fdye

So I think its fair to say the USSR, China, Cuba, North Kora were a form of communism that had the following characteristics. 1. Authoritarian 2. Central planning (perhaps the same thing) 3. Slow to change These are all valid criticisms based on what we know from history, etc. I think there is a bit of nuance here though based on a glance of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_famines and some basic history. 1. China did experience some horrible famines, particularly the '59-'61. However, they had experienced these, ~20years+/- 10 years, since at least the 1800s, perhaps 1700. That is well into royal rule prior to the revolution. Particularly the 1810, 1811, 1846, and 1849 (Four famines, ~45Mil dead). Just saying, objectively, not sure the average peasant was more or less likely to experience a famine under the royal rule or communism. 2. Russia and the surrounding neighbors that were consumed by the USSR, seem to have a similar story. The Tsar's in particular were not very good at economics, logistics, or resource management. 3. Post WWII cold war meant virtually every communist country was isolated and sort of by definition a centralized state. They were locked out of the emerging reserve currency (Dollar). They could not freely go to market with their goods. As well as they were all sort of frenemies of each other (see relationship between Korea, China, and USSR for examples).

Look I'm no great lover of communism, I sat through the same U.S. history classes in the 80's-90's, saw the wall fall on TV, etc. That said I think the one thing no one acknowledges is that people don't start revolutions and try out radical types of government because their lives are going just swell! Shit maybe its to much Civ as a kid, but I think its important to be honest about the pluses and minuses of government and the specifics of the people, region, and time period that these changes occur.

On a similar note, I know >3 individuals with successful businesses, think small construction shop or solo professional suite. They make good money, but everyone I've talked to doesn't have an IRA/401K or anything stashed, its all in their business. They have lots of cashflow, but are an injury, change in business climate away from ruin. Many don't have plans for hitting 60+ when they can't work anymore to keep the business going. They likely assume they will sell their business, but lately the valuations on these small time shops has been very low and many "boomer" businesses are having a hard time finding people interested in purchasing. Think mom/pop grocery store, ice cream shop, stationary store, etc. They own their home most likely, but thats all gonna get sucked in end of life care...

Seems like it took a bit longer then anticipated but is this the predicted outage from staff cuts? Also seems to be tied to a new feature being rolled out, but could be PR white washing.

Do this same thing for my hiring pipeline. Pretty much same percentages for how I weed down resumes, etc. I usually go a bit over an hour as I like to discuss the company, our tech, and get specific about what the job will entail. At the end I ask if they are still interested, and if yes we dig into their specific history, questions, etc. I also make crystal clear the salary range and benefits and get a verbal confirmation this band is acceptable to the candidate. We don't have to decide right then, but we need to be in the same ballpark and they need to understand the upper end isn't likely to move. No point in getting through a long interview process and then having to pass cause they want to much money. Then I make a decision if the candidate is a waste of time for my engineers to proceed on a technical evaluation. Three rounds, with three separate people on the team, usually only two of those rounds are true coding, one is more technical discussion/team fit. Anyone in the hiring committee can veto for essentially any reason. Works as well as any process I've seen in my decade+ career.

Three rounds is also coincidentally my max to give a company I am interviewing. If you can't make up your mind on a candidate after 3 rounds then you don't know what your doing. This 5+ round crap FAANG convinced us all was good is such a waste of time and honestly costs more in time suck then just giving the candidate a shot.

So in respect to the ad unit, the argument is that they have grown to such a size that brands (from mom and pop's restaurant, to coke, nike) are overspending for the service. If you read on some of the ad tech blogs (not my specialty) there seems to be a strong case there is rampant fraud in metrics and what customers (the brands) are actually getting when they spend their ad dollars with googles many, many platforms. This doesn't seem to be unique with google, meta and others seems to do similar, but google is the big boy on the block. The anti-trust thing is required (in the governments eyes) as there is not a viable alternative, at least for organic search, for these brands.

