speff

The cost you're referring to is fairly abstract - I'm not sure how it can be implemented for the employer. The cost to the laid-off employee is a loss of income, mental trauma, potential loss of residence. What would your ideal solution for the employer be here?

Loss of money? Layoffs normally have severance packages that are paid out to the employee - this can be seen as the company taking a monetary hit - though not proportional like you said. But what's the alternative here? 5x/10x'ing the severance package? I feel like that would make the job market even rougher as companies would be even more conservative with who and how much they hire.

Mental trauma? I mentioned it in another comment, but the employees after a layoff normally do have an increased fear of future layoffs which impact morale which would result in lower productivity.

Loss of residence / food? I'm coming up blank here.

I absolutely agree with your assessment that it should be the last resort option due to the societal cost of a large number of people losing their job. On top of the risks you mention, there's also the mental hit that often accompanies layoffs not just for the folks who were fired, but the increased feeling of paranoia from the people who are left.

But can it not be the case the this /was/ the company's last resort? There's another option of moving people around and retraining them to do another function. What if that was considered and then rejected because there weren't enough departments growing to warrant that? Rhetorically, if they don't have the ability/opportunity to re-assign people, then what?

That's 4% of corporate employees going by Reuter's 350k corp employee count[0]. Sounds well within the trimming-the-fat numbers. The rest of your comment alludes to an obligation towards improving the domestic economy. That can be done through regulation, but then there's a balancing act between under/over regulation. Too much and you end up in an EU situation that hinders small tech business growth.

So we come back to my previous statement/question. Above what profit amount should a company be obligated to keep (in their eyes) unproductive workers?

[0]: https://www.reuters.com/business/world-at-work/amazon-target...

I'm not sure I understand this viewpoint. Just because a company made a big profit doesn't mean it has to keep positions it decides is unneeded. This isn't the first time I've seen this type of attitude and I'm genuinely curious about the alternative. Once you make above $X in profit, you're obligated to keep employees who aren't necessarily doing the work you want done?

I found two, but it looks like the topic was deleted. Kagi had it partially cached as a search result[0]. The first thread in that list seems a bit more ...pushy than the second thread. Though I think you're still right - was probably just a new coder who was excited about what they found.

[0]: https://files.catbox.moe/oepmri.png

If you're amenable to feedback, the impression I got from your initial comment was "a hostile comment pointing out another hostile comment". It assumed a negative motivation on OOP based on vibes and you ran with it. Even this comment's parting line:

> But you do you.

- seems like a truism. I get the feeling it's meant to be read as "I give up. You can keep whatever wrong viewpoint you have".

I said Nazi/Hitler comparisons. Fascist fits the bill as much as socialist does for Democrats. Gore (retired) said it and apologized afterwards. Pritzker made the comparison yes.

So...that's one? A literally-who to most lay people, but yea, it is one Democratic politician. I see your one Illinois Governer and raise you one US President:

> "These people are running a Gestapo administration. It's the only thing they have. And it's the only way they're going to win, in their opinion..."

> "Every time the radical left Democrats, Marxists, communists and fascists indict me, I consider it actually a great badge of honor.... Because I’m being indicted for you"

I saw an interesting fact the other day. Not one democratic politician has apparently ever called the GOP Nazis or Trump Hitler. Can't find any examples of "trash" either. There was the infamous "deplorables" example by Clinton, however that was for a subset of GOP voters - not all of them.

It mostly seems to be the peanut gallery which uses that language - but never the leaders. So I'm left to rhetorically wonder, who's pushing the narrative that Dem politicians use that language? I even had coworkers who told me that Pelosi and Schumer are stoking the fires by calling our president Hitler. And yet they never said that...

Food presentation has an effect on taste. This is why the dyes are used. Frankly, I wouldn't want to live in a world where the only food we're allowed to eat has to demonstrate that it's only made of ingredients necessary to sustain life and be nutritional.

Manufacturing:

> The United States is the world's second-largest manufacturer after the People's Republic of China with a record high real output in 2024 of $2.913 trillion [0]

I believe the US' manufacturing capability is the core of your comment and I also believe it's incorrect. Sure we don't manufacture fast-fashion or junk products and we may have lost quite a bit of tribal knowledge[1] with respect to that. But it's nothing that can't be re-gained.

And the benefits China and the Russia get from their spying programs? Americans by-and-large simply do not care about them. Denmark can do whatever they want with their tech as long as their citizens approve. Like you said, they're in a different position given their geographic location - thus, they have different priorities. But Americans do not feel like they have such an existential threat so they are (generally) not willing to give up their privacy.

Whether "reality" catches up to your predictions remains to be seen.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_in_the_United_St...

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZTGwcHQfLY

That's a fair point. I try to stick to name brands on Amazon to try to minimize the chance of fakes (Generals, Casio, Zebra for my examples previously) - and the packaging does look like the one I get directly from the manufacturer. I bought two of the same Casios at different times - once from Casio and once from Amazon - and I'm sure the packaging was the same.

But it's one of the things I guess you can't be too sure about. Maybe if we see name-brand prices increase after commingling ends, that can be proof that prices were low due to counterfeits

I tried making a serious effort of avoiding amazon lately. What I found was _generally_ prices are much higher everywhere else.

