This is a perspective that some people need to learn to accept. There are those that don't care and there are those that care too much, but too few that understand that climate change is normal and that our planet is capable of sustaining itself regardless of what we do. If you look at the last century of weather data, you get one perspective, but if you look at larger sample sizes, it goes up and down based on what is needed as a reaction to everything else going on. The only reason to fight climate change is if you are concerned that it is going to impact you so significantly that you won't be able to function. Most urban areas aren't going to turn into desolate deserts, but the African equatorial countries will have to become less inhabited. Maybe they can move to Antarctica since parts of that continent will become habitable. In technology we talk about disruption as a good thing, but in environmental science we talk about it like it's a bad thing. Pick a lane folks! Change is good, but it's not like 3mm of moss growth a year is going to reach you in Chicago for another eon, so chill out!

With Facebook being a major supporter of net neutrality and not letting corporations pick winners and losers, rather creating laws that give the public that choice, doesn't this whole thing seem a bit hypocritical?

Just saying...

I think you misread the question. Which one would you give up first, not which one do you want to keep.

Facebook does nothing for us. It simply promoted IRC to the masses and spread the generally toxic expositions that anonymity used to provide to a general sounding board where so many people share idiotic click bait, that it has become impossible for the sheeple to decipher truth from reality. Everything from flipping a bottle and OMG it landed upright to the latest BS "news" that is simply some moronic editorial is enabled by Facebook. Working with them as a company (not for them, but as a "partner") is an exercise in futility as they bully folks around with their "we are bigger and better than you" attitude and eventually taking enough to build their own version of whatever your partnership was enabling. I can't wait to watch the fiery decline and eventual death of Facebook.

Amazon, on the other hand, actually DOES SOMETHING for me. They make the shopping experience easier and less time consuming. They enable competition between comparable products and comparable companies that are selling the same thing so that I can make better informed purchases for potentially less money. Zero votes for them in the early going and, I'm pretty sure, that is the reason. They are actually trying to make life easier.

Microsoft, Google and Apple are simply middlemen in the current technology state. They provide options for getting us to the end result, either through their OS/Browser or hardware. We may have preferences between those, but in the end, Facebook is a horrible product and Amazon has a solid service model providing easy access to awesome products.

Spot on.

Any company that replaces an employee with an H1-B worker is intentionally breaking the law. While the "unemployment rate" doesn't look all that bad, the fact is that we have many technology workers that are out of a job because of this abuse. I caught up with a good friend of mine this week who is out of a 17 year old network engineering job because they are laying people off at Verizon and hiring H1-B folks to do the work. We've seen new stories about Disney doing the same. Com Ed (an Excelon company) has been accused of this in the midwest. The Nielsen company has been doing this for years and signed a multi-year/multi-BILLION dollar contract with Tata Consulting Services and forced managers to replace employees with TCS H1-B workers. Walgreens has done the same with their technology folks claiming to only be "supplementing their staff" when these are full time jobs, not part time or short term "contract" engagements. Time and time again we are seeing this and it is killing our industry.

Here's another story about this just a few weeks ago: https://yro.slashdot.org/story...

The frightening reality of this is that not only are our jobs being taken away, but these companies are bringing on completely incompetent staff through these H1-B programs. Seriously, a program that was designed to bring in qualified individuals when local qualified individuals cannot be found is literally hiring people that are NOT qualified to do the job!
https://developers.slashdot.or...

It is abuse. It is illegal. It is one reason why this country has taken such a sharp turn towards isolationism in this last election and is willing to tolerate someone like Donald Trump as their President. Most folks I know that voted for him are saying "Yea, he's got a ton of faults, but at least we might be able to keep a job."

This issue has got to be addressed and, in my opinion, the senior executives at companies that have made the conscious decision to replace US workers with H1-B workers should have criminal charges levied against them just like those Wall Street folks that lied and cheated their investors. I am fed up with seeing this over and over again with nothing done about it.

Yet you are probably still all angry about net neutrality going away... You think your ISP needs to check your browsing history when you've created a public life? You probably think Google/Facebook don't know what sex toys you're interested in either since you used "used incognito mode"...

Wish I had some points because I would totally mod this up. That is such a good point! Seriously, there are more pictures that people will regret in 2 years and posts about the most idiotic things imaginable that much of humanity has no right to privacy because they are publicising their entire life anyway!

Yea that's why Illinois (Obama's home state and the birthplace of the democratic machine) is seeing higher rates of people leaving than ever before and Texas is seeing huge growth. Poor argument saying people want to be there because they are "nicer".