The value to consumers is hypothetically that splitting it up will increase competition in the ad tech space. This will in turn lower ad spends from brands and hopefully push their real metrics to be more accurate, less fraud, etc. This will in turn lower advertising spend for these brands will which theoretically end up in lower costs to consumers.

Some other random thoughts. 1. Why would google (or any of them) make a good faith effort to stamp out fraud when it is lining their pockets? They are so big their really isn't a strong alternative and brands can't choose to just not play. 2. Why should the dominate browser effectively drive the privacy/tracking conversation for the largest ad tech player? This is an inherent conflict of interest and is unlikely to lead to better privacy for the consumer. 3. Why should a company that benefits from tracking/analytics be driving the development of one of the top 2 OS for mobile. On face value we are heading towards a world where buyers have to pay a premium for privacy (arguably iPhone, debatable), but android (largely budget phones) have no such or at least inferior protections. Why would they ever strengthen consumer privacy on mobile if its lining their pockets now.

Agree with pretty much all points, think the latter part is the real crux of the issue. VC since '08 has just been the wealthy (like 0.01% ers), and sovereign funds trying to figure out where to get returns with ultra-low interest. In addition they have learned that prior to '08 they gave away to much of the pie, so now startups stay private way longer then before. Essentially endless D,E,F,G rounds that end up diluting any chance of a mid-late employee of seeing any value of working for a private company. Its a game now, keep investing and keep the ball rolling with endless rounds even though unprofitable. Cozy up to other funds to cross-pollinate, when one bet gets close to bottoming out then ask buddy to acquire in exchange for you acquiring a buddies low performer. Justify your valuations with growth stories until you get pension funds (i.e. the public) or heaven forbid an IPO on a company who never made a nickel, then cash out. It all works as long as money, i.e. interest stays cheap. At a macro level stock buybacks should be outlawed unless for the express purpose of preventing delisting. Its a meme stock but Bed Bath and Beyond was tanking hard and they just kept pumping up their stock with buybacks. It only makes sense in terms of stockholder/executive compensation. If ever there was a time to make use of excess capital it is in turning around your business. When did companies start seeing every penny of profit must be returned and not gasp go into R&D and expansion/turnaround? If they really want to return money to shareholders then we have a vehicle for that, dividends and gasp shareholders can pay some taxes. Like 90% of long term investors have DRIP set anyway so kinda a non-issue for the layman. https://ycharts.com/companies/BBBY/stock_buyback

Agreed a process cannot be copyrighted. Unfortunately, neither can a 'style', and to my knowledge the amount of 'work' that went into a piece doesn't necessarily effect copyright to my knowledge. I could setup a camera facing outside my window and press the button (with my finger to keep things simpler) every 10 seconds or so for several hours. No framing, thought of subject matter, lighting, just press the button, i.e. very little 'work'. At the end I would have a number of images that I hold copyright too. Legally (to my knowledge), they would have no greater or lesser legal protection then a shot I took on the top of mount Everest, with great care, framing subject, at a certain time of day, showing all my mastery of photographic arts (i.e. lots of work).

Sadly, I think artists have a better chance trying to limit their works inclusion in the datasets then making any claim as far as how easy it is to use AI. It likely, will fall along web scraping cases, which I'm not knowledgeable enough to say one way or another. However, it doesn't bode well that I can put an artists name into google image and see several examples of their work, this feels like public access and to my laymans mind would fall under fair use.

ref: https://www.thelegalartist.com/blog/you-cant-copyright-style

I take your point this feels different and may in the longterm need a new definition. I think what feels wrong to us is how easy it is to create these images and how good some of them turn out. However, the equation of 'work', i.e. it taking a longtime or a specific talent, whatever, has been ingrained in us as worthwhile.

Unfortunately, in the art world there have been plenty of well known artists (even some masters) who made extensive use of assistants and in some cases never even touched a canvas. Or more to the point were incapable of actually producing the final product. However, they are still the artist of note for the piece as it was their 'idea' or they created the style, etc. So clearly its not as simple as 'it should be hard' or 'work' that makes someone an artist and their work of worth. See Warhol and many pop artists for pieces of extreme value, but of relative ease to produce. Again I fall back to the prompt being the 'idea' and the truly artistic thing, even if stable diffusion or whatever is doing the work. (https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1611/life-in-a-renaissa...)

