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3.28M file for U.S. jobless benefits

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Re: 3.28M file for U.S. jobless benefits

#691

Post by _ea1k »

freepor wrote: post #656
_ea1k wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that is small-think. The technical solution is only part of the problem and scaling up all systems to meet the .1% case seldom makes sense. They were smart to save 5-10%.

The 0.1% case happens. And if it’s going to seriously wreck lives when it happens then you should solve for it. Does Instagram need to handle the 0.1% case? No. But the unemployment website should.

Unemployment forms being delayed by a day or two to deal with poor queuing will not "wreck lives".

Re: 3.28M file for U.S. jobless benefits

#692

Post by _ea1k »

taylodl wrote: post #541
chaz wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are the same kinds of assumptions that lead engineers to think they can build a [any product] clone in a weekend. It's unlikely that the problem or constraints are nearly as simple as one may think. Consider: single auth across all the state's services, external APIs, identity verification, address verification, employer ID verification, federal/military ID verification, income/tax verification, phone verificat…

Admittedly it's a value call. My thought is generally if it's a small incremental cost that greatly increases the robustness then you should go for it. But - sometimes the money or time just isn't there. I'm bothered more by the people not even wanting to have the discussion than by those who do a summary analysis and decide it's not worth it.

That's a fair point. My comment comes from being in too many meetings where people want Twitter scale for conference-room-sized user bases.

It sometimes borders on sealioning.

Re: 3.28M file for U.S. jobless benefits

#693

Post by jberm123 »

blackrock wrote: post #674
jberm123 wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If China becomes less dependent on exports to the US, they could dump US treasuries, which could potentially destroy the US economy & the dollar. They have the US by the balls.

Interesting theory. I suspect China will continue to do what they’ve been doing, and build out their own country. The United States was built on the foundation of transportation (roads and highways), automobiles, mortgages, and travel. These industries built up the middle class, by providing jobs for home, and profits from exports to abroad. Then came tech and the massive windfall from that. They essentially have the…

OP assumed the rest of the world will become less dependent on foreign goods, which would therefore hurt China. I pointed out China is hedged to come out on top in that scenario, not that China would necessarily push for that scenario.

Re: 3.28M file for U.S. jobless benefits

#694

Post by kirykl »

minikites wrote: post #690
kirykl wrote: post #689

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tying up $ in assets that are sitting in warehouses instead of using that $ elsewhere is a not benefit to society. One premise of lean is to match variation in demand to supply as quickly as possible, you should be calling for capacity to scale production and lower lead time, not hold inventory. You might not even hold the right inventory.

>capacity to scale production and lower lead time How has that been working out? What happens when factory employees fall ill?

What happens when your inventory runs out ?

Re: 3.28M file for U.S. jobless benefits

#695

Post by TeMPOraL »

kirykl wrote: post #689
minikites wrote: post #685

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're saying companies exist to make money but an isolated factoid like that doesn't make for a productive discussion. Lean manufacturing may be good for individual corporations but it's clearly bad for society and society needs to continue existing for corporations to exist.

Tying up $ in assets that are sitting in warehouses instead of using that $ elsewhere is a not benefit to society. One premise of lean is to match variation in demand to supply as quickly as possible, you should be calling for capacity to scale production and lower lead time, not hold inventory. You might not even hold the right inventory.

> Tying up $ in assets that are sitting in warehouses instead of using that $ elsewhere is a not benefit to society

As we can clearly see now.

> One premise of lean is to match variation in demand to supply as quickly as possible

This is done at a cost of making the whole system less resilient against demand spikes and in-chain disruptions. A perfectly lean system would be following predicted demand precisely, maximizing efficiency at each stage, and as a result break down as soon as anything in the chain changes by even most tiny amount.

I'm a layman in supply chain space, but my observation is that the risk horizons on the market are too small - anything that happens less frequently than once every few quarters may as well not exist. So throw in a big enough wrench, and everything is in shambles for way longer than the existence of initial cause (see the so-called "bullwhip effect", or as it's known in control theory, a positive feedback loop making the system oscillating and unstable). It could've been helped if there was enough buffer in the system to allow time for expanding manufacturing capacity.

As for what to do with different kinds of inventory, two observation. One, the earlier you are in the manufacturing process, the more potential buyers for your product you'll have - so it's that less risky to keep inventory. It's probably not worth it to stock too much of front left doors to 2020 BMWs, but a sheet metal wholesaler doesn't have to run lean and choke everyone downstream when the foundries or miners get disrupted by an epidemic. Two, for some stuff it's really the role of the government to keep buffers. PPE and food would be this. Imagine if any of the Western countries actually had a proper (Cold War style) stock of PPE for a pandemic, and food for everyone for a year. There wouldn't be any worry about staple shortages or hemorrhaging medical staff. There wouldn't be a problem with PPE manufacturers expanding capacity either, as the government could just buy enough goods to fill in the entire buffer capacity they plan on depleting - which would give the manufacturers a chance to recoup their investment in meeting a temporary demand surge.

Bottomline: not saying that fat is good, but I think there's such a thing as being too lean, and that is the problem we're having.

