In a sense, yes. If Alphabet had gifted the employees $500, the employees would have received such a declaration on the W2 and therefore would have to pay taxes on that $500 gift. Instead, Alphabet gifts the charity, so the employees do not receive such a declaration so they don't have to pay taxes on the gift.
I'm no accountant, but as I understand the tax world, these two are equivalent to all parties:
What isn't clear to me is how a Chromebook is valued for these transactions. They could be valued at retail... or at COGS... but there's also services that may come along with them, right?
The only thing we regularly print is shipping documents and invoices for customers that don't have electronic invoice acceptance. Outside of these items, maybe... 1-5 pages per month are printed?
All incoming paper documents are scanned and shredded.
I haven't paid a "long distance" rate for over 20 years. Prisons should just drop phone companies altogether and go with someone like Vonage for dramatically cheaper domestic calling.
Many of the items you mention as "win-wins" are myths.
While it is true for some, most people are not more productive at home. There are more distractions. There are fewer opportunities to engage with coworkers, and the management resources are further away. (yes, management is supposed to be a resource to help you get things done more efficiently. If that's not the case, then someone is doing something wrong)
Most workers don't consider the commute time to be "company time" so when they move away from that commute time, they don't automatically give it back to the company. They take it for themselves.
Finally, until someone comes up with the "whiteboard killer app" (and I've used lots of candidates), nothing beats a whiteboard for communication.
For the most part, the only people who are more productive with work-at-home options are workaholics since they have even more opportunities to get stuff done. But even or them, the lack of office time can be counterproductive if they aren't coming in on a regular basis.
Everyone at my small company has one. They aren't cheap, but neither are oscilloscopes, good computers, multi-monitor setups, office space, lab benches, etc.
Not everyone here adjusts them regularly, but I'd say around half of us do. It's good to adjust sit/stand posture multiple times a day. Also, for some workflows, we're in and out of our office / lab for multiple iterations and having the workspace at our standing height is just more convenient.
We also use the stand mode quite a bit for sharing / desk meetings / etc. I'm the one in charge of buying office furniture and it's unlikely we will buy anything else in the near future for office desks.
I don't think anthropomorphism is the correct term to apply here. The term applies to attributing human characteristics (intelligence, emotion, two hands, two legs, etc) to things that don't have them. But AI would presumably have a compatible intelligence and possibly emotion as well. Maybe even hands, legs, etc but that's largely irrelevant.
Furthermore, you might have things twisted around a bit. "Biological ends" may not be all that different from "machine ends" -- quest for power / energy / food, survival, and maybe even reproduction depending on the depth of emotion. Just because we're a biological vessel for intelligence doesn't necessarily mean that an intelligence in another vessel won't seek similar ends.
The sad truth is that we still don't know enough about intelligence to reliably untangle chicken and egg in all cases.
MavenLink is rather nice. For long-running projects, I think something with Gantt charting is an absolute necessity and most programmer "issue trackers" don't have Gantts. But this is mostly due to their mapping to methodology. Gantts come from waterfall methodologies and that doesn't settle with an agile process.
Software works well for agile processes but there are a lot of tasks and projects out there that are much more tuned to waterfall methods. Long-running projects, for example, can have tons of dependencies. Dependencies don't exactly play well in the agile process.
In the end, I think a combination of the two works well for some organizations. Waterfall / Gantt / MavenLink works well for the big-picture view where teams work concurrently and sequentially. Agile works well for small-grained tasks that are too numerous or tedious to incorporate into the waterfall view.
I'm pretty sure my old Atari 400 and Atari 800XL both ran from DC power supplied from a brick. What's new about that? Nearly every laptop runs from DC power and has a built-in battery.
They are a multi-billion dollar company dealing with an app running on one of (if not the) most relevant and widely-used smartphones in the market. They should dedicate a team specifically for the iPhone. And if Apple changes the API every week, they would be wise to rewrite the app every week just to maintain that market.
I don't care for Facebook and have my issues with Apple, but this is just a business decision on ROI.
First of all, you're setting yourself up with a massive fail should anything in this chain go wrong as all your eggs are in one basket. I could go on, but it's pointless. You haven't thought this scheme all the way through. What if the hard drive goes bad? What if just one or two sectors on this hard drive go bad? What if you get hit by a bus, have a heart attack, get caught in an act of terrorism or act of God? (just realized there isn't much difference between these, hmmmm) Not only is that bad password security, it's just bad IT practice all around.
The discussion was about password security. There's an entirely different discussion about backups, power of attorney, identity theft, medical advanced directives, catastrophe management, etc. You are correct, though -- these are all considerations that require careful evaluation and recognition that they CAN and DO occur.
The only problem with that system is it makes all of those sites unaccessible from literally any other computer in the world, unless you carry the KeePass file around with you.
