I was just wondering how you can file a claim regarding a hack which almost definitely was due to having piss poor security.
I have worked with national banks who whine about being hacked when they pretty much just leave the door open.
Rule 1) Cisco, Checkpoint, Pali Alto; etc:.. they do not sell security solutions. They sell overpriced door locks that keep the honest people honest.
Rule 2) If your company actually got hacked or suffered losses due to a hack, it almost certainly is because you spend too much money on security experts and not nearly enough on security.
The courses they're offering for these prices are the same online courses everyone else has and for far less money.
There is absolutely no possible way to do a data science degree of value the way they structured their curriculum in 30 weeks. 30 weeks of 8am to 5pm learning is absolutely worthless. For a program that should be focused on the success of their students as they won't make money unless their students graduate, this is a horrible design.
I would seriously recommend instead :
- Review high school math at Khan Academy for free... donate a few bucks to be nice
- Pick up calculus to understand rate of chance from Khan Academy.
- Pick up linear algebra from Khan Academy's pre-calculus course and then the linear algebra course.
- Learn a programming language (pick one, any one, it's just for learning principles), Code Academy, Khan Academy, or a thousand other sites will do.
- Learn programming theory, Khan Academy for a good intro algorithms course, or MIT Open Courseware for a hardcore one.
- Learn a data science language... Julia is hot now, Matlab/Octave is great too.
- Learn differential equations... this is only for people who want to be worth their salary. Khan Academy is good, MIT Open Courseware or Stanford is good too.
This can be done in 30 weeks if you're insanely disciplined. But it takes 18 months for the most experienced developers to become proficient in a programming language... anyone can learn a language in a few minutes, but to say "I actually know this language", someone who already knows 4 or 5 still needs 18 months.
I would also say that it doesn't make sense to do this program, it's all one thing. It doesn't seem to teach anything about anything for which the data set would be applicable, you'd leave with little more of value than stupid cat tricks.
Though, $50,000 i barely more than minimum wage... in fact it's probably considerably less. $15/hr minimum wage is $30,000 a year for 40 hour weeks. But overtime at time and a half would require yield $20,000 more with an average of 17 hours overtime a week. That may sound like a lot of overtime, but it's pretty common for an entry level programmer to work 60 hours a week while proving themselves without overtime pay. So, McDonald's pays more.
Consider also that they're asking for 17% of your wages for two years, so that's $41,500 a year probably taxed at a $50,000 a year bracket. So let's say it's the same as $20 a hour at 40 hour weeks, but you're probably working 60 and given the time and a half thing, it would work out to the same as about $11-$12 an hour if you were flipping burgers instead.
Now, if you received a real university education over a period of 3-4 years with the same deal... that would actually be promising.
This is yet another case of the failures of modern capitalism.
We constantly talk about food shortages and how there's not enough food to cover the world. The fact is that there is no food shortage, there is a logistics issue.
Instead of mass industrialization of the planet's farming resources, we instead over produce the hell out of one thing hoping to make a quick buck but discount that everyone else is doing the same thing. American capitalism does this to far too many industries. Fracking for example... yes... a new source of fuel is probably good, but overproducing excessively in order to make a buck before the market goes sour isn't. Dairy seemed like a good idea, so everyone did it and now there too much of it. The market correction will be a mess. We will literally slaughter massive numbers of animals just to adjust to poor planning. What will we do with the dead cows? Just compost?
When Amazon finally takes on logistics for meat and dairy, what will the impact be?
So, instead of shipping massive amounts of meat to massive amounts of stores which is put on display and later thrown away because every store needed at least a few packages of this or that, what happens when meat is butchered and processed to order through a website and it's more effective than going to a local store. Consider that a grocery store throws away about 1/3rd or more of all their perishables. Now, Amazon can charge the same price but reduce their logistics cost and their losses due to waste by 1/3rd. They'll collapse the markets. Add to this other perishables. So if Amazon is throttling production of meats, dairy products and even produce based on real-time data, they can probably increase efficiency by 50% or more. What then?
I am no lover of Amazon, but the benefits of a single overlord corporation in the 21st century looks more and more attractive. If it's Amazon or whoever else.. who cares, just make it work.
Calculate that you will buy her a new laptop every 3-4 years. Then consider that you probably are paying her at least €50,000 (we hope) but even so, her time is costing you money. A slow computer is costing you.
Then consider that a €100 a month investment in hardware and €100 a month investment in software will probably yield near-optimal result.
This means you should calculate €1200/year for hardware and €1200/year for software to hopefully optimize your ROI on employee performance.
This means that laptop+dock+extra screen should be budgeted for €3600 or €4800. Software is MS Office 365 and maybe Adobe.
I believe that pretty much every PC meets that target. So just tell her to buy what she wants, the amortize it over the ROI period and make sure she buys the support plan to cover that period including accidental damage.
I donâ€(TM)t think fact based journalism is a thing anymore. There is too much competition and it doesnâ€(TM)t sell. People only want to hear what makes them feel special. I havenâ€(TM)t seen news in a long time that doesnâ€(TM)t exploit ego and sell opinion. And worse now than ever, the people selling this trash actually believe it now too.
Iâ€(TM)m sure broadcast has something to watch, but itâ€(TM)s cheaper and faster to just buy it somewhere else.
her 18 year old son couldn't walk from his high school to his job after school because of traffic safety in Clearwater, FL. She tells me that it's dangerous to cross the street.
I asked her "Have you taught him to look both ways before crossing?"
She said "You wouldn't believe this scooter accident we saw there recently"
I pointed out "He probably didn't look both ways"
People don't walk not just because of laziness but because they're scared of EVERYTHING. And they pass it down to their kids. I've been crossing streets for 40 years and never once have I had a problem. I've crossed the street she mentioned many times growing up and even recently when visiting. I can't understand how with nearly a full kilometer of visibility in all traffic directions how it could possibly be dangerous to cross the street.
But this is America today. America has chosen to stop living because they have too much fear of getting hurt.
Just in case someone at Apple stumbles across this page, I'll add my two cents.
In my house, we have three iPhone 6S and 6S Plus in use. We will keep repairing them until such time as Apple makes a new phone just like the iPhone 6S Plus but with upgraded specs... or until software updates end. When software updates end, we'll consider Android instead if there's no replacement for the 6S Plus.
Apple has stopped making phones that meet our needs.
We aren't repairing to be cheap. In fact, we actually have had the last two cracked screens repaired at the Apple Store (one in Paris, one in Tokyo). We will buy new batteries for all the phones soon as well. We will try to do this at the Apple authorized repair shop. If this fails, we'll go aftermarket.
We simply don't want the newer phones.
1) We want our headphone jacks without the dongles.
2) We don't give a crap about wireless charging. What's the point, you still need the wire to the charger. It seems like one of the dumbest ideas ever... pay an extra $100 for a charger pad instead of simply plugging the cable in. And if I use the cable, I can move the phone around. If I use the pad, I have to move the whole damn pad if the battery is low.
3) We REALLY REALLY REALLY don't want a screen that wraps around the edges and makes it so that if you use a protective case you can't reach the edges of the screen.
4) Bring back touch ID. Using the iPhone X without touch ID is absolutely infuriating. I honestly can't believe Apple has now shipped two generations of telephones that are utterly unusable. Touch ID and how well it worked was Apples absolutely mandatory killer feature. Removing it made the iPhone just a piece of trash.
The iPhone 7 was the beginning of the end for the phones as it removed features instead of adding them.
Add support for Miracast so that I can use the phone in meetings on projectors and conferencing systems.... or properly license AirPlay.
P.S. I own an iPhone X as well. It was the worst user experience of my life. I forced myself to use it for two months and I'd rather masturbate with a cheese grater.
I am a BMW i3 driver in Norway. And I'm an American by birth and I've traveled to about 80 countries in my life.
Electric cars work extremely well here in Norway because of trust.
Yesterday, when I tried to transport stuff from my office to my house and it wouldn't fit in my car, I went to Ikea and for about $40, rented a massive van for 3 hours which I used to pick up my stuff, move it and then returned the vehicle.
Norway, Sweden, Denmark and to a more limited extent Finland are the most trusting countries in the world. This extends to insurance plans and many other areas.
As such, cars with limited range are far more practical in these countries.
Norway also severely punishes people for driving. And the worse the vehicle, the worse the punishment. What I mean is that driving 5 year old diesel in Oslo will bankrupt all but the richest people. It's far more cost effective to buy a new $50,000 car every few years than to drive a diesel station wagon.
This doesn't come without its downsides.
