Tesla is a strange one, but I'm going to guess you are North American - because almost everywhere else, Tesla uses the Type 2 socket which makes it compatible with many other public charging stations. It is speculated that the Model 3 outside North America will have a CCS2 port, which would make it compatible with both public Type2 and CCS2, as well as existing Tesla chargers/superchargers. It's a shame they didn't go down this route in North America, because they've now backed themselves into a corner due to how many cars and chargers use the existing North American socket type.
It's not an odd connector. It's a NEMA 14-50 socket, which gives you 240V @ 50A. It's a common household plug, used for electric ranges. It's also used for RVs that want 50A service. And thanks to that, there are common adapters to NEMA 14-30 (dryer plug).
So it's somewhat interesting, given you can go into an RV park and charge your Tesla as well (most RV parks provide a choice of 15/20A @ 115V, 30A and 50A service)
Most homes will have 1 or 2 of each plug, and an electrician can easily add more - the plugs are cheap. so they're one of the few EVs where the charger is practically free compared to the electrician.
Windows is still a monopoly in regard to x86 desktop hardware. Windows has so many limitations and obligations, Android pales in comparison. When was the last lawsuit against Microsoft? Or they are regularly paying billions of dollars in fines to EU each year? Enlighten me please.
Yes, Windows is still a monopoly. It's why there are special editions of Windows without Media Player and IE by default for EU regions. And even Korea gets its own version (The K version).
The big thing that MIcrosoft did was stop leveraging - that is, using their power in one area to distort the marked in another - like bundling a browser and media player with the operating system, which distorts both markets and why Microsoft offers versions of Windows with both disabled by default.
Google is attempting to leverage a much-desired feature (i.e., Play store) to insert their other services (e.g., YouTube, GMail, Drive, etc) along side it by forcing manufacturers who want Play Store to make those apps one-tap away at most, punishing OEMs and ODMs who are Play-licensed to not produce any vanilla Android without Play (see Amazon) and of course, defaulting to Google search.
Nokia a few years ago wanted to do just that - replace Google Maps with their HERE Maps. Google slapped them down - they could not license Play unless Google Maps was a part of it, and it had to be default - you can't bundle your product in and have it be default.
Of all the manufacturers and ODMs out there, only Samsung has possibly the most complete collection of replacement apps, so they could theoretically dump Google at any time.
But Apple is 10 times worse. There is no alternative app store at all for Apple. Android has some minor hoops but it's fairly simple to download apps from Amazon or several of the other third party android app stores. There is no way to replace siri with google or alexa. There is no way to change the default map program, the default email program, or the default anything. Android isn't without its flaws but it even lets you replace the desktop manager. It is infinitely more flexible and open than Apple.
Why go after Google first when Apple is by far the bigger offender?
Apple is not "far bigger". Kind of hard to be "biggest" offernder when 4 Androids are sold for every iPhone. And all those Androids have one common theme - all the manufacturers have to obey Google's rules to put Google's stuff on it.
And the reality of life is, if you don't have the Play Store, you don't have crap.
You have to remember this probably came out of a long-simmering debate when Nokia tried to release their phone with their maps instead of Google's...
And Apple may be a monopoly, but it's only one phone out of a sea of phones. Just like you don't complain when you buy a Ford Mustang and it has a Ford motor inside of it, or that Ford dealerships only provide Ford options even if you wanted that JVC headunit.
The 2170 is supposedly based on Tesla's R&D and it is trade secrets
Well, the 21700 is not really a new battery. It's a new battery size, yes, just like you have the 18650 battery, Tesla "invented" the 21700 battery. If you can't read the number, the first two digits it eh diameter of the cell in millimeters, so Tesla bumped up the cell diameter to 21mm from 18mm. The last 3 digits are the cell length in tents of a millimeter (or hundreds of a micrometer, to be precise). So the cell length went from 65mm to 70mm.
It doesn't seem like much, but the battery capacity increases significantly because of these minor tweaks. It also means battery management is a lot easier because there are fewer cells to actually manage.
Sixteen digits after the decimal? Have they overturned significant digits?
No, they haven't.
If the number of players is X, and the number of total players is Y, then when you divide, X/Y, the number of significant figures is actually infinite as both are "exact" counts. You can't have 3.1 players, for example, so there's no uncertainty digit. You have 3 players exactly. Likewise, there are a total of 10 players. Both values have infinite precision because they are exact values .
Significant figure rules apply when you have an uncertainty digit, like something takes 5.2 seconds to accomplish. In this case, the.2 is an uncertain digit but reflects the general system of precision we can get out of human timing. (The actual time may be 5.5 seconds, which is within the uncertainty digit).
Removing advertising from the Internet would leave us basically with the parts that have value.
No, it would leave us with the parts that the people willing to pay for it find valuable. Are you willing to pay for it?>/blockquote>
No, it would leave us with the parts of the internet sponsored by other people (or pages put up for marketing purposes). So you'll get all the commercial pages - Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, etc., trying to sell you stuff. And you'll get all those pages that are paid for by other people, so all your political pages will be up as well.
Content that you might want to read, like independent reviews and such, you either have to pay for, or those people simply would move on to other things to pay the bills.
To Wit:/. Beta. Did not want, do not want, what is now is fine... just fix the goddamned unicode problem.
There is no Unicode problem./. supports Unicode just fine.
There's a Unicode troll problem though, which is why/. has a rather strict whitelist of allowed characters. The trolls were constantly abusing the Unicode control codepoints and adornment codepoints to screw up the page and turn it all black, reverse text, etc.
The back end supports Unicode completely and has for nearly 2 decades now. Unfortunately, nearly 2 decades ago, the admins were having to delete comments (or mod them down) continuously that abused Unicode and turned the site useless.
You'll find it on any new website with brand new shiny comments section impacted by this and they rapidly either shut down comments or filters as well. Unicode is not easy and there are many issues with it, see all the iPhones and Androids crashing or doing other things when sent some strange Unicode text.
The decision said it was only 5% of breakage (stamps that were not redeemed for postal service). A large portion of breakage is assumed to be collecting for which the aesthetics is a key part of the value.
Which may be a bad assumption. I buy forever stamps because I send so few letters. I don't track what the postage rate (they're "forever" - good for one first class letter regardless of the current postage rate and when you bought it).
I'm sure a lot of them are simply sitting in the stamp roll of homes and I know Costco sold them in rolls of 100. Plus, since the value of those stamps goes up over time (when has postage every decreased?) I use the regular stamps first, so I probably have a good chunk of new in package stamps
This especially and one like the original iPhone that was powerful enough to drive good headphones before Apple crippled it due to parents complaining
Not just parents, government and everyone else.
And they have a right to - kids these days are starting to have hearing loss that you'd find in career musicians or seniors. And they're still kids. The next generation is growing up deaf.
