So the stock buybacks were to preserve the finance department and the lawyers' jobs?

"But Tufekci concludes that "Ultimately, the problem is that we haven't built a regulatory environment where companies have incentives to address technical debt, rather than passing the burden on to customers, employees or the next management.... For airlines, it might mean holding them responsible for the problems their miserly approach causes to the flying public.""

It's not up to the government to hold them responsible; that's the stockholder's and the board of directors' job. With the amount of money they lost and the stock losing almost 10% of its value, this isn't going to be swept under the rug.

Once "addressing Southwest's technical debt" has started and that camel's nose is in the tent...where will it end? And with whom?

"It used to be they were careful to use American regional accents. I hear there are schools for that in India, intended for legit call center workers. But these days they just go ahead with whatever accent they happen to have. I guess they figured out for someone stupid enough to fall for the scam it doesn't make any difference."

Haha. I had one hang up on me when I asked "the manager" why he, the person who answered the phone initially, and all the people I could hear chattering in the background all had Indian accents....when he said they were in Florida.

...t"hat have put India under the threat to be termed as the hub of such illegal call centres"

Who doesn't consider the to be the hub? I almost pity a legitimate call center person with an Indian accent as s/he is automatically presumed to be a scammer.

In other shocking developments, kittens nap and water seeks its lowest level.

I've had a real ID from my state for almost 10 years . It ain't rocket science here....

The simpler solution is to eliminate exclusive area franchise agreements. Competition will eliminate that kind of predatory pricing.

First Law
A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
Second Law
A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
Third Law
A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

He got impressed into the Russian army.

But it also means that you won't be reading others' tweets and consuming ads whilst doing so.

Yah, they need to be revamped. It's kind of unconscionable that they'll send a truck to deliver a shipment containing a $6 widget next day (just last week....). They have to still pay the shipping contractor so they're losing their ass on that $6 widget. Multiply that by thousands of times per day....

Remember, these are the morons that think the election was stolen, in spite of the fact that that would require the cooperation of 10's of thousands of people participating and keeping it a secret, not to mention the down-ballot elections that skewed Republican were untouched. 3 people can't even keep a secret much less that scale.

Trump spam calls are what got me to drop my landline in 2016:

Me calls to cancel landline.
ILEC: "So, OP, is there anything we can do keep your business?"
Me: "Can you stop Donald Trump from calling me?"
ILEC: "I'm afraid not."
Me: "Cancel that sucker."

Isn't you marking them as spam also protected political speech?