That was an interesting tutorial, but I think a little over the top. When it asks for an email address, just enter an invalid address. "a@a.com" used to work, but MS has done something so that address is specifically rejected, however, I was recently able to use "f*ckyou@f*ckyou.com" (replacing the asterisks with the usual character) and Microsoft did it's thing, telling me that the address had been used too many times, but then allowing me to set the machine up using only a local account.

What is utterly stupid is that I Microsoft will not allow me to use my work email address, which is hosted by ... Microsoft.

Because training for cutting-edge technology is much more difficult and specialized than teaching someone how to work in a 60s-era automotive factory. Google does too many things already, it would be kinda foolish for them to get into the education business and fuck that up the way Sundar Pichai is doing with Google as a whole.

Would you say the same to a biotech company?...hey Pfizer....stop looking globally for international cancer experts and just train up some smart high schooler and make them cancer genome bioinformaticists?

Here's where you're especially wrong. If Google wanted cheap Indian bodies, it is cheaper to host them overseas. Google wants top talent and can't find it at any price. Google has a LOT of money to throw around. It could pay double for their AI researchers and would be a rounding error in their profits. They don't want shitty Indians. They know where to find them. They want first-rate talent and that's distributed throughout the globe. If someone is hiring for a California office, they want quality, not low cost if they're a multi-national. There are 1000s of ways of getting cheaper labor than immigrants in Silicon Valley offices...first of which is just to open more offices in India. If your point is that H1Bs are indentured servants, why not host them in a failed city like Detroit or St Louis or build up an office in the middle of nowhere?

There's a global talent shortage in tech and AI is the newest and hottest field catching everyone's interest. Google is a shitty company, true, but they are right on this one. We need better immigration systems to compete globally.

Not disagreeing, but Peter Attia likes to talk about healthspan. Most of us are fine with dying at 80. Most us will happily spend whatever we can to ensure the last half of our life doesn't suck. For me personally, in my 40s, (where I'm still at), I am in the best shape of my life, caridio-vascular-wise and strength wise, but recovery is a BITCH. I can do more pullups than ever. I workout nearly daily and eat really really well, even have gotten good about getting sleep, but the difference between me in my 40s vs 30s or 20s is I can barely get out of a chair after a good workout...for like a week. I used to be able to do much more and recover in a day, maybe 2 if I really fucked myself up...now it's several for modest workouts. I can't even run for more than a few minutes on concrete without knee pain the next day (but can bike 50 miles effortlessly) . I dread it getting worse...also the vision deterioration sucks badly.

So even if you make it 100, whatever you're doing to make you not feel like garbage will probably give you cancer...if life generally doesn't. I agree, I think we've hit our limit on total lifespan. Historically, we've always had people reach 100, even long ago, it was just much rarer.....so in my view, those genetically lucky outliers show the theoretical limit...what kills most, their system just wasn't impacted by, but none of them every made it to 120, 130, etc. The best we can hope for is more people to make to the age of those old folks in Japan.

However, there are also generic outliers who barely age...who are energetic and healthy and cognitively sharp into their later years...and it's not just the stuff we know about like diet and exercise...I've met a few who eat and exercise mediocrely...and known many who are supremely healthy and fit and age like shit. We should really figure out what is different about those genetic outliers. The economy would benefit MASSIVELY if we learned how to slow aging...as would everyone's quality of life. Imagine a 70yo being as sharp as a 40 yo and continuing to work if they wanted to? Imagine those over 60 being heathy enough they can be active and fit and die from car wrecks, stupidity (selfies near edge of cliff type stuff) or sudden cancer instead of slow, expensive, miserable deterioration? Aging makes us miserable, makes our total economy poorer, and completely sucks. While it is fundamentally a fact of life, like cancer, war, and disease....the more we can reduce it's impacts, the more society would benefit as a whole.

So to me, this is not the vanity project of weathly silicon valley types or Joe Rogan (who is really into this). They just have the means to pioneer something we all should be concerned about, but for some reason, place mild social stigma on. I personally believe there is a lot that can be done to ensure our later years and really all of our years are much healthier...and a lot of the techniques are not yet discovered.

You are correct. You replied to my post in which I was replying to Oddroot. I had not noticed that you were not Oddroot.

My apologies.

In your original post, you stated that your wife had a stay in hospital, for which you received no bill, which you said was due to having insurance through your job. That simply wasn't true.

And, yes, you might not like it, but VA healthcare is socialized healthcare, especially as it provides coverage for for your wife.

Your own story contradicts the point you were trying to make (badly).

So you have socialized healthcare. You didn't pay nothing because of your insurance; you paid nothing because of your eligibility for VA healthcare. What was the point you were trying to make?

This is pure BS. I suspect you don't actually work in the USA. Perhaps you are just a foreign troll.

Almost no one in the US has insurance that doesn't have co-pays or deductibles. Even the best plan available to members of congress has deductibles and copays that would apply to the incident you described.

There is another possibility: you had already spent thousands of dollars for health care that year and had met your out of pocket maximum. Thousands of dollars that make your anecdote irrelevant.

