Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Hyundai to acquire Boston Dynamics

therobotreport.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 257 posts

Re: Hyundai to acquire Boston Dynamics

#241

Post by mrguyorama »

gwicks56 wrote: post #189
gorgoiler wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the moral case for implementing autonomous manufacturing? If you eliminate one kind of job, then another, then another, and then implement general purpose job elimination, where does it end? Is it not an axiom of the world that there simply isn’t enough knowledge work to go around all seven billion of us? By taking away jobs what do those of us who aren’t programmers, architects, novelists or day spa wait sta…

Surely the whole point of tech is to make life involve less work? The problem becomes an economic one, how to you distribute the wealth automation enables.

Solving the tech part of the issue while ignoring the societal aspect is somewhat condemning millions to misery though. Here in the US, it's expected you work, the economy and society are built around it, and millions of people would scream at you for trying to make a system that some people "don't have to" work in

Re: Hyundai to acquire Boston Dynamics

#242

Post by simonh »

jandrese wrote: post #239
mmc4444 wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> inheritance is a problem because it's un-earned wealth > Inheritance taxes should be high, without being overly punitive What's strange is that when you talk to people about inheritance tax they become instantly outraged at the idea of the government taking their money by force, yet they seem to have no problem with the government forcibly taking close to half of their salary. It's a strange paradox and it seems th…

The problem with inheritance taxes is that corporations don't have to pass their assets onto their children in order to continue existing. They're a half measure. That said this is an issue that for some reason has a lot of poor people who would never be affected taking up the torch in support of the very same billionaires that are currently screwing them over. It's really remarkable the power of propaganda.

Corporations don’t own themselves though, people do. Effective ownership and control are the main goals that benefit society, as long as the organisation is well run and generating useful goods and services, and employing people, we all benefit. Inheritance is an obstacle to that because it’s effectively random in terms of the competence of the inheritors, but there’s nothing random about the leadership of companies. By and large it’s based on merit. If it isn’t, then sure, corporate governance is a legitimate area for policy making.

Re: Hyundai to acquire Boston Dynamics

#243

Post by Ziggy_Zaggy »

postingpals wrote: post #174

Crunchyroll acquired by Sony, BD acquired by Hyundai, Slack acquired by Salesforce... Our economic system seems to have a natural tendency towards monopoly. This is happening before our eyes and we don't even realise it.

Plenty of us are seeing it happen. Now we just have to figure out how to take action to redesign the system to stop and undo it or use the tools already avaiable to undo the damage.

Re: Hyundai to acquire Boston Dynamics

#244

Post by ActorNightly »

postingpals wrote: post #222
ActorNightly wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't confuse monopoly with consolidation. When Salesforce goes out and gets a patent that says you can't have any client resembling Slack without paying them royalties , then you can consider that a monopoly. And for fringe companies like BD, its honestly better that they get acquired by someone that can dump IRAD money into it cause the research that comes out of these is arguably more valuable than the products th…

Contrary to what you might have learned on hackernews, monopoly doesn't mean there is no alternative and having no alternatives is not the primary downside to monopolies. > United States v. Grinnell Corp., 384 U.S. 563 (1966) Grinnell made plumbing supplies and fire sprinklers, and with affiliates had 87% of the central station protective service market. From this predominant share there was no doubt of monopoly powe…

Sure, but none of the cases listed in the comment I replied to are close to having control like Grinnell+affiliates.

Re: Hyundai to acquire Boston Dynamics

#245

Post by jandrese »

simonh wrote: post #242
jandrese wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with inheritance taxes is that corporations don't have to pass their assets onto their children in order to continue existing. They're a half measure. That said this is an issue that for some reason has a lot of poor people who would never be affected taking up the torch in support of the very same billionaires that are currently screwing them over. It's really remarkable the power of propaganda.

Corporations don’t own themselves though, people do. Effective ownership and control are the main goals that benefit society, as long as the organisation is well run and generating useful goods and services, and employing people, we all benefit. Inheritance is an obstacle to that because it’s effectively random in terms of the competence of the inheritors, but there’s nothing random about the leadership of companies.…

I think you might be overestimating how much merit is a factor in the selection of board members. Corporate boards are incredibly incestuous. The most reliable way to get on a board is to be in an old money family and know other people on the board.

One could argue that the current system of selecting corporate executives produces no better result than the general election process used to select some government officials. Certainly there is no lack of poorly run companies in the modern world, especially when compared to highly competitive companies like Apple under Steve Jobs and Tesla/SpaceX under Elon Musk. The advantage to corporate boards is that candidates don't have to spend time and energy with public campaigning, but they gravitate towards conservative governance that is unable to adapt to changing times.