To a great extent, that's the point. My feeling is that my stuff should be inaccessible from any other computer in the world unless I trust that computer. And representative of my trust of that computer is that my TrueCrypt (and KeePass) files are on it.
Well, not exactly applicable but interesting to the discussion.
I think the point is that consideration must be made for the "location" of the access portal. That is, if anyone with an internet connection can try their key in your lock, you probably want a pretty good lock.
But for access to things that have additional security, the lock quality may be reduced in favor of a key that is easy to remember.
1. Keep a good, long, easy-to-remember passphrase for access to your TrueCrypt partition that sits on a private computer inside your house.
2. Store passwords inside this partition in something like KeePass. The KeePass password doesn't need to be industrial. It should be easy to remember, but non-obvious. You type this password a lot.
3. Keep all internet passwords at maximum strength for the site and make them random from your password generator.
You may be surprised. With the advancements and push they're making on the self-driving car, they're making quite a case to get the captive in-car audience for billions of hours per day. Add HUDs and in-car popups and adverts and you have a whole lot of new advertising revenue.
Top it off with a whole lot of patents because, as far as I know, they're the only ones working on the self-driving car with such ferocity. They'll be the only channel available.
Argh. Hate it when I do that in posts. I also didn't use the possessive form for "business's". Double-argh.
Seriously though, capitalism was never predicated around petitions. If you want "pure capitalism" to work, then the response is to not buy Apple products....
Secondly, by focussing on Apple you're giving a free-pass to all the other tech companies who are using the exact same supplier. If you boycott Apple, just to be some other products produced by the exact same factory, you're applying absolutely zero pressure to that factory.
I mostly agree. But the petition is a form of action. It gathers support for the concept and puts Apple on notice. Some folks will choose to boycott others won't. But it sends a message to management, forces consideration and maybe a response, and just plain gets the word out to other customers.
Sure, Foxconn is enormous and has other customers. But that doesn't mean Apple doesn't have a tremendous effect on their business practices. Apple may be the punching bag, but you can bet the other Foxconn customers are taking notice and probably applying pressure, too -- just quietly enough that they don't capture the eye and ire of the customers.
Not only is it completely ineffective to hand a signed petitions to some Apple store manager in an attempt to influence the working conditions of an internationally traded public company in China...
Not so. Excuse me, but these are precisely the market forces that are supposed to insight change in "pure capitalism". Pure capitalism and our American brand of government / industry cooperation are essentially bottom-up enterprises where change usually comes from the accumulation of lots of insignificant voices.
I'm curious what alternative you would suggest would insight change? Three chain-wearing ghosts visiting Tim Cook overnight convincing him to change his businesses practices and relationships?
I'm not clear on exactly where you'd like to advance. You don't want to commit to your employer (and only took a 6-month contract) and you don't want to burden yourself with the risks associated with success (by not wanting to start a company). I assume this also means you don't want to partner with someone.
So you want exactly what out of advancement? No more risk. No more commitment. No more responsibility. Just money? Play the lottery.
Why use UV? Why not build a waterproof keyboard that gets sprayed with a disinfectant each time it is retracted? It could be quickly dried and the disinfectant recycled.
For a lower-cost keyboard, I could see UV being an advantage. But for $900, you could do much better.
Glad they removed it just in good taste. Seriously, that's one stupid, long-ass ad. Dumb jingle. Dumb tune. Dumb message. Should have been 4 minutes shorter.
Place your passwords into a secure repository (like KeePass) and keep it updated. Give the password to the repository and other containers (I keep my KeePass in a TrueCrypt container) to someone you trust to execute when you die. An attorney. A trusted friend. Etc.
If required, make the password a two-part thing and give each part to different people.
I think what the O.P. meant was that the handsets (millions of them) could be providing this feedback at all times with just small ancillary data on the uplink. Things like SNR, error rates, etc, could be reported in real-time at all times or selectively enabled by the towers when segments are being measured. This would composite all sorts of users, all sorts of chipsets, photes, locations, etc. With location services enabled, the phones can tell the towers where they are when these measurements come through.
Throw it all up on a fancy visualization and you can get a lot of information over different times of day, weather conditions, etc. No need for a bunch of trucks. Sure, the trucks can provide more information with better measurement equipment. But in many cases, lots of cheap devices can produce better data and fewer expensive devices as long as the proper statistical processing is applied.
Slashdot Mirror
In a sense, yes. If Alphabet had gifted the employees $500, the employees would have received such a declaration on the W2 and therefore would have to pay taxes on that $500 gift. Instead, Alphabet gifts the charity, so the employees do not receive such a declaration so they don't have to pay taxes on the gift.
