Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz joined nationwide protests against right-wing extremism this weekend in at least 90 cities across Germany.
This came after the far-right AFD called for all immigrants to be expelled from Germany in response to the Bundestag voting to expand German citizenship.
Scholz told people gathered in Potsdam, "Whoever is looking after themselves and their family, who chooses our country and shares our values, will in future be able to apply for a German passport after five years rather than eight. Nobody would be forced to deny their roots."
"If there is one thing that must never again have any place in Germany, it's the ethno-racial ideology of the National Socialists," Scholz told Germans in Potsdam, "That's exactly what the repulsive resettlement plans of these extremists are. The very thought sends a shiver down the spine. It is an attack on our democracy"
Give the AFD No Chance
Anti-right-wing Germans rally in Hamburg
People will now be able to apply for a German passport after five instead of eight years in Germany. In cases where applicants are "exceptionally well integrated," naturalization would be possible after three years.
Dual nationality is usually only allowed for citizens of other EU countries or Switzerland, although it is permitted for others in certain exceptional cases.
The Bundestag's loosening of immigration rules would make it possible to gain direct access to dual citizenship no matter where the applicant comes from.
Intel brought in Boston Consulting Group to create an AI platform using Intel AI chips.
Then, still finding no customers for their AI chips, Intel offered cheap discount pricing and rounded up six venture capital firms to become a buyer named DigitalBridge Articul8 with a snazzy logo of Intel AI chips.
Once completed, the new chip owners hope to sell time on the racks of Intel AI chips which will fill their building. - https://www.articul8.ai/
The venture capital owners of the new building full of Intel's chips are a list of largely unknown names: Fin Capital, Mindset Ventures, Communitas Capital, GiantLeap Capital, GS Futures and Zain Group. Good luck with that.
Perhaps Intel will then help fund new companies wanting to rent time on Articul8's Intel AI chips.
Zuckerberg said, “By the end of this year, we’re going to have around 350,000 Nvidia H100s. About 600,000 H100 equivalents of compute if you include other GPUs.”
https://www.pcmag.com/news/zuckerbergs-meta-is-spending-billions-to-buy-350000-nvidia-h100-gpus
That's $10.5 billion of new additional revenue for Nvidia
And in 2 to 3 years, at the most, Meta will spend that much again to buy the newer Nvidia chips that consume billions of Dollars less in electricity. What a business.
Only Amazon is known to be stubbornly designing their own incompatible AI chip.
AMD is selling essentially none of their incompatible AI training chips, but believes their chips could be adapted for "inference" once each year's Nvidia AI models are completed. Well, it's good to keep up an optimistic outlook Lisa Su.
You know the story well - a lot don't.
I bought some PYPL in December, but like PFE waves of sellers continued, so I was out.
Both are attractive valuations when they're closer to getting things turned around. PYPL certainly has more competition than PFE.
The Venmo business was they bought with Braintree was popular with consumers until Zelle and FedNow.
Paypal's biggest growth is the Braintree payment systems they bought in 2013. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braintree_(company)
Braintree provides businesses with the ability to accept online and in-app payments, and now makes up 30% of Paypal's revenue.
A lot of writers have been touting Paypal as "the stock of 2024", but the market is narrow and PYPL is currently an 'out of the mainstream' stock.
One thing I don't like is Paypal's new CEO is an Intuit exec. Intuit is the place acquired software goes to die, kept alive basically by their Turbotax franchise. Maybe he left Intuit because he was too smart?
The US and our foreign embassies already do very extensive background checks on people we give permanent immigration papers to.
House Republican leaders now need Democratic votes to pass any legislation in 2024. Kevin McCarthy was incapable of understanding and accepting this.
Like Kevin McCarthy, the crazy mini-collection of cast-iron parachutes, formerly known as 'freedom caucus' are no longer even a thing.
So GOP leaders have telegraphed to rank-and-file lawmakers that any consequential piece of legislation this year — like funding the government or a potential tax bill — will be brought to the floor under the suspension of the rules, according to aides and lawmakers.
How it works: The procedural move essentially bypasses the House Rules Committee, preventing conservatives from strangling legislation before it reaches the floor.
The Bill then requires a two-thirds majority to pass, or roughly 290 votes, which now looks exactly like the Senate which due to the filibuster rule needs 60 of it's 100 votes to pass anything.
In practice, it makes the House look suspiciously like the Senate, where legislation typically needs 60 votes to stand any chance of becoming law.
Congress is considering three consequential pieces of legislation this winter: A Ukraine funding and border bill, a tax proposal that trades business breaks for a child tax credit, and legislation to keep the government open (which will likely be two separate bills).
The first two are somewhat optional. The third one is more pressing, if lawmakers want to avoid a painful government shutdown.
This has angered Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), the chair of the now meaningless House Rules Committee, but a House Barely-Majority without enough votes to function has no need for them.
It has been a very busy ten days of trying out new equipment from Amazon and different services.
I've had a headstart because I've learned a lot over the years from one of my best friends was an attorney for Showtime, then moved to DC to work for Discovery, then to Miami Shores to become the SVP for Discovery Channels Latin America. He grew up on the east coast and was educated by Jesuits, so in addition to speaking Spanish and French as I do he's also fluent in Portuguese and Italian. We both speak some German and Dutch as well, so we both really liked Koen De Bouw as Jasper Teerlink in the original Belgian-produced crime-procedural drama 'Professor T.' subsequently remade in English and other languages. - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3823996/ & https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11981644/ It's worth watching too just for Goele Derick as his cynical secretary Frau Ingred Sneyers, translated correctly as Miss Snares in the English version.
Every year he'd go to Cannes and other trade shows to negotiate content for these "channels". From his perspective I could see a "channel" or a "network" was just an arbitrary marketing company, that would advertise and promote the content they had licensed. Now 78 he does the same work on a part-time contract basis for a number of content providers like Acorn, which for many years has provided most of the the British content for PBS, and he works for other networks in Latin America.
Entertainment is a very interesting business. They negotiate the rights to content for a specific distribution platform, or geographic area, or specific language, for a specific period of time. He had to contract with other companies to hire translators and voice actors, because only the largest global content providers have already provided these add-ons for their content.
Today, as a consumer you can watch the content with advertisements or pay extra to watch most of it ad-free.
There's far more platform hopping now. Amazon might pay to produce a season or two of a show, then suddenly Hulu, or MAX/HBO pay for subsequent seasons and where consumers find the content changes with it.
My friend greatly disliked the woman who became CEO of Discovery and shifted its American licensed content from educational shows to people customizing cars, UFO / aliens nonsense, ghosts and paranormal crap, and reality shows about discovering treasure and other nonsense. It's why he moved to Miami to take over their Latin American channels. The consumer has more control where their money goes now, and many of them want shit like naked people arguing with each other or surviving in a jungle.
Streaming is a bigger market but music artists and production companies earn less from it.
As a newbie, OTT - is a new term I just learned. It's an acronym for "over the top" - television networks which do not 'broadcast' live TV on cable networks, but only on streaming television services like Hulu+live TV, YouTube TV aka YTTV, FuboTV, Sling TV, etc.
Our 1GB internet service with Charter Spectum is now a non-discounted $125 /mo including all of their mystery fees. A huge improvement over their $270 mystery bill which included cable TV.
