Saturday, March 16, 2024

Web3 Is Going Great (Not) - 16 March 2024

In a move that surprised no one, Starbucks is shutting down its NFTs.

OK, to be precise, Starbucks is passing the Starbucks Stamps NFT Program over to a third-party and washing their hands.  The Starbucks Stamps NFT Program started out as a way to reward regular customers of Starbucks, but it has languished and finally gotten to the point that it is more trouble than it is worth.  So Starbucks is dumping it.

At one point, NFTs, blockchain, and blockchain-contracts were the triplet powerhouses that were going to drive Web3 into the future.  NFTs are failing left and right, blockchains and crypto-vendors are rug-pulling weekly, and e-contracts are often used to steal from crypto-vendors, so the future of Web3 is looking a little disorganized.  #NoSurprise

Reference - Engadget article, 16 March 2024 , subtitled The program ends on March 31 and its NFT marketplace will be shifted over to Nifty.



Wednesday, March 13, 2024

Washington 2024 Presidential Primary Results - 13 March 2024

Yesterday was the Washington Presidential Primary for Republicans and Democrats.  Washington does not require a voter to be registered in a particular party, but the voter does need to declare a preference or an affiliation for the election.  Once declared, a particular voter cannot vote for candidates from the other parties.  I did not see an Independent or an Other option, however there were protest votes.  On the Democratic side, there was a campaign underway for people to vote Uncommitted, and on the Republican side, there is a continuing effort for Nikki Haley even though she has formally withdrawn from the primary contest.  The results were that 85.6% of Democratic primary votes went to Biden while 7.5% of ballots went to uncommitted delegates, leaving 6.9% in some other category.  On the Republican side, Trump picked up 74% of votes, Nikki Haley, who dropped out of the race but was still on the ballot, is pulling 22%, and the remainder were scattered for Ron DeSantis (also dropped) and some miscellaneous categories.  Some of Haley's 22% represents cross-over Democrats doing protest votes, but we cannot determine how many.  

The uncommitted-as-protest group will claim victory based on the 7.5%, however the significance of the Uncommitted vote is unclear.  The 7.5% participation is a small number of the whole and no one knows what it would have been without the protest vote.  Therefore the other side (who?) can also declare victory.  In the end, the uncommitted-as-protest campaign was much sound and fury signifying nothing.

As in the last decade, the vote was primarily by mail with scattered drop boxes usually located near libraries, post offices, and the like.   I have not heard any reports of irregularities.  

As of "Super Tuesday", Trump and Biden have clinched the required number of delegates to secure their nominations.  For all intents and purposes, the Presidential campaign season has begun.

Tuesday, March 12, 2024

Washington 2024 Primary Election Day - 12 March 2024

Today is the Washington primary election day and The Stranger, a local progressive newspaper, is recommending that Democrats vote for Uncommitted.  I have thoughts.

Vote for Uncommitted in the Dem primary? That has got to be the most mealy-mouthed idea I have heard since Nader was running. "Uncommitted sends a message" because of Gaza? Because of student loans? Because of inflation? Because your milk turned sour before the sell-by date? A clear message! NOT!

You could instead write a letter to the White House and your congresscritters that explicitly and clearly expresses your views. And how could The Stranger imply that TFG is even remotely acceptable?

You don't tug on Superman's cape,

You don't spit into the wind,

You don't vote Uncommitted on the Dem ballot,

And you don't give TFG a win.

Monday, March 11, 2024

Disasters Declared On This Day - 11 March 2024

The Ides of March may be being overtaken by 11 March.  On this day in 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 to be a pandemic, and on this day in 2011, the Tohoku earthquake broke the Fukushima nuclear power plant.  

Sunday, March 10, 2024

Sad Tesla News - 10 March 2024

We start today with a tragedy.  According to a news report in The New York Post, "Angela Chao, the billionaire former CEO of dry bulk shipping giant Foremost Group, tragically died at the age of 50 on Feb. 10 after accidentally backing her car into the pond while making a three-point turn." If that name does not ring a bell, note that Angela Chao’s sister, Elaine Chao, is married to Senator Mitch McConnell and served as Secretary of Labor under President George W. Bush and Secretary of Transportation in President Donald Trump’s administration.  Mitch recently retired as Minority Leader (R) in the US Senate.