That's why volume limiters are imposed on all portable devices nowadays - kids are turning up the volume way too loud and they're going deaf exceeding the exposure limits of their ears.
Given hearing loss takes years to manifest themselves, by the time you realize you have it, it's too late - you can't take back those years of listening to music just a bit too loud at that point.
> Point being Toys R Us didn't die, it was murdered.
No, it died. The writing was on the wall for a long time.
The leveraged buyout was just a way to accelerate the inevitable. When you have access to massive debt creation tools, you can play games like that. What they did is create a bunch of money in order to jump the line of debtors and suck the marrow from the bones of the dying beast before it hit the ground. The real losers are the debtors who were not in on the game.
When it became obvious that the outlook was bleak, suppliers should have demanded better terms or even Net0 payments. ToysRUs defacto creditworthiness had defacto dropped to zero, and some sharks smelled the blood in the water first.
In a post-dollar economy, this might not be possible
No, it was murdered. The leveraged buyout basically killed it.
Toys R Us was actually a decently run company. They held their own against against big-box retailers like Target, Walmart, etc, they also had a decent webstore (it was one of the first online stores, at that) to compete against the Amazons of the world too.
The problem with the leveraged buyout is none of that matters - the leveraged buyout basically hung a huge anchor around its neck, such that instead of being able to invest in the business to compete (which it did so handily), it had to keep paying out tons of money in interest to service the debt. This works great, but a little hiccup in cash flow means you're circling the drain. Just a slightly slow quarter and you're screwed. And that's what happened.
That's why we call it murdered - because without the leveraged buyout, it was holding its own despite the onslaught of Walmart, Target, Amazon and others.
I think how it works is that Apple and Qualcomm treat an ARM core as a black box with just interface specifications. Kind of like how you'd by an IC, except that you don't solder it but rather draw it in a chip design. Qualcomm/Apple decide how to interface cores with the other stuff that's on a SoC (modems, GPU, memory bus, USB logic, power management). The SoC designer never* gets to see what's inside the ARM core; that knowledge is only shared with the fab company (e.g. TSMC, Samsung). In turn, the fab company has the details of how to make the individual transistors on the chip and only tells ARM (and other customers) how big the transistors are and what their electrical characteristics are.
No, Apple and Qualcomm have microarchitecture licenses (as do a few other companies. Marvell has the original license inherited from Intel who got it from Compaq via DEC). In this case, all Apple and Qualcomm get are the instruction sets and validation suite. They have complete freedom to design the CPU core as they wish. Apple's ARM cores are some of the fastest on the market. Qualcomm had their own 32-bit core, but now their 64-bit cores are derived from ARM's 64-bit designs. Marvell has XScale, but I haven't heard much from them as of late. I think they just use it as a network management processor.
Other ARM licensees like RockChip, Allwinner, Broadcom, etc, license the blocks only. They can assemble the blocks to form an SoC, but they have to buy it pretty much as a black box. They get the IP core and can synthesize it using tools, but thats as far as it goes. They can't tweak it at all.
I can't remember if Samsung has a microatchitecture license or not - I think they do as Exynos of late beats the crap out of Qualcomm's offerings. (Alas, Apple's last year chip still beats the current Exynos which beats Qualcomm's latest 835 chip).
I think Samsung needed the help more to they can get their Exynos up to Apple's performance levels.
The real problem is of course, how far away you are from the fab. Apple works with TSMC and Samsung to get their designs done for the fab, so you can tweak things a lot to get your yields in your favor. Samsung knows their own fabs so they can tweak as well. Qualcomm Kyro cores are derived from ARM's cores, so I think that's why they work (they're probably tuned for the fabs Qualcomm uses). Everyone else gets generic synthesizable and cannot tune it heavily for the fab, so you get great performance, but it's out of a generalized core.
Maybe you got lucky, but paying you very well is not the Scandinavian model. They pay everyone moderately well, try to make it a nice place to work and give you a good work-life balance and hope you don't throw it all away chasing a few more dollars. If you really want to maximize your salary you probably need to do some job hopping here too but it doesn't have nearly the same benefit, like the CEO is often paid 2-5x that of a regular employee and everyone else is somewhere in between.
Beyond a certain dollar figure, more money doesn't buy more happiness (around $72K or so). And surprise surprise, salary isn't generally the biggest factor in a job anymore. Sure it's a part, but people aren't chasing jobs just to make a couple more thousand dollars a year.
After that, quality of life starts becoming a big issue. Sure, work at an American company if dollars is all you really care about. But soon, you start wanting to live. Soon, chasing the dollar isn't all that important anymore - perhaps having some time off work so you can enjoy those dollars, or try something new. Suddenly, working 80 hours a week is less appealing.
My job pays well, and I'm probably on the lower end. Sure I could chase a job and make more money, but I realized I wasn't getting much benefit. An American company locally offered me a job with a 20% bump in pay, but was basically minimum everything in perks and benefits (eating a good 5% or more of that pay bump over what I had) and then I realized if I took it, I'd have to get my own car (+ gas, insurance, maintenance) to commute which ate up basically the rest of the pay bump and all for naught. They wouldn't budge on the perks or benefits (super cheap to them), nor on the pay, so in the end I declined the offer. The grass wasn't greener, for a year later they laid off a good chunk of their workers.
My friend makes twice what I do and has bonuses up the wazoo. He also works 60+ hours a week at the office, staying up to 2AM and coming back at 7AM. I could get a job with him if I wanted with similar benefits. Again, I don't, because even with my pay, I work... 40 hours a week. Management isn't a slave driver and timelines are reasonable.
Maybe I could make more money. I know I can, but if I have to go from 40 hour workweeks to 60 hour workweeks and I only get a 20% increase in pay, that's not more money in the end.
It's a similar problem to why so few electronics devices that come with wallwarts actually have any indication on the wallwart what the device it came with is.
That's because power supplies are left to companies who design power supplies (perhaps you've heard of Delta, or MeanWell, or others?).
For devices with built-in power supplies, you'll find the company often subcontracts the power supply to some third party.
For branded adapters like the ones Apple makes, same deal - except Apple asks Delta (I think they use Delta) to put it in their branded box.
For everything else, you can buy from China a wallwart made to your specifications - voltage, current, plug on the end, and whether you want it to be "universal" where the wallwart comes with adapters for all the plugs. Heck, they'll even ask if you want it pre-boxed or loose, and ship it to you by the thousands for a very low attractive price. If you requested universal supplies, they'll ship you in another box baggies of the adapters (or if they're pre-boxed, in the box).
Wallwarts are super cheap to manufacture - and yes, they can be had for under a dollar each in quantity. It's generally cheap enough that if it fails, most companies will just ship you a new one free of charge under warranty.
