Ah, I see. So the phone was face-up, on, the UI was visible in the picture, and you could determine that it was a standard consumer interface. Is that correct? Again, I haven't seen the actual photo. A link to it would certainly help.
I'm not familiar with this photo, but I am genuinely curious: how do you know, just from looking at a picture, whether a phone is secured or not? I would have expected that secured and unsecured phones would appear the same. After all, a notable difference in outward appearance would seem to beg for phones that mimic the "safe" appearance in order to gain exposure to sensitive material, and it that difference would advertise that authentic secured phones have likely been exposed to sensitive (hence valuable) information, thus making them worthwhile to target for theft/*ware/etc. Did the phone clearly belong to one of the reporters or something?
Again, maybe it's painfully obvious from the photo whether or not the phone is secure, but given my unfamiliarity, I'd just like to know.
Of course things change and, in the future, may change for the worst (or may not). I don't know how they'll change, and neither do you. I wasn't challenging you about what will happen in the future, though, I was challenging you about the way things "are," which is what you stated. Very clearly, the present state of affairs contradicts your claim. The jobs "are" not leaving.
You say this as though companies would never have though of outsourcing if it wasn't for this one particular grant. Do you really think a one-time, $10,000 grant will suddenly cause a company to say, "Fuck! We've been ignoring India all this time! Let's get on that outsourcing bandwagon!"?
Companies who'd benefit from outsourcing would already, and will continue to, benefit from outsourcing regardless of this proposed grant. Instead of promoting outsourcing, this grant will pretty clearly provide an incentive for a company to ponder, "Hmm. Do I really need Jeff to come in at 9:30 to mess around with spreadsheets, or could he just do that at his home (and earlier)?".
If you want to object to this grant on the basis of business incentives, it's that "and earlier" part that should concern you: companies aren't going to take the grant and say, "Yay outsourcing!", they're going to take the grant and say "Yay always-on employees!" I mean, companies already say that to an extent, but there is still a bit of a cultural norm that says office-time is company time, and home-time is me time. If you remove the office, though, that norm necessarily diminishes. You may get added convenience as an employee, but that convenience will come with the expectation that you're ready to do work whenever.
The proposed grant will certainly have its costs, but outsourcing is really more of a red herring in this context. Given the benefits that this proposal intends to incentivize (less traffic congestion, road maintenance, fuel requirements for the state; less office costs, more flexible employee availability, broader regional employee accessibility for the company; less commuting, more work flexibility, more family time for the employee... and the list goes on), it seems that Vermont is, as another user put it, embracing a "sudden outbreak of common sense."
Why do you think this wouldn't already be the case? Do you really think a one-time, $10,000 grant intended to promote remote work is going to tip a company over into outsourcing? If it does, that's not a company to work for anyway, because it's not going to be around a long time if a minor, one-time grant trumps cost analysis of workers over an extended time.
Companies who'd benefit from outsourcing are going to pursue outsourcing (if they aren't already doing so) regardless of this proposal. Really, outsourcing is a red herring, with respect to the proposed grant. The intent behind this proposal is pretty clear: reduce unnecessary commutes by providing at least a little bit of an incentive for businesses to re-examine the status quo. Businesses will still need to consider whether enabling remote work is feasible or not, but if it is, this will at least provide a carrot to get the business moving.
From the summary, it was concrete production that was fingered as the 5% contributor, not concrete use in general. In fact, the summary even states:
Manufacturing cement, concrete's binding agent, is energy-intensive, Fennell says. Ordinary Portland cement -- the most common form in concrete -- is produced by baking lime in a kiln and emits approximately one ton of carbon dioxide for every ton of cement.
That sounds to me like pretty much exactly what the parent stated. They were correct to indicate cement as the big CO2 driver in concrete production, based on the article summary. Maybe read what was actually said before getting all pedantic?
This actually sounds like the one-electron theory, which postulated that positrons are just electrons traveling backwards in time, allowing for the possibility of just one "electron" in the universe (any electron you observe is just the universal electron at a particular time instance, and the same would apply to observed positrons). Entangled electrons or positrons, then, would literally just be the same actual particle (or rather, field fluctuation). The problem with this particular theory is that, if true, one would expect to see the same amount of positrons as electrons, which just doesn't seem to be the case. I would expect that there's probably a similar issue with the general idea of any entangled particles being the same particle.
What you're talking about are hidden variables, and Einstein considered them as a way to explain away the spookiness. The problem is, people like John Bell came up with pretty ingenious ways of testing whether hidden variables are really responsible for the spookiness, and, in short, they aren't*. Veritassium actually has a pretty good explanation of why hidden variables don't work.
*Okay, local hidden variables (like those in your example) are ruled out. It is possible that hidden variables, that stretch across the whole of the universe, could still be in play.
And roosters cause the sun to rise... Didn't the common refrain around here used to be that correlation is not causation?
Yes, bachelor degrees are correlated with higher salaries and lower unemployment -- on average --, but that doesn't tell you that those degrees enable people to command higher salaries and lower unemployment. It could very well be that the types of people likely to pursue 4-year (at least) degrees to completion are also the types of people likely to put in the work and dedication required to command high salaries... the types of people who will keep searching for work when they're unemployed.