Angela Chao was hosting some friends on a ranch in Texas and wanted to return to the main ranchhouse at the end of the evening.  As it was cool, she decided to drive her Tesla rather than walk the four minutes from the guest houses to the main house.  At some point along the way, she backed her car into a pond where the car sank.  

The tragedy is multiplied by the design of the Tesla.  Rather than mechanical door handles, the main doors are opened electronically with a button.  Obviously, this is not a great design for an electric car sinking in a pond (loss of power).  There is an emergency mechanical door latch, but from the descriptions, it seems that it is hard to find, especially when sinking into a pond.  Chao was trapped inside the sinking car, unable to get out.  She had enough air in the car to be able to use her cell phone to call friends, but no one was able to help in time.

Many of the prior deaths in Tesla accidents have involved fire, but this is the first to involve water.

Condolences to the Chao family.

Reference: https://nypost.com/2024/03/09/us-news/angela-chao-made-panicked-call-before-dying-in-completely-submerged-tesla-on-texas-ranch/ 


Monday, March 04, 2024

The iPhone is the new transistor - 4 March 2024

Human history is a series of quiet periods interspersed with revolutions.  So, too, science is a series of quiet periods interspersed with revolutions.  In the 1947, the invention of the transistor changed the world and in 2007, the iPhone smart phone changed the world.  It took a while for the transistor to go from laboratory curiosity to common use, but the iPhone moved into common use more quickly.  More recently, people have thought virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), bitcoin (BTC), blockchain, and artificial intelligence (AI, LLM) would be the next revolutionary step.  AI may yet change the world, but the others are racing for the dust heap of history.

Some would claim that the Internet, the World Wide Web (WWW), or computing have changed history, and these have left their marks on life, but nothing has become as pervasive and as impactful as the smart phone.  The Internet, the WWW, and computing have contributed to the march of the smart phone, but so have many other technologies such as NFT, Bluetooth, and Wifi, but the smart phone is the agent of change.

In my smart phone, I can carry my wallet (except for cash, and even Venmo would object to that exception), my keys, my identification, my theater tickets, my shopping list, my maps, and the only things I need carry now are a pocket knife and a handkerchief.  Most people do not even carry handkerchiefs anymore.  And all this fits in one pocket.

We do not always recognize the revolution when it starts; in fact, we rarely do.  Transistors were big, chunky things with poor gain (a measure of transistor quality).  Horseless carriages were hard to start and broke down easily - and they needed roads to get somewhere.  Steam trains were noisy and smelly, too.  Medicine was glorified speculation until germ theory.  

The transistor continues to change our modern world, but the smart phone has surpassed it.




Saturday, March 02, 2024

Leap Day Babies and New Years Eve Babies - 2 March 2024

Babies born on Leap Day are always presented as being at a disadvantage.  Supposedly, a Leap Day baby only has birthdays every four years.  This strikes me as wrong.  The proper concern is the babies born on 31 December in a Leap Year.  Let me explain.

Simply, babies born today (as I write, it is 29 February 2024) are being born on the 60th day of the year 2024.  Your annual birthday is based on rotation about the sun and therefore it falls on the same day each year, at roughly the same angular rotation point around the sun.  This year, that falls on 29 February and next year the 60th day will fall on 1 March 2025.  No big deal.   It is the calendar that is faulty and that causes the 60th day to fall variously on 1 March and 28 February.  I see no problem.  The 60th day is the 60th day - and happy birthday to those who celebrate.  In 2025, the babies born on the 60th day will use 1 March to describe their day, but it is still the 60th day whether in 2025, 2026, or 2027.

A problem does arise at the end of the year.  In 2024, the last day of the year is the 366th day, 31 December 2024.  In 2025, 2026, and 2027, there are only 365 days in the year, therefore there is NO 366th day.  This leaves those New Years Eve babies as the ones with an issue.



Friday, March 01, 2024

Career Notes #4b: WF, Remote Work, and Soft Metrics - 7 February 2024 (original) - 1 March 2024

Someone said something on the Internet and I am upset.  