No one designs this sort of stuff nowadays - it's all subcontracted out to those companies who know better. Switching supplies can be a bit of a dark art and they're so cheap you shouldn't be doing it anyways. Especially since they can design it to pass the safety certifications you need
Dude this isn't 1994. It's 2018. Thanks to Metrics HR MUST filter out people out to reduce turnover. This means exact job title and descriptions for +2 years, no gaps, 3 managerial references and no more than 3 employers in 5 years, oh and the magical peace of paper called a degree.
Not meet all 3 of the requirements above? No interview therefore no job.
If you're applying for a job through HR, you're doing it wrong. Certainly through college and your first job you may have to, but that's where it ends. From there you should be networking - getting to know people. Get to know the coworkers that leave for other companies. Be the person they find indispensible.
You either want to be poached (and thus people need to know about you), or to have your name circulated around and to keep in touch with people.
Every company has a hidden list of job openings. They only post a few openings at any one time and those attract resumes like flies to honey. HR will filter those resumes out.
So if you don't have what it takes to get past the filter, you need to bypass it completely, which means going through the back door. Just like every company has hidden job openings, practically every company has a referral program - a program in which employees may recommend people to join the company. And you know what? Those recommendations override the HR filter - when a manager gets your resume and a glowing review from the employee, they tend to skip right to the interview stage.
It is at the recommendation stage and interview stage where you can clarify your shortcomings - you may be missing experience in X, but you have Y and Z which shows you can pick up X quickly.
And yes, this also means having to attend the after work hours events - the goal is to mingle and hobnob with people, get to know them and what they do. If you're lucky, you'll find someone who's doing something really really interesting and get their contact information so you can find out more and build a relationship that could end up with them asking you to join their team. And it doesn't hurt to befriend a CEO or two either.
You can go through the front door and fight with thousands of other applicants. Or with a little socializing you can get jobs in the back door. It's not what you know, it's who you know.
Then again, considering how many empty seats I see in theaters in the rare case where I go, filling any of those seats at all should be an increase in profits for the theaters, even if they're only getting a fraction of what the ticket price is.
I'm not sure this is true. It would be if the theatre was charged per showing but unlike in an airline, a theatre doesn't have to pay for an empty seat. I believe the theatre usually pays either a fixed cost per viewer or a percentage per viewer not a fixed cost per showing. If it's a fixed cost per viewer then the theatre can't sell the vacant seats for cheap.
It's percentage of ticket price.
For first couple of weeks, the percentage is around 100% for most studios. That is, all the money the theatre takes in for tickets goes to the studios. (It's why ticket prices creep up - the studios demand it)
Don't feel bad - the theatres make it up in concession sales during the first couple of weeks which sell out the theatre - there's enough people paying that it makes a profit.
For weeks after that, the percentage goes down to reflect declining attendance and now the theatre needs some of the ticket price to offset declining concession sales. So the third week it may drop to 80% goes to the studios, 20% of the ticket price goes to the theatre and declines from then on.
Empty seats cost the theatre nothing other than opportunity costs - i.e., the theatre should've moved it into a smaller theatre so less seats are empty and a larger showing can use the larger theatre and sell more seats.
These subscription services rely on the fact that they'll likely see increased concession sales which offset the loss in ticket revenue - i.e.,. the studios expect the ticket sales to be full price tickets even if bought at a discount (someone's gotta make it up and it isn't the studio). It's why the wisest of them will include discounted concessions - because no one wants to be the guy who is without popcorn while their friends are munching away, and the subscriber getting free popcorn or a discount will buy, forcing hte others to buy as well.
This perfectly sums up the modern american nanny state. Take away something we've enjoyed for generations, replace it with an amazingly crappy knockoff that's "safer" while destroying the entire spirit to the point where it's completely pointless.
And emphasize how great it is for a private company.
I don't know who will be watching these glorified LED throwies, but I'll be out watching fireworks tonight. At least as long as I still can in the land of the free and the home of the brave.
That would be true, if you're talking about the bumpkin fireworks display that you buy from the store.
No, the firework displays you talk of are professional done - and these have very strict rules on where they can launch, where they shoot up, and where the audience can be. These ones are also strictly controlled and permitted and do not generally have to abide by firework laws.
About the only complaint anyone has with them (excepting disasters) is the environmental impact of sending up all that black powder and heavy metals, usually seen as the huge cloud of smoke that accumulates and is visible midway through the show.
Those drone shows Intel puts on are in general alternatives.
Oh, and most fireworks companies are private as well. Though none is as big as Intel - most are family run. Some even have their own manufacturing facilities, but that generally requires a lot of work and is reserved for a few special ones they can't buy from China. (Seriously, the rules on manufacturing firework is pretty strict, meant to avoid explosions and other risks that can level a city block. Of course, China has no such provisions and well, yeah, accidents do happen).
Of course, tastes do change as well. I was never a fan of fireworks - the booms just never really did it for me, and although it was pretty, they were still limited in effect. 500 drones doing light draw animations can be more interesting.
One of the reasons why Concorde was so expensive was that there were only a few built, to fly very specific routes that were mostly over water, and even so, there were generally fairly long subsonic legs at the beginning and end. Those are expensive because supersonic aircraft tend to drink fuel when flying subsonic, and if you have to do it at the end of your flight you have to carry all that extra fuel all the way.
The big problem with Concorde was the noise. That limited the routes it could fly. When Concorde was designed, 19 airlines were lining up at the chance to buy one. They knew that getting from point A to point B quicker was worth the extra cost (which meant higher ticket prices and more profit).
However, the noise the Concorde makes made it impossible to do overland flights that everyone wanted, which is why it was limited to New York to London routes over water. Had it been quieter and able to do New York to LA and other routes, that would be far more appealing.
And yes, people would pay for the privilege - imagine going from LA to New York, conducting your business, then flying back from New York to LA in time to see the kids to bed. What would've been a 3 day business trip got compressed to 1. (Or 2 day whirlwind tour).
"Now this is a reason for bothering courts, unleashing lawyers and inquisite online activities: finding out who dared to desecrate a few unfinished seconds of a silly show."
+1
I was thinking the same thing. Seriously? One *PARTIAL* SCENE? Who cares??? I understand it might be annoying and could be worse later. But I would think there are far better "witch hunts" to be performed. Consider it free marketing as a trailer and move on.
Well, just because it's one part of a scene now, doesn't mean it's a complete script later, or a whole episode, etc.
The scene is already leaked - there's nothing you can do to fix that fact. The horse has left. However, what you can do is try to prevent future leaks from happening. At the very least, you'll find out which of the production or FX companies you hired is responsible and blackball them.
None of that changes the fact that tariffs are hurting the US, particularly smaller companies that actually try to make stuff there instead of outsourcing to China. It's ironic that the ones now suffering from component shortages and higher material costs are the ones providing jobs to Americans, while the people who already moved manufacturing to China are much less affected.
