I've worked at jobs far worse than McDonald's. One such job was so bad, that most people who started never returned from their first 10 minute break two hours after the start of their first day on the job. Yet, there was never any question in my mind that I was free to leave and, obviously, those who quit after two hours were also clear on that fact.

When the 55 mph speed limit was instituted, I kicked my speed up to 80 for most trips, reasoning that I was going to get a ticket anyway, I might as well get there sooner rather than later. Plus, trying to actually drive 55 caused me to drift off to sleep, even in the middle of the day.

I did much the same. Keeping my eyes on a swivel for cops kept me even more alert.

In all those years of the 55 mph limit, I was only pulled over on the freeway twice. One time the Highway Patrol officer just asked me to drive slower - I think I might have gotten off with a warning in that case because I was so attentive that I detected the cruiser well before he lit me up and slowed down and began moving to the right lane (it was night and back then you could pick them out due to the shotgun sticking up). The other time an airplane timed me -- there was no getting out of that. Planes were just too hard to see through the sun roof and figuring out if it was a Highway Patrol plane or just some weekend warrior pilot following the freeway was impossible.

When the 55 mph speed limit went the way of the dodo bird I actually began to drive slower as the risk of getting a ticket for 10 or 15 over wasn't worth the savings in time in most cases whereas the time saving to go the same speed rather than 55 was worth it.

Almost overnight in the area I live traffic began to flow better on the freeways when the 55 limit was lifted. Mostly this seemed to be because idiots who had actually been driving 55 (seriously - no one got a ticket for going less than 10 over anyway) "because it was the law" began to drive a rational speed. It only takes a few such idiots to mess up traffic. As well, although harder to be sure of, I think the number of people driving 80 dropped which may have helped the traffic flow a bit. A high variance of speed of vehicles is not conducive to high safe traffic flows.

"Freedom" is just that. It's not a "Guarantee of Utopia".

Given the opportunity without negative consequences probably three-quarters of the people would do NO productive work but instead pursue hobbies and interests that don't provide even basic services (drain cleaning) and products (such as food) to others. However such a society would mostly starve (the one-quarter who choose to work are very unlikely to hand the fruits of their labor over to the other three-quarters w/o just compensation).

Every person has the freedom to decide to work or not. But the consequences of deciding not to work are, to most, unpleasant enough to most that they choose to work. I can probably, within 1km of where I am at this moment, find several people who have made that choice (sometimes that choice is tied to a free decision they made to use drugs instead of work, sometimes that choice is tied to a free choice they made to eschew training/educational opportunities etc.).

If they choose to work, most people have many options in the current economy - although rising minimum wages in some areas may result in them having to move to do so if they have few skills and sketchy work experience which make them worth less than minimum wage to employers in the area they currently reside in.

Freedom is not the right to demand that others (including employers) provide for you. So, in that respect, you are correct in that some Americans have forgotten in recent decades what "freedom" is and have mistaken it for the right to demand, using the government's force, that others provide for them.

Why?

Most people work because they like to eat without hunting, live under a roof, etc. Most do not work for "fun" and even some of those of us who sometimes did would have preferred to eliminate the "non-fun" parts (such as interacting with incompetent idiots who hadn't yet been fired) from our jobs.

However, they can elect to work where ever they want -- assuming that their skills, education, training, attitude, work ethic, physical abilities cause that employer to have a strong interest in hiring them. Both sides have free choice - and this is true of Amazon and Amazon employees.

An Amazon employee actually has more freedom than Amazon the company in this matter. If an employee in a warehouse decides to terminate the relationship they run no risk of being sued by Amazon for that choice. On the other hand if Amazon decides to terminate the relationship Amazon has at least some risk of being sued by the employee for sexual harassment, discrimination against a member of a protected class, or other supposed (and often manufactured) violations of labor law.

The post under discussion was about the door plug incident.

As far as the 787 flight which, according to a passenger relaying what the pilot supposedly told them, lost instrumentation for 30 seconds. At this time we have little idea what actually happened. This incident may have been the result of a maintenance failure (the airlines are responsible for maintenance once Boeing turns the plane over), a "black swan" event caused by failure of a component that was fully tested and met all design standards, or any of a number of other things. I'd wait for the report from the relevant regulatory agency before jumping to conclusions.

Just because a Boeing airliner has a problem does not mean it's necessarily Boeing's fault.

Yes, Boeing does appear to need to tighten up its QA (although, driving to the airport is still far, far, far more dangerous than flying on a Boeing airliner operated by a US domestic carrier) to meet the hyper high standards modern "first world" air travel is held to. That, however, does not imply criminal behavior on the part of anyone.

There are always cost/benefit tradeoffs.

For example, requiring that every seat have a weight sensor and, if there's a butt in the seat, and the seat belt has been unfastened for more than 20 seconds an alarm is raised and the passenger is guilty of a crime would probably have prevented almost all the injuries on that "loss of instrumentation" flight -- yet, we are not willing to go to that expense or imposition and merely "recommend" rather than "require" that passengers keep their seat belts on whenever seated.

For another example, a 777 has three main hydraulic systems and each of them have some form of safeguards even within them. Any TWO can completely fail and the plane can still be safely flown and landed (with additional effort by the pilots and, for example, likely a less silky smooth touchdown). However if some day all three fail due to a very very rare, but possible, combination of failures (each of which is known to be possible) chance and results in a crash with deaths, would you think Boeing execs should be criminally charged because they didn't redesign the 777 to have ten redundant hydraulic systems (resulting in greater weight and maintenance costs and higher ticket prices)?

