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Messages - ergophobe

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3001
Water Cooler / Re: The Brave browser
« on: June 08, 2020, 11:10:45 AM »
Which sounds rather different from

Quote
We are a Binance affiliate, we refer users via the opt-in trading widget on the new tab page, but autocomplete should not add any code ... The autocomplete default was inspired by search query clientid attribution that all browsers do, but unlike keyword queries, a typed-in URL should go to the domain named, without any additions. Sorry for this mistake — we are clearly not perfect, but we correct course quickly."

https://www.pcmag.com/news/brave-browser-caught-redirecting-users-through-affiliate-links

3002
Water Cooler / Re: The Brave browser
« on: June 08, 2020, 11:05:31 AM »
Quote
We hijack nothing, no link rewriting. But what is more, based on user feedback, we are flipping the default on Brave site suggestions to “off”, even though it was aimed at showing the value of omnibox Binance affiliation where, if it worked, we would share back with users via BAT. Good job tanking this effort, and helping Chrome cement Google’s monopoly. (Firefox is dead.)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23441605
https://twitter.com/brendaneich/status/1269512276605759489?s=21

You can turn the ads off on Brave. If they are on, you earn BAT which you can give to websites you visit which can, in theory be turned into money.

There are a lot schemes out there for rewarding websites without ads and it seems like the problem is adoption. None of them have hit the takeoff point where I get an ad-free, tracking-free pass to the web, but which costs me a few cents per pageview. That, to me, is Brave's big idea, but the problem is getting from here to there.

3003
Water Cooler / Re: Proposals for Loosening the Lockdown
« on: June 08, 2020, 03:49:50 AM »
Lodging and bars reopen in California on June 11 in those counties who meet a certain threshold* The cleaning protocols are fairly intense and will take a lot of extra labor. Lodging will be caught in the same Catch-22 as airlines - costs are up, but demand is down.

Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy ride.

*It seems that the critical threshold is that they open in all counties where the Chamber of Commerce and Tourism Bureau has applied sufficient pressure.

3004
Economics & Investing / Re: Recession 2019/2020 Mega-thread (putteth all thy strange eruption in h're)
« on: June 05, 2020, 05:25:38 PM »
U.S. Unemployment Rate Fell to 13.3% in May
Payrolls rose by 2.5 million, suggesting jobs are returning
https://www.wsj.com/articles/may-jobs-report-coronavirus-2020-11591310177?mod=breakingnews

3005
Water Cooler / Re: Darwin 2020
« on: June 04, 2020, 06:39:42 PM »
Quote from: littleman on May 26, 2020, 12:41:52 AM
America Is Officially in ‘f### It’ Mode

Yosemite National Park settles on a reopening date
Quote
After being closed for more than two months due to the coronavirus pandemic, Yosemite National Park is ready to reopen as soon as next Wednesday or Thursday, but the plan hinges on state health officials granting approval for campsites and hotels to reopen in the surrounding communities to handle many of the overnight visitors.

Note, the letter is not a request from park officials to the state, but from local tourism bureaus etc.

But here's where we get to f### it mode

Quote
Already, they say, crowds have arrived since Easter on sunny weekends, and with few places to stay, have camped illegally, left trash and even caused several small fires in counties around Yosemite. “We need to get campgrounds open and we need to get our hotels running so that when the park opens we can handle it. The people are coming anyway,” said Kevin Cann, chairman of the Mariposa County Board of Supervisors.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/06/03/yosemite-national-park-settles-on-reopening-date/

Basically, this is a PR war that the local counties are waging to get lodging open. This is in part a response to the state very quietly moving the goalposts. When Newsom announced we were moving to Stage 2, he included lodging for leisure travel in Stage 3. Just recently they changed Stage 3 to allow

Quote
Travel for permissible activities, such as healthcare, food, stages 1-3 work, and local or activities shopping related to open sectors.

They pushed general travel for tourism out to Stage 4, concurrent with stadium events.
Quote
Stage 4: End of stay at home order
Gradually open larger gathering venues at a pace consistent with public health and safety, such as nightclubs, concert venues, and live audience sports.

Gradually resume remaining activities and travel.

At that point, the tourism bureaus all freaked out. That could essentially mean all lodging in CA closed until there is a vaccine, so at least late 2021, but who knows. A vaccine or herd immunity could take years.

https://covid19.ca.gov/roadmap/#top

3006
Water Cooler / Re: World’s Largest Megaship Arrives in Europe
« on: June 04, 2020, 06:03:23 PM »
That's roughly 200 feet / 60 meters longer than the new Ford Class aircraft carriers... but it probably costs less than 13 billion dollars

They might be a crazy amount of money and might be fast becoming foolishly vulnerable in the modern world of cheap drones, but from an engineering perspective those Nimitz and Ford carriers are incredible machines. 100,000,000 tonnes displacement (a fraction of a big cargo vessel), but they can hit 30 knots.

Neither comes close to the length of the Seawise Giant oil tanker - 458m

I'd love to see any of the three of them up close to get a feel for the scale. There's a thing when describing rockfall where rangers will convert cubic meters to washing machines, which to me means nothing. I always converted rockfalls to aircraft carriers when trying to give the scale of a rockfall. For the largest rockfall in recorded history, it turns out to be the mass equivalent of 16 fully-loaded 1092-foot-long Nimitz-class carriers with 80 aircraft aboard that came tumbling down the walls and across the road in a few seconds in March of 1987.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_R._Ford-class_aircraft_carrier
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longest_ships
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seawise_Giant#/media/File:Bateaux_comparaison2_with_Allure.svg

3007
Water Cooler / Re: Lock down projects
« on: June 04, 2020, 03:45:21 PM »
Quote from: Rupert on June 04, 2020, 12:23:59 PM
great for coughs

That seems to be all the rage. We were eating elderberries for years before anyone told us about supposed health benefits. We had heard for a long time that they are poisonous (the seeds, leaves, and woody parts are quite toxic, the berries mildly so, but not if cooked.

