Back when my father was working, he used to work long days and then bring home tons of work to do every night. On the weekend, his pile was extra large and he'd work on it all weekend. I once questioned this, since he wasn't getting paid any extra for this "overtime." He said "my boss expects this level of output from me." I countered that his boss only expected it because he provided it free of charge. When my bosses tried implying that I should continue working on projects on my own time, I strongly rejected it. For an emergency, yes, I'll do it, but not for Everyday Routine Project #55 that they want me to work during my own time so that it gets finished faster.
In short, I'd add another corollary: "A manager's expectation of work that can be performed will expand to fit at least as much as the employees allow."
NOTE: This doesn't put all the blame on the employee. If an employee is stuck with a horrible manager, they don't always have the choice of just quitting. That might lead to financial ruin so they might be faced with "do what I say or be fired." So the employee is responsible for pushing back to the extent that they can, but the manager is ultimately responsible for tempering their expectations with reality. If your employees are having to take work home and do unpaid work on their own time, chances are your expectations are too high.
I've seen a few examples where there's a weird stretching of the mouth or, in one, fingers coming out of the person's chin. My guess is that it's sampled a huge number of images and is stitching these together in some complicated fashion to create a "does not exist" person. In the event that the image contains an odd object (microphone near mouth, fingers by chin), the AI chokes and the image gets weird.
Still, it's very impressive. Now enhance this so it's a video and have the AI create a realistic (but not based on any one person) voice and we'll get into really scary territory.
Actually, I just want realistic sounding AI voices so I can plug my book into it and get a good audio-book out of it without needing to pay hundreds of dollars.
When my identity was stolen (credit card I didn't sign up for showed up at my door because ID thieves paid for rush delivery before changing the address), I contacted the FBI. They were uninterested because I hadn't lost enough money. The local police, meanwhile, began an investigation but weren't interested in seeing it through to the end because the ID thieves were in another jurisdiction and some other police department would get the arrest when my local police department would be putting in the investigative effort.
In other words, an ID thief can make out just fine if they steal small enough amounts of money from people far away from them.
What I hate the most is when they call me on my work phone. That phone is primarily used for system emergencies. When it rings, it means something big is happening and I need to hop on it right away. Too often, recently, though I've picked it up to hear. "We're calling you with an important message about your car's warranty/student loan." You can block the number, but they just call back using a different number each time.
I had my identity stolen. Somehow (I never found out how), they got my name, address, Social Security Number, and Date of Birth. They opened a credit card in my name. Luckily for me, they paid for rush delivery of the card before changing the address and the card wound up at my house. The FBI had zero interest in taking the case because I hadn't lost enough money. My local police grudgingly investigated but told me quite frankly that it wasn't a high priority because "we'll probably track them to some other location and that police department will get the arrest." Sure enough, the investigation petered out after a bit. The thieves never faced punishment for my identity theft and are still doing it to this day for all I know because apparently you can get away with this stuff if you fly below the radar of the FBI and local law enforcement.
*Tries opening the door by pushing. Door doesn't open. Tries opening the door by pulling. Door doesn't open. Tries opening the door by pushing. Door opens.*
I had a hearing test by an audiologist that showed significant hearing loss in the ear with the ringing. This might be genetic (as my mother has tinnitus as well) or just due to old age (which still feels odd to say given that I'm 43). Luckily, a second test a year later didn't show any additional hearing loss. Everything was exactly the same so we're hoping that this isn't going to get worse.
I believe that some "OTC hearing amplifiers" are being approved to help with the cost of hearing aids. These wouldn't be as tailored to your specific situation as a hearing aid could be, but they'd be a lot cheaper. Too late for me, though, as I've already shelled out the $1,000. (It hurt to pay that much, but trying to function with a constant ringing in one ear was worse.)
I have hearing loss and tinnitus in my right ear. A hearing aid was going to cost over $1,000 (after insurance reduced the cost) so I tried less expensive options first. White noise applications on a bluetooth headset reduced the ringing but blocked me from hearing through my right ear. I tried some "sound booster" apps but there was a delay. Not a big delay, but enough to be frustrating. Sort of like the stereotypical badly dubbed Japanese movie. {mouth moves} "How are {mouth stops moving} you doing?" Before anyone says that Bluetooth was to blame, I tried wired headphones as well and there was the same delay.
