Today's awfulness comes from Tim H, and while it's technically more than one line, it's so representative of the code, and so short that I'm going to call this a representative line. Before we get to the code, we need to talk a little history.

Tim's project is roughly three decades old. It's a C++ tool used for a variety of research projects, and this means that 90% of the people who have worked on it are PhD candidates in computer science programs. We all know the rule of CompSci PhDs and programming: they're terrible at it. It's like the old joke about the farmer who, when unable to find an engineer to build him a cow conveyer, asked a physicist. After months of work, the physicist introduced the result: "First, we assume a perfectly spherical cow in a vacuum…"

Now, this particularly function has been anonymized, but it's easy to understand what the intent was:

bool isFooOrBar() { return isFoo() && isBar(); }

The obvious problem here is the mismatch between the function name and the actual function behavior- it promises an or operation, but does an and, which the astute reader may note are different things.

I think this offers another problem, though. Even if the function name were correct, given the brevity of the body, I'd argue that it actually makes the code less clear. Maybe it's just me, but isFoo() && isBar() is more clear in its intent than isFooAndBar(). There's a cognitive overhead to adding more symbols that would make me reluctant to add such a function.

There may be an argument about code-reuse, but it's worth noting- this function is only ever called in one place.

This particular function is not itself, all that new. Tim writes:

This was committed as new code in 2010 (i.e., not a refactor). I'm not sure if the author changed their mind in the middle of writing the function or just forgot which buttons on the keyboard to press.

More likely, Tim, is that they initially wrote it as an "or" operation and then discovered that they were wrong and it needed to be an "and". Despite the fact that the function was only called in one place, they opted to change the body without changing the name, because they didn't want to "track down all the places it's used". Besides, isn't the point of a function to encapsulate the behavior?

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Two of Japan's largest media groups are suing AI search engine Perplexity over alleged copyright infringement, joining a growing list of news publishers taking legal action against AI companies using their content. FT: Japanese media group Nikkei, which owns the Financial Times, and the Asahi Shimbun newspaper said in statements on Tuesday that they had jointly filed a lawsuit in Tokyo. The groups join a number of Western media companies taking legal action against Perplexity, which provides answers to questions with sources and citations, using large language models (LLMs) from platforms such as OpenAI and Anthropic. The Japanese news providers claim Perplexity has, without permission, "copied and stored article content from the servers of Nikkei and Asahi" and ignored a "technical measure" designed to prevent this from happening. They claim that Perplexity's answers have given incorrect information attributed to the newspapers' articles, which "severely damages the credibility of newspaper companies."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Greenhouse gas reduction is no longer a priority for the US government, but if you're looking for a new vehicle and want to buy something with the lowest life cycle carbon emissions, you're best off looking for a compact with a small battery. That's one of the findings from a group at the University of Michigan of a comprehensive study that calculates the overall cradle-to-grave carbon impact for different types of vehicles, including factors like powertrain options, location (within the country), and use patterns. Even better, they built a tool you can use yourself. The study, published in Environmental Science and Technology, compares internal combustion engine powertrains with hybrid, 35- and 50-mile range plug-in hybrids, and 200-mile, 300-mile, and 400-mile battery electric powertrains across compact and midsize sedans, small and midsize SUVs, and pickup trucks, using a life cycle assessment model developed by Argonne National Laboratory and data of model year 2025 vehicles from the Environmental Protection Agency. If you expected that a gas-powered pickup truck would have the biggest carbon footprint, you'd be right. With a driving profile of 43 percent city driving and the rest highways (no cargo), a pickup will emit about 486 g CO2e per mile. Compared to that, a compact electric sedan with a 200-mile battery has just 17 percent of the life cycle emissions and is responsible for just 81 g CO2e per mile. A short-range electric pickup -- maybe that Slate that so many are salivating over -- is nearly as good, with a footprint that's only 25 percent the size of the gas pickup truck. On the other hand, hybrid powertrains (the kind that don't plug in) only reduce life cycle carbon compared to internal combustion alone by a modest amount -- between 11 and 13 percent, depending on the vehicle class. Plug-in hybrids with 35 miles of range can reduce emissions compared to plain combustion by 53-56 percent; with 50-mile batteries the reduction is 56-60 percent, assuming the PHEVs were driven in electric mode for 58 percent and 69 percent of the time, respectively. When it comes to BEVs, the smallest battery pack always has the least environmental impact. BEV powertrains with 400 miles of range have lifecycle emissions that are 67-69 percent lower than an ICE powertrain in the same vehicle. For 300-mile BEVs, this is an 81-83 percent reduction. A 200-mile BEV can be expected to contribute just 25-26 percent as much CO2e as an equivalent gas-burning vehicle would. That's not because EVs with big batteries are inefficient -- far from it -- but because making a battery for an EV is a very energy-intensive process. Most emissions from internal combustion engine (92 percent) and hybrid (89 percent) vehicles come from their use on the roads. But this changes once you start adding significant kWh-worth of battery. For PHEVs, the use phase is more like 73-80 percent, and for BEVs, it's just 48-60 percent, depending on the size of the batteries. The researchers also modeled different driving behaviors, including the use cases of someone who uses their vehicle just to commute and run errands; the "occasional road-tripper," most of whose needs are met by a small battery; and a contractor or someone else who has to drive a lot for work, with varying amounts of cargo onboard. As we've known for some time, where you get your energy from affects how clean your EV will be, and switching from gasoline to an EV has more of an impact in Seattle (which relies on hydropower) versus Cincinnati (where the electricity comes from burning coal), for both PHEVs and BEVs.

