Excellent point... and in theory, the internet should route around disruption like censorship.
Unfortunately, legal jurisdiction on the Internet is the quintessential slippery slope. I would love to hear ways to deal with the inherent conflict, but as it stands today there is no easy way to avoid lowest-common denominator compliance.
There are a huge range of devices out there in terms of capabilities and anticipated lifespans. I would be pissed if my refrigerator ended up having the same lifespan as my light bulbs due to firmware issues, as an example. The devices today that are the biggest problem are CCTV DVRs: essentially general purpose computers with poor security concepts and implementation.
Much of what really needs to happen is focusing on documenting the interface requirements for low power devices and setting security guidelines for more powerful devices.
The new MBP is a powerful computer, and more powerful than its predecessor for sure. It looks forward several years in advance. The problem is that it is a hassle to use today if you travel between multiple locations: you either need a charger/dock at each location, or you need a bunch of dongles. The dongle issue was not solved gracefully by Apple at least offering a first party docking solution. This isn't a computer for my needs, and it isn't a computer for anyone in my family, stock be damned.
We will see what happens in March/April, but really these products are very old now.
Beyond hardware, you have the issue that the iPhone works very poorly with the combination of Outlook and GMail, and the system lacks cohesion now. It doesn't "just work." I didn't recommend Apple products because of my stock position... I recommended them because they worked and made life better.
Yup... when I first saw Surface Studio I was wondering how Apple is stuck on thier awful iMac. (Should be VESA by default.) Microsoft is spending on product placement and it does build mindshare over time-- these aren't the brown Zune's anymore. Had Apple stuck with the perf tower maybe they could have kept a dedicated team on it sticking with the incremental upgrades.
My guess though, is that Apple changes course when the manufacturing technology better allows them to collapse the supply chain further.
In a rational market this would mean that the price drops between cycles.
I get how it is hard for Apple to justify a sku that brings in less than $50MM a year (or some random number), but the problem is Apple is built on mindshare. Pithy example, but my company switched to iPhones (back in the day) because of me, our sole Mac user; Apple no longer makes a computer well suited for my personal needs. This leads to erosion in core markets over time, and is hard to recover from.
So, sure... there is no profit to be had in a better Mac Pro, or a laptop that has built in Ethernet, or whatever. Worse, the designers run things now, and other functional items are eliminated for better visual appearance.
Look into the impacts of long-term scheduled overtime to see where that will end. The first time I heard this discourse it was in front of a few hundred hourly employees telling them not to do it because it will cause burnout. I know exactly what the feeling of getting in control of your day feels like, and if you can control more than 75% of your outcomes, it might end up working. Otherwise, it will just end up causing undue stress.
You very much are a Luddite. Not that it makes you wrong, but let's think of what could change. Arguably, what will happen soon is not as bad as the factory in a company town closing, as local employment drops from 95% to 15-20%. Maybe labor laws change, maybe subsidies for employment kick in, maybe... And, maybe there is a revolution. History shows that concentration of wealth ebbs and flows as new industries are created.
Being an entrepreneur is the thing that doesn't seem quickly replaced today by AI, although it could hurt first-mover advantages. We have to look where things are going before it happens, and try to adapt as a society. I wouldn't encourage anyone to go into truck or taxi driving today though for sure, and avoid large investments in training or education for something that might go away.
Curious where advertising will end though... this wave seems unsustainable.
For what it is worth, this has been widely reported for years. I decided to try to put myself in a positive frame of mind before checking email-- not the social support network BS, but some kind of happy thought. Once you get in the mode of being overwhelmed for the day, it is hard to recover.
However, since early morning is one of my most productive times usually, I do need to get moving quickly. (And sadly, I do often turn to/. to give me something other than news to wake me up.)
Basically doubling down hoping to make it work at scale as a market leader. But, they paid too much for that title, and the growth of nuclear is not looking as likely. I forget if they are invested in the SMR market, but that will require even more capital.
