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The Battle of Cassville - the most underrated "What If" of the American Civil War
2023.03.22 14:29 yaitz331 The Battle of Cassville - the most underrated "What If" of the American Civil War
The American Civil War is one of the most popular settings for alternate histories. There are a number of reasons for this; it's the largest war fought on American soil, it retains great cultural relevance to this day, and it's just generally really interesting. However, these alternate histories tend to cluster quite tightly around just a few turning points. There are hundreds of Gettysburg, Antietam, and Stonewall Jackson alternate histories, a fair few revolving around the Peninsula Campaign, Shiloh, the Overland Campaign, and British intervention, and disappointingly few around critical points such as the Vicksburg Campaign, the 1862 Kentucky Campaign, and the Chickamauga/Chattanooga Campaign. However, there is one potential alternate history that falls even below these; a potential alternate history that I have never, not even once, seen realized. The Atlanta Campaign as a whole has a few alternate histories written about it, primarily due to the fall of Atlanta being one of the major factors leading to Lincoln's reelection. But the greatest Confederate opportunity of the Atlanta Campaign remains bizarrely unused. Here, I lay out the historical context around the Battle of Cassville; hopefully I can spark interest in this fascinating moment of a fascinating war.
At the beginning of the campaign, Joseph E. Johnston commands the Confederate forces. William T. Sherman commands the Union forces. Sherman has much larger numbers, to the point that he actually commands multiple Union armies; the largest of these by far is George Henry Thomas' Army of the Cumberland. However, this is mainly an organizational thing; Sherman uses forces from different armies interchangeably. The Atlanta Campaign began with Confederate forces defending a strong defensive position at Rocky Face Ridge, just west of Dalton; however, Union forces discovered that there was an undefended pass at Snake Creek Gap that could enable them to outflank the Confederates. While they did outflank the Confederates, they failed to cut the line of retreat (due to Sherman not listening to Thomas' advice and McPherson, the guy leading the outflanking force, panicking), allowing Johnston to fall back to Resaca. At Resaca, Union forces launched a frontal assault (again against Thomas' advice), leading to the two-day Battle of Resaca; however, the battle proved indecisive and effectively irrelevant. A small Union column crossed the Conasauga River below Resaca, forcing Johnston to retreat again or risk being cut off. Johnston fell back to the town of Calhoun, some distance south of Resaca on the south bank of the Conasauga.
Calhoun proved a poor defensive position; there was nothing on which to anchor Confederate flanks, and the Confederate position was split by the Oothkalooga Creek. Looking for a better defensive position on his maps, Johnston found one at Adairsville. Both the main road and the railroad south of Calhoun ran through Adairsville, but unlike at Calhoun, they ran through a valley with difficult hilly terrain on either side, with the Oothkalloga Creek to one side. This was a much better defensive position, so the Confederates fell back to Adairsville and established a defensive line. Indeed, when leading forces of Howard’s 4th Corps arrived at Adairsville, their leading elements were repulsed by Johnston’s new line in the Battle of Adairsville.
However, looking at the maps, Johnston now began to consider an alternate plan. The repulse of 4th Corps meant that he had broken contact with Sherman, while Adairsville was a much wider valley then his maps had shown, reducing its defensive potential. South of Adairsville, there were two roads. One road, along with the railroad, ran southwest to Kingston; the other ran south to Cassville. From Kingston, the railroad looped back towards Cassville, crossing the Etowah River south of Cassville at the town of Cartersville. This gave Johnston an idea. Meeting with his three corps commanders and chief of staff on the evening of May 17, Johnston laid out his plan. Hood’s and Polk’s Corps would move south along the road to Cassville, while Hardee’s Corps would move southwest along the railroad to Kingston. Hardee’s Corps would make sure to leave behind plenty of signs of which direction they had taken, while Hood’s and Polk’s Corps would move quietly. From Kingston, Hardee would move back along the railroad to join with the rest of the army at Cassville, concentrating the Confederate army at Cassville. Hopefully, Sherman would be fooled by this, and would think the bulk of the Confederate army had in fact moved to Kingston. Sherman could then be expected to move his main force on Kingston, while sending a smaller force to try to cut the railroad near Cassville. The Confederates would then have their entire army against only a portion of the Union army, with the element of surprise. They could rout this portion of the Union army, and deal a heavy blow to Sherman’s numerical superiority, hopefully enabling them to continue the defense of Atlanta with advantage. It would require abandoning Adairsville, but it promised to deliver a decisive battle. The plan was put into motion, and the Confederate forces moved out of Adairsville that night.
The next morning, the deception worked perfectly. Convinced that the Confederate forces had retreated to Kingston, Sherman set most of his army on the road to Kingston; only Schofield’s 23rd Corps and Hooker’s 20th Corps moved towards Cassville, while the Union cavalry moved towards Cartersville. By evening on May 18, Johnston was in position at Cassville; Sherman was just north of Kingston with the bulk of his army. Johnston’s corps commanders urged an attack on Hooker’s and Schofield’s corps that night, but Johnston decided to wait to launch the attack until the next morning, unwilling to lose the element of surprise for a dusk attack.
Morning dawns on May 19, 1864. Union forces enter Kingston to find it abandoned. Sherman, now convinced that the Confederates had retreated across the Etowah, split his remaining forces in two, sending Howard’s 4th Corps and Baird’s division of 14th Corps with Thomas towards Cassville, while sending McPherson’s Army of the Ohio and Johnson’s division of 14th Corps to capture the crossings south of Kingston. Meanwhile, 20th Corps approached Cassville from the north along the Adairsville Road, while 23rd Corps was slightly farther behind and to the east on the Sallacoa Road. Johnston deployed his three corps at Cassville; Hardee’s Corps was left to watch the Kingston Road, while Polk’s and Hood’s Corps would cross Two Run Creek and attack the isolated Union forces. The plan was for Hood’s Corps to launch a surprise attack on 20th Corps, followed by Polk’s Corps arriving on the flank; once 20th Corps was broken, these two corps would fall on 23rd Corps. Meanwhile, Hardee would hold off any approaching Union forces along the Kingston Road until Polk’s and Hood’s corps were done, at which point they would join him, and the plan would be decided from there. Sherman had walked directly into this plan. 20th Corps would be subjected to a surprise attack and then a flank attack outnumbered two-to-one; 23rd Corps would then, in turn, be attacked outnumbered two-to-one. The corps-and-a-half Sherman had sent towards Cassville was a small enough force that Hardee could likely hold it off, and the remainder of his army was too separated to arrive in time. Johnston had the perfect setup to deal a crushing blow to the Union army. The Battle of Cassville, though by no means a sure Confederate deal, was a perfect opportunity, the best they would get in the Atlanta Campaign by far. I have left out only one detail; where’s the Union cavalry?
And here comes the potential point of divergence. On the morning of May 19, as Hood’s Corps begins to move to the attack, one of his staff officers noticed a column of troops approaching up the Canton Road to their east. The Union cavalry had gone further to the east than the infantry and now, by sheer coincidence, had arrived in the perfect spot to threaten the Confederate right and rear. In truth, the cavalry posed no real threat to the Confederate forces - the cavalry force, consisting of Stoneman’s and McCook’s cavalry divisions, was under 4,000 men strong and unprepared for infantry combat. In addition, the Union cavalry - especially Stoneman’s division - would later prove themselves of fairly low quality. However, Hood didn’t know the size of this force, or even whether it was cavalry or infantry; he only knew that there was an unexpected Union force approaching his flank and rear. With little choice, Hood paused his corps’ movement and informed Johnston of the approaching force. Shortly afterwards, Mackall (Johnston’s chief of staff) arrived, and told Hood that Union forces were also moving in from the west; if Hood wanted to attack, he had to do so immediately. Unwilling to risk the unknown force coming from the east getting in his rear, Hood instead decided to fall back to cover the Canton Road. This move, in turn, was spotted by Hooker’s corps, which quickly deployed and fortified. The best opportunity the Confederates would get during the entire Atlanta Campaign evaporated; Johnston had completely outgeneraled Sherman, and the coincidental arrival of two divisions of cavalry made it for nought.
With his plan ruined, Johnston decided to fall back to a strong ridgeline south of Cassville; he would still fight a defensive battle here. At noon, Union forces began to arrive on the field from the direction of Kingston, running into Hardee’s Corps deployed for battle; the shocked forces were relieved to see Hardee’s forces retreating instead of attacking. By 5:30 PM, Sherman and the Union artillery were on the field, and Johnston’s ridgeline proved severely vulnerable to artillery fire. That night, Polk told Johnston that his corps would not be able to stand for an hour if the artillery barrage resumed. Johnston remained convinced that the position was defensible, but believing that his corps commanders’ fears would inevitably spread to the troops and leave them demoralized, Johnston agreed to retreat. At midnight, the Confederates began falling back again, reaching Cartersville on the morning of May 20. Sherman still believed that he had only faced a rearguard and that the bulk of the Confederate army had already retreated earlier; as such, he sent only 23rd Corps in pursuit of the Confederates; this would have left them extremely vulnerable had the Confederates turned back and counterattacked, but they had no way of knowing that. At 8:45 pm, 23rd Corps reached the Etowah River to find the bridges destroyed and the Confederates over. With that, the whole area north of the Etowah was in Union hands.
Not only was the Battle of Cassville a tremendous lost opportunity, but it had cost the Confederates much land. The entire area between the Conasauga and the Etowah had fallen to the Union in only four days. The similar distance between the Etowah and the Chattahoochee would take two months; even accounting for the better defensive conditions there, that’s a major difference. Johnston had gambled, and his gamble had failed by the narrowest of margins. The best offensive chance the Confederates had throughout the entire Atlanta campaign had, by pure bad luck, become nothing more than a desultory skirmish. The Battle of Cassville could have been a turning point; even a Confederate defeat would likely have ended with vastly heavier Union losses on a scale that the Confederates would struggle to inflict the rest of the campaign. Instead, it was nothing but another brief stopping point on the road to Atlanta.
Cassville is my pick for the most underrated what-if of the American Civil War. I have never found it even mentioned in an alternate history context, but it provides such a fascinating point of divergence. If the cavalry had taken a different road, or if they had been delayed half an hour, a general battle would have followed, with all the possibilities a full battle brings. An entire battle arising that never happened historically is such a pregnant possibility for alternate history scenarios, and I hope that this post brings some attention to it.
My main source for this is Albert Castel’s Decision in the West, specifically pages 194-209. The book is available to read for free here (click "Borrow for 1 hour"), so you can take a look at the situation at Cassville yourself. I have simplified quite a bit here, and have not included a map; if you want to investigate further, that's the first place to start. Hopefully I have piqued your interest.
submitted by yaitz331 to AlternateHistory [link] [comments]
At the beginning of the campaign, Joseph E. Johnston commands the Confederate forces. William T. Sherman commands the Union forces. Sherman has much larger numbers, to the point that he actually commands multiple Union armies; the largest of these by far is George Henry Thomas' Army of the Cumberland. However, this is mainly an organizational thing; Sherman uses forces from different armies interchangeably. The Atlanta Campaign began with Confederate forces defending a strong defensive position at Rocky Face Ridge, just west of Dalton; however, Union forces discovered that there was an undefended pass at Snake Creek Gap that could enable them to outflank the Confederates. While they did outflank the Confederates, they failed to cut the line of retreat (due to Sherman not listening to Thomas' advice and McPherson, the guy leading the outflanking force, panicking), allowing Johnston to fall back to Resaca. At Resaca, Union forces launched a frontal assault (again against Thomas' advice), leading to the two-day Battle of Resaca; however, the battle proved indecisive and effectively irrelevant. A small Union column crossed the Conasauga River below Resaca, forcing Johnston to retreat again or risk being cut off. Johnston fell back to the town of Calhoun, some distance south of Resaca on the south bank of the Conasauga.
Calhoun proved a poor defensive position; there was nothing on which to anchor Confederate flanks, and the Confederate position was split by the Oothkalooga Creek. Looking for a better defensive position on his maps, Johnston found one at Adairsville. Both the main road and the railroad south of Calhoun ran through Adairsville, but unlike at Calhoun, they ran through a valley with difficult hilly terrain on either side, with the Oothkalloga Creek to one side. This was a much better defensive position, so the Confederates fell back to Adairsville and established a defensive line. Indeed, when leading forces of Howard’s 4th Corps arrived at Adairsville, their leading elements were repulsed by Johnston’s new line in the Battle of Adairsville.
However, looking at the maps, Johnston now began to consider an alternate plan. The repulse of 4th Corps meant that he had broken contact with Sherman, while Adairsville was a much wider valley then his maps had shown, reducing its defensive potential. South of Adairsville, there were two roads. One road, along with the railroad, ran southwest to Kingston; the other ran south to Cassville. From Kingston, the railroad looped back towards Cassville, crossing the Etowah River south of Cassville at the town of Cartersville. This gave Johnston an idea. Meeting with his three corps commanders and chief of staff on the evening of May 17, Johnston laid out his plan. Hood’s and Polk’s Corps would move south along the road to Cassville, while Hardee’s Corps would move southwest along the railroad to Kingston. Hardee’s Corps would make sure to leave behind plenty of signs of which direction they had taken, while Hood’s and Polk’s Corps would move quietly. From Kingston, Hardee would move back along the railroad to join with the rest of the army at Cassville, concentrating the Confederate army at Cassville. Hopefully, Sherman would be fooled by this, and would think the bulk of the Confederate army had in fact moved to Kingston. Sherman could then be expected to move his main force on Kingston, while sending a smaller force to try to cut the railroad near Cassville. The Confederates would then have their entire army against only a portion of the Union army, with the element of surprise. They could rout this portion of the Union army, and deal a heavy blow to Sherman’s numerical superiority, hopefully enabling them to continue the defense of Atlanta with advantage. It would require abandoning Adairsville, but it promised to deliver a decisive battle. The plan was put into motion, and the Confederate forces moved out of Adairsville that night.
The next morning, the deception worked perfectly. Convinced that the Confederate forces had retreated to Kingston, Sherman set most of his army on the road to Kingston; only Schofield’s 23rd Corps and Hooker’s 20th Corps moved towards Cassville, while the Union cavalry moved towards Cartersville. By evening on May 18, Johnston was in position at Cassville; Sherman was just north of Kingston with the bulk of his army. Johnston’s corps commanders urged an attack on Hooker’s and Schofield’s corps that night, but Johnston decided to wait to launch the attack until the next morning, unwilling to lose the element of surprise for a dusk attack.
Morning dawns on May 19, 1864. Union forces enter Kingston to find it abandoned. Sherman, now convinced that the Confederates had retreated across the Etowah, split his remaining forces in two, sending Howard’s 4th Corps and Baird’s division of 14th Corps with Thomas towards Cassville, while sending McPherson’s Army of the Ohio and Johnson’s division of 14th Corps to capture the crossings south of Kingston. Meanwhile, 20th Corps approached Cassville from the north along the Adairsville Road, while 23rd Corps was slightly farther behind and to the east on the Sallacoa Road. Johnston deployed his three corps at Cassville; Hardee’s Corps was left to watch the Kingston Road, while Polk’s and Hood’s Corps would cross Two Run Creek and attack the isolated Union forces. The plan was for Hood’s Corps to launch a surprise attack on 20th Corps, followed by Polk’s Corps arriving on the flank; once 20th Corps was broken, these two corps would fall on 23rd Corps. Meanwhile, Hardee would hold off any approaching Union forces along the Kingston Road until Polk’s and Hood’s corps were done, at which point they would join him, and the plan would be decided from there. Sherman had walked directly into this plan. 20th Corps would be subjected to a surprise attack and then a flank attack outnumbered two-to-one; 23rd Corps would then, in turn, be attacked outnumbered two-to-one. The corps-and-a-half Sherman had sent towards Cassville was a small enough force that Hardee could likely hold it off, and the remainder of his army was too separated to arrive in time. Johnston had the perfect setup to deal a crushing blow to the Union army. The Battle of Cassville, though by no means a sure Confederate deal, was a perfect opportunity, the best they would get in the Atlanta Campaign by far. I have left out only one detail; where’s the Union cavalry?
And here comes the potential point of divergence. On the morning of May 19, as Hood’s Corps begins to move to the attack, one of his staff officers noticed a column of troops approaching up the Canton Road to their east. The Union cavalry had gone further to the east than the infantry and now, by sheer coincidence, had arrived in the perfect spot to threaten the Confederate right and rear. In truth, the cavalry posed no real threat to the Confederate forces - the cavalry force, consisting of Stoneman’s and McCook’s cavalry divisions, was under 4,000 men strong and unprepared for infantry combat. In addition, the Union cavalry - especially Stoneman’s division - would later prove themselves of fairly low quality. However, Hood didn’t know the size of this force, or even whether it was cavalry or infantry; he only knew that there was an unexpected Union force approaching his flank and rear. With little choice, Hood paused his corps’ movement and informed Johnston of the approaching force. Shortly afterwards, Mackall (Johnston’s chief of staff) arrived, and told Hood that Union forces were also moving in from the west; if Hood wanted to attack, he had to do so immediately. Unwilling to risk the unknown force coming from the east getting in his rear, Hood instead decided to fall back to cover the Canton Road. This move, in turn, was spotted by Hooker’s corps, which quickly deployed and fortified. The best opportunity the Confederates would get during the entire Atlanta Campaign evaporated; Johnston had completely outgeneraled Sherman, and the coincidental arrival of two divisions of cavalry made it for nought.
With his plan ruined, Johnston decided to fall back to a strong ridgeline south of Cassville; he would still fight a defensive battle here. At noon, Union forces began to arrive on the field from the direction of Kingston, running into Hardee’s Corps deployed for battle; the shocked forces were relieved to see Hardee’s forces retreating instead of attacking. By 5:30 PM, Sherman and the Union artillery were on the field, and Johnston’s ridgeline proved severely vulnerable to artillery fire. That night, Polk told Johnston that his corps would not be able to stand for an hour if the artillery barrage resumed. Johnston remained convinced that the position was defensible, but believing that his corps commanders’ fears would inevitably spread to the troops and leave them demoralized, Johnston agreed to retreat. At midnight, the Confederates began falling back again, reaching Cartersville on the morning of May 20. Sherman still believed that he had only faced a rearguard and that the bulk of the Confederate army had already retreated earlier; as such, he sent only 23rd Corps in pursuit of the Confederates; this would have left them extremely vulnerable had the Confederates turned back and counterattacked, but they had no way of knowing that. At 8:45 pm, 23rd Corps reached the Etowah River to find the bridges destroyed and the Confederates over. With that, the whole area north of the Etowah was in Union hands.
