HN user
But the problem for El Salvador is not the technology of monetary systems
I do believe that the monetary system IS the problem since El Salvador is dollarized and is subject to a foreign central bank antics while having no say in the matter. Having their own would be marginally better perhaps but IMO bitcoin is a much better solution.
I'm afraid that if I try to retort to each point we may end up talking past each other.
But I will say this, I think that your assumption in point 1 is wrong. I think that the mismanagement of the financial system worldwide has proven that there is no country currency invulnerable to manipulation.
Jeff Booth talks about this towards the end of this interview which is great in it's entirety IMO.
How Inflation Is Stealing Your Wealth | Jeff Booth | Pomp Podcast #572 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuCqFjU9Wi4
El Salvador receives millions of dollars in aid from the US.
This has been true for decades. Not anymore. A couple of weeks back the US gov said that it would stop all USAID funding and give it instead to ONGs in El Salvador which are basically the opposition or anti-Bukele.
I assume that there are other ways that the US gov sends "aid" but I'm sure these will also stop soon enough.
Yes, and this is exactly what Jeff Booth explains in this podcast way better that I ever could:
How Inflation Is Stealing Your Wealth | Jeff Booth | Pomp Podcast #572 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuCqFjU9Wi4
As a Salvadoran living abroad but keeping an eye on politics there, I feel the need to comment given the amount of skepticism shown here, which is understandable given the history.
I believe that what the president, Nayib Bukele, and his team have done is monumental. The reason is that I also believe that the financial system crashed back in 2008 and has been kept alive by central banks worldwide. Last summer we saw how Lebanon banks reneged to pay back their customers their holdings in USD. This seems to be increasing. The thirst for USD around the world is increasing and all the so called printing by the FED is not getting to the other countries and international companies fast enough. El Salvador is in a though position since it does not control its main currency. The other one, the Colón, while still legal tender is for all practical purposes unusable. It would take too long to grow the economy enough for it to be valued appropriately against the USD. Mandating BTC as legal tender is an awesome move. To me the most important benefit is that the 70% of the population which was excluded from banking and relegated to use physical currency will now be included. If the economy is an engine and money is the oil, El Salvador, which had only some drops of oil, will now get a complete oil change with synthetic on top of that. Lets remember that the law obligates the government to instruct all citizens on the use of the technology and to provide the means if necessary. This means that the government now has to provide connectivity to all citizens and teach them. Nayib has shown that he’s up to the task. For example, El Salvador is providing every child in the public school system with a laptop and free internet connectivity.
So I think this is beyond if BTC goes up to 200k. It doesn’t matter. If it goes back to 10k is OK too. What matters is that every citizen will now be included as equal in this new financial system.
* Order military lockdowns in cities
Using the military was normalized be previous governments from the left and the right. Nothing new in using them for security purposes. And lockdowns are being performed worldwide, so from a local perspective nothing abnormal in using the military for lockdown purposes.
* Defect blame to all political opponents
Which blame? Keeping derelict infrastructure such as the potable water plant that didn't receive a repair for 30 years hoping that it will break down in order to pass laws to privatize access to water? A non-existing health care system for the most Salvadorans? On and on...
* Threaten to shutdown the largest bank and mobile phone operator
The president used his power to keep these and other corporations in check since these were ignoring the orders of not seizing the stipend provided by the gov to the poorest. At least one bank was seizing this in "fees" and debt collection. As for the mobile company, there were people reporting that one company was cutting service to people for non-payment even though these have been prohibited by the gov to do so for a few months therefore illegal.
* Bot networks that attack any dissenting view
This is a tired argument that has been shown to be false time and time again. The popularity of the president, Nayib Bukele, is such that 98% of the population have a positive image of the president and 97% approve his handling of the current virus crisis. There is enough people that approve his actions that anyone emotionally invested in the opposite cannot handle the reaction of others specially when any comments that they bring are at best uninformed, at worst lies. I know, these are high numbers; he's that good.
* A government official publicly using the twitter api to identify tweets from the opposition
So, the gov is investigating public information about posts with unverifiable data aimed to discredit and possible incite violence against the president's family. What's wrong with that?
* Order the military and police to use lethal force if someone does not comply.
Comply to what? To break lockdown? Nope. Use lethal force when engaged with violent life-threatening forces, which in El Salvador are gangs backed by drug cartels, corrupt business man, and prominent politicians from left and right protected by immunity because they are currently serving. Yes, that's right, current serving politicians from both left and right have been recorded providing funds to these gangs.
We've had somewhat working separation of powers.