So I think you are likely correct on it being something new. However, I still think its fair use. A thought experiment.

Lets say I have an idea for a picture I want. I would like a teddy bear that is in the style of H.R. Giger. I a human write the prompt "style: h.r. giger, a teddy bear" and plug it into Stable Diffusion. I then generate 1000 images, it takes say an hour, and then I pick the one I like.

Now the counter example for our experiment. I have the same idea. I go to my community college and learn to draw (lets say I'm decently talented). I goto a book store, buy a book of H.R. Giger's art. Study that book and try to replicate it, eventually can do a passable copy. I then find a teddy bear, possibly also copyrighted. Then finally draw my teddy bear in the style of H.R. Giger.

Now I dont think most people would say the second example violates any laws and is fair use. You cannot copyright a style (although some lawsuits are moving forward for rap flow) to my knowledge. Yes I would be ridiculed by the art community as derivative. Its unlikely to end up in the Louvre, but could probably be put on a shirt and sold or whatever with minimal legal risk.

So why does the first example feel different then the second? I think it comes back to the process. I would describe them both as the same process but everything after the 'idea' and writing the prompt is just 'steps'. Yes they are steps we attach value to, such as learning to draw, and talent. But ultimately, the real creative thing was the 'idea'.

Another parallel we've experienced has kind of shown us the way. When the first spreadsheet came out it was very much a similar process. However, we don't see it as so as numbers generally aren't seen as creative expression. Never the less there was a desire to calculate someones net profits or whatever. Previously, there was large amounts of accountants, I'm sure with tribal knowledge about how to get this done using a bunch of chalkboards and double checking their work. Most trained on this and knew how to do this fastidiously. Then spreadsheets were invented and it saved them a ton of time. The tribal knowledge was not needed. Even a lay person who had a need to calculate 'net profits' could do that with a fraction of the work prior.

Final thought, if producing derivative works based on previous art becomes trivial. Then wont the artists who can actually create original works be far more valuable, if immediately copied? Perhaps a lot of the concern of this moment is artists seeing how much of what they produce, and actually sells, is really derivative to begin with...

So I can't speak for the practices at Noma, but I used to work fine dining (front of house) for an upscale restaurant group based out of NY. There was a young man who started working prep / Garde Manger when he was around 15. He was a great worker, got put on the line, and around his 19-20 birthday the restaurant owner sat him down and asked him his goals. No idea the conversation, but it must have gone well because a week later he was on a plane to England to staj at The Fat Duck (three Michelin star, at time one of the top if not the top restaurant in the world). Not sure of the deal entirely, but my impression was his plane, lodging, and food (when he wasn't eating at the restaurant) was all paid for by our restaurant group. Probably a small stipend as well as he didn't come from money and had minimal means. I think if we look historically, this sort of arrangement was a lot more common in the past. The top restaurants and chefs would sort of send their talent to other places to pick up new techniques. It was very much a rite of passage. Now it seems like everything, our late stage capitalism has bastardized it into more of a sweatshop mentality. Instead we have swarms of individuals out of cooking school sending their resume off to all the top restaurants. Chefs can then offer them unpaid internships with the promise 1 out of 20 may get a paying job if they are good. If anyone complains then there is another 100 resumes to choose from. Sad...

Same. Several years ago I had an ex-GF of sorts reach out to me in SF. She was passing through and wanted to say hi, etc. I had a couple hours before my shift at a bar I worked at so I swung by where she was, bought her a drink, etc. Immediately could tell she was in a bad place, looked like her occasional drug use had become a permanent, more hard kind. About halfway through the drink was a clumsy come on and a push for some cash, she was out of gas, couldn't get home, whatever. I ended up giving her like $40, a big hug, said goodbye. The whole time she is swearing up and down she will be back next week, will pay me back, etc. I got to work and told a coworker what had happened. She thought I was crazy and was laughing cause I had been conned by an ex. I then explained if I never saw my $40 again it was money well spent. One less person in my life bringing with it their chaos, and our history had made it hard to totally write off. Sure enough, never heard from her again...

