Since FoxConn isn't actually doing any of what it promised in return for majorly corrupt incentives then vote to rescind them. No more tax breaks. No more illegally diverted lake water. Nothing. Let them reapply for standard breaks open to any company.
Then see how much they really want to continue this charade. If suddenly they lose their sweetheart deal and the ability to continually string the state government along then I'm guessing they'll decide that they really don't want to have anything to do with Wisconsin.
This whole thing was a pet project of the then-current state administration who bent over forward for FoxConn so they would look like they were doing something for the state. They weren't. They were doing it for themselves and now that they're out of office all the local resentment towards the deal has some teeth.
Spoiler - I'm female so if you want to let that influence your responses to my post then so be it.
I saw the movie this weekend. I have zero exposure to the Marvel comic universes and went in without seeing trailer, reading articles, etc. I went in cold expecting to be told a story. I knew it was an origin movie and adjusted my expectations accordingly.
As an origin movie it works. The new characters are developed enough to fit into future movies, existing characters are true to what is already in the series, and there were a few "Ohhhhh....." moments for me where things clicked from previous movies.
Do you NEED to see it before seeing the next Avengers movie? Probably not. Some simple searches on the internet will get you enough information about Captain Marvel in the MCU to get you up to speed.
It's not in my top X list of movies but it's not something that is too much out of line with the others. Thor: Ragnarok had more things that bothered me than this one, to be honest.
I will admit the opening scene with the Marvel logo had me tearing up and I wasn't the only one.
60 Minutes is known for writing the story first, then going out and shooting some video to fill it out; they've been doing it that way for decades.
It's pretty clear here that the women who were interviewed didn't provide the required sound bites - they probably complained about ongoing discrimination instead of happy talk about all the wonderful opportunities girls have today. 60 Minutes has always pushed their political agenda; it's pretty clear that they didn't want to admit that initiatives which were started over two years ago aren't working...
My (probably not) cynical view is that she didn't look good enough on camera. It is a visual medium and no matter how well she presented her points if the producer didn't find her attractive enough she wasn't getting into the story.
I support 4 different Patreon accounts. One is for the creator of a piece of software for 3D printing that is continually updated and improved. Three are for artists who provide a ton of content for 3D printing - including an online designer for making builds out of some of those same designs other people are creating among others.
In those cases Patreon is a great platform. They can interact with their patrons easily, have a community board, have posts restricted to patrons and ones that are open to everyone, and they get an audience without having to maintain their own website. They can focus on creating content and working with the people who choose to support them.
Facebook severely overestimates their value here. Funny enough every Patreon I subscribe to has their own Facebook page so there's more reach but I have no doubt that they're not even looking at Facebook for their subscription platform. I don't blame them even with the over the top fees and the casual assumption of their rights to their own work.
My experience may be different since I'm mostly getting physical products. These aren't people streaming video. They use other platforms for that and there's no charge to see them. But who in their right mind is going to say that they want to lose revenue and rights to their product for no gain?
This was a while ago (about 15 I would say) and I managed the IT service desk for a large bank. We used pagers and the ticket system paged on various events. They were necessarily cryptic but the intention was to let the right people know when stuff was going on. The CTO would get paged if email went down, that kind of thing.
It was the dawn of the not-so-smart phone era and the executives got them along with people getting their own flip phones and such. Texting was starting to build. It was a great new world on the horizon. And the executives wanted us to step boldly into it.
Every few months I was asked why we didn't switch away from those old fashioned pagers and use this marvelous new technology. No more cryptic messages! No need to carry two devices! Stop being stuck in the past and move with the times!
I would politely listen to them and tell them (again) that SMS relied on email to get the messages to the towers. So just how I was I going to send a message that email was down if.. I used a system that depended on email to send messages?
It kept happening for years but that TAPI system just kept chugging along and the pagers worked everywhere, even in the more remote areas of the states when cell reception was 'stand on a hill and point your phone in the right direction' level.
It's nowhere near as important as medical professionals needing to be paged but it's an object lesson in using the right tool for the job. In this case the pager system is unlikely to get overloaded when there's a crisis or some other event where everyone is on their mobile phones. It might seem like it's an unnecessary expense but I'm guessing they looked at it like the executives at my bank did - a cost without knowing the value behind it.
I've had my share of whiteboard interviews and in general I've found they fall into two categories.
