I have always found it amusing that as graphics cards got more sophisticated, Computer icons became flat ugly boring colorless super simplified things. All 3D was deemed old fashioned, shadows were eliminated. Icons that looked like what they represented were discarded, and replaced with flat simplified square things. Office Icons don't look like anything at all. The Word Icon and the Excel Icon look identical except for color (which probably looks identical to a color blind person) and is distinguished only by a 'W' and an 'X' (I could point out that 'Excel' starts with 'E', but that would be picky).

Now two days ago, I saw some article from some graphics 'guru' arguing that icons that looked like physical things were somehow in bad taste... not sure why a calendar that looks like a calendar is bad, but ... he's a 'guru'. So now he says we went too far and the answer is in the middle somewhere. The middle? We want a calendar icon that looks kind-of like a calendar, but not quite?

At least Apple got rid of Jony Ive before he successfully eliminated the 'Contacts' icon that looks like an address book, which he rallied against for years.

One must understand their skillset and utilize people that compliment those. Nobody can be good at everything. If the manager is really good at managing resources, but not that technical, then that manager needs a trusted technical lead to drive the design, and the manager must have the skillset to know if that person has the right stuff. It, on the other hand, the manager is technical, then the manager needs a trusted management lead to manage resources. I fall into the second category. I am good at writing code, driving technical design, and technical priorities. I have a trusted manager that defines priorities relative to what the company considers the greatest need and who is available with the right skills to get it done in the most efficient timeline. Much like a jigsaw puzzle, this person understands that a certain person worked on an area and has the best understanding in that area, and that task 'A' is preferred to task 'B' by the customers. I make the big decisions about how to best approach a problem. I worry about what language best suits the task. Which type of data management to utilize, and occasionally override a priority if task 'A' would be easier to create if task 'B' was completed. I have worked with technical managers who knew how to delegate effectively, and I have worked with non-technical managers who were really good at their job, and I was the trusted technical lead, and the projects were successful. I have also worked with non-technical managers that paid no attention to technical suggestions by the team, or singled out one, who's opinion the person considered the 'guru' and the projects failed.

Personally, I have never worked for a highly technical manager that was also an excellent resource manager. One ends up juggling too many balls in the at the same time.

...ummm and you for got about the Americans! I'm sure the CIA is in there too.

I absolutely pay attention to Consumer Reports. They are the only review site that doesn't accept advertising and actually go out and buy the cars they test anonymously. The car companies hand pick the cars they send to all of the other review sites, and buy advertisements from them, so essentially no review will ever say much bad about a car. They might say this one handles better than that one, but they will never say 'This car is garbage' Consumer Reports will and does report exactly what they find.

I admit that, like any other site, this is the opinion of the team reviewing the cars, and there is personal preference and prejudice involved, so just because they say they prefer car 'a' from car 'b', doesn't mean that I will always agree. They might say the back seat lacks leg room, and I sit in the car and I am ok with it.. maybe one of the guys on their team has long legs and this is his pet peeve, but you can always know that if they say a car is good, it is not because some company gave them a ton of advertising money, or 'loaned' a car to the reviewer forever for doing the review.

Anyone going to Stack Exchange for free advice who gets a free answer from someone who has no idea who said requestor is has no right to be offended when the person giving this free answer gets their 'preferred pronoun' wrong. If the requestor is so petty that they want to disrespect the person trying to help them because they don't know who they are helping.

Said person doesn't deserve free help. Screw them. Let them figure it out on their own.

I have DirecTV and have a few problems, but my only alternative is cable and Comcast is worse. They can't even deliver HD content.

DirecTV was number one is customer service for years. AT&T broke that. I HATE doing business with them, only to Wells Fargo is worse.
I had a $100 subscription with every channel. Channels keep disappearing and the price is now $180, and I have no Premium channels.
American TV is dreadful. Silly plots full of silly plot holes. Comedy that isn't funny.
The broadcasters keep squeezing the carriers for cash, which gets pushed to us.
I live in Florida, and every rain storm kills the feed.
I have 4K TVs with 4K streaming services. I am paying $180 a month for local channels I don't watch.

I decided to cancel my subscription a month ago.

ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox.. They are going to go away too.

spyware all over my house I would pay money to install any of these IOT things.

Why do we put up with it? We even pay a premium to allow fashion designers to put advertising on our clothing.

