I'm a huge Apple fan, and while you can "get by" without a headphone jack integrated into the phone, it is a silly compromise. I use Bose QC20 noise cancelling headphones when I fly; they are hands-down the best in-ear, noise cancelling headphone for that purpose. They have a 3.5mm (god I hate calling it that... it is 1/8"...) jack and a really stupid battery pack. I sometimes use these same headphones for listening to the in-flight entertainment. The headphones have an 18-hour battery, and can be charged while in use.
So, for Apple's world, I can either give up the best headphones and go bluetooth, with an extra bluetooth dongle for the IFE, or keep my stupid lightning/headphone dongle and maybe invest in a dual-port headphone/charger dongle. Either way, it is dongle madness. Oh, and I need two sets of bluetooth headphones since they don't last as long.
Oh, and since purchasing a new iPad pro, I need another dongle for USB-C... but that is a separate matter.
(If I could comfortably wear on-ear headphones for a 17-hour flight then there are more options, but that is not possible.)
Conductor ampacity, resistance, and maximum voltage would be simple starting points.
I do agree that this has far more potential for vendor abuse that consumer protection. I bought my first portable USB-C device over the weekend (an iPad) and am really pissed off about the limitations imposed by the solution even today. My must-have travel charger kit went from a 6-port multi-output charger with dongles for micro-USB, Lightning, Apple Watch now needs a new cable, and potentially a new multi-output charger. I had finally gotten my charging crap down to a manageable mess, and now this.
It is rapidly approaching the point where I want to just abandon consumer electronics altogether. Went without my watch for a week because I forgot the charging cable... and was completely unwilling to purchase yet another one. It wasn't the end of the world.
LA Metro works well if you are close to a station and can get to where you need to go with at most one transfer. Metro has 93 operational stations, or roughly one per 50 square miles of LA County. The system would need to increase by an order of magnitude in track miles and stations to be on par with NYC.
You can make batteries work as a green solution or as an economical solution today, but not both. This will eventually change, with daylight hours being “off-peak” tariffs, and late night considered on-peak for residential users. At this point, oversizing a PV array and adding batteries starts to make sense... but your costs go up.
Just get a usb-c thumb drive for sensitive data, and if there is a data security policy on the internal ssd, just wipe the drive when you leave.
And for what it is worth, if you want a high performance desktop, the new mini is actually a pretty good value if you upgrade the RAM yourself and use a NAS for bulk storage.
Bought the new 11” iPad on Saturday, and went with 512GB for just that reason— the premium to go with more storage than I could envision a use for was just too high. But, 512GB gives me plenty for now. I had budgeted for a new Mac as well, but decided to hold off for now and see what happens.
My only real complaint so far (beyond needing to restore music from iCloud) is the need to buy a new set of chargers and cables that support USB-C. Really makes a streamlined travel setup a pain in the ass.
On, and I know it is just anecdotal, but my Apple store was packed all day with people buying stuff.
Square and PayPal are 2.75%; my business non-swipe payments are about 1.75%, but our Line of Credit banking relationship likely subsidizes it a quarter-point. We don't take Amex, which is about 3.5% if we offer it, and we do have a monthly fee of around $50. We do well under $100k per year on credit cards though, the vast majority now is EFT.
Legacy providers can really rip you off, but if you shop your merchant services fees you can get good deals.
Walmart and their ilk generally pay closer to 1% plus $0.12 per transaction. I think gas stations pay the highest rate due to fraud issues, and that is in the 3-4% range.
When compared to check or EFT, sure 3% is a lot. For cash though, the cost is non-zero for proper handling. If you just put the cash in a cookie jar in the kitchen and don’t report it, it might be less of an issue.
Most merchant accounts are going to pay 2% or less. A small merchant that takes in ~$1500/day is generally going to be better off paying the $30 in credit card fees compared to the hassles of managing cash.
I would guess they would end up paying about $3 per cashier drawer to count cash, and another $10 per day to break down the cash for new drawers, and maybe $10/day for going to the bank. When you add back the risks of handling cash, it might not be worth it. As you work with more cash, the costs likely increase proportionately.
It isn’t just them— some people like to use cash for certain things because that is how they manage their spending. There are plenty of good reasons to prefer cash over cards, especially for transactions under $100. I like using cash where I think it may go unreported as income (a black economy is a good thing), and if it wasn’t for credit card points, I would go back to using it exclusively.
You have to reduce the cost of nuclear energy by about two orders of magnitude for it to be viable in 10 years; nuclear energy must be economical at a capacity factor of around 35-50% when compared to the alternatives.
