Yet here we are 20 years later with a full employment economy.
This only qualifies as full employment by the badly skewed and unhelpful unemployment statistic that the US BLS uses to hide how badly dysfunctional our economy really is.
The best available metric is the U-6 rate which currently stands at about 8%. This metric still does not include those persons who were forced into early retirement by the great recession and are now permanently out of the workforce, but not willingly. Estimates are that early retirements added approximately 1.5% to the unemployment at the height of the recession, but these numbers are not counted anywhere once the affected individual reaches the official retirement age. This has nonetheless Caused permanent damage to the economy, and ruined the retirements of some 3 million baby boomers.
The simple fact is that the 2001 crash coupled with the great recession did tremendous damage to everyone who is not upper middle class or higher.
When all is said and done, the great recession never ended for those in the bottom 25% of the income bracket. That is why there is still so much hatred in this country, and why there was enough venom to elect an openly racist, misogynist, con artist to the highest office in the land.
An obvious question is "why Uber". Compared to the cost of an ambulance, a Taxi is still dirt cheap.
Because most places you can expect a good hour wait for a taxi. Taxi service has always been piss-poor, much of that being due to the medallion system. It is one of the few real examples of bad regulation. As much as Uber consists of a bunch of criminals and scumbags (The executives, not the drivers), the industry they are disrupting is far worse.
Please. This was going to happen no matter what administration was in.
Just like the dismantling of net neutrality was going to happen under a democrat?
Both parties are beholden to the large donors, there is no doubt about that, but republicans are proud of their heritage of taking from the poor and giving to the rich. Trickle down economics doesn't work, and yet they insist on continuing these broken policies every time they are in office. Net neutrality and mega-corporation mergers are just symptoms of the larger problem.
The republican party sold themselves to the voters as the party of fiscal conservancy, and yet they just voted to increase the budget deficit by $150B per year, and *give* more than half of that money to the wealthiest people. That is not fiscal conservancy, that is maxing out your credit cards to buy luxury items and pretending the bill will never come due. If republicans were really about fiscal conservancy, they would cut the military budget down to the same levels as the rest of the world. The US spends more money on the military than the next highest 8 countries combined. The republicans could have cut defense spending by that $150B per year, and given that money to the rich and been heros, instead they insist that those who must foot the bill are the poorest Americans (by cutting their health care), and all of our children (by racking up a huge deficit). If ever there was proof that the tea-party was bullshit, every single tea party congressperson voted for this thing. Your personal share of the bill for this tax cut will be $7,500. Add that on top of the existing debt, and every single american owes close to $75,000. Someday that bill will come due, just like it did in Greece and Spain. Remember that the next time you go out to vote for one of these guys.
You mock Rust, but it's the language of the future.
Care to place a wager on that? I won $10k when a misguided colleague believed that C# was going to replace C and C++ within 5 years and I wouldn't mind another windfall
It's all about finding non-threatening parallels that the person you're speaking to can relate to. I mean, yeah, we can "not bother", but that doesn't really help the stereotype of the socially-ignorant, aloof nerd, does it?
By far and gone the best explanation I have ever heard is the following:
Programming is identical to writing a set of instructions that explains to a 5 year old how to tie their shoes. Children only reliably follow a very small set of instructions, and often they have individual quirks that no manual in the world can explain...
Try telling 5 year olds that the grump sitting in the corner is exactly why Santa can't bring them what they most wanted for Christmas and see what happens. And pass me the popcorn.
Funny, I have four kids, and most of the time they get what my wife and I want them to have; which only rarely coincides with what they had asked for. I can't say any of them have ever whined to me about not having something they asked for and didn't get. I must have simply gotten lucky.
Horse$#!7. A good parent understands that part of parenting is explaining the real world to your kids in a controlled environment so they can absorb the reality. There are two facits to that. The first is that a young child should never be given everything they want. Below the age of about 5, They simply do not have the cognition to equate their behavior throughout the year with a single regard in December. They haven't developed the ability to put cause and effect together when they are that far spaced in time. After 5 years of age, they are old enough to begin to appreciate the cause and effect, but they are also old enough to start learning that the reason why they are not going to get that $FADITEM for Christmas is because it costs way too much. Maybe you give them enough money to buy $FADITEM at normal retail prices and tell them they can wait until the price comes down (as it inevitably will), or they can use the money to buy something else right now. You will have just taught them a very valuable lesson about money and wise spending. Doing things your way is the reason we have so damn many precious snowflakes in this world.
