Fuck anonymous donations. As an act of civil disobedience I intend to donate directly from an account with my real name on it. They can come and get me.

A good workplace is one that naturally creates transparency in work goals. There are often conflicting directives between elements of an organization. A well designed working environment involves getting all those sources of conflict out in the open and re-working job descriptions where necessary.

For example it's QA's job to stand in the way of getting software published if it's not as good as possible. It's Development's job to get that software out there as soon as possible. If QA and Devs aren't on the same page you've got a recipe for a nasty stew of workplace politics. It's one guy's job to keep the employees happy. It may be another guy's job to keep costs down. Again: conflict, politics.

The more you take into consideration what you're actually asking different people to do the less stress you'll see. In my opinion well designed work flow counts for more than all the free gourmet coffee in Columbia.

I don't want to hear about how things are inside the NSA so much as what Congress is doing to fix these laws that can be "misinterpreted" so badly. It's easy and low-friction to just accuse the NSA but the blame belongs on the shoulders of congress, both those members doubtlessly complying due to the availability of blackmail material and those complying because they want to be the top dogs in a 1984 universe.

Seconded. it's illegal to ask about family and religion at a job interview in the US because it permits discrimination based on whether you think someone will ask for extra days off. Employers skirt this and other equal opportunity laws by asking for your Facebook info instead. If they're playing that kind of game I don't want to work for them.

That kind of warehouse workers are replaceable in a second and Amazon knows this. If they have to or want to fire one there's a sheaf of a hundred resumes equally qualified to trudge about scanning items and bringing them to the packing area. It's absolute bottom-of-the-barrel stuff. This is the only reason most amazon warehouses aren't replaced by robots now: humans at slave wages cost less.

source: I once worked in an Amazon warehouse.

You say this, but most people wouldn't. I'm not going to address the arguments about sexism but the "they don't convert" argument misses one point: They may be there not to make immediate sales but to make the brand stand out in buyers' minds.

Cynical, unprofessional, or sexist as it may be associating "hardware manufacturer x" with "a pleasant funny feeling in my pants" isn't the least desirable outcome for X.

The elephant in the room is the fact that colleges and forced cheap, easy student loans are being used to keep unemployment numbers down in the recession. Many millions of US student are in college because they couldn't find a good job. Many of them would stop attending immediately if a good job were offered.

It's not education, it's welfare.

"Verifiability not truth" is the shelter biased and power-hungry Wikipedia editors hide behind. Post an article or fact they don't like and they'll do their level best to claim it's not a good source using nebulous definitions and intra-Wiki politics. The author of a cited article can himself say, "that's not what I meant" and it will be rejected. One symptom of this source problem is a lack of consistently followed, useful guidelines for source material. Oh, there are guideline, they're just not consistently followed and entrenched interests have allowed their definitions of a good source to slide to support various point of view various editors want to push. NPOV is a religion they follow like a Baptist in his cups.

The problem isn't the bureaucrats in question, rather the culture of fear and secrecy in which our government had steeped these last several decades. This problem needs to be addressed at its cultural roots, starting with your family and friends -- Tell them fear will do infinitely more harm than the things we're, as a society, afraid of.

What I'm wondering is whether the limit is 2.71828 or so.

I would be happy to pay a little extra for this service for non-critical hardware. But if I were actually concerned the NSA would want to twist my knickers there's no way in hell I would: It's a huge red flag for them. Instead I would bribe someone at a different company to accept my shipment and forward it to me.

But let's be honest, if the NSA is interested enough in you to install extras on your hardware, they probably already know your favorite porn, your underwear size, and what you had for breakfast. I'm happy to see extra services appearing for privacy-loving individuals but I don't think this particular one will help.