+1 to this commenter

Really cool idea, but I would second a shorter and sequential way of ID'ing bugs. Its common in QA flows to use the JIRA-like shorthand to discuss/assign tickets. <Proj alias>-<sequential num>. Proj-alias is usually like 3 letters/nums (project configurable). So like SEC-3640, QWE-123, etc. Human-readable/discussable bug ID is gonna be something desired. Hash could stay as an alternate for those with deeper GIT knowledge, but its gonna get verbose to discuss a ticket.

Agreed, C is also a very real possibility.

I used to see this occasionally and always see it as wasteful. However, there is another angle here. Imagine your a C-Suite or senior level manager and you have lots of resources at your disposal. Now you have identified a strategic widget you need to get to within some timeframe, say 2 years to lay into your grand strategic vision.

Scenario A: Task a single team, staff them and let them do their thing. Cross your finger and hope they get it done.

Scenario B: Look across offices, org groups, whatever, and task 2-3 (sometimes more) teams with your task. Let them start work on it and get regular demos and updates. Eventually, pick a winner.

B looks very wasteful from the outside, until you realize that many software projects fail (like 50%). So more attempts give you a higher chance of success. Downside: Internal politics, waste, attrition from engineers throwing away code/busy work.

A is great if you can do it, but you're putting all your eggs in one basket.

A lot of times this is just bad org/bureaucracy though, but it can be done to great effect.

Disclaimer: Worked for a CEO with a large outsourced engineering base and several offices. Would see multiple attempts at different offices all the time. Eventually, grudgingly acknowledged there was a method to that madness. Trump also is famous for this (although his seemed more madness).

Building on many in this thread of keeping a TODO list. I use PostIt notes, usually the larger, lined ones. I keep an unordered list of stuff to do, adding and crossing things off throughout the day. At the end of the day I rewrite my list for tomorrow, then I crumble up the old PostIt note and launch it into the trash can. Its visceral and fulfilling, accompanied by a mini-meditation of sorts to eject those tasks from my brain. I've tried Kanban-like programs and other things, I use them in project management. However, for my personal tasks I find nothing gets it done like a physical piece of crumbled paper, sometimes I jump up and dunk it into the trash with glee. It helps...

I don't beat myself up if I don't get to everything. I don't stress about how long the list gets. Sometimes I'll have multiple PostIt's going with some loose association of long term/short term or project-specific tasks. The important part though is the cross off of tasks (progress throughout the day), and the mental reset at the end of the day of what to start with tomorrow.

On a related note I feel the way people frame ADHD, particularly during elementary schooling, is all wrong. It is literally a super power. I can context-switch and am generally more engaged doing so. The idea of slogging away at only one task at a time in a linear fashion gives me hives. Its not to say I can't do it, but its highly dependent on my interest level with the task and my flow state. However, no matter what happens I know I can widdle a task down a bit in 15-30 minute increments with a context switch to something else, then come back later.

Many coworkers of mine over the year have commented on how I can switch between 3-4 things at once. It's common for me to drop a task (interrupted by someone or my interest level), come back, check the PostIt note, and pick right up where I left off. I think there is some truth in ADHD aligning well to entrepreneurship, product ownership, or senior leadership. The other piece of it is being brutally honest with yourself at what your not good at and finding others who can supplement those tasks. I worked closely with a senior dev for a long time who wanted a linear, head down, deep dive task to sink his teeth into. The four or five less understood, needs some research, maybe a quick PoC, pathfinder tasks, sign me up.

My other tools are 3-square meals a day, 8 hrs of sleep a night, and walking the dog before and after work (helps the mind reset). When the urge to do something strikes, try to follow through with it in the moment, there is a high probability it will be lost/forgotten otherwise.

Thats all I got...