Not only was the Battle of Cassville a tremendous lost opportunity, but it had cost the Confederates much land. The entire area between the Conasauga and the Etowah had fallen to the Union in only four days. The similar distance between the Etowah and the Chattahoochee would take two months; even accounting for the better defensive conditions there, that’s a major difference. Johnston had gambled, and his gamble had failed by the narrowest of margins. The best offensive chance the Confederates had throughout the entire Atlanta campaign had, by pure bad luck, become nothing more than a desultory skirmish. The Battle of Cassville could have been a turning point; even a Confederate defeat would likely have ended with vastly heavier Union losses on a scale that the Confederates would struggle to inflict the rest of the campaign. Instead, it was nothing but another brief stopping point on the road to Atlanta.
Cassville is my pick for the most underrated what-if of the American Civil War. I have never found it even mentioned in an alternate history context, but it provides such a fascinating point of divergence. If the cavalry had taken a different road, or if they had been delayed half an hour, a general battle would have followed, with all the possibilities a full battle brings. An entire battle arising that never happened historically is such a pregnant possibility for alternate history scenarios, and I hope that this post brings some attention to it.
My main source for this is Albert Castel’s Decision in the West, specifically pages 194-209. The book is available to read for free here (click "Borrow for 1 hour"), so you can take a look at the situation at Cassville yourself. I have simplified quite a bit here, and have not included a map; if you want to investigate further, that's the first place to start. Hopefully I have piqued your interest.
2023.03.22 14:12 vrosaa Power BI additional photos
 | submitted by vrosaa to PowerBI [link] [comments] |
2023.03.22 13:43 burraqengineering Solar BootCamp Training-BES
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2023.03.22 13:10 Wazertad The People's President! 2008 McCain + achievement guide
decided to do this cuz not only could i not find a guide but all i found was people saying it was impossible so i decided to give it a shot.
Pawlenty VP, cakewalk difficulty
split visits half and half with Florida and Ohio with maybe one more to Ohio as it will be the closest states.
-1 I’d like to take a trip to Europe, meeting with NATO leaders to talk about Russia and giving the European Union my assurance that the United States is committed to collaborating on strengthening relations, and tackling current economic issues.
-2 Governor Pawlenty has served as a lesson in good governance to us all. I’m mightily impressed with his administrative experience and excited to get to work crafting legislation with him at my side.
-3 In 2008, it is clear that the American people want change. I will build upon the progress made in the last eight years, while working with both parties in Congress to forge a path ahead. My opponent claims he represents change, but his ideas of big government and raising taxes are just as old and out of touch as ever.
-4 I’d rather not make a big deal of the endorsement; I’d be happy to let him endorse me, but tying my name to Bush so vocally might hurt our chances in the long run.
-5 There’s no way we can compete with Obama’s celebrity status. Let him grab the attention for a bit, while we solidify our campaign organization, unveil specific policy planks, and continue to spread the message that I am the experienced, capable candidate who can lead our nation in troubled times.
-6 There’s no point trying to compete with Obama’s celebrity online. What we can do is outrun him on television. I want to be hitting the swing states hard with advertisements. We can lock up the older voters in a way Obama can’t.
-7 Only if that’s what it takes to defeat the terrorists. My number one priority is creating the conditions to get American soldiers home, and those conditions are safety at home and safety abroad.
-8 I don’t want to get too much into the policy, what we need to focus on is the message. Voters need to know that in times like these, experienced and capable leadership will see us through the worst crises.
-9 (achievement question) We should have broken up these monopolistic corporations years ago and brought the financial sector closer to the people. Too big to fail is too big to exist. How many Americans will suffer at the hands of this Bush-made crisis before they realize the folly of capitalism?
-10 It’s time to set politics aside. I’m suspending my campaign for the time being, and going to Washington to help negotiate a bailout. I invite Senator Obama to do the same, so we can focus on making a deal for the American people.
(5201) (if youre like me and you didnt know, right click on questions and hit inspect element to see the code value for every question so you can pick the best debate answers)
-11 I’d like to take some time, maybe an ad spot or two, to specifically target the people who are spreading these lies, disavow them and disprove them. We need to come together as Americans, and we’ll reach out to the Obama campaign to make it happen.
-12 We expected this attack to be made. His answer wasn’t perfect, but we’d be best served by moving on and forgetting all about it. Let’s shift the focus back to the issues ahead of the debate and stick to the message during it.
-13 Obama is too dangerous for America. I want that to be the message we’re putting out -- on the internet, on the television, everywhere. I want a massive robocall campaign to hammer the point home: we don’t know the real Barack Obama.
-14 I plan to revolutionize health care. By deregulating individual insurance markets so people can get covered across state lines, we can provide a tax credit of up to $5000 to offset the cost of insurance. Senator Obama will impose a mandate that will hurt small businesses immeasurably.
-15 We need to turn the tables. Let’s release an ad highlighting his disrespect for our troops in Afghanistan, and how he voted to cut off their funding, increasing the risk to their lives. Obama is too dangerous for America.
-16 No ma’am. He’s a decent family man - a citizen, that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues, that’s what this campaign is all about - he’s not.
-17 I do support closing the center at Guantanamo, and I certainly oppose the use of torture against detainees. All that we have accomplished through maintaining these policies is providing more recruits to al-Qaeda.
-18 His age isn’t an issue, but his experience is. We have a lifetime of political and military experience to capitalize on here. Obama lacks any of that, and is dangerously unqualified to handle the problems we face.
-19 I believe climate change is a serious issue, and if you look at my record, you can see I’ve taken it very seriously. We need to innovate in nuclear, solar, wind and ethanol, and as President I will work to achieve a 65% reduction in carbon emissions by 2050.
-20 I would support peoples’ rights to enter into legal agreements, for insurance and other areas. The unique status of marriage should be retained between a man and a woman. I don’t, however, support a federal ban.
-21 Yes, I believe Roe should be overturned. I would support a constitutional amendment banning abortion in all cases outside rape, incest and risk to the mother.
-22 We need to increase our energy independence. The best way to do this is to expand offshore drilling making new investments in electric cars and nuclear energy. I oppose a windfall profits tax, unlike Senator Obama.
-23 Wright is off the table. Any such attack would smack of desperation and racism at a time when we should be coming together. I do not want to be seen as a racist candidate. We’ll stick to the issues and our other attacks.
-24 The many crises facing our nation demand a steady hand. I may not be able to reach above my head, but I will reach across the aisle to make sure both parties are united in working for the American people. Let’s come together, and bring the right kind of change to our beloved country.
-25 Ohio and Indiana are going to decide this election. We’re going to blitz Cleveland, Cincinnati, Indianapolis and Dayton, before one final rally in Fort Wayne.
I tried this strategy 4 times and won all but one so it shouldn't be too RNG heavy.
You don't need to campaign in Colorado as you get 270 exactly without it but you can totally win it even without visiting it
Not impossible! hope this helps!
submitted by Wazertad to thecampaigntrail [link] [comments]
Pawlenty VP, cakewalk difficulty
split visits half and half with Florida and Ohio with maybe one more to Ohio as it will be the closest states.
-1 I’d like to take a trip to Europe, meeting with NATO leaders to talk about Russia and giving the European Union my assurance that the United States is committed to collaborating on strengthening relations, and tackling current economic issues.
-2 Governor Pawlenty has served as a lesson in good governance to us all. I’m mightily impressed with his administrative experience and excited to get to work crafting legislation with him at my side.
-3 In 2008, it is clear that the American people want change. I will build upon the progress made in the last eight years, while working with both parties in Congress to forge a path ahead. My opponent claims he represents change, but his ideas of big government and raising taxes are just as old and out of touch as ever.
-4 I’d rather not make a big deal of the endorsement; I’d be happy to let him endorse me, but tying my name to Bush so vocally might hurt our chances in the long run.
-5 There’s no way we can compete with Obama’s celebrity status. Let him grab the attention for a bit, while we solidify our campaign organization, unveil specific policy planks, and continue to spread the message that I am the experienced, capable candidate who can lead our nation in troubled times.
-6 There’s no point trying to compete with Obama’s celebrity online. What we can do is outrun him on television. I want to be hitting the swing states hard with advertisements. We can lock up the older voters in a way Obama can’t.
-7 Only if that’s what it takes to defeat the terrorists. My number one priority is creating the conditions to get American soldiers home, and those conditions are safety at home and safety abroad.
-8 I don’t want to get too much into the policy, what we need to focus on is the message. Voters need to know that in times like these, experienced and capable leadership will see us through the worst crises.
-9 (achievement question) We should have broken up these monopolistic corporations years ago and brought the financial sector closer to the people. Too big to fail is too big to exist. How many Americans will suffer at the hands of this Bush-made crisis before they realize the folly of capitalism?
-10 It’s time to set politics aside. I’m suspending my campaign for the time being, and going to Washington to help negotiate a bailout. I invite Senator Obama to do the same, so we can focus on making a deal for the American people.
(5201) (if youre like me and you didnt know, right click on questions and hit inspect element to see the code value for every question so you can pick the best debate answers)
-11 I’d like to take some time, maybe an ad spot or two, to specifically target the people who are spreading these lies, disavow them and disprove them. We need to come together as Americans, and we’ll reach out to the Obama campaign to make it happen.
-12 We expected this attack to be made. His answer wasn’t perfect, but we’d be best served by moving on and forgetting all about it. Let’s shift the focus back to the issues ahead of the debate and stick to the message during it.
-13 Obama is too dangerous for America. I want that to be the message we’re putting out -- on the internet, on the television, everywhere. I want a massive robocall campaign to hammer the point home: we don’t know the real Barack Obama.
-14 I plan to revolutionize health care. By deregulating individual insurance markets so people can get covered across state lines, we can provide a tax credit of up to $5000 to offset the cost of insurance. Senator Obama will impose a mandate that will hurt small businesses immeasurably.
-15 We need to turn the tables. Let’s release an ad highlighting his disrespect for our troops in Afghanistan, and how he voted to cut off their funding, increasing the risk to their lives. Obama is too dangerous for America.
-16 No ma’am. He’s a decent family man - a citizen, that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues, that’s what this campaign is all about - he’s not.
-17 I do support closing the center at Guantanamo, and I certainly oppose the use of torture against detainees. All that we have accomplished through maintaining these policies is providing more recruits to al-Qaeda.
-18 His age isn’t an issue, but his experience is. We have a lifetime of political and military experience to capitalize on here. Obama lacks any of that, and is dangerously unqualified to handle the problems we face.
-19 I believe climate change is a serious issue, and if you look at my record, you can see I’ve taken it very seriously. We need to innovate in nuclear, solar, wind and ethanol, and as President I will work to achieve a 65% reduction in carbon emissions by 2050.
-20 I would support peoples’ rights to enter into legal agreements, for insurance and other areas. The unique status of marriage should be retained between a man and a woman. I don’t, however, support a federal ban.
-21 Yes, I believe Roe should be overturned. I would support a constitutional amendment banning abortion in all cases outside rape, incest and risk to the mother.
-22 We need to increase our energy independence. The best way to do this is to expand offshore drilling making new investments in electric cars and nuclear energy. I oppose a windfall profits tax, unlike Senator Obama.
-23 Wright is off the table. Any such attack would smack of desperation and racism at a time when we should be coming together. I do not want to be seen as a racist candidate. We’ll stick to the issues and our other attacks.
-24 The many crises facing our nation demand a steady hand. I may not be able to reach above my head, but I will reach across the aisle to make sure both parties are united in working for the American people. Let’s come together, and bring the right kind of change to our beloved country.
-25 Ohio and Indiana are going to decide this election. We’re going to blitz Cleveland, Cincinnati, Indianapolis and Dayton, before one final rally in Fort Wayne.
I tried this strategy 4 times and won all but one so it shouldn't be too RNG heavy.
You don't need to campaign in Colorado as you get 270 exactly without it but you can totally win it even without visiting it
Not impossible! hope this helps!
2023.03.22 13:01 USSBurritoTruck Canon Connections: PIC 3x05 - Imposters
- This episode was co-written by Chris Derrick, whose likeness was used as the file photo for the Romulan dissident, Lurak T’Luco, and the severed head prop for that same character in “Disengage”.
- He also co-wrote the season two episode, “Hide and Seek”.
- Mixed in among the bridge sounds at the very beginning of the episode we hear some distinctive TOS beeps and boops.
- We learn this opening scene is Not David Marcus’ dream sequence of some sort after he opens fire on the USS Titan A’s bridge crew. Still, in his dream, before NDM kills Esmar, they say, ”I know what you really are.” Esmar is a Haliian, introduced in the TNG episode “Aquiel”, and as such likely mildly telepathic.
- Later in the real world, Esmar gives NDM a brief look from down a corridor that could be construed as them being aware of the fact that something is off with him, or just a passing glance.
- Riker’s acting captain’s log records the stardate as 78186.03.
- We don’t get a view close enough to actually make out what the objects are floating around the exterior of the Titan A tending to the repairs, but in DIS we were introduced to the 23rd century DOT-7 drones and the 32nd century DOT-23s. Potentially we’re looking at a 25th century equivalent.
- Riker claims that so far as he’s aware Changelings can mimic individuals on sight, but ”not their internal physiology.” In “The Adversary” Odo stated that when he mimics a rock he would register as such on scanners and speculates that Changelings more skilled than himself could do the same humanoids. Doctor Bashir confirms that the Changeling who was masquerading as a human ambassador was scanned and registered as human.
- Seven says that protocol since the Dominion war is “Every crew member passes through an internal imaging chamber.” Though not quite the same thing, when the Protogies arrived on relay outpost CR-721 in “Asylum” the first thing they had to do was go through a biometric scanner.
- The protocol was put into place to verify the crewperson isn’t a shapeshifter attempting to sneak aboard. Of course, we’ve seen Changelings mimic everything from glassware, to a spacefaring being, to fire; hopefully Starfleet has accounted for that as well.
- On M’Talas Prime, we see a hologram of Raffi wearing a mobile emitter. It appears identical to the one the Confederation La Sirena used to create the Emergency Elnor Hologram in season two’s “Hide and Seek”.
- The original mobile emitter came from the 29th century timeship, the Aeon, Krinn is able to recognize the one Raffi is wearing for what it is.
- The USS Intrepid NCC-79520 arrives to the Titan A’s location. This is merely the latest ship to bear the name.
- The Intrepid - United Earth ship first seen in “The Expanse”
- The USS Intrepid NCC-1631 - Constitution-class ship with an all Vulcan crew destroyed in “The Immunity Syndrome”
- The USS Intrepid NCC-38907 - The ship Sergey Rozhenko served on, and first on the scene after the Romulan attack on Khitomer according to “Sins of the Father”; the Excelsior-class ship Sergey mentioned in “Family” according to internal information
- The USS Intrepid NCC-74600 - Intrepid-class? At least according to non-canon material. Chakotay claimed to serve aboard it as part of his cover story while trying to figure out why Starfleet Headquarters was recreated in the Delta Quadrant in “In the Flesh”; also mentioned on a screen as part of a battle group in “Star Trek Nemesis”
- According to production designer Dave Blass, the Intrepid is a Duderstad-class ship, designed by Doug Drexlar and Bill Krause. It’s named for Drexlar’s late wife, Dorothy Duder, who was a food stylist on ENT.
- Captain Shaw lists off several events he thinks will be considered negatively in Starfleet’s accounting Picard and Riker’s guilt:
- ”That time someone hot dropped the saucer section of the Enterprise D on a planet.” - The USS Enterprise D’s saucer made emergency landing on the inhabited planet Veridian in “Star Trek Generations”.
- ”That time someone threw the prime directive out the window so they could snog a villager on Ba’ku.” - In “Star Trek Insurrection” Picard did get romantic with a member of the Ba’ku, but only after learning they weren’t actually a pre-warp species, and working to prevent a rogue admiral from forcibly relocating them to steal their resources.
- “Or the time you boys nearly wiped out all of humanity by creating a time paradox in the Devron system.” Actually, because of the nature of the time paradox in “All Good Things…”, those events did not happen, and Picard is the only one with any memory of it.
- It’s Ro Laren! From Star Trek! Commander Ro is played by Michelle Forbes.
- When last we saw her in “Preemptive Strike” Ro Laren defected from Starfleet to join the Maquis’ struggle against the Cardassians after the Federation abandoned its own citizens because it was more convenient to do so than continue to skirmish with the Cardassian Union.
- Michelle Forbes has previously turned down opportunities to reprise the role, both for DS9 and VOY.
- Seven gives NDM a Starfleet uniform so he’ll go unnoticed by the security officers transferred over from the Intrepid. In “Chrysalis” the augments, Jack, Lauren, and Patrick snuck on to Deep Space Nine wearing Starfleet uniforms, and In “People of Earth” Burnham had Booker wear a Starfleet uniform for similar reasons to those Seven gives NDM.
- Personally I did not expect NDM to get away with saying, ”That’s a stupid question,” to Ro.
- ”That was 30 years ago. The Maquis are no longer an enemy.” Riker is technically correct as all but a few dozen Maquis were wiped out by the Dominion after the Cardassian Union became a member in “By Inferno’s Light”.
- ”You trusted her when no one else would.” Riker is referring to the events of “Ensign Ro” where Picard initially did not want her aboard the Enterprise D until she proved herself to be a valuable officer despite her reputation.
- ”Your Bajoran earring…you’re not wearing it.” In “Ensign Ro”, Ro‘s condition for joining the crew of the Enterprise D was that she be allowed to wear her earring, despite it not being strictly within the Starfleet uniform code.
- On Bajor they just call it an earring.
- The brief glance we get of Ro’s boot knife it appears to be similar to the knife a Bajoran used to murder a Cardassian file clerk in “Duet”.
- Krinn wears an especially large IDIC on a chain, so you can understand the infinite diversity in infinite combinations.
- The tattoo under Krinn’s eye is Vulcan script.
- Krinn’s phaser appears to be based on, if not identical to, the Ferengi phaser Quark had in “The Magnificent Ferengi” and “The Siege of AR-558”.
- Bajoran springwine was first mentioned in “Return to Grace”.
- On Bajor they just call it springwine.
- Picard deactivates the safeties on the 10 Forward program. We’ve seen since the beginning of this season an display during the closing credits reading ”10_Forward // Bar_LA” with the safeties disabled.
- ”Guinan’s.” Picard points a holographic phaser from under the holographic bar at Ro. In “Night Terrors” Guinan pulled a rifle from Magus III out from under the bar and fired at the ceiling of Ten Forward aboard the Enterprise D.
- ”Unless I am mistaken, you are Vulcan. Hence Sneed, a Ferengi, is not your brother.” In “The Bonding” Worf inducted a human, Jeremy Aster, into his family ”for all time” and said they were brothers. Jeremy Aster was never mentioned again.
- ”There can be no utopia without crime. Ergo an organized criminal enterprise is logical.” In “Prime Factors” Captain Janeway observed, “You can use logic to justify almost anything.”
