In theory I agree 100% and Iâ(TM)d say the same thing. In practice itâ(TM)s different.

Thanks. I left the company about 3 years ago. There are still some residual health problems, but Iâ(TM)m doing well. Iâ(TM)m now freelancing for a small number of very good clients, including the one company that I always wanted to work for. So Iâ(TM)m in a good place :-) Leaving that job was one of my best decisions.

(This is a repost of a comment from a previous bullying discussion.)

If you've experienced workplace bullying first hand then you know what a destructive force it is. Your workplace becomes a place of dread and fear. The stress becomes not just a part of your daily life, but a part of who you are as a person. It changes you.

My own experience of being bullied began when I took a job with a company that had just promoted a long-standing employee in to a management position. He had no experience of managing people, he received no training, and he openly said that he didn't want the job. He was visibly stressed almost constantly, and resented that he was still expected to work and not just manage other people's work.

Very early in the job I was shouted at in the middle of a busy office for completing a task that should have been cancelled. It was a foul-mouthed and very personal tirade of abuse, accusing me of being untrustworthy, and came totally out of the blue. Then my manager realised that he had forgotten to mark the task as cancelled, and quietly in a private room away from other staff, he apologised and promised never to speak to me like that in front of people again.

The details of bullying incidents are generally repetitive and boring, so suffice to say, this was just the beginning of what became regular abuse: Shouted at in the middle of the office for things I had allegedly done wrong, and then apologised to in private.

I put up with the abuse for way too long. I'd spoken to my union rep and kept a bullying diary as advised, but I never started a grievance procedure. Colleagues said I should, and one day I ended up talking to the company secretary about it, but I backed off, determined to resolve the issue myself. Ultimately, I told myself, this is a case of two grown men having a clash of personalities, and I should be able to resolve it. But of course I couldn't.

After about a year I had to take time off work for an unconnected health reason, which seemed to go on a lot longer than one might expect. After a week back at work, I was off again with flu, which seemed to go on forever. My doctor was puzzled and I was sent to the hospital for tests. But in conversation with my doctor one time I mentioned about how it was actually quite nice to be off work because it was an escape from the bullying, and it was as if I'd said the magic word. My doctor was certain that the stress of being bullied was the root cause of my poor health. It explained everything. It turns out that a year of sleepless nights and constant anxiety isn't very good for you.

When I finally had to take formal action against my manager, the company was combative, and handled it on the basis that I was making it all up. I opted for the least "official" form of grievance, third-party arbitration, and my manager held his hands up to what he'd been doing and promised to change. Whether he could or not, I don't know, as I've not been well enough to return to work yet.

(Iâ(TM)ve since left that job and my career has gone from strength to strength ever since.)

You leave your door unlocked. Someone steals your TV. 100% your fault?

Here's something else that's moderately interesting. The Venn diagram of people who will never contribute anything to the world, and people who describe things as "meh" on the internet, is just a circle.

Web hosts and registrars are now the de facto controllers of mass publication. They have greater ability to censor unwanted speech than any government. It's scary how this has become common place, and all that happens in response is an over-intellectualised debate between "it's censorship" and "it's not censorship because it's not government" and "it's their house so it's their rules".

We've arrived in an era when large companies can censor unwanted voices, and all that happens is it becomes a talking point for a day or two and then is forgotten about.

I wish we could hear from people who have actually gone to war to defend our right to free speech. I wonder how supportive they are of Google and GoDaddy deciding who's allowed to talk?

I mean witness protection.

Why would a transport agency have any access to witness relocation data?

I found a similar flaw in a supermarket's self-service tills. Didn't report it for this very reason. I don't purposefully look for bugs/exploits, but if I did spot any more in future then I wouldn't report those either. My heart tells me to report them, but my head tells me no.

I had to sign one of these things when I left a company. They withheld wages until I signed. Totally illegal of course, but I needed the money.

If cinemas would do something about other people talking during movies then we'd go again. But they won't, so now we never go. The last 3 or 4 films we saw, we had to walk out partway through and get a refund. So we just don't bother anymore.

"We will get nowhere if everything keeps private; money isn't everything"

Then give your own stuff away for free.

Just to say, I enjoyed it. I especially liked the structure, which focused on the main law suit, before introducing the Thiel issue, and then moving on to discuss other issues. It packaged up a multi-layered story in a neat, easily-digestible bundle.

* Go to the search tab in the mobile twitter app. The search bar is hidden by default and you have to scroll up and click on it.

* Media player on PS4. Fast forward and rewind buttons go at an insane speed, i.e. you can skip through an entire film in a couple of seconds. There are YEARS of forum posts complaining about it.

* Pretty much everything on iCloud is broken and has been for years. Handoff, Airdrop and iMessage sometimes work, sometimes don't, and if you can't rely on something then it's useless. Apple support forums are full of workarounds but the faults are never fixed.

* Unity. So many broken features, never fixed. The latest release carried a huge list of impressive new features, but was greeted by hundreds of "will you ever fix XYZ" comments. The dirty secret of Unity development is that it's great for prototyping, but you need to custom write everything that matters. Right down to basic stuff like vector maths.

* Steam. For some games it asks your date of birth, which is remembered between sessions so you can just click ok. But occasionally it forgets, and if you click ok with the wrong date set then you can't access that game... ever. If you try to access it again then it says you're underage, with no option to enter the correct date.