That $145 difference has been replaced with $121 (YouTube TV+ live channels $73, plus $30 for Max-HBO+Showtime+Starz $30, plus $18 for ad-free Hulu streaming), a combination of far more live TV plus ad-free streaming content than Spectrum Cable for $24 a month less - with virtutally no contact with the cable company..
And all content played using our $120 Amazon Firecubes, a hundred fold better than Tivo at suggestions, with UNLIMITED 9 month DVR storage of recorder shows) without and cable company equipment other than the internet modem.
The very small backlit Amazon FireCube remote, in combination with Alexa voice commands, makes it all intuitively easy to use. Wait until Amazon adds AI.
I highly recommend Fire TV Cube - https://www.amazon.com/All-new-fire-tv-cube-4k-streaming-device/dp/B09BZZ3MM7
Taiwan elects a strong pro-independence President
China's leadership and their running-dog lackeys remain trapped by their ancient revanchist tendencies
Lai Ching-te, a former doctor from a poor mining family, was propelled into politics by a military crisis in the Taiwan Strait 27 years ago. Now, the soft-spoken political veteran is tasked with preventing another one from happening as the newly elected leader of the self-ruled island that China’s Communist Party has vowed to one day absorb.
On Saturday, Lai, 64, the current vice president from the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), won a widely watched election to become Taiwan’s next president. His victory handed the DPP a historic third consecutive term, delivering a snub to years of growing threats from Taiwan’s much-larger authoritarian neighbor, China.
“The election has shown the world the commitment of the Taiwanese people to democracy, which I hope China can understand,” Lai told thousands of jubilant supporters at a rally after his win.
Lai, who has long faced Beijing’s wrath for championing Taiwan’s sovereignty, said as president he has “an important responsibility to maintain peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait,” pledging to pursue dialogue with China under the principles of dignity and parity.
“At the same time, we’re also determined to safeguard Taiwan from continuing threats and intimidation from China,” he told reporters ahead of his victory speech.
Under leader Xi Jinping, China’s most assertive leader in a generation, Beijing has ramped up diplomatic, economic and military pressure on Taiwan, which it views as its own territory to be seized by force if necessary.
Tensions across the Taiwan Strait are at their highest since 1996, when China fired missiles into waters off Taiwan’s coast to intimidate voters ahead of the island’s first free presidential election – after the nascent democracy emerged from decades of its own authoritarian rule.
For Lai, then a fresh-faced doctor at a university hospital in the southern city of Tainan, that missile crisis became his “defining moment.”
“I decided I had a duty to participate in Taiwan’s democracy and help protect this fledgling experiment from those who wished it harm,” he wrote in The Wall Street Journal last year.
Lai hung up his white coat to run for office – first becoming a legislator, then a popular two-term mayor of Tainan, before serving as the premier and – since 2020 – the vice president of incumbent President Tsai Ing-wen.
The doctor-turned politician has now broken the “eight-year curse” of Taiwan politics – a popular term nodding to the fact that, until Lai’s victory, no political party had ever stayed in power for more than two terms since Taiwan became a democracy.
‘Unexpected journey’
Lai called his foray into politics an “unexpected journey.”
Growing up in poverty in a mining village near the northern coast of Taiwan, Lai had dreamed of becoming a doctor since childhood. He had five siblings, and his mother raised them alone by doing odd jobs. His father, a coal miner, died in a work accident when Lai was a small child.
Lai was too young to remember his father. “But one day I suddenly realized, the biggest asset my father left me was that my family was poor,” he said at an event in March last year.
“Growing up in such a family, we will be more mature, have more willpower, and have more courage to overcome difficulties.”
After completing a bachelor’s degree in physical medicine and rehabilitation in Taipei, Lai went to Tainan for medical school.
He was a few years into a promising career as a physician in Tainan when a local DPP official approached him. He asked the popular doctor to help a DPP politician campaign for local elections.
It was 1994, less than a decade after the DPP first emerged from Taiwan’s democracy movement against the authoritarian rule of the Kuomintang (KMT).
Before lifting martial law in 1987 and transitioning slowly toward free elections, the KMT ruled Taiwan with an iron fist for nearly four decades after fleeing to the island from mainland China after losing the civil war to the Communist forces there.
Tens of thousands of political opponents were killed or jailed during what came to be known as the “White Terror” and the DPP was formed by many veterans of those who had campaigned for democracy.
While Lai was in college in Taipei, he and his roommates had closely followed news of the KMT’s brutal crackdown on pro-democracy protesters. “I was full of doubts and concerns for the future of this country,” he said in video released by his presidential election campaign.
Lai agreed to help the DPP with the local election, but the candidate lost in the end.
A year later, some democracy activists invited Lai to join the DPP to run for the legislature.
He initially rejected the idea. “I was born and raised in a rural, impoverished place, and I had always wanted to be a doctor. Now, I’ve finally made it this far to become a chief physician,” he said in the campaign video.
But his political friends refused to give up. Months later, crisis flared in the Taiwan Strait as China held live-fire exercises and fired missiles toward Taiwan, giving Lai a final push across the line.
“Instead of criticizing the ruling government at the time from my clinic, wouldn’t it be better to come out and follow the vanguards of the democratic movement and actually do something for Taiwan?” he said in the video.
“I also thought that in this life, if I could find a project that makes me feel passionate to embark on, it would be a life worth living.”
‘Chill out’ In the lead-up to the election, China made no secret of its desire to prevent a Lai victory.
Chinese officials repeatedly framed the vote as a choice between “peace and war” – echoing a talking point of the KMT’s Hou Yu-ih, Beijing’s preferred candidate – while railing against Lai for triggering “cross-strait confrontation and conflict.”
Hailing from a more radical wing of the DPP, Lai was once an open supporter of Taiwan independence – a red line for Beijing.
His views tempered as he rose through the ranks. But China never forgave him for his comments from six years ago, in which he described himself as a “practical worker for Taiwan independence.”
Lai now says he favors the current status quo, proclaiming that “Taiwan is already an independent sovereign country” so there is “no plan or need” to declare independence.
That deliberately nuanced stance mimics his outgoing predecessor Tsai, Taiwan’s first female president, who was unable to stand again because of term limits.
Beijing cut off official communications with Taipei after Tsai took office in 2016 and ramped up its campaign to isolate Taiwan internationally, something that looks set to continue when Lai is inaugurated and fully takes over in May.
In many ways Beijing’s rhetoric towards Lai is even more hostile than how it viewed Tsai.
China’s government and state media regularly rebuke Lai, calling him a dangerous separatist, “troublemaker” and “war maker,” while rejecting his repeated offers for talks.
One such offer was made to China’s top leader, Xi.
In May last year, at a quick-fire Q&A session with students at his alma mater, National Taiwan University, Lai named Xi as the head of state he would most like to have dinner with.
If he had a chance to dine with Xi, Lai said, he would advise the Chinese leader to “chill out a little.”
“No need to be so stressed,” he said.
Asked about Lai’s invitation, Beijing said his comments were “weird” and accused Lai of “trying to put on the cloak of goodwill” given that his “Taiwan independence nature” had not changed.
Lai’s running mate Hsiao Bi-khim, who was elected vice president Saturday, was also openly loathed by Beijing. Hsiao, who recently served as Taiwan’s top envoy to the United States, was sanctioned twice by China for being a “diehard secessionist.”
‘Mainstream public opinion’ Lai earned more than 40 percent of the popular vote, while the KMT scooped up 33 percent and a newer opposition party, the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), racked up 26 percent.
