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Comment Re:This sounds awesome (Score 2, Insightful) 118

Got it.

You think that your convenience is exclusively more important than the legal system, the company you work for, the people you work with, and the people you produce a product or service for.

Is it legal where the company reports its base of operation and is legally liable? Lets assume yes or they'd be fired already.

Did you miss the whole "quiet" part of the narrative? The point is that the company DOESN'T KNOW that this is happening. If they did, yeah... the people would probably be fired already.

When it comes to interstate--let alone interNATIONAL--law, there is no "let's assume yes". There is only "make absolutely sure!".

This is something I deal with on a daily basis. And it is INCREDIBLY detailed and particular. Our company is going to a trade show. Employees from divisions around the world are going to attend. They're all going to wear shirts the company bought. I had to supply *detailed* information on the material, sleeve length, collar type, and country of origin in order to mail them to our employees.

If I'd gotten it wrong, it could have cost our company. Severely. Not only in penalties, but in enhanced scrutiny from Customs.

Is it legal where the company reports its base of operation and is legally liable?

That's you saying you've never had to deal with interstate or international commerce--and have zero clue how interstate/international law works. The company's base of operations is irrelevant. Where it's doing business IS.

And if you're in a jurisdiction outside of where your company exists, you are potentially opening them up to a whole world of liability.

Comment Re:This sounds awesome (Score 1) 118

Are you aware of every local, state/provincial, and federal law in the place where you're vacationing?

Are you aware of every interstate and international treaty governing the work you're doing, and the rule regarding it's transmission across interstate and/or international borders?

What you think of as "just doing my job from somewhere else" may put the company you work for in the crosshairs for civil and/or criminal prosecution. It may make them liable for taxes and other obligations.

If you're allowed to work remote, are traveling, and doing all the work that's required, just tell your company. They can let you know what is and is not allowed based on the jurisdiction you're working from. There is zero reason a company should unknowingly take on civil and/or criminal liability because you want to sneak off on a vacation. You're putting your company, your coworkers, and yourself at risk.

And if you think I'm exaggerating: I remember when sending a .zip of PGP outside the US was considered a violation of ITAR and considered "illegal export of stuff with military applications".

Comment Re:More likely explanation (Score 2) 49

And what legal issue would that be?

And frankly, I call B.S. on the whole argument that 'subscribe' means "pay money"

There are laws regarding media that specifically mention "subscribers". I publish a small online "newspaper". The municipalities I serve are actively forbidden from publishing public notices (which are required by law) in my paper because less than 50% of my subscriptions are paid.

I publish for free, and the only "subscriptions" I have is an auto-generated "here's all the stories from the past week" e-mail that goes out on Sunday morning. It doesn't matter than I have a larger readership than the "newspaper of record". The law defines a subscription as involving payment.

I have no doubt that major media platforms are running into laws that were written when the local newspaper was dominant.

Is it stupid? Absolutely.

But it's still the law.

Comment Re:So... lighting (Score 1) 267

So how much power is the lighting system using ?

Not much. I'm at home, so I don't have access to the specs, but I work for the company that manufactures the units they're using in their R&D wing (ours aren't in the production side yet), and energy usage is one of the things that we look at.

And how much CO2 does this convert into

I don't have those numbers, but you'd have to compare it against that produced by all the machinery used to grow and transport food grown in traditional farm (and consider that a lot of food is transported not only across the country, but across oceans)

And what about the variety of produce, did not see tomatoes, potatoes, rice, fruit , etc.

Currently, Plenty is offering leafy vegetables because they're the easiest to grow and are a good place to start. The same is true for InFarm, Bowery, Square Root, and other "urban farm" companies. They are, however using the knowledge they're gaining to start working on fruits like strawberries and tomatoes, and on towards more "solid" foods like beans, peas, and other climbing plants.

You have to start somewhere, you can't just jump in at the top.

I am guessing , like all marketing it hypes the positives to hide the negatives.

There aren't a whole lot of "negatives" to it. It can't compete with traditional agriculture yet--and it's unlikely it will ever replace cereals--but being able to bring a variety of fresh vegetables into urban markets with no agricultural run-off, no plowing under of land and creation of monocultures, no wholescale spreading of herbicides and pesticides, and virtually no transportation (tens of miles instead of tens of thousands of miles) is all a positive. Being able to have fresh-grown foods all year round? That's a positive, also.

Comment Re:It's just salad greens (Score 1) 267

They're growing leafy veggies first because they're the easiest, and help them to work out the system. They're already experimenting with strawberries, tomatoes, and other fruits. From there they'll move on to other things. It's a process, and they're only at the beginning of it.

Comment Re:I Actually RTFA (Score 2) 227

I agree.

