Which is unreliable in many situations. I worked on several projects that had issues involving intermittent data loss on a DB9 port, and every time the culprit turned out to be a USB/DB9 adapter. When we'd install dedicated RS232 cards, the problem went away.

For laptops, the answer to this kind of thing should be a standard space where a customer can specify what ports he wants... you get X number of standard ports, and then you can choose what goes into one or two available spaces. But you're just not going to see that happen with manufacturers, even if the customer is willing to pay a greater cost.

Except that I spent some years growing up in dense, street-centric areas, and kids simply played in the streets. Every day. Our substitute for baseball (so as not to damage cars or windows) was "whiffle ball", with hollow plastic balls and bats. In the summers especially, we spent literally all day outside. In the streets. For kids who did this too much, the criticism was literally that "you let your kids run the streets".

Being car-centric has nothing to do with kids activity. The spread of video games and Internet connected culture had everything to do with the modern dearth of outdoor activity by kids. All of my youngest's friends are online in distant places. There are other kids in the neighborhood, but very few of them play outside that I can see. Online is where all the action is. Maybe the answer is for parents to literally kick kids out of the house, they way they used to do ("out, and I don't want to see you back inside until lunch" was a common summer refrain from parents). Maybe if all the kids are turned out, they'll start doing the natural thing, and make their own fun, which is all "outside" is.

Tipping is great in good service jobs. You tend to make good money in mid-to-nicer restaurants as a waiter or waitress. Where tipping sucks is when you work in cheap joints with cheap customers. Or delivering pizza, like you did in college, where your customers tend to be either poor or cheapskates. Poor people can't afford to tip, and cheapskates simply won't. And then there are the groups that simply refuse to tip because they don't see labor or service as a value at all. "If I can't hold it in my hand, I ain't payin' for it".

Calling your superiors in the workplace a vulgar name is a fire-able offense pretty much any place else. It's not just the word, but also the fact that using it is a type of insubordination. If your boss is a jerk, then you need to find work elsewhere. But every workplace has discipline and conduct standards. You simply can't let subordinates openly insult their chain of command or you won't have much command.

You've just charged a comedian with a criminal offense because his Tweet might hurt feelings. Any freedom of expression Brits had is meaningless empty symbolism at this point.

" wouldn't it be better if the 300 million plus people in the United States DIDN'T need to sacrifice?"

I'm not sure, but I think this song was written *JUST* for you...

One evening as the sun went down
And the jungle fire was burning
Down the track came a hobo hikin'
And he said, "Boys, I'm not turning
I'm headed for a land that's far away
Beside the crystal fountains
So come with me, we'll go and see
The Big Rock Candy Mountains

"In The Big Rock Candy Mountains
There's a land that's fair and bright
Where the handouts grow on bushes
And you sleep out every night
Where the boxcars all are empty
And the sun shines every day
On the birds and the bees and the cigarette trees
The lemonade springs where the bluebird sings
In The Big Rock Candy Mountains

"In The Big Rock Candy Mountains
All the cops have wooden legs
And the bulldogs all have rubber teeth
And the hens lay soft-boiled eggs
The farmers' trees are full of fruit
And the barns are full of hay
Oh I'm bound to go where there ain't no snow
Where the rain don't fall, the wind don't blow
In The Big Rock Candy Mountains

"In The Big Rock Candy Mountains
You never change your socks
And the little streams of alcohol
Come a-trickling down the rocks
The brakemen have to tip their hats
And the railroad bulls are blind
There's a lake of stew and of whiskey, too
You can paddle all around 'em in a big canoe
In The Big Rock Candy Mountains

"In The Big Rock Candy Mountains
The jails are made of tin
And you can walk right out again
As soon as you are in
There ain't no short-handle shovels
No axes, saws or picks
I'm a-goin' to stay where you sleep all day
Where they hung the jerk that invented work
In The Big Rock Candy Mountains

"I'll see you all this comin' fall
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains"

= = = = = =

"The boomers and gen x are hoarding 80% of the wealth..."

Btw, "wealth" isnt a zero sum game it grows and is continuously created -- and I fall in to the gen x category. What I'm "hording" is what I've earned in ~40 years of work. You didn't lift a finger helping me with that work, why do you think you (or anyone else) are entitled to it? It was already taxed -- and the property I bought with that already taxed money is also taxed yearly, itself. If you don't like the level of services the government provides you just ask for an audit. Good luck getting one in California. They will, however provide a lovely "blue ribbon" commission to investigate how moneys were spent and why it costs ~1 million dollars to build a single unit of homeless housing or countless other money-pits that never answer the question of "where did all the money go". You'll get the similar run-around on the federal level. Vote better. Vote for people who actually represent the people who voted for them -- and not some ambiguous "party" that claims the other 'tribe' is evil.

BTW, I'm not a Republican or Democrat. My votes go to I feel is best qualified. I want a representative who will represent me/our community over what ever party they represent. Neither party does that well.

