bluemellophone

bluemellophone , 10 days ago

This.

You’d be surprised how much of a place’s physical infrastructure depends on a physical line. Automated fire alerts for high rises, security alarms, remote access for gates and doors, backup phone connections. A lot of this still uses old physical lines because it is easy to fix and highly reliable.

Now consider the infrastructure needed for specialized services like EMS, police, secure and classified buildings, federal agencies, embassies, smart traffic signals. Shutting down a network like that has massive implications for anything in society that relies on it, which is well beyond your cell phone plan.

bluemellophone , 2 months ago

$350k includes the salary but also all of the health insurance benefits, taxes, stock options, office space and perks, compute hardware, software services… the works. An employer will have an averaged overhead factor for their skilled workforce, which can be anywhere between 1.5 and 2.5 typically. A worker with an annual pre-tax salary of $140k could cost Google $350k in overall expenses per year. Labor is expensive.

Also, these people weren’t just making simple Python scripts. Most of them were contributing core functionality into Python itself and managing the internal Python version and the ecosystem of Google software stacks that depend on it.

bluemellophone , 2 months ago

Yes, pretty sure on both accounts.

bluemellophone , 3 months ago

That’s a pretty big decision for a 22 year old. I understand your point about it feeling condescending, but I can’t help but feel like the doctor was doing you a massive favor. It may have been an inconvenience but that’s better than the chance of a lifetime of regret.

bluemellophone , 5 months ago (edited 5 months ago)

The Chevy Volt PHEV was an absolutely fantastic car, I was very sad the day I sold it and even more sad when GM said they were discontinuing the line. Whoever brings a PHEV truck to the market with 100 miles of all-EV range, I’ll buy it day one.

bluemellophone , 5 months ago

Nah, they will simply sell the planes to other markets. I’m sure there are plenty of non-US airlines willing to gobble up planes at a discount. The pundit and lobby machine would get engaged and magically there would be a big industry bailout to cover the losses.