Unlikely that this is them "blowing it" given this happens damn near every cycle to one party or the other. The Republican party had a massive field, ended up with the longest of long shot candidates and he fucking won (much to many people's chagrin). It just looks this way right now because the party has so much noise, but I promise you only those directly in politics or the most die-hard followers of it are paying that much attention. The field will clear our close to the general election and it'll all follow the same status quo.

Problem is that Google isn't a broadcasting or press entity. Lot of those regulations don't apply to them because they are merely an aggregator. Not saying that they shouldn't have some of those regulations applied to them, but this is the problem with giving large entities free reign...

Interesting. I was unaware that the only industry in the United States with a union was the auto industry. So, what exactly has UPS and Fedex been dealing with all these years? Guess United/American/Southwest/etc. have been negotiating with thin air. Could you also tell me what the NFLPA, NHLPA, NBAPA, etc. stand for? It really is just baffling.

None of those companies have ever turned a profit right? All of them have just run into the ground repeatedly and kept coming back with some endless pit of money from [insert your least favorite political group here]? Couldn't be that the big 3 in Detroit horribly mismanaged their companies and wastefully blew money all the time instead of actually trying to keep their company in the black (pretty bad optics when they showed up to their first hearings begging for a bailout on private jets reserved for executive usage only).

Sooooo, I write software for a living and have a pretty good familiarity with the general industry and the more niche game development section. I've looked into the positions and have colleagues that came from/went to work in game development. Personally, I absolutely REFUSE to work in game development as it stands in spite of the fact that I love gaming and think I would like doing that type of work. Want to know why I refuse? Because why in the fuck would I go work for a game development company not even making six figures (even at my experience level, and I was working as a team lead/senior developer 3 years out of college) putting in regular 70 hour weeks and 120+ crunch time?

I work in business software development and automation, make way more than I could in game development and work basically zero overtime. Even my first job out of college at a mid size company, I worked maybe 60 hour weeks during heavy load times (which was a few weeks a year typically) and I got comp time for those hours. I knew the financials of my first company and know the micro financials for my current company (publicly traded anyway), and they were both turning a very solid and steady profit. What the hell makes you think these companies putting out fucking video games can't do the same?

A union for them would not destroy anything other than the outrageous profits and bonuses of the top brass. Most of the people working in the industry are specifically doing it because they love video games just that much, and the people on top are just exploiting that. I don't give a shit if they are willingly doing it, it doesn't give the executives an excuse to abuse that. Not to mention, there is a large portion of that workforce that are not formally trained software developers. Many of the people working those crazy ass work weeks are people that went into a trade program for game development not fully understanding the horrible work conditions expected of them.

Finally, the last thing I'd like to point out is just some basic math. Lets say someone working at an EA studio at a mid-level position is pulling 80k a year. Respectable for sure, but think about the hourly equivalent. At 40 hours a week (assuming paid vacations, etc.) you're looking at around 38.46 an hour. Lets amp that up to what most of them are actually working regularly (I've known 4 different people that worked at an EA studio and it was all the same) which is a minimum of 70 hour weeks. Suddenly that hourly plummets to 21.97 without factoring in that they effectively aren't getting vacations. If we then take the average with the truly insane time of 120 hours a week and average it out to lets say 85 or 90 a week, they get 18.10 an hour. You are aware that many states are requiring 15 an hour to flip burgers now right?

I'm more curious to know the clearly insane chain of events that took this from drunken idea that some swedish dudes came up with at 3:19 AM to a fully funded company trying to launch a few hundred of these expensive pains in the ass in several cities. I mean seriously, most people can't hardly jump on a pogo stick for more than a few feet, and they think people are going to use these regularly enough to sustain their revenue past 'joke'? The investors must have just looked at each other and said, "You know what, I'll part with a few hundred grand [because rich people] for the laughs at how terrible this ends and the inevitable Youtube fails when people try to use it."

