new industrial fashion

The difference in culture between Silicon Valley and 128 is that while in Silicon Valley if you're a tech guy you jump in your $100,000 luxury sports car parked in your 2 million dollar home's four car garage and drive to your weekly Dungeons and Dragons meetup to talk about tech stuff, while if you're a tech guy around 128 (where I am) you're more likely to own a modest suburban home built in 1948, drive a ten year old Toyota Camry, and go to a cocktail party where if you bring up "nerd stuff" with the guests you'll definitely be considered a bit strange, even if they too work in the industry.

Can't you talk about that new bistro that opened up in the South End like a normal person with some social graces? Jeez.

Sadly there's only one physical store in the entire metro Boston area where you can actually purchase from a large-ish selection of electronics components off the shelf. That's it.

There is still a large tech industry here, but its primary focus has shifted away from computer tech in the past 30 years, and heavily into biotech.

woot! all the asbestos you can eat!

Possibly they meant that the income they caoud get from it would not cover taxes, and demolition would cost more than the value of the vacant lot.

I read that book when it came out. I liked it, but found it amusing that one of the common characteristics was being able to boil decisions (both internal and made by their customers) down to two sheets of paper.

The book took 400 sheets of paper, sigh.

But then the only management book I ever thought worthwhile was "Up the Organization: How to Stop the Corporation from Stifling People and Strangling Profits" by Robert Townshend.

IIRC his section about the personnel department was, in totality, "Fire the lot".

Yep, I'm pretty sure asbestos remediation and otherwise bringing it up to modern fire codes, including widening the stairwells, are the big stumbling blocks, or else it would've been deluxe condos almost immediately.

It was a product of the boundless financial optimism right before the crash of 1929. It's still the tallest building in Rhode Island. One could argue that it was just too much skyscraper for a little city like Providence 90 years ago - and still is today!

Probably Apple's future profit potential has more to do with what new products they have in the pipeline in a very fickle market than where their stuff is assembled. Maybe cars, maybe VR, possibly pron related, which is taboo to discuss but pron has driven markets before. You can get VR goggles/headphones equipped with an additional ummm washable device..

Foxconn is a Taiwan-based company and they could probably plop down an assembly line anywhere in the world and have it running fairly quickly if decent profits are guaranteed by tariffs. Cars used to be made that way with 'kits' assembled by semi-skilled local labor in all sorts of backwater countries. It actually cost more, but employed some of the locals in a very visible way so they didn't attack their government with spears and pitchforks.

If (say) 20% tariffs are applied equally to attempt to force production domestically, then the whole cost of the assembled unit will go up by 20%, not just the assembly, since most of the parts cost is in imported parts from Japan and South Korea and maybe Taiwan (though the latter probably is mostly made in China factories). Maybe they'll set up a line in the US for final assembly there (1/3 of sales) and the rest of the world (2/3 of sales) will get supplied from China (China costs will go down with less demand!). Assuming best case, that China does not retaliate against US companies (probably unrealistic). Or if they don't those outside China will be more likely to buy a very nice Samsung or Huawei Android phone with a **$($*$

Economists will then gravely pronounce that Japan and Korea have taken up the slack and massive deficits remain (probably increase), because they're looking at aggregate imports. But Trump does not necessarily care about trade or $ deficits, only about jobs (and probably, at least at first, *perception* of jobs) so it may not matter.

Unlike Japan (mostly aircraft, with technology transfer and weapons- stuff they have yet to produce) there is a lot of US (and EU) product for sale in China- lots of US cars, iphones, agricultural products, Boeing aircraft so there will be winners and losers in a trade war. The US car industry would actually not mind a trade war with Japan because it's hurting them (protectionism and actual currency manipulation), but China is their supplier and their fastest growing big customer so not so much there.

Probably why Abe-san was so eager to bend Trump's ear before he talks to actual US businesspeople involved in manufacturing. Nothing to do with military alliances as the media was speculating, although that may be a hook- if Trump cares about expending capital challenging China's version of the Monroe doctrine.

It should make for 'interesting times'.

--sp

Yes, Foxconn could put a production line down in Bangladesh or Baltimore if you make it worth their while by protectionism. Might be a good time to invest in them or their suppliers.

Trade protectionism makes for more and more inefficient production lines, so more equipment and higher profits.

--sp

Last one I bought was about 50% more than that.

It's packed with technology, and very well made. As are the equivalent high end units from Huawei, Samsung etc. (which are not significantly cheaper to buy).

Another reason is that it's worth at least that much to users- replacing a watch, pager, ebook reader, tape recorder, GPS with navigation and maps, etc. etc. Phone is just one of many 'apps', and not the most used. And, to many, it's jewelery.

Apple may have only a tiny share of the world smart phone market in units, it is much larger in $$ sales, and they currently have earned the majority of **profit** share. So they have sure been doing something right, even if you are not a dedicated fanboi.

