sulcate

Omron doesn't offer an $80 PLC with gpio that runs python and can directly integrate with your ERP and other software like REST / SQL that anyone could teach themselves if they know python. If it takes two months to create a fully developed local, customized visual build out and assembly accounting software stack that also interfaces with torque sensors and serialization like this one, why is that any kind of a loss? How is integrating a pi with other systems any less valuable of a skill that isn't applicable across other sides of the business, compared to the very narrow task of integrating slow moving PLC hardware that has clunky ass proprietary software most of the time?

I don't know if you've worked in industry, but companies actually won't invest in their local employee to get trained on 'industry standard' automation hardware. They contract that out. So you have no one on site who knows how anything works, half the time. The choices are often "pay s ton and have all the traditional investment of time in a contractor setting up PLC hardware and finding external software integrators to do all the other actual useful stuff you want, or just don't do the project because all of that is expensive and resource intensive."

They prioritize industrial and embedded applications like this for sales, so it's not as impossible to get a board for projects like these.

Yes, absolutely!

But a part that's missing is the reason WHY companies often prefer to hire inefficient outside consultants that will under deliver, over promise, and often leave you with a half functional system at the end.

It's for class politics and control reasons that managers and executives don't want to invest in on-site talent to expand their skills. They want disposable labor even if it costs them more money in the end, because it's a decision motivated by their power interests. They don't want to depend on on-site talent, they don't want to promote you, they don't want to pay you what you are worth, they don't want your talents to develop.

They want to pay an outside agency whatever amount of money for the promise of a system, because even if the consultant fails they have fulfilled their capitalist due diligence and did things the right way, rather than having had local employees that are crucial to you that you invest in do work for you.

If you take issue with this characterization, I'd ask you why do many people here find it notable that this company had an existing employee develop a system rather than just dragging in the consultants.

PLCs are often a pain to integrate with multiple systems and are not nearly as versatile and simple as an internet connected pi running python, for certain desired tasks.

Please tell me which PLC you can get for $200 that runs python, can query some REST APIs, query and write to some databases, communicate with several other types of PLC and equipment, check a half dozen types of local sensors, and perform complex operations without purchasing a software subscription or having to be programmed in ladder logic.

Obviously they are suitable to different tasks, but there's a reason someone might reach for a PI to integrate new functionality, including on top of an existing PLC. They're tremendously handy in this environment, not just used because people don't know better.

I'm going to be transparent: I'm interested in a structural analysis as to why there's a crisis of loneliness.

Humans are wired for sociality and interdependence. Our brains pretty much literally wither away, in ways, without meaningful social stimulus.

Given this, I can't immediately simply lay the blame at the feet of individuals as to why people seem increasingly lonely and thirsty for meaningful connection. So what might be some other causes for this type of isolation that seems increasingly common?

Yes, people are different, but you'd imagine that organizations promoting nativist ideology and religious education in schools might also very likely not resonate with a more highly-correlated-with-atheism hackernews crowd, no?

The point being, the offered easy solutions aren't undeserving of critique and we can discuss real reasons people might not be joining these dying institutions. There was an issue in framing and I discussed it.

A la the other conmments around not wanting to hang exclusively with senior citizens, or ham radio not offering the kind of bustling community one might want. Perhaps there's are reasons said organizations are struggling and a reason why people might feel the choice to find meaningful community isn't always easy, when it's disincentivised in society.

What?

Do you notice a trend in the membership of your named organizations, mainly that they seem filled with old conservative men?

Re: "daughters of the america"

"Council of the Daughters of America, a patriotic fraternity, which seeks to aid in preserving and perpetuating the Public School system; to instill a spirit of patriotism into the youth of our land; to place our flag over every schoolhouse; to promote the reading of the Holy Bible therein; and to protest against the immigration of paupers, criminals, and the enemies of our social order"

Ugh, yeah, my queer self is not really looking for that kind of engagement and I doubt they're looking for me.

It has to be noted that there is absolutely an increasing poverty of community life and hyper individualization. It's kind of incentivized in currently existing systems.

