And the answer as usual is AI slop.

This has been going on for ages and used for spam and cybercrime and they didn't care.

The reason it's a problem now is AI companies are buying access to your TV so they can use your clean IP address to go scraping data from websites that are blocking them.

Don't get me wrong it's still a good thing that these are getting banned but they have been around apparently for quite some time and none of the TV manufacturers gave a shit. Probably because the problem wasn't big enough until the AI swap bots got involved.

This is exactly why I keep my television tuned 24/7 to Fox News Network. There is absolutely nothing you can do to make a TV dumber than that!

AI slop posts farming karma so they can do scams and political post floods during an election season mean all of the discussion on any of the hobbyist forums is basically garbage. You get the same low effort obvious bot posts pretty much everywhere. Besides that there's the usual outrage porn all over the place designed to get you all angry so you will engage.

All that stuff was always a bit of a problem but the AI chat bots have made it so much worse.

Well, what manner of person who thinks ahead decides to live hours away from teh workplace? I know - people who don't plan ahead. If you don't want to go back because you live several states away, that is definitely a you problem. Y'all have so many excuses. Do a risk/reward analysis. Then if you want to live in Alaska, or wherever you want to live, and find employment there.

And let's say we get that universal no one in the workplace Utopia. The cheap housing that is so tempting will just go up in price. Note - I did video conferences, still do. But I didn't move to say Alaska because I like it there, when the company is in New Jersey. Then again, guess I'm not very smart.

Because everyone should be able to interact with the government without using a proprietary software package. That's why. Accessing government resources is necessary to function in society and we shouldn't put that behind a paywall.

Also basic services are best handled by the government. Things like water and electricity. What you would call infrastructure. At this point something is simple as open formats qualify as part of our infrastructure.

It takes a ridiculous amount of crime for a police officer to qualify as doing a bad thing. Police are more or less above the law unless what they do is so cartoonishly evil that it triggers moral indignation and makes the news.

We're going to see Mass automation and large scale unemployment because of it. Those people aren't going to eat a bullet. They're going to have to find a new way to survive. For some of them it's going to be crime, for some of them they will be organized into militaries and start wars and some of them will put the nose to the grindstone to survive and come for your job. Maybe they won't do it as well but your boss doesn't care he just wants cheap labor. With a complete lack of competition in the markets these days your boss doesn't have to care if he has a substandard product...

I guess what I'm saying is no man is an island and you can't just keep ignoring other people's problems because they're going to make problems for you whether you like it or not. And no, having a stash of firearms isn't going to help. There are millions of these people and you don't have enough ammo to shoot them all.

Well yeah, but people already accuse me of posting walls of text! ;^)

Yeah, People can have differing thoughts on where they live related to work. A woman I worked with lived about 50 minutes from work. I asked he if that was a nuisance for her. She said that by the time she got home, she was relaxed, and in a much better mood. Granted, she had a pretty scenic drive, but she had a point and she enjoyed driving. Others utterly hate driving. Either outlook is valid.

Now, what is my takeaway from all this? A lot of people really really want to never go to an office again, and have all manner of reasons that going to office is bad. And I have no issues with my 50/50 situation. I get work done without interruption. While the site work is non-stop interruptions. But that some of us do not hate onsite work, is every bit as valid. Others in here find that problematic

Yikes, that sucks!

In what I guess is a reverse corollary, I was offered a job in DC some years ago. The pay was significantly higher.

Problem was, it was DC. A lot higher cost of living. Housing, taxes, the commute is a nightmare. One time I had to leave at noon on Friday. The normal 5 hour trip to home (Pennsylvania) took ten hours. And yeah, the wife was not thrilled (she was already the VP in her company)

Even if she found new work at similar pay, we'd end up with less money after living expenses.

So here I am, living in a beautiful part of the USA - if ridiculous summer humidity, and mighty rainy this year - with more actual money.

Boss gets a dollar, you get a dime, that's why you shit on company time!

I note the response time is based on whether I need something from them, or they need something from me. 8^)

Exactly - And there is the interesting part. The typical angry response does not allow for any deviation from the idea that people who work from home are the most competent, most productive employees who will have the world beating a path to their door. And seem to believe this is universally true.