That works fine if you are in an area where your line of business is the predominate business line. Software in San Francisco, for example. ... not so much if you are doing something that is more rare in your area. In my case, most of my business contacts live in other areas, so unless I am willing to relocate, I am not going to find much through my contacts. I have a very few in my area, but none of them are looking for my skillset, and not likely to be anytime soon as people in jobs in my area tend to stay there. I have lived in the Washington D.C. area in the past, and yes... there you are correct. There are lots of jobs and my contacts were then all local.
My last several jobs were remote, but it's hard to find remote jobs without going through the broken hiring process. I saw some posting on LinkedIn a while back from some hiring manager who said if she didn't receive a thank you note from the candidate in the next few days, she threw the resume in the trash. I am now a CTO of my own company, and I posted that if she worked for me, I would fire her on the spot. That comment lit up the comment section like you wouldn't believe. Most posting that they were glad I had the nerve to post that. I don't care about such posts, but it shows how frustrated and helpless people feel.

that idiot couldn't write an SQL statement if his life depended on it. He only uses his keyboard to post silly ideas on Slashdot.

Some idiot that wants to solve a problem we don't have. What is so precious about the space the Caps Lock key, and why do my fingers need to learn a new layout because this idiot wants that real estate for some other useless key. Maybe for windows users we could replace it with a key that enters two backslashes because some other bunch of idiots used the universal escape character as the directory separator.

No more simple essence of elegance nonsense. I am so happy to see him go. He has reduced everything to be beautiful, but functionally limited.

Can I have my ports back now?

The Scientific Method is somewhat to blame. The premise is that everything is false until proven to be true, and to go there one must provide a theory and then prove it. This requires that you think of a theory first and propose it. This alone means that you have to think of an answer to a question. By definition if your tests result in something other than you expect, you are already surprised. Then the whole scientific method is pessimistic. Take Bigfoot. whether one believes in Bigfoot or not, Bigfoot is assumed to not exist unless a scientist sees him digging through his trashcan, and most of the suppositions assume him to be an 'animal' of limited intelligence. Why do we not find bones or bodies? Suppose Bigfoot has death rituals as humans do? ... not accounted for. Why haven't we found him? Did we ever find D.B. Cooper? Maybe Bigfoot is smart enough to evade human contact. I propose that the scientific method has a flaw. It should become optimistic at some point. If there are hundreds of Bigfoot sightings in a year, as some of the researchers claim, then it becomes unlikely that all are hoaxes or misidentification, so maybe the scientific method should then assume that Bigfoot is likely to exist and is undetectable for some reason. At this point scientists would be less surprised when we finally find real evidence, when, as Jane Goodall did with the great ape, someone finds an encampment someday.

I am not a scientist, and maybe I am oversimplifying it, but I find scientific studies frustrating when I read that everything is always dismissed out of hand until an apple falls from a tree and hits them on the head.

Here here! And take Jony Ive with his simple elegance (who needs upgradability and ports?) with you!

Warner Brother has proven time and again, that they are completely stupid and greedy.

o Let's merge with a DialUp company after the Internet has made them irrelevant.
o Let's close all of the Warner Brothers Stores in the malls because they don't earn a profit. YOU DON"T CARE IF THEY EARN A PROFIT! YOU ARE SELLING YOUR ADVERTISING!!! Mickey Mouse is still popular, but no kid ever heard of Bugs Bunny! Because Disney is still selling Mickey Mouse stuff to new kids, and WB killed the goose that laid the golden egg.

Why should this be any different? Instead of encouraging people to spread the popularity of their stuff, they shut it down, and slowly kill it. Years from now Star Wars will still matter because Disney gets this, and Harry Potter will be forgotten because Warner Brothers will have strangled it to death.

They even tried to extort money from people for singing happy birthday! Their own greed ultimately cost them $14 million dollars... the amount, by the way they thought they could extort from people by claiming to own it in first first place.

The are not cheap, but after going through several iterations of "home" routers, Linksys, Belkin, Netgear... you name it. Had to reboot them constantly, only some stuff would successfully connect. None of them were reliable. Most died within a year. Dropped connections. hung connections.. you name it. I hate Windows, and Linux won't run everything I need for work, so I bought a Mac. VERY reliable. I finally got fed up and decided maybe ... just maybe I might find something that 'just works'... I bought an Airport out of desperation. My Apple router is almost 10 years old. It has crashed once after lightning caused a power spike that was strong enough to cause the Power suppression unit it is plugged into to clamp the circuit. I have yet to find a single device that failed to connect. I haven't rebooted it since the last security update. I, for one, am sad to see them exit the market leaving it to the 'cheaper alternatives'. Maybe the EdgeMax UniFi might work.