Yeah, I get it - you have to serve mobile kids too. I don't like that interface. Have been using classic on Android since I got it. I browse logged in. There should be configuration preference for "never show me the mobile site again".
and so it starts. The Chinese government decided to stop buying up US Treasuries and they are likely not going to roll over the US bonds that they already own, that would be Trillions of dollars that the Fed will have to print to buy up this incoming flood of the old Treasuries and without the Chinese in the US bond market, the Fed will have to buy up all of the new issued debt as well.
In this case what is good for the Chinese is bad for the Americans, Chinese are going to see a long needed deflation finally, while the Americans will see massive amounts of inflation, so much of which was exported to China previously, coming back.
nvm
Apparently Backblaze has a third generation box out. Backblaze is a provider of online backup who has a fixed fee "all you can eat" price structure. Because of this they have to minimize the cost of providing their huge storage needs. They designed a 4U server to hold 45 drives some years ago and open sourced it. Netflix uses the design now for their CDN. Since then Backblaze has improved it some and it has been reported here.
Now there's a site where you can buy them for retail, and there's a new version out. If you want to put 180TB raw into 4U, there is no more efficient way to do it.
In Star Trek they have a great deal of amazing technologies. Warp drive, transporters, phasers, replicators, lots of cool stuff. Some of these things have been realized at least partially with technology. Tech people love Star Trek mostly, and adore the tech. Some think that this is what Star Trek is about. This technology stuff is what makes Star Trek science fiction. This is not what Star Trek â" nor any popular fiction â" is about.
The tech in Star Trek has almost never been the story, and certainly never in a good episode. The tech is a method where the storyteller sets his story in a place just different enough from the current day that the audience can view the story objectively rather than subjectively. It is a prop. With this diversion the moral play becomes not a threat to the viewer's established prejudices because it happened in a mythical place far away in space and time, opening the viewer to alter their prejudices and experience (pleasurable) personal growth. Every Star Trek show is a moral play showing conflicts arising between people, and how they resolved them. It is about educating people about conflict resolution and ethical behavior. This and only this is why we watch. Roddenberry was shameless in re-telling all of the basic stories of the past in his postmodern future â" even Aesop's fables and Shakespeare. It's about the people because how people engage with other people is what we, as humans, connect with on an emotional level. That is what makes it a good story.
In the technology world we focus on the widget. What its gigawhats and megathings are relative to the one that came before. How many FPS it gets on TradeBench. This is entirely the wrong approach. The technology world is not about gigawhats. It's about people. People who have wants and needs, aspirations and dreams. To a certain extent we acknowledge this in the marketing department where the people who sell the stuff we make live and bring the money that buys our sweet engineering gear. Marketing understands this is how you sell things: You associate the thing in the customer's mind with a greater affinity with his family, the public, the world â" you empower and enable him to do what he needs or wants to do, to be important, or at least convince him you will, and he gives you his money.
Somehow a one-way conceptual firewall has been built between engineering and marketing where this idea cannot pass back to the people who invent stuff. Engineering doesn't respect marketing, and is living in its own Star Trek world where they invent ever more widgets they think are really cool and then fling them through the Barrier to Marketing to make of them what they can.
If you start instead at âoewhat do people really want and needâ and build that you don't need marketing much at all. People will beat down your door to get it once they know you have it. Make it your engineering goal to understand what people want and need at a basic human level, and focus on inventing stuff around enabling and empowering them to have that.
So what do people want and need? After air, food and shelter they want to connect with their fellow humans, to share and partake of sharing of each others' lives. This is why Facebook and Twitter are so huge. They want to relax and enjoy life, and enjoy songs and stories â" so, Netflix and Pandora. They want fame and recognition, so: Facebook and Twitter. Notice Facebook doesn't have a âoedislikeâ button? Know why that is? Because the fear of negative feedback would ruin the sharing experience by including the risk of rejection. They want love without fear. Give them that and they are yours.
On November 21, 2012, Hostess Brands was shut down and went through a bankruptcy procedure to restructure its debts. On June 7, 2013, Hostess is open for business again under the new management.