These are the US tariffs on electronic components, by the way, not the retaliatory ones from China. The pain from the Chinese ones will come on top, along with the EU ones.
Trade is not a zero sum game that Trump thinks it is. That's the problem. Buying something from overseas does not mean that money is gone from the country - trade is bilateral. We outsource manufacturing of electronics to China, and the Chinese then buy luxury vehicles from the US. Or did, until the conglomerates spun out all the luxury vehicle sales.
The other problem is the "losing out" problem - trade surpluses and deficits will always happen. But the goal is to have them be relatively small with respect to total trade - $20M is tiny if total trade is $1B.
And that's why Trump's tariffs hurt - Trump looks at the small number - "oh no, we have a deficit" and ignores that it's tiny compared to the trillion dollars or more economic activity it generates on both sides. You put in tariffs to equalize that small amount, and no big surprise, but it ripples into the bigger picture. It's like the old saying "penny wise, pound foolish" where you are so happy you saved a few pennies on something, even though in doing so it actually costs you a few dollars. Like the guy who drives across town in traffic to save 5 cents a liter (roughly 20 cents a gallon).
It also will hurt a ton because the US economy is so big and has benefited so much from trade.
If trade was so terrible, third world countries would not be clamoring for it.
No, it's not funny on the Internet, but the reason it isn't funny is because it is so believable. Trump has a history of appointing people to key positions who have absolutely zero background in the area that they are supposed to be running, like naming DeVos as secretary of education. Shatner at least has some appreciation of what NASA does, so it wouldn't be his worst appointment by a fairly large margin.
Hell, Trump himself is unqualified to talk about trade, or business, having neither run a successful business (seriously, how do you lose money on a casino?) Heck, he doesn't even bother trying to educate himself on what he doesn't know. He's just trot out the exact same industry lines that everyone keeps saying that isn't quite the turth, but a good soundbite. (E.g., "regulations are bad", or "environmental regulations cost jobs" and the like).
Hell, given his praise for dictators as "good people" and the like, and his disdain for leaders of what is regarded as the free world, one even wonders if he's taken an American History class
When reality has become so bizarre that no sane person would have believed it possible just a few years ago, any attempt at separating truth from fiction is impossible without significant amounts of independent research, which is why fake news is spreading so easily. We brought it on ourselves.
Even worse is when Trump purposefully redefined "Fake News" as "news that makes me look bad". Yes, that's what he calls Fake News. Anytime a headline puts him in a less than flattering light, it's fake news. Doens't matter if it's completely true, either. As long as it makes Trump look bad, i t's Fake News.
Likewise, the ability to only speak the truth is hard - there are so many nuances that half truths really proliferate.
One thing Trump is good at, is his speech training. He was groomed which is why he never uses joiner or filler words like "um" or "ah". When his mouth runs faster than his brain, he's been conditioned to simply repeat the last words over and over again. It's why you have him repeating things like "this'll make them happy, really happy, they'll be happy" That's his speech training going into action.
The unfortunate side effect is that repetition is considered to be one way to get your point across so every time he does that, he's basically reinforcing the point until people believe it's true.
The same thing is happening to firearms dealers doing online sales (which have all the same safeguards and background checks as in-person sales â" and actually more traceability because credit card sales are more traceable than cash sales).
Presumably these payment processors won't allow legal marijuana sales either. The realm of socially disapproved behavior grows larger every day.
This creates a big, expanding opportunity for a payment processor who won't bow to the Twitter mobs and their blacklists and witch hunts.
No, it's actually all about risk management. Payment processors hate chargebacks - it's extra processing on everyone's end, and your chargeback rate (as well as industry chargeback rate) determines your processing fees.
Naturally, adult content is one area of concern, because when wife opens the Visa bill and sees a charge to "Hot Sluts.com" she'd confront hubby, who will deny signing up (yeah right, he did do it), and then get on the phone and be all innocent and say it was a fraudulent charge. And then starts all the arguments and generally speaking, the porn site will relent and allow the chargeback through.
Firearms are less of an issue in general, though if it's a kid buying up guns to shoot up his school behind his parent's back, well, the parent might be spending a few hours on the phone with Visa wondering about those charges.
Likewise same for marijuana sales - charges to "Weed-R-Us" might get some denials of the truth.
You see, these activities are restricted not because they are "socially unacceptable" but because the person doing it doesn't want others to know about it (i.e., it's socially unacceptable to them). I'm sure firearms charges are fine in a family who goes hunting a lot, and if they're open and honest, so would things like marijuana and adult content.
It's all about risk and risk management - how likely is this business likely to be engaged in something that people will force chargebacks to? Chargebacks cause a lot of risk the in system - if the chargeback fails (merchant out of business or funds cannot be locked for it), then all the banks are on the hook for the money. And if the charge is legitimate, then it's a lot of wasted effort on everyone's side, and that effort has to be paid for.
It's less about social unacceptability and more about users doing things that they will later deny. Thus even if you ran the loosest payment processor in the world and allowed all these activities, chances are you'd get bogged down handling chargebacks to your clients
It's not your client's fault, really. It's your client's customers. The same way every parent denies their son does {drugs|guns|etc) even though they were just caught with (drugs|guns|etc) and how they're the best kid in the world with straight A's and impeccable record.
nd if I go to buy the files online instead, from ITMS or Amazon, or if I stream it or whatever, in most cases the source of those files was the same badly-mastered CD
This is no longer true.
Sites and services like iTunes and such have guidelines,on how to properly encode the audio for their services (see "Mastered for iTunes"). For a good chunk of iTunes' catalog, this means the studios went back to the original studio masters and re-mastered and encoded them.
In the early days of digital services, yes, they ripped the CDs and encoded those, but this hasn't been true for nearly a decade when digital became "a thing".
It's also why there is no longer anything known as "studio master" - the same album will be mastered 6 or 7 times - you have the CD release, the LP release (both of which are mastered differently), there is also a high-res release, and also an iTunes and other digital release as well. Granted, some mastering engineers are lazy and reuse the same master (this is especially true for high-res releases, which lack provenance and can be upscaled CD releases), and often there's a mastering for PDM (aka DSD) releases versus PCM releases.
And nevermind the crap that is MQA that despite its promises, is actually a lossy encoding that does worse than FLAC. (MQA encoding has two parts - first is downsampling to 44.1/16 or 48/16 from the original source which may be anything up to 192/24, then it's taking that CD-friendlier stream and "encoding" it with a proprietary algorithm to make it smaller, but you can use FLAC and do better. The downsampling is special but you lose 3 or so bits to the "MQA" data, making it sound like crap when played back in "compatible" mode).
OK, I can understand ghosting an employer pre-employment stage - i.e., they send an offer and you didn't respond. It's rude, but understandable at times.