What? I guess you're talking about the president stating that he will use his constitutional powers to enforce any measure deemed necessary to protect lives. This is an argument used by his discredited opponents because they still control the judicial and legislative bodies. Before Bukele, the presidency danced to the same sick music that has kept this little country poor where both left and right were attached to the hip.
It is terrible to see my country turning into an autocratic rule, and how the government is misusing Twitter to make that happen :/
It brings hope to see a small country that has been ruled by a primitive dishonest bi-partisan mafia to have at last a glimmer of hope for a better future in this time of incertitude.
[1] Survery result in Spanish PDF
https://www.cidgallup.com/uploads/publication/publication_fi...
Regarding you feeling that this is engineered, the following could be a reason why if valid:
The dual economy didn’t happen overnight, says Temin. The story started just a couple of years after the ’67 Summer of Love. Around 1970, the productivity of workers began to get divided from their wages. Corporate attorney and later Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell galvanized the business community to lobby vigorously for its interests. Johnson’s War on Poverty was replaced by Nixon’s War on Drugs, which sectioned off many members of the low-wage sector, disproportionately black, into prisons. Politicians increasingly influenced by the FTE sector turned from public-spirited universalism to free-market individualism. As money-driven politics accelerated (a phenomenon explained by the Investment Theory of Politics, as Temin explains), leaders of the FTE sector became increasingly emboldened to ignore the needs of members of the low-wage sector, or even to actively work against them.
America’s underlying racism has a continuing distorting impact. A majority of the low-wage sector is white, with blacks and Latinos making up the other part, but politicians learned to talk as if the low-wage sector is mostly black because it allowed them to appeal to racial prejudice, which is useful in maintaining support for the structure of the dual economy — and hurting everyone in the low-wage sector. Temin notes that “the desire to preserve the inferior status of blacks has motivated policies against all members of the low-wage sector.”
America is Regressing into a Developing Nation for Most People
https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/america-is-r...
"The most ominous danger we face does not come from the eradication of free speech through the obliteration of net neutrality or through Google algorithms that steer people away from dissident, left-wing, progressive or anti-war sites. It does not come from a tax bill that abandons all pretense of fiscal responsibility to enrich corporations and oligarchs and prepares the way to dismantle programs such as Social Security. It does not come from the opening of public land to the mining and fossil fuel industry, the acceleration of ecocide by demolishing environmental regulations, or the destruction of public education. It does not come from the squandering of federal dollars on a bloated military as the country collapses or the use of the systems of domestic security to criminalize dissent. The most ominous danger we face comes from the marginalization and destruction of institutions, including the courts, academia, legislative bodies, cultural organizations and the press, that once ensured that civil discourse was rooted in reality and fact, helped us distinguish lies from truth and facilitated justice."
The Permanent Lie, Our Deadliest Threat https://www.truthdig.com/articles/permanent-lie-deadliest-th...
This seems to me a good and complete answer as to why everything seems so hard. It's because everything that occurring is based on the "permanent" lie. The powers that be, be the deep state or whatever, cannot acknowledge facts or reality because it will loose its power. The sad part is that I think we also live in our own permanent lie in order not to see the homeless on the sidewalk, acknowledge the cow/chicken/etc raised in factory farming, the use of tax dollars to overthrow governments and kill untold number of people around the world, etc. Lots of issues that I think we need to tackle personally if we want society to do it too.
So what is your permanent lie?
MarketWatch has an infographic that shows the relative sizes. It's originally from 2015 but it has as been updated for 2017.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-is-how-much-money-exi...
... the survey respondents didn’t necessarily perceive every non-euphoric event as negative. In fact [the study authors] deliberately avoided the word “adverse” in their study for this reason. Instead, they chose “challenging,” which better captured the meditators’ varied interpretations of their experiences.
I've meditated and attended multiple 10 day meditation retreats and I can attest that yes there are challenging moments and I have yet to experience an "adverse" event.
I would not say that meditation has a dark side. I would say that the meditators' minds are being stressed and challenged to the point where these react with such a force for which they were unprepared due to many reasons such as environment, emotional state, health issues, memories, etc. Like any activity, your mileage may vary.
I personally like to make that analogy of the mind to an OS which is trying to help you, an organism living in a giving environment, to identify and classify the stimuli it receives and generate an appropriate response. These responses are like programs that the mind/OS has generated to deal with the stimulus. All this is mechanical/automatic. If my limited understanding is correct, then meditation helps control this process and the process becomes less automatic and more controlled. The mind becomes more calmed and ready to focus on what you choose instead of whatever the stimuli dictates. Little by little the subconscious becomes conscious.