This is an example of what free market based restructuring looks like after a company goes through normal bankruptcy due to no longer being able to operate and carry on with its fiscal responsibilities to the lenders, bond and share holders. Obviously the restructuring made the company profitable again, the plants and equipment were bought at auctions, the unions and various obligations to those unions written off as they should be.
The socialist/fascist/collectivist media is complaining full force that many people lost their jobs, of-course that was the point - restructuring debts, restructuring operations, streamlining operations, ensuring that the business can continue without impossible liabilities.
If it were up to the socialists/fascists/collectivists, the government would have stepped in (right into it) and bailed out the unions as it did in case of GM and some others. Of-course GM is going to fail again because it is still structurally unsound, even more so than before.
Had GM been allowed to go through the same bankruptcy procedures, the plants would have been bought up in auctions by more responsible owners at large discounts and made profitable again, plants and equipment don't go to waste, capitalism reclaims discarded pieces of business to rebuild them specifically because they have no liability baggage attached to them after restructuring.
Instead when the government steps in, it ensures that the business continues as usual, the only way governments know how - by stealing from actual owners and loading business with more liability and debt ensured by the tax payers.
It is a good thing that Hostess was allowed to go bankrupt, GM and all the banks should have also been allowed to go bankrupt, they would have re-emerged, clean slate, made profitable again in a sustainable manner.
This time capitalism won, the brand is back in business and people can enjoy their wonder breads and whatever other products named with plenty of sexual innuendo.
Of all the achievements I've managed in my
I'm starting to detect some deviation from the former regime. Posts are no longer as controversial. My comments are not moderated as frequently - or at all. The front page is not as timely. There's a chance my idle maunderings don't even appear to most folk. The 16 hour outage of Hotmail and such remain unreported here. Something is amiss.
It may be time to take my leave of
The US Attorney Carmen Ortiz and the professional prosecutor Steve Heymann both have petitions on the whitehouse "we the people" site calling for their termination in the wake of the Aaron Swartz scandal. The Ortiz petition was filled almost immediately, but the Heymann petition took longer. Today the Heymann petition is also filled.
The whitehouse has promised to give a response to petitions which meet these thresholds. Now we will find out what the response will be, and what the reaction to that response will be.
I think it is funny what is happening on
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I make the argument that the Constitution is not in fact a "living, breathing, malleable document", that it is to the government what criminal code is to an individual.
The Constitution is the law and when the government officials say that the law needs to be interpreted rather than clarified and amended if it is unclear on something, what they are saying and doing is they are breaking it.
A murder trial involves figuring out whether murder was committed and whether the individual in front of the judge and jury did it and what the punishment should be. Of-course jury can nullify the law, but so far I hear that nobody tried doing that during a murder trial. So the trial does not include figuring out whether murdering people is bad, whether the legislature that set the law meant for people to be murdered under certain circumstances, if the person murdering them was doing it while pursuing criminals (or terrorists) as a government official for example.
Same thing must be done in case of the Constitutional law, same thing exactly - if something is unclear in the Constitution it needs to be clarified IN the Constitution.
However the Constitution must be followed, it is the chains around the hands and the legs of the government. It is supposed to be the chains that hold government within its limits. But what happened to that idea? The politicians figured out that amending the Constitution is too damn hard, they would rather break the law and call that "an interpretation".
There are plenty of signatures on the Whitehouse petition to fire US Attorney Carmen Ortiz but she's just a politician. The frontline prosecutor who drove this case was Steve Heymann. He needs to go too, but his petition isn't trending to enough votes to get it done. We need to be rid of him too.
So do your part and do him in: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/fire-assistant-us-attorney-steve-heymann/RJKSY2nb
Just got notified that it's been 10 years since I created this
Tina Turner is getting her Swiss citizenship after spending the last 20 years living in Switzerland, in itself this is not news, what is interesting is the fact that she is renouncing her USA citizenship. USA is one of very few countries in the world that taxes foreign incomes of its citizens, even if they are not actually residents in America. For the singer this means millions in saved taxes obviously, good for her.