Young couples will either have to delay or completely rethink parenthood starting now because they will be taxed VERY heavily if they inherit mom and dad's old gas or diesel station wagon to use to transport their kids to and from day care. Not only are we charging more for gas and diesel, but we charge double at the toll booths for people driving during rush hour which are the only hours compatible with day care.
If you were to drive a diesel station wagon from one side of town to the other during rush hour (quite common since Oslo is small), you would pay 178 Norwegian crowns a day or about $19 a day for toll booths where an electric car driving outside rush hour would pay about $1.20 a day. This is $3800 a year (net income, or as much as $7000 a year gross income revenue) for diesel during rush hour vs. $200 (net, $400 gross) for electric outside rush hour.
Then there's parking costs. Electric cars park free on the streets. All others (including hybrid) pay about $3-$10 an hour.
We actually can't afford to drive anything other than brand new electric cars in Oslo. Consider that a 5 year loan for an electric car is paid for completely by the money saved by getting rid of a diesel. In fact, when you add in the cost of EU control, the cost of gas, etc... buying a brand new BMW i3 is actually substantially cheaper than continuing to drive a gas vehicle.
But it won't work in someplace like the UK or the US. These are protectionist societies. We assume everyone is guilty until proven innocent.... actually... we assume everyone is guilty and if they're proven innocent we congratulate their lawyers for being so damn good. Unless you live in a society of trust, you can't make a change this big. You have to actually be willing to work together towards something better.
I've studied and operated as a professional computer scientist and electronics engineer with a degree and dozens of certifications (generic and vendor specific) for decades.
Today is the first time I've heard of the term "Professional Engineer" or even PE. I've never heard of a "Government board certified professional engineer"
The reason for this is that I've only worked in engineering professions where degrees are issued by universities based on performance in school and also in positions where the industry regulates based on their own trust system.
I just read the link at NSPE.org that you provided and after reading it, unless there was a specific job which required that I wasted time and resources on such a certification, I wouldn't. They sell the thing like a two bit whore. Click the link "Why get licensed?"
I could clearly see the value of this paper as something truly meaningful if your education was a trade skill, like electrician or plumber. After all, these are apprenticeships and there should be some formal process of calling yourself a plumber before an insurance company will back your work. It can't just be that some guy named Joe, a clear educational expert since he has his name on the truck says "He's a plumber".
But for someone that is formally trained and tested over a period of 3-12 years at a university, this type of certification is useless.
NSPE even lists money and prestige as a selling point of their cert.
I think that PE should not be protected either and Professional Engineer also should not be protected. Instead, it should have to clearly state "Oregon State Board Certified Professional Engineer".
After all... as someone that knows nothing about Oregon's politics and whether the board is corrupt or not (and from the web site, it looks fishy... like a fund raising scam) why in the world would I trust someone certified by the state board of Oregon? In fact, other than their web site and news articles about this, I can't find any meaningful reference to the Oregon's state board. This seems suspicious to me.
Let me start by addressing the article. I believe at this point making comments like "He should know, he's got his very own ML startup" is premature. I believe there's a great deal happening behind the scenes that we don't even know about... let's say instead "From the projects we currently are aware of we can assume..."
On the other hand, I agree quite a bit with what you say. However, I think that common sense and emotion aren't always a requirement for each other.
What I mean by this is that common sense and reasoning is a possibility within the short term for AI. The reason for this is that common sense generally means that it's something which doesn't require too much prior knowledge to understand and it is simply understood. Something like "my stomach feels a certain way, I should visit the toilet" would in theory be common sense.
The fact however is that most "common sense" is based on experience and learning from patterns.
The question however is, how much common sense does it take to be counted as common sense? I am constantly amazed as the sheer lack of depth of most peoples common sense. In fact, I'd say that over 50 of the population of the world amazes me as they are little better than a bird that keeps flying into the glass window trying to get through. (Visit Florida some time... you'd be absolutely shocked how that place attracts those people)
So, let's take "Is it a hot dog?" from Silicon Valley and consider whether providing enough patterns and a large enough dictionary to work from whether deciding whether something is a hot dog counts as common sense.
I'd say that it's already showing the earlier signs of cognitive reasoning. In fact, there are actual real people who have little more common sense than that.
On the other hand, I think the issue at hand is more about general intelligence. That app was able to adapt to identify penis pics. It is possible that simply providing a new data set was good enough for that. On the other hand, general intelligence would suggest that the app would also be able to adapt itself to tap its foot (or blink its screen) to the beat of music. And advanced general intelligence (I'm sure there's a real word for it) would suggest it would want to all by itself.
I believe that using AI for economic data crunching like you mentioned is actually not as hard as you would think. I was talking with the kids yesterday about what an auditor does for a living. We have one in the family. I believe we'll see things like auditing being the first type of "intuitive economic task" to be fully automated. I think it should be possible to teach "is it a hot dog" to look for creative accounting anomalies.
I think that an AI that is fed all the financial data from many historical cases as well as having a historical record of regulation over time to reference, it should be possible to provide the computer a new case and let it use the solutions from earlier cases to perform a lot better than many of us with these regards. I for example have now run 2 failed companies because I never really understood that stuff.
Many of us prefer to work in a place that is clean and nice and high tech. We choose to work in places with good restaurants. This is great for business parks.
There are some of us that prefer to work in the city. Even in the city, I don't want to pay street food prices for food, so if I have to choose, I'll walk to the grocery store an get food.
There's no reason we need street vendors. In fact, craptiques should go away too. Ever walk through London and after turning right onto Oxford St. from Reagent St. you find yourself walking past one crap store after the next? Things like stores that sell overprices Chinese crap to tourists? They're an eyesore.
The 3.5mm headphone jack was one of the greatest inventions ever. There were attempts at smaller, but the 2.5mm was just too fragile.
After 50 years, the 3.5mm jack is damn near perfect. There are some potential problems with it, but nothing which is too much of a problem.
If people want to use bluetooth, they're welcome to it. But I've gone iPhoneX and then back again. A major part of this was the headphone jack.
What people often don't realize about the headphone jack is that it takes power. This is this real problem for companies these days. A small audio amplifier places a drain on the battery. It also requires space on the PCB. It's extremely difficult to design an audio amplifier with insanely good audio which fits within the real-estate constraints of a phone and also make it so there's no interference from all the surrounding radio circuits.
So... the solution is to charge us more and remove the port.
What Apple and the others seem to forget is that we like the choice. I don't like constantly losing headphones because they're not connected to the phone. Or constantly leaving my phone on the desk and being out of the building before I realize I forgot it... because the sound starts crackling. I don't like breaking expensive lightning to headphone dongles. I don't like having to constantly charge wireless headphones. I hate when my headphones run out of battery on the train.
Now.. here's the REAL PROBLEM
I don't like having to constantly pair and pair and pair and pair my damn headphones. I use my headphone with my PC to talk on Skype. I use my headphones on my phone to... well everything. I use my headphone on my tablet to... well everything. I have one pair of headphones I simply plug or unplug. When I use bluetooth, I have to delete the device and repair it every time I switch. With proper headphones I can move the cable and click the button on the headphones to play. I don't even have to unlock the phone.
I've been hoping Apple or Google will release a phone at some point called "The old fogey phone" for people who want all the features of the latest phone but are willing to live with lesser audio to get the headphone jack.
Well, I'm not an AC and while I don't believe I'm as hostile as the AC was, I'm curious.
Slashdot was "News for Nerds" at some point in time. And I started reading this post and the article because I was interested in how this was supposed to be news for nerds as opposed to news for people who are explicitly not nerds. And then I read the first post where the title was "heroes" and while I'm very happy this isn't yet another racist rant first post, I'm pretty confused.
I looked up the definition of hero. It ends up that all this time I was under the impression that a hero was someone who acted selflessly in some sort of means that was simply above and beyond. Nope, even Kim Kardashian is a hero by the official definitions (checked 5 dictionaries) as apparently, all it takes to be a hero is to have someone admiring you. As a matter of fact, I couldn't find any definitions that actually required any heroism in order to be a hero.
Now, I agree completely about the guy coming in second deserving just as much respect as the guy coming in first. I simply don't see why it's reasonable to respect the guy coming in first for basically walking across Antarctica. Sure, it sound pretty cool, but I don't see why this is any different than walking across London for example.
It's currently summer time in Antarctica and -at the coldest part of the continent, it's generally about -30c which really isn't that bad. I've walked to the train station and waited outside for the train many times in this temperature. When moving and wearing a decent jacket, you can actually work up a sweat. I make my kids walk 5km each day to school in this weather and have made them do it for the last 10+ years. My daughter actually wears gloves when it hits -20... which is strange since I have to tell her to wear a jacket at -10.