--sp

was that they could get away with charging half-again more for their hardw are than their competitors because their hardware was perceived to be excel lent - nobody ever got fired for buying from IBM.

one of

l and

I have known one good personnel officer, but she got the job because she wa s the managing directors mistress, and was much better at it than anybody e lse I've come across.

There are some firms that keep unto size down to about 150 people, and insi st that the manager and his/her secretary deal with all personnel issues. T hat worked. Every proper personnel department I've dealt with has been hope less at screening engineers to be hired - the number of hopeless candidates I had to interview was remarkable, and there was a least one case where a brilliant candidate - whom we did hire - only got an interview because his wife played badminton with the wife of one of our engineers. Personnel had rejected him without interview on several occasions, but when his CV finall y got into the hands of the senior engineer he got hired very quickly, and proceeded to revolutionise how we put our electron microscope columns toget her.

The Americans head-hunted him a few years later ...

Speaking of which, GM's sales of the Volt over the past couple years of its existence have been okay, but somewhat sluggish stateside (I think they just surpassed 100k total units moved early this year.) As an owner, I think part of the problem is that GM simply didn't know how to market it effectively even in its primary markets of the Northeast and CA; i.e. sell it on the enormous fuel savings ownership grants. When I talk to other drivers about it, that's the statistic that really makes them sit up and take notice.

Why anyone is even sitting in dealership looking at something like a Malibu when the Volt is pretty much an objectively better car for only a few tens of dollars more a month, assuming a lease, is certainly beyond me - perhaps they don't realize that for an average commuter driver one's fuel expenditures immediately drop from ~$150 a month to around ~$20 a month the minute you drive it off the lot. An overnight charge from a wall socket, good for about 70 miles of driving, is less than a dollar at off-peak electric rates here.

Most salespeople I talked with seemed to know very little about the car. Same with owners. I met a few other new owners at public chargers who were unaware that there was a button that allowed switching back and forth between the battery and the backup gas engine on-demand, i.e. that you could say burn gas on the highway where it's most efficient to do so and then switch to "silent running" once you got into the city.

The Vauxhall-branded version Ampara tanked in the EU, sales in the US will likely remain modest for the foreseeable future, but GM is betting its EV line is going to be a big hit in Asia, particularly China. They'll be rolling out a Buick-branded version of the Volt for the Chinese market early next year, as the Buick name apparently has more brand-cachet than Chevrolet over there.

Allegedly they're going to force ecars to make some obnoxious double tone noise in city driving so they won't as easily run down the idiots staring into their cell phones while crossing the street.

Buick (and Cadillac) are very healthy brands in China. For young people!

--sp

This was definitely a problem for me when getting adjusted to EVs - the first gen Volt was quiet as a submarine when running off battery power and sometimes pedestrians just couldn't hear me coming.

On the Gen 1 they "solved" this in a pretty basic manner; on the end of the left stick there was a button to sound a "polite" horn. Instead of the pretty aggressive "BLAAAAAMP" of the Chevrolet wheel horn, it would make a less hostile "beep beep boop!" noise when activated. I'd just pound away on that button when driving in the city whenever I saw a pedestrian looking suspect (and if you're driving defensively, all pedestrians standing around obviously staring at their phones near the street should be suspect.)

It being Boston, the results were predictable: a lot of jaywalking pedestrians staring at their phones looking up just long enough to shout "Hey, F you buddy I'm walkin' heah, go to F'in hell!"

The Gen 2 now has an alerter system, it's not as obnoxious as a double tone, more like a swooshing spaceship noise when the car is under 30mph or so.

I don't entirely trust it. I'd really like to still have my second horn.

I read that long ago. Fun.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

I have a couple of Blackberry Classics, which I like very well.

Looking at getting a Nexus 6 and putting Tor on it, for when BB 10 isn't tenable anymore.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

For some odd reason Russians think Buicks are great cars.

Ditto.

Don't forget, portable WiFi hot-spot.

Oh, and television. I take my old one to the gym to watch while I'm on the treadmill. Much better to watch what I want to watch on NetFlix than the same old things they forced me to watch on NetFlix for the past month. Great way to pass the time.

A small amount of noise won't work with peds that are deafened and away with the pixies because they are using earbuds.

My daughter rides a bike in London, and has added a "bell" that sounds /just/ like a car horn. She says it has a useful effect :)

For about half you could be smack dab in the middle of town here.

Farther out you can cut it down to 25% of what you are paying:

Pretty nice digs and El Dorado Brewing Company is a short stroll away. As is the main mountain bike trail.

In part that may be because Bay Area folks are starting to move to Sacramento in droves. It's driving up real etate prices out here. What I don't understand is why they don't push all the way to Utah or Texas. Whether you move 100 miles or 1000 miles doesn't make much of a difference but the deals are way better out there. And no leftists to rob them blind via taxes.