I blame the weak FP?

Why did someone try to censor that comment? Not the strongest FP, but whose political sensitivities did you manage to offend? (Maybe another approach to fixing the moderation would be to remove the anonymity?)

I actually think you are touching on a big question there. Why? I think it's basically because they didn't want to have a gap with no living humans who had been to the moon. They're getting old and dying off and that basically created a kind of fake pressure on Congress to fund Artemis, even though America's government has become almost totally dysfunctional in recent years.

The story did produce a number of jokes, some of them good, but the one I was looking for would have involved Musk. Proof of incompetence. How come DOGE didn't manage to kill this one? If Musk is really so clever, then he would have found a way to transfer the business to his company. (More complicated joke involves "might not making right", but winners think they must be morally (or politically) correct because they won. Reality is much more random and lucky and the truth is more like the lottery: "Someone had to win." (Latest data from another pesky book, so I might as well stop.))

Hmm... Maybe that's why I never select playlists? One of those problems I learned about and solved with "Don't do that" a long time ago? I do think that these days a lot of "getting used to" has become "learning how to avoid undesired features". The feeping creaturitus is strong with YouTube.

Perhaps the most interesting aspects of Microsoft Secrets by Cusumano and Selby involve their methods of avoiding feature creep.

Nice theory. But why would they need to ask? They just offer a salary that is insufficient if the candidate has a family and the candidate with the family quickly answers "No".

If none of the candidates accepts, then they can look for more candidates or call around with slightly better offers until they find a fish.

I think most of those things are clumsy bandages. The fundamental requirement of a real solution would be to transfer money to people who are doing the really difficult work of raising children. However, it looks less expensive to count on lust for sex and love of your own children to get as much as possible of the work "for free". And CPS is another bandage for the resulting problems...

NAK

No thanks. YouTube is the largest scam in this story. (That'll teach you not to ask me? And I'm still going to fall short of Funny...)

It would be interesting to see the real financial data. I think the google actually knows how the money works in YouTube, but revealing how the trick works could create a "That trick never works" again situation. However the general outlines are pretty clear.

YouTube gets lots of eyeballs. That's largely because there is lots of new content all the time, and creating that content is not seen as a cost on the google's side. They basically take a free-speech-ask-no-questions approach, but I'm pretty sure the real data would show that most of the most attractive content is not little guys exercising their free speech, but either big guys trying to get some free publicity, normally with excerpts, or outright criminals pirating the best stuff they can find and copy. But the real question is how much loot google is making from advertising versus how much comes from people paying to avoid some of the advertising...

So yeah, I'm glad the cops finally got around to doing something about this flamboyant and moderately profitable scam, but "Heck no thanks" to watching the YouTube spin version, even if it was cut under ten minutes. Crime is too profitable these years.

Disclaimer needed? I sort of listen to YouTube while I'm doing other stuff. Whenever I notice an ad I flip back to that tab and cut it off. But there's some recursive humor in there because some of the listening time is while I'm scanning the fresh videos (in the subscribed channels, mostly humor) to see if there are any to add to the "watch later" list. Equilibrium around 10 per day? (So my "best stuff" is mostly advertising for tickets to live comedy.) But my actual "watching" time is minimal. I mostly don't look unless I hear something that doesn't make sense without looking at it...

Ever heard of a race to the bottom?

So you have two candidates for a job. But one of them has a family to support and the other one is still living at home. You don't think that's relevant to the salary offer that each candidate will consider acceptable?

Too bad the future of society depends on people having families and therefore on having incomes high enough to support families. Unintended consequences and all that stuff.

Actually the big winners are pretty clear: Netanyahu and Putin. And they are NOT tired of winning yet. Especially not on America's dime. And speculators with insider information. They also won too much and are still winning.

I'm not sure who the biggest losers are yet. Obviously the Iranians are leading candidates, especially any moderate Iranians running loose in Iran. They were probably the most targeted victims the day after the war started.

My growing concern is with Xi's plans to get in on the winning. What sort of "other shoe" is Xi going to drop on the YOB when they meet? Some kind of deal providing Chinese boots on Iranian ground to "fix" the Hormuz problem? Perhaps in exchange for a permanent military base on Taiwan? Let's have a "great deal" to eliminate any threat of a messy amphibious invasion? Or maybe offer the YOB a couple of hotel towers with golf courses near Shanghai and Hong Kong? The corruption also knows no bounds.

