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OK, I've really done it this time...

One of the things that Turgid jr. got for Christmas was a new Android tablet. It's useless.

Mrs Turgid suggested buying some kind of Amazon kids tablet, and I looked them up on line and they didn't look all that great, certainly not for playing Pokemon Go.

So I asked some of the guys at work about tablets for children. They said you can set up an unprivileged user account in Android and lock it down pretty well so that it's mostly safe for supervised use.

With that in mind I went online and ordered a 10" Acer tablet (Acer Iconia One 10) and lo and behold Acer have removed the ability to create multiple user accounts.

It's my own stupid fault for not unpacking it and trying it out as soon as I bought it. I could have sent it back...

To be honest, it never occurred to me that a manufacturer would remove the ability to have multiple user accounts. It just seems crazy...

Needless to say, this creates a tricky situation. How do you explain to a 7-year-old that Santa Claus is an idiot?

Can I root the machine and put something sane on it?

If there was any sort of "we're all in this together" feeling, it would help, but there isn't.

There isn't such a feeling because we aren't all in this together.

Why does US labor have to take a haircut while the 1% get lots more money?

Because you're competing with several billion people who will work for a lot less while the capital of those rich people does not. There's no reason to expect this to be fair. But at the same time, it's not unfair to expect you to adapt to the situation rather than make it worse.

For example, let's say you're the only plumber in a town. You are a paragon of virtue and don't abuse your effective monopoly position and offer prices comparable to neighboring towns which do have more than one plumber.

Then one day, five new plumbers move in and immediately start offering lower and lower prices. It's not fair to you. Nobody else in town has this sort of competition going on. You are losing wealth relative to everyone else who isn't a plumber through no fault of your own. Income inequality increases as a result with six poor plumbers.

At this point, you have a number of choices, all of them bad to some degree. For example, you can attempt to tough it out to be one of the last ones standing, knowing that you'll still have a greatly reduced market share and profit as a result. You can move to a new town and be a plumber there. Or you can abandon plumbing as a career altogether. Maybe you'll try to take a chance and create a new plumbing service that the other plumbers can't match (maybe it'll pay off, maybe it won't)..

There are all ways you could attempt to better your situation. But you could also choose to make the situation worse such as developing a drinking habit. I believe this is going on at a vast scale in the developed world. There's all this entitled talk about how the rich people owe us a good salary and such. Well, they owe the Indians and the Chinese good salaries too. And good salaries there are much less than good salaries in the developed world.

Bottom line is that developed world labor has to be able to offer something that developing world labor can't offer (and it can be as simple as access to a nice market, though the developing world has nice markets too) or it won't get the work for the pay that is desired. Developed world labor just doesn't have pricing power and won't get it until there is near parity with the developing world (which is improving at a good rate) or until some remarkable advantage is created (I'm not seeing the remarkable advantages in the long run).

You want what rich people have, but you don't have leverage to get it. You're not going to make your situation any better by making it harder for rich people to give you what you want.

It's not Russia that's trying to impact our elections, it's our evil neighbor to the north!

Those hosers have launched a propaganda campaign designed to confuse and demoralize Americans in advance of the election.

Couched in condescending terms as a "love note" to Americans, Canadians tell lies, make unsubstantiated claims and generally try to blow smoke up our asses.

But we know the truth.

We suck donkey balls and anyone who says differently is either a Clinton shill or one of her many secret hit squads have abducted family members and threatened them if they don't toe the line.

Okay, maybe that's just a *little* hyperbolic. Actually, I think the ad campaign is kind of sweet.

See the "Blue Book" for more information

Amendment 69 proposes amending the Colorado Constitution to:
 establish ColoradoCare, a statewide system to finance health care services for Colorado residents;
 create new taxes on most sources of income, redirect existing state and federal health funding to
pay for the services and administration of ColoradoCare, exempt ColoradoCare from constitutional
limits on revenue, and require approval by Colorado residents for future tax increases;
 establish a board of trustees, initially appointed and then elected, to oversee the operations of
ColoradoCare; and
 allow the board to terminate ColoradoCare if the waivers, exemptions, and agreements from the federal
government are not sufficient for its fiscally sound operation.

Arguments For
1) Amendment 69 creates a more equitable health care payment system that provides coverage for all
Coloradans. All people should have access to affordable health care regardless of their ability to pay. The
current health care system leaves many people uninsured or unable to access care due to insurance denials or
high deductibles. ColoradoCare prohibits deductibles and may reduce financial barriers to needed care. The
measure helps ensure that individuals and families will not face financial ruin when accessing needed health care
services.

