But if you did the right thing and got vaccinated, you need to be in the office three days a week. Just fantastic messaging there, Google. Really rewarding the right behavior.

As a reminder, Google has been pouring a ton of money and political capital into building a giant office complex in San Jose for years now. That's what this is about: not worker productivity, or what is right for their workers, but making sure there are enough butts in seats to justify their gigantic real estate plans.

But we're going to cry poor to the government that they need to fork over billions more in taxpayer money to fund chip plants.

Wages are down, inflation is rising, tons of people are out of work. Those "record low" unemployment numbers are fed by states kicking tons of people off unemployment (and let's not even get into underemployment...). Turns out using the stock market as an indicator of economic health is fundamentally flawed and as much as Biden wants to tell you the economy is good because the number is going up, the average blue collar worker who can barely afford gas or groceries certainly feels otherwise. People simply don't have the money to splurge on Christmas gifts this year.

I mean, it's a nice change of pace.

For a brief moment, it looked like we might be able to set aside geopolitical animosity and unite as one species. the greatest powers of the world, hand-in-hand towards a new era of exploration for humanity.

What a pity that we threw it all away.

Until campaign finance/corporate lobbying get brought under control. Language gets inserted into bills at the request of corporate lobbyists all the time, and usually for a relative pittance of a campaign contribution. If you as a multi-billion dollar ISP had the chance to completely eliminate the thread of municipal broadband competition for the cost of a $4K donation, you take that gamble 100 times out of 100. And while I've got zero love for the GOP, it's not a problem unique to them and Dem politicians are just as happy to take corporate money to pass corporate-friendly legislation at the expense of the actual people they are ostensibly elected to represent.

U - Universal
B - Basic
I - Income

It seems this is something a lot of "UBI experiments" and those reporting on them fail to grasp.

"I" is self-explanatory: you get paid some kind of regular monetary value.
"B" is less well understood it seems: "basic" means the income you're paid will pay for your "basic" expenses: shelter, utilities, food and beverage. The "basic" things we as humans need to survive. Right away this experiment torpedoes itself by only paying $500/month, far less than the "basic" income needed to cover these needs even in a very poor area.
"U" is also seemingly misunderstood somehow: "universal" means "everyone." Not just the poor. Not just women. Not just minorities. Everyone. Anything less betrays the whole idea.

"UBI" - taken together - means everybody in a sample is given the same amount of money in the same interval that at a minimum is able to cover their basic needs. This experiment passes "I", but it does not pass "U" or "B", so I'm not exactly sure what if anything we are actually supposed to take from it in terms of relevance to how properly implemented UBI impacts individuals in a community.

"Employees refuse to return to long commutes, decreased quality of life without pay raises."

You want your employees to come back in? Then pay them to do it, otherwise STFU. COVID proved for a lot of white collar industries that the job can be done from home, so if you now want folks back in the office then make it worth their while.

This article has the same kind of energy as all the restaurants posting whiny "NOBODY WANTS TO WORK ANYMORE!111!1!" signs when they're offering to hire people in at $2.13/hour. Pay up or shut up.

Hell, good luck finding it at all. Even not accounting for the ongoing chip shortage, whatever pitiful stock Nvidia pushes out will be snapped up in a femtosecond by scalpers and miners.

We have written and archeological evidence of humans knowingly brewing and drinking alcohol as far back as seven thousand years ago. And I'd bet every cent I have that the tradition goes much farther back than that. It's part of the human condition to desire an alteration of consciousness from time to time, and alcohol is an easy method of doing so.

Red meat causes cancer. Alcohol causes brain damage. Salt causes hypertension. Sex can result in STD's. High intensity exercise or physical activity can cause injury and even death. Turns out life isn't particularly kind to living, stop worrying about what will shorten your life and make sure what life you do get to live was fulfilling to you.

If the police find a safe in a suspect's house that they believe contains incriminating evidence of their crime, they cannot be compelled to unlock the safe. If the police have a warrant they are free to try to guess the combination, or break the lock, or cut into the safe, or whatever else they want to try to get in, but the suspect cannot be compelled to assist them.

So if the police find your phone and believe it contains incriminating evidence, they should similarly not be able to compel you to unlock it. That strong encryption is harder to break than a physical lock and thus makes the police's job harder is not the problem of the suspect. Very obvious rights should not be stripped because they make it harder to prosecute.

Chinese hackers are targeting US IP, and if they manage to develop an effective vaccine faster than we can, then US pharma can't bleed us dry by charging out the wazoo for a product most desperately want right now.

If China gets to a vaccine first they'll do what they always do: flood the market at a cheap price. Uncle Sam can't have that when there's money to be made!

Presumably there has to be some form of enticement, dishonesty, or both in convincing donors to choose "anti-aging snake oil for old rich people" as the ultimate use of their blood instead of actual, helpful medical uses.

That's it. They don't exist to improve society, or uphold morals. China is the largest market in the world, and excluding yourself from it because you refuse to play by their disgusting rules on moral grounds means failing as a corporation.

That's the reality of capitalism. You chase an extra 1% growth this quarter no matter how many morals have to be bent, or lives have to be ruined, to get it. If you don't like it, then I have a news flash for you: you don't like Capitalism.

It's out in the open that Amazon is in bed with the police and are more than happy to share any data they collect from it with them, including audio and video. This isn't Big Brother putting a telescreen in your home and telling you to like it at gunpoint, this is people actively making the decision to pay a corporation to install a device that spies on them and their neighbors in their homes. It is resoundingly sad how clear products like Ring, Echo, etc have proven that the average person values a marginal increase in convenience over the privacy of themselves and others.