Because Mozilla pushed the update as part of the normal daily updates, without even so much as a pop-up warning that it was going to happen.
The same thing happened to me. One afternoon last week, one of my kids comes to me telling me his computer is acting strange. After much digging I discover two things: First, the computer has some kind of malware on it that is doing some naughty shit. Luckily, I have the kids computers segmented from the rest of the network and each other, so the damage is contained. The second thing I discover is that Firefox on the kids computers automatically updated to version 57. My kids cannot have done it because they do not have permissions to install or run unauthorized software. I checked my own machine and sure enough, it had automatically updated to 57 as well. Any other time, I might not have cared so much, but this time it was criitical because Firefox 57 is not compatible with NoScript yet, and so the #^@&ing idiots at Mozilla thought the ideal solution to that problem was to just do the upgrade anyway and ignore the fact that NoScript did not work, by simply removing the Add-on altogether. Worst of all, all of this happened silently. Those imbeciles caused my sons computer to get owned by taking down an important layer of defense I had constructed to keep those computers safe.
The important lesson here is that NoScript is more valuable to me than Firefox, and having been so burned once, I will never again touch another Mozilla product as long as I live. NoScript was the only thing keeping our computers on Firefox. Since I obviously cant trust Mozilla to do the right thing, I have no choice but to move to an alternative. I don't like ScriptSafe as much as I liked NoScript, but Firefox is forever off the table, and that leaves microsoft or google.
The update ran automatically at some point. The failure of any of the plugins in the new version should have been an upgrade failure, or should have produced a confirmation dialog before proceeding. It did neither. It simply started up with no indication that the plugin was no longer present. Had the update mechanism done one of the two things I just mentioned, Mozilla and I would still be friends. Instead they chose the worst possible option.
It seems to be worse still because Mozilla was aware directly that NoScript would not be ready for the update, so they did not accidentally forget that NoScript would not work, they deliberately ignored the problem.
Because of the browsing habits of children, this behavior put my computers directly at risk. The simple fact that Mozilla deliberately ignored the security implications of their decision means that they can't be trusted ever again. Even Microsoft only ends up screwing their customers through incompetence, Mozilla appears to have taken it to the level of malice.
When the dumb &#$%s at mozilla pushed the firefox 57 update, NoScript was not compatible, so what did they do? They just silently disabled it. That is absolutely unacceptable behavior. They just created a foaming at the mouth hater out of me. Much as I don't like any of the other alternatives, turning off defense mechanisms without even so much as a warning has earned them my undying hatred. Even apple or Microsoft have not been able to accomplish that. From this day forward, I will never so much as touch anything written or maintained by them, and will go a long way out of my way to make sure people understand exactly why they shouldn't either.
Yep, guns allow us to all vote more...or something...are you really from this planet?
Our country was founded at the point of a gun, as were pretty much all other countries. When it comes time to select a new government for, the group that did the fighting and dying gets to make the rules, not the wank alls who sit on the sidelines waiting to see who wins.
In point of fact, without the threat of violence you, as an individual, have no political power whatsoever. The only thing that ensures that our votes matter is the implied threat of what happens when/if they are no longer counted. Keep that in mind when you call for the removal of our collective right to bear arms.
HAHAHAHA "moral outrage". As if. The real moral outrage is how week after endless week, another mass shooting occurs, and you 'merkins are too fucking stupid to repeal your second amendment.
The only thing left that stands between us and the Trump version of Putins Russia *is* the second amendment. If we give that up now, might as well not even bother pretending the rest even matter anymore.
Self-protect High Energy Laser Demonstrator (SHiELD)
Can we stop with the dumb-ass acronyms now. Its like the people coming up with these names have the mentality of a 6 year old, and the names are designed to sell to those with the thought process of a four year old.
I'm not sure what is more disappointing: The fact that there are people who are paid to try this kind of marketing, or the fact that it works.
Have you seen how much crap is added to C++? It's a bloated, complex beast full of hacks to fix other hacks. C++ needs to die.
