dpb001 · HackerTrans

vor 17 Tagendiscuss

Right. Even the cheaper R2 just released is in a different market segment. There will be some cross-shopping of the Slate with the upcoming new platform Ford EV truck, which Ford is hinting will be $30K. Of course, I remember when Ford hinted that the F150 Lightening would initially be a $40K truck, so we'll see.

dpb001

vor 2 Monatendiscuss

It was interesting to read some of the history and this was a fun era to live through for developing database applications where most of what you needed was contained in the database application itself. But I'll disagree that mismanagement was the primary cause of decline of systems such as dBase, FoxPro, and Paradox. By the late 80's they were all starting to show the strain of implementing multi-user access via some sort of file server hosting. Read consistency and transaction isolation is pretty hard to implement and I still remember how early versions of Paradox would simply restart a query executing on a workstation if another user updated a table. When things like PowerBuilder and the relatively inexpensive WATCOM SQL server arrived there was no turning back for anything other than simple applications.

dpb001

vor 3 Monatendiscuss

I think the 14 year old nephew has been around for every iteration of technology - there are probably clients now threatening to just have their nephew vibe code the thing you're trying to spec out.

Once, when fed up with this during a discussion on a small moonlighting job I said "Yeah, kids are pretty good with this stuff these days, Tell you what - have him get started and I'll be available to give him any help he needs at 2x my rate".

dpb001

vor 3 Monatendiscuss

I’m a blue state resident and will not argue the point about overall quality of life. But a quick look at net inflow/outflow rankings by state show there’s already a migration in the red state direction. There are many factors involved, but the cost of living is certainly one. Taxes are a large component of the cost of living. Increasing them on a segment of the population that has the resources to move elsewhere can only result in some additional migration. Whether that results in a net loss of tax revenue remains to be seen.

dpb001

vor 3 Monatendiscuss

The union of states arrangement has the side effect of putting the states in competition with each other for things like new/expanding businesses and residents. It's relatively easy to relocate (or even remain in a state while legally "residing" elsewhere). So there are diminishing returns to raising the tax rates significantly on the upper brackets at the state level. I'm not a believer in the trickle down theory but beyond a certain marginal rate many people would just move to a state with a lower rate.

dpb001

vor 3 Monatendiscuss

Coincidentally, I just checked in early for an upcoming Air Asia flight (first time on this airline, not China) and see that among other restrictions they require power banks to "be carried on your person or in the seat pocket in front of you" and "sealed in a plastic or insulated pouch or kept in their original retail packaging to prevent short circuits".

Agree that China TSA equivalent > US TSA.

dpb001

vor 3 Monatendiscuss

I flew Cathay Pacific late January and power banks were prohibited in both checked luggage and overhead bins. Of course the overhead bin restriction would have been difficult to police and enforce. Also prohibited to use them for charging devices or to be charged from the onboard USB outlets. But the onboard outlets were good enough for anything I needed to do during the 15+ hour flight.

dpb001

vor 4 Monatendiscuss

I don't doubt your experience, but out of curiosity, what led you to the conclusion that branding is "absolutely necessary"? It seems to me that the presence of a name on black rectangle wouldn't matter to the average consumer. I get that there's a percentage of the consumer market that wants to advertise that they're rocking an Apple/Samsung/whatever device, but I would think that price/performance would be the major factor. Of course, that's probably why no one has ever put me in charge of marketing strategy.

dpb001

vor 5 Monatendiscuss

My experience (South and NE US) is that walls are painted and ceilings are textured. More labor is required to produce a good finish on a drywall ceiling and knockdown and popcorn finishes arose to reduce construction costs.

dpb001

vor 5 Monatendiscuss

A company I worked for in the mid-80’s used a PC based CAD package with this kind of copy protection. IIRC the cost of the software was about $5K, and engineers using it probably made around 50K/yr. This level of expense required a lengthy capex justification approval process. There was a category of users who didn’t need the software full time and since the software was tied to the dongle it was common to have the package installed on multiple workstations and borrow the dongle when needed.

The nature of our business was such that there was a lot of logic analyzers and signal tracing equipment in the lab and the dongle was reverse engineered and cloned after a couple of “where’d my dongle go” incidents.

dpb001

vor 9 Monatendiscuss

We just moved from a 70's-era house where I spent some time with a fish tape running cable to a 2025 three story townhouse (drywall already finished when we purchased).

For some reason the cable service entry is on the third floor in the laundry room. Ethernet and the TV signal cable runs from there to exactly one place, where the TV is expected to be mounted. Nothing in the nice office area on the other side of the wall.

My guess is that the thinking these days is that everyone's on laptops with wifi and hardwired network connections are only of interest for video streaming. Probably right for 99% of purchasers.

dpb001

vor 10 Monatendiscuss

In the early 2000’s there were efforts to provide broadband over power lines (BPL). I think one of the biggest obstacles was the radio frequency interference it generated.

dpb001

vor 11 Monatendiscuss

I think John Bolton would disagree with you.

comments