Bonam

Nope. If someone bulldozed your house would you go out and try to commit murder so you could be locked up for the rest of your life, or perhaps get killed in the act? No, you'd probably be smart enough to file a lawsuit instead. Maybe you wouldn't get your house back, but you'd probably get a payout enough to buy yourself a nice house elsewhere. Just because someone else does something nasty doesn't mean you should react in a way that is likely to make your own life even worse. Use reason, not emotion.

I agree the rate of doubling is slowing down and likely will continue to as we approach the limit of the current paradigm. But once we enter some new paradigm it will likely speed up again as we go through all the iterations of that until the next physical limit is approached. Silicon semiconductor circuits are not the first computing technology mankind invented, and neither will they be the last.

Doesn't appear that way.

It doesn't take much to be qualified for president, though. Just look at the current crop of candidates to see what constitutes "qualified".

Nope. The UN proposed that Israel be created, but the Arabs refused to abide by the terms of the resolution and invaded the Jewish communities with their combined forces. The Jews fought back, defending themselves, and were victorious. In this victory, they founded the state of Israel. The UN lifted not one finger to help uphold Israel as an independent state. The credit for Israel's creation and continued existence goes to its inhabitants alone.

What kind of question is this? A post can be on topic, and a reply to it can be off topic, obviously.

I don't think quantum computing is "just around the corner". Someone brought up quantum computing as a way to break current encryption methods, and the point I was trying to make was that, if and when quantum computers become practical, their ability to break classical encryption methods will be largely irrelevant (except during a brief transition period) because they would also make unbreakable quantum encryption possible.

I don't think Argus mentioned stripping anyone of the right to vote anywhere. Rather, his point was that voters that don't pay any net tax don't have as much reason to care about how taxes are spent, compared to voters who pay tax. Therefore, if a large fraction of the voter base doesn't pay any net tax, he reasons that the wise spending of tax dollars will not be among their highest priorities in electing a government. The implied solution to this is not to strip anyone of the right to vote, but instead to modify the tax system so that everyone has some "skin in the game", even if it's a relatively small amount.

No fusion reactor that achieves steady state fusion has ever been built. The first one with this goal is planned to be turned on in the 2020s. Fusion will likely never be commercially viable for terrestrial power generation, but could be very useful for space power systems, naval reactors, remote outposts, and the like. As for why would quantum computing be "different"... why wouldn't it? Many new technologies are developed and reach commercialization, many others do not. You don't know in advance which are which.

Commercial 2nm is still at least 10 years away. Quantum computing is a totally different regime and doesn't require shrinking transistor size to implement, it's a matter of setting up the right arrangements of entangled qubits and reducing decoherence. Also, the moment you have working quantum computers you can also use quantum encryption which is fundamentally unbreakable given our understanding of the laws of quantum mechanics (no cloning theorem and observer effect).

Well, even that takes us through ~4 more doublings. But, that's not necessarily the limit. Who is to say that a molecule surrounded by some atoms can't be made to function as multiple transistors simultaneously rather than just 1? Who is to say that a certain arrangement of quarks can't be made to function like a transistor?

The article talks about hitting a limit in the 2020s. Other than that, it just talks about companies no longer releasing a joint roadmap that centers around Moore's law... not that companies won't continue to work on making smaller transistors. The main problem with packing more transistors in the same volume, for now, is heat. But there are materials besides silicon which can switch with much lower thermal losses. People have been predicting the end of Moore's law for a long time and it hasn't happened yet. We still have several more doublings left before existing paradigms hit a wall with quantum physics. And after that, there are other paradigms. As long as there is demand for faster and denser computing, the technology to enable it will be developed. Of course, if the demand runs out, companies won't invest the tens of billions needed for each next step. So the question isn't really whether Moore's law can continue, but whether there will be enough demand to incentivize companies to put in the billions in R&D and infrastructure... and given that we are still in the early part of the transition to cloud computing, big data, mobile computing, etc, I think there will be plenty of demand drivers. You still about an order of magnitude improvement in GPUs to render multiple 8k images at 120-240 Hz, which you'll need for VR which seems to be increasingly in the plans of many major companies. Government agencies and research companies still need orders of magnitude more computing power for numerical simulations for science research, weapons research, etc. Cloud service providers need cheaper, faster, more reliable data storage that takes less physical space. And the emerging field of nanotechnology will need tiny processors that can fit inside devices just a few hundred nanometers across. There are just a few examples of demand drivers for continued improvement. That's not to say there might not be some hiccups along the way or some slowing to solve harder physical problems, but we are far, far, away from reaching the point where we stop shrinking computational elements.

