Approach to Finding the Root Cause of Failures

[George Herold]

On Wednesday, April 1, 2020 at 12:49:09 PM UTC-4, Phil Hobbs wrote:

On 2020-03-31 18:50, George Herold wrote:
On Tuesday, March 31, 2020 at 4:08:59 PM UTC-4, Phil Hobbs wrote:
On 2020-03-31 14:40, Rick C wrote:
On Tuesday, March 31, 2020 at 12:41:36 PM UTC-4, David Brown wrote:
On 31/03/2020 17:40, blocher@columbus.rr.com wrote:
On Tuesday, March 31, 2020 at 11:34:44 AM UTC-4, blo...@columbus.rr..com wrote:
Another topic that I hope can elicit engineering discussion:

What makes up a good skill set for finding the root cause of a failure that is rare, intermittent or obscure?

Over the past several years I have been more involved in root cause failure than I was when I was doing more design work. In many ways I think it is more challenging than design work. It takes a mindset that is different than design.

Here is my reminder list when doing root cause studies

1. never root for a particular outcome when performing a test. Root for not being fooled by the results of your test

2. Assign weighting factors to everything you believe. Never assign a weighting factor of 1 to anything until you know you have the problem solved

3. Expect to have to do certain tests over again and that you will draw an opposite conclusion when you repeat a test than what you concluded after the first test.

4. Taking guidance from "helpful" outsiders is challenging. On the one had they care and are smart, on the other hand if you go about chasing other peoples ideas (often conceived of to just demonstrate they are concerned in a meeting) you will never get an a clear path to troubleshoot the problem in your own way.
Help is a two edged sword. It is important but can sometimes be problematic.

5. As an aside - I have learned that when I "see something" during the design phase, I no longer look at that as a curse, but as a blessing. It is going to come back and get you later.

6. Get past the notion that having nothing to show for a days work is bad. As a designer you can show a days work for a days pay. In root cause you feel like you have accomplished nothing for a long time. Frequently, though , these problems are the most visible problems in an organization and can make a difference between losing a customer and keeping one.

7. Look for contradictions in your thinking. Use other people to help you find contradictions in your thinking.

OK - enough for now......

Also - the FPGA guys and the SW guys will only acknowledge a problem when it is laid out under their nose. It is never their fault


That's because it's usually a hardware fault - and it can be solved by
using a bigger capacitor

You laugh, I once used a telephony part that had a PSRR of 0dB which I had missed. (Who expects 0 dB?) On the customer's work bench they were getting noise in the audio that turned out to be from the DSP power consumption. They were using clip leads to provide power to the UUT and the on board capacitance wasn't enough to mitigate it. We told them to use better power connections and also used a larger cap.

0 dB of PSRR??? How can you even do that exactly??? CP Clare, what a piece of work they are. The other CP Clare part had a problem that virtually made it unusable, but they didn't point it out in the data sheet. I wonder if they actually use engineers or if they just let high school kids design their ICs?

Are you quoting that WRT the input or the output? PSRR and CMRR are
normally quoted input-referred, i.e. to find out the effect you have to
multiply by the overall gain.

There are lots of parts that can have negative-dB PSRR as referred to
the output.
At higher frequencies aren't there many opamps that cross
0 dB PSRR. At least for one of the rails.

Negative PSRR is usually horrible in "single supply" op amps, because,
duh, they expect you to use a single positive supply.

(That's why God* invented the cap. multiplier.)

Yup.

George H.
*or one of his offspring....

Well, children, anyway.

who did do the cap mult. first?


Dunno. I first saw it in an audio amp project in a magazine, circa
1977. The LED + NPN emitter-follower voltage reference, I saw in an
article of Walt Jung's at about the same time.

We should revisit that "how many two-transistor circuits are there?"
thread at some point.
Sure, but I need to understand all the one transistor circuits first.

Just thinking out loud here, but in principle you've got three configurations
(what terminal is common) and then can think about voltage or current as the
input or output parameter.. I get 12 possibilities.
But maybe I'm over thinking it.

