Slashdot Mirror

On November 11th, 2018.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/1...

Yes, but those are the sales for the one-day Singles Day. US holiday shopping is spread out over an entire month. If all Christmas sales were all compressed to a single day, then the total would be much higher for that one day. As a comparison, total 2017 US Christmas sales were over $700 billion, of which $123 billion was online.

China is quickly becoming a consumer economy, but it still has a ways to catch up to the US for now.

On November 11th, 2018.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/1...

A Nissan Leaf in particular? No. But cheap cars? definitely yes. Note Sergey Brin and Larry Page with Priuses and Balmer with a Ford Fusion Hybrid.

Rich people don't necessarily drive luxury cars, and I'm not sure that the Model 3 counts as luxury anyway. Lots of crappy SUVs cost the same or more as at least the base model, which is what they're finally starting to roll out. Sure, you can add on options to crank the price way up, but you can do that with most cars.

Stallman is absolutely right to draw attention to the privacy-stripping nature of crypto-currency, but this is far from the only challenge that this type of model can experience.

As we saw in Bitcoin trading in early 2018, an even greater threat may be speculation. Earlier this year, investors and speculators all "piled in" to Bitcoin, driving up the value of coins as demand far out-stripped supply. Now, less than a year later, the value of Bitcoins is tumbling to about $3,750, roughly 20% of the value it held at the beginning of the year. That's a shocking rate of loss.

It is worth mentioning the "speculation risk" with respect to crypto-currency, because there is nothing that Mr Stallman has said which gives any indication that his GNU Project Alternative would in any way mitigate the risk of speculative trading. An only slightly smaller annoyance than the speculators would have to be the conversion fees charged by the so-called "Exchanges".

As this MSNBC report from last December shows, some exchanges were charging an average of $28 per transaction. There are examples of people being charged $15 to send $100 in value - which is ridiculous.

This is frustrating for many reasons, not least of which is the fact that Bitcoin briefly had the potential to be something that could bring down the banking hegemony on currency conversions: you convert some of your local currency to Bitcoin for next-to-no overhead... you fly to another country... you convert your Bitcoins to local currency for next-to-no overhead. This, had it come to pass, would have allowed Bitcoin to become quickly established in the world and to also force established financial institutions to offer fairly-priced products instead of creaming fat profits off of travellers.

So even though I'm sure that Mr Stallman and his colleagues will have done some excellent work on enhancing the privacy of their alternative crypto-currency, the simple fact remains that privacy is just one of a multi-faceted problem. In fact, it's entirely possible that different exchanges, working in concert, could price this new offering out of the market by demanding even higher transaction fees (on the basis that they are not getting marketing information out of their users).

The entire "marketplace" looks to be increasingly rigged by "establishment middlemen". Sadly, I don't think that there is any way of circumventing that, at least not within the scope proposed here.

The US is moving toward authoritarianism, akin to China: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/1...

For one, H was not properly trained on security matters. She somehow missed the class(es). She had a "briefing", but a briefing is not the formal class.

Yeah, that's a lie. Why else would she have specifically told staff not to use private e-mail? She knew fully what she was doing was wrong - and even sent out reminders to staff to NOT do what she was doing.

the vast, vast majority of us have healthcare

Health insurance != health care. For the vast, vast majority of people, their health insurance requires them to pay 80-100% of costs up to $6,000 or more which is a crippling enough cost that many people will avoid any sort of "health care" for as long as possible. Further, "A total of 12.2 percent of all adults now lack health insurance," -- Americans without health insurance jumped by more than 3 million under Trump, which undercuts the "vast, vast majority" claim. Many Americans who know they'll never get health care even if they had health insurance because of the large deductible won't take on the several thousands cost of health insurance. They'll end up taking advantage of the "medicare for all" that is hospitals requiring to take in emergency cases to receive medicare/medicaid funds.

There's a lot of things you can argue as positives in the US, but health care is not one of them.

Yet somehow the top 4 universities in the world, ranked by a non-US source, are all in the US.

Those being: MIT, Stanford, Harvard, and Caltech.

Whichever country you are from, it doesn't do as well.

'Vast cash flow' plus negative profit is not a good thing.

Good thing for Tesla then that they have only positive cash flow!

Or maybe you were casting shade on TSLA shorts. Ha ha you are so right, what morons!

