If you buy into AWS, you are stuck with AWS... even the "offline versions" are half assed and held together with duct tape and crazy glue. The only possible way to run AWS is if you have the entire operations team at Amazon constantly tweaking, tuning and running around changing hardware.
If you buy into Azure, you have the option to fallback on Azure Stack... while you'll still be stuck with MS from now and to forever, you have the option to host it yourself or on a separate provider.
Right now, the only fiscally responsible decision for "cloud solutions" is actually Azure because you can in fact run it offline and have some minimalistic amount of control over your own future.
I actually do a lot of cloud projects and while I use a lot of Docker and sometimes even Kubernetes if I really have to, these are just tiny little bits of a platform. A proper cloud solution starts with storage first... this means object storage, document storage, table storage. It centralizes all aspects of "cloud scale" scaleout of this storage. Then it provides a networking backend that companies like Cisco would call SDN but cloud vendors would just call networking. Then they provide container and VM orchestration.
You can build your own "cloud service" if you really want to, but the work to do it is VERY VERY expensive and requires companies 100% devoted to it. This is what made IBM CICS/DB2/RPG/COBOL so amazingly successful for so long. It takes a mega corporation to build and maintain this.
On the other hand, you can buy Azure Stack or rent online... and skip all that crap and ditch most of your IT operations staff.
As I sit here waiting in Florida to finally travel back to civilization, Iâ€(TM)ve seen a huge effect of automation and centralization while on this visit.
The US is way ahead of anywhere else in the world with regards to killing jobs. To be honest, Iâ€(TM)m envious. Due to vast amounts of cheap and untrained labor, the US has made incredible progress towards to a Wall-E like society. People like me have no need to go to the mall or the grocery store or pretty much anywhere else since you can order anything online and get it quickly.
The malls are replacing retail shops with services and entertainment. The roads are littered with abandoned retail shops except those catering purely to poor people lacking credit cards or novelty. The decline is very obvious to an outsider.
Automation and centralization has made it so the people are forced to work in almost entirely service oriented jobs.
America is the logistics powerhouse of the western world. The country is famous for its ability to move things from place to place efficiently. This is glorious to watch. Compared to Europe, America is years ahead with regards to killing off jobs because in Europe, logistics companies are not yet able to offer dirt cheap delivery options. This is because outside of England, there arenâ€(TM)t enough uneducated people in Western Europe to handle all the logistical tasks manually for slave labor wages. We need the machines.
That said, once logistics is automated, both Europe and America will face a huge problem. The issue will be that if products can be delivered by drone or self-driving vehicles or whatever else, a HUGE number of jobs will disappear.
This will cause governments around the world to place many people on unemployment or social welfare because unless people open massive numbers of vanity oriented services like theme restaurants and eyebrow plucking shops, there simply will be no jobs to go around.
As the governments dilute their currencies via deficits, the value of their money will plummet. The ripple effect through the world will be that eventually companies will no longer see a clear path to profitability by manufacturing, distributing and marketing useless shit.
The people will focus on purchasing necessities rather than novelties therefore collapsing markets for endlessly disposable crap. This will hurt financial markets as well as the general import/export markets. Unions like the EU will become a matter of survival and will make it so as the market adjust, the governmentâ€(TM)s will be able to balance their deficits (not reduce, but increase systematically) until people are still being fed and kept healthy but with far less purchasing power than before.
The rich will be hurt because the vast majority of their sources of income will dissolve. The mass dilution of currency will mean that everyone will move progressively towards the middle or many will die because governments dependent primarily on manufacturing will lack the resources to balance their deficits as their exports will become unimportant.
The end result will be somewhat chaotic. Countries will unite to mega corporations who no longer see the financial benefit of producing and distributing necessities. Companies like Amazon will become more similar to a welfare system.
This of course is a doomsday scenario and if I were to write five more pages, I would add predictions that would include the one month work year which will make a big difference. But the point is that rich people are only rich because their money is perceived to have purchasing power. As that perception erodes, so will their wealth.
Please feel free to visit the latest Linux Kernel tree (or any for several years) and audit the code for the included ESXi drivers (memory management and network specifically) as well as the Cisco VIC network and SCSI driver code.
It took me an average of 3 minutes between finding attack vectors thanks to VMware's half-assed code that should have been completely rewritten years ago. Now, if you can't find a vulnerability using the ESXi drivers in the Linux code base, you probably shouldn't be allowed near a computer.
The Cisco VIC adapter code is so much better... you not only can find endless numbers of vulnerabilities, but you can actually upload entire new operating systems to the VIC adapters in nearly all Cisco servers (especially HyperFlex) and you can even change the boot firmware by disabling authenticity checks in the driver code. The end result being that you could easily permanently place undetectable backdoors that would require hardware replacement to correct into the VIC adapter.
Even better... as a bonus, I'm quite confident that it is possible on VMware from a guest machine using VMFEX network adapters with Cisco VICs, it should be possible to change the hardware firmware of the VIC adapters... which include entire built-in processors for SCSI and RDMA... so that you could pretend to be one of the VMs and communicate to anywhere you want and even issue SCSI requests to the SAN directly over network protocols that can't be monitored on Cisco switches.
None of this is intentional... it's all because no one takes the time to clean up after their own messes.
It seems to me that lack of preparation is an issue here.
Even the blurb explains that the issue was that there was a planned spacewalk and although there are 6 astronauts on board the ISS at this time and there has been some time to make the decision to prepare the space suits, no one saw fit to... well... to fit the suits appropriately.
Who gives a shit about the gender of the astronauts beyond ensuring there is appropriate necessities in the ISS to facilitate their gender specific needs? This could have easily been a similar problem if one of the astronauts was a smaller male. They are basically two nerds, one a mechanical and aerospace engineer and the other, a physicist and electrical engineer.
This past year has been one whole year of :
- First female to win Abel award... yeh... she won it because she's a she... not because she is one of the most brilliant mathematicians of the last 70 years
- All female spacewalk cancelled... yeh, they're astronauts because they're girls, not because they both achieved top marks from top schools in areas of science and engineering.
- all female..
- first woman...
I mean seriously... what's the f-ing point here? Exceptional people are exceptional people... and moron journalists are moron journalists... done.
I wrote a kernel module not long ago... in C. I was extremely diligent to make the code as clean as possible and to make the memory and error management as perfect as possible. I even added as many checks as I could. I wrote massive amounts of unit and integration tests. I configured multiple static code analysis systems to keep the code as pristine as possible... you shouldn't even be able to look at the code without causing some warning to be generated.
Then we got to procfs which is a bleeding disaster.
No one ever keeps the documentation up to date on anything in the kernel. Someone will go and write a book on the topic and before the pages of the PDF have cooled down from the press, the entire API will have changed.
Then comes sk_buff... it has an API which is such a cludge that there should be laws against using Linux for networking in secure environments. It's absolutely impossible to create a network frame in the kernel since the documentation is 100 versions out of date, there are hundreds of documents trying to describe how it should work... they're all obsolete. Trying to find a support group that can help is like trying to find the answers to the mysteries of the universe. Everywhere you go, they'll point you somewhere else and then speculate that whoever they send you to will make you start over because they changed everything recently... again.
I genuinely believe it's impossible to use SK_BUFF without making memory leaks in the kernel at this time.
Let's talk about timer_setup and setup_timer.... there's nothing wrong with a name change, but there should be a macro of some type which would allow for testing which one to use. See, kernel modules are built using a kernel module make system. There's no autoconf.
It doesn't matter how good your C code is... it's the trust issue. If have a large C codebase... for example multiple millions of lines of OS code with thousands unmaintained kernel modules written by people who shouldn't be allowed to spell "C" in gentle company, you're going to have an unmanageable cludge.
Linus kicked ass when he made git. I think the world as a whole would burn without it today. But he should attack make files next and make it so that git and make are tightly integrated. Then all the kernel modules could be checked in as modules... and a CI/CD pipeline for the kernel and its modules could be established.
At age 44, I'm starting the university to work on a Masters and Ph.D. related specifically to applying neural networks to automate the vast majority of tasks related to preventative medicine. This will be done by exploiting full body motion capture ultrasound to identify anomalies undetectable to general practitioners. The entire goal is to make it so people can stand in a booth for 5-10 seconds (similar to the airport nudie x-ray) and have a substantially more thorough check of every aspect of their body as often as they'd like. I hope that companies like mine will install them as devices people will use at least once a week.
I also hope that people like Bill Gates will fund making these inexpensive enough to put them everywhere in the developing world.
The intended result should be that cancer will be treated with noninvasive approaches because tumors will be detected long before a doctor could. Adding an automated blood test system that could automatically perform most lab functions would be possible at some time as well.
I am not the first person to think of this and I know there's already billions being spent on this. It will cut the number of jobs of doctors, surgeons, nurses, etc... substantially.
Then there's adaptation of robotics and AI from boston dynamics that will allow robots to reproduce (often better than humans) many low risk procedures. Possibly even things as complex as plastic surgery. It's even possible that at some point, it would be possible to sit in a photo booth at the mall, choose a surgical procedure and have it performed by a machine there and then. (This is probably a bit too sci-fi for now)
I prepared to go to the university by watching over 1000 videos on Khan Academy. I'll watch at least 1000 more before starting in August (or January depending on the admissions process). I do the assignments and take the exams online with no human intervention and am graded (for my own purposes) on my performance... when I have questions, I comment on Youtube and people answer them. In the beginning I did hire a tutor, but I've long since past her level. I'm working on multivariable calculus and will do linear algebra and differential equations before switching to MIT Open Courseware for Discrete Mathematics, Graph Theory and Number Theory. I'll also study algebra, chemistry, physics, organic chemistry and others on Khan. I'll then switch to Harvard Open Courseware for anatomy, physiology, biochemistry at the rest of pre-med.
