This is both a "power corrupts" situation, and a "necessary evil" situation.

Without collective bargaining, corporations egregiously exploit their workers. This will always happen, reliably, every time corporations exist, no matter who runs them, because the imbalance of power is like the ring of Mordor. Even pure-hearted Frodo will fall to corruption eventually.

So, employees need collective bargaining in order to receive fair and decent treatment, and the only way to get that is Unions.

Once unions establish themselves, however, THEY wind up being corrupted by power as well. The union administrators make quite a lot of money at their jobs, and they sure don't want that to dry up, so once things are going well for their workers they have to start asking for "even more" in order to justify their continued existence. Including asking for things that are unreasonable. They may also engage political and/or economic leverage to basically force people to be members of their union whether they want to or not. More people = more power = more money and so on.

So it is easy to point at this end-result, which is clearly bad, and say "see? Unions are bad. We should reject them." But without them the results are even worse. Much worse. So, they are necessary evils. The best we can do is group up and muster collective leverage (by voting and etc.) to push back against the evils of Unions, while still benefiting from the good that they also do.

Aside: business owners have a direct financial incentive to hate unions whether they are evil or not. So they will usually advice against abiding unions, regardless of any other detail, and will naturally overplay the evils and downplay the goods in order to make their case.

Linux is the most common operating system around (Android). BSD is right after (iOS). Windows is a distant third.

As for GNU/Linux (not Android), most people who use it, use it for real work. It's a programmer's OS.

I wonder if this has anything to do with the general lack of open positions, leaving people facing fears of income stability and reigning in discretionary spending.

Maybe that few-years-old gas-powered car that is still perfectly functional is preferable to a pricey upgrade to a shiny new car with fewer gas stations and longer refuel times.

The emotional satisfaction of living an environmentally-friendly lifestyle is going to take second seat to practical realities, especially during uncertain economic times.

CompTIA: another for the list of, "I can't believe that company is still around."

The thin phone is a lie, and the memes are rather hilarious.

They basically have a viral marketing campaign against their phone going on.

From Sony's perspective, the ISP is the absolute *best* target here. Not only is the ISP a bottleneck through which almost-all copyright infringement happens now (thus making it the perfect place to greatly block it), but Sony gets to make some other business incur all the costs and consequences of enforcement, including eating the profit loss, while Sony rakes it in.

Sony doesn't care in the slightest if entire households are harmed because one member infringes in secret, nor if that harm is actually very grievous since Internet access is now essential for daily life (and even having a job) in most of the developed world. If families starve on the streets because of this, they think that's great, as it will serve as an example to all those other evil pirates!

So, they will keep pushing for this with all their might, because they have a mountain to gain and nothing but legal fees to loose. Maybe they will lose a little public goodwill, but they are too rich to care about that.

Sony did this twice, as I recall. After being hit with a class action lawsuit and forced to do reparations, they just went out an did this a second time. And got hit with a class action lawsuit a second time, too.

Probably most of the decision-makers who were involved in those decisions have moved on by now. It's probably safe to assume that this is a different Sony. Does that mean they deserve a benefit of the doubt? Absolutely not, since all evidence here indicates that the new boss is the same as the old boss.

Sony cares about profits, and will trample families and laws underfoot to achieve them, just like all the other big businesses who are rich enough to get away with it.

Agreed. The promise that limiting renter's choice to a single provider would result in beneficial cost savings was one of those lies that everyone knows is a lie the moment they hear it, yet everyone with decision making power pretends it is the truth (and many other adjacent parties just thoughtlessly repeat it).

Similar to "this merger will allow us to eliminate wasteful spending on competition and thus offer higher quality service at lower prices, without firing anyone!"

Or "disallowing third parties from making repairs will keep our clients safe"

I could go on, but I wouldn't be saying anything novel or revelatory.

There are other forms of crazy that also motivate self-cutting. Some forms of dissociative identity disorder include strong feelings of being fake, as in not a real person. One might think they are a robot or an animated manikin or similar. Of course this sounds unrealistic (and unlikely) to most of us because we don't experience this. But for people who suffer these episodes, they are extremely disturbing.

So they cut themselves to see their own blood. It helps alleviate the anxiety of the condition. Seeing their own blood helps ground them in their sense of being an actual living creature. Apparently, feeling the pain can help with this too. Though if episodes are lengthy, one cut isn't enough, because the blood dries and resembles plastic, which adds more fuel to the fire.

On a different spectrum, as I understand, there is "sympathy-seeking" cutting, where people cut themselves so their injuries will be seen by others who will then offer support and sympathy and attention. Our society tends to take a pretty dim view of this one, seeing it as mere selfishness or immaturity. Which it may be, in some cases. But in cases of extreme feelings of isolation, loneliness, rejection, etc., the emotional imbalances are enough to drive on to depression and suicide, so it can actually be indicative of a serious condition, and a legit cry for help.

I have read about religious cutting as well, as in "stigmata," where a person internalizes an expectation that this should be happening to them (from their religious upbringing) and experiences cognitive dissonance when it doesn't happen for too long, and wind up doing this to themselves with only semi-awareness so they can then surprise themselves at the discovery of the injury mere moments later.

"Ok class, the next time anyone disrupts class with an outburst like that, they will go into detention. Furthermore, any time any one of you does this, you are all getting extra homework assignments for the day, that will affect your grade."

Back it up with action.

Of course, I have never worked as a teacher and have no idea what the problem with this is. I wonder if someone with my "punish disobedience" attitude just wouldn't succeed as a teacher, these days.

Apparently they've been building it since the 80s.

What's wrong with PDF as a format? Compared to HTML/CSS, it's positively elegant.

Management isn't dumb. They have incentives that are different than yours, and they chase their own incentives.

If you're a startup, you're breaking other people's things. You don't have any of your own stuff to break.

If you put an object into a list, queue, stack or hashtable, then you need to have a plan to remove it otherwise you have a memory leak.