If the members don't deliver a strike mandate to Union leadership, they have no leverage during contract negotiations. Voting against a strike is directly voting against your own interests no matter how good the employer is.

I've worked in bash. I've written tools in bash that ended up having a significant lifetime.

Personally, you lost me at

reading from the database

Database drivers exist for a reason. Shelling out to a database cli interface is full of potential pitfalls that don't exist in any language with a programmatic interface to the database. Dealing with query parameterization in bash sounds un-fun and that's table stakes, security-wise.

Same with making web API calls. Error handling in particular is going to require a lot of boilerplate code that you would get mostly for free in languages like Python or Ruby or Go, especially if there's an existing library that wraps the API you want to use in native language constructs.

My family has had pinball machines as long as I can remember. I mostly played them but I also helped my dad work on them from time to time.

A pinball machine is an electrical device running on mains power, so the usual warnings like "don't work on it while it's plugged in" apply. Some machines have high voltage components like Nixie tube displays that require extra caution. I'd recommend against making pinball machine maintenance your first electronics hobby project. Those warnings out of the way, they're not super difficult to maintain if you're electrical and mechanically inclined.

All pinball machines need wear-and-tear sort of maintenance like replacing burned out lightbulbs or worn out rubber bands. The playfield components like kickers, flippers, and drop targets are driven by solenoids attached to the underside of the playfield and these sometimes fail and need to be replaced. The contacts that activate the components sometimes need adjusting since they can get bent after being hit with a pinball millions of times.

The rest is dependent on the age of the machine. 70s and older machines use electro-mechanical state machines that can be a bit fiddly to troubleshoot. You'll need the schematics if you want to maintain and repair one of these machines but most schematics are available online, either digitally or to order as printed replicas. Newer machines use electronic or computerized state machines which are more reliable but if one of the control boards fails, you usually have to replace the whole board.

If you want to get into it, buying a working but neglected machine from the mid-70s and fixing it up would probably be the cheapest and easiest way to get started. Machines that have flaws that make them worthless to collectors like cracked back glass will be the best value for money if you just want one to play with.

Oh, and they're heavy. You need 2-3 people to move one.

At my last job, one of the presales guys was terminated instantly when he tried to expense a client meeting at a strip club.

I haven't read the article but I work with Bloom filters at work sometimes.

Bloom filters basically tell you "this thing might be present" or "this thing is definitely not present".

If you're looking for a piece of data in a set of large files, being able to say "this data is definitely not in this file" saves you a bunch of time because you can skip over the file instead of searching through the whole thing just to figure out what you're looking for isn't there.

You could watch the Canadian coverage: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/how-to-follow-2024-us-election-cbc-1.7368364

As a public broadcaster, CBC is less prone to sensationalism than its commercial counterparts (though it is not immune).

The "store things in the recycle bin" people are the victims of a Lotus Notes-ism. The Trash folder in Notes isn't subject to size limits, so some people started storing anything they wanted to keep there. Those people told other people to do the same without explaining why and it took on a life of its own as a technological fairy tale.

Strangely enough, this came to mind today. I think it was 22 Minutes and the commentary was "And here's Stockwell Day not campaigning on a Sunday with 23 members of the press."

You mean Amal Clooney, the international Human Rights Lawyer? The adjunct professor of law at Columbia University? Advisor to the International Criminal Court? That Amal Clooney?

The fact that she's married to a celebrity is the least interesting thing about her in the context of Israel and the ICC.

For packages between 2 and 20 oz, it's 0.2 oz: https://competition-bureau.canada.ca/accuracy-requirements-net-quantity-declarations#sched-1-2

File a complaint with CFIA: https://inspection.canada.ca/en/food-safety-consumers/where-report-complaint/report-food-related-concern

That is well outside the permitted margin of error.

They probably meant append-only meaning existing entries can't be changed (for some value of "can't").

Most shells ignore setuid on scripts for security reasons.

Lone star tick bites can cause a condition called alpha-gal syndrome that makes you allergic to red meat.

I visited a former coal mine that's now a museum. If you take a tour, you get a small piece of coal to keep at the end.

An article I read said they split a single salary.

Maggard Razors sells aftershave samples from different manufacturers. You could buy a few different ones and see what you like.

I really like Barrister and Mann's stuff: https://maggardrazors.com/collections/pre-post-shave/products/barrister-and-mann-artisan-shaving-soap-and-aftershave-samples

Chiseled Face is reputable but I don't care for their marketing. People speak very highly of Henri et Victoria but I haven't tried it myself.