I live and breathe C++. Its a perfectly fine language. Except a few minor quirks, the language behaves quite nicely. Perhaps you are basing your experience from the STL nightmare that existed circa 2000. Even Microsofts STL implementation is now reasonably compliant with the standard, and the standard is quite good. If you are continuing to have trouble with the language, then I would submit that you are probably not a very good programmer, and the behavior of the language (which requires you to have a good grasp on how computers actually work), is probably mysterious to you, but each and every behavior of C++ is there for a very good reason. Other languages hide these ugly details from you, and the very act of hiding these details means that the language is sub-par because the devil is in those very same details. I will grant you, C++ has a steeper learning curve than most languages, but the performance of the code you can write in C++ is vastly superior to all languages except maybe C. There are constructs I can create with template metaprogramming that even C cannot match the performance of. Proper use of the STL allows you to minimize the need for memory management, but like any C derivative, the option of going all pointer-fu is there if you need it.
In all, C is a language for professionals, C++ is a language for experts. Everything else is for amateurs.
Sure, they haven't totally rendered hammers obsolete (for one thing, they suck at removing nails) but neither will Cx completely replace C.
Cx, (or Go or Rust, or any other fad damned thing) will not replace C. The reason is simple. C is perfectly fine for most of what it is used for, and there is a huge amount of legacy code (plus toolchains, IDEs, and much much more) that exist in the C domain. Its not good enough that the Next Big Thing (tm) be better than C, it has to be better enough to warrant the extra cost of converting existing C code, C toolchains, C environments and the simple fact that there are uncounted millions of programmers out there who, almost without exception, know C. If I am going to start a new project (or more importantly, if I am going to pay someone else to start a new project) that falls into one of the areas that are traditionally C strongholds (such as embedded systems programming, kernel level systems design, device drivers, etc...) you can pretty well bet that it is going to be C that is used. Anyone trying to talk me out of it had better have a damn good reason, since I know the risks of using C, and I have no idea what the risks are of using XYZ new fad.
The much better way is to make it illegal for anyone in Congress or C level management of a publicly traded company to own any stock. Keeps them honest and forces the companies to pay them fully taxable salaries rather than company stock where gains are taxed much lower.
Flag as Inappropriate
How does that work for a founder of the company? Presumably one of the founders is going to own stock, and if the founders of the company can't be in leadership positions, the company will never get off the ground...
These investors were stupid enough to invest 185million in a startup that was trying to compete with a free operating system for other peoples phones. These investors are obviously too stupid to have even done rudimentary research on the idea/team they were investing in, so I can't see any particular reason that they should be on th ball enough to even know what a self driving car is, much less whether it is a good investment or not.
Hopefully Ireland decides to tell the EU to go to hell and bail along with Britain and soon-to-be Catalan.
Hopefully governments get smart about this, and start insisting that any company that does business within their borders pays their tax rate. I'm all for these companies being able to deduct taxes paid elsewhere from their taxes due, but any company that does business in the US should pay the US tax rate. If they owe 15%, they should pay 15% to somebody.
I could not agree with that more. How much should you spend on security specific efforts well many would argue: X = risk probability * cost of a breach
In most cases, the company never pays the full cost of a breach because their customer are the victims, not them. The only way to ensure that this calculus is done correctly is to ensure that the company bears at least the true cost of the breach. The most effective way to do this is through fines that meet or exceed the actual cost of the failure. The problem with regulations in the United states, is not that they exist, but that they are not properly sized for the actual behavior they are there to prevent. Fines resulting from regulation must potentially be large enough to bankrupt a company if the violation is egregious enough. If they are not, then by definition they are not performing their intended function in society.
There are currently 3 credit bureaus: Equifax, Experian, and Transunion. Going from 3 to 2 would reduce competition, and raise prices. That is not in the best interest of consumers. It is already clear that everyone directly involved in this debacle is going to lose their jobs, and Equifax will be under completely different management. So what is the point of shutting Equifax down and putting 9500 employees out of work?
If this breach were to be fully exploited, two things would happen:
First, the fraud that could be perpetrated would be on the order of tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars. That would be more than the company is worth for the next 100 years. That cost would not be coming out of the CEOs pockects, but from John Q. Taxpayer like every other bailout in history.
Second, it would undermine the value of all credit check services because they all use the same information to verify identity. The result would be that no lender could actually trust that the credit applicant was actually who they said they were. The result would be countrywide meltdown of credit for individuals.
