1990 post-apocalyptic kind of "artistic Terminator". Dylan McDermott stars, and if I recall an interview from long ago he never watched it and described it (incorrectly) as a story about the last guy alive after a nuclear war. It's not that...

What it is is a low-budget sci-fi flick that is much better than it out to be. Great imagery, great soundtrack, decent storyline. It isn't too ambitious, well-executed.

I saw it quite accidentally in its very limited theatrical run. We were at a theater, wanted to see a movie, the one sheet looked promising and sci-fi and bad-ass. Wasn't disappointed.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0...

But, much like Amazon deliveries, once I'm at their house, in their bedroom, they're stuck with me...at least for the short term.

I'll see myself out now, thanks for listening, enjoy the veal, tip your waitress.

It's like Upton Sinclair all over again, isn't it?

company policies require all products to comply with laws and regulations.

Is this like when I'm required by a potential hookup online to disclose the size of my erect penis? I pinky-swear it's long and thick? Seriously, they "require" this by announcing to sellers they must do this.

Should we apply this kind of policy enforcement to other things? Plane safety (oh, wait, we kind of did that recently, didn't we)? Pharmaceutical testing (er... nevermind)?

There's a difference between passive enforcement of, say, copyright infringement on a video-sharing site and freaking consumer safety.

So, let's get this straight:

Companies make things people want to buy.

Companies spend money to make things.

Many companies want to compete, and therefore they enhance their offerings, in order to differentiate. This costs more money in the making of things.

People pay for these things.

If people are willing to pay more for enhanced things, companies will continue to enhance. If people start not being willing to pay, companies will either stop enhancing them to keep costs down, or find other ways to reduce costs.

How is any of this different than the rest of the world? Ads to reduce cost to customers is not new. Companies seeking to reduce customer cost while keeping value, by "attacking" and subsidizing end price through multiple schemes, is nothing new.

This supposes that - somehow - there is an alternative universe where economics don't apply.

Oh... no... um... no...please...oh, you did...

I worked in transportation software, for a Large Global Company that does a little bit of everything technology-wise. I wouldn't have to predict this as an outcome, as I would know that it would happen, even without knowing the systems involved.

Many systems are just plain outdated, backed by outdated pseduo-database or flat-file technologies that were homegrown. NULL? Yeah right.

Then, many systems were made to talk to those systems. They, in turn, might expect or need different data. They, themselves, were probably built a while ago by companies that might be technology creators, or might might be consultants with government ties. If the latter, you probably have some rigid kind of rules and practices.

These talk to more modern systems that do things like "hey, we can identify someone by their plate and just ticket/fine/invoice them. We just need to know who owns the vehicle. Oh, and state law says we have to send the registered owner the first invoice and the registered address, and then we can skip-trace past that with future notices."

Great! We need to use the registration info anyway! How do we do this? We build a system to take inbound infraction information. That system we build to identify the plate - mostly automatically, because machines are less expensive than people. (please note: NULL is pretty easy to OCR under real-world conditions). Now, we just need to 'dumb down' that information for the interfaces to the company system that talks to the government system that in turn maintains the government data originally used to - in isolation - invoice and track registration. Oh, everything is a pipe-delimited string cut off at 32 bytes and some other wonky stuff, but that's cool it's legacy and has worked rock-solid for 32 years...

BTW, 'we' were smart enough to know that not all infractions can have an image we can identify. So we store these with NULL or some integral value like NOPLATE. Also, some people have TEMP plates and we can't send those on. However, we need to report on all of this, so we understandably store this data.

Whether we sent "NULL" and it matched somewhere along the way, or an update back made its way into our system...well... let's just say "OK then".

And someone comes along with the bright idea of having "NULL" or "TEMP" or "NOPLATE" etc. and is genuinely shocked. I can understand the shock - surely this shouldn't happen... but as soon as you think about my (very simplified) example, you realize the inevitability of it.

I can only imagine the bureaucracy of trying to fix it...No joke, at that point I'd probably retain a lawyer, one who preferably knows the governor or commissioner or something.

Similar to other comments, but my $.02:

This is really between the staffing firm and the company. It's most typical that an agreement exists that says the company can't poach (or hire from a different staffing firm) a contractor, without paying some kind of commission or fee.

The fact that you had such an NDA is terrible.

But it is an interesting thought... if paying ransoms, by municipalities/cities/local governments was very publicly illegal, it may actually stop most or all of these attacks.

I think it would be difficult/illegal (in and of itself) to prohibit private businesses from paying, but government entities? Sure.

Of course, then you need a pretty extensive ad campaign/publicity/etc to make sure the scum in other countries who do this crap get the message...

...And Walmart is paying what the law states that they owe (or better).

The point here is if either is ethical.

This! In fact, I"ll expand it do include a subset of larger companies as well.