I'm no accountant, but as I understand the tax world, these two are equivalent to all parties:
1. Alphabet gives employees $500... Employee gives charity $500.
2. Alphabet gives charity $500.
What isn't clear to me is how a Chromebook is valued for these transactions. They could be valued at retail... or at COGS... but there's also services that may come along with them, right?
The only thing we regularly print is shipping documents and invoices for customers that don't have electronic invoice acceptance. Outside of these items, maybe... 1-5 pages per month are printed?
All incoming paper documents are scanned and shredded.
...why not just install a microphone connected to the LINE IN instead of wiring the vibration motor to it as they have done?
I haven't paid a "long distance" rate for over 20 years. Prisons should just drop phone companies altogether and go with someone like Vonage for dramatically cheaper domestic calling.
Many of the items you mention as "win-wins" are myths.
While it is true for some, most people are not more productive at home. There are more distractions. There are fewer opportunities to engage with coworkers, and the management resources are further away. (yes, management is supposed to be a resource to help you get things done more efficiently. If that's not the case, then someone is doing something wrong)
Most workers don't consider the commute time to be "company time" so when they move away from that commute time, they don't automatically give it back to the company. They take it for themselves.
Finally, until someone comes up with the "whiteboard killer app" (and I've used lots of candidates), nothing beats a whiteboard for communication.
For the most part, the only people who are more productive with work-at-home options are workaholics since they have even more opportunities to get stuff done. But even or them, the lack of office time can be counterproductive if they aren't coming in on a regular basis.
Everyone at my small company has one. They aren't cheap, but neither are oscilloscopes, good computers, multi-monitor setups, office space, lab benches, etc.
Not everyone here adjusts them regularly, but I'd say around half of us do. It's good to adjust sit/stand posture multiple times a day. Also, for some workflows, we're in and out of our office / lab for multiple iterations and having the workspace at our standing height is just more convenient.
We also use the stand mode quite a bit for sharing / desk meetings / etc. I'm the one in charge of buying office furniture and it's unlikely we will buy anything else in the near future for office desks.
I don't think anthropomorphism is the correct term to apply here. The term applies to attributing human characteristics (intelligence, emotion, two hands, two legs, etc) to things that don't have them. But AI would presumably have a compatible intelligence and possibly emotion as well. Maybe even hands, legs, etc but that's largely irrelevant.
Furthermore, you might have things twisted around a bit. "Biological ends" may not be all that different from "machine ends" -- quest for power / energy / food, survival, and maybe even reproduction depending on the depth of emotion. Just because we're a biological vessel for intelligence doesn't necessarily mean that an intelligence in another vessel won't seek similar ends.
The sad truth is that we still don't know enough about intelligence to reliably untangle chicken and egg in all cases.
I've never wanted to dump all of my mod points from the last 10 yrs into a single post like I do now.
MavenLink is rather nice. For long-running projects, I think something with Gantt charting is an absolute necessity and most programmer "issue trackers" don't have Gantts. But this is mostly due to their mapping to methodology. Gantts come from waterfall methodologies and that doesn't settle with an agile process.
Software works well for agile processes but there are a lot of tasks and projects out there that are much more tuned to waterfall methods. Long-running projects, for example, can have tons of dependencies. Dependencies don't exactly play well in the agile process.
In the end, I think a combination of the two works well for some organizations. Waterfall / Gantt / MavenLink works well for the big-picture view where teams work concurrently and sequentially. Agile works well for small-grained tasks that are too numerous or tedious to incorporate into the waterfall view.
Perhaps I'm missing the point, but hasn't a similar technique been used in horror movie soundtracks for decades to produce anxiety in viewers?
License what? The ability to run from 12v power?
I'm pretty sure my old Atari 400 and Atari 800XL both ran from DC power supplied from a brick. What's new about that? Nearly every laptop runs from DC power and has a built-in battery.
They are a multi-billion dollar company dealing with an app running on one of (if not the) most relevant and widely-used smartphones in the market. They should dedicate a team specifically for the iPhone. And if Apple changes the API every week, they would be wise to rewrite the app every week just to maintain that market.
I don't care for Facebook and have my issues with Apple, but this is just a business decision on ROI.
First of all, you're setting yourself up with a massive fail should anything in this chain go wrong as all your eggs are in one basket. I could go on, but it's pointless. You haven't thought this scheme all the way through. What if the hard drive goes bad? What if just one or two sectors on this hard drive go bad? What if you get hit by a bus, have a heart attack, get caught in an act of terrorism or act of God? (just realized there isn't much difference between these, hmmmm) Not only is that bad password security, it's just bad IT practice all around.
The discussion was about password security. There's an entirely different discussion about backups, power of attorney, identity theft, medical advanced directives, catastrophe management, etc. You are correct, though -- these are all considerations that require careful evaluation and recognition that they CAN and DO occur.