Ideologically, I am about as far as you can get from Ms Ocasio-Cortez, but attacking her because she isn't rich enough to afford two homes is really taking the low road.

She has spoken out about against the Amazon tax subsidy, so at least I agree with her about that.

Somebody's going to be paying for that, so it comes at the cost of legroom.

And yet it's rare to be on a full flight. How much extra are they really making?

It seems that I'm on full flights a lot more than I used to be. I would say about 80% of my flights are full with many having waiting lists and/or paying people to voluntarily deboard. Airlines overbook and run at about 85% capacity. They can't increase that much more than the 85% because additional overbooking runs the risk of having too many flights where too many people can't get on the plane they paid for. https://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/1...

Acres burned were dropping until the 1990s (when climate change was, you know, happening). Then harvesting of timber in California dropped dramatically in the mid 1990s, and we see an uptick in fire coverage - mainly driven by California.

Coincidence or causation? Well, given that California has a record amount of dead trees out there, it's not a big leap to say that reduced harvesting is a problem. And given that lots of people in CA believe logging dead trees is bad, we shouldn't be surprised at the fuel - and subsequent fire - increase happens.

THAT is how you cite your argument. Simple, see?

Here's your reminder.

Madison is actually number 6 in the US. just a bit higher than Bridgeport, CT.

Trump wants Medicare for all too.

Uh, Trump doesn't pay attention to what he says. One day he says "why can't Medicare just cover everybody?" (ref:) A few months later, he says "Medicare for all would be a catastrophe and a disaster!" (ref:)

The actual truth is, he has spent zero time studying the question of health insurance, he has no plans or policies about health insurance, and he's not going to have any plans or policies about health insurance: it's a hard problem, and he just isn't interesting in doing anything that is hard. It simply isn't something he has any interest in.

The Democrats won't sit at the same table with him, so your only chance in hell at it happening is shot down.

"Medicare for all", of course, is a Bernie Sanders proposal (ref:)

>"When the company announced a list of 20 top contenders in January, it included Washington and Montgomery county, Maryland, which is just north of the city."

So when it is just south of Washington DC, it is "Washington DC", but when it is just north of Washington DC, it is "Maryland"? This is the third article/summary I have seen say the same thing, from different sources.

And here it is in reverse, listing Virginia, but not listing Maryland:
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/1...

So, a CEO coming out and publicly stating they are building 30% more cars than they really are, and stating that sales are 50% more than expected, even though they have data which disputes the very claims, is not guilty of fraud and stock manipulation? CEOs and companies are fined when they mislead investors by overstating estimated revenues or understating risks.

Well according to the quote from Tesla here:

In particular, the SEC has issued subpoenas to Tesla in connection with (a) Mr. Musk's prior statement that he was considering taking Tesla private and (b) certain projections that we made for Model 3 production rates during 2017 and other public statements relating to Model 3 production.

Good thing Musk never makes "aspirational" targets. Oh, wait...

Failure to predict the future is not illegal (...) As long as they weren't egregiously bullshitting

Predicting a future you aren't actually planning for can be illegal. Like if you're planning to open a new plant in six months you can't claim it's opening next quarter and then announce a three month delay later. If a machine is capacity limited to 3000 cars/week and you're not doing anything about it you can't project to make 5000/week. If you're not actually planning to pay shifts to work 24x7 you can't use that in your calculations. I think Musk is quite capable of padding the estimates beyond the "most optimistic projection" as a stretch goal. And normally I don't think anyone would bother, but now he's got the SEC pissed and looking for ways to throw the book at him.

That whole "going private" business only meant something to the people who bought/sold stock in that period, if you were sitting on it throughout it was just a paper valuation. If the SEC can show Musk misled all the investors through fraudulent production projections, now that could get nasty. Still seems rather unlikely but considering how poorly he seems to understand his obligations as a CEO of a public company, who knows. He doesn't seem to have any understanding of why we made rules about misleading public investors.

a $500,000 angel investment in the social network Facebook for 10.2% of the company and joined Facebook's board.

They say your first million in business is the hardest, and that got Facebook halfway there. It may seem impressive that half a million would be enough to launch a successful competitor against an established business, but the reality is few investors are willing to risk that kind of capital and most people don't have that kind of money to fund the venture themselves. The median American household has only $11,700 in savings. Facebook got lucky twice - first that they were able to secure venture capital, and second that they were able to gain marketshare and topple their competitor.

