You could probably make a big enough threat to the companies just by saying, “If our audit finds you are, in fact, sending meritless denials to try and pad your bottom line, you need to reach out to all those impacted and inform them that the denied services will be covered 100%, along with any follow-up care needed as a result from the treatment you denied. And the fine is 150% of the cost of all claims you denied.”

Shareholders ultimately don’t care about the CEO, they can get another one. Hit their bottom line hard enough, and they’ll take note, though.

At lot of this strikes me as non-issues, or even bordering on entitlement.

Well, for instance, if you’re contributing your own code, there is a high bar to clear. It often feels as if you need to surpass whatever the existing functionality is. Just to get accepted, you have to offer something better than some existing product that may have been around for decades.

Well, no kidding, that’s how it works in most things. Why would a project accept a contribution that doesn’t add a previously missing feature or improve on the implementation of a current one? I would be pretty suspect of using a program that accepts a random commit so that a college kid can check the “Timmy’s first accepted pull request” box and let them pad their resume.

Some would-be contributors are very familiar with programming, reading, and writing code, but they may never have opened an issue or sent a pull request. This is a scary first step. Others may have the necessary tech skills, but not the creativity. Where should they you begin? Also, if someone is scared, that can result in impostor syndrome. The fear that people all over the world will see your bad code is a powerful factor reducing the urge to share it.

These are all things that the greybeards being maligned had to figure out at some point, I don’t really see the harm in new contributors being expected to do the same, especially when there is an abundance of documentation and tutorials available now, which simply didn’t exist in the past.

For instance, there are a lot of folks doing mods for video games. This can be a very creative activity, there is lots of room for innovation, as well as outlets such as streaming to reach an audience. It applies to all sorts of games, such as Pokémon, Elder Scrolls, and Minecraft. Game modding is a great way in. It could even be a way to set up a company, or to make a living. But it’s not considered as FOSS. For novices getting interested, it could even be attracting people away from getting into FOSS development.

Again, nothing new here. No, game mods weren’t nearly as prevalent in the past, but new devs have had the choice between contributing to FOSS software and contributing to/creating proprietary programs for as long as FOSS has been a thing.

I don’t think the old guard should be dismissive or rude to newcomers when their contributions aren’t up to the standard expected to be accepted, but they also aren’t getting paid to be these peoples’ mentors. It kind of reminds me of posts I see in language learning communities, where people would get all upset, “I completed the Duolingo Spanish tree, but the cashiers at my local Mexican restaurant speak too fast for me to understand and they switch to English when I try to talk to them in Spanish.” Cool that you want to try and use the language, my friend, but these people aren’t being paid to be your tutor, and you may well be making their job more difficult and/or holding up other paying customers by trying to force random people to listen to your extremely basic, and likely incorrect, Spanish. They don’t have an obligation to put everything else in their work or life on hold to try and stroke your ego.

Curiously, I don’t see any mention of what, in my view, is likely a much more serious issue to getting new generations of contributors involved, as well as having a more diverse set of contributors. Access to technology and relevant education is far from uniform. If little Timmy from Greenwich, CT has had a personal computer he was free to mess around with to his heart’s content from the moment he could read and attended a well-funded school with the possibility of studying computers, programming, and early exposure to things like Linux from grade school onwards, it shouldn’t come as any surprise that he’s more comfortable working with these concepts and more likely to wind up contributing successfully to FOSS projects than my friend Lucas, in Brazil, who only got a second-hand computer when he managed to get accepted to university, and had no real concept of Linux/FOSS until I explained to him why I couldn’t just install a random, Windows-only program he thought would be useful to me.

To draw another language learning comparison, it’s like how in the US, most students will only study a second language for a couple of years in high school and two semesters at university, if they attend higher education, and then you periodically have people going, “How come so many Americans fail to speak a second language compared to students in Europe?” Then, you look at the curriculum in countries like Germany, and realize they begin teaching students English as early as grade-school, often adding another foreign language later on. Is it any surprise that, when they have nearly a decade of foreign language instruction, compared to the mere two years many Americans get, alongside a fair bit more exposure to and encouragement of engaging with foreign language media, that they wind up being more proficient at using said language on average?

