Monthly Archives: February 2023

2.26

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That father advised his son that they shouldn’t offer above asking, not because he had toured the home and uncovered a flaw but because he had fixated on a detail he saw online: The house was 18 feet wide. The father believed it was priced as if it were 20. They insisted on putting in an offer at $1.6M, or $50,000 below the asking price of $1.65M. The house ultimately sold for $150,000 over asking — to someone else. “It would have been very nice if they’d listened,” Harris said, not only because his client regrets losing that townhouse but because, more than a year later, Harris, an agent with Coldwell Banker Warburg, is still taking the same client to showings. “I can’t get that time back.”

And if you’re interested in the operational cost of running this setup it is like 60$ for the RaspberryPi (one time cost) + electricity (less than 1$ a month) + 10$ a year for domain (which I needed anyway). So not more than like 2$ a month if you already have internet in your home.

But, even more crucially for the VCs who’ve plunged more than $5bn into the sector globally since 2017 — they’re asking whether the business model works at all.

“We are taking this preventative step to ensure the health, safety, and confidence of residents,” said Mayor Aftab. “Our entire community has East Palestine in our thoughts, and in coordination with the Ohio EPA and the Sanitation Commission, we will continue to support the best recovery possible. I am proud of the swift action of Water Works and City Manager Long in stepping up to protect our families.”

Once you become an engineering executive, an invisible timer starts ticking in the background. Tick tick tick. At some point that timer will go off, at which point someone will rush up to you demanding an engineering strategy. It won’t be clear what they mean, but they will want it, really, really badly. If we just had an engineering strategy, their eyes will implore you, things would be okay. For a long time, those imploring eyes haunted me, because I simply didn’t know what to give them: what is an engineering strategy?

An international team of scientists has shown that the blood pressure-lowering effect of exercise is significantly reduced when people rinse their mouths with antibacterial mouthwash, rather than water — showing the importance of oral bacteria in cardiovascular health.

The Finnish data protection authority (Data Protection Ombudsman) ruled against the use of Google Analytics by four libraries in the Helsinki metropolitan area. You might have heard this one already, because authorities in Austria, France, Italy, and Denmark also found that the use of Google Analytics is not compatible with the GDPR.

Left unmentioned in the brief was that the parties behind it had direct financial ties to Google. The group that funded the brief, a nonprofit advocate for startups called Engine, is funded in part by Google. And at least one of the content creators who signed on to the amicus brief has said that employees from YouTube, a Google subsidiary, invited them to sign onto the brief. In addition, the firm representing the creators and Authors Alliance — Keker, Van Nest & Peters — represents Google in other litigation.

Guys who think they are the next Jame O’Keefe get in via promising donors, they take over the board, and James is gone. What’s the lesson for Talent? Work with money men. The ones who don’t really care about what you do nor understand it. If they are boring, even better. Then be Talent. Create value. Let the Suits capture it. Win-win.

The conclusion of a leading Beltway pundit that the Biden administration offered its outstretched hand to Beijing in Munich, only to have it “slapped away,” seems difficult to refute.

In any event, the more I learned about Estonia and their history, the more they became one of my go-to countries. When I saw their MOD earlier this month published Russia’s War in Ukraine: Myths and Lessons, I knew it had to be good.

and also included a “fat finger error” that overstated the price at which he sold it.

“I didn’t have, like, a Grant Thornton or somebody audit my personal books.”

As Gen Z is the most online of any age group — spending up to six hours a day on their smartphones — the iPhone’s dominance is shaping the social circles of young Americans, according to researchers who advise companies on the preference of Gen Z consumers.

We must do everything possible to avoid an enormously destructive war in Ukraine | Bernie Sanders February 2022

All in all, the adjustments increase launch revenue by $130M and Starlink revenue by $890M, driven by the outperformance of the subscriber numbers and a reallocation to the higher-priced Starlink Business subscriptions. In addition, our adjustments introduced $325M in revenue recognition from NASA lunar landing and Space Force next-gen constellation programs. All in, Payload has adjusted its 2022 SpaceX revenue estimate from $3.25B to $4.6B. 

It’s been more than a year since Dr. Greg Schulz was suspended from Concordia University Wisconsin for publicly objecting to its board of regents inserting racial prejudices into its criteria for a new president. Interim president Dr. William Cario suspended the tenured philosophy professor on Saturday, Feb. 19, 2022, immediately banning Schulz from campus and his university email, according to legal documentation.

“The most difficult thing is personnel management. Americans are the worst at this, because Americans are the most difficult to manage.”

Create daily. You don’t have to publish daily, but creation is the habit that makes everything else possible.