When last I wrote about WFH, I was upset at the radio, but I have now returned to being continuously upset about what someone said on the Internet.  I am a creature of habit.  As to subject matter, I was complaining about Work From Home, WFH, also known as Working Remotely.  I had spoken about "hard metrics" and was about to discuss "soft metrics".  Allow me to reestablish the rant, uh, conversation.

In the classic goal-setting process of management-by-objectives (MBO), the emphasis is on specific and measurable goals (part of the larger "S.M.A.R.T." framework for goal setting).  A classic goal is "deliver a report to the customer by the end of the quarter".  This is much more useful than "be a good employee" or "do good work" and it has the welcome attribute that there is little argument because the report gets delivered on-time or it does not.  What can one argue with?

Well, one can argue with this because of the soft metrics.  I can deliver a "report", even a long report, that is on-time but full of garbage.  The word "report", even qualified with some number of pages, is a soft metric, and so we see that metrics can be misleading and metrics can be gamed.

WFH or remote work has virtually the same problems as SMART.  It is overly fixed on things that can be measured and these things are often a narrow part of the job.  If the job is full of rote processes, then WFH can be perfect.  A customer service agent (first-line) can answer calls and reset passwords or refund orders with little supervision needed.  The rare problems can be handled with voice recordings of the customer transactions and depend on the customers to escalate situations to higher levels of support.  But not all jobs are rote and simple metrics are usualy inadequate.  Engineering, software, business and accounting positions require at least spreadsheet or database work, and art positions require lots of computer interactivity, thus many positions now include some sort of computer programming.  All of these (engineering, software, business, accounting, art) require some degree of originality and inventiveness, perhaps within bounds but still require novelty.   The behavior we want to encourage is more than just words and formulas on a page, requiring human judgement beyond simplistic metrics.  

But that human judgement often requires exposure and observation.  Management can often tell a difference in actions when practiced at the office that is not visible when working from home.   I management cannot see the individuals as they practice their expertise, it rapidly becomes hard to evaluate the level of expertise.

And that is why WFH only works for rather rote role and starts to fail as one moves through a career.

Note: I got stalled and distracted by this note.  It took multiple tries to edit it down to something readable and focused.  Therefore, there are multiple dates on the title line.



Thursday, February 29, 2024

Health care has become a top target for cybercriminals - 29 February 2024

A warning about computer security for medical computing systems was recently raised by a neighbor named Steve Moeller.  He wrote:

Here is an article from the Seattle Times talking about the threat from cybercriminals to the national and local healthcare system: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/why-health-care-has-become-a-top-target-for-cybercriminals/#Echobox=1708874045 

From the article:

When a cyberattack hit Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center late last year and exposed the personal data of nearly a million patients, many were caught off guard, stunned a breach could infiltrate such a large and highly resourced health care organization. 

This is a problem and it is more widespread than most people realize.  

The Internet was designed with open access in mind, so it is proving hard to make it secure.  This means that *anything* attached to the Internet has some degree of exposure that depends on how much thought and effort the "owner" has put into security.  The answer to "how much effort" is often little to none.  This means that everything from your medical records to your banking records are at risk.  Further, your power grid, your road systems, and even your personal cars are all at risk.  The old phone system is relatively secure (ok, I remember 2600 and phone phreaks) but the new wireless systems are far more exposed.  Social media like Facebook, Instagram, Xitter, and Snapchat are all exposed, and even giants in the field like Google and Microsoft are exposed.  

My point?  You should be checking with each and every supplier you use to ask them what their security policies are.  In the main, you will find that the corporate security policies protect the corporation but you?  You are left dangling.  We need legislation that places the burden back on the corporations. 


Wednesday, February 28, 2024

Seattle Nisqually Earthquake 2001 - 28 February 2024

Twenty-three years ago was the Good Friday Nisqually Earthquake.  At 10:54am, I was sitting with my boss, Gene Pope, in his Amazon.com office near S. Weller and 5th Ave S in Seattle, near the International District.  At first, it sounded like a freight train rumbling from the distance and then, the shaking started.  The lights were suspended on cables from the ceiling and I remember watching them swing back and forth, swinging wider as the shaking continued.  Someone was standing nearby in an area of cubbys and I yelled something like "get under the furniture".  I do not recall if he moved or not.  After an eternity or two, the shaking stopped and we started to assess what we had.  The Seattle bus tunnel was closed for a couple of hours while the engineers checked it for damage.  After it opened, I took a bus home and continued work from there.  