George H.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510

http://electrooptical.net
http://hobbs-eo.com

 

On Wed, 1 Apr 2020 12:51:29 -0400, Phil Hobbs
<pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-04-01 05:17, DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno@decadence.org wrote:
David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote in
news:r61klr$369$1@dont-email.me:

On 31/03/2020 20:40, Rick C wrote:
On Tuesday, March 31, 2020 at 12:41:36 PM UTC-4, David Brown
wrote:
On 31/03/2020 17:40, blocher@columbus.rr.com wrote:
On Tuesday, March 31, 2020 at 11:34:44 AM UTC-4,
snip

Also - the FPGA guys and the SW guys will only acknowledge a
problem when it is laid out under their nose. It is never
their fault


That's because it's usually a hardware fault - and it can be
solved by using a bigger capacitor

You laugh, I once used a telephony part that had a PSRR of 0dB
which I had missed. (Who expects 0 dB?) On the customer's work
bench they were getting noise in the audio that turned out to be
from the DSP power consumption. They were using clip leads to
provide power to the UUT and the on board capacitance wasn't
enough to mitigate it. We told them to use better power
connections and also used a larger cap.


I had a smiley, but I have seen more than a few systems
reliability improved by adding a bigger capacitor. There is a
rule in software development that "almost all programming can be
viewed as an exercise in caching". (Yes, it is an exaggeration -
but there's a grain of truth in it.) Capacitors are the hardware
equivalent of software caches.


Mind you, I have seen problems with too big capacitors too. I
remember long ago trying to find why a card communicated find (at
9600 baud RS-232) with some computers but not others. Looking
with a scope, the RS-232 signals were lovely triangle waves -
someone had added 100 nF capacitors to the lines to reduce the
noise...

I have a trusted engineer friend who once said that most failures
occur at power up or power down. He always left his computers at
work and his home up all the time.

Old net and system admin guys usually like keeping systems up and
running at all times too.
The big computer rooms of the sixties would lose thousands and hour
in insurance if the room temperature rose above a preset level like
63°F.


Yup. At IBM Watson we used to shut the whole place down over Labor Day
weekend. It always took a couple of days to get the silicon fab line
back up, because things like corroded connections and worn-out motors
tend to fail at inrush.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

And we just shut the whole world down.



--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

Science teaches us to doubt.

Claude Bernard

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Friday, April 3, 2020 at 12:24:31 AM UTC+11, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Wed, 1 Apr 2020 12:51:29 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-04-01 05:17, DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno@decadence.org wrote:
David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote in
news:r61klr$369$1@dont-email.me:

On 31/03/2020 20:40, Rick C wrote:
On Tuesday, March 31, 2020 at 12:41:36 PM UTC-4, David Brown
wrote:
On 31/03/2020 17:40, blocher@columbus.rr.com wrote:
On Tuesday, March 31, 2020 at 11:34:44 AM UTC-4,

<snip>

Yup. At IBM Watson we used to shut the whole place down over Labor Day
weekend. It always took a couple of days to get the silicon fab line
back up, because things like corroded connections and worn-out motors
tend to fail at inrush.

And we just shut the whole world down.

It does seem to be the least damaging response. In fact the US doesn't seem to have shut their bit of it down tight enough yet, but presumably they will get there eventually.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote in
news:5rpb8ftc1ja9166o8ajjv3p1npt63p3r74@4ax.com:

On Wed, 1 Apr 2020 12:51:29 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-04-01 05:17, DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno@decadence.org
wrote:
David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote in
news:r61klr$369$1@dont-email.me:

On 31/03/2020 20:40, Rick C wrote:
On Tuesday, March 31, 2020 at 12:41:36 PM UTC-4, David Brown
wrote:
On 31/03/2020 17:40, blocher@columbus.rr.com wrote:
On Tuesday, March 31, 2020 at 11:34:44 AM UTC-4,
snip

Also - the FPGA guys and the SW guys will only acknowledge a
problem when it is laid out under their nose. It is never
their fault


That's because it's usually a hardware fault - and it can be
solved by using a bigger capacitor

You laugh, I once used a telephony part that had a PSRR of 0dB
which I had missed. (Who expects 0 dB?) On the customer's
work bench they were getting noise in the audio that turned
out to be from the DSP power consumption. They were using
clip leads to provide power to the UUT and the on board
capacitance wasn't enough to mitigate it. We told them to use
better power connections and also used a larger cap.


I had a smiley, but I have seen more than a few systems
reliability improved by adding a bigger capacitor. There is a
rule in software development that "almost all programming can
be viewed as an exercise in caching". (Yes, it is an
exaggeration - but there's a grain of truth in it.) Capacitors
are the hardware equivalent of software caches.


Mind you, I have seen problems with too big capacitors too. I
remember long ago trying to find why a card communicated find
(at 9600 baud RS-232) with some computers but not others.
Looking with a scope, the RS-232 signals were lovely triangle
waves - someone had added 100 nF capacitors to the lines to
reduce the noise...