Same. My car has Carplay, while my wife's doesn't. Guess which one we discuss selling? A large part of that is the better integration of media. Its hard to go back to a propped up cellphone in a holder with bluetooth, once you've used Carplay.

So I've always wondered if Apple actually building a 'car' was ever really the goal. It seems like a skunkworks where they try crazy things and then incorporate into Carplay. Future seems to be ever expanding Carplay support. I use it and probably would not buy another car that did not have it integrated. I imagine car manufacturers are somewhat tired of always building HUDs and in vehicle control systems. So gradually standardizing on a way to take all the displays/touchscreens in a vehicle and let them be run by Carplay seems like the future. Eventually, they can start handing more and more of the software side (not their specialty) off to people cellphones via some interface, particularly around media. As the ubiquiti of the M1/M2 type chip is found in all of our pockets (embedded ML silicon), the car companies will no longer have to actually embed it in a vehicle as an add on. Plugging in your phone with an M1/M2 type chip will unlock Siri or similar AI functionality in the vehicle. Sure it will drive without it, just like it does now, but it wont be 'cool' and have all the assist, nav, and media functionality everyone wants.

Seems like this is gonna get overruled, but who knows with this supreme court nowadays. Aside from that issue, I'd like to discuss why social media always seems so impotent in their response to misinformation. Seems Youtube, Facebook, etc, are all letting people post misinformation, it gains traction through whatever means and is shared to millions of people. Then after the damage is done they swoop in and block it after the damage has been done.

I think they could instead limit the possible exposure by building tiers/gates a post has to move through to truly go to a mass audience. First it would start with a mass audience of 10^1, mostly direct connections. If no keywords were triggered for misinformation, and none of the eyeballs on that post marked it as misinformation or offensive, then send it to 10^2 people outside their immediate social circle. Repeat until it hits 10^4, 10^5 or whatever and then it hits a tier of truly mass audience. Perhaps here it requires a real review by a moderator if it has keyword matches or isn't from a trusted source. Then it is let out to reach everyone because its just a kitty cat video, or about the best way to stain a table, or all the community content we actually want.

This approach is closer to an A/B test for a social post. If it is posted and highly offensive within a small group of close connections, then it never ripples out of those echo chambers. Again it's about uniqueness of the post, so grandma can click reshare or whatever, when she looks at her history she see's it in her timeline, but it's never massively put on others feed until its gone through above.

Ironically, the social platform killing it right now works somewhat close to this in terms of showing you others posts. My feed shows me a lot of big posters, but like 10% of the time I am reached by people i've never viewed, with a post with like 5-10 views. Then they measure engagement (how long did you watch, did you like, etc), before they decide to push it to more people. (My summary of their algorithm, not theirs). I'm advocating for similar but to gate for offensive/misinformation. Seems like it would work like a sieve where good/unoffensive content would rise to the top "in general" and the bad stuff would stay with a small amount of eyeballs.

REMEDIANT INC | (SR.) / SOFTWARE ENGINEER / CLOUD OPERATIONS DEVELOPER | BASED IN SF | FULL REMOTE - Remediant is hiring for a Cloud Operations Developer to join our Engineering team. This team is responsible for the rapid development and prototyping of new technology for our flagship product, SecureONE. The ideal candidate is someone who has a high aptitude for learning and developing new technologies in a fast paced environment.

We're an established startup with an experienced fully remote team who is looking for a developer with an operations automation mindset as we build out our SaaS offerings. Focus will be developing the operations side of our product for but are not limited to that. Comfortability 'crossing the lines' between operations and application development is a huge plus.

Tech Stack: - Application: Python, Angular, Mongo - DevOps: Terraform, Docker, Helm, Kubernetes, ELK, AWS

Must be a resident of United States. Remediant does not offer employment/visa sponsorship at this time.

