And it is my experience that employers who ask for previous salaries during the hiring process are looking to use that information against applicants and are probably crappy places to work. I'll share my previous salary history with a potential employer just as soon as the employer is willing to tell me the exact range they have available for the open position and the salaries of everyone else on the team by job title.
Good info. Your other tidbit about Republicans is exactly what I was thinking. The real reason they aren't going to be a state is that it would probably upset the balance of Congress and the EC... it would be especially harsh in the Senate, given that they would add two seats to a situation where the margins are razor thin as it is.
Actually, they've had several referendums on becoming a state and while the outcomes have been somewhat close, it certainly looks like a lot of the people of Puerto Rico want it to be a state. Besides, is it really just up to them? The USA has every right to either make it a state or cut them loose, doesn't it? This sorta-kinda part of America thing is senseless in this day and age.
Actually, it would be better for the US federal government to produce an aid package for PR that incorporated a healthy mix of what Musk is selling here... why not? At this point there's little to lose, you get a lab to prove the technology out in, you can boost an American company, you can boost the workforce with people qualified to install and maintain a forward-looking technology... at best you help prove out a game-changing technology at a large scale, at worst you kick PR's problems down the road a good ways.
Also, PR should be made a state immediately. This "colony/territory" thing is imperialistic at best. It has no place in a Republic such as this.
Plus, what with the total farce that is the Nobel Peace Prize, who wants a Nobel? Especially when you can have an award named after one of the most actually noble people to ever live and who contributed personally such a great deal to field of computing.
I've got a Fine Art degree and 15+ years working as a developer. The worst code I've ever seen was from a CSci grad with the job title "systems architect" (my guess is he got that title to get around normal pay range issues with being an "engineer"). Just the crappiest garbage I've ever seen. Normally the worst I see from CSci types is a tendency to over-engineer, which counterpoints the tendency of others to use copy/paste or bizarre workarounds to issues they don't understand because they lack the CSci chops. And unless I'm missing something, organizational management isn't taught at all during a regular Csci program, so the assumption that CSci degree holders should manage technical groups seems rather flawed to me.
As a lifelong critic of the Drug War, I have to say that there are some problems with what you've said. The Drug War was overbroad and poorly implemented. It banned relatively harmless drugs (like marijuana) and even non-habit forming substances (like LSD). Had it stuck to substances with proven addiction and health problems the result might have been much different. Also, the corruption and incompetence levels of American law enforcement have been staggering. If rich white kids with bags of coke get off with a slap on the wrist, while poor black kids with a single joint go to jail, you are not actually enforcing the law, you are just making shit up as you go. And that assumes that law enforcement agents themselves aren't involved directly in maintaining certain flows of drugs (i.e. protecting some drug businesses for bribes or cuts). Finally, your argument that black markets create lower prices is anti-intuitive. Normally black markets raise the cost of goods or services because the financial model has to include the risk of being in the business.
So, what I'd actually like to see is evidence that what you say could be happening in Europe around this illegal content is happening. Or that it is being as badly implemented as the Drug War in the USA. Otherwise this is a nice analogy and not the worst theory ever, but I'm not convinced.
Agreed. Most of my foreign-born coworkers here in the US have been very good at their jobs. And none of them have been the worst I've encountered (leave that to Americans). But when off-shoring to groups in other countries (not just India), problems arise. I think the search for cost-savings in IT via off-shoring is usually self-defeating since it only focuses on a single obvious tangible metric for a SMALL portion of the entire effort. The people who do this tend to show themselves as penny-wise-pound-foolish in other areas as well. I've seen guys who drive cars that cost more than developers make in a year complain about a few bucks here and there around the office for furniture or get really directly involved in the color or placement of a single button on a web page. It's a grasping after control, since they really think of software development as magical and the only thing they really do understand is how much they are paying in salary.
Thank you. I'm so sick of hearing this "definition" of insanity. While doing the same thing over and over expecting different results might be insane, so are lots of other things.
