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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 + - 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.
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.
Idle

Man Builds Fully-Functional Boeing 737 Flight Simulator In His Son's Bedroom 128

Posted by samzenpus from the those-magnificent-men-in-their-flying-machines dept.
laejoh writes "An aeroplane enthusiast has taken his obsession a step further than most after using his son's bedroom to build a Boeing 737 flight simulator that exactly mimics the real thing. Laurent Aigon, 40, from Lacanau in France, has spent the last five years collecting and buying components from around the world with best friend and fellow enthusiast (obviously) Jean-Paul Dupuy. The pair spent thousands of euros on internet orders for bits and pieces to construct the simulator – which is so realistic that the Institute of Aircraft Maintenance at Bordeaux-Merignac Airport asked him to give a lecture on his achievement. Mr Aigon has since schooled himself in all the procedures for take off and landing and says he is able to fly his 'plane' just like a real-life pilot."
Science

Physicists Attempting To Test 'Time Crystals' 231

Posted by Soulskill from the where's-The-Doctor-when-you-need-him dept.
ceview writes "This story at Wired seems to have lots of people a bit confused: 'In February 2012, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Frank Wilczek decided to go public with a strange and, he worried, somewhat embarrassing idea. Impossible as it seemed, Wilczek had developed an apparent proof of "time crystals" — physical structures that move in a repeating pattern, like minute hands rounding clocks, without expending energy or ever winding down. ... [A] Berkeley-led team will attempt to build a time crystal by injecting 100 calcium ions into a small chamber surrounded by electrodes. The electric field generated by the electrodes will corral the ions in a "trap" 100 microns wide, or roughly the width of a human hair. The scientists must precisely calibrate the electrodes to smooth out the field. Because like charges repel, the ions will space themselves evenly around the outer edge of the trap, forming a crystalline ring.' The experimental set up is incredibly delicate (Bose Einstein Condensate), so it implies this perpetual motion effect can't really be used to extract energy. What is your take on it? It's unlike to upend anything, as the article suggests, because at a quantum level things behave weirdly at the best of times. The heavy details are available at the arXiv."

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