My niece is 16 and due to social issues has been home schooled this year by attending remote courses with 500+ students per class. Each class is run by one instructor and a few assistants.
In order to feed my family today, I'm delivering a product today at work which will cut back on hiring 30-40 senior network engineers (Cisco Professionals) because we'll be able to manage the tasks without them. We have pretty much stopped using server, virtualization and storage professionals because we have no need for them since we can do ad-hoc docker in a box on our own... we can buy prepackaged Azure Stack for a full Kubernetes solution if we need something more.
I see waiters and waitresses to be one of the most upcoming positions because we can't replace human interaction. Wait staff is about substantially more than taking orders and bringing food to the tables. I can cook at home... I can even simply order food for delivery and the companies in the local area are already experimenting with drone delivery. I go to the restaurant for the environment and interpersonal interaction. I see the cook in the restaurant as being easier to eliminate than the wait staff.
I just brought my niece's Macbook 2017 to the Apple Store for the same problem and they had the nerve to try and sell a new screen for a faulty cable. They claimed the cable and screen can't be sold separately. I told them that this behavior was clearly a manufacturing flaw. The engineer said "Yes it is" and I asked "So?" and he said "It's out of warranty". I asked "how much" and they actually said they can give me a deal for only $380.
I just ordered a replacement for $20 and will ask a friend in the area to replace it.
Where are the laws that would protect the consumer from local car dealerships and repair shops.
I actually would prefer that when I need service, the car company can come and pickup my car and replace it with a loaner and ship it back to the factory to be properly refurbished... not simply repaired.
Consider if Tesla were to build an assembly line that could disassemble 80% of the vehicle and perform full maintenance including changing bushings, replace capacitors, etc... and then reassemble the vehicle. It should be possible to build such an assembly line that could process many vehicles per hour.
When the car is in service, it would even be possible to offer upgrades such as newer computers and better sensors.
This assembly line would be huge and would require a substantial location.
With the extremely high environmental cost of producing a car like a Tesla, it makes a huge amount of sense to keep these cars driving for as long as possible. Instead of thinking in terms of 10-15 years, anything that can be done to extend their lifespans to 30+ years should be highly encouraged.
Let's also point out that by centralizing the service, it means that large companies can be forced to be held accountable for managing the waste. Smaller firms like local dealerships and repair shops don't have the infrastructure or the means to participate within such an infrastructure to manage the lifecycle of a modern vehicle and its components.
But, I suppose if you're in Texas, there's no such thing as global warming or waste management problems. Whenever they throw away single use plastics or used tires, they automatically become fairy dust and happiness for all the world to share.
So, I hold telephone numbers in a few countries as it makes sense as part of my business.
Only my American phone receives more than one spam call occasionally.
Consider that my normal phone is registered in one of the richest countries in the world per-capita. My normal phone should be a target. However, the local phone company blocks all calls from numbers which have been reported as sources of spam... or it blocks calls coming from numbers which are obviously spoofed... meaning the "reverse path forwarding check" fails for the number.
So, if for example these companies were using Skype, each time a number gets reported, Skype loses the ability to make calls in this country using that number. as such, if Skype loses enough numbers, it can no longer make calls in this country. So, Microsoft makes a genuine effort to ensure that their numbers are not being blocked.
So far as I can tell (and I have SIM cards from middle east and third world countries like Greece), only America has the problem that they can't get this problem under control. I can't speak about England though, I would imagine that as with so many other things, England is equally bad as the U.S.
It's amazing that the FTC and FCC can't investigate and put and end to these scams in the U.S.. If nothing else, the American tax payers deserve to have wide spread commercials informing the people "Any company making these calls is in violation of the law and any information you gather (including recordings) can help put a stop to them".
then people should work less... not simply not work.
The solution is to use more people to do the same jobs and decrease the amount that people work.
If you're a truck driver and I can replace 6 drivers with 1 trucks which can drive themselves (drivers working one week on, one week off and in 8 hour driving shifts... and on truck working 100%)... then as more of these self-driving trucks become available, we'll progressively decrease the number of hours you drive. So maybe, you have 8 weeks off, one week on instead.
The same can go for factories, waste management, etc...
As we decrease our dependence on people, we need to take the limited number of jobs that still require humans and simply give more people more time off.
The issue is how we compensate people.
Right now, we have an overly commercialized society.
Let's consider Hallmark... a company which has contributed more to the downfall of western society than most.
Hallmark has made it so that there's now commercialism surrounding pretty much every day of the year. We have greeting cards and gifts and custom teddy bears and flower pots and wrapping paper for practically every day of the year.
This has been very good for capitalism since producing those products consumes worker hours across hundreds of countries in hundreds of industries. Consider that someone mines an industrial diamond to coat the edges of a boring blade to drill oil which is refined and distributed by boats, planes, trains and automobiles to make the components of a spark plug that operates a truck to deliver a replacement motor for a milling wheel to produce pigments to mix with ink to be placed in printers to produce labels to mark the destinations of where to ship palettes of greeting cards.
If we need more varieties of greeting cards, we'll provide more jobs across the entire scale of the globe, from the poorly paid minor (practically or even really a slave) in the Congo through the stock traders on wall street gambling on commodities with regards to paper production.
Each greeting card printed doesn't employ every person in the chain... in fact, Hallmark may be responsible for many jobs directly and justifying 100% employment for maybe even as much a a million people around the world... but there is a cycle which exists in this vane market.
Consider that we don't need "National Secretaries' Puppies Day" greeting cards custom printed with numbers to tell us that your boss remembers how old his secretary's puppy is.
But by simply making a single card generalized to simply celebrate the day without specific ages of the puppies, there are from 3-19 different varieties which will not be produced, marketed, sold, waste managed, etc... in addition, they might have 16 different designs and patterns that have been mass produced.
The impact of reducing the number of days celebrated for no real reason, would hurt many jobs all around the world.
Consider that Hallmark could instead install a high end printers with embossing and laser cutting abilities that reduce ink consumption considerably, eliminates the vast majority of jobs related to shipping, etc... they could even, as the day approach print one kind of each greeting card and each card is scanned and sold at the counter, a new one could be printed and then restocked on the shelf. As such, they could eliminate massive amounts of waste, they could cut costs dramatically. The ripple effect it would have globally would be a virtual disaster to the job markets.
So, we would simply need less people to work.
Not only that, but as people as a whole earn less money, they would be less likely to waste money on greeting cards for stupid holidays. The demand would drop and Hallmark would eventually become a design company that would install their printers at Walmart and Amazon. The number of cards produced would drop to a less nonsensical amount. We would buy "Get well soon", "Happy Birthday", "We mourn your loss", etc... cards or even forgo c
Let's be blunt, this is job protectionism and it's nonsense.
The planet can't survive unless we come up with a better plan than to try and avoid being smart. I personally believe that a much better solution would be to demand that Facebook, Google and Amazon establish a long term plan as to how to consolidate into a single company.
Here's the thing, the vast majority of our environmental problems are not from overpopulation. It's from overproduction due to capitalism.
In order for each person on the planet to have a job and earn enough income to sustain their lives, we have to produce far more than we need.
Visit Walmart or Amazon or eBay or any other major shopping source. Now, I want you to consider the percentage of the products they sell that simply would not exist unless someone was just trying to make jobs.
Now, take all the products which are in fact necessities and identify how they are packaged, stored, distributed, etc... and consider:
- does a store like Walmart would really need 25 full length isles of freezers running 24/7 if it weren't for the fact that we have frozen pizza, frozen pizza with pepperoni, frozen pizza with extra pepperoni, frozen bite sized pizzas with pepperoni, frozen bite sized pizza with extra pepperoni....
- do we need 9 different sizes of corn flakes from 3 different brands?
- Does the cucumber need to be individually wrapped in plastic?
Our excessive consumerism comes from an overabundance of workers attempting to each have a place in the world producing things we simply don't need.
Companies like Google, Tesla, and Amazon and others are working extremely hard at optimizing all aspects of the supply chain. This will over time eliminate the vast majority of jobs on the planet. Google and Tesla's self-driving technology will make it possible in the near future to handle warehouse to warehouse shipping with almost no human intervention. Amazon's drone technology combined with Google and Tesla's self-driving technology will make it possible to deliver directly to the consumer with almost no human intervention as well. Self-sailing cargo ships are coming fast as well. Self-flying planes will be around the corner.
Why does this matter so much for the planet?
Well, suppose Amazon were to start buying massive numbers of farms... or at least they were to buy the vast majority of food produced by farms. Then they were to setup a few depots around each state. Now, they could slaughter meat on demand and produce meat on demand. In addition, they could in real-time alter the prices of different cuts on the wholesale and retail market to increase or decrease demand for different parts of the animals. This would allow producers of other products to setup plants attached to Amazon locations to purchase the meat products they would need in order to fulfill their orders. They could also, using automated production lines switched between which products they would produce based on real-time demand.
