Whilst I agree with the first, second and third sentences wholeheartedly, fascism is as American as selling glass beads to natives and stealing their land.

Up until the Pearl Harbour there was a sizable fascist movement in the US, organisations like the German-American Bund had tens of thousands of members right up until December of 1941 when the US declared war on Nazi Germany and pretty much banned them. Not that we were entirely innocent over this side of the pond with the BUF (British Union of Fascists) but we did see the writing on the wall sooner rather than later with membership falling off a cliff in the late 30s (notably with the BUF becoming openly racist, which is poisonous to the British character, so there was no need for an outright ban until after the war). I'm hoping that Europe can follow that example again before one of our nations falls into Fascism.

Make no mistake, there will be a significant number of Americans openly supporting Fascism, in particularly they will be vocal in saying things like "don't call it fascism" and calling people they don't like "left".

Sadly it's infecting the rest of the world.

A lot of things that you get quoted will change price depending on location, time, browser/OS (user agent), IP, et al. I'm thinking specifically of flights, accommodation, insurance, and other things without a strictly advertised price which would mean they become subject to advertising laws and consumer rights.

Because SCOTUS had sealed the files and blocked the release until just a few weeks ago.

So yes, they really were prevented from releasing the Epstein files.

For me, mentions of TheAppFormerlyKnownAsTwitter have pretty much disappeared. News sites no longer quote tweets, friends no longer mention them. The only time I hear about them is when they get another fine for breaking the law or Musk does something else incredibly stupid.

Social Media itself is dying, but TheAppFormerlyKnownAsTwitter is exemplifying why. Social media has now become beholden to rich people who are using it to try and drown out voices they don't like. Hence people are switching off. It's for that reason that new social media networks don't really have a chance. The things we used to use Social Media for, aren't really being served by social media (mainly it was used to communicate with friends, families or like-minded people, now it's being used to push someone elses agenda)

You literally have a police force operating with impunity and immunity grabbing people off the street.

You have a president that is openly ignoring the law... I mean trying to ignore or handwave that away must have become very difficult last night as he literally became guilty of piracy.

The only one being misleading here is you... and the only one you're misleading is yourself. You can lie to yourself, just don't expect it to fool anyone else.

Mentioned two already, Aldi and Lidl.

They've been particularly successful in penetrating countries that have traditionally suffered from a lack of competition, like Australia.

To be fair, once you've a few years of experience in a profession, almost no-one gives a crap about your education. Being able to demonstrate you can do a good job becomes more important. Certs become more important and that's mainly because some licensing agreements give the company discounts if they can maintain X number of certified professionals. Obvious exceptions excluded, like being a pilot for example.

Not that I disagree with your point mind you, and to add to it the over-commercialisation of education has been detrimental to it's quality.

Nope, Microsoft is going to let it wither and die a slow, undignified death as they drain every penny they can out of it.

It's been the strategy with their gaming software for years now. Buy up a successful studio, kill anything that made it successful, release half arsed sequels that are DLC'd, P2W'd and generally geared to maximise profit over enjoyment and when that is no longer working, sack any remaining staff and shelve the studio. Case in point, Bethesda.

They've already said they have no interest in making hardware but they still want branded hardware out there. So what they want is someone else to have the expense of designing, building and supporting the hardware whilst they control the brand.

It would be a mercy if they Old Yeller'd the Xbox right now, but they won't as there's still blood to drain from it and lets face it, the fanboys will keep paying because they're too invested, financially and emotionally to stop now.

The Playstation has the same problem with a few notable exceptions, Sony still does some decent games, they are still willing to piss huge sums up the wall and the Japanese government will never let Sony fail no matter how much they piss up the wall.

Libre office is fine for personal use, it's improved in leaps and bounds in the last 10 odd years. I'd recommend it to anyone regardless of skill or experience to get them off the MSFT merry-go-round.

The problem isn't for the home users, they've always been on the "bend over and take it" track when it comes to MS, it's just that now they've got some real viable options which will end up hurting MS but I digress... the issue is business users. For business users the problem isn't the software for the end user (word, excel, et al) it's not even the issues with supporting FOSS, it's mostly the back end. The costs of running an on-site MS Exchange setup is stupendous and not to mention that it's a huge vector for cyber attacks let alone the costs of running an equivalent platform, not even Google really competes with Exch/Office and that's just the tip of the iceberg (OK, a large enough tip on its own), it's really on the back end where MS has businesses by the short and curlies. Whilst I agree businesses should be better protecting themselves against predatory vendors, it's not such a simple thing to do in practice.

I really think we need another serious probe into Microsoft, in fact the entire licensing industry. Shine a huge light onto it and we'll be horrified at what we find.

8 years ago, I may have agreed with you. Now you literally have a secret police force nabbing US citizens or whoever they don't like off the street and deporting them to a foreign prison without trial.

Your highest offices are openly ignoring the law... what makes you think they'll stop at shooting just one US citizen (and posthumously declaring them a traitor with no evidence after the fact). They're already sticking guns into the faces of preachers. Ironic as a German Preacher named Martin Niemoeller warned us of just this kind of thing 90 odd years ago.

That's really more akin to fascism rather than socialism, by which you of course mean Marxism.

A simple cow analogy,
Communism: you have two cows, the government takes both and gives you some milk.
Fascism: you have two cows, the government takes both and sells you some milk.

With the US, this really is a problem of it's own making. Not just with Trump, he's just the ultimate expression of a deep seeded problem in the US. The notion that someone who is poor or doesn't have enough money is in that situation entirely due to their own fault. That the poor deserve their lot. Makes people who benefit from it feel better however it's a negative feedback loop as costs rise (in no small part due to Trump) those who were previously comfortable start to suffer and struggle to reconcile this with the philosophy that it's OK to hate the poor because it's their fault they're poor.

Whilst I agree that it's not unique to India, it tends to be endemic across Asia with the notable exception of a few ex colonies like Singapore and the Philippines.

However as an Australian who's lived in Britain for the last 10 years, I think you misunderstand British politeness. A Brit will definitely say no to you, even directly. However the penchant tends to be for understatement. "I don't think that's a good idea" is a nicer way of saying "you're utterly daft for even thinking it" or "Things didn't quite go according to plan" means "it resulted in the death of a family of 4".

Seems to depend on location. In my home city in Europe, it was 3-4 times a day, even shortly after the war.

Numbers mean nothing once enough inflation is involved. But back in those same days, a mailman could support a family on his salary. Not a luxury life for sure, but enough to rent a place and put food on the table. Women working was still a somewhat new thing.

Yes, this stuff is moving digital as well. At different speeds in different countries.

Social media has become a toxic dump. If you wouldn't allow children to play in waste effluent from a 1960s nuclear power plant, then you shouldn't allow them to play in the social media that's out there. Because, frankly, of the two, plutonium is safer.

I do, however, contend that this is a perfectly fixable problem. There is no reason why social media couldn't be safe. USENET was never this bad. Hell, Slashdot at its worst was never as bad as Facebook at its best. And Kuro5hin was miles better than X. Had a better name, too. The reason it's bad is that politicians get a lot of kickbacks from the companies and the advertisers, plus a lot of free exposure to millions. Politicians would do ANYTHING for publicity.

I would therefore contend that Australia is fixing the wrong problem. Brain-damaging material on Facebook doesn't magically become less brain-damaging because kids have to work harder to get brain damage. Nor are adults mystically immune. If you took the planet's IQ today and compared it to what it was in the early 1990s, I'm convinced the global average would have dropped 30 points. Australia is, however, at least acknowledging that a problem exists. They just haven't identified the right one. I'll give them participation points. The rest of the globe, not so much.