Apply here: - https://www.remediant.com/careers/software-engineer - https://www.remediant.com/careers/cloud-operations-developer - https://www.remediant.com/careers/sr-software-engineer-rd

REMEDIANT INC | SOFTWARE ENGINEER | BASED IN SF | FULL REMOTE - Remediant is hiring for a Software Engineer to join our Engineering team. This team is responsible for the rapid development and prototyping of new technology for our flagship product, SecureONE. The ideal candidate is someone who has a high aptitude for learning and developing new technologies in a fast paced environment. Primary requirements are a strong proficiency in Python and Node.js and the ability to rapidly develop and deploy code in an extensible and consumable way. Additional helpful skill sets include experience with Cybersecurity, Windows administration and Active Directory, maintaining REST API’s, MongoDB, and distributed architectures. DevOps or Full-stack experience is nice to have. Must be a resident of United States. Remediant does not offer employment/visa sponsorship at this time. Apply here: https://www.remediant.com/careers/software-engineer

So I keep hearing the same two narratives over and over, we printed money and what do we expect (?), and supply chain issues. However, there is a third (and likely more) thing going on and that is megacorporate monopolies. Take toilet paper, the market has now completely consolidate on three major players (rule of three), Proctor & Gamble, Kimberly Clark, and Georgia-Pacific. Just looking at P&G we can see y/y (https://www.google.com/search?q=procter%26+gamble+q4+2021+ea...)

Revenue 20.95B +6.12% Net income 4.22B +9.57% Diluted EPS 1.66 +12.93% Net profit margin 20.15% +3.23%

During the last year they have paid ~3% dividend on top of buying back billions of stock (https://ycharts.com/companies/PG/stock_buyback), in Q4 they increased their buyback from ~3B->4.75B.

With all do respect supply chain/monetary policy concerns are a cover for what is really going on, lack of competition in the market. A rational market with multiple competitors and no price fixing, would prompt at least one of the competitors that is sitting on billions of extra money to drop prices. As a result they would increase sales and make up the profits in volume, this would prompt their competitors to follow suit or else lose customers and market share. You know Econ101.

The market is not rationale right now as we have allowed these mega mergers and pushed out all small competitors. That 7.5% inflation is them coordinating prices and sticking the profits back into their investors pockets, then using supply chain and monetary policy as cover in the media.

REMEDIANT INC | SOFTWARE ENGINEER | BASED IN SF | FULL REMOTE - Remediant is hiring for a Software Engineer to join our Engineering team. This team is responsible for the rapid development and prototyping of new technology for our flagship product, SecureONE. The ideal candidate is someone who has a high aptitude for learning and developing new technologies in a fast paced environment. Primary requirements are a strong proficiency in Python and Node.js and the ability to rapidly develop and deploy code in an extensible and consumable way. Additional helpful skill sets include experience with Cybersecurity, Windows administration and Active Directory, maintaining REST API’s, MongoDB, and distributed architectures. DevOps or Full-stack experience is nice to have. Must be a resident of United States. Remediant does not offer employment/visa sponsorship at this time. Apply here: https://www.remediant.com/careers/software-engineer

Wow, you weren't kidding. That may take the cake as some of the worst reviews I've seen on GlassDoor.

I do not know Drata, but an endpoint agent on a company machine is not that odd. Generally, they come from the big EDR companies, such as Carbon Black, CrowdStrike, etc. They would mostly run in the background and scan for malware, push out Group Policy changes, and yes, provide a backdoor to run scripts on your machine. Drata sounds a bit more like spyware though. Technically, EDR agents can do session captures (recording the screen, showing what was run on the computer over history, processes, network traffic). Generally, though its only utilized for incident response and not tracking a contractors time, making sure they are working, etc. Although I must admit, theoretically there is nothing preventing that, although its at a more technical level then most management would know how to decipher. I second the recommendations above. Only agree to install it on a company machine, same for any agent or company AV, etc. If they wont provide it then its a no go on any personal hardware of yours.

