As a mechanical engineer, I want to offer some perspective on how specific this is for people working exclusively in software. I would never ever even consider working fully remotely, mainly because my job involves designing physical things. The prototypes and models for them are not and cannot be in my home. A big part of my job involves making sure the technician can actually assemble the things I design, which requires going to the place where they assemble it. My company employs many software engineers, and they work from home more frequently than the mechanical or electrical engineers, but they are much more hesitant to allowing full remote just because the work is so centered on the physical product. Every time I see an article posted here arguing one way or the other this rarely comes up. Regardless of the pros, cons, or preferences this just is not an option for a lot of technical people.
Readit Newsisanengineer commented on I will always prefer to work from home shavingtheyak.com/2023/10... · Posted by u/exponentialgenx
isanengineer commented on ASML DUV machines used to produce Huawei Mate 60 Pro chips scmp.com/tech/tech-war/ar... · Posted by u/gfxb
Article is paywalled so I can't read past the first 2 paragraphs, but I still don't understand what the controversy about this is. EUV was developed with significant input and resources from the US government [1], so I understand the rationale behind export controls there. But immersion lithography is quite different. My understanding is it was proposed in published papers as early as the 80s, but was industrialized by ASML in the late 90s. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think the US government was involved with immersion lithography in any way.
I'm sure the actual legal mechanisms are complicated, but I don't see any justification for the US imposing export controls on technology developed in-house by a European company.
[1] https://www.spiedigitallibrary.org/ebooks/PM/EUV-Lithography...
In the US, Zelle vs. Venmo is comparable to debit card vs. credit card. With Zelle/debit, you're basically mailing cash - it might get lost in transit, your money is gone right away. With Venmo/credit, there's a middleman with a big pile of cash that assumes the risk of money being in-flight, and usually eats fraud/errors as a cost of doing business in exchange for selling data about your spending to advertisers.
This exactly. And this is the reason that Venmo or Paypal need to charge fees for commercial transactions, because they're providing a service. What bugs me is that Zelle seems to be marketed as equivalent to those other digital payment platforms, but in reality it's very different.
You should write that up as an Op-Ed or contact some journalists to use it as part of a story.
You've got a lot of details in there that are definitely not common knowledge and would be of wide interest.
Thanks, but I don't think I know enough about this to speak about it on the pubic record. My experience is based on remembering what random customer service reps said a few years ago and a bunch of reddit and forum posts. For example, I don't know if Zelle is literally just direct deposit--if it was how did they freeze my transaction for 3 weeks?
But I do get the sense that of all the payment platforms, Zelle is uniquely risky because of the way it's set up. I do with a journalist would look at it from that angle rather just from the "wow there's a lot of fraud here". It seems to be that the banks are incentivized just to get have this product out here to undercut the competition from digital payment platforms, but have absolutely no incentive to make it a functional or safe platform.
I use Zelle all the time but with people I know. In fact, I can't remember where my check book is. I use Apple Pay all the time and I use an actual credit card about once a month. I use cash at one place, my taco truck of choice. And for the record, I've never touched bitcoin.
I've used PayPal and Venmo but I don't see their utility now and prefer Apple Pay.
All of these modern tools have their benefits and risks. I got burned for $40 on Zelle for a bike part. It was a $40 lesson.
Agreed. I'm being hyperbolic when I say "do not ever use Zelle". I'm sure it's fine for passing money between friends. It's just that my version of the $40 lesson had a few more zeros on the end, and so stings a bit more.
For me I only use Venmo because that's what most people in social circles use. If they used Cash App or Apple Pay, I'd use those instead.
It's not just fraud you need to worry about. Here's a horror story for you. A few years back I was moving to a city for graduate school and needed to rent an apartment. A friend of mine toured the place and when we decided to rent the landlord asked if we could send him the security deposit using Zelle. I sent the deposit using his contact information, but he never received it.
I spent three weeks being passed back and forth by one bank being told I needed to speak with they other bank. They confirmed the money had been debited from my account, and confirmed it was not deposited in his, but nobody could tell me where the money went. I called Zelle multiple times, but all they would tell me is I needed to talk to the banks. Eventually after three weeks the money was quietly returned to my account with no explanation. After a bit more digging it appears my transaction triggered some fraud alert, but neither myself, the depositor, or either bank was notified of this.
