Posts by Triggerfish 2452 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Feb 2010
One does not simply walk into Moscow.
A few people have tried it, and its not always gone well, and that was before we had WMD to add into the fray.
Not saying there is an easy solution, but a hot war between superpowers at that level risks becoming buckets of sunshine hot.
Recently reread Snowcrash (which was apparently a FB management must read at some point), and thinking of that and other authors who works touch on VR and cyberspace.
I realised none of them talk about the biggest problem when creating VR, its not the massive computing power, or making sure avatars don't break into corporations and stuff.
It's perverts.
"I am pointing out the bald fact that participation in the initial procurement programme, and its successors was, and is, optional for individual member states."
In theory with zero demonstration in practice.
"Hungary's opting-out demonstrates this, and demonstrates that the ability to not participate was not a benefit of Brexit."
Hungary didnt opt out of the initial phase. They complained the EU was slow then opted out.
So they were allowed to opt out then? How does this reconcile with zero demonstration?
To some degree I am also of the opinion its up to us. If there is no demand from consumers there is no reason to stock a supply, and if the trigger for no demand is: Where was this manufactured? Or how was it manufactured? Then there is no reason to stock the goods.
As much as we talk about companies showing questionable ethics by worrying about their bottom line, we also enable it if we do not become more discerning ethical shoppers. (I'll admit this is not always easy).
Quite interestingly at the moment the gov has been doing a big push on rejuvenating Town Centres (lots of funding out, reclaim high streets etc). If office space drops and people end up staying in these Towns more to work, then this could be a big thing that helps.
Just a pure throwing out there bullshit level hypothesis,
If you start taking all the towns that became run down because of no work and hard commutes, and they become more attractive (i.e rejuvenate everything, schools, shops, infrastructure), and enough people started taking up the thought they ca now work from home and they'd rather raise their kids in a small nice Town than say centre of a London suburb that isn't so nice. You might get people migrating back out of cities like a reverse industrial revolution.
@ DrSyntax
I agree, all those old factory and industrial buildings its just ripe for repurposing them into a more modern usage.
It could be interesting to see what happens land values wise in the next few years. I think there's a possibly a tipping point or ratio that may emerge, where land that might be considered prime now, such retail space for convenience supermarkets as right near a train station in a city, drops in value depending on commuter usage vs retail space for the same in smaller towns. Office space in cities may go the same way. (Not saying it's going to crash completely but I think it's not going to be as valued for sure).
@Calverhouse
Depending on hows its done, it could actually be made somewhat of a boon for nature. If you take a brownfield site and you are say using a mill, yeah that gets done up and also the car park, but there is on some of those sites a fair bit of just empty space also,if planning is done right you turn that into a nature space, there's probably no reason to build extra buildings. If it's redeveloped for housing it's usually maximize all available sqm of land space and best you get is a thin strip of grass.
i disagree there, some people definitely get more from working together and work better doing so. Our office is sort of split with some of us being happy to work fully remote and others finding they get better work done as a team across a table. But yeah some people as well just don't have the luxury of an actual workspace at home and for them an office is probably essential to being able to work comfortably also.
The idea of hotdesking though is something you may start seeing changing a bit. As someone who has top look into these sort of developments, there is a few property developers looking at the workspace solutions being not the traditional areas (for example a WeWork in the middle of a city prime location) but instead in more suburban areas so as to mean there is no commute, and a few mixed usage building and residential developers starting to think of putting the same in their new developments.
Hybrid WFH is probably going to be the prevailing model for most companies though IMO.
i was on a webinar a year or two ago, with some big name companies talking about doing business in China, and the conversation about holding the passwords to systems came up, and that it was responsibility of employees there to make sure they were not handed over, which lead to the RIPA act and what is China's version of it and what risk there is to employees.
The main gist I got was well it's not ideal, but were not going to be the people on that front line.
You couldn't pay me enough.
COVID-19 isn't the big one, though, it's just a wake-up call.
When you look at something like SARS, with an estimated fatality rate of around 14%, and in over 64s at 50%, that's really scary numbers. SARs was prevented by fast action in the large part and some luck by a sharp eyed doctor. But it pretty much ended up in Hanoi with a sealed hospital and it was a grim story
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2003/05/estimates-sars-death-rates-revised-upward
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Chronology-of-the-outbreak-of-SARS-in-Hanoi-French-Hospital-HFH-Vietnam_tbl4_7729526
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2003/05/05/vietnam-took-lead-in-containing-sars/b9b97e91-b325-42f9-98ef-e23da9f257a0/
I also think nowadays with modern tech being a surveillance state is easy really, we all carry phones and it's easy enough for authorities to leverage that, facial recognition, card spending, habits and so on, to build a pretty good surveillance picture if they wanted to (and the laws allowed). Going off grid is hard.
With current technology I think it's definitely becoming, how much do you trust your government? Not do they have the capability.
https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/clients/summary?cycle=2019&id=D000033563
Just the declared lobbying, apparently you can have lobbyist that don't technically fall under the definition so that's cool, just like brown envelopes don't I guess.
I've recently gone through various reports such as Mckinsey, PWC and so on doing a bit of research into this. A lot of them point to there being a bit of a disconnect between workers and CEO level for WFH.
It's worth saying there are some reasons to have people in an office at times. But not all the time, a hybrid WFH is probably going to be the most common model IMO.
