We can't claim to know it left them with "bad" employees. I think there's vanishingly little evidence that recruiters actually go after the "good" employees effectively -- I'm pretty skeptical that a pro recruiter actually gets you better employees, they just make the process of getting employees way less stressful. We also have no reason to assume that a good or bad employee is correlated in any way with caring about not returning to office -- it's possible very bad employees are just as likely to quit as very good ones. How do you even tell good from bad, anyway?
What this "return to office" stuff definitely DOES do is preferentially retain the most obedient/desperate employees. Which may be part of the goal, along with low-key downsizing.
It doesn't add any cost to include a throttle on the ebike.
Regulate speeds, not mechanisms. Moving people to micromobility is a benefit regardless of the form of that micromobility. Speed is the safety concern, not any of this loophole-inducing nonsense.
Still, the issue isn't the presence of a throttle. It's the specs of the machine.
The idea that the law should be framed around whether or not the vehicle needs to be peddled is backwards. The relevant machine specs are what the legislation should address. Which is still, primarily, top speed. All incident evidence we have suggests that below ~20mph / 30 kph, even full automobiles see precipitous dropoffs in serious injuries, so that's the place to start. We see most places really serious about bike networks going reasonably further past that (25 or 20 kph). That's all reasonable. If you further want to have requirements on acceleration or weight, it's worth investigating that.
Having the legislation require peddling is just a way to create weird loopholes in the law. It's pearl-clutching and moral panic. And worse, it creates accessibility issues and can pressure people off the bikeped infrastructure who would've used it reasonably and safely back into cars.
The law should narrowly address the actual problem, not some tertiary smell the problem has created. The idea that a bike that has pedals is magically safer than an identical bike with an identical frame, motor, and everything which has a throttle is preposterous.
I am totally convinced an ebike with a throttle is safer and easier to use for its rider than one without one at any speed. I don't think they should be required -- because that's just silly -- but I think anyone the claiming opposite, that only peddled, throttle-less vehicles are safe, has fallen off the deep end.
I, for one, could not be made to care one iota about what Jack Dorsey has to say. He's a weird little fuck, and only getting weirder.
Time long past to be a lot more honest about these tech billionaires -- pretty much every one of was just immensely, immensely lucky, and until they can talk honestly about how nearly everything to do with their success compared to any other mid-level software developer was just blind luck, we should assume everything coming out of their mouths is pure grandiose delusion.
MTG didn't entirely lose in this whole debacle, either. She now gets to point to Johnson and say "See, he's with the Democrats". That'll be super useful to her in campaigns and all that kind of shit.
I doubt that was her intention -- she doesn't strike me as a person having intentions beyond the most superficial ones -- but she's definitely enough of an opportunist to make hay with it now that it's worked out this way.
The dems backing Johnson was a cynical move. It was a nasty piece of business. But that deal was to get aid to Ukraine, and that's a deal I'll take. And hey point, it may be the end of Johnson's career, getting all those democratic "votes of confidence". Unfortunately, his replacement would doubtless be an even more creepy little gremlin.
Google loves to have entirely ai-driven moderation which makes decisions that are impossible to appeal. They are certain that one AI team lead is more valuable than 20 customer service agents. Meanwhile, YouTube shorts is still a pipeline to Nazidom and death by electrical fire.
Might be the worst customer service in the tech industry, though that's a highly competitive title.
They also don't offer replacement parts (even major parts like the charging case) for their headphones. So I guess they're intended to be a disposable product. Evil shit.
If you've ever had an entirely positive interaction with Google customer service... you'd probably be the first.
Home Assistant is now part of the Open Home Foundation, a non-profit aiming to fight against surveillance capitalism and offer privacy, choice, and sustainability....
I had it briefly up and running and can only say... it's a bear, at least if you are trying to use it as a drop-in replacement with existing hardware. I'm sure I'll go back and sort it out at some point, but it left me just feeling tired and frustrated even when I had it doing most of what I wanted.