"There simply aren't as many resources and there are more people competing for them."

It's choices. The stats show that choices and an inability to delay every single gratification leads to much higher risk of poverty. Want to avoid being in poverty? Do the following:

Graduate High School.
Don't have a kid while in High school.
Don't have a kid before marriage
Share responsibility raising your kids.

If you go to college, follow the same rules about marriage and having kids.

THAT is the toolset you need to access "resources" in life for you and your family, and pass that 'culture' on to your kids. That way, your kids will have a much higher likelihood of avoiding poverty -- and if they do experience it, minimize it's duration. A good life isn't guaranteed -- but you can stack the odds in your favor -- dramatically -- without a trust-fund.

"average age for first time home purchase across the population is over 40 buying a starter home not a young family doing the same"

I was 30 years old when I got married. We bought our home when I was 38. My son was 5 years old and my daughter was 2. I was still driving my paid off 1988 toyota pick up. Which I still have. And the stats I read place the average first home buyer age across the US at 38 as of 2024 -- but CA is certainly in the mid 40s now. We got our home about 20 years ago -- so yeah, it took us a bit longer than average back then. Our family was still "young". One of the reasons for the age creep on home-ownership that everyone ignores is that a huge chunk of the US (about 10%-15%) now have substantial student loan debt. Again -- choices -- and a failure for both school and parents to instill the need to consider what they might MAKE after graduating and how long it would take to pay those loans back.

And the cost of housing? Much of it is due to over regulation by local and state governments in building new housing and an almost religious belief that home-ownership is a sin.

"How do you stop subscribing to things when everything is now a subscription?"

Lower your standards. Pluto TV is free and has a wealth of programming.

" When you have to keep saving for and buying the same goods over and over instead of being able to save for something else after buying something."

Stop treating buying something as permanent. If you buy a $1000 phone that you KNOW will be obsolete in 5 years -- the BEST you are doing is you are "renting" the phone for a bit more than $16/mo unless it breaks in a way it's more expensive to fix after the warranty expires. Maybe buy a $200 phone that lasts 3 years? That's only ~$5. And you get a new phone every three years.

"It's all well and good to suggest that everyone should be frugile, eat ramen, and suffer but if a significant number of people actually did it the result would just be that the economy would crash."

To be clear, are you advocating people just not consider saving money? That being frugal is the equivalent to "suffering"? Sorry, but it's not a human right to have a $1000 phone, have 10+ subscription services costing more than two premiere cable services combined, eating quality steak 3+ times a week or driving a new car every 2 or 3 years.

  "The American dream needs to be achievable for the average man not just the exceptional."

I'm not exceptional and I started below average on the economic ladder. I'm the first in my family to go to high school, never mind college. My family didn't give a rip about school. My entire family were substance abusers. My sister got me high for the first time when I was 7 (she's 13 years older than me) because she thought it would be funny.

Today, I'm a home owner, I have two 10+ year old cars (paid off), two adult kids (one in the middle of college with zero debt so far and the other starting medical school next year). My son (going to medical school) has $70k in his bank from money he's earned while going to college and currently making $75/hour tutoring students for the MCAT (doing about 20-25 hours a while) taking an gap year. Daughter has 11k saved up after 3 years -- also zero debt.

The only advantages my wife and I provided were rent-free promise and paying tuition if they go locally. Both went to community college -- which, btw, was free -- just books). We only had to pay tuition once for our son as he refused our money when he got a paying job at UCLA as part of a research group.

Hell, my wife came to the US when she was 19 with her entire family back in the late 80s (she's the eldest child of kids -- and her parents). They had nothing, too. Yet each one of their kids got out of school with zero dept, all post grad degrees and are doing well in their chosen fields.

You have very low expectations of people. I think it's those low expectations that cause far more of the suffering you attribute to being "frugal" than eating Raman a few times a week.

"It's much easier to lifestyle adjust your way into feeling comfortable on $70k (median household) vs $40k (30th percentile)."

I came from nothing. Almost literally. I was raised in a family full of substance abusers. I got high for the first time when I was 7 because my sister (13 years older than me) thought it would be funny. Nobody cared about school in my family.

I am the first in my family to finish high school, never mind go to collage (did that, too). I rejected that life entirely and the moment I bolt, I was out of it and never looked back. There were a few times I needed to make choices such pay for food, pay for rent or pay for books, for example -- but could only afford two of those. I lived in a cheap studio apartment with a mini fridge that was a dumpster dive find and got by on Raman and $0.25 burritos from Taco Bell's $0.25 cent Tuesdays for a year straight. I did this while working in data entry (brain dead typing).

My wife is an immigrant -- came from Syria in the late 1980s. with her entire family -- she was 19 years old. They also had nothing, but were a much better example of a family that I came from. She was the eldest of 4 -- all have post grad degrees and are successful in their respective fields -- and all in the state of California which does *NOT* make it easy.