I have a trusted engineer friend who once said that most
failures
occur at power up or power down. He always left his computers
at work and his home up all the time.

Old net and system admin guys usually like keeping systems up
and
running at all times too.
The big computer rooms of the sixties would lose thousands and
hour in insurance if the room temperature rose above a preset
level like 63°F.


Yup. At IBM Watson we used to shut the whole place down over
Labor Day weekend. It always took a couple of days to get the
silicon fab line back up, because things like corroded connections
and worn-out motors tend to fail at inrush.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

And we just shut the whole world down.

Yes, and unlike the asshole who blew it off for a month, and as a
result more AMERICANS will die, try not to cry about it like a little
stock market bitch, or that jackass did.

 

[Phil Hobbs]

On 2020-04-02 09:24, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Wed, 1 Apr 2020 12:51:29 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-04-01 05:17, DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno@decadence.org wrote:
David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote in
news:r61klr$369$1@dont-email.me:

On 31/03/2020 20:40, Rick C wrote:
On Tuesday, March 31, 2020 at 12:41:36 PM UTC-4, David Brown
wrote:
On 31/03/2020 17:40, blocher@columbus.rr.com wrote:
On Tuesday, March 31, 2020 at 11:34:44 AM UTC-4,
snip

Also - the FPGA guys and the SW guys will only acknowledge a
problem when it is laid out under their nose. It is never
their fault


That's because it's usually a hardware fault - and it can be
solved by using a bigger capacitor

You laugh, I once used a telephony part that had a PSRR of 0dB
which I had missed. (Who expects 0 dB?) On the customer's work
bench they were getting noise in the audio that turned out to be
from the DSP power consumption. They were using clip leads to
provide power to the UUT and the on board capacitance wasn't
enough to mitigate it. We told them to use better power
connections and also used a larger cap.


I had a smiley, but I have seen more than a few systems
reliability improved by adding a bigger capacitor. There is a
rule in software development that "almost all programming can be
viewed as an exercise in caching". (Yes, it is an exaggeration -
but there's a grain of truth in it.) Capacitors are the hardware
equivalent of software caches.


Mind you, I have seen problems with too big capacitors too. I
remember long ago trying to find why a card communicated find (at
9600 baud RS-232) with some computers but not others. Looking
with a scope, the RS-232 signals were lovely triangle waves -
someone had added 100 nF capacitors to the lines to reduce the
noise...

I have a trusted engineer friend who once said that most failures
occur at power up or power down. He always left his computers at
work and his home up all the time.

Old net and system admin guys usually like keeping systems up and
running at all times too.
The big computer rooms of the sixties would lose thousands and hour
in insurance if the room temperature rose above a preset level like
63°F.


Yup. At IBM Watson we used to shut the whole place down over Labor Day
weekend. It always took a couple of days to get the silicon fab line
back up, because things like corroded connections and worn-out motors
tend to fail at inrush.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

And we just shut the whole world down.
The planet is overrated anyway.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs


--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510

http://electrooptical.net
http://hobbs-eo.com

 

[Ricky C]

On Friday, April 3, 2020 at 6:44:17 PM UTC-4, Phil Hobbs wrote:

On 2020-04-02 09:24, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Wed, 1 Apr 2020 12:51:29 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-04-01 05:17, DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno@decadence.org wrote:
David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote in
news:r61klr$369$1@dont-email.me:

On 31/03/2020 20:40, Rick C wrote:
On Tuesday, March 31, 2020 at 12:41:36 PM UTC-4, David Brown
wrote:
On 31/03/2020 17:40, blocher@columbus.rr.com wrote:
On Tuesday, March 31, 2020 at 11:34:44 AM UTC-4,
snip

Also - the FPGA guys and the SW guys will only acknowledge a
problem when it is laid out under their nose. It is never
their fault


That's because it's usually a hardware fault - and it can be
solved by using a bigger capacitor

You laugh, I once used a telephony part that had a PSRR of 0dB
which I had missed. (Who expects 0 dB?) On the customer's work
bench they were getting noise in the audio that turned out to be
from the DSP power consumption. They were using clip leads to
provide power to the UUT and the on board capacitance wasn't
enough to mitigate it. We told them to use better power
connections and also used a larger cap.