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Farmers Insurance disclosed a breach affecting 1.1 million customers after attackers exploited Salesforce in a widespread campaign involving ShinyHunters and allied groups. According to BleepingComputer, the hackers stole personal data such as names, birth dates, driver's license numbers, and partial Social Security numbers. From the report: The company disclosed the data breach in an advisory on its website, saying that its database at a third-party vendor was breached on May 29, 2025. "On May 30, 2025, one of Farmers' third-party vendors alerted Farmers to suspicious activity involving an unauthorized actor accessing one of the vendor's databases containing Farmers customer information (the "Incident")," reads the data breach notification (PDF) on its website. "The third-party vendor had monitoring tools in place, which allowed the vendor to quickly detect the activity and take appropriate containment measures, including blocking the unauthorized actor. After learning of the activity, Farmers immediately launched a comprehensive investigation to determine the nature and scope of the Incident and notified appropriate law enforcement authorities." The company says that its investigation determined that customers' names, addresses, dates of birth, driver's license numbers, and/or last four digits of Social Security numbers were stolen during the breach. Farmers began sending data breach notifications to impacted individuals on August 22, with a sample notification [1, 2] shared with the Maine Attorney General's Office, stating that a combined total of 1,111,386 customers were impacted. While Farmers did not disclose the name of the third-party vendor, BleepingComputer has learned that the data was stolen in the widespread Salesforce data theft attacks that have impacted numerous organizations this year. Further reading: Google Suffers Data Breach in Ongoing Salesforce Data Theft Attacks