Now consider if for example Kellogg were to use real-time statistics to produce cereal based on demand. Now, instead of selling boxes of different sizes, shapes and packaging, they could offer on Amazon all different sizes, shapes and packaging labels. They could also offer bulk options made available in reusable packages. They would fill silos at Amazon's distribution locations with their products based on their production capability as well as the demand. By moderating production based on demand, they could reduce the amount of preservatives they use during production.
When a purchase is made, using a simple algorithm, a box would be printed and manufactured to size and labeling. A wax paper bag would be produced to size. The entire process would be automated.
Consider if Tropicana were to do the same, but they would provide oranges and silos at Amazon would be filled with their oranges and their production machinery that would produce orange juice to demand. Tropicana cou
I'm not convinced that's the case. I'm raising a kid these days and he goes to a high school where they're told engineering and science has no future and they should instead focus on law and finance. It's actually more of a cluelessness. They are brainwashed from the time they're young into considering that gambling is "the free market economy". Many of them are good people and genuinely altruistic.
I actually believe that what they're doing is a good thing. They lack foresight into many things. For example, investing in real estate typically ensures that your money grows relative to the cost of living. Therefore, it's a inflation adjusted investment that allows you to put $100 in today and in 30 years, you can get $100 rate adjusted back out.
Wall Street investments don't work in those terms. Generally, most of their investments on behalf of who they represent earn them fast cash now, but causes their customers to not necessarily equal or outpace the rate of inflation over time.
I turned on my American telephone for my upcoming US trip next week. Since I've turned it on, I've signed up for the "Do not call registry" which I'm quite sure does nothing. I've been receiving on average 3-5 phone calls a day from Kissimmee Florida to inform me that my medicare will not cover a hip some surgery if I wait any longer. Every call claims quite forcefully that "This is your last warning" of which I keep hoping it is true... it's not. If I press 2, it should add me to the "Do not call list" and I've pressed it a few times only to be transferred to a sales person. At which time I ask to be removed from the list... and I'm not.
It is quite impressive to see how poor the state of the US is in. Only in India, the UK and the US have I ever seen so many people blatantly trying to take advantage of other people. It's absolutely horrifying that the regulatory committees are unable to control this problem. When an American company calls and American telephone number and the owner of that number contacts the FTC to report a violation, the FTC should be knocking on their door within a week. Instead, the FTC doesn't seem to do anything about it... all the scam calls I've received are long time members of a list of known scammers. It also appears that these people know they are safe. What's worse is that there are people working for these companies who knowingly violate the "Do not call" registry. After all, Robocallers should have access to a database which makes it clear who they can call and who they can't. If these companies violate that, they should be shutdown or fined severely on early offenses and punished with prison on repeat offenses.
I'm very sad to know just how low the people of America have declined to.
Let's also add that restoring an iPhone from the cloud should give you the option as to whether you have to download all the damn films which were on the old phone to complete the process. When I replaced my phone at the Apple Store in Tokyo, I had to sit in the store and share wifi with the other users for 5 hours one day because I couldn't get my settings onto my replacement phone without downloading all the films. I tried stopping it twice, but it completely freaked on me.
You shouldn't have to download 110GB of films you've already watched just to restore your settings.
Give the exact same phone as the 6S plus with a longer battery and a faster CPU and I'll buy it before it ships. But no headphone jack and no touch ID is a deal breaker. I'm simply no wasting money on a phone which removes features. iPhone 6S Plus was the best phone Apple ever made. I'll keep repairing the one I have until Apple makes a legitimate replacement.
Face ID - nice feature, but doesn't actually add convenience. Wireless charging - useless feature since I can't charge while watching the phone. The charger needs a cable anyway. Edge to edge screen - means I can't use a protective cover to avoid breaking the glass and still be able to reach all parts of the screen. Also, holding the phone from the sides becomes difficult as it interferes with the text. Swiping gestures to replace the home - means you have to swipe either side of the phone. If I use the phone right handed, I can manage this, but left handed, I end up dropping it all the time.
I upgraded from the iPhone X 256GB to the iPhone 6S plus and it was the biggest upgrade I ever made on a phone.
As someone who grew up in New York, I have to say that Amazon would be a weird fit. New York is one of the last places in American where a small business owner... well where you can be your own person and own your own company without being a slave to a franchise.
I'm planning on visiting the states next week with my children, we'll head to Clearwater Florida, an area I know where as I lived there for about 6 years. We make lists of things to do before going there and with the exception of Disney and the Museum of Science and Industry, all of our money is expected to be spent at chains and franchises.
When we travel to New York, we instead make plans to spend our money at family owned places. This includes pizzerias, electronic shops, etc...
New York is maybe the only place left in the entire U.S. that I've seen that people protect their family owned stores and prefer paying an extra 10% if it means shopping for groceries at a store where you know the owner personally.
Amazon will place a great deal of pressure on the environment to embrace chains. In fact, by simply having a large presence in the area, it will likely have a terrible impact on local stores as well as the health of the people in the community since it would convince people to order online and have things delivered by drone since a NY presence could mean 30 minutes or less for pretty much anything.
That said, NY wastes a massive amount of... well pretty much everything. Take a visit to Starette City and you might be horrified. Since New Yorkers have the best of everything... the best meat, the best cheeses, the best of anything since NY has always made that a core component of the culture. You can sit at most good restaurants and eat fresh Maine lobster and aged Kobe beef with fine Russian beluga caviar and it would not be considered odd to ask for such a thing. When ordering sushi, being asked "Nova Scotian, Norwegian or Japanese" regarding your salmon is a real possibility.
The single mega company brings with it a real benefit to the whole world. Grocery stores and restaurants all around the world manage their perishable items poorly. As more stores eliminate the in-store butcher, it's getting far worse. Meat, fish, dairy, vegetables etc... they are placed on display... defrosted because people want the illusion of shopping for fresh goods. People don't want to choose something from a computer screen and pick it up from a counter after it's been prepared, not when the fresh lovely colors of all the products are visible on display elsewhere.
Amazon will be able to store all perishables far longer than a grocery store which will generate substantially less waste. I've seen numbers on the order of 30% of all food is thrown away. I don't believe these numbers. I've watched grocery stores throw away 50% or more of their unsold meat and dairy.
Improves logistics from Amazon will help society as a whole, but it will eliminated hundreds of millions of jobs world wide. And this is as it should be. We need to start moving to minimizing. Commercialization is destroying us. So, as long as Amazon continues to find a way to find a balance of killing off jobs and still having someone left with money to sell to, they should be welcomed.
As for the $3 billion, that's not nearly as much money as it once was. And by simply giving it away like that, it will save New York years and tons of money trying to collect taxes from a company who has a legal team far more powerful than the state does. Remember, just because you lose a huge law suit that says you have to pay a billion dollars, it doesn't actually mean you'll pay it... you will just have to move to another negotiation that will let government right it off as a loss.
What percentage of these deaths could have been avoided if we detected the condition requiring surgery before it was too late and were forced to move from relatively non-invasive operations or even medication to requiring surgery?
My theory... of which I recently signed up for the university to work towards a masters and Ph.D. in the topic is to detect maladies before they reach the point of requiring complex surgery. This comes from automating advanced medical practices and eliminating the simple ones. For example, instead of having a general practitioner stick his finger up your ass to check for lumps... what's the frigging point... if you have a lump big enough that he can feel it, we detected it far too late. It should have been detected before it ever formed.
So, the solution is to employ modern full body layered ultrasound (or alternative techniques... that's what I hope to study) to identify the problems long before they become lumps that you could feel. If a doctor is looking for lumps, it's because we only visit a doctor once a year and we might already be 80% of the way to detectable which is 150% of the way to "this is bad" but we'll wait an entire extra year before checking again.
If we look for tumors, oddities in circulation, etc... by simply scanning the body and looking inside, we can do this using machine and do this several dozen times a year as the cost would be minimal following the initial capital expenditure. The machine would be reminiscent of an airport body scanner and already exists (there was a story on Slashdot not long ago). By reducing the cost of such machine that initially all larger companies would install them in each campus as a replacement for security doors.. not all doors, just as a voluntary option, a person could walk through twice a day if they wanted and if machine detects anything suspicious, they will receive a text message with a recommended appointment at a specialist.
Once we use the wealthy as guinea pigs, we can mass produce them and deploy them in offices and schools across the world. They should work everywhere except the U.S. which has ridiculous problems with things like health care because the American people would rather die than cooperate with one another.
I've been thinking the same way... maybe a little less on the conspiracy side.
The way I see it, 5G is more or less the last upgrade for a while. Whoever bags this one will make a lot of money on it. Huawei is practically giving their stuff away compare to what the western companies are charging. I work for a big telco... so big that Huawei rents about a thousand square meters of office space a few floors above where I sit to be closer to us. We'll are one of the world's largest customers for 5G and whoever we buy our 5G network from will make billions from us. If we buy Huawei, we'll save probably $2-3 billion over buying from their nearest competitor. (don't buy stocks on this information, I don't see the papers and I'm not in the meetings, this is all from public shareholder reports).
The university where I'm doing my grad work runs a super computing program, I'm working on RDMA over classic Ethernet (instead of converged) as a research topic in HPC. We use Huawei ARM based servers for the nodes.