However, I don't understand ghosting an employer AFTER you've accepted the position. That's very rude - the employer likely stopped interviewing other people or searching (and turned down others inquiring about the position) as you said you've filled it. The employer also would've committed resources in getting you "onboarded" and such.
I can understand the harried HR person not responding - they probably went through a thousand candidates and it can be dizzying to figure out which one y ou were of them. But once the pool has shrunk from thousands down to a handful, there is no reason to ghost anymore - at this point you're down to a point where candidates are no longer just a piece of paper on the desk.
And yes, once it gets to the point where an appointment is made, barring personal emergencies, the appointment should be kept unless notification is given and acknowledged. If you made an appointment to be interviewed and someone made you your dream job offer? You don't ignore the job interview, you kindly make a phone call, send an email, send a registered letter, somehow you get in contact with the HR manager and cancel. Likewise on the other side, if you found your perfect candidate, then you call the other candidates and cancel.
I consider it rude to ghost if someone has committed resources. Like an appointment for an interview - the company would commit resources in seeking people to do the interview, and the application would commit resources in blocking out the time in their schedule to attend the interview. Here, if you need to cancel or reschedule, you notify the other party immediately to free up those resources. Likewise if you agreed to take on a job and don't show up, the company committed resources into getting your desk and other equipment ready for you (and likely a manager has committed time to show you around).
The only excuse would be an emergency, at which point you notify the other party as soon as reasonable. If you got hit by a bus the day you were supposed to start, unfortunate, but not rude. Just make sure someone tells the company within reason. Likewise, if the company burns down, I would expect that once the embers have been put out and the company gets up and running, then HR would contact you on options (it would be rude if the company took the opportunity to "forget" about you).
The only time ghosting is ever acceptable is when resources are not committed - if you send your resume off and hear no reply, I'm going to assume you are not interested. Or if a recruiter cold calls. But once a relationship has formed, interviews done (time and money spent on both sides), etc, it is never acceptable to ghost - either HR has to say no, or the applicant should reject the offer.
Why do you need your exchanges to be hardened? Keep your wallet to yourself.
Because exchanges typically require you to submit a lot of rather personal information to use... there aren't many that will simply cut you a cheque. They all insist on some sort of banking information and many are required to submit tax information as well.
Naturally, if the exchange can't be trusted with the information, that's a lot of juicy personal identify theft information ready for stealing.
Buying bitcoin is remarkably simple - plenty of places will take your debit card info and charge you for it (though again, you might have second thoughts about giving them access to your bank account). Converting it back out still remains a challenge.
How many hours a week do you work between your day job and Upwork?
I'm kinda sad to see working two jobs becoming more normal in the UK. Presumably you keep the main job because Upwork full time is a bad idea.
I say it probably happened because of Brexit - the amount of uncertainty it's caused (remember, it takes effect next year) has caused a LOT of companies to retrench and re-evaluate. A number of UK companies are opening offices on the EU mainland in order to continue getting EU work, and many EU companies are wary of giving work to UK companies fearing what could happen.
You would think that after a couple of years of economic turmoil (UK economic growth, once an envy in the EU, has stalled to barely above even, and the Pound's value has dropped significantly) that the government would've done major effort in trying to eliminate uncertainty, but I suspect they hit an impasse - and with the EU holding all the chips, they're not wanting to relent.
On the other hand, I hear the real estate market has significantly cooled...
I'd also bet his regular job is no longer full time - either local contract work as a freelancer, or what used to be a full time job made part time because the company just doesn't have enough work.
Slashdot Mirror
Tesla is a strange one, but I'm going to guess you are North American - because almost everywhere else, Tesla uses the Type 2 socket which makes it compatible with many other public charging stations. It is speculated that the Model 3 outside North America will have a CCS2 port, which would make it compatible with both public Type2 and CCS2, as well as existing Tesla chargers/superchargers. It's a shame they didn't go down this route in North America, because they've now backed themselves into a corner due to how many cars and chargers use the existing North American socket type.
It's not an odd connector. It's a NEMA 14-50 socket, which gives you 240V @ 50A. It's a common household plug, used for electric ranges. It's also used for RVs that want 50A service. And thanks to that, there are common adapters to NEMA 14-30 (dryer plug).
So it's somewhat interesting, given you can go into an RV park and charge your Tesla as well (most RV parks provide a choice of 15/20A @ 115V, 30A and 50A service)
Most homes will have 1 or 2 of each plug, and an electrician can easily add more - the plugs are cheap. so they're one of the few EVs where the charger is practically free compared to the electrician.
Yes, Windows is still a monopoly. It's why there are special editions of Windows without Media Player and IE by default for EU regions. And even Korea gets its own version (The K version).
The big thing that MIcrosoft did was stop leveraging - that is, using their power in one area to distort the marked in another - like bundling a browser and media player with the operating system, which distorts both markets and why Microsoft offers versions of Windows with both disabled by default.
Google is attempting to leverage a much-desired feature (i.e., Play store) to insert their other services (e.g., YouTube, GMail, Drive, etc) along side it by forcing manufacturers who want Play Store to make those apps one-tap away at most, punishing OEMs and ODMs who are Play-licensed to not produce any vanilla Android without Play (see Amazon) and of course, defaulting to Google search.
Nokia a few years ago wanted to do just that - replace Google Maps with their HERE Maps. Google slapped them down - they could not license Play unless Google Maps was a part of it, and it had to be default - you can't bundle your product in and have it be default.
Of all the manufacturers and ODMs out there, only Samsung has possibly the most complete collection of replacement apps, so they could theoretically dump Google at any time.
Apple is not "far bigger". Kind of hard to be "biggest" offernder when 4 Androids are sold for every iPhone. And all those Androids have one common theme - all the manufacturers have to obey Google's rules to put Google's stuff on it.
And the reality of life is, if you don't have the Play Store, you don't have crap.
You have to remember this probably came out of a long-simmering debate when Nokia tried to release their phone with their maps instead of Google's...
And Apple may be a monopoly, but it's only one phone out of a sea of phones. Just like you don't complain when you buy a Ford Mustang and it has a Ford motor inside of it, or that Ford dealerships only provide Ford options even if you wanted that JVC headunit.
Well, the 21700 is not really a new battery. It's a new battery size, yes, just like you have the 18650 battery, Tesla "invented" the 21700 battery. If you can't read the number, the first two digits it eh diameter of the cell in millimeters, so Tesla bumped up the cell diameter to 21mm from 18mm. The last 3 digits are the cell length in tents of a millimeter (or hundreds of a micrometer, to be precise). So the cell length went from 65mm to 70mm.
It doesn't seem like much, but the battery capacity increases significantly because of these minor tweaks. It also means battery management is a lot easier because there are fewer cells to actually manage.
No, they haven't.