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Mark Tyson writes via Tom's Hardware: On this day 34 years ago, an unknown computer science student from Finland announced that a new free operating system project was "starting to get ready." Linus Benedict Torvalds elaborated by explaining that the OS was "just a hobby, [it] won't be big and professional like GNU." Of course, this was the first public outing for the colossal collaborative project that is now known as Linux. Above, you can see Torvalds' first posting regarding Linux to the comp.os.minix newsgroup. The now famously caustic, cantankerous, curmudgeon seemed relatively mild, meek, and malleable in this historic Linux milestone posting. Torvalds asked the Minix community about their thoughts on a free new OS being prepared for Intel 386 and 486 clones. He explained that he'd been brewing the project since April (a few months prior), and asked for direction. Specifically, he sought input about other Minix users' likes and dislikes of that OS, in order to differentiate Linux. The now renowned developer then provided a rough summary of the development so far. Some features of Linux that Torvalds thought were important, or that he was particularly proud of, were then highlighted in the newsgroup posting. For example, the Linux chief mentioned his OS's multithreaded file system, and its absence of any Minix code. However, he humbly admitted the code as it stood was Intel x86 specific, and thus "is not portable." Last but not least, Torvalds let it be known that version 0.01 of this free OS would be out in the coming month (September 1991). It was indeed released on September 17, 1991, but someone else decided on the OS name at the last minute. Apparently, Torvalds didn't want to release his new OS under the name of Linux, as it would be too egotistical, too self-aggrandizing. He preferred Freax, a portmanteau word formed from Free-and-X. However, one of Torvald's colleagues, who was the administrator for the project's FTP server, did not think that 'Freax' was an appealing name for the OS. So this co-worker went ahead and uploaded the OS as 'Linux' on that date in September, without asking Torvalds.

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Struggling small biotech firms are pivoting into cryptocurrencies, rebranding as "crypto treasuries" or stockpiling digital assets like Ether and Litecoin as a last-ditch effort to boost share prices amid stalled funding and weak drug pipelines. Bloomberg reports: Shares of 180 Life Sciences Corp., now doing business as ETHZilla, tripled after the Peter Thiel-backed company said it had accumulated Ether tokens worth over $350 million. Less than two weeks later, the stock's gains have been erased. In July, Sonnet BioTherapeutics Holdings soared 243% in one volatile session on plans to transform into a public crypto treasury while MEI Pharma Inc. initially doubled on plans to sell shares to fund a Litecoin treasury. Such about-faces are a tried-and-true formula for small firms when funds are low and shares are under pressure. For drugmakers it can be a sudden shift to chase after trendy new treatment targets, still other companies rebrand with buzzwords like artificial intelligence to juice returns. Now some biotech executives are using digital coins to pump new life into flagging shares. So far in 2025, at least 10 biotechs have announced a pivot into digital assets. The announcements frequently spark frenzied, but short-lived, spikes in shares. "If they're low on ideas, if they can't find relevance in drug development, they're going to try to justify their existence as management in another way," according to Mike Taylor, lead portfolio manager of the Simplify Health Care ETF. "You have a handful of companies trying to reinvent themselves into some other tangent. And, most, if not all won't work out."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: AMD's X3D-series Ryzen chips have become popular with PC gamers because games in particular happen to benefit disproportionately from the chips' extra 64MB of L3 cache memory. But that extra memory occasionally comes with extra headaches. Not long after they were released earlier this year, some early adopters started having problems with their CPUs, ranging from failure to boot to actual physical scorching and burnout -- the problems were particularly common for users of the 9800X3D processor in ASRock motherboards, and one Reddit thread currently records 157 incidents of failure for that CPU model across various ASRock boards. In an interview with the Korean language website Quasar Zone (via Tom's Hardware), AMD executives David McAfee and Travis Kirsch acknowledged the problems and pointed to the most likely culprit: motherboard makers who don't follow AMD's recommended specifications. Some manufacturers have historically shipped their AMD and Intel motherboards with elevated default power settings in the interest of squeezing a bit more performance out of the chips -- but those adjustments can also cause problems in some cases, especially for higher-end CPUs.

