I would like some evidence of this. I've read and heard many people confidently pin the high cost of health care on: too much administration, greedy doctors, undocumented immigrants, over use of tests, over prescription of drugs, too much paperwork causing inefficiency, and probably others I'm forgetting. They can't all be the primary cause.
[ and before someone replies, it is a mix of those, of course ]
In competitive markets, competition will keep costs and profits from ballooning.
What kind of market conditions are required for spending to increase in all sorts of directions? I can immediately point to education as an example where both lenders and colleges both have a vested interest in growing eachother's businesses, paid for by the customer.
Back in the late 90's and early 2000's, there were a set of hacking challenges called the Zebulun Challenges hosted by the site CyberArmy. For the 7th or 8th challenge (Lt. Kernel to Kernel), you had to find a proxy or have an rDNS for your IP that resolved to a .su domain in order to proceed into the simulated system you were trying to hack into.
In the late 90's with dial-up connections, most ISPs would not do this, hence the search for .su proxies. Today, it is much easier when you can spin up a VM in the cloud and control DNS entries.
Walk through some IoT stuff using Stringify or ITTT. Let them help you create what is going to happen. Use the development tools on an Android device to change location to show geo-fencing triggers. Every kid there could use the "silence my phone when I get to school" routine, but you can always get more advanced than that.
Maybe I'm cynical, but this looks more like a data hording scheme than a protect my privacy enhancement. If I use Google to sign in, Google and the app has that data and can monetize it.
Now if I sign in using Apple, they are going to have the data to monetize. They may keep the app from getting my information, but that means that their data is better than someone else's data, so it is more valuable. Also, they are getting app usage statistics that I may have opted out of at the OS level, but they now have due to having the sign in history.
Problem is, today I agree, 10 years ago it would've been a tossup, and 5 years from now, who knows? These "trusted central broker" privacy models are nicer than giving your info to dozens of individual actors (when you trust that central broker more than anyone else), but they also become a single point of attack/failure.
My point is some of the information available now is that historically, companies that respect your privacy today might not tomorrow. And might only be respecting your privacy to get a monopoly on your data so they can exploit it later.
Neither would be the only sane choice. Multinational corporations will always screw individual customers for profit.
And the issue with trusting any entity with data isn't really what it will do with it today. The bigger problem is what the entity will do with it tomorrow - under new leadership.
It might also be interesting to know that Apple is also in the business of selling "relevant adds". Its a tiny amount if compared to Google, but gives them the same incentives if the platform ever became the most used one around the globe.
That danger is basically nonexistent considering the pricing of Apple devices but makes most claims of apples trustworthiness pretty hollow.
Some of Apple's services use end-to-end encryption. That makes them better from a privacy angle than Google for example... But still... Don't trust multinational corporations. That can never end well
The question was not "who do you trust", but "who do you trust more".
Given that Google's business model depends on data sharing whereas Apple has made privacy one of their core features, I think the answer has to be Apple, even if you don't trust them entirely.
Absolutely. One would still be able to do that (Apple's providing SSO here, not enforcing any guidelines, as of today). Though, I'm happy that friends and family would be able to choose anonymous per-app email-ids on the fly and still be able to SSO.
op mentioned apple core is privacy. i implies that they care it only for their high end customers. They could anytime do a low end mobile if privacy was their core. Their core is like any other business get maximum profits.
Apple's premium price is exactly what allows them to focus on privacy.
Google/Facebook/etc. are able to offer you cheap products and services because they're selling your privacy to the highest bidder.
Apple is not doing this (because they care about privacy), so they need to charge a much higher price for similar products.
This is somewhat of a chicken and egg problem (did Apple care about privacy and charge a premium price, or did charging a premium price allow them to start caring about privacy?), but that's arguably not important. What's important is that Apple cares about privacy when their competitors do not.
If Apple cared about privacy they would have left China instead of giving up it's iCloud key.
They are focusing on it because of business sense. To upsell people who are able to buy those expensive devices otherwise all devices are now more or less can do the work.
Apple can easily lower their price to match android. They do have insane profits. But I don't see they care about lower class people.
How about 'neither of them'? Trusting Google with your data is like trusting a fox with guarding your hen house, trusting Apple with your data is trusting a fox which claims it turned vegetarian.
Run your own mail server and you'll have all the addresses you care to use, using any scheme you might think off. I've been doing this for decades now and it just plain works. A day or so to get the thing setup, 8 hours of maintenance per year and you're done. Use Google-free Android devices in your pocket, Linux or *BSD on your lap and in the server/broom cupboard and those foxes can claim to be vegans for all I care.
Where do you host your mail server? I've been running my own for years on Rackspace, and it works great, except they recently started adding on a $5/month support fee that old accounts like mine had been grandfathered out of. With that, and other price increases over the years, it now costs about twice what I originally paid.
I originally picked Rackspace over AWS because Rackspace's cheapest acceptable option was about the same price I had been paying for space on a shared hosting service, and that was about half of the cheapest viable AWS option.
But now it looks like AWS is quite a bit cheaper than Rackspace, and it is getting time to build a new server anyway [1], so it is time to consider alternatives.
One thing I'm concerned about is IP blacklists. Every time someone posts an article about setting up your own email server, there are comments about this being a pain because spammers will set up service on neighboring IP addresses, and you'll often get caught up when that gets the whole block blacklisted.