Actually they take pictures that include the driver's face. Just recently read about someone being impressed by the high quality of the images. They sent copies with the citation. The question of the identity of the driver seems like a minor one at that point. They would only need to confirm that the face matches a known face. If you tried to claim you had loaned the car to someone else, then it becomes even easier, just proving the photographed face does not match the claimed face. But it reverts to the general facial recognition problem if they send a photo of an unknown person who would then have to be identified using a large database of faces...

However the direction the world seems to be heading, the next step will be real time checking of registration information to make sure the car isn't stolen. After all, that could explain some of the speeding. A car thief is extra likely to be in a bit of a hurry.

Not a bad FP branch, and I can add a relevant citation. The book is mostly about abusing people to increase the profits of giant tech companies and Amazon gets plenty of mentions. They tried to focus the book on AI, and that's where most of the examples come from, but it's really a broader thing. If there is interest in more books [On Slashdot? ROFLMAO] I can dig up some others from the last few years. But this one was published last year:

Feeding the Machine by Muldoon, Graham, and Cant.

They're especially good at enforcing silly rules. The rule-making process in Japan sometimes produces terrible rules, which then get enforced with enthusiasm. Or is it worse when the rules get case-by-case treatment that can make them effectively meaningless except as threats?

So anyway, I think the opening joke was weak and the story itself didn't get any attention in Japan. The FP numbers work out at a thousand bucks per "cybersecurity engineer", which is just silly. If the decimal place slipped twice and it was supposed to be $100,000/engineer, then it's only 10,000, which is actually a reasonable number to hope for some good. Unfortunately, cybersecurity is a weak chain game, which in this case means finding any vulnerability defended by a lesser engineer. The value of a top "cybersecurity attacker" is unlikely to be capped at such a small number as $100,000 and someone is gonna git overrun and breached.

Returning to the topic of "attention in Japan", absence of evidence is not proof of anything. However if it was a big deal then it should have made the local news... My bad. Turns out it did: https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworl... Or did it?

Oh wait. Is it possible the Slashdot version is wrong? NHK says it's about AI with cybersecurity getting a side-mention. Investing in AI? Where have I seen that story before. Oh yeah. Everywhere.

And one more thing. About the new Subject. The particularly stupid new rules I was thinking about involve a new campaign against bicycles. Enough to convince me to get rid of my bike. Not worth more hassles, but my typically negative prediction is that bike problems are minor and bike benefits are significant, so if the new rules push more people to buy cars then the net effects will be mostly negative...

Who's tired of too much winning?

Unfortunately not Netanyahu or Putin. But I'm waiting for Xi to drop the other shoe with an offer the YOB can't refuse. Only link to Amazon I can imagine involves merchandise made in Taiwan? "But if you let us build a big military base on Taiwan then it will eliminate any risk of a YUGE amphibious invasion in the future..."

Anyway, I'm not even clear why your comment was modded Funny, much as I want to see Funny these days. Mostly seems irrelevant, dare I say off topic, unless Amazon is drafting employees the way Amazon wants to draft customers...

(And as I am too fond of saying, my second and final Amazon purchase was decades ago. My main residual concern is that Amazon may get exclusive rights to sell something that I want and then can't get anywhere else...)

Okay FP, though really shallow for the moderation claim of "Insightful". Story was worth some Funny, but didn't get it. Just some kind of mumble about a homophone-ophobe?

As for your theme, I think there are two main pressures for getting people into the office, and you didn't hit either of them. One is the control issue, as in they want to control the workers as tightly as possible. The other one might be the flip side of the coin, so maybe it's really the same thing. The "leaders" feel the need to prove their importance and value in front of an audience, but the employees will do in the pinch.

However I think the biggest issue is the stupidity that is creating this possibly short-term pressure on oil prices. The YOB without a plan has upset another apple cart and expects the rest of us to clean up the mess while he goes on to create more messes. The REAL lesson of this fiasco is that if you are a smallish country that wants any respect, you need to get nuclear weapons, like Israel and North Korea. Ukraine is now the poster child for what happens if you give up your nuclear weapons. Many poster countries for failing to get a nuclear weapon and getting badly dissed. Obvious that Iran is the main one just now, but Taiwan is RSN?

If I was a gambling man I'd be looking into those gambling websites for bets on what kind of "offer the YOB can't refuse" that Xi will play when he meets the YOB. But maybe we can all hope that Xi has surrounded himself with yes-men and other useless idiots?