If the number of players is X, and the number of total players is Y, then when you divide, X/Y, the number of significant figures is actually infinite as both are "exact" counts. You can't have 3.1 players, for example, so there's no uncertainty digit. You have 3 players exactly. Likewise, there are a total of 10 players. Both values have infinite precision because they are exact values .
Significant figure rules apply when you have an uncertainty digit, like something takes 5.2 seconds to accomplish. In this case, the .2 is an uncertain digit but reflects the general system of precision we can get out of human timing. (The actual time may be 5.5 seconds, which is within the uncertainty digit).
There is no Unicode problem. /. supports Unicode just fine.
There's a Unicode troll problem though, which is why /. has a rather strict whitelist of allowed characters. The trolls were constantly abusing the Unicode control codepoints and adornment codepoints to screw up the page and turn it all black, reverse text, etc.
The back end supports Unicode completely and has for nearly 2 decades now. Unfortunately, nearly 2 decades ago, the admins were having to delete comments (or mod them down) continuously that abused Unicode and turned the site useless.
You'll find it on any new website with brand new shiny comments section impacted by this and they rapidly either shut down comments or filters as well. Unicode is not easy and there are many issues with it, see all the iPhones and Androids crashing or doing other things when sent some strange Unicode text.
Which may be a bad assumption. I buy forever stamps because I send so few letters. I don't track what the postage rate (they're "forever" - good for one first class letter regardless of the current postage rate and when you bought it).
I'm sure a lot of them are simply sitting in the stamp roll of homes and I know Costco sold them in rolls of 100. Plus, since the value of those stamps goes up over time (when has postage every decreased?) I use the regular stamps first, so I probably have a good chunk of new in package stamps
Not just parents, government and everyone else.
And they have a right to - kids these days are starting to have hearing loss that you'd find in career musicians or seniors. And they're still kids. The next generation is growing up deaf.
That's why volume limiters are imposed on all portable devices nowadays - kids are turning up the volume way too loud and they're going deaf exceeding the exposure limits of their ears.
Given hearing loss takes years to manifest themselves, by the time you realize you have it, it's too late - you can't take back those years of listening to music just a bit too loud at that point.
No, it was murdered. The leveraged buyout basically killed it.
Toys R Us was actually a decently run company. They held their own against against big-box retailers like Target, Walmart, etc, they also had a decent webstore (it was one of the first online stores, at that) to compete against the Amazons of the world too.
The problem with the leveraged buyout is none of that matters - the leveraged buyout basically hung a huge anchor around its neck, such that instead of being able to invest in the business to compete (which it did so handily), it had to keep paying out tons of money in interest to service the debt. This works great, but a little hiccup in cash flow means you're circling the drain. Just a slightly slow quarter and you're screwed. And that's what happened.
That's why we call it murdered - because without the leveraged buyout, it was holding its own despite the onslaught of Walmart, Target, Amazon and others.
Company Man explains it much more clearly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Yes, Amazon and Target and Walmart and others had an effect, But they had an effect on every other store as well.
No, Apple and Qualcomm have microarchitecture licenses (as do a few other companies. Marvell has the original license inherited from Intel who got it from Compaq via DEC). In this case, all Apple and Qualcomm get are the instruction sets and validation suite. They have complete freedom to design the CPU core as they wish. Apple's ARM cores are some of the fastest on the market. Qualcomm had their own 32-bit core, but now their 64-bit cores are derived from ARM's 64-bit designs. Marvell has XScale, but I haven't heard much from them as of late. I think they just use it as a network management processor.
Other ARM licensees like RockChip, Allwinner, Broadcom, etc, license the blocks only. They can assemble the blocks to form an SoC, but they have to buy it pretty much as a black box. They get the IP core and can synthesize it using tools, but thats as far as it goes. They can't tweak it at all.
I can't remember if Samsung has a microatchitecture license or not - I think they do as Exynos of late beats the crap out of Qualcomm's offerings. (Alas, Apple's last year chip still beats the current Exynos which beats Qualcomm's latest 835 chip).
I think Samsung needed the help more to they can get their Exynos up to Apple's performance levels.
The real problem is of course, how far away you are from the fab. Apple works with TSMC and Samsung to get their designs done for the fab, so you can tweak things a lot to get your yields in your favor. Samsung knows their own fabs so they can tweak as well. Qualcomm Kyro cores are derived from ARM's cores, so I think that's why they work (they're probably tuned for the fabs Qualcomm uses). Everyone else gets generic synthesizable and cannot tune it heavily for the fab, so you get great performance, but it's out of a generalized core.
Beyond a certain dollar figure, more money doesn't buy more happiness (around $72K or so). And surprise surprise, salary isn't generally the biggest factor in a job anymore. Sure it's a part, but people aren't chasing jobs just to make a couple more thousand dollars a year.
After that, quality of life starts becoming a big issue. Sure, work at an American company if dollars is all you really care about. But soon, you start wanting to live. Soon, chasing the dollar isn't all that important anymore - perhaps having some time off work so you can enjoy those dollars, or try something new. Suddenly, working 80 hours a week is less appealing.
My job pays well, and I'm probably on the lower end. Sure I could chase a job and make more money, but I realized I wasn't getting much benefit. An American company locally offered me a job with a 20% bump in pay, but was basically minimum everything in perks and benefits (eating a good 5% or more of that pay bump over what I had) and then I realized if I took it, I'd have to get my own car (+ gas, insurance, maintenance) to commute which ate up basically the rest of the pay bump and all for naught. They wouldn't budge on the perks or benefits (super cheap to them), nor on the pay, so in the end I declined the offer. The grass wasn't greener, for a year later they laid off a good chunk of their workers.
My friend makes twice what I do and has bonuses up the wazoo. He also works 60+ hours a week at the office, staying up to 2AM and coming back at 7AM. I could get a job with him if I wanted with similar benefits. Again, I don't, because even with my pay, I work... 40 hours a week. Management isn't a slave driver and timelines are reasonable.
Maybe I could make more money. I know I can, but if I have to go from 40 hour workweeks to 60 hour workweeks and I only get a 20% increase in pay, that's not more money in the end.
That's because power supplies are left to companies who design power supplies (perhaps you've heard of Delta, or MeanWell, or others?).
For devices with built-in power supplies, you'll find the company often subcontracts the power supply to some third party.
For branded adapters like the ones Apple makes, same deal - except Apple asks Delta (I think they use Delta) to put it in their branded box.
For everything else, you can buy from China a wallwart made to your specifications - voltage, current, plug on the end, and whether you want it to be "universal" where the wallwart comes with adapters for all the plugs. Heck, they'll even ask if you want it pre-boxed or loose, and ship it to you by the thousands for a very low attractive price. If you requested universal supplies, they'll ship you in another box baggies of the adapters (or if they're pre-boxed, in the box).
Wallwarts are super cheap to manufacture - and yes, they can be had for under a dollar each in quantity. It's generally cheap enough that if it fails, most companies will just ship you a new one free of charge under warranty.