Insane taxes to fund a bunch of state regulations is just as stupid as the Federal ones. If you want anonymity on the internet, buy a service that routes you through something that adds anonymity. Everyone here knows that. This is Slashdot not an Apple forum. Your personal preferences are not a commercially protected right. If you want something, you usually have to pay for it. Everyone is looking for secondary means of revenue. Identifying people's online habits is the #1 selling commodity and marketing is one of the top spending areas for most companies. This is capitalism at it's finest and I'm fine with it. Sure beats the far extreme of the left with government running everything and deciding what you can and can't see on the internet (i.e. China)

I agree with the customer service aspect. Apple is light-years ahead of most PC manufacturers including those with "good customer service" like Dell. Having had a variety of experiences with each, I definitely prefer the Apple experience.

Part of me thinks that this article should be modded down as flamebait, but I was having a pretty boring day too so I guess I'll grab some popcorn.

If you click through your Windows configuration like you click through an EULA, you probably missed this, but there are a ton of options regarding how updates are applied...

Fellow parent here and I agree. Another good example is gaming. I love counter-strike. I have for almost half of my life, to be honest, but I'm not letting my son play it at this point. Why? Not because there are guns and violence. It's because of the toxicity and language of the other kids that are playing. He's asked me many times if he can play and, just like League of Legends I say no. These communities, just like many social networks, are simply not conducive to healthy psychological development.

Well played.

That is exactly what I was thinking as I was reading this. Most companies that I've worked for "own" any IP that I build using company resources including company time. If you are bringing your personal laptop in and working on it only during your personal lunch time or something, you might have a leg to stand on, but during working hours? I have managed hundreds of developers in my career and while I haven't had this exact scenario, I have reprimanded people for working on projects other than their assigned priorities even if it's company work. The one that really gets me is if a contractor is assisting another person from his consulting firm while I am paying for his or her hours. I see this alot with offshore and H1B folks where they are asked to assist others that are "onboarding". Their company should be paying for those hours, not me. I'm not a heartless jerk that doesn't think that consultants should help others from their consulting company. Heck, I've spent many years of my career in those roles and have done that, but I don't bill my primary client for it unless it is for another project at their company and it doesn't impact my primary job responsibilities.

Any of these examples should be considered grounds for termination. If someone is being paid to do a job and they aren't doing it, whether doing someone else's job, working on a side project, surfing the internet for new shoes, playing video games... whatever, then it's a problem and depending on the severity, you need to deal with it one way or another.

Thank you for posting this. It sums up my thoughts exactly. First of all, a deregulated telecommunications means you have choices in which ISP to use. Second it creates competition between them to provide superior services for lower costs. Capitalism at its most basic level is supply and demand. If people demand access to services online and there are multiple suppliers that can sell that access, then we as consumers will have more choice, not less.

Honestly, these startups aren't going to be the ones that get hit. The super competitive media streaming giants that are killing cable companies' "On Demand" revenue streams will be the ones that are impacted. Honestly there's no reason that TWC, Comcast, AT&T and other would have any reason to care one bit about Etsy, GitHub or most of these other complainers. They aren't competition and they aren't creating the need for the providers to increase operational overhead. Netflix, Amazon Video, Hulu and others like that ARE competing directly against cable services and they ARE using up large amounts of bandwidth that increases the operational overhead of the ISP, so they are likely targets.

Here's the thing. This is already happening with cellular data providers, but it's not like it's an issue. T-Mobile, Sprint, Verizon and AT&T all have their own variations of "Unlimited Data" with various service levels. One will only stream 480p after a certain point. One may have a contract with the NFL to stream their games in HD in the unlimited definition. Another may allow Spotify to stream forever, but only at a certain quality level. All of these variations are based on the deals that these ISPs have struck with other companies and it has resulted in a VERY competitive landscape where options continue to improve and costs continue to go down.

Too many people think that companies will abuse this and abuse their customers through this deregulation, but maybe you guys don't realize how wrong you are. Do you know how much money these companies spend marketing bigger, better, faster and cheaper messages to you as a consumer? You're business means everything to them. These aren't heartless big business entities that have a monopoly on your money. They may have been in years past, but none of these places can function that way anymore. They spend millions on predictive analytic models based on focus groups to figure out if a decision will have a positive impact on their bottom line, so giving or not giving them your business is your voice. Stop trying to get the government to control everything for you. It's like you haven't moved out of your parents' house yet and you're mad because they want you to make your own decision about what to eat for dinner. You as a consumer control the ecosystem, not the government. Use your wallet to speak your mind and companies will react.