So, honestly, other than being all alone for a really long time, I don't see anything in the slightest way exciting about this. Is it because of the terrain? Is it because of the danger of ice fissures? If not, it's just walking in the cold and it's not even that cold.
But again, what's the real excitement or nerd value of hiking and camping through Antarctica? I'm not saying he didn't do something impressive, but why is it news worthy and why would it be "news for nerds"?
P.S. It sounds like I'm talking badly about the guy. This is not my goal. I'm simply wondering why it's something worth a headline.
I have very little knowledge about the fishing industry (which is odd since much of my salary is provided by it) but I'm curious.
The article makes a big deal about how climate has effected the fishing industry. I'm a huge lover of old books and have read pretty much everything I could get my hands on from the past 5000 years of writing. I recall stories dating back to the ancient Egyptians regarding the how a major part of their version of modern politics was centered around the inundation of the Nile. And in recent times, we know that it's very important for dead fish to be left on the shores of the Nile to fertilize crops.
It seems to me that I can think of books and historical references from nearly every era of human history that would tell stories of fishermen chasing fish because the fishing grounds constantly changed.
That said, I live in Norway now which depends almost as much on fish as on oil money. A massive portion of the country's income is spent on fish breeding and while Norway is still a whaling country, they apparently are believed to be one of the top contributors to repopulating the whales of the world. I know very little about the details and I have no idea how accurate my understanding of this topic is. I believe most of what I know is hearsay.
That said, I wonder if anyone here on Slashdot is knowledgeable about the fishing industry and could answer some questions.
1) Are the migratory issues normal? In other words, did the fish always move similar to this? Is the problem because companies aren't "fishing companies" but instead "halibut companies"? Instead of changing to a different fish as might have happened 500 years ago, the companies are chasing specific types of fish now because they have the means to?
2) Is the fish population genuinely less or could it be that fish are adapting to a more hostile environment and swimming further from the surface as a matter of survival?
3) Is this an issue of genuine migration? The blurb makes a point that not only are the fish further north, but there are less of them? Could it be that these fish were probably always there but the southern populations have been so over-fished that there simply aren't enough left to make it profitable?
4) Could the population have migrated elsewhere and we simply haven't found them yet? I imagine we don't have submarines zooming all over the Atlantic looking for halibut.
5) Is it even possible to farm fish instead? In other words, here in Norway, much of our salmon comes from farms instead of free range. Is it possible for the industry to adapt for other fish?
I used to have the misfortune of living in the minimum wage state for 6 of the worst years of my life.
First, let's start by saying that "Sun and fun" and "I don't have to shovel rain" are not good enough reasons to move to the state of apathy known as Florida. Florida has endless problems and not least among them is "We really don't care about anything so long as it doesn't make us actually work or learn.". Additionally, Florida is crippled by a population who votes almost entirely with short-term goals since fixing things takes time and if you ask the average voter "Don't you care about your grand children's futures?" and they'll generally respond "Of course I do... but they live in Michigan"
Red Tide is a problem all around the world. The Florida red tide is of course exacerbated by opportunists. Of course, Florida depends on opportunism to survive... I hate visiting my parents because every time I do, it seems what few legitimate businesses were left in Florida are replaced by "Check cashing" and "Payday loan" places.
It's absolutely amazing that other than in the Hispanic areas of Miami, the entire state of Florida is in a cultural constant state of decaying.
But yeh... Tampa and the surrounding areas are an absolute shit-hole. It operates on the golden principal of "Anything for a buck" and the phosphorus problem has only gotten worse over time. And so long as there are actual jobs related to it and most of those jobs are rednecks who actually do vote as opposed to young middle class families (I don't care about the party they belong to), there will be nothing done to fix the dumping problem. It will only get worse until it's so bad that it can't be ignored.
Let's be honest... there was dysfunction long before that.
- They named themselves Faraday. Instead of being original, they started from the very beginning as a "me too" company. Everything they did was to simply copy Tesla. And they intended to reach a point of competitive product with a version 1 vehicle while racing the clock against an established company like Tesla who has a rain-maker CEO.
- Car that seems to completely lack design Honestly, the FF vehicle is an absolute mess. Look at it. It's an end-to-end disaster.
- Tech that's not there A huge amount of what Tesla is selling is the gadgets and gizmos. Most of the Tesla drivers I know were sold on the bling instead of practical items.
- They started by building it themselves. Tesla started by building their tech into someone else's design. In fact, in order to establish Tesla as a real player, Tesla's initial vehicles were based on Lotus gliders. In other words, Lotus was delivering cars without drive trains and Tesla was simply fitting tech. This allowed Tesla to avoid being just another unicorn startup. They actually managed to deliver a real product that would allow investors to have something to touch and feel. Faraday fails on every front here. In fact, Lotus was always special since they're kind of a budget sports car. So Elon probably got a great deal on the gliders.
Faraday should have paid someone else to manufacture the majority of it. It was a total waste of money to tool a factory to produce a version 1 vehicle.
Companies like Ford, GM and BMW for example should be desperately looking for partners these days. Their entire business is eroding. I own a BMW i3 and I expect this vehicle to be road worthy for 20-30 years with minimal additional cost. When the car is paid off sometime in 20 months or so, i'll take a loan to upgrade to the newest battery pack and add Airplay to the car... if these options prove too expensive, I'll dump it for a smaller Chinese EV. Ford, GM and BMW are now making almost entirely plastic, non-corrosive, minimal vibration vehicles. In fact, I'm trying to convince local tree-hugger political groups to mandate that all new cars sold in Norway should have "20 year plans" as a requirement. Meaning that all car companies should be required to offer plans to keep cars road worthy with a predictable TCO for a minimum of 20 years. This would be a huge positive environmental improvement... but it will destroy many legacy car companies if this becomes a thing.
So Ford, GM, BMW, etc... companies who have proven they simply "don't get" the next phase of cars and will lose their asses to newcomers who will focus more on long term capitalization on existing vehicles (apps, features, upgrades, etc...) than on sales of replacement vehicles. As such, Faraday should have easily found someone willing to help produce for them.
If nothing else, they could have simply had a Chinese company build them.
My hand is not raised because I donâ€(TM)t make anywhere near that little.
That said, I have never met a teacher who does not have to grade tests, plan, prep the classroom, etc... most teachers work a lot more than you seem to think. Why not offer teachers a trade... pay them 80% per hour of their current pay and offer them to charge per hour. If they turn it down, fire them because they are either lazy or they are idiots. Of course, you would likely end up having to pay the ones who stay 50% more.
It is obvious your teachers failed to educate you. Please learn to perform the slightest research before speaking about something. There is a new web site called Google and you can type questions into it. Use it;)
Do you think Kansas has the available expertise within the government to secure a data center? My guess would be they are like most other states who have IT departments filled with the crap that is left over.
I have worked with state level IT many times and it is absolutely shocking how everything is done as hack and slash. Then again, anyone investing in SAN at this point is generally unsuitable to continue working. SAN is just a terrible idea no matter how you spin it.
And $17 million is peanuts compared to what contractors would rape a state government before the inevitable data breach.
Wow... weaponize... I noticed the 'S' in your spelling. It's pretty significant at this time while Brexit is occurring.
A few years ago, I remember something that was almost life changing for me. It was an interview with Mikhail Gorbachev where he came out as critical against the western world. When the worked with Reagan and GWB to end the cold war peacefully, he believed he was helping Russia to enter a new world where it would be England, the USA and Russia reigning in an era of cooperation and peace. What he said however was that James Bond (specifically) and Hollywood made a huge deal about how Russia was nothing more than a bunch of corrupt ex-KGB and hookers. And of course, England and the US made a huge deal out of how they won the cold war and how Russia was basically about as important as any other third world country now.
This changed my life because I realized how foolish we all were after the curtain came down. We all listened to the propaganda and what would make good TV. We seemed to think it didn't matter that the Russians were now going to the movies and watching the same things we were. It didn't matter that we were all buying into this James Bond "We're civilized, you're all animals" thing.
All major countries spy. If we go back to James Bond, not only does the UK spy, but the British take incredible pride in their spy capabilities. They advertise them as being national heroes. I'm actually shocked Ian Flemming wasn't knighted.
Yes, China spies, but imagine if we classified all aspects of English industry as being completely military and intelligence related?
What if I were to suggest as an American that the only reason why England has any interest in space is so they could spy?
You might site things like science, research, industry, communication, etc... and you'd be right.
