With 1) a majority of Americans doing their best "Batman Forever" addiction imitation with their eyes glued to their phones, 2) sports packages being available now with streaming options, and 3) digital OTA options in most places for network TV and random digital channels with various, old syndicated content (from I Love Lucy and Star Trek to Home Improvement) with the same commercials volume (if not less than) of cable channels carrying the same edited-for-TV slop... That's just 50% of America throwing their money away, IMO.

Or, "I have Company X that provides internet access, and cable TV (or landline phone) is just part of the bundle," and haven't bothered cutting the cord yet.

The small penny came up in the mid-1850s, along with the elimination of the half-penny. (Both the large penny and half penny were coppers larger than today's penny.)

The nickel production costs are at least partially because of the harder metal (nickel). The U.S. Mint could consider a new "half dime" - the "deem", in coin parlance - and cut production costs again? It'd make more logical since again to have a 5 cent coin be smaller than the 10 cent dime, anyways - though their so damn small that some people wouldn't be able to even read them...

If you make the dime bigger, you'll screw with everyone's heads - unless you went with a different brass color??...

Oh, fuck it, nevermind... kill the nickel, too. And live with the $0.10 dime being the new penny.

"Trillions? Wow -- What if we didn't need all of this infrastructure thanks to future advancements?" "Can these data centers be repurposed?"

If not, we're gonna have a lot of wasted resources go down the internet tubes.

"Joshua Rogers, a security researcher based in Poland."

I know that "based" doesn't mean he was born there, but did anyone else do a double take at that name + country combination?

That's right up there was "Dmitri Peskov, a cattle breeder working out of Texarcana, TX"...

I can only speak for the public sector, but the talented people that stay in the public sector eventually have to move up to management positions for only one reason: A bigger salary.

The real problem isn't about too many managers. It's about politics and culture: "I'm THE manager, so people beneath me cannot make more money than me!"

If leaders eliminated that single stupid, corrosive paradigm from their org's culture and people were paid what they're worth based on merit (not title or hierarchies), these pointless middle management jobs would disappear overnight. "You mean I don't have to manage anyone and I get paid what I'm really worth? Wow! F**k those management responsibilities! I'll take door number 2, thank you."

If you're a manager and don't like this because you worked your way up in the current culture and would feel slighted by this change, you need to STFU. You're not BETTER than your subordinates because of your title. You're just managing others because that's your job that you're officially trained to do - manage people. And those people may be just as important, if not more so, to your organization as you are.

You forgot a key step on China's side:

China: Let's build it.
Get rid of everyone and everything in its way.

...I want to see the special #2 pencil they're gonna use to wind the tape back up when it gets garbled and spit out of the player.

A while back, RT tried different techniques to appease their corporate overlords.

The most egregious I recall was when they tried to introduce manufactured, positive reviews well ahead of the general release window. They did this to trick early bird types that would be looking for an RT score and maybe not come back to check for updates. Bad movies would have an 80%+ score until a few days before when the real reviews would blast the movie and drop it into rotten territory. That was kind of obvious to regular visitors so they cut that practice out.

The influencers aren't as clumsy anymore, but they can't hide the problem they've created: Everything can't be various degrees of "fresh" at ROTTEN Tomatoes.

Posted by someone who clearly hasn't driven much in the United States.

Europe != USA, but Europe !== USA.

Why in the fuck are WiFi provisions in the same bill as federal public land sales and tax cuts??

Using the middle initial imparts extra formality, and in some corners, respect and importance to the individual's name.

Trivia - In my church (LDS/Mormon), it is traditionally ingrained in the Mormon culture to say the full name of every "apostle" or "prophet".

The odd tradition likely started as a practical way to differentiate Joseph F. Smith (a president/prophet in the early 20th century) from the original founder Joseph Smith (died in 1844). My guess is that it sounded unique so it became the Mormon version of, "So and So THE THIRD" - only without the disdain and with some religious reverence/awe sprinkled on top.

So now we have leaders with names (in any church PR) like David O. McKay, Harold B. Lee, Spencer W. Kimball, Howard W. Hunter, Gordon B. Hinckley, Thomas S. Monson, Russell M. Nelson... and so on. Joseph Fielding Smith was the only exception (since "F" was already taken).

I recently test drove a Mach-E, and I mostly liked it. It was the first electric car I've tried out that felt like a regular car, and it wasn't too expensive.

But I had to take it off my list because of the giant touchscreen and a general lack of knobs/controls. The salesman said, "Well, if you sync it all up with your phone, you can do a lot of what you want to do with speech and an app." Thanks, but no thanks. I want to get in my car and drive - not geek out with computers.

(To pour salt in the wound, new cars are getting an extra knob in place of the stick shift. That's the only place I don't want a knob...)

Broadcom long since shit on the VMWare individual customers.

I've purchased VMWare Workstation or Fusion for development for years over other products because it "just worked" (for the most part). I've been using Fusion for upwards of the last decade.

As soon as I heard that Broadcom bought VMWare, I reached out asking about long-term plans for Fusion - support, licensing, etc. "You shouldn't see any changes," etc. was the response. Then this year, out of the blue, updates on Fusion stopped working. You now get a "can't connect to server" error. Broadcom pulled the plug on updates from public servers. Now you have to uninstall and reinstall any updates they may or may not release.

I know i'm not even a microbe on the asshole of a tadpole to Broadcom, but it didn't take them long to prove they're definitely fish fuckers and/or (like Kanye) like fish sticks.

What certifies what music is? Was it pounded on a buffalo drum? Plucked on a string? Chanted in gothic cathedrals? Played in royal opera houses (or not)? Is it printed and sold in a store? Music label contracts? Radio playtime? MTV airtime? Napster availability? Youtube/Spotify/Amazon has it?

Now it's "Did humans make it?"

In the end, the same rule has always applied: "I play, therefore I'm music."

The things you cut out were all loaded with sugar - the cocaine/crack looking stuff you buy in bags/buckets, and the heroin-looking corn syrup in jars.

Sadly, food companies have been jamming that dope into everything that they can. Us Americans shouldn't have to go out of our way carefully reading nutrition labels (all while doing grams to teaspoons metric conversions) or avoid entire aisles in grocery stores just to avoid weight gain.