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Apple has filed a lawsuit against former Apple Watch staffer Dr. Chen Shi, alleging that he "conspired to steal Apple's trade secrets relating to Apple Watch and to disclose them to his new employers (Oppo)." The company alleges he downloaded 63 sensitive documents, attended technical meetings, and coordinated with Oppo to transfer proprietary information, though Oppo denies wrongdoing. The Verge reports: Ahead of starting his new job at Oppo, the employee, Dr. Chen Shi, attended "dozens" of meetings with technical members on the Apple Watch team to learn about their work and downloaded 63 documents "from a protected Box folder" that he loaded onto a USB drive, according to the lawsuit. Shi allegedly sent a message to Oppo saying that he was working to "collect as much information as possible" before starting his job. And he searched the internet for terms like "how to wipe out macbook" and "Can somebody see if I've opened a file on a shared drive?" from his Apple-issued MacBook before leaving the company. Shi was formerly a sensor system architect at Apple, and the company says he had "a front row seat to Apple's development of its cutting-edge health sensor technology, including highly confidential roadmaps, design and development documents, and specifications for ECG sensor technology." He now heads up a team working on sensing technology at Oppo -- which Apple says it learned because of "messages he left on his Apple-issued work iPhone." In his resignation letter to Apple, Shi said he was leaving "due to personal and family reasons." Via that iPhone, Apple also says it found messages from Oppo demonstrating that it "encouraged, approved, and agreed to Dr. Shi's plan to collect Apple's proprietary information before leaving Apple."

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Nvidia has launched its Jetson AGX Thor robotics chip module, a $3,499 "robot brain" developer kit that starts shipping next month. CNBC reports: After a company uses the developer kit to prototype their robot, Nvidia will sell Thor T5000 modules that can be installed in production-ready robots. If a company needs more than 1,000 Thor chips, Nvidia will charge $2,999 per module. CEO Jensen Huang has said robotics is the company's largest growth opportunity outside of artificial intelligence, which has led to Nvidia's overall sales more than tripling in the past two years. "We do not build robots, we do not build cars, but we enable the whole industry with our infrastructure computers and the associated software," said Deepu Talla, Nvidia's vice president of robotics and edge AI, on a call with reporters Friday. The Jetson Thor chips are based on a Blackwell graphics processor, which is Nvidia's current generation of technology used in its AI chips, as well as its chips for computer games. Nvidia said that its Jetson Thor chips are 7.5 times faster than its previous generation. That allows them to run generative AI models, including large language models and visual models that can interpret the world around them, which is essential for humanoid robots, Nvidia said. The Jetson Thor chips are equipped with 128GB of memory, which is essential for big AI models. [...] The company said its Jetson Thor chips can be used for self-driving cars as well, especially from Chinese brands. Nvidia calls its car chips Drive AGX, and while they are similar to its robotics chips, they run an operating system called Drive OS that's been tuned for automotive purposes.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from PYMNTS: Artificial intelligence startup Perplexity has announced a new subscription program called Comet Plus that it said gives users access to premium content from trusted publishers and journalists, while providing publishers with a better compensation model. "Comet Plus transforms how publishers are compensated in the AI age," the company said in a Monday blog post. "As users demand a better internet in the age of AI, it's time for a business model to ensure that publishers and journalists benefit from their contributions to a better internet." Comet Plus is included in Perplexity's Pro and Max memberships and is available as a standalone subscription for $5 per month. Perplexity introduced its Comet AI-powered browser in July, saying the tool lets users answer questions and carry out tasks and research from a single interface. Bloomberg reported Monday that Perplexity has allocated $42.5 million for a revenue sharing program that compensates publishers when their content is used by its Comet browser or AI assistant. The program will use funds that come from Comet Plus and will deliver 80% of the revenue to publishers, with Perplexity getting the other 20%, the report said, citing an interview with Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas. "AI is helping to create a better internet, but publishers still need to get paid," Srinivas said in the report. "Sowe think this is actually the right solution, and we're happy to make adjustments along the way."

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The Federal Trade Commission is warning major U.S. tech companies against yielding to foreign government demands that weaken data security, compromise encryption, or impose censorship on their platforms. From a report: FTC Chairman Andrew N. Ferguson signed the letter sent to large American companies like Akamai, Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Apple, Cloudflare, Discord, GoDaddy, Meta, Microsoft, Signal, Snap, Slack, and X (Twitter). Ferguson stresses that weakening data security at the request of foreign governments, especially if they don't alert users about it, would constitute a violation of the FTC Act and expose companies to legal consequences. Ferguson's letter specifically cites foreign laws such as the EU's Digital Services Act and the UK's Online Safety and Investigatory Powers Acts. Earlier this year, Apple was forced to remove support for iCloud end-to-end encryption in the United Kingdom rather than give in to demands to add a backdoor for the government to access encrypted accounts. The UK's demand would have weakened Apple's encryption globally, but it was retracted last week following U.S. diplomatic pressure.