Cracking the technical debt conundrum requires us to challenge conventional management thinking in two critical ways: The first is realizing that technical debt is not a problem to be solved but rather one to be managed. The second is seeing technical debt as a way to achieve strategic competitive advantage rather than as a burden.

In the first post, I covered 16 important lessons which helped us to not only grow the business and increase ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue), but also how we did it without any outside investments. We got traction in an industry which is dominated by billion dollar companies.

It’s possible that one day, when physical land is abundant too, Balaji’s vision will come to pass. But for now, The Network State is an exemplary salvo in a debate playing out in tech today over which type of world we want to live in: A world of Atoms, or of Bits?

There’s been some talk online about whether we are post peak wokeness. I will have more to say about this when I complete my analysis of several institutions language usage dynamics. For the time being, I provide a timely update of a chart I made in 2019 about prevalence of terms in New York Times news and opinion articles. This is the chart from 2019:

The Camera & Imaging Products Association presentation at the CP+2023 show indicated that average camera prices doubled in 3 years and increased 6 times in 10 years. Here is a recap of the presentation:

2.19

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Most of the world’s olives grow in southern European countries, such as Spain and Italy. In the U.S., California dedicates more than 30,000 acres to the commodity. But Florida may be the next agricultural region for small-scale commercial olive production.

It appears that editors will support Hersh’s work when it serves the interests of the party they support, the Democrats, whether those stories are true or not. His establishment media enablers stayed away from the Biden pipeline piece because it aligned with the belief of many on the right, including senior GOP officials, that Biden blew up the pipelines.

Of liberal candidate Janet Protasiewicz’s $195,000 fundraising haul in large donations last week, only $7,500 came from in-state donors.

It’s a tactic Democrats employed nationally in last year’s midterms to mixed reviews from their partisan camp. The strategy involves implicitly siding in partisan primaries with the GOP candidate opponents feel would appear to voters as most conservative in the general election, then going after that candidate and casting them as out of touch with voters after the primary

‘The left has become largely irrelevant in the US because it is incapable of working with the right’, said Nick Brana, chair of The People’s Party, which organised the rally with libertarians. ‘It clings to identity politics over jobs, health care, wages and war, and condemns half the country as deplorables.’

That progress could be overstated and the company isn’t out of the woods just yet, according to an internal memo from one of the company’s top executives that Recode obtained. Meta still faces major business challenges, including Apple limiting its advertising business, TikTok’s rising popularity, and its brand sentiment with users in the US.

This is the reality of the outcome of the war in Ukraine. Washington seems determined to pursue its increasingly illusory goal of maintaining international hegemony, now packaged in spurious claims of supporting “democracy versus authoritarianism.” Not many buyers there. How long will the US continue to flail in endless foreign wars to desperately prove to itself and the world that it is still # 1?

SQLite is one of those projects that I wish I had known about long before I did. I had heard about it, but for many years I never thought about taking a serious look at it because I was under the false impression that is was a tiny database only useful for personal address books and small embedded devices.

As defense counsel has pointed out, and the Government does not dispute, many individuals use a VPN for benign purposes. In the Government’s view, however, the use of a VPN raises several potential concerns. First, a VPN is a mechanism of encryption, hiding online activities from third parties, including the Government. Second, it is a means to disguise a user’s whereabouts because a VPN server essentially acts as a proxy on the internet. In other words, because the demographic location data comes from a server in another country, a user’s IP appears as if it is in that country, and the user’s actual location cannot be determined.

“The way I see it, Google has four core cultural problems,” Seshadri said. “They are all the natural consequences of having a money-printing machine called ‘Ads’ that has kept growing relentlessly every year, hiding all other sins. (1) no mission, (2) no urgency, (3) delusions of exceptionalism, (4) mismanagement.”

Even before the famous scandal, there was another kind of snow he was interested in: the stuff falling from the sky. His passion for winter weather and vehicles that could traverse those icy conditions became one of DeLorean’s main sources of post-GM income (and a significant pawn in the post-conviction DMC bankruptcy) but was somehow simultaneously his least known business endeavor. In fact, the first DeLorean wasn’t the DMC-12—it was a snowcat.

The suit, filed in 2017 by a sales representative for a competing medical device firm, alleges an illegal kickback scheme between Medtronic and hospital employees. According to the complaint and documents released in the suit, between 2011 and 2018, VA health care workers received steakhouse dinners, Apple electronics and NASCAR tickets, and in turn, Medtronic secured a lucrative contract with the hospital. Meanwhile, the company’s representatives allegedly “groomed and trained” physicians at the facility, who then deployed the company’s devices even when it was not medically indicated.

