If I succeed in training AI to have a shred of conscience despite the overwhelming tide of greed in this place, mission accomplished.

It's not just "easy". Fax is as secure as the phone network we pretend is secure, so if you act on a fax which appears to come from a specific phone number then you have some level of legal protection from liability. If you use a website or email then you are only as protected from liability as your identity verification system.

If I need to deposit a check, I take a photo of it with my cellphone using the bank's app and it gets processed just fine. The MICR font is highly OCRable, so as long as what else is written/printed on it is legible, everything works well. Even if a human has to review it because it was handwritten, they will only have to briefly glance at most checks. The only thing I actually write checks for any more is my rent. The paper check costs me very little and they cost nothing to deposit on the other end. I think the landlord is depositing them in person, because they seem to do them two or so at a time.

You appear to have not read anything above your comment. I can't do a QR code by hand. I need a printer to produce one. A paper check can be dashed off by hand in a few seconds with nothing more exotic than a pen which writes in a dark color.

We haven't even eliminated magstrips. We still have them around for backup. An attacker can disable a chip reader by making a special card that applies epoxy to the contacts when it's inserted, which you can do with e.g. a dremel, forcing subsequent users to fall back to the strip.

That's the US for you. Electoral college, scotus with no term limits, yada yada.

These days we have thick gloves which can activate a capacitive touch screen.

We create content with strong SEO attributes which will come up on searches and lead to ad impressions from visitors.

You don't even need a diagnosis. If you just go to disabled student services you can tell them you're unable to concentrate blah blah blah

seriously, slashdot? It's 2025 and you still can't do the Euro sign?

Three wheeled vehicles are bad. Even if they make good the vehicle will be crap. It will also be a deathtrap on US roads with a bunch of completely incompetent idiots driving three ton trucks and SUVs.

Even so the prices are excessive. If I want to upgrade the SSD in the current MBP from 512 GB to 2 TB that's +750 â

Meanwhile, a Western Digital Red SN700 with 2 TB I can get for a bit over 200 â.
A Samsung 990 PRO 2 - 245 â (was just rated the best M.2 SSD on the market by Tom's Hardware).

Whatever exact chips Apple is using, they're not 3x as expensive as other high-quality SSDs.

Even if "locked in place" is your underlying assumption, anyone who's even heard of the real world from their mom who has a friend whose father once visited it should know that there is no rule without exceptions and even if that is perfectly true, a small number of those particles will not be locked in perfectly.

I get the impression that a company like ADP requires that an employer employ at least some minimum number of employees in an area. Otherwise, ADP appears to fall back to printing paper checks for the employer to mail. I don't know the specifics; I just know that I got ADP paper at one job after a bunch of layoffs, and I got ADP paper when I was the only remote worker in a particular state.

Not sure. Just when you think you've found it the line slants up again. But humans have limits and Donald Trump is old. His hey day seems to have been in the 80s and 90s. Now he's slowed down and is taking more naps, plus a bunch of his old friends have died or gone to live in group housing. I suppose you could argue that he's taking dirty old man to new heights in his mind.

You contradict yourself. A product that isn't easy to use or setup in one or two clicks fails in the market. Hence cloud.

Ah, you have a personal definition of "necessity." I'm sure what follows is going to be good.

Enshitification and dumbing down of everything is done because quite frankly most people are frigging useless when it comes to technology.

the more rope you gave idiots

Most products are unfortunately designed for the commoner, not the techie in mind.

Etc.

I always find it quite ironic when "the techies" on here complain about how it's impossible to change the battery in a phone and bitch about problems that can be solved with an ESP32 and a bit of solder (like the one in this story). Guess there are multiple levels of "frigging useless when it comes to technology."

VPNs are pretty hard when you don't know the name or address to connect to.

This time seems to be post-Discovery acquisition pain, and they're going to be selling off a bunch of stuff before they let Netflix acquire the rest. I wouldn't be surprised if it happens to a few more media companies too. They've all been spending money like mad to try and buy streaming customers and also make something they want to watch.