It's well known that big tech companies are overstaffed. You probably can't build Dropbox in a weekend starting from scratch, but a smaller scale cloud-based storage solution can be deployed very quickly if you start from existing open source components. And a small team of experienced web devs can certainly build a cloud storage thing in a matter of weeks from scratch too.
I feel like vzw abandoned sane things like otp for k8s ai and blockchain ( or whatever nonsense tech goes here ). otp was probably deemed antiquated and too hard to maintain.
Almost; you need maintenance and monitoring but that doesn't take anywhere near 100k people - assuming they even use their own headcount for this instead of just outsourcing maintenance to their equipment vendor.
Big Tech companies operate much more complex systems (for starters, they actually build greenfield stuff instead of buying ready-made equipment from a vendor and plugging it in) and have way less headcount.
You're building new cell towers, managing countless failed backhual links (thanks to fiber's natural enemy, the backhoe), working with whatever obscure bugs your MVNOs have managed to uncover, certifying new cell phone designs, and still working on upgrading everything to 5G while simultaneously planning for 6G (keeping in mind that the 5G network architecture looks radically different than the LTE architecture). Much of that work is necessarily physically distributed across the entire country.
Not to mention dealing with end-user sales and support, which unfortunately often needs physical stores.
I'm not going to say whether 100k is too many, but there's a lot more involved here than just maintenance and monitoring - especially if you want your network capacity to keep up with growing demand.
ChatGPT can very well be an upgrade compared to the "engineering" capability of a lot of telcos (they have very little, are hell-bent on outsourcing as much as possible and are even proud of that). But don't take it from me, here's a more reliable source: https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/5g-elephant-in-the-room/
Has none of the usual expected perks like rental car insurance or damage/theft protection on purchases. Guess purchase protection would be a threat to applecare revenue.
> if you read the manual (which I guess most kids didn't).
Most kids did't read the manual? I would rtfm for every game I got my hands on during the car ride home from toysrus or blockbuster. If Mom had several errands to run, I may rtfm a dozen times before I finally got home with the game.
Ahhh, nostalgia: Some games like Super Mario and Duck Hunt were quite doable without a manual, but I specifically remember Legacy of the Wizard [0]. With no manual and almost zero in-game text to work from, our progress was limited to stumbling around a giant labyrinth, never realizing certain obstacles required switching characters to use unique abilities, and then finding special items that unlock abilities for other characters...
I've been on a bit of a retro bender and have intentionally limited myself to nothing but the manuals and games and it's been so fun to rediscover how much thought people used to put into the manuals including the presentation and art. Extreme shame half of the time now even if you go and grab a physical copy you basically just get a key in a box.
I would read the manual too on the ride home. But I think that was only for new games? I seem to remember that rentals didn't come with manuals. The best memory was my grandma picking me up to spend the summer at her house. We stopped by wal-mart and I grabbed the first release of Gran Turismo for psx. It came with a fairly giant manual. Had a three hour drive to her house. I read it over and over!
The people working hint hotlines apparently memorized some information from manuals, as so many kids without access to the manuals called with the same questions. The famous code from Star Tropics, for example.
Identifying the 1% of ai use cases that are useful and refusing to have your attention stolen by the 99% that is mild melting garbage will be the key ai skill for the ai future
I just got an invoice from ups to pay a $16 brokerage fee to jpmorgan for collecting a $0.60 tariff on a sticker included in a box with a custom keyboard shipped from Taiwan. Seems like wall street is making out better than the US on this arrangement
Yeah, I noped-out when I saw eBay's writeup on tariffs owed by the buyer (not paid by the seller):
"Shipping carriers or US Customs usually charge $5–$30 in processing fees. Add the item price, import fees, and processing fees to estimate your final cost."
Not something I'm doing for a $5 item... I'll sit back and wait until the Supreme Court finds the tariffs are illegal, and the Fed has to pay every cent back to the businesses, suddenly sending the US spiraling into the biggest budget deficit in history.
Tariffs do not always 100% immediately get passed on to buyer.
If there's a $100 product you'd like to purchase and there's a 100% tariff, it won't be $200.
That product was made abroad, let's for $20. So the tariff should be $20, not $100.
The US-based owner will go to the supplier, say they're getting squeezed by tariffs and first they'll try to see what they can do to recategorize the tariff, or negotiate with their supplier to absorb some of the expense. Let's say that got it down to $15. The owner still doesn't want to increase costs by 15%, so they'll hold off for a while and absorb, and then eventually maybe increase 5-10 and absorb further; perhaps eventually going the full stretch - maybe not.
Squeezing the supplier may work in the short term, especially for goods already ordered, and produced, which can't be sold elsewhere.
But in the short-medium term it creates uncertainty for the supplier. (The on / off / on nature of these tariffs doesn't help.) For some goods this means suppliers will develop new markets, or will adjust prices up for American purchasers.
For example, say I have an orange farm. Say I have been selling to the US for ages. Simple, reliable sale, no need to look for other customers.
This year there's turmoil. We take a hit because US buyers need a discount (or might cancel the order.) OK, I'll take the hit. But I'll also put out feelers for other markets for next years crop. Maybe Saudia Arabia is looking. Maybe Europe is looking. Next year, do I develop those relationships, or do I reserve my crop for my US buyer?
Tariffs are not necessarily the problem. They are an important long-term tool used to support local production. Uncertainty though is a huge problem- it's easier to sell elsewhere.
