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Comment Re:Eventually that will trickle up to everybody (Score 1) 158

The question will remain: Will the people who work at call centers now, get into coding, do a bootcamp, and then work as a software developer or just a stable code money..... will these people understand that their circumstances might not exist by the time they have gotten 2-5 tiers up the ladder?
This question bothers me far more than thinking about the job loss, because it mirrors former events: There is a lot of workers who managed to get on the first steps in the industrial output before the outsourcing and the rust belt, who still thinks there are widget end labor that exist to climb the same ladder they have, and they might even have gotten a degree after working at said widget factory for a year or two with newfound appreciation. What do a economy look like, when the widget engineer thinks there will be more people him, and he just accidentally climbed the ladder as it was extended far far out of reach?

The reason to think about this, is because the people who now climb the ladder might get enough clout or capital to later try to build an enterprise, or just some middle service niche. Without anybody climbing after, there are for the long term no competition climbing up.
Today if you want some manufacture or even assembly, you need to find out if there are special regions near where you live to see if its possible to get your feet wet. If they don't exist, well you don't. And the same extends trough out the economy.
I'd image even working at the mail room of one of the larger corporations back in the day gave you a decent idea on what was going on, even if resulted in education instead of competitive clout.
What I fear is
What do the economy look like when the only position left to climb is the sales people? And what happens when the pie finally starts shrinking on that end?

Comment Re:Is this a good patent? (Score 1) 23

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fapple.slashdot.org%2Fsto...
They poached a bunch of Masimo employees, and the owner of Masimo decided that settling out of Court was a bad idea that would just lead to further problems down the line.
The patent itself is NOT discussed in any of the upvoted comments, which means there is actually nothing of value in that article outside of the poaching.

Comment Watch recommendation (Score 1) 20

Wanted to ask the same question, what is a good sensor fit for a sport/sleep watch which can export the data, and maybe have a eink or AMOLED display with 2-3 weeks of battery life?
While I am amazed at how far the smart watches has gotten in terms of features, one for just jogging/sleep is hard to pick.

Comment Kettle calling tea (Score 1) 61

Mr Schmidt's opinion is limited by the fact the defaults for the OS on that phone is something that is in at the least 1/3 of the cases something he could influence. Mr Schmidt could implement policy that the phone can't serially beep, and that would literally be the end of the tale.
Instead he is sitting there like a idiot, complaining about things he let come to pass.

Comment Re:This guy had a different experience (Score 1) 201

"a distance of some 4,800 miles "
And with some skimming, you can also see the caveat is that its only done by using supercharging at daytime.... which means no wall socket charge over night. And there goes my "bad faith journalism attempt".

All the article can do is ask: Is the VW ID Buzz a bad car?

Comment Re:And put it where? (Score 1) 60

"Transporting it will have protests against transporting"
It will go in the same cylinder as everything, with a danger sign maybe telling what it is if you can bother to look up what the numbers correspond to.
At that point you have protests against transporting oil and literally anything else... in the same round tubes that goes on a semitruck.

Comment Re:Value Chain (Score 1) 268

>and also to provide some form of viable work for those who are not very well educated, but still need a job.
This kind of thinking is dangerous. At face value, we have a "Value chain". If basic molding lead to advanced stamping, stamping leads to industrial mass design along the lines of automotive or satellites.
Then the bext question you need to ask yourself is: How can you do CNC related engineering, there exists no secondary production in your region?
You are basically saying that the jobs you are dependent upon to work higher in the value chain is "provide some form of viable work for those who are not very well educated". I can't tell if this is some elaborate self lie to avoid talking about pulling the ladder up alongside you, or if its delusion. Or if its a joke made by a bureaucrat, since after all working is somebodies else problem if all you do is to manage and get paid for it.

Comment Value Chain (Score 1) 268

Good explanation. BUT, i notice you stop at the point where its contested.

So you go toward a Service Economy. The money to keep the service economy comes from oil, and providing OEM with machines to build their gizmoz and widgets, and exporting that service. ASML is one of the more cited companies for this idea, and its a good reflection of reality.
And this is where your explanation stops. Nothing wrong with that.

So what is stopping the host nation providing the primary economy, from exporting to the service economy one? What is stopping the host country from going from making satellites and land survey equipment into competing for that Service with a host country advantage?
What if your area's only economic is.. tourism? What happens when there isn't air service for half a year, or your currency increases?
Remember: The service economy exchanges money for services, and that economy throughput still has to come from somewhere. Somewhere in a "Service Economy" is the real economy of plastics, food, metals, ceramics hydraulics that is keeping the service economy afloat.
If your entire economy is providing CAD software, what is stopping the buyer of those services to long term NOT buy those services?

But that isn't my argument against the service economy. My argument against the service economy is far simpler: If there is nowhere to work in the industry because its all abroad, how will you gain experience in the industry?
What if there is no factories, no investment into refinement? What if you are building cheap data centers due cheap electricity, but can't generate more value via using that electricity for refinement into gizmos?

I don't think the Chinese will deindustrialize. I think they might offload some to somewhere other in Asia, but i think they will try to keep as much possible.
I think the Chinese is currently in a phase where they via having a large primary resource and secondary refinement sector, are trying to build a synergy where its possible to keep it long term in China. At the end of the day any example company like Microsoft is only providing value at exchange, they do not produce.