If the FUD mongers manage to accomplish their goals, we'll be forced to dump Huawei in both places due to "national security". (again public news). We are fighting it tooth and nail because all of our systems are either relatively safe from hackers since we don't exactly expose important systems to the outside world... or we simply give China or India the passwords anyway since we pay them for operations. Why on earth would Huawei need to hack us when they have administrative access to the network to begin with?
I'm going to call BS on this. This sounds like the kind of nonsense people spout from the back of a trailer while drinking Schlitz and shooting the cans from yesterday's drinking fest.
This is precisely what we said back in the 80s about the Japanese. Have you been to Japan? If the closest thing you can get to it is porn sites, they practically invented the term creative.
China is a HUGE country...it's full of creativity from top to bottom. Check out "Harbin International Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival" if you need a hint.
China spent the past 40 years sending their best and brightest to universities in the western world and a lot of the talent is coming back. There is no doubt that China is coming up fast now. They are filling universities with western educated professors who are educating their youth by the hundreds of thousands to rise to the top.
If only based on sheer headcount, the Chinese can throw a WHOLE LOT of spaghetti at the wall and a lot of it will stick.
Although, if you think that we here in the west are safe because of some old fool redneck tale... enjoy your Schlitz.
So, I was curious. I've never worked for minimum wage, I've either been dead broke in poverty and desperate and living in the back of a car which was waiting to be repossessed or I've make 6 figures but never between. I never had the chance to live like a normal person.
So, I just searched Omaha for apartments. It seems that a two bedroom apartment in a nice suburb will cost you $1030 a month. To secure this, it would require a $3090 a month income. That's about $18 an hour or it can be done at $15 an hour at 9.5 hours a day assuming time and a half overtime.
A 2014 BMW i3 with range extender would cost $18000 to $302 a month over 72 months. This is a good car because the resale value shouldn't drop considerably and after paying the car off, you can pay about the same for another year for a battery refurbishment. This car should have a very low cost of ownership (I drive one and it's almost like being paid to drive) and it should be relatively reliable. The only disadvantage is that it would have to be serviced by a BMW shop. But, it's still a far better purchase than a $12500 gas vehicle that has substantially more parts to break and replace... and pay gas for.
Car insurance will run about $125 a month on that for a 30+ man or woman.
I just grocery shopped online at one of the more expensive grocery stores I know of and shopped as if I had to budget. This didn't mean being stingy, but it meant grocery store brand over name. It meant fresh foods over packaged. It meant not paying double for organic. Choosing to shop the sales, etc... I came up with what should be a grocery card for a family of two including a month supply of soaps (bathroom, dish, laundry...), paper towels and toilet paper, tooth brushes, etc... I came up at $223. I suppose that using coupons and time as well as shopping at a non-rich person store would get it to $150, but I also didn't get anything really fun, it looked like what a healthy family would eat... you know, the kind of family where the parent loves the children instead of giving them food from boxes. So, let's choose $600 a month as a relatively round number for essentials (food, etc..) for a family of two.
Then there's clothes. Depending on your needs, you can dress fairly well on a budget of $100 a month for an adult... this will also cover buying new winter coats. And you can dress a child for $150 a month. They grow and require replacement of stuff much faster. So let's calculate $250 a month
The person would need furniture as well, but you can't budget that monthly, you buy that over 20 years and piece by piece. You inherit what you need from other people until you can buy the thing you actually want.
Then there's electricity, water, internet and telephones. I think even someone much better than I am at budgeting would still find this costing about $400 a month.
So, $1030 (rent), $600 (food stuff), $300 (Car), $125 (car insurance), $250 a month (clothes, shoes, etc..), $400 a month for utilities and phone.
We're up to $2900 a month. If the person manages to get 9.5 hours a day, they would earn $3090 a month. I think even if they get almost 100% tax free, they would still have to pay social security which I think is about 10%, so there goes $300 a month.
So, this person, if I don't account for any additional oopsies would be about $100 a month in the whole...at least.
The car is paid off in 6 years, so if they can do 8 years, that's probably an extra $100 a month in the bank. And if the car lasts 25 years... as it should since it's basically all plastic and easy to replace parts, after the loan is paid, the cost of ownership should drop to $100 a month. But that doesn't help earlier on.
There's no room for day car or babysitting... so, being a single parent would be REALLY REALLY difficult.
They could get a cheaper apartment, but the goal isn't survival. For $1000 a month, you get an apartment with a gym, a pool and other things. This is considered living like a human instead of someone who is simp
I still have a pack of Marlboro on the dinner table that I tap into... more often than I should. And I have a pack in the car which... well it shouldn't be there. I was a 30 a day smoker until early December 2018. I'm sucking so hard on a nicotine free e-cig these days begging for something to come out of it that I could probably make an excellent career as a male prostitute now.
You're probably right that the massive decrease in smoking has been financially damaging to many people around the world. But companies and shareholders are two different things and there are too many people who don't get that.
You seem to think that there's some sort of major money making machine out there that if a company doesn't perform well, the owners are going to lose their asses and such. This could be medical research for cancer. It can be a tobacco company... pretty much any company capable of profiting from tobacco taxes.
This is not how it works.
The owners of the companies are the shareholders. The shareholders can generally move their investments from one company to another. If they want to get some extra cash from the company, they can force it to deplete its cash by paying dividends. They can even get the company to take a loan and use that money to pay dividends leaving the company bankrupt, in debt and ready to collapse, but it takes an amazing accountant to make that work cleanly.
Every company making money from big Tobacco is covered. The shareholders of those companies have already left the companies. They've moved onto whatever Forbes or Gartner is interested in these days. Instead, what's left is investors who specialize in profiting as companies shrink. There is such a thing. It's possible for the owners of a company to find ways to profit from writing off losses for example.
Let's say you're Emma Watson and you've had a great year and tax time is coming. One option for Hollywood actors in the past has been to buy into producing a film guaranteed to fail at the box office. This would let you take a loss in a possibly fun way. The alternative is to invest in a company that will lose money on a steady schedule so the loses can be written off. Creative accountants can find ways to make a million in losses come back as 10 million in non-taxable income or better.
So those companies are amazing targets for people in need of write-offs right now and there's a ton of money to be made that way.
Where's the value for Foxconn to use American workers?
They're expensive. Wisconsin is a union state too. Which means that Foxconn will have union labor issues just building the factory and keeping it running will just be a nightmare.
As for skills, Wisconsin the state has no fiscal responsibility, it has not fiscal stability, it has an almost 3rd world infrastructure. It's educational level is #18 in the country which means the most common answer to questions asked by students in a classroom is "Duh, I don't know".
It's better to pay more to stay in China. It's just more cost effective and the workers are smarter, more creative, more motivated and more skilled.
Now that Walker is out and there's no one willing to pay Foxconn to be there, there's no point staying.
Ok... that's just lame that you would fight people spouting legal bullshit with... well legitimate legal bullshit.
I was wondering about that and appreciate the specific details as you presented them.
Is there a legal process declared which would perform as a litmus test for whether a company is in fact a monopoly? Meaning, is it just an bunch of old people in congress or a bunch of hungry little opportunistic lawyers trying to prove that a company is a monopoly? Or is there a legal definition that says if you can check these boxes and add up a score like this, it is a monopoly.
That said just because a company is a monopoly doesn't mean it's bad. For example, Linux is a monopoly for IoT devices. There are alternatives, and they are even far better, but no one would use them because the GNU community has more or less crushed them out of existence using often unfair and unethical methods. That said, it's provided a means of standardization that makes it so that we have a relatively standard and semi-reliable platform to depend on.
So far as I know, there is no business Facebook has a possible monopoly on other than advertising. Even so, I would suggest that Google proves that Facebook is not a monopoly there. Snapchat and others seem to have pretty strong followings. There is also Twitter, LinkedIn and a few others. Facebook is more like a defacto replacement for the phone book rather than something useful.
Facebook's biggest crime is that it's big. The bigger you are, the bigger your mistakes. And I honestly can't see how it's a crime In a legal sense.
On the other hand, can a company be forced to break up as an anti-trust resolution, or would reform be the likely approach?
Credit bureaus are safe, just because they're improperly implemented today doesn't mean they can't be done well.
If you're someone offering credit to someone, then you should be able to contact a credit bureau for a report on the person in question.
So, when you apply for credit, you sign a form to authorize a credit search to be performed on you.
All companies part of the credit network would then, based on a relationship that suggests that the credit bureau is acting within the law would respond to a map request for data related to the report.
When the data is returned, an algorithm would reduce the report to a report with a possible rating number.
This is not an issue. Of course, there should be a way to retain credit information from defunct companies following their shutdown....
As for phone books... those haven't worked in American in decades.
So, Ajit Pai has made a huge deal out of supporting deregulation of broadband in America. In fact, the FCC has been trying very hard to define 5G as a legitimate replacement for fiber (it could in theory work). And the American government has spent years attacking Huawei, even far past the point of rationally.
Who in the White House has interests related to 5G infrastructure? I doubt itâ€(TM) Trump is involved, not unless they are helping him get the wall, though it could be. What about his cabinet?
While I trust Huawei only a smidgen more than I trust Cisco (and Cisco feeds my family, but they are my creepy/dirty uncle), this is screaming conspiracy now. Someone who can influence the Whitehouse stands to profit hugely from keeping Huawei out of the 5G roll out. At least it really seems that way.
It would also explain almost everything Ajit Pai has done since coming to power.