At the end of the day, letting one of the three fail would raise prices for consumers, some percentage of which would pay for better security, and you could bet your favorite genital component that the companies would take data security seriously after watching equifax get liquidated from the failure. This is what should have been done to the banks in 2009, even if it would have cost the economy. In the banks case, they should have been nationalized and the entire management structure put out of a job. Make sure that everyone (including the shareholders) who had a stake in the mess looses their shirts as a warning to others. In Equifax's case, it is simpler to just fine them out of existence.
Luckily for us, it is looking more and more like the breach was done by a foreign government. While this does present certain foreign policy problems, it is far more manageable than had the breach been done by organized crime.
You need to get a firmer grip on reality. Equifax's net income last year was $488M. There were 143M people compromised. So even $3 per person per year would likely bankrupt them.
I think that was the point.
Before you try to beat the odds make sure you can survive the odds beating you - despair.com
maybe they're combining solar + motion + heat + radiowaves harvesting and maybe they're just running a 386dx running vnc between the watch and a smartphone or maybe it's just a scam
After a bit more digging, They say it requires at least an hour a day with > 10k lux. Here in New York, that would require about 1.5 hours of direct sunlight in the summer and almost 4 hours of direct sunlight in the winter. On a cloudy day, it would be about 3x that long. Note that both of those are with the panel surface perfectly perpendicular to the sun. If you move the surface 30 degree off angle, you double the time required. Indoor lighting, as stated, is worthless. So you either have to have an external charging system for the thing, or put it under a sunlamp for an hour a day... Neither of those are very appealing, since I can just get a watch that use QI charging, and achieve the same effect for far less money, and get one that can power a modern processor.
As a kickstarter campaign, this seems to be quite successful, but keep in mind they only had to find 600 people willing to part with $150 each. As a viable company, I think they will discover that after the first dozen or so scathing reviews, their sales (if they ever achieve anything significant) will tank and that will be the end of them.
Slashdot Mirror
Yet here we are 20 years later with a full employment economy.
This only qualifies as full employment by the badly skewed and unhelpful unemployment statistic that the US BLS uses to hide how badly dysfunctional our economy really is.
The best available metric is the U-6 rate which currently stands at about 8%. This metric still does not include those persons who were forced into early retirement by the great recession and are now permanently out of the workforce, but not willingly. Estimates are that early retirements added approximately 1.5% to the unemployment at the height of the recession, but these numbers are not counted anywhere once the affected individual reaches the official retirement age. This has nonetheless Caused permanent damage to the economy, and ruined the retirements of some 3 million baby boomers.
The simple fact is that the 2001 crash coupled with the great recession did tremendous damage to everyone who is not upper middle class or higher.
When all is said and done, the great recession never ended for those in the bottom 25% of the income bracket. That is why there is still so much hatred in this country, and why there was enough venom to elect an openly racist, misogynist, con artist to the highest office in the land.
An obvious question is "why Uber". Compared to the cost of an ambulance, a Taxi is still dirt cheap.
Because most places you can expect a good hour wait for a taxi. Taxi service has always been piss-poor, much of that being due to the medallion system. It is one of the few real examples of bad regulation. As much as Uber consists of a bunch of criminals and scumbags (The executives, not the drivers), the industry they are disrupting is far worse.
Please. This was going to happen no matter what administration was in.
Just like the dismantling of net neutrality was going to happen under a democrat?
Both parties are beholden to the large donors, there is no doubt about that, but republicans are proud of their heritage of taking from the poor and giving to the rich. Trickle down economics doesn't work, and yet they insist on continuing these broken policies every time they are in office. Net neutrality and mega-corporation mergers are just symptoms of the larger problem.
The republican party sold themselves to the voters as the party of fiscal conservancy, and yet they just voted to increase the budget deficit by $150B per year, and *give* more than half of that money to the wealthiest people. That is not fiscal conservancy, that is maxing out your credit cards to buy luxury items and pretending the bill will never come due. If republicans were really about fiscal conservancy, they would cut the military budget down to the same levels as the rest of the world. The US spends more money on the military than the next highest 8 countries combined. The republicans could have cut defense spending by that $150B per year, and given that money to the rich and been heros, instead they insist that those who must foot the bill are the poorest Americans (by cutting their health care), and all of our children (by racking up a huge deficit). If ever there was proof that the tea-party was bullshit, every single tea party congressperson voted for this thing. Your personal share of the bill for this tax cut will be $7,500. Add that on top of the existing debt, and every single american owes close to $75,000. Someday that bill will come due, just like it did in Greece and Spain. Remember that the next time you go out to vote for one of these guys.
