We are about 35 people, and I am/was the business owner and IT support, which is a very stupid arrangement; I have another engineer helping out with desktop issues in his "spare time", which we wanted to cut back. With Linux we spent about $10k per year on consultants, upkeep, and upgrades. Now we are at $40k for a consultant, and the engineer helping out seems to be stuck putting in more time.
If I could hire someone reasonably capable (but still learning), I would be at $70k direct salary minimum, so about $120k total. With a direct hire, I don't have any contingency if the person quits or is hit by a bus; a consultant offers me that benefit. A consultant also gives us a little peace of mind that when something bad does happen they can address it efficiently and effectively... rather than trial and error.
The problem is that it is essentially a "protection racket".
Doesn't the drop in GPON costs cover some of the issues with wireless? I understand it is a different business strategy, but it seems like the way forward.
As for government broadband, yes you could avoid it as a solution if you can get the providers in place that serve customer's needs. The competitive commercial solution is inherently less (resource) efficient, which should lead to higher prices and/or lower performance. The reason for government to be involved is that it can be a 20-50 year investment rather than a 2-5 year strategy.
Personally, I think the co-op approach is best in theory, but support doesn't scale well with it.
Users don't spend time thinking through the problem. My little sister complained that her two-year old iPhone wouldn't last her through the day. Turns out she doesn't plug it in at night, just in the car to/from work and her mophie when she needs more battery. That will obviously degrade the battery, but not everyone seems to understand these things.
How can a transaction be wholly within one exchange? Doesn't (at a minimum) the source and destination wallet need to be debited and credited within the blockchain?
I get converting cash to bitcoin to cash off-block-- the wallets never really get involved within the float period of the exchange. I don't understand how you could move bitcoins between wallets though...
It is scalable because the person who wanted the database doesn't need to pay for any hardware... all the hardware is out in the cloud or something. And, the people who do buy the hardware get paid with inflationary money.
The concept is very cool, but logically you would need about a 5,000x increase in transaction volume to become ubiquitous as a transactional medium.
We were on Linux for our file server for a decade and ended up needing to switch to Windows. We were tired of not having a good consultant and Windows consultants were easy to find.
The mistake incidentally was not in switching to Windows per se; it can easily do the added tasks we need of it and Linux could not. The mistake was in thinking the issue was in finding good Linux consultants-- the issue was simply in finding good consultants period.
The peeing into a plastic bottle trick is pretty common for “professional” drivers, and the 11-your days seem like a pretty good deal to America s. The thing I dislike about it all is that Amazon, Uber, and Lyft all do things with their algorithms to waste driver’s time and productivity.
Amazon uses boxes grossly larger than needed, and could often get by with bags instead, limiting the number of packages they can take— all while sending multiple drivers to the same address, from the same warehouse, in the course of an hour or two. Lyft and Uber do thing to share load between drivers rather than select the closest to the pickup.
Were you asleep the last 6 years of the Obama administration? The republicans were the obstructionist "Party of NO." Getting congress to do literally ANYTHING was futile.
There are people vocally opposed to small ISPs needing to comply with Title-2 regulations; I don't pretend to understand the issues, but it is essentially the job for a full time attorney.
Logically, should a guy that puts up an antenna on a water tower to serve his town be considered a utility? If he goes out of business, what does that mean? Government bailout?
There are also people who believe that forcing net neutrality via executive order is an overreach. While I personally think that is a partisan issue, I am equally concerned that the FCC chief can just flip a switch to provide utilities with more monopoly power.
It would be nice if Congress created a clear, focused law to address this issue so it isn't the whim of an administration. "We" have been trying to do that for over a decade with no success.
In current events, it becomes even more odd... back-porting standards for harassment 20, 30 years. Certain things may be easy to distinguish as inappropriate, but what happens when you go back to the 60's and 70's?
Even the jackass politician masturbating in front of the lobbyist in the bathroom at a co-ed bachelor party... I can imagine how that might have not seemed that off to him at the time in a drunken state. Don't condone it, very poor judgement, but a whole lot of one night stands also involve very poor judgement (and/or misreading of signs).
The other thing that is an issue is there is no defense.
Foot, momentum. Not deal-killing resources. Probability of shock attack encountering properly trained people able to respond quite low. Add cell jammer and some gimmicks and you have a high probability of getting stuff to buy more...whatever.
GP’s point remains. We have constant risk, but losing sleep over it is stupid. Why?
Actually found pjm; they have good historical data available which is great. Past week variability is from a peak of around 6GW to a minimum of 0.2GW. It isn't what you can build a grid around without significant storage or non-renewable sources.
Interesting point. I can't find PA data, but NYISO does look steady for the last two days, varying from a peak of 923MW to a minimum of 430MW in the course of two hours.
