Completely agree.
These contracts are not only wasteful, Accenture and others are some of the worst offenders of H1B abuse. It makes zero sense to pay for them to bring replacements for US citizens or lawful permanent residents.
Not to mention the security implications of having an organization with transitory foreign nationals to handle pentagon contracts.
This is two birds with a single stone.
some daycares need to sign up before kid is born!
Some people are extremely picky. It's because fresh parents in the upper middle class are cracked in the head.
I wish it was about being picky. Even the most basic ones have 6+ months wait. And if you want anything educational like Montessori, things get much more competitive. (Of course there might be exceptions).
$6k/month rent is commonplace
Yes. I know people that pay that much. Most are not. My mortgage is was less than that in the Bay Area, but I bought several years ago. My house is also not big or in a desirable school district.
I think each person makes their own value judgement on to stay or to move. Being able to switch to a different silicon valley job, especially when the start up market is hot, is a huge advantage for those building their career or trying to make their fortune. During an economic downswing, the valley tends to flush out a lot of young people who seek greener pastures as they can't sustain the high cost of living here.
A lot has changed in the last several years.
If you want to live anywhere close to work, and want a house for kids... the prices are unreasonably high.
Of course there are "deals" to be found. Apartments with bug issues, homes without working utilities. Homes literally sinking into the ground...
(Was just in the market)
And many could prefer to own a 20 acres in the middle of nowhere with a much more peaceful life at $150k "value".
I'm not sure how much you think a decent house should cost in most of the US. I have some crappy ones and the cheapest was $230k (Michigan).
$150k is not the purchase price, but the salary. With a $100k down payment it would enable about $900k in mortgage, which should be enough to buy 20 acres in the middle of nowhere.
Just checked this at zillow, and many results came up:
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zillow.com%2Fhomedet...
I'm sure even better ones could be found.
Yes, I know the same work and different pay... However there really is more demand from workers for higher independence (duh!) and employers can and do charge a premium for it... in terms of lower wages.
If you were given two choices:
1) Stay in Silicon Valley with $400k salary, need to come to work 3-5 days per week
2) Stay anywhere else with $250k salary, need to show up online only
Which one will you prefer?
Let us be honest. The cost of living ($6k/month rent is commonplace), the traffic, quality of life (really bad), schools (extremely expensive or bad), everything is overcrowded and long waits (some daycares need to sign up before kid is born!)
And many could prefer to own a 20 acres in the middle of nowhere with a much more peaceful life at $150k "value".
That is why employers will do it. They know we will choose (b) without blinking.
The actual solution is condemning those home in disaster zones. However they tend to be rich and influential:
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zillow.com%2Fhomedet...
Take this random beauty, $4 million mansion in Los Gatos, literally on hills that catch fire every year.
The real market value for insurance is probably over $50,000 per month alone. But of course nobody will pay it. So, yes either the government will step in directly. Or they will force the rest of the state, which do not own hillside or cliffside mansions to subsidize the rich.
This is extremely unfair, but letting them build that structure was the issue in the first place. If it was up to me, I'd say let them "self insure".
There is a solution, but most of us will not accept that.
DRM. Yes, that DRM.
A browser that is fully secure end to end, including mouse and keyboard hardware attested by a trusted notary and all connections going through your client SSL certificate... would solve the "human detection" problem. (At least until they make physical robots that are capable in typing similar to a human).
And of course this idea is bollocks, and will never pass, except high security systems, like confidential work or government. And those already have their own firmware for devices and does something similar.
That leaves us, the public, with half working solutions, like tracking mouse movements, or delays between keystrokes, and using sequence or similar machine learning models to classify bot input. And of course that will always be tricked by a "better bot" (we already have mouse imitator algorithms: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fben.land%2Fpost%2F2021%2F04%2F...). Or CAPTCHAs that only block humans now, as the article ironically points out.
I have used a lot of TP-Link routers with OpenWRT in the past. They were awesome (except hardware quality. They all needed replacement in a few years, but then the wifi tech was also advancing)
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fopenwrt.org%2Ftoh%2Fhwdata...
They just worked out of the box, and even sometimes using the original firmware's update page. (Yes, just download the open source firmware, open router, upload, and reboot).
At one point they locked the bootloader.
And everything went downhill from there.
Their excuse? US people installing EU firmware to unlock illegal bands (airports and all). However this was when they started selling "mesh" routers and other changes, which makes me at least suspicious.
Anyway, if you have an older TP-Link with lots of RAM and internal storage, look up support on that page. If not, just use a better router.
That is the value to Google.
But not to others. For any other buyer (maybe except Microsoft, which also has a competing search engine / ads platform), the value is
Actually less than that.
Any other browser is either open source, tied to a single platform, or malware. I.e.: it's either a money / energy sink, or crap.
Since the NetScape / Opera days many have tried to monetize browsers and failed. They are basically public utilities at this point.
Why would anyone want to pay any money to Chrome? Especially billions.
Exactly.