You may want to look up the definition of geosynchronous...
He was responding to a suggestion to use LEO sats to reduce the latency. LEO sats cannot be geosync. Right back at ya.
You mock Rust, but it's the language of the future.
Care to place a wager on that? I won $10k when a misguided colleague believed that C# was going to replace C and C++ within 5 years and I wouldn't mind another windfall
Yeah, you're right. You should claim a refund.
I did. I returned the product and got a full refund. I now use another vendors product, and they get the money from the limited tracking I permit.
It's all about finding non-threatening parallels that the person you're speaking to can relate to. I mean, yeah, we can "not bother", but that doesn't really help the stereotype of the socially-ignorant, aloof nerd, does it?
By far and gone the best explanation I have ever heard is the following:
Programming is identical to writing a set of instructions that explains to a 5 year old how to tie their shoes. Children only reliably follow a very small set of instructions, and often they have individual quirks that no manual in the world can explain...
The parallels are uncanny.
Try telling 5 year olds that the grump sitting in the corner is exactly why Santa can't bring them what they most wanted for Christmas and see what happens. And pass me the popcorn.
Funny, I have four kids, and most of the time they get what my wife and I want them to have; which only rarely coincides with what they had asked for. I can't say any of them have ever whined to me about not having something they asked for and didn't get. I must have simply gotten lucky.
.
Four times
.
Spoken like a non-parent.
Horse$#!7. A good parent understands that part of parenting is explaining the real world to your kids in a controlled environment so they can absorb the reality. There are two facits to that. The first is that a young child should never be given everything they want. Below the age of about 5, They simply do not have the cognition to equate their behavior throughout the year with a single regard in December. They haven't developed the ability to put cause and effect together when they are that far spaced in time. After 5 years of age, they are old enough to begin to appreciate the cause and effect, but they are also old enough to start learning that the reason why they are not going to get that $FADITEM for Christmas is because it costs way too much. Maybe you give them enough money to buy $FADITEM at normal retail prices and tell them they can wait until the price comes down (as it inevitably will), or they can use the money to buy something else right now. You will have just taught them a very valuable lesson about money and wise spending. Doing things your way is the reason we have so damn many precious snowflakes in this world.
Why did you allow your users to upgrade then?
Because Mozilla pushed the update as part of the normal daily updates, without even so much as a pop-up warning that it was going to happen.
The same thing happened to me. One afternoon last week, one of my kids comes to me telling me his computer is acting strange. After much digging I discover two things: First, the computer has some kind of malware on it that is doing some naughty shit. Luckily, I have the kids computers segmented from the rest of the network and each other, so the damage is contained. The second thing I discover is that Firefox on the kids computers automatically updated to version 57. My kids cannot have done it because they do not have permissions to install or run unauthorized software. I checked my own machine and sure enough, it had automatically updated to 57 as well. Any other time, I might not have cared so much, but this time it was criitical because Firefox 57 is not compatible with NoScript yet, and so the #^@&ing idiots at Mozilla thought the ideal solution to that problem was to just do the upgrade anyway and ignore the fact that NoScript did not work, by simply removing the Add-on altogether. Worst of all, all of this happened silently. Those imbeciles caused my sons computer to get owned by taking down an important layer of defense I had constructed to keep those computers safe.
The important lesson here is that NoScript is more valuable to me than Firefox, and having been so burned once, I will never again touch another Mozilla product as long as I live. NoScript was the only thing keeping our computers on Firefox. Since I obviously cant trust Mozilla to do the right thing, I have no choice but to move to an alternative. I don't like ScriptSafe as much as I liked NoScript, but Firefox is forever off the table, and that leaves microsoft or google.
why is it Moziillas fault?
The update ran automatically at some point. The failure of any of the plugins in the new version should have been an upgrade failure, or should have produced a confirmation dialog before proceeding. It did neither. It simply started up with no indication that the plugin was no longer present. Had the update mechanism done one of the two things I just mentioned, Mozilla and I would still be friends. Instead they chose the worst possible option.
It seems to be worse still because Mozilla was aware directly that NoScript would not be ready for the update, so they did not accidentally forget that NoScript would not work, they deliberately ignored the problem.