Slashdot Mirror
If you buy into AWS, you are stuck with AWS... even the "offline versions" are half assed and held together with duct tape and crazy glue. The only possible way to run AWS is if you have the entire operations team at Amazon constantly tweaking, tuning and running around changing hardware.
If you buy into Azure, you have the option to fallback on Azure Stack... while you'll still be stuck with MS from now and to forever, you have the option to host it yourself or on a separate provider.
Right now, the only fiscally responsible decision for "cloud solutions" is actually Azure because you can in fact run it offline and have some minimalistic amount of control over your own future.
I actually do a lot of cloud projects and while I use a lot of Docker and sometimes even Kubernetes if I really have to, these are just tiny little bits of a platform. A proper cloud solution starts with storage first... this means object storage, document storage, table storage. It centralizes all aspects of "cloud scale" scaleout of this storage. Then it provides a networking backend that companies like Cisco would call SDN but cloud vendors would just call networking. Then they provide container and VM orchestration.
You can build your own "cloud service" if you really want to, but the work to do it is VERY VERY expensive and requires companies 100% devoted to it. This is what made IBM CICS/DB2/RPG/COBOL so amazingly successful for so long. It takes a mega corporation to build and maintain this.
On the other hand, you can buy Azure Stack or rent online... and skip all that crap and ditch most of your IT operations staff.
As I sit here waiting in Florida to finally travel back to civilization, Iâ€(TM)ve seen a huge effect of automation and centralization while on this visit.
The US is way ahead of anywhere else in the world with regards to killing jobs. To be honest, Iâ€(TM)m envious. Due to vast amounts of cheap and untrained labor, the US has made incredible progress towards to a Wall-E like society. People like me have no need to go to the mall or the grocery store or pretty much anywhere else since you can order anything online and get it quickly.
The malls are replacing retail shops with services and entertainment. The roads are littered with abandoned retail shops except those catering purely to poor people lacking credit cards or novelty. The decline is very obvious to an outsider.
Automation and centralization has made it so the people are forced to work in almost entirely service oriented jobs.
America is the logistics powerhouse of the western world. The country is famous for its ability to move things from place to place efficiently. This is glorious to watch. Compared to Europe, America is years ahead with regards to killing off jobs because in Europe, logistics companies are not yet able to offer dirt cheap delivery options. This is because outside of England, there arenâ€(TM)t enough uneducated people in Western Europe to handle all the logistical tasks manually for slave labor wages. We need the machines.
That said, once logistics is automated, both Europe and America will face a huge problem. The issue will be that if products can be delivered by drone or self-driving vehicles or whatever else, a HUGE number of jobs will disappear.
This will cause governments around the world to place many people on unemployment or social welfare because unless people open massive numbers of vanity oriented services like theme restaurants and eyebrow plucking shops, there simply will be no jobs to go around.
As the governments dilute their currencies via deficits, the value of their money will plummet. The ripple effect through the world will be that eventually companies will no longer see a clear path to profitability by manufacturing, distributing and marketing useless shit.
The people will focus on purchasing necessities rather than novelties therefore collapsing markets for endlessly disposable crap. This will hurt financial markets as well as the general import/export markets. Unions like the EU will become a matter of survival and will make it so as the market adjust, the governmentâ€(TM)s will be able to balance their deficits (not reduce, but increase systematically) until people are still being fed and kept healthy but with far less purchasing power than before.
The rich will be hurt because the vast majority of their sources of income will dissolve. The mass dilution of currency will mean that everyone will move progressively towards the middle or many will die because governments dependent primarily on manufacturing will lack the resources to balance their deficits as their exports will become unimportant.
The end result will be somewhat chaotic. Countries will unite to mega corporations who no longer see the financial benefit of producing and distributing necessities. Companies like Amazon will become more similar to a welfare system.
This of course is a doomsday scenario and if I were to write five more pages, I would add predictions that would include the one month work year which will make a big difference. But the point is that rich people are only rich because their money is perceived to have purchasing power. As that perception erodes, so will their wealth.
Please feel free to visit the latest Linux Kernel tree (or any for several years) and audit the code for the included ESXi drivers (memory management and network specifically) as well as the Cisco VIC network and SCSI driver code.
... which include entire built-in processors for SCSI and RDMA... so that you could pretend to be one of the VMs and communicate to anywhere you want and even issue SCSI requests to the SAN directly over network protocols that can't be monitored on Cisco switches.
It took me an average of 3 minutes between finding attack vectors thanks to VMware's half-assed code that should have been completely rewritten years ago. Now, if you can't find a vulnerability using the ESXi drivers in the Linux code base, you probably shouldn't be allowed near a computer.
The Cisco VIC adapter code is so much better... you not only can find endless numbers of vulnerabilities, but you can actually upload entire new operating systems to the VIC adapters in nearly all Cisco servers (especially HyperFlex) and you can even change the boot firmware by disabling authenticity checks in the driver code. The end result being that you could easily permanently place undetectable backdoors that would require hardware replacement to correct into the VIC adapter.
Even better... as a bonus, I'm quite confident that it is possible on VMware from a guest machine using VMFEX network adapters with Cisco VICs, it should be possible to change the hardware firmware of the VIC adapters
None of this is intentional... it's all because no one takes the time to clean up after their own messes.
It seems to me that lack of preparation is an issue here.
... well... to fit the suits appropriately.
Even the blurb explains that the issue was that there was a planned spacewalk and although there are 6 astronauts on board the ISS at this time and there has been some time to make the decision to prepare the space suits, no one saw fit to
Who gives a shit about the gender of the astronauts beyond ensuring there is appropriate necessities in the ISS to facilitate their gender specific needs? This could have easily been a similar problem if one of the astronauts was a smaller male. They are basically two nerds, one a mechanical and aerospace engineer and the other, a physicist and electrical engineer.
This past year has been one whole year of :
- First female to win Abel award... yeh... she won it because she's a she... not because she is one of the most brilliant mathematicians of the last 70 years
- All female spacewalk cancelled... yeh, they're astronauts because they're girls, not because they both achieved top marks from top schools in areas of science and engineering.
- all female..
- first woman...
I mean seriously... what's the f-ing point here? Exceptional people are exceptional people... and moron journalists are moron journalists... done.
I wrote a kernel module not long ago... in C. I was extremely diligent to make the code as clean as possible and to make the memory and error management as perfect as possible. I even added as many checks as I could. I wrote massive amounts of unit and integration tests. I configured multiple static code analysis systems to keep the code as pristine as possible... you shouldn't even be able to look at the code without causing some warning to be generated.
Then we got to procfs which is a bleeding disaster.
No one ever keeps the documentation up to date on anything in the kernel. Someone will go and write a book on the topic and before the pages of the PDF have cooled down from the press, the entire API will have changed.
Then comes sk_buff... it has an API which is such a cludge that there should be laws against using Linux for networking in secure environments. It's absolutely impossible to create a network frame in the kernel since the documentation is 100 versions out of date, there are hundreds of documents trying to describe how it should work... they're all obsolete. Trying to find a support group that can help is like trying to find the answers to the mysteries of the universe. Everywhere you go, they'll point you somewhere else and then speculate that whoever they send you to will make you start over because they changed everything recently... again.
I genuinely believe it's impossible to use SK_BUFF without making memory leaks in the kernel at this time.
Let's talk about timer_setup and setup_timer.... there's nothing wrong with a name change, but there should be a macro of some type which would allow for testing which one to use. See, kernel modules are built using a kernel module make system. There's no autoconf.
It doesn't matter how good your C code is... it's the trust issue. If have a large C codebase... for example multiple millions of lines of OS code with thousands unmaintained kernel modules written by people who shouldn't be allowed to spell "C" in gentle company, you're going to have an unmanageable cludge.
Linus kicked ass when he made git. I think the world as a whole would burn without it today. But he should attack make files next and make it so that git and make are tightly integrated. Then all the kernel modules could be checked in as modules... and a CI/CD pipeline for the kernel and its modules could be established.
At age 44, I'm starting the university to work on a Masters and Ph.D. related specifically to applying neural networks to automate the vast majority of tasks related to preventative medicine. This will be done by exploiting full body motion capture ultrasound to identify anomalies undetectable to general practitioners. The entire goal is to make it so people can stand in a booth for 5-10 seconds (similar to the airport nudie x-ray) and have a substantially more thorough check of every aspect of their body as often as they'd like. I hope that companies like mine will install them as devices people will use at least once a week.
I also hope that people like Bill Gates will fund making these inexpensive enough to put them everywhere in the developing world.
The intended result should be that cancer will be treated with noninvasive approaches because tumors will be detected long before a doctor could. Adding an automated blood test system that could automatically perform most lab functions would be possible at some time as well.
I am not the first person to think of this and I know there's already billions being spent on this. It will cut the number of jobs of doctors, surgeons, nurses, etc... substantially.
Then there's adaptation of robotics and AI from boston dynamics that will allow robots to reproduce (often better than humans) many low risk procedures. Possibly even things as complex as plastic surgery. It's even possible that at some point, it would be possible to sit in a photo booth at the mall, choose a surgical procedure and have it performed by a machine there and then. (This is probably a bit too sci-fi for now)
I prepared to go to the university by watching over 1000 videos on Khan Academy. I'll watch at least 1000 more before starting in August (or January depending on the admissions process). I do the assignments and take the exams online with no human intervention and am graded (for my own purposes) on my performance... when I have questions, I comment on Youtube and people answer them. In the beginning I did hire a tutor, but I've long since past her level. I'm working on multivariable calculus and will do linear algebra and differential equations before switching to MIT Open Courseware for Discrete Mathematics, Graph Theory and Number Theory. I'll also study algebra, chemistry, physics, organic chemistry and others on Khan. I'll then switch to Harvard Open Courseware for anatomy, physiology, biochemistry at the rest of pre-med.