I finally broke down and got a hearing aid. It's helped my tinnitus and improved my hearing. Still, I'd love it if there were a method for boosting audio for those hard of hearing. It would make for a lot of options less expensive than a hearing aid.
I did use a Bluetooth keyboard whenever possible, but the on screen keyboard worked fine also for quick "I'm standing and waiting with nothing to do for 5 minutes" writing sessions. It might only have produced a paragraph or two per session this way, but it added up over time.
I used a Bluetooth keyboard whenever possible, but if I was just standing around waiting for a bit, I could load my novel up on Google Docs and type up a paragraph or two using the on screen keyboard during my wait time. It might not seem like much but it added up quickly. As far as moving through a document, I had chapter headers and was able to use "Document Outline" to quickly jump to the latest chapter instead of scrolling through a few hundred pages.
If you get a battery mod, look for one that can be charged via USB-C without being connected to the phone. This way, you can be charging the battery mod even if you are using the phone away from the charger.
Doesn't the Moto Z support mods? I have a 2 year old Moto Z Play that supports mods. The battery is going so I paid $50 for a new Moto battery mod. I charge it every night and attach it to the phone every morning. That provides me with a day's worth of juice. When this battery pack dies, I can buy another $50 battery pack. Eventually, I'll buy a new phone, but the battery pack mods are helping me delay this purchase.
My current phone is a Moto Z Play. It's two years old and the battery, like many older smartphones, is going. Thankfully, with the Moto Mod concept, I can just buy a new external battery pack for $50, slap it on, and have good battery life again. No, it isn't going to prevent me from ever upgrading again, but it does help me push it off for another year or two.
I wrote my novel almost entirely on my smartphone. Google Docs meant I could open it up no matter where I was and write a few paragraphs. When it was done, I did export it into a full fledged word processor on my laptop to properly format it for printing/Kindle, but the writing portion was easily done on my phone. My second novel (still in progress) as well as a series of novellas I'm going to give away for free were also written on my smartphone. It's much more portable than any laptop and definitely more than a desktop PC.
I wonder if Android app development boosted Java's numbers. I was looking into developing some apps for Android, but it requires Java. I haven't programmed Java in decades so I'd need to first get up to speed on Java before getting into Android application development.
Fine, let's use January 19th 2021 (the last day of his first term before Inauguration Day). Let's also assume that planetary alignments work out perfectly and it would only take 150 days to get to Mars. That means we would need to launch on August 22nd, 2020. This gives us 19 months to come up with a launch/mission plan, design and build the rockets, select and train the astronauts, etc. It took much longer than that for the first Apollo moon landing to be planned out. Even selecting the landing site took over 2 years. (Choose the wrong spot and your landing vehicle will crash killing or stranding your astronauts.) Can it be done? Perhaps, but it's highly unlikely. The likeliest outcome of a rush job to get an astronaut on Mars by the end of Trump's first term would be the deaths of some astronauts in pursuit of a political stunt for Trump.
I'm not sure when Kennedy told NASA to work on a moon landing, but he gave the speech in September 1962.and Apollo 11 launched in July 1969. If Trump gave a "we're going to Mars" speech today and expected the same turnaround, we'd launch in October 2026 - well after a theoretical second Trump term and MUCH later than his 2020 preference.
There's "impossible" that becomes possible when enough time and money is thrown at it and then there's impossible that is actually impossible. If you promise all the resources in the world to someone and they still say it's not possible, it doesn't mean they're bad at their job. It might just mean that it's actually impossible. If you promised me the entire world's resources devoted to sending a person back in time, I'd tell you it's impossible. Even if the entire world stopped what it was doing and devoted itself to this one task, we wouldn't be able to do it. I know that's an extreme example, but some things truly are impossible. Even if we gave NASA an unlimited budget, they couldn't safely send a man to Mars by 2020.
He's all of the "bad kids" in Wonka combined. He wants everything for himself (NOW) like Veruca, he watches TV like Mike, he eats like Augustus, and while he doesn't chew gum like Violet (that I know of), substitute Twitter and you have the final piece in place. Someone get Trump a "golden ticket" and a tour of Willy Wonka's factory.
I think it's a self-fulfilling prophesy of sorts. People who have multiple stints behind bars might be more inclined to break the law so they aren't hired (and thus are steered back towards a life of crime even if they are trying to go straight). This might not apply to a one time non-violent offender, but companies decide they don't want the legal risk of their employee being "a criminal" (despite the fact that they served their time and shouldn't be considered a criminal anymore). So they pass on hiring the person. This leads the person to commit more crimes just to have some income which leads to multiple stints behind bars. If more companies would be willing to hire non-violent offenders who have done their time, the cycle could be broken and a lot of people could be keep from going to jail again.
