I guess the joke is on them, having one of the lowest homicide rates by firearm in the world, even knife homicides which London is famous for are lower than many major US cities.
141 karma · joined November 27, 2018
Yes iMessage can be decrypted by the Chinese government. But China is a much different arena than the rest of the world, it is an almost totalitarian state by default.
FB is also an easy target at the moment, so Apple can use them to sell the "privacy" of their product.
That and I think Tim Apple has a bone or two to pick with Zucks.
There are a few major parts to my system, the major ones being
- Daily check in
- Reflection of the previous day
- Morning journal
- Daily planner
- Don't do and Anti-regret lists
- Review of the day (including a note to my future self)
- And a habit tracker, this also tracks how I feel in the morning, and how I feel in the night.
So in regards to the "worry book", I think it is a great idea. Anxiety sucks, and being able to understand why it happens and how to deal with it is a good practice. So this is how the above works for me in regards to anxiety at a high level.
1. Daily check in: This sets me up for the day, it has a list of traits I want or do have, my `don't do` and `anti-regret` lists and some other things. So for example a trait might be, 'calm', as well as some quotes which bring me back down to reality. This also includes some tools, like meditation.
2. The reflection of the previous day: I look back at what happened the previous day, what went right/wrong and what made me happy.
3. Morning journal: How I feel when I start my day, personal goals and thought.
4. Review of the day: What went right/wrong and what made me happy, and message to my future self.
How I think this works, for a "worrybook":
1. Daily check in: helps me understand the person I want to be for example a trait might be 'Not controlled by anxiety', and I will have a tool which helps that, like 'meditation'
2. The reflection of the previous day: I get to see what was bothering me the previous day, how it affected me, what I did about it or what I didn't do about it. But it also shows me that I can make it through the day, even with "bad" things happening.
3. Morning journal, how I feel and this is where I first try to adjust my thoughts. What I can do to lessen my anxiety, if it is just panic etc. How I want to feel.
4. Review of the day: I found it always good to review. Calm my mind before sleep, document how I handled the day etc.
So summed up I have understanding of how anxiety affects me, when it has be relevant historically, how I have dealt with it, and the tools which I have to deal with it. I know a little complex though, but it works for me.
It's interesting that someone mentions CBT below, it is my understanding that it is influenced somewhat by stoic thinking, which was one of the drivers behind my system. I also read `The Daily Stoic` by Ryan Holiday daily as part of one of my tasks. All of this takes me about 30 to 45 minutes a day.
遺憾 yí hàn type items, my `don't do` list would be a better area for 後悔 hòu huǐ item.
The anti-regret list is forward looking, as in if I did not do these things I will/may regret it.
The don't do list is backwards looking, if I do these things then I will/may regret it.
The `don't do` list works well, not all the time but I am constantly reminded not to drink coke, down from many liters a day. My `anti-regret` list takes priority over my to do list, things like spend more time with the kids, again works in the majority of times.
I think this is true, morally good or bad has been a moving target for some time, they are not concrete. Rather they are derived from inner definitions, and outside definitions at a point in time, and even then questionable.
While my knowledge of Nihilism is very small, but I would gather that Moral Nihilist are not rampaging through the street killing people, as while there is no concrete version of morals, there is no need to act in a manner which harms people, after all why would it matter.
And now I am going back to my solipsism.
Nouriel Roubini implies that carbon tax could mean a negative value. Contrary to income tax, a carbon tax wouldn't be a "negative" tax.
If it went to near 0 it could be out paced by inflation. I guess also if fees outpaced it's extrinsic value could mean an overall negative valuation. But a actual value below 0 would be rather difficult.
There have been a few comments on the long term accessibility of the account, like you mention. So I think it could be a good idea for me to look into doing a scheduled backup from gmail to a drive or other data storage option.
I thought it was important to leave them something that they can reflect on, memories, thoughts, reasons, and an understanding of me in some ways and how they impacted on my life.