I had a smiley, but I have seen more than a few systems
reliability improved by adding a bigger capacitor. There is a
rule in software development that "almost all programming can be
viewed as an exercise in caching". (Yes, it is an exaggeration -
but there's a grain of truth in it.) Capacitors are the hardware
equivalent of software caches.


Mind you, I have seen problems with too big capacitors too. I
remember long ago trying to find why a card communicated find (at
9600 baud RS-232) with some computers but not others. Looking
with a scope, the RS-232 signals were lovely triangle waves -
someone had added 100 nF capacitors to the lines to reduce the
noise...

I have a trusted engineer friend who once said that most failures
occur at power up or power down. He always left his computers at
work and his home up all the time.

Old net and system admin guys usually like keeping systems up and
running at all times too.
The big computer rooms of the sixties would lose thousands and hour
in insurance if the room temperature rose above a preset level like
63°F.


Yup. At IBM Watson we used to shut the whole place down over Labor Day
weekend. It always took a couple of days to get the silicon fab line
back up, because things like corroded connections and worn-out motors
tend to fail at inrush.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

And we just shut the whole world down.
The planet is overrated anyway.

You mean compared to the world you live in? Where would that be again? Oh yeah, NY, coronavirus capital of the US and maybe the world. I get why you say that now.

I'm not seeing a problem getting the world economy started again. Just the backlog in toilet paper will fund things for some time. It's not like people are suddenly going to say, "I don't need to keep this stuff anymore." lol Nope, this sort of adventure makes permanent impacts on people. Just look at that guy here who wants to buy a freezer. He'll still be buying it after supply catches back up with demand. He'll probably buy his own ventilator as well.

--

Rick C.

-+- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
-+- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Saturday, April 4, 2020 at 3:11:03 PM UTC+11, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Fri, 3 Apr 2020 18:44:11 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-04-02 09:24, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Wed, 1 Apr 2020 12:51:29 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-04-01 05:17, DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno@decadence.org wrote:
David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote in
news:r61klr$369$1@dont-email.me:

On 31/03/2020 20:40, Rick C wrote:
On Tuesday, March 31, 2020 at 12:41:36 PM UTC-4, David Brown
wrote:
On 31/03/2020 17:40, blocher@columbus.rr.com wrote:
On Tuesday, March 31, 2020 at 11:34:44 AM UTC-4,
snip

Also - the FPGA guys and the SW guys will only acknowledge a
problem when it is laid out under their nose. It is never
their fault


That's because it's usually a hardware fault - and it can be
solved by using a bigger capacitor

You laugh, I once used a telephony part that had a PSRR of 0dB
which I had missed. (Who expects 0 dB?) On the customer's work
bench they were getting noise in the audio that turned out to be
from the DSP power consumption. They were using clip leads to
provide power to the UUT and the on board capacitance wasn't
enough to mitigate it. We told them to use better power
connections and also used a larger cap.


I had a smiley, but I have seen more than a few systems
reliability improved by adding a bigger capacitor. There is a
rule in software development that "almost all programming can be
viewed as an exercise in caching". (Yes, it is an exaggeration -
but there's a grain of truth in it.) Capacitors are the hardware
equivalent of software caches.


Mind you, I have seen problems with too big capacitors too. I
remember long ago trying to find why a card communicated find (at
9600 baud RS-232) with some computers but not others. Looking
with a scope, the RS-232 signals were lovely triangle waves -
someone had added 100 nF capacitors to the lines to reduce the
noise...

I have a trusted engineer friend who once said that most failures
occur at power up or power down. He always left his computers at
work and his home up all the time.

Old net and system admin guys usually like keeping systems up and
running at all times too.
The big computer rooms of the sixties would lose thousands and hour
in insurance if the room temperature rose above a preset level like
63°F.


Yup. At IBM Watson we used to shut the whole place down over Labor Day
weekend. It always took a couple of days to get the silicon fab line
back up, because things like corroded connections and worn-out motors
tend to fail at inrush.

And we just shut the whole world down.
The planet is overrated anyway.

I think it's a shockingly nice planet. Suspiciously nice.

We've probably evolved to appreciate it's virtues.

