I am also fine with Apple collecting a modest fee for providing that service. That fee should probably be somewhere in the 2-3% range. Demanding what amounts to a 30% “introducer fee” is beyond absurd.

I also do not approve of how inconsistently Apple enforces their own rules.

I’d assumed that was for all prescriptions, but it could just be controlled substances.

So, yeah, just make them use managed accounts.

Seems more like an issue with the linked site to me.

Nothing beats real world experience, and the sooner you can put theory into practice, the better.

Additional learning on your own is, of course, also a great idea. Pick a project you’d like to do, and then do it. Or find an interesting open source project, explore the code base, and try tackling a bug report or two.

In reality, a corporation so isolated would have no reason to exist.

If you have no savings, then it’s very likely you’ll still go into crippling debt eventually; at best, you’re staving it off until retirement. At that point, cheap credit is probably not going to be as readily available.

But I get your meaning. Yes, there is definitely an in-between where people can spend their entire income without accumulating immediate debt (social debt and future debt not withstanding).

People with low incomes have little choice but to budget responsibly or go into crippling debt. Once you get into the habit of spending responsibly, it’s easy to continue that habit even as your income rises. You’re used to making what you earn go a long way.

On the other hand, if your attitude is, “yeah, maybe I’m not making much now, but I should totally be making fat stacks in a couple years,” then your poor spending habits are likely to continue. You’ll go into debt with the expectation that you’ll be able to pull yourself out of it as your income rises. But living beyond your means is a very hard habit to break. You start to rationalize: “hey, I should have a much better lifestyle making $100k than I did at $50k.” Except, well, you weren’t really living off $50k; you were living off $50k plus a lot of high-interest credit.

If there's anyone who can push back against the marketing department, it's the legal department.

I do not understand why it should be preferable to say "oh well, nothing to be done, time to quit" rather than be a force for change. The former is easy, but it does little to correct systemic problems that affect many of your peers.

Also, you make "accept paychecks" sound like you're accepting some sort of favor. Paychecks are not charity; they are compensation. You produce something of value, and you receive something of value in return.

Whether the organizers were covered by the NLRA is another matter; those with direct reports are likely excluded by the 'supervisors' exemption, which has been expanded over the years to cover pretty much anyone in a managerial role. For those who are covered, Google's actions could absolutely meet the legal definition of retaliation.

As an aside, the legal standards for what constitutes 'retaliation' are not the only ones that matter. They may manage to avoid a lawsuit, but they will suffer harm to their reputation regardless. I, for one, could not care less whether the law allows them to retaliate against the protest organizers. To me, this is just one in a long line of reasons why I scratched Google off my "short list" of potential employers.

Games don’t have to prompt for confirmation to spend proprietary fake money. This removes an opportunity to reconsider a purchase, and dramatically increases the chance of accidental spending. And without a dollar value that players can easily reason about, it’s easy to not realize how much you’re spending. “35 crystal whatzits? Um, okay, that doesn’t sound like much.” Never mind the fact that you actually have to buy at least 50 whatzits to have 35, because the next lowest option is to buy 25.

I don’t have any data on this, but I’d be willing to bet that revenues from in-app purchases went through the roof when someone had the bright idea to switch to an in-game currency (and, eventually, multiple currencies).