Because of the browsing habits of children, this behavior put my computers directly at risk. The simple fact that Mozilla deliberately ignored the security implications of their decision means that they can't be trusted ever again. Even Microsoft only ends up screwing their customers through incompetence, Mozilla appears to have taken it to the level of malice.
WHO THE HELL CARES ABOUT SPEED?!
When the dumb &#$%s at mozilla pushed the firefox 57 update, NoScript was not compatible, so what did they do? They just silently disabled it. That is absolutely unacceptable behavior. They just created a foaming at the mouth hater out of me. Much as I don't like any of the other alternatives, turning off defense mechanisms without even so much as a warning has earned them my undying hatred. Even apple or Microsoft have not been able to accomplish that. From this day forward, I will never so much as touch anything written or maintained by them, and will go a long way out of my way to make sure people understand exactly why they shouldn't either.
Yep, guns allow us to all vote more...or something...are you really from this planet?
Our country was founded at the point of a gun, as were pretty much all other countries. When it comes time to select a new government for, the group that did the fighting and dying gets to make the rules, not the wank alls who sit on the sidelines waiting to see who wins.
In point of fact, without the threat of violence you, as an individual, have no political power whatsoever. The only thing that ensures that our votes matter is the implied threat of what happens when/if they are no longer counted. Keep that in mind when you call for the removal of our collective right to bear arms.
HAHAHAHA "moral outrage". As if. The real moral outrage is how week after endless week, another mass shooting occurs, and you 'merkins are too fucking stupid to repeal your second amendment.
The only thing left that stands between us and the Trump version of Putins Russia *is* the second amendment. If we give that up now, might as well not even bother pretending the rest even matter anymore.
Self-protect High Energy Laser Demonstrator (SHiELD)
Can we stop with the dumb-ass acronyms now. Its like the people coming up with these names have the mentality of a 6 year old, and the names are designed to sell to those with the thought process of a four year old.
I'm not sure what is more disappointing: The fact that there are people who are paid to try this kind of marketing, or the fact that it works.
Have you seen how much crap is added to C++? It's a bloated, complex beast full of hacks to fix other hacks. C++ needs to die.
I live and breathe C++. Its a perfectly fine language. Except a few minor quirks, the language behaves quite nicely. Perhaps you are basing your experience from the STL nightmare that existed circa 2000. Even Microsofts STL implementation is now reasonably compliant with the standard, and the standard is quite good. If you are continuing to have trouble with the language, then I would submit that you are probably not a very good programmer, and the behavior of the language (which requires you to have a good grasp on how computers actually work), is probably mysterious to you, but each and every behavior of C++ is there for a very good reason. Other languages hide these ugly details from you, and the very act of hiding these details means that the language is sub-par because the devil is in those very same details. I will grant you, C++ has a steeper learning curve than most languages, but the performance of the code you can write in C++ is vastly superior to all languages except maybe C. There are constructs I can create with template metaprogramming that even C cannot match the performance of. Proper use of the STL allows you to minimize the need for memory management, but like any C derivative, the option of going all pointer-fu is there if you need it.
In all, C is a language for professionals, C++ is a language for experts. Everything else is for amateurs.
Sure, they haven't totally rendered hammers obsolete (for one thing, they suck at removing nails) but neither will Cx completely replace C.
Cx, (or Go or Rust, or any other fad damned thing) will not replace C. The reason is simple. C is perfectly fine for most of what it is used for, and there is a huge amount of legacy code (plus toolchains, IDEs, and much much more) that exist in the C domain. Its not good enough that the Next Big Thing (tm) be better than C, it has to be better enough to warrant the extra cost of converting existing C code, C toolchains, C environments and the simple fact that there are uncounted millions of programmers out there who, almost without exception, know C. If I am going to start a new project (or more importantly, if I am going to pay someone else to start a new project) that falls into one of the areas that are traditionally C strongholds (such as embedded systems programming, kernel level systems design, device drivers, etc...) you can pretty well bet that it is going to be C that is used. Anyone trying to talk me out of it had better have a damn good reason, since I know the risks of using C, and I have no idea what the risks are of using XYZ new fad.
