Teslas

Kagi is the search engine for people who want specific/technical answers and information, and it's also the only one that actually has a practical and ethical business model: Customer pays for service. I'm still happily paying for it two years after first hearing about it. Kagi is the only website I allow to store cookies after browser close, and the very first thing I log into on every new device. If I forget to, and my first search gets sent to Google or Bing, the difference in results is obvious and painful.

Now I'm in favor of it.

I'll buy all sorts of gadgets. I'm not opposed to smart-anything. But one thing I will never own is a device with a constantly listening microphone. I've tested the Alexa and it's actually scary how perceptive it is. If I whisper "alexa...", under my breath in another room, it lights up. Volume is irrelevant so long as the speech is clear. If it can hear that, what else can it hear? Everything. By design, the microphone is constantly on. You can argue that it's not always recording, but it is on, and that's bad enough.

And yes, even though I disable the "ok Google..." hotword on my phone, I know people say that the NSA/FBI/CIA/Whatever can still spy on me through it, but I view that differently. If the government's men in black want to get me, they're going to find a way get me.

This sounds like a job for the A-Team!

I wonder how many online orders of yours have been cancelled.

One, this is oddly progressive for the predominantly republican state of Arizona.

Two, I don't think it's a good idea. Not everyone has the special talent for programming. Others (myself included) are marginally decent at it, but still have no desire to actually do it. Those who have the interest and drive to learn how to do it usually end up doing it on their own. It's not like you need to access to a school's computer lab these days, you can write code on a smartphone. Granted, that's far from optimal, but so are most school computer labs.

Is there really some huge demographic of people who are both talented and want to program, but somehow don't figure that out on their own by age 15? Seems unlikely to me. Kids with interest in this sort of stuff are already working on it themselves. The last thing they want is to sit in a classroom typing Hello World programs over and over again until everyone catches up. All that's going to to do is bore them. The same types of people who excel at programming, also get bored easily working in a classroom setting. So why taint their favorite activity?

Are you suggesting that the scientific fields are just as full of political motivation, need for personal gain, fear of embarrassment, unwillingness to admit when wrong, and truth-stretching/outright lying as every other field of work in which humans take part? And that this means that the information that they come up with should not be trusted by default? Hogwash! It can't be so!

There's no FIOS in Midwestville, Flyover where I live. That's the big advantage of the cable company over fiber optic: there's usually cable in all but the most rural of areas. Also, FIOS starts at $70 a month for 50Mbps, whereas Charter Spectrum starts at $45 for 60.

Nice sig. I just found a new favorite Bible verse.

Am I allowed to defend a big company on Slashdot and not be accused of being a shill?

Charter is easily the best ISP, at least in my area (and from what I've heard, it is in many places). They're the only ones that actually gives you the advertised speeds. They guarantee 60Mbps over wired connections, not wireless, but wireless is usually damn near as good with a quality router. My guess with New York is that some of the modems they gave to customers weren't up to the latest DOCSIS specs.

Also, the wording of the article is odd. To paraphrase, it basically at one point says customers couldn't use sites like Facebook. I don't get that. Just because speeds are slow doesn't mean you flat out can't access websites. It's just suspicious wording.

I had AT&T for a little while and it sucked ass. Pay for 40Mpbs? Oh okay, here's 20 on a good day. And it was only just slightly cheaper. What are the alternatives? We all know Comcast is dog shit. I've been very happy with Charter, and it only keeps getting faster.

Funny you say that, because he actually did steal some shit back in his youth. Obviously that was a long time ago and not very relevant anymore, but those Apple IIs disprove your theory.

If you think the Nazis are an example of the "extreme right" then your arrogance and misunderstanding knows no bounds. "Nazi" meant "National Socialist German Workers Party". Remind me again, which political party is it that offers a safe haven to socialism? I certainly don't think it's the big-business first capitalist Republican one. I believe it was your original candidate, Mr. Bernie Sanders, that publicly stated he was a socialist.

From Wikipedia: The party emerged from the German nationalist, racist and populist Freikorps paramilitary culture, which fought against the communist uprisings in post-World War I Germany.[7] The party was created as a means to draw workers away from communism and into völkisch nationalism.[8] Initially, Nazi political strategy focused on anti-big business, anti-bourgeois, and anti-capitalist rhetoric, although such aspects were later downplayed in order to gain the support of industrial entities, and in the 1930s the party's focus shifted to anti-Semitic and anti-Marxist themes.[9]

I am always still managing to be shocked at what kind of back-asswards world you lefties live in. I'm sure you'll find some way to try to twist this around and claim that the Nazis were really Republicans.

So far, you're the only one who's managed to disagree with me without insulting myself, Trump, or both. That's a big step up from everyone else here.

Or maybe I just have a different opinion than you. Maybe you're not perfectly correct on everything you think about the man.