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As an Educator watching this episode of south park, well, I had to chime in. Under personal circumstances I’ve seen how effective and “optimized” our systems are from the internal side of working alongside professors, some (not all) who would curve the class to a higher grade if the average grade was too low (I assume to maintain status quo), while many students merely a waver away from passing. Including future Doctors, Scientists, and Economists.

So it’s as funny as watching Idiocracy manifest but rather sad to realize, the aspects of handymen being the only possible labor power of the future under AI normalization.

Most individuals grew up with the Step A to Step C path process to education and a “successful future”, but we see often how too many Architects graduate when the overall economy already has so many, new graduates find themselves with a large educational debt and no means to pay it off in the career path chosen back in the day in High School.

Not only that but Universities and for profit educational corporations have made their campuses resemble a resort of some type rather than a place of higher learning, adding in lazy rivers to attract more students. It is a business strategy but others could argue there are more effective ways for improving the educational centric environment, however I tangent from the point.

The idea that this pathway was so widely encouraged to manufacture Business professionals, Doctors, Dentists, and potentially much of the American GDP professionals in the service economy we have created, will degrade over time as more and more educated people get replaced by optimized AI models. The ever “Rusting Old Economy” will expire with all of these jobs being more optimized by AI algo’s, like it or not this is going to happen.

From my perspective I really feel over the time of a century of highly educated individuals, the information has gone so vast, the types of learning paths for each individual subject can be so vast that the optimization of one individual in a subject is prone to faults and error. Which in turn can be optimized by a Machine Model.

However, not many consider the labor side of education, learning operation of machinery, handiness in repair of electric, mechanic, metallic, wood based products, hell even assembly of an Ikea product can and will become a new flourishing environment for the future for those that can interact with reality if the Metaverse doesn’t take us in first.

The Labor market is ripe for individuals willing to self-develop in todays day, the YouTube/online/cat video watching audience, to find yourself a dependable source of education (yes even YouTube), absorb some new skills, buy some tools and practice to perfection at home and expand on those physical skills that cannot be replaced (yet) due to limited technology in real life precision of mechanics.

This is the future of the Handyman, one that can be given a real life problem and present a practical solution, a skill that is much lacking in todays general population of “if broken buy new replacement” generation vs the old “break it and fix it” mindset.

Do you have a broken outlet? Do you know how to turn off the right fuse for the section of the house/apartment and then apply tools to replace it yourself? Can you at least look at some video instructions and troubleshoot your own in parallel? Or will you just call a Handyman? Questions that the new generation will need to ponder and answer for their future experience and success in a Rusting Service Economy.

So while the episode had a major focus of the new gen changes in culture with Cartman changing into a minority black woman and having the odd fantasy of the Pandering stone, the underlying economic observation is very striking to current trends.

Consider myself, finding a self sustaining job as an educator in all subjects registering as a freelancer on online gig jobs, the new Gig economy has its place in our current economic chaos. If you have a skill to provide, there is a way to find an audience to distribute to, remember this! My talent is providing simple to understand snippings of information that helps students understand different perspectives using TakeLessons as my host and some other High School Online support systems: https://www.excelhighschool.com/
and a private tutor in programming, advanced mathematics, even data analytics:
https://tl.page/christoph?bookwithme=yes#reviews
(Shameless plug in recent advances in my personal career path as educator, if your interested in expanding your knowledge consider a mentor such as myself or thousands of other tutors available at your online finger tips!)

The point I’m making is, our culture is having a deep thought about itsself, how it fits in improving personal lives and the outcomes of success to help those in our direct cultural community. The first step is self-improvement and this is the time and year to begin (if you haven’t already) expanding a skillset you wish to fine tune and find a way to make a career! Hobbies are the best careers because you get paid to do what you love!

I like to watch popular shows to see the focus of the general populace, and between all the reality drama TV and a dark comedy with a hint of self-manifesting predictions, South Park definitely thought deep about this one if you scratch below the surface of the latest episode of Joining the Panderverse.

Stay strong, self-develop and grow friends!

Ok, some of you are probably asking: what the hell is going on with GameStop? How did its market price go from 5 dollars to 500 in a few months? What is a stock market? How money work help plz?!

Alright, well, let me briefly explain now that you probably are seeing mainstream media start their siren machine on an old narrative that they have been essentially keeping under the rug for numerous years…

First, let’s consider that our beloved GameStop has found its way out of bankruptcy and with new management, lots of awesome possibilities can transform the way this company works on a fundamental level. From speculation to reality, one can consider GS going strong into the gamer community, even holding tournaments between store regions and creating a whole new type of entertainment value, as well as possible rumored crypto connections. But don’t hold your breath; nothing is written in stone yet.