> tariffs are surely paid by the buyer, not the seller.
The US has declared import tariffs are to be paid by the importer/shipper, not collected from the end purchaser after... The opposite of the rest of the world.
If you look through eBay, at items coming from China, you'll see most are noted as:
Import fees: Includes import fees
This item includes applicable import fees—you won’t pay anything extra after checkout."
So they are being paid by the seller/importer/etc.
It seems to be a rare exception that you'll see the seller is not paying the tariffs:
Import fees: Import fees due prior to delivery
Due to US customs policies, the buyer of this item will need to pay import fees to the shipping carrier prior to delivery.
I expect nearly all foreign sellers have increased their prices to cover the tariffs. However, there are items selling for less than eBay says an individual will be charged in fees, so it's not just a you-pay-or-I-pay thing. Either eBay is exaggerating, or sellers are finding a way to get a better deal.
It's a minefield for eBay buyers who likely won't notice the footnote means their $5 purchase will cost them $20+ in fees. They now have something else to lookout for that doesn't show up in the table of search results. Something only in a small note on the item's product page. Something that might mean significant extra cost if you aren't careful when shopping.
I actually expect quite a lot of smaller foreign sellers have just stopped bothering trying to sell to the US, because the price plus the hassle isn't worth it. Large companies of course still will, with some price increase.
Would you consider renaming the note to contain a reference to the generated code? Such as "Thoughts on Hedgehogs.md" becomes "Thoughts on Hedgehogs [AB-99].md"
This preserves your goal of having the system rightfully not need another source of truth outside the markdown files, but also lets the markdown file carry the identifier across renames without adding a YAML block.
And it lets you find the note in the "open note" dialog box by typing the code, so no other kind of search interface is needed. Or even to find the note with any other filesystem utility if you have your reference code.
Were you inspired by the Zettelkasten Method for your plugin?
Hmm... Not a fan of that approach. Would mess things up for my personal use case, at least, making the names less nice. I'm leaning on having some sort of a vault-specific database tracking existing codes across renames as an addition to the existing mechanism. I actually do like the idea of adding tags in the frontmatter, but then it'd become impossible to tag files and folders.
If only we had resource forks.
As for inspiration, I'm not really much of a note-taking system person. My system is just hyperlinking lots of notes together: https://ezhik.jp/hypertext-maximalism/ - this little plugin just helps with that outside of my vault.
The payment processors have been held criminally and civilly liable in court for processing payments for pornhub. I don't see how we can expect Visa/MC to not censor their customers, if we also intend to hold them criminally liable for the actions of their customers in such cases.
If Visa spends years in criminal court because a book store accepted a credit card payment for an illegal book, then yes, expect Visa to start placing limits on card processing for bookstores.
Since the top comment seems to be judging the worthiness of this individual to work with databases after prison, for those considering working with or hiring someone with a criminal record, I'd beg you to consider:
You're hiring the person as they are today, long after any punishment, rehabilitation, parold, probation, and personal growth. Not who they were at the time of past actions.
Having your own mini trial, where you sit in judgement over the candidate, from your ignorant position of privilege, using whatever details you can dig up with google may be entertaining for you, but is tells you nothing of what kind of employee they might be. Your mock trial may be especially traumatic to endure for the candidate, because their side of the story is rarely included in any reporting you can dig up. Especially for those unfairly convicted.
With everything going on today, do you really trust our justice system to be fair, especially to someone who is not a wealthy and connected straight white male?
If you're only willing to give people a chance when you judge their offence to be trivial by your own ethics, you're not actually providing second chances for those that need it.
Your comment doesn't seem applicable to this scenario since this is not about "work with databases after prison" or "long after any punishment, rehabilitation, parold, probation, and personal growth". Even the title says it: "from prison". This individual is actually still undergoing their punishment, not long after it.
I'm not judging anything at all. What part of my comment makes you think I judge the worthiness? I just decided to share what the crime was since OP left it out.
To make it unambiguous I added a prefix: "Great story, I wish this inspired more prisons around the world to follow suit."
Your phone could become damaged and inoperable every day. From dropping it in the toilet, being stolen, a house fire, etc. If you're "petrified" of losing your data, it's worth the work to ensure your data backup procedures are adequate.
You’re right, but also I know I have enough backed up to survive a catastrophe. What I don’t want to do is to test my backup in a non catastrophe situation and invalidate all my TOTP, WhatsApp history, mail settings etc. just because I wanted to test disaster recovery.
It feels like buying a fire safe (phone and app backups) without any kind of understanding if it works then burning your house down to see if it works. I want a fire safe (phone and app backups) that is up-front with guarantees it works!
I should have said this by the way: for a long time I did wipe my phone when crossing borders, learning the hard way all the little details that don’t quite work properly when doing a restore from backups.
Analogies only go so far. Going to the store, buying gasoline and rags and a lighter and then committing arson and burning my house down is maybe a little bit different from sitting down for a few hours with my laptop connected to my phone.
I've spent the last month and a half building an encyrpted backup system I could sleep peacefully with, independent of tech giants that secretly compromise you. I'm almost there but it's not easy for a lot of reasons you mention and more.
Ultimately it's not enough for individuals to spend this effort for themselves. We need a self-managed option that is nearly as turnkey as iCloud. A distro with it built from the outset.
Yes. You can restore your icloud backup to another target iphone without wiping the source iphone, as long as the target iphone has enough storage capacity.