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Intel said Monday that converting $8.87 billion in federal chip subsidies into a 10% equity stake creates unprecedented complications and potential "adverse reactions" for a company deriving 76% of revenue internationally. The arrangement transforms Biden-era CHIPS Act grants into share purchases at $20.74 -- a discount to Friday's $24.80 close -- with the Department of Commerce receiving up to 433 million shares by Tuesday's expected closing. Foreign governments may impose additional regulations on Intel due to US government ownership, the company warned in securities filings, while the precedent could discourage other nations from offering grants if they expect similar equity conversions. China alone represents 29% of Intel's revenue. The deal also restricts Intel's strategic flexibility, requiring government votes align with board recommendations except on matters affecting federal interests.

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Living through extreme heat waves can accelerate your rate of aging, according to research published Monday. From a report: Scientists analyzed 15 years' worth of health data from nearly 25,000 adults in Taiwan and found that two years of exposure to heat waves could speed up a person's so-called biological aging by eight to 12 extra days. It may not sound like a lot, but this number builds over time, said Cui Guo, an assistant professor at the University of Hong Kong who led the study, which was published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change. "This small number actually matters," she said. "This was a study of a two-year exposure, but we know heat waves have actually been occurring for decades." The research comes as human-induced climate change is making heat waves more intense and long-lasting. The West Coast of the United States is suffering from sweltering temperatures while Iran is experiencing searing heat. Record-breaking temperatures punished Europe, Japan and Korea earlier this month. France recently experienced its second heat wave of the summer, sparking a national debate over air-conditioning.

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Google will require identity verification for all Android app developers, including those distributing apps outside the Play Store, starting September 2026 in Brazil, Indonesia, Singapore, and Thailand before expanding globally through 2027. Developers must register through a new Android Developer Console beginning March 2026. The requirement applies to certified Android devices running Google Mobile Services. Google cited malware prevention as the primary motivation, noting sideloaded apps contain 50 times more malware than Play Store apps. Hobbyist and student developers will receive separate account types. Developer information submitted to Google will not be displayed to users.

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Security researchers have uncovered critical vulnerabilities in Perplexity's Comet browser that enable attackers to hijack user accounts and execute malicious code through the browser's AI summarization features. The flaws, discovered independently by Brave and Guardio Labs, exploit indirect prompt injection attacks that bypass traditional web security mechanisms when users request webpage summaries. Brave demonstrated account takeover through a malicious Reddit post that compromised Perplexity accounts when summarized. The vulnerability allows attackers to embed commands in webpage content that the browser's large language model executes with full user privileges across authenticated sessions. Guardio's testing found the browser would complete phishing transactions and prompt users for banking credentials without warning indicators. The paid browser, available to Perplexity Pro and Enterprise Pro subscribers since July, processes untrusted webpage content without distinguishing between legitimate instructions and attacker payloads.

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A group representing the world's biggest stock exchanges has called on securities regulators to clamp down on so-called tokenised stocks, arguing that the blockchain-based tokens create new risks for investors and could harm market integrity. From a report: Crypto exchange Coinbase and broker Robinhood are among those making a push into the nascent sector that could shake up the securities investing landscape. Proponents say tokenised equities can cut trading costs, speed up settlement and facilitate around-the-clock trading. The World Federation of Exchanges (WFE), in a letter sent to three regulatory bodies last Friday, said it was concerned the tokens "mimic" equities without providing the same rights or trading safeguards.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Elon Musk's AI startup xAI sued Apple and ChatGPT maker OpenAI in U.S. federal court in Texas on Monday, accusing them of illegally conspiring to thwart competition for artificial intelligence. Musk earlier this month had threatened to sue Cupertino, California-based Apple, saying in a post on his social media platform X that "Apple is behaving in a manner that makes it impossible for any AI company besides OpenAI to reach #1 in the App Store."

