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Comment Re:4K is a gimmick; 8k is an ultra gimmick (Score 1) 139

You touch upon the layers of the 4K technology stack! There's more than just single-frame dimensions!

There's frame dimensions, frames-per-second (FPS), color gamut, and other data (including audio channels of their own specs) within the throughput afforded with 4K/8K.

And as with anything technological, real-world performance is roughly 50% advertised (theoretical) technical max. So for best 1080p/HD experience, I rely on 4K cable. And for my 4K? I use 8K HDMI cables.

Overall, even fewer people would recognize a difference upgrading from 4K to 8K -- especially when 720p-1080p/HD *content* is "good enough" for most content, although native 4K content is ideal for larger-dimensioned viewing ("big screen" TVs).

The 8K specs are in the same realm as the 3D-TV revolution; mostly a fad due to the limited availability of content that truly showcases its distinctive value proposition.

Comment Comcast Holdings media empire is based in Philly (Score 1) 83

With Comcast and its media empire, ranging from NBC broadcast to Universal Studios to major sports teams to Xfinity ISP to cable TV to various digital/print publications to DreamWorks and other major movie studios and beyond (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... for more), it is the epitome of a propaganda machine.

As the old saying goes, Whoever controls the media, controls the mind. https://quoteinvestigator.com/...

So anyone who remains within the bubble of that media empire is brainwashed into whatever narrative the powers-that-be determine the narrative to lean.

Comment Re:Four major things that make this possible (Score 4, Insightful) 84

In response to point (a) -- Positive investments into the labor force are good for business (both in political and economic terms). The fundamentality is that your target consumer is derived from your workforce itself; if they're not employed, then they're without income upon which to spend on your consumer good.

In response to points (b) and (c) -- 100% agreed. Knee-jerk businesspeople are not insightful (no matter how eloquent their sales pitches may be) due to their ignorance to the actual factors and interconnected gears driving supplier costs. Sometimes the supplier simply demands higher prices due to the buyers not committing to longer-term buying contracts (see OpenAI + Nvidia/AMD for recent examples of mutual support).

In response to point (d) -- Their decisions were spurred during an insightful period in the 1990s' globalization expansion about nurturing the domestic economies before boosting foreign economies; for these guys and the domestic nature of their customers (it's rare for commodities to have global marketplace dominance), it against points back to my response to point (a) above: if your neighborhood is unemployed and cannot afford your product, then what makes you think other equally-unemployed neighborhoods could afford your product?!

Everything used to be domestically manufactured (with few exceptions) whilst limiting immediate corporate greed. But as with any wayward management tier bulked up with internal layers each pining for unearned payouts, many businesses chose offshoring. It's nice to see a case study illustrating how offshoring is not required; unfortunately it's a story that's falling on evermore deaf ears.

Comment Re:Guess what's coming next? (Score 1) 85

The 1990s already had this innovation -- it was called PointCast, it was available in Screensaver and eventually windowed modes (or maybe I ran it inside a windowed VM, idk, it's been almost 3 decades), and it streamed both static and animated content (including video streams from broadcasters)... and, yes, as a consequence, ads.

It's important to note that the ad-serving landscape in the 1990s was not as mature as the DoubleClick (now owned by Google) era of digital ad networks and real-time arbitrage with auctioning formats by competing global firms. In the 1990s, the tech stack was simpler and the ad network firms had individual relationships with advertisers and limited telemetry for their interactions.

But I digress. All to say that what's old is new again -- including video wallpapers, 3D browsers (VRML and the Metaverse), and even browser plug-ins (now called extensions) to enable additional functionality in UXs.

Comment Re:There is already a safe subset of C++ (Score 2) 86

This comparative metaphor makes sense. But it seems the C++ EWG is hoping to contain bad code (put limits on the trunk's abilities) rather than creating a culture of good code (teaching drivers efficient usage of the trunk).

In the end, EWG doesn't want to nurture a culture of safe code; they want safe code to happen by accident. Wishful thinking indeed...

Comment Re:It was good but not great. (Score 1) 86

This implies the different approaches are like building a house with a safe and solid foundation, or patchworking a foundation with copious amounts of duct tape.

And in this vein, the C++ EWG prefers the duct tape approach... because laying new foundations in a well-regulated manner is hard, or rather, presents an "irreconcilable design disagreement...."

Taking a step back, the EWG (like all corporate programmers) are taking the path of least resistance ("what checks the box yet requires the least amount of effort, and has an off switch?").

Comment Re:California (Score 1) 37

Although some mandatory proportional income taxes (like social security withholdings from paychecks) are unavoidable in and of themselves,

Up to a point. A person earning $10 million p.a. pays no more to social security than someone who only earns $168k p.a.

A person earning $10MM on standard payroll would be subjected to these payroll taxes. THIS distinction is the whole point -- Should a worker (or CEO) take in only a $1 Salary, then they are subject to those payroll withholdings/burdens on that standard payroll amount.

Money-savvy executives gladly accept a $1 salary because the remainder of their overall compensation package is awarded as semi-regulated financial instruments potentially subject to capital gains taxes, or awarded in any other manner which sidesteps traditional/standard payroll systems.

The net result? The executive's $1 salary means they are paying less in taxes than the $30K laborer employed by the same company.