No one designs this sort of stuff nowadays - it's all subcontracted out to those companies who know better. Switching supplies can be a bit of a dark art and they're so cheap you shouldn't be doing it anyways. Especially since they can design it to pass the safety certifications you need
If you're applying for a job through HR, you're doing it wrong. Certainly through college and your first job you may have to, but that's where it ends. From there you should be networking - getting to know people. Get to know the coworkers that leave for other companies. Be the person they find indispensible.
You either want to be poached (and thus people need to know about you), or to have your name circulated around and to keep in touch with people.
Every company has a hidden list of job openings. They only post a few openings at any one time and those attract resumes like flies to honey. HR will filter those resumes out.
So if you don't have what it takes to get past the filter, you need to bypass it completely, which means going through the back door. Just like every company has hidden job openings, practically every company has a referral program - a program in which employees may recommend people to join the company. And you know what? Those recommendations override the HR filter - when a manager gets your resume and a glowing review from the employee, they tend to skip right to the interview stage.
It is at the recommendation stage and interview stage where you can clarify your shortcomings - you may be missing experience in X, but you have Y and Z which shows you can pick up X quickly.
And yes, this also means having to attend the after work hours events - the goal is to mingle and hobnob with people, get to know them and what they do. If you're lucky, you'll find someone who's doing something really really interesting and get their contact information so you can find out more and build a relationship that could end up with them asking you to join their team. And it doesn't hurt to befriend a CEO or two either.
You can go through the front door and fight with thousands of other applicants. Or with a little socializing you can get jobs in the back door. It's not what you know, it's who you know.
It's percentage of ticket price.
For first couple of weeks, the percentage is around 100% for most studios. That is, all the money the theatre takes in for tickets goes to the studios. (It's why ticket prices creep up - the studios demand it)
Don't feel bad - the theatres make it up in concession sales during the first couple of weeks which sell out the theatre - there's enough people paying that it makes a profit.
For weeks after that, the percentage goes down to reflect declining attendance and now the theatre needs some of the ticket price to offset declining concession sales. So the third week it may drop to 80% goes to the studios, 20% of the ticket price goes to the theatre and declines from then on.
Empty seats cost the theatre nothing other than opportunity costs - i.e., the theatre should've moved it into a smaller theatre so less seats are empty and a larger showing can use the larger theatre and sell more seats.
These subscription services rely on the fact that they'll likely see increased concession sales which offset the loss in ticket revenue - i.e.,. the studios expect the ticket sales to be full price tickets even if bought at a discount (someone's gotta make it up and it isn't the studio). It's why the wisest of them will include discounted concessions - because no one wants to be the guy who is without popcorn while their friends are munching away, and the subscriber getting free popcorn or a discount will buy, forcing hte others to buy as well.
That would be true, if you're talking about the bumpkin fireworks display that you buy from the store.
No, the firework displays you talk of are professional done - and these have very strict rules on where they can launch, where they shoot up, and where the audience can be. These ones are also strictly controlled and permitted and do not generally have to abide by firework laws.
About the only complaint anyone has with them (excepting disasters) is the environmental impact of sending up all that black powder and heavy metals, usually seen as the huge cloud of smoke that accumulates and is visible midway through the show.
Those drone shows Intel puts on are in general alternatives.
Oh, and most fireworks companies are private as well. Though none is as big as Intel - most are family run. Some even have their own manufacturing facilities, but that generally requires a lot of work and is reserved for a few special ones they can't buy from China. (Seriously, the rules on manufacturing firework is pretty strict, meant to avoid explosions and other risks that can level a city block. Of course, China has no such provisions and well, yeah, accidents do happen).
Of course, tastes do change as well. I was never a fan of fireworks - the booms just never really did it for me, and although it was pretty, they were still limited in effect. 500 drones doing light draw animations can be more interesting.
The big problem with Concorde was the noise. That limited the routes it could fly. When Concorde was designed, 19 airlines were lining up at the chance to buy one. They knew that getting from point A to point B quicker was worth the extra cost (which meant higher ticket prices and more profit).
However, the noise the Concorde makes made it impossible to do overland flights that everyone wanted, which is why it was limited to New York to London routes over water. Had it been quieter and able to do New York to LA and other routes, that would be far more appealing.
And yes, people would pay for the privilege - imagine going from LA to New York, conducting your business, then flying back from New York to LA in time to see the kids to bed. What would've been a 3 day business trip got compressed to 1. (Or 2 day whirlwind tour).
Well, just because it's one part of a scene now, doesn't mean it's a complete script later, or a whole episode, etc.
The scene is already leaked - there's nothing you can do to fix that fact. The horse has left. However, what you can do is try to prevent future leaks from happening. At the very least, you'll find out which of the production or FX companies you hired is responsible and blackball them.
Trade is not a zero sum game that Trump thinks it is. That's the problem. Buying something from overseas does not mean that money is gone from the country - trade is bilateral. We outsource manufacturing of electronics to China, and the Chinese then buy luxury vehicles from the US. Or did, until the conglomerates spun out all the luxury vehicle sales.
The other problem is the "losing out" problem - trade surpluses and deficits will always happen. But the goal is to have them be relatively small with respect to total trade - $20M is tiny if total trade is $1B.
And that's why Trump's tariffs hurt - Trump looks at the small number - "oh no, we have a deficit" and ignores that it's tiny compared to the trillion dollars or more economic activity it generates on both sides. You put in tariffs to equalize that small amount, and no big surprise, but it ripples into the bigger picture. It's like the old saying "penny wise, pound foolish" where you are so happy you saved a few pennies on something, even though in doing so it actually costs you a few dollars. Like the guy who drives across town in traffic to save 5 cents a liter (roughly 20 cents a gallon).
It also will hurt a ton because the US economy is so big and has benefited so much from trade.
If trade was so terrible, third world countries would not be clamoring for it.
Hell, Trump himself is unqualified to talk about trade, or business, having neither run a successful business (seriously, how do you lose money on a casino?) Heck, he doesn't even bother trying to educate himself on what he doesn't know. He's just trot out the exact same industry lines that everyone keeps saying that isn't quite the turth, but a good soundbite. (E.g., "regulations are bad", or "environmental regulations cost jobs" and the like).
Hell, given his praise for dictators as "good people" and the like, and his disdain for leaders of what is regarded as the free world, one even wonders if he's taken an American History class
Even worse is when Trump purposefully redefined "Fake News" as "news that makes me look bad". Yes, that's what he calls Fake News. Anytime a headline puts him in a less than flattering light, it's fake news. Doens't matter if it's completely true, either. As long as it makes Trump look bad, i t's Fake News.
Likewise, the ability to only speak the truth is hard - there are so many nuances that half truths really proliferate.