I watch California much more closely, and they will regularly vary from 0.5GW to 5GW over the course of the day. I don't know how closely they match one-hour and 24-hour forecasts, but there is a high intra-day and inter-day variability that does make planning a challenge.
Technically that is true for any appreciating asset. What you do is sell enough to cover your initial investment, and take money out periodically leaving some amount that can still grow.
I wouldn't recommend doing it with your 401k, but if the guy has put in $100/month for the last 5 years instead of going out for a nice meal then that is his decision.
"Never [invest | gamble] more than you are comfortable losing."
I think your numbers might be off somewhere; the peak day BTC transactions to the blockchain were 500k in 24 hours.
I think everyone here understands that the transactional model for BTC is doomed; what (most) of us are surprised at is how many people think it is a store of value. I get that it is inherently deflationary, and that has its advantages... but there are just so many ways for you to be robbed or the value to fall flat... it just doesn't pass the smell test.
As for a substitute for wire transfers of $5,000 or more it looks a little better, but you still have that float time which can impact you dramatically.
I think the problem for Ether will be that any common exchanges will place both at risk. Ether still has a $XX Billion market cap, so I would say it has a long way to fall at this point.
Solar is predictable at a grid level days in advance, at least +/- 10%. Wind isn’t, even 4 hours in advance. The only issue I can think of that might hurt GE is their turbine ramp times, because the need today is for GW or natural gas that can go from 0-100% in minutes, the same for 100-0%, all while being economical to run.
I can see how the US will get to 50% renewable energy, but going beyond that will take more than lithium batteries and pumped hydro.
The problem is people not being prepared. My situation was in the dot.bomb I had a massive (for me) capital loss covering 2000 and 2001. The IRS sent me a bill for all the sales I did to cover margin calls. Since I didn't file a return covering the capital gains, they assumed that my basis was zero, so I owed $$$.
I imagine much the same kind of thing happening to other inexperienced investors, some of whom might actually pay the bill. (I was going to run for the hills until I actually got an explanation of what I needed to do by calling the IRS.)
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We are about 35 people, and I am/was the business owner and IT support, which is a very stupid arrangement; I have another engineer helping out with desktop issues in his "spare time", which we wanted to cut back. With Linux we spent about $10k per year on consultants, upkeep, and upgrades. Now we are at $40k for a consultant, and the engineer helping out seems to be stuck putting in more time.
If I could hire someone reasonably capable (but still learning), I would be at $70k direct salary minimum, so about $120k total. With a direct hire, I don't have any contingency if the person quits or is hit by a bus; a consultant offers me that benefit. A consultant also gives us a little peace of mind that when something bad does happen they can address it efficiently and effectively... rather than trial and error.
The problem is that it is essentially a "protection racket".
Doesn't the drop in GPON costs cover some of the issues with wireless? I understand it is a different business strategy, but it seems like the way forward.
Curious who the local provider is.
As for government broadband, yes you could avoid it as a solution if you can get the providers in place that serve customer's needs. The competitive commercial solution is inherently less (resource) efficient, which should lead to higher prices and/or lower performance. The reason for government to be involved is that it can be a 20-50 year investment rather than a 2-5 year strategy.
Personally, I think the co-op approach is best in theory, but support doesn't scale well with it.
Users don't spend time thinking through the problem. My little sister complained that her two-year old iPhone wouldn't last her through the day. Turns out she doesn't plug it in at night, just in the car to/from work and her mophie when she needs more battery. That will obviously degrade the battery, but not everyone seems to understand these things.
How can a transaction be wholly within one exchange? Doesn't (at a minimum) the source and destination wallet need to be debited and credited within the blockchain?
I get converting cash to bitcoin to cash off-block-- the wallets never really get involved within the float period of the exchange. I don't understand how you could move bitcoins between wallets though...
It is scalable because the person who wanted the database doesn't need to pay for any hardware... all the hardware is out in the cloud or something. And, the people who do buy the hardware get paid with inflationary money.
The concept is very cool, but logically you would need about a 5,000x increase in transaction volume to become ubiquitous as a transactional medium.
We were on Linux for our file server for a decade and ended up needing to switch to Windows. We were tired of not having a good consultant and Windows consultants were easy to find.
The mistake incidentally was not in switching to Windows per se; it can easily do the added tasks we need of it and Linux could not. The mistake was in thinking the issue was in finding good Linux consultants-- the issue was simply in finding good consultants period.
Yes; medicine is focused on preserving life rather than improving it.
The public domain utopia is nigh!
Well, I can dream...
The peeing into a plastic bottle trick is pretty common for “professional” drivers, and the 11-your days seem like a pretty good deal to America s. The thing I dislike about it all is that Amazon, Uber, and Lyft all do things with their algorithms to waste driver’s time and productivity.