Certainly college degrees are necessary (and reasonably so) for some professions, such as those in medicine, but mostly, they serve as a status symbol and certification -- a shortcut that signals to other people that the recipient possesses skills necessary for employment. However, there are certainly other ways those skills can be advertised, and people possessing those skills do not require a degree to do so. Due to pervasive attitudes and social stigmas, though, it just so happens that it's often (socially) easier to pursue a degree, rather than advertising worth and quality through other means, hence the disproportionate amount of high-earners with degrees.
Also, make no mistake, the "on average" part above really matters: there are several degrees out there that, if pursued for employment purposes, are actually more of a liability (when considering the financial and opportunity costs necessary to obtain the degree). Not to beat on an already bloodied target, but would you really council someone just looking for employment to pursue a gender studies degree because, after all, those possessing a degree generally earn more than those without a degree? I mean, if gender studies floats your boat, then by all means, study gender studies, but if the goal is just to get a decent paying job, there are better ways to spend 4 years of your life, and several of those ways do not involve college.
Just like janitors should be paid more than NBA stars, right?
Say it with me: supply and demand. That's the underlying framework of markets; not job importance.
I agree with the thrust of the article you reference; that garbage men perform a more important service than, say, patent trolling lawyers. Worker pay isn't determined by job importance, though; it's determined by how many other people are available to perform the job being payed for. If you work in a low skilled job, you're basically replaceable by myriad other would-be workers looking for a paycheck. As important as they are, garbage men are easily replaced; and as parasitic (overall) as they are, attorneys able to successfully litigate a patent lawsuit are few and far between.
The only time low-skilled workers really make their presence known, and can demand a change, is when they work as a collective to demand that change. High-skilled workers don't really have to rely on others; since from a supply perspective, they're essentially worth a collective, individually. The individual garbage man has basically no shot at demanding better pay or work conditions, but all garbage men in a municipality acting at once do, since it's just not practical to replace everyone. The individual patent attorney (assuming the right technical background as well), can easily demand more; they're just not that common.
I don't see how UBI would alter this situation: yes everyone would have a fixed, base income, but garbage collection would still be low-skill, and patent litigation would still be high-skill. If anyone wanted more than their UBI, they would need to pursue work, and low-skill work would still be the easiest entry point. All UBI would do is remove the people who just don't want to do anything at all, and are content with a basic income, from the worker pool, which, if UBI advocates are to be believed, would be a minimal amount of people. It wouldn't have any impact on the disparity between pay scales between low and high-skilled labor.
Everyone knows that whatever follows means, "in my ideal reality..." Oh, and there are never any unforeseen consequences that arise from the "should" either.
I don't think that corporation enjoy lining politician pockets any more than they enjoy lining their employee pockets. Like employee pay, though, lobbying is a necessity that corporations can see coming, and can plan for. Savvy corporations (and why are we limiting to corporations... this really applies to all business interests) will look at that necessity and determine how best it can result legal frameworks that, while costly to abide by or challenge, effectively erect entry barriers for other competitors.
I said that the regulations you're calling for, for Facebook, would be feel-good band-aids; regulations in general, though, aren't necessarily bad, and can be good if well planned. That's a difference between a specific case, and a general case. Really, that's a pretty obvious point from the context, and it's no more contradictory than saying something like, 'cars driven recklessly are deadly, but cars don't have to be dangerous if used properly.'
As for certainty in how regulations would actually be applied, I obviously cannot determine the future, and it's possible that regulations could apply to Facebook well. It's also possible, though, -- and I would argue, most probable -- that regulations would have unintended consequences that effectively backfire. That's why the 'just regulate them' approach isn't a good one: regulations take care to plan, but knee-jerk calls to regulate basically invite pandering in place of planning. Since you've not provided any insights into how Facebook would be regulated, you seem to fall into the knee-jerker's camp, hence the "feel-good band-aid" comment. At best, that's all you'll get.
Finally, yeah... why would I consider US regulations for a company founded in the US, headquartered in the US, and employing majority US employees? That's just strange, right? I guess you would suggest they be hit hardest in satellite offices? Do you think that'd remove their TLD, or access to it? I guess those network effects I saw you arguing for elsewhere would magically vanish once you slapped on, say, Egyptian regulations.
You seem to be approaching regulation with the understanding that it will force Facebook to correct its privacy issues. It won't.
Regulating Facebook and other social media sites will provide feel-good band-aids that address immediate -- and by the time regulations are enforceable, outdated -- concerns, but those regulations certainly will not curtail Facebook's collection and sale of user-supplied data, as long as that practice remains profitable. Facebook is powerful enough, now, to ensure that any proposed regulations will be flexible enough, or toothless enough, to allow for a continuation, in some form, of its business model.
Actually, it's in Facebook's interests to support the passage of social media regulations, as such regulations will undoubtedly be easy for Facebook to overcome, but damn near impossible for startups, that might threaten Facebook's dominance, to overcome. That's why it isn't the least bit surprising to me that Zuckerberg's been saying, "I actually think the question is more 'What is the right regulation?' rather than 'Yes or no, should it be regulated?'"
