The number of times I've needed a waterproof phone is zero and I spend a fair amount of time on boats

Science? Really? There's a lot of soft-brained, unscientific and technophilic pseudo-religion in the article.

Let's work with the argument's load-bearing phrase, "exploration is an intrinsic part of the human spirit."

There are so many things to criticise in that single statement of bias. Suffice it to say there's a good case to be made that "provincial domesticity and tribalism are prevalent inherited traits in humans", without emotional appeals to a "spirit" not in evidence.

Is it illegal if you are salaried? Or how about if you have to take a dump? Or if I think about a problem while eating dinner?

Salaried exempt is a fixed amount of pay per pay period regardless of the number of hours, so they aren't part of this discussion.
You dont' get extra pay for working more than 40 hours doing the same job as you do during regular hours, And they can't pay you less for working fewer hours one day either.

As a salaried worker.. there is no such thing as "clock in" / "clock out time", so it's an unrelated matter. If your employer reduces your pay for a difference in hours less than not working a whole day, then they lose the Overtime exemption.

Clocking out to use the toilet, sip coffee, answer the phone for non-work items, patting the dog's head.

They cannot. Many retail employers would do this with their minimum wage staff if the law allowed it.
This is also Illegal. Federal law prohibits deducting pay for breaks under 20 minutes; even if the employee was persuaded to agree.
Federal law states that breaks less than 20 minutes must be paid. The break has to exceed 20 minutes before the employer may clock you out.

Employers are required to pay for all time spent on breaks less than 20 minutes. The only thing they can do is track or limit your number and duration of breaks.

Employers: Cannot require clocking out for short breaks: It is illegal to dock pay for breaks under 20 minutes

Employers: Cannot impose unreasonable restrictions. That includes things such as not letting employees use the bathroom, or forcing them to take 20 minutes... locking bathroom doors and actions that cause delays, etc. Must allow restroom use as needed per OSHA rules / ADA rules in some situations. An employer cannot require bathroom breaks to be at scheduled times, either.

Melodramatically complaining about a 0.1ms

You have to know it takes much longer than 0.1ms to receive the SMS text messages containing a token.

Anyway it doesn't matter if it's 0.1ms or 8 hours. Wages are required to include all time spent on work-related activities required by the employer,
and rounding of times can only be performed when the system is both reasonable and does not consistently disfavor the employee.

Consistently shaving off a second of an employee's compensated time per day from when they are working is still an unlawful thing worthy of liquidated damages, and it will add up to numbers given enough days.

if you knew the terms for which you're being paid why did you stick to the job longer than say 4 to 8
Because you need money for you or your family to survive, possibly. And it may take you MUCH longer than 8 weeks to successfully obtain a replacement role that is any better.

It doesn't matter.. It is illegal for the employer. Not the part about waiting for Windows to boot, but failure to start the work clock including the time when the employee's duties start -- which includes all time taken for all necessary preparations required by the employer (including time for security checks, boot, etc), even though it is before they can start taking calls or working on their assigned tasks.

the security guard at the door wears a stab proof vest and is 6'5" tall. this is not like your neighborhood grocery store, this is downtown literally across the street from a major train station

This safeway is directly across the street from the main "downtown" caltrain station and also two muni rail lines (n judah and ... 4th st? 3rd st?) it's extremely high traffic and they regularly taze resisting shoplifters ,like, a couple times a day. It's both high revenue (mission bay is 14,000 pop/sq mile) and high "loss"/shoplifting. It doesn't surprise me at all that they've had to resort to this. Also "unhoused" encampments pop up along the southern side of the caltrain station on the regular as well as nearby overpasses which.... there's a lot of correlation between that and shoplifting. This is not a bright sunny suburban grocery store, it is part of the ground floor of a huge urban complex building with 600 condos on the 4th-16th floors a couple blocks from Uber and OpenAI headquarters, major genetech offices etc. Context matters.

In that case, I've got to tell you your duplicate post commenting about duplicate posts and duplicate replies is a duplicate.

It's duplicates all the way down.

Anybody could vibe code an online video game store backed by s3 in about 20 minutes, where is the monopoly? Before steam existed people distributed games on floppies and CD/DVD. Nobody is stopping you from selling your video games mail order, or on your own squarespace store or whatever. There's zero economic moat here. I routinely pay a premium to buy my games on steam because I don't trust the developer to keep track of my account or even keep their store up in 90 days.

Spam, spam, spam, eggs and spam didn't provide enough incentive to try to distinguish between humans and skin jobs, but now "AI slop" does? Ok, great!

Check the OpenPGP signature.

Unsigned? /dev/null.

Signed but no trust path? /dev/null

Signed and with a trust path? Can still be trash, but its claims to be of human origin, are worth taking seriously. If you find a problem (e.g. someone trusted the wrong person) then deal with that then.

Notable point: If you are a US citizen they might seize the device but you WILL be admitted into the country - a citizen cannot be denied entry.

If you don't cooperate with the search.. In theory you will be allowed entry as a citizen - probably yes - you just may be inside the US but in jail: without the property, and potentially you could possibly be on your way after a few days in detention -- Or possibly longer due to additional things officials are going to find to charge you with in retaliation for said noncooperation.

What if you don not have the codes for let say a company device?

I'm sure you could explain that to customs most likely, And they would probably let you go, but the device stays behind with customs until they can get into it. They will just hold the property as potential contraband until someone from the company calls and provides them access to search the contents of it.

A company with trade secrets does not allow them to be stored at rest on a laptop being flown overseas -- you probably have to acesss your work data through an online user interface.

So a reboot before going to places like customs etc can defeat these tools

Customs would be an example of an agency that does not need something like Celebrite for routine searches.. only in extreme cases would they.

If you power off your phone or reboot it or have it locked going through customs: Customs holds you at the gate and requires you to provide the passcode to unlock the phone or laptop. If you fail to provide the passcode: they seize the device, and you at the border. If they demand to search it: You aren't getting across the border through customs, and you aren't getting yourself or your property released, until you provide them with the keys.

Even if the people who know how didn't move on over the last few decades, surely they would have been fired some time in the last few months as part of the overall effort to weaken the US economy, health, and defenses.

Is there anyone left who knows how to do the job? Can they be hired back, after the Epstein shutdown is over?