2) Amendment 69 offers a means to control health care costs and improve patient outcomes. In the
United States, health care costs are higher than in any other industrialized country. Under Amendment 69, health
care costs could be controlled by lowering administrative costs, adjusting payment rates to health care providers,
and reducing the amount of unpaid care provided by health care providers. By creating a centralized system for
health care records, ColoradoCare may improve the coordination of care and create cost savings by more
efficiently sharing information between providers, monitoring medical conditions, and reducing diagnostic testing.

3) ColoradoCare provides a more transparent system that serves the interests of Coloradans, instead of the
interests of private corporations. The current private health insurance system is profit-motivated, which
contributes to rising health care costs. ColoradoCare offers an alternative that shifts incentives toward improving
patient care by allowing Coloradans to elect health care decision-makers. Under Amendment 69, Coloradans
also have control over tax increases for ColoradoCare, increasing local control over health care costs. Unlike
private insurance companies, ColoradoCare board meetings are subject to open meetings laws, which allows
Coloradans to monitor decisions made by the board.

Arguments Against
1) Amendment 69 imposes new taxes, which may harm the Colorado economy by burdening
taxpayers and eliminating jobs. The tax increases under this measure will nearly double state government
spending, which currently totals $27 billion for the entire state budget. In the initial years, taxpayers will pay
about $2 billion a year into a system without receiving any direct benefits. Many individuals and
businesses will pay more with the new taxes than they currently pay for health care. Additionally,
taxpayers must pay the new taxes even if they do not utilize the services offered through ColoradoCare.
Under Amendment 69, higher taxes and an uncertain economic climate could discourage businesses from
operating in Colorado. Finally, ColoradoCare may cause private health insurance businesses to downsize
or leave the state, leaving many people unemployed.

2) Amendment 69 offers no guarantee that ColoradoCare will improve patient care, expand access, or
reduce health care costs. Coloradans may never receive the benefits promised under ColoradoCare if
federal approval is not granted or revenues are not sufficient. The measure does not specify critical details of
how ColoradoCare will be implemented, and has no required implementation date. The measure concentrates
control for making important decisions and spending billions of taxpayer dollars in a 21-member board with limited
accountability and no required health industry experience. ColoradoCare may not solve fundamental problems of
rising health care costs and limited access. If the state fully transitions to ColoradoCare and it fails, it could take
years to re-establish a private health insurance market and government programs, and taxpayers will have paid
billions of dollars for a failed system.

3) ColoradoCare may limit consumer choice and strain the health care system. Health care providers may
be unwilling to serve ColoradoCare patients if reimbursements are too low, or they may choose to leave Colorado
due to uncertainties in the health care market. This could reduce options for patients and increase wait times to
receive services. Also, the health care system could be further burdened by people coming to the state to receive
health care without adequately contributing to the taxes that pay for their care. If the system fails to control costs,
health services covered by ColoradoCare may be reduced. Additionally, private health insurance may not be
available or affordable if Amendment 69 passes. This could leave people with limited options for accessing
alternative coverage or needed care, forcing some people to leave the state.

Personal take
Tentatively planning Yes on this one. Despite the costs we really need to move away from for-profit health insurance.

What say you Soylent?

A real-life swing-state voter checking in. I've got the 2016 State Ballot Information Booklet in front of me. Let's do this thing! (aka the "Blue Book," located here)

There's some pretty crazy stuff in here so I plan to go initiative by initiative and hit them all.

Amendment T proposes amending the Colorado Constitution to:
 remove language that currently allows slavery and involuntary servitude to be used as punishment
for the conviction of a crime.

Argument For
1) The section of the Colorado Constitution that allows slavery and involuntary servitude as punishment for a
crime should be updated because it represents a time in the United States when not all people were seen as
human beings or treated with dignity. Removing the language reflects fundamental values of freedom and
equality, and makes an important symbolic statement. There are 25 other states that do not have any language
related to slavery and involuntary servitude in their constitutions, and both prison work and community service
programs are able to operate within those states.

Argument Against
1) Amendment T may result in legal uncertainty around current offender work practices in the state. Prison
work requirements provide structure and purpose for offenders, while enabling skill building and helping to reduce
recidivism. Community service programs allow offenders to engage with the community and make amends for
their crimes.

Personal take: Definitely the least controversial item on the list, so, perhaps a bit boring to start off with. Since our state constitution is so easy to amend currently (more to come on that issue) we might as well make forced labor camps illegal while we can. Planning to vote Yes.

Your thoughts, SN?

Welcome to my continuing nervous breakdown. I have some new cynicism that I feel the world would benefit from.

Q: How many C++ programmers does it take to change a lightbulb?

A: Ten. Six to explain to the world why C++ was the correct solution and the advanced techniques employed in implementing that solution and four to implement a partially-working solution in twice the time that the lone C programmer got a complete, correct solution designed, implemented, tested, documented and signed off in last time.