If we'd been intelligently designed we might have been faster to notice where we were screwing it up.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote in
news:f42g8fhqdn9epmvo409mev3heptl3lavsr@4ax.com:

On Fri, 3 Apr 2020 18:44:11 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-04-02 09:24, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Wed, 1 Apr 2020 12:51:29 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-04-01 05:17, DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno@decadence.org
wrote:
David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote in
news:r61klr$369$1@dont-email.me:

On 31/03/2020 20:40, Rick C wrote:
On Tuesday, March 31, 2020 at 12:41:36 PM UTC-4, David Brown
wrote:
On 31/03/2020 17:40, blocher@columbus.rr.com wrote:
On Tuesday, March 31, 2020 at 11:34:44 AM UTC-4,
snip

Also - the FPGA guys and the SW guys will only acknowledge
a problem when it is laid out under their nose. It is
never their fault


That's because it's usually a hardware fault - and it can
be solved by using a bigger capacitor

You laugh, I once used a telephony part that had a PSRR of
0dB which I had missed. (Who expects 0 dB?) On the
customer's work bench they were getting noise in the audio
that turned out to be from the DSP power consumption. They
were using clip leads to provide power to the UUT and the on
board capacitance wasn't enough to mitigate it. We told them
to use better power connections and also used a larger cap.


I had a smiley, but I have seen more than a few systems
reliability improved by adding a bigger capacitor. There is
a rule in software development that "almost all programming
can be viewed as an exercise in caching". (Yes, it is an
exaggeration - but there's a grain of truth in it.)
Capacitors are the hardware equivalent of software caches.


Mind you, I have seen problems with too big capacitors too.
I remember long ago trying to find why a card communicated
find (at 9600 baud RS-232) with some computers but not
others. Looking with a scope, the RS-232 signals were lovely
triangle waves - someone had added 100 nF capacitors to the
lines to reduce the noise...

I have a trusted engineer friend who once said that most
failures
occur at power up or power down. He always left his computers
at work and his home up all the time.

Old net and system admin guys usually like keeping systems
up and
running at all times too.
The big computer rooms of the sixties would lose thousands and
hour in insurance if the room temperature rose above a preset
level like 63°F.


Yup. At IBM Watson we used to shut the whole place down over
Labor Day weekend. It always took a couple of days to get the
silicon fab line back up, because things like corroded
connections and worn-out motors tend to fail at inrush.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

And we just shut the whole world down.
The planet is overrated anyway.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

I think it's a shockingly nice planet. Suspiciously nice.

Yes... There is a shockingly large amount of squirmin' vermin
runnin' around though. One even squirmed right into the White House.
Killed people while he was there. Both here and abroad. And retards
like you touted him as if to be some kind of hero for the people.

The true shame of that paragraph is the error where I spoke of the
murderous jackass in the past tense.

 

On Fri, 3 Apr 2020 18:44:11 -0400, Phil Hobbs
<pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-04-02 09:24, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Wed, 1 Apr 2020 12:51:29 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-04-01 05:17, DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno@decadence.org wrote:
David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote in
news:r61klr$369$1@dont-email.me:

On 31/03/2020 20:40, Rick C wrote:
On Tuesday, March 31, 2020 at 12:41:36 PM UTC-4, David Brown
wrote:
On 31/03/2020 17:40, blocher@columbus.rr.com wrote:
On Tuesday, March 31, 2020 at 11:34:44 AM UTC-4,
snip

Also - the FPGA guys and the SW guys will only acknowledge a
problem when it is laid out under their nose. It is never
their fault


That's because it's usually a hardware fault - and it can be
solved by using a bigger capacitor

You laugh, I once used a telephony part that had a PSRR of 0dB
which I had missed. (Who expects 0 dB?) On the customer's work
bench they were getting noise in the audio that turned out to be
from the DSP power consumption. They were using clip leads to
provide power to the UUT and the on board capacitance wasn't
enough to mitigate it. We told them to use better power
connections and also used a larger cap.


I had a smiley, but I have seen more than a few systems
reliability improved by adding a bigger capacitor. There is a
rule in software development that "almost all programming can be
viewed as an exercise in caching". (Yes, it is an exaggeration -
but there's a grain of truth in it.) Capacitors are the hardware
equivalent of software caches.


Mind you, I have seen problems with too big capacitors too. I
remember long ago trying to find why a card communicated find (at
9600 baud RS-232) with some computers but not others. Looking
with a scope, the RS-232 signals were lovely triangle waves -
someone had added 100 nF capacitors to the lines to reduce the
noise...

I have a trusted engineer friend who once said that most failures
occur at power up or power down. He always left his computers at
work and his home up all the time.

Old net and system admin guys usually like keeping systems up and
running at all times too.
The big computer rooms of the sixties would lose thousands and hour
in insurance if the room temperature rose above a preset level like
63°F.


