US companies hit by 'colossal' cyber-attack

It's not as good as it once was, and purchasing power is slowly but certainly going down. Everything is tightening up. Switzerland is extremely integrated into the western money circuits. If it goes to shit in the US, it'll follow suit at a much slower pace.

However, Eurasia is replete with countries which try to imitate Western European successes by applying the same receppies. If you can swing it, the purchasing power is 3-5 times larger on the same net income, and you don't have pesky invasions of your private sphere at each corner.

Also, as a Swiss, I can tell you that past the superficial welcome, we're a mountain people. We're really not as warm as others peoples. Over time, depending on your character, it may accrues and impact quality of life.

We are also very disciplined in a lot of aspects of life, even outside work. That is a problem for some over time.

But if your character fits, you'll have a blast.

I live in Eastern Europe. A local city with a population of 300-400k was hit with a near total ransomware attack. The hackers asked for 400 bitcoin.

The mayor answered to them on TV "You fools, we still do most things on paper here ! We'll just spend the week-end installing windows and word and F** Y* !!!"

I sometime find wisdom in the approach from olden times :-)

Do you think the abuses are any less rampant when power is privatized? The main problem that would be solved by a government institution is a pathway for transparency and citizen recourse against questionable practices. It's admittedly not a lot of transparency or accountability but it can be far more than currently exists.

People talk about government corruption and sure, there's lots of it, but there's just as much if not more private corruption hidden behind privacy protection veils. At the very least, there is some degree of transparency with the government and we can in theory hold them accountable with explicit rights granted to us (more-so than private institutions).

I cannot hold these private institutions that have gamed the system so far they're beyond my grasp accountable for their actions. Ill start a credit rating agency tomorrow and compete with Equifax, Transunion, and Experian so through market forces of competition I can fix these problems! Consumers and market forces will fix these problems! Yea, right, give me a break.

This whole government bad, private good, anti-communism/socialism/whatever argument has grown tiring because we're at a point now where you can chuck private institutions in the same gutter of corruption as different systems of government. We played that fiddle and gave private institutions the benefit and here we are, with rampant corruption in concentrated pockets of business as well, governing our daily lives with little oversight or means of recourse beyond avoiding the system or hoping some competitor can actually change things.

Privatization works well when you can actually hold institutions accountable, when there are competitors that actually compete and give consumers the option to vote with their wallets. When that doesn't exist, it's far worse than a US government agency managing it. It might be cheaper but there's probably a good undesirable reason it's cheaper than a public institution that isn't related to poor management and basic optimization practices to improve efficiency. Those efficiency gains probably exist because the institution is doing something it shouldn't be doing, focusing on profit margins over implications on the consumer.

1) How secure is the software? Where are the audits?

2) If your software compromises my business, how much of the losses I incur as a result will you cover?

It doesn’t tell me whether they understand how it all works together, or if they understand the organization’s environment, or if they are a good worker.

I don’t hold it against people who fail (I’ve seen good people fail the test) or who don’t have it - I just have to ask a few more probing questions to ensure they know the tech I’m discussing. But I don’t outright ask if someone is a CISSP, so typically I ask the clarifying questions anyway so our understanding of the problem is accurate and aligned.

And cert or not, I’m still more interested in whether you know what you’re doing than what you put on your resume.