Posts by HungryMan

What's a COVID-19 outbreak? Amazon gets all Trumpy over Alabama warehouse workers' mail-in vote to form a union

Unions vs companies is really just fire vs frying pan

I have had the displeasure of being in a union while working my way through collage. the Culinary Workers Union is one of the most corrupt organizations I have ever seen. there were bribes for politicians, intimidation of workers who don't want to vote in a union, followed by further intimidation of workers who did not want to join the union once it was voted in, and all kinds of cronyisms. for the 1930-1950s Unions used to be for making work places safe, and better pay and benefits for the workers, now it has become about paying union dues. nothing else matters. its all about the cash. it was not about making a better life for workers it is now all about making money that is then given to political causes that were not anywhere near related to making life better for employees. usually for team blue jackass. Government organizations like MSHA and OSHA now watch the health and safety, but could care less about how employees are compensated. also unions have driven many companies out of business by refusing to negotiate on pay packages or labor reductions when times get tough. which is why union membership in the US has dropped from around 30% to less that 7% since the 70s.

Don't get me wrong. I am not totally anti union, companies like amazon would pay everyone minimum wage if they could get away with it. also in certain industries, union labor is better. Examples are the construction industry unions and machinists unions. those kinds of unions usually require a certain level of competency to meet certain pay grades, example apprentice or journeyman electricians. they also usually have a higher standard of work quality in my experience of dealing with both union and non union electricians. personally I would want union labor performing any maintenance of aircraft I fly on, because you know those companies will cheapen it because it is less expensive to pay off lawsuits and lost aircraft than to pay for competent labor with good pay and benefits. an example of this is the GM bean counters deciding it was cheaper to pay off lawsuits for dead people, than to pay 50 cents more for a spring in an ignition lock. air lines would do the same thing given to opportunity. these companies usually donate to team fat red elephant.

bottom line is you will either take the shaft form the company or you will take the shaft from the union. the difference is the union shaft has barbs on it, so once it is in, you will never get it out.

That was quick: Seattle rushes to kill tax that would mildly inconvenience Amazon

the problem is also weather related. most west coast cities have relatively mild climates. combined that with liberal governments in the big cities where its easy to get a hand out and you have a recipe for homelessness. You don't see these problems in places like Salt Lake City, Las Vegas, Fargo or Phoenix. Fargo and Salt Lake have real winters where it gets cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey and Las Vegas and Phoenix have summers so hot you can fry an egg on the sidewalk. they still have some homelessness problems but nothing like what you see in in places like Portland, LA, Seattle, of San Francisco. the other big part of the problem is the government hand outs that are support by the libs. when you take money out of working peoples pockets and give it to non working people, you end up with a whole lot of people that don't want to work and have no incentive to work. back in the late 20's and 30's during the great depression, people knew that they could not make a living where they were and picked up and moved on to where they could find a job and could support themselves. that's how California got most of its population. there was no government handout. if necessity was the mother of invention, then starvation was the father. I am not against social program for those that need it like the sick and the crippled and the old. but I have a real hard time seeing it go to able bodied people that just want to hang out on the sidewalk all day and get stoned rather than work. and that is what you have in Seattle and other west coast cities and the local governments allow it.

Tesla undecimates its workforce but Elon insists everything's absolutely fine

I personally love electric cars, however the problem with electric cars has always been the capacity of the batteries and the speed at which they recharge. electric cars first came about around 1884, shortly after Karl Benz invented what we consider the first car. one of my favorites is the Baker Electric. Jay Leno has a 1909 model that is Absolutely spectacular. however early electric cars suffered from the same things that hamper todays electric cars. range and recharge time. while tesla and others have made great strides, it still takes hours to recharge them even with a tesla super charger and the range is still to low for any thing but day to day city use. they are very impractical for long distance trips. In order to compete with gas/diesel powered cars in the US market, they need to have a range of around 350-400 mile and recharge to 95% in less than 15 minutes, they also to be able recharge at 95% of the refueling stations, in every city and in every state and not just a designated recharge locations. they also need standardization on charging connector so any electric car can use any changer. with a gas or diesel car I can pull in to any station and refuel. Tesla has made incredible progress in all these areas except for the recharge rate of the battery and connector standardization. they should really open source the connector to other manufactures, that way more refueling stations would be inclined to install one and change the driver by the amount of energy they use to refill the battery. the speed of the recharge is also needed. you can have someone sitting around for hours with their car plugged it waiting for it to recharge.

Slashing regulations literally more important than saving American lives to Donald Trump

Re: All vehicles within 4 years?

"Yeah, I've always wondered about this vehicle to vehicle communications. Perfect "encrypted, authenticated , unjammable and unspoofable" is impossible at consumer cost. Can an asshole with a button make every listening car in range panic brake?"

I don't even need to hack the system or make a button to do that. all I have to do is slam on the breaks of my own car for no reason at all, and V2V will make all the other cars around me panic break as well. not to mention if it can send data out it has to be able to receive data as well. hackers have already proved they could take control of Jeep Cherokees with their built in wifi. I would be more worried about some asshole script kiddies playing real life bumper cars.

If you want to get real tinfoil hat, there is the always possibility of the government taking control of you vehicle. behind on you taxes, child support, alimony, any other ridiculous government fee and boom, no more driving for you. "because driving is a privilege and not a right" so there for we can drop the hammer on you for any reason we want. all the while forgetting that a lot of people depend on being able to drive to their jobs and to make a living to pay these bills.

Behold, says robo-mall-cop maker: Our crime-busting dune buggy packed with spy gear

I am seeing a lot of potential here...

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/10/01/bofh_2010_episode_11/

Congress battles Silicon Valley over upcoming US sex trafficking law

this cant ber serious...

we are dealing with US senators here, there is no one better qualified at picking up hookers on the internet than members of congress. Its like milk and cookies, they just go together. I cant count the number of politicians that have had sex scandals in the last 40 years. I am just surprised the other senators have not stuck a knife in this guys back yet. Et tu Rob Portman?

Windows 10 pain: Reg man has 75 per cent upgrade failure rate

I have only had one failure

I have done a lost of windows 10 upgrades this last year. so far only 1 failure, but it really was not a failure as a much as is was driver issue with a Dell Latitude D510 with a NVidia graphics chip. this is a 12 year old laptop. the upgrade did completed successfully, but had problems when viewing images in a google or Bing search. IE, Edge and even Chrome would crash. I talked with MS support and it is a known issue with the video card drives on that model. since it is older, Dell/Nvidia are not going to make a new driver for it. so we reverted back to windows 7 using the rollback feature which worked perfectly. I was really impressed with the fact it rolled back with out issues.

Post-pub nosh neckfiller: Tortilla de patatas

spanish omelet.

I worked as a line cook in a fancy restaurant while I was putting my self through collage. we used to

make a version of this on Sunday morning after a very long night of drinking.

I cooked the onions and potatoes is duck fat instead of olive oil, using just enough to fry them, not boil it in oil. and no need to strain them. duck fat is the only thing I know better then lard. the duck fat is absorbed in to the eggs. I used to throw in a little bit of chopped spicy hot Italian capicolla. seasoned with salt and fine ground white pepper.

I might have to fire up the old way-back machine tonight, have a few beers and a Spanish Omelet.