- The knives Raffi and Worf are given for their fight to the death are the same as one Shinzon had gave Picard with a sample of his blood in “Star Trek Nemesis” and used by the Tal Shiar assassins in “Remembrance”.
- Picard suggests taking Ro’s concerns to Admiral Janeway. Ensign Janeway was a junior science division officer aboard the Enterprise D whom counselor Troi was very mean to in “Man of the People”. Apparently she took Troi’s advice to shape up to heart.
- Daystrom Station appears to be kitbashed from Jupiter Station, the Midas Array, and cargo containers, first seen in “Life Line”, “Pathfinder”, and “Fortunate Son” respectively.
- *”Daystrom Station is guarded by a highly sophisticated A.I. system. But it has flaws that are most…illogical.” Badgey was uploaded to Rutherford’s cranial implant, which was seen salvaged from the void of space in “The Stars at Night”.
- Ro crashes her shuttle into the Intrepid’s port nacelle. Other bullshit deaths in Trek include:
- Jadzia Dax - “Tears of the Prophets”
- Trip - “These Are the Voyages…”
- Data - “Star Trek Nemesis”
- Hugh - “Nepenthe”
- The Titan A’s tactical console shows the Intrepid raising shields using a graphic of dots populating around the ship, similar to what we saw in “Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan” when the USS Reliant raises shields.
- NDM’s fight against the four changelings echoes Dahj Asha’s activation against the Tal Shiar Assassins when she was attacked in her apartment in “Remembrance”.
- ”Old-school Bajoran spycraft.” Ro’s earring turns out to be a datachip holding all of her investigation in to the Changelings infiltrating Starfleet.
- On Bajor they just call it spycraft.
2023.03.22 12:31 upbstock 🗞🗞🗞🗞🗞🗞🗞🗞🗞🗞🗞🗞🗞🗞🗞🗞🗞🗞🗞🗞🗞🗞🗞🗞🗞🗞🗞🗞🗞🗞
Fedilemma
Leading up to the Federal Reserve's March 21-22 monetary policy meeting, traders had been expecting the FOMC to ratchet up its key interest rate by 50 basis points because the economy appeared to be surprisingly robust. But then three U.S. banks failed - Silvergate Capital (SI), SVB (SIVB) and Signature Bank (SBNY) - and a fourth is teetering (check out the latest headlines related to First Republic (FRC)). That may have Fed policymakers rethinking their expectation for a rate hike today and their upcoming rate path, while the whole episode came during the Fed's blackout period, creating even more uncertainty about what may lie ahead.
Backdrop: As a reminder, the Fed has increased its key rate for eight straight meetings, bringing the federal funds rate target range to 4.50%-4.75%, from 0.0%-0.25% in the past year, in its drive to push down inflation. Meanwhile, the core PCE price index, the central bank's preferred inflation gauge, showed a jump of 4.7% Y/Y in February, up from 4.6% in January, but easing from 5.2% in March 2022. Don't forget that efforts to shrink the bank's balance sheet were upended last week, as financial institutions borrowed a whopping $153B from the Fed's discount window (and $12B from the newly created Bank Term Funding Program), though assets from emergency lending tend to fall as soon as a crisis subsides, compared to holdings added under quantitative easing.
With regards to whether to hike or not, the decision won't be easy. Inflation still remains very high and a pause now could signal there are deeper problems within the banking system. On the other hand, there are fears that the Fed is moving too far, too fast with its aggressive rate increases, and some see the current banking crisis as a direct result of tighter monetary policy. Ultimately, things will boil down to whether the financial stability problem has been limited to a handful of regional banks that has been successfully contained, or if something systematic has broken - with the possibility of the crisis morphing into something larger.
By the numbers: According to the latest Wall Street Breakfast survey, around 70% of the 1,740 respondents expect the central bank to go for a smaller 25 basis point hike, though 20% believe that the Fed will pause its hiking cycle (and about 10% still see the possibility of a 50 bps increase). Any surprises will surely jolt markets, so pay attention to the Fed's dot plot - which will be published alongside its policy decision at 2 PM ET - as well as Jerome Powell's press conference a half hour later. SA contributor James Baker expects the central bank chair to "emphasize the continuing strength in the employment, the Fed's intention to make money available to any bank needing funds to meet deposit withdrawals, and the Fed's continuing commitment to bring inflation down." (84 comments)
Deposit runs
U.S. officials are prepared to take more actions if needed to ensure liquidity in the banking sector, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said yesterday during an American Bankers Association meeting in Washington, D.C. She defended federal regulators' actions to protect the depositors of Silicon Valley Bank (SIVB) and Signature Bank (SBNY), saying "our intervention was necessary to protect the broader U.S. banking system." While conditions have improved with aggregate outflows stabilizing, "similar actions could be warranted if smaller institutions suffer deposit runs that pose the risk of contagion." Yellen also cited a need to re-examine current regulatory and supervisory regimes, and expressed worries over a last-minute deal to resolve the debt ceiling. (3 comments)
Meet Bard
Google (GOOG, GOOGL) has released its artificial intelligence chatbot for public use as it responds to the growing threat from rival projects at Microsoft (MSFT) and OpenAI. The Bard chatbot will be available to a limited number of users on a waitlist picked from those in the U.S. and the U.K., before Google offers it in more countries. The company is also learning from missteps of OpenAI's ChatGPT and its own demonstration of Bard, by limiting the amount of interaction that can occur between Bard and users. Calling the situation a "code red" in February, Google AI chief Jeff Dean said the tech giant was moving "more conservatively than a small startup" since it has much more "reputational risk" in providing erroneous information. (31 comments)
Earnings swoosh
Shares of Nike (NKE) jumped 4% in after-hours trading on Tuesday after topping earnings expectations and touting inventory management actions. However, the gains didn't hold, and the stock even ended the session down 2%. Management noted continued promotional activity that compressed margins by 330 basis points to 43.3% - disappointing against a 43.7% consensus expectation - and the sneaker giant said it would "continue to take a cautious approach in planning our business, leading with intentional financial and operational guardrails." Inventories were also up 16% to $8.9B compared with the year-ago period, while China continues to remain a sore spot for Nike, with sales declining 8% Y/Y across the region. (22 comments)
Today's Markets
In Asia, Japan +1.9%. Hong Kong +1.7%. China +0.3%. India +0.2%. In Europe, at midday, London -0.1%. Paris +0.3%. Frankfurt +0.5%. Futures at 6:30, Dow flat. S&P -0.1%. Nasdaq -0.2%. Crude -0.4% to $69.41. Gold +0.3% to $1947.20. Bitcoin +0.3% to $28,205. Ten-year Treasury Yield unchanged at 3.60%
Today's Economic Calendar
7:00 MBA Mortgage Applications 10:30 EIA Petroleum Inventories 2:00 PM FOMC Announcement 2:30 PM Chairman Press Conference
Companies reporting earnings today »
What else is happening...
Sticker shock: UK inflation rate unexpectedly rebounds to 10.4%.
PIMCO said to lose $340M from Credit Suisse (CS) AT1 debt writeoff.
GameStop (GME) surges after meme player records a surprise profit.
DWAC on watch with Trump expected to be formally indicted today.
Vote of confidence ahead of court ruling on SEC-(XRP-USD) case.
Ford (F) brings an all-electric Explorer to European markets.
Dodge (STLA) unveils its last super-fast gasoline muscle car.
Intel (INTC) shakes up leadership, announces new foundry leader.
These stocks are picking up Bed Bath & Beyond's (BBBY) lost market share.
Home improvement? Check out the latest housing stats on sales and prices.
submitted by upbstock to Optionmillionaires [link] [comments]
Leading up to the Federal Reserve's March 21-22 monetary policy meeting, traders had been expecting the FOMC to ratchet up its key interest rate by 50 basis points because the economy appeared to be surprisingly robust. But then three U.S. banks failed - Silvergate Capital (SI), SVB (SIVB) and Signature Bank (SBNY) - and a fourth is teetering (check out the latest headlines related to First Republic (FRC)). That may have Fed policymakers rethinking their expectation for a rate hike today and their upcoming rate path, while the whole episode came during the Fed's blackout period, creating even more uncertainty about what may lie ahead.
Backdrop: As a reminder, the Fed has increased its key rate for eight straight meetings, bringing the federal funds rate target range to 4.50%-4.75%, from 0.0%-0.25% in the past year, in its drive to push down inflation. Meanwhile, the core PCE price index, the central bank's preferred inflation gauge, showed a jump of 4.7% Y/Y in February, up from 4.6% in January, but easing from 5.2% in March 2022. Don't forget that efforts to shrink the bank's balance sheet were upended last week, as financial institutions borrowed a whopping $153B from the Fed's discount window (and $12B from the newly created Bank Term Funding Program), though assets from emergency lending tend to fall as soon as a crisis subsides, compared to holdings added under quantitative easing.
With regards to whether to hike or not, the decision won't be easy. Inflation still remains very high and a pause now could signal there are deeper problems within the banking system. On the other hand, there are fears that the Fed is moving too far, too fast with its aggressive rate increases, and some see the current banking crisis as a direct result of tighter monetary policy. Ultimately, things will boil down to whether the financial stability problem has been limited to a handful of regional banks that has been successfully contained, or if something systematic has broken - with the possibility of the crisis morphing into something larger.
By the numbers: According to the latest Wall Street Breakfast survey, around 70% of the 1,740 respondents expect the central bank to go for a smaller 25 basis point hike, though 20% believe that the Fed will pause its hiking cycle (and about 10% still see the possibility of a 50 bps increase). Any surprises will surely jolt markets, so pay attention to the Fed's dot plot - which will be published alongside its policy decision at 2 PM ET - as well as Jerome Powell's press conference a half hour later. SA contributor James Baker expects the central bank chair to "emphasize the continuing strength in the employment, the Fed's intention to make money available to any bank needing funds to meet deposit withdrawals, and the Fed's continuing commitment to bring inflation down." (84 comments)
Deposit runs
U.S. officials are prepared to take more actions if needed to ensure liquidity in the banking sector, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said yesterday during an American Bankers Association meeting in Washington, D.C. She defended federal regulators' actions to protect the depositors of Silicon Valley Bank (SIVB) and Signature Bank (SBNY), saying "our intervention was necessary to protect the broader U.S. banking system." While conditions have improved with aggregate outflows stabilizing, "similar actions could be warranted if smaller institutions suffer deposit runs that pose the risk of contagion." Yellen also cited a need to re-examine current regulatory and supervisory regimes, and expressed worries over a last-minute deal to resolve the debt ceiling. (3 comments)
Meet Bard
Google (GOOG, GOOGL) has released its artificial intelligence chatbot for public use as it responds to the growing threat from rival projects at Microsoft (MSFT) and OpenAI. The Bard chatbot will be available to a limited number of users on a waitlist picked from those in the U.S. and the U.K., before Google offers it in more countries. The company is also learning from missteps of OpenAI's ChatGPT and its own demonstration of Bard, by limiting the amount of interaction that can occur between Bard and users. Calling the situation a "code red" in February, Google AI chief Jeff Dean said the tech giant was moving "more conservatively than a small startup" since it has much more "reputational risk" in providing erroneous information. (31 comments)
Earnings swoosh
Shares of Nike (NKE) jumped 4% in after-hours trading on Tuesday after topping earnings expectations and touting inventory management actions. However, the gains didn't hold, and the stock even ended the session down 2%. Management noted continued promotional activity that compressed margins by 330 basis points to 43.3% - disappointing against a 43.7% consensus expectation - and the sneaker giant said it would "continue to take a cautious approach in planning our business, leading with intentional financial and operational guardrails." Inventories were also up 16% to $8.9B compared with the year-ago period, while China continues to remain a sore spot for Nike, with sales declining 8% Y/Y across the region. (22 comments)
Today's Markets
In Asia, Japan +1.9%. Hong Kong +1.7%. China +0.3%. India +0.2%. In Europe, at midday, London -0.1%. Paris +0.3%. Frankfurt +0.5%. Futures at 6:30, Dow flat. S&P -0.1%. Nasdaq -0.2%. Crude -0.4% to $69.41. Gold +0.3% to $1947.20. Bitcoin +0.3% to $28,205. Ten-year Treasury Yield unchanged at 3.60%
Today's Economic Calendar
7:00 MBA Mortgage Applications 10:30 EIA Petroleum Inventories 2:00 PM FOMC Announcement 2:30 PM Chairman Press Conference
Companies reporting earnings today »
What else is happening...
Sticker shock: UK inflation rate unexpectedly rebounds to 10.4%.
PIMCO said to lose $340M from Credit Suisse (CS) AT1 debt writeoff.
GameStop (GME) surges after meme player records a surprise profit.
DWAC on watch with Trump expected to be formally indicted today.
Vote of confidence ahead of court ruling on SEC-(XRP-USD) case.
Ford (F) brings an all-electric Explorer to European markets.
Dodge (STLA) unveils its last super-fast gasoline muscle car.
Intel (INTC) shakes up leadership, announces new foundry leader.
These stocks are picking up Bed Bath & Beyond's (BBBY) lost market share.
Home improvement? Check out the latest housing stats on sales and prices.
2023.03.22 11:47 mayurpande6990 6G Wireless Technology Market Report 2022: Global Industry Overview, Challenges, Size & Share Analysis, Technology Developments Forecast Till 2028
6G Wireless Technology Market Scope & Overview: The market analysis covers the Porter's Five Forces Analysis, sales channels, distributors, market drivers, challenges, trends, opportunities, risks, and entry barriers. When conducting 6G Wireless Technology research, both national and international markets as well as the long-term growth outlook are taken into consideration. The report offers a thorough analysis of the market from all angles, making it a more complete and essential resource for market participants.
The research report's market projections are supported by extensive secondary research, primary interviews, and internal expert assessments. The 6G Wireless Technology market's motivators and constraints are its intrinsic components, whereas its options and difficulties are its incidental components. A perspective on the market's revenue performance over the anticipated time period is provided by the market research.
Get Sample Report of 6G Wireless Technology Market @ https://www.intelligencemarketreport.com/report-sample/805642
Competitive Analysis
The research takes into account both the current state of the 6G Wireless Technology market and its projected future market developments. In-depth discussion is given on a number of market growth accelerators, restraints, and trends. The research covers both the industry's supply and demand sides. The market's top companies and other well-known ones are profiled and examined.
The research study includes profiles of leading companies operating in the global 6G Wireless Technology Market:
AT&T Autotalks Broadcom Corporation China Telecom China Unicom Cisco Systems ComSenTer (University of California) Corning Incorporated DARPA DeepSig Ericsson European Commission Federated Wireless Fujitsu Google Huawei InterDigital International Telecommunication Union Karlsruhe Institute of Technology Keysight Technologies LG Corporation MediaTek Motorola Solutions Nanyang Technological University National Instrument Corp. National Science Foundation NEC Corporation NGMN Alliance Nokia (Bell Labs) NTT DoCoMo NVidia NYU Wireless Orange Qualcomm Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited Samsung Electronics SK Telecom T-Mobile TU Braunschweig University of Oulu (6G Flagship) Verizon Wireless Virginia Diodes Virginia Tech ZTE
Market Segmentation Analysis
The market size (both volume and value) for each category is included in the research report, along with market segmentation for 6G Wireless Technology by type, industry, and channel sectors. Readers of the study will benefit from the inclusion of client data from different businesses. The sector's current situation, market share, growth rate, anticipated trends, market drivers, opportunities and challenges, risks and entry barriers, and Porter's Five Forces Analysis are all taken into account in the market research report.
Segment by Type
Infrastructure Deployment Apps and Services
Segment by Application
Artificial Intelligence Automation & Robotics Internet of Things VR and AR Others
Years considered for the study are as follows:
Historical year – 2019, 2020 Base year – 2021 Forecast period – 2022 to 2028
Do you have any specific query regarding this research? Ask Your Query @ https://www.intelligencemarketreport.com/send-an-enquiry/805642
Covid-19 Impact Analysis
The market research report provides recommendations that market participants can use to safeguard their businesses from the negative effects of pandemic-like circumstances. The analysis of the COVID-19 outbreak's overall effects on the 6G Wireless Technology market is the study's main objective.
Regional Outlook
Asia Pacific, North America, Latin America, Europe, and the Middle East and Africa are the main global regions that are covered in the most recent 6G Wireless Technology market report. The report also highlighted the key market category divisions on a global scale. The major associations for each category are listed in the categorization report. In-depth explanations are provided for the market subdivisions, sector growth representatives, and market governing subdivision.
Key Questions Answered by the 6G Wireless Technology Market Report
1 Scope of the Report
2 Executive Summary
3 Global 6G Wireless Technology by Company
4 World Historic Review for 6G Wireless Technology by Geographic Region
5 Americas
6 APAC
7 Europe
8 Middle East & Africa
9 Market Drivers, Challenges and Trends
10 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis
11 Marketing, Distributors and Customer
12 World Forecast Review for 6G Wireless Technology by Geographic Region
13 Key Players Analysis
14 Research Findings and Conclusion
Conclusion
A thorough analysis of the market as a whole is provided in the report, with a particular emphasis on issues relating to market size, growth forecasts, potential business opportunities, the operational environment, trend analysis, and competition analysis.
Buy 6G Wireless Technology market [email protected] https://www.intelligencemarketreport.com/checkout/805642
Contact Us: Akash Anand Head of Business Development & Strategy [email protected] Phone: +44 20 8144 2758
submitted by mayurpande6990 to u/mayurpande6990 [link] [comments]
The research report's market projections are supported by extensive secondary research, primary interviews, and internal expert assessments. The 6G Wireless Technology market's motivators and constraints are its intrinsic components, whereas its options and difficulties are its incidental components. A perspective on the market's revenue performance over the anticipated time period is provided by the market research.
Get Sample Report of 6G Wireless Technology Market @ https://www.intelligencemarketreport.com/report-sample/805642
Competitive Analysis
The research takes into account both the current state of the 6G Wireless Technology market and its projected future market developments. In-depth discussion is given on a number of market growth accelerators, restraints, and trends. The research covers both the industry's supply and demand sides. The market's top companies and other well-known ones are profiled and examined.
The research study includes profiles of leading companies operating in the global 6G Wireless Technology Market:
AT&T Autotalks Broadcom Corporation China Telecom China Unicom Cisco Systems ComSenTer (University of California) Corning Incorporated DARPA DeepSig Ericsson European Commission Federated Wireless Fujitsu Google Huawei InterDigital International Telecommunication Union Karlsruhe Institute of Technology Keysight Technologies LG Corporation MediaTek Motorola Solutions Nanyang Technological University National Instrument Corp. National Science Foundation NEC Corporation NGMN Alliance Nokia (Bell Labs) NTT DoCoMo NVidia NYU Wireless Orange Qualcomm Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited Samsung Electronics SK Telecom T-Mobile TU Braunschweig University of Oulu (6G Flagship) Verizon Wireless Virginia Diodes Virginia Tech ZTE
Market Segmentation Analysis
The market size (both volume and value) for each category is included in the research report, along with market segmentation for 6G Wireless Technology by type, industry, and channel sectors. Readers of the study will benefit from the inclusion of client data from different businesses. The sector's current situation, market share, growth rate, anticipated trends, market drivers, opportunities and challenges, risks and entry barriers, and Porter's Five Forces Analysis are all taken into account in the market research report.