The DPP lost its majority in the legislature, taking 51 of the 113 seats, meaning Lai may find himself more constrained than Tsai and needing to rely on political alliances to pass legislation.
Hours after Lai declared victory, China dismissed the outcome of Taiwan’s elections, saying the DPP “does not represent mainstream public opinion” on the island.
“Taiwan is China’s Taiwan,” China’s Taiwan Affairs Office said in a statement on Saturday night.
“This election cannot change the shared hope from compatriots on both sides of the Taiwan Strait to get closer and closer, it moreover cannot stop the inevitable destiny that our motherland will be united.”
But that assertion could not be further from Taiwan’s mainstream public opinion.
Under Xi’s strongarm tactics, Taiwan’s public has shifted determinedly away from China. Less than 10 percent now support an immediate or eventual unification, and less than 3 percent identify primarily as Chinese.
The majority of Taiwanese want to maintain the current status quo and show no desire to be ruled by Beijing.
“We have been bullied for years on end. I just can’t stand kneeling down to their demands and their meddling with our elections. We want to keep our free style of living and our democracy,” Yang Wei-ting, a 27-year-old civil servant, said amid cheers and celebrations at Lai’s rally.
“I think the most important part for us is to work with like-minded partners around the globe, and tell China that we’re not alone and we’re not scared. We’re standing in the face of an authoritarian regime, but we’re backed by many like-minded countries.”
Charter/Spectrum ended our TiVo service which has been tremendously annoying for one week. I know we're late to this game, but TiVo has kept us blissfully ignorant of our cable company's bad service.
Charter/Spectrum has been trying so hard to go out of business, and they finally gave us a reason to mostly leave them as a customer.
Only a week later we've now happily replaced cable TV with two Amazon Fire TV Cubes (each 3 inch square) an Amazon Alexa that controls TV and streaming. Coupled with a monthly YouTube TV subscription with local TV stations for $42 a month less than Spectrum, which has an unlimited cloud DVR with a 9 month storage life (due to DRM agreements with content producers).
YouTube TV has all our local channels but is missing only the History Channel/A+E. People needing that will want to instead choose "Hulu+ local tv".
If you think you wanted it, you can attach the HDMI cable of a cable box to the HDMI in on the Fire Cube and let Fire Cube merge all your channel guides and control the cable box. But why? We'd be missing the record ability and paying $42 more than for YouTube TV. We tried out Spectrum's wretched new "cable box replacement" called Xumo, a ghetto version of the Roku streaming box impossible to navigate and cluttered with ads run in a 50/50 joint-venture with Comcast. Xumo was originally founded as advertisementbanners.com - need I say more.
We had been paying $6 a month each a cable cards for our two TiVos, which would be replaced with more than $67 a month in fees for DVRs which are a really sad technology from 25 years ago (we've tried them out for 3 days) all now replaced by a one-time purchase of two $120 Fire Cubes.
Fire Cube provides a combined channel guide of all of your inputs, including local broadcasts if you have an antenna, and Alexa now controls my non-smart TV, instantly looks up shows, changes inputs, the channel or the volume. It's easiest to find shows I want to my Cloud DVR to record either on the YouTube TV website or asking the Alexa in Fire Cube to do it.
It's very easy to add HBO, Showtime, etc for the same price as cable for a month, then turn them off online when you no longer want them.
For now we're keeping our 1Gb internet service with Spectrum at a "customer retention rate" of $75, but in the coming future will do a trial of T-Mobile 5G home internet service for $50 a month to see what speeds we achieve at our address.
Cable TV is no longer a business for Charter or Comcast - just sad companies.
Most large AI array owners provide AI cloud services to others for a fee.
Some imagine Nvidia's demand will drop when the market for these chips to these mega-customers is "saturated" but power savings with newer chips means they get bought all over again by the very same buyers.
The actual chip owners, Google, Microsoft etc have a very powerful economic incentive to buy newer lower-power Nvidia chips as they become available, to save on the $6 billion power bill for Google alone.
In spite of the hefty price for the next Nvidia chips with lower power attached memory, they will greatly reduce the cooling power needed, making the economic life of the existing chips very short.
More memory also reduces the number of AI centers. Currently the training model for ChatGPT and similar are so large they cannot be housed in one center, but connect multiple centers around the world. More attached memory to each chip means faster, lower power training on far fewer chips. Of course using the trained model for inference requires a much smaller setup, but the power savings will be the same with the new chips.
Google will still offer AI cloud services for a fee, but upgrading to the newer lower-power chips will cut their $6 billion power bill.
Homeless people will be able to live in public areas all across America, or not, after the Supreme Court hears an appeal in April brought by Gov Gavin Newsom and city officials in California and seven other western states.
https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2024-01-12/supreme-court-agrees-to-rule-on-homeless-encampments-in-california-and-the-west
City officials are appealing against a 9th U.S. Circuit Court Appeals ruling which held that officials cannot remove homeless people from street encampments if the people living on the street, often mentally ill, refuse an offer to move into temporary shelter.
“California has invested billions to address homelessness, but rulings from the bench have tied the hands of state and local governments to address this issue,” Gov Gavin Newsom said.
“The Supreme Court can now correct course and end the costly delays from lawsuits that have plagued our efforts to clear encampments and deliver services to those in need.”
In the rest of America, cities have been able to relocate homeless people to shelters. Only in eight western US states has the 9th Circuit ruling allowed homeless people to sleep on public property. After the Supreme Court rules, there will be one national standard.
Conservative Supreme Court justices may choose to make homeless street camps a national phenomena in a victory for the freedoms of homeless mentally ill Trump voters.
That's the economic incentive for users like Google and Microsoft to buy the newest Nvidia chips as soon as they're available, and throw their current chips in the trash.
Annual associated cost for electricity for a year is close to the purchase price of the AI chip - and Nvidia's next chips will use 85% less electricity per calculation.
Of course Google and Microsoft will increase their computing power and keep electrical usage the same.
Google spends about $6 billion a year on electricity to power just their own AI chips. Google's electric consumption is comparable to that of the nation of Ireland.
Nvidia has sold more than $20 billion of AI chips to these customers. They can expect a 100% replacement cycle.
Their customer lock is their software interface to the chip. Few want to switch to a different AI software system just so they can buy cheaper chips from AMD or others.
There will be no increase in power demand in spite of a huge increase in AI chip usage.
AI / GPU calculations require: lots of nearly correct calculations; and a huge amount of memory. Each has a low-energy solution.
Lots of low-energy memory
LPCAMM (Low Power Compression Attached Memory Module) is going to add huge amounts of memory directly to the AI processor at very low power settings, without the the heat of transmission from DRAM chips relatively remote from the chip requiring super-super-fast networking and huge energy consumption.
https://news.samsung.com/global/samsung-electronics-industry-first-lpcamm-ushers-in-future-of-memory-modules
https://investors.micron.com/news-releases/news-release-details/micron-first-market-lpddr5x-based-lpcamm2-memory-transforming
Fuzzy Math
Multiplying 5 times 7 on a 64-bit precision chip uses as much electricity as multiplying 1,405,684,935,683,397,445.07 times 495,385,294,405,339,032.456034
Spreadsheets require the full 64-bit double-precision, because the exactly right answer matters. For AI and graphics that precision is worse than useless.
Say GPUs and AI require precision of 5 x 7 or 1,405,68(10-13th power) x 495,385(10-12th power) which can all be calculated with less energy in 8-bit or 32-bit math. Eight bits is 8 faster and 87% less electricity than 64 after just the first calculation.
