AE is a special case. Procurement law for public agencies in the US requires qualifications-based selection for professional services. The price is then negotiated, but it's basically whatever the consultant says it is as long as they transparently report labor hours. This leads to the majority of effort being labor-intensive make-work pushed to expensive labor categories. There is no market process for discovering efficient service providers. This is part of the reason why workflows for transportation infrastructure design haven't improved in 30 years and probably won't until the legal landscape changes.
"Mormon" was originally a derogatory term that was coined by those that legalized killing Mormons on sight until 1980. So some are understandably uncomfortable with its continued usage.
It may have been coined that way, but Mormons quickly adopted it as well as a favorite term and used it that way coming up on 200 years. The church used the word extensively in marketing campaigns for decades, between mormonads and I'm a Mormon, etc. Under Hinckley who was media savvy, it was used a lot.
Nelson (current head of the church) just doesn't like the word and wants to change it. Confusion, inconvenience, and Pragmatism be damned. It's his right as prophet to say that Jesus told him to use the full name of the church and drop Mormon, but let's not pretend it's suddenly offensive because it's been used by enemies of the church. They've also used the full name as well, so that should be offensive if we're staying consistent.
I find your insistence that they can't be offended by a word with an objectively offensive historical origin fascinating. Do you deny that sometimes opinions on words and language can change over time?
I have insisted nothing of the sort. Of course, opinions on words and languages can change over time. However, I find it unlikely that a population of tens of millions suddenly became offended, even if their prophet told them to.
More reasonably, I think they are not offended. Rather they are simply trying to use the full name of the church rather than any sort of shortenings. Sure, if somebody was being a jerk and using the word Mormon to be a jerk, then that could be offensive. However, that's a much different thing than being offended by the word itself used in a friendly context.
Just to be clear, fundamentalist Mormon means he had multiple wives, and most likely lived on a secluded compound or in one of the surrounding areas of one of these compounds. Your likelihood of interacting with such a person is near zero.
I prefer American screening. I was recently in Frankfurt and was very pleased to find they had a line for families with children, but then every single screen was equivalent to the screen you receive when you leave a water bottle in your luggage in the USA. Everyone was required to have a full on 2 minute conversation with the security agent, and children were screaming as they received intensive pat downs.
If you're going to have security theater, at least try and make it fast.
I grew up in Australia, and mostly pre-911. Took my girlfriend and her daughter there from the US recently. Worst part of screening was emigration/passport checking, outbound, at Sydney.
They've never traveled abroad, so I'm bringing them with me. There's a bunch of open gates. Agent says "Use the three gates" to us, "so it can be quicker".
We do.
Her daughter's passport is being problematic.
Agents are being unhelpful. They're more interested in berating us. The same one who spread us across three gates speaks witheringly and condescendingly to us, "This is why you need to go parent - child - parent." Took every ounce of restraint to not say "Then why did you tell us to do something different a minute and a half ago?"
Said kid is an intelligent 16 year old. There was actually an issue with the equipment, not her.
Ha, when I flew out of of Frankfurt to Italy, I just had to walk through a metal detector like it was 1998. So did every other person at that security terminal. Made me wonder why flying in America was not like that great experience
Don't get caught up in the hype. The technology is becoming commoditized, and only startups with unique advantages will survive. Look for startups with proprietary data, special algorithms, or deep domain expertise. Avoid ones that are just gluing together APIs or building generic applications. And don't chase the hype train. Invest in startups with a real chance of success.
Avoid ones that are just gluing together APIs or building generic applications.
Debating if I want to respond to this, because there is fistfuls of cash right now in software consulting for this sort of work. Boring CRUDs and API integrations make a lot of the world go round (quietly).
If you want to start your own, it's kind of a depressing realization to have after working at a start-up or interacting with others. It's not some cool tech or algo that makes the difference, it's things like the CTO is leveraging contacts they made previously in their career to get deals to access data that no mere mortal could get, or board members who broker sweet partnerships with legacy companies that matter.
This complaint was resolved. They received a small fine for organizing the funds incorrectly. But the money was legally donated and it's not illegal to invest money donated to a charitable organization.
Also, you've posted this article twice in the past week. Hacker News is probably not the best place for your Anti-Mormon crusade.
I'm not an antimormon. I'm a secular individual who would like to see the promise of a secular society kept. I am also an individual who happens to think that white-collar crime is the blight on our society that causes so much of the other crime that we feel the effects of every day.
As such I find instances of white collar crime that involve nonprofit organizations and a hundred billion dollars to be quiet odious.
> They received a small fine for organizing the funds incorrectly
Anyone else think maybe Apple Silicon in the Macs is hurting their sales? I used to feel the need to upgrade my Macbook every 2 years or so, since the battery life would have dropped significantly and the fans were giving me a constant jet engine drone in the background of my work. But my M1 Macbook Pro still lasts all day, I've never heard the fans, and the only task I've given it that it struggled with was local AI image generation. It flies through everything else imaginable. So why would I buy another one?
>> I used to feel the need to upgrade my Macbook every 2 years or so
You're a minority. The vast majority of Mac owners don't have thousands of dollars to spend upgrading every couple of years. And they don't need to - that's one of the great things about Mac's! I'm an iOS developer + do a lot of heavy music production on my Macbook Pro and after 4 years it's still working well. I'm starting to consider an update (mainly because of the vast improvements the Apple silicon chips bring) but I could probably use this reasonably for another year or two at least. More 'normal' users I know (docs + web browsing people) typically keep their Mac's 6+ years and those are the 'cheap' lower powered Mac's.
Yes but it wont show yet.
It feels a little like the iPhone now, where a new iPhone doesn't "feel" much better. The M1 Max in particular felt lightyears ahead of it's time and I don't feel the need to upgrade it for a couple more years.
Most mac's are 3-5 year lifetimes tho, longer than phones.
I don’t think so. M1 helped them establish a clear cut lead in the laptop market. It’s not even close. I think people will gradually switch to Mac (switch rate is painfully slow). Unless MS does something here, they’re going to leak Windows market share.