Good point; you could create a pretty simple adaptive firewall for each product. Problem is feature changes and off-requests, but if initially blocking doesn't hinder functionality it isn't too bad. I think the DPI engine on my EdgeRouter can get me halfway there... but it would be a pain to maintain individually.
Sorry, but I call BS... unless you had a dramatic change of circumstances. $1,600/month is what you would pay today for a family of 5 (IIRC) in most places, and $450 is about what you pay for an individual.
What a number of people (my employees included) are seeing is that the employer is reducing the amount they pay towards the premiums. We went from 90% down to 80% for employee/40% dependent over the past five or so years in order to keep our contributions essentially flat (2-3% growth). Our employee salaries went up (on average) about 10% per year.
Obamacare is a clusterfuck in many ways, just as the previous system was a clusterfuck. It appears that 20-30% of healthcare costs are linked to the billing/payment process, which is money wasted. While single-payer isn't a panacea (and medicare is a big part of the billing challenges), I have tremendous difficulty in understanding how an improvement can be made without eliminating the insurance companies from the equation.
We need to get costs down to a reasonable level; monthly cost should not be more than 10% of net pay for great coverage or 5% for preventative + catastrophic. It isn't going to happen overnight though, and it will have a negative impact on a lot of companies, people, and industries.
I'll take the liberty of re-phrasing the question: What can be done to prevent "my" IOT devices, which require some access to the internet, from being part of the problem?
Don't really know the answer; consumer routers aren't up to the task, and configuring a more advanced router/firewall isn't easy, and the end devices themselves have terrible security. You could proxy some of the data that is sent by the equipment and track anomalies... but that becomes a lot of work.
And millenials are apparently really bad at math too, as the only way to make that kind of return on $100 would be $75 strike Jan/2018 calls, hoping for the stock to hit $95, which would be a 20x return.
Reality is an unlikely outcome, and a terrible gamble.
But, for us old farts, we would interpret this as either Microsoft isn't going away, and is likely to hold value, or, Pump and Dump alert. You pick...
I personally am trying to come to grips with something a (economically extremely conservative) relative said at Christmas, so I will channel his thoughts: does the work need to be done in the US, at American wages and cost of living; does it provide strategic advantage to the company to invest in this service, or is it a commodity function best outsourced; if by reducing costs for this service, is the company able to offer other things to their customers that are perceived as having a higher value?
For me, the jury is still out. I think there are competitive advantages that can theoretically be provided, and moving on to a non-commodity endeavor is better economically. At the same time, I don't want the government to subsidize the process by providing h1b visas to eliminate jobs. Make people get b1 visas and control it that way.
But long term, not sure where the pendulum heads. Whatever policy or approach you take has to be based on long term planning and not short term financials.
The airlines overbook to the extent that it makes economic sense. I have had to pay 5x the "normal" fare for a ticket before to get on a flight I needed for work. My premium made it attractive to bump, re-route, or re-book other passengers on to flights with lower load factors.
You generally can't buy a ticket for more than 5-6x the "normal" fare; not sure how regulation actually works for that, but my guess is that they have to sell a published rate. It sometimes takes status with an airline to be able to purchase these oversold tickets, but if you really must be on the flight and have at least 24 hours notice, there is usually a way.
Duh... the airlines will sell a ticket to every passenger willing to pay a sufficiently high price at the time of sale... and deal with the consequences later. They value your time at zero, so it is only accommodation expenses that they have to foot the bill for.
You need to understand how to protect yourself, especially on high risk tickets. Not rocket science.
Slashdot Mirror
Excellent point... and in theory, the internet should route around disruption like censorship.
Unfortunately, legal jurisdiction on the Internet is the quintessential slippery slope. I would love to hear ways to deal with the inherent conflict, but as it stands today there is no easy way to avoid lowest-common denominator compliance.
Does a JTAG count as easy upgrade mechanism?
There are a huge range of devices out there in terms of capabilities and anticipated lifespans. I would be pissed if my refrigerator ended up having the same lifespan as my light bulbs due to firmware issues, as an example. The devices today that are the biggest problem are CCTV DVRs: essentially general purpose computers with poor security concepts and implementation.