While I like the NuScale concept, it only really addresses about 30% of the cost issues as I understand it.
If it can’t be operated safely then it needs to be shut down. If upgrading for safe operation is not economically viable, all the more incentive to shutter it. This isn’t rocket science.
Not at all. It has been happening for 40+ years; they failed at every opportunity to deal with any form of competition. A stupid example, but the Sears store near me used to reek of mold, miserable merchandising, and no brand differentiation. But, people shopped there because they had a good appliance selection (and reputation), it was the closest place for a lot of people with reasonably good tools and basic sporting goods, and it was somewhat functional.
When they closed, it was torn down and they built a Bloomingdales which is prospering.
Keep in mind this is a solo journey, and without any support. It might be comparable to a team of 3 doing it 50 years ago without the modern tools, but you still have a 350-lb sled to tow some 900 miles.
I wouldn't say I have seen literary genius in a 5-paragraph essay, but the formula and structure are a useful basic guideline for technical writing. I always push junior engineers to focus on one-page reports with Background, Analysis, and Recommendation. It is essentially the same structure, and it is useful for conveying an approach and recommendations for many things.
Of course it doesn't take the place of a full report (or a few quick lines in an email), but it is a nice simple construct for organizing thoughts.
I actually think Musk is brilliant-- just not what we know of the tunnel concept. I would be surprised if there weren't big parts that we had no idea about though, as the waffling on seemingly import items like "skates" does not make sense. I think he is trying to figure out a vision he can actually deliver today for perception, but the master plan is very much in flux.
The part I am less confident about is if maybe this was just a "hey, I can get a 12' TBM cheap... would be fun to play with!" thing. Adding in the whole 12^2/17^2 math is what makes me think of it as a 1-dimensional solution to a 4-dimension problem. I would rather see him running an elliptical TBM (angled cutter head) or something else crazy that might make a bigger difference in the equation.
Sadly, I am pretty underwhelmed so far. Once I saw the NFPA130 job posting I realized they now understand how badly they screwed up. What they “accomplished” as an unsafe tunnel that is not exceptional in any way.
It is like they approached the problem one-dimensionally.
We do a 4-9-4 schedule, and I really like it. It makes Friday a pretty chill day, and I only need to take 4 hours of PTO to have a 3-day weekend. 4-10 Is painful, especially for the poor saps that end up working 10 hours on Friday. I guess they can get Monday off, so YMMV...
I don't think 4-10 would reduce burnout. The main factor for combating work-related burnout is to make work fun and interesting... which simply isn't always possible.
Pretty sure you are wrong on the cloud margins; it might not be cash-flow positive due to reinvestment, but I understand it generates significant and growing profit in absolute terms.
As for bottled water... they should push for water filters and refillable bottles. Filtering things like heavy metals is very easy, and RO will get just about anything else out. Add a mineral bed for post-treatment and you have great water with minimal shipping costs. (Pump your concentrate/reject water from the RO system back to your hot water tank or to the garden.)
The number seems very low; my highest paid employee is at $170k, and that is not a highly sought-after tech role, just a senior managing electrical engineer in Los Angeles. I would have expected closer to $225-275k median pay for “top talent/prime role” type job.
But, your cost of living expectations are unrealistic. At $180k single income family a $1 million home is reasonably affordable, and you have a disposable income penalty of about 15%. If you rent, the picture gets a little worse since you don’t recoup the mortgage payment when you sell, but you can live much cheaper.
Windows is fine for some things, but the networks need to be segregated and external comms to critical systems should be proxied for status only and not control.
It sounds like the networks are even less robust than an automotive network, and they need to be more like an airplane.
Agree on "stupid amenities;” wanted to hit my partner for buying a cliche ping pong table and fousball... but I held back.
The problem is even people that think they have a very good idea of what they need can rarely communicate it, which gets exasperated by corporate standards on how big an office should be. While I currently have a 10x17' office, I would prefer to have something closer to 8x8', which is the size of most of our employee cubicles.
And... even when you (think) you know what you want, needs change. Someone with a laptop has different needs than a desktop; two or three monitors vs one monitor; tall people, short people; quiet task driven vs phone people. Most of my team starts out with a desktop and a phone that gathers dust, and their needs change dramatically every 6 months. Unfortunately their workstation cannot change easily with them.
Slashdot Mirror
...by Saudi Aramco, not on the open market.
