>Was Puerto Rico unaware of this when they took out the loans?
The fact that it went to the Supreme Court of the US [1] means that it is unprecedented and required the highest court in the land to interpret the law means that no parties were fully aware of how Bankruptcy would hold.
I mentioned this in another comment but i'll repeat it.
Due to the complexities of Puerto Rico's status as a commonwealth (i.e. not a State) the island is unable to declare bankruptcy. If they could then this issue could easily be solved and would give the government some leverage as is the case in most cases involving financial institutions taking advantage of these loans like was the case in Detroit and NYC.
To quote the wikipedia article on the topic [1]:
"Puerto Rico or any of its political subdivisions and agencies cannot file for debt relief under Chapter 9, Title 11, United States Code because it applies only to municipalities on the mainland.[55"]
Having lived in PR my most of life and most of my family being lawyers in both the Federal and the local Supreme Court the insight I get from the situation is that unless the White House gets involved or Congress simply amends that single line in the bankruptcy law then the government has really no leverage and these financial institutions (not lenders, but banks who bought the debt from lenders) will get mostly what they want and cripple the island.
The problem lies in the fact that Puerto Rico (unlike States and other municipalities in the United States) is unable to declare bankruptcy due to being a commonwealth.
If they could then these financial institutions would be unable to raid the island's coffers.
I think the issue is that a lot of people already live in Major metros where commute time is inversely proportional to rent and just accept it as a fact of life. This is why I refuse to move to LA, SF, NYC, Seattle, etc.
I currently live 15 min away from my job in Miami and pay less than $1k in rent. It is amazing being able to wake up at 8:30, dress and pack lunch and still get to work before 9am.
Most people here who have longer commutes are because they own homes and don't have the luxury of moving around like me, but then again, the own homes which is pretty hard in the cities I mentioned.
Honestly my first filter when job hunting is commute times and the price of rent within a 10 mile radius of the office.
Having had a 90 min commute at one point I realized that it just wasn't worth it unless you could have flexible hours to avoid rush hour and even then it's almost 900 minutes a week lost to "just" driving.
The issue is that Amazon and other 3rd party vendors actually offer deals.
I was in the market for some headphones and had a specific brand and make in mind and when I looked in their site they were more than $100 more than Amazon. This has held true for me for a lot of items and even when using price tracker it is pretty much no contest to just buy off any reputable vendor most of the time.
I think it's just that the people who make the goods often have no market sense and rely on outsourcing it for 90% of their sales.
Hear hear, I'm under 30 but because the industry I work in isn't really as sexy or brand new as some more CS focused ones I tend to work with people who are older and were raised with the type of expectation that the workplace is a place for working and carry themselves more or less restrained in this regard.
I have friends who work in LA and in SF and they constantly bombard me with stories of how employees of all levels (even recent hires) just spew the most extremist political diatribes at all times and some just do it to troll other employees of the different faction. It has gotten so bad that there are several "secret" slack channels for these cliques dedicated to continue gossiping and sharing memes that are pretty distasteful.
Whenever I ask about them reporting it to HR they just tell me that HR doesn't really exist and they pretty much exist just to make sure payroll is distributed.
Just my 2 cents but I prefer just clocking in and talking about the weather than have to put up with that kind of toxicity.
Some unions requires all employees to become members and charge a fee.
Some unions abuse their power to negotiate with the employer to make union leaders wealthy instead of granting benefits to the employees.
Some unions work alongside gangs to rake in illegal profit.
Some unions force all employees to take the same position of the union on certain issues meaning that people who oppose the measure may be blacklisted and pretty much terminated if the union uses its muscle.
Again these are just some unions and YMMV, the history of unions has many pros and cons with some being notorious and others being very much necessary in this day and age.
A few years ago me and my parents wanted to take a cruise in the Baltic making several 1-2 day stops and I have to say I felt the same way.
The ship was massive and had pools, a restaurant, live entertainment but it was obvious that all the people who were employed were semi indentured servants.
Most were from southeast asia and worked 6-8 months away from their families. What broke my heart is that only a small portion could leave the ship whenever we docked and most didn't seem to have passports that allowed entry to European countries without visa so they would just wait in the dock and use up the wifi to face time their spouses and children. Except the wife was really bad and the bandwidth quickly peaked and most were left just being miserable.
It was nice being able to visit all these countries that would otherwise have cost a fortune but man the pure human suffering really broke me.
Don't use a delivery service that isn't actually performed by the restaurant.
Every one of these services pays below minimum wage to their drivers and will use every trick in the book to make sure that any cost saving measures goes downstream to lower the amount paid to the drivers.
>Netflix is a heavily data-oriented company; if a large chunk of Netflix subscribers just watch decades old reruns then they know it. What Netflix needs to do is build content specifically for these people and I don't believe they're doing that.
I know that a significant portion just bing rewatch the Office and Friends, however they do not own the rights and these will go back to NBC who will just host them in their own streaming service.
This is the main issue facing Netflix. The more their competitors wise up and take their content elsewhere people will be more reticent to pay for a sub fee since there are now way too many options to choose from.
>I'll never understand why lawmakers think that fruit and other flavorings for tobacco are aimed at getting kids hooked.
Because the companies themselves have admitted to marketing towards this demographic. [1]
The market was wildly unregulated and it was printing free money for these companies to target kids and sell these pods in retail stores. Heck I even remember going to a gamestop and seeing video game style vape pods.
I'm not going to comment on the ban itself, but I think it is reasonable to assume that these companies have very big incentives to target minors and create brand loyalty early on since regulations can be quite murky regarding e-cigarettes.
I think that is the point of interviews. Sure I may not have worked X years on a project but I can answer any question my potential supervisor ask then who cares?
I would say my CV is 90% accurate and 10% lies, enough to get some glances from hiring managers, but not enough to blow an interview due to sheer ignorance if they ask me about i.
I can't wait for groups of friend to have "Designated Drone Operators" to hand over the controls to if the police ever question them as to why the machine was operating so erratically.
Isn't the difference also that Stadia is streaming from Google servers or nodes while the Nvidia Shield and Steam Link just stream from your computer via LAN? I would assume that would create more possible vectors for high latency which is the main worry for most people.
To be fair, Dota hasn't changed that much since W3 Mod days in terms of overall gameplay, yes there are talents and the map has changed but it's still 5 v 5 , 3 lanes, and you need to destroy the ancient. The only thing that has radically changed since Icefrog joined Valve is how it was monetized by using the Marketplace and cosmetics to rake in huge profits.
I would argue that the "gameplay" part is due largely to Icefrog's influence and philosophy regarding hero designs and reccurring patches.
IMO the game has never been more enjoyable and while I haven't gotten a battle pass since 2016 due to the fact that they have gotten too expensive with little value, this year's is actually really tempting with the new map skin, arcanas, persona, and announcer pack.
This just happened a few days ago and it was basic alterations and despite being authenticated as an altered video there are still those who:
-Deny it was altered
-Spread it for the sole purpose of misinformation
People will weaponize this technology like they do all others and gladly welcome it with open arms. We simply need to develop ways to identify and prevent abuse of powers.
Unless you are the incumbent banking on it like Big Media with the DMCA. The amount of fake / mass DMCA Takedowns that happen on YouTube on a daily basis is astounding.