Much of what really needs to happen is focusing on documenting the interface requirements for low power devices and setting security guidelines for more powerful devices.
Not enough-- look at the ransom attacks on Hue bulbs as an example.
More like a pump and dump scheme I would guess.
The new MBP is a powerful computer, and more powerful than its predecessor for sure. It looks forward several years in advance. The problem is that it is a hassle to use today if you travel between multiple locations: you either need a charger/dock at each location, or you need a bunch of dongles. The dongle issue was not solved gracefully by Apple at least offering a first party docking solution. This isn't a computer for my needs, and it isn't a computer for anyone in my family, stock be damned.
We will see what happens in March/April, but really these products are very old now.
Beyond hardware, you have the issue that the iPhone works very poorly with the combination of Outlook and GMail, and the system lacks cohesion now. It doesn't "just work." I didn't recommend Apple products because of my stock position... I recommended them because they worked and made life better.
Yup... when I first saw Surface Studio I was wondering how Apple is stuck on thier awful iMac. (Should be VESA by default.) Microsoft is spending on product placement and it does build mindshare over time-- these aren't the brown Zune's anymore. Had Apple stuck with the perf tower maybe they could have kept a dedicated team on it sticking with the incremental upgrades.
My guess though, is that Apple changes course when the manufacturing technology better allows them to collapse the supply chain further.
Oh, come on. The EPA won't exist in 2 years, so there won't be any superfunds to worry about. The free market will take care of it.
That said, as a TSLA shareholder, I really hope they don't have a fire...
In a rational market this would mean that the price drops between cycles.
I get how it is hard for Apple to justify a sku that brings in less than $50MM a year (or some random number), but the problem is Apple is built on mindshare. Pithy example, but my company switched to iPhones (back in the day) because of me, our sole Mac user; Apple no longer makes a computer well suited for my personal needs. This leads to erosion in core markets over time, and is hard to recover from.
So, sure... there is no profit to be had in a better Mac Pro, or a laptop that has built in Ethernet, or whatever. Worse, the designers run things now, and other functional items are eliminated for better visual appearance.
No, the security was in the ticket stock. You needed an actual, magnetically coded ticket to board the plane.
More secure, but an awful process.
Look into the impacts of long-term scheduled overtime to see where that will end. The first time I heard this discourse it was in front of a few hundred hourly employees telling them not to do it because it will cause burnout. I know exactly what the feeling of getting in control of your day feels like, and if you can control more than 75% of your outcomes, it might end up working. Otherwise, it will just end up causing undue stress.
What we see is kind of the pre-pubescent hacking. What is going on behind the scenes is the real stuff.
You very much are a Luddite. Not that it makes you wrong, but let's think of what could change. Arguably, what will happen soon is not as bad as the factory in a company town closing, as local employment drops from 95% to 15-20%. Maybe labor laws change, maybe subsidies for employment kick in, maybe... And, maybe there is a revolution. History shows that concentration of wealth ebbs and flows as new industries are created.
Being an entrepreneur is the thing that doesn't seem quickly replaced today by AI, although it could hurt first-mover advantages. We have to look where things are going before it happens, and try to adapt as a society. I wouldn't encourage anyone to go into truck or taxi driving today though for sure, and avoid large investments in training or education for something that might go away.
Curious where advertising will end though... this wave seems unsustainable.
For what it is worth, this has been widely reported for years. I decided to try to put myself in a positive frame of mind before checking email-- not the social support network BS, but some kind of happy thought. Once you get in the mode of being overwhelmed for the day, it is hard to recover.
/. to give me something other than news to wake me up.)
However, since early morning is one of my most productive times usually, I do need to get moving quickly. (And sadly, I do often turn to
Basically doubling down hoping to make it work at scale as a market leader. But, they paid too much for that title, and the growth of nuclear is not looking as likely. I forget if they are invested in the SMR market, but that will require even more capital.
