Of the listed factors (lack of child care, early retirement, incarceration and substance addiction) the only one we can easily handle is the lack of child care.

Child care is ridiculously expensive, in part because of insurance and regulations. Many state regulations limit it to no more than 4 or 5 children per worker, which makes the labor expensive even though we underpay them ($12/hour is common). $12/4 kids = each parent paying $3/hour just for the labor, not including rent, supplies, and of course, insurance. Insurance is high because of the high value we place on the children.

So the solution is to have either local governments or large businesses supply the child care. In those cases, they can self-insure.

Everyone my age knows what the stereotypical 'robotic' voice is. They changed it because they wanted to hide the fact you were talking to a machine.

We all know that a mouse moving in a perfectly straight line means a machine is controlling it, while humans do something more like a squiggly line. Basically a normal human drawing a line looks like someone with Parkinsons did it as compared to what a machine drawing a line looks like.

Similarly, humans typing have pauses that tend to end after set thoughts. New sentence = a pause. If I am seeing a long unbroken, steady text output or text that all appears in full sentences quickly, I know it is a machine.

For the best hybrids, the major advantage is not the regenerative braking. While that helps save some energy, it is relatively minor.

Instead the main advantage is that you can design the internal combustion engine (ICE) to run at a consistent RPM. You do not need to run the ICE at different speeds to get 30 mph, 45 mph and 60 mph. Instead you have one that just runs at a set RPM. Then you use the hybrid battery to supply all the power at low speeds and a boost at the max speeds.

The more efficient ICE can add 10 more mpg to an engine alone, without even considering the regenerative braking.

You have no idea what the article is saying or what is real. here is an unbiased summary of reality.

No state 'dislikes' billionaires, they all want them.
All states have various taxes.
A bunch of conservatives claim California hates billionaries, because they tax them more than certain red states do.
Some conservatives think a proposed one time tax law in California will drive away billionaires.
The actual facts are that billionaires do MORE business in California than they do in ANY other state. After it is New York City.
California has not changed anything about themselves, they continue to do the same thing they always did.

This article is implying that the conservatives are wrong about the relationship between California and Billionaires, as demonstrated by these facts. But of course, the conservatives that hate California also do not respect the Los Angeles Times.

If a person makes an offer and accept the money, that is a non-verbal contract for services. Certain states have laws that prevent businesses from cancelling orders without just cause.
In those cases, it may very well be illegal for a company to cancel an order because an AI that was authorized to set prices did not follow the company's intentions.

The real problem is that the companies are going to try and refuse the responsibility for the AI actions.

As in:

Yes my AI was empowered to set prices, but we did not want it to set a price less than a $1000 and it set a price of 10 cents. No we do not want to give up all other transactions the AI approved.

Yes the AI hired only christian white woman and illegally asked if they had children, but we did not mean to break the law. That was the LLM, not our fault.

Yes the AI illegally rejected every rental applicant that was single but we did not mean to violate the Fair Housing Law. We never told it to do that, it is just the algorithm.

You can't sue us if we did not intend to break the law.

No. They can definitely sue you for unintenionally breaking the law.

It's only cheaper if you do not get sued for slandering an innocent person that your camera falsely reported tot he police.

Basically, what is going on here is companies shifting risk from themselves to their customers.

Does that sound to you like a good idea? To be so afraid of your customers stealing that you treat them with massive disrespect?

#1) After the Maine Candidate dropped out, the chances of the DNC taking Maine rose above what it was before.

#2) I said impeached again, not removed from office. The Dems will do it if they get 51% if only to make it harder for him to continue to destroy the country.

#3) Plattner was a bad Democrat candidate in part because he did the same things the Republicans candidate do and stay in office. Trump himself has been convicted of lying to the US government not to mention paying large sums of money (> 1 million each time) because he:
a) Refused to rent apartments to black people.
b) Refusing to let black Casino Dealers work in the much better paying high net worth games
c) raped women
d) Raped 13 year old girls at his friend Epstein's parties.
e) scammed students out of money for a fake real estate course.

These are JUST the cases where he had to pay money, not the many other crimes he has been accused of.

How did he win election? He has huge social skills, no ethics, and never ran for lesser office. If you run for lesser office you do not get immunity and the higher people in the party kick you out when they find out about your crimes. But he never ran for anything less than Presidency so he was never properly vetted until after he won and acquired a bunch of loyal idiots.

1) The cops in Minneapolis appear to have the reputation for being psychotic morons. Suspects are not always guilty, as shown in this case and Car theft is most often kids joy riding (75%). Yes, 25% of the time it is organized crime (to steal a car for anything more than a joy ride you need good connections to large organizations to either chop it up or ship it out of the country). It is totally unreasonable to draw a gun on people joy riding.

2) The cops appear to be illiterate. The theft report said 34 DTM. While the flock cameras did not see it was 34 10 DTM, the cops SHOULD have seen the 34 10 DTM and realized something was off before they stopped the vehicle They should still have questioned them, but should have realized before hand that the license plate was not identical to the theft report and gone in more subtely.

3) Flock is incompetent and should be banned.

I just do not understand how so many people are so freakin' STUPID.

They have abandoned their privacy, thinking nobody cares about them. But it has gotten so cheap to spy on people that you can spy on everyone, aggregate the data and suddenly everybody cares about the data.

Every doorbell camera like this should come with a large warning (bigger than the doorbell camera) that says:

"Thieves WILL access this camera and use it to figure out when you are on vacation. Your ex boyfriend will access it and see who you are dating. Connecting this device to the internet is a dumbass thing to do and definitely NOT secure."

That would have to be approved by the courts. It could go either way.

The $5K a year just gives you a $300 per person per visit discount. So pays itself back in 15 visits or so.

If you want to stop AI Cheating, turn the classroom into a faraday cage and all work is done there.

Given the US current economy and the GOP prospects for the coming election, the absolute worst thing Trump could do for the GOP is to enact new economic measures.

If he messes up enough he will be impeached again. Just takes a few more democrats in the senate.