motorcycles (which can likely never be self-driving)
BMW, Honda, and Yamaha have already built them. The future is here, and it looks boring as hell.
I just signed up for their Spectrum service, was promised to receive 100 Mbps, but have consistently gotten less than 40 Mbps since day one.
Did they promise 100Mbps, or "up to 100Mbps"? That's always been their game. "We'll give you 'up to' the advertised speed, but that includes anything down to and including zero". On a side note, have them come out and check your wire. I'm about to call them again to have them replace the line from the pole for the third time. They just can't hang those things to save their lives, and two of them have broken at the anchor point on my eaves. This third one they ran directly through a bushy tree, and the wind is tearing it up.
Starting salaries for college grads may be higher, but what is the average starting salary for someone fresh out of school, with no prior work history? "College grad" is a large, vague group of people that includes new graduates all the way up to (and beyond?) retirement age. How many of these fresh grads are severely underemployed for the first few years after they get their degree, and don't actually start making a decent amount until later? I bet you can walk into any Starbucks, throw a stick, and hit someone with a degree. I actually work with a person right now who is finishing up a masters, but can't get a job in their field and worked at Starbucks prior to joining up with us doing gopher work.
My situation was not a tragedy, nor extreme. I started work right out of high school, and spent the next 8 years realizing I didn't what to do what I was doing anymore. It gave me the motivation to do well in school, and gave me a goal. I also didn't know what I wanted to do as a career until I knew what I didn't want to do. It was tiring, with long nights, but I had fun and it felt like an accomplishment to pull it off with a 4.0gpa. I believe everyone should work while they go to school. Colleges can't teach you how to function within a business organization. They don't teach you people skills, office politics, what not to say to the boss even when he's wrong, how to make your measly paycheck last until the next one and beyond, etc. Living in the bubble that is college, and then being thrown to the wolves as soon as you're done, has got to be a terrifying experience. It benefited me greatly to experience all the crap that goes along with employment in a job that I was all to happy to be leaving.
College education is hugely important for living well in this day and age. Asking adults to start working to pay for their college is a great lesson in life: nothing is actually free. You set them up with a 4 year 'free' ride, then expect them to be instantly successful living in this big scary world afterwards is just setting them up for failure, especially since they're leaving the gates with a massive debt load. If you want to make an argument, it should be 'college should be cheaper', which I won't disagree with. "College should be 'free', except not really and by the way good luck kid" is not a great system for positive outcome.
They don't have a job yet (that's why they go to college)
I had a full time job for 6 years before I went back to school, and continued to work full time while going to school at night. Employment and education are not mutually exclusive. Between my employer's education benefits and tax breaks, school cost me little more than time and effort. I think those who live completely off of loans for 4 years, and then expect to find immediate employment above what they could have been doing all along, are foolish.
I think it's fair to say that California has a well maintained road network for its size,
The interstates are generally well maintained. The freeways in and around the LA/OC area are a fucking travesty. Potholes everywhere. Some roads are crumbling and coming apart in chunks. They only fix the worst of the worst, and it takes them several years to get to it. I work in the north SFV area, and I've only seen them repave 4 streets in the ~5 miles around my office in the last decade, and only just recently. Meanwhile, the freeways are constantly "under construction" but you rarely see them working on them, even late at night. They like to start 15 projects, tear everything to shit, then spend the next 6 years slowly putting one of them back together. For such a car-centric metro area, our roads are in a totally unacceptable level of disrepair. This isn't New Hampshire, this is Car City USA. Fix the fucking roads. And don't even get me started on the sidewalks.
. It worked great, but the $200 'tincture' was basically just alcohol with some herbs and shit in it.
It was more likely just a $200 bottle of alcohol. Past a certain point, no molecules of the original substance should be present in the dilution.
Either companies are honeypotting Bittorrent emissions themselves, which would be entrapment
Honeypots are not entrapment. They have not forced or coerced you into doing something you weren't setting out to do anyway. I believe the concept of entrapment can only be applied to law enforcement entities, as well.
The electoral college prevents politicians for completely ignoring 90% of the country and focusing only on the few really big cities.
Unfortunately, in states like California (where I reside), the electoral college system completely nullifies the votes of those outside the big cities. If you look at the voting results by county, the major metro areas (SF, LA, SD) vote severely Democrat. The further north you head, and away from the coast, the vote tends to learn more Republican. California is a huge state, but most of the population is concentrated on the coastal areas of the lower half. If you vote Republican in California, your vote simply does not count with the current system. Going to a popular vote would at least give those who live outside the big cities SOME voice. As it is, you might as well throw your presidential vote in the round file.
The whole thing is unpractical, unproven, dependant on technology that does not exist
Sounds an awful lot like the manned spaced flight program. Should we have just stuck to flapping our arms and staring longingly at the moon as well?
The major difference between bonds and bond traders is that the bonds will eventually mature.