Comment Lignin (Score 2) 95

It doesn't decay correctly with oxygen inside of it, and there is fungi that eats dead wood. Which results in methane release, among other things.
One would image you wouldn't need to go all the way with turning it into charcoal, but you would need to go far enough to not come back to the mine turning into one gigantic bioreactor for fungi and bacteria.

The argument being made is often that there was a very long period between wood evolving, to the period where wood could be digested by anything. Meaning there was a 60 million year period where all wood would just fall down, where erosion and flood would bury it, and keep tumbling down, and eventually turn to fossile fuel due heat and pressure.
As per wikipedia:
"One theory suggested that about 360 million years ago, some plants evolved the ability to produce lignin, a complex polymer that made their cellulose stems much harder and more woody. The ability to produce lignin led to the evolution of the first trees. But bacteria and fungi did not immediately evolve the ability to decompose lignin, so the wood did not fully decay but became buried under sediment, eventually turning into coal. About 300 million years ago, mushrooms and other fungi developed this ability, ending the main coal-formation period of earth's history."
"The conversion of dead vegetation into coal is called coalification. At various times in the geologic past, the Earth had dense forests[20] in low-lying areas. In these wetlands, the process of coalification began when dead plant matter was protected from oxidation, usually by mud or acidic water, and was converted into peat. "

Comment Re: Well, that's sad. (Score 1) 103

Lets make a small comment to make a bit more sense of it.
In curtains parts of the EU, you have state gambling monopoly, while the neighbors do not. What do you do if a online casino with address in your neighbor countries starts buying acting services from your citizens living in your country to their bank accounts located in said country? This is not a tricky question so long it involves citizens and not expats.

A lot of US digital multinationals are buying services in EU, buying infrastructure in EU, has national sales teams in EU, they have distribution interaction, etc. Even if you ignore that for something like Meta and X.... there are still companies buying Ads and services from those multinationals
The catch here is that EU consist of a majority blocks. The Germans might follow rule of Law, the French might, but the Spanish and Italians might not. This always leads to the question: Is this EU overreach to make an example, or is it just rule of law being applied?

Comment Re:Tell me you haven't been near college in 20 yea (Score 1) 289

I will be honest: I don't get why your post is upvoted.
Brain-Fu is saying he is interviewing people with Bachelor or Master degrees, which means they are just ONE small step away from being completely on top of the Education pyramid with a PHD. Brain-Fu is complaining that he isn't really getting anything he couldn't have gotten from taking a few people who had completed pre college and just done apprenticeships.
Brain-Fu second point, is that the skill level Brain-Fu experienced would enable him to at the least have a chance in the interviews Brain-Fu commits. Brain-Fu is puzzled over the complete breach of continuity.

But let me come back to my point:
Vocation training exist where I live. A "car mechanic" is a certified vocationship where you can do school year 11+12 in school, and year 13+14 as a minimally paid apprentice with access to student loans and grants. For all intents and purposes, a car mechanic in this system comes off the mill with 4 years of work experience under his belt with a newly minted vocationship in Car Mechanics.
This again opens the opportunity to go to get a Bachelor and then a Master, while working part time and having RL work experience under your belt, possibly even taking the next step up the ecosystem and going from being a specialized and educated tool user to getting a degree to become a Tool maker tool maker. But since this is ecosystem related, a Mechanical Engineer should at the have an idea on what a mechanic is, and what a mechanic do.
As far as I am aware, where I live, you could do a Vocationship for IT: End user hardware, customer support, light scripting. School with specialized education for year 11 and 12, and a vocationship apprenticeship year 13 and 14 in a normal enterprise. And bam, 4 years of CV experience.
Because IT isn't very super secret expensive tool intensive, these people can and will work up the ladder in their field. But you should expect anybody with work experience to at the least do light scripting, but for an engineer that should be a given.

The essence is a bit more blunt: He is interviewing people with Masters degree in art, and they have the drawing ability of a toddler.

Comment EU (Score 1) 106

So Germany, Austria, Belgium, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Switzerland AND Holland has a population of 135 million together. That is including ignoring South Africa, for a lot of reasons.
That IS the Dutch market. What you are saying is a lot like saying "Texas is only a market of 31 million, surely they can't develop anything".

One of the great struggles with the EU project, is that it used to be what you said: Internal economies, language barriers, trade restrictions.
But there is a point here: What remains is that when it comes to large projects such as replacing the entire dominant OS stack and software.... somebody has to foot t he bill, and that somebody always has to be somebody else. Or a region tries to get away from paying the MS tax, only to discover that its competing with more than a decade of cumulative high end software, alongside the actual internal tech debt inside of each IT department and vendor.

I don't think anything will come of it. There is just something nice about precompiled binaries, MS computer fleet management systems, good software support, lack of broader vendor lockin on the upper layers, and using a HTML5 browser.

Comment Re (Score 1) 11

After a few rounds of driving the Tesla with phone key setup, i disagree.
You enter the car, and set it in gear, and drive. And maybe use the right side of the screen to add a address, where you get to see the car load in satellite images instead of the google maps UI. If you are going further than the range of the car, its going to plan out charging and manage battery pre heating to keep charging to a minimum.
And the only thing you would use the app for would be..... starting the car before you go out to it, such as heating the interior? Or sending in service requests, and see if its possible to remote diagnose it?

You have high tech and sleek, and high tech and clunky. The latter i don't really mind for industrial machines, but i really dislike it for home use, appliances and cars.
The Tesla is very close to the ideal. Seamless keyless experience, good follow distance on the cruise control, and no fiddly manual management of battery pre condition for charging for longer distances.

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