REMEDIANT INC| R&D SENIOR SOFTWARE ENGINEER | BASED IN SF | FULL REMOTE - Remediant is hiring for a Senior/Staff Engineer to join a newly minted “Research & Design Team”. This team is responsible for the rapid development and prototyping of new technology and integrations that will become a part of our flagship product, SecureONE. The ideal candidate is someone who has a high aptitude for learning and developing new technologies in a fast paces environment. This position will work directly with the founder (CTO/CEO) in a two-man team and deliver working prototypes to the larger engineering team. Primary requirements are a strong proficiency in Python and Node.js and the ability to rapidly develop and deploy code in an extensible and consumable way. Additional helpful skillsets include experience with Windows administration and Active Directory, maintaining REST API’s, MongoDB, and distributed architectures. Must be resident of United States. Remediant does not offer employment/visa sponsorship at this time. Apply here: https://www.remediant.com/careers/sr-software-engineer-rd

So philosophy of the 'Metaverse' aside. As a developer the thing that sort of resonated in the demos I've seen was the displays on the 'walls' of your rooms. I haven't really tried VR in its modern incarnation yet. However, my day-to-day developer life consists of two monitors (Macbook, and larger display above), within those are a half dozen virtual desktops, and within those are several terminals, vscode usually remote debugging, and various database clients, chrome (with a million tabs), etc. So the killer-app for me would be an awesome interface to N 'virtual desktops', along with some amazing eye-tracking/hotkeys to lock desktops to my PoV, split to side-by-side, 4x4, etc. Bonus points if I can experience my work environment the same in a coffee shop, work trips, etc. I often find myself working on just my Macbook's monitor and spend 30%+ of my time just switching between views on different virtual desktops. The goggles for me now look to clunky to easily use in a coffee shop, although if portable and running off my laptop then perhaps would be fine for working on the road in a hotel room. Bonus Bonus points if there is an easy way to share views among team mates. I work for a fully remote company and we regularly pair program via Zoom. This generally means one of us 'drives' displaying one of their monitors and switching back and forth between desktops, etc. We've gotten pretty good at it, but there is still the occasional game of telephone where the person(s) not driving are trying to get you to focus on something and the description is just not clicking. Zoom's assume input control is kind of clunky, so we usually spend a few minutes talking until it clicks and the 'driver' realizes what is being asked of them, etc. Often shouting out a line number of some code that looks suspicious is used, but occasionally it goes by fast and your telling the 'driver' to back track, etc. An experience where another individual can piggyback on your view, or take selective control of specific 'virtual desktops' or clone them to adjust the view or try something out would be ideal. Probably, just a clean switch of control from 'driver' to 'observer' would be enough to still count as a killer-app. Final thoughts; I described my workflow which is probably somewhat similar to many other developers and remote teams. However, I can imagine other types of jobs that would enjoy multiple 'virtual desktops' without having to purchase physical monitors. Financial types come to mind as well, but really any field where you have to synthesize multiple streams of input a la multiple monitors.

Honestly, the entire COVID response and vaccine initiative is in dire need of a good marketing campaign, perhaps alongside a healthy carrot and stick approach. We have the vaccine, and yet everything I hear out of officials mouths is doom and gloom, and equivocating about what it will take to be out of lockdown/protective measures. We understand nothing is certain in science or the virus, but you are experts and if you think something is 70%+ likely or not then tell us until proven otherwise.

Instead I would recommend the following.

1. Set a goal of the "best guess" of number of people needed to get herd immunity. Notice I said "best guess", we are never going to get it right, we are unlikely to actually completely achieve herd immunity. But compared to where we are now with a very small portion of the population having any immunity, and 70-85% of our citizens being vaccinated is a hell of a lot better then where we are now.

2. Plaster that count of people who have gotten immunized everywhere, time square, bottom of evening news, upper right of every newspaper. Make it aspirational for the nation to hit this number

3. Now for the hard part, when we hit it, remove protective measures. Yes its possible hospitals still have COVID patients, but I guarantee it will not be this crazy level of infection if we have 85% vaccination or similar. We will instead have isolated flare ups which can be dealt with on a regional basis. The US did this with small pox several decades ago. They would lockdown neighborhoods or even towns as flare ups happened. I've talked with seniors going through this about being in previous lockdowns when they were children, we have just forgotten this far back.