It’s hardly a perfect solution that will completely mitigate all of the issues with getting younger and more diverse groups of people to contribute to FOSS projects, but I don’t doubt that having access to computers in the home from a young age and access to more extensive education on computers and related fields from a much younger age would go a long way towards getting more people involved. Of course, even then, having the downtime to be able to dedicate to contributing to/maintaining FOSS projects is a factor that will disproportionately favor historically privileged groups. Even if she has the knowledge and ability to do so, a single mother working three jobs in the Bronx in order to keep a roof over her family’s head, food on the table, and the lights and heating on simply might choose not to spend what little free time she has writing a badass new MPD client in Rust that has plugins to integrate with Lidarr and automatically fix metadata with beets based on matching the hashes of files to releases on various trackers in order to scrape the release data from them, no matter how cool the concept might sound to her. And it’s not really something I could blame her for.

Beyond games, hardware support would still be a pretty big one. If Linux is widely adopted enough, it makes more and more sense for hardware companies to make sure their new devices will be supported on launch day. Not having to worry about my network card being too new from a brand that has poor/no Linux support would be a pretty big factor in influencing my purchases the next time I’m looking for a laptop. Pretty sure I’ve also encountered people complaining about being unable to use all the features that their new GPU offers under Windows, because the company hasn’t released a Windows driver and devs working on Linux are still in the process of reverse-engineering things to write an open driver that is feature complete.

Another big one would be configuration of peripherals, as there are a fair number that assume you have Windows to run their proprietary configuration tool. I’ve come across mice like that, as well as mechanical keyboards that require some proprietary Windows program if you want to flash the firmware and customize your layout.

More Linux users also makes it a more attractive target for devs in general. That could mean you get a cool, new hobby project that someone is working on and decides to make a FOSS Linux version, could mean companies at least offer a Linux version of their proprietary software that doesn’t have a comparable Linux alternative. There’s a lot of software out there that people need for work or school, especially in more niche fields, where there’s not a viable Linux alternative and your job/school isn’t going to change their entire workflow just for you.

I’m sure others can come up with further examples that wouldn’t occur to me.

Yeah, it’s pretty good, especially in the summer time.

On topic for the thread, the way I make it has pretty much always gotten a “WTF are you trying to feed me?” look from Dominicans. Okay, more of an “Ay dios mío, este muchacho” eye roll and a “¿Qué es este menjunje que tu tá inventando allí?” from them, if I’m being honest. For the ones I’ve gotten to actually try it, though, they all agree it’s pretty good.

I have the usual mix of milk and orange juice, add in some sweetened, condensed milk, vanilla extract, and then I add jam/preserves instead of just sugar. I’m partial to cherry preserves, but if chinola jam were a thing I could get here, I’d probably just stick with that. Toss it in a blender with some flaked ice, and 30 seconds later, you’re that much closer to developing diabetes. Depending on the sort of night I’m having, I might toss in some spiced rum, too.

Can’t be, I actually recognize all the sponsors as real brands with existing products, rather than shit I’ve never heard of that turns out to be crypto nonsense, shell companies, Philipp Morris in a mask, or some combination of the three.

Probably IndyCar, let’s go to the nose cam, brought to you by Verizon, for another angle on this one.

I think the biggest pro for me would be that sane policies at the federal level that are broadly popular in my region could stop getting blocked by yokels representing states that sometimes barely even have the population of the semi-rural county I grew up in in the Northeast. Ditto for not having to worry about corporate interests from those same states filing frivolous lawsuits that manage to block the implementation of the odd policy that does make it through, like student loan forgiveness.

Also, I’m not above admitting that there’s a great deal of appeal in the potential schadenfreude of all the “But I don’t want my taxes paying for the trans, minority welfare queens getting bottom surgery! Down with any social safety net!” Republicans from the South and Midwest being forced to reckon with the fact that they have actually been the welfare queens this whole time, and it’s only been by the grace of those dang liberal states paying in disproportionately high shares of taxes that get funneled towards red states that their shithole states haven’t yet collapsed entirely. Let’s see how Alabama fares with its whooping 1.1% of the national GDP when they no longer have federal funding to prop them up. Their top 5 employers are all public institutions that likely depend on federal funding to remain operational, and 2/5 of them are military bases. Good luck, guys, the South will fall again.