The Commie term has nothing to do with newcomers competing with the incumbents.

This quote explains it better than I could:

It's the sense that monopolies, and the oligarchs that run them, have rigged the system in their favor. They hired well-paid lobbyists to influence politicians. They won Supreme Court cases that give corporations the same rights as people. This allows them to spend untold millions on political ads that benefit them. Many feel that capitalism's winners may even favor inequality. They have fewer competitive threats. They "rig the system" by creating barriers to entry.

It is entirely possible to acknowledge a situation exists (in this case, late capitalism), without agreeing that communistic measures are the correct course of action to remedy it. History has already taught (most of us) that communism doesn't work.

They make a ton of money though.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/2...

Not to mention President Trump has been a lot tougher on Russia than his predecessor, including military support for the Ukraine, military opposition in Syria, sanctions on individuals and the country, and more. But somehow I guess that's Putin being a 5D chess master to make Trump punish Putin just to put on a show?

I want names.

Stop the goalpost shifting. You said that NOBODY wanted speech regulated. I provided a survey with evidence that over A HUNDRED MILLION Americans think it should be. The specific names of those millions is irrelevant, and you know it.

Your own article says:

An overwhelming majority of Americans believe that “it would be hard to ban hate speech because people can’t agree what speech is hateful

Keep reading. They think it will be hard to do, but a sizable minority think it should be done anyway. 40% think the government should have the power to silence people saying "Men are better at math than women".

Show me somebody who matters that wants to regulate hate speech through the government.

More goalpost shifting. First it was "nobody", then it was "nobody credible", then it was "nobody that can't be specifically named", now it is "nobody that matters".

Preferably someone on the left.

Why does that matter? Some progressives want to ban "hate speech". Even more conservatives want to ban disrespect to the flag. It is an infringement on free speech either way.

Anyway, since you asked, here are a few specific people that have advocated government regulation of online speech:
1. Larry Kudlow, advisor to Donald Trump
2. Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce
3. Kevin Knight, former Facebook executive
4. Ro Khanna, California congressional representative

I now await your objection that these people "don't matter" or that I didn't list all 120 million.

Since Silicon Valley uses so many contract workers, it shouldn't be a big deal to just poach a few away for a year or two, right?

Seems he is misinformed or SemiAccurate is off base

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/2...

Hmm.

"Some service employees said they were surprised to learn that when they sent mechanics to help out with "bursts" to build new vehicles in the Fremont factory, their time was billed either to "training" or "research and development," rather than service or vehicle assembly. "

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/1...

Look on the bright side of things, you have "commercialized space" with government money now going not to NASA, but to Elon Musk. Ain't that a boon? Maybe if you unlearn to say "no", you can share the factory floor with him.

Isn't $15/hr the amount that minimum wage activists have been suggesting for the past year or two?

He didn't say "Obama" - he said Homeland Security and they DID attempt to infiltrate their systems along with several other states.
https://www.cnbc.com/2016/12/0...
Ostensibly it could be argued that they were "testing" the security but that's not been confirmed one way or the other or why they didn't bother notifying the states when they got in that their security was compromised.
Interesting also that this story just went away after the election.

Out of all the Teslas (any model!) you can find that are on fire, how many of them were involved in some horrific crash?

Nearly all of them. Getting a Tesla (or any EV) to catch fire generally requires some effort.

Meanwhile, there is a car fire roughly every 3 minutes in the US alone (based on data from NFPA: 174,000 reported incidents in 2015). 72% of these fires are caused by a malfunction of some kind. I guess having a flammable liquids in close proximity to boiling hot metal and gasses can be a hazardous situation!
=Smidge=

meanwhile in the real word real research is happening by Boeing's competitors So keep thinking it'll never happen

Astounding ignorance is believing that such a major disruption in such a massive employer in the third world ( https://data.worldbank.org/ind... ) and yet one that needs to make truly massive efficiency gains to feed everyone ( https://www.cnbc.com/2014/10/1... ) will be compensated for by "progress".

Western agriculture is already massively automated and using up most of the available land it has for agriculture which means the real gains in food production will necessitate the sudden adoption of ultra modern tech in third world agriculture. When all these third worlder's suddenly become unemployed what are they going to do? These are people from countries that can't afford to properly educate their own people, there's no way the vast majority of them will just magically "adapt" and create the needed economic growth to employ themselves in other industries.

