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Comment Re:Sucks for Apple (Score 1) 74

Apple is stuck right now. They can't continue to manufacture in China, or they just won't be able to sell any iPhones in the US with the tariffs. But moving production to India is a big risk, because you can't predict if there'll be higher tariffs on India soon. And it's just not feasible to make them in the US, though I'm sure they worked the numbers on it. Then there's always the risk that after moving production to India, that China makes a deal and it becomes better to manufacture in China again.

There is always some risk with literally everything regarding Trump, but in this case, the risk is probably low.

1) Trump and Modi like each other and Trump needs to stop pissing off possible allies for the inevitable war with China. He needs for the other nations in the region to at least be not actively helping China to win. I suspect a lot of this kind of thinking is driving US relations with Russia - the US is trying to keep Russia from supporting China in the eventual war, but Trump is too dumb to understand that duplicity is exactly up Russia's alley.
2) It's inevitable that for a variety of reasons, including my predicted eventual war with China, that Apple has to stop making everything in China. Once the war starts, there aren't going to be any more iPhone shipments outside of China.
3) VP JD Vance has made it pretty clear that he is hugely pro-India (see who he married) and extremely anti-China. He is just one very easy to spot open manifestation of what is likely the general feeling among Trump's aides.

Comment Re:I have a solution! (Score 1) 178

That is what Japan does. They have the city name on the plate, then a letter and usually a four digit number.

Uh, you sure about that? Because I can do the math you were too lazy to do and check it out:
26 * 10000 = 260000. (26 letters used once and 4 digit numbers including the possibility of 0000).

That seems like not a lot of license plate combinations for some really big towns in Japan. By the way, some poster below mentioned that some US states list the county on the license plate. This is true, but that doesn't mean the same license plate combination can be used in multiple counties. It's still one unique license plate combination per car in the state. The county thing probably is a holdover from the old days when the county you lived in was actually super important and to allow law enforcement to do the old "You ain't from around here are you, boy?" thing to people from "other" counties. Not kidding about that.

Comment Lots of dumb comments here on US taxes (Score 1) 275

OK, if you live outside the USA you just don't know how it is, but many of you seem to be Americans like me and your ignorance of the tax system is stunning. Here's why it is how it is.

1) Businesses like the current system because there are deductions for EVERYTHING. One US company who I won't name because many of you have never heard of them used to brag in the previous decade that they hadn't paid a cent in taxes in many many years. They bragged about having an army of accountants to get them every tax break possible.
2) Many Americans are terrified of the tax system without good reason, so they hire an accountant to do their taxes so the accountant is on the hook if there is a problem. My brother is like this. His taxes are not complicated but he is too afraid to do them himself. My guess is it costs him multi-hundreds of dollars each year. I looked and H&R Block is estimated to charge on average $300 and up for doing taxes for individuals. Keep in mind that if you are going to H&R Block in person to have them do your taxes, your taxes just aren't that complicated.
3) Some Americans simply don't want to do their taxes - at all. One of my good friends pays an accountant every year to do his taxes because - and I asked him why and he told me - he doesn't ever want to do his own taxes. He owns no property or businesses.

I use H&R Block software. I do have stock sales to deal with. It costs me $50 a year for the right software and $20 to file electronically in my state. Federal filing is free. $70 a year sounds a lot better to me than paying some chump $300 and up to do it for me. It's just not all that hard to do it.

Comment Re:Right nuts (Score 2) 224

At least when Donald Trump's term is over, we'll be able to remind right nuts that Trump tried it their way and it failed horribly.

That's not what will happen. I lived through the Reagan era and I liked Reagan, but this is nothing like that and it's not like anything I've ever seen. About 40% of American voters are in what I call The Cult Of Donald Trump. My best friend is what I might describe as a John McCain type Republican but his wife is like a clone of Majorie Taylor Greene. He admits to being exasperated by her. She's fully in that 40% of voters in the cult. You need to understand that they honestly think Trump has never been wrong, is not wrong now, and never will be wrong about anything. He is perfect. He can't make a mistake. Even if the economy is destroyed and the country is occupied by a foreign power with destruction everywhere, they will insist that none of it is Trump's fault. I keep wondering if my friend wishes his wife loved him even half as much as she loves Trump. It's really that bad. You know how Tom Cruise has been in the Church of Scientology forever and he refuses to leave it? It's like that with Trump's cult. They will simply never admit he made a mistake. Even if everything blows up, Trump will just blame the Democrats and his cult members will agree.