For cons, obviously it’ll suck for the people who still live in those states until they finally move, but that’s been the case for a long time. If the decent regions help finance the move for those who are willing to leave, but unable to for lack of money, I’m kind of fine with it. Same goes for overlooking criminal charges when people are unable to leave their state due to some BS non-violent crimes landing them on parole and being refused travel permissions. If Mississippi wants to lock you down as exploitable labor because you got pulled over with some weed, or loaned a kid a book that said gay people actually aren’t the spawn of Satan sent to destroy US civilization, come on over. They can keep their sex offenders and violent criminals, though. For the folks that don’t move because “Oh, but my family is here and I love them too much to move away,” or similar reasons, good luck with living through the second feudal age, but that’s your own choice.

Likewise, it’ll be sad to see them destroy national and state parks in the name of business, as well as visiting those places while they still exist being a much riskier proposition.

Honestly, I think most red states severely underestimate how poorly things would go for them if they were to be cut loose, while overestimating the popular support they would enjoy and their international appeal as trade partners. Even for the ones who are in a relatively favorable economic opinion, like Texas, would probably see absolutely insane levels of brain drain from industry and higher education that would leave them dead in the water, barring state-sanctioned violence to prevent people from leaving.

That said, their economies would be devastated. Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, North Carolina and Kentucky would all see between 20.7%-30.7% of their overall revenues for state and local governments vanish overnight if they stopped receiving federal funding. States like New York and Texas could probably come away at a net profit just by retaining the taxes they’d previously passed on to the federal government, even factoring in how many new services would have to be provided for at the state/regional level that were previously financed by the federal government. For the states like New Mexico, Mississippi, and Alabama that manage to claw back almost all of what they contribute in federal taxes, if not get more back in federal funding, good luck. Somehow, I suspect their new, libertarian overlords in Texas aren’t going to be so keen on subsidizing their impoverished neighbors to any real extent.

Complaining loudly about how it wasted so much of my time, before I proceed to pay by check. No, I won’t let the machine print the info for me, I’ll just spend the next 10 minutes fighting the tremors in my hand to fill it out and pay for my two slices of deli ham and single can of cat food.

Have they tried pulling out the “Make a vehicle that’s not a massive and shitty death trap,” or “Boot the Nazi from the company” stops? Because, I suspect doing those two might help it out.

I mean, white women were the single demographic group to benefit most from affirmative action, despite racists preferring to paint it as a program that only benefited African Americans in their reverse racism arguments, so yeah, they count in my book. Especially when you consider that a large portion of far-right white men want them to occupy the trad wife role and not been seen outside the home and church again.

I have a risk mitigation strategy for them which ought not to be novel, but sadly seems to be, which could probably bring this risk down to statistically insignificant for most of these people. Don’t build your business on amassing obscene amounts of wealth via trampling the rights and dignity of millions of people who are only one bad week away from destitution and having all they’ve struggled their entire lives to build stripped from them, who have literally nothing to lose when it all goes pear shaped. Consider not only the financial, but the social costs of your actions.

The executive and financial elites of this world seem to have forgotten that humans are animals, and an animal backed into a corner is at its most dangerous, prone to lashing out in unpredictable ways.

And where exactly did I call for that? I said “Fuck you” to them, and made some disparaging, yet accurate, comments regarding their character. I didn’t call for any sort of action against them. Where on earth are you getting that I’m asking someone to harm them in any way by cursing them out on the internet?

Who said anything about hurting them? They did a shitty thing, I’ll call them out for being shitty. It does them no harm, and if they have half a brain, might even lead to some reflection on their actions.

Get lost with your misplaced concern for a straw man.

I’d like to send out a special “Fuck you” to the asshole that called this tip in, whether it turns out to be the real shooter or not. I can’t imagine being such a piece of trash to go do that.

