Well darn. I was hoping to run VirtualBox on it so it could run Windows programs.

Office suite + Python = OpenOffice. This is already a thing.

Then why do it?

Why push so hard and expensively lobby for years and years on end if it's no change at all?

And there it is, and post #2 no less. The Russian astroturfing. Way to be on the spot, comrade.

Oh, and a brief side note.

The people who complain about Millennials? I have absolutely NO idea what they are going on about. I work with a couple dozen of them. I've never met a smarter, more energetic, more knowledgeable bunch in my life. Their dedication to getting things done is astounding. I'm amazed daily by how competent and informed these folks are.

I strongly suspect the people who have problems with Millennials have never been around a group of them trying to figure out why the server is having problems. Maybe I'm just lucky and happen to work with a good bunch, but I doubt it.

Yup all of that.

I'm in my 50's. I just dropped a two decades long career in writing software drivers to write web applications in C#.

I did it for a couple of reasons.

First reason - if I have to write another keyboard driver ever ever ever again, I'll murder someone. I can't do it anymore. It isn't possible to be more bored with something than I am. Doing something new - anything new - feels like a vacation.

Second reason - growth. It's a strange rule of our profession that the things that pay best aren't the hardest to do. I don't have to read PDFs of parts and timing diagrams now. I'm fiddling around with CSS making stuff look pretty. At about a 15% pay increase. It'll be a great Christmas at my house this year.

Always keep looking. Keep your eye on your career, your happiness, and the money. Get as informed as possible and then make the best decisions you can.

You are correct, of course. Replacing those workers would immediately return 7.5 billion to UPS, minus a percentage of people/customers newly unemployed that would no longer be able to afford their services. This is where UBI enters the conversation.

Also correct. As it currently stands, a great deal of America bases a great deal of their personal self-image around their ability to hold a job. I will say this though - cultural values can change, and rapidly if they have to. A brief review of the last 100 years of German history can show that.

Bless you. You are the only other person who is worried about the same thing I'm worried about. This exactly. We are making exactly zero preparations for this. It's inevitable at this point and all of society is simply ignoring it. Don't tell me they don't want to replace 3.5 million truck drivers - they absolutely do. You don't make a R&D project like this one on a whim. I think the economy - just on trucking alone - could tank. Add to that all the other easily automated jobs and it's a disaster. And nobody is even talking about being prepared for it.

I'm not 100% sure UBI would be a fix either. Maybe another solution would be to have everyone retire at 35, and instead of calling it UBI we call it early pension. Or something. I don't know what would actually work either. But it's a problem we're going to have to solve, and soon.

Well, I didn't mean "pure capitalism" to mean a kind of Ayn Rand free-for-all, I just meant that capitalism is currently the prime mover for automation.

The truly funny bit is that in the light of your statement, it would be the conservatives that will wind up pushing the country into a socialist looking UBI.

A thought experiment. In a nation of 330 million, if there are only 150 million jobs, are the unemployed freeloaders? Really think about it before you answer.

The new thing that's happening is that here soon, production will massively outpace labor. It's a new state of affairs that human beings haven't seen yet. There isn't an -ism to describe it accurately. It wouldn't be capitalism or communism, both are predicated on scarcity. Given a limited amount of valuable goods, how best to equitably distribute them? Remove the "limited" from the equation and they suddenly don't apply.

So what would you do if that were the case? Let's say that automation does eliminate half the jobs in America. There simply isn't anything for you to do. What would you do? Would you hold to your "argh it looks like socialism so it is bad" philosophy and not accept UBI? Would you starve before giving in?

Because it is coming, you know. And it doesn't have jack shit to do with any political left/right point of view. Right now it's pure capitalism driving this. As soon as UPS is able to replace 100,000 drivers with an average salary of 75,000 a year with computers - it will. The competitive advantage it would gain would be 7.5 billion in saved revenue. Think they won't do that?

And every other industry that can, will. If UPS does it, FedEx will have to if they wish to remain competitive. And so on.

What will you do then?

So somehow reporting that someone shut down Trump's twitter account is Trump bashing? It's a simple matter of fact.

Oh that's right - I forgot. Any facts that you guys don't like are fake news/someone's agenda/whatever so you don't have to face them.

Let me tell you something, my friend. Reality doesn't give two shits what you think about it.

I mean yes obviously, those reduced millions are still coming in from somewhere.

But I haven't heard anyone I know - in years - saying they were going to go to a theater and watch a movie. I think the last thing I personally saw in a theater was the first half of Kill Bill. None of my friends have said anything about going to a movie since I can't remember when.

I've considered that maybe I'm just getting old and I don't go out as much, and that's skewing my perception of things. But I have nephews and other family that are younger. And babysitters and neighborhood kids that come over to hang out with my kids.

Nobody seems to talk about going to the movies anymore.

Do people actually go to the movies these days? I can't think of anyone that does. Whatever it is that you want to see - it'll be on blu-ray in a month and you can watch it at home, without the sticky floors and ten dollar popcorn. A gigantic LED tv doesn't cost all that much, and you have one for your XBox already anyways.

Who the hell goes to the movies these days?

Nothing like closing the barn doors after the horses leave.

Recorded Future has not detected specific instances of North Korean malware mining, but believes that the regime has the knowhow, motive, and interest in cryptocurrencies to execute similar attacks.

So in other words - you have exactly nothing to say, but spent an entire article saying it.