Charcoal pencils - 30% cheaper on Amazon compared to other sites. More than 2 times cheaper compared to local art stores and the local store only has one crappy brand in stock.

My watch - $40 plus shipping (2 weeks) directly from the manufacturer. Amazon has it at $28 and it'll get here tomorrow.

Pen nibs from Jetpen - $10 + $5.95 shipping. Once again >1week for delivery. $16 from amazon and it gets here tomorrow

I really feel like an idiot trying to boycott this company, but I'm still trying where I can.

I've been hearing that H1B holders are currently trying to stay within the US in fear of not being let back in or because of shenanigans like this[0]. Wonder how many people are currently looking for a flight.

[0]: Oh, it looks like the bsky link has an article with companies advising as such - https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/03/31/immigra...

The comments that really get me are the ones putting the onus onto Youtube to refactor their view approach to "just" count it from the backend. Rhymes with consumers asking gamedevs to add multiplayer to games.

I'm not sure that'll be enough to save them. I've known various people who've worked there in different departments - dev, accounting, UX - and none of them had anything good to say about the company or its culture. My impression of IBM is that it's completely rotten.

Elden Ring is currently $15 cheaper on GameBillet compared to Steam[0] - it even comes with a Steam activation key. If Valve did the same thing, sites like isthereanydeal.com wouldn't really have as much of a purpose.

[0]: https://isthereanydeal.com/game/elden-ring/info/

Mouthwashing was delisted for reasons unrelated to the Visa/MC kerfuffle [0]

> This game hasn’t been indexed since October 2024 since it doesn’t meet our indexing criteria: https://itch.io/docs/creators/getting-indexed#why-isnt-my-pr...

> The developers are using a “Download” button as a link to Steam. The developer took down any playable files form this page in 2024.

[0]: https://itch.io/post/13496611

If everyone in the world is able to check if my door is locked and enter if not, yes I will give a bounty to someone who politely tells me that it's unlocked. Cybersecurity vulns are in a different class of exploitability from physical vulns.

I don't really follow how your statement relates to o11c's. The theft they are referring to is of other American companies - not other countries' IP.

That would be a valid solution, yes. But it sounds a bit too simple? My concern here is - wouldn't someone have already tested the slurry and made the determination that's it's suitable/unsuitable? This article doesn't really go into the details there

I'm pretty sure everyone would take that position so I'm confused why you're implying I wouldn't.

"authorities currently favor one explanation for the pollution"

Tells me that they don't have proof this is the source of the PFAS pollution. If they did, they wouldn't "favor" the explanation, they would just say that's the explanation. I don't support making wide changes based on hunches. Sure - replace the fertilizer with something else for a while and see if that changes the PFAS levels. If it does, sure ban the paper products from being used as fertilizer. But there is a cost associated w/ doing that and that cost has higher-order effects.

"Industrial waste" can cover a lot of different types of materials - not all of which are worthless. It would be worse if waste products from one industry are sent to a dump when they can be re-used for other productive purposes.

I generally agree with your point, but would like to mention in my opinion Amazon (not AWS) makes billions because they've captured the market and prevent any meaningful competition from arising due to their "Fair Pricing" policy rules. I'll be happy when there are meaningful alternatives to Amazon that don't have inflated prices due to price parity which have an excessive return cost built in...

If I recall correctly, the accent marks only started to get dropped when people began using keyboards. Resumé and fiancée still got an accent when it was handwritten

Is this system not preferable over just trashing anything not perfectly made? Sure it would be nice if everyone can have perfectly manufactured medicine, but that's not reality. I would think something that's still likely good is still better than nothing.

I feel like you can make the same argument in favor of being allowed to DDOS. Yes it's public, but I don't think that gives you a moral out for viewing the content in a way the publisher doesn't want.

Ah yea, it looks like that's true. I didn't calculate the actual percentages, but it was very low. Thanks for the heads up -

> Demand for housing also remains heavy because Soviet rents, heavily subsidized by the Government, are very low. A modest two‐room apartment will en for 6 to 8 rubles ($8 to $11.30) a month, including some utilities. A four‐room apartment wil rent for 14 to 16 rubles ($18.20 to $22.30). Apartments in more modern buildings cost more because of additional services.

https://www.nytimes.com/1974/11/11/archives/in-soviet-ingenu...

Has rent ever been 10% of take-home pay of a lower-class laborer anywhere in history? Asking because this goal doesn't seem very achievable, but I could be wrong

Caveman math indeed. Thanks for the correction - that's a pretty big error. Though then I'm not sure what to make of the discrepancy between the numbers. They still don't square up w/ the Wikipedia article any way you look at it

I skimmed the article - any significant concrete numbers were all sourced to the EPI site linked by the GP. There's an unsourced FBI chart that says >19B in 2012, but I couldn't find the actual numbers when I looked. Frankly - I don't trust this claim if the only one actually putting big numbers on it is one publication.

EDIT: I'm going to cast more suspicion on the FBI graph. According to a 2022 report[0], the number of robbery offenses reported in 2018 was 1691 cases. The median loss being about $2k. Doing some caveman-math, that's about $3B lost to robbery in 2018. Unless we went through some insane spike of lawlessness between 2012 and 2018, I don't see how $340m in 2012 jumps to $3B in 2018.

[0]: https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/research-and-pu...