"but has no access to social media of any type" - Wow, really? She has no phone, no computer, no computers at school and none of her friends have phones or computers?

Does anybody know why? Why is the USA having such a hard time getting chip and PIN working? It seems very odd to me that the US is so far behind the rest of the world.
 
We have had chip and PIN here for about 8 or 10 years. I think I saw my first American portable chip terminal last summer at the Minneapolis airport. Up till then the servers still walked away with your card (how sketchy is that!), and then brought a piece of paper for you to write your name on.

If I want to know how to replace a taillight bulb on my car, a video is perfect. If I want the registry entry to let me open 50 files at once in windows 10, half a page of text will do. They each have their place. The problem is when somebody makes a 7 minute video instead of typing that half page of text.

Words have meanings. Around here a layoff is when you have too many workers and you let some go to adjust the size of your workforce. A layoff means that if the company is going to add staff, they will call the laid off workers first and offer them the jobs. If they want you gone and they don't ever want you back they use the word fired. Seems to fit.

Why not put a deposit on them just like cans and bottles. Say 50 cents per cigarette. Refundable at any place that sell cigarettes. People would pick them up just as soon as they hit the ground.

From TFA it sounds like about 2 - 3% of the total workforce was fired. The firings were all ranks in the company including managers and engineers, not just the factory laborers.So it may have been nothing more than a pruning of the very lowest performers.

In case of Sonic Attack on your district, follow these rules:

If you are making love it is imperative to bring all bodies to orgasm simultaneously.
Do not waste time blocking your ears.
Do not waste time seeking a "sound proofed" shelter.
Try to get as far away from the sonic source as possible
Do not panic
Do not panic

Use your wheels. It is what they are for.
Small babies may be placed inside the special cocoons
and should be left, if possible, in shelters.
Do not attempt to use your own limbs.
If no wheels are available - metal - not organic -
limbs should be employed whenever practical.

Remember:
In the case of sonic attack survival means
"Every man for himself"
Statistically more people survive if they think
only of themselves
Do not attempt to rescue friends, relatives, loved ones
You have only a few seconds to escape
Use those seconds sensibly or you will inevitably die
Think only of yourself
Think only of yourself
Do not panic
Think only of yourself
Think only of yourself

These are the first signs of sonic attack:
You will notice small objects - such as ornaments - oscillating
You will notice vibrations in your diaphragm
You will hear a distand hissing in your ears
You will feel the need to vomit
You will feel dizzy
You will have difficulty focussing
You will need to breathe more rapidly
There will be bleeding from orifices
There will be an ache in the pelvic region
You may be subject to fits of hysterical shouting or even laughter

These are all sign of imminent sonic destruction
Your only protection is flight
If you are less than ten years old
Remain in your shelter and use your cocoon
Remember - you can help no one else
You can help no one else
You can help no one else
Do not panic
Think only of yourself
Think only of yourself
Think only of yourself

Think only of yourself

Think only of yourself

Think only of yourself

When the anti-vaccine hysteria was peaking about 15 years ago, the consensus was that it would last until a bunch of children all died from a preventable disease. 35 dead in the current outbreak - we get mandatory vaccines.It's sucks to be right sometimes.

I thought I was seeing the mobile site by mistake. The new layout is from Satan who is the Devil. Information density is down by about 70%. All I see is white space (Gray space?) with a single column of news articles down the center. The old layout was far more usable for me.

Preferably all three at once.

You should have seen the Alumni at my old University flip out when the new Director of Athletics cut funding for Football and Baseball and put the money into Ultimate and Soccer because that's what the kids were actually playing.

Going from memory here so be gentle, but as I recall the idea was to write a bit that was sort of half magnetized and neither a one or a zero. The original disk would read different values if you read it several times, a copy would always give the same value. I recall it also got cracked.
 
I also recall a friend who's boss had a new-fangled C64 for his small business. He had an accounting package for the C64 which he had bought from a local software house. One day the software's copy protection errored and deciding his legit, store bought disk was a copy. It overwrote a disk with 8 months of payroll data with "PIRATEPIRATEPIRATE..." The developer of the software ended up having to hire someone to re-enter all the data.

I think that if we accept the notion that electric cars are going to get better and cheaper in the future, then sooner or later, maybe not in 8 tears, but maybe in 10 or 15 there will not be many ICE new cars sold. I commute 25 miles each way to work. Most any new electric can do that. That would cover about 90% of my driving. Also, I have a cottage about 250 miles away. Still a bit of a stretch but I think a Chev Bolt could just about do it. Up the range to 300 miles and it would get me to the cottage in the summer and the ski hill in the winter. That would cover 99% of my trips. The odd time I want to take a driving vacation I would rent a gas car. Hell, we did that last year, rented a mustang convertible for 10 days and drove to California and back.
 
People always look at "now", and seem oddly blind to tomorrow. When digital cameras first showed up, I read somebody who said that digital would never replace film because cameras would have to be over 10 Mp to match the resolution of 35mm film. At the time a digital camera cost $1500 and had a resolution of 640x480 (about 0.3 Mp). Thing is, the digital cameras were roughly doubling in pixel count every year even at that time. Same thing with LCD monitors; The CAD guys at work all had $3000 21" Sonys and they were sure they would never replace them with LCDs. Now they all have 28" 4K displays, and I don't think you can actually buy a glass monitor any more.

We bought them for our managers. Six of ten kept the surface pro tablets and four went back to laptops (zbook g3). So they are around.

At $45 / bbl who is going to be doing any offshore exploring?