1 - A basic scenario to show you know the broad outlines of what needs to be done.
2 - Some esoteric problem that requires knowledge of obscure functions and is a pet project of an interviewer.
The first kind is useful. It lets them know how you think and that you know what's going on. The second one is a dumpster fire you're never going to answer to their satisfaction so you might as well thank them for their consideration and walk out the door.
My personal favorite interview story about the second was actually a logic question. The problem itself was flawed in that they didn't give a critical piece of information necessary to solve it. There was an assumption that was quite literally wrong. When they smugly told me how I should have solved it I pointed out that error. Needless to say I didn't get the job. Also needless to say I told everyone I knew about their lack of proper requirements for problems and to avoid them as an employer.
I RTFA even though I know that's not what we do here.
One bill doesn't put a limit on what retailers can charge to have it deleted and has a $20 fee going to the state. They also have to maintain a way to report content and keep it current.
The other bills require admission fees for anything remotely adult entertainment oriented to go to the state. Venues and stores have to keep a customer count and then pay up monthly.
SCOTUS has already declared this sort of thing unconstitutional. So they're fighting a losing battle from the onset.
They pull out the 'Think of the Children!" rag, they try to tie it to human trafficking, they try to say that they would be surprised if it wasn't hailed by the public as necessary. They're wrong on all counts. It's a money grab by the state and another way to show that Kansas legislators really have no idea how the world works.
I wonder what a search of their browser history would turn up.... Not that I'm advocating any Anonymous group to do such a thing...
Sure electronics get all the headlines but as one post pointed out the farmers are the ones shafted the worst.
They're locked into a service contract when they buy new equipment. There's no choice, So if something breaks that they can fix the equipment still won't work until a factory tech shows up and enters the secret code that tells the thing it's OK to run. They don't do any more than that but the farmer is stuck without working equipment while his crops rot. And then he has to pay for the bill for this kid to show up to enter the stupid code.
There are always going to be repairs that are beyond regular consumers. That's what repair shops are for. There are no independent repair shops for John Deere or other locked-down farm equipment. It's the dealer or an expensive field ornament.
If it takes the Apple name to get this moving and passed then that's great. But don't forget that the people who grow your food are the ones who get hurt BAD by the inability to repair their own equipment.
Director: "We want to produce these in China but we're getting a bad rep for not sourcing in America."
Manager: "But if we produce these in American then we lose our relationship with the Chinese markets!"
Director: "What can we do so this can happen?"
PR: "Pick an American supplier who can't deliver what we need, make a big public stink about how it failed, then go with the Chinese vendor we wanted all along?"
The best value going to me are the private groups. I belong to several hobby related groups and they're the new forum of the internet it seems, even if the format is terrible for forum-style posting. I can share information and questions with people all over the world and get answers. We show off projects. And they're all on one platform.
I've seen some arguments about going back to personal websites and an extension of that would be the forums that are still going but not nearly as diverse as the FB groups it seems.
The personal information they collect? If they want to know I'm finishing collecting the Chessex Festive dice line or that I'm asking about where to get cooling fans for my 3D printer they're welcome to that information.
As others have noted true dollar stores (as opposed to stores like Dollar General which are not fixed price) are great deals for the right things. Party supplies, household goods, holiday decorations, greeting cards, etc. They're not so great on other things but you also have to figure in the cost of shopping.
Am I willing to pay 20 cents more for that can of evaporated milk I need? Sure. I'm there. The eggs are fresh but medium size for the same price as large at the grocery store? I can deal with that. And hey! This soup is less than the grocery store!
The store near me has started carrying more fresh foods such as dairy and bread. So it's not all junk food. There's aisles of decent foods as well as frozen vegetables and fruit. They know their shopping target audience.
There's no real socioeconomic boundaries to the stores around me. They're in strip malls next to upper middle class subdivisions as well as low income apartments. And they're always busy.
I'd never be able to do true grocery shopping at a dollar store. They simply don't have the inventory. But when I need picture frames, pens, paper plates, and such there's no better deal out there.
who will be paying for this in the form of higher taxes to cover all the subsidies. It's like the Olympics, no sane person wants it in their city.
OTOH the other cities seem to have told Amazon to take a flying leap when they came calling ala Foxconn asking to be paid by the local government for a few hundred jobs, maybe DC isn't gonna roll out the money carpet.
