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Comment Re:Jesus fucking Christ (Score 3, Informative) 87

Without a SIM card, these "hidden radios" cannot get called or contacted except by the local network operators. "China" can certainly not do it.

Did you miss the story earlier today? iPhone 17 Air Drops Physical SIM Slot Globally, Pushing eSIM-Only Future said in the summary that 75% of phone connections are going to be eSIM by 2030. Just because a cellular device doesn't have a physical SIM card doesn't mean they can't communicate. This will make it harder to identify hardware that has undocumented cellular components, you will have to identify the actual components instead of just going "WTF is a SIM slot doing there?". It will be almost impossible to identify if the manufacturer actually is trying to hide such hardware in a SOC or something like that, the only giveaway might be the need for an antenna but those are getting smaller and smaller.

Comment Re:The joy of stock buy backs (Score 2) 55

To start where I agree, there can be situations where a company has what amounts to free cashflow and no realistic opportunities to invest it. If that is the normal state of affairs, it should be issuing dividends.

Buybacks and dividends are the same from the company's standpoint. They are transferring $X to the shareholders with either method. But from the investor's POV, the buyback is better. If a company issues an investor a dividend they have to take that money right now. That means they have to recognize it as income even if they didn't want/need that income. By contrast, if the company increases the per-share price via a stock buyback then the investor can take that gain whenever they choose, rather than at the whim of the company. A dividend puts the timing of the income under the company's control where a buyback puts it under the investor's control, at least under current US tax law. That's why investors (and hence the companies they invest in) mostly prefer buybacks these days.

Otherwise I think they give management too much room to play games at the expense of long-term firm health, both by opportunities for self-dealing and by training investors to expect them.

They can play similar games with dividends, there have been plenty of companies that continued to pay dividends right up to their bankruptcy because that's what investors expected. Don't get me wrong, there have been plenty of shenanigans with buybacks -- like the airlines doing big buybacks before COVID then begging for bailouts when their business tanked but they can do the same thing with dividends.

Thanks for answering, the animus toward buybacks puzzled me when from my perspective (as a retired person living on investments) dividends and buybacks are just two sides of the same coin. I prefer buybacks for the reason stated above, but any ROI is good and I'll take it in any form I can get it.

Comment Re:The joy of stock buy backs (Score 1) 55

I agree that buybacks are usually a stupid idea, and companies that train investors to expect them are setting themselves up for future pain

Why? I see this a lot but don't understand people's objection to stock buybacks. Are companies not supposed to ever return profits to their investors? If not, then why invest in that company? Sometimes a deep piggy bank is not in the best interest of a company -- they may end up just squandering it on something stupid like the metaverse or AI. I would much rather see a company return profit to its investors then watch it burn money while management flails and fails at something that is not in their core competence. I expect rsilvergun to be against stock buybacks because he is a perpetual victim so any action by anyone is designed to keep him on the bottom, but what's your specific beef with them?

Comment Re:Chinese State Media and Rueters (Score 2) 103

Instead of quoting "Chinese State Media" they should just site that "Supreme Chinese leader Xing says".

I'm not sure what your beef is here, that's exactly what they are saying. When they quote "state media" it means that's what the government is saying, that's why they use that term. I could see your complaint if they just quoted something like Russia Today without disclosing that it is state media, but that's not the case here.

Comment Re:I have best intuition about this, believe me! (Score 1) 83

Obama misspoke, then immediately corrected himself. The "series of tubes" and Guam statements were purely the confident ignorance displayed by so many politicians, but I don't think Obama is one of them. Just for the record, here is the statement referred to:

“Everybody knows that it makes no sense that you send a kid to the emergency room for a treatable illness like asthma. They end up taking up a hospital bed. It costs when, if you, they just gave, you gave, treatment early, and they got some treatment, and uhhh a breathalyzer, or uhh, an inhalator, not a breathalyzer...”

Comment Re:I'm Excited (Score 2) 33

Yep, seems like vaporware. The linked article was very light on details, like cost per kwh stored or round-trip efficiency, both of which are very important when discussing energy storage. Looks like just another "press release project" where the whole point of the "project" is to generate press releases.

Comment Re:m/s does not mean miles per second! (Score 3, Insightful) 28

Negative leap seconds are rare, it has never happened before. From Wiki:

The leap second was introduced in 1972. Since then, 27 leap seconds have been added to UTC, with the most recent occurring on December 31, 2016.[1] All have so far been positive leap seconds, adding a second to a UTC day; while it is possible for a negative leap second to be needed, this has not happened yet.

Comment Re:No shit, Sherlock (Score 1) 110

Maybe he thinks fast internet connections are like dolls, we should get less and pay more.

“Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls. And maybe the two dolls will cost a couple bucks more than they would normally. All I’m saying is that a young lady, a 10-year-old girl, nine-year-old girl, 15-year-old girl, doesn’t need 37 dolls,” he told reporters. “She could be very happy with two or three or four or five.”

Just s/dolls/megabits/ and I'm sure you have Trump's opinion on network speeds. No matter the issue, it's about what will make him and his billionaire bribers^W donors more money.

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