Amazon.com Hiring and Recent Revelations - 22 March 2023

According to news reports, internal documents obtained from Amazon show that they hired too many people.  Not as in "planned hiring was too high" but rather "unapproved hiring was too high".  From the article:

Amazon Web Services posted 24,988 job openings in 2022, but the department was only approved to recruit for 7,798 positions. The document addresses Amazon’s lack of governance as an issue that led to the disconnect between job listings and open positions.

When I worked at Amazon (circa 2000), this was generally true:  there were few, if any, business controls in place.  I did not see it at the time (having been raised in corporations that routinely imposed controls and audits for budgets, hiring, travel, and the like), so I did not exploit it, but it was obvious even then that there were really no controls.  I have always been astounded at the success of Amazon given the internal workings of the company.  On the other hand, recent examples like Credit Suisse and Silicon Valley Bank make me wonder if it is more a case of all-companies-all-the-time.

Source: https://gizmodo.com/amazon-layoffs-andy-jassy-amazon-web-services-aws-1850251481 

Another clip from the article:

After Amazon announced another round of layoffs affecting 9,000 employees earlier this week, a leaked document from inside the company revealed that listing too many job openings and subsequently over-hiring in some departments may have been a part of the problem.

A leaked document obtained by Insider reveals that Amazon put hiring power in the hands of managers, and that the company had little oversight on the hiring process until 2022. This apparently led managers to recruit and hire more employees than they were approved to.

New Application of AI Technology - 21 March 2023

Applying AI technology to analyze banks and prevent blow-outs would be a useful application of Silicon Valley technology.  I wonder why the wizards of Silicon Valley overlooked this self-protective opportunity.

Nuclear Waste Production Plants are not needed - 12 March 2023

Some population of the "green" community has been demanding an increase in nuclear energy production in the United States.  While this may make some sort of sense in the short term, it shows a grotesque failure to understand how actions and consequences relate.  Let us get some terminology straight at the start of the conversation.

There is a common misunderstanding that people know how to build and maintain "nuclear power plants".  If we look at these facilities in the short term, the name "nuclear power plant" makes sense, but if we consider the long term, a better name becomes obvious.  The plants will operate and produce electrical power for 20-40 years, the short term.  Once exhausted, they leave behind nuclear waste that will last tens, hundreds, and thousands of years.  In this longer term, it is clear that their primary end-product is nuclear waste, therefore the facilities are more accurately called "nuclear waste production plants" and they have a brief surplus power in their early years.  

By and large, we have no idea how to deal with the legacy of nuclear waste production plants.  Coal-fired and gas-fired plants can be cleaned up, solar plants and wind farms can be recycled, and even dams can be safely breached.  There is a problem with coal mines and gas drilling sites, but we have general technology to deal with most of that residual.  But we have no technology or process that can handle nuclear waste. 

Nuclear waste comes in multiple types, and some will argue that we can process 90-95% of the nuclear waste from the nuclear waste production plants.  This is insufficient in the extreme.  We build large processing plants to remove threats from water so that it can be used near humans, but we have no technology for nuclear waste products.  The 5-10% remaining nuclear waste that cannot be processed can only be waited out while it remains toxic - waiting for thousands of years.  And even the faint technologies that we do have that can partially process this nuclear waste have proven to be very expensive.  So expensive that we have to ship the waste to the processing plant instead of processing the waste on-site.  No one wants to allow the unprocessed waste to travel nearby, so moving the waste to the processing plant is not possible.

As a result, nuclear waste production plants leave pools full of "spent" waste material sitting nearby, waste that will take thousands of years to become safe to handle.  

If it is not obvious by now, nuclear waste production plants do not generate enough surplus energy to justify their construction or operation.  They are so costly and risky that they cannot get private insurance to cover their construction and operation.  

We may develop nuclear fusion in the future.  Until then, we must continue to develop avoidance and convervation technologies, and we can only build using renewable energy production technologies.

Edit:  https://medium.com/predict/nuclear-power-is-the-future-heres-why-1901f8fa68e0

The Angels' Share - 4 March 2023

Cognac is an ancient city.  The city was well established when Francois I was born there in 1494 and his salamander is carved into many buildings.  Although built from a light colored stone, some of the buildings have a grey or even black coloration on the exterior.  This color comes from Baudoinia compniacensi, a fungus that grows where it can be fed by alcohol. The alcohol lost during the aging process goes into the air, from which it is consumed by B. compniacensi.  The quantity of cognac that has evaporated is known as the Angels' Share.  We were told that the buildings with the black coloring are showing that they are active aging houses.  

Cognac is on display everywhere and the largest cognac houses dominate the riverfront.  These include Hennessy, Martell, Camus, and Remy Martin.  Courvoisier is based in a small town about 9 km outside Cognac.

An odd thing about cognac that distinguishes it from many other grape beverages (wine, champagne) is that it has no vintage.  By definition, the cognac houses run a sophisticated process that produces a product that is consistent from year to year.  The process is based on repeated taste tests and blending to produce the particular flavor of each house.  As their marketing has gotten more sophisticated, the houses produce cognac products with distinct flavors, and may even occasionally declare a vintage, but the traditional products are consistent by design.  Thus, an "old bottle of cognac" has no particular significance other than an emotional tie.

A Shining Example of Bitcoin, Not - 3 March 2023

SBF, or Sam Bankman-Fried, was the head of the FTX exchange for bitcoin and other digital coinage.  He has been in the news for quite a while, starting as a wonder-boy who could do no wrong and morphing into a financial criminal of grand proportions (as alleged by the US Department of Justice).  It was revealed today that $9 Billion of customer funds is missing.  Sam is going to give Bernie Madoff a run for his money as they compete to be the masterminds of their respective "largest financial fraud ever".

https://gizmodo.com/ftx-sbf-sam-bankman-fried-crypto-1850183784

Gizmodo reports that "FTX Confirms $9 Billion in Customer Funds Vanished" via FTX and Alameda Research (Sam's other company).

Photo: deeper and deeper: measuring snow in Redmond WA on 26 Feb 2023.

Florida governor Ron deSantis - 2 March 2023

Florida governor Ron DeSantis is an idiot. Large chunks of the Florida legislature are, too, if they support this legislation.

https://www.wfla.com/news/politics/florida-bill-would-require-bloggers-who-write-about-governor-to-register-with-the-state/