As someone who lives in one of the 20 original cities I can breathe a large sigh of relief that we're out of the running. The only people who wanted it here were the politicians. No residents (including the tech community) wanted it and were quite vocal about their displeasure.
And every time the winter Olympics come up those same politicians get all excited about putting our hat in the ring only to be roundly defeated by referendums. The residents here at least seem to have a solid grip on what's going to be beneficial and what's going to be a giant money suck.
From what I saw in the video portion the text size is comparable to paperbacks now. And I think that format would make them easier to read when sitting down, like on public transportation or a waiting room.
The size makes them fit into a jacket pocket or purse. And there's something so nice about having an actual book in your hand.
The downside is that publishers will price them so high that no one will buy them and then declare that they're a failure because sales are low.
I'm still salty about ebooks costing more than paperbacks and darn near as much as hardcovers. Another passive way to slow adoption of them by the market.
I know it's a pipe dream since this is a government operation but here goes.
TSA is required to give a detailed plan on what this change is supposed to provide, giving hard numbers and not just vague assurances. They have to state how many years they have to achieve said goal
One year before the mandatory end of the program the GAO goes in and does the work to find out if the program actually did as it was intended or not.
If not, since it probably won't, then the program is immediately terminated and any similar plan is limited to 1/4 the amount of time as the original, with more stringent defined goals.
If it does work then they can submit a new proposal with a term no longer than the original with the same qualifications - GAO review one year before expiration.
I'm not against the TSA trying to make the experience faster and more efficient. I'm against them having no accountability for their decisions.
I have a G+ account that's not me (which wouldn't have been allowed at their ill-advised rollout requiring real names) and I use it a LOT. It's all the stuff I don't want linked to me but I want to post. Facebook is for cat pictures and memes.
When I heard they were shutting it down I decided to start a Blogger blog so that I could continue to post. And get some formatting in the darn things but that's another story.
Unfortunately there's no way to simply move your G+ posts to Blogger posts. Since the basic format is the same you would think that doing so would be a minimal effort. Nope. The best way to do it is to export your G+ posts in HTML format then copy-paste each one into a new Blogger post.
This means the dates are hopelessly screwed up since everything shows it being posted with the current date.
I'm working through six years of posts and doing Control-C, Control-V over and over and over and over. I'm only through 2012 so I might see if I can work some magic to convert these to some kind of XML Blogger will recognize and maybe even get those original post dates in there since the G+ export has them.
I'm not surprised to see G+ bite the dust. I'm more annoyed they didn't provide any kind of reasonable method to even move to one of their own products.
I use my phone mostly for email during the day (can't access at work) and leave it sitting when I get home. I have a tablet that I use for reading, surfing, and apps.
Will they see my complete lack of phone use for most of the day as a sign of depression? Do they consider me out of contact with people when I'm doing that on a device they're not monitoring?
As with so many things these days it's a case of "Technology can take the place of real people and make assumptions based on the data we expect".
Needless to say I'm not downloading the app. And if it gets added to my carrier's bloatware it's going to be the last straw that makes me root my phone.
Or the amber alerts that are from somewhere else in my state 400 miles away,
The real test of their system will be the ability to block
Reply All to the messages./s
You can disable amber alerts on some/most phone carriers. You can do the same thing with weather alerts even though Sprint seems to have stopped sending those. But you can't disable or block the Presidential ones.
If you're serious about automating your job, make sure your apps do a directory check to make sure you're still employed before it does it's job..../s?
Adding a dead-man's switch in your code is a good way to get yourself sued. It has happened before, and you're just looking for a world of hurt if you do it.
Now, being sloppy and using your home directory as a temporary extract location as part of a deep and complicated routine, because you needed a quick way to debug it? And your well-commented debug script looks there for data? There's a reason they let you go, and it was quite possibly stuff like that.
When I left a long term job I had automated a whole lotta stuff as part of my job. I made every effort NOT to tie any of it to my personal logon but some things did happen that way for reasons. When I left they didn't deactivate my AD account because they weren't sure what would stop working. Mind you I had asked for a backup to learn all this stuff for 10 years but they didn't think it was worth it.
That being said having it tied to your personal account because it's your job doesn't seem like a dead man's switch as much as a personal productivity tool. It would be the same as having email messages being sent to/from your account and when that account no longer exists then the process doesn't run.
