Follow Slashdot blog updates by subscribing to our blog RSS feed

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:Government mandated minimum wage increase do co (Score 1) 140

I think you're missing that those 1.4M people are needed, but they're no longer affordable at $15/hr. In theory.

What the GP is missing is that increasing the buying power of people in the area can boost local businesses.

Take the mom 'n' pop business down the road:
- 100 consumers in the local area that will visit the store.
- Sell widget for $5.
- Pay 5 employees $290/wk (probably reasonable coverage for a store)
- Consumers want the widget every other day, but have to save (for example) 1 week of pay to buy that widget and still cover other expenses.
- Business makes $5000 per week. Business spends $1450 in payroll.
- $3550 for the business after payroll and before cost.

- 100 consumers in the local area that will visit the store daily.
- Sell widget for $5.
- Pay 5 employees $600/wk (that's $15/hr, 40hr/wk)
- Consumers want the widget every other day, and can buy the widget every other day without worrying if they'll have to eat ramen noodles for the next week.
- Business makes $17500 per week. Business spends $3000 in payroll.
- $14500 for the business after payroll and before cost.
- Businesses makes more money, even though they're paying their workers more???
- Businesses can spend more with suppliers/distributors, passing that money further up the chain.

The whole thing is oversimplified, and assumes everyone in the area is paying that $15/hr of course. And keep in mind that $15/hr means $310 extra in the pocket per week - that's enough for each one of those 100 consumers to buy 62 widgets per week if they really wanted to, and they can maintain their other expenses (assuming they were able to in the first place.).

I've been sitting here thinking, and I don't see where - if anywhere - the whole thing breaks down either. Until someone gets greedy and says "I want me a bigger cut of this" and doubles their prices - which leaves everyone except for whoever doubled the prices in the same place they were in the first place.

Which is of course where it'll break down, because publicly traded companies are assholes that do everything in their power to make more money.

Comment Re:Serious Sam series (Score 1) 313

Absolutely. None of this "taking cover" bullshit - just keep firing until you or the literal thousands of enemies are gone, or run away to wherever that last health pack you saw was.

I'll suggest Serious Sam 2 though - 1 wasn't -bad-, I just didn't like the level design in a lot of places. YMMV, etc.

Comment Re:Used to work here, and... (Score 2) 161

Me personally? No. Others though, especially when they're less-computer-literate business travelers (or tourists) and need a quick turnaround? I'm not saying it's smart, but it's understandable why they'd do it.

If they'd actually hired people on the ground who knew what they were doing (or let existing employees who knew what they were doing actually DO something,) it might have actually been a worthwhile service. As it was when I worked there though, if anything needed to be done, you connected it up to a remote session to India and let who-the-hell-knows-who-they-are do whatever work was "required." Having watched them do their thing, it's something that even 7 years ago I could have done in half the time it took them.

I sold the services when necessary, if only because I needed some minor piddly things like food and housing, but GTFO'd as soon as I could.

Submission + - New Wave Of Targeted Attacks Focus On Industrial Organizations (helpnetsecurity.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Kaspersky Lab researchers discovered a new wave of targeted attacks against the industrial and engineering sectors in 30 countries around the world. Dubbed Operation Ghoul, these cybercriminals use spear-phishing emails and malware based on a commercial spyware kit to hunt for valuable business-related data stored in their victims’ networks. Operation Ghoul is only one among several other campaigns that are supposedly controlled by the same group. The group is still active, and in total more than 130 organizations from 30 countries, including Spain, Pakistan, United Arab Emirates, India, Egypt, United Kingdom, Germany, Saudi Arabia and other countries, were successfully attacked by this group.

Submission + - Intel To Manufacture Rival ARM Chips In Mobile Push

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Chip maker Intel has entered an unlikely partnership with British semiconductor firm ARM in an effort to boost opportunities for its foundry business. The licensing agreement, which was confirmed at the Intel Development Forum in San Francisco, means that from 2017 Intel’s Custom Foundry will manufacture ARM chips – used by smartphone giants such as Apple, Qualcomm and Samsung. On the announcement of its latest earnings report, Intel was clear to highlight a shift in focus, away from the traditional PC market, to emerging areas such as the Internet of Things and mobile – a sector dominated by one-time arch rival ARM. It seems that Intel has now decided to surrender to the latter’s prominence in the field.

Submission + - 10 Year-Old Teaches Hackers a Valuable Lesson In Privacy (csoonline.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: At r00tz Asylum, a kids-only gathering at DEF CON, 10-year-old Evan Robertson presented his first-place winning school science fair project, which showed how quickly people will hand over their privacy for a little free Wi-Fi. Robertson set up a Wi-Fi hotspot with terms-of-service that would allow him to access or modify connecting devices 'in any way.' In his science fair experiment, 76 people at local malls and stores connected to his hotspot, and 40 of them (52%) accepted the TOS to gain access. And, proving that security pros aren't all quite as privacy-minded as you might expect them to be, Robertson later set up his hotspot at BSides San Antonio, where 41 people connected to his hotspot, and 20 of them accepted the TOS.

Submission + - Mobile providers sell data about user location to third parties (observer.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Observer got a look at some aggregated data about two Donald Trump rallies in Indiana before the primary in that state, and it illustrated the kind of data mobile providers can collect and that they also sell.

For example, he said, there were an unusually high number of Android users in the audiences. “This is somewhat indicative of a lower income bracket,” he explained. Saying that the Samsung S5 was the most popular phone at the two events, “which is kind of an old phone. These are not people buying the latest technology,” he said.

As the old adage goes: if you don't pay for the product, you are the product. Except, consumers do pay for mobile service, yet they still become products.
Earth

6 Million Americans Exposed To High Levels of Chemicals In Drinking Water, Says Study (businessinsider.com) 166

Posted by BeauHD from the dirty-water dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Business Insider: A new study out Tuesday in the journal Environmental Science and Technology Letters looked at a national database that monitors chemical levels in drinking water and found that 6 million people were being exposed to levels of a certain chemical that exceed what the Environmental Protection Agency considers healthy. The chemicals, known as poly- and perfluoroalkyl substances, or PFASs, are synthetic and resistant to water and oil, which is why they're used in things like pizza boxes and firefighting foam. They're built to withstand the environment. But PFASs also accumulate in people and animals and have been observationally linked to an increased risk of health problems including cancer. And they can't be easily avoided, like with a water filter, for example. You can view the chart to see the tested areas of the U.S. where PFASs exceed 70 ng/L, which is what's considered a healthy lifetime exposure.

Slashdot Top Deals

I'm always looking for a new idea that will be more productive than its cost. -- David Rockefeller

Close