I've never had that problem at Rackspace. I don't know if spammers just don't use them for some reason, or if they are really good at kicking off spammers...but in the 7.5 years I've been doing this at Rackspace I don't think my outgoing mail has ever been caught in an IP-based blacklist (or had any other delivery problems, for that matter).
While I'd like to spend less than I'm spending now, it would not be worth the savings if it makes my mail unreliable.
[1] I'm on Debian 8, which is in the last year of long term support. I prefer to built a new server from scratch with the latest and move to it rather than trying an in place update across major distro versions.
The server sits in a special cupboard I made which has servers, a switch and storage on top, drying racks on the bottom. All the way in the bottom is a forced draft fan (meant for modern air-tight homes, low-power and -noise) which pulls the warm air from the top through the drying racks. All the way on top sits a large air filter. This keeps the equipment clean and relatively cool while using the waste heat to dry produce (now filled with mint leaves, later it will be used to dry apple, possibly some jerky, etc).
The whole is connected through our gigabit fiber to the outside with a possibility for a wireless backup connection should the fiber go down (which it hasn't thus far).
The hardware runs a combination of Debian stable with some unstable packages plus home-grown tools. I've done Debian upgrades on these servers for years, generally without much breakage. That is actually why I moved to Debian from Redhat which I used earlier (before the Fedora days) as upgrading RH was always a hit-and-miss experience compared to Debian.
So, in short: my own hardware on my own connection on my own premises, with off-site (and even out-of-country) backup in a reciprocal agreement: I run backups for my brother in the Netherlands and get to put my (encrypted) backups on his NAS.
Can we stop being hyperbolic please? If not blocking ads in a very specific way is what it takes to be counted as "evil", that word has officially lost all meaning.
The difference is that one is a hardware company making services to sell devices; the other is an advertising company making services to get more data for ads. One of them can live without your data, the other cannot.
Except Google is an advertising company and Apple is a consumer electronics and software company. Their objectives are different, and historically, Apple has been one of the most privacy-focused tech companies.
Not saying Apple can't use your data, but as far as auth providers go, I'd rank Apple higher than all the other Big Tech Cos.
Apple doesn't, to the best of my knowledge, monetize data, either through ads or selling it to third parties. I'd welcome a clarification if I'm wrong.
I actually use this one all the time. I do a little wood working and if I slice open a finger, I just grab my Rockler CA glue, put some on, squeeze the slice shut and wait about a minute.
If you purchase liquid bandage in a drug store, it is just sterile CA glue.
Important to note that this is the guy who was actually running the fraud - the artist creating the forgeries served 4 months in prison and now makes an apparently successful living painting reproductions and original works.
I will actually give more credit to the Executive programs because they require prior work experience (normally 5 years). People are much more likely to remember and be able to use the concepts they have learned in class if they can immediately apply them to real world situations that they have been in.
Will you be building “business software” for enough of your career to make it worthwhile? I’ve had to learn enough about plenty of verticals over the years to build software. We hire/contract the experts if they don’t already work for us.
If you are spending $150K on an MBA, you are spending way too much. In Louisiana, LSU's Executive MBA costs under $60K including all books and meals during the program. If you go Southeastern Louisiana University, their Executive MBA program costs around $20K with the same things included. I went to Southeastern for mine, and I found it very useful in moving into the management chain inside of IT.
Then again, as someone above pointed out, I knew why I was getting an MBA. I can teach myself tech, but some of the business aspects are a pain to teach myself so I paid someone else to teach me those.
Yes, but from what others have said, if you are getting an MBA for the salary increase and not just to learn, getting an MBA from a non top tier school isn't really worth it if you are already in a high paying field.
In the parent's case, it probably made sense though. He was looking to get into management with an eMBA program with (I'm assuming) a school in the state that's probably well-represented at the company. A degree from a regional school is probably going to be less useful in another part of the country and/or for a less well-defined purpose.
It depends? If there's an immediate concrete benefit and they're planning to stay regional anyway? Possibly/probably? And a lot of people actually stay with an employer for a significant length of time. And even just using as a near-term/midterm stepping stone may pay benefits down the road beyond the degree itself.
I tend to think personally that law and MBA grad degrees do generally tilt toward benefiting top schools but I'd never suggest that was an ironclad rule.
The next question is, how long does the affect of the college you attend vs. experience matter with an MBA?
For software development, from personal experience of going to an unknown state school in the mid 90s, I was just as competitive with people coming from well known schools within three or four years. It probably would have helped with me landing that first job.
Again, I think it depends. My MBA definitely played into my first job after; the process started with an on-campus interview. I doubt the school (or probably even that I had an MBA) made a bit of difference after that but then I was in that job for 13 years and my subsequent jobs weren't even business roles per se. I think the background was useful but it didn't matter from a hiring perspective if I had a degree from X school or not.
In my current job, to the degree my educational pedigree made any difference at all, it was my undergrad because that's where my hiring manager went. However, I'm sure there are many cases where business school networks associated with top schools can be important.
I posted previously that I took all of the classes to get an MBA but ended up with slightly less than 3.0. I looked at the salary projections of just staying in tech and keeping my skills relevant and worrying about an MBA from a non top 25 school and it wasn’t worth worrying about the degree.