Comment Multiple problems with this buyer (Score 1) 272

There are multiple problems with this buyer, although I agree that his warning that features that can only be accessed via a (for now) free phone app is a potential future problem area. First of all, I don't know where he is shopping, but nobody rational seems to be selling the 800 model for $400 more than the 500 model he bought. The models are almost identical and the 800 is, based on what I saw, about $100 more. You're paying that money for a different type of drying and slightly less noise. Second, I've got news for him, but the 800 model also uses wi-fi and the exact same app and while he may think that he can just push a button on the 800 - if he had it - to do stuff he has to use the app for on the 500, well, maybe not. Why have the app at all if the buttons on the 800 can do everything without it? Maybe he's right, but this takes more research and he may just be guessing and thus may be wrong. And finally, what the hell is up with the 4 hours he spent to connect it? I changed my dishwasher a few years ago and paid Lowe's, who I bought it from, to connect it for me and take away the old one. The install guy had it working in maybe 15 minutes. Look, I can do some minor plumbing stuff at home, like I can change the guts of a toilet tank out on my own, and I'm not fast because I do that stuff when needed so I don't do it every day as my job, but crap, how the hell does it take 4 hours to install a dishwasher? I watched my install guy and he connected some hoses and one pipe and plugged it into an outlet. How long can that take?

Comment Re:guess nothing can be done then (Score 1, Troll) 130

Obviously a war with either China or Russia is not desirable for planet Earth. But what kind of argument are you trying to make? Is this a "well they have nukes, so nothing can be done!"

The world should be ruled by whatever country has a nuke and is willing to violate international law and treaties? That's certainly a possible future, but not one I would promote we work towards.

Just so people here understand, currently in America we're hearing the Cult Of Donald Trump people make this very argument, right now for the Ukraine-Russia war. Basically it's "We don't want WW3, so just give Russia EVERYTHING they want!" So it wouldn't be difficult to see those same people make the argument twoards China. Although if Trump gets pissed off against China (very likely) and/or Russia (less likely but not impossible) they'll also be the loudest voices arguing to blow those people off the planet now.

Comment Re:MAGA? (Score 2) 146

Is anyone else as puzzled as I am about how this is supposed to be serving American greatness?

No, because if it actually becomes a thing people care about, the Trumpers will just lie about it and the MAGAheads will believe the lies. You would not believe the crap I see constantly on Facebook from MAGAheads. One college fraternity brother seems to have completely lost his mind and among other things believes that Ukrainian president Zelenskyy was "put into place by the CIA under Obama" despite being elected president in 2019 during Trump's first term. Another guy I konw retweeted some crap RFK Jr. supposedly said that amounted to "Ivermectin great vs. COVID, vaccines bad". I'm sure Putin "promised" Trump that Russia would stop the attacks and Trump believed him, so that's probably driving this. Lots of people warned that re-electing Trump would be very bad, but some black men hate black women, some legal immigrants want all immigration stopped including legal immigration, some Gen Z white guys got pissed for being blamed for crap that happened before they were born, and then 5 years ago Kamala Harris gave an interview and made the moronic statement that the government paying for prisoners to get free gender change surgery was unbelievably awesome, so here we are.

Comment It will go down how it always does at IBM (Score 3, Insightful) 49

If you use the term family loosely, I have a family connection to a US based manager at IBM. I guess he's been there for over 30 years and most of that time he's been in management. Based on talks with him some time ago, I'm sure this will go down how it always goes down at IBM.

No US manager will lose a job. Even if they lose all of their direct reports. Management will be saved!
As few foreign employees as possible will lose jobs and the vast majority of jobs lost will be to Americans. Even if some of the people in the to be closed area are H1-B holders, somehow IBM will find a way to save their (cheap) jobs while Americans hit the streets.

Best quote I ever heard about IBM was from a former co-worker. He said "You may find better elsewhere, but you'll never pay more!"

Comment Re:I can't see anything. (Score 1) 28

Even with the arrow pointing at it in the first picture I see nothing there.

Yeah, I thought something similar at first. Our takeaway from the photo is that the amorphous blob is the lander inside a crater. That much we can tell. But we can't see enough to actually tell that it's on its side. That's simply a guess based on that lander's inability to communicate any more.

Comment Think they got the MLS comment wrong (Score 1) 27

From the article post:
Technical implementation varies significantly across competitions -- some MLS stadiums have fewer cameras available for review than others -- creating inconsistent application.