If you were thoughtful about hardware from the ground up, maybe it would be more straightforward, but I tried getting it running on just an old workstation with ubuntu installed on it that I use for very basic stuff like syncthing and it was just painful. Mix of Kasa/Wyze/Philips devices that are just what I've somehow collected over time.
It would be nice to see better first-class add-on support. I found myself needing to SSH into a VM to get stuff into it, and even then it was twitchy in all the wrong ways. Would also be nice to see better support for the containerized version, because that's so much easier to distribute and execute compared to a VM. Next time I'll probably just try to do it all with docker and see if it hurts less, since I don't think any addons I was using were critical to begin with.
That said, if you're doing HA, get a dedicated piece of hardware for it. I suspect it vastly simplifies things.
Also, how can we be assured the privacy practices of their subscription/payment platform are at least better than the (likely blockable) trackers?
Forming a financial relationship with a website is, theoretically, infinitely more traceable to your personal identity than all the cookies in the world.
Literally the only criticism I have about my longtail cargo ebike is that the bike shop culture is still dreadful about them. Many flat scoff and tell you they refuse to do ANY kind of work on any ebike that they didn't themselves sell. It's so ridiculous. I went to my local shop after accidentally popping a piston out and did a surprise full bleed during a brake pad change and asked if they could just top of me off or loan me a funnel, and they went on a whole rant about "insurance" because of the battery (which is removable you dumbasses) and how "specialty mechanics" tools were needed for that kind of thing. Nope, it was just a $20 kit from Amazon and some mineral oil.
Other than that it is a dream. Fits four fullly-loaded grocery bags in the panniers and could easily be expanded with a front/tail basket, cargo net, passenger/child seats, etc.. Easily takes me around town, typically with shorter trips than driving thanks to it being uncongestable and my full comfort with the Idaho stop. I also don't need to find and pay for parking, aside from the occasional place that makes it remarkably hard to lock up your bike through unintentional hostile design choices.
Anecdote aside, I can basically do all necessary service work on it myself, in the climate controlled living room. And the good eBike brands have very responsive customer support, in my experience.
For $2 grand all in, I have a vehicle that serves me better than the car rotting in my driveway. I often go months between cranking the ignition on it. I'd even be able to get lumber on the ebike if I got a cargo trailer if not for the fact that you have to take sidewalks for much of that route because it's on an insane stroad.
Faster-than-light 'warp speed' interstellar travel now thought to be possible ( www.earth.com )
Scientists have taken a significant step towards turning the sci-fi concept of "warp drives" into a feasible reality.
Ordered back to the office, top tech talent left instead, study finds ( www.washingtonpost.com )
Without paywall: https://archive.ph/0KvTq
Gabe Newell, the Man Behind Steam, Is Working on a Brain-Computer Interface ( futurism.com )
E-Bikes Should Not Require Pedaling, Proposes U.K. Government, Diverging From E.U. ( www.forbes.com )
E-bikes could get faster, more powerful and not require pedaling, in a move announced today by UKGOV. Cycling organizations are opposed to the plans.
An Interview With Jack Dorsey ( www.piratewires.com )
Marjorie Taylor Greene fails to remove House Speaker Mike Johnson ( www.bbc.com )
The House killed the far-right Republican's motion to remove Mike Johnson over support for Ukraine aid.
What Happens When a Romance Writer Gets Locked Out of Google Docs ( archive.ph )
Net neutrality is back as FCC votes to regulate internet providers ( www.cnn.com )
The little smart home platform that could ( www.theverge.com )
Home Assistant is now part of the Open Home Foundation, a non-profit aiming to fight against surveillance capitalism and offer privacy, choice, and sustainability....
'Pay or Okay' explained: Why more and more websites make you pay for your privacy - noyb ( noyb.eu )
Study finds that once people use cargo bikes, they like their cars much less ( arstechnica.com )
Easy to clean 🤷 ( sh.itjust.works )