Since the application wasn't assigned work or something that was implemented by the company there's more of a grey area depending on how you set things up.
I use LinkedIn as a research tool. If I'm looking for a job I use it to see who I already know at the company and reach out to find out the real dirt. It could also get them a hiring bonus, which is nice.
I also use it to check on company hires, especially in the executive ranks in my division. I've learned some interesting stuff that way and have been able to adjust my expectations accordingly.
As for the slew of recruiters sending me job posts that have nothing to do with my skills and want to connect? They get ignored until I get bored and clean out my inbox by deleting the messages and declining their invites.
I use Facebook mostly for the groups and pages now. I have a single source for groups that interest me and businesses that are active on social media. All the groups are closed so it all tends to stay in place. Sure people can screen shot stuff but does anyone really care that I was helping someone with a 3D printing problem?
I adjusted my privacy four ways long ago. The first was to clear all those 'About Me' fields. The second was to lock everything down to friends only. The third was to only have people who are actual meatspace friends as Facebook friends. The fourth was to post nothing but memes and cat pictures.
Because of the special interest groups Facebook does have some value. It has combined what used to be multiple forums into one for a lot of things. I've found people with common interests and I'm online friendly with them. But I'm not going to splatter my personal life up there to be harvested.
Elan Musk has already proven that his company can provide solar and battery power to large areas. It would be pocket change for him to toss out a small farm to provide constant residential power to this place. It would also fit is rather eccentric personality to do so. I'm honestly surprised he hasn't done so already to proof of concept his solution to isolated power grids.
C'mon folks. We're not talking Future Crimes stuff here. They plugged in data, had statistical models run over it, and did some testing to see what happened.
If there's a certain area where there is more reported crime then increasing police presence will help in reducing crime in that area. Of course there will be secondary effects such as underreported crime and criminals moving to other areas that aren't as heavily patrolled.
The first effect - underreported crime - is something that can't be addressed since it relies on victims. That's going to happen regardless. It will skew the models used to predict where to send more patrols but in the long run it will even out.
The second effect - crime moving elsewhere - will be addressed when spikes show up and the increased patrols are moved. Criminals won't enjoy having to guess where to commit crimes without getting arrested. When their 'safe areas' aren't safe any more then it will be interesting to see what the models predict.
As for racial profiling? Is it profiling when only the crimes themselves are used as data points? If more crime is being committed in neighborhoods that are mostly purple Martians then I don't think it's profiling to say "Per the police reports more crimes are committed in neighborhoods that are mostly populated by purple Martians." It's a fact.
If this leads to better use of limited resources (police patrols) and a reduction in crime then how is it a bad thing?
His statement that there's room for compromise is correct. The compromise is that law enforcement accepts that default encryption is in place, it's going to keep getting better, and they're not going to get to dictate or legislate anything about it.
The lame "it makes it harder to do our jobs" doesn't fly. The numbers are against them. The total number of people using devices with default encryption vs the number of devices they want to encrypt makes their sample statistically insignificant.
People want secure encryption. Not "secure except for anyone who has the keys to decrypt it under dubious circumstances" encryption. Companies know that and they're going with what their customers want.
There's an entire division of government dedicated to doing things like breaking encryption. Let them earn their paychecks by working on ways to break encryption. If they can't then that's not the consumer's problem.
Demanding less secure encryption is a slippery slope. If they can force it to happen then they've got precedent for other kinds of default access. Key locks? Need a master key for those so we can enter without constraint. Vehicles? Master key. Email? Master key/default access.
You can't give up one kind of security without putting every other one at risk.
I looked up the cheese vs processed cheese situation as a close example. Processed cheeses - for the most part - cannot simply be called 'cheese'. They're processed cheese and labeled as such. That one had to be regulated and has some rules as to exactly what kind of labeling goes onto them.
Milk vs [descriptor] milk is already doing that. Milk without a qualifier is cow milk. Milk from other mammals is also labeled as such - goat milk, etc.
Perhaps the rule should simply codify what's already being done. It's got precedent. But honestly there's no reason not to call it soy milk when it's used for the same purposes as cow milk and is clearly labeled as to what variant it is.
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Since FoxConn isn't actually doing any of what it promised in return for majorly corrupt incentives then vote to rescind them. No more tax breaks. No more illegally diverted lake water. Nothing. Let them reapply for standard breaks open to any company.
