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Why our economy may be headed for a decade of depression

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Re: Why our economy may be headed for a decade of depression

#111

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

PopeDotNinja wrote: post #80
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with a lot of what you're saying - assuming it's possible for someone to do it - low wages make much of that difficult. > improving your skills for unexpected job loss is a good idea This is the one I struggle with when I see it - if your industry collapses what skills are the ones you should have been working on? Software is our own special beast, but I don't know what skills in a lesser paid profession shou…

I don't think anything can prepare you for an entire, sudden collapse. If the world software biz goes full quantum programming, qubits and all, in the span of a few days, I'm screwed. But if I get canned from my job as a dev, that work I put into learning a few algorithms, scaling on AWS, and some marketable programming language will give me a fighting chance. If I were a MUMPS programmer who had never used version c…

Yeah, I think this sort of thing works for our profession, I just don't know if it helps those outside it.

Re: Why our economy may be headed for a decade of depression

#112

Post by [deleted] »

nsl73 wrote: post #18
kube-system wrote: post #4

> Because tomorrow, every piece of consumer electronics, even your lowly coffee machine or microwave or toaster, is going to have a 5G chip. That’s what the internet of things is about. If the Chinese can listen to you through your smartphone, they can listen to you through your toaster. Once we declare that 5G is going to allow China to listen to our communication, we will also have to ban all household electronics…

I can imagine a hundred products that can benefit from 5G, and I’m just one person. WiFi is great for high power products that stay within trusted networks, but not everything does stay within a trusted network. 5G can also offer a convince of being pre-configured out of the box to work.

[deleted]

Re: Why our economy may be headed for a decade of depression

#113

Post by dehrmann »

NotSammyHagar wrote: post #109
dehrmann wrote: post #64

I'd take what Roubini says with a grain of salt. Economists have predicted 10 of the last 7 recessions, and a broken clock is right twice daily. In recent history, he was a bit late to the coronavirus party, not really being on-board until late February. Preppers were all over it in January.

Preppers also predicted 10 of the last 1 world debacles too, so that's not very predictive either (year 2000 crisis, nuclear war, etc). I'm no better myself. However, in 2008 there was a giant amount of poor mortgage debt, it was a real thing. We've had near 0% interest rates in much of the western world, more in europe, wasteful debt increases and tax cuts in the us that didn't go to long term useful infrastructure.…

Never mind China's debt bomb. Their demographic bomb is bigger. It's going to look like Japan in 20 years. Between that, the possibility of parts splitting off, and the possibility of the fall of the Communist part, The "China will overtake the US" narrative is premature. If Xi can hold it together, maybe it will, but that's not a given.

Re: Why our economy may be headed for a decade of depression

#114

Post by mikem170 »

csharptwdec19 wrote: post #73
lotsofpulp wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt it. Less than 15% of adults have student loan debt, and only a small portion of those are past due. Plus young people don’t vote. The only thing that might happen, is what has happened which is to delay payments or maybe interest, but politically, student loan borrowers are not a sympathetic group to other voters. https://www.investopedia.com/student-loan-debt-2019-statisti...

Any solution to student loan debt that doesn't fix the problem of how we wound up in the situation shouldn't (and probably won't) get widespread support for at least another 5 years or so. Even as someone who's still paying off student loans, it's hard to want blanket forgiveness unless there is a system put in place to help minimize the number of people taking out loans for degrees that have a low chance of being ab…

I agree, it is completely unfair to give one group of people tens of thousands of dollars. If they are going to do that, then they should give everyone the same amount of money, even if you repaid your loans, even if you didn't take out loans!

On the one hand I worry about the moral hazard, the devaluing of the currency, and the debt being passed to future generations. On the other hand I recognize that it is almost criminal how we pressured 18 year olds into this situation.

Re: Why our economy may be headed for a decade of depression

#115

Post by NotSammyHagar »

dehrmann wrote: post #113
NotSammyHagar wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Preppers also predicted 10 of the last 1 world debacles too, so that's not very predictive either (year 2000 crisis, nuclear war, etc). I'm no better myself. However, in 2008 there was a giant amount of poor mortgage debt, it was a real thing. We've had near 0% interest rates in much of the western world, more in europe, wasteful debt increases and tax cuts in the us that didn't go to long term useful infrastructure.…

Never mind China's debt bomb. Their demographic bomb is bigger. It's going to look like Japan in 20 years. Between that, the possibility of parts splitting off, and the possibility of the fall of the Communist part, The "China will overtake the US" narrative is premature. If Xi can hold it together, maybe it will, but that's not a given.