China’s state-run aviation industry is working toward self-sufficiency because of sanctions. But it is these same sanctions that will make it difficult to achieve.

Denver’s snow plowing response was widely criticized following the December storm, when a sustained cold snap combined with the city’s failure to deploy side-street plows caused mounds of snow and ice to languish for weeks. In response, the city upped its plowing efforts for the Jan. 17-18 storm, dispatching small plows to clear residential streets. Still, due to a sidewalk clearing system that relies heavily on business and private property owners to ensure sidewalks and curbs are accessible, problem areas have inevitably remained.

“The mainstream media, they have decided on their own that we are at war and by ‘we,’ that means the Acela corridor, the expensive suburbs of the East Coast … and that means the rules (of journalism) have changed,” Brecher offered.

Back at the Boulevard Mall, I return to LensCrafters to pick up my glasses. I’m anxious because I have one ear that’s higher than the other and a touch of undiagnosed OCD, and getting them to fit the way I like them—almost floating, not gripping my ears like tight little baby hands—is always an ordeal. But the young man who helped me choose the frames bends and shapes them with such slow and attentive care that I am put immediately at ease. As he works, we talk. His name is Pouyan. He is twenty-eight years old, bearded and solidly built, with intense blue eyes and a warm, open manner. He immigrated to Las Vegas three years ago from Fardis, a city outside Tehran, by way of Turkey, to which he had escaped by foot, and where he was later met by his parents and younger brother. He was an optician in Iran, as was his father, but his family is Baha’i, a persecuted religious minority there, and the Iranian government shut their optical shops down.

The items and issues included the US SPR levels, the North / South divide on the energy transition, the challenges of expanding minerals supply, the IRA, the strong push governments are giving the energy transition, the talk and the mood at Davos, Dan’s perspective on European governments and their palpable return to reality on energy security, the different perspectives that will be showcased at CERA on the energy transition, and the US and China relationship.

Kerry is no stranger to long flights and extravagant stays as Biden’s climate czar. From March 2021 to June 2022 alone, he flew nearly 200,000 miles—the equivalent of traveling around the world more than seven times—to fight climate change, the Washington Free Beacon reported in September. Those flights produced 9.54 million pounds of carbon, roughly 300 times the average American’s carbon footprint for an entire year. In November, meanwhile, Kerry attended an international climate conference in Sharm El Sheikh, an Egyptian resort town known for its long beaches, luxury resorts, and recreational watersports, including windsurfing, an activity Kerry has long enjoyed.

But in America, the exact opposite attitude holds: woke virtue signaling is more important than scientific achievement, but not more important than beating the Steelers.

My Dear Fellow Clergymen: I think I should indicate why I am here in Birmingham, since you have been influenced by the view which argues against “outsiders coming in.” But more basically, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham.

An e-battery factory and new cultural center have put Skelleftea at the heart of an eco-urban renaissance

2.5

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However, the act has been criticized for its ineffectiveness in preserving newspapers and protecting competition [4].

When electric utilities or electric rates are used to accomplish any public good, any cost increase falls disproportionately upon those with lesser incomes and resources. Power costs tend to function as a highly regressive tax, putting the burden on those who struggle the most and having the least impact on the wealthy. As a practicing engineer I often worried what impact our projects would have on the less fortunate. Now I fear that poor struggling grandmothers will end up paying for the “green” dreams of the financially well off.

I spent Martin Luther King Jr. Day in Washington, D.C. My white friend who earns $200,000 in total compensation as a government worker was enjoying a holiday while the Black service/retail industry workers who get $15/hr had to come in for their regular shifts. Over a leisurely holiday lunch, she explained the current structure of a typical federal agency. “Nobody has to come in,” she said, “and most of the people who work for me haven’t come into the office for months. I go in two or three days a week just to get out of the house, but it is not required.” Why wouldn’t the young people she manages want to come in and get out of their crummy apartments? “A junior programmer wouldn’t get paid more than $90,000 per year, so he couldn’t afford to the live in the city anyway. One guy lives out in Gaithersburg with his brother and it is too much effort to come in. The rest of the Millennials aren’t interested even if they do live, with parental support, reasonably close to our office.”

Someone, usually the general counsel, looks so pained that he or she appears to have just been Tasered. One or two eschew smiles altogether: in this context they are the hostage-takers.

While the AirPods Pro earbuds aren’t certified hearing aids, I am definitely hearing much better. Over the course of five hours one night, for example, I heard every word in a conversation with my wife and son. That never happens. And I watched television with my son with the soundbar volume set lower than my wife usually has it at. That was game changing, with all dialogue sounding crisp and loud enough.