Segment by Type
Infrastructure Deployment Apps and Services
Segment by Application
Artificial Intelligence Automation & Robotics Internet of Things VR and AR Others
Years considered for the study are as follows:
Historical year – 2019, 2020 Base year – 2021 Forecast period – 2022 to 2028
Do you have any specific query regarding this research? Ask Your Query @ https://www.intelligencemarketreport.com/send-an-enquiry/805642
Covid-19 Impact Analysis
The market research report provides recommendations that market participants can use to safeguard their businesses from the negative effects of pandemic-like circumstances. The analysis of the COVID-19 outbreak's overall effects on the 6G Wireless Technology market is the study's main objective.
Regional Outlook
Asia Pacific, North America, Latin America, Europe, and the Middle East and Africa are the main global regions that are covered in the most recent 6G Wireless Technology market report. The report also highlighted the key market category divisions on a global scale. The major associations for each category are listed in the categorization report. In-depth explanations are provided for the market subdivisions, sector growth representatives, and market governing subdivision.
Key Questions Answered by the 6G Wireless Technology Market Report
- What is the market size and forecast of the Global 6G Wireless Technology Market?
- What are the inhibiting factors and impact of COVID-19 shaping the Global 6G Wireless Technology Market during the forecast period?
- Which are the products/segments/applications/areas to invest in over the forecast period in the Global 6G Wireless Technology Market?
- What is the competitive strategic window for opportunities in the Global 6G Wireless Technology Market?
- What are the technology trends and regulatory frameworks in the Global 6G Wireless Technology Market?
- What is the market share of the leading vendors in the Global 6G Wireless Technology Market?
- What modes and strategic moves are considered suitable for entering the Global 6G Wireless Technology Market?
1 Scope of the Report
2 Executive Summary
3 Global 6G Wireless Technology by Company
4 World Historic Review for 6G Wireless Technology by Geographic Region
5 Americas
6 APAC
7 Europe
8 Middle East & Africa
9 Market Drivers, Challenges and Trends
10 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis
11 Marketing, Distributors and Customer
12 World Forecast Review for 6G Wireless Technology by Geographic Region
13 Key Players Analysis
14 Research Findings and Conclusion
Conclusion
A thorough analysis of the market as a whole is provided in the report, with a particular emphasis on issues relating to market size, growth forecasts, potential business opportunities, the operational environment, trend analysis, and competition analysis.
Buy 6G Wireless Technology market [email protected] https://www.intelligencemarketreport.com/checkout/805642
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2023.03.22 11:14 Acceptable_Slide5192 Why The Market Always Reacts To The Fed’s Interest Rate Hikes - Part 2
Here are some more ways that Fed and RBI rate hikes can affect your money.
Mortgages Are Getting More Expensive
If the Fed raises interest rates again, people who need to borrow money to buy a house or use the equity in their home to pay for something else will In the coming months, you will most likely have to pay more.
Some economists predicted that interest rates would peak this summer. Midway through June, the 30-year fixed mortgage reached 5.81%, and economists predicted that rates would be in the low 5% range by the end of the year.
However, as the economy deteriorated and the Fed continued to raise rates aggressively, mortgage rates reached a new 20-year high of 7.08% in the middle of November, exceeding most forecasts for the year.
Mortgage rates have since fallen slightly. The average rate for the week ending December 8th, according to Freddie Mac, was 6.33%.
The bond market, which frequently reacts to what the Fed does, has a direct impact on mortgage rates.
The Fed's rate hikes in 2022 were one of the factors driving up mortgage rates earlier in the year. Investors' strong demand for mortgage bonds has aided the recent drop in rates. This is because the economy appears to be more stable, and Fed rate hikes, especially small ones, are no longer surprising.
The Fed funds rate, on the other hand, is directly related to shorter-term home loans with floating rates, such as adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs) and home equity lines of credit. (HELOCs). This means that when that rate rises, so will the rates on ARMs and HELOCs.
Even though mortgage rates are still higher than they were in 2021, not everyone thinks this is a bad thing. Some real estate professionals believe that raising interest rates is one way to cool off an overheated housing market. Some believe that after years of low borrowing costs, it is time to return to normalcy.
Housing experts advise people who want to buy now to think about locking in the best interest rate possible, as rates can rise by the hour. Rate locks typically last at least 30 days, but some lenders offer longer locks for a fee.
It is difficult to know for certain whether you have locked in the lowest possible rate, but you can always refinance later if rates fall.
Although there is no direct relationship between federal funds and deposit rates, banks are steadily increasing the annual percentage yields (APYs) on deposit accounts such as savings accounts, money market accounts, and certificates of deposit. (CDs).
Rates rise to attract deposits, but banks have a lot of cash on hand right now, so they can take their time raising yields.
APYs on deposits will rise faster or slower depending on where you bank. Online banks, smaller banks, and credit unions typically have higher yields than large banks, and they've raised rates more quickly in recent months due to increased competition for deposits.
If you want to get a better return on your money, you should put it in an online bank or credit union. The average savings account rate has increased from 0.06% to 0.24% since January, but the best high-yield savings accounts pay up to 5% APY on some deposits.
Where you keep your money is critical, especially when inflation is on the rise.
submitted by Acceptable_Slide5192 to u/Acceptable_Slide5192 [link] [comments]
Mortgages Are Getting More Expensive
If the Fed raises interest rates again, people who need to borrow money to buy a house or use the equity in their home to pay for something else will In the coming months, you will most likely have to pay more.
Some economists predicted that interest rates would peak this summer. Midway through June, the 30-year fixed mortgage reached 5.81%, and economists predicted that rates would be in the low 5% range by the end of the year.
However, as the economy deteriorated and the Fed continued to raise rates aggressively, mortgage rates reached a new 20-year high of 7.08% in the middle of November, exceeding most forecasts for the year.
Mortgage rates have since fallen slightly. The average rate for the week ending December 8th, according to Freddie Mac, was 6.33%.
The bond market, which frequently reacts to what the Fed does, has a direct impact on mortgage rates.
The Fed's rate hikes in 2022 were one of the factors driving up mortgage rates earlier in the year. Investors' strong demand for mortgage bonds has aided the recent drop in rates. This is because the economy appears to be more stable, and Fed rate hikes, especially small ones, are no longer surprising.
The Fed funds rate, on the other hand, is directly related to shorter-term home loans with floating rates, such as adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs) and home equity lines of credit. (HELOCs). This means that when that rate rises, so will the rates on ARMs and HELOCs.
Even though mortgage rates are still higher than they were in 2021, not everyone thinks this is a bad thing. Some real estate professionals believe that raising interest rates is one way to cool off an overheated housing market. Some believe that after years of low borrowing costs, it is time to return to normalcy.
Housing experts advise people who want to buy now to think about locking in the best interest rate possible, as rates can rise by the hour. Rate locks typically last at least 30 days, but some lenders offer longer locks for a fee.
It is difficult to know for certain whether you have locked in the lowest possible rate, but you can always refinance later if rates fall.
- Savings account interest rates are slowly rising.
Although there is no direct relationship between federal funds and deposit rates, banks are steadily increasing the annual percentage yields (APYs) on deposit accounts such as savings accounts, money market accounts, and certificates of deposit. (CDs).
Rates rise to attract deposits, but banks have a lot of cash on hand right now, so they can take their time raising yields.
APYs on deposits will rise faster or slower depending on where you bank. Online banks, smaller banks, and credit unions typically have higher yields than large banks, and they've raised rates more quickly in recent months due to increased competition for deposits.
If you want to get a better return on your money, you should put it in an online bank or credit union. The average savings account rate has increased from 0.06% to 0.24% since January, but the best high-yield savings accounts pay up to 5% APY on some deposits.
Where you keep your money is critical, especially when inflation is on the rise.
2023.03.22 10:35 CIN-01 What are the Rights of Temporary Workers in Canada?
 | What are the Rights of Temporary Workers in Canada? submitted by CIN-01 to u/CIN-01 [link] [comments] Temporary workers are an important part of Canada’s labour force. They are individuals who are employed for a fixed period and are not considered permanent employees. These workers may be foreign nationals, students, or individuals on work permits. While they are not permanent employees, they have certain rights under Canadian law. Those who want to work in Canada for a short period should know about What are the Rights of Temporary Workers in Canada. In this blog post, we will discuss the rights of temporary workers in Canada. We will look at their rights under federal and provincial laws, their entitlements to benefits, and their rights in the workplace. Rights under Federal and Provincial LawsIt is important to know about what are the rights of temporary workers in Canada. Temporary workers in Canada have several rights under federal and provincial laws. These rights include the right to fair wages, working conditions, and protection against discrimination.Temporary workers are covered by federal and provincial labour laws, which set minimum standards for wages, hours of work, and working conditions. In addition, they are protected by human rights legislation, which prohibits discrimination based on race, gender, sexual orientation, age, and other factors. Under federal law, temporary workers are entitled to the same wages and working conditions as permanent employees in similar positions. This means that they must receive the same pay, benefits, and other entitlements as their permanent counterparts. In addition, temporary workers have the right to refuse unsafe work under the Canada Labour Code. This means that if they believe that the work they are being asked to do is unsafe or unhealthy, they can refuse to do it without fear of reprisal. Provincial laws also protect temporary workers. For example, in Ontario, temporary workers are entitled to minimum wage, overtime pay, and vacation pay. They are also entitled to workplace safety protections and the right to join a union. There is a Reason for Canada to Welcome so Many Immigrants Every Year, the government can’t jeopardize their rights and will take immediate action if their rights are violated in any way. Entitlements to BenefitsTemporary workers in Canada are entitled to certain benefits, including health care coverage, workers’ compensation, and employment insurance. Health care coverage is provided by the provincial government under the Canada Health Act. This act ensures that all residents of Canada, including temporary workers, have access to medically necessary healthcare services.Workers’ compensation provides benefits to workers who are injured on the job or become ill as a result of their work. Temporary workers are covered by workers’ compensation programs in the provinces and territories where they work. Employment insurance provides temporary income support to unemployed workers, including temporary workers who lose their jobs. To be eligible for employment insurance, workers must have worked a certain number of hours in the previous year and must be actively looking for work. Rights in the WorkplaceTemporary workers in Canada have the right to a safe and healthy work environment, freedom from harassment and discrimination, and the right to join a union.Under the Canada Labour Code, employers must provide a safe and healthy work environment for all employees, including temporary workers. This includes providing safety equipment and training and ensuring that workers are not exposed to hazardous substances or situations. Temporary workers are also protected against harassment and discrimination under human rights legislation. Employers are required to provide a workplace that is free from discrimination, harassment, and violence, and to take steps to prevent such behavior from occurring. Finally, temporary workers have the right to join a union and engage in collective bargaining. Unions represent workers in negotiations with employers, and help to ensure that workers are treated fairly and that their rights are respected. ConclusionWhat are the rights of temporary workers in Canada is a crucial question for everyone aspiring to get a work permit one day. Temporary workers play an important role in Canada’s labour force, and they are entitled to certain rights and protections under federal and provincial laws. These include the right to fair wages and working conditions, entitlements to benefits such as health care coverage and workers’ compensation, and protections against harassment and discrimination in the workplace.If you are a temporary worker in Canada and believe that your rights have been violated, you should contact a lawyer or a labour rights organization for assistance. These organizations can provide advice and support to help you understand your rights. You can also continue the journey of Work Permit to PR Canada later after gaining some experience. |
2023.03.22 10:06 Comfortable-Jump-218 Current grad student's: Share your stipend/budget or tips to save money/ tips in general for new students. Anything you think a new student needs to know.
(If you disagree with any of these, just leave a comment and don't downvote. I hate when people do that. I'd much rather be told "hey this isn't a good tip", then a downvote that doesn't address the issue. One thing I hate about reddit.)
There's a lot of people getting accepted and thought it would help them realize what grad school is like financially. Also, I'm just curious. (Keep in mind, it might change by your major)
University of Toledo
Stipend: $23k/year
Retirement plan: Yes
Rent: 1Bedroom Apartment $700/month
Electric: (Electric heating) $60-$140/month. Also, electricity can be a scam here in toledo. I had a person knock on my door saying they worked for the electric company (they said the name of the company and dressed like they did) and they needed to correct something on my bill. Long story short, I was stupid/busy, they transfered my account to their company, and after they left I realized my rates would have tripled and luckily I was able to fix it before the damage was done. A week later another guy came and I almost wanted to call the cops on him. Another thing, I got a letter saying that back in November 2000 some committee voted on something and my supplier was going to switch to a different company. My current rate is like 0.02 cents/kilowatt or something and that letter said it was going to go to $0.06/kilowatt. Pretty much my bill would have doubled because a committee voted for something when I was 2 years old. Just, check your email and if something feels off, it probably is.
Internet: (AT&T 25mbps) $4/month because of ACP benefit (Thanks Biden)
General Fees/University Fees: about $700/semester; don't know what summer is yet; parking permit for year $250; my parent's job provide me healthcare but here's the link
Textbooks: ..... learn how to use the internet lol. Books are expensive. If you have to buy, rent or buy used. I found out a lot of people buy books from small bookstore websites, then sell them for a higher price on amazon. So, try and find small bookstore websites.
Renter's Insurance: Around $160/year (liberty mutual)
Credit Card: Discover. I need to get a visa because not everybody accepts Discover (ex: Costco). But there is no annual fee, I've made money off it because of cashback, and they have a "good grades" thing that got me $20 a year. I did that during my undergrad and I don't know if it applies for grad students, but I don't think they even check. I think I just needed a student email.
Furniture for new apartment: Cheapest route is probably thrifting stores, Facebook marketplace, or maybe even putting a flyer up at local churches. However, I lived with my parents before grad school so I just saved all my money and bought furniture off amazon. It's not "expensive", but it does add up quick. Definitly a few $1,000 went into that. Bought my TV from best buy open box. Oh, and this one is really ghetto, but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. If you drive around dumpsters in apartment complexes or just low-income places you can find stuff. My apartment complex is constantly through out furniture. At first I was tempted to take it, fix it up, and sell it, but I didn't have time and I hate Facebook market place.
Tip: Spend a good week looking for programs/local groups that support low-income families. Government programs. Some people shame people who go on welfare and stuff like that, but guess what, you are low-income and definitely qualify. I pay taxes like everyone else and you probably do it. So yeah, abuse it. Get money back.
Food: Honesty, I am still debating if it's better to eat out everyday (places like chipotle; not McDonalds or else you'll feel sick. Speaking from experience). When I consider the time it takes to do dishes and cook food, the price I paid for groceries, time to grocery shop and make a list, I almost think going out and getting dinner every other day saves me money and time. But that's an individual thing everyone needs to think about for themself.
Lighting: My apartment as two windows and no interior lighting except the kitchen and bathroom. The light switch only controls one outlet per room. So I had to get Wi-Fi led lights. I highly recommend these (although it looks like the price went up. They were $20). The connection is good. Works simi-well with alexia. The biggest thing I like is it has a "wake-up" setting that makes me peacefully wake up everyday. I used to tell myself I am not a morning person, but these lights changed that. Also, since there are no windows I lose track of time a lot. These lights have a daylight cycle that change throughout the day.
WATCH OUT FOR BURNOUT! Get a hobby, go for a walk around a metro park, or something. Too many people burn themselves out and I was one of them. Doing classes online during Covid years ago still did a number on me. Pace yourself.
Therapy: If you are even questioning if you need it before grad school you will most likely need it during it. I don't know how expensive it is here.
I don't recommend studying at home. My issue is I really want to go home after class and tell myself I'll study at home, but I never do. Keep school stuff at school. Keep lab stuff in the lab. Your apartment should be a safe place. My only exception is writing stuff because I have a big monitor and hate my laptop.
I know some people in academia are jerks, but I say be honest with your PIs and instructors. Tell them your issues, questions, etc. I mean, don't come up to them with 1,000 of questions and get made they can't help you right there and then. Set an appointment and tell them what your questions are. If it can be done over email, do it. I only had one professor ne a jerk when I had a question, but that was about how an assignment was graded and she gets a pass because she has a relevant health issue.
Lastly, if you were a straight A student through out college, you are probably in for a rough time. Not saying it's impossible, but some people in my program are not coping well with the idea they got a B on an exam. As far as I am aware, grades don't matter after grad school and they are more focused on what type of research you did. I am speaking mainly to PhD students and don't know about master students for this.
submitted by Comfortable-Jump-218 to GradSchool [link] [comments]
There's a lot of people getting accepted and thought it would help them realize what grad school is like financially. Also, I'm just curious. (Keep in mind, it might change by your major)
University of Toledo
Stipend: $23k/year
Retirement plan: Yes
Rent: 1Bedroom Apartment $700/month
Electric: (Electric heating) $60-$140/month. Also, electricity can be a scam here in toledo. I had a person knock on my door saying they worked for the electric company (they said the name of the company and dressed like they did) and they needed to correct something on my bill. Long story short, I was stupid/busy, they transfered my account to their company, and after they left I realized my rates would have tripled and luckily I was able to fix it before the damage was done. A week later another guy came and I almost wanted to call the cops on him. Another thing, I got a letter saying that back in November 2000 some committee voted on something and my supplier was going to switch to a different company. My current rate is like 0.02 cents/kilowatt or something and that letter said it was going to go to $0.06/kilowatt. Pretty much my bill would have doubled because a committee voted for something when I was 2 years old. Just, check your email and if something feels off, it probably is.
Internet: (AT&T 25mbps) $4/month because of ACP benefit (Thanks Biden)
General Fees/University Fees: about $700/semester; don't know what summer is yet; parking permit for year $250; my parent's job provide me healthcare but here's the link
Textbooks: ..... learn how to use the internet lol. Books are expensive. If you have to buy, rent or buy used. I found out a lot of people buy books from small bookstore websites, then sell them for a higher price on amazon. So, try and find small bookstore websites.
Renter's Insurance: Around $160/year (liberty mutual)
Credit Card: Discover. I need to get a visa because not everybody accepts Discover (ex: Costco). But there is no annual fee, I've made money off it because of cashback, and they have a "good grades" thing that got me $20 a year. I did that during my undergrad and I don't know if it applies for grad students, but I don't think they even check. I think I just needed a student email.