Meanwhile, white collar jobs are being increasingly automated which in the past is where manual laborers went when they were displaced by technology.

Sorry, but believing in historic pasterns in the face of overwhelming contrary data is what is astoundingly ignorant. In other words it's really astounding ignorant to think that society will always be able to keep up with Moore's Law. Society needs to start planning for this shit.

You talking out your ass does not change the fact that Manafort is Mueller's bitch now. Cohen too, and Allen Weisselberg too.

Trump is the walking dead, you know it.

Middle class is a step up, property owning, savings in the bank with a decent retirement to look forward to, lots of disposable income.

That's the British definition of middle class. The American definition of middle class is anybody with a roof over their head and less than 3 airplanes in their garage/hanger. And yet we also constantly say the middle class is struggling to make ends meet, and demand that our politicians fight for the middle class.

There is no working class in America -- it's poor, middle, rich with 90% considering themselves to be in the middle. Okay I exaggerated slightly, research shows just 70% claim middle classhood.

As for the world middle class, if you define middle class as being actually in the middle then it has always been true that half the people are above average.

I'm aware. I used to be a federal employee. Most US companies start people out with 2 week, then after 5 years go to 3 week, and after 10 years offer 4 weeks vacation. I've also worked at several other large companies (over 10k employees) and this seems to be pretty standard. These sites back that up with stats from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics-

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/0...
https://www.usatoday.com/story...

The actual numbers are actually a little lower according to this - https://www.bls.gov/news.relea...

India is dropping.

Oh you didn't mean currency.
India is far below the US. Only the king of idiots would be calling on them to drop.

The SEC didn't back down. Elon Musk changed his mind and decided to take the deal.

In the original deal, Musk wouldn't have had to give up the CEO position either. He just had to give up the chairman position for 2 years (now 3 years), pay a fine, and appoint 2 new independent directors.

From Tesla's Musk pulled the plug on a settlement with the SEC at the last minute:

Tesla and the Securities and Exchange Commission were close to a no-guilt settlement but Elon Musk pulled out at the last minute, sources told CNBC.

Under the deal, Musk and Tesla would have had to pay a nominal fine, and the CEO would not have had to admit any guilt, the sources said. However, the settlement would have barred Musk as chairman for two years and would require Tesla to appoint two new independent directors, CNBC's David Faber, citing sources.

Well yes, but the distinction between sued and charged may be kind of academic. One of the remedies suggested/demanded in the suit would be to bar Musk from acting as an officer or director or officer of a publicly traded company. I wonder if they are serious or if that is some sort of negotiating chip.

If nothing else, I would think this might serve as a warning to CEOs to be a bit careful about what you tweet. That's possibly what the SEC had in mind. It's also possible that they'd informally warned Musk in the past to watch his step.

Here's a link to CNBC's article: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/2... It seems to contain a link to the full text of the SEC lawsuit.

James Comey, then head of the FBI, declared that she's guilty, but that "no reasonable prosecutor" would pursue her.

No. No he did not. He said her staff where careless.

He did, indeed, say that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case. Here is the CNBC story that quotes him.

The case is unprosecutable because there isn't evidence of a crime.

From the same story:

Comey began his address by explaining what investigators found. He said that the probe showed that 110 emails in 52 email chains were determined to include classified information at the time they were received. Within those emails, eight chains contained information that was "top secret" at the time they were sent, 36 had "secret" information and eight more had "confidential" information, the FBI director said.

All of that is evidence of a crime. He is further quoted as saying, in the SAME SENTENCE that contains the "no reasonable prosecutor" phrase:

"Although there is evidence of potential violations regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case," he said.

There is evidence, but no prosecutor would bring a case. Further, he said:

He characterized the investigation findings as showing that Clinton and her team were "extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information" but he said there was no clear evidence they intended to violate the law.

So no, he didn't say that just Clinton's staff "where" careless. Clinton too.

But but but ... no clear evidence of intent? Sadly the laws being broken don't have an intent clause, they are broken when the act takes place, intent or not.

Despite the bleatings of the conspiracy theory set, "Grandma doesn't understand email security" isn't a crime,

But "Grandma doesn't understand what 'Top Secret' means and the necessity of safeguarding such material" IS a crime. Grandma shouldn't have had to understand email security, but since she made the attempt and failed, and had classified material transported using that email system in violation of federal law, there is a crime. A crime that Grandma had been briefed on before she was given a security clearance, by the way. Ignorance is not only not an excuse, it doesn't apply here.

join the fact based community.