This is not my experience at all. Coders who come to America to live and work are just as good as anyone else here. It's actual offshoring, whether to India or eastern Europe, where the quality of work suffers. And the worst programmers I've run across were born and raised in the USA. But the problem with them wasn't just that they couldn't code, it was that a bias in favor of those who conform to the American "hacker" stereotype (i.e. works crazy hours while sucking in mountain dew and saying technical sounding gibberish) allowed them to confound less technical coworkers into believing that the problem was actually really hard to solve. It has always dismayed me that inept system developers can look like heroes by staying up long nights hand-holding their crap systems through inevitable crises. Whereas if your code runs quickly and silently and you don't look stressed out, your bosses think you aren't working hard enough.
I'd like to know what these 2-3 hour a week jobs are going to be... because it requires a lot more than a few hours a week to become proficient at a lot of professions in the current system. And usually jobs require some level of staying in practice, just doing the job itself counts here, but also training comes in many forms... If the actual end-point is a job that only 2-3 hours a week, how am I going to get good at that job? Stay good at that job? I'm going to be spending most of my life thinking about something decidedly not that job.
Why would it be desirable to put vape companies out of business when they produce a product that can be used without any nicotine at all, and is therefore according to this study, not a risk factor for heart disease? I mean, I guess you might also have as your goal to put all alcohol, car, and soda companies out of business... but vape companies are way on the low end of harms here.
Actually, after looking into it quite a bit, I haven't found any evidence that nicotine itself is bad for one's overall health at all. And to say that this study supports the idea that nicotine is a significant risk factor in heart disease is... weak, at best. It is a known stimulant. It raises adrenaline. So does caffeine. And reading the comments.
Nicotine in large doses is toxic, yes. Cigarette smoke is harmful, yes. But nicotine in controlled dosages delivered via non-toxic routes, such as gums, pills, vaping? No conclusive evidence points toward overall harm. In fact, there are a number of potential positives... none of which points to vaping as the ideal delivery form, except for people who are at risk for smoking.
In the case of the New York Times article where they actually tried search terms for things you might actually use to make a bomb, they (surprise) got links to other stuff you might use to make a bomb. But it's not like suddenly people searching for 5 gallon pails were being offered C4 and detonator caps.
And you're right... I didn't really want to say that anyone buying the parts to make explosives on Amazon was a terrorist. Probably the vast majority of them are either explosives enthusiasts or use those ingredients in a professional setting. The original idea I was responding to was that "rebels" fighting a tyrannical government would be shopping on Amazon.
As long as the biggest browser in the market also has other business concerns where they think their control of a browser can be used as a competitive advantage, we will be at risk.
Outside of a few purists, nobody cares if their browser is compliant with the HTML5 standard. I'm guessing most people who use browsers these days wouldn't even know that means, let alone have a clue if their browser complied. In fact, quickly checking my own browser at https://html5test.com/index.ht... indicates that Firefox 55 on Windows 10 is only MOSTLY supporting it. And it looks like very few browsers will even intend to support the whole standard.
Used to be a time where every piece of software on my machine was virtually guaranteed to have been compiled from source code. Today that is not even close to true, but Firefox is one of many where I could (in theory) replace my binary installed version with a source compiled version. My point is: as long as Firefox is open source, this option will always be an option... just an increasingly more difficult one to change.
If you live somewhere with a "tyrannical government" just how likely are you to be shopping for bomb making materials on Amazon? Even if you could put in the order, do you really think you'd ever get your shipment delivered? I mean, it's not the 5 gallon pail that's the active ingredient here.
Let me say it again: if you are shopping on Amazon for bomb parts and you reasonably believe your shipment will be delivered, you are a terrorist. At least in the minds of almost everyone else living around you. Because if you lived somewhere that actually wasn't free, you wouldn't a) have Amazon to shop at, and b) have a hope in hell that your real bomb parts would be delivered.