Re: 3.28M file for U.S. jobless benefits

#696

Post by TeMPOraL »

kirykl wrote: post #694
minikites wrote: post #690

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>capacity to scale production and lower lead time How has that been working out? What happens when factory employees fall ill?

What happens when your inventory runs out ?

Potentially the same problem, except you shift it forward in time. So perhaps the factory staff can recover and get back to work before the buffer runs out. Or competitors can ramp up production in time to compensate. Point is, a buffer is adding inertia into the system, an integrating block, which is often a good thing, as it eats oscillations. It's essentially the same reason you put capacitors next to the power supply in electronics - they eat voltage spikes, preventing your device from shutting off just because it briefly drew more power.

Re: 3.28M file for U.S. jobless benefits

#697

Post by pc86 »

cko wrote: post #668
jachee wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good. Screw the landlords. Let them liquidate and bring the market back down to earth a bit.

Do landlords drive up prices? I know for residential properties, homeowners are willing to pay way higher prices than what makes sense for landlords. I don't understand the vitriol towards landlords. Do people get angry at the bank for lending money so they can buy a house?

> I don't understand the vitriol towards landlords.

It's because real estate is - the vast majority of time - a tried and true way to accrue wealth, and it takes a least some measure of wealth (or a lot of personal risk) to get into it. People get angry when they see folks they think of as "less deserving" with money, and literally the only thing you need to get into real estate is money. So there are a lot of "dumb" people doing it, making a lot of money, seemingly for no reason other than they own the right building.

I've dealt with commercial landlords before and they can be ruthless. As a commercial tenant, you're most likely paying everything. Your rent (with yearly increases well beyond inflation), pro rata insurance, pro rata real estate and school taxes, common area maintenance (CAM) fees that can be thousands a month between all tenants for snow to get plowed ten times a year and the grass to get mowed.

If you're a low margin business it's easy to look at half your revenue leaving the door to your landlord who (in your eyes) has zero risk and provides no value and get angry. But I owned a brick and mortar business for 4 years and had 3 landlords in that time because they kept going bankrupt. So there's definitely some risk associated with it.

Re: 3.28M file for U.S. jobless benefits

#698

Post by pc86 »

blackrock wrote: post #671
cko wrote: post #668

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do landlords drive up prices? I know for residential properties, homeowners are willing to pay way higher prices than what makes sense for landlords. I don't understand the vitriol towards landlords. Do people get angry at the bank for lending money so they can buy a house?

Most landlords raised rents just because they could. They were profitable where they were, but since the next guy raised his rents, then they jacked up their own rents. This is what makes people angry at landlords. And often times, your rent increased, but your pay didn’t, so you get squeezed both ways.

This is literally basic Econ 101.

Commercial leases have rent increases built into them that are agreed to by all parties. Nobody is getting a surprise by their rent going up, and they're typically negotiated and signed close to a year before becoming effective. If the rent is too much, you can move your business or find ways to grow your revenue. If there's nothing cheaper, then that's what the market has decide a square foot of commercial real estate in your area is worth. If your business doesn't support that, the market doesn't want your business.

We tell contract developers all the time "you need to charge more!" and "charge what you're worth!" but the minute someone does it to us we scream about how unfair it is and how the system is broken. I'm sure the guy selling widgets who has his WordPress guy charging him $125/hr thinks that's unfair, too. And I say that as someone who has been both the widget salesman and the $125/hr WordPress dev.

Re: 3.28M file for U.S. jobless benefits

#699

Post by joquarky »

ardy42 wrote: post #491
x0x0 wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that backend pain shouldn't stop you from accepting it on the front end and putting it into a queue. Making the problem of getting the application through backend systems the states' to deal with, not the applicants'.

> The point is that backend pain shouldn't stop you from accepting it on the front end and putting it into a queue. What if the backend rejects the form? The user's already moved on before their form made it through the queue. So then you're stuck re-implementing all the validations the backend needs in order to give the user feedback (which you may not even be able to do) or trying to get the user to come back later…

Put it in a workflow where a form is filled out until it reaches a point where the back-end needs to do some heavy lifting, queue the form for processing, and then notify the user to continue to the next form in the workflow.

Re: 3.28M file for U.S. jobless benefits

#700

Post by vkou »

Izkata wrote: post #680
vkou wrote: post #651

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They were saying everything was okay and people-people transmission is low. For the first two weeks of January. When they got to the point of locking down an entire city, it became pretty clear to everyone that it was a serious situation. We looked at that, and did... Nothing.

The first lockdown in Italy was Feb 21. Trump had alread convened a task force to investigate and handle the spread of the virus on Jan 29, and was later called racist for the travel restrictions placed on people coming from China on Jan 31. It's apparently been memory-holed, but during this period it was the US media calling it "no worse than the flu", not the other way around.

And what did that task force accomplish?

* Shipping a laughably insufficient number of test kits that didn't work, while banning private labs from developing their own tests. We still have a crippling test kit shortage.

* Asking people traveling from China to self-quarantine, and not following up.

* No stockpiles of necessary medical supplies.

Getting called names has never stopped him from rolling out bad policy in the past. I don't see why it can be credited for stopping him from rolling out good policy this time.

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