I forgot about the age issue and also the too many males, too few females in China. The Communist part is looking pretty strong right now. I wonder, is there any reason to hope that China will eventually democratize? I see nothing like the demographic trends that is so clear. China has a lot of room to grow their economy and military before the demographic issues hit. Look at Japan, very powerful in both dimensions.

Re: Why our economy may be headed for a decade of depression

#116

Post by thephyber »

mydongle wrote: post #37
elindbe2 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about you, but I have very sensitive conversations with my self--out loud--while making toast.

I too engage in classified discussions regarding geopolitics and military operations while making toast.

I dislike this kind of thinking in security -- it is a very 19th century.

The reason we only think about state security in the context of "geopolitics and military operations" is because that's all we hear about and that's probably all that nation-states used to be able to resource.

But with cloud + machine learning + sufficient sensors, the old assumptions about resource scarcity for security intelligence collection is flipped. It used to take a few "James Bond" agents, a few "Q" engineers, and a large support staff to work one case at a time. That scarcity calculus is completely different now. Instead of "1 civilian to every 300 police officers", new data collection feels more like "300 police officers to every 1 civilian".

The only thing that stops any sufficiently large organization from collecting dossiers on every person on Earth is "complexity versus competence".

Re: Why our economy may be headed for a decade of depression

#117

Post by TeMPOraL »

true_religion wrote: post #59
Aperocky wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article just want you to believe that 'The Chinese' would want to put a microphone with 5G into your toaster. So that they could listen to YOU through the said toaster, because whatever shit you said near the toaster is obviously very important to the Chinese. Is there a more moronic idea? If someone were to listen to you, wouldn't it be easier to say... do it through the phone?

Putting a microphone in the kitchen is probably one of the best ways to spy on people in their homes. The kitchen is a natural gathering place, and spot for conversations. And if I thought someone was spying on me, I would check the inside of my toaster last.

Speaking of fun ways to hide surveillance equipment: if you're looking for hidden cameras in your home, check the lightbulbs.

Re: Why our economy may be headed for a decade of depression

#118

Post by thephyber »

true_religion wrote: post #59
Aperocky wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article just want you to believe that 'The Chinese' would want to put a microphone with 5G into your toaster. So that they could listen to YOU through the said toaster, because whatever shit you said near the toaster is obviously very important to the Chinese. Is there a more moronic idea? If someone were to listen to you, wouldn't it be easier to say... do it through the phone?

Putting a microphone in the kitchen is probably one of the best ways to spy on people in their homes. The kitchen is a natural gathering place, and spot for conversations. And if I thought someone was spying on me, I would check the inside of my toaster last.

> And if I thought someone was spying on me, I would check the inside of my toaster last.

I assume that organizations that spy for a living learn from their previous mistakes and the natural selection effect means that the obvious places to plant bugs are skipped.

Re: Why our economy may be headed for a decade of depression

#119

Post by TeMPOraL »

sandworm101 wrote: post #98
rgbrenner wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You didnt mention the biggest flaw in the argument: 5g has nothing to do with microphones.. and saying that 5g == microphones kind of says a lot about the writer's understanding of tech. Adding a microphone to a toaster would also be easy to recognize if the device were torn down. Maybe people won't do that to every toaster, but if this were widespread, a few toasters from different brands would eventually be torn do…

Unless all sorts of consumer goods start integrating a generic IOT controller, one with a 5g connection and a sensor package that includes a microphone. I could see use for this. A microphone is essentially a vibration sensor, a useful generic item in many connected home appliances. For toasters specifically, a microphone listening for a smoke alarm (code in most kitchens) would be very interesting. A toaster could h…

Put 5G connection in a SoC, and then have vendors use it under the guise of the toaster needing a CPU for timers and making perfect toast with machine learning, whatnot.

Using a microphone to listen to other devices is more of a hack that hobbyists would do to monitor some dumb devices in their custom home automation network. I'd be surprised to ever see it in an IoT device; I think it's too unreliable.

(Not to mention, a toaster listening to a fire alarm is a bit absurdish as systems architecture. But then again, I've given up on expecting the market to deliver intelligent solutions to actual problems.)

Re: Why our economy may be headed for a decade of depression

#120

Post by TeMPOraL »

thephyber wrote: post #116
mydongle wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I too engage in classified discussions regarding geopolitics and military operations while making toast.

I dislike this kind of thinking in security -- it is a very 19th century. The reason we only think about state security in the context of "geopolitics and military operations" is because that's all we hear about and that's probably all that nation-states used to be able to resource. But with cloud + machine learning + sufficient sensors, the old assumptions about resource scarcity for security intelligence collection…

Agreed. So to me, it's just a matter of time - with the data advertisers already have, it would only take getting that data in the same room with a few smart spooks, and you'd have something to act on to police thinking, if your government was so inclined.
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