As an aside, there is an episode of the Cosmos reboot that talked about Photometry at a mile-high level. I had never heard of it before, but it is supremely interesting.
The culture has to change from within. There is no reason why that information can't be shared among employees. As the user above you said, retaliatory action to that activity is in fact illegal. Just because the culture of where she works says it is not does not mean she is at all in the wrong for doing it, or that the retaliatory bullshit that was experienced was warranted - even if it was 'expected' as you say.
I for one side with the person who threw together the spreadsheet, not with Google who is trying to sneak by with not paying everyone equally.
Your assertion that the poster above you lives in a fantasy world for thinking that sharing salary information is a protected activity is frankly a nauseating attitude. One that I hope we all in tech can fix.
You should check out some of the documentation on Linode's site. They have some great tips about doing some very basic security such as securing SSH, keeping things updated, etc. Worth a peek.
Yeah I don't find their data convincing really. Ignoring that they have a biased sample to work from, and not knowing how the app works (do users elect when to tell their mood to the app? does the app ask? this could be a source of bias certainly), it is hard for me to look at these graphs and say wow. I'd imagine there are a number of confounding variables not being controlled for here. Life events that have nothing to do with sleep, etc? I'd be curious to see if that sort of thing was considered.
There is no statistical analysis happening here. This is just a presentation of what appear to me to be dubious looking graphs. I'm not convinced of any of this.
Additionally at the bottom of the page: "For the sleep analysis, we looked only at moods logged within 3 hours of the user waking up to reflect the impact of the user’s last sleep on the user’s mood."
Rousseau would probably say that a business's interests are inherently selfish and not in line with the general will of the populous. Businesses, in my mind, are not members of a republican government. An argument as to why they are will frankly never make any sense.
Additional edit: There is a huge amount of evidence that can be seen already about how businesses wreak havoc on political systems. The United States is a perfect example over and over again. Whether is it government intervention in the forming of labor unions, military intervention around the world and in south america (especially the early 20th century), corporate sponsorship of congressional members, etc - we can already see that this is a thick cloud over our representative government. Noam Chomsky has written extensively about this. Our senators and representatives are continually caught up in this via lobbying and etc. When you let businesses into the process as much as we have you will have problems - but if you allow them further access beyong what they currently have then that would be absolute insanity.
"The Super Rich Technologists Making Dire Predictions About Artificial Intelligence club gained another fear-mongering member this week: Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak."
A lot of universities have policies surrounding using work you've done for other classes in subsequent classes too. For instance, if you write a paper for one class and use it in whole, or in part in a different class.
I think posting finished homework online is a silly thing to do regardless. There's no reason to do that. I'd wager students get informed of these policies well before it gets anywhere close to where this went.