It may not be easy for all companies to offshore people, you start taking on tax liabilities etc from running foreign offices, yes you can hire companies aboard that do the work - like call centres and tech support companies do now. But the average member of office staff or admin may be more work than its worth for many smaller companies.
I'm just curious but if they really want to be sovereign citizens, then why not? They can be if they like, should be fun playing you and whose army considering they have now tried to seize Edinburgh castle, 20 idiots vs the Black Watch should be fun.
We can send the army round and plant flags in their gardens, go all colonial on them.
I often look up tech, suprsing how many in house documents etc end up being indexed, if not on the companies own website often on someone else's it has been shared with. I had to backtrack who made some rebadged tech once (ended up being some company on China) , found it because one company who had rebranded hadn't changed some info on their page and it was displaying in Chinese at the top.
Slack web security would not be a suprise.
This may give you a better idea of the numbers and it may just be three workshops. To late here to be bothered to dig much sorry.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-13/ho-chi-minh-city-tells-samsung-to-suspend-factory-amid-outbreak
As for the quaranting on site, this is one of the things they do here. Better they stay in site than travel out and spread the virus more is the theory.
This is sort of one of the things they will do here even to blocking off cities and provinces. But at City level I have seen it as well with a case cropping up a few km away (a few waves back as well) in Hanoi, and the whole area being closed off. No one out, food delivered, gov provides meals as well, medical staff on call. The speed they will lockdown a place at risk can be fast (whole city basically shut off in day fast).
Vaccine availability here is low still, I'd be surprised if many had been vaccinated.
This is what I thought, my muscle memory is perfectly ok having learned normal key layout, and its frustrating enough swapping between US and UK keyboard layouts. I don't want to confuse the issue by having one special no standard key layout on one device for no particular good reason.
Most of the news I see for VN living here, seems to be more based around getting the Astra Zeneca and Pfizer, Sputnik they are building a factory for apparently. They are also in stage 3 trials of their own.
I think they are getting as many as they can really, the chances of getting them originally was harder because most G8 countries had a priority to them, (TBF also most chucked in a lot of money for research into them).
But this is the biggest outbreak here I think, and they will do things like quarantine a whole factory, in fact there's an image of them setting out tents in one place cos the workers are now quarantined, and someone I know ended up quarantined on the farm they worked at for a few months. Right now I think they are really trying to keep those places going because its going to hit the factory workers hard.
I do think in some way this may have helped with the public. SARs was very remote to people living in the UK. meanwhile this played out on the public consciousness in Vietnam.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2003/05/05/vietnam-took-lead-in-containing-sars/b9b97e91-b325-42f9-98ef-e23da9f257a0/
The words China and Virus, absolutely got peoples ears here pricked up from day one, people already started taking precautions as soon as those words hit the news and it just became a thing that you wear masks and wash hands even before it was official. People were worried.
I believe at the time the gov vowed never to risk something like that getting in the wild again, and pretty much said at the beginning of COVID we'd rather shut down now and have a small mistake than have a disaster.
Public attitude IMO has been a major factor in shutting down the spread. So saying there must have been a point we could have thought people should have been getting a clue also when we saw it hitting other countries.
As someone who had a choice to make of whether to stay in Vietnam, or return to the UK. Never had my judgement been so wrong on who would handle it so well. I stayed in Vietnam because I had elderly parents and coming through every airport seemed a bad idea, I thought better I ride it out in Vietnam, I mean standard hospitals here are scary (and private hospitals few), its still to some degree a developing country, cleanliness etc not as much. I expected it to be the worst hit vs somewhere like the UK.
Instead
Politicians seemed only to be giving a shit about their shareholders and party contributors staying open.
People were dropping like flies in Italy, I had UK colleagues still discussing holidays in Spain and the Cheltenham festival was on, there was discussion about keeping music festivals going. I had American colleagues actually tell me as Americans it took their freedom away to wear a mask while they sat in lockdown that weekend, and I went to bars and hit the countryside for a jolly.
I've genuinely sat here last year and been amazed at the batshit craziness that seems to have been the mark of countries outside of APAC response.
Was just about to offer same thoughts, as long as to some degree the money difference isn't too much and you can afford to live on it. There is a lot of value in time and mental health. I'd rather get less and have more time than be stuck in an office doing extra hrs each day, bad managers, workmates, stress because that's the culture there.
Grab actually seems quite suited to SEA in a way, the usefulness of a motorcycle driver you can send to pick up anything, and the amount of motorcycle taxis out here (and maybe a bit of the fact you see the fee since gypsy cabs, overcharging etc is quite common on some places) , it's pretty much the default choice for anyone here, even to the point of getting a grab even on a street there is taxis.
I'm not sure it will work as easily in somewhere like the USA though.
Agreed here I actually remember the first mobile phones and they were hugely expensive and impractical.
I could see gamers wanting it, and content consumption, especially where I am in SEA, most people here tend to use their mobiles for those very things over laptops. But it will be a long time before the price drops enough to actually match the average pocket in SEA from the looks of things.
Imagine the situation in reverse. If a bunch of hedgies piled in to drive the price of an ailing company to a clearly artificial level at the expense of a bunch of small time day traders and retail trend followers, prosecutions for market manipulation would follow.
If you had stopped there it would have been a classic example of poes law.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