Q: How many C++ programmers does it take to change a lightbulb?

A: Ten. They all set to work analysing their previous partial and unreliable implementation and come up with a new design based on new language features in the latest standard that have been in LISP for over thirty years but they've never heard of before. They draw UML diagrams galore and fire up Visual Studio It Never Rains But It Pours Cloud Enterprise 365+ Edition. Six months later the project is scrapped and declared impossible.

Q: How many C++ programmers does it take to change a lightbulb?

A: We don't know, about ten maybe, but the new language standard has advanced features that will make changing lightbulbs not just a possibility, but achievable by ordinary programmers. Watch this space.

Donny Hairboy takes the number one spot, as if anyone really thought he wouldn't.

Then again, this isn't anything new.

At the same time, there are those who would disagree with that sentiment.

But it just goes to show that, in fact, practice makes perfect.

That's not to say that others shouldn't get honorable mentions, but Donny is the undisputed king.

Long Live The King!

Underemployment could be a society-side solution to class disparity caused by systemic unemployment. Think about mechanization especially: a single factory may have had 100x as many workers before robots, but all the remaining workers are still working full hours. Perhaps instead of concentrating that wealth in the investors, we could keep more like 1/2 of the workers earning the same wages for fewer hours. That way we could maintain a wider income distribution while improving overall quality of life. But there is a fundamental problem that may be intractable: human greed. The investors want the maximum return on investment for the robots they bought, whether or not that return comes at somebody else's expense. And the individual worker, with the opportunity to work 30 hrs/week for the same wage as their former 40 hrs/week, would usually rather keep their hours and earn 33% more.

While there's a lot more written in this discussion thread, I'll stop with that.

There's this idea that work is broken. We're working too much, paid too little, and employers are fat cats leeching off our work. So we're going to force everyone to work less so that these employers have to pay us more. There's a certain sense to it. Lowering the hours worked per week constrains the supply of labor and hence, in a vacuum would raise to some degree the price of labor.

But then we start getting into the many, many problems. The most obvious is simply that work does things and makes stuff. The less we work, then the less things we do and the less stuff we make. This is a problem in a variety of ways.

It means we're doing considerably less overall - the virtues of that level of underemployment aren't enough to compensate for the drawbacks. And I doubt it's a great idea to slow down the rate of progress just for some labor policy. For example, I'd much rather we at least get the developing world up to developed world status and some major progress on human longevity done before we dial back.

That output of work also pays for our labor. The less we do, then the less output there is to pay for our labor.

We also have large fixed costs per worker in the developed world. The less labor per worker the more these costs dominate. That means yet another way employers end up employing less people.

Moving on, another key observation here is that work (not effort!) and employment are not fixed. We can always find more stuff to do, we can find ways to do that stuff better, we can start new businesses, or change existing ones. This leads to another observation. Why curb supply of labor when we can increase demand for labor? Well, that would require throwing bones to employers such as reduced minimum wage; easier employment termination; lower thresholds to business creation, growth, and shrinkage; lower taxes; and reduced mandatory benefits.

One notices a striking component of these work reduction proposals. The employer is the enemy often labeled as "human greed" (as in meustrus's comment) or as the impersonal "investor". Somehow it's not human greed to pass laws to force employers to pay you the same for less work (on top of all the other wealth extraction ploys out there) even though you're pursuing your own benefit at the expense of the employer and threatening the viability of the whole system. But it is human greed just to be an employer. So of course, throwing bones to employers is unthinkable and we are left with this dysfunctional spiral.

Who's more important? A horde of underemployed workers who can't do stuff for themselves? Or the relatively few employers who keep everything going? Sure, you need workers, but when you're in an underemployed situation, there are too many of them and not enough employers.

And of course, the idea of forcing this change on everyone, the unspoken iron fist in this discussion, is completely ignored. In a free society, we certainly should have the choice to work harder to better ourselves and circumstances.

So here's my take on the whole matter. Breaking work further will not make it better, particularly in a world which already has attractive substitute goods for your labor: developing world labor and automation. The perverse and stilted ideology behind this proposal will not consider the obvious alternative, making employing people more attractive.

The proposed benefits of labor reduction are laughable such as income equality (devaluing labor hurts the poor far more than the rich making income inequality worse), inflation prevention (making stuff that people pay money for is deflationary so forcing people to make less stuff is inflationary), better quality of life (why do I need to work less to make your life better? Perhaps, you ought to unilaterally work less? I'm not holding you back), and of course fighting the good fight against human greed (human greed has always been with us, why is it suddenly more of a problem now than the past?).

So how about we fix what actually is broken or do something positive rather than entertain proposals that aren't even pointed in the right direction to fix anything or help anyone?