Gerard Depardieu renounced his French citizenship and moved to Belgium (though now he also has his new Russian passport, that's an weird turn of events given that in Russia the real taxes on individual entrepreneurs are ridiculously high, one needs to be connected to government to be able to keep his gains, the rest are living under constant threat of government violence against them, there are really no property rights in that country).
Bernard Arnault, probably the wealthiest businessman in France, owner of Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy applied for Belgian citizenship, he is probably worried about his income but also wealth and death taxes in France.
There is a theme there, and that theme is: for people who hate the rich so much, they certainly like to rely on them for productivity and tax money. Another thing that comes to mind has something to do with geese and golden eggs, but I am not sure socialists are quite verse in such esoteric matters.
Funny enough, Bill Maher said something a couple of days ago that was actually mildly correct. Of-course he doesn't understand that he is part of the problem, when he talks about the 'dirtbags', he is enabling people to be 'dirtbags' by promoting socialist, collectivist, fascist ideas. He is correctly noticing that the number of people 'pulling the wagon' is shrinking and the number of people 'riding in the wagon' is growing. Well, Bill, you are part of the reason that so many people decided they will not pull the wagon, that it is much more comfortable sitting in the wagon, and worse yet, yapping from the wagon at the people that are pulling it to pull harder.
The people in the wagon are yelling that the ones pulling the wagon are 'not doing their fair share'.
In this journal entry I will explain that the so called 'Fiscal Cliff' is actually something positive for USA economy and that avoiding it is part of the problem and that the solution that the government is looking for is fake. I will explain that the real cliff that USA has to be worried about is not the 'Fiscal Cliff', which in fact should be much bigger, it's not a cliff, it's a tiny bump in the road, but the real cliff that USA is moving towards is the debt and currency crisis. 'Fiscal Cliff' is part of a solution, it's not a problem itself. I will also show that 'Debt Ceiling' is fake (everybody knows that part), but also that the rhetoric surrounding 'Debt Ceiling' is completely misleading and the words that come out of mouths of politicians, such as Obama and supposed 'mainstream economists' are the exact opposite of the truth.
Just like the 'Fiscal Cliff' thing that isn't going anywhere, the 'Debt Ceiling' is also a topic for discussion. What is 'Fiscal Cliff'? It is a deal that the US government supposedly brokered with the rating agencies to prevent them from lowering USA credit rating. The deal is to cut some spending and to raise some revenue in order to reduce overall deficit and debt. Of-course a real rating agency (Egan Jones) wasn't swayed by that nonsense and lowered US credit rating a number of times and is sued by SEC.
What is the problem? The problem is that at some point any credit rating agency has to lower credit standing of an individual or a company or a country that cannot pay its bills and lives on perpetual credit. Your credit risk is measured and presented to potential debt buyers (creditors), that's the point of a credit agency. The credit agencies that did not yet lower USA credit are in bed with the USA government, they are in fact licensed by USA government, the moment they don't play ball they will feel the entire wrath of USA government upon them.
Playing ball in this case means keeping the score artificially high. USA credit score is in reality junk. USA is a deadbeat debtor, it is a terrible credit risk, it cannot repay its debts. That's precisely the words that come out of USA politician and so called economist collective mouths, they are all repeating this same nonsense:
If USA cannot get into more debt, it will default on its payments.
That is pure nonsense. Today USA only has to shell out 360 Billion USD in interest payments per year to not default on its interest payment obligations. This is not about repaying the creditors at all, this has nothing to do with the principal, the USA government promises to default on the minimal interest payments to its creditors if it can't raise more debt. But these words by USA politicians are extremely dangerous, they are the proof that USA has no intention of ever repaying that debt, not even making the minimum yearly payment that it can absolutely pay out of its tax revenues.
USA is a deadbeat debtor and every politician in USA and every so called 'mainstream economist' says exactly that every time they open their mouth to tell the world that if USA cannot raise more debt it won't make the 360 Billion USD interest payment for the year!
But I want to show you that the fact is that USA can make its yearly interest payment with just the revenues that it collects from taxes, that the real reason people like Obama talk about default has nothing at all to do with the minimum yearly interest payment, it has everything to do with the fact that US of A is completely broke, it's bankrupt, its Treasury is bare and its financial obligations cannot be met.