If you were to suggest that China only cares about military and intelligence, I'd call you a fool.
China cares about communism which in its Chinese form is rapidly approaching systematic (and somewhat enforced) Confucianism. The Chinese government repressed two full generations in order to establish a normal. As such, they established a set of rules and molded a sense of uniformity throughout the entire nation. And even if the little red book was considered horrible by the west, you should read it sometime. It was about working together to make something better. Norway (where I live) has a little red book called "Janteloven" which is also used in Sweden and Denmark. By something Americans and Englishmen would call brainwashing, a standard is set which convincing the people of the nations to think of more than just themselves. It's a beautiful thing... I as an American learned a great deal about being a good person by living in a society that damn near brutally inflicts communism on its people from birth. I mean, seriously... you are expected to leave your baby in a baby carriage in the freezing cold while you sit and drink coffee indoors at a cafe.
China cares about establishing a One China vision which is far closer to the American dream than American ever had. But the American dream could never be accomplished through the western way. It required a massive portion of the entire world's population to work together towards a goal.
If you need proof of any of this... look to India, a country defined by "Every man for himself"... I spoke to a pretty Indian girl at a hotel in Qatar not long ago and asked her "As a woman, would you recommend bringing my wife and daughter to Doha on vacation" and she immediately responded "Yes!" and I asked "Wow... I expected to hear stories of repression against women" and she said "Nonsense.... I love Doha" and I asked "Why", she responded "Because if someone rapes me, I can go to the police". I stood completely dumbfounded and unable to speak.
Now... let's compare India to the 51 states (US and England) and to China.
India which is every person for themselves is a third world caste based country where girls flee the c
When a machine in China can sort trash automatically using ML and cameras (in testing) and can recycle this waste into materials using minimal staff, then deliver those materials to factories which can produce manufactured homes for pennies on the dollar today.... what will happen to housing prices which is where most people in the world store their money today?
When a meat can be produced by machine instead of from animals and programs like those sponsored by the Gates Foundation or the Chinese Government decrease the cost of meat to the point where it can be distributed for pennies on the dollar compared to today's prices?
When vegetables can be produced using underground automated 3D hydroponic gardening powered by renewable energies?
When energy itself is plentiful and cheap thanks to things like California laws which require all new houses to be built with solar panels on their roofs?
When self driving and operating construction vehicles can lay foundations, raise houses, build roads, etc... without human or minimum human assistance?
When a country like China becomes entirely self sufficient thanks to Western Nations actually paying China to take their trash which provided China not only with the raw materials they need but also the money to recycle the material with for their own uses?
When single use plastic becomes illegal pretty much everywhere and cars use less gas?
When Amazon optimizes the logistical supply chains throughout the western world and makes it so that instead of needing to manufacture and stock 1 million units of a particular item in thousands of stores throughout the U.S., they instead stock 10,000 and centralize and optimize the distribution process? Consider how this would impact for example something as simple as rubber bands? The company who makes the rubber bands manufactures 30 boxes of 500 to be stored at each of several hundred Staples stores. They sit on the shelf up to 2 years before being sold. Now instead, they ship 100 boxes to Amazon who stores 25 boxes in 4 strategic locations and then ship them to customers as needed and will need to restock every 6 months. The result is that it requires 30% as many rubber bands to meet the same demand. So the rubber band company goes bankrupt because it requires the old business model to produce a profit
What happens when a company like Amazon either 3d prints meat people ordered or butchers meat centrally on demand to supply all their customer's orders? How many fewer animals would be needed? How much less trash will be produced? How many local grocery stores would be unable to compete?
I think there are much bigger problems to address than just automation?
What will cause a bigger problem?
a) The government protects jobs from robots and other countries don't and the U.S. economy weakens due their insanely high labor cost and overall inefficiency
b) Robots do the majority of the work and decrease the costs of living for the average American low enough to survive off of deficit funded welfare
The jobs will be automated or the companies will lose their asses to the companies in other countries who automated.
This is because the government is employing an insane amount of people now. - The DOD now has over 2.8 million active or reserve on payroll - The DHS has 229k they also use a massive number of full time contractors (let's assume 100k) - The TSA has 60k (they also use up to 1 million additional contractors) - The DoE is 13k employed another 120k consultants/contractors - Police departments employ over a million people - Fire has over 1.1 million - Half a million prison guards, but it looks like there's 3 times as many workers at prisons as guards... so let's say 1.5 million prison workers - Can't find the count, but adding heads at defense contractors (Lockheed, Honeywell, etc...) I come up with about 10 million people - There are at least 2.2 million people removed from the count because of incarceration - There are 10-20 million people working jobs not directly for the military but that wouldn't exist if not for the military. This includes things like gas stations near base. - There where about 1.2 million federally funded road construction jobs in 2018 - There were probably about another 1.2 million jobs producing road construction equipment and supplies.
There are a total of 180 million working age (not working eligible) people in the U.S. meaning 20-64 years old. It took me 5 minutes of using Google to get this far.
I didn't even get creative, but I'd imagine that the U.S. government now employs at least one of 3 eligible Americans or simply removes them from the job market.
Let's also consider that the labor force participation rate was 62.9% last year. That means of the 180 million, only about a 100 million are actually trying to work. Remove another 4 percent or so from the count as they are unemployed. And about 28 million are part time workers (working less than 35 hours a week). So, we're now down to about 68 million full time employed workers.
I also see that on average 1 in 3 workers are part of the gig economy which I have no idea what that really equates so. Someone says it's 16 million another one says it's more like 60 million.
No... the unemployment rate is absolutely horrible.
Hmmm... I'm not sure you really understand the way this works.
Let's clarify some stuff.
Have you ever seen how much work there is involved with most of these service jobs? Did you ever notice that McDonald's employee's don't spend a great deal of time sitting around? A waitress at a Friday's spends most of her time running her ass off. I can go on, but to be fair, these people work a hell of a lot harder (calorie burning-wise) than I do and they get paid about 1/5-1/20 of I what I do.
Why in the world would this be the case?
I've never looked for a job for myself using a job website, but if you look there are generally two types of jobs.
1) A long ass wallpaper of job requirements that even after 20+ years in the industry with job references from multiple CEOs from successful companies and more current (and maintained honestly) certifications than most engineers, I don't meet half the requirements needed.
2) "Desperate for money?, We'll hire anyone... and I mean anyone. We won't pay you except commission, but come talk with us"
The first type, I know I can apply to it and get it usually because I understand the way job requirements are written. I'll google the company, read their shareholder reports, find out what products I'm likely to work on and then I'll write a CV or Resume which doesn't answer the job listing but instead identifies why I'm well suited to the position they're hiring for. I've never needed to do this, in fact, it's more likely I'll call a friend of a friend of a friend and get their boss to call me instead which will place me on better terms to list and negotiate my requirements. This is I'm skilled at getting jobs. Most people aren't.
The second type... unless you have a safety net... and if you've ever worked for minimum wage, you know the only thing which even resembles a safety net in that circumstance is "Bank of Mom and Dad" if there's anything there to withdraw. As such, while some people might be able to do that, most people aren't suited for these jobs. They generally require professional confidence. My company leased space to a company like this, when we went to the cafeteria, we saw them. They had an entirely new set of people almost every month possibly quicker.
This leaves the final type of job... "Help wanted".
When you're at a burger joint and there's a sign on the wall which says "Help Wanted", it's convenient and the employer is clearly expressing their needs. You understand that the job will pay minimum wage before you even apply but you take it because... well it's there and the terms are pretty well understood by both the employee and employer before the application is filled out.
If you're applying for a job which has a... well job application... which means they don't expect to see a CV/Resume and if you provided one, they will still ask you to fill out this form anyway, well, you know this is not going to be a great position and you also generally won't be highly regarded since... well instead of talking with you and learning about you, they instead justifiably assume there's something wrong with you... after all, you're the type of person who would actually apply for such a miserable job.
Now, most people don't know that McDonald's and Burger King have always had incredible internal educational programs and if you work there for 2-3 years and work your way up, the owner of the restaurant may decide it makes sense to sponsor you at McDonald's or Burger King University. If this happens, you can be on a great 6-figure career path. But probably less than one in a thousand workers go that route.
No. Personal responsibility is not an option.
Another example is that America builds prisons faster than McDonald's builds restaurants. This is great because the people sit around on their asses waiting for the government to open coal mines back up... even when there's simply no coal left in the mine or there's simply no one left to sell it to and even
Slashdot Mirror
Can it play baby shark?
I was just wondering how you can file a claim regarding a hack which almost definitely was due to having piss poor security.