The view expressed in the article is not surprising when reading two other articles (see below) that appeared not long ago here in HN, one of which was flagged (I tend to suspect that these theses hit a little too close to home for some and hence the immediate dismissal).
[1] America is Regressing into a Developing Nation for Most People https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/america-is-r... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14158310
[2] Why Poverty Is Like a Disease http://nautil.us/issue/47/consciousness/why-poverty-is-like-... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14201822
David Graeber from the Guardian writes that:
When banks make loans, they create money. This is because money is really just an IOU.
And that the paper:
...co-authored by three economists from the Bank's Monetary Analysis Directorate, they stated outright that most common assumptions of how banking works are simply wrong.
The truth is out: money is just an IOU, and the banks are rolling in it http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/18/truth-m...
The Bank of England Paper: Money creation in the modern economy http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Documents/quarte...
Edit: added more text to second quote.
The guys at The Automatic Earth[1] explain that after the multi-decade credit run up enabled by cheap oil would come when peak oil is reached. Once there the financial system is not able to sustain itself without cheap credit it will collapse and a sustained credit deflation will ensue. In this deflation all assets will decrease in price but the difficulty to obtain cash will be harder making them effectively very expensive.
This, they explain, will have the effect of making oil cheap to the point that there won’t be enough money to invest in maintaining the current infrastructure and even less to invest in green tech. Once the bad debts are cleared and growth returns the true effects of peak oil will be felt everywhere.
In summary, they say, don’t get your hopes up with clean/green tech. It is too little too late and it simply cannot replace oil. And nuclear energy is no better once you take into account the energy required to build, operate and decommission reactors and also dispose of radioactive waste in a safe manner.
They have in my opinion one of the best analysis available in the intertubes.
Bloomberg's Businessweek had an article (link below) not long ago about Sony that mentions this issue. Here is a quote:
In his biography of Jobs, Walter Isaacson writes that Sony had “all of the assets,” including a record company, to create its own iPod. “Why did it fail?” he writes. “Partly because it was a company … organized into divisions (that word itself was ominous) with their own bottom lines; the goal of achieving synergy in such companies by prodding the divisions to work together was usually elusive.”
What Is Sony Now?
http://www.businessweek.com/printer/magazine/what-is-sony-no...
And there are not only environmental effects but social too. IEEE Spectrum has an article this month regarding this. Is a good read.
Cracking Down on Conflict Minerals
http://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/materials/cracking-d...
The dollar demise seems to be in vogue nowadays thanks in no small part to QE I and II. I guess it makes for good headlines, especially when gold is over $1430.
To those of you that may be interested in financial commentaries outside of mainstream I suggest the following:
- Mish [1] - The automatic earth [2] - Max Keiser [3] - Jesse's Café Américain [4]
These can be classified more or less so in three different camps: inflationist, deflationist, and stagflation. But inflation/deflation here does not mean price increase, but credit expansion/contraction. Also, these blogs are all against the status quo, hence their non-mainstream designation. For that there is WSJ.
For starters, at the automatic earth [2], Illargi and Stonleigh give very detailed analysis of the current situation taking into account credit availability and peak oil for example. They argue that we will hit a deflation period (i.e., credit contraction) before any hyperinflation destroys the dollar.
Mish [1] is also in the deflationist camp and provides excellent commentary on current financial news. US centric but with good international coverage.
Max Keiser [3] is an inflationist. I believe that he has called correctly gold and silver trends (up and up) for the past decade. He’s a very vocal anti-to-big-to-fail commentator. I think that he’s currently spearheading a movement to get people to buy silver bullion in order to put JP Morgan out of business given their alleged silver shorts. Mish, while a good friend of Max, disagrees and thinks that JP Morgan is most likely well hedge against silver.
Jesse [4] provides a thoughtful market analysis, especially with gold and silver. He thinks that the US is going into stagflation for quite a while.
[1] Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/
[2] The Automatic Earth
http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com/
[3] Max Keiser — Markets Finance Scandal
[4] Jesse's Café Américain
An option is to get an account for O’Reilly’s Safari. I personally am an ACM member (USD$99) for historical reasons, and they provide access to a limited subset of books from Safari. I have opted for also getting the premium library (USD$415) that provides access to all technical and business content [1]. They also have videos that show some of the subjects that you’re interested in, which I’ve found to be quite helpful.
I’m aware that it’s quite expensive, but I think that is one of the best investments that I’ve done since it has allowed me to switch careers on a dime, from developing on embedded systems to web apps and services.