This isn't to say that regulations are inherently bad; they certainly aren't a cure-all, though. Before clamoring for regulation, it'd be worth pondering exactly what that regulation should look like, how it would be implemented, who it would effect, and how it could be twisted to benefit entrenched powers that be. If you can't take that step, it'd probably be worth considering if you can just make do with existing (or new) alternatives to the thing you're trying to regulate.
Can't recall off the top of my head, but I think Spectre is an Intel-specific variant of the generic Meltdown vulnerability, which basically impacts all speculative processors (so everything currently in use). In other words, the vulnerability isn't just Intel's problem.
Also, I very much doubt that Intel had anything to do with this security firm's announcement, or the investment journal's "obituary." I'd suspect that that's more just run-of-the-mill profiteering from basically worthless outlets looking to make a quick buck at someone else's (AMD's) expense. This isn't to suggest that Intel doesn't engage in shady practices, but I highly doubt that they're behind this particular issue.
That's how organizational cuts always work, though: The call comes from on-high for an organization to meet budget constraints, for example by reducing open head count. It's on managers within that organization, though, to determine how the headcount reduction actually manifests.
Perhaps some managers do just randomly choose employees to let go, but if they do, they'll probably not be managing for very long. More likely, managers will rely upon metrics to assess employee value, and remove those employees deemed least valuable. It's not like the call for a general reduction in headcount impacts all workers uniformly, nor is that ever the intent.
Well, you provided an actual response, so thank you for that; still, you're arguing a point that I didn't make: Can you tell me where I said that the cut would improve NWS forecasting?
What I said was that I doubted that the cut would break the NWS. Actually, I doubt it will have much of an impact at all, much like cutting back on essentially useless people, in the fire department example I gave, wouldn't really impact the performance of the fire department. From a performance point of view, such people would be benign, neither detracting from nor adding to overall performance, but from a budgetary point of view, they're basically parasites that suck up resources. That's a problem because that means that resources directed to support them aren't going elsewhere, where those resources might actually provide a tangible benefit.
Aside from that, your assertion that staffing cuts cannot improve an organization is pretty specious as well:
As already mentioned, if resources are used to support benign employees, that can actually be a net negative because it means that they're pulling resources from better uses, and it likely means that better alternatives, like technological alternatives, for example, aren't being explored. If you force the removal of benign workers, you may promote the use of technological alternatives which are both cheaper, and more accurate. Think, just as a *not necessarily* toy example, of using a script in place of someone who really only gathers data, and pastes it into an Excel spreadsheet. If that worker performed their task with basically 100% accuracy, then you perhaps didn't improve organizational performance with their replacement, but you certainly improved organizational efficiency, which is actually a good thing. On the other hand, if that worker performed their task less accurately than the script that replaced them, then you have actually improved organizational performance along with organizational efficiency.
That's if workers are benign... Workers may also be an organizational burden, though. After all, not every worker will perform their task as they're supposed to, and such workers, whether intentioned or not, may actually effectively sabotage other workers, thus degrading organizational performance. If you think that removing such workers cannot be a benefit, well, I guess you've either had the privilege of never working in an environment where someone really needs to be fired, or you are the person that needs to be fired.
Now, do I think that only benign or malignant workers will be impacted by the budgetary cuts? No, probably other, useful people will be impacted as well. However, that doesn't mean that those beneficial workers can't be hired back or replaced. Trump is instituting a business-like approach (shocking, I know), where you basically cut until you bleed, then hire back. Is that tough to go through if you're an employee? Yes, absolutely, and it's probably even tougher if you've been working for a governmental organization for which this type of practice is unheard of. From a mile-high view, though, it allows you to determine what the actual resource requirements of an organization truly are, and once you know that, you can better determine how to maintain an organization at it's current organizational output, or improve an organization by hiring into areas that actually promise real benefits.
Well I can see that the moderators didn't like actual direct sources. Surprise, surprise.
In any event, you seemed to gloss over a key portion which contradicts, well, basically your entire dismissal (so easily predicted, by the way), which I'll quote:
Oh, and just so you don't dismiss me as a Trumpkin (even though you or someone else probably will), I'm not a supporter, and there's a lot to despise in Trump's budgetary plans. Calling for more military bloat for an already bloated military, for example, is pretty cringe-worthy to me. Still, even if substantial budgetary increases to the military are the wrong call, minor decreases to the weather service may in fact be the correct call to make. It's a major, really unsupportable, leap to suggest that the weather service decrease is a shortcut to 3rd world status, and it just makes you look, well, childish.
Really, great job illustrating my point. It's almost as if you're a stimulus-response engine.
Just so we're clear, the actual budget for forecasting proposed calls for a 4% reduction in forecasting services, not the 8% suggested by a careless reading of the Washington Post's article, though that may have been their intention for readers. As an aside, the Washington Post is just about as much a joke as Fox News... I can't believe anyone takes their articles at face value.