I have worked with national banks who whine about being hacked when they pretty much just leave the door open.
Rule 1) Cisco, Checkpoint, Pali Alto; etc:.. they do not sell security solutions. They sell overpriced door locks that keep the honest people honest.
Rule 2) If your company actually got hacked or suffered losses due to a hack, it almost certainly is because you spend too much money on security experts and not nearly enough on security.
The courses they're offering for these prices are the same online courses everyone else has and for far less money.
There is absolutely no possible way to do a data science degree of value the way they structured their curriculum in 30 weeks. 30 weeks of 8am to 5pm learning is absolutely worthless. For a program that should be focused on the success of their students as they won't make money unless their students graduate, this is a horrible design.
I would seriously recommend instead :
- Review high school math at Khan Academy for free... donate a few bucks to be nice
- Pick up calculus to understand rate of chance from Khan Academy.
- Pick up linear algebra from Khan Academy's pre-calculus course and then the linear algebra course.
- Learn a programming language (pick one, any one, it's just for learning principles), Code Academy, Khan Academy, or a thousand other sites will do.
- Learn programming theory, Khan Academy for a good intro algorithms course, or MIT Open Courseware for a hardcore one.
- Learn a data science language... Julia is hot now, Matlab/Octave is great too.
- Learn differential equations... this is only for people who want to be worth their salary. Khan Academy is good, MIT Open Courseware or Stanford is good too.
This can be done in 30 weeks if you're insanely disciplined. But it takes 18 months for the most experienced developers to become proficient in a programming language... anyone can learn a language in a few minutes, but to say "I actually know this language", someone who already knows 4 or 5 still needs 18 months.
I would also say that it doesn't make sense to do this program, it's all one thing. It doesn't seem to teach anything about anything for which the data set would be applicable, you'd leave with little more of value than stupid cat tricks.
Though, $50,000 i barely more than minimum wage... in fact it's probably considerably less. $15/hr minimum wage is $30,000 a year for 40 hour weeks. But overtime at time and a half would require yield $20,000 more with an average of 17 hours overtime a week. That may sound like a lot of overtime, but it's pretty common for an entry level programmer to work 60 hours a week while proving themselves without overtime pay. So, McDonald's pays more.
Consider also that they're asking for 17% of your wages for two years, so that's $41,500 a year probably taxed at a $50,000 a year bracket. So let's say it's the same as $20 a hour at 40 hour weeks, but you're probably working 60 and given the time and a half thing, it would work out to the same as about $11-$12 an hour if you were flipping burgers instead.
Now, if you received a real university education over a period of 3-4 years with the same deal... that would actually be promising.
This is yet another case of the failures of modern capitalism.
We constantly talk about food shortages and how there's not enough food to cover the world. The fact is that there is no food shortage, there is a logistics issue.
Instead of mass industrialization of the planet's farming resources, we instead over produce the hell out of one thing hoping to make a quick buck but discount that everyone else is doing the same thing. American capitalism does this to far too many industries. Fracking for example... yes... a new source of fuel is probably good, but overproducing excessively in order to make a buck before the market goes sour isn't. Dairy seemed like a good idea, so everyone did it and now there too much of it. The market correction will be a mess. We will literally slaughter massive numbers of animals just to adjust to poor planning. What will we do with the dead cows? Just compost?
When Amazon finally takes on logistics for meat and dairy, what will the impact be?
So, instead of shipping massive amounts of meat to massive amounts of stores which is put on display and later thrown away because every store needed at least a few packages of this or that, what happens when meat is butchered and processed to order through a website and it's more effective than going to a local store. Consider that a grocery store throws away about 1/3rd or more of all their perishables. Now, Amazon can charge the same price but reduce their logistics cost and their losses due to waste by 1/3rd. They'll collapse the markets. Add to this other perishables. So if Amazon is throttling production of meats, dairy products and even produce based on real-time data, they can probably increase efficiency by 50% or more. What then?
I am no lover of Amazon, but the benefits of a single overlord corporation in the 21st century looks more and more attractive. If it's Amazon or whoever else.. who cares, just make it work.
Calculate that you will buy her a new laptop every 3-4 years. Then consider that you probably are paying her at least €50,000 (we hope) but even so, her time is costing you money. A slow computer is costing you.
Then consider that a €100 a month investment in hardware and €100 a month investment in software will probably yield near-optimal result.
This means you should calculate €1200/year for hardware and €1200/year for software to hopefully optimize your ROI on employee performance.
This means that laptop+dock+extra screen should be budgeted for €3600 or €4800. Software is MS Office 365 and maybe Adobe.
I believe that pretty much every PC meets that target. So just tell her to buy what she wants, the amortize it over the ROI period and make sure she buys the support plan to cover that period including accidental damage.
I donâ€(TM)t think fact based journalism is a thing anymore. There is too much competition and it doesnâ€(TM)t sell. People only want to hear what makes them feel special. I havenâ€(TM)t seen news in a long time that doesnâ€(TM)t exploit ego and sell opinion. And worse now than ever, the people selling this trash actually believe it now too.
Iâ€(TM)m sure broadcast has something to watch, but itâ€(TM)s cheaper and faster to just buy it somewhere else.
her 18 year old son couldn't walk from his high school to his job after school because of traffic safety in Clearwater, FL. She tells me that it's dangerous to cross the street.
I asked her "Have you taught him to look both ways before crossing?"
She said "You wouldn't believe this scooter accident we saw there recently"
I pointed out "He probably didn't look both ways"
People don't walk not just because of laziness but because they're scared of EVERYTHING. And they pass it down to their kids. I've been crossing streets for 40 years and never once have I had a problem. I've crossed the street she mentioned many times growing up and even recently when visiting. I can't understand how with nearly a full kilometer of visibility in all traffic directions how it could possibly be dangerous to cross the street.
But this is America today. America has chosen to stop living because they have too much fear of getting hurt.
Just in case someone at Apple stumbles across this page, I'll add my two cents.
... pay an extra $100 for a charger pad instead of simply plugging the cable in. And if I use the cable, I can move the phone around. If I use the pad, I have to move the whole damn pad if the battery is low.
In my house, we have three iPhone 6S and 6S Plus in use. We will keep repairing them until such time as Apple makes a new phone just like the iPhone 6S Plus but with upgraded specs... or until software updates end. When software updates end, we'll consider Android instead if there's no replacement for the 6S Plus.
Apple has stopped making phones that meet our needs.
We aren't repairing to be cheap. In fact, we actually have had the last two cracked screens repaired at the Apple Store (one in Paris, one in Tokyo). We will buy new batteries for all the phones soon as well. We will try to do this at the Apple authorized repair shop. If this fails, we'll go aftermarket.
We simply don't want the newer phones.
1) We want our headphone jacks without the dongles.
2) We don't give a crap about wireless charging. What's the point, you still need the wire to the charger. It seems like one of the dumbest ideas ever
3) We REALLY REALLY REALLY don't want a screen that wraps around the edges and makes it so that if you use a protective case you can't reach the edges of the screen.
4) Bring back touch ID. Using the iPhone X without touch ID is absolutely infuriating. I honestly can't believe Apple has now shipped two generations of telephones that are utterly unusable. Touch ID and how well it worked was Apples absolutely mandatory killer feature. Removing it made the iPhone just a piece of trash.
The iPhone 7 was the beginning of the end for the phones as it removed features instead of adding them.
Add support for Miracast so that I can use the phone in meetings on projectors and conferencing systems.... or properly license AirPlay.
P.S. I own an iPhone X as well. It was the worst user experience of my life. I forced myself to use it for two months and I'd rather masturbate with a cheese grater.
I disagree.
I am a BMW i3 driver in Norway. And I'm an American by birth and I've traveled to about 80 countries in my life.
Electric cars work extremely well here in Norway because of trust.
Yesterday, when I tried to transport stuff from my office to my house and it wouldn't fit in my car, I went to Ikea and for about $40, rented a massive van for 3 hours which I used to pick up my stuff, move it and then returned the vehicle.
Norway, Sweden, Denmark and to a more limited extent Finland are the most trusting countries in the world. This extends to insurance plans and many other areas.
As such, cars with limited range are far more practical in these countries.
Norway also severely punishes people for driving. And the worse the vehicle, the worse the punishment. What I mean is that driving 5 year old diesel in Oslo will bankrupt all but the richest people. It's far more cost effective to buy a new $50,000 car every few years than to drive a diesel station wagon.
This doesn't come without its downsides.
