That's a good point. Netflix is ideal as a home for indie movies. Keep the budget down, so that you can experiment without blowing too much money. It's where they try to make tentpoles happen that they fail spectacularly.

Seriously, the Electric State cost $320M? What did they do, use all practical effects? Build all the robots?

Stålenhag's novel was absolutely brilliant. The movie was terrible. It could be a textbook case in how to create a dumbed-down, overly-literal, rather feeble film that absolutely misses the point of the source material.

He's gonna enjoy prison...

Fandango is owned by the studios. Rotten Tomatoes is owned by Fandango. Do you really expect them to say "yeah, that last film we pushed out, wow, that one really sucked"?

"Professional" critics are kept in line by threatening to limit their access, without which they can't do their job. Huge negative differentials between critic ratings and audience ratings are passed off as review bombing.

Not to say this always happens. But if there's a half billion dollars at stake, you can bet the studios will call Fandango and tell them to bring RT in line.

So, I'll have to figure out another interface when all I really want is to get my work done. Fabulous.

As usual, Microsoft sees Windows as an application rather than an OS. So we'll get something really dramatic and unusable, there will be a huge outcry, and they'll eventually, grudgingly withdraw some of the more onerous "features". Just like last time. And the time before.

And Ma and Pa Kettle will continue to use their ancient PC as-is because they lack the patience and expertise to migrate to a new OS.

"U.S. authorities have secretly..."

So... nobody in China reads Slashdot?

It's true, in most cases, upper management and bean counters do not understand how things work.

But as much as it may annoy us, both the engineering row and the executive row have a purpose. Without engineering, you'd have nothing to sell. (Witness companies that laid off their engineering staff as a cost savings measure, then went under when their queue emptied.) But without the executive row, you may have something to sell, but no way to sell it. Then the company gets bought and gutted. Or just closes its doors.

Yeah, let's give some third party with no stake in the company all the passwords. That'll totally end well.

...that the "debilitating" breach was not its fault. It had outsourced the "service desk" part of...

Dudes.... that's totally your fault.

It doesn't benefit the US work force at all. Just pointing out the perception that it benefits US companies.

Illegal tasks like cooking data, as just one example.

Combine this with diploma mill issues, and the company can end up with a department ill-equipped to do the job, ill-equipped to communicate results, poor ethics with little accountability, and just generally a way to siphon off funds. But it looks good on paper.

"1. No limits on working time. Salaried employees end up volunteering for the company they work for after 40 hours. If they don't work this unpaid overtime, they will be subject to progressive discipline up to and including termination."

And termination often isn't a matter of just finding another job but having to go back to country of origin, where jobs are scarce to nonexistent. This makes the threat of termination a huge, career-threatening thing, which tends to promote servitude. Which makes the manager's job easier and is more beneficial to the company.

Essentially slave labor.

A company I worked for gradually replaced the entire division with H1b workers, and I witnessed first hand that these workers essentially lived in their cubicles, occupying them all hours of the day and night. This was expected of them, on pain of being sent home.

A simple change to the labor laws, limiting the number of hours a salaried employee can be expected to work to say, 50 hours, on pain of high penalties, (or something similar) might go far to cut the heart out of this H1b scam.

Speaking as someone who's entire department was gradually replaced with H1b workers (not complaining at all, as it led to a better paying job) I observed as the replacement process went on, that the incoming workers tended to work 70 - 80 hour weeks, essentially living in their cubicles, and tended to be more completely under control of their H1b boss. They tended to have no local family, once a year going back to their respective countries to be with family for a few weeks, before coming back for another year of nothing but work and sleep. Essentially mid-salary indentured servitude.

So, if costs go down and productive hours go up, and (I think) overhead goes down, (as, I believe they were contractors rather than full time, so reduced benefits costs (this is speculation as it's outside my visibility)) why wouldn't a company encourage this?

Once years ago at a family gathering, some of us were on the roof seeing if we could spot Mir going overhead.

While we were waiting, grandfather, who had a draft deferment during WWII due to being in the defense industry, told a story whereby his foreman told the team that something special was about to happen. They all went to the roof and he directed them to look east. Grandfather said that about a half hour later there was a brilliant flash on the horizon. Nothing was said about what it was, but later he pieced together that it must have been the first test in New Mexico.

No idea if this is true, but it's a neat story.

...Just sayin'...

Dude. That's been going on for a while.