Despite spending far more on incarceration than any other country, America has a horrible record of recidivism.
Just to expand on this, there's a big stigma against hiring people who have served time in prison. So John Smith is convicted of a crime and spends 3 years behind bars. He serves his time and is released from prison. Theoretically, he shouldn't be paying for his past crimes from this point on assuming he stays out of trouble in the future, So he tries to do the right thing and get a job. At every interview, though, mentioning his past prison time leads to him being excluded for job after job. With little to no legal avenues of income, he'll be more likely to revert to criminal behavior. This, in turn leads to a vicious cycle. The more criminal convictions, the harder it is to get legal work, the harder it is to pull out of the life of crime.
If we could keep nonviolent, non-repeat offenders out of prison, they could be given a chance to turn their lives around. By all means, monitor them and make sure they go to therapy or any other relevant service, but don't toss them behind bars and then expect them to never commit another crime again. Unfortunately, most politicians will balk at this because longer prison times make them look "tough on crime."
You haven't "seen anything like it before" because we have barely "seen" anything.
The more we explore the universe, the more we'll see things unlike what we've seen before. It wasn't that long ago that there was a debate as to whether planets even existed outside of our solar system. I've lost count of how many we've found since then, but the first few were definitely "like nothing we've ever seen before." That didn't mean OMG ALIENS! It meant that our understanding of reality had to be tweaked to accommodate this new data, In other words, science.
Trust me, I'd love if the answer to "what is Oumuamua's origin" was "aliens", but it's more likely something else. Might it cause us to rethink some previously held beliefs? Sure, but it doesn't mean that little green men are going to be zipping by to follow up on their probe's findings.
Not everyone has smartphones or data access. In my sons' school district there are plenty of kids whose financial situation isn't very good. They might have a bare bones phone with little to no data access. They can't afford to suck up data by installing apps (or their phone literally can't install apps) just to get reminders. For these kids, text messages work better.
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No, my guess is that each day you shave off gives you a 20% boost.
I'm going to go to a zero day work week and get a 100% boost in productivity!
Back when my father was working, he used to work long days and then bring home tons of work to do every night. On the weekend, his pile was extra large and he'd work on it all weekend. I once questioned this, since he wasn't getting paid any extra for this "overtime." He said "my boss expects this level of output from me." I countered that his boss only expected it because he provided it free of charge. When my bosses tried implying that I should continue working on projects on my own time, I strongly rejected it. For an emergency, yes, I'll do it, but not for Everyday Routine Project #55 that they want me to work during my own time so that it gets finished faster.
In short, I'd add another corollary: "A manager's expectation of work that can be performed will expand to fit at least as much as the employees allow."
NOTE: This doesn't put all the blame on the employee. If an employee is stuck with a horrible manager, they don't always have the choice of just quitting. That might lead to financial ruin so they might be faced with "do what I say or be fired." So the employee is responsible for pushing back to the extent that they can, but the manager is ultimately responsible for tempering their expectations with reality. If your employees are having to take work home and do unpaid work on their own time, chances are your expectations are too high.
I've seen a few examples where there's a weird stretching of the mouth or, in one, fingers coming out of the person's chin. My guess is that it's sampled a huge number of images and is stitching these together in some complicated fashion to create a "does not exist" person. In the event that the image contains an odd object (microphone near mouth, fingers by chin), the AI chokes and the image gets weird.
Still, it's very impressive. Now enhance this so it's a video and have the AI create a realistic (but not based on any one person) voice and we'll get into really scary territory.
Actually, I just want realistic sounding AI voices so I can plug my book into it and get a good audio-book out of it without needing to pay hundreds of dollars.
When my identity was stolen (credit card I didn't sign up for showed up at my door because ID thieves paid for rush delivery before changing the address), I contacted the FBI. They were uninterested because I hadn't lost enough money. The local police, meanwhile, began an investigation but weren't interested in seeing it through to the end because the ID thieves were in another jurisdiction and some other police department would get the arrest when my local police department would be putting in the investigative effort.
In other words, an ID thief can make out just fine if they steal small enough amounts of money from people far away from them.