Key take away: the budget for "ANALYZE, FORECAST, AND SUPPORT" services was $492,014,000 but now it's $471,792,000. Will that reduction break forecasting? Perhaps, but I strongly doubt it. More likely, it'll result in cuts to people who have been there for a while, but hardly do anything (legacy folks), yet cost a lot, and/or cuts to open recs that have yet to be filled, or were just recently filled. In other words, people who, despite all of the yammering, are actually expendable with regard to the services they're supposed to provide.
Still, it's easy for partisans, such as yourself, to observe a 4% cut, and babble, "[the US is] transforming itself into a 3rd world country." After all, Trump's suggestion is a bit like suggesting cuts to a fire department: regardless of how much deadweight is involved, there are always going to be fires, and only an 1ns4n3 politician would suggest cutting any of the fat, right?
Oh, and just so you don't dismiss me as a Trumpkin (even though you or someone else probably will), I'm not a supporter, and there's a lot to despise in Trump's budgetary plans. Calling for more military bloat for an already bloated military, for example, is pretty cringe-worthy to me. Still, even if substantial budgetary increases to the military are the wrong call, minor decreases to the weather service may in fact be the correct call to make. It's a major, really unsupportable, leap to suggest that the weather service decrease is a shortcut to 3rd world status, and it just makes you look, well, childish.
Nice. Make a bullshit assertion. Someone rebuts your bullshit with factual counterpoints. Cry "Triggerreed! Guilltay! Snawflarke!"
By the way, where did you see a dig at women? The use of a gender studies (not even women's studies) example, illustrating how your ilk are eager to assign bigoted motivations -- without any evidence -- to genuine technical challenges, simply because such challenges may not impact everyone identically? Hmm, that seems very related to the topic being discussed... almost as if it's a recurring theme with you idiots.
By the way, it's illustrative how you think I made a dig at women because I said that the assertion that early engine cranks were designed to be too tough for women to turn, is a bullshit claim. Why do you even accept that women had difficulty turning the crank, and men didn't, as the assertion requires? Isn't that an implicit dig on women on your part? After all, you're essentially saying that women lack whatever attribute is required to turn an engine crank while men don't. Seems kinda sexist to me... you sexist, you.
Well I guess you better get off your ass and implement a better algorithm, then. After all, light reflectivity isn't a problem for you.
Also, what is the problem, in the summary, with recognizing women vs. men? This statement?
more errors arise -- up to nearly 35 percent for images of darker skinned women
Oh, wait... it's darker skinned women, not just women in general, that the summary references. Perhaps the technical detail referenced by the parent isn't irrelevant after all?
No, I'm sure you're right, and will roll out that politically correct recognition algorithm of yours in no time at all.
set lighting for white people has to be carefully designed and set up. One of the reasons colour film took so long to become practical was the difficulty of getting [white] skin tones right.
I assume you've got a reputable source for this assertion, right? I mean, surely you didn't just pull it out of your ass (or the ass of a gender-studies course*).
Pertaining to older movies, which ones are designed to be slanted in their color representations? I watched Spartacus, for example, which came out in 1960, and while the cast is certainly overwhelmingly white, there's a notable scene with Kirk Douglas and Woody Strode which hardly appears to be slanted against Woody in the color balance/saturation department. Is 1960 just too mature for the film-making era you're talking about? While color films certainly existed prior to 1960, keep in mind that color broadcasts weren't officially a thing in the US until 1953, and that color TV sets only really started to sell in the mid-1960's (only overtaking black-and-white sets in sales in the 1970's).
In other words, Spartacus debuted when color motion pictures were still very much a novelty in daily life, and thus subjected to little scrutiny when technical details such as color balance or saturation weren't quite right. It also came out when racial sentiments were still decidedly anti anything not white, so I find it difficult to believe that the filmmakers would have ignored technical decisions informed by pro-white aesthetics, knowing that they could a) get away with it due to the novelty of the process and b) likely benefit with sales/reviews if they could make Kirk appear all that more appealing, even at the expense of Woody.
* Yes, gender studies courses do pull things out the ass. I would know; I took one last year. The "professor" actually said that engine turn cranks were designed to be difficult to turn so that only men would be able to operate early vehicles... it wasn't a technical limitation or anything; no no, it was a conscious decision on the part of the patriarchy to restrict the movement of women.
You use the word incriminate... I don't think that means what you think it means.
Page was indeed a bumbling mess in that interview you cited, but nowhere did he say anything that would link him to any crime. Perhaps he was on the cusp of incriminating himself, or perhaps he isn't all that aware that, rather than giving responses with wiggle room and muddled clarifications, which give the appearance of having something to hide, he should instead answer clearly and concisely*.
*Note that clear, concise answers in a press interview have no relation to actual truth: an interviewee has no legal obligation to respond to the press truthfully. Such responses would seem less shady, though, which is really what you seem to object to.
Slashdot Mirror
Ah, I see. So the phone was face-up, on, the UI was visible in the picture, and you could determine that it was a standard consumer interface. Is that correct? Again, I haven't seen the actual photo. A link to it would certainly help.
