I think the description in his resignation goes far beyond the sickness you describe. In big business it gets broken up, either by intervention or by just firing everybody. This is far beyond just not working.

One paragraph of the resignation letter that shows it off spectacularly:

"On another occasion I asked your deputy why you didn’t conduct an evaluation by the Op-Divs of the immediate office administrative services to try to improve them. She responded that that had been tried a few years ago and the results were so negative that no further evaluations have been conducted."

So the person in charge says they tried to make it better years ago, but the environment was such a cesspool that they decided to not even bother trying to make it better.

How do you even...?

Because:

- The pay is 2-3x what I could get paid at established firms
- The relationship-starting practices actually make sense (an interview amongst humans, often with C-levels, rather than with an HR-drone, and forms of testing that involve work on-product, rather than abstract and unrelated HR games).
- They are thankful to have me and pleasant to work with (as opposed to confronting the HR bureaucracy and middle management)
- I get better titles and better status/authority within the firm

I do good work, I produce value, and the startups that I work with see that and can measure it quantitatively. Established firms could if they wanted to, but that's the point: they don't want to. They want to pay you as little as they can get away with, and have you as silent and head-hung as they can get you to be.

I stopped working for stodgy HR- and middle-management-heavy firms years ago. It basically sucked, and was soul-sucking.

Companies want to talk about making yourself competitive in the labor market, then bitch and moan when those that will pay get all the hot talent?

Oh noez! Whatever will we do!?

I'd say that if someone gets paid $big_bucks at $hot_startup, they're entitled to it. If you want them, pony up.

company now:

- Pays less
- Is less secure
- Is a shitty environment
- Offers dwindling benefits
- And little respect

You're cannon fodder, that's all.

At startups and companies with that "hot startup" attitude (there are a few established companies that do this), you're the core of the business, the brains of the operation, worthy of any perks or cash they can throw at you.

Who wants to work where they're completely undervalued when they can work where they're (if anything) overvalued?

Make the salary at least reasonable, the hiring practices sane, the benefits good, and the job security reliable, and you'll find that a lot of young people are willing to work at stodgy old firms, just like they used to.

Employees are just tired of being treated like shit. These days hot startup > freelance/consult > established firm when it comes to the deal you get as a worker.

I'd think that $50B would go a long way to making something more sensible than wind/solar (Which are still and will be a boondoggle with $50B poured into it (Where in the heck do you store energy so that it's sustained instead of feast/famine? Right now, you can't realistically replace coal with either- and without the storage tech to MAKE it so...it's a waste of time and money, bluntly put...)- which would be Thorium reactors.

Correct, with decades of measurements it was estimated to be about 40 solar masses, but now that is being revised thanks to the smaller star.

It is shedding lots of mass and is not very compact, and appears to be fluctuating internally and exploding externally. It is likely near the end of its life. So the outer shell appears to be 1315 times the diameter of Sol, but coming in at 40 Msun most of that is probably fairly sparse.

Note that "end of its life" for a star is a really long time. At that size their life is relatively short for a star, about 5 million years, so it could possibly have a half million years left. Generations from now we could have interstellar ships visiting the star for additional research. I mean, even if it takes a thousand years for us to get the technology for fast interstellar travel plus the 12,000 light years of distance, the star will likely still be in its final stages. As for what will happen, nobody knows. It might collapse as a supernova, but astronomers can only speculate at the conditions that cause supernova; there have been no observed supernova in our galaxy since 1604, and the telescope data from that time doesn't exactly tell us details about the size and type of star involved. We can make educated guesses based on supernovae in distant galaxies, but those also are rather sparse on pre-collapse details.

Supernova is only one possible outcome. It might eventually become a blue supergiant. It might eventually become a blue variable. If it eventually collapses the mass is near enough the 40 Msun boundary that both neutron stars and black holes are possible options. If it eventually collapses to a black hole quickly it could skip the dramatic show, it would just visibly vanish. If it eventually collapses slowly a supernova is possible, as are less energetic options. There is even the option of a double collapse, first to neutron star then to black hole, which possibly could result in a hypernova. It is also possible that a series of partial collapses could cause pieces to explode and break up rather than collapse, making a fun fireworks show lasting for ages. But really there is insufficient data; there are not enough data points to know what is going to happen. It might be fun to speculate, but like most stars we probably won't see anything interesting happen in our lifetimes. With our measly 100 year lives we can only record the tiniest window of the lifetime of stars.