Scarlett Doumato collected the half-eaten cookie and munched-on carrots she’d left out for Saint Nick and his reindeer and submitted them for DNA tests

The relocation of Diversey Inc. to manufacturing facilities Northern Kentucky eliminated between 65 and 100 jobs in the Watertown area, while the company’s headquarters remain in Watertown.

For the last few decades, smartphones have been gradually eating into the dedicated camera market. Most people only benefit from very basic photographic functionality (taking some baby pictures, making a copy of a receipt, etc.). There’s basically zero market for “casual” dedicated cameras anymore; basically anyone who has a dedicated camera today is relatively serious about it, either because they’re using their camera in a professional capacity or pushing the limits of the camera beyond what cell phone cameras can handle.

The labor market may have been much weaker than the government let on in 2022. While the Bureau of Labor Statistics initially reported the U.S. economy added 1.2 million jobs last spring, a new report shows the private sector had a net loss of 287,000 jobs during the same time period, a difference of nearly 1.5 million.

This article was amended on 30 January 2023. An earlier version said that new solar is about a quarter cheaper than the cost for coal plants. At $24 and $36 respectively for each megawatt hour, new solar is about a third cheaper, not a quarter.

The first 747 entered commercial service on January 21 1970 on Pan Am’s New York-to-London route. It entered popular lore, too. The US Postal Service printed it on a stamp. Mitchell sang of “dreams of 747s over geometric farms” in the ballad “Amelia”, and a quarter of a century later, novelist JG Ballard compared it to the Parthenon, writing that each gave shape to “mathematics, aesthetics and an entire geopolitical worldview”.

A U.S. judge on Monday said the names of two people who helped guarantee bail for indicted FTX cryptocurrency exchange founder Sam Bankman-Fried should be made public, but put his ruling on hold pending an expected appeal.

Condit recounted how legendary Pan American Airlines CEO Juan Tripp and Boeing CEO Bill Allen came to terms on the 747’s launch order: “Juan Trip said to Bill Allen, ‘If you build it, I’ll buy it.’ And Bill Allen said ‘If you buy it, I’ll build it.’” That “handshake by giants” started an airplane program that literally changed the world, Condit said.

Looking down on the canyon where we’d moored, I saw a clear stream flowing along its bottom, slicing through the Dominy Formation and pushing out the mess, flood by flood. Geomorphologists have been surprised by the speed at which the hard muck departs. I asked Johnson what she thought of the speed, and she said, “Drastic. It’s changing so fast.” Recently, she and her colleagues went to Dark Canyon, a tributary of Glen Canyon, to document depositional patterns in its reservoir sediment, which was more than 25 feet thick in places. When they arrived, they found that the entire layer had been scoured out by a flash flood. In days or weeks, tons of sediment can be carried off to the lower reaches of the reservoir, mud compounding mud. The problem simply relocates — and accumulates.

My understanding, from these conversations, is that it is still possible in Disneyland (not World) to evade because they rely on the app and credit card swipes to generate single user ID’s, not on a wristband which is subject to infrared detection throughout the parks in Florida.

Most of the largest venture funded technology companies all have exactly the same marketing plan to get big. Embrace, Extend, and Extinguish.

A business trip required the use of an unfamiliar travel platform, which required time and effort to learn. I scanned my own lunch items into a kiosk at the airport, which asked me if I wanted to leave a tip (to myself?). When the flight was delayed, I sat in a coffee shop where orders had to be placed via an iPad. After 30 minutes of waiting for a latte, I looked around for help but couldn’t find a human being to complain to (the guy next to me claimed to have been waiting 40 minutes). I eventually boarded without coffee or a refund.

Right away, we can see several things, before we do any calculations or conversions. First, there are not very many 0s after that B! In fact, there is just one zero. It’ll be a little while before that zero rolls over to 1, because the next digit after the 0 is an 8. If we look at more recently assigned ASINs, such as for Jayne Ann Krentz’s forthcoming Lightning in a Mirror, that has already rolled over to a 9: B092V35KJF.

So why stop issuing real return bonds? The government may suspect that inflation will go up a lot more, and it will then have to pay more to bondholders. Non-indexed debt can be inflated away if the fiscal situation worsens. The cumulative 11-per-cent inflation since January, 2021, has inflated away 11 per cent of the debt already. Argentines have seen a lot more.

Mackay also recounts the story of a sailor who ate a merchant’s tulip bulb, thinking it was an onion. He rotted in jail.