My niece is 16 and due to social issues has been home schooled this year by attending remote courses with 500+ students per class. Each class is run by one instructor and a few assistants.
In order to feed my family today, I'm delivering a product today at work which will cut back on hiring 30-40 senior network engineers (Cisco Professionals) because we'll be able to manage the tasks without them. We have pretty much stopped using server, virtualization and storage professionals because we have no need for them since we can do ad-hoc docker in a box on our own... we can buy prepackaged Azure Stack for a full Kubernetes solution if we need something more.
I see waiters and waitresses to be one of the most upcoming positions because we can't replace human interaction. Wait staff is about substantially more than taking orders and bringing food to the tables. I can cook at home... I can even simply order food for delivery and the companies in the local area are already experimenting with drone delivery. I go to the restaurant for the environment and interpersonal interaction. I see the cook in the restaurant as being easier to eliminate than the wait staff.
So, I'm pretty sure this article is a problem.
I just brought my niece's Macbook 2017 to the Apple Store for the same problem and they had the nerve to try and sell a new screen for a faulty cable. They claimed the cable and screen can't be sold separately. I told them that this behavior was clearly a manufacturing flaw. The engineer said "Yes it is" and I asked "So?" and he said "It's out of warranty". I asked "how much" and they actually said they can give me a deal for only $380.
I just ordered a replacement for $20 and will ask a friend in the area to replace it.
Where are the laws that would protect the consumer from local car dealerships and repair shops.
I actually would prefer that when I need service, the car company can come and pickup my car and replace it with a loaner and ship it back to the factory to be properly refurbished... not simply repaired.
Consider if Tesla were to build an assembly line that could disassemble 80% of the vehicle and perform full maintenance including changing bushings, replace capacitors, etc... and then reassemble the vehicle. It should be possible to build such an assembly line that could process many vehicles per hour.
When the car is in service, it would even be possible to offer upgrades such as newer computers and better sensors.
This assembly line would be huge and would require a substantial location.
With the extremely high environmental cost of producing a car like a Tesla, it makes a huge amount of sense to keep these cars driving for as long as possible. Instead of thinking in terms of 10-15 years, anything that can be done to extend their lifespans to 30+ years should be highly encouraged.
Let's also point out that by centralizing the service, it means that large companies can be forced to be held accountable for managing the waste. Smaller firms like local dealerships and repair shops don't have the infrastructure or the means to participate within such an infrastructure to manage the lifecycle of a modern vehicle and its components.
But, I suppose if you're in Texas, there's no such thing as global warming or waste management problems. Whenever they throw away single use plastics or used tires, they automatically become fairy dust and happiness for all the world to share.
So, I hold telephone numbers in a few countries as it makes sense as part of my business.
Only my American phone receives more than one spam call occasionally.
Consider that my normal phone is registered in one of the richest countries in the world per-capita. My normal phone should be a target. However, the local phone company blocks all calls from numbers which have been reported as sources of spam... or it blocks calls coming from numbers which are obviously spoofed... meaning the "reverse path forwarding check" fails for the number.
So, if for example these companies were using Skype, each time a number gets reported, Skype loses the ability to make calls in this country using that number. as such, if Skype loses enough numbers, it can no longer make calls in this country. So, Microsoft makes a genuine effort to ensure that their numbers are not being blocked.
So far as I can tell (and I have SIM cards from middle east and third world countries like Greece), only America has the problem that they can't get this problem under control. I can't speak about England though, I would imagine that as with so many other things, England is equally bad as the U.S.
It's amazing that the FTC and FCC can't investigate and put and end to these scams in the U.S.. If nothing else, the American tax payers deserve to have wide spread commercials informing the people "Any company making these calls is in violation of the law and any information you gather (including recordings) can help put a stop to them".
then people should work less... not simply not work.
The solution is to use more people to do the same jobs and decrease the amount that people work.
If you're a truck driver and I can replace 6 drivers with 1 trucks which can drive themselves (drivers working one week on, one week off and in 8 hour driving shifts... and on truck working 100%)... then as more of these self-driving trucks become available, we'll progressively decrease the number of hours you drive. So maybe, you have 8 weeks off, one week on instead.
The same can go for factories, waste management, etc...
As we decrease our dependence on people, we need to take the limited number of jobs that still require humans and simply give more people more time off.
The issue is how we compensate people.
Right now, we have an overly commercialized society.
Let's consider Hallmark... a company which has contributed more to the downfall of western society than most.
Hallmark has made it so that there's now commercialism surrounding pretty much every day of the year. We have greeting cards and gifts and custom teddy bears and flower pots and wrapping paper for practically every day of the year.
This has been very good for capitalism since producing those products consumes worker hours across hundreds of countries in hundreds of industries. Consider that someone mines an industrial diamond to coat the edges of a boring blade to drill oil which is refined and distributed by boats, planes, trains and automobiles to make the components of a spark plug that operates a truck to deliver a replacement motor for a milling wheel to produce pigments to mix with ink to be placed in printers to produce labels to mark the destinations of where to ship palettes of greeting cards.
If we need more varieties of greeting cards, we'll provide more jobs across the entire scale of the globe, from the poorly paid minor (practically or even really a slave) in the Congo through the stock traders on wall street gambling on commodities with regards to paper production.
Each greeting card printed doesn't employ every person in the chain... in fact, Hallmark may be responsible for many jobs directly and justifying 100% employment for maybe even as much a a million people around the world... but there is a cycle which exists in this vane market.
Consider that we don't need "National Secretaries' Puppies Day" greeting cards custom printed with numbers to tell us that your boss remembers how old his secretary's puppy is.
But by simply making a single card generalized to simply celebrate the day without specific ages of the puppies, there are from 3-19 different varieties which will not be produced, marketed, sold, waste managed, etc... in addition, they might have 16 different designs and patterns that have been mass produced.
The impact of reducing the number of days celebrated for no real reason, would hurt many jobs all around the world.
Consider that Hallmark could instead install a high end printers with embossing and laser cutting abilities that reduce ink consumption considerably, eliminates the vast majority of jobs related to shipping, etc... they could even, as the day approach print one kind of each greeting card and each card is scanned and sold at the counter, a new one could be printed and then restocked on the shelf. As such, they could eliminate massive amounts of waste, they could cut costs dramatically. The ripple effect it would have globally would be a virtual disaster to the job markets.
So, we would simply need less people to work.
Not only that, but as people as a whole earn less money, they would be less likely to waste money on greeting cards for stupid holidays. The demand would drop and Hallmark would eventually become a design company that would install their printers at Walmart and Amazon. The number of cards produced would drop to a less nonsensical amount. We would buy "Get well soon", "Happy Birthday", "We mourn your loss", etc... cards or even forgo c
Let's be blunt, this is job protectionism and it's nonsense.
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The planet can't survive unless we come up with a better plan than to try and avoid being smart. I personally believe that a much better solution would be to demand that Facebook, Google and Amazon establish a long term plan as to how to consolidate into a single company.
Here's the thing, the vast majority of our environmental problems are not from overpopulation. It's from overproduction due to capitalism.
In order for each person on the planet to have a job and earn enough income to sustain their lives, we have to produce far more than we need.
Visit Walmart or Amazon or eBay or any other major shopping source. Now, I want you to consider the percentage of the products they sell that simply would not exist unless someone was just trying to make jobs.
Now, take all the products which are in fact necessities and identify how they are packaged, stored, distributed, etc... and consider
- does a store like Walmart would really need 25 full length isles of freezers running 24/7 if it weren't for the fact that we have frozen pizza, frozen pizza with pepperoni, frozen pizza with extra pepperoni, frozen bite sized pizzas with pepperoni, frozen bite sized pizza with extra pepperoni....
- do we need 9 different sizes of corn flakes from 3 different brands?
- Does the cucumber need to be individually wrapped in plastic?
Our excessive consumerism comes from an overabundance of workers attempting to each have a place in the world producing things we simply don't need.
Companies like Google, Tesla, and Amazon and others are working extremely hard at optimizing all aspects of the supply chain. This will over time eliminate the vast majority of jobs on the planet. Google and Tesla's self-driving technology will make it possible in the near future to handle warehouse to warehouse shipping with almost no human intervention. Amazon's drone technology combined with Google and Tesla's self-driving technology will make it possible to deliver directly to the consumer with almost no human intervention as well. Self-sailing cargo ships are coming fast as well. Self-flying planes will be around the corner.
Why does this matter so much for the planet?
Well, suppose Amazon were to start buying massive numbers of farms... or at least they were to buy the vast majority of food produced by farms. Then they were to setup a few depots around each state. Now, they could slaughter meat on demand and produce meat on demand. In addition, they could in real-time alter the prices of different cuts on the wholesale and retail market to increase or decrease demand for different parts of the animals. This would allow producers of other products to setup plants attached to Amazon locations to purchase the meat products they would need in order to fulfill their orders. They could also, using automated production lines switched between which products they would produce based on real-time demand.
