I think your question is misguided. Democracy doesn't mean a two-party system race to the bottom. Democracy can see democratically elected politicians that better resonate with each individual voter by eliminating first past the post voting and using ranked choice voting instead. The problem isn't that "half the country disagrees". You can't please everyone. The problem is that we've been divided and weaponized against each other, so the tribalism keeps us from finding common ground we may have. I doubt anyone votes FOR a candidate anymore. They seem to just vote AGAINST another candidate. Democracy works. It's our implementation of it that's failing.

Exactly. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. You get what you (didn't) pay for. If you try to cut employees by using AI then you deserve this. You also deserve this if you don't pay your employees a decent wage. But they won't learn anything from this.

Not OP, but I chose not to go Bambu because of the closed ecosystem. I like that they're enabling custom firmware now, but they presented as very closed and proprietary, including network printing going through their cloud. While I'm not printing anything sensitive, I could see that being a concern for some, especially if you're designing your own prints. I get that they're the turnkey solution that "just works" out of the box, but so do my Qidi X-Plus 3 printers, and I can SSH into them if I want.

Depending on what you meant by this question, I'd say Perplexity. It's got access to a number of different LLMs, and cited its sources. The biggest concern I've had when it comes to LLMs is that they eventually make shit up. If you can verify its answers by checking its sources, you have a much higher confidence level in the answer.

It makes perfect sense. It's about control by any means. The fact of the matter is that, by definition, conservatives don't want progress. They'll say and do anything to stand in the way of progress, even if it's contradictory.

Jirard's words were unambiguous over the years, though. It was always "we're working with..." or "we've donated to..." and not "we're looking at these charities". I don't know what the rationale for hanging on to that money was, whether it was for the right reasons or not. What I do know is that people were lied to. It doesn't matter if he intended to or not. It's not a good spot to be in, and I can't imagine it gets much better from here. The whole thing felt very much like w crypto scam, except the money was still available, but there was a whole lot of "trust me, bro" and misrepresentation of what was happening behind the scenes.

How many years of research do you need in order to pick the charity or university you want to fund? How many times do you repeat the lies (with numbers!) without even knowing what your own charity is doing? I wouldn't be surprised if there was a different reason they hung on to the money, because this doesn't pass the sniff test. Where there's smoke there's fire.

I also like tools like Honey or CamelCamelCamel, which show you the actual price changes over time, and you can decide when the right time to buy is. Obviously, you never know when something will go on sale in the future, but it at least helps you see how good the current price is compared to the past month or year.

I doubt exclusion of men from this feature has anything to do with it being more work to add men. Hell, it's actually LESS work to enable it for everyone than it is to add exclusions. Excluding men was a business decision, I'm sure.

Now, I'm in the privileged position of being male, so take this with a grain of salt, but I entirely disagree with the blatant sexism of this feature. I get the purpose, but it feels horribly misguided. Can women not commit violent or sexual crimes? Can nonbinary people not commit violent or sexual crimes? Only men can apparently commit these crimes, according to the people who thought this feature up. Sexual crimes by women, for example, go wildly underreported..Even if they were using statistics to justify how they implemented this feature, they didn't do their homework.

Shit, I'd take four 10-hour workdays and a day off over five 8-hour workdays. It's not about the hours per week, but about being able to enjoy a full day to myself.

FOR FREE?! Girl, you need to be getting paid for all that!

I just read through Madison's whole account of what happened and all the comments here. I have a few key takeaways:

1. People are naive - Get shit in writing. Verbal promises aren't worth a damn.
2. Experience matters - It sounds to me like Madison, Colton, and most of the management staff have no idea how to properly manage (up or down). This is a massive problem, but not a surprise. I can say the same for the people in the comments here. You WILL be in shitty situations at work. How you navigate them matters and will determine if your claims will be successful. The most important thing I can tell her, them, and all of you is KNOW YOUR RIGHTS!
3. Most people have no idea what they're talking about - Everyone saying that the government needs to always be involved, or that this is why we need unions has no idea what the fuck they're talking about. I'm not anti-union, I'm anti-bureaucracy. You think things moved too slowly when you asked for a mirror? Wait until there are MORE people in between that MUST be involved.
4. Her mental health is concerning - I don't know if her mental health issues existed before LMG, but they don't do much besides detract from her potentially valid points. I'm concerned this will be used to dismiss the issues she encountered rather than fix them. I, personally, didn't have a high opinion of her when I saw her for the first time (I think it was one of the videos where fans get a custom computer). It makes me wonder how much of this is overblown, but that doesn't mean her complaints are all invalid. This will be a tough road for her.