There is no legal obstacle to Congress passing such a law. It would stand just as easily as drug prohibition and a host of other freedom-limiting federal laws. The Commerce clause can be used to nullify just about anything a state wants to do. And if that doesn't work, there's always the millions of other strings the Feds could pull to accomplish the same goal. The only foolish thing to think here is that Congress would actually care about this enough to try making a law. There isn't a single state in the Union that wants to be prohibited from bribing big business into (re)locating there. Even in places where companies should be begging for the chance to locate, the people fall for this scam over and over again. Politicians on both sides of the aisle want to feel and look important by bringing jobs to the area. People living in an area perceive their job market more positively if there are a number of large employers with posh campuses around.
Perhaps if you stop substituting your political rhetoric for actual analysis you will understand what many of the people you're responding to are saying.
Credit freezes should be free and simple to request; default would be even more ideal. As of now, in many states, one must pay much as $15 per freeze and again to thaw. Price varies widely from state to state.
In fact, given all the bullshit ways the commerce clause is used, it ought to be a no-brainer for congress to pass a law requiring the agencies to provide these at some set rate, and to legislate that in cases where direct loss of data can be linked to attempted misuse the "consumer" must be given free credit monitoring services and free freeze/thaw services for some period of time. Obviously there can't be any legislation that would affect this breach directly, but for the future...
Equifax, TransUnion, and Experian are inherently operating across state lines and, as such, this shouldn't even be a state-by-state question.
If I were obtaining someone's credit report from Equifax at this point, I'd actually consider it MORE likely to be accurate since everyone's poring over their own records to make sure everything's OK. The hack didn't create, update, or delete data, just read it. At least as far as we know... and because of the hack, the data itself is under more scrutiny than normal.
The whole thing smells like a fantastic way to sell credit freeze and credit monitoring services. Just another modern protection racket.
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And it is my experience that employers who ask for previous salaries during the hiring process are looking to use that information against applicants and are probably crappy places to work. I'll share my previous salary history with a potential employer just as soon as the employer is willing to tell me the exact range they have available for the open position and the salaries of everyone else on the team by job title.
Good info. Your other tidbit about Republicans is exactly what I was thinking. The real reason they aren't going to be a state is that it would probably upset the balance of Congress and the EC... it would be especially harsh in the Senate, given that they would add two seats to a situation where the margins are razor thin as it is.
Actually, they've had several referendums on becoming a state and while the outcomes have been somewhat close, it certainly looks like a lot of the people of Puerto Rico want it to be a state. Besides, is it really just up to them? The USA has every right to either make it a state or cut them loose, doesn't it? This sorta-kinda part of America thing is senseless in this day and age.
Actually, it would be better for the US federal government to produce an aid package for PR that incorporated a healthy mix of what Musk is selling here... why not? At this point there's little to lose, you get a lab to prove the technology out in, you can boost an American company, you can boost the workforce with people qualified to install and maintain a forward-looking technology... at best you help prove out a game-changing technology at a large scale, at worst you kick PR's problems down the road a good ways.
Also, PR should be made a state immediately. This "colony/territory" thing is imperialistic at best. It has no place in a Republic such as this.
Plus, what with the total farce that is the Nobel Peace Prize, who wants a Nobel? Especially when you can have an award named after one of the most actually noble people to ever live and who contributed personally such a great deal to field of computing.
I've got a Fine Art degree and 15+ years working as a developer. The worst code I've ever seen was from a CSci grad with the job title "systems architect" (my guess is he got that title to get around normal pay range issues with being an "engineer"). Just the crappiest garbage I've ever seen. Normally the worst I see from CSci types is a tendency to over-engineer, which counterpoints the tendency of others to use copy/paste or bizarre workarounds to issues they don't understand because they lack the CSci chops. And unless I'm missing something, organizational management isn't taught at all during a regular Csci program, so the assumption that CSci degree holders should manage technical groups seems rather flawed to me.