Now, how the heck did the price for one share of GSE (the stock symbol for GameStop) go from $5 to nearly $500 in such a short amount of time? Is the company doing that great?? The simple answer is no. The complicated answer involves corrupt bankers and hedge funds over-leveraging their market-making tools… So… let me guide you through some market basics.

TL;DR

People in suits thought GameStop was a dead company.
They sold shares early at a higher price to buy later at a lower price for profit.
Public got fed up with these rich bastards.
Public pushes price higher.
Suits start sweating bullets due to huge monetary losses (over $7 billion since January).
The war rages on as I am writing this.

AMC Theatres is the next target based on countless streamers and forums, and was even identified as 100/100 short squeeze risk on Fox Business.

Edited:
Companies involved first round: GME (01/2021), AMC (06/2021), BBIG, CLOV, BBBY, BlackBerry
Second round currently developing (03/2022): GME, AMC, BBBY, MULN, ATER

What is a share?

At its base, consider a share a piece of official paper that gives you part ownership of a company. If you own 51% of a company’s shares, you can essentially call all the shots (Look at Michael Cohen and GSE).

But what is a share?

Nothing really; just like paper money, it’s paper… with a set value target… that inflates. So realistically, it’s nothing, but our economic system decides that we can buy and sell (exchange money for shares) so thus we enter the stock market exchange.

The GameStop Gamble

What happened with GSE shares?
Simple, yet complex… so let’s consider the simple factor:

Imagine you have a Charzard Holographic Pokemon card that’s worth 1,000 dollars on the market, but you have no intention of selling it. So I come by (as a hedgefund/banker/suit/shill) and ask if I can “borrow” that card for a week. You say, “Sure as long as it’s in the exact same condition” and I pay you $25 per day of lending. I agree. (Enter the “short selling” concept).

So of course I want to “borrow” your Charzard card not to just stare at it for a week, but because I heard that the price will drop because more cards of this exact kind will be released at the end of the week, thus reducing its value due to increased supply. So I immediately sell “your” card on the market for $1000—its market value.

Scenario One:
6 days later, I waited for the price to drop, and sure enough thousands of new Charzard cards were printed and one card now costs 300 dollars! Hooray! I sold it for $1000, bought it back for $300, and paid you $25 per day (*6 days = $150) and actually made profit! 1000 – 300 – 150 = 550; not bad, huh?

Well yes, this happens with shares as well, called short selling, but now imagine…

Scenario Two:
If more cards never were printed, in fact what if they found out there were far less Charzard cards than initially counted on the market… so now the whole narrative is flipped. That card I sold for $1000 six days ago is now $5000… but I can’t just not return it… what if you were a Mafia boss ready to break my knees and I’m not a fan of sleeping with the fishes (too salty)?

So now I legally HAVE to buy it back for $5000 to return the card back to you. Got it? Good. Now multiply one Charzard by millions of shares that were borrowed and never returned. Starting to get the picture?

So maybe now you can see what happened when hedge funds thought GameStop would go from 5 dollars to 4…3…2…1…0, dead. Why even bother writing papers for a $0 company? You can just clear out all the borrowed shares because they are worthless… well… not when the reddit community took a sniff. You can start seeing how all this became a losing gamble for the suits and ties.

The Public Backlash

It started with a forum, then it continued to streaming, and recently to mainstream news media… the Naked Shorts were in main focus. (No, not see-through trousers).

As the general public started buying up the shares, the price increased, forcing hedge funds to hold on to their contracts for borrowed shares, praying on their knees that the price will go down below 5 again… but so far their greasy pressed hands did them no service. Due to obvious historic repetition, remember the 2008 crash? Yeah, basically same thing as above, just real estate.

In fact, after 2008, the government made naked shorts (fake shares being sold) illegal, so the subject has now grown into the airwaves of the masses.

Conclusion

As I am writing this, I can’t say that I am also invested in this sporadic event, but I can say that I would never not let an opportunity like this go by. Though it is a very risky bet, it has been bearing fruit so far, like lots of green fruit. Man, it’s almost surreal.

But with a pissed-off public watching their tax money used to bail out gambling men in suits, I am not in the least surprised capitalism finally approaches a re-balancing of justice to those that were pushed to the side and used for bailouts.