Then see how much they really want to continue this charade. If suddenly they lose their sweetheart deal and the ability to continually string the state government along then I'm guessing they'll decide that they really don't want to have anything to do with Wisconsin.
This whole thing was a pet project of the then-current state administration who bent over forward for FoxConn so they would look like they were doing something for the state. They weren't. They were doing it for themselves and now that they're out of office all the local resentment towards the deal has some teeth.
Spoiler - I'm female so if you want to let that influence your responses to my post then so be it.
I saw the movie this weekend. I have zero exposure to the Marvel comic universes and went in without seeing trailer, reading articles, etc. I went in cold expecting to be told a story. I knew it was an origin movie and adjusted my expectations accordingly.
As an origin movie it works. The new characters are developed enough to fit into future movies, existing characters are true to what is already in the series, and there were a few "Ohhhhh....." moments for me where things clicked from previous movies.
Do you NEED to see it before seeing the next Avengers movie? Probably not. Some simple searches on the internet will get you enough information about Captain Marvel in the MCU to get you up to speed.
It's not in my top X list of movies but it's not something that is too much out of line with the others. Thor: Ragnarok had more things that bothered me than this one, to be honest.
I will admit the opening scene with the Marvel logo had me tearing up and I wasn't the only one.
60 Minutes is known for writing the story first, then going out and shooting some video to fill it out; they've been doing it that way for decades.
It's pretty clear here that the women who were interviewed didn't provide the required sound bites - they probably complained about ongoing discrimination instead of happy talk about all the wonderful opportunities girls have today. 60 Minutes has always pushed their political agenda; it's pretty clear that they didn't want to admit that initiatives which were started over two years ago aren't working...
My (probably not) cynical view is that she didn't look good enough on camera. It is a visual medium and no matter how well she presented her points if the producer didn't find her attractive enough she wasn't getting into the story.
I support 4 different Patreon accounts. One is for the creator of a piece of software for 3D printing that is continually updated and improved. Three are for artists who provide a ton of content for 3D printing - including an online designer for making builds out of some of those same designs other people are creating among others.
In those cases Patreon is a great platform. They can interact with their patrons easily, have a community board, have posts restricted to patrons and ones that are open to everyone, and they get an audience without having to maintain their own website. They can focus on creating content and working with the people who choose to support them.
Facebook severely overestimates their value here. Funny enough every Patreon I subscribe to has their own Facebook page so there's more reach but I have no doubt that they're not even looking at Facebook for their subscription platform. I don't blame them even with the over the top fees and the casual assumption of their rights to their own work.
My experience may be different since I'm mostly getting physical products. These aren't people streaming video. They use other platforms for that and there's no charge to see them. But who in their right mind is going to say that they want to lose revenue and rights to their product for no gain?
This was a while ago (about 15 I would say) and I managed the IT service desk for a large bank. We used pagers and the ticket system paged on various events. They were necessarily cryptic but the intention was to let the right people know when stuff was going on. The CTO would get paged if email went down, that kind of thing.
It was the dawn of the not-so-smart phone era and the executives got them along with people getting their own flip phones and such. Texting was starting to build. It was a great new world on the horizon. And the executives wanted us to step boldly into it.
Every few months I was asked why we didn't switch away from those old fashioned pagers and use this marvelous new technology. No more cryptic messages! No need to carry two devices! Stop being stuck in the past and move with the times!
I would politely listen to them and tell them (again) that SMS relied on email to get the messages to the towers. So just how I was I going to send a message that email was down if .. I used a system that depended on email to send messages?
It kept happening for years but that TAPI system just kept chugging along and the pagers worked everywhere, even in the more remote areas of the states when cell reception was 'stand on a hill and point your phone in the right direction' level.
It's nowhere near as important as medical professionals needing to be paged but it's an object lesson in using the right tool for the job. In this case the pager system is unlikely to get overloaded when there's a crisis or some other event where everyone is on their mobile phones. It might seem like it's an unnecessary expense but I'm guessing they looked at it like the executives at my bank did - a cost without knowing the value behind it.
I've had my share of whiteboard interviews and in general I've found they fall into two categories.
1 - A basic scenario to show you know the broad outlines of what needs to be done.
2 - Some esoteric problem that requires knowledge of obscure functions and is a pet project of an interviewer.
