"Guns don't kill people; people kill people."

Good god, that was an interesting, 5-min. idea padded by a ton of crap. Is that how Doctorow makes his living?

You've been reading the Murderbot Diaries, haven't you?

Your severance principle and your example conflict. The principle you stated was 4 weeks of pay for each year of service. Your example was 1 week of pay per year. Which is correct?

More than even in the U.S., corruption is how stuff gets done within China. So, maybe the CEO is just pissed that he wasn't getting his cut. Unless it was "lie to keep bosses happy" scam that got busted, and there's no lucre to skim.

I'm already toting around my phone, because I use a password manager that generate non-significant strings of 16 characters for my passwords. That's what we're supposed to do if we can't memorize endless passphrases, right?

...for the Twitter account "justsaysinmice." Mice (as opposed to rats) are herbivores, not omnivores, and have a wholly different kind of metabolism than humans. If this research result is replicated in primates, then it's worth raising an eyebrow about, not before.

The unvaccinated are breeding vessels for ever-fitter and more potent variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Currently, even the delta variant can break through the Pfizer vaccine 12% of the time, up from just 5% of the time for the original virus strain. Why allow plague rats in your facilities?

Would they need one, though? Apparently, Chinese military hacking groups can put implants in any system they choose.

...that state-sponsored hackers would have implants in the IT system of a leading, U.S. cybersecurity firm? Inconceivable!! Seriously, FireEye, don't you test your own networks? I hear that Eliot Anderson is available to lead a team.

...is decentralization and lack of control by govt.s.

Except Detroit: https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/04...

I use Retrospect.

"...due to housing prices..."

For which Californians can thank prop 13, which was intended to allow folks to age in place in the face of steeply rising annual property value assessments. It also has the effect of making residential housing provide a shrinking fraction of the revenue local govt.s need to simply tread water when you factor in inflation. That means a shopping mall (until retail collapsed) or business complex brings in vastly more revenue, so that's what cities approve for building. Until Californians repeal prop.13 (repealable only through a ballot initiative), cities have little incentive to approve even luxury, market-rate housing development. not to mention low-income housing.

In addition, NIMBYs use an environmental review law known as CEQA to cause interminable delays in new residential housing development of all kinds.

Another factor is the State Building and Construction Trades Council. A major donor to Calfornia Democrats, the construction workers’ union plays political hardball both publicly and behind the scenes. You very, very rarely hear a Democratic lawmaker criticize the trades to the media, although they will frequently tell you on background it’s a fool’s errand to cross them. There has yet to be major legislation opposed by the trades actually become law. A bill to allow churches and universities to convert spare land to low-income housing without time-consuming environmental reviews? Opposed by the trades and buried. A bill to force higher-income neighborhoods to allow denser, low-income housing with expedited review? Opposed by the trades and buried. In one instance, an unexpected torrent of hearing testimony from union workers opposing a bill to streamline motel conversions into apartment buildings left an Assemblymember on the verge of tears. [source:https://calmatters.org/housing/2021/01/california-housing-crisis-lessons/]

California has a Gordian knot's worth of housing production barriers.

...issue to the problem that their core metric is user engagement. Every measure that FB took in 2020 to bolster democracy decreased user engagement, and that's bad for FB's advertising rates. FB needs either (a) needs to be dissolved as an existential threat to democracy, because the best way to drive user engagement is to allow lies to spread under the guise of free speech, or (b) it needs to be classified as a publisher of content, rather than a neutral host of content.