davidw

Xed said:

Madbum said:

Low performing retail stores need to have layoffs to save cost

Which Apple retail stores have such poor sales that they can't afford to keep the lights on? I bet even the least profitable Apple Store has more revenue and profit than nearly any other retail chain has at its best retail outlet.

radarthekat said:

The Cambridge dictionary states:

shall modal verb (CERTAINLY WILL)

formal or old-fashioned

used to say that something certainly will or must happen, or that you are determinedthat something will happen: 

The school rules state that no child shall be allowed out of the school during the day, unless accompanied by an adult.

You shall go to the ball, Cinderella.

fastasleep said:

entropys said:

The concern here is the same as CSAM scanning on the iPhone. It's more than a matter of personal privacy. It's a concern centered on the possibility that an error could result in a law abiding person being reported to law enforcement, which cares more about filling quotas and busting so-called bad guys than anything else.  Having an accused person's time wasted, or worse, being arrested for something they didn't do only because a computer secretly misread a file on their computer is something no citizen of any nation should stand for.  

It was always more than that. The concern was that child abuse was a smoke screen for a broader purpose, eg identifying people that did not agree with an authoritarian government by what pictures they were looking at.

Which was also a horseshit argument. If a hostile government wanted to force Apple to install nefarious software features, why would they need this feature as a smokescreen? And would you expect Apple to comply with something like that?

fastasleep said:

jdw said:

Having an accused person's time wasted, or worse, being arrested for something they didn't do only because a computer secretly misread a file on their computer is something no citizen of any nation should stand for.  

That’s not how hashes work, at all.

There's a reason why Apple set a 30 "hit" limit, before an iOS user would be flagged, with their once proposed on device CSAM scanning. It was to reduce the chances of errors and false accusations because of inherent inaccuracy of the CSAM scanning software. 

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/10/eu-lawmakers-must-reject-proposal-scan-private-chats

> It’s difficult to audit the accuracy of the software that’s most commonly used to detect child sexual abuse material (CSAM). But the data that has come out should be sending up red flags, not encouraging lawmakers to move forward. 

• A Facebook study found that 75% of the messages flagged by its scanning system to detect child abuse material were not “malicious,” and included messages like bad jokes and memes.
• LinkedIn reported 75 cases of suspected CSAM to EU authorities in 2021. After manual review, only 31 of those cases—about 41%—involved confirmed CSAM.  
• Newly released data from Ireland, published in a report by our partners at EDRi(see page 34), shows more inaccuracies. In 2020, Irish police received 4,192 reports from the  U.S. National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). Of those, 852 referrals (20.3%) were confirmed as actual CSAM. Of those, 409 referrals (9.7%) were deemed “actionable” and 265 referrals (6.3%) were “completed” by Irish police. 

Despite the insistence of boosters and law enforcement officials that scanning software has magically high levels of accuracy, independent sources make it clear: widespread scanning produces significant numbers of false accusations. Once the EU votes to start running the software on billions more messages, it will lead to millions of more false accusations. These false accusations get forwarded on to law enforcement agencies. At best, they’re wasteful; they also have potential to produce real-world suffering. 

The false positives cause real harm. A recent New York Times story highlighted a faulty Google CSAM scannerthat wrongly identified two U.S. fathers of toddlers as being child abusers. In fact, both men had sent medical photos of infections on their children at the request of their pediatricians. Their data was reviewed by local police, and the men were cleared of any wrongdoing. Despite their innocence, Google permanently deleted their accounts, stood by the failed AI system, and defended their opaque human review process. 

With regards to the recently published Irish data, the Irish national police verified that they are currently retaining all personal data forwarded to them by NCMEC—including user names, email addresses, and other data of verified innocent users. <

Perhaps it's the way you think it works, that is wrong. 

Marvin said:

paxman said:

Apparently the call for lower wages was based on the allegation that he earns more than 1400 x more than the lowest paid Apple worker. If so that is kinda crazy in any environment. Perhaps there should be legislation that regulates not the highest or lowest wage within an organization, but instead the allowable disparity. It would likely mean that bottom wages would increase and top wages go down but still grades and hierarchy could be observed.