The much better way is to make it illegal for anyone in Congress or C level management of a publicly traded company to own any stock. Keeps them honest and forces the companies to pay them fully taxable salaries rather than company stock where gains are taxed much lower. Flag as Inappropriate
How does that work for a founder of the company? Presumably one of the founders is going to own stock, and if the founders of the company can't be in leadership positions, the company will never get off the ground...
I'd like to sign up with this VC of yours. Seems like a fucking cool cat.
You can't, He ran out of money a long time ago...
how does this even fly with the investors?
These investors were stupid enough to invest 185million in a startup that was trying to compete with a free operating system for other peoples phones. These investors are obviously too stupid to have even done rudimentary research on the idea/team they were investing in, so I can't see any particular reason that they should be on th ball enough to even know what a self driving car is, much less whether it is a good investment or not.
Hopefully Ireland decides to tell the EU to go to hell and bail along with Britain and soon-to-be Catalan.
Hopefully governments get smart about this, and start insisting that any company that does business within their borders pays their tax rate. I'm all for these companies being able to deduct taxes paid elsewhere from their taxes due, but any company that does business in the US should pay the US tax rate. If they owe 15%, they should pay 15% to somebody.
I could not agree with that more. How much should you spend on security specific efforts well many would argue: X = risk probability * cost of a breach
In most cases, the company never pays the full cost of a breach because their customer are the victims, not them. The only way to ensure that this calculus is done correctly is to ensure that the company bears at least the true cost of the breach. The most effective way to do this is through fines that meet or exceed the actual cost of the failure. The problem with regulations in the United states, is not that they exist, but that they are not properly sized for the actual behavior they are there to prevent. Fines resulting from regulation must potentially be large enough to bankrupt a company if the violation is egregious enough. If they are not, then by definition they are not performing their intended function in society.
There are currently 3 credit bureaus: Equifax, Experian, and Transunion. Going from 3 to 2 would reduce competition, and raise prices. That is not in the best interest of consumers. It is already clear that everyone directly involved in this debacle is going to lose their jobs, and Equifax will be under completely different management. So what is the point of shutting Equifax down and putting 9500 employees out of work?
If this breach were to be fully exploited, two things would happen:
First, the fraud that could be perpetrated would be on the order of tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars. That would be more than the company is worth for the next 100 years. That cost would not be coming out of the CEOs pockects, but from John Q. Taxpayer like every other bailout in history.
Second, it would undermine the value of all credit check services because they all use the same information to verify identity. The result would be that no lender could actually trust that the credit applicant was actually who they said they were. The result would be countrywide meltdown of credit for individuals.
At the end of the day, letting one of the three fail would raise prices for consumers, some percentage of which would pay for better security, and you could bet your favorite genital component that the companies would take data security seriously after watching equifax get liquidated from the failure. This is what should have been done to the banks in 2009, even if it would have cost the economy. In the banks case, they should have been nationalized and the entire management structure put out of a job. Make sure that everyone (including the shareholders) who had a stake in the mess looses their shirts as a warning to others. In Equifax's case, it is simpler to just fine them out of existence.
Luckily for us, it is looking more and more like the breach was done by a foreign government. While this does present certain foreign policy problems, it is far more manageable than had the breach been done by organized crime.
You need to get a firmer grip on reality. Equifax's net income last year was $488M. There were 143M people compromised. So even $3 per person per year would likely bankrupt them.
I think that was the point.
Before you try to beat the odds make sure you can survive the odds beating you - despair.com
maybe they're combining solar + motion + heat + radiowaves harvesting and maybe they're just running a 386dx running vnc between the watch and a smartphone or maybe it's just a scam
After a bit more digging, They say it requires at least an hour a day with > 10k lux. Here in New York, that would require about 1.5 hours of direct sunlight in the summer and almost 4 hours of direct sunlight in the winter. On a cloudy day, it would be about 3x that long. Note that both of those are with the panel surface perfectly perpendicular to the sun. If you move the surface 30 degree off angle, you double the time required. Indoor lighting, as stated, is worthless. So you either have to have an external charging system for the thing, or put it under a sunlamp for an hour a day... Neither of those are very appealing, since I can just get a watch that use QI charging, and achieve the same effect for far less money, and get one that can power a modern processor.
As a kickstarter campaign, this seems to be quite successful, but keep in mind they only had to find 600 people willing to part with $150 each. As a viable company, I think they will discover that after the first dozen or so scathing reviews, their sales (if they ever achieve anything significant) will tank and that will be the end of them.