* Wireless charging. Sometimes lint gets stuck and I can't charge. Often I just forget to charge my phone. When I had a micro-usb adapter I'd wear out about one cable a year, and once the port on my phone just got too damaged and I had to get a new phone. The lightning port doesn't seem quite as fragile, but even so I'm excited about this.
Lightning port is pretty hardy, and a paperclip does wonder to get the lint out;-) I generally do that about once a year.
Yet companies like Apple are on this business treadmill where they think they have to re-invent it every year in order to keep selling phones. They mostly coasted on the fact that the next model improved some aspects -- CPU, storage, photo quality -- some noticeable increment, but they didn't really increase the basic utility value.
So you think they would be better if they _didn't_ release upgrades every year?
I would also say that Apple "re-invents" the iPhone every 2-3 years, in terms of there being larger changes to form factor, internal design, etc. The second year is usually just a refresh with better camera, CPU, etc. If you're going to complain about an incremental refresh, then I really don't understand your argument.
FWIW, I tend to skip a generation. Started on an iPhone 5, now have a 7.
Ditto. Started with 3gs, kept it for 3 years and got a 5. Kept that for 3 years and got a 6s. The 6s battery kind of sucks, but I'll keep it until I really feel like I have to upgrade. You don't _have_ to upgrade every year or two.
There's also the issue of biomagnification--bioaccumulation moving up the food chain.
Small fish consume small amounts of plastic. Larger fish consume many small fish over time, consuming (and accumulating) larger and larger amounts of plastic. Higher-level predators--Dolphins, polar bears, whales, people--eat these larger fish, accumulating even more plastic.
The small fish may never consume enough plastic for it to be a huge deal, but it might be a really big deal for the polar bear.
Mercury is one of the classic examples of an element that disproportionately affects the higher levels of the food chain.
My father in law's company just dropped their cadillac plans too. Really unfortunate, as he's had some chronic health issues develop over the last couple of years.
I used to live just outside of Falls Church. Nice area with a lot of options for food, culture, etc., but man, I just could not deal with the traffic. My commute was ~9 miles, and I could never know whether it was going to take 15 minutes or 1.5 hours. The record was 2.5 hours (an 18-wheeler truck carrying office supplies overturned coming onto the Beltway blocking all lanes. Paper, pallets, boxes, etc., were EVERYWHERE.)
This was around 10 years ago, and yy wife and I were making about 120k while living in a tiny one bedroom apartment (1200/mon). Kids were not yet in the picture. We were living fat then and stashed a lot into savings, but once we started looking at a house, daycare, private school tuition, even going down potentially to one salary, a lot of the "fun" things about the area then seemed out of reach.
Reply is late, but I just saw your message. My entire message did assume that the >$250k being targeted was indeed one of those techie types, filing singly. Married filing jointly (along with child deduction, tuition deductions, etc) would pay substantially less tax, but would obviously have more expenses.
I had thought about including retirement account in my ballpark above, but decided to leave it out. Probably should have included it.
Even for you--a two person household--your house mortgage numbers plus car payments are pretty much dead on my estimate for what could easily be afforded.
Where I do disagree with your assumption is that having all these things--an 800k house, two 30k+ cars, presumably 100k's+ in retirement accounts, ability to pay cash for 8k vacations, ~250k annually salary, ability to drop 25k on a wedding, ketc., does not put you in the rich category. Now please note, I'm not judging that at all--I'm in a similar boat (though I do live in a much, much, much lower cost area of the country. My ~3000 sq foot house in a nice neighborhood costs 250k). BUT, statistically speaking, that's rich. 3x or 4x the mean household salary nationwide is getting up there!
Also, going by the numbers, most people who would be described as "rich" don't have that much cash on hand. The "rich" tend to live more extravagantly than they should. Paradox of the the Millionaire Next Door. Like I said, we're not talking wealthy like NBA players (many of whom do go broke) or movie stars (many of whom do go broke), but compared to the vast majority of Americans? rich.
Sorry to hear about your health problems. Out of curiosity, did you have insurance through work or exchange?
I would also add, that even in Seattle, people can live in housing that is substantially cheaper than 800k. People can easily spend less than $100/day for food (even for a multi-person household). People can easily drive a 20k (or less) car that is perfectly fine.