4. Now for the stick. I believe OSHA has indicated it is within an employers right to require vaccination, especially related to the pandemic. Use this aggressively. Pass protections for businesses, particularly freaking health care facilities, to consider failure to vaccinate (without certain medical exceptions) as cause for termination. It can be a gradual thing as vaccine availability comes online perhaps they are offered remote work if possible. However, when it hits general availability and you are still declining, then ultimately the business can't have you on their facility (or open themselves up to liability for unsafe work environment) and thus you are terminated. You are perfectly able to continue to decline, that is your right, but that does not mean you have continued employment at this organization.

In closing, I like all of you are freaking tired of this thing. I want to see the country looking forward to that magic day when this pandemic is over. Remember, the Flu from 1918 never went away, it just got a hell of a lot less deadly and people gained more immunity. It still throws our hospitals for a loop when we have a bad flu year. The goal is not to end COVID, it is instead immunity to the vast majority of us until the virus, naturally, continues its evolution to a less deadly form, and our population's immune system adapts as well. Here is hoping 2021-2022 has all the similarities of the roaring 20's after the 1918 flu, I'm certainly ready for a good time again!

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So I can give a real life example of the type of customer that uses these exclusively. My previous employment was leading development on a media scanning station, a bit like an ATM, but with a lot of ports in front to accept USBs, CDROM, etc. We provided this product to the energy, defense, pharmaceutical, etc sectors. Essentially critical infrastructure. Many of our customers utilize air-gaps to isolate their critical systems. So to get files into those systems you basically have to sneaker net it, usually using portable media of some kind.

The basic procedure using our product was to take an "unknown" piece of media with the files you wanna move over. Slot it into our station, then grab a "known" piece of media and put it into the other port on the station. The station would scan all of the files using several commercial AVs, then files deemed to be clean would be copied to the "known" piece of media. The important thing about the "known" piece of media is that its generally one of these expensive USBs with FIPS encryption, and crucially the FIPS epoxy and digitally signed firmware on the controller. Often these facilities are like onions with several layers of security, and this procedure must be done several times to get to the truly sensitive equipment, along with guards checking receipts and unlocking media from lockboxes, etc.

Having everyone at the facility using the same drive, especially if you can purchase in known serial numbers, is good practice. That way anyone using a different model drive is easily spotted and programmatically you can lockdown to those known serials before mounting. Similarly if someone tries to take it apart the FIPS epoxy should destroy the internals of the microcontroller. They drill through the epoxy and flash the firmware, the microcontroller in these drives will reject cause it is not signed. Finally, if they do manage to build an exact replica, with the correct serials but some nasty internals, it wont matter since they are forced to use a "known" drive before stepping up to the next security level (the bad drives gets left at the low security gap).

Its not perfect, but it does build defense in depth, especially with more mundane things added into the mix like FBI background checks, etc. You quickly get into mission impossible scenarios requiring physical agents gaining access to reach the inner layers of these critical systems.

What really sucks is this was a perfect time for a lawyer to use Justice Thomas' analogy to better explain the difference. I would have tried something like:

"Close your honor, but let me expand on this further. Imagine instead that your opponent publishes their calls and they are regularly available to all individuals of the general public. However, while they may describe a call for going long, they do not give any specifics if the receiver starts from the left, center, right side of the field, how fast he should go, who should block for him, etc. They essentially are just assigning a call to a general concept of 'go long'. Now as a competitor team, I look through their publicly available calls and say "Hey, thats a good idea, we should have a call for 'go long' as well". However, in practice my team does start from the left, and then cut in the center of the field to receive the ball. This may, or may not be totally different then what my opponents choose to do when they call "go long" The additional benefit is if I transfer a new coach onto my team, he can use the call "go long" and even though the team accomplishes the goal, possibly by a different route, he can make the call to accomplish essentially the same thing."

Note: Not a huge sports guys, so perhaps my football analogy broke down a bit there, but hopefully you get the idea.