Unlike data brokers out there, Google actually uses the data itself, but does not sell to third parties (at least so far).
When you sign up for a "loyalty card" from your groceries, connect to utilities, use your bank, or have a mobile phone, the companies will sell your data to third party brokers, which will then join these different sources to build profiles for you. At best, you get some mailers, worst, they are leaked, sold on black market, and leads to stolen identity.
Google, and maybe Microsoft and a few others, will exploit the data, that part is true. But they will keep it to themselves.
And that is a big difference.
Why?
Google is exploiting Chrome to sell search ads. That is how they make money (and the $20 billion value).
Your profile is kept internal.
But say...
If say a multi-national fund like Blackrock bought it. What would be their business model?
They will auction your browsing behavior to third parties, probably including Google (ironically) and any other highest bidder. They would have no infrastructure to use (exploit) the data, so instead of "you being the customer" (will you be paying $20 per year to use Chrome? of course not), you will be the "merchandise"
And that would be another failed, once popular browser (like Opera, or Brave which did these kind of things)
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fnews.ycombinator.com%2Fi...:
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.reddit.com%2Fr%2Fpriva...
The EVs will eventually take over for the basic fact that they are just better cars.
Not only they drive faster, smoother, and give you a much better feeling with "instant torque", they are also more reliable, has less moving parts, and future proof.
Yes, the older models were like "small home appliances" as someone called it. Nissan Leaf was designed like a vacuum cleaner. They had a meager 70 miles range, charged extremely slowly and drove sluggish. Of course the cargo space and internal amenities too a hit. Charging infrastructure? Almost non existant.
Today, none of them are true. Tesla, Lucid, yes, but also Ford, Hyundai, Volkswagen and other classic manufacturers are now producing really good and fun EV offerings.
It is just "when" instead of "if".
(I would not go crazy and say 5-10 years, but saying 40-50 years is also unrealistic. Probably something in between).
Yes,
Human nature would have prevailed.
Would anyone miss out the chance to cash in on literally billions of value?
You have to be extremely altruistic. And given the profile this person is not it.
They are not touching monopolies that actually affect real life, but have a massive focus on those in the virtual world. I am really baffled by this.
I'm not saying Google was not doing shady stuff. Apparently "do no evil" is no longer there. However...
Berkshire Hathaway for example, our nations sweet grandpa "invests" in real estate, by evicting home owners. "Mobile" home owners, but home owners nevertheless. And they are not alone in this: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpublicintegrity.org%2Fin...
Eli Lilly, the very successful pharma company increased their value about 8x during the pandemic. These are "nvidia" numbers. And how are they doing? They are suing those who try to bring cheap drugs to the market: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fseekingalpha.com%2Fnews%2F...
Walmart, ExxonMobil, Oracle,
Yes, having the default search engine in Chrome being Google, and them sending covert data to mothership is not good. But are they really more important than big pharma fleecing us, and real estate "investors" are raking in cash while people are losing their homes?
Before having such strong responses, I would recommend trying to read and understand what was said. Maybe an LLM would help you to summarize.
That being said, the reasoning capabilities of LLMs are still in discussion, and them being unable to reason is not "an objective fact".
Yes, they have limits on reasoning, nobody claims they are more advanced than the best humans.
But given these IQ tests, and what we know about the general population, they seem to be more capable than a significant amount of us:
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmedium.com%2F%40ronit.pati...
Are you sure your effective income tax is 27%? Not the marginal one?
Even if you were single, living in California (one of the tax heavy states), and making $100k income, your effective tax rate would be 19.58%.
You have to be doing real good and living in a relatively desirable place to have 27% of your income be taxed.
(Sorry but the numbers are out there).
That "effective rate" is a farce.
Income tax average of the top 1% is 25.9%. Top 0.1% pays 30-35%. And the very top 0.01% pays 35-40% or higher.
And compared to that the median tax rate is 0.4% (almost half of Americans do no pay income taxes). While the average household is estimated 10% to 15%.
So, no, you are not, and I am not, none of us are, paying more taxes than these rich snobs. Not even in percentile wise. Definitely not in absolute terms.
Their personalities might be extremely lacking, but with using some clever shift of definitions we try to placate ourselves above others by saying "my tax is higher than X, Y, and Z". No it is not. It does not work that way.
This all assumes humans are "special" and what can be said for the AI cannot be said for at least most of humanity as well.
Don't get me wrong, we might very well be indeed special, and our brains require some quantum phenomenon we have not realized yet. (Yes, there are scientifically plausible theories on that). But we should ignore it for now, for a fair discussion.
The average American reads at 7th to 8th grade level (middle school), and their reasoning would be expected to be similar.
What this means is, observing a black box, the ChatGPT and other moderns AIs can do as good as our average person. Don't get me wrong, they would still somehow fail this "Turing Test", as their responses are too formal, and they would occasionally burst out "as a language model...".
Yet for all practical purposes, they seem to demonstrate as good reasoning skills as a random person you meed down the road.
A conclusion is simply the place where someone got tired of thinking.