Taxes and housing costs are by the far biggest variables in local costs. Have you considered selling that 800k+ house and moving to a lower cost state? Texas? Georgia? NC? etc? There's a reason so many people are moving south!
Yeah, that was my first thought, when did $250K a year define you as rich?
Sure in many parts of the US, that is a lot of money and you can live comfortably...but not excessive.
But in other parts, that is NOT a high salary....especially in the larger metropolitan areas on the east and west coast.
Well, median salary in Seattle is 80k, so yeah, I think if you're making 250k you're doing ok and making substantially more than the average.
Previously at least there's no state income tax in WA, so let's say after deductions etc, your federal income tax rate is around 30%. Let's round it up to 35% to cover other random deductions. Hell, even 40% to be ridiculously safe.
250k minus 40% taxes/social security/medi*/health insurance/etc = 150k take home.
Going by the old rule of thumb, 1/4 of your take home pay to pay for housing is up to 37.5k a year or $3100 a month. That should cover you buying a home that's somewhere around 600k-800k+.
150k take home - 37.5k a year for housing leaves you with $112,500 for food, transportation, creature comforts, saving, retirement, etc.
Why not order a maxed out Tesla Model S (160k) why you're at it. That'll cost you about $2400/mon.
Now you're down to $83,700.
Utilities for that big house and electric car--$600/mon?
Let's say food and drink costs on average $100 a day, 365 days a year.
$40,000 of pretty much totally disposable "fuck you" money AFTER spending lavishly on car, housing, and food. That right there is close to the median salary in many states.
I'd say that counts as rich. Not NBA superstar or Hollywood moviestar rich (many of whom, it should be noted, borrow huge amounts of money and go bankrupt), but yeah, you're a 1%%er.
* and if you actually spend money frugally or even not lavishly you could have a lot, lot more disposable cash.
I'm on the fence about Discovery--I hope it's good, but I'm afraid it will be more trash.
I am scared about the "diversity" factor as well, but with a major caveat. Star Trek has ALWAYS had a great deal of diversity (a black woman, a Russian, and a Japanese guy on the bridge crew in the 60s; female captain, black captain, etc.). Diversity alone should not scare any Trek fan. What does make me nervous are some of the quotes in the media about how they are approaching diversity. IMHO Trek's diversity has historically been so effective because it wasn't even commented on. Nobody made a big deal out of Uhura or Chekov or Sulu. Nobody make a big deal about Sisko or Janeway. It all just was. If STD continues that tradition, then bully on it.
Yeah, in a post BSG world, Star Trek is going to look pretty hokey if they don't really have their writing game in order
Called it--from now on the appearance of angels in the finale and imaginary spirit advisors are to be the hallmarks of good writing. Anything else will be considered just hokey.
(In all serious, I love Star Trek, Ron Moore, and 99% of BSG)
Extremely minor nit, but Chapterhouse: Dune was the sixth book in the Dune series, and it didn't _quite_ finish off the series.
I've read Dune multiple times, and I read the original Dune books 2-6 once, many years ago. I don't remember a lot, but I didn't like them very much.
Brian Herbert and Kevin Anderson took things in all different directions with prequels, sequels, and whatever you call a book that comes between two sequential and previously published books in a series. They're entertaining--at least the few I read--but they're kind of like trashy pulp function compared to the classic Dune. Totally agree with you that the difference in writing ability is striking. I wouldn't bother with them.
We decommissioned our last PowerPC Mac last year (2016). It was running one piece of legacy software that had a $10k upgrade price for an Intel edition. We switched software, so we didn't need the PC any more.
The PowerPC transition is actually notable for how smoothly it went. Universal binaries made it easy for developers to distribute Intel and PowerPC binaries at the same time. Previously, OS 9 "classic" compatibility was included for several revisions of OS X (we shut down our last classic-using-OSX machine around 2010).
Yes, when a computer vendor switches architecture, the older architecture is going to die sooner or later. No, Apple didn't screw anyone over, and the process went as smoothly as it could. Yes, it sucks if you bought a PowerPC Mac the day before the Intel switch.
Digital output via the Lightning port (presumably there will be Lightning->USB-C audio out adapters)?
