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ascii said:

I really admired Elizabeth Holmes and was gutted when she turned out to be a fraud. 

Another way of saying someone has a "reality distortion field" is to say they have the skill of persuasion. But it's not enough to just have that, it also has to be that the thing you are persuading people about is technically doable, and that was the difference between her and Jobs. 

I saw Bad Blood in the bookshop about a week ago and have been waiting to finish my current book before buying it.

You won't admire her or Sunny after reading the book. It was actually one of the best books I've ever read. I've been following the Theranos story for many years and was even recruited by them (I work in biotech) but thankfully never seriously considered it. I always suspected she was a fraud; it is one thing to be a great programmer in high school but to be an expert in biochemistry, enzymology and assay development takes a formal education.

rotateleftbyte said:

It is not just Apple that is losing key skills. Almost all Engineering and Tech companies who contract out work are doing the same.

Outsourcing to cheaper locations might be good for the beancounters (note... their jobs hardly ever go overseas) but the skills drain is immense.

It happened to me twice. The last time I refused to train my Indian replacements. They had two people just to do my job.

The experiences of the first episode made me think long and hard about training people who really didn't care about the job and who were unable to ask relevant or hard questions for fear of losing face with their boss.

I have warned my grandchildren away from going into the IT business as there is no future for it in the west.

Exactly right. And, it is not just computer tech and IT. I'm a chemist and work for a smaller company ($0.7B market cap) that does internal R&D and also contract R&D for all the large pharma companies (worldwide). None of these pharma companies do any chemistry any more; it is all contracted out to china (Wuxi) and India. They literally have giant buildings filled with thousands of low paid chemists that are way cheaper than using domestic talent, even if that means risking IP. It is so competitive to be a Western chemist today that you need a BS (4-5 yrs), PhD (5-6 yrs) and several post-docs (each one is 2-3 yrs) just to have any hope of being hired in the US or Europe. You basically need more training than an MD. There is zero security no matter how good you are. And, most western chemists quickly pivot to project management and are no longer in the lab. I'd say most of the high paying jobs in the US/Europe are in finance, project management, alliance management, logistics, MBA-related, etc..., not in hard skills. Sad really what we've become.

Well, Brits do know a thing or two about land grabs.

GeorgeBMac said:

22july2013 said:

GeorgeBMac said:

22july2013 said:

I see Apple is moving up, from doing business with a country that gets 2.26 (out of 10) on the democracy index (China) to a country that gets 3.06 (Viet Nam). I would much rather see Apple do its business in a higher scoring country, perhaps India (6.90) or Brazil (6.86.) I guess Apple's core values don't include freedom or democracy or human rights. Well, at least they aren't doing business with North Korea (1.08), or Saudi Arabia (1.93). I guess Apple wouldn't do business with Saudi Arabia because Apple has strong LGBTQ values.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index <--

By the way, on environmental indexes, Viet Nam is near the bottom. Although India is even closer to the bottom.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_Performance_Index <--

I couldn't care less what form of government a country chooses for itself.  

I agree with that statement, but the problem is that people don't get to choose their own governments in dictatorships. So I infer you are against sanctions against North Korea, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba and Syria.

The Chinese people, contrary to right wing propaganda, seem to be far happier with their government than we here in the U.S.  The Chinese aren't the ones talking about civil war, sending armed militias to invade state government houses and kidnapping their leaders -- or coups to overturn their government.

Responsible, ethical leadership doesn't depend on the form of government.

Chinese people can't so much text a friend their slight unhappiness about the government; they'll be quickly visited by a government official, at the minimum. I work with many chinese and this is true.

You forgot about puttings lists together of members of the losing party so they can potentially be jailed, likely without trial.

Had Spotify premium for my daughter, canceled it last month and switched to YouTube Premium - music and ad-free youtube for about the same price. Got charged again this month for Spotify. Turns out you have to hit cancel on 5 different pages to cancel Spotify. They are worse than a timeshare company. They are scum, will never go back for any reason.

hucom2000 said:

WHO CARES what this guy thinks? Why does the media (including AI) give him all of this attention? What has he accomplished since that gives him credibility? Seriously…

Yeah. Same with Jonas Salk. What did he do after inventing the Polio vaccine? Nothing. He's a fucking loser, just like Wozniak.🤦‍♂️

pwrmac said:

Who cares about his opinion. If he wanted Apple to do better than he should have stayed with the company. It is easy shouting at the sideline!

You cared enough to comment on his opinion.

Cook is quick to scold us on BLM but is silent on chinese atrocities. In fact, he bends over backwards to please his chinese masters.

soundsinmotion said:

I swear some thieves are so dumb, they always get caught in the end.

How do you know? We only hear about the ones that got caught not the thousands that didn't.

kimberly said:

Really just a bloated fur ball that 95% of us make use of 5% of the features.

Except we all use a different 5%. I wrote my thesis in word taking full advantage of figure/caption links, auto table of contents, indexing, styles, references, etc... I use Excel daily for data analysis. It really is a fantastic piece of productivity software with a reasonable price.