At my last workplace, we officially got two 15-minute breaks per day, one before lunch and one after lunch. Now this was at a non-regulated, non-union, private company and we were salaried employees who routinely showed up early, occasionally stayed late, and many of us were still checking (and responding to) emails and tickets, fixing things, etc. from home at all hours of the day and night. This was not a scenario where we had time cards or where everyone worked exactly 480 minutes per day or where being away from your desk for a few minutes had any negative impact on productivity.

Over the course of some years, a group of smokers had aligned our patterns so that we'd break for a quick smoke at 9:30, 11, 2:30, and 4. We kept it legit, it doesn't take 7 1/2 minutes to walk outside, smoke a cigarette while chatting, and walk back in. No one was taking four 15-minute breaks. Eventually HR sent out a warning to everyone who was "abusing" the break policy by taking two quick breaks during every 4 work hours instead of one 15-minute break.

So we shifted to taking our allotted break once before lunch and once after. And we used every last second of those 15 minutes, every time. We'd wave at the cameras on the way into and out of the building and one of us would always keep track of our remaining time on their watch or their phone. Guess which folks stopped showing up at work 20 minutes early, staying late to finish things up, leaving our email clients open and monitoring work emails 24/7, and handling shit outside of business hours? Guess which folks stopped bringing their lunches and eating in 10 minutes at their desk, and started taking their full lunch hours offsite every day?

Somehow there are still plenty of employers who just don't understand that if you treat your employees like a bunch of kindergarteners, you're not going to get things like "loyalty" and "amazing work ethic" and "110%" in return. No, you're going to drive away good talent, and with that talent will go many years of your institutional memory. And you deserve to lose it.

By the time I was out of there, we had a running joke that they were probably keeping records of anyone who took more than 2 minutes to take a shit. I suppose it's a function of HR feeling a need to justify their own existence from time to time. That company is currently advertising for an HR director, a little bit of schadenfreude to end my night on a pleasant thought...

When (e.g.) a forensic examiner is discovered to have manipulated or faked various test results that were introduced by the prosecution, this often results in hundreds of prior cases being reviewed. Every case that person touched as an expert or as a witness is called into question. Verdicts are vacated, people get released from prison.

Shouldn't that scenario be playing out here? Any case in which a supposed "confidential informant" was used in these Florida jurisdictions is now potentially in question. Defense attorneys should be lining up over this.

Alright, they flubbed up and leaked everyone's email address; where is the list? Surely it's been posted somewhere, I'd like to take a look at it myself.

Forget doing it digital. Your beneficiaries may have no idea how to decrypt something, or how to access whatever's become of some dead man's switch. Really, if I got hit by a bus tomorrow, even if I had things stored in quadruplicate across various flash drives, I'm not so confident anyone would know what to do with them.

Type the important stuff up, and seal it in an envelope (or several, if you're dividing things up amongst likely heirs). Present those things to an attorney and have him draw up a will. The attorney will retain those envelopes and ensure that things are done properly once you're gone. If your very important passwords change, revise the documents and stop by the lawyer's office with new copies in new envelopes. They might not even charge you anything for that.

I know we generally hate lawyers here, but this is one really worthy function that many of them can perform, and the courts know full well how to deal with written and physically signed documents. In the event that you outlive your lawyer, his or her office will retain custody of your will and your envelopes, or you can find a different lawyer.

I believe Glenn Greenwald lives in Brazil.

You forget this is Slashdot, Yesterday's News for Nerds. reddit had the story 3 days ago, and I'm not sure anyone goes to Digg anymore...

Last week the US Marshals did it.

Shouldn't cost anything. We (the taxpayers) already paid for it once. I think it's ridiculous for police to be getting this sort of equipment at all, but for fuck's sake, how many times does the public need to be billed for it?

If you live in Indiana, maybe you already have. It's taxpayer money buying these things, after all, and buying them for the second time. We already paid for the damned things once, when they were built and sent off to Iraq or Afghanistan.

If they'd actually hit the booty, it wouldn't be a problem. Maybe that's how the education should work, we just need new catch phrases. "Put it in her ass and save your cash," or something.

Not to mention "Law & Order," they've done way too many spin-offs and the whole thing is just played out. Watterson should have quit that, too, and moved to selling robot insurance full time.

I thought all of a phone's radio operations and cellular workings (e.g. choosing a tower) was handled by a separate "baseband" processor that the user-facing OS doesn't expose. Could something like this really be implemented via Android?