More along the lines of Noble Prince Khaleed and the ungrateful peasant uprise.

They watched him do his double hand-job dance for 45 minutes... and cheered.

Trump fans are the ones who listen to Trump the least.

Considering it's now just a phone in a laptop form, they've got to be making money hand over fist. I think I'll stick to my ordinary laptop/PC that can play video games. There is at least some competition in that market keeping prices sane (well, somewhat sane, not paying 3000 Euro for a oversized phone).

Not really, these are travel authorisations (the TA in ESTA) and are considered visa waivers, not visas. They've essentially replaced the old arrival cards you used to have to fill out.

I recently went back to Australia and my gast was flabbered by the mere fact I had to fill out a paper slip on entry... What used to be commonplace has almost completely disappeared in the last 5 odd years. I'm a UK/AU dual national for context, so I didn't need a visa to enter but still needed to complete an incoming passenger card (everyone does, citizen, visitor or otherwise).

Because being lied to is "freedom".

Seriously, I've had more than one American use this argument to defend fraudulent advertising practices. Apparently its up to the audience to determine what is true or not despite most of the audience being completely unable to do so.

This morning I read about another ad being banned for misleading information and I thought, "won't this make companies more afraid to use risky advertising techniqes" and my second thought was "good".

Corporate America really reminds me of the Syndicate from Jack Cambell's Lost Fleet/Lost Stars novels. A corporate state where skulduggery rules amongst the executive classes and fear is used to rule the worker classes. Probably where the author got the idea for it.

Mark my words, unless your country decides to stand up for itself against corporate greed, you'll have to call them "honoured CEO" before too long.

OTOH, work really doesn't have to suck, it just tends to most of the time.

And you believe that? If you look at the inflation of South American countries you'll notice that Colombia, Brazil, Chile, Equador and Peru next to Argentina looked completely flat. When you zoom in you realise that they had the same curve but topped out around 12% where as Argentina went to over 220% and only dropped down to 110%. Brazil and Colombia followed similar curves and they had left wing governments (Lula and Petro respectively) which should tell you it was a global condition and Milei (as well as Lula and Petro) had little to do with inflation coming down.. Otherwise you'd best be praising the Brazil's Lula and Colombia's Petro for the same thing.

And if they're still not sure, they can go and ask the pharma companies selling vitamin supplements that don't work (they're designed not to, expressly to avoid being classed as medications and that means they might be regulated).

Just create a fictional problem that your product is meant to fix. The entire "disease" of halitosis was invented by Lambert Pharmaceutical Company to sell Listerine.

Why are you paying for a liar?

(yeah, I know you mean fibre, just couldn't resist a cheap joke).

I suspect that your country, like most civilised countries has laws that state the price on the contract is the final price and must include all applicable fees, taxes and charges.

The US doesn't like that system as hiding the real price behind fees and charges makes them think they're still an affordable country to live in because the advertised price is still low, however they always pay more than the advertised price. See Also: tipping, eating out appears cheap until you realise you have to add 20% or more onto the top.

This kind of thing is not a problem with other countries because many, many, many years ago we codified into law (yes law, not "rules" or "voluntary codes of conduct", actual law) that an advertised price must be the price at which the product can be purchased including all applicable fees, charges, duties, levies and taxes. Basically if you say you widget costs 10 of my finest Pounds, then I can front up with 2 fivers and get your widget.

The same goes for contracts. Any fees or charges must be written in and for consumer contracts, like your phone, internet, et al. the final price must be prominently displayed (mid-contract price rises I suspect is going to be killed in the UK sometime in the near future). There is no "we're adding a fee calculation fee" after the deal is struck.

The "gross negligence" part is that after years of concerted efforts, they still have only just managed to cause some harm to the point where governments are starting to take notice.

Didn't Javier Milei sweep to power in Argentina promising to fix the Argentine economy with magical Libertarian powers by cutting all government departments. I distinctly remember videos of him tearing names of government departments off a white board shouting "Afuera".

What would such an anarcho-capitalist god need with a bailout?

Someone else makes the hardware, Microsoft sticks a badge on it.

Then you pay for the subscription.

MS wants out of the hardware game because it's not paying for itself any more. With Sony blinking first and raising the price of the Playstation, Microsoft sees it's out. It can get someone else to build the hardware and just reap the profit from the software sales and subscription services. That was the only thing that made the Xbox profitable, the fact that they could get publishers to pay a per instance fee for the game (and pass that on to the end user) and then get the end user to pay a monthly fee for basic things like online access. However that's not bringing in enough money to pay for the hardware any more. This generation is over and both Sony and Microsoft need it to continue for several more years to make it profitable.

So they're in a bind... but don't worry, the brands will continue because it doesn't matter what kind of abuse Sony and MS dish out, console owners will bend over and take it like they always have.

Pretty much this.

By forcing everyone back into the office you're not going to force the workshy to start working, they'll just have to go back to their old, tried and trusted methods of avoiding work by walking around, having conversations, drinking coffee, going to Greggs and pointless meetings. In fact it's going to be a productivity sync as they love to drag others into their pointless meetings to make it look like they're doing something... which drags the productive people away from being productive.

Meh,

It's not like they could do any more damage to the franchise after the last few movies. The Blond Bond and grittyfication sucked all the humour and gravitas out of the series. Now they're left with a withered husk so they might as well see what they can do with it.

And the thing is, I liked Daniel Craig in his previous roles. He wasn't even the wrong actor, it was the role that had changed into something worse.