I'm not familiar with this photo, but I am genuinely curious: how do you know, just from looking at a picture, whether a phone is secured or not? I would have expected that secured and unsecured phones would appear the same. After all, a notable difference in outward appearance would seem to beg for phones that mimic the "safe" appearance in order to gain exposure to sensitive material, and it that difference would advertise that authentic secured phones have likely been exposed to sensitive (hence valuable) information, thus making them worthwhile to target for theft/*ware/etc. Did the phone clearly belong to one of the reporters or something?
Again, maybe it's painfully obvious from the photo whether or not the phone is secure, but given my unfamiliarity, I'd just like to know.
Of course things change and, in the future, may change for the worst (or may not). I don't know how they'll change, and neither do you. I wasn't challenging you about what will happen in the future, though, I was challenging you about the way things "are," which is what you stated. Very clearly, the present state of affairs contradicts your claim. The jobs "are" not leaving.
You're just wrong, friendo.
You sure about that, friendo?
You say this as though companies would never have though of outsourcing if it wasn't for this one particular grant. Do you really think a one-time, $10,000 grant will suddenly cause a company to say, "Fuck! We've been ignoring India all this time! Let's get on that outsourcing bandwagon!"?
Companies who'd benefit from outsourcing would already, and will continue to, benefit from outsourcing regardless of this proposed grant. Instead of promoting outsourcing, this grant will pretty clearly provide an incentive for a company to ponder, "Hmm. Do I really need Jeff to come in at 9:30 to mess around with spreadsheets, or could he just do that at his home (and earlier)?".
If you want to object to this grant on the basis of business incentives, it's that "and earlier" part that should concern you: companies aren't going to take the grant and say, "Yay outsourcing!", they're going to take the grant and say "Yay always-on employees!" I mean, companies already say that to an extent, but there is still a bit of a cultural norm that says office-time is company time, and home-time is me time. If you remove the office, though, that norm necessarily diminishes. You may get added convenience as an employee, but that convenience will come with the expectation that you're ready to do work whenever.
The proposed grant will certainly have its costs, but outsourcing is really more of a red herring in this context. Given the benefits that this proposal intends to incentivize (less traffic congestion, road maintenance, fuel requirements for the state; less office costs, more flexible employee availability, broader regional employee accessibility for the company; less commuting, more work flexibility, more family time for the employee... and the list goes on), it seems that Vermont is, as another user put it, embracing a "sudden outbreak of common sense."
Why do you think this wouldn't already be the case? Do you really think a one-time, $10,000 grant intended to promote remote work is going to tip a company over into outsourcing? If it does, that's not a company to work for anyway, because it's not going to be around a long time if a minor, one-time grant trumps cost analysis of workers over an extended time.
Companies who'd benefit from outsourcing are going to pursue outsourcing (if they aren't already doing so) regardless of this proposal. Really, outsourcing is a red herring, with respect to the proposed grant. The intent behind this proposal is pretty clear: reduce unnecessary commutes by providing at least a little bit of an incentive for businesses to re-examine the status quo. Businesses will still need to consider whether enabling remote work is feasible or not, but if it is, this will at least provide a carrot to get the business moving.
From the summary, it was concrete production that was fingered as the 5% contributor, not concrete use in general. In fact, the summary even states:
Manufacturing cement, concrete's binding agent, is energy-intensive, Fennell says. Ordinary Portland cement -- the most common form in concrete -- is produced by baking lime in a kiln and emits approximately one ton of carbon dioxide for every ton of cement.
That sounds to me like pretty much exactly what the parent stated. They were correct to indicate cement as the big CO2 driver in concrete production, based on the article summary. Maybe read what was actually said before getting all pedantic?
This actually sounds like the one-electron theory, which postulated that positrons are just electrons traveling backwards in time, allowing for the possibility of just one "electron" in the universe (any electron you observe is just the universal electron at a particular time instance, and the same would apply to observed positrons). Entangled electrons or positrons, then, would literally just be the same actual particle (or rather, field fluctuation). The problem with this particular theory is that, if true, one would expect to see the same amount of positrons as electrons, which just doesn't seem to be the case. I would expect that there's probably a similar issue with the general idea of any entangled particles being the same particle.
What you're talking about are hidden variables, and Einstein considered them as a way to explain away the spookiness. The problem is, people like John Bell came up with pretty ingenious ways of testing whether hidden variables are really responsible for the spookiness, and, in short, they aren't*. Veritassium actually has a pretty good explanation of why hidden variables don't work.
*Okay, local hidden variables (like those in your example) are ruled out. It is possible that hidden variables, that stretch across the whole of the universe, could still be in play.
And roosters cause the sun to rise... Didn't the common refrain around here used to be that correlation is not causation?
Yes, bachelor degrees are correlated with higher salaries and lower unemployment -- on average --, but that doesn't tell you that those degrees enable people to command higher salaries and lower unemployment. It could very well be that the types of people likely to pursue 4-year (at least) degrees to completion are also the types of people likely to put in the work and dedication required to command high salaries... the types of people who will keep searching for work when they're unemployed.