At any rate, the competence of the leadership at companies doesn't really matter. If they make money they can be taxed on that. How competent the leadership is may or may not impact how much money they make. Poorly managed companies may even make more money in the short term.

Re: Hyundai to acquire Boston Dynamics

#246

Post by simonh »

jandrese wrote: post #245
simonh wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corporations don’t own themselves though, people do. Effective ownership and control are the main goals that benefit society, as long as the organisation is well run and generating useful goods and services, and employing people, we all benefit. Inheritance is an obstacle to that because it’s effectively random in terms of the competence of the inheritors, but there’s nothing random about the leadership of companies.…

I think you might be overestimating how much merit is a factor in the selection of board members. Corporate boards are incredibly incestuous. The most reliable way to get on a board is to be in an old money family and know other people on the board. One could argue that the current system of selecting corporate executives produces no better result than the general election process used to select some government offic…

Well, badly run companies die and get eaten by their competitors. That’s fine. We do of course need to make sure markets are competitive and that incumbents aren’t unfairly privileged, so there is a role for regulation, but the basic competitive system is fine.

Re: Hyundai to acquire Boston Dynamics

#247

Post by dragonelite »

marcusverus wrote: post #123
ASalazarMX wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stock market is real for the few privileged insiders, the rest of us have modest profits or even loses that pay for someone else's profits.

Silliness. The market is effectively a free money machine for people who are capable of delaying gratification. The fact that most people are not capable of this is not the fault of the market. And, for the record, the rich aren't getting better returns than the rest of us--the S&P beats the vast majority of Hedge Funds, year after year. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/15/active-fund-managers-trail-t...

It was like put money in x wait/monitor till it starts moving up or down lock in your maximum losses and your minimal profits with stop loss orders. I was kinda dumb strucked how easy it was to grow your initial input after the huge market drop in march and just by reading some blogs. Things will probably change after the corona pandemic.

Re: Hyundai to acquire Boston Dynamics

#248

Post by pkd »

WanderPanda wrote: post #208
jandrese wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In market based economies there will always be a general movement of capital to the top, because simply having money allow you to earn more money. It's a positive feedback loop. That's why it is important for an external force, which pretty much has to be a government, to tax the wealth at the top and move it back to the bottom. Otherwise the system gradually turns into feudalism by its very nature. A government that…

Thats not at all correct. In the mid to long term money will move to the person allocating it most efficiently. This of course assuming a non corrupt government. And thats where I see the actual positive feedback loop: People like you want the government to have more power, with more power there is more room for corruption/lobbyism, people demand even more government power

It is actually very much correct if you believe in data backed research and can read Capital in the 21st Century.

Re: Hyundai to acquire Boston Dynamics

#249

Post by marcusverus »

itsoktocry wrote: post #215
marcusverus wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That's clearly an absurdity and not physically possible. And yet the market has averaged a 7% annual return since 1870.

Nominal returns. Unfortunately, none of us are average. You can gain 100% many times, but lose it only once. It's going to be fun when the "just buy an index and you'll be fine" strategy falters (in this case a cap-weighted, large US company index that buys shares at any price). The S&P500 isn't diverse like they talk about in finance textbooks. There are quite a few years in that article you linked where hedge funds…

>Nominal returns. Unfortunately, none of us are average.

With index funds and ETFs everywhere, it is quite common to be average. It's also far easier to buy an all-market index fund/ETF than to pick stocks or active funds.

> You can gain 100% many times, but lose it only once.

True of all investments.

>It's going to be fun when the "just buy an index and you'll be fine" strategy falters (in this case a cap-weighted, large US company index that buys shares at any price). The S&P500 isn't diverse like they talk about in finance textbooks. There are quite a few years in that article you linked where hedge funds beat the index (2001-2005, 2007, 2009, 2010). It's almost as if who beats whom is random...

Not over the long run. From the same article, "After 10 years, 85 percent of large cap funds underperformed the S&P 500, and after 15 years, nearly 92 percent are trailing the index."

Re: Hyundai to acquire Boston Dynamics

#250

Post by joshspankit »

Cactus2018 wrote: post #105
T-A wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reference to Ford is reminiscent of this: https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/04/experts-say-tesla-has-r... It's quoted, along with a bunch of other articles from 2018, here: https://www.iqsdirectory.com/resources/teslas-big-problem-ex...

> [Ars quoting Musk in 2017] "We are pushing robots to the limit in terms of the speed that they can operate at, and asking our suppliers to make robots go way faster, and they are shocked because nobody has ever asked them that question," Musk said on a conference call last November. I saw a video, years ago, when Tesla was installing/setting up/showing off the robots. The demonstrated method and tool to 'program' t…

I saw a video a few years ago where they failed to land a rocket on a platform and it blew up...
Post reply on HN