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Years of aggressive capacity expansion have driven China's solar manufacturing sector into deep losses. Panel prices have hit their lowest levels since 2011 even as the country's installations more than doubled. Shanghai-listed Tongwei reported a 4.96 billion yuan ($693 million) net loss for the first half of 2025, widening from 3.13 billion yuan a year earlier, while Trina Solar swung to a 2.92 billion yuan loss from a prior-year profit. Panel prices touched 8.7 cents per watt in July, forcing manufacturers to write down inventory values across the polysilicon-to-module supply chain. China installed 212.2 gigawatts of photovoltaic capacity through June, bringing total installations to 1.1 terawatts, yet supply continues outpacing demand after seven major manufacturers posted their first combined annual loss in 2024. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology convened leading producers last week to urge shutdowns of outdated capacity, while the China Photovoltaic Industry Association pledged to tackle what it termed "involution-style" competition through strengthened self-discipline measures.

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DHL's German operations, facing the departure of one-third of support staff within five years, has automated customer service calls and begun capturing institutional knowledge through AI-conducted exit interviews. The company's voicebot now processes one million monthly calls, resolving half without human intervention, though initial deployments struggled with basic German language recognition. FT adds: At DHL in Germany, one in three staff working in support operations will retire in the next five years, taking with them decades of institutional memory. "Everyone in Germany understands that if you don't automate and use AI, you won't be able to deal with the shrinking workforce," says Gemein [chief information officer for post and parcels].

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Yahoo Finance interviews Peter Cappelli, a Wharton professor of management, on "the business case for employers pushing for workers to get back to the office." (Cappelli has co-written a new book with workplace strategist Ranya Nehmeh titled In Praise of the Office: The Limits to Hybrid and Remote Work ...) Yahoo Finance: What's wrong with a hybrid work arrangement? Cappelli: People just don't come in. That's maybe the single biggest factor. There is a growing awareness that people are really never there on their anchor days. If you want that for your company, you have to manage that attendance... Yahoo Finance: What's the compelling advantage of in-person work? Cappelli: There's value in human interaction, what we learn from each other, the cooperation that we can get in solving problems, and the motivation and commitment that comes from being around other people... When you first began your career, imagine what it would've been like if no one was in the office. You'd be completely lost. If you think about how we learn about office work, we learn by watching. You learn what the values of the organization are. You learn it from the conversations in the office. You can see how the boss reacts to different requests and different problems. As you advance, you've got your ear to the ground, and you've got the opportunity to raise your hand and pitch in and have some influence. You can catch the boss between meetings and pass along a little tidbit of information, and you develop relationships with people where you can solve problems... Those are the kind of things that we miss when we move to remote — in addition to the general fact that people are energized by working with people. With remote work, people also spend more time in meetings that are worthless. A lot of those things could be fixed, but the problem is they're not. He argues remote work isn't as widespread as it seems. ("In Europe, for example, where employees have always had more power, I figured remote work would stay. It hasn't. Most everybody's gone back to the office.") Even in the U.S., 70% of employers are in-office, all the time. ("[M]ost employers are small. Remote work and hybrid work, in particular, is largely a big city, big company phenomenon... It's only white-collar jobs.") And fewer jobs offered are being offered with remote-working options, he believes, now that the labor market has softened. "CEOs are now thinking we're losing something, and the employee resistance to return to the office has weakened.... The longer you wait, the harder it is to ever get people to come back without a big fight. " Cappelli: Right now, people might be saying, 'I will quit if I have to go back to the office,' but it turns out they don't mean it. The reason, of course, is it's one thing to say that you will quit; it's another to actually walk away from a paycheck... If you opt for remote or hybrid, good outcomes don't happen by themselves. You can make it work, but it requires more time and effort for management, more rules, more practices, more leadership.

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