All AI solutions use something called Vector Floating Point Math aka Scalar Double-Precision Floating-Point Instructions to calculate an emulated aka 'approximate' 64-bit addressing capability answer. - https://docs.nvidia.com/cuda/floating-point/index.html
Using vector point floating math, the same processor can calculate 30 to 80 times faster with the same electricity, by lopping off precision. By contrast using the next smallest chip die only increased processing power per watt by 2.5 times
Each chip maker uses their own flavor of scalar calculation. This scalar function is increasingly being dedicated to an attached Scalar Chiplet. Google calls their chiplet Tensor Flow https://www.infoq.com/news/2017/04/tpu-architecture/
I'm liking this year's quicker delivery schedules.
1099 forms arrive January 19th and the IRS opens filing on January 29 - I like getting stuff out of the way early.
Then if all goes well, on May 28 brokerage firms and their customers move from T+2 settlement to T+1.
We used the now hard to imagine T+5 settlement time until switching to T+3 settlement only in March 1992.
I guess it was because prior to 1992 we still used horse-riding dispatch couriers.
Immigrants typically need to be more ambitious. It's a negative for many large employers to hire people who speak English with a different accent or imperfectly, and who are socialized differently. It's only made worse when the immigrant is from a family that was previously very wealthy in their former home country.
Before he went to school to become a Doctor, my grandfather started learning English while attending Hollywood High School after his mother relocated them there from Russia in 1914 when he was 13 years old. While attending college he catered parties during the night, then proceeded to his second job delivering milk in his tuxedo, as he had no time to change clothes, something former customers would recall decades later.
My Dad who called his father-in-law "Doc" was not surprised to learn from my grandmother, that her immigrant husband had been let go from a number of jobs until he and his brother, by then a new attorney, pooled their meager resources and bought the Beverly Hills Transfer and Storage Company out of bankruptcy in 1930 and my grandfather became the new managing owner.
"Can you imagine a business owner and hiring Doc?," my Dad wondered, "It certainly wouldn't be very long before his new employer would start to wonder who was working for who." - a trait not often popular with employers.
After five years of paying his movers in part with shares in the company to keep it going, being short on cash as newly broke Beverly Hills customers often paid for their move with pieces of their best furnishings, my grandfather sold the moving company to his employees and using the proceeds to attend medical school during the Great Depression.
The path of an immigrant to America is not an easy one, but opportunity exists in America for smart people who are willing to work more diligently than Americans.
We just received a $75 a month permanent customer retention rate for 1Gbps download 40 Mbps upload from Charter/Spectrum in Los Angeles.
Anywhere on our Linksys WiFi mesh I uniformly get 775-814 / 39-41 with wired connections a micro-bit faster at 886 / 42. Latency is 15 ms or less.
It's the same rate we were paying for 300 / 10 which was typically 360 / 20. The same fast modem we had before but not with more channels bonded.
I'm not happy they're removing TiVo support. It's like they're trying to kill off their cable TV business.
The Amazon Echo effect
The music industry had a record-setting 2023 with more than 4 trillion on-demand audio song streams.
That's a 22.3% increase from 2022's 3.4 trillion streams, per year-end data from Luminate, a music and entertainment data analytics firm.
In the U.S., one of every 78 audio streams in 2023 was a Taylor Swift song
Foreign-born people ages 16 and older made up 18% of the U.S. working-age population, and more than 60% of the country’s labor force growth last year
https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2024-01-09/california-immigration-driving-population-labor-force-growth
The resurgence of immigration has not only given the U.S. a modest gain in total population but also done something far more vital for the economy: It has fueled the nation’s workforce in the last year.
.
As the overall population ages, as more baby boomers retire, and as family birthrates remain relatively low, the size of the U.S. workforce is increasingly dependent on immigration.
Better technology can help increase productivity, but if the U.S. economy is to keep growing and offering the possibility of higher standards of living for more of its citizens, an expanding workforce is also vital, most economists agree.
Last Friday’s jobs report for December, while showing resilient employment growth, offered new signs that the economy may be hitting a wall in terms of workforce participation and the return of those who dropped out of the labor market amid the pandemic.
But the same report showed a rising tide of foreign-born workers, including many more who appear to be on the sidelines of the labor market trying to engage.
“There may be a larger shadow pool of available workers than is generally perceived,” said Bob Schwartz, a senior economist at Oxford Economics in New York. He said an expanding supply of workers could help cool wage growth, an important factor in inflation.
Although illegal immigration and in recent months the out-of-control influx from the southern border have drawn all the attention, as many in Latin America flee violence and poverty, new arrivals to the U.S. have come from many corners of the world, including more migrants from Africa and refugees from Ukraine, among other countries.
Taken together, they could provide additional breathing room to an economy strapped for workers.
Low wages, lousy shifts, little room for advancement: So young immigrants start businesses to get ahead
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-09-15/10-years-ago-this-immigrant-didnt-qualify-for-daca-protection-now-hes-an-entrepreneur
DACA recipient, Zacil Vazquez helps her mother, Maria Vazquez, prepare an order at their restaurant, Sazòn, in Huntington Park
That underlying reality could now begin to break up the political stalemate over immigration, in which Republicans have demanded drastic action to curb immigration while Democrats have been equally adamant about opposing crackdowns.
What may force both sides to begin thinking about compromise is that both broadly conservative business leaders and often liberal big city mayors and state officials are starting to feel the pinch of the labor shortage.
Without much public fanfare, President Biden and many congressional Democrats are being pressed by mayors and other leaders in New York, Denver, Chicago and other cities to tighten up as they’ve been awash in expensive-to-care-for migrants sent by Texas and other border states.
Meantime, all but the most extreme right-wing Republicans in Congress are being quietly urged by some business leaders to loosen up because of worker shortages.
“This is a clear case of right-wing Republicans being at odds with the business sector,” said Dean Baker, a senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a left-leaning think tank in Washington.
Businesses have reported persistent difficulty finding workers. The National Federation of Independent Business’ December survey found 40% of small-business owners had job openings they couldn’t fill. The problem was especially acute in construction and transportation, but hospitality and health services also have many entry-level openings that analysts say could be filled relatively quickly by immigrants, who tend to be younger and highly motivated to work.
Business and political leaders, in fact, have been urging Washington to provide work authorization, among other help, to deal with the financial and social burden of sheltering the migrant surge.
Immigration is making the difference between whether the nation’s population is growing or shrinking — and is pivotal for many employers as well.
“It allows businesses to expand. A lot of businesses close because they can’t get workers,” Baker said.
The U.S. jobless rate in December was 3.7%, near a 50-year low. And although job openings and worker quits are down from highs, there are still 1.6 unfilled positions for every unemployed person.
The labor participation rate hasn’t quite returned to pre-pandemic levels among those over the age of 55.
Nicholas Eberstadt, a political economist at the American Enterprise Institute, a right-leaning think tank in Washington, said female employment is setting records. But many workers 55 and older haven’t returned as previously expected, he said, not even jobs paying $65 an hour is enough to lure lazy older Americans out of retirement. Eliminating Medicare and Social Security benefits is looking like the best way to motivate older Americans to work.
“Immigration has been very positive for the U.S.,” he said, noting that he favors legal immigration like DACA. “The difficulty at the moment is the chaos on the southern border. ... What I worry about is that it’s going to poison public support for immigration.”
