Hershey

Hershey (HSY) to Lay Off 15% of Workforce to Fuel Growth

I can tell you why - stupid "Almonds in every bite!" It's unnatural.

Almost Free Shipping

You can ship a lot of Baofengs for $600...

It now costs just $596 to ship a 40-foot container from Shanghai to the U.S west coast. Incredible. https://t.co/9SoAz6bqS4

— Chris Vernon (@clv101) September 1, 2016

Vizio TV Watches You

I know there is a "in Soviet Russia" joke in here, but I hate to hear that the Vizio TVs are tracking me:

"Vizio's technology works by analyzing snippets of the shows you're watching, whether on traditional television or streaming Internet services such as Netflix. Vizio determines the date, time, channel of programs — as well as whether you watched them live or recorded. The viewing patterns are then connected your IP address - the Internet address that can be used to identify every device in a home, from your TV to a phone."

Other than that, I really like my Vizio (M55-C2) 55-Inch 4K Ultra HD Smart TV.  Maybe it is too smart.

Happy Singles Day

In honor of Singles Day, buy a Chinese radio from Amazon.

Organizational Announcement

Effective April 1, 2015, I will be splitting the website in to two blogs - Brick and O'Lore. I think this will better serve my customers. Plus all the cool kids are doing it.

But #1 in your hearts

People who work in the tech industry say my school is number eight on the list of best business schools.

The Real Yellow Multimeters

As a follow-up to my yellow multimeter post, Fluke is donating $30K worth of their multimeters to Sparkfun to replace the ones stopped in customs. Talk about turning bad PR into something good. Well played.

Yellow Multimeters

Customs says yellow multimeters infringe on Fluke's trademark, so they won't be allowed in the US. So does this mean we can only have a handful of companies that make multimeters? Fluke's are yellow. Sears sells some red ones. Who gets blue? Green?

Marketing

So I've been doing a little consulting to keep me a float, I'd like to grow the business. Maybe a movie would help.

Main Trading Company

MTC is having a grand opening of their new digs on Saturday. I'm glad to see things going well for ham radio businesses.

Google's Business Plan

Google's Business Plan

Step 1: Control your thermostat
Step 2: Control the weather
Step 3: PROFIT

TN .GOV @ Work

This is just another example of how the government fails to meet the standards of the private sector. I don't seem to recall Amazon.com shutting down during parts of the day and preventing me from just checking the status of an order.

Budgets

I always suspected, but now I know how budgets are created.

Business 3.0

The goal used to be to "cut out the middleman." Now the middleman is a requirement.

Doctors "Fire" Patients

Be careful if you chose to ignore your doctor's recommendations regarding vaccinating your child. You might get dropped as a patient.

Is this the same as refusing service to politician?

Via Slashdot.org

Death to Inefficieny

Death to independent bookstores. (Amazon)
Death to publishers. (Amazon)
Death to publishers again. (Apple)

Death to inefficiencies.

Google Stock Drops

Google stock drops... some say because of Motorola. If it is because of Motorola, then it is because they split off the most valuable segment - ham radio!

Not Sure Which is Scarier

asymco From comments: "consumerization" is actually going to reveal itself as "commoditization" of IT as an industryWed, Jan 11 05:42:28 from Twitter for Mac

Of course, my background is on the infrastructure side, which I've felt like has been a commodity for a long time. In the past you outsourced infrastructure to a different company, but kept the techs (maybe the same set of techs!) on-site. Then you outsourced some of your infrastructure support to India. Now you put applications in the cloud. I guess it really doesn't scare me - everything changes and IT faster than others.

I'd still love to get our e-mail in the cloud. I've got plenty to do and off loading e-mail would be a good one.

Occupy Building Their Own Social Network

The Occupy folks are talking about building their own social network. It would be called Federated General Assembly (FGA). Some interesting quotes:

“We don’t want to trust Facebook with private messages among activists,” he said.

“You have to know someone in real life who sponsors you,” said Knutson.

"And he sees no reason against spinning off the tech to businesses."

Yaesu Musen

KB6NU posts the new logo for Yaesu Musen and K0NR points out that at the same time Yaesu is showing additional commitment to the amateur world with this article on digital enhancements. The full annoucement can be found at KDSanders' site (PDF).