Certainly college degrees are necessary (and reasonably so) for some professions, such as those in medicine, but mostly, they serve as a status symbol and certification -- a shortcut that signals to other people that the recipient possesses skills necessary for employment. However, there are certainly other ways those skills can be advertised, and people possessing those skills do not require a degree to do so. Due to pervasive attitudes and social stigmas, though, it just so happens that it's often (socially) easier to pursue a degree, rather than advertising worth and quality through other means, hence the disproportionate amount of high-earners with degrees.
Also, make no mistake, the "on average" part above really matters: there are several degrees out there that, if pursued for employment purposes, are actually more of a liability (when considering the financial and opportunity costs necessary to obtain the degree). Not to beat on an already bloodied target, but would you really council someone just looking for employment to pursue a gender studies degree because, after all, those possessing a degree generally earn more than those without a degree? I mean, if gender studies floats your boat, then by all means, study gender studies, but if the goal is just to get a decent paying job, there are better ways to spend 4 years of your life, and several of those ways do not involve college.
Just like janitors should be paid more than NBA stars, right?
Say it with me: supply and demand. That's the underlying framework of markets; not job importance.
I agree with the thrust of the article you reference; that garbage men perform a more important service than, say, patent trolling lawyers. Worker pay isn't determined by job importance, though; it's determined by how many other people are available to perform the job being payed for. If you work in a low skilled job, you're basically replaceable by myriad other would-be workers looking for a paycheck. As important as they are, garbage men are easily replaced; and as parasitic (overall) as they are, attorneys able to successfully litigate a patent lawsuit are few and far between.
The only time low-skilled workers really make their presence known, and can demand a change, is when they work as a collective to demand that change. High-skilled workers don't really have to rely on others; since from a supply perspective, they're essentially worth a collective, individually. The individual garbage man has basically no shot at demanding better pay or work conditions, but all garbage men in a municipality acting at once do, since it's just not practical to replace everyone. The individual patent attorney (assuming the right technical background as well), can easily demand more; they're just not that common.
I don't see how UBI would alter this situation: yes everyone would have a fixed, base income, but garbage collection would still be low-skill, and patent litigation would still be high-skill. If anyone wanted more than their UBI, they would need to pursue work, and low-skill work would still be the easiest entry point. All UBI would do is remove the people who just don't want to do anything at all, and are content with a basic income, from the worker pool, which, if UBI advocates are to be believed, would be a minimal amount of people. It wouldn't have any impact on the disparity between pay scales between low and high-skilled labor.
They said, "should."
Everyone knows that whatever follows means, "in my ideal reality ..." Oh, and there are never any unforeseen consequences that arise from the "should" either.
I don't think that corporation enjoy lining politician pockets any more than they enjoy lining their employee pockets. Like employee pay, though, lobbying is a necessity that corporations can see coming, and can plan for. Savvy corporations (and why are we limiting to corporations... this really applies to all business interests) will look at that necessity and determine how best it can result legal frameworks that, while costly to abide by or challenge, effectively erect entry barriers for other competitors.
Way to (intentionally?) misread what I said.
I said that the regulations you're calling for, for Facebook, would be feel-good band-aids; regulations in general, though, aren't necessarily bad, and can be good if well planned. That's a difference between a specific case, and a general case. Really, that's a pretty obvious point from the context, and it's no more contradictory than saying something like, 'cars driven recklessly are deadly, but cars don't have to be dangerous if used properly.'
As for certainty in how regulations would actually be applied, I obviously cannot determine the future, and it's possible that regulations could apply to Facebook well. It's also possible, though, -- and I would argue, most probable -- that regulations would have unintended consequences that effectively backfire. That's why the 'just regulate them' approach isn't a good one: regulations take care to plan, but knee-jerk calls to regulate basically invite pandering in place of planning. Since you've not provided any insights into how Facebook would be regulated, you seem to fall into the knee-jerker's camp, hence the "feel-good band-aid" comment. At best, that's all you'll get.
Finally, yeah... why would I consider US regulations for a company founded in the US, headquartered in the US, and employing majority US employees? That's just strange, right? I guess you would suggest they be hit hardest in satellite offices? Do you think that'd remove their TLD, or access to it? I guess those network effects I saw you arguing for elsewhere would magically vanish once you slapped on, say, Egyptian regulations.
You seem to be approaching regulation with the understanding that it will force Facebook to correct its privacy issues. It won't.
Regulating Facebook and other social media sites will provide feel-good band-aids that address immediate -- and by the time regulations are enforceable, outdated -- concerns, but those regulations certainly will not curtail Facebook's collection and sale of user-supplied data, as long as that practice remains profitable. Facebook is powerful enough, now, to ensure that any proposed regulations will be flexible enough, or toothless enough, to allow for a continuation, in some form, of its business model.
Actually, it's in Facebook's interests to support the passage of social media regulations, as such regulations will undoubtedly be easy for Facebook to overcome, but damn near impossible for startups, that might threaten Facebook's dominance, to overcome. That's why it isn't the least bit surprising to me that Zuckerberg's been saying, "I actually think the question is more 'What is the right regulation?' rather than 'Yes or no, should it be regulated?'"