The company I work for has multiple divisions. We primarily build technology. In some divisions, the people who write code are, indeed, just laborers who build exactly what is provided them.

But in a couple - magical - divisions, the people writing the code understand the intent, the business, and the objectives. It's much harder to find, hire, and develop these people. It's especially bad when someone is good at one facet but not all of them. It's really difficult to scale. That's why so many places "grow" to a point where things like the business, design, architecture, etc. are divvied up. They also end up being (individually) "expensive", at least on paper.

However, if you can make it work, the employees tend to love it. There is some survivor bias - people who don't like it are amongst those who cycle out. "I'd rather just code than deal with foo." It's also hard to scale.

Honestly, there's merit in both approaches. As for personal satisfaction, it depends where you land in terms of what you truly enjoy.

We give live programming challenges in interviews. Interestingly, we quickly moved from a 'hard' model to an 'easy' one, for kind of the same reasons.

What we do is provide a list of about 6 (depends upon skill set we're hiring) problems that equate to first or second year CS studies. They are all straightforward and require no fancy manipulations. The candidate picks one. We set them up with an environment, they can access Google (keep search history intact, no Googling the actual problem).

They are given an hour to do the problem; anyone on the team can do it in fifteen minutes or less. If they're having trouble, we will give them another hour. There is a proctor present to help with non-programming issues (for example, for C++ folks we'll help them compile if they're rusty with command-line gcc).

These types of simpler exercises provide insight into some of the fundamentals: can you write code? What methods do you use to solve problems? Can someone else easily understand your code?

The number of C++ 'programmers' who can't compare two lists based upon criteria, or web programmers who (no joke) can't code a page that dynamically retrieves data using a (provided) web service, or database folks who can't join two tables is staggering. The exercise weeds out people who have spent years - decades - copy/paste/trial-error coding. Sorry kids, we have real work to do.

Not necessarily. I've flown plenty of times with just one gate access on the lower level. People just take the stairs. It takes longer, sure, but it isn't a big deal. The second level is typically used for First or First/Business. If there's Premium Economy or just Economy on that level as well, they end up lumping them on the main jetway anyway.

I find it difficult to believe that you actually believe this. At least, I hope not.

Let's break it down, just in case you do... All 8-year-olds? Nope. Basic ladder logic as a (complete, holistic, everything-you-can-do) skill in demand enough to say that it's a viable on its own? Nope.

How about a little more? Would people with these... ahem... minimal skills make their way into the "non-conveyor-line" market? Probably. Do we see enough "Learn to Code in X weeks!"-type folks flooding the market? Yup. Assuming you're in tech, do you work with some miserable person who can barely but adequately cobble together some cut-and-paste functionality and send it down the pipe, only to have it cause problems later? Probably.

No, 'learn to code' isn't appropriate for everyone. It's not a floor measurement for people's aptitude in life or the job market in general. Different people are good at different things. Is this really that difficult?

While I respect your opinion and point of view, I really hate NIMBY folks. It's like, "Austin is nice now that *I'm* here, so please stop all progress." I like progress. Some aspects are good, some bad, but in general, it's for me. I'll strongly disagree with you, and also disagree that progress and growth has to equate us turning into the Bay Area.

A. You don't understand the 'A' criteria. This means that the contractor is able to provide the objective output without control of the contracting entity. In simplistic (and admittedly ineffective) terminology, this means no micromanagement. If you're contracted to provide a widget, you turn in a widget in exchange for your fee. In this case, you get the person from point to point. Part of the question is where the objective turns into control. Is dictating the application the driver uses? The vehicle characteristics?

B. You don't understand the 'B' criteria. It isn't about whether the worker can contract with another contracting entity (for this or other work). It's about whether or not the work that the contractor is supplying is or is not part of the contracting entities regular business. If you're an agency that makes websites for customers, it's hard to argue your contract web developer is supplying something outside your regular business. When Uber has faced similar challenges, their position is that they are a software company providing software and that they are not in the business of providing transportation. This is dubious.

C. This is more in-line with your 'B' argument. This is the strongest argument Uber has that its drivers are contractors, with respect to the California 'ABC'. However, it's not pick-and-choose. It's all 3.

I'm certain that you have it wrong.

You see, if Google doesn't do this, someone will. So you have it wrong.

You see, if Google does this, then Google can help shape future open communication and equality. So you have it wrong.

You see, then Google gets to decide bits and pieces to influence. Google only has The Good in mind. So you have it wrong.

You see, Google is good. They understand this, and that they - and only they - are responsible for ensuring freedom for the Chinese. If they fail, all will be lost. So you have it wrong.

You see, Google cares. You must understand this about them, and that they are in the unique position to help. Only by censoring data access, censoring freedom, and reporting user actions, can they enforce freedom.

So you have it wrong.