Young couples will either have to delay or completely rethink parenthood starting now because they will be taxed VERY heavily if they inherit mom and dad's old gas or diesel station wagon to use to transport their kids to and from day care. Not only are we charging more for gas and diesel, but we charge double at the toll booths for people driving during rush hour which are the only hours compatible with day care.
If you were to drive a diesel station wagon from one side of town to the other during rush hour (quite common since Oslo is small), you would pay 178 Norwegian crowns a day or about $19 a day for toll booths where an electric car driving outside rush hour would pay about $1.20 a day. This is $3800 a year (net income, or as much as $7000 a year gross income revenue) for diesel during rush hour vs. $200 (net, $400 gross) for electric outside rush hour.
Then there's parking costs. Electric cars park free on the streets. All others (including hybrid) pay about $3-$10 an hour.
We actually can't afford to drive anything other than brand new electric cars in Oslo. Consider that a 5 year loan for an electric car is paid for completely by the money saved by getting rid of a diesel. In fact, when you add in the cost of EU control, the cost of gas, etc... buying a brand new BMW i3 is actually substantially cheaper than continuing to drive a gas vehicle.
But it won't work in someplace like the UK or the US. These are protectionist societies. We assume everyone is guilty until proven innocent.... actually... we assume everyone is guilty and if they're proven innocent we congratulate their lawyers for being so damn good. Unless you live in a society of trust, you can't make a change this big. You have to actually be willing to work together towards something better.
I've studied and operated as a professional computer scientist and electronics engineer with a degree and dozens of certifications (generic and vendor specific) for decades.
Today is the first time I've heard of the term "Professional Engineer" or even PE. I've never heard of a "Government board certified professional engineer"
The reason for this is that I've only worked in engineering professions where degrees are issued by universities based on performance in school and also in positions where the industry regulates based on their own trust system.
I just read the link at NSPE.org that you provided and after reading it, unless there was a specific job which required that I wasted time and resources on such a certification, I wouldn't. They sell the thing like a two bit whore. Click the link "Why get licensed?"
I could clearly see the value of this paper as something truly meaningful if your education was a trade skill, like electrician or plumber. After all, these are apprenticeships and there should be some formal process of calling yourself a plumber before an insurance company will back your work. It can't just be that some guy named Joe, a clear educational expert since he has his name on the truck says "He's a plumber".
But for someone that is formally trained and tested over a period of 3-12 years at a university, this type of certification is useless.
NSPE even lists money and prestige as a selling point of their cert.
I think that PE should not be protected either and Professional Engineer also should not be protected. Instead, it should have to clearly state "Oregon State Board Certified Professional Engineer".
After all... as someone that knows nothing about Oregon's politics and whether the board is corrupt or not (and from the web site, it looks fishy... like a fund raising scam) why in the world would I trust someone certified by the state board of Oregon? In fact, other than their web site and news articles about this, I can't find any meaningful reference to the Oregon's state board. This seems suspicious to me.
Let me start by addressing the article. I believe at this point making comments like "He should know, he's got his very own ML startup" is premature. I believe there's a great deal happening behind the scenes that we don't even know about... let's say instead "From the projects we currently are aware of we can assume..."
On the other hand, I agree quite a bit with what you say. However, I think that common sense and emotion aren't always a requirement for each other.
What I mean by this is that common sense and reasoning is a possibility within the short term for AI. The reason for this is that common sense generally means that it's something which doesn't require too much prior knowledge to understand and it is simply understood. Something like "my stomach feels a certain way, I should visit the toilet" would in theory be common sense.
The fact however is that most "common sense" is based on experience and learning from patterns.
The question however is, how much common sense does it take to be counted as common sense? I am constantly amazed as the sheer lack of depth of most peoples common sense. In fact, I'd say that over 50 of the population of the world amazes me as they are little better than a bird that keeps flying into the glass window trying to get through. (Visit Florida some time... you'd be absolutely shocked how that place attracts those people)
So, let's take "Is it a hot dog?" from Silicon Valley and consider whether providing enough patterns and a large enough dictionary to work from whether deciding whether something is a hot dog counts as common sense.
I'd say that it's already showing the earlier signs of cognitive reasoning. In fact, there are actual real people who have little more common sense than that.
On the other hand, I think the issue at hand is more about general intelligence. That app was able to adapt to identify penis pics. It is possible that simply providing a new data set was good enough for that. On the other hand, general intelligence would suggest that the app would also be able to adapt itself to tap its foot (or blink its screen) to the beat of music. And advanced general intelligence (I'm sure there's a real word for it) would suggest it would want to all by itself.
I believe that using AI for economic data crunching like you mentioned is actually not as hard as you would think. I was talking with the kids yesterday about what an auditor does for a living. We have one in the family. I believe we'll see things like auditing being the first type of "intuitive economic task" to be fully automated. I think it should be possible to teach "is it a hot dog" to look for creative accounting anomalies.
I think that an AI that is fed all the financial data from many historical cases as well as having a historical record of regulation over time to reference, it should be possible to provide the computer a new case and let it use the solutions from earlier cases to perform a lot better than many of us with these regards. I for example have now run 2 failed companies because I never really understood that stuff.
Many of us prefer to work in a place that is clean and nice and high tech. We choose to work in places with good restaurants. This is great for business parks.
There are some of us that prefer to work in the city. Even in the city, I don't want to pay street food prices for food, so if I have to choose, I'll walk to the grocery store an get food.
There's no reason we need street vendors. In fact, craptiques should go away too. Ever walk through London and after turning right onto Oxford St. from Reagent St. you find yourself walking past one crap store after the next? Things like stores that sell overprices Chinese crap to tourists? They're an eyesore.
The 3.5mm headphone jack was one of the greatest inventions ever. There were attempts at smaller, but the 2.5mm was just too fragile.
... well everything. I use my headphone on my tablet to... well everything. I have one pair of headphones I simply plug or unplug. When I use bluetooth, I have to delete the device and repair it every time I switch. With proper headphones I can move the cable and click the button on the headphones to play. I don't even have to unlock the phone.
After 50 years, the 3.5mm jack is damn near perfect. There are some potential problems with it, but nothing which is too much of a problem.
If people want to use bluetooth, they're welcome to it. But I've gone iPhoneX and then back again. A major part of this was the headphone jack.
What people often don't realize about the headphone jack is that it takes power. This is this real problem for companies these days. A small audio amplifier places a drain on the battery. It also requires space on the PCB. It's extremely difficult to design an audio amplifier with insanely good audio which fits within the real-estate constraints of a phone and also make it so there's no interference from all the surrounding radio circuits.
So... the solution is to charge us more and remove the port.
What Apple and the others seem to forget is that we like the choice. I don't like constantly losing headphones because they're not connected to the phone. Or constantly leaving my phone on the desk and being out of the building before I realize I forgot it... because the sound starts crackling. I don't like breaking expensive lightning to headphone dongles. I don't like having to constantly charge wireless headphones. I hate when my headphones run out of battery on the train.
Now.. here's the REAL PROBLEM
I don't like having to constantly pair and pair and pair and pair my damn headphones. I use my headphone with my PC to talk on Skype. I use my headphones on my phone to
I've been hoping Apple or Google will release a phone at some point called "The old fogey phone" for people who want all the features of the latest phone but are willing to live with lesser audio to get the headphone jack.
Well, I'm not an AC and while I don't believe I'm as hostile as the AC was, I'm curious.
Slashdot was "News for Nerds" at some point in time. And I started reading this post and the article because I was interested in how this was supposed to be news for nerds as opposed to news for people who are explicitly not nerds. And then I read the first post where the title was "heroes" and while I'm very happy this isn't yet another racist rant first post, I'm pretty confused.
I looked up the definition of hero. It ends up that all this time I was under the impression that a hero was someone who acted selflessly in some sort of means that was simply above and beyond. Nope, even Kim Kardashian is a hero by the official definitions (checked 5 dictionaries) as apparently, all it takes to be a hero is to have someone admiring you. As a matter of fact, I couldn't find any definitions that actually required any heroism in order to be a hero.
Now, I agree completely about the guy coming in second deserving just as much respect as the guy coming in first. I simply don't see why it's reasonable to respect the guy coming in first for basically walking across Antarctica. Sure, it sound pretty cool, but I don't see why this is any different than walking across London for example.
It's currently summer time in Antarctica and -at the coldest part of the continent, it's generally about -30c which really isn't that bad. I've walked to the train station and waited outside for the train many times in this temperature. When moving and wearing a decent jacket, you can actually work up a sweat. I make my kids walk 5km each day to school in this weather and have made them do it for the last 10+ years. My daughter actually wears gloves when it hits -20... which is strange since I have to tell her to wear a jacket at -10.