Furniture for new apartment: Cheapest route is probably thrifting stores, Facebook marketplace, or maybe even putting a flyer up at local churches. However, I lived with my parents before grad school so I just saved all my money and bought furniture off amazon. It's not "expensive", but it does add up quick. Definitly a few $1,000 went into that. Bought my TV from best buy open box. Oh, and this one is really ghetto, but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. If you drive around dumpsters in apartment complexes or just low-income places you can find stuff. My apartment complex is constantly through out furniture. At first I was tempted to take it, fix it up, and sell it, but I didn't have time and I hate Facebook market place.
Tip: Spend a good week looking for programs/local groups that support low-income families. Government programs. Some people shame people who go on welfare and stuff like that, but guess what, you are low-income and definitely qualify. I pay taxes like everyone else and you probably do it. So yeah, abuse it. Get money back.
Food: Honesty, I am still debating if it's better to eat out everyday (places like chipotle; not McDonalds or else you'll feel sick. Speaking from experience). When I consider the time it takes to do dishes and cook food, the price I paid for groceries, time to grocery shop and make a list, I almost think going out and getting dinner every other day saves me money and time. But that's an individual thing everyone needs to think about for themself.
Lighting: My apartment as two windows and no interior lighting except the kitchen and bathroom. The light switch only controls one outlet per room. So I had to get Wi-Fi led lights. I highly recommend these (although it looks like the price went up. They were $20). The connection is good. Works simi-well with alexia. The biggest thing I like is it has a "wake-up" setting that makes me peacefully wake up everyday. I used to tell myself I am not a morning person, but these lights changed that. Also, since there are no windows I lose track of time a lot. These lights have a daylight cycle that change throughout the day.
WATCH OUT FOR BURNOUT! Get a hobby, go for a walk around a metro park, or something. Too many people burn themselves out and I was one of them. Doing classes online during Covid years ago still did a number on me. Pace yourself.
Therapy: If you are even questioning if you need it before grad school you will most likely need it during it. I don't know how expensive it is here.
I don't recommend studying at home. My issue is I really want to go home after class and tell myself I'll study at home, but I never do. Keep school stuff at school. Keep lab stuff in the lab. Your apartment should be a safe place. My only exception is writing stuff because I have a big monitor and hate my laptop.
I know some people in academia are jerks, but I say be honest with your PIs and instructors. Tell them your issues, questions, etc. I mean, don't come up to them with 1,000 of questions and get made they can't help you right there and then. Set an appointment and tell them what your questions are. If it can be done over email, do it. I only had one professor ne a jerk when I had a question, but that was about how an assignment was graded and she gets a pass because she has a relevant health issue.
Lastly, if you were a straight A student through out college, you are probably in for a rough time. Not saying it's impossible, but some people in my program are not coping well with the idea they got a B on an exam. As far as I am aware, grades don't matter after grad school and they are more focused on what type of research you did. I am speaking mainly to PhD students and don't know about master students for this.
2023.03.22 08:39 Justin534 To everyone in the US please do not vote solely on who's going to be friendly to crypto
I'm reading more and more on this sub that people are going to vote for Republicans because they seem more friendly to crypto. I'm begging all you please do not vote solely on a politician's stance towards crypto.
In the aftermath of the 2008-09 financial crisis the Dodd-Frank act was passed to prevent another financial crisis from happening again.
Here is an overview of what the act accomplished and restrictions put in place to limit the risks banks could take so they would not destabilize the entire financial system again.
https://www.forbes.com/advisoinvesting/dodd-frank-act/
The passage of this act was straight down party lines with only 3 republicans voting for it in the house 237 yes votes 192 no votes. In the Senate it passed with 60 to 39 votes, again with only 3 republicans supporting it.
https://ballotpedia.org/Fact_check/Do_all_the_Republican_presidential_candidates_support_the_repeal_of_Dodd-Frank
Then in 2018 Trump and Republicans rolled back many of the provisions in the law to safeguard the financial system and economy from banks taking too many risks.
In 2018, former President Trump signed into law a bill that made significant changes to the Dodd-Frank Act, including exempting some small and regional banks from its strictest regulations. The new law also weakened rules intended to protect big banks from collapse.
It dramatically reduced the number of banks subject to special Dodd-Frank treatment, including the number of banks that must undergo annual stress tests to demonstrate they can handle a severe downturn.
The administration said that the bill “rolls back the crippling Dodd-Frank regulations that are crushing community banks and credit unions nationwide. They were in such trouble. One size fits all—those rules just don’t work.”
Dismantling the CFPB The Trump administration took the CFPB on a long and winding journey of deconstruction since 2017.
Former CFPB director Richard Cordray resigned in November 2017 due to what many have described as political pressure from the administration. Mick Mulvaney became interim director and slowly started to loosen restrictions by calling off an investigation into subprime lenders, firing the agency’s 25-member advisory board and siding with lenders in a lawsuit against the CFPB.
In 2020, the Supreme Court ruled the director can be fired at will by the president, but the bureau itself remains constitutional.
Loosening the Volcker Rule In 2020, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) loosened restriction in the Volcker Rule. Under the revised regulation, bank capital requirements were lowered and banks were granted permission to make investments in venture-capital funds.
“While the intent of this statute is straightforward, it has been one of the most challenging post-financial crisis rules for both regulators and banking entities to implement,” said FDIC Chairman Jelena McWilliams in a statement. McWilliams added that the restrictions under the original rule were “inefficient” and “overly restrictive.”
One FDIC board member, Martin Gruenberg, a democrat, opposed the changes to the Volcker rule. Gruenberg said the changes leave the rule “severely weakened” and “risks repeating the mistakes” of the 2008 financial crisis."
The roll back of the Dodd frank act was passed with 225 republicans and 33 democrats voting in favor. Then was signed by Donald Trump.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/22/house-passes-bank-bill-rolling-back-dodd-frank-rules.html
One thing in particular I feel it's very important to point out:
The measure eases restrictions on all but the largest banks. It raises the threshold to $250 billion from $50 billion under which banks are deemed too important to the financial system to fail. Those institutions also would not have to undergo stress tests or submit so-called living wills, both safety valves designed to plan for financial disaster.
Now I want you to look at all the US Banks failing and getting lifelines right now. Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank, and First Republic bank all have something in common. They're all are over $50 billion in assets and less than $250 billion.
Silicon Valley Bank lobbied exactly for this to happen.
https://www.levernews.com/svb-chief-pressed-lawmakers-to-weaken-bank-risk-regs/
In 2015, SVB President Greg Becker submitted a statement to a Senate panel pushing legislators to exempt more banks — including his own — from new regulations passed in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. Despite warnings from some senators, Becker’s lobbying effort was ultimately successful.
Touting “SVB’s deep understanding of the markets it serves, our strong risk management practices,” Becker argued that his bank would soon reach $50 billion in assets, which under the law would trigger “enhanced prudential standards,” including more stringent regulations, stress tests, and capital requirements for his and other similarly sized banks.
Becker insisted that $250 billion was a more appropriate threshold.
What do we know about First Republic bank?
Like SVB their assets were just shy of $250 billion. Just like SVB their losses were on their top tier capital, treasury securities, simply because they did not bother to manage their interest rate risk.
https://thehill.com/business/3911002-what-to-know-about-first-republic-bank/
Who did they give political donations to? They largely favored republicans over democrats. But they did donate to democrats too.
https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/first-republic-bank/summary?topnumcycle=2022&toprecipcycle=2022&lobcycle=2022&outspendcycle=2022&id=D000044505&contribcycle=2018
They also spent at least $250k solely to lobby Congress to roll back Dodd-Frank reforms which lead to the 2018 roll back.
So please please please if you're going to vote for a republican (or a democrat or anyone else) solely based on their stance towards crypto at least consider where they tend to vote in measures that could have avoided this banking crisis we now find ourselves in. Ask yourself is this person in the pockets of a financial insitution that has argued it's too small to pose a systemic financial risk - when in fact they pushed through "reforms" which lead to their failure and threaten the financial system today? Please don't find yourself voting for someone who happens to be pro crypto if the cost is also being pro banking and financial crisis.
Please do not vote for some kind of self fulfilling prophecy where crypto succeeds because everything else fails.
submitted by Justin534 to CryptoCurrency [link] [comments]
In the aftermath of the 2008-09 financial crisis the Dodd-Frank act was passed to prevent another financial crisis from happening again.
Here is an overview of what the act accomplished and restrictions put in place to limit the risks banks could take so they would not destabilize the entire financial system again.
https://www.forbes.com/advisoinvesting/dodd-frank-act/
The passage of this act was straight down party lines with only 3 republicans voting for it in the house 237 yes votes 192 no votes. In the Senate it passed with 60 to 39 votes, again with only 3 republicans supporting it.
https://ballotpedia.org/Fact_check/Do_all_the_Republican_presidential_candidates_support_the_repeal_of_Dodd-Frank
Then in 2018 Trump and Republicans rolled back many of the provisions in the law to safeguard the financial system and economy from banks taking too many risks.
In 2018, former President Trump signed into law a bill that made significant changes to the Dodd-Frank Act, including exempting some small and regional banks from its strictest regulations. The new law also weakened rules intended to protect big banks from collapse.
It dramatically reduced the number of banks subject to special Dodd-Frank treatment, including the number of banks that must undergo annual stress tests to demonstrate they can handle a severe downturn.
The administration said that the bill “rolls back the crippling Dodd-Frank regulations that are crushing community banks and credit unions nationwide. They were in such trouble. One size fits all—those rules just don’t work.”
Dismantling the CFPB The Trump administration took the CFPB on a long and winding journey of deconstruction since 2017.
Former CFPB director Richard Cordray resigned in November 2017 due to what many have described as political pressure from the administration. Mick Mulvaney became interim director and slowly started to loosen restrictions by calling off an investigation into subprime lenders, firing the agency’s 25-member advisory board and siding with lenders in a lawsuit against the CFPB.
In 2020, the Supreme Court ruled the director can be fired at will by the president, but the bureau itself remains constitutional.
Loosening the Volcker Rule In 2020, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) loosened restriction in the Volcker Rule. Under the revised regulation, bank capital requirements were lowered and banks were granted permission to make investments in venture-capital funds.
“While the intent of this statute is straightforward, it has been one of the most challenging post-financial crisis rules for both regulators and banking entities to implement,” said FDIC Chairman Jelena McWilliams in a statement. McWilliams added that the restrictions under the original rule were “inefficient” and “overly restrictive.”
One FDIC board member, Martin Gruenberg, a democrat, opposed the changes to the Volcker rule. Gruenberg said the changes leave the rule “severely weakened” and “risks repeating the mistakes” of the 2008 financial crisis."
The roll back of the Dodd frank act was passed with 225 republicans and 33 democrats voting in favor. Then was signed by Donald Trump.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/22/house-passes-bank-bill-rolling-back-dodd-frank-rules.html
One thing in particular I feel it's very important to point out:
The measure eases restrictions on all but the largest banks. It raises the threshold to $250 billion from $50 billion under which banks are deemed too important to the financial system to fail. Those institutions also would not have to undergo stress tests or submit so-called living wills, both safety valves designed to plan for financial disaster.
Now I want you to look at all the US Banks failing and getting lifelines right now. Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank, and First Republic bank all have something in common. They're all are over $50 billion in assets and less than $250 billion.
Silicon Valley Bank lobbied exactly for this to happen.
https://www.levernews.com/svb-chief-pressed-lawmakers-to-weaken-bank-risk-regs/
In 2015, SVB President Greg Becker submitted a statement to a Senate panel pushing legislators to exempt more banks — including his own — from new regulations passed in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. Despite warnings from some senators, Becker’s lobbying effort was ultimately successful.
Touting “SVB’s deep understanding of the markets it serves, our strong risk management practices,” Becker argued that his bank would soon reach $50 billion in assets, which under the law would trigger “enhanced prudential standards,” including more stringent regulations, stress tests, and capital requirements for his and other similarly sized banks.
Becker insisted that $250 billion was a more appropriate threshold.
What do we know about First Republic bank?
Like SVB their assets were just shy of $250 billion. Just like SVB their losses were on their top tier capital, treasury securities, simply because they did not bother to manage their interest rate risk.
https://thehill.com/business/3911002-what-to-know-about-first-republic-bank/
Who did they give political donations to? They largely favored republicans over democrats. But they did donate to democrats too.
https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/first-republic-bank/summary?topnumcycle=2022&toprecipcycle=2022&lobcycle=2022&outspendcycle=2022&id=D000044505&contribcycle=2018
They also spent at least $250k solely to lobby Congress to roll back Dodd-Frank reforms which lead to the 2018 roll back.
So please please please if you're going to vote for a republican (or a democrat or anyone else) solely based on their stance towards crypto at least consider where they tend to vote in measures that could have avoided this banking crisis we now find ourselves in. Ask yourself is this person in the pockets of a financial insitution that has argued it's too small to pose a systemic financial risk - when in fact they pushed through "reforms" which lead to their failure and threaten the financial system today? Please don't find yourself voting for someone who happens to be pro crypto if the cost is also being pro banking and financial crisis.
Please do not vote for some kind of self fulfilling prophecy where crypto succeeds because everything else fails.
2023.03.22 07:43 Visual-Soft5584 Federal Reserve 'between a rock and a hard place' as interest rate decision looms
 | Federal Reserve officials will convene this week for one of the central bank's most uncertain policy meetings in years. submitted by Visual-Soft5584 to Burystocks [link] [comments] Forced to balance the consequences of a banking crisis and inflation that remains well above target, the Fed is expected to raise interest rates by another 0.25% when it releases its latest policy decision at 2:00 p.m. ET Wednesday afternoon. This move would bring the Fed's benchmark interest rate range to 4.75%-5%, the highest since 2006. Fed Chair Jerome Powell will hold a press conference at 2:30 p.m. ET to explain the Fed's decision. "They're in between a rock and a hard place," said Wilmer Stith, bond portfolio manager for Wilmington Trust. "There's a banking crisis and it's really a very tenuous, uncomfortable position for the Fed to be in." During his semi-annual testimony before Congress in early March, Fed Chair Jerome Powell said strong economic data would likely push interest "higher than previously anticipated." Just days later, the 16th-largest bank in the U.S. — Silicon Valley Bank — was taken into receivership by the FDIC, marking the second-largest bank failure in U.S. history. By the evening of Sunday, March 12, the Fed, Treasury, and FDIC had stepped in to backstop deposits at the bank and, in effect, deposits across the banking system. Regulators also seized Signature Bank on March 12, and last week the banking industry organized a de facto bailout of troubled lender First Republic. Shares of First Republic reached a record low on Monday as investors fear the bank will be the fourth U.S. bank this month to fail. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell testifies before the House Committee on Financial Services on Capitol Hill on March 08, 2023 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Anna MoneymakeGetty Images) This past weekend, Swiss banking giants UBS and Credit Suisse merged in an emergency combination aimed at shoring up the European banking system. This Fed again issued a Sunday evening statement — this time on global swap lines to ensure dollar liquidity remains abundant worldwide. Still, as of Tuesday morning, data from the CME Group showed investors placing an 85% chance on the Fed raising rates by 25 basis points on Wednesday. "If they stop and reverse [rate hikes], that could cause markets to believe they're not fighting inflation when inflation is still a problem, giving you higher mortgage rates and funding costs for corporations and just a tighter vice on the economy," Stith said. After a year fighting one problem (inflation) with one tool (higher interest rates), the Fed has had to firefight a whole new challenge in just the last 10 days. Don't rule out 'further hikes to come' In addition to announcing its latest interest rate decision, the Fed will also reveal its new Summary of Economic Projections (SEP) on Wednesday, which include officials' forecasts for interest rates, inflation, unemployment, and economic growth over the balance of this year and the next two, as well as longer-run expectations. "[While] Chair Jerome Powell will acknowledge the uncertainty and stress the Fed's willingness to adjust policy if the situation in the banking sector worsens, that doesn't necessarily mean that the new Summary of Economic Projections won't still show further hikes to come,” said Andrew Hunter, an economist at Capital Economics. In December, the Fed's SEP suggested rates would peak in a range of 5%-5.25% during this rate hiking cycle. Powell's testimony earlier this month suggested this outlook is what would need altering from the central bank. On March 14, the February consumer price index showed consumer prices excluding food and energy — or so-called "core" inflation — rose 0.5% over the prior month in February, a modest acceleration from the 0.4% gain logged over each of two prior months. On March 10, the February jobs report showed some 311,000 jobs were created last month after more than 500,000 jobs were added to the economy in January. https://preview.redd.it/6awngnoyk8pa1.png?width=904&format=png&auto=webp&s=36cfb0d87a3996768cad9a010fa2beaf5a542e62 This is the strong economic data investors are betting will force the Fed to continue raising rates, though caution is expected given financial stability risks in the banking sector. Back out the banking crisis that has enveloped global markets and these inflation and jobs numbers had made a 50 basis point rate hike likely. Or as Powell told lawmakers on March 7: "If the totality of the data were to indicate that faster tightening is warranted, we would be prepared to increase the pace of rate hikes." As February turned to March, Fed officials were widely socializing the idea that 5%-5.25% peak range for the Fed funds rate would need to be revised higher. Leading up to this month's bank failures and before the Fed's ten-day quiet period ahead of its policy meeting, many Fed officials were calling to raise rates higher previously forecast. Fed Governor Chris Waller warned in a speech March 2 that if jobs and inflation reports continued to come in hot rates would have to rise more than previously expected this year. Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari, a voting member of the FOMC, said earlier this month he'd lean towards pushing rates higher than he previously forecast, while Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic said that if data come in stronger than expected then a case could be made for higher rates https://preview.redd.it/qpji7q34l8pa1.png?width=960&format=png&auto=webp&s=0a281e095946df03f00d4ecba4e3bc69b1aaa1d7 "It's a toss up," said Stith. "Do they raise 25 [basis points], but stop quantitative tightening? Do they raise 25 but lower their dot plot significantly? It's less certain now from my perspective that they're going to do the 25, [and] continue to telegraph a higher rate environment. I think that's a bar that's a little too high." Goldman's chief economist Jan Hatzius — who expects the Fed will stand pat on Wednesday — said there is "considerable uncertainty" about the path beyond March, but he's leaving expectations unchanged for 25 basis point hikes in May, June, and July, and now expects the Fed to finish its rate-hiking cycle with rates in a range of 5.25%-5.5%. https://preview.redd.it/wqpa5ce7l8pa1.png?width=921&format=png&auto=webp&s=6448bd4dc99a3d56d2505eb60be099b3f194e20a Liquidity looms In addition to balancing full employment with stable prices, the Fed's dual mandate has an unofficial third arm — financial stability. This "third mandate" is what has been put under the most stress during this month's banking crisis. The Fed has said it would use its regulatory tools to deal with financial instability, and the central bank created an emergency lending facility to offer funding to banks to ensure banks could meet all depositor withdrawals. This program essentially backstopped all deposits — both those insured and uninsured — across the U.S. financial system. So far banks have borrowed only about $12 billion from the program — equivalent to a small fraction of the deposits that were pulled out of Silicon Valley Bank before its collapse. Still, banks have borrowed $153 billion in loans through the Fed's traditional lending program, known as the discount window, marking the largest amount since the 2008 financial crisis. And as the Fed uses its tools to shore up confidence in the system, these efforts have been a collaborative effort in Washington, D.C. Speaking before the Senate last week, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said she is monitoring stress in the banking system to make sure problems at Silicon Valley Bank and Signature don't spread to other banks. Yellen assured Senate lawmakers last Wednesday the U.S. banking system is "sound" despite recent bank failures. https://preview.redd.it/tz6lnbjal8pa1.png?width=960&format=png&auto=webp&s=b9ba6d0e4a1ae019458982b1b9acd9d75fa9e829 These stresses on the banking system may also, in a roundabout way, work to accomplish some of the Fed's goals, particularly as it relates to tightening financial conditions. "The Fed wanted to tighten financial conditions and bam, they got that in a week," Stith said. According to the Fed's latest Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey, most banks were already tightening standards on consumer and business loans by the end of last year. "If credit was restricted enough to seriously hit activity, the risk is that a self-sustaining cycle of rising unemployment, higher delinquency rates and ever-tighter credit standards could eventually emerge," said Capital Economics' Hunter. |
2023.03.22 07:30 TheSajuukKhar Ten Forward Weekly 3/21/2023
- Next event, after Voth event ends, is First Contact Day
- Ship from SNW soon(tm), though probably not one we were expecting
- Zen store ships coming up. Kael believes one of the Zen store ships is technically a Lower Decks ship
- Kael hasn't heard anything regarding a bundle for DSC ending
- Unlikely Cryptic will make new starting experiences
- Kael believes theres some new item set coming soon
- When STO was launched on consoles there were 15 countries that it didn't get launched on the Playstation store for, for w/e reason, and Cryptic is working on getting that fixed
- "End of game" for STO isn't happening any time soon
- The tech is there to make costume items for vanity pets, Kael isn't sure it will happen any time soon
- Kael will pass on beards for Romulans
- When asked about making older, non full spec, Zen store/lockbox ships upgraded to full spec to make them more relevant/on par with current ships Kael said that the T6x upgrades were made to help with that, and that theres more stuff coming in that area
- To get the Voth battlezone to work with the event Jesse had to do some "under the hood" magic because the game editor couldn't do it directly. The data was able to be handled by the engine, just not in a way that was directly available to them. Had to get a new icon made for the battlezone from the UI artist Joe. "Most difficult" part was opening up the battlezone and editing all the events to capture areas to give credit for completion of the event which involved.... one whole line of data!