As an American and MLS fan, it's my understanding that this is how things were in MLS but not how they currently are. Apple TV+ has, since 2022, been the broadcaster of all MLS games/matches. While it was true that prior to the Apple contract that MLS stadiums could be wildly different in terms of numbers of cameras because cheaper owners wouldn't pay for more cameras, I've been told by a writer who covers a team in the league that now all MLS games/matches meet the same standards for camera angles. But yeah, prior to Apple having the contract it was pretty bad. Before every match/game the refs had to pick which of the available cameras they would use and they weren't allowed to use them all because this was somehow 'unfair" (no joke here) to the cheaper teams that had less cameras. If I remember correctly the refs picked 3 or 4 cameras and couldn't use any others. We did have several instances where a camera not picked for replay had the needed angle on a play and it got ignored by the rules at the time. That was pretty stupid.

Comment Re:Meme (Score 2) 77

There's a photo going around of an iRobot store in a shopping mall with a wall of floor cleaners and a young woman in front of said wall with a dust mop cleaning the floor.

iRobot is paying rent in umpteen shopping malls and can't compete with Chinese vendors putting their money into manufacturing and R&D?

I guess I'd need an MBA to figure this one out.

"90% of innovation happens on the shop floor".

iRobot doesn't have any stores, at least not in the USA. Maybe not anywhere. They do partner with a lot of resellers. The photo is either fake or it's a dedicated iRobot section of another store that happens to sell them.

Comment What's the benefit to Trump? (Score 0) 67

So for this to work, there has to be some kind of benefit to Trump. He's not going to run for president again. In fact, I think he will refuse to step down in 4 years and simply declare himself president again, saying he is "owed" another term because of the "cheating in 2020". But that's another story. So what exactly can SBF give Trump? He's not running again, so he doesn't need SBF's help. As far as I know, Gen Z doesn't worship SBF or think he's been unfairly treated. Maybe if SBF can convince Musk or someone else in the inner circle that he's a victim of the evil Democrats it might work, I guess. The Tate brothers got released from custody in Romania and fled and Trump claims he doesn't even know who they are, which is possible, yet the whole thing smacks of somebody in the administration asked for them to be freed and somebody in Romania thought it was a good idea. I mean if those scummy guys can get freed, yeah, I suppose it could happen to SBF.

Comment What the hell was his job at Disney? (Score 2) 96

The article says Matthew Van Andel lost over $200,000 in bonuses. What the hell exactly was his job at Disney? A few years ago I was working for a Fortune 500 company and you'd have to be at least 2 levels above my manager - and I was a drone, not in management - to have a salary around that kind of money, let alone get those kind of bonuses. The article makes it sound like he was just some kind of average joe programmer, but he was a very highly salaried employee to have bonuses of over $200,000. Were they paying him a million or more a year in his job? What the hell exactly was he doing? He seems to have no internet history besides this report. There's no Linkedin profile for him that I could find. Does this make sense? Is it all bs and lies to get money for some kind of GoFundMe scam?

Comment Re:Virtually unknown? (Score 1) 64

Never heard of them (I'm Dutch). When I google search on "bird ai dutch" all I get are news headlines and somewhere on the second page I find a couple of companies which have 'bird' in their name and apparently do AI things. I'm not impressed with their SEO efforts (maybe they are AI based).

I'm not Dutch, but doing your search a little differently, I think I found them at bird.com. The "ai" in your search is throwing off the results. Try using instead "cloud communications" where you have "ai" because I looked at the article and found a reference to "cloud communications". I have to ask this - Did you ever see the US TV show (not the original British one) called "The Office"? They have an episode in season 7 called WUPFH.com. You might be able to find a short clip on YouTube from it explaining what WUPFH is if you haven't seen it. Bird.com is trying to do WUPFH apparently. My guess is that this business isn't working very well for them, so the "We're leaving over AI rules, bitches" talk with Reuters is Bird playing Reuters and getting some free publicity by tricking Reuters into thinking they're a major player when they aren't. Again just guessing, but they probably grabbed 5-10 IT people in the company at random and said "Make us do AI stuff".

Comment Re:It Might Work... (Score 2) 69

That being said ... venture funding is already one step up from gambling, and even with the standard model something like one in ten startups fail. Also, building AI company does require substantial up-front investment.

I'm pretty sure that it's one in ten startups succeed and not "fail". Back in the 2000s I changed jobs to join a startup that did succeed and got bought out by a Fortune 500 company and it was a pretty interesting experience to be part of a successful startup, even if joining late in the "startup" period. I can't believe most startups make it. After we got bought out, all our top management left by choice. The acquiring company was willing to give them jobs, but they chose to move on. Shortly after, various groups of them started several new startup companies and every one of those failed. I think the most successful one lasted maybe 2 years. They poached a small but noticeable number of our employees for those startups and when they failed, most of the ones who left came crawling back to the Fortune 500 owner begging for a job and they did get re-hired.

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