Yup. At IBM Watson we used to shut the whole place down over Labor Day
weekend. It always took a couple of days to get the silicon fab line
back up, because things like corroded connections and worn-out motors
tend to fail at inrush.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

And we just shut the whole world down.
The planet is overrated anyway.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

I think it's a shockingly nice planet. Suspiciously nice.



--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

Science teaches us to doubt.

Claude Bernard

 

[mpm]

On Friday, April 3, 2020 at 9:22:17 PM UTC-4, Ricky C wrote:

> I'm not seeing a problem getting the world economy started again. Just the backlog in toilet paper will fund things for some time. ...

So here's the thing: I'm hoping you are correct and the world economy recovers / rebounds post-Corona, or at least, once we can get a better handle on managing the pandemic.

OR...

Will employers struggling to stay afloat via layoffs (etc..) find new ways to work more efficiently, and as a result, NOT re-hire staff? (Here, I'm thinking investment in automation, consolidation of departments, etc.. - wherever you can find efficiencies that don't have an additional payroll or 401k attached to it.)

Will tele-medicine become the new normal?
What about education? Is the "30 kids in a box" model under fire with all these school closures? Fewer teachers? fewer schools? fewer companies to print textbooks? Coronavirus could (by force) answer difficult questions for us, that industry may have preferred not to ask. (Think: Teachers unions.)

FWIW: Where I work, we've layed-off (laid-off?) a few workers, and my guess is we won't re-hire / fill those positions post-Coronavirus.

One more thought:
Who's to say that workers (as a whole) go back to work where they came from (for those who lost their jobs)? After the big "re-shuffle" of employees, is it fair to say they all find employment? (Here, I'm thinking from a skillset perspective, but clearly some small businesses will never recover and those jobs will be lost).

I realize the macro-economy is much larger than a few textbooks and employee musical chairs, but I also wonder if there are any (thus far) hidden obstacles to getting a $22T economy up and running. (After all, it seems to take a lot to kill one!)

But alas, my reason for asking is selfish enough: I've got my eye on about 15 stocks that will ("famous last words") rebound significantly after this Coronavirus. But as of this week, they are all still in free-fall, or mostly so. A few are depressed enough I could buy now, even if not at their respective rock-bottom prices, and still feel good about it - since I could probably hold on to them as long as needed (within reason).

Note importantly that NO CRUISE LINES are on that list.
I may be mistaken, but I think vacationers will pull the plug on that industry for the foreseeable future. The Titanic would offer a better experience, and probably have a better ROI too.

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Sunday, April 5, 2020 at 1:10:57 PM UTC+10, mpm wrote:

On Saturday, April 4, 2020 at 12:40:43 AM UTC-4, Bill Sloman wrote:

If we'd been intelligently designed we might have been faster to notice where we were screwing it up.

Sloman finally admits he's not intelligently designed.

None of us were. Don't you understand anything about evolution?

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[mpm]

On Saturday, April 4, 2020 at 12:40:43 AM UTC-4, Bill Sloman wrote:

> If we'd been intelligently designed we might have been faster to notice where we were screwing it up.

Sloman finally admits he's not intelligently designed.

 

[Ricky C]

On Saturday, April 4, 2020 at 11:08:41 PM UTC-4, mpm wrote:

On Friday, April 3, 2020 at 9:22:17 PM UTC-4, Ricky C wrote:

I'm not seeing a problem getting the world economy started again. Just the backlog in toilet paper will fund things for some time. ...

So here's the thing: I'm hoping you are correct and the world economy recovers / rebounds post-Corona, or at least, once we can get a better handle on managing the pandemic.

OR...

Will employers struggling to stay afloat via layoffs (etc..) find new ways to work more efficiently, and as a result, NOT re-hire staff? (Here, I'm thinking investment in automation, consolidation of departments, etc.. - wherever you can find efficiencies that don't have an additional payroll or 401k attached to it.)

If you think improved efficiency in the work place is a bad idea you probably will be happier living in the 1800s. No, even then they had John Henry battling it out the steam drill.

Name a period of time since the cotton gin that employers haven't be happy to improve productivity? Where have you lived your life that you haven't seen huge advances in automation in nearly every type of job on a regular basis???

Here's one area where I think we will see changes, although it's been coming for sometime. Shopping online. Yes, that's not news. But I'm the guy who in the 1990's thought cell phones were just for the rich and that no one would want to watch TV shows on their computers. I'm ordering food over the Internet now that I don't want to go to the store!