One thing Trump is good at, is his speech training. He was groomed which is why he never uses joiner or filler words like "um" or "ah". When his mouth runs faster than his brain, he's been conditioned to simply repeat the last words over and over again. It's why you have him repeating things like "this'll make them happy, really happy, they'll be happy" That's his speech training going into action.
The unfortunate side effect is that repetition is considered to be one way to get your point across so every time he does that, he's basically reinforcing the point until people believe it's true.
No, it's actually all about risk management. Payment processors hate chargebacks - it's extra processing on everyone's end, and your chargeback rate (as well as industry chargeback rate) determines your processing fees.
Naturally, adult content is one area of concern, because when wife opens the Visa bill and sees a charge to "Hot Sluts.com" she'd confront hubby, who will deny signing up (yeah right, he did do it), and then get on the phone and be all innocent and say it was a fraudulent charge. And then starts all the arguments and generally speaking, the porn site will relent and allow the chargeback through.
Firearms are less of an issue in general, though if it's a kid buying up guns to shoot up his school behind his parent's back, well, the parent might be spending a few hours on the phone with Visa wondering about those charges.
Likewise same for marijuana sales - charges to "Weed-R-Us" might get some denials of the truth.
You see, these activities are restricted not because they are "socially unacceptable" but because the person doing it doesn't want others to know about it (i.e., it's socially unacceptable to them). I'm sure firearms charges are fine in a family who goes hunting a lot, and if they're open and honest, so would things like marijuana and adult content.
It's all about risk and risk management - how likely is this business likely to be engaged in something that people will force chargebacks to? Chargebacks cause a lot of risk the in system - if the chargeback fails (merchant out of business or funds cannot be locked for it), then all the banks are on the hook for the money. And if the charge is legitimate, then it's a lot of wasted effort on everyone's side, and that effort has to be paid for.
It's less about social unacceptability and more about users doing things that they will later deny. Thus even if you ran the loosest payment processor in the world and allowed all these activities, chances are you'd get bogged down handling chargebacks to your clients
It's not your client's fault, really. It's your client's customers. The same way every parent denies their son does {drugs|guns|etc) even though they were just caught with (drugs|guns|etc) and how they're the best kid in the world with straight A's and impeccable record.
This is no longer true.
Sites and services like iTunes and such have guidelines,on how to properly encode the audio for their services (see "Mastered for iTunes"). For a good chunk of iTunes' catalog, this means the studios went back to the original studio masters and re-mastered and encoded them.
In the early days of digital services, yes, they ripped the CDs and encoded those, but this hasn't been true for nearly a decade when digital became "a thing".
It's also why there is no longer anything known as "studio master" - the same album will be mastered 6 or 7 times - you have the CD release, the LP release (both of which are mastered differently), there is also a high-res release, and also an iTunes and other digital release as well. Granted, some mastering engineers are lazy and reuse the same master (this is especially true for high-res releases, which lack provenance and can be upscaled CD releases), and often there's a mastering for PDM (aka DSD) releases versus PCM releases.
And nevermind the crap that is MQA that despite its promises, is actually a lossy encoding that does worse than FLAC. (MQA encoding has two parts - first is downsampling to 44.1/16 or 48/16 from the original source which may be anything up to 192/24, then it's taking that CD-friendlier stream and "encoding" it with a proprietary algorithm to make it smaller, but you can use FLAC and do better. The downsampling is special but you lose 3 or so bits to the "MQA" data, making it sound like crap when played back in "compatible" mode).
OK, I can understand ghosting an employer pre-employment stage - i.e., they send an offer and you didn't respond. It's rude, but understandable at times.
However, I don't understand ghosting an employer AFTER you've accepted the position. That's very rude - the employer likely stopped interviewing other people or searching (and turned down others inquiring about the position) as you said you've filled it. The employer also would've committed resources in getting you "onboarded" and such.
I can understand the harried HR person not responding - they probably went through a thousand candidates and it can be dizzying to figure out which one y ou were of them. But once the pool has shrunk from thousands down to a handful, there is no reason to ghost anymore - at this point you're down to a point where candidates are no longer just a piece of paper on the desk.
And yes, once it gets to the point where an appointment is made, barring personal emergencies, the appointment should be kept unless notification is given and acknowledged. If you made an appointment to be interviewed and someone made you your dream job offer? You don't ignore the job interview, you kindly make a phone call, send an email, send a registered letter, somehow you get in contact with the HR manager and cancel. Likewise on the other side, if you found your perfect candidate, then you call the other candidates and cancel.
I consider it rude to ghost if someone has committed resources. Like an appointment for an interview - the company would commit resources in seeking people to do the interview, and the application would commit resources in blocking out the time in their schedule to attend the interview. Here, if you need to cancel or reschedule, you notify the other party immediately to free up those resources. Likewise if you agreed to take on a job and don't show up, the company committed resources into getting your desk and other equipment ready for you (and likely a manager has committed time to show you around).
The only excuse would be an emergency, at which point you notify the other party as soon as reasonable. If you got hit by a bus the day you were supposed to start, unfortunate, but not rude. Just make sure someone tells the company within reason. Likewise, if the company burns down, I would expect that once the embers have been put out and the company gets up and running, then HR would contact you on options (it would be rude if the company took the opportunity to "forget" about you).
The only time ghosting is ever acceptable is when resources are not committed - if you send your resume off and hear no reply, I'm going to assume you are not interested. Or if a recruiter cold calls. But once a relationship has formed, interviews done (time and money spent on both sides), etc, it is never acceptable to ghost - either HR has to say no, or the applicant should reject the offer.
Because exchanges typically require you to submit a lot of rather personal information to use... there aren't many that will simply cut you a cheque. They all insist on some sort of banking information and many are required to submit tax information as well.
Naturally, if the exchange can't be trusted with the information, that's a lot of juicy personal identify theft information ready for stealing.
Buying bitcoin is remarkably simple - plenty of places will take your debit card info and charge you for it (though again, you might have second thoughts about giving them access to your bank account). Converting it back out still remains a challenge.
I say it probably happened because of Brexit - the amount of uncertainty it's caused (remember, it takes effect next year) has caused a LOT of companies to retrench and re-evaluate. A number of UK companies are opening offices on the EU mainland in order to continue getting EU work, and many EU companies are wary of giving work to UK companies fearing what could happen.
You would think that after a couple of years of economic turmoil (UK economic growth, once an envy in the EU, has stalled to barely above even, and the Pound's value has dropped significantly) that the government would've done major effort in trying to eliminate uncertainty, but I suspect they hit an impasse - and with the EU holding all the chips, they're not wanting to relent.
On the other hand, I hear the real estate market has significantly cooled...
I'd also bet his regular job is no longer full time - either local contract work as a freelancer, or what used to be a full time job made part time because the company just doesn't have enough work.