That chaos is largely the result of political paralysis in Washington. In a presidential election year in which the battle lines are as bitterly entrenched as they are today, the immediate outlook for compromise may still look dim. But the accumulating data on worker shortages and weak population growth suggest that change may be closer than it looks.
I just noticed on Monday Hewlett Packard (NYSE:HPE) said they're buying yesterday's networking star Juniper Networks (NYSE:JNPR).
JNPR closed Monday at 30.37 and opened Tuesday at 36.36 so not a huge premium.
Greatly increased networking speed is again profitable and essential.
Cisco is the dog of the industry, with Arista (NYSE:ANET) making the most sought after products.
I appreciate your insights Nick.
I can see that 140 - 150 support level which AAPL last left in February 2023.
I just noticed that when I got back just now - Happy me.
I bought a big chunk of PANW yesterday at $290.40 when it was laying there dead while Crowdstrike was rising to the sky.
I'm not convinced the pessimism around AAPL is quite justified either, although trying to sell goods into China's economy is going to be ugly for some time.
These immigrants can seem scary to many arriving in large crowds, but these hard-working people have a tough road and have always been on of the key factors that make America's economy so successful and so creative.
Because they're willing to work harder than Americans, because they have to, I understand why this makes many Americans resent them.
But, among other things, these immigrants are hugely subsidizing our Medicare and Social Security, because without immigration the US has a declining population, just like Europe, China, Japan and most of the world.
The still retiring Baby Boom is creating a huge labor shortage in all sectors of our economy. - I know what a really stupid person would do, deport workers - it's on par with encouraging older Americans to work by eliminating Medicare benefits and cutting their social security payments. Trump and many Republicans are "world-class stupid".
Trump has revealed his "new master plan" to his malcontent Trumper Brigade followers,
1.) deport all immigrants;
2.) Impose a new 10% import tariff on all of our $3.2 Trillion in imports - which will send inflation well past 10% annually.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-12-15/trump-s-10-import-tariff-would-crush-trade-la-port-chief-says
I read one grumping Trump supporter complaining he has difficulty getting any building maintenance person to come out to work on his building even though he's offering $65 an hour. Let's leave aside the fact that trades people certainly insist on a premium to work for a repellent person and put him at the bottom of their priority list.
. . . What does a Trumper Brigade member like this imagine his "labor situation" will be like after deporting all of the immigrants who work on all of the buildings and cook all of the food?
England has found out to their serious regret when they stopped getting new immigrants from Poland and other parts of Eastern Europe, and even losing some whp went home. Shortages of truck drivers, farm and construction workers, restaurant workers with inflation, shortages in stores and closing restaurants.
I jumped back onto CRWD yesterday morning which was none too soon.
I think money is moving out of PANW into CRWD.
United Airlines said earlier on Monday that it found loose bolts on the door plugs sealing the unused doors on some of their new 737-Max9s during inspections.
Alaska Airlines announced Monday night that "reports from our technicians indicate some loose hardware was visible on some aircraft."
The aircraft and door plug which failed on the Alaskan Airways flight had been delivered by Boeing to Alaska Airways just six weeks prior.
The cockpit door immediately flew open, banging into a lavatory door and jolting the first officer forward, causing her to temporarily lose her headset, Homendy said, citing interviews with flight attendants. The captain and the first officer were able to put on oxygen masks and turn on a speaker, but “communication was a serious issue,” she said.
Flight attendants described trouble getting information from the flight deck, and passengers in the cabin struggled to hear announcements. “It was very violent.”
Trump blames very unfair FAA scrutiny.
Investigators who examined the grounded plane after the accident found that the headrests of two seats directly adjacent to the door plug were missing, as well as the back of one seat.
One flight attendant suffered minor injuries, according to the union that represents Alaska crews, The Washington Post reported. Several passengers required medical attention for injuries, the airline said. The flight was carrying 171 passengers and six crew members.
Pieces of trim, paneling and insulation were ripped from the interior of the plane, Homendy said, and damage was visible in at least 12 rows, including the interior side of some windows. However, these parts are “not critical to the structure of the aircraft,” she said, adding that the tubing of several oxygen masks had been “sheared off.”
NTSB investigators were unable to uncover communications from the cockpit voice recorder, which overwrites itself every two hours and was not recovered before the recording had been automatically erased. Homendy called on the FAA to implement a rule that would require the automatic overwrite time to be increased to 25 hours, a standard she said the NTSB has called for and is “consistent with Europe and many other countries.”
“That information is key not just for our investigation but for improving aviation safety,” she said.
Why these people are fleeing China, the world's second-largest economy
For now, people from China are on track to be the fastest growing group making those crossings, according to an analysis of the latest law enforcement data on border encounters, bring back past American fears of plague carrying Yellow Peril. Yet Cold War Era US immigration laws give priority to refugees from communist nations like China, laws which Republicans refuse to change.
China’s economy had a miserable year. 2024 is likely to be even worse
The “zou xian” ‘walking route’: How an underground industry charging Chinese fleeing China for the US For $9,000 to $12,000, travelers can pay smugglers to arrange transportation for parts of the journey north, as well as a boat and guide for the optional rainforest crossing, all inclusive.
For those able to spend more, at least $20,000, the route gets easier: for example, help with a multiple-entry visa to Japan, which unlocks visa-free entry to Mexico, and transport to the border.
They come with backpacks carrying a few spare changes of clothes and whatever money and phones they weren’t robbed of by criminals or cartels along the way, arriving at the United States-Mexico border exhausted from the stress of the journey north.
Like the hundreds of [url=https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/29/us/us-mexico-border-migration/index.html]thousands of people[/url] around them who have also trekked weeks to reach the US, they’re driven by a desperation to escape and make a new life, despite the uncertainty of what’s on the other side.
But these migrants are fleeing the world’s second largest economy and an emerging superpower.
A group of Chinese migrants gathered at a temporary camp near the US-Mexican border after illegally crossing into the US.
Bundled in hoodies and jackets, they huddled around fires as they, and others there, counted the time before US border control agents would take them away for processing – and what they hoped would be the start to their lives in America.
These arrivals are part of a staggering new trend. In the first 11 months of 2023, more than 31,000 Chinese citizens were picked up by law enforcement crossing illegally into the US from Mexico, government – compared with an average of roughly 1,500 per year over the preceding decade.
Three years of Covid-19 lockdowns and restrictions left people across China out of work – and disillusioned with the ruling Communist Party’s increasingly tight grip on all aspects of life under Xi. Now, hope that business would fully rebound once restrictions ended a year ago has vanished, with China’s [url=https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/27/economy/china-economy-challenges-2024-intl-hnk]once envious economic growth stuttering[/url].
Others nod to restrictions on personal life in China, where Xi has overseen a sweeping crackdown on free speech, civil society and religion in the country of 1.4 billion.
“We are Christians,” one neatly dressed middle-aged man said simply when asked what had led him there – a bare encampment thousands of miles from home.
These Chinese nationals join migrants from around the world whose numbers have the southwestern US border with illegal crossings in recent months. Most are seeking asylum after they cross – a pathway that may narrow in the coming weeks as Congress is expected to move to stem that flow amid a fierce debate over immigration.
And as the numbers making their escape have grown, so too has a network of businesses and social media accounts catering to Chinese migrants, who must often take a circuitous route across continents, before beginning the arduous, overland journey north.