There used to be an "earthquake rose" but the original seems to have been pulled from the internet.  You can read about it here -- 

https://inhabitat.com/a-beautiful-and-mysterious-rose-created-by-an-earthquake-and-a-pendulum/


Friday, February 23, 2024

Dell is telling the truth about remote work - 23 February 2024

A recent article from The Register reports on consequences of a recent return-to-the-office (RTO) program at Dell Computer.   From the article:

The implications of choosing to work remotely, we're told, are: "1) no funding for team onsite meetings, even if a large portion of the team is flying in for the meeting from other Dell locations; 2) no career advancement; 3) no career movements; and 4) remote status will be considered when planning or organization changes -- AKA workforce reductions." 

The last three points are the most significant.  The first point is optional - some companies will fund team meetings and some will not.  I think Dell is wrong on this point, but it is their company so they make their rules.  

The most important point is - no career advancement.  Let us say you are the manager and you are faced with a key decision, assigning important tasks, choosing a promotion candidate, or simply assigning bonus budget.  You have two employees, one who is often in the office where you see their work, see their interactions with other team members, and see their presentations, and a remote employee that you see intermittently, see no interactions, and see only video presentations.  Which one are you going to select for rewards and the best assignments?  Pretty obviously the on-site person.  If you think that is wrong, ask your mother if it is OK to just call from now on, and you will stop your in-person visits.  Ask yourself if you would rather put your kids to bed and read them a story rather than read a bedtime story over the phone.  No mother or kids?  What would your dog think?  Expanding on this, no career movements is a reasonable extension.  As a manager, you can choose a local candidate that you see routinely or you can choose someone who is always at the far end of a phone line.  Not hard to choose.  Finally, the old rule is "out of sight, out of mind" and that will trump over "absence makes the heart grow fonder" - when it comes time to downsize, it is far easier to lay-off someone on a phone line compared to someone you see routinely in the office.  It just is.

Note that "routinely in the office" includes hybrid and full-time office sightings.  Seeing someone Monday-Wednesday-Friday is closer to Monday-Friday than never or rarely.  I am not arguing against work-from-home, simply stating boundaries.

Furthermore:

Another employee said: "Choosing to be remote does indeed put career advancement at a standstill."

As one advances up the ranks, there are more and more leadership and team skills required to work on larger projects.  If your job is one person (you) in one place (your home or office), then advancement within these constraints is possible.  But if your job requires interactions and teams, that is best done in-person.  To advance, you need to demonsrate those leadership and team skills, and you cannot do that sitting alone in your home-office with the dog.

So if you want to be a Lyft driver or work on small projects for the rest of your life, work from home.  But if you want to advance in the corporate environment, get to the office.




Friday, February 16, 2024

10km ebike ride to awaken the limbs - 16 February 2024

After weeks of rain, a day of snow, and overnight frosts, I grabbed a partly sunny day to unwind my limbs and refresh the e-bike.  I just puddled around the neighborhood for 6.2 miles, up and down and around.  It was a bit on the cold side, 47F, but I was able to wrap up.  The main "save" was the pair of gloves that I wore.  My fingers get cold after the frostbite session on that China trip.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/sgey47DQpqEUi76HA


Friday, February 09, 2024

Bad Reporting #1: Radio Tower Stolen - 9 February 2024

No.  One does not just steal a 200-foot tall radio tower.  No.  There are two major problems with this simple-minded assertion, size and power.

The obvious problem is the size of the 200-foot tower.  It takes time and equipment to down it and haul it away.  You need a couple of hours to rig it, to lower it to the ground, to dismantle it, and then to haul it away.  The word "stolen" implies surprise or stealth.  The radio station had hours to respond to any surprise attempt to take the tower.  The police had hours to respond when called.  This tower was not stolen.  