So, honestly, other than being all alone for a really long time, I don't see anything in the slightest way exciting about this. Is it because of the terrain? Is it because of the danger of ice fissures? If not, it's just walking in the cold and it's not even that cold.
But again, what's the real excitement or nerd value of hiking and camping through Antarctica? I'm not saying he didn't do something impressive, but why is it news worthy and why would it be "news for nerds"?
P.S. It sounds like I'm talking badly about the guy. This is not my goal. I'm simply wondering why it's something worth a headline.
I have very little knowledge about the fishing industry (which is odd since much of my salary is provided by it) but I'm curious.
The article makes a big deal about how climate has effected the fishing industry. I'm a huge lover of old books and have read pretty much everything I could get my hands on from the past 5000 years of writing. I recall stories dating back to the ancient Egyptians regarding the how a major part of their version of modern politics was centered around the inundation of the Nile. And in recent times, we know that it's very important for dead fish to be left on the shores of the Nile to fertilize crops.
It seems to me that I can think of books and historical references from nearly every era of human history that would tell stories of fishermen chasing fish because the fishing grounds constantly changed.
That said, I live in Norway now which depends almost as much on fish as on oil money. A massive portion of the country's income is spent on fish breeding and while Norway is still a whaling country, they apparently are believed to be one of the top contributors to repopulating the whales of the world. I know very little about the details and I have no idea how accurate my understanding of this topic is. I believe most of what I know is hearsay.
That said, I wonder if anyone here on Slashdot is knowledgeable about the fishing industry and could answer some questions.
1) Are the migratory issues normal? In other words, did the fish always move similar to this? Is the problem because companies aren't "fishing companies" but instead "halibut companies"? Instead of changing to a different fish as might have happened 500 years ago, the companies are chasing specific types of fish now because they have the means to?
2) Is the fish population genuinely less or could it be that fish are adapting to a more hostile environment and swimming further from the surface as a matter of survival?
3) Is this an issue of genuine migration? The blurb makes a point that not only are the fish further north, but there are less of them? Could it be that these fish were probably always there but the southern populations have been so over-fished that there simply aren't enough left to make it profitable?
4) Could the population have migrated elsewhere and we simply haven't found them yet? I imagine we don't have submarines zooming all over the Atlantic looking for halibut.
5) Is it even possible to farm fish instead? In other words, here in Norway, much of our salmon comes from farms instead of free range. Is it possible for the industry to adapt for other fish?
A bit of an oversimplification maybe?
I used to have the misfortune of living in the minimum wage state for 6 of the worst years of my life.
First, let's start by saying that "Sun and fun" and "I don't have to shovel rain" are not good enough reasons to move to the state of apathy known as Florida. Florida has endless problems and not least among them is "We really don't care about anything so long as it doesn't make us actually work or learn.". Additionally, Florida is crippled by a population who votes almost entirely with short-term goals since fixing things takes time and if you ask the average voter "Don't you care about your grand children's futures?" and they'll generally respond "Of course I do... but they live in Michigan"
Red Tide is a problem all around the world. The Florida red tide is of course exacerbated by opportunists. Of course, Florida depends on opportunism to survive... I hate visiting my parents because every time I do, it seems what few legitimate businesses were left in Florida are replaced by "Check cashing" and "Payday loan" places.
It's absolutely amazing that other than in the Hispanic areas of Miami, the entire state of Florida is in a cultural constant state of decaying.
But yeh... Tampa and the surrounding areas are an absolute shit-hole. It operates on the golden principal of "Anything for a buck" and the phosphorus problem has only gotten worse over time. And so long as there are actual jobs related to it and most of those jobs are rednecks who actually do vote as opposed to young middle class families (I don't care about the party they belong to), there will be nothing done to fix the dumping problem. It will only get worse until it's so bad that it can't be ignored.
Let's be honest... there was dysfunction long before that.
- They named themselves Faraday.
Instead of being original, they started from the very beginning as a "me too" company. Everything they did was to simply copy Tesla. And they intended to reach a point of competitive product with a version 1 vehicle while racing the clock against an established company like Tesla who has a rain-maker CEO.
- Car that seems to completely lack design
Honestly, the FF vehicle is an absolute mess. Look at it. It's an end-to-end disaster.
- Tech that's not there
A huge amount of what Tesla is selling is the gadgets and gizmos. Most of the Tesla drivers I know were sold on the bling instead of practical items.
- They started by building it themselves.
Tesla started by building their tech into someone else's design. In fact, in order to establish Tesla as a real player, Tesla's initial vehicles were based on Lotus gliders. In other words, Lotus was delivering cars without drive trains and Tesla was simply fitting tech. This allowed Tesla to avoid being just another unicorn startup. They actually managed to deliver a real product that would allow investors to have something to touch and feel. Faraday fails on every front here. In fact, Lotus was always special since they're kind of a budget sports car. So Elon probably got a great deal on the gliders.
Faraday should have paid someone else to manufacture the majority of it. It was a total waste of money to tool a factory to produce a version 1 vehicle.
Companies like Ford, GM and BMW for example should be desperately looking for partners these days. Their entire business is eroding. I own a BMW i3 and I expect this vehicle to be road worthy for 20-30 years with minimal additional cost. When the car is paid off sometime in 20 months or so, i'll take a loan to upgrade to the newest battery pack and add Airplay to the car... if these options prove too expensive, I'll dump it for a smaller Chinese EV. Ford, GM and BMW are now making almost entirely plastic, non-corrosive, minimal vibration vehicles. In fact, I'm trying to convince local tree-hugger political groups to mandate that all new cars sold in Norway should have "20 year plans" as a requirement. Meaning that all car companies should be required to offer plans to keep cars road worthy with a predictable TCO for a minimum of 20 years. This would be a huge positive environmental improvement... but it will destroy many legacy car companies if this becomes a thing.
So Ford, GM, BMW, etc... companies who have proven they simply "don't get" the next phase of cars and will lose their asses to newcomers who will focus more on long term capitalization on existing vehicles (apps, features, upgrades, etc...) than on sales of replacement vehicles. As such, Faraday should have easily found someone willing to help produce for them.
If nothing else, they could have simply had a Chinese company build them.
My hand is not raised because I donâ€(TM)t make anywhere near that little.
;)
That said, I have never met a teacher who does not have to grade tests, plan, prep the classroom, etc... most teachers work a lot more than you seem to think. Why not offer teachers a trade... pay them 80% per hour of their current pay and offer them to charge per hour. If they turn it down, fire them because they are either lazy or they are idiots. Of course, you would likely end up having to pay the ones who stay 50% more.
It is obvious your teachers failed to educate you. Please learn to perform the slightest research before speaking about something. There is a new web site called Google and you can type questions into it. Use it
Do you think Kansas has the available expertise within the government to secure a data center? My guess would be they are like most other states who have IT departments filled with the crap that is left over.
I have worked with state level IT many times and it is absolutely shocking how everything is done as hack and slash. Then again, anyone investing in SAN at this point is generally unsuitable to continue working. SAN is just a terrible idea no matter how you spin it.
And $17 million is peanuts compared to what contractors would rape a state government before the inevitable data breach.
Wow... weaponize... I noticed the 'S' in your spelling. It's pretty significant at this time while Brexit is occurring.
A few years ago, I remember something that was almost life changing for me. It was an interview with Mikhail Gorbachev where he came out as critical against the western world. When the worked with Reagan and GWB to end the cold war peacefully, he believed he was helping Russia to enter a new world where it would be England, the USA and Russia reigning in an era of cooperation and peace. What he said however was that James Bond (specifically) and Hollywood made a huge deal about how Russia was nothing more than a bunch of corrupt ex-KGB and hookers. And of course, England and the US made a huge deal out of how they won the cold war and how Russia was basically about as important as any other third world country now.
This changed my life because I realized how foolish we all were after the curtain came down. We all listened to the propaganda and what would make good TV. We seemed to think it didn't matter that the Russians were now going to the movies and watching the same things we were. It didn't matter that we were all buying into this James Bond "We're civilized, you're all animals" thing.
All major countries spy. If we go back to James Bond, not only does the UK spy, but the British take incredible pride in their spy capabilities. They advertise them as being national heroes. I'm actually shocked Ian Flemming wasn't knighted.
Yes, China spies, but imagine if we classified all aspects of English industry as being completely military and intelligence related?
What if I were to suggest as an American that the only reason why England has any interest in space is so they could spy?
You might site things like science, research, industry, communication, etc... and you'd be right.
If you were to suggest that China only cares about military and intelligence, I'd call you a fool.
