Amazon activist’s firing deemed illegal by labor board officials

As an SRE it's my job to make sure the computers I'm responsible for are working properly, and to actively pay attention and gather information about whether that's true. If there's too much load on the site for our current set of servers to handle, even if it's not my job to actually order more, it's certainly my job to say something to the people who can. If we're okay now but we won't be in a month, that's also my job. And if a disk fills up on a server and it stops working, "Oh, I wasn't monitoring disk space, and the program never logged anything" is no excuse. Nor is it an excuse that I'm not good at guessing what problems are likely to happen; that, also, is my job and why they look for people with experience doing this job successfully.

Isn't there all the more reason that someone whose job is looking after people and not computers should figure out if they're overworked or about to be overworked and if they're in comfortable, humane conditions?

"Because Amazon never trained me in the basics of my job as a supervisor. Which is to understand obvious the fact in order for our workers to be sustainably productive, they need to take healthy rest breaks now and then -- especially during crunch time. Otherwise Amazon will lose. And because whatever natural sense of intuition I may have had about these issues was thoroughly beaten out of me by the time I got through all that Core Values training they made us do."

But they can be very useful to burn through people to get shit done and raise profits short term. A timemachine would be interesting, to compare different times and see whether narcism is deep rooted in our genetics, or if it is our culture that promotes them .

After being what I consider a very talented member of our industry for 15 years and having no career advancement whatsoever, I’ve been asking myself over the past couple years whether these experiences are to blame. Getting reamed out all the time seems to have had a lasting impact on my ability to take ownership, do the kinds of things you need to do to get ahead, etc.

The thing that was found to be unsupported by the evidence.

If I were this particular worker, knowing the NLRB will force at least that, I would ask for something much higher to settle. Though I suppose if you're homeless, you may not have that option to wait.

Back pay and reinstatement are possible outcomes (in general for complaints, tbh I have no idea for this one), so it could have a real effect on the wronged.

It's not childish. It's a totally reasonable expectation of how the world should work. Don't pass that off as childish, instead ask why the government is failing to meet its most basic obligations.

It's only naive because the government has totally failed the people. There's no reason (other than a system designed to protect the interests of the wealthy instead of the needy) that it works this way. We should forge a world where such expectations aren't naive.

No safety net whatsoever?

It is terrifying and unfortunate for those who do not have that luxury though, and strong local communities can help there. We need to do a more. But I think in all cases where I have the option I'd prefer to rely on those close to me than the government.

But it also emphasizes how much impact one can have just helping those in need directly instead of complaining about how crappy the government is.

The government's role is not that of a protector of people, but instead a protector of its own autonomy. That is, government carries out a means of control (law, tax, policy, decree, etc.), and protects its ability to control from threats local and foreign. That is completely independent to the wealfare of its citizens.

The ideal of a government having a role in the safety, welfare, health, or interest of the citizens it controls is bizarre. It's a view that presumes goodness in group, where there is no indication of that ever being the case at any point in human history. It is, in a more disturbing and worrying light, a view that reassigns the government as a kind of parental figure, when it should be abundantly clear that nothing of the sort is the case. It would be like a newborn chick, presuming the snake in its nest a protector, instead of a looming threat. The issue is, leaders are paid to lie and assure citizens of the opposite. Without a great amount of personal investment - or first hand experience - some may even start to believe such tawdry, grasping hisses as fact. The actions of such a cabal is apparent once it is measured.

Ignorance to that does not make you stupid, or childish, or any other number of things. It simply means that you did not know, what you later learned. From the sounds of it, this is a thing that has bothered you, and I am sorry to hear that it has weighed heavily on you. Just keep in mind that you are not alone in this sadness. It is a thing that may pass. Just keep in mind the facts of the situation you are in, and that anyone - ANYONE - who claims to do whatever "needs doing" to be in "the public interest" is most certainly one who moves about on their stomach.

On a related note: It may be beneficial to point out that, in a similar vein, police officer have no legal responsibility to protect citizens or their property - their role is not of protection, as some sort of "public utility bodyguard", but instead one of law enforcement. This is a slightly more nebulous point, as the so-called motto of law enforcement (in America, at least) is "To protect and serve". The fact of the matter is that it has been affirmed in SCOTUS that no law enforcement officer will be held responsible for failing to act to protect a citizen, even to the point of grevious harm or death. Laws are far more telling of the reality of the thing, than any non-binding, hopeful motto. A motto is merely a desire of public perception.

Seriously, the number of people who have had to mop up their kid's blood or pick chunks of their dead loved one's brains out of carpeting is depressing to think about. If you've got money there are people who will come and do it for you, but those services aren't cheap.

Police won't even pay to repair a door they broke down in error. https://reason.com/2010/01/26/dc-police-raid-wrong-home-city...

The property damages are bad enough, but they also don't do anything for the mental trauma they cause when they force you to stand handcuffed and naked in the middle of the room while a team of cops swarm around taking video and destroying your things, or they make your kids sit right next to the corpse of the family dog they murdered after busting in. It's beyond unacceptable how little help people get from the government even after they were directly abused by it.

Even the lawsuits which may or may not get you anything at all are expensive, time consuming, and stressful yet you somehow have to manage it while processing everything that happened to you.

In a well functioning company where managers and employees are well-treated, the Union is at best an extra step, and it does actually prevent direct interaction in some cases. That said, it a badly run company that exploits its employees, talking to management is dangerous for workers.

I have no idea here but, as an example, I’d expect the behaviour you describe if someone tried to mix Recaptcha V2 and Recaptcha V3. They might get a score from V3 and, if that score is low, they challenge with V2 as an “escape hatch” to prove you’re not a bot. But then they might have messed it up and redirect you back to a V3 check which still gets a low score. Cycle repeats.

In fact, they may well be testing an upgrade from V2 to V3 which could behave the same if they test both at once instead of A/B test.

This is pure speculation. Probably 100 other ways they can mess it up.

There's this idea in the tech crowd that laws governing circumstances that aren't quantifiable or boolean with zero doubt or error are either entirely impossible or tantamount to just anything-goes subjectivity of judges.

But the entire purpose of a system of laws and the courts is to match the ambiguity of the rules to the complexity of life.

Because, as it turns out, it's the cases that can be captured by a fixed set of algorithms that are almost non-existent. Which is sort-of the problem "smart contracts" ran into, and that motivated them to create the useless simulation of real-world ownership that is NFTs.