Certainly some people do work better alone. I've met a number of people who flounder if not supervised. I had a very talented employee once, who if you gave him a task, would say he was going to get a soda before starting, then spend a few hours flirting with some of the staff assistants, he fancied himself a modern Casanova, then come back hours later. He never met a deadline. I finished most of his work. Boss ended up calling me in to issue an order to me "do not finish his work", as they wanted him gone. Probably the supervisors of the staff assistants he was annoying. Irony of all that is I became the Prick in all this, the bastard that had some personality conflict with a top notch employee. Another employee had a side business, took him on as a full partner (the idiot) and this very talented but rudderless guy drove him out of business.

That's an extreme example of a person failing, but there are many lesser degrees of people needing supervision to function.

Another thing is despite what appears to be the norm on Slashdot, most people need a bit of actual humanity around them. Or perhaps most people are cowed into silence by their histrionics if some dares to disagree. But humans are by and large social creatures. Introversion is not the norm. Nothing wrong with introversion, but there seems to be a conscious effort to force on others these days.

Finally, a person who wants to slack off ie, a lazy person - will have a marked tendency to love WFH. Just sayin'!

Yes, some people have the need to make shit up. One of the biggest things I see is the claimed incredible productivity gains that happen only in WFH. At work, if I need something, I go to the person, tell them what I need, in person, and they do it, hand it to me and it's all good. Then some want to only communicate via slack or text. Will they be there to answer? Will I be able to concisely communicate my need and get everything back in a much shorter time? That hasn't been my experience.

My "favorite example of this effect is a guy who claimed he only communicated via text, no phone calls after I offended him with voicemail. So I took a walk to his office, and noted he was standing outside, chatting with someone. I asked for a moment. I simply said "If I call via phone you will answer - if that is too much trouble for you I will pay you a personal visit, I will not be happy, and I will bring the director with me because that's who I am working with. And complex communications via text is a non-starter."

Might be something else going on. In my case, I once thought I was an introvert, but the wife called BS on it. She said "You are obviously in your element, networking, enjoying it, and people want to talk with you even if you are a little terse at times - I think they like that, and you definitely listen." What I thought was my weekly day off where I'd hop in the car to "recharge" was actually processing, which is similar, but marks more in-depth thinking than just avoiding people.

What you describe sounds a little like that.

And that outlook is holding them back.

So it doesn't take long to get them on the street but there is a metric fuck ton of additional training much of which is military training that the police are given. It's often an extremely low quality and dubious value and clearly intended to line the pockets of some well connected asshole. But the cities have to do it because if they don't then they will piss off the police Union and lose their re-election campaigns.

So a typical police officer has several hundred thousand dollars worth of training poured into them. Now most of that is either worthless or nothing you want to be training a police officer to do but it's still going to get done. So cash strapped cities look at that and look at a recently disgraced police officer showing up for a job that they look the other way.

Largely due to corruption means they're basically untouchable. It doesn't matter if you get caught doing something hideously illegal another subdivision of your city will hire you because they don't want to have to spend the money training somebody else.

Those are tradeoffs. I could move from my small city, and out to some of the poor areas near here. Yes, I'd pay less taxes, and probably have a much cheaper house, I'd also have a 40 minute commute, have to drive almost that far for groceries and shopping, and a long ambulance ride because of the remoteness.

I choose to live 15 minutes from work, and it is not my employers responsibility. I choose to work onsite half the time, home the other half.

And while you might consider your demands to be somehow superior to mine, I dunno, I'm doing just fine. My salary, and investments make whatever it costs me in increased costs for amenities is not a rounding error, but just a cost of life.

This argument y'all demand to have shouldn't be an argument, but you just get so triggered if anyone dares to say anything other than your party line, your intolerance is amusing. Too me, WFH vs onsite and getting spun up is like some people at a bar arguing about the Steelers and Eagles, and getting into a fight about it.

And seriously, do as you will. If going to a workplace is the untenable situation y'all claim, Don't. If your employer wants you to come back to work, don't. You are a grown up with free will, live in the manner you deem appropriate. I've quit jobs in teh deep dark past that I found not to my liking. One job I was put on tasking that was incredibly boring because I was good at it. Others who didn't do very well at it got interesting tasks, while they refused to do that with me. To top it off those guys got promotions, while I didn't because their work was more visible. So I quit. They told me I was up for promotion, but I asked if I had to do the same work, reply was "But you're so good at it Ol!"

Point is, it sucked, so I got a new job that paid 5 grand more a year (no small feat in 1980) As well, I "retired" at 55 from my University job after getting a new Supervisor who was an nuisance, he had no idea what I did and didn't care. Once again, I left. Now I'm working again post retirement.

Point is, I refuse to be a victim. If working is WFH only for you, only WFH. Like I said - it's pretty simple. Stand up for yourself.