- Jesse says it was about time they added the Battlezones to events. STO has been running events using TFOs/mini-games like Omega molecules for awhile now, why not integrate the battlezones? They have obvious break points in capturing sections that can be used for event credit. This new option seems to resonate with players, so they might do it again.
- When asked about small craft content Kael/Jesse talk about the "Mario Kart" gameplay they tested for small craft in the past. They spent weeks and weeks making it, and even got to actual testing of it, but found that the amount of work needed to make it feel good in the game was more than the payoff they would get out of it(there was a semi-long conversation about camera, movement, weight of objects, etc, between games that makes each game work/feel as it needs to be, and how STO's ship system just wasn't built for cart racing so it doesn't feel good)
- Issue with bringing the DPS test map on Tribble over to live involves both fixing rewards, and that it was made by a developer who no longer works for Cryptic so someone like Jesse would have to find the map in the code, see it how works, bring it over to live, find ways to it could be exploited and fix them, etc.(Cryptic has also previously mentioned the map isn't very optimized and bringing it over to live server would lag the game)
- Issue with the old Maco/Omega/Honor Guard unlocks is that they were awarded in ways that they don't structure the data anymore. So a designer like Jesse has to go find where in the data did they award this thing. Then it has to be passed to a programmer who has to figure out how this is actually unlocking the costume. Then it has to be sent to a costume artist who has to decide if this is something they want to give out, or does it need to be fixed up for clipping/species lists. Its not as easy as just "flip switch costume unlocked". Kael says he will ask Jarod about see if it can be added as rewards for like a Borg event or something
- Spock's volcano suit was brought up as a possible reward for this years First contact Day, but a more fun reward was thought up/decided instead. Cryptic is still aware people want it, but right now its just a costume with no stats and someone in systems would have to build the actual EV suit
- Ground vehicles, like the Argo, would require a larger overhaul to get working. The Voth mech suit works because its basically just "big group person". While Champions has vehicles theres some hard limits on what they can do. Compares it to the shuttle issues. What does it feel like to drive a car in STO? What maps can you use it on? Is it actually going to fit in all the places we want it to on a map? What happens when you crash? When you run into another car? When you drive over a critter? How is throttle handled? Do you have to shift gears? Is it automatic? Can other people ride in the car and/or possibly shoot a gun while in the car?
- Kael will ask Jarod about making older party poppers available
- Turning hoverboards on in maps like New Romulus is possible, but would require some fiddling since hoverboards work by defining a "volume" on the map where hoverboards are allowed. You have to be careful about things like ground clearance. If you notice you can just too high and accidentally have the hoverboard power turn off because the volume for allowing hoverboards only really covers the area directly above the water
- Cryptic is having ongoing discussions about how to make the V-Rex less campable
- V-Rex not counting for daily event progress it intended because of the camping issue
- Porting things between STO/Champions/Neverwitner is really difficult. Champion is locked to its own code branch meaning its more stable, but doesn't have many of the features STO/Neverwinter do. STO and Neverwinter are easier to port between because they're developed in tandem, but differences in how the game's play mean you can just port enemies between games without having to do things like rebuilding the animation rig.
- Champions isn't on console because it just didn't work out that way. It was originally going to be on Xbox 360, but that didn't work out for w/e reason.
- Reason why special BOFFs, like those based on actors, aren't editable is due to costume clipping/performance reasons. Some costume pieces don't look good on X species, other don't match well with other costume part, some things like capes/loose cloth is very performance heavy, etc. Geordi and EMH BOFFs were editable because of being very generic human shape without too many issues.
- The reason why Defense of Starbase One was bottable was because it was originally designed to require you to clean up each wave of Klingons before it would move onto the next wave. However, around the time they made it, there was a big engine bug where all instances of that "clean up the remaining enemy" would never complete. This was due to a fake entity being on the map/being used for code purposes that the game would count as an enemy even though it wasn't. In order to get around the bug the TFO was changed to just have automatic wave progression, which made it AFKable. That issue was solved, so they changed it back/adjusted what the game looks for in regards to people AFKing to make it not AFKable.
- Oddest bug Christian ever worked on was a bug that caused two people PVPing to revert to level 0 after the PVP match was over
- John said he would think about changing the Terran Valkyrie pets to use agony phasers, and that it was an interesting idea, but no confirmation of if/when it will happen.
- Updating the old uniforms is unlikely since the character artists are working on new things hinted at the end of recent missions(likely talking about the Borg arc tease)
- To revamp something like DSEs would require
- The environment team looking at the map and deciding if it looks good enough, or if its janky/needs some fixes. Spend several weeks doing that.
- Content would have to track down all associated bugs like critters warping in, fading out, then warping back in again. That's a big question mark since Cryptic doesn't know what causes it, and thus, how long it will take to fix.
- In regards to refreshing the content itself would require things like. Bringing in a voiced characteactor to be a liaison for the DSEs. Have the writer write up different text for each type of DSE. Couple days for writing, a couple days for recording, a couple days for the audio team to set audio levels and hook it all up. Character reaction has to sculpt their likeness, even if its a mini contact box and not a full dialogue screen. That's weeks of work. If its an STO original character thats still days of work. Content would then have to do things like make higher level DSEs. This would involve copying the DSEs and changing the encounter levels on them, set it all up, and make a new version of the map for all of this stuff. That's a couple days of work due to the number of DSEs. Adding new gameplay features like closing portals, rescuing ships etc, would take a few days to a week. Then it needs to be copied to all the other DSEs and edited for each kind of enemy to make sure it works. Then it goes to QA who has to test all of them, all variations, how it works with teams of people, if things like fighting one type of enemy breaks the new gameplay feature. This is a few weeks for QA to go through everything/send back to programmers to fix issues. Would also include adding DSEs to quadrants without them, critter groups not currently covered by DSEs, new accolades, trying them into the endeavor system, etc. Jesse says he would schedule around 1.5-2 months worth of time to bring DSEs up to 2023 levels of gameplay.
- Don't assume devs know about a bug just because its old, and if you've posted about it on the forums before, but it hasn't been fixed, don't be afraid to bump the thread up to get more visibility on it.
- fleet logo being available on ships/not is up to Thomas wanting it to be there or not
- Christian is always scanning the forums/Reddit for new bugs. But do include details/steps for recreating said bug. Just saying "x is broken" isn't helpful for the devs.
- Jesse would like to redo Khitomer in Stasis but it would require a lot of work.
- Texas class not having the NA registry is a bug and is getting fixed either this week, or soon
- Bug regarding ISA right transformer not spawning with a shield has been reproduced by QA, and put on content, so it should be fixed soon
- Bug about Texas class console/experimental weapon misfiring was noted
- Female french twist hairstyle making your character invisible was reported, confirmed by QA, and has been sent to the team to fix
- Kael asked Christian to note the Beverly hair not being available for females
- Cryptic is looking into the block? on PS4
- Christian fixed the bug on the Valkyrie hanger pet visuals, and the Jem'Hadar Zen store ships having wrong descriptions.
- The teams disbanding at the end of a TFO bug is a bug that Cryptic has dealt with for years, and it keeps coming back every time they think they've squashed it.
- Jesse fixed the bug in "Stranded in Space" regarding the science career optional
- Screen flicker in Khitomer in Stasis TFO, and other older maps, was reported
- Starfleet 32C non admiral pants clipping through the jacket also noted
- Trauma response being buggy is a known issue
- Christian wrote down feedback about the synth ship getting a skin without the Federation logo on it.
- Lobi outfits not being able to be worn by BOFFs on at least the Xbox version was noted
2023.03.22 06:40 ruKawin Wednesday, 22nd March 2023
 | The Daily Spin. Rate-Hike Wednesday Edition. On-chain amount of stablecoins being converted into Bitcoins reaches a 4-year high. Options open-contracts hit ATH at 468k BTC, Coinbase’s Bitcoin premium index also hits record highs. And the bears are still waiting for $10k… submitted by ruKawin to CoinwebDailySpin [link] [comments] DefiLlama resolves its internal conflict between founders, easing concerns of a ‘hostile takeover’ forking of its code. MakerDAO’s emergency proposal causes MKR to shed 26%. SushiSwap’s Head Chef receives a subpoena from our regulator of the year, Gary the Salamander – Garrymander. DeFi insurance grew by 22 providers in 2022. And one of the most anticipated airdrops in the crypto community – $ARB – happens tomorrow. Magic Eden launches Ordinal NFT marketplace, Sony files for an NFT patent. Cardano’s DJED stablecoin expands into Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain. Biden’s administration reports that cryptocurrencies are “mostly speculative investment vehicles.” Mastercard announces collaboration with Australian payment gateway, Stables, to issue a stablecoin-only physical payment card for daily use in the APAC region. Stables will work with a third party to convert USDC to currency and settle transactions on the Mastercard network. Stables’ digital app will enable instant USDC transactions by providing digital asset custody technology that are ISO and SOC2 certified. Cryptowallet.com makes a press release about their successful renewal of their Estonian license. Circle goes for regulatory approval in France. India’s new crypto laws are making it difficult to just HODL. Binance launches its Verifiable Random Functions (VRF) Oracle, providing Random Number Generator (RNG) capabilities to blockchain networks. Its utility will see use cases in blockchain gaming, consensus sampling, and any scenario where true randomness is valuable and verifiable. Lastly, don’t forget to catch last week’s episode of the All-in Podcast, covering the banking crisis and the great VC reset… here is our round-up of curated news and opinions (surely biased) from the world of Blockchain, keeping you informed into the market news with the most trending, in-the-know, and controversial topics. In the name of transparent, dissemination of information to keep you curious, inspired, and clinically sane… Ongoings at Coinweb Coinweb’s Layer 2 marks 4 million transactions milestone https://twitter.com/CoinwebOfficial/status/1638125472814092291?s=20 Coinweb Partners With Ceffu for Institutional Crypto Custody https://www.ceffu.com/blog/coinweb-partners-with-ceffu-for-institutional-crypto-custody?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=organic_social&utm_campaign=cweb0321 Coinweb’s Fireside Chat Series, digitALL: Innovation and Technology for Gender Equality https://twitter.com/CoinwebOfficial/status/1636676933361745920?s=20 “A Thread on Refereed Delegation of Computation” by Kawin on Twitter https://twitter.com/CoinwebOfficial/status/1635952081302589441?s=20 Coinweb to bring cross-chain tokenisation to Layer 2 https://cryptoslate.com/coinweb-to-bring-cross-chain-tokenisation-to-layer-2/ “A Thread on L2 Scalability, Network Efficiency and Throughput/TPS” by Anton on Twitter https://twitter.com/CoinwebOfficial/status/1633424957693915137 The Coinweb Monthly Spin - Coinweb Project's Monthly Round-Up and Curated News & Events From The Bleeding Edge of All Things Web3 https://coinweb.beehiiv.com/p/coinweb-monthly-spin-fifth-edition A Leading Layer 2 Platform Looking To Tackle Crypto's Interoperability Issue https://www.benzinga.com/markets/cryptocurrency/23/02/31067514/a-leading-layer-2-platform-looking-to-tackle-cryptos-interoperability-issue Toby Gilbert takes the stage at the Thai Technology Investment Summit 2023, “On the future of Web3” and Ain Mohd represents Coinweb on a panel discussing “The Role of Women in Web3” “The Reality of Large-scale Enterprises Adopting Blockchain Technology” an article by Toby Gilbert for CityAM Magazine https://www.cityam.com/the-reality-of-large-scale-enterprises-adopting-blockchain-technology/ Coinweb Labs is proud to unveil LinkMint ⛓️🍃, our groundbreaking Cross-Chain Tokenisation Platform and DeconX, our integrated native DEX! Live Walkthrough Demonstration for the Community by Toby, Knut, and Alexander. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSKA3cAB15U “A Thread on Guaranteed Liveness and the Coinweb Routing System” by Anton on Twitter https://twitter.com/CoinwebOfficial/status/1630052477579169793?s=20 “A Thread on Rollups, Monolithic, and Modular Blockchains” by Kawin on Twitter https://twitter.com/rukawin/status/1616342851507613696?s=46&t=BjBOK3soH3kOMbsWEa_jlg Coinweb to Deliver Cross-Chain Smart Contract Architecture and Blockchain Loyalty Programme to BMW https://cryptoslate.com/bmw-to-bring-blockchain-loyalty-program-through-coinweb-and-bnb-chain/ KuCoin Labs launches incubation program to accelerate builders (Coinweb, DoraHacks, Ava Labs) https://cointelegraph.com/press-releases/kucoin-labs-launches-incubation-program-to-accelerate-builders Toby’s full presentation at Token2049-London https://youtu.be/pdtKx3vAs9c On the Radar Ethereum Shanghai Upgrade, Delayed (On-chain) FOMC Meeting, Mar 21-22 (Washington D.C.) Arbitrum Airdrop, Mar 23 Polygon zkEVM Launch, Mar 27 (On-chain) WOW Summit, Mar 29-30 (Hong Kong) ASEAN Web3 Summit, Mar 30-31 (Singapore) Hong Kong Web3 Festival, Apr 12-15 (Wan Chai, Hong Kong) Consensus 2023, Apr 26-28 (Austin, Texas) Web3 Weekend, May 8-13 (Jakarta) AIBC Asia, Jul 19-22 (Manila) TOKEN2049, Sep 13-14 (Singapore) Blockchain Events curated by CryptoNomad https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1KtyFTb_W282bQ1xoVA5rlTwTDz3QfhswWIVpXhpbQIc/edit On the Block(chain) Stablecoins being converted into Bitcoin approach a four-year high https://cryptoslate.com/insights/stablecoins-being-converted-into-bitcoin-approach-a-four-year-high/ Options open contracts hit new ATH – 468K Bitcoin https://cryptoslate.com/insights/options-open-contracts-hit-new-ath-468k-bitcoin/ Bitcoin Coinbase premium index hits record levels https://cryptoslate.com/insights/bitcoin-coinbase-premium-index-hits-record-levels/ DefiLlama resolves internal conflict, quelling ‘hostile takeover’ accusations https://crypto.news/defillama-resolves-internal-conflict-quelling-hostile-takeover-accusations/ MakerDAO’s emergency proposal triggers 26% MKR price plunge https://crypto.news/makerdaos-emergency-proposal-triggers-26-mkr-price-plunge/ Sushi and its ‘head chef’ receive SEC subpoena https://cryptoslate.com/sushi-and-its-head-chef-receive-sec-subpoena/ DeFi insurance grew in 2022 to include nearly two dozen providers https://cryptoslate.com/defi-insurance-grew-in-2022-to-include-nearly-two-dozen-providers/ Arbitrum to airdrop 112.8M ARB tokens to DAOs on its ecosystem https://cryptoslate.com/arbitrum-to-airdrop-112-8m-arb-tokens-to-daos-on-its-ecosystem/ Competitive Landscape Mastercard and Stables introduce first APAC stablecoin-only wallet https://crypto.news/mastercard-and-stables-introduce-first-apac-stablecoin-only-wallet/ Magic Eden Launches Ordinals Marketplace for Bitcoin NFTs https://decrypt.co/124078/magic-eden-ordinals-bitcoin-nft-marketplace-launch Introducing Binance Oracle VRF: The Next Generation of Verifiable Randomness https://news.bitcoin.com/introducing-binance-oracle-vrf-the-next-generation-of-verifiable-randomness/?utm_source=OneSignalPush&utm_medium=notification&utm_campaign=PushNotifications GamesOnChain: The Decentralized Platform for Fun and Fair Gaming https://dappradar.com/blog/gamesonchain-the-decentralized-platform-for-fun-and-fair-gaming Coinbase offered Circle $3b credit line to repeg USDC https://crypto.news/coinbase-offered-circle-3b-credit-line-to-repeg-usdc/ Amid stablecoin turbulence, Djed to expand to Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain https://cryptoslate.com/amid-stablecoin-turbulence-djed-to-expand-to-ethereum-binance-smart-chain/ Sony Interactive Entertainment files for NFT patent https://cryptoslate.com/sony-interactive-entertainment-files-for-nft-patent/ Binance CEO highlights USDT growth amidst rival issues https://cryptoslate.com/binance-ceo-highlights-usdt-growth-amidst-rival-issues/ World Yellen Says US Could Back All Deposits at Smaller Banks if Needed to Prevent Contagion https://news.bitcoin.com/yellen-says-us-could-back-all-deposits-at-smaller-banks-if-needed-to-prevent-contagion/?utm_source=OneSignalPush&utm_medium=notification&utm_campaign=PushNotifications SC justices hear Coinbase’s first arguments in favor of class action arbitration https://cryptoslate.com/sc-justices-hear-coinbases-first-arguments-in-favor-of-class-action-arbitration/ USDC issuer Circle seeks regulatory approval in France amid US banking troubles https://cryptoslate.com/usdc-issuer-circle-seeks-regulatory-approval-in-france-amid-us-banking-troubles/ India’s new crypto rules are making life hard for hodlers https://thenextweb.com/news/india-cryptocurrency-tax-banking-regulation-investment-analysis Head of Venezuelan Crypto Watchdog Sunacrip Arrested on Alleged Corruption Charges; Institution to Face Restructuring https://news.bitcoin.com/head-of-venezuelan-crypto-watchdog-sunacrip-arrested-on-alleged-corruption-charges-institution-to-face-restructuring/?utm_source=OneSignalPush&utm_medium=notification&utm_campaign=PushNotifications Argentine Tax Authority AFIP Detects Irregularities in 184 Digital Wallet Tax Statements https://news.bitcoin.com/argentine-tax-authority-afip-detects-irregularities-in-184-digital-wallet-tax-statements/?utm_source=OneSignalPush&utm_medium=notification&utm_campaign=PushNotifications Crypto Ads in Belgium to Feature ‘Punchy Warning’ of Risks, New Rules Imply https://news.bitcoin.com/crypto-ads-in-belgium-to-feature-punchy-warning-of-risks-new-rules-imply/?utm_source=OneSignalPush&utm_medium=notification&utm_campaign=PushNotifications OneCoin associate Irina Dilkinska charged following US extradition https://cryptoslate.com/onecoin-associate-irina-dilkinska-charged-following-us-extradition/ CryptoWallet.com Among Minority of Successful Companies to Renew Coveted Estonian License https://cryptoslate.com/press-releases/cryptowallet-com-among-minority-of-successful-companies-to-renew-coveted-estonian-license/ Thought Leadership Playing Mind Games With The Economy: The Federal Reserve’s Reverse Psychology Gambit https://www.forbes.com/sites/brandonkochkodin/2023/03/21/playing-mind-games-with-the-economy-the-federal-reserves-reverse-psychology-gambit/?utm_medium=browser_notifications&utm_source=pushly&utm_campaign=2800634&sh=31dcb2097829 All-in Podcast E120: Banking crisis and the great VC reset (90mins) https://youtu.be/yYwfiqYocc0 A reimagined vision of the future of digital banking https://crypto.news/a-reimagined-vision-of-the-future-of-digital-banking/ Biden Administration's Economic Report Deems Crypto Assets ‘Mostly Speculative Investment Vehicles’ https://news.bitcoin.com/biden-administrations-economic-report-deems-crypto-assets-mostly-speculative-investment-vehicles/?utm_source=OneSignalPush&utm_medium=notification&utm_campaign=PushNotifications https://preview.redd.it/e15z62g1a8pa1.png?width=837&format=png&auto=webp&s=87ee3a9784c3af3c5ecda6b40f93e57282ed3448 |
2023.03.22 06:05 ProGoogler4answers It seems kinda boomer-ish to associate the idea of having a job with nuance of 'success' or 'independence'
Ive been outta work for a while, and got made fun of by a girl as she said no girl wants a jobless guy. And that girls have their own jobs now so why should they talk to me?