I'm a huge Apple fan, and while you can "get by" without a headphone jack integrated into the phone, it is a silly compromise. I use Bose QC20 noise cancelling headphones when I fly; they are hands-down the best in-ear, noise cancelling headphone for that purpose. They have a 3.5mm (god I hate calling it that... it is 1/8"...) jack and a really stupid battery pack. I sometimes use these same headphones for listening to the in-flight entertainment. The headphones have an 18-hour battery, and can be charged while in use.
So, for Apple's world, I can either give up the best headphones and go bluetooth, with an extra bluetooth dongle for the IFE, or keep my stupid lightning/headphone dongle and maybe invest in a dual-port headphone/charger dongle. Either way, it is dongle madness. Oh, and I need two sets of bluetooth headphones since they don't last as long.
Oh, and since purchasing a new iPad pro, I need another dongle for USB-C... but that is a separate matter.
(If I could comfortably wear on-ear headphones for a 17-hour flight then there are more options, but that is not possible.)
Conductor ampacity, resistance, and maximum voltage would be simple starting points.
I do agree that this has far more potential for vendor abuse that consumer protection. I bought my first portable USB-C device over the weekend (an iPad) and am really pissed off about the limitations imposed by the solution even today. My must-have travel charger kit went from a 6-port multi-output charger with dongles for micro-USB, Lightning, Apple Watch now needs a new cable, and potentially a new multi-output charger. I had finally gotten my charging crap down to a manageable mess, and now this.
It is rapidly approaching the point where I want to just abandon consumer electronics altogether. Went without my watch for a week because I forgot the charging cable... and was completely unwilling to purchase yet another one. It wasn't the end of the world.
LA Metro works well if you are close to a station and can get to where you need to go with at most one transfer. Metro has 93 operational stations, or roughly one per 50 square miles of LA County. The system would need to increase by an order of magnitude in track miles and stations to be on par with NYC.
You can make batteries work as a green solution or as an economical solution today, but not both. This will eventually change, with daylight hours being “off-peak” tariffs, and late night considered on-peak for residential users. At this point, oversizing a PV array and adding batteries starts to make sense... but your costs go up.
Just get a usb-c thumb drive for sensitive data, and if there is a data security policy on the internal ssd, just wipe the drive when you leave.
And for what it is worth, if you want a high performance desktop, the new mini is actually a pretty good value if you upgrade the RAM yourself and use a NAS for bulk storage.
Bought the new 11” iPad on Saturday, and went with 512GB for just that reason— the premium to go with more storage than I could envision a use for was just too high. But, 512GB gives me plenty for now. I had budgeted for a new Mac as well, but decided to hold off for now and see what happens.
My only real complaint so far (beyond needing to restore music from iCloud) is the need to buy a new set of chargers and cables that support USB-C. Really makes a streamlined travel setup a pain in the ass.
On, and I know it is just anecdotal, but my Apple store was packed all day with people buying stuff.
Square and PayPal are 2.75%; my business non-swipe payments are about 1.75%, but our Line of Credit banking relationship likely subsidizes it a quarter-point. We don't take Amex, which is about 3.5% if we offer it, and we do have a monthly fee of around $50. We do well under $100k per year on credit cards though, the vast majority now is EFT.
Legacy providers can really rip you off, but if you shop your merchant services fees you can get good deals.
Walmart and their ilk generally pay closer to 1% plus $0.12 per transaction. I think gas stations pay the highest rate due to fraud issues, and that is in the 3-4% range.
When compared to check or EFT, sure 3% is a lot. For cash though, the cost is non-zero for proper handling. If you just put the cash in a cookie jar in the kitchen and don’t report it, it might be less of an issue.
Most merchant accounts are going to pay 2% or less. A small merchant that takes in ~$1500/day is generally going to be better off paying the $30 in credit card fees compared to the hassles of managing cash.
I would guess they would end up paying about $3 per cashier drawer to count cash, and another $10 per day to break down the cash for new drawers, and maybe $10/day for going to the bank. When you add back the risks of handling cash, it might not be worth it. As you work with more cash, the costs likely increase proportionately.
It isn’t just them— some people like to use cash for certain things because that is how they manage their spending. There are plenty of good reasons to prefer cash over cards, especially for transactions under $100. I like using cash where I think it may go unreported as income (a black economy is a good thing), and if it wasn’t for credit card points, I would go back to using it exclusively.
You have to reduce the cost of nuclear energy by about two orders of magnitude for it to be viable in 10 years; nuclear energy must be economical at a capacity factor of around 35-50% when compared to the alternatives.