Yes, things will change from this disease, many, many things and I think that is good. It is making America great again.


> Will tele-medicine become the new normal?

Not sure what that even means. Is that code for something I'm not tuned into?


> What about education? Is the "30 kids in a box" model under fire with all these school closures? Fewer teachers? fewer schools? fewer companies to print textbooks?

Again, they've been pushing to increase class sized for as long as there's been paid teachers. Again, this has little to do with the virus.

> Coronavirus could (by force) answer difficult questions for us, that industry may have preferred not to ask. (Think: Teachers unions.)

What questions would those be that haven't already been asked over and over in every school district?


> FWIW: Where I work, we've layed-off (laid-off?) a few workers, and my guess is we won't re-hire / fill those positions post-Coronavirus.

Of course they will if they are needed. If they aren't needed why keep them on the payroll?

One more thought:
Who's to say that workers (as a whole) go back to work where they came from (for those who lost their jobs)? After the big "re-shuffle" of employees, is it fair to say they all find employment? (Here, I'm thinking from a skillset perspective, but clearly some small businesses will never recover and those jobs will be lost).

Sounds like a labor dispute where some of the workers find other jobs. Your thoughts aren't clear about how that impacts finding employment. Are you talking about employers not hiring workers back or working looking for work elsewhere?

Maybe this (much like the great recession) will turn out to be a good opportunity for workers to get educated in better fields?


> I realize the macro-economy is much larger than a few textbooks and employee musical chairs, but I also wonder if there are any (thus far) hidden obstacles to getting a $22T economy up and running. (After all, it seems to take a lot to kill one!)

I'm sure it won't be without bumps in the road. So that will be a good time to work on fixing the bumps and improving our economy, not that this is not an ongoing process by natural means in a free economy. In fact, with the huge bailouts, it will be better than free for a privileged few.

But alas, my reason for asking is selfish enough: I've got my eye on about 15 stocks that will ("famous last words") rebound significantly after this Coronavirus. But as of this week, they are all still in free-fall, or mostly so. A few are depressed enough I could buy now, even if not at their respective rock-bottom prices, and still feel good about it - since I could probably hold on to them as long as needed (within reason).

Note importantly that NO CRUISE LINES are on that list.
I may be mistaken, but I think vacationers will pull the plug on that industry for the foreseeable future. The Titanic would offer a better experience, and probably have a better ROI too.

I would have thought that too, but I read the other day they are presently booking for this winter at huge rates of sales! I didn't like them before because it has been known for a long time they are floating petri dishes... Norovirus, Rotavirus, Campylobacter, Enterotoxigenic E. coli... seems the vast majority of the illnesses are Norovirus which makes you puke and crap your guts out for a week, getting better just in time to go home... if you are lucky.

Nope, I'm not investing in them in spite of the fact that they have all manner of legal walls preventing you from even getting your money back much less compensation for the discomfort.

https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/vsp/surv/gilist.htm#2019

Tesla is a stock I know something about... well, I mean I've been studying it for a couple of years now. I put money into it in 2018 and 2019 when it was going to take off and it did. I sold some at 500 and more at 900 - shares that were long term capital gains. I waited to sell more 540 and still hold some that won't be long term until the end of May. Not sure where the stock will be then. It can be very hard to predict short term.

Tesla released production and sales numbers the other day, 90,000+ produced, a lot less sold, stock went up! I guess they like that the production number was not whacked... yet. Obviously a closed factory won't be pumping out many cars in Q2. I think they are still making cars in China, so it won't be zero no matter what.

So the money I got from selling shares will be back into Tesla before the year is out, possibly Q3. Then sit back and watch it zoom!

Of course if the economy does tank and stay tanked, it is possible they won't be able to sell all the cars they make. I think that might be worse for them than other car makers. They are pretty leveraged and have construction of a new factory underway in Germany. They are counting on being able to grow like a Ponzi scheme. If they stumble it might be a long way down to the ground. It will be more clear as the year progresses.

What would help if the fucking governors of this country took the damn disease seriously so we could get rid of it. This disease isn't going away on it's own. Some fools think because their states don't have high infection rates at the moment they won't grow. If they just dealt with it now while it was possible to do contact tracing and test everyone who was exposed even if they don't have symptoms they might be able to prevent more NYC situations. One governor said he didn't know asymptomatic people could transmit the disease until a couple of days ago!!! Is he really that big a moron or did he have his head in the sand? Maybe that was just an excuse to change his position and he thinks his electorate are idiots too?