WESTERN DIGITAL UPS THE GAME WITH POWERFUL
NEW GAMING SSD WITH NVMe PERFORMANCE

SAN JOSE, Calif., April 5, 2018 – PC gaming is increasingly immersive, with richer and more intense visual content than ever before, and gamers are faced with making technology choices to maximize their experience. To push leading-edge performance, lower power consumption and extended durability for PC gaming systems, Western Digital Corporation (NASDAQ: WDC) today introduced a high-performance Western Digital® Black 3D NVMe™ SSD featuring the company’s own SSD architecture and controller. The drive accelerates data for PC applications to enable users to quickly, access, engage and capture today’s high-resolution video, audio and gaming content. With growing demand for rich content, PCs must have the capability to run intensive applications and enable the 4K/Ultra HD graphics and video content experiences. To move this immense amount of data quickly and seamlessly, Western Digital developed a new breed of SSDs to help remove the traditional storage bottleneck. This M.2 drive features a new NVMe architecture and controller, which optimally integrates with Western Digital 3D NAND. Western Digital’s new vertically integrated SSD platform was engineered from the ground up, specifically architected to help maximize performance for NVMe SSDs, with advanced power management, durability and endurance for the growing range of applications benefiting from NVMe technology. “Today’s gaming applications require increasing capability from their PCs, and this will only continue to advance. With our new architecture and controller, the Western Digital Black SSD integrates our 3D NAND technology with the NVMe interface to enable new levels of performance. Whether it’s a new gaming rig or a video-editing workstation, our innovative NVMe drives will power many existing and future environments that enable data to thrive,” said, Mark Grace, senior vice president,
Devices Business Unit, Western Digital. Western Digital Black 3D NVMe SSD – Built to Boost Gaming Systems

With exceptional sequential read (up to 3,400 MB/s1 for 1TB and 500GB model) and write performance (up to 2,8001MB/s* for 1TB model) combined with up to 1TB capacities, the new drive is ideal for enhancing user experiences in gaming environments that benefit from acceleration of intensive fast data. Additionally, the drives feature up to 500,000 random-read IOPs (for 1TB model) to deliver extreme throughput, which is ideal for multi-threaded applications and data-intensive multitasking environments. The drive offers a five-year limited warranty with up to 600TBW
endurance (for 1TB model). The Western Digital Black 3D NVMe SSD is available in the U.S. in capacities of 250GB ($119.99 USD), 500GB ($229.99 USD) and 1TB ($449.99 USD). The new drives will be available by late April 2018 in select Western Digital retailers, e-tailers, resellers, system integrators and distributors globally.

Western Digital brought TechwareLabs to San Jose for an event surrounding Big Data. We were able to meet key executives, innovators, and the brilliant minds behind some of their most cutting edge tech like HAMR and the new MAMR. We sat down with Dave Tang to discuss Big Data and what it means to you.

WESTERN DIGITAL’S WORLD’S FIRST 14TB ENTERPRISE HARD DISK DRIVES PROVIDE CLOUD AND HYPERSCALE DATA CENTERS BIG DATA CAPACITY 

Second Generation SMR Technology Coupled with HelioSeal® Technology Deliver Breakthrough Capacity For Sequential Write Workloads

SAN JOSE, CA — Oct. 3, 2017 — Western Digital Corp. (NASDAQ: WDC), a global data storage technology and solutions leader, today announced that it is providing cloud and hyperscale data centers the capacity required by big data applications with the world’s first 14TB enterprise-class hard drive featuring host-managed shingled magnetic recording (SMR) technology. Western Digital’s HGST-branded Ultrastar® Hs14 delivers 40 percent more capacity and more than twice the sequential write performance of its SMR predecessor, enabling more economical and efficient capture of the growing volume and variety of data.

     The future is built on the insights and predictive power of big data. As data grows exponentially, storing it all in an affordable and accessible manner is an ongoing challenge for enterprise and cloud service data center operators. With a focus on total cost of ownership (TCO), the factors of capacity per rack, power consumption, cooling, maintenance, and acquisition cost are all paramount. To combat the big data challenge, Ultrastar Hs14 drives deliver unprecedented capacity leadership and online watt/TB power efficiency for extremely low TCO by harnessing two core complimentary technologies – fourth generation HelioSeal® technology, and second generation host-managed SMR – along with enterprise-class reliability. These mature, field-proven technologies provide the foundation for delivering efficient, quality and reliable performance required by cloud and hyperscale environments, perfect for ultra-dense scale-out storage systems running sequential write workloads. By utilizing SMR technology, Ultrastar Hs14 HDDs offer a 16 percent increase in capacity[1] while keeping highly predictable, highly reliable performance.          