Maybe, probably not, but there is not enough data to know. It's been over four hundred years since the last recorded supernova in the Milky Way, and telescopes weren't that great in 1604. (Also the standard note about time and distance in astronomy, the star's light we see today is from about 12,000 years in our past. We cannot see today, we see the past.)

There is not enough data to say what will happen, and there are only a few major options for a star that size: partial collapse, full collapse, or ablation.

It might go through a series of partial collapses, with many small contractions end up ejecting huge chunks of the star, then re-expanding, and themselves re-exploding on their way out. This seems to be a fairly normal end-of-life pattern. Basically the core works like a fireworks launch platform as we see in summertime displays. Eventually the remaining core might be collapsed or not, but the show will be enjoyable. The result is a small nebula.

It might collapse into a neutron star. It might even collapse to a black hole. Either of these collapses MIGHT lead to a supernova, or maybe even a hypernova, or have a bunch of gamma bursts, or, most boring, nothing much at all; it just collapses with a (relatively mild compared to supernova) explosion and the outer layers blow away. Modern astronomers never seen it happen up close, so everything is a guess. Now that the partner is known people might be able to make a better guess, but it is still a guess. Depending on when it explodes, if ever, it will likely form a big nebula.

The actual article says the larger star is rapidly shedding mass. If it is throwing enough mass out fast enough (which will be affected by its binary partner) it will shrink enough to avoid a core collapse. In that case it will throw out a bunch of mass and in a few centuries appear as a small nebula.

But again we don't know what will happen because there are no similar data points. If you are looking for nearby stars to go supernova, there is a short list of known supernova candidates that we can watch. Otherwise the supernova we see are from distant galaxies where we can only speculate about.

Some schools do. Back in my academic days in the 1990s, my school (a state university) partnered with the local AFB for such things. Some of the people in the lab spent half their day working on fighter jet programs and other systems on the base. In exchange a lot of people got recruited by the base and by the base's contractors as civilian programmers before graduation.

However, I note in the story that they businesses are looking for a specific class of programmers: The low-paid programmers who have enough background to be useful but not enough background to demand a high salary.

Specifically the businesses are looking for people with one year of training on how to use the language. Those who graduate from the program will likely enjoy a few years on the job --- probably paid a living wage for those few years --- and then will be dumped when they start asking for professional wages.

Contrary to what those business want you to believe, there is not a shortage of programmers. Instead, there is a mismatch between what the businesses want to pay versus what programmers believe they should earn. Skilled programmers provide valuable services, are very much white-collar workers, and are able to demand a high salary just like doctors, lawyers, pilots, architects, and other highly-trained, highly skilled professionals. Businesses who pay well have no difficulty finding skilled and talented programmers. Businesses who pay their programmers the same rate as their hourly call center workers, well, they get the quality they paid for.

Software runs the world. I wouldn't want a minimum-wage physician, or a minimum-wage airline pilot, or a building designed by a minimum-wage architect. I similarly wouldn't trust custom-built software written by minimum-wage programmers.

Yes, I can come up with a thousand free market answers. And yes, that pretty much answers your question.

Would you buy a vehicle from any company whatsoever if you knew that parts were difficult to acquire? A manufacturer can play a game with parts availability only if they don't plan to stay in business.

Maybe we should go back to renting our phones from ATT as well.

Both, because you need to multiply it by planes in service.

A few seconds on Google shows there are around 20,000 registered commercial airliners, and around 145,000 registered aircraft (including commercial aircraft, corporate jets, personal airplanes, military aircraft, and so on.) It doesn't include non-registered aircraft, of which there are many.