For many, that overland route begins in Quito, Ecuador – a city of roughly 2.5 million high in the Andean foothills that has become a gateway for those escaping China.
In 2022, Ecuador documented around 13,000 Chinese nationals entering. In the first 11 months of 2023, that number rose to more than 45,000. The country doesn’t require visas for Chinese passport holders.
A cottage industry of businesses caters to the border-bound, starting with airport pickups to arranging stays at Chinese-run hostels and organizing the journey north – often for a hefty fee, CNN reporting has found.
At one bus station, a ticket agent has a sign for “the Colombian border” printed in Chinese, ready to flash to potential customers. At a local hospital offering vaccinations – recommended for a treacherous jungle crossing – the Spanish-speaking nurse keeps a Chinese translation of the intake form on her desk.
A ticket agent in Quito, Ecuador holds up a sign written in Chinese for the bus to "Tulcan at the Colombian border.
Along the fringes of the city’s central business district are a growing number of businesses linked to the trend, travel agent Long Quanwei, who immigrated to Quito from China five years ago, told CNN last month.
There, convenience and department stores sell gear and goods needed for the trek north, while Chinese-run establishments offer housing, food and a place to link up with others headed north and decide about onward routes, Long says.
At one of these hostels, where a night’s stay with meals costs about $20, printed Chinese-language maps and instructions pasted to a wall detail each leg of the trip. The owner, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of online backlash, estimates there are 100 such small businesses like hers that cater to Chinese travelers, including those preparing to head north.
“Many people come here and don’t speak English or Spanish, so they look for me,” she said.
Among those passing through was Zheng Shiqing, who arrived in early December after first traveling by plane though Thailand, Morocco and Spain.
On his first attempt to pass through Colombia, Zheng and a travel partner were robbed at gunpoint. With his phone and money gone, he turned back to Quito to regroup. Still, he remained determined that the only way is forward to the US – to break a cycle he sees in China.
"For ordinary people, survival is really difficult. It is really hard to live. Don’t even think about making money because you are being exploited by those (upper class) people,” Zheng said from the hostel as he prepared to set off for Colombia a second time with borrowed cash.
Zheng, a high-school graduate from rural Yunnan province whose parents are migrant workers in China, recounted how life had become increasingly difficult for people like him, despite decades of rapid economic growth lifting large parts of the population out of poverty.
I wish I was never born … living feels so exhausting.” - Zheng Shiqing, migrant from China
He started factory work mixing glue for shoe boxes in his late teens, and later switched between jobs, including at an assembly line making smartphone parts for Apple. During the pandemic, he was locked down in another factory fabricating internet routers, unable to leave. After the lockdown ended, Zheng switched to another job, where he says his wages were never paid, even after he filed a formal complaint.
“There is no way out … unless your parents are officials or business people. But if you are from the lower-class, even if you get married and have children, you will still follow the old path … it’s painful just thinking about it,” he said. “I wish I was never born … living feels so exhausting.”
Earlier this year, like thousands of other Chinese, Zheng decided to try “zou xian” or taking the “walking route” to America.
The phrase has become a euphemism for the perilous journey, as has “global travels” – one of the search terms people can key in to find online tutorials in Chinese for how to prepare, what to do at each leg and even what to say to immigration officials.
‘Dire straits’
China’s Covid-19 controls, far worse than imposed when Trump was last Emperor of the United States, relaxed only a year ago, hit blue collar workers in cities and residents in rural areas hard.
And now the economycontinues to struggle under a property market crisis, high local government debt and the effects of a government crack-down on the once-booming private sector, all of which has cost jobs.
After urban youth unemployment hit record levels last year, the government [url=https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/14/economy/china-economy-july-slowdown-intl-hnk/index.html]stopped publishing data[/url] for the metric altogether. The Communist Party [url=https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/08/economy/china-politburo-economy-2024-intl-hnk/index.html]pledged[/url] to do more to bolster the economy — and quash bad news about it.
“It’s striking that so many are making this perilous journey to South America and up to the US when politically the country is very stable,” said Victor Shih, director of the 21st Century China Center at the University of California San Diego, pointing to a contrast with periods of emigration from China amid political turmoil.
“It suggests that a significant segment of the population is in economic dire straits.”
Hundreds of thousands fled the mainland for Hong Kong in the mid-20th Century amid civil war and, later, political turmoil and famine under the policies of Communist China’s founder Mao Zedong.
People escaping famine in mainland China were detained by Hong Kong police and British troops after crossing the border into the city in May 1962.
Chinese emigration to the US took off after the opening of China’s economy in the early 1980s, a little more than a decade after restrictive US immigration policies were dropped. Then, the number of people from China gaining permanent residency – a pathway often linked to family ties, employment, and political asylum – started to climb significantly, US data shows.
As China’s economy boomed in the early 2000s, dynamics shifted: there were more opportunity for workers there, while wealthier Chinese had greater resources to immigrate or study in the US.
But the country has also seen an [url=https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/14/china/china-party-congress-walkup-analysis-intl-hnk-mic/index.html]intensified crackdown[/url] on civil society – and any form of dissent – during the past decade under Xi, its most authoritarian leader in decades.
Data shows the number of people from China seeking political asylum in the US and elsewhere around the world has sharply risen during Xi’s rule – climbing from nearly 25,000 in 2013 to more than 120,000 globally in the first six months of 2023.
Those who cross at the southern US border, who include not just single adults but families, are also typically seeking asylum, an immigration category for people escaping persecution. Previously, asylum seekers from China might apply after entering the US on a tourist visa, or via a different route that may not involve being detained at a border, immigration experts say.
Now, the southern border has emerged as a better-known route amid a broader increase in the number of people from around the world crossing there since the pandemic ended.
Those who’ve entered illegally on that route must typically pass an initial screening in order to stay in the US and apply for asylum, though different migrants may face different circumstances amid an overwhelmed system.
Congress is expected to act to update immigration rules for the border in the coming days, which could change and narrow existing rules, experts say.
Within the overall increase in such crossings, the rising number of Chinese nationals who are willing to take the treacherous route – even at a time of sharp political tensions between the US and China – appears as a new and telling trend.
Beijing has condemned the border crossings, with its Foreign Ministry telling CNN in a statement that it “opposes and resolutely cracks down on any form of illegal immigration activities, and is willing to actively engage in international cooperation on this matter.”
Those who rely on gathering information themselves and making their own way up through South and Central America, will spend at least $5,000 – more than a third of a Chinese factory worker’s [url=https://www.stats.gov.cn/english/PressRelease/202305/t20230517_1939617.html]average annual salary[/url].
That includes flights out of Asia, typically through Chinese passport-friendly countries like Turkey, into Ecuador, and then cash for overnight stays, buses, taxis, boat rides, and, typically, a guide for crossing the notoriously dense jungle of the Darien Gap connecting Colombia with Panama – through which no roads run.
Those with means, however, can find ways to avoid some of the dangers. CNN uncovered information on an assortment of travel options and packages marketed to those from China looking to make the journey.
For $9,000 to $12,000, travelers can pay smugglers to arrange transportation for parts of the journey north, as well as a boat and guide for the optional rainforest crossing, all inclusive.
For those able to spend more, at least $20,000, the route gets easier: for example, help with a multiple-entry visa to Japan, which unlocks visa-free entry to Mexico, and transport to the border.
It’s not clear how many are taking those curated routes, but the offerings suggest a range of economic backgrounds among the border-bound. CNN compiled the information on these options by speaking with smugglers and others familiar with the industry, as well as from information in online tutorials.