     “Over 70 percent of the exabytes Western Digital ships into the capacity enterprise segment are on helium-based high-capacity drives and continue to support customers with outstanding reliability, performance and value Quality of Service (QoS),” said Mark Grace, senior vice president of devices at Western Digital. “The TCO and reliability benefits of our HelioSeal platform are the foundation of our leadership in high-capacity enterprise storage.” 

Ultrastar Hs14 14TB Enterprise Drive Features and Specifications: 

HelioSeal Technology: Western Digital’s fourth-generation helium filled drive technology brings the highest capacity hard drive to market much sooner than competing offerings.

Host-managed SMR Technology: Second-generation enterprise storage deployment of host-managed SMR  delivers 14TB with no compromise of performance predictability and consistency. Host-managed SMR hard drives are designed specifically for sequential write environments, and will not work as drop-in replacements for traditional capacity enterprise drives.

Reliability: Amongst the industry’s highest MTBF rating at 2.5M hours.

Availability

     The Ultrastar Hs14 enterprise hard drive is currently sampling to select OEMs and comes with a 5-year limited warranty. For more information on the Ultrastar Hs14 14TB enterprise drive, visit: http://www.hgst.com/products/hard-drives/ultrastar-hs14.

ADATA Debuts XPG EMIX H30 and I30 Headsetsand SOLOX F30 Amplifier

Premium quality gaming audio coupled with ergonomic design and cross-platform compatibility 

Taipei, Taiwan – October 3,2017– ADATA Technology, a leading manufacturer of high performance DRAM modules and NAND Flash products, today launched its first dedicated audio products. The three are XPG-branded as they deliver powerful, clear, and comfortable sonic experiences to enthusiast gamers. The EMIX H30 headsets feature a full-sized, over-ear design with 53mm drivers while EMIX I30 earphones bring an advanced in-ear design with oversized 13.5mm drivers. The SOLOX F30 amplifier (sold paired with EMIX H30 or separately) provides multiple connections, four audio presets, and virtual 7.1 surround. All three products boast an attractive gaming-inspired style, while EMIX H30 and EMIX I30 are universally compatible with PC, Mac, consoles, and mobile devices.

SOLOX F30 – virtual 7.1 surround and distinct audio modes

Precision sound processing enables SOLOX F30 to act as an external audio card and amplifier for PC and Mac. Virtual 7.1-channel surround adds depth to sound and more accurate positioning within games for a competitive edge. SOLOX F30 has four sound presets: game, movie, music, and voice. Multiple connections increase its versatility, and it can output audio to headsets and speakers simultaneously or separately.

Customers can purchase the SOLOX F30 in a bundle with EMIX H30 and a headset stand, or separately.

EMIX H30 – big sound and genuine comfort

The full-size EMIX H30 headsets deliver a wide sonic range with powerful bass thanks to their 53mm drivers. They do so while ensuring complete comfort even during extended gaming sessions thanks to breathable memory foam ear cushions, a self-adjusting headband, and carefully optimized clamping force. The detachable microphone ensures gamers are clearly heard by team members, just as the braided cable and gold-plated connector withstand extended and demanding use without sound quality degradation.

EMIX I30 – strong gaming audio goes in-ear

As most personal audio products for gamers are larger headset designs, compact and mobile in-ear options are rare. EMIX I30 earphones have powerful 13.5mm drivers and a design that fits snugly in ear canals to leave unwanted noise out and enjoyable sound in. Thanks to their oversized drivers, EMIX I30 earphones are able to produce patented 5.2-channel surround sound with a strong spatial effect. While compact and light, EMIX I30 earphones bring gamers impactful sound whether at home or on the go.

Versatile cross-platform compatibility

EMIX H30 and EMIX I30 work driver-free on PC, Mac, PS4, Xbox, Switch, and mobile devices. This means gamers no longer need to purchase dedicated headsets for different devices.

Availability

The XPG EMIX H30 and I30 Headsets and SOLOX F30 Amplifier will be available at Amazon.com and Newegg.com

http://www.xpg.com/en/feature/522

http://www.xpg.com/en/feature/523

• XPG Emix H30+SOLOX F30 -USD199.99
• XPG Emix I30 -USD99.99

Toshiba L200 1TB 2.5-inch Internal Hard Drive Review  @ NikKTech

It may not bring anything new on the table in terms of read and write performance but thanks to its low temperatures and electrical requirements and affordable price tag the  7mm thick L200 1TB 2.5-inch hard drive by Toshiba could be exactly what you’ve been looking for to expand the storage space of your laptop and/or game console.