The other problem is the electrical power being pumped into the antenna.  There are thousands of watts of power being pumped into the antenna in order to broadcast, perhaps as high as 50,000 watts, but likely less in this case.  When you walk up to the tower and touch it, you become the path to ground.  Big shock - literally.  Someone had to have the smarts to cut off the transmitter before anyone touched the tower.  Yes, the report talks about evidence of a break-in, suggesting that the thief did have the requisite smarts.  But radio stations monitor their signal - they listen to themselves to make sure they are still transmitting.  Again, no surprise is possible when the transmitter gets cut and the antenna gets "stolen".

Reporters really need to pause and think before they report this stuff.

Source: Alabama station in disbelief after 200-foot radio tower stolen at NBC News.



Thursday, February 01, 2024

Privacy and the Internet Giants - 1 February 2024

Twelve years ago, Facebook went public as a multi-billion dollar company.  On today's market, Facebook (now META) has a market cap of $1T and a user base between 2 billion and 3 billion, depending on who is counting what.  This suggests that the value of a Facebook user has gone up from about $6 to about $333 (very roughly).  Why such a significant rise?  Does Facebook offer more value and function to you today than it did a decade ago?  Not really.  55x more value and function?  Far from it.  The stock market has assigned the price, so where does this value come from?

In a recent report from Consumer Reports, "Using a panel of 709 volunteers who shared archives of their Facebook data, Consumer Reports found that a total of 186,892 companies sent data about them to the social network. On average, each participant in the study had their data sent to Facebook by 2,230 companies."  And as noted by Bruce Schneier, "This isn’t data about your use of Facebook. This data about your interactions with other companies, all of which is correlated and analyzed by Facebook."

This is not Facebook/META alone - this is all the big Internet companies, including a bunch you do not know about like Palantir Technologies.  You are not a hapless victim.  Contact your representatives and senators to demand protection.  Consumer Reports probably has some good suggestios of where to start.



Tuesday, January 30, 2024

Career Notes #4: WFH and Remote Work - 30 January 2024

Someone said something on the radio and I am upset.  There is probably only one motive more stupid to write about than "someone said something on the Internet and I am upset", and that is the subject of my first sentence.  Someone said something stupid on the radio and I am upset.  However, I have always barged in where angels fear to tread, so I will share my thoughts on the recent resurgence of the RTO push for workers to return-to-office.  Since shortly after COVID began, there has been a vibrant discussion about the merits of working in an office compared to working from home (WFH).  It is the fodder for serious commentators as well as for the comics.  After hearing someone potificate on the radio this morning about managers who will have to learn how to support and encourage people who are WFH, I rather got to the end of my tether and -- I have thoughts.  I should say up-front that I retired as a senior manager in engineering at a high-tech company and I managed mostly highly educated people (nearly all had PhD degrees from major universities in the US).  These were (are) bright, educated, talented, and highly  motivated people eager to advance their careers and advance the fields of engineering.

When COVID began, there was a medical reason for everyone to avoid crowds and that included avoiding the shared office.  When I decided to close our local ABC Corporate office (a branch office of about 100 people and anonymized), I expected that it would be for 2-3 weeks until the pandemic abated.  I think it was pretty commonly understood that closing offices and sending people home was temporary and we would return to normalcy in a month or so.  As time went on and people continued to die from COVID, it became clear that our initial estimates were naively optimistic and that WFH (work from home) was a long-term state, verging on a year.  

While a high proportion of ABC Corporate workers could be sent home to work, there were key jobs that needed to continue on-site and in the office.  In our branch location, there were about 10 employees that needed to be in the office daily and 2-3 more that would come in occasionally.  The 10 folks needed access to labs and equipment that could only be on-site and could not be taken home.  The 2-3 folks varied each day from the 90 who were WFH - they were not usually the same individuals, but there were consistently 2-3 of them in the office.  

In our group (about a third of the 100 people in the branch), we had long-standing key metrics (KPI - Key Performance Indicator - is a common industry buzzword, but we did not use the phrase KPI).  The primary metric among these was the continued delivery of high-quality results as promised in the schedules and contracts.  As a general rule, the team was able to maintain successful delivery of all the group metrics.  From this, one might conclude that WFH was acceptable as a stable, long term strategy for the team.  After all, the overall team was spread across four primary sites already, so dispersing to homes was of marginal impact, right?  Wrong, but I have gone on too long in this posting and will reserve further thoughts for a second posting.