No, because I don’t see any point to it. If they manage to catch him, they may as well just kill him on the spot when they get him, as I have no faith that his trial would be anything more than a farce to try and present some sense of following process and norms, while guaranteeing he gets some insane sentence, only to be found mysteriously to have hung himself. I’m sure that, somehow, a jury of his peers will be comprised solely of the 12 most ghoulish residents of NYC one could find, and they’ll probably try to shop around for the worst judge they can to hear the whole thing.

Not sure my mother ever topped hot dogs. Hot dogs with Sabrett’s red onions on top, and some baked beans fresh from the can were about as lofty as culinary pursuits got in my house growing up before ambition exceeded ability.

In lots of places, they aren’t liable, but many people aren’t aware of this, and/or aren’t in a position to fight it. It’s one of those things that vary by state, but in NY, for example, it’s definitely illegal.

Employers are only allowed to deduct certain items from an employee’s wages, such as taxes, insurance premiums, union dues, etc. They are not permitted to charge employees for breakages, cash shortages, fines or any other losses to the business.

Restaurants tend to employ younger workers, and often hire undocumented immigrants, so it’s easier for them to pull one over on their staff who may not know their rights, or be scared of retaliation if they do try to insist on their rights being respected.

Shocking absolutely nobody, there’s a deafening silence from the blue MAGA brigade that, pre-election, kept crying about how not supporting Israel 100% would sink the Democrats’ chances of winning 100% and that Trump would do oh so much worse. Democrats have already lost the election, and now they double down on a losing policy when they literally have nothing at stake.

The only difference between a Biden and a Trump administration for Palestine is the speed at which things occur. Biden is fundamentally onboard with the same genocidal policies as Trump is willing to support.

Would probably be more relevant to measure English-speaking countries’ ability to speak whatever the most commonly studied foreign language is, rather than Japanese. That would also probably need a caveat of eliminating native speakers and/or heritage speakers from the data set in some countries, as well.

I didn’t think you were, I was more saying that the loss of many of those jobs that had been outsourced in the pursuit of cheap stuff means that, even if Trump’s proposed tariffs were effective at bringing those jobs back, it might not matter because they would still cost more than most residents of the US would be able to afford. At least, with current working conditions, many of these goods would simply cost more than people would be willing to pay, as we’ve been collectively conditioned to want as much stuff as possible, as cheap as possible. Domestic production of so many goods would require a drastic shift in consumer habits to even have a chance at being viable in the long term, but they absolutely couldn’t do the sort of volume that places like China has and be able to sell at a profit, barring the implementation of Chinese-style working conditions.

nor the desire to build their own shit

I would say that we’ve also largely lost the means to afford stuff built here, in large part as a consequence of our endless pursuit of cheap crap while scraping the bottom of the barrel with outsourcing. Even if you want to buy domestically-made goods, since we’ve lost so many of those good union jobs, especially in manufacturing, we no longer have the means to pay what it costs to make such a product with American workers. Especially if people intend to continue with their current consumerist trends.

I’m making $20/hour at the moment. If I want to buy American, union-made shoes, it’ll run me $400 a pair, on the lower end. I think it’s pretty reasonable to have a pair of work boots, a pair of regular shoes for wearing out and about, and a pair of dress shoes, which at that low end will run me 37.5% of my monthly gross pay. Now do the same for domestically produced clothing, and you’ve probably run up a bill of several month’s pay, just to have enough outfits to last you a single week, leaving aside coats, seasonal clothing, or formal attire. We’re either going to have to sharply curtail our purchasing and focus on buying a smaller amount of goods meant to last as long as possibly, or the sadly more likely scenario, we’ll see the establishment of domestic sweatshops to fuel the consumerist impulses of what remains of the middle class and up. Whether we’ll just go even more insane in our treatment of the poor here, or use prison labor and undocumented migrants “pending” deportation in these sweatshops remains to be seen, but Americans have demonstrated we shortsightedly value our ability to accumulate cheap trash over anything else.

I’d love to be proven wrong, and see a growth of strong unions and domestic production leading to a resurgence in American craftsmanship again, but the current environment is less than amenable to this outcome, to put it mildly.