Consider these numbers for the year 2013:
1. The total tax revenues for USA Federal government are 2.46 Trillion USD.
2. The total expenses for USA Federal government are 3.8 Trillion USD.
3. The interest payment on the outstanding public debt that is on the books is at least 360 Billion USD for the year based on the interest rate (which is manipulated by Federal reserve and other banks, but that's a separate subject matter).
4. Social Security benefit payouts are budgeted as 882.7 Billion USD.
5. Medicare for the year is budgeted at 523 Billion USD.
6. Medicaid for the year is budgeted at 283 Billion USD.
7. Other mandatory programs for the year is budgeted at 654 Billion USD.
8. War will cost 525.4 Billion USD.
Add it up, that's 2.868 Trillion USD
That is not even everything, there is other spending, discretionary spending, etc., which is another 932 Billion USD (difference between 3.8 Trillion and 2.868 Trillion).
So the total revenues are 2.46 Trillion USD, total expenses are 3.8 Trillion USD, the interes payment is 360 Billion USD. If you get rid of the interest payment from both sides, that leaves about 2.1 Billion in revenues and 3.4 Billion in spending. This already means that there is a gap of 1.3 Trillion USD between revenues and expenses.
That gap of 1.3 Trillion USD is what the entire fake 'Debt Ceiling' crisis is about. Why is it fake? Because it will be raised, there is no question about it, the government will raise its own debt ceiling. The government will not be stopped by artificial lending limits imposed by itself upon itself (the debt ceiling idea was introduced in 1917, at the same time as the Federal reserve was given the green light to monetise US Treasury debt, the debt ceiling was there to prevent overspending by government, but USA government never failed to raise it every time it hit it).
To expect government to impose its own debt ceiling upon its spending is precisely like expecting an alcoholic to impose his own drinking limit upon himself or a drug addict to impose a drug limit for himself. It can't happen, it won't happen, just like in cases of the alcoholic and the drug addict, the debt ceiling will be a hard one, imposed by the reality, by the creditors. Once Chinese stop subsidising USA consumption with its production and absorption of USA created inflation, then USA will no longer be able to get into more debt, nobody will give USA the opportunity. That's when the real CRISIS will hit, when USA has nothing to consume. Americans believe they have a new type of economy, they call it 'consumption based economy', well there is no such thing.
There no consumption based economy, there is no service economy, there is no difference between the pre-industrial and post-industrial economies. The only thing that keeps such a thing going is the wealth that was accrued over the productive years and the inertia of the world that can't actually come to terms with the fact that its debts will never be repaid, USA cannot repay them.
Now, why can't USA repay the debts? Are the people wrong when they say that what is needed is economic recovery and then things will get better? Yes, they are wrong. There is no recovery, there can be no recovery, there will be no recovery. The reason for that is that to have a recovery USA has to experience deleveraging first. The bad debts have to be written off, the companies must go bankrupt, banks must fail (and they will, they are part of the money laundering operation in USA, which pumps fake money in form of new credit from the Fed to the commercial banks to the Treasury and the commercial banks make the arbitrage between the fake 0% interest rate on the Fed's loans and the fake 2-3% Treasury interest rates for 10, 20, 30 year bonds).
Until the bad debts are written off, until the failed companies fail and release the scarce resources that they are still occupying, until the government stops pumping liquidity into the market to try and inflate the credit bubble out of the recession again (this time it's the bond and the dollar bubble), there can be no economic recovery. That's why we know that there will be a real crisis, the sovereign debt crisis in USA and the dollar crisis that will come with it, because US Treasury bonds are the same thing as US dollars. They are a promise to be paid USD in the future, there is no difference between dollars and bonds.
I hope it is now clear to the readers that what is actually happening with the fake 'Fiscal Cliff' and the fake 'Debt Ceiling' crises is actually a political game that will be played until there is a real monetary collapse in USA. USA is already in an economic collapse, but it does not have to go through the monetary collapse, it chooses to go through it. Why do I say that? Because of the fake 'solutions' that the government and the people apparently want to implement to these fake 'crises'. Their solutions are not solutions, their solutions are equivalent to a person driving a run away car on a road to an actual cliff and instead of trying to break, instead of turning, even instead of jumping out of the car, the driver just closes his eyes and pushes the pedal to the metal while keeping the same direction!
