Wow. I had a similar experience working a dead-end job as security back in my college years.

Busted my ass making a remote facility that everyone hated into a pleasant place to work. Had a manager change at HQ followed by military service (Desert Storm). Suddenly, on my return, i went from star employee to crap employee without changing a thing. It ended with my being sent home with "no available hours for you to work this week" to an on-call basis. I filed a complaint with the legal folks at the USN as this happened immediately after my return. They told me they had bigger fish to fry and said they'd send a strongly worded letter to my employer, but that was it. That letter did get their attention.

Got called into corporate where I was told I wanted my old cushy position because I was a lazy good for nothing POS as a corporate lawyer watched in the background. Said when they have time for me on the schedule, they'd call me, don't call them. It's been 30 years now and they never had any more hours become available. They never fired me either. Filed for unemployment, they contested it. The person at the EEOC said what they were doing was illegal, but they sided with the employer anyway.

I managed to squeak in before the pensions were all canned at my company. I do not pay anything into it. The company puts money in the pension fund for me and with proper investing, should grow and maintain itself. The newer employees get a 401k, where they basically fund their own pension. I have a 401k myself, but I get a 33% lower company match percentage than my pensionless co-workers.

Now if we want to look at government employee pension funds, that's an entirely different story. Didn't fund enough? Made some bad investments? Just raise taxes to cover it.

If it is truly a novel design, it should be patented for his protection. He can always amend the patent or apply for additional ones for any improvements to the initial design. I do not understand why he does not file immediately - unless the whole thing is actually a farce.

Better than a ziplock bag full of dirt with "Puto" written on it.

I wonder how many here remember that little story?

Maybe it's bluster, or a side-show for something bigger - be it a blockade or full scale invasion.

China watched the reaction of the West when it came to Ukraine. It probably knows that an attack on Taiwan would bring about a similar reaction.

However, in this case they can look to the U.S. and Pelosi and claim that they did not start it. They warned about the repercussions of a visit, and as long as they can put the blame somewhere else besides themselves, they have a once-in-25 year opportunity - right now - to do it.

One may think that China isn't fooling anyone with this - but that hasn't stopped them from denying human rights abuses, conducting land grabs from neighboring countries, blaming COVID on the US Army (or anyone as long as it is not them) and claiming a huge chunk of ocean, ignoring an international tribunal in the process.

What is alarming to me was how fast they managed to mobilize and pull off this military exercise. Sure, they must have been planning for it, but pulling it off so quickly also shows how damn well they are prepared for this.

There were a couple of them that depended on DPS. One of which was WordPerfect for NeXTSTEP. Everything on that system was display postscript, and it was a joy to use back in the day. The other was WriteUp. Used both back in the day. WriteUp seemed a bit more "modern", but it had a tendency to (rarely) corrupt save files. WP (especially the 1.0.1 release), was great. What was on the screen was truly what you got on the printer - a big deal for the early 90's.

That's in order to get a severance package. You do not have to sign anything to get wages earned from hours worked or accrued vacation time.

The "not on the books" is key:

If you leave a company, PTO is considered time/money owed to the employee. You have 2 week's worth saved up, you get two weeks pay added to your last paycheck. With UPTO, there isn't any. You quit or get laid off - you get your hours for that pay period, and that's that.

It's just a scam employers dreamed up to enrich themselves and put a pretty bow on it. The problem is, it'll start to spread throughout the industry.

Perhaps it has. Back in the day, I was at a rally for Ronald Reagan at Pierce College in 1984. Several protesters were there and behind me as scuffle broke out when someone tore an anti-Reagan picket sign out of someone's hand, and shoved him to the ground.

I took the sign back and handed it back to the guy, who thanked me. My friends who were there were surprised, as I was a big supporter of the GOP then. I told them he had every right to be there, just like we did. To the two idiots who instigated the situation, I pointed out the snipers on the top of the press box in the stadium who were now had a sudden interest in our particular area of the crowd.

Better than amassing an invasion fleet, only to get it swallowed by a very small dog.

Every time an article like this comes up:

The Killing Star a very good read.

I can understand flying with minimal crew and no passengers, but airlines also serve as conduits for package delivery as well. Are these flights coming with with empty cargo holds? I would think that the airlines would carry airmail and express delivery cargo in the hold to offset the cost. Since COVID ran rampant, there's a lack of shipping options - and the airlines are not one to miss a profit opportunity.

That link you mention is one click down from an article on "Smurf Sex" (go find it yourself) on a NSFW site... My recommendation is to revisit this after you get home and enjoy old internet stories from 20+ years ago.

Back in 2009. my kid took AP Comp Sci in high school. The class was a literal joke. Most of the exercises were comprised of:

Here is an example of a for loop that counts from 1 to 100. Modify this loop so it counts to 100 by 10's. Car and parking lot examples where most of the code is written and you need to modify only a few variables or the car object to add a trait or two (manual vs automatic transmission).

Kid scored A in the class, with nearly 100%. The AP test was a disaster, with a score of 1. Retook the class in college and got another A in it.

The problem:
Kid had no ability to write code from scratch, only patch existing code.

So teacher prep is definitely an issue.

Calling CueCat, where an XOR was used for DMCA purposes. Was that really 22 years ago? I'm getting old.