Right. Github is located in a civilized country that also has unions and employment law. Unions aren't active in every company, and not active in most for that matter. Gender discrimination and harassment is illegal pretty much everywhere if not everywhere in the US. IANAL and I'm not going to go check all of the jurisdictions to confirm.

Everyone who has an opinion about unions seems to have a strong one. My own was formed at my first job where I made around $4/hour and got 1.5x overtime over 40 hours. The union guys got a lot more than that, though in fairness they were experienced and I was a kid, so "more" was quite reasonable. They got overtime and double overtime (3x base rate, or what they called "golden time") if they worked something like > 12 hours in a day, which happened from time to time. None of that really bothered me. Obviously, they just negotiated from a stronger position.

What bothered me was that they could spend a significant amount of that time just sitting on their butts and no one could do a thing about it. They had a "supervisor" who literally sat in a car all day long "supervising". Eventually, the company managed to get rid of that particular leech and just made one of the regular guys a shift lead or some such, and we got along just fine. The leech's parting words of advice to me were to find a job that paid a lot where I didn't have to do anything. In other words, do exactly what he had done. And then there's seniority. With a union, it doesn't matter if you're any good at your job or not, the only question is how long you've been there. Unions, in my experience, promote mediocrity. Oh, and then there's double dipping. Our work was primarily moving freight from one mode of transport to another. Typically from a ship to a train or truck. One of the enterprising union guys figured out how to sign up to work two ships at a time and only show up for one. He got paid for both. It was widely known that he was doing this, but no one could fire him for what amounted to blatant fraud. Maybe it's more precise to say it wasn't worth the fight with the union to get rid of the guy. Those instances of brazen exploitation turned me off unions.

Unions do have their place. When employers are abusing the workers, unions can back them off. Unions have enough power, though, that they can also screw over the employers AND the employees, and unchecked, they do.

Let me redirect you to your claim:

Even if frozen for a few seconds cell die.

Nope. At least not always. They also weren't cells in culture, they were ~1mm tissue blocks that had been removed from a live animal an hour or two before freezing.

I find the living cells in a 43,000 year old mammoth carcass pretty hard verging on impossible to believe, too. I'm just making the point that cells are more hardy than you might think.

IIRC, there's some evidence principle that if you should have records of a thing and I claim those records exonerate me, if you can't provide the records, then the court assumes they say what I claim they do. A principle like that would work well here. If you had or should have had camera footage of our interaction and I claim you punched me in the nose, if your recording is "lost" or your camera was "broken", then you punched me in the nose.

If ya don't like that, don't lose your recording and make sure your cameras work.

Mammoths don't travel at 500+ mph. Planes don't leave footprints or take great, big dumps on the ground to announce where they've been. Now, if they create a mammoth that can travel at 500 mph across water, I concede that yes, we may lose track of it.

I have personally frozen cells in a step-down freezer, then submerged them in liquid nitrogen for years, taken them back out, thawed them, implanted them, and had them grow. So...way.

Sure. Woolly mammoths are pretty big. One might even call them mammoth. If one gets out, it won't be that hard to find.

Besides, we shouldn't be talking about creating a population of these things yet. Lets create one and see how that goes. It's not like it's going to run off into the forest and sprout more.

No, but you also can't call the manufacturer and insist they unlock it for you. If they happen to offer that service, sure, you can use it, but the manufacturer might very reasonably require you to prove you have the legal authority to do so, which is pretty much what Apple is doing.

The inheritor is legally entitled to the data on that device (as they would to any other intellectual properties like writings, patents and works of art created by the deceased)

That may be true, but I don't see how you giving someone your iPad creates an obligation on the part of a 3rd party to help you read it. If you're going to give someone your iPad after you die, give them the password, too. Maybe dear old mum is quite happy for them to have the physical device, but didn't want her children pawing through her digital life. Who is Apple to decide that?

Jokes aside here, Apple is just being a dick, which is really what we can expect from Apple.

Quite possibly. Were I Apple, I'd want to help out, but I also wouldn't want to set the precedent that you can call me up and ask me to unlock someone else's device and I'll do it. Now if you give me solid legal cover, like, oh, say...a court order, then absolutely I can help you out.

Actually, that's not what I see. At that very same Home Depot, I paid for my stuff and saw the little notice pop up on the cashier's register "Would you like to pay for this with your Home Depot Charge Card?" Cashier said not a word about it and just dismissed the notice and saved me having to decline their annoying credit card offer. (No, I don't want another credit card, and I most certainly don't want a store credit card.) You might be right that most still have policies that call for doing this stuff, but a lot of drones have tired of it, and I appreciate it. Large companies may still push annoying practices, but if someone with a brain or conscience cuts them off before they reach me, I'll give them a pass for it.

Maybe it's regional, but the upsell is uncommon enough that I still notice it. I don't always object, either. I bought new homeowner's insurance and they wanted to sell me every other kind of insurance. I just told them "Here's what I'm paying now, if you can beat it, give me a quote." Didn't hear a word back from them.

If an employee didn't ask every customer about a cell phone AND a satellite dish they were fired. Even before that turnover was like a fast food place.

Funny, that's the kind of thing that makes me quit shopping at a store. Last time I set foot in an OfficeMax was when the manager walked away just shaking his head in dismay at what a stupid decision I made not to buy the extended warranty on a camcorder. I probably spent a decade not so much as walking into a Radio Shack after they actually refused to sell me a battery because I wouldn't tell them my phone number.

Just yesterday, I had somebody come up to me at Home Depot and tell me they were "giving back to homeowners" and did I own a home? Yep, sure do! What would I change about my kitchen? Well, I'm actually here for a deeper sink. Blahblahblah, they wanted to sell me cabinets. Hey, thanks for wasting my time lying about what you're doing. You're selling cabinets, not giving anyone anything. I won't quit doing to HD over that, but I will quit talking to your little sales weasels. I hate being rude to people who are just trying to make a buck, but don't waste my time with drivel like that.

Anyway, sorry for the minor derail. My point is that there's money to be made in just selling people what they need without a lot of annoying up/cross selling.

M99, aka etorphine. I enjoyed that show and had to look it up to see if it's real. It is.

Interesting. I had the same experience with one of the oxycodone + NSAID combos. I forget which one. Might have been vicodin. Anyway, I had a severe toothache that was going to be a Monday morning root canal. Oxycodone over the weekend was the pain management plan. I found it was less effective than the 600 mg of ibuprofin, so I quit using the oxycodone and went back to the IB. I was still in pain, but less pain.

Then every patron with a brain and a spine says "No thanks, I'll take my chances. I won't hold you liable if I lose it, which you wouldn't be anyway." Granted, there aren't many people these days with both, but I'll tell you where to shove your bus before I hand over my phone.

They probably cut science class one too many times and never took the make-up tests.

Exactly.

We should at the very least stop enabling the endless price hikes by putting the university's skin in the game. As it stands now, you can take out huge loans for college. The university gets their cash before you even enter the classroom. If they sell you a degree that is worthless, they don' t have to care (much). They still get paid. If you can't pay the loan, they don't care, they already got paid. You also can't generally default on the loan through bankruptcy, so those loaning you the money don't care if you ever make a dime back on the degree, either. They'll still get theirs.