Ok fair enough, now lets say I am an Accountant and I work out that I can increase profits even further by hiring 5 people offshore for 30K a year. I am paying now $150K to save $6m. You cannot deny me the accountant, the same opportunity to earn from cost reductions if you profit from it, that would not be in the theme of rewarding people for giving an advantage to a company.
If you look at both situation, mine is more efficient based on cost.
But most all you're playing an unfair advantage. You say the following: (* caveat lets say fair market value is 100k per developer)
> That's roughly 30 engineers being paid $200k
What happens if there are only 5 developers working for that company too, and working on the same profit-reward model as you are working on, they are getting paid 400K a year each because they are making the company $4m. So what's their true value, if they are being paid 400K and they can be replaced by your team for 200K it seems that they are being over paid 200K. Your way of justifying your 2x pay is that you decreased cost, their justification of being paid 4x is that they increased profits, but you're doing the same job, aren't they worth more than you are.
I the accountant see a business opportunity, and start a company the same as the 3rd party software company. I know that developers like you work on a profit-reward model of 20%. So your job did get outsource, but you were getting paid 200K to save the company a part of the 6m before that. I reduce the cost of the software by 50% to 3m, I offer you and your team 100K base salary and 20% of profits (2.5m for ease, 3m - 5x developers @ 100k), so would you take the job for 150k, a 25% reduction in pay for doing the same job based on the same model?
Here's the final point, how much do you pay a cleaner, they are a cost they don't produce profit.
I think it is very admirable for a company to pay profit sharing, and at the very least pay bonuses for good work. But that is because I am an employee :)
I just don't think profit sharing is realistic in the majority of situations for many reasons, and people over value their own worth. There's like a bias, if I generate multiple of millions for a company, then I must be highly skilled. That may be the case but sometimes it is the business itself which provides the environmental factors for that to be possible.
Yes, streamlining can save a great deal of money, and consultants and businesses are making good money offering such services. But they are only represented once generally in financials of a company, unless that cost is reduced over time.
> For most software businesses, it is more lucrative to spend resources increasing revenue, but at some point decreasing costs becomes worth it. For non-software businesses, the “some point” is usually right now.
In general this is correct, but there are situations where cost savings aren't worth it. We see this play out with the idea of Linux vs Windows quite often, the reduction in cost switching to Linux is over shadowed by other issues such as training etc. Switching accounting systems, service providers etc might just not be worth the cost reduction.
This would be a rare occurrence, but let's run with it. I don't think anywhere I have alluded to anything which could be considered as making such judgement on whom is worth more but rather the idea that businesses are systems with many actors.
But I think we are running around the obvious question, out of $2.8m, and ignoring any other costs and expenses like taxes for example (21% in the US), how much should the programmer get paid, how much should the sales person be paid?
If I had a company and I had 1 person sewing t-shirts which sold for $5, and another person sewing the same amount of t-shirts, same skill level, same quality of work but they were supreme t-shirts selling for $38. Should I pay the second work many times more, since they make me 7+ times more doing the same job. I don't think the market would say I would. Unless you have a unique skill or go beyond the level of the second employee, the rate would be the same. Even your software selling for 3m is set by the market, you cannot stick a price on it and say it is worth 50m and it's worth 50m.
The same argument goes for developers, it's a generic pool of skilled workers. While there maybe an argument for paying a high profit generating developer more, the majority of developers are likely to be the lower end. Maybe some people just get lucky, for example it is probably easier generating 1m of revenue working at Facebook (developer A), than it would be working at a small boutique development firm (developer B), developer A being no different than developer B, should developer A get paid more just because of the opportunity they have.
> Well, a worker who, through their time and expertise, is adding $1M to the company's value is almost precisely equivalent to the investor investing $1M. However, you believe that the worker should get back 10% of what they invested, while the investor should get back 110% of what they invested. Do you see the double standard?
There is no double standard, and they are not equivalent. The employee earns a salary, the invest earns via capital gains (excluding cases of dividends and profit shares). An investor can lose everything, while an employee gets paid.
If you think an employee == investor then you should not expect a salary at all, you getting paid depends on whether the company makes a profit and if there are capital gains to be had.