Which is kind of odd ( as myself having an MS finance, for whatever weight that may carry), because the accounting and math of employment in the US...is far from reflective of efforts, merit, and most of all; is FAR more likely than not, to compensate with wages that are far, far, far below the idea of 'success', or even offer financial independence, let alone appreciable personal savings and goals. Even without that thought, I wouldn't see myself as anything to brag about if I didn't give someone a chance based on their legal employment basis or earnings. And if I did, Id only be fooling myself, because I'd be caught in so many fallacies.
Real world Example: At $12/hour, working full time, as a single person with no dependents, opting for pre-tax deductions of insurances, and then using the adjusted value accordingly to continue on with Federal/State/Local (in my case I dont even have local taxes).
One would net $687/Bi-weekly. That is $1,374/Month. You'd have a hard time finding a place to rent alone, for less than $1000. And that doesnt include utilities.
Okay, so you've managed to somehow pay the deposit , the activation costs of utilities, and I wont even include the costs of moving/furnishing/homecookware etc. You've popped the $1,000, and now have that $374 to spend on showing the world that you ARE succesful and independent! You work full time and work hard! Aha, wait. Even low-balling national median prices for a fraction of your other costs, will exceed this $374 quickly. Cell? $50. Domestic Supplies?( Laundry detergent, hygience/cleaning items) $50. Internet? $50/month...(these are comically low-ball prices btw) Electricity?$80 Food? Ah, well you only have $144 left...From a survival perspective, possible, but you wont feel very good or feel much like yourself. But, what about your car? its insurance? Easily $150-$400/Month. You're already tapped out, exhausted, surviving off rice and beans. But what about your water bill? What about $ to have even a dollar put into a savings account? What about student loans, credit cards, those teeth, your medical co-pays, your Rx costs? Hell, you don't even have $10 if you get a flat tire. You don't even have a few hundred for that rotten tooth in your mouth, to get a root canal and crown.
//////////////
Ok, $12/hour Fulltime scenario is nothing short of a total delusion of financial independence. But, that just means I'm not good enough or smart enough to earn enough! *POOF* WOW! suddenly I am! I make $20/hour. Relative to the rest of the country's wages, this is a rarer wage, and higher than most people's wages in the US.
$20/Hour @ 40-Houweek
$3,200/MONTHLY GROSS WAGES
$38,400/ANNUAL GROSS WAGES
--------------------
Pre-Tax deductions of Health($90/BiWeekly)/Dental($7.5/BiWeekly)/Vision($2.5/BiWeekly)
MONTHLY TOTAL INSURANCES DEDUCTIONS: $200
ANNUAL TOTAL INSURANCES DEDUCTIONS: $2,400
--------------------
MONTHLY TAXABLE WAGES: $3,000
ANNUAL TAXABLE WAGES: $36,000
--------
STATE TAXES: $1,190
FICA: $2,754
FEDERAL: $4,114.38
TOTAL TAXES DUE: $8,058.38
--------
TOTAL WAGES NET ANNUAL: $27,941.62
TOTAL WAGES NET MONTHLY: $2,328.47
TOTAL WAGES NET BI-WEEKLY: $1,164.23
A whopping $2,328.47 for the young stud who earns MORE THAN OVER 2/3 of the nation in wages. Ladies and gentleman give this special little boy a balloon!!
While median rent is reported to be $1,770/Month...Lets have some faith in this earner. But REMEMBER! He is earning a higher wage, its rare for areas with very low rents to commonly feature such jobs. So, lets see to it he still gets a 'good deal' at renting a musty apartment for $1,300/Month. Well, like before, bills come-a-knocking. Utilities of electricity, internet, water rack up to a modest $200. Hes got some basic prepaid service plan for $50, nothing fancy, hes a savy guy. Hes gonna need more than rice and beans to keep up that life of high pay, but still manages to get groceries down to $100/Week. $400/Month. Now, mind you that includes sales tax, so its less than what may come to mind! This guy is not getting a room that cheap in an area where he wouldn't also need a car, lets use some reason here. But hes savy as they come baby. He blew his savings for that $8,000 2003 Corolla. Insurance is pecking at him for $120/month, could be worse. Now, we've reached a point where he now has less than $300 across the month to fulfill: Medical Co-Pays, Auto Maintenance, Gasoline, Any form of eating out/entertainment, All clothing, Furniture, A phone, A computer, Student loans, credit cards, emergency health services, haircuts, and everything else that life demands of us even without a kid.
It would be nothing short of remarkable for this individual who is financially independent to save $10/month. Working 40 hours/week is exhausting too, doesnt leave much time for taking care of things yourself, which can be costly too.
So, $20/hour, at relatively low costs of living, isn't anything sustainable long term. Sure are alot of people on Reddit who claim "I make this and Im independent and Im fine!" Im sure their story of pulling up their bootstraps by themselves and maintaining any dignity of life are more so part of a narrative they hold; rather than real-world finance.
Call it all bullshit if you want. I go by the numbers. Job or no job, you're not in a fairy tale. You're in a loose labor market, where fiduciary duty to shareholders/company agents are law. Not owed to you, but to the investors/company agents. I haven't even touched on the fucked up realm of costs and income when having a kid is involved, a health condition, care taking, or any other situation which can wreck everything. SaaS has been offsetting jobs for a decade, AI is too, and there is not homogeneous opportunity across the US.
Its incredible to me, how unaware so many people are. They can't be bothered to comprehend that the majority of problems for people in the U.S. stem from inequity and lack of money. The mental health implications of having to accommodate the need for money to survive and stay out of prison, and the mental health implications from people who internalize these things as if it was their fault. As if they were born as the problem. As if their emotions and life were wrong and despicable. So much of posts here can be attributed to a lack of resources and the implications of it. Resources are sent to the dumpster en masse, not because they are truly unusable, but solely so that we cannot have it, without handing over enough money. Buried in the earth, just to make damn sure, those people dont get em.
So, before you even *suggest* that someone isn't trying, isn't worthy, doesn't care, because of not having a job, not having their own place, not having their own car, not getting the healthcare they need, not being able to afford participation in things, or even afford being a parent... Remember. You're more than likely, calculably wrong. And promoting the internalization of capitalism and the moral construct of poverty. You would fit right in, with the category of scum in society, what keeps it so horrible, and what holds humanity back.
submitted by ProGoogler4answers to offmychest [link] [comments]
Which is kind of odd ( as myself having an MS finance, for whatever weight that may carry), because the accounting and math of employment in the US...is far from reflective of efforts, merit, and most of all; is FAR more likely than not, to compensate with wages that are far, far, far below the idea of 'success', or even offer financial independence, let alone appreciable personal savings and goals. Even without that thought, I wouldn't see myself as anything to brag about if I didn't give someone a chance based on their legal employment basis or earnings. And if I did, Id only be fooling myself, because I'd be caught in so many fallacies.
Real world Example: At $12/hour, working full time, as a single person with no dependents, opting for pre-tax deductions of insurances, and then using the adjusted value accordingly to continue on with Federal/State/Local (in my case I dont even have local taxes).
One would net $687/Bi-weekly. That is $1,374/Month. You'd have a hard time finding a place to rent alone, for less than $1000. And that doesnt include utilities.
Okay, so you've managed to somehow pay the deposit , the activation costs of utilities, and I wont even include the costs of moving/furnishing/homecookware etc. You've popped the $1,000, and now have that $374 to spend on showing the world that you ARE succesful and independent! You work full time and work hard! Aha, wait. Even low-balling national median prices for a fraction of your other costs, will exceed this $374 quickly. Cell? $50. Domestic Supplies?( Laundry detergent, hygience/cleaning items) $50. Internet? $50/month...(these are comically low-ball prices btw) Electricity?$80 Food? Ah, well you only have $144 left...From a survival perspective, possible, but you wont feel very good or feel much like yourself. But, what about your car? its insurance? Easily $150-$400/Month. You're already tapped out, exhausted, surviving off rice and beans. But what about your water bill? What about $ to have even a dollar put into a savings account? What about student loans, credit cards, those teeth, your medical co-pays, your Rx costs? Hell, you don't even have $10 if you get a flat tire. You don't even have a few hundred for that rotten tooth in your mouth, to get a root canal and crown.
//////////////
Ok, $12/hour Fulltime scenario is nothing short of a total delusion of financial independence. But, that just means I'm not good enough or smart enough to earn enough! *POOF* WOW! suddenly I am! I make $20/hour. Relative to the rest of the country's wages, this is a rarer wage, and higher than most people's wages in the US.
$20/Hour @ 40-Houweek
$3,200/MONTHLY GROSS WAGES
$38,400/ANNUAL GROSS WAGES
--------------------
Pre-Tax deductions of Health($90/BiWeekly)/Dental($7.5/BiWeekly)/Vision($2.5/BiWeekly)
MONTHLY TOTAL INSURANCES DEDUCTIONS: $200
ANNUAL TOTAL INSURANCES DEDUCTIONS: $2,400
--------------------
MONTHLY TAXABLE WAGES: $3,000
ANNUAL TAXABLE WAGES: $36,000
--------
STATE TAXES: $1,190
FICA: $2,754
FEDERAL: $4,114.38
TOTAL TAXES DUE: $8,058.38
--------
TOTAL WAGES NET ANNUAL: $27,941.62
TOTAL WAGES NET MONTHLY: $2,328.47
TOTAL WAGES NET BI-WEEKLY: $1,164.23
A whopping $2,328.47 for the young stud who earns MORE THAN OVER 2/3 of the nation in wages. Ladies and gentleman give this special little boy a balloon!!
While median rent is reported to be $1,770/Month...Lets have some faith in this earner. But REMEMBER! He is earning a higher wage, its rare for areas with very low rents to commonly feature such jobs. So, lets see to it he still gets a 'good deal' at renting a musty apartment for $1,300/Month. Well, like before, bills come-a-knocking. Utilities of electricity, internet, water rack up to a modest $200. Hes got some basic prepaid service plan for $50, nothing fancy, hes a savy guy. Hes gonna need more than rice and beans to keep up that life of high pay, but still manages to get groceries down to $100/Week. $400/Month. Now, mind you that includes sales tax, so its less than what may come to mind! This guy is not getting a room that cheap in an area where he wouldn't also need a car, lets use some reason here. But hes savy as they come baby. He blew his savings for that $8,000 2003 Corolla. Insurance is pecking at him for $120/month, could be worse. Now, we've reached a point where he now has less than $300 across the month to fulfill: Medical Co-Pays, Auto Maintenance, Gasoline, Any form of eating out/entertainment, All clothing, Furniture, A phone, A computer, Student loans, credit cards, emergency health services, haircuts, and everything else that life demands of us even without a kid.
It would be nothing short of remarkable for this individual who is financially independent to save $10/month. Working 40 hours/week is exhausting too, doesnt leave much time for taking care of things yourself, which can be costly too.
So, $20/hour, at relatively low costs of living, isn't anything sustainable long term. Sure are alot of people on Reddit who claim "I make this and Im independent and Im fine!" Im sure their story of pulling up their bootstraps by themselves and maintaining any dignity of life are more so part of a narrative they hold; rather than real-world finance.
Call it all bullshit if you want. I go by the numbers. Job or no job, you're not in a fairy tale. You're in a loose labor market, where fiduciary duty to shareholders/company agents are law. Not owed to you, but to the investors/company agents. I haven't even touched on the fucked up realm of costs and income when having a kid is involved, a health condition, care taking, or any other situation which can wreck everything. SaaS has been offsetting jobs for a decade, AI is too, and there is not homogeneous opportunity across the US.
Its incredible to me, how unaware so many people are. They can't be bothered to comprehend that the majority of problems for people in the U.S. stem from inequity and lack of money. The mental health implications of having to accommodate the need for money to survive and stay out of prison, and the mental health implications from people who internalize these things as if it was their fault. As if they were born as the problem. As if their emotions and life were wrong and despicable. So much of posts here can be attributed to a lack of resources and the implications of it. Resources are sent to the dumpster en masse, not because they are truly unusable, but solely so that we cannot have it, without handing over enough money. Buried in the earth, just to make damn sure, those people dont get em.
So, before you even *suggest* that someone isn't trying, isn't worthy, doesn't care, because of not having a job, not having their own place, not having their own car, not getting the healthcare they need, not being able to afford participation in things, or even afford being a parent... Remember. You're more than likely, calculably wrong. And promoting the internalization of capitalism and the moral construct of poverty. You would fit right in, with the category of scum in society, what keeps it so horrible, and what holds humanity back.
2023.03.22 05:22 Loreat A TransUnion sucker post.
I was looking to check my credit due to potential identity theft (Getting a more than usual number of phishing emails - Equifax was down) and was referred to TransUnion by the CRA site. What I failed to notice was in the fine print, TransUnion says they will charge you, however while going through the signup process they ask for a credit card to "verify your credit" without saying there that you will be charged a fee, nor do they have a final "purchase" confirmation.
Only after the fact did I notice that they charged me - I immediately canceled and felt the part of the sucker. If anyone asks where to get a credit check, I will advocate for any other services as TransUnion feels predatory.
Everything was fine, according to them, but still, no confirmation of charge, and saying the card was only being used for verification purposes feels like a total scam.
submitted by Loreat to PersonalFinanceCanada [link] [comments]
Only after the fact did I notice that they charged me - I immediately canceled and felt the part of the sucker. If anyone asks where to get a credit check, I will advocate for any other services as TransUnion feels predatory.
Everything was fine, according to them, but still, no confirmation of charge, and saying the card was only being used for verification purposes feels like a total scam.
2023.03.22 05:01 mschvs_one Day 449 Stats
Alive: 497
Dead: 6,644
Day 449 Change: 3
Day 449 Percent Change: 0.600%
Total Percent Dead: 93.04%
Estimated Bots: ~43*
Pool Value Per Person: ~$143.68**
*Estimated Bots is a rough count determined by all "safe" logins within the first 30 seconds of a new day. This number is far from accurate, as there are surely some humans caught up in it, but for now, it is the best number we can get without having a bigger universe. Eventually, we will have a more accurate method to get this number.
**This number does not account for the credit fees, etc, removed from the total pool amount. At the end of the game the total pool will likely be closer to ~$67k after credit card processing fees are deducted by MSCHF. This number also does not account for your potential local and federal taxes which would be owed on the winnings.
submitted by mschvs_one to MSCHVS [link] [comments]
Dead: 6,644
Day 449 Change: 3
Day 449 Percent Change: 0.600%
Total Percent Dead: 93.04%
Estimated Bots: ~43*
Pool Value Per Person: ~$143.68**
*Estimated Bots is a rough count determined by all "safe" logins within the first 30 seconds of a new day. This number is far from accurate, as there are surely some humans caught up in it, but for now, it is the best number we can get without having a bigger universe. Eventually, we will have a more accurate method to get this number.
**This number does not account for the credit fees, etc, removed from the total pool amount. At the end of the game the total pool will likely be closer to ~$67k after credit card processing fees are deducted by MSCHF. This number also does not account for your potential local and federal taxes which would be owed on the winnings.
2023.03.22 04:51 fradigit I would like a credit for not being notified about the Automatic Payment credit reduction
I received an email today stating the following:
If you do not update your payment method before March 25, 2023, your monthly discount will decrease to $5 per month.