Yea... this is precisely why I switched off of chrome. I was an early adopter of it back when I thought Google wasn't the evil monstrosity they are now, but I have been waiting for these events to come around for some time now. They WILL kill their browser if they follow through with this terrible idea. At this point all Firefox has to do is sit tight and watch them burn their own empire. If MS, Opera, and the like don't instantly fork Chromium on the changelist before this mess gets implemented they will burn right with them.

I get that allowing tons of ads to get blocked when their main income source IS ads seems counter-intuitive, but since it has turned into a virtual arms race with the marketing departments of all these companies it is now an essential need. Hell, this may even be the beginning of the end for the entire company. The main reason they got to where they are now is all the techies they won over telling all their non-techy friends how great Google was as a company. The band-wagon effect took over, and now even though a lot of us tech types are switching off, market inertia keeps others on the sauce. This however, will be a clear signal to the general market that Google has no interest in what is good for their user base and may finally spur the break.

I, for one, welcome the destruction of our colorful search/ad company overlord.

Probably in limited amounts. As long as they are not doing things like developing autonomous targeting systems or something that focuses on attack, you can get ethically minded engineers to help harden systems for defensive purposes.

That might be closer to what they end up doing, but that will be a mess in and of itself. Integration points are often the most vulnerable if you're not really familiar with doing it or with what is being integrated. The more I think about this the worse the idea sounds.

Are you actually aware of even a fraction of what the military uses for computer hardware? Logistics divisions alone have crazy amounts of workstations that are all at various ages and procured at various times with large variations in what hardware is in the PC. Mobile devices are not much better. And custom hardware? Yes lets complicate the process even more so that they need custom circuit designs from CE and EEs. While were at it, why not make all of the electrical receptacles 150 volts AC and step it down to 28 DC? This just layers cost on top of cost on top of more cost with even more time to get through the process (and even more unwieldly to change it...).

Not even close to the actual problem. The problem is that those standards have to be developed even if they are only worried about their own needs. Just within the military it requires vastly different PC components for all of the different things they are trying to run. If you have a military OS and they just let each group define whatever they want, it will be a nightmare hellscape of incompatibility, bugs, logistics, and numerous other problems. Engineering has standards for a reason, without them it becomes spaghetti code.

It will be for the military. Most of the people that would be working on this don't necessarily specialize in software development and most certainly not the best talent. Even using a defense contractor they won't be the very best and they will pay a massive mark-up. Not to mention it will likely be less secure because most of our security models these days rely on large scale usage and reporting of the problems. How are the best security researchers going to test an OS that they when they don't have the security clearance to even look at it running on a device?

They might be able to conscript talent, but there are huge issues with that too. People don't tend to do their best work when they are forced to do things they don't want to do. Not to mention who the hell are they going to get to even decide who the best talent is to conscript? A stuffed shirt that knows nothing about OS development?

This is seriously the stupidest thing I've heard in months and clearly comes from someone that knows nothing about the basics of an OS or security. Windows is literally MILLIONS of lines of code and requires a massive undertaking to design and interface with all the hardware options out there. Standards development alone takes a ridiculously large and coordinated effort. Not only that, for any practical purpose so many engineers and others have to know about the specifics and intricacies of that software to make it work, the obscurity will be next to worthless. Even now, as mature as the Windows codebase is it still takes a pretty huge team to work on it, and their security is definitely not top notch.

Now imagine having to employ a massive division dedicated to nothing but that within the military. It is government, so top tier talent won't go there on principle and pay will be mediocre at best compared to private sector, plus any military personnel working on it could end up just straight vanishing when their enlistment ends. So now you need a top notch, reliable, full featured, high security OS developed by middle of the road developers that works with a variety of hardware that is not standardized necessarily to be optimal for your OS. Sound like a nightmare to you yet? Not only that, as someone that has done a lot of reverse engineering in my time, it takes a MUCH smaller effort to reverse engineer systems like that then it does to build them. Then once the inevitable unlocking of the base gates happens that everything is based on, what do they do? Design another OS and play the most expensive game of whack-a-mole in history?