Streaming audio to Homepod or other network devices?
Lossless audio is a pretty niche thing to start with... Hell, having actual audio files on your device (instead of spotify / apple music cloud / pandora / whatever) is becoming a niche activity.
That's interesting, I had skimmed right over that. Does seem like one heck of a contrived data point!
Apple: (116k employees) Steve Jobs' biological father was Syrian (adoptive father was American). Wozniak maybe had one grandparent who was Canadian?
Alphabet: (~60k employees?) Larry Page, American. Sergey Brin and his family immigrated from the former USSR.
Amazon: (341k employees! wow) Jeff Bezos's adoptive / step-father is from Cuba (opposite of Jobs!), so I guess this counts?
Facebook: (8k employees) Zuckberg's great-grandparents were from Germany, Austria, and Poland. (cite). Sandberg had ancestors who were Soviet Jews.
Ok, so the lesson I take from this is that people escaping from Communist regimes are very motivated! These four companies account for more than 1/3 of the 1.5 million employees cited in the post.
I actually agree with most of your post, but I did want to add one thing.
What bothers me about the "new" Star Trek is that this message is now delivered by sledgehammer. Look, we're progressive, we have an asian female nonbinary transgender captain. If it was at least an alien... but for some odd reason, alien captains are still a nono.
There seems to be a good chance that the male captain will be an alien (there was apparently some deleted tweet showing the captain with molding goo on his face).
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, I do. (heads to Apple Store)
That's what I was saying--that the iphone 6/6s/7 are all one "generation" despite the nomenclature. Apple broke the pattern there.
* Wireless charging. Sometimes lint gets stuck and I can't charge. Often I just forget to charge my phone. When I had a micro-usb adapter I'd wear out about one cable a year, and once the port on my phone just got too damaged and I had to get a new phone. The lightning port doesn't seem quite as fragile, but even so I'm excited about this.
Lightning port is pretty hardy, and a paperclip does wonder to get the lint out ;-) I generally do that about once a year.
Yet companies like Apple are on this business treadmill where they think they have to re-invent it every year in order to keep selling phones. They mostly coasted on the fact that the next model improved some aspects -- CPU, storage, photo quality -- some noticeable increment, but they didn't really increase the basic utility value.
So you think they would be better if they _didn't_ release upgrades every year?
I would also say that Apple "re-invents" the iPhone every 2-3 years, in terms of there being larger changes to form factor, internal design, etc. The second year is usually just a refresh with better camera, CPU, etc. If you're going to complain about an incremental refresh, then I really don't understand your argument.
iPhone 3g / 3gs (2 years)
iPhone 4 / 4s (2 years)
iPhone 5 / 5s (2 years)
iPhone 6 / 6s / 7 (3 years)
FWIW, I tend to skip a generation. Started on an iPhone 5, now have a 7.
Ditto. Started with 3gs, kept it for 3 years and got a 5. Kept that for 3 years and got a 6s. The 6s battery kind of sucks, but I'll keep it until I really feel like I have to upgrade. You don't _have_ to upgrade every year or two.
There's also the issue of biomagnification--bioaccumulation moving up the food chain.
Small fish consume small amounts of plastic.
Larger fish consume many small fish over time, consuming (and accumulating) larger and larger amounts of plastic.
Higher-level predators--Dolphins, polar bears, whales, people--eat these larger fish, accumulating even more plastic.
The small fish may never consume enough plastic for it to be a huge deal, but it might be a really big deal for the polar bear.
Mercury is one of the classic examples of an element that disproportionately affects the higher levels of the food chain.
Yes?
I’m not clear if browsing https sites protects you from ISP spying?
From the github link for the deletion problem:
poettering locked and limited conversation to collaborators on Apr 17
Hahahaha
My father in law's company just dropped their cadillac plans too. Really unfortunate, as he's had some chronic health issues develop over the last couple of years.
I used to live just outside of Falls Church. Nice area with a lot of options for food, culture, etc., but man, I just could not deal with the traffic. My commute was ~9 miles, and I could never know whether it was going to take 15 minutes or 1.5 hours. The record was 2.5 hours (an 18-wheeler truck carrying office supplies overturned coming onto the Beltway blocking all lanes. Paper, pallets, boxes, etc., were EVERYWHERE.)