The key takeaway, again, is KNOW YOUR RIGHTS!! You have a complaint? Write it in an email. Send it to the intended recipient, and CC HR or BCC your personal email. If you don't have a paper trail of issues, you will lose. You were asked by your manger or by HR to solve the problem yourself by talking to the other person? Get them to verify that in writing. They'll backpedal REALLY quickly if they have any sense. A verbal warning? That means jack shit. It can't be held against you because the company has no paper trail (see? This cuts both ways.) An agreement where they gave you certain assurances verbally? Email the person with a summary of the conversation as you understood it and ask for confirmation of your understanding.

All of this is how you protect yourself as an employee and as an employer. GET SHIT IN WRITING and then use those notes as proof if you need to appeal to a higher authority (HR, upper management, or the government arm responsible for labor issues). And yeah, people have trouble like this because people don't speak out. You need to not just KNOW your rights, but also EXERCISE THEM.

I say all of this as somebody in a management position. Employees rarely know what the inner workings for disciplinary issues looks like, or how long it takes to be carried out. A complaint doesn't simply result in termination unless it's egregious (in which case your complaint needs to be DOCUMENTED BY YOU AS WELL, not just left in the hands of HR or management). I live my life by "trust but verify". I only trust one person to act in my best interest, and that's me, so I'm going to give me the best chance of doing that by DOCUMENTING EVERYTHING.

That said, you all need to understand that managing people doesn't start with a management position. Every relationship needs to be managed and curated. You need something from Suzy? Ask her nicely. Still didn't get that thing? Email her. Maybe she's just busy or forgot (but you've started your paper trail). No response from Suzy? Follow up on your email and CC her manager. Consider CCing or BCCing your manager as well. Suzy may not like it, but you're just doing your job. The same rules apply when you're managing up. Sometimes you'll get an absolute turd of a manager. It WILL happen, so be prepared to deal with it. It will absolutely suck to deal with, and you will be frustrated, but you'll have documentation of your position, not a pissing contest between two people.

Am I getting my point across? You're not a unique snowflake, you're another cog in the machine. Protect yourself (and others!) by documenting and verifying. And if you see somebody being treated like shit, it's your job to also raise that!!! Just because it's not happening to you doesn't mean you should ignore it. You felt uncomfortable when somebody else got publicly berated? FUCKING SAY SOMETHING! I had a rather incompetent manager start to chastise me in front of the employees I managed at the time. I was 18 or 19 back then. I asked her to stop and to follow me. We went to a separate area and I proceeded to explain to her that I didn't appreciate what she did. Her complaints may have been valid, but the way she handled it was inappropriate, and I asked her to make sure that if she has a problem with me in the future to please bring it to me privately. She saw the problem and agreed that she was wrong in how she handled it, and thanked me for my handling of the situation. YOU CAN DO THIS, TOO! You can email HR and the CEO after he storms into your area and goes off on somebody. You can say that you felt unsafe in that moment, and that you don't appreciate how that person was treated. You can stand up for others and for yourself. If you want to be successful in your career YOU NEED TO LEARN TO MANAGE UP!

While the pirate in me says "hell yeah!", the system administrator in me says "Fuuuuuuuck". I was once part of an IRC network, and one of the biggest issue we had was with Brazilians who would break our rules and get banned. Just a minute or two later, they were back. It got so bad that we just said "Fuck it. We're banning all of Brazil." Not an ideal solution, but it beats spending our time chasing the majority offenders. It's the 80/20 rule, where 80% of your problems are caused by 20% of your users.

Now let's pretend somebody builds their new app around this new tech. I love the concept, but how do you keep order? How do you ensure people follow the rules? The only thing keeping users in line would be the fear of losing their "brand" (their username, their reputation). If the new app is something like a chatroom, there's no "brand" to be had, and you can simply use a new name. It would, obviosly be very different if the app were based around file hosting like Google Drive, because you don't want to lose your files, but anything with low retention will likely be rife with misconduct due to anonymity.

On the other hand, it would allow for a completely open internet, that no single government can shut down, which we're seeing happening more and more, with China, Iran, Russia, and Myanmar all shutting down the Internet, or portions of it, when those in power feel there's a threat to the status quo.