While I like the NuScale concept, it only really addresses about 30% of the cost issues as I understand it.
If it can’t be operated safely then it needs to be shut down. If upgrading for safe operation is not economically viable, all the more incentive to shutter it. This isn’t rocket science.
Not at all. It has been happening for 40+ years; they failed at every opportunity to deal with any form of competition. A stupid example, but the Sears store near me used to reek of mold, miserable merchandising, and no brand differentiation. But, people shopped there because they had a good appliance selection (and reputation), it was the closest place for a lot of people with reasonably good tools and basic sporting goods, and it was somewhat functional.
When they closed, it was torn down and they built a Bloomingdales which is prospering.
The 3.5mm jack is far from perfect though-- the contacts wear and lose their springyness with use-- aircraft IFE headphone jacks are a good example.
But boy do the alternatives really suck!
Keep in mind this is a solo journey, and without any support. It might be comparable to a team of 3 doing it 50 years ago without the modern tools, but you still have a 350-lb sled to tow some 900 miles.
I wouldn't say I have seen literary genius in a 5-paragraph essay, but the formula and structure are a useful basic guideline for technical writing. I always push junior engineers to focus on one-page reports with Background, Analysis, and Recommendation. It is essentially the same structure, and it is useful for conveying an approach and recommendations for many things.
Of course it doesn't take the place of a full report (or a few quick lines in an email), but it is a nice simple construct for organizing thoughts.
I actually think Musk is brilliant-- just not what we know of the tunnel concept. I would be surprised if there weren't big parts that we had no idea about though, as the waffling on seemingly import items like "skates" does not make sense. I think he is trying to figure out a vision he can actually deliver today for perception, but the master plan is very much in flux.
The part I am less confident about is if maybe this was just a "hey, I can get a 12' TBM cheap... would be fun to play with!" thing. Adding in the whole 12^2/17^2 math is what makes me think of it as a 1-dimensional solution to a 4-dimension problem. I would rather see him running an elliptical TBM (angled cutter head) or something else crazy that might make a bigger difference in the equation.
Sadly, I am pretty underwhelmed so far. Once I saw the NFPA130 job posting I realized they now understand how badly they screwed up. What they “accomplished” as an unsafe tunnel that is not exceptional in any way.
It is like they approached the problem one-dimensionally.
We do a 4-9-4 schedule, and I really like it. It makes Friday a pretty chill day, and I only need to take 4 hours of PTO to have a 3-day weekend. 4-10 Is painful, especially for the poor saps that end up working 10 hours on Friday. I guess they can get Monday off, so YMMV...
I don't think 4-10 would reduce burnout. The main factor for combating work-related burnout is to make work fun and interesting... which simply isn't always possible.
Maybe I will propose a 4-1 schedule next year...
Pretty sure you are wrong on the cloud margins; it might not be cash-flow positive due to reinvestment, but I understand it generates significant and growing profit in absolute terms.
As for bottled water... they should push for water filters and refillable bottles. Filtering things like heavy metals is very easy, and RO will get just about anything else out. Add a mineral bed for post-treatment and you have great water with minimal shipping costs. (Pump your concentrate/reject water from the RO system back to your hot water tank or to the garden.)
https://it.slashdot.org/story/...
The number seems very low; my highest paid employee is at $170k, and that is not a highly sought-after tech role, just a senior managing electrical engineer in Los Angeles. I would have expected closer to $225-275k median pay for “top talent/prime role” type job.
But, your cost of living expectations are unrealistic. At $180k single income family a $1 million home is reasonably affordable, and you have a disposable income penalty of about 15%. If you rent, the picture gets a little worse since you don’t recoup the mortgage payment when you sell, but you can live much cheaper.
Windows is fine for some things, but the networks need to be segregated and external comms to critical systems should be proxied for status only and not control.
It sounds like the networks are even less robust than an automotive network, and they need to be more like an airplane.
Agree on "stupid amenities;” wanted to hit my partner for buying a cliche ping pong table and fousball... but I held back.
The problem is even people that think they have a very good idea of what they need can rarely communicate it, which gets exasperated by corporate standards on how big an office should be. While I currently have a 10x17' office, I would prefer to have something closer to 8x8', which is the size of most of our employee cubicles.
And... even when you (think) you know what you want, needs change. Someone with a laptop has different needs than a desktop; two or three monitors vs one monitor; tall people, short people; quiet task driven vs phone people. Most of my team starts out with a desktop and a phone that gathers dust, and their needs change dramatically every 6 months. Unfortunately their workstation cannot change easily with them.