What I hate the most is when they call me on my work phone. That phone is primarily used for system emergencies. When it rings, it means something big is happening and I need to hop on it right away. Too often, recently, though I've picked it up to hear. "We're calling you with an important message about your car's warranty/student loan." You can block the number, but they just call back using a different number each time.
I had my identity stolen. Somehow (I never found out how), they got my name, address, Social Security Number, and Date of Birth. They opened a credit card in my name. Luckily for me, they paid for rush delivery of the card before changing the address and the card wound up at my house. The FBI had zero interest in taking the case because I hadn't lost enough money. My local police grudgingly investigated but told me quite frankly that it wasn't a high priority because "we'll probably track them to some other location and that police department will get the arrest." Sure enough, the investigation petered out after a bit. The thieves never faced punishment for my identity theft and are still doing it to this day for all I know because apparently you can get away with this stuff if you fly below the radar of the FBI and local law enforcement.
A USB entrance?
*Tries opening the door by pushing. Door doesn't open. Tries opening the door by pulling. Door doesn't open. Tries opening the door by pushing. Door opens.*
No, we all know that 5G stands for G-G-G-G-Grrrreat! Their new mascot's named Tony and is on loan from a cereal company.
I had a hearing test by an audiologist that showed significant hearing loss in the ear with the ringing. This might be genetic (as my mother has tinnitus as well) or just due to old age (which still feels odd to say given that I'm 43). Luckily, a second test a year later didn't show any additional hearing loss. Everything was exactly the same so we're hoping that this isn't going to get worse.
I believe that some "OTC hearing amplifiers" are being approved to help with the cost of hearing aids. These wouldn't be as tailored to your specific situation as a hearing aid could be, but they'd be a lot cheaper. Too late for me, though, as I've already shelled out the $1,000. (It hurt to pay that much, but trying to function with a constant ringing in one ear was worse.)
I have hearing loss and tinnitus in my right ear. A hearing aid was going to cost over $1,000 (after insurance reduced the cost) so I tried less expensive options first. White noise applications on a bluetooth headset reduced the ringing but blocked me from hearing through my right ear. I tried some "sound booster" apps but there was a delay. Not a big delay, but enough to be frustrating. Sort of like the stereotypical badly dubbed Japanese movie. {mouth moves} "How are {mouth stops moving} you doing?" Before anyone says that Bluetooth was to blame, I tried wired headphones as well and there was the same delay.
I finally broke down and got a hearing aid. It's helped my tinnitus and improved my hearing. Still, I'd love it if there were a method for boosting audio for those hard of hearing. It would make for a lot of options less expensive than a hearing aid.
I did use a Bluetooth keyboard whenever possible, but the on screen keyboard worked fine also for quick "I'm standing and waiting with nothing to do for 5 minutes" writing sessions. It might only have produced a paragraph or two per session this way, but it added up over time.
I used a Bluetooth keyboard whenever possible, but if I was just standing around waiting for a bit, I could load my novel up on Google Docs and type up a paragraph or two using the on screen keyboard during my wait time. It might not seem like much but it added up quickly. As far as moving through a document, I had chapter headers and was able to use "Document Outline" to quickly jump to the latest chapter instead of scrolling through a few hundred pages.
If you get a battery mod, look for one that can be charged via USB-C without being connected to the phone. This way, you can be charging the battery mod even if you are using the phone away from the charger.
Doesn't the Moto Z support mods? I have a 2 year old Moto Z Play that supports mods. The battery is going so I paid $50 for a new Moto battery mod. I charge it every night and attach it to the phone every morning. That provides me with a day's worth of juice. When this battery pack dies, I can buy another $50 battery pack. Eventually, I'll buy a new phone, but the battery pack mods are helping me delay this purchase.
My current phone is a Moto Z Play. It's two years old and the battery, like many older smartphones, is going. Thankfully, with the Moto Mod concept, I can just buy a new external battery pack for $50, slap it on, and have good battery life again. No, it isn't going to prevent me from ever upgrading again, but it does help me push it off for another year or two.
I wrote my novel almost entirely on my smartphone. Google Docs meant I could open it up no matter where I was and write a few paragraphs. When it was done, I did export it into a full fledged word processor on my laptop to properly format it for printing/Kindle, but the writing portion was easily done on my phone. My second novel (still in progress) as well as a series of novellas I'm going to give away for free were also written on my smartphone. It's much more portable than any laptop and definitely more than a desktop PC.