Apple has already provided the FBI with all the data from the iPhone in question. That is all it should legally be required to do. Creating a backdoor on all iPhones is not necessary. If and when law enforcement agencies have a warrant to access a particular individual iPhone, then Apple should hand over the data, as it has in this case, but a method for the FBI to access all iPhones should not be implemented. All that said, I'm sure all this is just keeping up appearances. As we know from Snowden, all the major tech companies have already built in backdoors, and this is probably the government colluding with companies to pretend that some things are still secure, when really they already have all the backdoors they want.

Yeah that's what the article in the OP says: Canadians looking to buy homes between $500,000 and $1 million will have to put down larger down payments as new federal rules took effect Monday. Under the changes, homebuyers must now put at least 10 per cent down on the portion of a home that costs more than $500,000. Buyers can still put down five per cent on the first $500,000 of a home purchase. Homes that cost more than $1 million still require a 20 per cent down payment.

Well, they'll still have less than 10% equity, since it's still only a 5% requirement on the first 500k. When the bubble pops (as all bubbles do eventually) and prices drop to something approaching sense given the incomes in the areas in question, it won't matter if you have 5% equity or 7% equity.

Yes, good to see. I'm sure some crazies are already planning to kill her now, though.

Well, yes, clearly by requiring a higher downpayment you will get higher initial equity, by definition.

It's a bad thing: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/a-crisis-in-vancouver-the-lifeblood-of-the-city-is-leaving/article28730533/ Vancouver is a dying city. Many of its young people have already left, and the rest are in the process of leaving, as they can't afford to live in the city, even those who make six figure incomes. It will be an old folks home, a shell of what it once was. And at some point the bubble will pop and the people who thought of their house as their "main investment" will end up screwed, too. And it will serve them right for having supported the politicians that destroyed Vancouver. Already, half of the west side stands empty, unoccupied houses owned by investors in China and elsewhere. The rest of the city is not far behind.

First time homebuyers can't afford houses that cost 500k+ anyway, unless they are in the top 5% of earners, and for them, the down payment change just means they might have to save up for an extra year before buying. But most houses in this range are purchased by previous homeowners who can extract the equity from their last home to fund a downpayment, or foreign investors who buy all in cash anyway, and so will be unaffected by the down payment change. This change does nothing to reduce the problems with housing affordability in Vancouver and Toronto and only serves to slightly further skew the playing field in favor of foreign investors as opposed to local buyers. That said, higher downpayment requirements are good in the long term but, from the article: Phil Soper, president and CEO of Royal LePage, says the new rules aim to slow the breakneck pace of price growth in the red-hot markets of Toronto and Vancouver without affecting markets that are lagging, such as those in oil-dependent provinces. and the new rules will fail to achieve that.

A new low? I haven't seen it be any worse than the vitriol that was constantly directed at Harper and the Conservatives. Sorry but the current level of polarization and idiocy is the new normal all around.

Yeah, unfortunately, the social justice types form a big chunk of the Democrat base, as much as the tea party types are a big part of the Republican base. Both parties seem to be getting hijacked by the extremist elements, and there is a growing chasm in the center. It wasn't long ago that both parties fought over the center ground, today it's a no man's land.

Yep pretty much. Regarding history: that's why I say another 50% drop in the next few years is unlikely (of course, not impossible) - this isn't a prediction, but just a statement of probabilities. Such drops tend to be few and far between, historically. But, if such a drop did happen, it would be a great buying opportunity. Not sure what sharkman didn't understand about that.

Cool, well if it drops that much again, all the better the buying opportunity will be

Yeah, in 2000 the market dropped 47% from it's all time high of ~1527 down to ~800. So not quite the 50% threshold but pretty close. In 2009, the market hit 683 after attaining an all time high of 1561, a 56% drop. But before that, you have to go all the way back to the Great Depression to find another drop of 50% or more from an all time high (that drop was ~80%). Today, we're only 13% off the all time high, and drops in the 10-20% range happen every couple of years historically.

Hah, that was meant as a joke... you know, how people always think this time is different, because they've forgotten the last 100 times the exact same thing happened. I too would love a nice 50% drop in the S&P like we had in 2008. That's a once or twice in a lifetime buying opportunity there. Sadly I had very little capital in 2009, having just finished university. Doubt we'll see another drop that big any time soon though.