Now consider if for example Kellogg were to use real-time statistics to produce cereal based on demand. Now, instead of selling boxes of different sizes, shapes and packaging, they could offer on Amazon all different sizes, shapes and packaging labels. They could also offer bulk options made available in reusable packages. They would fill silos at Amazon's distribution locations with their products based on their production capability as well as the demand. By moderating production based on demand, they could reduce the amount of preservatives they use during production.
When a purchase is made, using a simple algorithm, a box would be printed and manufactured to size and labeling. A wax paper bag would be produced to size. The entire process would be automated.
Consider if Tropicana were to do the same, but they would provide oranges and silos at Amazon would be filled with their oranges and their production machinery that would produce orange juice to demand. Tropicana cou
I'm not convinced that's the case. I'm raising a kid these days and he goes to a high school where they're told engineering and science has no future and they should instead focus on law and finance. It's actually more of a cluelessness. They are brainwashed from the time they're young into considering that gambling is "the free market economy". Many of them are good people and genuinely altruistic.
I actually believe that what they're doing is a good thing. They lack foresight into many things. For example, investing in real estate typically ensures that your money grows relative to the cost of living. Therefore, it's a inflation adjusted investment that allows you to put $100 in today and in 30 years, you can get $100 rate adjusted back out.
Wall Street investments don't work in those terms. Generally, most of their investments on behalf of who they represent earn them fast cash now, but causes their customers to not necessarily equal or outpace the rate of inflation over time.
It affects him directly.
I turned on my American telephone for my upcoming US trip next week. Since I've turned it on, I've signed up for the "Do not call registry" which I'm quite sure does nothing. I've been receiving on average 3-5 phone calls a day from Kissimmee Florida to inform me that my medicare will not cover a hip some surgery if I wait any longer. Every call claims quite forcefully that "This is your last warning" of which I keep hoping it is true... it's not. If I press 2, it should add me to the "Do not call list" and I've pressed it a few times only to be transferred to a sales person. At which time I ask to be removed from the list... and I'm not.
It is quite impressive to see how poor the state of the US is in. Only in India, the UK and the US have I ever seen so many people blatantly trying to take advantage of other people. It's absolutely horrifying that the regulatory committees are unable to control this problem. When an American company calls and American telephone number and the owner of that number contacts the FTC to report a violation, the FTC should be knocking on their door within a week. Instead, the FTC doesn't seem to do anything about it... all the scam calls I've received are long time members of a list of known scammers. It also appears that these people know they are safe. What's worse is that there are people working for these companies who knowingly violate the "Do not call" registry. After all, Robocallers should have access to a database which makes it clear who they can call and who they can't. If these companies violate that, they should be shutdown or fined severely on early offenses and punished with prison on repeat offenses.
I'm very sad to know just how low the people of America have declined to.
Let's also add that restoring an iPhone from the cloud should give you the option as to whether you have to download all the damn films which were on the old phone to complete the process. When I replaced my phone at the Apple Store in Tokyo, I had to sit in the store and share wifi with the other users for 5 hours one day because I couldn't get my settings onto my replacement phone without downloading all the films. I tried stopping it twice, but it completely freaked on me.
You shouldn't have to download 110GB of films you've already watched just to restore your settings.
Give the exact same phone as the 6S plus with a longer battery and a faster CPU and I'll buy it before it ships. But no headphone jack and no touch ID is a deal breaker. I'm simply no wasting money on a phone which removes features. iPhone 6S Plus was the best phone Apple ever made. I'll keep repairing the one I have until Apple makes a legitimate replacement.
Face ID - nice feature, but doesn't actually add convenience.
Wireless charging - useless feature since I can't charge while watching the phone. The charger needs a cable anyway.
Edge to edge screen - means I can't use a protective cover to avoid breaking the glass and still be able to reach all parts of the screen. Also, holding the phone from the sides becomes difficult as it interferes with the text.
Swiping gestures to replace the home - means you have to swipe either side of the phone. If I use the phone right handed, I can manage this, but left handed, I end up dropping it all the time.
I upgraded from the iPhone X 256GB to the iPhone 6S plus and it was the biggest upgrade I ever made on a phone.
As someone who grew up in New York, I have to say that Amazon would be a weird fit. New York is one of the last places in American where a small business owner... well where you can be your own person and own your own company without being a slave to a franchise.
I'm planning on visiting the states next week with my children, we'll head to Clearwater Florida, an area I know where as I lived there for about 6 years. We make lists of things to do before going there and with the exception of Disney and the Museum of Science and Industry, all of our money is expected to be spent at chains and franchises.
When we travel to New York, we instead make plans to spend our money at family owned places. This includes pizzerias, electronic shops, etc...
New York is maybe the only place left in the entire U.S. that I've seen that people protect their family owned stores and prefer paying an extra 10% if it means shopping for groceries at a store where you know the owner personally.
Amazon will place a great deal of pressure on the environment to embrace chains. In fact, by simply having a large presence in the area, it will likely have a terrible impact on local stores as well as the health of the people in the community since it would convince people to order online and have things delivered by drone since a NY presence could mean 30 minutes or less for pretty much anything.
That said, NY wastes a massive amount of... well pretty much everything. Take a visit to Starette City and you might be horrified. Since New Yorkers have the best of everything... the best meat, the best cheeses, the best of anything since NY has always made that a core component of the culture. You can sit at most good restaurants and eat fresh Maine lobster and aged Kobe beef with fine Russian beluga caviar and it would not be considered odd to ask for such a thing. When ordering sushi, being asked "Nova Scotian, Norwegian or Japanese" regarding your salmon is a real possibility.
The single mega company brings with it a real benefit to the whole world. Grocery stores and restaurants all around the world manage their perishable items poorly. As more stores eliminate the in-store butcher, it's getting far worse. Meat, fish, dairy, vegetables etc... they are placed on display... defrosted because people want the illusion of shopping for fresh goods. People don't want to choose something from a computer screen and pick it up from a counter after it's been prepared, not when the fresh lovely colors of all the products are visible on display elsewhere.
Amazon will be able to store all perishables far longer than a grocery store which will generate substantially less waste. I've seen numbers on the order of 30% of all food is thrown away. I don't believe these numbers. I've watched grocery stores throw away 50% or more of their unsold meat and dairy.
Improves logistics from Amazon will help society as a whole, but it will eliminated hundreds of millions of jobs world wide. And this is as it should be. We need to start moving to minimizing. Commercialization is destroying us. So, as long as Amazon continues to find a way to find a balance of killing off jobs and still having someone left with money to sell to, they should be welcomed.
As for the $3 billion, that's not nearly as much money as it once was. And by simply giving it away like that, it will save New York years and tons of money trying to collect taxes from a company who has a legal team far more powerful than the state does. Remember, just because you lose a huge law suit that says you have to pay a billion dollars, it doesn't actually mean you'll pay it... you will just have to move to another negotiation that will let government right it off as a loss.
What percentage of these deaths could have been avoided if we detected the condition requiring surgery before it was too late and were forced to move from relatively non-invasive operations or even medication to requiring surgery?
My theory... of which I recently signed up for the university to work towards a masters and Ph.D. in the topic is to detect maladies before they reach the point of requiring complex surgery. This comes from automating advanced medical practices and eliminating the simple ones. For example, instead of having a general practitioner stick his finger up your ass to check for lumps... what's the frigging point... if you have a lump big enough that he can feel it, we detected it far too late. It should have been detected before it ever formed.
So, the solution is to employ modern full body layered ultrasound (or alternative techniques... that's what I hope to study) to identify the problems long before they become lumps that you could feel. If a doctor is looking for lumps, it's because we only visit a doctor once a year and we might already be 80% of the way to detectable which is 150% of the way to "this is bad" but we'll wait an entire extra year before checking again.
If we look for tumors, oddities in circulation, etc... by simply scanning the body and looking inside, we can do this using machine and do this several dozen times a year as the cost would be minimal following the initial capital expenditure. The machine would be reminiscent of an airport body scanner and already exists (there was a story on Slashdot not long ago). By reducing the cost of such machine that initially all larger companies would install them in each campus as a replacement for security doors.. not all doors, just as a voluntary option, a person could walk through twice a day if they wanted and if machine detects anything suspicious, they will receive a text message with a recommended appointment at a specialist.
Once we use the wealthy as guinea pigs, we can mass produce them and deploy them in offices and schools across the world. They should work everywhere except the U.S. which has ridiculous problems with things like health care because the American people would rather die than cooperate with one another.
I've been thinking the same way... maybe a little less on the conspiracy side.
The way I see it, 5G is more or less the last upgrade for a while. Whoever bags this one will make a lot of money on it. Huawei is practically giving their stuff away compare to what the western companies are charging. I work for a big telco... so big that Huawei rents about a thousand square meters of office space a few floors above where I sit to be closer to us. We'll are one of the world's largest customers for 5G and whoever we buy our 5G network from will make billions from us. If we buy Huawei, we'll save probably $2-3 billion over buying from their nearest competitor. (don't buy stocks on this information, I don't see the papers and I'm not in the meetings, this is all from public shareholder reports).
The university where I'm doing my grad work runs a super computing program, I'm working on RDMA over classic Ethernet (instead of converged) as a research topic in HPC. We use Huawei ARM based servers for the nodes.
