Except it doesn't actually save a buck. It's actually like those outfits that rent you furniture and appliances. It looks cheap to start but in the end it costs you several times as much as ownership.

Cloud computing only makes sense for overflow capacity and perhaps disaster recovery.

Being in tech after 35 means knowing that the latest silver bullet is just warmed over slop from 10 years ago and will work no better now than it did the last time it was abandoned but will probably cost twice as much. It also means remembering and being able to adapt a technique from 10 or 15 years ago that worked really well and didn't cost much.

Many younger programmers find embedded work on micro-controllers to be hard because there's no room for "application frameworks" or kitchen sink libraries. It's actually reminiscent of programming in C for small 8-bit home computers like the C64. But only older programmers ever had that experience.

If idiots like this actually locked down systems ( offshoring makes it easy to crack these ), OR refused to pay, then these nations/groups would stop. Butâ¦.

Just like nations that trade prisoners or pay for others, makes their citizens easy targets.

Using an expendable cargo version starship, including a small rocket for launching the samples to orbit would be possible. That would also fit in with what SX wants. From there, ESA's return rocket would be able to bring them back. And this could be done in the next couple of years assuming that SX gets Starship done this year.

You can become a paramedic in 1-2 years, why does it take that long to learn how to safely cut and dye hair?

For the very reasion you stated. Safety. Do you really want someone hacking away at your hair with a sharp pair of scissors? You have ears, don't you? And that doesn't get into the issue of HOW to cut hair so it looks decent. How do you properly cut a bob? Layering? What do you do with different types of hair (straight, curly, African American, thick, thin, etc)? How do you cut a man's hair compared to a woman (not every guy gets a buzzcut)?

And those chemicals used to dye hair can cause burns to the scalp (and skin if spilled) if not properly applied. Do you want your pre-teen daughter wailing in your ear for weeks and months that her head burns and now she can't have good looking hair because the colorists burned her?

I know it seems silly to have to go through all of this, but there are valid reasons to be certified/licensed/whatever. This also gives you legal rights if something goes wrong.

Go do a parallel search for something political on Google and Yandex.

The reason is two fold. First, with Yandex being Russian, they want every political story about the West out there for people to read. They probably even promote the stories to higher rankings so they are seen. However, try putting in a query about the thoudands of Russian losses in Ukraine or Russian ships being sunk or the oil refineries in Russia being attacked or the Belgorod region being shelled by Russian forces and see what happens. I would be willing to bet you only get a few stories with little substance.

The second reason is as we all know, Google is flooded with SEO crap (like this story) and their software is unable, or unwilling, to filter the wheat from the chaff. They make money regardless of the quality of the search.

I've started reading a lot more non-fiction, mainly history.

Oddly enough, so have I. Right now I'm on a book about Aaron Burr. Before that was Andrew Jackson and before that was James Madison. Then there was the book about how the Pilgrims and Puritans screwed over the Native Americans in New England (wonderful title: God, War, and Providence) despite Roger Williams' best efforts. And who couldn't read history without delving into World War II and the German army, Panzer Battles.

That last two chapters of the book should be required reading for anyone in the Ukrainian military. Literally, in the truest sense of the word, nothing has changed in Russian tactics and actions in the past 80 years. The words written sound like they were written last year.

And there we have it. Thank you for those who marked my comment down. You proved my point admirably.

I agree. Some of it, I suspect, is that I've just read so many books now that I'm in 50s that when I read a trope-driven genre novel (SF, Fantasy, Mystery, Thriller, whatever), I rapidly feel like I've read this story before. I've gotten to the same place with TV and movies. Both mediums really suffer from a lack of any kind of originality, or even attempts at quirkiness. It all just feels like Thomas Kinked-esque cookie cutter.

I've started reading a lot more non-fiction, mainly history. Ironically, there's a lot more originality there than in most of the modern fiction I read.

I read the first Three Body Problem novel, and I thought it was crap. Some of that might have been the translation, although I've read other translations from Chinese without that much of an issue. The plotting was terrible, the characters flat. I finished it more because I kept expecting it to eventually turn around, breaking my rule that if I don't like a book in the first three chapters, I won't finish it. In the end, I couldn't imagine why I would want to read any more of it.

Does it have the intro "Imagine Bash, but object oriented and with function call names so long they would drive a Java developer to madness. Brought to you by the author of Microsoft Bob and Clippy, psychopaths that infect your computer with their dead-eyed smiles comes Powershell."

As an owner of the complete History of Middle Earth series, these books are not for the casual fan, or probably even the average fan. They really are more designed for Tolkien scholars, and anyone picking up The Nature of Middle Earth expecting ripping yarns filled with Hobbits and wizards is going to be very disappointed.

Right now the vast majority of the sci-fi/fantasy books are all Game of Thrones type, set in some medieval-style world where evil lurks around every corner.

Then you have the Kim Harrison types (which usually have fantastic cover art), followed by sci-fi itself which generally revolves around some Earth/Solar System/Universe threat which only one man (it's almost always a man) can solve.

I've tried reading various books at random, but either I've lost my ability to immerse myself in the story or the stories aren't well written to hold my interest.

I'm not sure what the answer is, and maybe my situation is unique, but perhaps publishers should take more chances on new or fledgling authors so different styles of storytelling can get out.

but when activists are actively against Israel policies then it's NOT OK.

For the simple reason any criticism of Israel is not allowed. Nothing. Any criticism of any kind for any reason immediately brands you as anti-semitic. No exceptions. Even when Israel does to others which was done to them you are not allowed to say a single word. If you do, you're an anti-semite. Full stop.

I suspect hydrogen will never get there. If someone comes up with an efficient process to synthesize propane from a renewable source, we'll have something. Unlike hydrogen, there's a fair bit of distribution infrastructure and off the shelf hardware for it.