The first kind is useful. It lets them know how you think and that you know what's going on. The second one is a dumpster fire you're never going to answer to their satisfaction so you might as well thank them for their consideration and walk out the door.
My personal favorite interview story about the second was actually a logic question. The problem itself was flawed in that they didn't give a critical piece of information necessary to solve it. There was an assumption that was quite literally wrong. When they smugly told me how I should have solved it I pointed out that error. Needless to say I didn't get the job. Also needless to say I told everyone I knew about their lack of proper requirements for problems and to avoid them as an employer.
I RTFA even though I know that's not what we do here.
One bill doesn't put a limit on what retailers can charge to have it deleted and has a $20 fee going to the state. They also have to maintain a way to report content and keep it current.
The other bills require admission fees for anything remotely adult entertainment oriented to go to the state. Venues and stores have to keep a customer count and then pay up monthly.
SCOTUS has already declared this sort of thing unconstitutional. So they're fighting a losing battle from the onset.
They pull out the 'Think of the Children!" rag, they try to tie it to human trafficking, they try to say that they would be surprised if it wasn't hailed by the public as necessary. They're wrong on all counts. It's a money grab by the state and another way to show that Kansas legislators really have no idea how the world works.
I wonder what a search of their browser history would turn up.... Not that I'm advocating any Anonymous group to do such a thing...
Sure electronics get all the headlines but as one post pointed out the farmers are the ones shafted the worst.
They're locked into a service contract when they buy new equipment. There's no choice, So if something breaks that they can fix the equipment still won't work until a factory tech shows up and enters the secret code that tells the thing it's OK to run. They don't do any more than that but the farmer is stuck without working equipment while his crops rot. And then he has to pay for the bill for this kid to show up to enter the stupid code.
There are always going to be repairs that are beyond regular consumers. That's what repair shops are for. There are no independent repair shops for John Deere or other locked-down farm equipment. It's the dealer or an expensive field ornament.
If it takes the Apple name to get this moving and passed then that's great. But don't forget that the people who grow your food are the ones who get hurt BAD by the inability to repair their own equipment.
Director: "We want to produce these in China but we're getting a bad rep for not sourcing in America."
Manager: "But if we produce these in American then we lose our relationship with the Chinese markets!"
Director: "What can we do so this can happen?"
PR: "Pick an American supplier who can't deliver what we need, make a big public stink about how it failed, then go with the Chinese vendor we wanted all along?"
Director and Manager: "Perfect!"
The best value going to me are the private groups. I belong to several hobby related groups and they're the new forum of the internet it seems, even if the format is terrible for forum-style posting. I can share information and questions with people all over the world and get answers. We show off projects. And they're all on one platform.
I've seen some arguments about going back to personal websites and an extension of that would be the forums that are still going but not nearly as diverse as the FB groups it seems.
The personal information they collect? If they want to know I'm finishing collecting the Chessex Festive dice line or that I'm asking about where to get cooling fans for my 3D printer they're welcome to that information.
As others have noted true dollar stores (as opposed to stores like Dollar General which are not fixed price) are great deals for the right things. Party supplies, household goods, holiday decorations, greeting cards, etc. They're not so great on other things but you also have to figure in the cost of shopping.
Am I willing to pay 20 cents more for that can of evaporated milk I need? Sure. I'm there. The eggs are fresh but medium size for the same price as large at the grocery store? I can deal with that. And hey! This soup is less than the grocery store!
The store near me has started carrying more fresh foods such as dairy and bread. So it's not all junk food. There's aisles of decent foods as well as frozen vegetables and fruit. They know their shopping target audience.
There's no real socioeconomic boundaries to the stores around me. They're in strip malls next to upper middle class subdivisions as well as low income apartments. And they're always busy.
I'd never be able to do true grocery shopping at a dollar store. They simply don't have the inventory. But when I need picture frames, pens, paper plates, and such there's no better deal out there.
who will be paying for this in the form of higher taxes to cover all the subsidies. It's like the Olympics, no sane person wants it in their city.
OTOH the other cities seem to have told Amazon to take a flying leap when they came calling ala Foxconn asking to be paid by the local government for a few hundred jobs, maybe DC isn't gonna roll out the money carpet.