For HN discussion regarding the ACM see [2], [3], and [4]. Note that IEEE also offers Safari access but their discount may be smaller than ACM’s.
[1] http://learningdev.acm.org/books/saf_pkgs.cfm
[2] Ask: ACM vs IEEE Membership
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=917933
[3] Ask HN: Are ACM worth a membership?
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1182169
[4] ACM considered harmful
http://se9book.wordpress.com/2011/01/24/acm-considered-harmf...
I did suspect that an experienced web developer will feel some heaviness when using a framework such as Grails. I'm simply too new at this to have an idea of all the little issues that arise when using the JVM.
Thanks for the link.
Sorry for taking this long to reply. Lots of errands to do.
An embedded programmer is a catch-all adjective I think. One could be working on very low level programming of microcontrollers (e.g., PIC32, MSP430) and FPGAs [11].
On the other end of the spectrum, you can find embedded programmers working on embedded devices that hosts complete systems with OS, filesystems and utilities such as the ELDK (referred in previous posts). The duties for such programmers include creating device drivers for the specific devices that the product has. I have for example, modified an existing application developed originally for a system with no OS into a Linux application running on a PowerPC board. For example, some of my duties were to modify the original application's absolute FLASH memory references to a method compatible with what the Linux based system offers (hint: I used mmap).
I would guess that someone like yourself with limited exposure to electronics would be guided toward the latter type of jobs. From my limited experience in my local area I believe that this type of jobs offers the best balance. Latter on you can move deeply into low-level development once you have beefed-up your resume if you so desire.
The trick here is to be identified by a competent manager that can match your education and experience to his needs. And you`ll be surprised how little managers need to know, technically speaking, to get a product going which means that you need to sell yourself well.
Senior positions depend heavily into the nature of the company. I find that importance given to hierarchy between employees is proportional to the amount of bureaucracy present. This translates into defined roles, which will need to be created (i.e., company is growing) or the position becomes available (i.e., because of retirement or lay-off). So for example, if you want to become an architect where you actually design a product or part of it; it will be harder in a big company. Smaller companies suffer less from hierarchy and give more chances to hold important and challenging positions but the pay usually lags far behind the bigger companies.
The best ways to get a job depend largely on the type of jobs available which are dictated by the companies implanted there. Where I am, there were several small companies that needed someone that could wear lots of hats. That`s how I started back 10 years ago. I had to manage a small network, program an 8-bit HC11 microcontroller, design the PCB, select the electronic components, do some soldering, do some mechanical design, and train the client and fix the bugs once the product was out the door. This path has led me to be a generalist rather than a specialist.
But I talked no long ago to the guy that was my boss back then, and he said that these days is cheaper to contract out the small jobs to specialized shops which wasn't the case back then or at least he wasn't aware of competent companies that offered a reasonable cost. So things do change. Be prepared to turn on a dime.
I think that you should not have too many problems going the embedded way. But you'll need to help the hiring person to match your skills to their needs. They may just assume that they need an EE just because they're working very close to the hardware. I think that you have a bright future. One of the most competent embedded programmers that I've met did a BSCS.
I hope I did not go ramble too much and loose you in the middle. Just one more thing. Remember that your worst enemy is yourself. Don't let self-doubt and/or laziness to get in the way. Control those and you'll have a good future.
[11] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field-programmable_gate_array
I'm glad that you like the info. I see that you're working on very low level stuff. Can you go even lower and deal with sensors, resistors, capacitors, opamps, and the like? These days there is a reference design in white papers somewhere so you don't need to be and expert in electronics to get away with something that works. You just need access to the tools such as multimeters and oscilloscopes.
I'm thinking sensor networks. If you can, then I would recommend to try something using the MSP430 for example, given its low power requirements. Take the microcontrollers and pair them with different sensors (eg., IR, temperature, etc) and an RF module such as xbee [9] in order to create a mesh network [10]. You'll need to work on the protocol and management side too-- a linux box somewhere with a database but that should not be a problem for you. But I realize that is more of a team project given the amount of work.
I mention this because I see some activity in this field and lately I've seen several articles, mostly in The Economist, that talk extensively on how sensor networks and the system that manage them will encroach our daily life. So if you can't figth them, might as well join them.
[9] http://www.digi.com/products/wireless/point-multipoint/xbee-...