I'm sorry, the problem isn't the "evils of capitalisms" but far more the poor choices people make with the resources they have. The only benefits my kids have received is not having to pay for college (other than books). Not that we could realistically afford to pay anything but local tuition -- they both made due by working and saving. Free rent (in our home) and both took advantage of the local community college free tuition -- that knocked two years of college out of the way with zero expense. Son transferred to the local state college and managed to split time between that and UCLA (both very local to home). He's disciplined and only spends the interest he earns (that's his spending money) -- all he makes from work goes in to the kitty. He breaks his cash in to 4 piles -- each one goes in to CD in such a way that he has money back from other CDs every three months (4 times a year). He'll be taking his first and only school loans for medical school next year.

Again, it all comes down to what you do with the resources you have. Our kids are taking advantage of what we CAN offer and not selling their future on unrealistic expectations of employment paying back all their loans for the "college experience".

Blame the students, blame the state for not teaching the important of RoI when planning for college or even how to manage money, blame the parents for not teaching this and blame everyone who tries to brush it off as "exploitation of the workers". It's a load of fly shit.

MAKE BETTER CHOICES. And yes, not everyone starts their life with their glass half full or more, but it's REALLY not that hard to to survive and build yourself up if you make choices that match the resources you have available.

" Assuming they can avoid excessive exploitation of their labor by the ones who own nearly everything"

I keep seeing this -- but I don't really see anyone mentioning how many of those "exploited" have new cars, school debt and/or $1000 phones -- which strongly suggests they aren't very smart with excessive spending.

I own a home. My phone is over 5 years old and works flawlessly. I own a 1988 Toyota pickup and a 2011 Honda CRV (both paid for long, long ago). With the exception of some "luxuries" I allow myself and my wife allows herself (for me, it's the occasional vanity collectable like a movie poster or lobby card -- and maybe a game now and then) we don't keep buying new things. Hell, I picked up a great copy of Axis and Allies for $10 at a local garage sale and finally retired my 30 year old set that was falling apart.

The closest I've come to buying a new car was that 1988 Pickup I got in 1989 -- with 170ish miles on it. It was selling as used for about $3,000 cheaper than it's brother sitting right next to it with 27 miles on it.

Lets see -- we've managed to buy a house (about 80% paid off), have a son ready to start medical school with about $50k in his bank (he's making $75/hour being being an MCAT tutor and made money as a paid research assistant at UCLA) and a daughter half way through college with zero debt and about $11k in her account.

I'm one of the "exploited" masses, yet somehow I don't feel "exploited" -- other than by an over-reaching state government (I live in CA).

and the boys were already ten and eleven years old when I entered their life

I hope you got a good relationship with them! My son can't even talk yet. So, right now, he's just this cute thing that runs around and causes trou^H^H^H^Hgood things to happen.

Seriously. This is the South. Put a bounty on these things, with no bag limit, and local hunters will pursue them to extinction. Get the major cowboy boot companies to chip in with all skins going to them for their "Florida Man" production line. Compensation can be a little cash and free boots for yourself and the wife. And all that snake meat will surely be good for something. In 5 seasons, they'll declare a snake genocide.

Because that's now how property works.

AI-enhanced robotics will replace humans on a number of manual labor positions, but adoption will be a matter of scale. Because mobile robotics will always be expensive, they'll only be adopted where each can do the job of 10+ humans on a near 24 hour basis. Farming is a good example of where mobile robots will eventually be widely adapted. They'll pretty much pay for themselves on very large farms. But your plumbing contractor will never reasonably be able to afford them considering how much work each employee gets. You can only work on one toilet at a time, one house at a time. The scaling simply isn't there for small businesses with skilled workers. Same thing for small to medium scale construction contractors. You might see robots supplementing men on big city skyscraper projects, but not doing home renovations or pouring a new driveway at someone's house.

Everyone needs a degree now because we watered down high school and made it worthless, then we banned companies from using IQ tests to select workers, and so the college degree became a stand in for "He's probably smart enough to do this". But now we're watering down the Bachelor's Degree, too, because it's unfair if everyone doesn't have a college degree or some nonsense.

That is flat out wrong. The goal was specifically to replace human beings in a wide swath of positions.

What makes AI unique is that, unlike say, the spreadsheet, it wasn't created to make workers more productive with some skill training. It was created to completely replace a major chunk of knowledge workers, maybe most of them. And it will. AI is a jobs extinction level event. Manual work will be unaffected... AI can't fix your toilet or lay mortar in a construction site, but it's going to be the asteroid that kills off most coding jobs, financial analyst jobs, and a huge chunk of administrative jobs. The software dev positions that remain will mostly be for maintaining AI. All that "learn to code" advice from just a few years ago? Unless you're going into a hyper-specialized software field, requiring years of education and training, you're pretty much going to be obsolete, soon. And I mean soon as in "this decade", not some ambiguous date down the road. So not only will fields like software completely change, but the education ecosystem that served them is going to undergo a serious culling as well. No more coding camps, boys.