No - UK public sector just the same - very little useful work every done

Formal training is not the same as lot of certifications. Most certifications are very narrow and basically just a way to get week candidates to pay money to try and look better.

You have a phone which cost $1500 when new.

In 3 / 4 years time it will be worth a few hundred bucks second hand. Then 130$ becomes significant

The customer base was very particular where by a small number of customers could start a sizable run and the correlation between these customers is very high. This isn't the same for traditional banks.

> , that the bank has (and always had) enough assets to cover its liabilities

In a mark to market liquid model .. I suspect not which is why they were taken over

> just something to help liquify the bank's assets at fair market value

No - the bank didn't need this to sell assets at a fair market value. There issue was that they needed to sell them above the fair market value.

The issue was that their assets were poorly structured in such a way that they couldn't withstand a small run without critical damage. Someone noticed and the rest is history.

Charges what for? Because I choose not to sign up to a service? If it were my kid that 150$ would be out of my account as fast as possible.

Having used both - they are just phones. The interface is a bit different but they both make phone calls, receive SMS'es and have a bunch of apps I can install. I've never had to download separate libraries for either.

Apart from a few companies that want to build custom apps than offer no better experience than a website and can't be bothered to use a cross platform build system to write them I've never had any issues.

As for needing tech support for a phone .... other than sharing names of useful apps - never had the need to provide it. It's just a phone !

I went to the casino the other night. Came away with 20% profit.

The real question is ... is playing blackjack on basic strategy a safer investment that crypto ?

It's really not. I suspect most governments are secretly (or not so secretly) wanting Crypto to blow up

So I can now play GTA as a my car auto drives itself around town ......

There's a massive different between fully remote and hybrid.

Working from home allows me to make confidential phone calls without having to jump into an office to make them. It allows me to have confidential things on my screen without worrying if someone walking behind me will see. It allows me to get on with stuff without distractions.

However - working from home means I don't get the feel for how my team is doing. If there are issues / questions they can't just be shouted out. If someone is getting frustrated you can't see it in their body language. And all the time wasted trying to get on calls ... argh ... :(

Depending on the person, 1 day from home or 3 days from home might work. But fully time at home - never.

my 16MB P133 from 1996 says differently ....

A business model where they care about 99.9% of their customers over the other 0.1% is unsustainable?

Top link was to a driver, not firmware.

As you pointed out - there are issues with both open and closed source software. The "open source security is good" has been disproved so many times (google openssl security if you like!)

You have already installed the manufacturers hardware in your computer. If you don't trust them then your security is compromised. There is nothing they can't do without a binary firmware blob that they can't do with the hardware __you__ installed for them. (note this is slightly different to having binary only drivers which would have access to parts of the system that the manufacturers hardware doesn't).