As someone who lives in one of the 20 original cities I can breathe a large sigh of relief that we're out of the running. The only people who wanted it here were the politicians. No residents (including the tech community) wanted it and were quite vocal about their displeasure.
And every time the winter Olympics come up those same politicians get all excited about putting our hat in the ring only to be roundly defeated by referendums. The residents here at least seem to have a solid grip on what's going to be beneficial and what's going to be a giant money suck.
My phone has a replaceable battery, microSD card, and a headphone jack. It runs just fine and does everything I need a cell phone to do.
I also got it used online for around $120.
Tell me again why I need to buy a new phone that doesn't have any of that and will cost me almost 10 times as much?
From what I saw in the video portion the text size is comparable to paperbacks now. And I think that format would make them easier to read when sitting down, like on public transportation or a waiting room.
The size makes them fit into a jacket pocket or purse. And there's something so nice about having an actual book in your hand.
The downside is that publishers will price them so high that no one will buy them and then declare that they're a failure because sales are low.
I'm still salty about ebooks costing more than paperbacks and darn near as much as hardcovers. Another passive way to slow adoption of them by the market.
I know it's a pipe dream since this is a government operation but here goes.
TSA is required to give a detailed plan on what this change is supposed to provide, giving hard numbers and not just vague assurances. They have to state how many years they have to achieve said goal
One year before the mandatory end of the program the GAO goes in and does the work to find out if the program actually did as it was intended or not.
If not, since it probably won't, then the program is immediately terminated and any similar plan is limited to 1/4 the amount of time as the original, with more stringent defined goals.
If it does work then they can submit a new proposal with a term no longer than the original with the same qualifications - GAO review one year before expiration.
I'm not against the TSA trying to make the experience faster and more efficient. I'm against them having no accountability for their decisions.
I have a G+ account that's not me (which wouldn't have been allowed at their ill-advised rollout requiring real names) and I use it a LOT. It's all the stuff I don't want linked to me but I want to post. Facebook is for cat pictures and memes.
When I heard they were shutting it down I decided to start a Blogger blog so that I could continue to post. And get some formatting in the darn things but that's another story.
Unfortunately there's no way to simply move your G+ posts to Blogger posts. Since the basic format is the same you would think that doing so would be a minimal effort. Nope. The best way to do it is to export your G+ posts in HTML format then copy-paste each one into a new Blogger post.
This means the dates are hopelessly screwed up since everything shows it being posted with the current date.
I'm working through six years of posts and doing Control-C, Control-V over and over and over and over. I'm only through 2012 so I might see if I can work some magic to convert these to some kind of XML Blogger will recognize and maybe even get those original post dates in there since the G+ export has them.
I'm not surprised to see G+ bite the dust. I'm more annoyed they didn't provide any kind of reasonable method to even move to one of their own products.
I use my phone mostly for email during the day (can't access at work) and leave it sitting when I get home. I have a tablet that I use for reading, surfing, and apps.
Will they see my complete lack of phone use for most of the day as a sign of depression? Do they consider me out of contact with people when I'm doing that on a device they're not monitoring?
As with so many things these days it's a case of "Technology can take the place of real people and make assumptions based on the data we expect".
Needless to say I'm not downloading the app. And if it gets added to my carrier's bloatware it's going to be the last straw that makes me root my phone.
the three times a week emergency test on my TV.
Or the amber alerts that are from somewhere else in my state 400 miles away,
The real test of their system will be the ability to block Reply All to the messages. /s
You can disable amber alerts on some/most phone carriers. You can do the same thing with weather alerts even though Sprint seems to have stopped sending those. But you can't disable or block the Presidential ones.
If you're serious about automating your job, make sure your apps do a directory check to make sure you're still employed before it does it's job.... /s?
Adding a dead-man's switch in your code is a good way to get yourself sued. It has happened before, and you're just looking for a world of hurt if you do it.
Now, being sloppy and using your home directory as a temporary extract location as part of a deep and complicated routine, because you needed a quick way to debug it? And your well-commented debug script looks there for data? There's a reason they let you go, and it was quite possibly stuff like that.
When I left a long term job I had automated a whole lotta stuff as part of my job. I made every effort NOT to tie any of it to my personal logon but some things did happen that way for reasons. When I left they didn't deactivate my AD account because they weren't sure what would stop working. Mind you I had asked for a backup to learn all this stuff for 10 years but they didn't think it was worth it.