I think you should consider that employees are more like businesses, you are selling you product/services (aka skills) to a customer.
Yes, the operational costs can be substantial.
If you generate 1m of profit, I don't think 10% is that bad. If you generate 1m of revenue then 10% is pretty good depending on operational costs. If you're talking about 1m of saving 10% is not bad. That 10% is paid in a salary.
> You call it a "commission" as if this was a salesman getting a cut of the cost of the product they sold
You can call it whatever you want, salary, bonus, commission etc. I use the word commission because it is easy to relate the concept, if you generate 4m for example what is your worth, and it is probably easier to count that as a percentage.
But fell free to use whatever nomenclature you want.
> but a salesperson selling a $1M product is not providing $1M to the company
If you are not producing sales or a product which is sold, or reducing costs just how are you adding 1m of value. By this I mean tangible value, value which you can be paid for. Because that is what we are actually talking about monetary value being added somewhere.
> On the other hand, an investor who gives the company $1M normally expects to get more than 100% of that back (with some risks, of course). Or would you say that an investment where you pay $1M to get $100K back is a good investment?
Why would I ever say investing 1m to get 100k back is a good investment, getting 1.1m back might be a good investment depending on risk though, sticking 1m in a bank I am unlikely to get that rate of return for example. But I don't understand this part at all.
Let's use an arbitrary 1m saving.
If you saved a company (me) a million dollars, you just made 10% (aka 100K). That's a pretty good commission. If you got health care, retirement contributions and anything else on top of that, you have made an exceptional commission.
Because I gather you mention saving you mean on sunk costs. The second year you earn 100K, and if you don't save me money you have now made 20% commission and only saved me 800K (1m - 100K - 100k). And so on and so on, or you need to keep saving me 1m a year and there is a point where my costs will reach $0 and your salary will outpace that, increasing my costs.
This obviously is a very linear representation where you're not adding extra value, nor am I incurring any additional cost/losses by employing you. Cost savings are reflected once in my bottom line but your salary is reflected every year in my in operating costs.
However if you made me an extra 1m a year revenue (and my costs stayed the same), I would make 900K from you every year, and you make 10%. But if my costs increased then that 900K revenue is much smaller, let's say my revenue increased 900K but my costs increased 100K, you make around 12%. Now we are talking about profit.
But yes, I can see what you are saying that employers drive the demand which puts the value on developers. Kind of like my wife and multiple other people in the world putting a price on a LV handbag, without the demand the LV is probably not worth more than a few hundred dollars.
Also there is a difference between revenue generating and cost reduction.
Society on mass is generally promoting the concept of vaccination. Good on companies like Uber and such supporting a widely accepted social agreement (though their motive may or may not be over all non-business motivated).
All of these situations are very difficult and very dangerous. I don't agree in emergency situations that the police should wait, and I don't agree that police should be militarized either. There are dangers in both situations, waiting too long and have multiple armed men in APC turn up on your doorstep to kick butt.
So if we decided that waiting is not an option which I think is an acceptable stance to take, what level of force should be used in these situations becomes the question. Especially in this example where a phone call turned into an innocent death.
I don't know what the answer is, but it very concerning that this is happening.
Thanks, I understand now. Those types of conditions seem pretty bad.
However the following should be very much disallowed:
> The move, however, came with a 15% salary cut, she said. Then in late March, the team was told it would be a 25% cut.
Forcing a pay cut due to a business decision is rather wrong. I don't know US employment laws but that surely would have to be illegal.
Alcohol and Tobacco etc are generally regulated substances.
They cannot be obtained even by Adults in all circumstances, for example legislation may prohibit the sale of alcohol at certain venues or require a license to do so. The premise on advertising has less to do with consent I would say, but rather the health and social implications of such substances.
While the issue at hand with the vaccines maybe one of consent, it is a different situation.
This also seems to step farther than this, in its intent to restrict the use of school property to host vaccination drives. This serves no public good as far as I can imagine, it has nothing to do with consent either.
While the concept of consent should be obtained by parents in many situations, the idea that this is solicitation is a long bow and goes in general against the public good.