When companies try to use the cheapest possible labor, it usually results in a decrease in productivity and quality, which causes them to lose business to competitors in a healthy, competitive market.
If a company can find cheaper labor that performs just as well, they'll do so and outperform the competition. If they can find a way to distort a market so competitive pressure has less impact, then they'll do that absent a sufficient threat of punishment.
Headline is bullshit. This is an archiving feature for sectors where the law requires employers to retain records of certain kinds of communications. It only applies to phones set up with mobile device management, and it displays a clear notification to the user that the conversation is being logged.
Oh, sure, her views are very concerning and totally unsuitable for a therapist. Invoking Satan and calling trans acceptance demonic should get some serious attention from the university outside of her grade for this particular assignment.
Sadly, I fear that's not likely in the current political climate, at least not in a red state.
I read the assignment, the paper, and the instructor comments. The instructor is correct to give this a failing grade, however a zero was probably too harsh.
The criteria were:
Is there a clear link back to the assigned article? Can the reader assess whether the student has read the assigned article? (10 points)
Does the paper provide a reaction/reflection/discussion of some aspect of the article, rather than a summary? (5 points)
Are the main ideas and thoughts organized into a coherent discussion? Is the writing clear enough to follow without multiple re-readings? (5 points)
These are not particularly tough criteria. It's an easy assignment aimed at ensuring students read a particular article and think about its contents. Here's how I think I'd grade it:
I skimmed the article myself. In 2020, I would have been pretty confident the student read it. In 2025, I can't be sure an LLM didn't summarize it for the student. I would expect more discussion of specific details from the article rather than a general overview of themes, especially now. 5/10.
The student definitely has plenty of her own reactions to the article in her paper, but all of them are based on religion rather than psychology. If she wrote that there's substantial reason to believe certain gendered behaviors are based on biology and instinct, and that going against those instincts causes stress, that's fine. In a more rigorous paper, she'd need to cite sources for that, but not here. She could even use the presence of gender norms in religious texts to argue that multiple cultures have discovered something similar to what she believes. She didn't though. She talked about her religious beliefs regarding gender. 4/10.
Yes, this looks like a dual-chemistry slot charger that handles both NiMH and 3.6/3.7V Li-ion, which would charge each battery independently.
The battery in the third slot looks to be an Energizer L91 lithium-iron-disulfide primary battery. Those are not rechargeable, and attempting to charge one may cause it to explode.
Lithium disposables beat alkaline in longevity, but lose in cost and are only 1.2V.
They're about 1.6V open-circuit, and maintain 1.5V under light load for a large portion of their discharge cycle. They maintain 1.5V much longer than alkaline.
They're terribly expensive for regular use compared to pretty much any other option though.
You can’t just mix and match battery chemistry and call one superior.
Superior is a value judgment I wasn't making there. You made a claim about cost and capacity between different chemistries (unless you meant something else by "rechargeable equivalents"), and I said it only holds up for cheap (alkaline) primaries under light loads.
you absolutely have to be pedantic about it
I'm trying to share additional information, not win an argument on a technical point.
And you can’t just allow for different voltage ranges without all the electronics also being adjusted for that.
That's true. The broader topic of long-term obsolescence ought to include device design though. Someone designing a device today that could potentially use AA batteries should think about whether they're obsolete for the use case.
That does raise another issue: some of the retail-grade chargers are pretty terrible and may have led some people to a bad impression of how rechargeable batteries perform.
A charger should charge cells individually, at a reasonably fast rate, and terminate correctly to prevent overcharging. Yours hits two points out of three: it's individual and correct, but slow.
I had NiMH batteries in mind since we're talking about types that come in alkaline, and low-self-discharge NiMH batteries (e.g. white Eneloops) are generally fine to fully charge before storage.
You might end up with a bit shorter runtimes storing charged batteries for years than charging them right before use, but it doesn't matter much when your runtimes are measured in years.
There's one potential snag with certain low-power devices though: a few only work in the 1.3-1.5V range. That's terrible design since it doesn't use most of the power in an alkaline, but some of those won't work at all with NiMH.
I'd much rather see modern rechargeable batteries (Li-ion, maybe Na-ion in the future) in standardized, field-replaceable form factors.
This is already common in flashlights. In my pocket today is a flashlight running on an AA-size 14500 Li-ion. There's a magnetic pad to recharge the battery with a proprietary cable, but I can also unscrew the tailcap and replace it with a spare, as most people expect from a flashlight. I can use AA in a pinch with reduced performance, though I'll note supporting both voltage ranges takes extra work on the manufacturer's part.
Being complex and energy-intensive doesn't preclude batteries being standardized or field-replaceable. The issue with smartphones is that they have a highly optimized form factor.
When companies try to use the cheapest possible labor, it usually results in a decrease in productivity and quality, which causes them to lose business to competitors in a healthy, competitive market.
If a company can find cheaper labor that performs just as well, they'll do so and outperform the competition. If they can find a way to distort a market so competitive pressure has less impact, then they'll do that absent a sufficient threat of punishment.