Yes, it's what rfwhyte said. It's literally an externality to the company that people get inconvenienced for hours on understaffed phone lines and end up losing out on money, returns, support, etc. They benefit by reducing overhead and making the support innavigable (thus reducing successful returns/support overhead), you pay the cost with hundreds of hours of your life on hold.

Well, in that case, I have some unfortunate information for you about Facebook, Instagram, hackernews, and much more.

But that's not the point. It's not meant to be intelligible. The point is marketing, aka to misinform consumers. It's working as expected and it happens in every field.

Choosing obscure names that make it extremely hard to compare characteristics within products by a company, much less to compare to outside competitors, is not a bug --- it's a feature.

Try buying a bike and figuring out how to compare it to other bikes by the same manufacturer from this year or last, or try to figure out what features it carries. You're left doing what you always do: staring at 7 tabs with spec sheets and slowly trying to absorb the features of the various "poorly" named offerings

It's anti consumer and I'm surprised there's not more outrage, given that a market purportedly should consist of rational consumers making informed decisions.

This is irrelevant and misses the point.

Even a completely 'trashed' earth that renders billions displaced or suffering amidst ecological catastrophe is still infinitely more hospitable to life than celestial bodies that are completely devoid of that benefit in the first place.

When exactly did they say they were not? They stated the opposite:

>"You have to look at what countries are actually consuming the products leading to the emissions."

But elements are not interchangable and have important differences in properties, difficulties in refining, and workability.

Gold is tremendously useful for many applications and I believe all that you mentioned are brittle in comparison. I believe it's also rarer than a few on that list.

Mainly, I've heard a few people in my life contend that we only arbitrarily decided that gold has a use, or that it's mostly hype. I don't think that's the full case. It's workable, useful, biocompatible, profitability extractable, and obviously stunningly pretty. Not so much just culturally significant just on a whim or something, it's useful.

From the article:

" Although critics question the legality of TRAPs, a legal analysis published last year found that courts generally uphold the agreements in challenges brought under anti-kickback provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act, the law establishing a federal minimum wage. However, the author of the study, Loyola Marymount associate law professor Jonathan F. Harris, said another type of legal challenge might prove more successful: courts could refuse to enforce TRAP contract language under the so-called unconscionability doctrine, a legal principle that allows judges to void agreements containing unreasonable terms dictated by a party “with superior bargaining power.” In 2000, the study noted, a federal judge in Manhattan nullified one employment agreement in the financial services industry, ruling that the language of the contract “approaches indentured servitude.” "

Additionally, it does not cost tend of thousands of dollars to have a law firm draft demand letters for debt. Even if the debt is contestable, theoretically, it remains a huge problem and not something that can be ignored.

See what? An irrelevant comment that doesn't address the fact that one doesn't get to magically wish away a corporation's claim (unjust or not) of debt against an individual? Because that's not how debt works ("just ignore it") and directly ignores the article:

"Although critics question the legality of TRAPs, a legal analysis published last year found that courts generally uphold the agreements in challenges brought under anti-kickback provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act, the law establishing a federal minimum wage. However, the author of the study, Loyola Marymount associate law professor Jonathan F. Harris, said another type of legal challenge might prove more successful: courts could refuse to enforce TRAP contract language under the so-called unconscionability doctrine, a legal principle that allows judges to void agreements containing unreasonable terms dictated by a party “with superior bargaining power.” In 2000, the study noted, a federal judge in Manhattan nullified one employment agreement in the financial services industry, ruling that the language of the contract “approaches indentured servitude.”"

So, I don't get where you or the other person in this thread are getting the idea that this is a non issue because you can just ignore the contract terms. I too wish this was a non issue for those involved and ignorable, because it's despicable. It's obviously unconscionable and a problem that these companies are attempting to extort money from disadvantaged populations (not the supposedly previously narrower, highly paid technical applications of the agreements) even if said agreements existed in a counterfactual universe in which a corporation pursuing you for debt was a non issue. Debt is not expensive to draft continuous demand letters against or to transfer to a collections agency. Plus, you know, the above paragraph in the article.