Good point; you could create a pretty simple adaptive firewall for each product. Problem is feature changes and off-requests, but if initially blocking doesn't hinder functionality it isn't too bad. I think the DPI engine on my EdgeRouter can get me halfway there... but it would be a pain to maintain individually.
I would say you might be better off with a $50 Ubiquiti EdgeRouter X; cheaper and easier.
(I was just thinking about Breaking Bad this morning...)
Sorry, but I call BS... unless you had a dramatic change of circumstances. $1,600/month is what you would pay today for a family of 5 (IIRC) in most places, and $450 is about what you pay for an individual.
What a number of people (my employees included) are seeing is that the employer is reducing the amount they pay towards the premiums. We went from 90% down to 80% for employee/40% dependent over the past five or so years in order to keep our contributions essentially flat (2-3% growth). Our employee salaries went up (on average) about 10% per year.
Obamacare is a clusterfuck in many ways, just as the previous system was a clusterfuck. It appears that 20-30% of healthcare costs are linked to the billing/payment process, which is money wasted. While single-payer isn't a panacea (and medicare is a big part of the billing challenges), I have tremendous difficulty in understanding how an improvement can be made without eliminating the insurance companies from the equation.
We need to get costs down to a reasonable level; monthly cost should not be more than 10% of net pay for great coverage or 5% for preventative + catastrophic. It isn't going to happen overnight though, and it will have a negative impact on a lot of companies, people, and industries.
I'll take the liberty of re-phrasing the question: What can be done to prevent "my" IOT devices, which require some access to the internet, from being part of the problem?
Don't really know the answer; consumer routers aren't up to the task, and configuring a more advanced router/firewall isn't easy, and the end devices themselves have terrible security. You could proxy some of the data that is sent by the equipment and track anomalies... but that becomes a lot of work.
This is true when innovation is occurring, but is it when you truly have a commodity function you wish to outsource?
And millenials are apparently really bad at math too, as the only way to make that kind of return on $100 would be $75 strike Jan/2018 calls, hoping for the stock to hit $95, which would be a 20x return.
Reality is an unlikely outcome, and a terrible gamble.
But, for us old farts, we would interpret this as either Microsoft isn't going away, and is likely to hold value, or, Pump and Dump alert. You pick...
Ok, compete against them. Figure out a way to simplify the systems and cut costs and improve "outcomes" that way.
How are they going to do it for a lower cost? Just fire the 50% of the team that is chaff? Take a pay cut?
You basically need a process that reduces the amount of support staff and time that are required... or you need to approach the problem differently.
I personally am trying to come to grips with something a (economically extremely conservative) relative said at Christmas, so I will channel his thoughts: does the work need to be done in the US, at American wages and cost of living; does it provide strategic advantage to the company to invest in this service, or is it a commodity function best outsourced; if by reducing costs for this service, is the company able to offer other things to their customers that are perceived as having a higher value?
For me, the jury is still out. I think there are competitive advantages that can theoretically be provided, and moving on to a non-commodity endeavor is better economically. At the same time, I don't want the government to subsidize the process by providing h1b visas to eliminate jobs. Make people get b1 visas and control it that way.
But long term, not sure where the pendulum heads. Whatever policy or approach you take has to be based on long term planning and not short term financials.
The airlines overbook to the extent that it makes economic sense. I have had to pay 5x the "normal" fare for a ticket before to get on a flight I needed for work. My premium made it attractive to bump, re-route, or re-book other passengers on to flights with lower load factors.
You generally can't buy a ticket for more than 5-6x the "normal" fare; not sure how regulation actually works for that, but my guess is that they have to sell a published rate. It sometimes takes status with an airline to be able to purchase these oversold tickets, but if you really must be on the flight and have at least 24 hours notice, there is usually a way.
Duh... the airlines will sell a ticket to every passenger willing to pay a sufficiently high price at the time of sale... and deal with the consequences later. They value your time at zero, so it is only accommodation expenses that they have to foot the bill for.
You need to understand how to protect yourself, especially on high risk tickets. Not rocket science.