Those from China who travel overland typically take what’s become a well-worn route from Quito to Tulcan, a small city perched on the border with Colombia.
There, residents told CNN they see hundreds – if not thousands – of Chinese migrants passing from Ecuador to Colombia each week.
The locals in Tulcan are adapting to the new group. One storekeeper whose snack shop sits on the way to the border charges a fee to help Chinese passing through set up an app for obtaining transit visas, allowing them to stay legally in Colombia for 10 days.
But she warns the crossing is dangerous: Chinese migrants are now prime targets for cartels and criminals, she says – something Zheng learned the hard way.
He passed through Tulcan a second time in mid-December and from there continued northeast to the coastal city of Necocli, where [url=https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/03/americas/necocli-migrant-colombia-immigration-intl-latam/index.html]boats await to carry migrants[/url] across the Gulf of Urabá to the edge of the Darien Gap, which they then must traverse on foot.
Images shared with CNN by Zheng and others from China show the perils of that [url=https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/15/americas/darien-gap-migrants-colombia-panama-whole-story-cmd-intl/index.html]miles-long jungle stretch[/url]. There, guided groups typically travel through dense rainforest and along rocky riverbanks, at times clambering over steep, slippery stretches – or gripping ropes to cross swiftly moving or deep river water.
In the final leg, clad in orange life jackets and seated in wooden boats, they follow a winding river to the next destination – temporary migrant camps in Panama, where they register, have a free meal and rest.
In Panama, authorities have resorted to busing people from these southern border camps to their northern ones - all in the dark of night, a Panamanian official told CNN. Then it’s on through Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico – if they’re not stopped by police or thieves.
For some, the final stretch into America is the most arduous.
A mother, Chen, 38, has spent at least two nights on the streets of Mexican towns with her two children, 15 and 11, as they struggle to make it to the border.
They aim to join her husband, who made the journey to the US a year ago following what she describes as detention and abuse from authorities in China because he was vocal about politics and attended church. She didn’t want to use her full name for safety reasons.
“Without knowing this path (to America), no matter how hard you’re pushed in life, you would only lie low in another city in China and just get by,” she told CNN from Tapachula, a town at Mexico’s southern border, as she calculated whether to pay a smuggler or try and bribe their way forward to get past immigration police.
“In the rainforest, as long as I had the willpower, I could make it through. But Mexico, that’s a different story,” he told CNN in late December as he too stayed in Tapachula, trying to plan – and get funds for — his next move forward, Zheng said.
“(Here) there’s the risk of being deported, not to mention gangs and robbers. We can’t afford to take those risks … one more robbery and I’ll be ruined,” he said.
But, he added: “I will have to find a way. I’ve come this far. There’s no turning back now.”
American dream? Days later, after scrounging together thousands more dollars to pay a smuggler to arrange a flight for him, Zheng made it to Tijuana just south of the California border.
After a brief detention there, he slipped through a gap in the border wall – finally reaching America.
There, like others who make that crossing, he waited in the country’s southernmost hinterlands in an informal camp. As he tried to stay warm, he kept thinking about what was next: “I need to find a job and live,” he told CNN by text before being taken onto a government bus for processing at a detention center.
For Zheng and thousands of others making the same crossing, this is where a new kind of uncertainty begins.
Those who are allowed to stay and enter an asylum claim after being processed by immigration officials may wait years to make their case in front of a judge within an overwhelmed system.
In the meantime, they can apply to work legally and move within the country, sometimes while carrying a government-mandated GPS tracker.
For Wang Qun, 34, whose journey to cross the border in June 2022 was [url=https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/17/china/china-escape-american-dream-intl-hnk-dst/index.html]documented by CNN[/url], that waiting period has given him time to start his long-desired life in America.
Last fall, after months of memorizing English words for different parts of tractor trailers and their functions, Wang passed a licensing test. That’s allowed him to fulfill a goal he had back in his home country – becoming a truck driver in America.
Wang Qun, who immigrated to the US in 2022, has gotten a job as a truck driver.
Now, Wang is earning a decent living driving long hauls between California and Florida. He’s also expecting a baby with his partner, Iris, whom he met in Los Angeles after she made her own journey from China over the border just months after he did.
“I believe (Iris and I) are valuable to America. Because we are constantly working hard, paying taxes, I think our coming does not burden the US government,” he said. Wang declined to share the details of his asylum claim with CNN, as the case is pending.
But getting a positive ruling on such cases from the US government is far from a sure shot for applicants, regardless of their backgrounds, immigration experts say.
Chinese nationals have long been one of the largest groups of [url=https://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/668/]successful asylum seekers[/url] in the US, with nearly 13% of people granted asylum in 2022 coming from China, according to [url=https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/2023-11/2023_0818_plcy_refugees_and_asylees_fy2022.pdf]data[/url] from the Department of Homeland Security. That equated to just over 4,500 people approved that year.
Because wait times can be years long, the data doesn’t reflect the flow of people seeking asylum in 2022.
Those who choose that difficult path over the southern border now may come from different walks of life, but see their “livelihood and various interests being violated” in China, according to Ma Ju, a Chinese-Muslim community leader who won asylum in the US in 2019.
He would know – he’s running a shelter in New York City for new arrivals from China, largely those who say they are fleeing political or religious oppression. For many, it takes more than a year for a work permit in the US, he says, leaving them stuck in under-the-table jobs without labor protections as they wait to learn if they can stay.
But within the wait, there’s hope.
“Regardless of whether they’re here for economic reasons or other things, it’s for dignity – something they’ve never had in their home country,” Ma said.
Janet Yellen says 100,000 firms have joined a business database aimed at unmasking shell-company owners — https://archive.ph/JH677#selection-269.3-308.1
Jan. 8, 2024, WASHINGTON — Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is announcing that 100,000 businesses have joined a new database that collects “beneficial-ownership” information on firms as part of a new government effort to unmask shell-company owners.
Yellen, in remarks prepared for delivery Monday, says the new Treasury database that is collecting beneficial-ownership information sends the message that “the United States is not a haven for dirty money.”
Yellen will visit Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network — known as FinCEN— in Vienna, Va., to discuss the launch of the database with the new year. She will also expand on upcoming real estate rules meant to increase transparency about the people and companies buying up property in the U.S.
The Virginia visit is meant to showcase the Biden administration’s intent to increase corporate transparency and prevent the misuse of shell companies.
“Around the world, lack of transparency, specifically due to opaque corporate structures, makes it easier to conceal illicit activity,” Yellen says in remarks prepared ahead of her visit to FinCEN headquarters. “Information on beneficial ownership will support our law-enforcement colleagues in making arrests, prosecuting offenders, and seizing ill-gotten assets.”
In 2021, the bipartisan Corporate Transparency Act was signed into law, giving Treasury the authority to write new rules on beneficial ownership. And as of Jan. 1, most U.S. firms must report identifying information about who directly or indirectly owns or controls them. The rule requires most American businesses with fewer than 20 employees — roughly 32.6 million companies — to register with the government.
In November 2022, the National Small Business Association sued Treasury over the database and argued that the new reporting rule to determine the identity of tax evaders violates the U.S. Constitution — saying it is unduly burdensome on small firms, violates privacy and free-speech protections, and infringes on states’ powers to govern businesses. A judge is expected to decide on the matter imminently.