This isn't to say that regulations are inherently bad; they certainly aren't a cure-all, though. Before clamoring for regulation, it'd be worth pondering exactly what that regulation should look like, how it would be implemented, who it would effect, and how it could be twisted to benefit entrenched powers that be. If you can't take that step, it'd probably be worth considering if you can just make do with existing (or new) alternatives to the thing you're trying to regulate.
Can't recall off the top of my head, but I think Spectre is an Intel-specific variant of the generic Meltdown vulnerability, which basically impacts all speculative processors (so everything currently in use). In other words, the vulnerability isn't just Intel's problem.
Also, I very much doubt that Intel had anything to do with this security firm's announcement, or the investment journal's "obituary." I'd suspect that that's more just run-of-the-mill profiteering from basically worthless outlets looking to make a quick buck at someone else's (AMD's) expense. This isn't to suggest that Intel doesn't engage in shady practices, but I highly doubt that they're behind this particular issue.
That's how organizational cuts always work, though: The call comes from on-high for an organization to meet budget constraints, for example by reducing open head count. It's on managers within that organization, though, to determine how the headcount reduction actually manifests.
Perhaps some managers do just randomly choose employees to let go, but if they do, they'll probably not be managing for very long. More likely, managers will rely upon metrics to assess employee value, and remove those employees deemed least valuable. It's not like the call for a general reduction in headcount impacts all workers uniformly, nor is that ever the intent.
Well, you provided an actual response, so thank you for that; still, you're arguing a point that I didn't make: Can you tell me where I said that the cut would improve NWS forecasting?
What I said was that I doubted that the cut would break the NWS. Actually, I doubt it will have much of an impact at all, much like cutting back on essentially useless people, in the fire department example I gave, wouldn't really impact the performance of the fire department. From a performance point of view, such people would be benign, neither detracting from nor adding to overall performance, but from a budgetary point of view, they're basically parasites that suck up resources. That's a problem because that means that resources directed to support them aren't going elsewhere, where those resources might actually provide a tangible benefit.
Aside from that, your assertion that staffing cuts cannot improve an organization is pretty specious as well:
As already mentioned, if resources are used to support benign employees, that can actually be a net negative because it means that they're pulling resources from better uses, and it likely means that better alternatives, like technological alternatives, for example, aren't being explored. If you force the removal of benign workers, you may promote the use of technological alternatives which are both cheaper, and more accurate. Think, just as a *not necessarily* toy example, of using a script in place of someone who really only gathers data, and pastes it into an Excel spreadsheet. If that worker performed their task with basically 100% accuracy, then you perhaps didn't improve organizational performance with their replacement, but you certainly improved organizational efficiency, which is actually a good thing. On the other hand, if that worker performed their task less accurately than the script that replaced them, then you have actually improved organizational performance along with organizational efficiency.
That's if workers are benign... Workers may also be an organizational burden, though. After all, not every worker will perform their task as they're supposed to, and such workers, whether intentioned or not, may actually effectively sabotage other workers, thus degrading organizational performance. If you think that removing such workers cannot be a benefit, well, I guess you've either had the privilege of never working in an environment where someone really needs to be fired, or you are the person that needs to be fired.
Now, do I think that only benign or malignant workers will be impacted by the budgetary cuts? No, probably other, useful people will be impacted as well. However, that doesn't mean that those beneficial workers can't be hired back or replaced. Trump is instituting a business-like approach (shocking, I know), where you basically cut until you bleed, then hire back. Is that tough to go through if you're an employee? Yes, absolutely, and it's probably even tougher if you've been working for a governmental organization for which this type of practice is unheard of. From a mile-high view, though, it allows you to determine what the actual resource requirements of an organization truly are, and once you know that, you can better determine how to maintain an organization at it's current organizational output, or improve an organization by hiring into areas that actually promise real benefits.
Well I can see that the moderators didn't like actual direct sources. Surprise, surprise.
In any event, you seemed to gloss over a key portion which contradicts, well, basically your entire dismissal (so easily predicted, by the way), which I'll quote:
Oh, and just so you don't dismiss me as a Trumpkin (even though you or someone else probably will), I'm not a supporter, and there's a lot to despise in Trump's budgetary plans. Calling for more military bloat for an already bloated military, for example, is pretty cringe-worthy to me. Still, even if substantial budgetary increases to the military are the wrong call, minor decreases to the weather service may in fact be the correct call to make. It's a major, really unsupportable, leap to suggest that the weather service decrease is a shortcut to 3rd world status, and it just makes you look, well, childish.
Really, great job illustrating my point. It's almost as if you're a stimulus-response engine.
Hyperbole much?
Just so we're clear, the actual budget for forecasting proposed calls for a 4% reduction in forecasting services, not the 8% suggested by a careless reading of the Washington Post's article, though that may have been their intention for readers. As an aside, the Washington Post is just about as much a joke as Fox News... I can't believe anyone takes their articles at face value.