I wonder if Android app development boosted Java's numbers. I was looking into developing some apps for Android, but it requires Java. I haven't programmed Java in decades so I'd need to first get up to speed on Java before getting into Android application development.
Fine, let's use January 19th 2021 (the last day of his first term before Inauguration Day). Let's also assume that planetary alignments work out perfectly and it would only take 150 days to get to Mars. That means we would need to launch on August 22nd, 2020. This gives us 19 months to come up with a launch/mission plan, design and build the rockets, select and train the astronauts, etc. It took much longer than that for the first Apollo moon landing to be planned out. Even selecting the landing site took over 2 years. (Choose the wrong spot and your landing vehicle will crash killing or stranding your astronauts.) Can it be done? Perhaps, but it's highly unlikely. The likeliest outcome of a rush job to get an astronaut on Mars by the end of Trump's first term would be the deaths of some astronauts in pursuit of a political stunt for Trump.
I'm not sure when Kennedy told NASA to work on a moon landing, but he gave the speech in September 1962.and Apollo 11 launched in July 1969. If Trump gave a "we're going to Mars" speech today and expected the same turnaround, we'd launch in October 2026 - well after a theoretical second Trump term and MUCH later than his 2020 preference.
There's "impossible" that becomes possible when enough time and money is thrown at it and then there's impossible that is actually impossible. If you promise all the resources in the world to someone and they still say it's not possible, it doesn't mean they're bad at their job. It might just mean that it's actually impossible. If you promised me the entire world's resources devoted to sending a person back in time, I'd tell you it's impossible. Even if the entire world stopped what it was doing and devoted itself to this one task, we wouldn't be able to do it. I know that's an extreme example, but some things truly are impossible. Even if we gave NASA an unlimited budget, they couldn't safely send a man to Mars by 2020.
He's all of the "bad kids" in Wonka combined. He wants everything for himself (NOW) like Veruca, he watches TV like Mike, he eats like Augustus, and while he doesn't chew gum like Violet (that I know of), substitute Twitter and you have the final piece in place. Someone get Trump a "golden ticket" and a tour of Willy Wonka's factory.
I think it's a self-fulfilling prophesy of sorts. People who have multiple stints behind bars might be more inclined to break the law so they aren't hired (and thus are steered back towards a life of crime even if they are trying to go straight). This might not apply to a one time non-violent offender, but companies decide they don't want the legal risk of their employee being "a criminal" (despite the fact that they served their time and shouldn't be considered a criminal anymore). So they pass on hiring the person. This leads the person to commit more crimes just to have some income which leads to multiple stints behind bars. If more companies would be willing to hire non-violent offenders who have done their time, the cycle could be broken and a lot of people could be keep from going to jail again.
Just to expand on this, there's a big stigma against hiring people who have served time in prison. So John Smith is convicted of a crime and spends 3 years behind bars. He serves his time and is released from prison. Theoretically, he shouldn't be paying for his past crimes from this point on assuming he stays out of trouble in the future, So he tries to do the right thing and get a job. At every interview, though, mentioning his past prison time leads to him being excluded for job after job. With little to no legal avenues of income, he'll be more likely to revert to criminal behavior. This, in turn leads to a vicious cycle. The more criminal convictions, the harder it is to get legal work, the harder it is to pull out of the life of crime.
If we could keep nonviolent, non-repeat offenders out of prison, they could be given a chance to turn their lives around. By all means, monitor them and make sure they go to therapy or any other relevant service, but don't toss them behind bars and then expect them to never commit another crime again. Unfortunately, most politicians will balk at this because longer prison times make them look "tough on crime."
The more we explore the universe, the more we'll see things unlike what we've seen before. It wasn't that long ago that there was a debate as to whether planets even existed outside of our solar system. I've lost count of how many we've found since then, but the first few were definitely "like nothing we've ever seen before." That didn't mean OMG ALIENS! It meant that our understanding of reality had to be tweaked to accommodate this new data, In other words, science.
Trust me, I'd love if the answer to "what is Oumuamua's origin" was "aliens", but it's more likely something else. Might it cause us to rethink some previously held beliefs? Sure, but it doesn't mean that little green men are going to be zipping by to follow up on their probe's findings.
Not everyone has smartphones or data access. In my sons' school district there are plenty of kids whose financial situation isn't very good. They might have a bare bones phone with little to no data access. They can't afford to suck up data by installing apps (or their phone literally can't install apps) just to get reminders. For these kids, text messages work better.