But the costs multiply. So when you start with $100K for the device plus installation, you are looking at $14B for the first pass. Then your small annual fee multiplies to perhaps fifty million every year in upkeep and service fees.

If you are talking about a major aircraft like a commercial B777 passenger craft, the installation and upkeep is relatively small. These massive aircraft are expensive to buy and maintain. The amortized cost per passenger over a year's flights is going to be a fraction of a cent.

When you are talking about smaller craft like the super common Cessna 172, the device is going to be about 1/4 of the cost of the airplane. All the little utility aircraft are the most common type of aircraft, even though most of us only associate airplanes with the giant cargo jets and passenger flights.

Ultimately let's assume they are looking around $14B initial investment plus $50M/year continuous cost. All of that money to get a little information once every few years when an airplane gets lost over the ocean. Is it worth it? Perhaps it is worth it for the large commercial passenger airlines, but not for all aircraft.

NPOV is a lofty goal, but not a firm promise. For niche fields it can be difficult or impossible to find enough sources to present a neutral view.

This is why Wikipedia policy prefers secondary sources but will still accept primary sources when few or none exist. The policy allows for the encyclopedia to have accurate information with proper references (yet written with a bias) rather than for the encyclopedia to have no information on the topic at all. The policy clearly allows articles written by the closely-affiliated experts citing only primary sources when the material is noteworthy. Such articles are less likely to be neutral, but they are still valuable.

There are broad topics that millions of people understand and sources are plentiful. These articles have no problem with NPOV. However, many articles are about niche fields or niche topics. Generally the experts in the field also work in the field. The experts on a particular business often work in that business. The experts on a specific technology often are intimately familiar with it.

Was probably a typo on the parent post. The stats more clearly stated:

South Africa has the highest rape statistics on the world.

Approximately 40% of women in the country are rape victims.

Approximately 30% of women are raped before they are 18.

Approximately 17% of girls are raped before age 10.

Approximately 25% of adult males openly admit to committing rape, mostly as gang rape

Approximately 10% of adult males admit to raping a child.

None of the things will protect against theft.

The thief will still pick your pocket. When they get back to their evil lair, they will find it is password protected. If they try to break the protection (which is easy with the right tools) they will find it is encrypted. Then they will trash the device or perhaps attempt to sell it. For you it doesn't matter, your device is still stolen and must be replaced.

There are tons of tools out there to make backups so restoration is easy on a new device. But your device is still stolen and must be replaced.

Actually the SCOTUS has shown they are more than willing to learn about something required for them to do their jobs.

Go back a few years when they had a specific case about video games and free speech in 2011. They set up a lab and played the ultra-violent games for a few days, both online and off, to help make a decision. (All of them agreed with the free speech, two dissented saying it was not regulating speech, but was regulating the sale of products.)

Historically the judges have been willing to get their hands dirty and view the gritty details when they are called to review them for a case. They have traveled to remote locations, dug through physical evidence, and gotten their hands dirty. They may not be hardcore gamers or telecom experts, but when it comes to ruling on the law they are making determinations based on the exact wording on the law. Such a decision can be made based on reviewing the facts, reviewing details provided by experts, and looking at the specific items enough to satisfy their opinions.

I paid $600 at one point for a used full-height hard drive that was made out of a solid hunk of alloy for the first hard drive for my PC.

So?

Way to let the point fly over your head.

By the time we were mid-'90s, we could get backup solutions that were—yes—$1,000 to $3,000 for the mechanism and $15-$30 for each piece of media.

But they:

- Would cover the space of most consumer drives at the time within 1-4 cartridges
- Would thus backup your entire consumer data library for $50-$150 per complete backup

This can't be done any longer. Not even close.

My point wasn't to get into a "history" pissing match. Sheesh, yes, also back in the day there were no such things as digital computers or hard drives or printing presses or even written script and everything had to be passed along as oral tradition, which meant that the cost of a backup was the cost of a human life.

As I said, this misses the point entirely. One might have hoped that in the process of getting here from the mid '90s we'd have gone forward rather than backward on the ability to make backups on removable storage media.