This was around 10 years ago, and yy wife and I were making about 120k while living in a tiny one bedroom apartment (1200/mon). Kids were not yet in the picture. We were living fat then and stashed a lot into savings, but once we started looking at a house, daycare, private school tuition, even going down potentially to one salary, a lot of the "fun" things about the area then seemed out of reach.
Hi dcw3,
Reply is late, but I just saw your message. My entire message did assume that the >$250k being targeted was indeed one of those techie types, filing singly. Married filing jointly (along with child deduction, tuition deductions, etc) would pay substantially less tax, but would obviously have more expenses.
I had thought about including retirement account in my ballpark above, but decided to leave it out. Probably should have included it.
Even for you--a two person household--your house mortgage numbers plus car payments are pretty much dead on my estimate for what could easily be afforded.
Where I do disagree with your assumption is that having all these things--an 800k house, two 30k+ cars, presumably 100k's+ in retirement accounts, ability to pay cash for 8k vacations, ~250k annually salary, ability to drop 25k on a wedding, ketc., does not put you in the rich category. Now please note, I'm not judging that at all--I'm in a similar boat (though I do live in a much, much, much lower cost area of the country. My ~3000 sq foot house in a nice neighborhood costs 250k). BUT, statistically speaking, that's rich. 3x or 4x the mean household salary nationwide is getting up there!
Also, going by the numbers, most people who would be described as "rich" don't have that much cash on hand. The "rich" tend to live more extravagantly than they should. Paradox of the the Millionaire Next Door. Like I said, we're not talking wealthy like NBA players (many of whom do go broke) or movie stars (many of whom do go broke), but compared to the vast majority of Americans? rich.
Sorry to hear about your health problems. Out of curiosity, did you have insurance through work or exchange?
I would also add, that even in Seattle, people can live in housing that is substantially cheaper than 800k. People can easily spend less than $100/day for food (even for a multi-person household). People can easily drive a 20k (or less) car that is perfectly fine.
Taxes and housing costs are by the far biggest variables in local costs. Have you considered selling that 800k+ house and moving to a lower cost state? Texas? Georgia? NC? etc? There's a reason so many people are moving south!
Yeah, that was my first thought, when did $250K a year define you as rich?
Sure in many parts of the US, that is a lot of money and you can live comfortably...but not excessive.
But in other parts, that is NOT a high salary....especially in the larger metropolitan areas on the east and west coast.
Well, median salary in Seattle is 80k, so yeah, I think if you're making 250k you're doing ok and making substantially more than the average.
Previously at least there's no state income tax in WA, so let's say after deductions etc, your federal income tax rate is around 30%. Let's round it up to 35% to cover other random deductions. Hell, even 40% to be ridiculously safe.
250k minus 40% taxes/social security/medi*/health insurance/etc = 150k take home.
Going by the old rule of thumb, 1/4 of your take home pay to pay for housing is up to 37.5k a year or $3100 a month. That should cover you buying a home that's somewhere around 600k-800k+.
150k take home - 37.5k a year for housing leaves you with $112,500 for food, transportation, creature comforts, saving, retirement, etc.
Why not order a maxed out Tesla Model S (160k) why you're at it. That'll cost you about $2400/mon.
Now you're down to $83,700.
Utilities for that big house and electric car--$600/mon?
Let's say food and drink costs on average $100 a day, 365 days a year.
$40,000 of pretty much totally disposable "fuck you" money AFTER spending lavishly on car, housing, and food. That right there is close to the median salary in many states.
I'd say that counts as rich. Not NBA superstar or Hollywood moviestar rich (many of whom, it should be noted, borrow huge amounts of money and go bankrupt), but yeah, you're a 1%%er.
* and if you actually spend money frugally or even not lavishly you could have a lot, lot more disposable cash.
I think DS9 really fell off the wagon in the last season, unfortunately with the whole Pah Wraith/Gul Dukat/Kai Winn thing. Meh.
Not to mention Vic Fontaine. Definitely meh.
Realistically, I'm going to pirate at least the first episodes.
I subscribed to HBO Go basically just for Game of Thrones, though their catalog is far, FAR more appealing than CBS's.