To add insult to injury, during this process the people in charge of Zelle at my bank (which rhymes with Space) told me I was out of luck, because using the Zelle for any type of commercial transaction, including sending rent or security deposits, is against the terms of service. Looking back over the terms of service I found they were 100% correct.
I also found that Zelle is basically just a front-end for the existing ACH Direct Deposit system. It was created by a consortium of banks to compete with services like Venmo, but it at it's core a very different service. Venmo actually provides value by acting as a middle man: Venmo pays the recipient and collects the money from me. Zelle is just a way to send money directly to someone's checking account, but by using their email address or phone number instead of the account and routing number. This is why there is absolutely no recourse if anything goes wrong.
tl;dr do not ever use Zelle.
isanengineer commented on Oliver Stone Releases Trailer for His Pro-Nuclear Energy Movie hollywoodreporter.com/mov... · Posted by u/melling
I don't really care about Oliver Stone, but as a longtime climate activist (and engineer) I'm glad to see any publicity promoting nuclear. I can't take seriously any proposal for reducing fossil fuel generation that doesn't involve nuclear power. The Messmer Plan in France shows that this can be done in a relatively short time frame. They built huge capacity between the 1980s and 2000s and still get 72% of their electricity from nuclear today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France#Messme...
Meanwhile Germany decided to phase out their nuclear generation over decades due to environmental concerns, and ended up re-commission old coal plants to meet demand. The full story of this is complicated and is also thanks to the current gas crisis in Europe, but the fact remains that the decision to phase out nuclear has lead to more carbon emissions, not less.
https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/qa-why-germany-phasing-...
I think the US view of nuclear power has been really complicated by the anti-war movement of the 1960s and 1970s, where nuclear power was (not unreasonably) linked to the military industrial complex. That said, I think the largest obstacle to nuclear power in the US is the federal structure of the government. The US still doesn't have a centralized location for the long-term storage of nuclear waste thanks to Harry Reid killing the Yucca Mountain project in the late 2000s. No state representative has any incentive to allow a facility like that to be constructed in their state, and the federal government is unable or unwilling to force the issue.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_r...
I'm heartened to see climate activists slowly but surely starting to take nuclear seriously. I want to plug Emergency Reactor as doing to difficult work of trying to turn the tide of public perception and make nuclear central to the climate change discourse. https://www.emergencyreactor.org/
isanengineer commented on Solar panels reduced my electric bill in 2022 mattbruenig.com/2023/01/0... · Posted by u/iandev
This is interesting to me, I like reading people's experiences with solar panels since I'm waiting for the price to make sense for my own home. But as someone spending about $1,000/year, it's just not there yet. My options seem to be: diy, 20-30 year roi, find more ways to use electricity, or wait.
> find more ways to use electricity
I’m not sure if you were serious with this comment, but for the sake of other readers I wanted to point out this is a legitimate strategy. Many people tend to pair solar with installing mini splits, EV chargers, or some other home upgrade that will offer value at the expense or a higher electric bill. This can make the solar investment make sense where it previously didn’t.
isanengineer commented on Solar panels reduced my electric bill in 2022 mattbruenig.com/2023/01/0... · Posted by u/iandev
I worked in the solar industry for years and this is a very good summary of the residential install process from the customer side.
I’ll also second one of the main points of the author: do NOT get a solar lease. Either finance it through a solar loan or pay cash. A good solar company will not push you into a lease. If they try, talk to someone else.
"Toyota’s first manufacturing investment in the United States came in 1972 when the company struck a deal with Atlas Fabricators, to produce truck beds in Long Beach, in an effort to avoid the 25% "chicken tax" on imported light trucks." ... "After the successes of the 1970s, and the threats of import restrictions, Toyota started making additional investments in the North American market in the 1980s. In 1981, Japan agreed to voluntary export restraints, which limited the number of vehicles the nation would send to the United States each year, leading Toyota to establish assembly plants in North America."
The book "The Machine That Changed the World", while a bit dated, gives a great overview of the history of Toyota from US automaker perspective.