Along with the business database, Yellen says, Treasury is considering additional steps to address risks associated with commercial real estate.
Real estate is a commonly used vehicle for money laundering. Yellen said in March 2023 that illicit actors laundered at least $2.3 billion through U.S. real estate between 2015 and 2020.
A 2022 Congressional Research Service report suggested that Congress could consider how to balance money-laundering risks in the real estate sector against differing views on oversight.
“The benefits of increasing corporate transparency through gathering beneficial-ownership information — put simply, knowing who owns what — start with protecting our national security,” Yellen says. “Corporate transparency can bring economic benefits as well: protecting our financial system, reducing due-diligence costs, enabling fair business competition, and increasing tax revenue.”
FinCEN’s mission is to safeguard the financial system from criminal abuse, money laundering and other illicit activity, according to its website.
Jayshree Ullal has done a terrific job. Arista customer service always takes responsibility for their equipment and it's always priced far more reasonably than the rapacious licensing plans charged by Cisco where Arista's founders came from.
If you want your high end network to work, Arista is your first choice.
They went public only in 2014.
Looks like Apple also has an upcoming anti-trust settlement talks over their proprietary closed ecosystem with Apple as the toll taker - in addition to weak sales in China.
Apple will likely go to trial rather than agree to jailbreak their system for ruffians.
https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/5/24027001/apple-doj-antitrust-lawsuit-investigation
T-Mobile bragged about a new wireless download speed exceeding 3.6Gbps, made possible by merging an unprecedented six channels of mid-band 5G wireless on its regular network.
T-Mobile has been deploying aggregation commercially with fewer channels at a time for a couple of years now, an everyday technique used in home WiFi routers.
The test conducted with Ericsson and Qualcomm merely took the concept a few steps further.
While the experimental results make T-Mobile’s 5G look slow, but 5G service for T-Mobile customers continues to be twice as fast as AT&T and Verizon’s 5G.
T-Mobile’s average downloads at 163.59Mbps in Ookla Speedtest results were more than twice as fast as Verizon’s average of 75.68Mbps and AT&T’s 72.64Mbps.
T-Mobile’s rural coverage, however, can still fall short of what its two rivals offer. So in that context, T-Mobile’s more significant announcement this week may have been the news of Tuesday’s launch by SpaceX of the first six Starlink satellites capable of providing roaming service to T-Mobile phones.
Financial Times predictions for 2024
https://archive.ph/mg8MZ#selection-2327.0-2339.135
Will China’s economic growth crash to 3 per cent or less?
No. The quality of Chinese growth has certainly deteriorated markedly in recent years. The property market, which contributes almost a third of gross domestic product, is slowly imploding. Many local governments are drowning in debt. The Chinese consumer is hesitant.
But GDP growth in 2024 is still set to comfortably exceed 4 per cent — assisted by a medley of debt bailout packages, fiscal stimulus initiatives and other forms of official support. Advances in technology will remain strong. James Kynge
Will a change of president in Taiwan spark a Chinese attack?
No.
The Chinese leadership under President Xi Jinping still seems to believe, too, that it has a chance to coerce Taiwan into unification without fighting — by stepping up military intimidation, political infiltration, economic lures and international isolation. Kathrin Hille
Will the US and the EU keep funding Ukraine?
Yes.
Will Argentina dollarise its economy?
LOL, No. Some would argue long-suffering Argentines have already dumped the peso: they save in greenbacks and buy and sell property unofficially in dollars.
Though Milei's economic minister Luis Caputo insists that adopting the US currency remains a long-term aim, it's unlikely to happen in 2024: the IMF is unenthusiastic and most economists believe the loss of economic sovereignty would outweigh the benefits. But clowns will be clowns. Michael Stott
Will X go bankrupt?
Yes, of course.
Will Novo Nordisk end the year as Europe’s most valuable company?
Yes, obviously. In 2023, obesity treatment Wegovy became one of the most successful drug launches of all time and Denmark’s Novo overtook luxury goods group LVMH in value.
Will Donald Trump become US president again?
No. Only in his personal fantasies inside his prison cell.
Will Keir Starmer become UK prime minister?
Yes, though it's likely an exhausted and divided Tory party will postpone their losing election until 2025. Keir Starmer, the world's most powerful boring machine will put everyone to sleep in 2024 or 2025.
Apple's largest phone maker Foxconn expects a big revenue decline this quarter.
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/01/05/apple-iphone-supplier-foxconn-expects-first-quarter-revenue-decline.html
Just as with Nike, sales to consumers and businesses in China are weak, and being made worse by the continuing decline in Chinese real estate valuations.
One of the largest non-bank lenders in China, Zhongzhi Enterprise Group, just filed for bankruptcy.
The lender with more than 10,000 employees has sizable exposure to China's real estate sector said it cannot pay $64 billion in liabilities.
Chinese citizens who placed their retirement savings with Zhongzhi are expected to lose roughly 70% of their savings, and will have access to none until after the long bankruptcy process is completed.
A much larger collapse than Evergrande.
Nikki Haley is attracting a lot of billionaire fundraisers, many of whom have been publicly pushing for big cuts to Medicare.
Cliff Asness, Stanley Druckenmiller, Henry Kravis and Leonard Stern are among 21 hosts of a fundraiser for Haley on Jan. 30
The following day, billionaires Barry Sternlicht will co-host a fundraiser in Miami. Others include Citadel hedge fund founder Ken Griffin and Home Depot co-founder Ken Langone.
Silicon Valley investor Tim Draper will host two fundraisers for Haley on Feb. 6 in California, priced at up to $16,600 per ticket, and on Feb. 7, Charles Swindells, former ambassador to New Zealand under former President George W. Bush, will co-host a fundraiser for Haley in Orange County, priced at up to $10,000.
These events are all scheduled for dates after the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries, indicating Haley plans to stay in the race past the consequential initial two primaries, which are seen as bellwethers for the rest of the country and often prompt under-performing candidates to drop out.
There's even some flat-out Democratic donors, simultaneously making contributions to Joe Biden's campaign, who have publicly expressed support for Haley or contributed to her campaign in an effort to thwart Trump’s chances of securing the Republican nomination.
Which is more obviously mentally disturbed, Trump or Trump voters? Nikki Haley wants to make major cuts to Medicare while Trump says he now wants to repeal and replace Medicare - no doubt with Trump-care where the helicopter picks you up on your lawn and flies you 15 blocks to the hospital.
A curious world indeed.
We saw a thin young person perhaps 20 years old or so with a huge beard like a coal miner from the 1850s, who was visibly not from Los Angeles, today on the sidewalk outside the restaurant we ate at a few doors from the Writer's Guild.
It wasn't one thing, but everything which made it obvious he had recently arrived from some completely different "foreign culture". All I remember is a huge beard, so obviously not likely to become an actor. My BMW mechanic originally from Bulgaria probably never looked so out of place when he first arrived.
He carried two boxes of pizza in a delivery bag from an adjoining restaurant, and put them on the passenger side rear seat of his Prius purchased from a Toyota of Hopkinsville, Kentucky - according to the name printed on the trunk lid of the car, something which no car seller would dream of doing here.
After he drove off I looked it up on my phone out of curiosity, apparently a very rural town about 70 miles northwest of Nashville, TN and 20 miles from the Fort Campbell Army Base built in 1942 as a temporary training camp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hopkinsville,_Kentucky
He was obviously delivering food for Uber or a similar service, starting a new life in Southern California.