3-4 episodes a month for $6 comes down to a buck or two an episode. That seems worthwhile, right?
I'm on the fence about Discovery--I hope it's good, but I'm afraid it will be more trash.
I am scared about the "diversity" factor as well, but with a major caveat. Star Trek has ALWAYS had a great deal of diversity (a black woman, a Russian, and a Japanese guy on the bridge crew in the 60s; female captain, black captain, etc.). Diversity alone should not scare any Trek fan. What does make me nervous are some of the quotes in the media about how they are approaching diversity. IMHO Trek's diversity has historically been so effective because it wasn't even commented on. Nobody made a big deal out of Uhura or Chekov or Sulu. Nobody make a big deal about Sisko or Janeway. It all just was. If STD continues that tradition, then bully on it.
Yeah, in a post BSG world, Star Trek is going to look pretty hokey if they don't really have their writing game in order
Called it--from now on the appearance of angels in the finale and imaginary spirit advisors are to be the hallmarks of good writing. Anything else will be considered just hokey.
(In all serious, I love Star Trek, Ron Moore, and 99% of BSG)
Extremely minor nit, but Chapterhouse: Dune was the sixth book in the Dune series, and it didn't _quite_ finish off the series.
I've read Dune multiple times, and I read the original Dune books 2-6 once, many years ago. I don't remember a lot, but I didn't like them very much.
Brian Herbert and Kevin Anderson took things in all different directions with prequels, sequels, and whatever you call a book that comes between two sequential and previously published books in a series. They're entertaining--at least the few I read--but they're kind of like trashy pulp function compared to the classic Dune. Totally agree with you that the difference in writing ability is striking. I wouldn't bother with them.
We decommissioned our last PowerPC Mac last year (2016). It was running one piece of legacy software that had a $10k upgrade price for an Intel edition. We switched software, so we didn't need the PC any more.
The PowerPC transition is actually notable for how smoothly it went. Universal binaries made it easy for developers to distribute Intel and PowerPC binaries at the same time. Previously, OS 9 "classic" compatibility was included for several revisions of OS X (we shut down our last classic-using-OSX machine around 2010).
Yes, when a computer vendor switches architecture, the older architecture is going to die sooner or later. No, Apple didn't screw anyone over, and the process went as smoothly as it could. Yes, it sucks if you bought a PowerPC Mac the day before the Intel switch.
What? Of course there is. Software commonly does not run on an OSX version only one or two minor versions behind.
Examples? I'm running one version back on my laptop and two versions back on my desktop and I have not run into any software compatibility issues.
Digital output via the Lightning port (presumably there will be Lightning->USB-C audio out adapters)?
Streaming audio to Homepod or other network devices?
Lossless audio is a pretty niche thing to start with... Hell, having actual audio files on your device (instead of spotify / apple music cloud / pandora / whatever) is becoming a niche activity.
That's interesting, I had skimmed right over that. Does seem like one heck of a contrived data point!
Apple: (116k employees) Steve Jobs' biological father was Syrian (adoptive father was American). Wozniak maybe had one grandparent who was Canadian?
Alphabet: (~60k employees?) Larry Page, American. Sergey Brin and his family immigrated from the former USSR.
Amazon: (341k employees! wow) Jeff Bezos's adoptive / step-father is from Cuba (opposite of Jobs!), so I guess this counts?
Facebook: (8k employees) Zuckberg's great-grandparents were from Germany, Austria, and Poland. (cite). Sandberg had ancestors who were Soviet Jews.
Ok, so the lesson I take from this is that people escaping from Communist regimes are very motivated! These four companies account for more than 1/3 of the 1.5 million employees cited in the post.
Are you confused? The Supreme Court overturns lower court decisions all the time...there's absolutely nothing unusual about that.
Alpha Nerds....love it!
Imagine a Star Trek movie with a Star Wars setting
You mean JJ-trek? zing
I actually agree with most of your post, but I did want to add one thing.
What bothers me about the "new" Star Trek is that this message is now delivered by sledgehammer. Look, we're progressive, we have an asian female nonbinary transgender captain. If it was at least an alien... but for some odd reason, alien captains are still a nono.
There seems to be a good chance that the male captain will be an alien (there was apparently some deleted tweet showing the captain with molding goo on his face).