The issue here is twofold:
EDIT: I have been receiving a reduced $5/month auto pay credit since January, in case there was confusion. I am only asking for the difference to be credited to me.
submitted by fradigit to Comcast_Xfinity [link] [comments]
Final reminder - update your automatic payment method
Don’t lose your $10 monthly automatic payment and paperless billing discount. Update your automatic payment method to a bank account using your account number and routing number — today!If you do not update your payment method before March 25, 2023, your monthly discount will decrease to $5 per month.
The issue here is twofold:
- I have not been receiving the $10 monthly credit since December 2022
- I was never notified previously there was a way to keep the $10 credit. In fact, I believe I was told my bill would be $90/month, and when it was $95 last month I called in and the rep said it was an error on the billing system and would update automatically to $90/month by the time I was charged (spoiler, it didn't). I double checked my email and did not see any other notices from Xfinity related to automatic payment changes.
EDIT: I have been receiving a reduced $5/month auto pay credit since January, in case there was confusion. I am only asking for the difference to be credited to me.
2023.03.22 03:55 Maleficent-Change-94 As someone with basically no credit history, is financing through the dealership my only choice?
Currently a college student graduating this spring with 20k in federal student loans, and starting a full time job this summer with 85k yearly salary. Current credit score is about 690.
I’ve been rejected by every local bank and credit union for an auto loan of 15k. I’ve been told to never finance through a dealership but it seems now that that’s the only way.
I’ve also been thinking of co-signing with my father but his credit score isn’t so good either (about 660).
Is there any other way for me to finance or is the dealership my only choice?
EDIT: I think what I’ll do is take the shitty dealership financing option with 9% monthly interest, but once I start working ill actually have the paystubs to prove my employment and therefore get a better refinancing deal. Is this sound?
submitted by Maleficent-Change-94 to personalfinance [link] [comments]
I’ve been rejected by every local bank and credit union for an auto loan of 15k. I’ve been told to never finance through a dealership but it seems now that that’s the only way.
I’ve also been thinking of co-signing with my father but his credit score isn’t so good either (about 660).
Is there any other way for me to finance or is the dealership my only choice?
EDIT: I think what I’ll do is take the shitty dealership financing option with 9% monthly interest, but once I start working ill actually have the paystubs to prove my employment and therefore get a better refinancing deal. Is this sound?
2023.03.22 03:23 rrmdp 📢 Local Government Federal Credit Union is hiring a Buyer!
submitted by rrmdp to jobboardsearch [link] [comments]2023.03.21 23:36 j_frenetic Getting spammed with credit cards I never requested
2 weeks ago, I got a call from MBNA, which I ignored, since I didn't even know who they are and I've never been their client. The next day, I got a call from Rogers, then the day after couple of calls from unidentified numbers. They were all leaving me voicemail, addressing by my first and last name and asking to call back, which I never did.
Fast forward to today, and I find 2 envelopes in my mailbox, containing actual credit cards from Rogers Bank and CIBC under my name with instructions on how to activate. WTF??? Not only I've never been their client, but I moved quite a lot in the past couple years, and somehow they know my current address? What is happening here and should I be concerned? Or can I just ignore them and hope they'll just leave me alone eventually?
Edit: Just got a TransUnion credit report, and saw those 3 credit inquiries on my file (from Rogers, MNBA and CIBC) done on the same day. Looks like someone indeed used my name to apply for those credit cards. Really my first time dealing with this. Will be calling those companies tomorrow, but have no idea how to stop it going forward.
submitted by j_frenetic to PersonalFinanceCanada [link] [comments]
Fast forward to today, and I find 2 envelopes in my mailbox, containing actual credit cards from Rogers Bank and CIBC under my name with instructions on how to activate. WTF??? Not only I've never been their client, but I moved quite a lot in the past couple years, and somehow they know my current address? What is happening here and should I be concerned? Or can I just ignore them and hope they'll just leave me alone eventually?
Edit: Just got a TransUnion credit report, and saw those 3 credit inquiries on my file (from Rogers, MNBA and CIBC) done on the same day. Looks like someone indeed used my name to apply for those credit cards. Really my first time dealing with this. Will be calling those companies tomorrow, but have no idea how to stop it going forward.
2023.03.21 23:29 grumpimusprime You Broke Reddit: The Pi-Day Outage
 | submitted by grumpimusprime to RedditEng [link] [comments] Cute error image friends, we love them. Been a while since that was our 500 page, hasn’t it? It was cute and fun. We’ve now got our terribly overwhelmed Snoo being crushed by a pile of upvotes. Unfortunately, if you were browsing the site, or at least trying, during the afternoon of March 14th during US hours, you may have seen our unfortunate Snoo during the 314-minute outage Reddit faced (on Pi day no less!) Or maybe you just saw the homepage with no posts. Or an error. One way or another, Reddit was definitely broken. But it wasn’t you, it was us. Today we’re going to talk about the Pi day outage, but I want to make sure we give our team(s) credit where due. Over the last few years, we’ve put a major emphasis on improving availability. In fact, there’s a great blog post from our CTO talking about our improvements over time. In classic Reddit form, I’ll steal the image and repost it as my own. Reddit daily availability vs current SLO target. As you can see, we’ve made some pretty strong progress in improving Reddit’s availability. As we’ve emphasized the improvements, we’ve worked to de-risk changes, but we’re not where we want to be in every area yet, so we know that some changes remain unreasonably risky. Kubernetes version and component upgrades remain a big footgun for us, and indeed, this was a major trigger for our 3/14 outage. TL;DR
It BeginsIt’s funny in an ironic sort of way. As a team, we had just finished up an internal postmortem for a previous Kubernetes upgrade that had gone poorly; but only mildly, and for an entirely resolved cause. So we were kicking off another upgrade of the same cluster.We’ve been cleaning house quite a bit this year, trying to get to a more maintainable state internally. Managing Kubernetes (k8s) clusters has been painful in a number of ways. Reddit has been on cloud since 2009, and started adopting k8s relatively early. Along the way, we accumulated a set of bespoke clusters built using the kubeadm tool rather than any standard template. Some of them have even been too large to support under various cloud-managed offerings. That history led to an inconsistent upgrade cadence, and split configuration between clusters. We’d raised a set of pets, not managed a herd of cattle. The Compute team manages the parts of our infrastructure related to running workloads, and has spent a long time defining and refining our upgrade process to try and improve this. Upgrades are tested against a dedicated set of clusters, then released to the production environments, working from lowest criticality to highest. This upgrade cycle was one of our team’s big-ticket items this quarter, and one of the most important clusters in the company, the one running the Legacy part of our stack (affectionately referred to by the community as Old Reddit), was ready to be upgraded to the next version. The engineer doing the work kicked off the upgrade just after 19:00 UTC, and everything seemed fine, for about 2 minutes. Then? Chaos. Reddit edge traffic, RPS by status. Oh, that’s... not ideal. All at once the site came to a screeching halt. We opened an incident immediately, and brought all hands on deck, trying to figure out what had happened. Hands were on deck and in the call by T+3 minutes. The first thing we realized was that the affected cluster had completely lost all metrics (the above graph shows stats at our CDN edge, which is intentionally separated). We were flying blind. The only thing sticking out was that DNS wasn’t working. We couldn’t resolve records for entries in Consul (a service we run for cross-environment dynamic DNS), or for in-cluster DNS entries. But, weirdly, it was resolving requests for public DNS records just fine. We tugged on this thread for a bit, trying to find what was wrong, to no avail. This was a problem we had never seen before, in previous upgrades anywhere else in our fleet, or our tests performing upgrades in non-production environments. For a deployment failure, immediately reverting is always “Plan A”, and we definitely considered this right off. But, dear Redditor… Kubernetes has no supported downgrade procedure. Because a number of schema and data migrations are performed automatically by Kubernetes during an upgrade, there’s no reverse path defined. Downgrades thus require a restore from a backup and state reload! We are sufficiently paranoid, so of course our upgrade procedure includes taking a backup as standard. However, this backup procedure, and the restore, were written several years ago. While the restore had been tested repeatedly and extensively in our pilot clusters, it hadn’t been kept fully up to date with changes in our environment, and we’d never had to use it against a production cluster, let alone this cluster. This meant, of course, that we were scared of it – We didn’t know precisely how long it would take to perform, but initial estimates were on the order of hours… of guaranteed downtime. The decision was made to continue investigating and attempt to fix forward. It’s Definitely Not A Feature, It’s A BugAbout 30 minutes in, we still hadn’t found clear leads. More people had joined the incident call. Roughly a half-dozen of us from various on-call rotations worked hands-on, trying to find the problem, while dozens of others observed and gave feedback. Another 30 minutes went by. We had some promising leads, but not a definite solution by this point, so it was time for contingency planning… we picked a subset of the Compute team to fork off to another call and prepare all the steps to restore from backup.In parallel, several of us combed logs. We tried restarts of components, thinking perhaps some of them had gotten stuck in an infinite loop or a leaked connection from a pool that wasn’t recovering on its own. A few things were noticed:
This fixes everything, I swear! Next, we decided to restart calico-typha. This was one of the spots that got interesting. We deleted the pods, and waited for them to restart… and they didn’t. The new pods didn’t get created immediately. We waited a couple minutes, no new pods. In the interest of trying to get things unstuck, we issued a rolling restart of the control plane components. No change. We also tried the classic option: We turned the whole control plane off, all of it, and turned it back on again. We didn’t have a lot of hope that this would turn things around, and it didn’t. At this point, someone spotted that we were getting a lot of timeouts in the API server logs for write operations. But not specifically on the writes themselves. Rather, it was timeouts calling the admission controllers on the cluster. Reddit utilizes several different admission controller webhooks. On this cluster in particular, the only admission controller we use that’s generalized to watch all resources is Open Policy Agent (OPA). Since it was down anyway, we took this opportunity to delete its webhook configurations. The timeouts disappeared instantly… But the cluster didn’t recover. Let ‘Er Rip (Conquering Our Fear of Backup Restores)We were running low on constructive ideas, and the outage had gone on for over two hours at this point. It was time to make the hard call; we would make the restore from backup. Knowing that most of the worker nodes we had running would be invalidated by the restore anyway, we started terminating all of them, so we wouldn’t have to deal with the long reconciliation after the control plane was back up. As our largest cluster, this was unfortunately time-consuming as well, taking about 20 minutes for all the API calls to go through.Once that was finished, we took on the restore procedure, which nobody involved had ever performed before, let alone on our favorite single point of failure. Distilled down, the procedure looked like this:
In our environment, we don’t treat all our control plane nodes as equal. We number them, and the first one is generally considered somewhat special. Practically speaking it’s the same, but we use it as the baseline for procedures. Also, critically, we don’t set the hostname of these nodes to reflect their membership in the control plane, instead leaving them as the default on AWS of something similar to `ip-10-1-0-42.ec2.internal`. The restore procedure specified that we should terminate all control plane nodes except the first, restore the backup to it, bring it up as a single-node control plane, and then bring up new nodes to replace the others that had been terminated. Which we did. The restore for the first node was completed successfully, and we were back in business. Within moments, nodes began coming online as the cluster autoscaler sprung back to life. This was a great sign because it indicated that networking was working again. However, we weren’t ready for that quite yet and shut off the autoscaler to buy ourselves time to get things back to a known state. This is a large cluster, so with only a single control plane node, it would very likely fail under load. So, we wanted to get the other two back online before really starting to scale back up. We brought up the next two and ran into our next sticking point: AWS capacity was exhausted for our control plane instance type. This further delayed our response, as canceling a ‘terraform apply` can have strange knock-on effects with state and we didn’t want to run the risk of making things even worse. Eventually, the nodes launched, and we began trying to join them. The next hitch: The new nodes wouldn’t join. Every single time, they’d get stuck, with no error, due to being unable to connect to etcd on the first node. Again, several engineers split off into a separate call to look at why the connection was failing, and the remaining group planned how to slowly and gracefully bring workloads back online from a cold start. The breakout group only took a few minutes to discover the problem. Our restore procedure was extremely prescriptive about the order of operations and targets for the restore… but the backup procedure wasn’t. Our backup was written to be executed on any control plane node, but the restore had to be performed on the same one. And it wasn’t. This meant that the TLS certificates being presented by the working node weren’t valid for anything else to talk to it, because of the hostname mismatch. With a bit of fumbling due to a lack of documentation, we were able to generate new certificates that worked. New members joined successfully. We had a working, high-availability control plane again. In the meantime, the main group of responders started bringing traffic back online. This was the longest down period we’d seen in a long time… so we started extremely conservatively, at about 1%. Reddit relies on a lot of caches to operate semi-efficiently, so there are several points where a ‘thundering herd’ problem can develop when traffic is scaled immediately back to 100%, but downstream services aren’t prepared for it, and then suffer issues due to the sudden influx of load. This tends to be exacerbated in outage scenarios, because services that are idle tend to scale down to save resources. We’ve got some tooling that helps deal with that problem which will be presented in another blog entry, but the point is that we didn’t want to turn on the firehose and wash everything out. From 1%, we took small increments: 5%, 10%, 20%, 35%, 55%, 80%, 100%. The site was (mostly) live, again. Some particularly touchy legacy services had been stopped manually to ensure they wouldn’t misbehave when traffic returned, and we carefully turned those back on. Success! The outage was over. But we still didn’t know why it happened in the first place. A little self-reflection; or, a needle in a 3.9 Billion Log Line HaystackFurther investigation kicked off. We started looking at everything we could think of to try and narrow down the exact moment of failure, hoping there’d be a hint in the last moments of the metrics before they broke. There wasn’t. For once though, a historical decision worked in our favor… our logging agent was unaffected. Our metrics are entirely k8s native, but our logs are very low-level. So we had the logs preserved and were able to dig into them.We started by trying to find the exact moment of the failure. The API server logs for the control plane exploded at 19:04:49 UTC. Log volume just for the API server increased by 5x at that instant. But the only hint in them was one we’d already seen, our timeouts calling OPA. The next point we checked was the OPA logs for the exact time of the failure. About 5 seconds before the API server started spamming, the OPA logs stopped entirely. Dead end. Or was it? Calico had started failing at some point. Pivoting to its logs for the timeframe, we found the next hint. All Reddit metrics and incident activities are managed in UTC for consistency in comms. Log timestamps here are in US/Central due to our logging system being overly helpful. Two seconds before the chaos broke loose, the calico-node daemon across the cluster began dropping routes to the first control plane node we upgraded. That’s normal and expected behavior, due to it going offline for the upgrade. What wasn’t expected was that all routes for all nodes began dropping as well. And that’s when it clicked. The way Calico works, by default, is that every node in your cluster is directly peered with every other node in a mesh. This is great in small clusters because it reduces the complexity of management considerably. However, in larger clusters, it becomes burdensome; the cost of maintaining all those connections with every node propagating routes to every other node scales… poorly. Enter route reflectors. The idea with route reflectors is that you designate a small number of nodes that peer with everything and the rest only peer with the reflectors. This allows for far fewer connections and lower CPU and network overhead. These are great on paper, and allow you to scale to much larger node counts (>100 is where they’re recommended, we add zero(s)). However, Calico’s configuration for them is done in a somewhat obtuse way that’s hard to track. That’s where we get to the cause of our issue. The route reflectors were set up several years ago by the precursor to the current Compute team. Time passed, and with attrition and growth, everyone who knew they existed moved on to other roles or other companies. Only our largest and most legacy clusters still use them. So there was nobody with the knowledge to interact with the route reflector configuration to even realize there could be something wrong with it or to be able to speak up and investigate the issue. Further, Calico’s configuration doesn’t actually work in a way that can be easily managed via code. Part of the route reflector configuration requires fetching down Calico-specific data that’s expected to only be managed by their CLI interface (not the standard Kubernetes API), hand-edited, and uploaded back. To make this acceptable means writing custom tooling to do so. Unfortunately, we hadn’t. The route reflector configuration was thus committed nowhere, leaving us with no record of it, and no breadcrumbs for engineers to follow. One engineer happened to remember that this was a feature we utilized, and did the research during this postmortem process, discovering that this was what actually affected us and how. Get to the Point, Spock, If You Have OneHow did it actually break? That’s one of the most unexpected things of all. In doing the research, we discovered that the way that the route reflectors were configured was to set the control plane nodes as the reflectors, and everything else to use them. Fairly straightforward, and logical to do in an autoscaled cluster where the control plane nodes are the only consistently available ones. However, the way this was configured had an insidious flaw. Take a look below and see if you can spot it. I’ll give you a hint: The upgrade we were performing was to Kubernetes 1.24.A horrifying representation of a Kubernetes object in YAML The nodeSelector and peerSelector for the route reflectors target the label `node-role.kubernetes.io/master`. In the 1.20 series, Kubernetes changed its terminology from “master” to “control-plane.” And in 1.24, they removed references to “master,” even from running clusters. This is the cause of our outage. Kubernetes node labels. But wait, that’s not all. Really, that’s the proximate cause. The actual cause is more systemic, and a big part of what we’ve been unwinding for years: Inconsistency. Nearly every critical Kubernetes cluster at Reddit is bespoke in one way or another. Whether it’s unique components that only run on that cluster, unique workloads, only running in a single availability zone as a development cluster, or any number of other things. This is a natural consequence of organic growth, and one which has caused more outages than we can easily track over time. A big part of the Compute team’s charter has specifically been to unwind these choices and make our environment more homogeneous, and we’re actually getting there. In the last two years, A great deal of work has been put in to unwind that organic pattern and drive infrastructure built with intent and sustainability in mind. More components are being standardized and shared between environments, instead of bespoke configurations everywhere. More pre-production clusters exist that we can test confidently with, instead of just a YOLO to production. We’re working on tooling to manage the lifecycle of whole clusters to make them all look as close to the same as possible and be re-creatable or replicable as needed. We’re moving in the direction of only using unique things when we absolutely must, and trying to find ways to make those the new standards when it makes sense to. Especially, we’re codifying everything that we can, both to ensure consistent application and to have a clear historical record of the choices that we’ve made to get where we are. Where we can’t codify, we’re documenting in detail, and (most importantly) evaluating how we can replace those exceptions with better alternatives. It’s a long road, and a difficult one, but it’s one we’re consciously choosing to go down, so we can provide a better experience for our engineers and our users. Final CurtainIf you’ve made it this far, we’d like to take the time to thank you for your interest in what we do. Without all of you in the community, Reddit wouldn’t be what it is. You truly are the reason we continue to passionately build this site, even with the ups and downs (fewer downs over time, with our focus on reliability!)Finally, if you found this post interesting, and you’d like to be a part of the team, the Compute team is hiring, and we’d love to hear from you if you think you’d be a fit. If you apply, mention that you read this postmortem. It’ll give us some great insight into how you think, just to discuss it. We can’t continue to improve without great people and new perspectives, and you could be the next person to provide them! |