The linux drivers idea is good particularly if you want to learn about communication with embedded system. But there are other approaches too. You'll need to ask yourself how low-level do you want to go. For example:
Do you want to work on a system that has an OS, utilities, filesystem, etc such as the ELDK[1]? Or a little more stripped down with only the OS such as FreeRTOS[2], uClinux[3], or uC/OS[4]? Or even lower and use no OS at all. Use instead a foreground-background system--basically a forever loop.
Another way of doing this is to select the hardware first according to what you would like to do. You must keep in mind that you will most likely not have access to all the debugging tools that you're used to. This translates into very expensive compilers and debuggers for the high end hardware. But these days it seems that there is something for every taste and wallet.
Two particular development kits that come to mind are Arduino boards [5] and TI's MSP430 development kits [6]. I find the wireless watch development kit [7] particular interesting. I haven't used either.
If you see something that you like, try to find the corresponding development kit that comes with a development board, cables, and software.
A good place to start is by checking DIY or hacker magazines such as Make[8].
I hope this gives you an idea.
[1] http://www.denx.de/wiki/DULG/ELDK [2] http://www.freertos.org/ [3] http://www.uclinux.org/ [4] http://micrium.com/page/home [5] http://www.arduino.cc/ [6] http://focus.ti.com/mcu/docs/mcuprodoverview.tsp?sectionId=9... [7] http://focus.ti.com/docs/toolsw/folders/print/ez430-chronos.... [8] http://makeprojects.com/
I'm currently working on a set of SOAP web services using tomcat, cxf, mysql, and hibernate among others.
I decided to do a switch from embedded to web development about a year and a half ago after being laid off. My paycheck is smaller but I now work on a whole new set of problems. After working about 10 years in embedded and everything around it, I felt that I needed a change. It was as if I was solving the same problems over and over. And don't get me started in the state of the tools. I remember thanking the heavens when we switched platforms to PowerPC and ELDK.
At first I did not know were to start in web development. But I did decide to concentrate on the back end quite early. At first I approached each technology separately, mostly because of my ignorance. For example, I saw that tomcat was very popular, so I decided to take a look into it. But I quickly realized that I needed a birds eye view of the whole web service stack and not its individual components. At least not yet.
I started to look into frameworks. After realizing that there are lots of those and that I learn about a new one almost every week, I had to narrow my search. I've been working and learning Groovy on Grails which is all based on the JVM since then. What sold it to me was the fact that Groovy is a language very similar to Python, which I know, and that Grails is a web framework that integrates all the necessary technologies to get a decent site up and running thanks in big part to the amount of plugins available for it.
Like grayhairmomma says, it's a humbling experience.
Yes, the forums' website is down. Here is the google cache [2]. The link [1] entitled "NVIDIA Quadro NVS 3100M on Lenovo Thinkpad T510: NVIDIA Backlight Control Causes Buzz" is the first result in the search for "t510 backlight" [3].
The issue has also made it to Canonical's launchpad [4]. The link [1] is mentioned in comment #27 [5].
[2] http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:4dJW3r_...
[3] http://www.google.com/search?q=t510+backlight
[4] Bug #562005: Backlight controls of laptops with NVIDIA NVS and Quadro FX 880M GPUs no longer function while using proprietary drivers https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nvidia-graphics-dr...
[5] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nvidia-graphics-dr...
When I got mine, I had an option for "Intel Centrino Ultimate-N 6300 AGN". That's what I selected and it works flawlessly. I don't know about the others.
Same here. I got mine about two months ago. I also installed 10.04. I love the trackpoint (the red pointing stick in the middle of the keyboard) and the mouse buttons just below the space bar (don't have to leave the keyboard to use the mouse). The only major issue that I have now is the inability to control the backlight. This seems to be due to a bad driver by nvidia [1]. The backlight controls work if you use non-nvidia drivers. This will shorten your battery charge considerably. Other than that, everything works out of the box. I use the 64-bit version.
This comment is out of topic but related.
When I saw this I thought about a video where the speaker talks about how our future could move/is moving towards a reality where human action is rewarded with points as in a game. I think that he made a prediction where this sort of thing could take off once game designers move away from games and into other activities.
Video: Most Disturbing Presentation Ever: Our Tech Nightmare ("Skinner Box") DICE 2010 Lenght: ~10min http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nka-_Mhp7f0&feature=playe...
While front running may be illegal it seems that is possible to do front running if you’re properly placed in the stock exchanges. Max Keiser and Hellen Brown discuss this in the video [1] regarding how this can be done by “specialist brokers.”
For good measure read also Hellen’s article [2].
[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5G7zBWMpIs&feature=playe...
[2] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ellen-brown/stock-market-colla...