Although the key metrics, including consistent, timely, high-quality deliverables continued to be met, these are all "hard" metrics.  These are hard metrics because they are countable.  The deliverable was provided or it was not; the deliverable was on time or it was not; and the customer accepted the deliverable or they rejected it.  However, there were other, less countable metrics that were not always met, and many of these "soft" metrics are also on a scale, but hard to quantify.  Without covering all of the next post, consider "innovation".  There is no good measure of innovation.  There are simple measures (e.g., the number of patents authored) of these soft metrics, but simple measures can easily miscount or mislead (e.g., an idea can be patentable but it may be kept as a trade secret instead).  A more critical measure is readiness for promotion or other recognition, which is very hard to measure.

Until next time when I discuss soft metrics.




Monday, January 29, 2024

Moving Close to the Office - 29 January 2024

In a recent decree, IBM has announced that all employees must be in the office for at least three days a week, or they should plan to separate from the Company.  There is a big debate today about the value of in-office work.  A weak string of responses in Slashdot gives the usual responses of people trying to be clever, but resistence is futile.  For better or worse, IBM management has decided that this shall be and so it shall be.  Comply or pursue a voluntary separation.  

Of course, some people could try to delay in the hopes that plate tectonics will come to the rescue as the New Pangea reassembles itself.



Saturday, January 27, 2024

Talking to Executives - 27 January 2024

An underappreciated skill, learning how to talk to executives can boost your career.  This sounds trite, but it is true.  Many an engineer has capped out because they talked too much.

These boil down to a short list.  In this list, I lump "manager" and "executives" together.  With a manager, you are more likely able to bend these rules, but the higher you go in the manager-executive chain, the more you want to adhere to these rules.

  1. Be succinct,
  2. Actionable,
  3. Focus on results and impact,
  4. Define the problem but always offer a solution,
  5. Subject lines - meaningful (not just "FYI" or "interesting event"), and
  6. Be terse - yes, redundant with succinct because it is that important.

If engineers as a group have a fatal flaw, it is the failure to be succinct.  Ideally, when they ask a question, a manager or executive wants to hear "yes" or "no", to hear a single number or date.  Answering with a "yeah, but..." is not going to succeed.  In many cases, you can respond that you will get back to them with an answer, but be succinct.  And if you promise to get back with an answer, give them a date for the answer and meet that date.

In a bit of cognitive dissonance, managers are creatures of action and of delay.  On the one hand, managers want to get things decided and done, minimize delays, minimize waste, eliminate idleness.  On the other hand, managers will wait if promised more information, but it must be high-quality information that will inform a better decision.  Balancing these two is hard, but it is what managers are paid to do.  In the end, advance actions and options.

As an aside, some managers get confused.  One type of manager will made decisions fast in the belief that any decision is better than no decision.  Another type of manager will kick the decision down the road in the hope of avoiding blame.  Both of these are wrong.  Each decision will be different - some will invite immediacy and some will demand delay - but a manager that always leans one way or the other is wrong.  Either that, or they have no authority (delay) or they have no understanding (immediate).  End of digression.

Results are what a manager seeks.  Negative results are often called consequences.  Ultimately, the manager is not as interested in the work, but in the results or impact of the work.  A particular proposal may require an engineer to work nights and weekends, but the manager is interested in avoiding impact on the customer, and impact that might cause the customer to change to a competitor.  

Clarity in defining the problem is critical.  If an engineer delivers a perfect technical solution to the wrong business problem, it is not a solution, it has no value.  

As a particular point of communication, email has become a dominant way to communicate with managers, and the first line if that communication is the Subject line.  Write your subject lines to be clear, concise, and meaningful.  Bad examples include, "that answer you wanted", "FYI", or "suggestion".  A journalist would say that you have buried the lede.  You want the Subject line to be relevant to the  manager and give them something of value, something to catch their attention.  Subjects like "solution for Jones case", "Q4 capital request", or "retention problem" are going to catch their attention.  Your email is not a mystery novel - state the key inforamtion up-front, name the murder in the first sentence.  Sometimes you need to temper this for confidentiality, and so some vagueness is in order in the subject line.  You want to say "retention problem" rather than "Jones about to quit" in case someone is reading over the manager's shoulder.