If I am a military leader in the cyber operations side of the US military, I'm fucking ecstatic that the Chinese are wanting to do this. They will waste massive amounts of resources trying to do develop it, create an absolute logistical nightmare for themselves to deploy it, make it easier for US intel to break into it, and make it easier to not affect our own stuff with introducing any 'backdoors'. All the while the US can simply work with Microsoft to harden our existing infrastructure and build on decades of work and lessons learned.

There is a reason that there are only a few bases of large scale OSs (not counting embedded systems, those are a different beast).

The biggest enemy to the bill is the same as always. The 'tough on crime' and 'we must stop all terrorism' crowd will deride it as neutering law enforcement and opening out borders up (even though these are US citizens...). Rand Paul is never a good barometer for how wide Republican support for a bill will range anyway. He is a bit of a fanatic, though to his credit a consistent fanatic, about a number of principles and the GOP as a whole waxes and wanes on support for certain things much more fluidly. Not to mention he is a bit of an outcast because he actually has enough backbone to buck party leadership regularly. I may not agree with his views, but I can respect certain attributes about him.

Wyden isn't much better on the democratic side given his penchant for grand standing gestures in legislation. He is constantly creating and introducing idealist bills that he knows will never have a chance. I actually personally like this bill and hope it does pass, but know better than to expect that it has wide bipartisan support on either side based on the sponsors.

They are just using it as an excuse anyway. I've posted about this subject before. Someone high enough at CBP realized that there is no distinction between data searches and physical searches in the current laws governing their powers. As we have seen, most government agencies are perfectly content with going on fishing expeditions into private citizens lives under the guise of 'security and law enforcement.'

It honestly wouldn't surprise me to see them attempt to argue/implement some type of 'border data search' on anything traversing the network at the border too. They probably haven't thought of it yet and Congress is such a mess they likely won't pass any law stopping it soon. The truly alarming part of a lot of these acts is the fact that clearly enough of certain types of people have reached positions of power/influence within these organizations that have no actual respect for the founding principles of the country. The famous Ben Franklin quote, "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety," is quite applicable and just shows that the people in power don't seem to have any respect for those principles.

The economics still apply with wage elasticity. The companies will only pay to a certain point where they can maintain profitability. Wages will likely consolidate for the remaining jobs to some degree, however newer jobs will be created as a result of the automation that also are factored into the equation. Not to mention there are measurable benefits outside of reduced labor costs to consider, such as fewer mistakes, more strict application of business rules, and lower employee benefit cost (in that segment of the business anyway, the new workers in other areas will simply fill that space later) just to name a few.

Automation is progress just like anything else has been for the past thousand years. The market will eventually correct itself one way or another, and its basically a given that once the technology is developed companies are not going to just not use it unless it is completely pointless to begin with.

Yes and no. In a hub and spoke model train routes are incredibly efficient to use for regional transportation. However, in a point-to-point system trains lose a LOT of efficiency simply because it is so expensive to build out/use/schedule rails to suit their needs because they are so fluid. You can get a better idea of this with airline company comparisons. The best example I use is American vs Southwest because they are headquartered near each other, face similar economics, etc., but AA uses a hub and spoke while SW uses point to point. They are transporting people more instead of strictly cargo, but it does give an exceptionally good case study of how transportation companies have to economically scale.

Point to point is WAY more flexible and can be applied to a plethora of industries. Not only that, it can be profitable at any scale point whereas hub and spoke requires a rather large segment/market scale out before profit margins can be fully realized. Often times it makes more sense to adapt technology to the business then vice versa. I don't want to say it is unequivocally true, as there are probably good uses/examples for both sides of the argument, but it is perfectly reasonable to expect self-driving tech to be exceptionally useful in this use case. I would also argue, without looking at numbers, our rail infrastructure is woefully inadequate for all of these companies to use it at scale, thus necessitating at least some of them use a trucking model.

Lot of sorting is actually already automated at USPS facilities (at least the large ones). Can't speak for the individual branches as I always dealt in industrial scale sortation systems, but typically in a good system 95%+ should be automatically handled by a large system.