For that matter, do you think every driver who causes a fatal accident because they failed to anticipate a patch of "black ice" on a bridge in otherwise clear weather with no ice/snow on the "normal" roads should be convicted of manslaughter and imprisoned? After all, careful study of the weather, bridge construction, shade, thermal transfer, etc would have prepared the person to expect "black ice" and failing to do that study before embarking on their trip is what caused the accident. After all, people without advanced engineering knowledge shouldn't be driving.

Much as people hate to believe it, "good enough" applies to airplanes as well as everything else in life.

The US does have a safety net - no, it's not great and it's unlikely to result in a lifestyle that most people in the US would like to live (although, it beats the lifestyle from a "western" standpoint of many hundreds of millions of people worldwide).

Unemployment is low right now and jobs are plentiful - even low skill jobs in many areas. The alternative to working at Amazon is not (and should not be) sucking off the safety net - it's going down the street or moving to the next state if needed and getting another job. That's the choice I speak of.

Yes, most people in the US have little choice but to work to maintain the lifestyle they seek rather than a pretty dismal lifestyle. However they have the choice to work where they choose and, if necessary, to invest the time and energy to "upskill" to a better paying job. Realistically, it's ridiculous to to think that animals, of which humans are an example, won't spend most of their life working to feed, shelter, and procreate - that's their purpose in life. If no one needed to work to maintain the lifestyle they desire through some magical economic system, few would work and production would crawl to a halt. For example, few people would work cleaning sewer lines or pumping septic tanks as a hobby -- but these things need doing.

The US has a high degree of personal freedom and, with that, an expectation for people to earn their own keep if they are able to. Some, of course, choose to use drugs etc rendering them incapable of doing so, but that's their choice.

No one died in the "door plug" incident. Someone dying is an essential element of a "manslaughter" charge.

Perhaps there was a potential for death. But if you're in the development arena, do you think you should go to prison because you missed, for example, a defect during a code review and the defect could, theoretically, have caused a death?

Perhaps something like not properly recovering from a SQL insert failure caused by a deadlock in the underlying database in very rare circumstances resulting in the insert being silently swallowed and, subsequently, the possibility of a nurse giving an lethal overdose a few minutes later as they were unaware of the earlier drug administration -- even though all the bug actually caused was failure to charge a hospital patient $20 for one aspirin?

To imply that people who every day have the freedom to make a choice to go to work or not and even every minute of the work day have the freedom to make the choice to simply walk off the job (and get paid up through the last minute before they walked off) is dismissive of those who historically suffered from slavery and those, in some countries, who still do. It is, in fact, extremely insulting to such individuals.

The meaning of slavery is the practice or institution of holding people as chattel involuntarily and under threat of violence. It typically also results in being forced to perform labor of some form.

Not a single Amazon worker is a "slave" or anything close to it.

I've not looked beyond the /. summary, but...

Perhaps "signature" came up because a signature is what is used to validate that the person accepting a contract is, in fact, the person they claim to be. Traditionally this was a pen on paper (or stamp on paper) but now includes such things as digital signatures.

When claiming that another party entered into a contract there are couple things, among others, that the person making the claim needs to show:

(1) That the other party accepted the contract (vs. rejected it or simply didn't respond). This could be indicated by a "thumbs up" (vs. a "thumbs down").

(2) That the other party is who they claim to be rather than an imposter. This would traditionally be demonstrated by a "pen on paper" signature which is potentially compared to exemplars as needed. In the case of texting this could be simply that it is very likely that the person sending the text is the person who owns and uses the sending device exclusively.

be when possible ready and prepared to remove Timmy (where possible on an airplane it obviously isnt)

Timmy's parents should book flights only on Boeing 737 MAX 9s and make sure to sit near a plugged exit to simplify removing Timmy midflight.

Sometimes you need to transport babies.

Don't they fit in the overhead bins - at least if you don't overfeed them?

Generally I think "Constitutional originalists" and "conservatives" think these are good things while advocates of a "living constitutionalism" and "liberals" believe they are bad things.

Rational Democrats realize that they won't always be in the majority which is why they don't want to be the ones who squash the filibuster for legislation. They know it's quite possible that come January 20, 2025 Republicans will be in control of the Executive branch and both houses of Congress but won't have a 60 seat majority in the Senate. Without the filibuster, this would allow Republicans to pass anything they wanted for at least two years with barely a whimper from Democrats. Republicans feel similarly constrained because they know that Democrats will, some day, control the Executive branch and both houses of Congress.

Many remember that it was Reid, a Democrat, who used the "nuclear option" to eliminate the filibuster for all executive nominees' confirmation except for Supreme Court Justices. At the time, that probably seemed like a good idea to some although I warned at the time it was a bad idea that many may regret in the future.

Now I'm sure, if being honest, many regret Reid's actions as it greased the skids for the Republicans to extend it just slightly to include eliminating the filibuster for Supreme Court Justices with very little push back as, logically, it's hard to support eliminating the filibuster for some, but not all, nominees for lifetime appointments and the vast majority of cases that actually impact individuals are decided at the District and Circuit court levels anyway. The result has been Dobbs, Bruen. In the near future, it will likely also result in overturning more gun regulations at all levels and decimation of Chevron deference. The latter will result in elected members of Congress having to directly legislate on matters of importance rather than allowing them to shelter from accountability by delegating legislative power to administrative agencies which don't directly report to the voters and who don't get regular performance reviews at the ballot box.

It sounds like HP is pivoting to a new business model - that of compiling and selling "sucker lists" of gullible consumers to companies and scammers who find such lists very valuable in improving their "conversion rate".

If I could obtain a sizeable list of suckers who would fall for HP's deal as described here, I'd likely be very rich very quickly.

Four years of lost full time income seems like a pretty high stakes deal - esp. when you would acquire all those same skills, likely much better, by just working and not eschewing social contact for those four years.