I am typing this in between flipping my world neighborhood-famous elderberry pancakes.

3008
Economics & Investing / Re: Recession 2019/2020 Mega-thread (putteth all thy strange eruption in h're)
« on: June 04, 2020, 03:41:08 PM »
Quote from: nffc on June 04, 2020, 12:02:01 PM
The benchmark index is now 41.7% above that low, and less than 9% from its February all-time high level.

I would say the jury is still out and I'm still nervous. We won't really know for years. I'll be prepared to say I was wrong if we drop significantly below March, but I won't be prepared to say I was right until 2022. There's still a lot of uncertainty and a lot of stimulus sugar high. 

That said, the money I threw into an index fund when I made the above comment has had a 29% return thus far. If I had been less nervous, it would have been more money, but all I did is max out my IRA contribution. Still, so far it was better than sitting on the sidelines.

3009
Traffic / Re: Google sued over tracking in incognito mode
« on: June 04, 2020, 03:24:13 AM »
Well, dare I admit it, I use G Suite. So to some extent not using Chrome is moot.

3010
Hardware & Technology / Re: Tesla big battery recoups cost of construction in little over two years
« on: June 04, 2020, 03:23:20 AM »
That's awesome, but seemed unbelievable

Quote
The huge revenue boost from battery storage was the result of unusual – and likely unrepeatable – conditions that occurred when a tornado tore down the main transmission link between Victoria and South Australia in late January.

And now I see. Still pretty cool.

3011
Water Cooler / Re: Online personal styling company Stitch Fix is laying off 1,400 in HCOL Calif AND
« on: June 03, 2020, 07:45:32 PM »
Quote from: DrCool on June 03, 2020, 06:48:31 PM
>>group A is in Monday and Wednesday, group B is in Tuesday, Thursday

I've been wondering about that too. At my workplace, most offices are overcrowded, meaning that there are two of us in my office, which 10 years ago had one person. Pre-covid, it fits with no problem. Two desks, a bookcase, file cabinets, my workout stuff and various detritus. It didn't seem tight at all and my office mates is one of my favorite people in the world.

So I start to think...
 - part of the reason I like to actually go into an office is because my officemate is there. If he's not, the "social plus" of going to the office starts to disappear. In our case, we do not collaborate though, so it's workable.
 - The office next door has three people who do collaborate. If they come in on some sort of rotation, what's the point of coming in?

So it's going to take a lot of rethinking of workspaces. You'll have to put an M/W HR person in with a Tu/Th marketing person or a M/W operations person in with a Th/Th engineering person, which means that much of the collaboration that arises from being there in person is broken.

3012
Water Cooler / Re: Online personal styling company Stitch Fix is laying off 1,400 in HCOL Calif AND
« on: June 03, 2020, 05:36:20 PM »
>>Who is buying clothes right now?

I don't think it's just that. Notice this:

Quote
The employees affected can stay with the San Francisco-based company if they relocate — Stitch Fix will start hiring for 2,000 positions in lower-cost cities this summer.

A lot of value propositions have just changed (universities are completely screwed, but that's another topic). On this topic: if my California workers are not coming into the office, why do I have offices in California at California rents paying California wages?

I think a lot of companies will realize they do not need to be in Silicon Valley anymore. Automattic, Streak, and many other distributed companies have realized this already. Now that every company in California is de facto distributed, they are realizing it too.

3013
Water Cooler / Re: Lock down projects
« on: June 03, 2020, 05:29:43 PM »
Quote from: buckworks on June 03, 2020, 11:08:41 AM
currants

The currants here are growing like mad this year. I can't wait to harvest them. All wild, but now growing in our yard. That will be nice to supplement the elderberries. We harvest quite a few elderberries each year and use them first and foremost in pancakes.

Around here, though, currants are very much a bush. We have three species. For many years, of course, the authorities organized military scale operations to wipe out currants (and most species of ribes in general, gooseberry being the other one that grows like mad here), because of their link to blister rust. The USDA eventually gave up and now they are everywhere again. But there was a blister rust camp just down the trail from here. For 30 years, a team of men spent every summer out there trying to kill currants.

3014
Traffic / Re: Google sued over tracking in incognito mode
« on: June 03, 2020, 05:23:55 PM »
Yeah, I knew that ISPs and websites might still try to track me in incognito, I thought I had a reasonable expectation that the browser manufacturer would not.

That said, I mostly use incognito
1. To look at sites as an unauthenticated user when I'm working on it as an authenticated user in the main browser window
2. To look at sites without cookies and without browser extensions running, especially when Privacy Badger is rendering the site unusable.

And I gave up Chrome anyway.

Still, I really think the suit is correct that Google is being willfully nefarious in this case. In the universe of Google haters, I am much less anti-Google than most people on this forum, but this does in fact quite bother me on principle.

3015
Traffic / Google sued over tracking in incognito mode
« on: June 03, 2020, 03:13:42 PM »
So far, just allegations. But as I understand it, Google hasn't denied the claim, merely stated that what they are doing is not legal.

The allegation is that Google collects users' browsing history even in incognito mode.

Quote
Many internet users assume their search history isn't being tracked when they view in private mode, but Google says this isn't the case.

The search engine denies this is illegal and says it is upfront about the data it collects in this mode.

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-52887340
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/02/technology/google-sued-wiretap-privacy.html

I'm not sure how Google squares this with what it tells me when I open an incognito tab:

Quote
Chrome won't save the following information:
Your browsing history
Cookies and site data
Information entered in forms

Don't be evil.

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