Tim Cook's salary is much less than the billionaire investors are making from Apple. Warren Buffet made over $100b.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/04/warren-buffett-makes-over-120-billion-on-apples-trot-to-3-trillion-among-his-best-bets-ever.html

$36b invested in 2018, more than 3x return. This nonagenarian doesn't put in a minute's work at Apple but makes over 1,500,000 times Apple's median salary.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/apples-tim-cook-paid-over-124709881.html

When talking about fairness in earnings, the billionaire ownership class needs to be part of the discussion. They are the ones depriving the workers of earnings, not Tim Cook. Unpaid wages go to the company owners and so will Tim Cook's reduction in salary. Tim Cook has earned his salary, the billionaire owners haven't contributed anything to Apple's success.

There needs to be an employment law that requires employees get allocated a minimum portion of company profits when company profits far exceed their payroll.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/cameronkeng/2014/12/18/if-apple-was-a-worker-cooperative-each-employee-would-earn-at-least-403k

$68k median salary over 100k employees = $6.8b. Apple has made over $90b profit the last 2 years:

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AAPL/apple/net-income

doubling the median salary (or rather bonus allocation, not permanent) of the workers would cost less than 10% of their profits and that's what the law should be - employees deserve at least 10% of a company's excessive profits. They're the ones who made the profit after all.

The last thing the US need is to have the government come with with laws that regulate what "excessive profits" are? That's an impossible task under capitalism. That is something that Sen. Sanders would come up with. You actually want to take a chance that some one like Sen. E. Warren might head a government committee to determine what qualifies as  .... "excessive profits", (for a company or an industry)? We do not need to be like the EU when it comes to regulating companies more, in the name of "Socialism".  If company employees wants a piece of their companies profit, they should do what their company shareholders do ....... buy stocks in their company. Companies paying their employees bonuses when they have a good year, is not the problem. The government making laws to force companies to pay out bonuses in good years, is ludicrous and  bordering on socialism as way of regulating for-profit companies. 

And in a way, employees that are critical to highly profitable companies, are already compensated for that profit. Ever notice that companies with the most profits are the ones that usually pays their critical employees the most. Software engineers for highly profitable companies like Apple, Facebook, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Intel, Oracle, Salesforce, etc., earn high salaries that reflects their companies profitability. And they are still paid that high salary whether their company is profitable that year or not. They would probably make 10% less, working for a less profitable company. 

Now I'm all for employees being able to negotiate their salary pay package to take account for a percentage of their company profits, when there are profits. Say a software engineer that would be paid $120K a year, accepts a salary of $100K a year and a certain percentage of the company profits each year. That's like a famous actor/actress working on a movie almost for free, in exchange for a small percentage of the movie profits. There's no guarantee that the percent of profit will make up for the lost in salary, in any given year. But on the other hand, one's salary could doubled in any given year. They take their chances, just like shareholders.  

Employees don't make the profit for the company, unless they are working for free or below competitive wages. Consumers buying the company products and services are what makes the profit for the company.  All profits belongs to the shareholders. It's the shareholders that should have a say in whether a certain amount of profits be distributed to the employees, not the government. I'm OK with AAPL shareholders having a say in Tim Cook pay package and not at all would like to see the government having a say in it, by passing laws regulating how much a CEO can make based on the median salaries of all the employees. We are not the EU.    


As for Buffet. AFAIK, Warren Buffet, the billionaire, do no own any AAPL shares. His holding company, Berkshire Hathaway invested in millions of shares of AAPL over the past 5 years. I only have thousands of shares of AAPL over 25 years. Why shouldn't a share of AAPL be worth the same to Buffet's holding company, that it is to me?  ....... because the person running the company is a billionaire? Since 2018, I made the same percentage on my shares of AAPL as Berkshire Hathaway with theirs and I haven't put a minute work in to Apple either. The reward for investing in a company stock should be proportional to the amount one was willing to risk in purchasing the stock. I did not make billions of dollars. But then again, I did not risk billions of dollars when I purchased my AAPL shares. 

Warren Buffet is not a billionaire because of any AAPL shares he might personally own. He's a billionaire because of his 230K shares of BRK.A he own in his own company. A share of Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A) is worth about $481,250. Up from $320,000 a share five years ago. And one of the reason why is because of the shares of AAPL that Buffet holding company purchased over the years. In fact, it wasn't even Buffet that purchased the shares. One of his investment manager made the initial purchase. Buffet has a history of not wanting to invest in tech.