If any high-income earners are literally making their earnings strictly through standard payroll, then I would question the finance management savvy of that company's CFO! That's a LOT of liquidity walking out the door on an annual basis independent of the company's revenues. (Bonuses are not salaries or wages, so they don't compute the same way for either the employer or the employee.)

Comment Re:California (Score 1, Insightful) 37

Someone earning 600K+ is paying more in taxes than someone earning 30k in both states.

Your argument is rather shallow. There are trillion-dollar corporations that nominally pay less in corporate taxes than blue-collar workers earning $30K per year -- so reducing the argument to high-income earners necessarily pay more in taxes than lower-income earners is objectively false.

Finance-savvy higher-income earners often also hire personal finance advisors/managers and adopt money-management techniques which reverse their total tax burdens on an annualized basis; lower-income earners often cannot afford their preferred living expenses, increases in longer-term savings balances, or hire third-party personal finance advisors adept at reducing their annual tax burdens.

PS: Some money-management techniques are only available beyond certain income thresholds. Although some mandatory proportional income taxes (like social security withholdings from paychecks) are unavoidable in and of themselves, the overall burden can be reduced by setting up alternative compensation arrangements which do not qualify as "income" (thus not subject to paycheck withholdings) that private banks then provide the customer with a spending card (recognizing that the banks get repaid before any residuals may ultimately get deposited into the customer's own checking account).

PPS: These setups are fully legal, "old-school", and part of the financial industry backstory. "Ya gotta have money to make money," (and avoid tax burdens) as the saying goes...

Comment Re:Extreme Weather (Compared to current footprint) (Score 1) 40

Such temperature/conditions swings are extremely rare in Seattle/PNW for sure, 100% -- but such dramatic fluctuations (aka "extreme weather") do occur more often in Seattle than places like SF or LA burning down due to natural causes (despite their respective wildfire seasons forevermore).

And that's the gist of Waymo's deployment; there's more variability/extremes in Denver and/or Seattle during any given year than those 5 other markets combined. (So I wouldn't argue about their usage of "extreme weather" compared to those markets; places like upper midwest [Chicago, Minneapolis] and northeast [NYC, Boston, Philly, DC] offer more extremes in any given year for sure, but Waymo is being gradual in their rollouts, and I appreciate that.)

Comment Re:Extreme Weather (Compared to current footprint) (Score 2) 40

Seattle has extreme weather...? That's news to me!

Why yes it does! Seattle has between 4 and 14 seasons, depending on how sensitive you are to the false season changes and how smoky the seasons become.

But most importantly, compared to the existing Waymo service areas (San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Austin, and Atlanta), both Denver and Seattle have more seasonal weather variations in any 3-month period.

Denver gets things like frost-to-extreme heat-to-snowfall within arbitrary 36-hour periods, and Seattle goes from 30s with marine clouds (mist and rain) to blue bird upper-80s back to 30s (windy mist) within its own 36-hour periods. Those fluctuations are definitely more "extreme" than mother nature just changing the humidity dial.

Comment Money talks, same blowback from Made-in-China (Score 2, Insightful) 213

"The people will be willing to pay more for things just made by humans."

In the 1990s, after the fall of the Berlin Wall and demise of the Soviet Union, the age of globalization [aided by the "information superhighway"] swept over the industrialized world: manufacturing migrated more intensely overseas, outsourcing was all of the rage, and overall cost efficiencies became achievable within years instead of decades. This business opportunity (economies of scale) was the underbelly behind Amazon from a profits-by-volume measure.

China became the dominant manufacturing hub but there was plenty of blowback for the increasing Made-in-China labels across all kinds of consumer goods. In the US, Made-in-America became a rallying cry for politicians and a marketing campaign by manufacturers... all with the promise that higher-quality domestic production, which would command higher price tags relative to the global market choices, would win-out the consumers' overall purchasing habits.

And it did: opinion polls all over agreed that domestic production was of higher-quality, and opinion polls agreed that their higher price tags were fully justified. Fast-forward to today and manufacturing in China far outweighs domestic production regardless of cost because money talks and everyone, by and large, would rather save money than not.

The same will happen with AI-or-AI-free products development and marketing. Will people be willing to pay more? Sure. But will people actually pay more for non-AI-laden products? Hahaha, no. Reduced operating costs for the products while increasing the product pricing equals MORE PROFITS and that's the last thing people want to pay for... loading up executives' pockets over the increase in profit margins.

Any products marketed as, "and now without any AI," should be viewed skeptically as just another money-grab. It's the same decision model used by many crooks holding positions of power, also.

Comment Re:The source code is the easy part (Score 1) 192

Only the completed form (and associated metadata) is transferred to the IRS API -- not the various workflow processes used to populate or generate the completed form.

Depending how people sort out their financial lives, the various tax laws are more imperative for their everyday accounting software rather than their quarterly/annual tax prep steps. So it's not a technical challenge/issue but rather how individuals do NOT leverage accounting tools and often feel caught off-guard by their annual income tax reporting actions.

Yeah, I know! People spend their lives completing their taxes EVERY SINGLE YEAR and yet they continually, constantly, without any sense of irony or sarcasm, remark how they had no way of being prepared and having their affairs sorted in order to complete their taxes on schedule! That's bananas to me!!!

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