--

Rick C.

-++ Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
-++ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Michael Terrell]

On Saturday, April 4, 2020 at 11:10:57 PM UTC-4, mpm wrote:

On Saturday, April 4, 2020 at 12:40:43 AM UTC-4, Bill Sloman wrote:

If we'd been intelligently designed we might have been faster to notice where we were screwing it up.

Sloman finally admits he's not intelligently designed.

Well, he is a poorly evolved APE!

 

On Saturday, April 4, 2020 at 11:26:21 PM UTC-4, Bill Sloman wrote:

On Sunday, April 5, 2020 at 1:10:57 PM UTC+10, mpm wrote:
On Saturday, April 4, 2020 at 12:40:43 AM UTC-4, Bill Sloman wrote:

If we'd been intelligently designed we might have been faster to notice where we were screwing it up.

Sloman finally admits he's not intelligently designed.

None of us were. Don't you understand anything about evolution?

The fool has said in his heart that there is no God

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Sunday, April 5, 2020 at 7:55:51 PM UTC+10, Michael Terrell wrote:

On Saturday, April 4, 2020 at 11:10:57 PM UTC-4, mpm wrote:
On Saturday, April 4, 2020 at 12:40:43 AM UTC-4, Bill Sloman wrote:

If we'd been intelligently designed we might have been faster to notice where we were screwing it up.

Sloman finally admits he's not intelligently designed.

Well, he is a poorly evolved APE!

Like everybody else who posts here. Of course there's quite a lot of diversity in what our evolution producted. Everybody can talk, and the people who post here can read and write as well, but some of them don't think very clearly.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Monday, April 6, 2020 at 12:52:11 AM UTC+10, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Sat, 4 Apr 2020 20:10:54 -0700 (PDT), mpm <mpmillard@aol.com
wrote:

On Saturday, April 4, 2020 at 12:40:43 AM UTC-4, Bill Sloman wrote:

If we'd been intelligently designed we might have been faster to notice where we were screwing it up.

Sloman finally admits he's not intelligently designed.

He was designed by an especially dull and tedious being, on a bad day.

Sadly for John Larkin's reputation, I wasn't designed at all, and neither was anybody else - we just evolved, and are the consequence of an essentially random shuffling within the fairly narrow range of genetic possibilities our parents had to offer.

This may not be too different from the sort of design process that John Larkin seems to manage, but most of us can do better (at least on a good day).

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

On Sunday, April 5, 2020 at 10:48:26 AM UTC-4, Bill Sloman wrote:

On Sunday, April 5, 2020 at 8:58:11 PM UTC+10, blo...@columbus.rr.com wrote:
On Saturday, April 4, 2020 at 11:26:21 PM UTC-4, Bill Sloman wrote:
On Sunday, April 5, 2020 at 1:10:57 PM UTC+10, mpm wrote:
On Saturday, April 4, 2020 at 12:40:43 AM UTC-4, Bill Sloman wrote:

If we'd been intelligently designed we might have been faster to notice where we were screwing it up.

Sloman finally admits he's not intelligently designed.

None of us were. Don't you understand anything about evolution?

The fool has said in his heart that there is no God

Agnostics merely say that there's no convincing evidence one way or the other.

Your position that intelligent design is irrational takes the agnostic position off the table.

--

Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

On Sat, 4 Apr 2020 20:10:54 -0700 (PDT), mpm <mpmillard@aol.com>
wrote:

On Saturday, April 4, 2020 at 12:40:43 AM UTC-4, Bill Sloman wrote:

If we'd been intelligently designed we might have been faster to notice where we were screwing it up.

Sloman finally admits he's not intelligently designed.

He was designed by an especially dull and tedious being, on a bad day.



--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

Science teaches us to doubt.

Claude Bernard

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Sunday, April 5, 2020 at 8:58:11 PM UTC+10, blo...@columbus.rr.com wrote:

On Saturday, April 4, 2020 at 11:26:21 PM UTC-4, Bill Sloman wrote:
On Sunday, April 5, 2020 at 1:10:57 PM UTC+10, mpm wrote:
On Saturday, April 4, 2020 at 12:40:43 AM UTC-4, Bill Sloman wrote:

If we'd been intelligently designed we might have been faster to notice where we were screwing it up.

Sloman finally admits he's not intelligently designed.

None of us were. Don't you understand anything about evolution?

The fool has said in his heart that there is no God

Agnostics merely say that there's no convincing evidence one way or the other.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney