You can't rise to certain levels of a big company's hierarchy without drinking the kool aid. (Or being at least somewhat a sociopath.)

Just an anecdote, but my 10-year-old daughter knows her times tables far better than I did at her age. That's entirely from her public schooling, not something I was even aware of until I saw her homework. And she's fairly middle of the curve in her class, so it's not like she's some exception to the rule or anything.

Then again, my boomer mother even in her declining age has always been extremely swift at mental arithmetic, in a way I've never been. It was more required of them at a time when pocket calculators still weren't a thing.

So maybe I'm just the slow one.

Depends on your definition of "poorly", seeing that Musk is the richest person in the world. Although almost certainly not the happiest.

Even without the question of college, there's a huge difference on average between hiring 18 and 22 year-olds. That's an extra 22% life experience and brain development. For most people, it's also the first four years since kindergarten that they will have spent learning to live outside of the school system. 18 year-olds may legally be adults but adolescence can go on for years.

In fairness, Signal has something on the order of 70 million active users, and in contrast this is the first time I've ever heard of Kiwifarms.

I was excited to maybe buy a Rivian until I saw they don't support CarPlay. Didn't even bother with a test drive after I found that out.

I'm sorry that vehicles lost the infotainment wars, but their multi-year production cycles have never been well-suited to this space, and car companies generally suck at being mobile device companies. Their days were numbered the moment AA/CarPlay became available on third-party head units, and they basically surrendered when they let them ship first-party. Yes it's one less revenue stream but their products are immeasurably better for it. Even if the car's infotainment is nice, AA/CarPlay will always have a leg up running on the device that already has all of my apps, all of my accounts, knows all of my preferences, has the context from everything else in my life I use it for, etc.

I'm a big fan of EVs (own two of them myself), but I'm not sure they would make sense for someone running a rideshare gig?

My IONIQ 5 gets about 260 miles of range according to the sticker, but if I'm gig-driving every day and want to preserve the battery I'm only charging it to 80% and recharging it when it's 20-30%, so that's about 50-60% of range before I have to fuel up somewhere. I don't know how many miles taxis typically drive in a working day... maybe in big cities where you're sitting in lots of traffic it'd be enough to get by, but it feels low to me. Having to stop somewhere and charge up for 20-40 minutes, possibly more than once a day, would be a big disincentive. Those fast-chargers aren't cheap, either.

Then there's also the fact that my range will be further reduced during the winter if I live somewhere relatively cold (which is going to be true for lots of drivers if Uber is mandating this across their entire fleet).

We recently got our kid her first laptop, a Surface Book. After years of tablets, she gravitates towards the touch screen for most things. Even though I showed her how much more fidelity she has in Minecraft with the touchpad and WASD, she still opts for the second-rate on-screen touch controls.

My recent calls screen on my phone is 90+% "Spam Risk". If there was a way for me to automatically send those calls to voicemail I would.

I keep hearing numbers like $500 thrown around and it's nowhere near that.

If you happen to have the breaker panel in your garage, and if you happen to be able to install the charger right next to the panel, and if your local government/power company is doing a rebate on chargers, and if licensed electricians aren't in too high demand in your area? Maybe.

I wanted to install my L2 charger about 25 feet away from the panel (so it would be more convenient and could reach both car spots), and I was getting quoted $1,500 to $2,000. For 25 feet! I finally found an electrician that would let me install the junction and run the cabling myself to the spot I wanted it, and then he would just do the terminations for about $700. Granted I live in Seattle so everything is more expensive, but also a lot of EV buyers live here.

Weird that within a few headlines on Slashdot I'd find both this article about Denmark preserving a more traditional form of reading, and one about eliminating a similarly traditional form of reading.

I was thinking this while watching School of Rock with my 10-year-old. I had to look up the development history and see that Jack Black was the writer's neighbor and worked directly with him on it, because there was no believable way this was just some script that was written and financed independently and they then auditioned a bunch of other people for the role.

Is there any evidence that's ever been a problem? The Michelin-star restaurants that do this kind of thing are already sending questionnaires to their customers ahead of their reservation, tracking them over years of visitations, and being extremely precious with their reputation. You think they are just googling a person's name and then spending tons of effort and money on something they gleaned from the profile picture of the wrong person? I can't think of a more embarrassing outcome for that restaurant; I imagine people would be fired if it ever happened.

This is a big thing in the Hulu show The Bear, not necessarily the social media aspect, but finding ways to treat your customers with surprises that make the dining experience more personal and memorable. They even have a "surprise budget" for exactly this kind of thing. It's shown in a very positive light; people LOVE being surprised with an experience the staff overheard them expressing they regretted not having. I wouldn't be surprised if the show is what gave the idea to some of these restauranteurs.

Personally I don't see what the fuss is. This isn't government surveillance, it isn't Orwellian, it's people who work at a small business looking at the social media YOU chose to make public, to try and differentiate themselves from your other dining experiences. If you don't like it, you've got a bevy of options, from locking down your social media, to maybe telling them in advance if you know they do this sort of thing and don't want it for yourself, to reviewing them poorly if you feel creeped out by what they do (although then you're probably in for backlash from people who think you're in the wrong for complaining about something you opened yourself up for), and of course the easiest solution: to not giving those restaurants your business.

Oh, I used to have this with Windows Media Center on a custom HTPC with a Ceton CableCARD. Those were the good days. Everything recorded on a local single PVR, streamed to anywhere in the house, just one app, extremely responsive, zero ads in the UI, no cloud bullshit. I might still be using that system today if MS hadn't killed WMC.