Yes. C# for Android and iOS. Haven't tried it myself, since I'm having more fun playing with JS for Android via Cordova (developing in VS2017).
As a lifelong critic of the Drug War, I have to say that there are some problems with what you've said. The Drug War was overbroad and poorly implemented. It banned relatively harmless drugs (like marijuana) and even non-habit forming substances (like LSD). Had it stuck to substances with proven addiction and health problems the result might have been much different. Also, the corruption and incompetence levels of American law enforcement have been staggering. If rich white kids with bags of coke get off with a slap on the wrist, while poor black kids with a single joint go to jail, you are not actually enforcing the law, you are just making shit up as you go. And that assumes that law enforcement agents themselves aren't involved directly in maintaining certain flows of drugs (i.e. protecting some drug businesses for bribes or cuts). Finally, your argument that black markets create lower prices is anti-intuitive. Normally black markets raise the cost of goods or services because the financial model has to include the risk of being in the business.
So, what I'd actually like to see is evidence that what you say could be happening in Europe around this illegal content is happening. Or that it is being as badly implemented as the Drug War in the USA. Otherwise this is a nice analogy and not the worst theory ever, but I'm not convinced.
Agreed. Most of my foreign-born coworkers here in the US have been very good at their jobs. And none of them have been the worst I've encountered (leave that to Americans). But when off-shoring to groups in other countries (not just India), problems arise. I think the search for cost-savings in IT via off-shoring is usually self-defeating since it only focuses on a single obvious tangible metric for a SMALL portion of the entire effort. The people who do this tend to show themselves as penny-wise-pound-foolish in other areas as well. I've seen guys who drive cars that cost more than developers make in a year complain about a few bucks here and there around the office for furniture or get really directly involved in the color or placement of a single button on a web page. It's a grasping after control, since they really think of software development as magical and the only thing they really do understand is how much they are paying in salary.
Thank you. I'm so sick of hearing this "definition" of insanity. While doing the same thing over and over expecting different results might be insane, so are lots of other things.
This is not my experience at all. Coders who come to America to live and work are just as good as anyone else here. It's actual offshoring, whether to India or eastern Europe, where the quality of work suffers. And the worst programmers I've run across were born and raised in the USA. But the problem with them wasn't just that they couldn't code, it was that a bias in favor of those who conform to the American "hacker" stereotype (i.e. works crazy hours while sucking in mountain dew and saying technical sounding gibberish) allowed them to confound less technical coworkers into believing that the problem was actually really hard to solve. It has always dismayed me that inept system developers can look like heroes by staying up long nights hand-holding their crap systems through inevitable crises. Whereas if your code runs quickly and silently and you don't look stressed out, your bosses think you aren't working hard enough.
I'd like to know what these 2-3 hour a week jobs are going to be... because it requires a lot more than a few hours a week to become proficient at a lot of professions in the current system. And usually jobs require some level of staying in practice, just doing the job itself counts here, but also training comes in many forms... If the actual end-point is a job that only 2-3 hours a week, how am I going to get good at that job? Stay good at that job? I'm going to be spending most of my life thinking about something decidedly not that job.
Got any short, to-the-point evidence to back this up?
Why would it be desirable to put vape companies out of business when they produce a product that can be used without any nicotine at all, and is therefore according to this study, not a risk factor for heart disease? I mean, I guess you might also have as your goal to put all alcohol, car, and soda companies out of business... but vape companies are way on the low end of harms here.
Actually, after looking into it quite a bit, I haven't found any evidence that nicotine itself is bad for one's overall health at all. And to say that this study supports the idea that nicotine is a significant risk factor in heart disease is... weak, at best. It is a known stimulant. It raises adrenaline. So does caffeine. And reading the comments.
Nicotine in large doses is toxic, yes. Cigarette smoke is harmful, yes. But nicotine in controlled dosages delivered via non-toxic routes, such as gums, pills, vaping? No conclusive evidence points toward overall harm. In fact, there are a number of potential positives... none of which points to vaping as the ideal delivery form, except for people who are at risk for smoking.