A good suggestion. I suppose you would classify CNBC with Brietbart, but you can find the full statement here on the FBI's website. Are CNN and The New York Times also Brietbart sycophants?

I just learned that today. Some claim UPS workers provide better service than FedEx workers, due to UPS workers being unionized.

I can honestly say I've never noticed any difference. Read more here: https://www.motherjones.com/po...

Of course unions can also stand in the way of progress, such as forbidding the use of drones or driverless delivery trucks: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/2...

The article also makes clear that Cohen didn't name Trump in his plea deals nor submitted testimony

You are correct. Cohen's testimony didn't mention Trump by name. It mentioned an "unnamed federal candidate that Cohen worked for". Since Cohen never worked for any other candidate, who do you think it's referring to?

That's why Trump is referred to as an "unindicted co-conspirator". This is a common formulation in criminal cases that involve elected officials. I remember when an earlier incarnation of Trump, Rod Blagojevich, was indicted and everybody was finking on each other. They didn't name the other parties in the conspiracy because they were being indicted separately (or cooperating), and Justice Department guidelines don't allow testimony to name anyone who is not a defendant in that case. Since the testimony is evidenciary in a case that is still being built, brick by brick, against Donald Trump, he's not a defendant until he's indicted. But make no mistake: Cohen implicated Trump in several felonies, and is still talking his head off to prosecutors in some room in the Southern District of New York.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/2...

...are not millennials.

They are Generation Z-ers.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/0...

Another person just left the sinking ship that is Tesla.

Things like automobile production that have a lot of parts will suffer supply hiccups, but OTOH they're not really doing JIT manufacturing, most cars sit around on lots before even being transferred to the dealers, and the disruptions aren't as bad as they might sound on the tee-vee. The vast majority of products do not have that many parts. And none of it is exclusive to China. None of it.

Car companies are deciding now what models they will release in 2022. They have to decide now, where to build the plants, where to get the supplies etc. not knowing which countries will have tariffs at what levels on which parts is extremely disruptive and costly.

The worst the U.S. could manage, the regulator said, would be to institute new levies on all of the Chinese goods coming into the world's largest economy. Such an offensive from Trump would only hit 0.7 percentage points of China's GDP growth, he forecast, adding that Beijing had ample tools to "cushion" the blow.

The worst the U.S. could manage, the regulator said, would be to institute new levies on all of the Chinese goods coming into the world's largest economy. Such an offensive from Trump would only hit 0.7 percentage points of China's GDP growth, he forecast, adding that Beijing had ample tools to "cushion" the blow.

And yet several industry analysts are saying that Tesla doesn't have any credible competition until at least 2020 and that Tesla's lead in EV technology may last far longer than anyone thought after an underwhelming product announcement from Audi.

Maybe making an EV that actually works is hard, and the big auto makers can't slap one together at the last minute?

No, wait ...

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/1...

Oh. It's all a ruse. I guess it'll be rocket fuel after all.

The Fed, not Trump, sets interest rates.

And who do you think sets the Fed?

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/2...

The President doesn't actually have that much control over the deficit.

The deficit increase is entirely from the tax cuts and the increase in military spending, which were both Trump-driven.

Congress controls spending levels and controls borrowing.

The current GOP-majority congress is entirely, 100% controlled by Trump.

Sorry, but Gates, Buffet and 12 other billionaires signed a pledge to give most of their fortune away.
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/3...
Bezos refused to sign (as did Bloomberg). They are greedy self serving pigs.

This is the reality in your free market situation:

You are disgruntled that you are not getting a proper treatment through your provider for the illness you currently have, often straight up denying claims or not covering illnesses that were specified somewhere in fine print in your 1000-page contract. You cancel out of anger and try to sign up for next competitor. The new provider deems you have pre-existing condition and deny you. You say, "oh, shit, I better go back, quick!" But then your previous provider denies you as well for having pre-existing condition even though you insured with them for decades before jumping ship. Now you solely pay out of pocket for exorbitant amount of money draining your savings and/or taking out second mortgage against your house OR you stay with your shitty provider that barely covers you. Few months in, now you're broke and declare bankruptcy.

You think this is a cool story? It happens to millions of people in US every year.

https://www.cnbc.com/id/100840...