I doubt they’d have to retire the phone - digital radio power levels are normally pretty easy to change in the radio firmware. Which also means it’s pretty easy to change, intentionally or unintentionally, in a later OS version.

Perhaps Apple chose to cheat to improve reception after mandatory testing was complete and the phone was available to buy, figuring they’d never get caught out. Perhaps Apple didn’t retest with later OS versions and it was unintentional. We will probably never know.

If you’re on-call 24/7/365 without a break, and it’s not because you have equity in the company, then find a new job.

If you don’t, then your health (physical and mental) will eventually force you to leave anyway. I did it at a startup where I was employee #1 (no equity for me), just me and the founders, and I nearly had a nervous breakdown from it, and ended up quitting from stress. Afterwards I decided I would do no more than 1 week in 3, and life got better after that.

What? Tech companies the world over have people on 24/7 on-call rotas, and it’s usually voluntary.

Depending on the company, you might typically do 1 week in 4 on-call, get a nice little retainer bonus for having to have not much of a social life for 1 week in 4, and then get an additional payment for each call you take, plus time worked at x1.5 or x2 the usual rate, plus time off in lieu during the normal workday if the call out takes a long time. If you do on-call for tech and the conditions are worse than this, then your company’s on-call policies suck.

I used to do it regularly. Over the years, it paid for the deposit on my first house, plus some nice trips abroad. I enjoyed it - I get a buzz out of being in the middle of a crisis and fixing it. But eventually my family got bored of it, and I got more senior jobs where it wasn’t considered a good use of my energies.

Your internet connection, the websites and apps you use, your utilities - they don’t fix themselves when they break at 0300.

If TSMC’s approach to on-call is bad, then yeah, screw that. I don’t see anything in the article that says that one way or the other. But doing an on-call rota at all is a perfectly normal thing to do in tech.

Russians in positions of power have frequently said that Ukraine is an aberration, and doesn’t actually exist at all as a national identity. So any Ukrainian symbol is an act of resistance to that.

Why use that particular flag? Well, why does anyone do any trolling? Because it feels good getting an emotional reaction out of other people. Because it feels good sticking it to those people who want you dead, or assimilated.

But also because it helps to figure out who isn’t a fan of the concept of Ukrainian statehood. If the initial reaction towards a Ukrainian nationalist flag is that it’s “Nazi” then that’s a pretty strong signal.

It’s worked though, hasn’t it? No one with half a gram of understanding of modern Ukraine thinks it’s Nazi - nationalist, yes, but not Nazi - and yet there are several accounts on the thread who have taken that bait.

Finding Nazis everywhere is paranoia, and demeans the experience of the millions who suffered and died because of actual Nazis.

“V for Victory” is Nazi too, right? Think about how the occupied French must have felt when they heard that on the BBC, after all the Frenchmen killed by those English longbow archers.

Meanings evolve.

Sure. I’m sure Trinidad and Tobago, and Albania, are definitely Nazis. And those anarchists with their black and red flags, they’re definitely Nazis too, right?

Seriously though, in this case, it’s the unofficial war flag of Ukraine.

It was originally associated with the WWII nationalist Banderite movement, which has some dubious history but is important in the 20th century story of Ukrainian nationalism. However its usage has evolved and is used widely, albeit unofficially, in modern Ukraine, by lots of military-associated groups who have nothing to do with Nazis or fascism.

One of the main selling points of it is that it trolls people who uncritically believe that Ukraine is run by Nazis.

I can only imagine they’re shutting it down to replace it with something with different branding, based on an LLM. Microsoft has gone all-in on LLMs and I’m sure they’d love some of that virtual assistant action if they were able to differentiate themselves.

I wouldn’t say the Pixel line’s hardware is rubbish, more that Google is focused on having a polished “it just works” experience rather than trying to differentiate themselves by having the fastest, biggest, newest hardware in the Android market.

The mobile market hit the “diminishing returns” point quite a while ago and for a lot of people - probably the majority - the only reasons to upgrade are security updates ending, or because a non-replaceable battery is getting to the end of its life.

I used to upgrade every 12-18 months religiously, but now my Pixel 5 is coming up on 3 years old and I’d happily keep it another few years with a battery replacement, if the updates weren’t going to end shortly.