Be terse.  This bears repeating because being succinct is critical.  All your work to craft a brilliant three-page document will be wasted if no one reads past the first paragraph.

There are managers and executives that will try to isolate you from the "next level up" and even peers will try to squeeze you out in an effort to out-compete you.  If you work to become a good communicator with executives, they will seek you out.




Sunday, January 21, 2024

Ron & Vivek drop out of Republican presidential nomination - 21 January 2024

To the surprise of absolutely no living person, Ron Desantis and Vivek Ramaswamy have dropped out of the primary process to be the Republican nominee for President in 2024.  We also got news that Chris Christie had dropped out recently.  As to Desantis, NBC blamed "Muddled messages, hiring too many staffers and even a puzzle."  There are probably similar defenses of Ramaswamy as a candidate.  Both of these argument threads miss their respective points.

Desantis is just a wannabe dictator.  Why go with the wannabe when you can get the real thing in Trump?  Desantis was a money-fueled distraction from the main event and no one wanted tickets to an also-ran.  In the end, he has endorsed Trump.

Ramaswamy was  a tech-bro who drank his own coolaid.  He got lucky in business, parlayed that into a little bit of political success, and started inhaling his own gaslighting.  Like Desantis, he presented himself as a Trump without the baggage.  What Ramaswamy calls baggage, we would call a history of recorded and reported statements, policies, and actions.  But I digress...  Ramaswamy was another sideshow and no one wanted his also-ran tickets, either.  On leaving, he has endorsed Trump.

Chris Christie is more of a question mark.  He clearly sees Trump for what he is and is willing to state it, but Christie is too little, too late.  But even if he were the right amount and on-time, he is running on a negative-Trump platform rather than a content-filled platform of his own.  No one knows what Christie stands for outside "not MAGA".

For all intents and purposes, this leaves Nikki Haley.  She is but a pale imitation of Trump (pun intended), and the only real question is whether Haley will pull out before Trump falls over from bad health.

But we can be a bit relieved because we are now free of the Ron-Vivek virus.

P.S.  Yes, Trump continues to bounce among his various legal cases.  I think there are four, perhaps a fifth that I lost track of, and still 91 felony counts hanging over him.  He has been recently making more and more verbal mistakes in the press.  Confusing Nikki Haley and Nancy Pelosi is the most recent one, but they are coming in a steady flow.  Trump is still the unchallenged favorite to get the Republican nomination.



Saturday, January 20, 2024

Trickle-down Economics is Really Trickle-Up - 20 January 2024

Inflation has been a key concern of many in the USA for the last year, perhaps longer.  FOX News [sic], in particular, has been banging on President Biden and his "failure" to control inflation, rating it one of the key problems that Biden "must solve".  However, now a more complete truth is coming out, backed by actual data and studies rather than gaslighting (from FOX).

Much of the recent inflation is due to increased corporate profit-taking.  Yeah, I know some will be surprised at this, and even contradict it.  In their effort to stream more profits, the companies are simply hiding behind the headlines and blaming their own actions on the inflation boogey-man.  Here is the behavior laid stark -

The report, compiled by the progressive Groundwork Collaborative think tank, found corporate profits accounted for about 53% of inflation during last year’s second and third quarters. Profits drove just 11% of price growth in the 40 years prior to the pandemic, according to the report.

Note that second sentence - profits are driving almost 5x the amount of price growth that has been historic.  

As a shareholder, I am delighted, but as a consumer, hang 'em all!  And the next time you consider the "benefits" of trickle-down economics, remember this, and ask yourself if the explanations of trickle-down economics are complete or if they are masking a deeper strategy better described as trickle-up.



Friday, January 19, 2024

Truffle Feast Tonight - 19 January 2024

Long, long ago, before COVID-19 was known as a scourge of the globe, we visited a specialized farm in France.  Les Pastras is a family farm that provided traditional goods from Provence.  They have olive trees to make olive oil, grape vines to make wine, beehives to make honey, and oak trees to grow truffles.  Although they run it as a farm, they offer tours centered around the various agricultural products, and we did a December hunt for black truffles.  Our hosts were modern in that they used dogs to hunt for the underground morsels.  Pigs are the older tradition, but pigs like truffles and so they compete with the farmer for the truffles, sometimes to the point that the farmer loses a finger.  Dogs, on the other hand, like the treats presented after finding truffles and could care less about the truffles themselves.  And so modern hunters use dogs.