Having experienced both government-run and private health care, I can tell you that private health care sucks. Deeply.

The problem with private healthcare is that, mostly, it simply doesn't exist. There is a health services industry, that is highly motivated to sell you more services. Thus (my wife has personal experience of this), you typically don't get the best treatment available, you get the treatment that makes the most money for providers. That's what your supposed competition gets you. You get treatments that have little to no proven benefits. Some time back I refused some such treatments, but only because a doctor in the UK that I knew told me that there is no proven benefit to what the "recommended' treatment.

The second problem is that you can't negotiate the price of health services. A negotiation took place, but you were not involved in it: that negotiation took place between the insurance companies and the providers. Among other things they negotiated was how much you got the pay before the deductible and out-of-pocket maximums kick in.

I sure there are people who never had a serious illness that think that they can negotiate the price of the hospital will charge while they are en-route to said hospital in an ambulance, but this is pure fantasy.

The other fantasy that some people harbor is the idea that an unqualified individual working for a private company with a strong profit motivation is more likely to approve some treatment than a doctor employed by a government health service, with no profit motive.

I subscribed to a streaming service that subsequently put up their price. At the time of the price increase, they required me to accept the new price. The streaming did not work without this acceptance.

I did not accept the new price and the streaming service no longer worked. However, they kept billing my credit card at the old rate.

I did not realize this for some time and when I did, I disputed the charge for that month, which was quickly refunded. Then they charged me the next month. Because they had forced me to take action again, I demanded refunds going back quite a long way. All of these refunds were credited to my account.

I was unable to log in to cancel. I was unable to get any response from their customer service, until I finally realized that, at some point in time, they had broken support for "plus-addressing".

But why did they keep charging my account? I wonder how many other people they are still charging, but not providing the service.

A couple of decades ago, I experienced something similar: I had been paying a monthly amount for dial-up Internet. About a year after the service shut down, I was still being charged. In this case, it was in the UK, where there are supposed to be protections against bad "direct debits", but the bank basically told me to take a hike when I complained. It wasn't so much money that I could be bothered to argue.

Until you take into account the weight of the storage tanks.

This is just basic protectionism and as the TFA stated, it's symbolic. If you are serving in the military and you really want your iPhone, I guess you'll buy a cheap burner phone for the base, just like how most of us did 20 years ago when work gave us a blackberry which we couldn't use for non-work purposes. We'd carry a blackberry on our belt (for some reason, that wasn't an embarrassment) and our real phone for talking to our family in our pocket.

I guess this is the new future? I don't care too much. The US bans TikTok to protect it's local social media industry and South Korea does the same to protect it's smartphone industry. It's not great, but not in the top 10 of my daily worries.

Apple is the undisputed leader in tablets. Their phones are on par with the best of their competitors...and it's a very active sector. IMO, their laptops are far better than their competitors. So while there are no earth-shattering innovations in tablets or laptops in the last 3 years, there are subtle refinements and as a leader, they have different pressures. Stuff has to work...it has to work for a broad base of people. If Samsung screws up a folding phone...no one cares. Only early adopters bought it. If Apple screws up the iPhone 16, they will get sued. There will be a massive cost. I've worked for a tiny startup and now I work for a massive software company...the dynamics are much different...a small mistake is no big deal when you have no paying customers. When you have billions on the line, your innovation will be measured, but I view it as equally innovative. Also, I view innovation as relative. I will complain about my iPad when the competitors release a noticeably better version. Same with the laptop or phone. So subtle things like wireless charging adapters that actually work for laptops, like magsafe, are both innovative and HUGE...I wish I could get one on a lenovo...the only remotely close laptop I've seen in the last 10 years are the Surface tablet/laptop hybrids....from Microsoft.

You're welcome to hipster this and claim Apple & MS aren't "innovative"...but MS is holding up well against the competition and they have some really fierce competitors. Apple is way ahead of the market in most categories. Very few companies of their size innovate better. I will still grade Apple as quite good in the innovation category...mostly because I've recently used products from their competitors: laptops, tablets, and phones. You're welcome to complain, but until theri competition clearly beats them, I'm going to have to push back on that one.

You can make money on the stock in more ways than dividends. For example, Alphabet is also buying back stock. People who invested at a lower stock price and now sell back at the higher have made money. Normally, buybacks tend to concentrate control of a company into fewer hands, but, since these are already non-voting stock, in this case, it doesn't change this.

Apple is a darling of financial performance and innovation. Microsoft is doing amazing lately on similar fronts, especially in gaming and cloud services. Your list is not meaningful. Apple & MS don't have a lot in common with Oracle, IBM, and HP in regards to industry perception or performance in their sectors. Most perceive Oracle, IBM, and HP to be legacy players at this point, especially in their core offerings.

I personally wish more tech companies offered dividends...so everyday consumers can hold on to the stock and make money...so all the gains don't go to day traders or those who are exceptional at long-term planning.

Yes, but this whole story is about the USA, where only 43% of the population even have a passport (and don't have access to something like the Schengen Zone).