In the case of the New York Times article where they actually tried search terms for things you might actually use to make a bomb, they (surprise) got links to other stuff you might use to make a bomb. But it's not like suddenly people searching for 5 gallon pails were being offered C4 and detonator caps.
And you're right... I didn't really want to say that anyone buying the parts to make explosives on Amazon was a terrorist. Probably the vast majority of them are either explosives enthusiasts or use those ingredients in a professional setting. The original idea I was responding to was that "rebels" fighting a tyrannical government would be shopping on Amazon.
As long as the biggest browser in the market also has other business concerns where they think their control of a browser can be used as a competitive advantage, we will be at risk.
Outside of a few purists, nobody cares if their browser is compliant with the HTML5 standard. I'm guessing most people who use browsers these days wouldn't even know that means, let alone have a clue if their browser complied. In fact, quickly checking my own browser at https://html5test.com/index.ht... indicates that Firefox 55 on Windows 10 is only MOSTLY supporting it. And it looks like very few browsers will even intend to support the whole standard.
Used to be a time where every piece of software on my machine was virtually guaranteed to have been compiled from source code. Today that is not even close to true, but Firefox is one of many where I could (in theory) replace my binary installed version with a source compiled version. My point is: as long as Firefox is open source, this option will always be an option... just an increasingly more difficult one to change.
If you live somewhere with a "tyrannical government" just how likely are you to be shopping for bomb making materials on Amazon? Even if you could put in the order, do you really think you'd ever get your shipment delivered? I mean, it's not the 5 gallon pail that's the active ingredient here.
Let me say it again: if you are shopping on Amazon for bomb parts and you reasonably believe your shipment will be delivered, you are a terrorist. At least in the minds of almost everyone else living around you. Because if you lived somewhere that actually wasn't free, you wouldn't a) have Amazon to shop at, and b) have a hope in hell that your real bomb parts would be delivered.
There is no legal obstacle to Congress passing such a law. It would stand just as easily as drug prohibition and a host of other freedom-limiting federal laws. The Commerce clause can be used to nullify just about anything a state wants to do. And if that doesn't work, there's always the millions of other strings the Feds could pull to accomplish the same goal. The only foolish thing to think here is that Congress would actually care about this enough to try making a law. There isn't a single state in the Union that wants to be prohibited from bribing big business into (re)locating there. Even in places where companies should be begging for the chance to locate, the people fall for this scam over and over again. Politicians on both sides of the aisle want to feel and look important by bringing jobs to the area. People living in an area perceive their job market more positively if there are a number of large employers with posh campuses around.
Perhaps if you stop substituting your political rhetoric for actual analysis you will understand what many of the people you're responding to are saying.
Credit freezes should be free and simple to request; default would be even more ideal. As of now, in many states, one must pay much as $15 per freeze and again to thaw. Price varies widely from state to state.
In fact, given all the bullshit ways the commerce clause is used, it ought to be a no-brainer for congress to pass a law requiring the agencies to provide these at some set rate, and to legislate that in cases where direct loss of data can be linked to attempted misuse the "consumer" must be given free credit monitoring services and free freeze/thaw services for some period of time. Obviously there can't be any legislation that would affect this breach directly, but for the future...
Equifax, TransUnion, and Experian are inherently operating across state lines and, as such, this shouldn't even be a state-by-state question.
This is it exactly. 100% Couldn't agree more.
If I were obtaining someone's credit report from Equifax at this point, I'd actually consider it MORE likely to be accurate since everyone's poring over their own records to make sure everything's OK. The hack didn't create, update, or delete data, just read it. At least as far as we know... and because of the hack, the data itself is under more scrutiny than normal.
The whole thing smells like a fantastic way to sell credit freeze and credit monitoring services. Just another modern protection racket.
I didn't know this until a couple days ago, but starting in 2011 all new SSNs are random numbers. https://www.ssa.gov/employer/r...