That being said having it tied to your personal account because it's your job doesn't seem like a dead man's switch as much as a personal productivity tool. It would be the same as having email messages being sent to/from your account and when that account no longer exists then the process doesn't run.
Since the application wasn't assigned work or something that was implemented by the company there's more of a grey area depending on how you set things up.
I use LinkedIn as a research tool. If I'm looking for a job I use it to see who I already know at the company and reach out to find out the real dirt. It could also get them a hiring bonus, which is nice.
I also use it to check on company hires, especially in the executive ranks in my division. I've learned some interesting stuff that way and have been able to adjust my expectations accordingly.
As for the slew of recruiters sending me job posts that have nothing to do with my skills and want to connect? They get ignored until I get bored and clean out my inbox by deleting the messages and declining their invites.
I use Facebook mostly for the groups and pages now. I have a single source for groups that interest me and businesses that are active on social media. All the groups are closed so it all tends to stay in place. Sure people can screen shot stuff but does anyone really care that I was helping someone with a 3D printing problem?
I adjusted my privacy four ways long ago. The first was to clear all those 'About Me' fields. The second was to lock everything down to friends only. The third was to only have people who are actual meatspace friends as Facebook friends. The fourth was to post nothing but memes and cat pictures.
Because of the special interest groups Facebook does have some value. It has combined what used to be multiple forums into one for a lot of things. I've found people with common interests and I'm online friendly with them. But I'm not going to splatter my personal life up there to be harvested.
Elan Musk has already proven that his company can provide solar and battery power to large areas. It would be pocket change for him to toss out a small farm to provide constant residential power to this place. It would also fit is rather eccentric personality to do so. I'm honestly surprised he hasn't done so already to proof of concept his solution to isolated power grids.
C'mon folks. We're not talking Future Crimes stuff here. They plugged in data, had statistical models run over it, and did some testing to see what happened.
If there's a certain area where there is more reported crime then increasing police presence will help in reducing crime in that area. Of course there will be secondary effects such as underreported crime and criminals moving to other areas that aren't as heavily patrolled.
The first effect - underreported crime - is something that can't be addressed since it relies on victims. That's going to happen regardless. It will skew the models used to predict where to send more patrols but in the long run it will even out.
The second effect - crime moving elsewhere - will be addressed when spikes show up and the increased patrols are moved. Criminals won't enjoy having to guess where to commit crimes without getting arrested. When their 'safe areas' aren't safe any more then it will be interesting to see what the models predict.
As for racial profiling? Is it profiling when only the crimes themselves are used as data points? If more crime is being committed in neighborhoods that are mostly purple Martians then I don't think it's profiling to say "Per the police reports more crimes are committed in neighborhoods that are mostly populated by purple Martians." It's a fact.
If this leads to better use of limited resources (police patrols) and a reduction in crime then how is it a bad thing?
His statement that there's room for compromise is correct. The compromise is that law enforcement accepts that default encryption is in place, it's going to keep getting better, and they're not going to get to dictate or legislate anything about it.
The lame "it makes it harder to do our jobs" doesn't fly. The numbers are against them. The total number of people using devices with default encryption vs the number of devices they want to encrypt makes their sample statistically insignificant.
People want secure encryption. Not "secure except for anyone who has the keys to decrypt it under dubious circumstances" encryption. Companies know that and they're going with what their customers want.
There's an entire division of government dedicated to doing things like breaking encryption. Let them earn their paychecks by working on ways to break encryption. If they can't then that's not the consumer's problem.
Demanding less secure encryption is a slippery slope. If they can force it to happen then they've got precedent for other kinds of default access. Key locks? Need a master key for those so we can enter without constraint. Vehicles? Master key. Email? Master key/default access.
You can't give up one kind of security without putting every other one at risk.
I looked up the cheese vs processed cheese situation as a close example. Processed cheeses - for the most part - cannot simply be called 'cheese'. They're processed cheese and labeled as such. That one had to be regulated and has some rules as to exactly what kind of labeling goes onto them.
Milk vs [descriptor] milk is already doing that. Milk without a qualifier is cow milk. Milk from other mammals is also labeled as such - goat milk, etc.
Perhaps the rule should simply codify what's already being done. It's got precedent. But honestly there's no reason not to call it soy milk when it's used for the same purposes as cow milk and is clearly labeled as to what variant it is.