I think the road that USA is taking is economic and societal suicide. USA just cannot admit that SS, Medicare, Medicaid, War, other 'mandatory' and 'discretionary' spending that it wants to keep should be cut drastically in order just to slow down the real collapse that is coming. Actually what really has to be done is shutting down most of the government offices, abandoning the ideas of SS, Medicare, Medicaid, Wars and most other government practices and activities, getting rid of most of business regulations, getting rid of the income related taxes, payroll taxes, Medicare taxes, all labour related laws, etc., and allowing the failed businesses to fail, allowing the failed government structures to fail, allowing the failed people to fail.
That's the only way to stop that car and actually turn back going away from the edge of the cliff.
Notice that the cliff I am talking about is the debt and currency crises, not the fake 'Fiscal Cliff' and 'Debt Ceiling' crises.
When Obama says:
"We must pay our debts, we must borrow more money to do it", what he actually says is this:
We cannot pay out obligations, not the 360 Billion, but SS, Medicare, Medicaid, Wars, etc.
In reality getting more debt means not paying obligations.
Not getting more debt means actually paying obligations (but of-course I am talking about obligations to the bond holders, not the SS, Medicare, Wars, etc., that stuff cannot be paid without more debt).
When I say that 'Fiscal Cliff' is fake, I am addressing the actual topic of debt that USA collects, and I am showing that USA will vote to raise its fake debt ceiling and that whatever measures that POTUS and the government were supposed to take in the deal with the credit rating agencies will not be taken. There will be no measures, the spending will increase, the debt ceiling will grow and the so called 'Fiscal Cliff' will be averted. When I say: 'Fiscal Cliff' is fake, I am saying that the government (and the public) already know that they will avert it.
The truth is that USA needs to hit the 'Fiscal Cliff', hitting it actually means starting to slow down that car that is moving towards the edge of the real cliff, of the debt and currency crises cliff.
The 'Fiscal Cliff' as it stands is nowhere near enough to stop the car, but it would cause a slight slowdown of the car moving towards the real cliff. Unfortunately for USA the fiscal cliff is not a cliff at all, it's a slight bump in the road, it's not going stop the car falling off the edge of the real cliff that is coming (the bond and dollar collapse, the currency crisis to go with the economic crisis that USA is in now and which will become much worse than anybody can even imagine today).
USA needs the fiscal cliff, it has to be a much bigger fiscal cliff, but USA will not hit it, it will 'solve' it, and that solution is the problem, that solution coupled with raising the fake 'Debt Ceiling' means closing your eyes while pushing the pedal to the metal and keeping the direction towards the edge of the real cliff.
The remaining idea I would like to address is the idea that USA spending is not a problem that USA federal government is not getting enough revenue. If you believe that it is the case then realise that effective taxes have to go up to cover the 1.3Trillion dollar difference between the current revenues and expenses, and since the current revenues are about 2.4Trillion and expenses are 3.7Trillion, the 1.3Trillion means an effective raise of about 54% in taxes on every person.
Does anybody think that it is possible to raise effective taxes in USA by 54%? An attempt to raise effective taxes upon everybody by 54% will cause a complete shutdown of most (if not all) economic activity in the country. Obviously the wealthy are already bearing a disproportionate tax load and they are moving their productivity elsewhere and the middle class and the poor would be crashed if their taxes went up that way.
So in reality it is the spending that needs to be cut minimum by that much in order actually to stop the car from falling off the edge of the real cliff.
The prosecutor who hounded Aaron Swartz to death, impoverishing his family and guaranteeing he would spend the rest of his natural days in federal prison because they had not enough to defend him properly: her name is Carmen Ortiz. She is the one who would do this to him - not for killing somebody, or stealing something, but for accessing information he was entitled to access manually in an automated way. Building scripts was his crime. Carmen Ortiz was his prosecutor. She killed him.
Software production is assumed to be a line function, but it is run like a staff function. -- Paul Licker