We followed the host out into the orchard (is that what one calls it?) of oak trees that had been innoculated with truffle spoor in the hope that truffles would eventually grow.  Truffles are wild things and so this is far from a certain thing.  They have to overplant oak trees to get sufficient truffles.  I call them "trees" which is botanically correct, but I think it would be better to think of them as saplings.  Wild truffles are found in the forest, but growing truffles only need oak roots.  

After the hunt, we retired to the farmhouse patio and gorged on truffle specialities, from simple sliced truffles on buttered bread, to truffle oil (olive oil infused with truffles), and truffle honey on ice cream.  The last is pretty novel but it works very well for those seeking truffle immersion.  One of our party was not thrilled with the truffles, so he satisfied himself with the local charmant (champagne made outside the appellation area).  

In the end, we quite enjoyed the whole experience and we "adopted" a truffle tree.  This gives us rights to truffles each year.  Our truffles shipped from France on Monday (harvested on Sunday), and promptly ran into bad weather in the U.S.  Expected on Wednesday, the truffles arrived today (Friday) and we are gathering for the feast.  Truffles have a short shelf life, so one eats them as soon after harvesting as possible.  We get enouhg truffles to have a couple of nights of truffle delights and even a couple of breakfasts.  These are proper black truffles, not the chemicalized variety that comes in jars with chemical additions, so we take care to make dishes that are simple and allow the flavor of the truffle to shine.  We never cook the truffles except as they are warmed by the cooked dish when they are served together.

Anticipating the truffle shipment has become an annual tradition for us, and we usually expand the event with foie gras and other gems.



  

Thursday, January 18, 2024

Innovation keeps rolling, Part 2 - 18 January 2024

Previously, I wrote about a patent idea I had at IBM that had been declined by the internal IBM patent review committee, and that a company had recently announced binoculars that used a strongly similar idea.  Let me return to the more general intellectual property (IP) arena in this note.

The success of new companies of the world is highly dependent on diligently and daily applying innovation to their products and processes.  Bookstores were simple repositories of books until Amazon unleashed technology on the selling and shipping of books and more.  Cars were glorified wristwatches until hybrids and then full electric vehicles (EVs) caused a reinvention of the automobile.  Even companies like Intel were glass manufacturers until ARM, Apple, Nvidia, and AMD showed that fabless semiconductor companies could be a thing.  You can debate specific examples, but the clear trend of business from 1924 to 2024 shows that those failing to apply technology have been left as footnotes; at best, they are quaint companies turning out homespun crafts.  

In recognition of this innovation force, companies set up internal procedures to generate patents.  IBM is probably the cannonical example.  IBM has long had an internal process that collected IP ideas, evaluated them through a committee process, and awarded IP "points" to inventors on patent filings that could be turned into cash and prizes.  (No kidding - my prize for one set of points was luggage.)  Little mafias and cliques grew up within IBM to keep churning out patents.  If your idea had the right co-inventors, you got points.  Even ideas that did not deserve filing were "published" and the authors got IP points as a result.  Perverted results aside, the system worked well, and IBM was the largest patent producer in the world for decades.  The innovations of IBM were world-class as demonstrated in their products, and IBM ruled the computer world.  Somewhere along the line of history, IBM reduced their emphasis on IP and technological excellence and pushed financial engineering.  While other companies continued to grow, IBM sold off parts of the company and shrank.  As I write this, the market capitalization of IBM is about $150 billion, while Apple and Microsoft are each (each!) $2.9 trillion.  

In the last few days, IBM has announced that they are terminating the old program  (that would issue cash and prizes) for a new program that issues BluePoints.  It is unclear what one can do with BluePoints, but cash awards for accumulating points seems to be elimiated.  Combined with other changes over the years, it is not clear that IBM has figured out how to exit their death spiral.  Cold days ahead for innovation at IBM.  Sad.