The only problem with that system is it makes all of those sites unaccessible from literally any other computer in the world, unless you carry the KeePass file around with you.
To a great extent, that's the point. My feeling is that my stuff should be inaccessible from any other computer in the world unless I trust that computer. And representative of my trust of that computer is that my TrueCrypt (and KeePass) files are on it.
Well, not exactly applicable but interesting to the discussion.
I think the point is that consideration must be made for the "location" of the access portal. That is, if anyone with an internet connection can try their key in your lock, you probably want a pretty good lock.
But for access to things that have additional security, the lock quality may be reduced in favor of a key that is easy to remember.
1. Keep a good, long, easy-to-remember passphrase for access to your TrueCrypt partition that sits on a private computer inside your house.
2. Store passwords inside this partition in something like KeePass. The KeePass password doesn't need to be industrial. It should be easy to remember, but non-obvious. You type this password a lot.
3. Keep all internet passwords at maximum strength for the site and make them random from your password generator.
You may be surprised. With the advancements and push they're making on the self-driving car, they're making quite a case to get the captive in-car audience for billions of hours per day. Add HUDs and in-car popups and adverts and you have a whole lot of new advertising revenue.
Top it off with a whole lot of patents because, as far as I know, they're the only ones working on the self-driving car with such ferocity. They'll be the only channel available.
Using incite rather than insight could work ;P
Argh. Hate it when I do that in posts. I also didn't use the possessive form for "business's". Double-argh.
Seriously though, capitalism was never predicated around petitions. If you want "pure capitalism" to work, then the response is to not buy Apple products. ...
Secondly, by focussing on Apple you're giving a free-pass to all the other tech companies who are using the exact same supplier. If you boycott Apple, just to be some other products produced by the exact same factory, you're applying absolutely zero pressure to that factory.
I mostly agree. But the petition is a form of action. It gathers support for the concept and puts Apple on notice. Some folks will choose to boycott others won't. But it sends a message to management, forces consideration and maybe a response, and just plain gets the word out to other customers.
Sure, Foxconn is enormous and has other customers. But that doesn't mean Apple doesn't have a tremendous effect on their business practices. Apple may be the punching bag, but you can bet the other Foxconn customers are taking notice and probably applying pressure, too -- just quietly enough that they don't capture the eye and ire of the customers.
Not only is it completely ineffective to hand a signed petitions to some Apple store manager in an attempt to influence the working conditions of an internationally traded public company in China...
Not so. Excuse me, but these are precisely the market forces that are supposed to insight change in "pure capitalism". Pure capitalism and our American brand of government / industry cooperation are essentially bottom-up enterprises where change usually comes from the accumulation of lots of insignificant voices.
I'm curious what alternative you would suggest would insight change? Three chain-wearing ghosts visiting Tim Cook overnight convincing him to change his businesses practices and relationships?
Maintenance-induced failures are pretty common in the aviation industry. Although a big deal, it's not really news to us.
If you're concerned about data integrity, then keep backups.
If you're concerned about data security, then keep the data encrypted before you store to these sites.
These are simple rules. If you follow the rules, you won't care what happens to sites like this.
I'm not clear on exactly where you'd like to advance. You don't want to commit to your employer (and only took a 6-month contract) and you don't want to burden yourself with the risks associated with success (by not wanting to start a company). I assume this also means you don't want to partner with someone.
So you want exactly what out of advancement? No more risk. No more commitment. No more responsibility. Just money? Play the lottery.
Why use UV? Why not build a waterproof keyboard that gets sprayed with a disinfectant each time it is retracted? It could be quickly dried and the disinfectant recycled.
For a lower-cost keyboard, I could see UV being an advantage. But for $900, you could do much better.
Glad they removed it just in good taste. Seriously, that's one stupid, long-ass ad. Dumb jingle. Dumb tune. Dumb message. Should have been 4 minutes shorter.
Place your passwords into a secure repository (like KeePass) and keep it updated. Give the password to the repository and other containers (I keep my KeePass in a TrueCrypt container) to someone you trust to execute when you die. An attorney. A trusted friend. Etc.
If required, make the password a two-part thing and give each part to different people.
I think what the O.P. meant was that the handsets (millions of them) could be providing this feedback at all times with just small ancillary data on the uplink. Things like SNR, error rates, etc, could be reported in real-time at all times or selectively enabled by the towers when segments are being measured. This would composite all sorts of users, all sorts of chipsets, photes, locations, etc. With location services enabled, the phones can tell the towers where they are when these measurements come through.
Throw it all up on a fancy visualization and you can get a lot of information over different times of day, weather conditions, etc. No need for a bunch of trucks. Sure, the trucks can provide more information with better measurement equipment. But in many cases, lots of cheap devices can produce better data and fewer expensive devices as long as the proper statistical processing is applied.