Anyway, here's the actual budget. You'll want to look at Chapter 5 for the National Weather Service:
http://www.corporateservices.noaa.gov/nbo/fy19_bluebook/FY19-BlueBook.pdf
Key take away: the budget for "ANALYZE, FORECAST, AND SUPPORT" services was $492,014,000 but now it's $471,792,000. Will that reduction break forecasting? Perhaps, but I strongly doubt it. More likely, it'll result in cuts to people who have been there for a while, but hardly do anything (legacy folks), yet cost a lot, and/or cuts to open recs that have yet to be filled, or were just recently filled. In other words, people who, despite all of the yammering, are actually expendable with regard to the services they're supposed to provide.
Still, it's easy for partisans, such as yourself, to observe a 4% cut, and babble, "[the US is] transforming itself into a 3rd world country." After all, Trump's suggestion is a bit like suggesting cuts to a fire department: regardless of how much deadweight is involved, there are always going to be fires, and only an 1ns4n3 politician would suggest cutting any of the fat, right?
Oh, and just so you don't dismiss me as a Trumpkin (even though you or someone else probably will), I'm not a supporter, and there's a lot to despise in Trump's budgetary plans. Calling for more military bloat for an already bloated military, for example, is pretty cringe-worthy to me. Still, even if substantial budgetary increases to the military are the wrong call, minor decreases to the weather service may in fact be the correct call to make. It's a major, really unsupportable, leap to suggest that the weather service decrease is a shortcut to 3rd world status, and it just makes you look, well, childish.
Nice. Make a bullshit assertion. Someone rebuts your bullshit with factual counterpoints. Cry "Triggerreed! Guilltay! Snawflarke!"
By the way, where did you see a dig at women? The use of a gender studies (not even women's studies) example, illustrating how your ilk are eager to assign bigoted motivations -- without any evidence -- to genuine technical challenges, simply because such challenges may not impact everyone identically? Hmm, that seems very related to the topic being discussed... almost as if it's a recurring theme with you idiots.
By the way, it's illustrative how you think I made a dig at women because I said that the assertion that early engine cranks were designed to be too tough for women to turn, is a bullshit claim. Why do you even accept that women had difficulty turning the crank, and men didn't, as the assertion requires? Isn't that an implicit dig on women on your part? After all, you're essentially saying that women lack whatever attribute is required to turn an engine crank while men don't. Seems kinda sexist to me... you sexist, you.
Well I guess you better get off your ass and implement a better algorithm, then. After all, light reflectivity isn't a problem for you.
Also, what is the problem, in the summary, with recognizing women vs. men? This statement?
more errors arise -- up to nearly 35 percent for images of darker skinned women
Oh, wait... it's darker skinned women, not just women in general, that the summary references. Perhaps the technical detail referenced by the parent isn't irrelevant after all?
No, I'm sure you're right, and will roll out that politically correct recognition algorithm of yours in no time at all.
set lighting for white people has to be carefully designed and set up. One of the reasons colour film took so long to become practical was the difficulty of getting [white] skin tones right.
I assume you've got a reputable source for this assertion, right? I mean, surely you didn't just pull it out of your ass (or the ass of a gender-studies course*).
Pertaining to older movies, which ones are designed to be slanted in their color representations? I watched Spartacus, for example, which came out in 1960, and while the cast is certainly overwhelmingly white, there's a notable scene with Kirk Douglas and Woody Strode which hardly appears to be slanted against Woody in the color balance/saturation department. Is 1960 just too mature for the film-making era you're talking about? While color films certainly existed prior to 1960, keep in mind that color broadcasts weren't officially a thing in the US until 1953, and that color TV sets only really started to sell in the mid-1960's (only overtaking black-and-white sets in sales in the 1970's).
In other words, Spartacus debuted when color motion pictures were still very much a novelty in daily life, and thus subjected to little scrutiny when technical details such as color balance or saturation weren't quite right. It also came out when racial sentiments were still decidedly anti anything not white, so I find it difficult to believe that the filmmakers would have ignored technical decisions informed by pro-white aesthetics, knowing that they could a) get away with it due to the novelty of the process and b) likely benefit with sales/reviews if they could make Kirk appear all that more appealing, even at the expense of Woody.
* Yes, gender studies courses do pull things out the ass. I would know; I took one last year. The "professor" actually said that engine turn cranks were designed to be difficult to turn so that only men would be able to operate early vehicles... it wasn't a technical limitation or anything; no no, it was a conscious decision on the part of the patriarchy to restrict the movement of women.
Just 7,327 more times... it'll start to lose mainstream appeal by then.
You use the word incriminate... I don't think that means what you think it means.
Page was indeed a bumbling mess in that interview you cited, but nowhere did he say anything that would link him to any crime. Perhaps he was on the cusp of incriminating himself, or perhaps he isn't all that aware that, rather than giving responses with wiggle room and muddled clarifications, which give the appearance of having something to hide, he should instead answer clearly and concisely*.
*Note that clear, concise answers in a press interview have no relation to actual truth: an interviewee has no legal obligation to respond to the press truthfully. Such responses would seem less shady, though, which is really what you seem to object to.