Amazon uses boxes grossly larger than needed, and could often get by with bags instead, limiting the number of packages they can take— all while sending multiple drivers to the same address, from the same warehouse, in the course of an hour or two. Lyft and Uber do thing to share load between drivers rather than select the closest to the pickup.
Were you asleep the last 6 years of the Obama administration? The republicans were the obstructionist "Party of NO." Getting congress to do literally ANYTHING was futile.
There are people vocally opposed to small ISPs needing to comply with Title-2 regulations; I don't pretend to understand the issues, but it is essentially the job for a full time attorney.
Logically, should a guy that puts up an antenna on a water tower to serve his town be considered a utility? If he goes out of business, what does that mean? Government bailout?
There are also people who believe that forcing net neutrality via executive order is an overreach. While I personally think that is a partisan issue, I am equally concerned that the FCC chief can just flip a switch to provide utilities with more monopoly power.
It would be nice if Congress created a clear, focused law to address this issue so it isn't the whim of an administration. "We" have been trying to do that for over a decade with no success.
That was the definition 5-10 years ago. It has morphed into much more; there doesn't need to be a reporting structure for it to be harassment.
In current events, it becomes even more odd... back-porting standards for harassment 20, 30 years. Certain things may be easy to distinguish as inappropriate, but what happens when you go back to the 60's and 70's?
Even the jackass politician masturbating in front of the lobbyist in the bathroom at a co-ed bachelor party... I can imagine how that might have not seemed that off to him at the time in a drunken state. Don't condone it, very poor judgement, but a whole lot of one night stands also involve very poor judgement (and/or misreading of signs).
The other thing that is an issue is there is no defense.
Foot, momentum. Not deal-killing resources. Probability of shock attack encountering properly trained people able to respond quite low. Add cell jammer and some gimmicks and you have a high probability of getting stuff to buy more ...whatever.
GP’s point remains. We have constant risk, but losing sleep over it is stupid. Why?
Thanks! Didn't know that. So, the miners game the system too...
Actually found pjm; they have good historical data available which is great. Past week variability is from a peak of around 6GW to a minimum of 0.2GW. It isn't what you can build a grid around without significant storage or non-renewable sources.
Interesting point. I can't find PA data, but NYISO does look steady for the last two days, varying from a peak of 923MW to a minimum of 430MW in the course of two hours.
I watch California much more closely, and they will regularly vary from 0.5GW to 5GW over the course of the day. I don't know how closely they match one-hour and 24-hour forecasts, but there is a high intra-day and inter-day variability that does make planning a challenge.
Technically that is true for any appreciating asset. What you do is sell enough to cover your initial investment, and take money out periodically leaving some amount that can still grow.
I wouldn't recommend doing it with your 401k, but if the guy has put in $100/month for the last 5 years instead of going out for a nice meal then that is his decision.
"Never [invest | gamble] more than you are comfortable losing."
I think your numbers might be off somewhere; the peak day BTC transactions to the blockchain were 500k in 24 hours.
I think everyone here understands that the transactional model for BTC is doomed; what (most) of us are surprised at is how many people think it is a store of value. I get that it is inherently deflationary, and that has its advantages... but there are just so many ways for you to be robbed or the value to fall flat... it just doesn't pass the smell test.
As for a substitute for wire transfers of $5,000 or more it looks a little better, but you still have that float time which can impact you dramatically.
I think the problem for Ether will be that any common exchanges will place both at risk. Ether still has a $XX Billion market cap, so I would say it has a long way to fall at this point.
Solar is predictable at a grid level days in advance, at least +/- 10%. Wind isn’t, even 4 hours in advance. The only issue I can think of that might hurt GE is their turbine ramp times, because the need today is for GW or natural gas that can go from 0-100% in minutes, the same for 100-0%, all while being economical to run.
I can see how the US will get to 50% renewable energy, but going beyond that will take more than lithium batteries and pumped hydro.
Not even just escrow... "paper currency exchange, but with a computer for DIGITAL currency!"
WTF... is there any other reasonable way to do currency exchange, other than having a float of each currency you trade?
Yes, I completely agree.
The problem is people not being prepared. My situation was in the dot.bomb I had a massive (for me) capital loss covering 2000 and 2001. The IRS sent me a bill for all the sales I did to cover margin calls. Since I didn't file a return covering the capital gains, they assumed that my basis was zero, so I owed $$$.
I imagine much the same kind of thing happening to other inexperienced investors, some of whom might actually pay the bill. (I was going to run for the hills until I actually got an explanation of what I needed to do by calling the IRS.)
Thanks, didn't know that.
However, would any exchange want to actually hold BTC at risk, beyond half of their own float?