If the FUD mongers manage to accomplish their goals, we'll be forced to dump Huawei in both places due to "national security". (again public news). We are fighting it tooth and nail because all of our systems are either relatively safe from hackers since we don't exactly expose important systems to the outside world... or we simply give China or India the passwords anyway since we pay them for operations. Why on earth would Huawei need to hack us when they have administrative access to the network to begin with?
I'm going to call BS on this. This sounds like the kind of nonsense people spout from the back of a trailer while drinking Schlitz and shooting the cans from yesterday's drinking fest.
This is precisely what we said back in the 80s about the Japanese. Have you been to Japan? If the closest thing you can get to it is porn sites, they practically invented the term creative.
China is a HUGE country...it's full of creativity from top to bottom. Check out "Harbin International Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival" if you need a hint.
China spent the past 40 years sending their best and brightest to universities in the western world and a lot of the talent is coming back. There is no doubt that China is coming up fast now. They are filling universities with western educated professors who are educating their youth by the hundreds of thousands to rise to the top.
If only based on sheer headcount, the Chinese can throw a WHOLE LOT of spaghetti at the wall and a lot of it will stick.
Although, if you think that we here in the west are safe because of some old fool redneck tale... enjoy your Schlitz.
So, I was curious. I've never worked for minimum wage, I've either been dead broke in poverty and desperate and living in the back of a car which was waiting to be repossessed or I've make 6 figures but never between. I never had the chance to live like a normal person.
So, I just searched Omaha for apartments. It seems that a two bedroom apartment in a nice suburb will cost you $1030 a month. To secure this, it would require a $3090 a month income. That's about $18 an hour or it can be done at $15 an hour at 9.5 hours a day assuming time and a half overtime.
A 2014 BMW i3 with range extender would cost $18000 to $302 a month over 72 months. This is a good car because the resale value shouldn't drop considerably and after paying the car off, you can pay about the same for another year for a battery refurbishment. This car should have a very low cost of ownership (I drive one and it's almost like being paid to drive) and it should be relatively reliable. The only disadvantage is that it would have to be serviced by a BMW shop. But, it's still a far better purchase than a $12500 gas vehicle that has substantially more parts to break and replace... and pay gas for.
Car insurance will run about $125 a month on that for a 30+ man or woman.
I just grocery shopped online at one of the more expensive grocery stores I know of and shopped as if I had to budget. This didn't mean being stingy, but it meant grocery store brand over name. It meant fresh foods over packaged. It meant not paying double for organic. Choosing to shop the sales, etc... I came up with what should be a grocery card for a family of two including a month supply of soaps (bathroom, dish, laundry...), paper towels and toilet paper, tooth brushes, etc... I came up at $223. I suppose that using coupons and time as well as shopping at a non-rich person store would get it to $150, but I also didn't get anything really fun, it looked like what a healthy family would eat... you know, the kind of family where the parent loves the children instead of giving them food from boxes. So, let's choose $600 a month as a relatively round number for essentials (food, etc..) for a family of two.
Then there's clothes. Depending on your needs, you can dress fairly well on a budget of $100 a month for an adult... this will also cover buying new winter coats. And you can dress a child for $150 a month. They grow and require replacement of stuff much faster. So let's calculate $250 a month
The person would need furniture as well, but you can't budget that monthly, you buy that over 20 years and piece by piece. You inherit what you need from other people until you can buy the thing you actually want.
Then there's electricity, water, internet and telephones. I think even someone much better than I am at budgeting would still find this costing about $400 a month.
So, $1030 (rent), $600 (food stuff), $300 (Car), $125 (car insurance), $250 a month (clothes, shoes, etc..), $400 a month for utilities and phone.
We're up to $2900 a month. If the person manages to get 9.5 hours a day, they would earn $3090 a month. I think even if they get almost 100% tax free, they would still have to pay social security which I think is about 10%, so there goes $300 a month.
So, this person, if I don't account for any additional oopsies would be about $100 a month in the whole...at least.
The car is paid off in 6 years, so if they can do 8 years, that's probably an extra $100 a month in the bank. And if the car lasts 25 years... as it should since it's basically all plastic and easy to replace parts, after the loan is paid, the cost of ownership should drop to $100 a month. But that doesn't help earlier on.
There's no room for day car or babysitting... so, being a single parent would be REALLY REALLY difficult.
They could get a cheaper apartment, but the goal isn't survival. For $1000 a month, you get an apartment with a gym, a pool and other things. This is considered living like a human instead of someone who is simp
I'll play along.
... well it shouldn't be there. I was a 30 a day smoker until early December 2018. I'm sucking so hard on a nicotine free e-cig these days begging for something to come out of it that I could probably make an excellent career as a male prostitute now.
I still have a pack of Marlboro on the dinner table that I tap into... more often than I should. And I have a pack in the car which
You're probably right that the massive decrease in smoking has been financially damaging to many people around the world. But companies and shareholders are two different things and there are too many people who don't get that.
You seem to think that there's some sort of major money making machine out there that if a company doesn't perform well, the owners are going to lose their asses and such. This could be medical research for cancer. It can be a tobacco company... pretty much any company capable of profiting from tobacco taxes.
This is not how it works.
The owners of the companies are the shareholders. The shareholders can generally move their investments from one company to another. If they want to get some extra cash from the company, they can force it to deplete its cash by paying dividends. They can even get the company to take a loan and use that money to pay dividends leaving the company bankrupt, in debt and ready to collapse, but it takes an amazing accountant to make that work cleanly.
Every company making money from big Tobacco is covered. The shareholders of those companies have already left the companies. They've moved onto whatever Forbes or Gartner is interested in these days. Instead, what's left is investors who specialize in profiting as companies shrink. There is such a thing. It's possible for the owners of a company to find ways to profit from writing off losses for example.
Let's say you're Emma Watson and you've had a great year and tax time is coming. One option for Hollywood actors in the past has been to buy into producing a film guaranteed to fail at the box office. This would let you take a loss in a possibly fun way. The alternative is to invest in a company that will lose money on a steady schedule so the loses can be written off. Creative accountants can find ways to make a million in losses come back as 10 million in non-taxable income or better.
So those companies are amazing targets for people in need of write-offs right now and there's a ton of money to be made that way.
Where's the value for Foxconn to use American workers?
They're expensive. Wisconsin is a union state too. Which means that Foxconn will have union labor issues just building the factory and keeping it running will just be a nightmare.
As for skills, Wisconsin the state has no fiscal responsibility, it has not fiscal stability, it has an almost 3rd world infrastructure. It's educational level is #18 in the country which means the most common answer to questions asked by students in a classroom is "Duh, I don't know".
It's better to pay more to stay in China. It's just more cost effective and the workers are smarter, more creative, more motivated and more skilled.
Now that Walker is out and there's no one willing to pay Foxconn to be there, there's no point staying.
Ok... that's just lame that you would fight people spouting legal bullshit with ... well legitimate legal bullshit.
I was wondering about that and appreciate the specific details as you presented them.
Is there a legal process declared which would perform as a litmus test for whether a company is in fact a monopoly? Meaning, is it just an bunch of old people in congress or a bunch of hungry little opportunistic lawyers trying to prove that a company is a monopoly? Or is there a legal definition that says if you can check these boxes and add up a score like this, it is a monopoly.
That said just because a company is a monopoly doesn't mean it's bad. For example, Linux is a monopoly for IoT devices. There are alternatives, and they are even far better, but no one would use them because the GNU community has more or less crushed them out of existence using often unfair and unethical methods. That said, it's provided a means of standardization that makes it so that we have a relatively standard and semi-reliable platform to depend on.
So far as I know, there is no business Facebook has a possible monopoly on other than advertising. Even so, I would suggest that Google proves that Facebook is not a monopoly there. Snapchat and others seem to have pretty strong followings. There is also Twitter, LinkedIn and a few others. Facebook is more like a defacto replacement for the phone book rather than something useful.
Facebook's biggest crime is that it's big. The bigger you are, the bigger your mistakes. And I honestly can't see how it's a crime In a legal sense.
On the other hand, can a company be forced to break up as an anti-trust resolution, or would reform be the likely approach?
Credit bureaus are safe, just because they're improperly implemented today doesn't mean they can't be done well.
...
If you're someone offering credit to someone, then you should be able to contact a credit bureau for a report on the person in question.
So, when you apply for credit, you sign a form to authorize a credit search to be performed on you.
All companies part of the credit network would then, based on a relationship that suggests that the credit bureau is acting within the law would respond to a map request for data related to the report.
When the data is returned, an algorithm would reduce the report to a report with a possible rating number.
This is not an issue. Of course, there should be a way to retain credit information from defunct companies following their shutdown.
As for phone books... those haven't worked in American in decades.
So, Ajit Pai has made a huge deal out of supporting deregulation of broadband in America. In fact, the FCC has been trying very hard to define 5G as a legitimate replacement for fiber (it could in theory work). And the American government has spent years attacking Huawei, even far past the point of rationally.
Who in the White House has interests related to 5G infrastructure? I doubt itâ€(TM) Trump is involved, not unless they are helping him get the wall, though it could be. What about his cabinet?
While I trust Huawei only a smidgen more than I trust Cisco (and Cisco feeds my family, but they are my creepy/dirty uncle), this is screaming conspiracy now. Someone who can influence the Whitehouse stands to profit hugely from keeping Huawei out of the 5G roll out. At least it really seems that way.
It would also explain almost everything Ajit Pai has done since coming to power.
What do you people think?