China cares about communism which in its Chinese form is rapidly approaching systematic (and somewhat enforced) Confucianism. The Chinese government repressed two full generations in order to establish a normal. As such, they established a set of rules and molded a sense of uniformity throughout the entire nation. And even if the little red book was considered horrible by the west, you should read it sometime. It was about working together to make something better. Norway (where I live) has a little red book called "Janteloven" which is also used in Sweden and Denmark. By something Americans and Englishmen would call brainwashing, a standard is set which convincing the people of the nations to think of more than just themselves. It's a beautiful thing... I as an American learned a great deal about being a good person by living in a society that damn near brutally inflicts communism on its people from birth. I mean, seriously... you are expected to leave your baby in a baby carriage in the freezing cold while you sit and drink coffee indoors at a cafe.
China cares about establishing a One China vision which is far closer to the American dream than American ever had. But the American dream could never be accomplished through the western way. It required a massive portion of the entire world's population to work together towards a goal.
If you need proof of any of this... look to India, a country defined by "Every man for himself"... I spoke to a pretty Indian girl at a hotel in Qatar not long ago and asked her "As a woman, would you recommend bringing my wife and daughter to Doha on vacation" and she immediately responded "Yes!" and I asked "Wow... I expected to hear stories of repression against women" and she said "Nonsense.... I love Doha" and I asked "Why", she responded "Because if someone rapes me, I can go to the police". I stood completely dumbfounded and unable to speak.
Now... let's compare India to the 51 states (US and England) and to China.
India which is every person for themselves is a third world caste based country where girls flee the c
Extend that even further.
When a machine in China can sort trash automatically using ML and cameras (in testing) and can recycle this waste into materials using minimal staff, then deliver those materials to factories which can produce manufactured homes for pennies on the dollar today.... what will happen to housing prices which is where most people in the world store their money today?
When a meat can be produced by machine instead of from animals and programs like those sponsored by the Gates Foundation or the Chinese Government decrease the cost of meat to the point where it can be distributed for pennies on the dollar compared to today's prices?
When vegetables can be produced using underground automated 3D hydroponic gardening powered by renewable energies?
When energy itself is plentiful and cheap thanks to things like California laws which require all new houses to be built with solar panels on their roofs?
When self driving and operating construction vehicles can lay foundations, raise houses, build roads, etc... without human or minimum human assistance?
When a country like China becomes entirely self sufficient thanks to Western Nations actually paying China to take their trash which provided China not only with the raw materials they need but also the money to recycle the material with for their own uses?
When single use plastic becomes illegal pretty much everywhere and cars use less gas?
When Amazon optimizes the logistical supply chains throughout the western world and makes it so that instead of needing to manufacture and stock 1 million units of a particular item in thousands of stores throughout the U.S., they instead stock 10,000 and centralize and optimize the distribution process? Consider how this would impact for example something as simple as rubber bands? The company who makes the rubber bands manufactures 30 boxes of 500 to be stored at each of several hundred Staples stores. They sit on the shelf up to 2 years before being sold. Now instead, they ship 100 boxes to Amazon who stores 25 boxes in 4 strategic locations and then ship them to customers as needed and will need to restock every 6 months. The result is that it requires 30% as many rubber bands to meet the same demand. So the rubber band company goes bankrupt because it requires the old business model to produce a profit
What happens when a company like Amazon either 3d prints meat people ordered or butchers meat centrally on demand to supply all their customer's orders? How many fewer animals would be needed? How much less trash will be produced? How many local grocery stores would be unable to compete?
I think there are much bigger problems to address than just automation?
And...how much will that $15/hour with no additional benefits buy you in 2020 compared to $9/hours in 2016 plus food stamps and welfare
What will cause a bigger problem?
a) The government protects jobs from robots and other countries don't and the U.S. economy weakens due their insanely high labor cost and overall inefficiency
b) Robots do the majority of the work and decrease the costs of living for the average American low enough to survive off of deficit funded welfare
The jobs will be automated or the companies will lose their asses to the companies in other countries who automated.
This is because the government is employing an insane amount of people now.
- The DOD now has over 2.8 million active or reserve on payroll
- The DHS has 229k they also use a massive number of full time contractors (let's assume 100k)
- The TSA has 60k (they also use up to 1 million additional contractors)
- The DoE is 13k employed another 120k consultants/contractors
- Police departments employ over a million people
- Fire has over 1.1 million
- Half a million prison guards, but it looks like there's 3 times as many workers at prisons as guards... so let's say 1.5 million prison workers
- Can't find the count, but adding heads at defense contractors (Lockheed, Honeywell, etc...) I come up with about 10 million people
- There are at least 2.2 million people removed from the count because of incarceration
- There are 10-20 million people working jobs not directly for the military but that wouldn't exist if not for the military. This includes things like gas stations near base.
- There where about 1.2 million federally funded road construction jobs in 2018
- There were probably about another 1.2 million jobs producing road construction equipment and supplies.
There are a total of 180 million working age (not working eligible) people in the U.S. meaning 20-64 years old. It took me 5 minutes of using Google to get this far.
I didn't even get creative, but I'd imagine that the U.S. government now employs at least one of 3 eligible Americans or simply removes them from the job market.
Let's also consider that the labor force participation rate was 62.9% last year. That means of the 180 million, only about a 100 million are actually trying to work.
Remove another 4 percent or so from the count as they are unemployed. And about 28 million are part time workers (working less than 35 hours a week). So, we're now down to about 68 million full time employed workers.
I also see that on average 1 in 3 workers are part of the gig economy which I have no idea what that really equates so. Someone says it's 16 million another one says it's more like 60 million.
No... the unemployment rate is absolutely horrible.
Hmmm... I'm not sure you really understand the way this works.
... and if you've ever worked for minimum wage, you know the only thing which even resembles a safety net in that circumstance is "Bank of Mom and Dad" if there's anything there to withdraw. As such, while some people might be able to do that, most people aren't suited for these jobs. They generally require professional confidence. My company leased space to a company like this, when we went to the cafeteria, we saw them. They had an entirely new set of people almost every month possibly quicker.
Let's clarify some stuff.
Have you ever seen how much work there is involved with most of these service jobs? Did you ever notice that McDonald's employee's don't spend a great deal of time sitting around? A waitress at a Friday's spends most of her time running her ass off. I can go on, but to be fair, these people work a hell of a lot harder (calorie burning-wise) than I do and they get paid about 1/5-1/20 of I what I do.
Why in the world would this be the case?
I've never looked for a job for myself using a job website, but if you look there are generally two types of jobs.
1) A long ass wallpaper of job requirements that even after 20+ years in the industry with job references from multiple CEOs from successful companies and more current (and maintained honestly) certifications than most engineers, I don't meet half the requirements needed.
2) "Desperate for money?, We'll hire anyone... and I mean anyone. We won't pay you except commission, but come talk with us"
The first type, I know I can apply to it and get it usually because I understand the way job requirements are written. I'll google the company, read their shareholder reports, find out what products I'm likely to work on and then I'll write a CV or Resume which doesn't answer the job listing but instead identifies why I'm well suited to the position they're hiring for. I've never needed to do this, in fact, it's more likely I'll call a friend of a friend of a friend and get their boss to call me instead which will place me on better terms to list and negotiate my requirements. This is I'm skilled at getting jobs. Most people aren't.
The second type... unless you have a safety net
This leaves the final type of job... "Help wanted".
When you're at a burger joint and there's a sign on the wall which says "Help Wanted", it's convenient and the employer is clearly expressing their needs. You understand that the job will pay minimum wage before you even apply but you take it because... well it's there and the terms are pretty well understood by both the employee and employer before the application is filled out.
If you're applying for a job which has a... well job application... which means they don't expect to see a CV/Resume and if you provided one, they will still ask you to fill out this form anyway, well, you know this is not going to be a great position and you also generally won't be highly regarded since... well instead of talking with you and learning about you, they instead justifiably assume there's something wrong with you... after all, you're the type of person who would actually apply for such a miserable job.
Now, most people don't know that McDonald's and Burger King have always had incredible internal educational programs and if you work there for 2-3 years and work your way up, the owner of the restaurant may decide it makes sense to sponsor you at McDonald's or Burger King University. If this happens, you can be on a great 6-figure career path. But probably less than one in a thousand workers go that route.
No. Personal responsibility is not an option.
Another example is that America builds prisons faster than McDonald's builds restaurants. This is great because the people sit around on their asses waiting for the government to open coal mines back up... even when there's simply no coal left in the mine or there's simply no one left to sell it to and even