For many things, I want to be able to download a fixed copy of the data (I write for a newspaper, and having the ability to download a fixed copy is very important--and a PDF shows that it's from the source, not from me).

That being said. it's still up to content creators to make sure that the PDF is up-to-date (especially for things that tend to change with some frequency).

The proper solution is to have an HTML version (that's searchable, and works on all size screens), along with a PDF that sets a timestamp.

Comment I Actually RTFA (Score 3, Informative) 227

(My apologies for that heresy.)

That first section shows that the "study" doesn't know what it's talking about. Basically, it's arguing that PDFs are "unfit for use" because.... They behave like a sheet of paper and (paraphrasing the actual article) people are confused by that.

The authors are premising their position on the idea that people don't understand fixed-medium information. ("They take users out of a familiar context and into one that is outdated and clunky.") Because, apparently, people today have never seen a magazine, newspaper, book. or anything printed on a piece of paper or other physical material.

The following sections don't show that PDFs are bad, they show that the content creators are using them for the wrong things, failing to keep them up to date, and creating them badly. Along with a healthy dose of users who are idiots that would (based on their comments) be incapable of "navigating the UI" of a printed magazine.

Comment Re:Not just Chinese people (Score 1) 134

Sure. And the point remains that if you're not Chinese or want to message Chinese people, people you want to message are almost certainly not on it.

[looks at contact list]

German, Portuguese, Mexican, Zimbabwean, Russian, Belorussian, Israeli, British, American...

Pretty much everyone I want to message is on it.

Comment Tempest in a Teacup (Score 1) 26

At a time when the national unemployment rate is just under 15%, and the unemployment rate in California hovers around 25%, Google has... chosen to not hire more people.

From TFA:

The move affected more than 2,000 people globally who had signed offers with the agencies to be a contract or temp workers

TFA explicitly states that they are "would-be workers".

None of these people actually worked for/with Google in any capacity.

On the other hand (from TFA):

Google has taken some steps to help its temp and contract workers. In March, the company said it would extend the assignments of temp workers whose jobs were scheduled to end from March 20 to May 15 by 60 days.

The company also said it would continue to pay contract workers affected by office closures such as people who serve food in the company’s cafeterias.

So... temps (who work day-to-day) have been guaranteed 60 days of work, and contractors who aren't able to work are still being paid. These are the people who provide all those services that can't be done from home. Y'all keep assuming that every job at Google has to do with programming. You're blind to the people who clean the floors, empty the trash, receive packages, deliver the mail, answer the phones, prepare the food in the "free" cafeteria, etc. And-- according to TFA that is trying to paint the company as bad--Google is protecting those vulnerable workers by not increasing their workforce.

That's what you're getting upset about.

Comment Re:Who is debating this? Always use 2 spaces after (Score 5, Informative) 344

Henry Beadnell’s influential Guide to Typography, published in London in 1859, advised using an em space after a sentence that ends in a period: “after a full-stop, an em quadrat” (pt. 2, p. 43).

This would be the advice also in the first edition of our very own Manual of Style (1906):

A standard line should have a 3-em space between all words not separated by other punctuation points than commas, and after commas; an en-quad after semicolons, and colons followed by a lower-case letter; two 3-em spaces after colons followed by a capital; an em-quad after periods, and exclamation and interrogation points, concluding a sentence. ( 245)

A 3-em space is one-third of an em space (“3-em” is short for “three to an em”). So printers in those days were putting not two but three times as much space between sentences as between words.

That was old news by 1906. You’ll see extra space between sentences in the 1611 first edition of the King James Bible. You’ll also see it in Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility as first published in London in 1811.

--Chicago Manual of Style

Typesetters used proportional fonts.

If you're going to use history to back up your choice, at least get the history correct.

Comment Re: WeChat Wallet (Score 1) 161

All BofA knows is my direct deposit check which my employers already report to the IRS and how much cash I withdrew the next day.

BoA knows everything you do through BoA--every check you write, every ATM/debit/credit transaction.

If you're doing all your transactions in cash, then the Chinese government has exactly the same information on WeChat users who use cash: Zero.

Comment Re: WeChat Wallet (Score 1) 161

Do you not think that WeChat has full access to the funds in the wallet?

Of course they have full access to the funds in the wallet. However, unlike Google Pay (and, I'm assuming, Apple Pay), WeChat Wallet does not require linking to a bank account for basic use.

And how do you think funds get into the WeChat account?

Based on my six years of living in China and using WeChat Wallet? People send you money through the app. Employers pay you through the app. Businesses post "red envelopes" that you can claim through the app.

There are lots of ways to add money to your wallet without linking to a bank account.

Why do the sites that talk about how a WeChat wallet getting funded talk about using a bank account to do it?

a) Because it unlocks all the features.

b) Because the Chinese government wants people to link to bank accounts, even if they don't need to.

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