For better or worse, Nissan's are often sold (here in the US) to people with poor credit. No, I do not know all the details. I suspect Google knows, but that's the perception. The end result of this is that they're often in horrible condition and driven by drivers who did not care.

And no, it's not a 'classist' thing. I'm sure there's some confirmation bias but they're frequently in horrible condition, to the point of being unsafe. Then, of course, there are the drivers who have less care about their driving habits. Again, that could be some confirmation bias going on, but that's generally why there's a negative view here in the US.

One of my favorite vehicles was a pickup truck that I owned a long time ago. It was just called 'Nissan'. The side helpfully said, 'Pickup'. It was just 2WD but went anywhere I asked of it. The inline 6 cyl engine was amazingly reliable. The body was less reliable and rust was the eventual killer of the truck - but it was already in poor condition when I bought it.

I'm reminded of Archaeology grad students. I'm convinced they get the worst treatment.

They are quite literally started off by shoveling dirt. Well, that's if they don't start by sifting dirt, but that's usually a volunteer task on a popular dig site.

Over their scholastic career, they'll shovel literal tons of dirt. They'll do more of that after they graduate but at least they have grad students to work down to the good stuff.

Couple this with the goal of bringing manufacturing back to the US.

Yeah... Outsourcing the pollution is a good thing for us. I mean, it sucks for them but it's good for us.

You saw how they voted in real life.

They're gonna vote the same way online.

Sadly, from my observations, not everyone is in a position to save any significant amounts of money.

Even with 40 hours a week, it'd be difficult to survive on minimum wage while still having anything that qualifies as a satisfactory life.

Working multiple jobs and needing to split resources with roommates is not a very good life and is outside the bounds where I'd consider it a reasonable solution.

That was similar, though school-provided jobs were paying less than I could otherwise earn. I did some TA work but not as much as some folk did. I'd also taken a bit of a break and was then married, meaning I had to work pretty hard to cover those living expenses. Fortunately, I had other skills (willingness to work) and could work around my schedule. The then-wife worked when she was able/willing. It was expensive to live in the Greater-Boston area.

I wouldn't laugh at them. It's 2025. We're no longer allowed to laugh at the mentally handicapped.

I kid. I kid!

There's no reason for me to really trust AI. In fact, I did a vanity search of my username and was surprised how accurate it was. I guess that's on me for reusing my username across many sites over the years. Then again, I'm not the only one who uses this combination of letters as their username. So, I guess the AI vanity check would be wrong for the rest of the people who use my username.

But, it got a ton of information correct as I dug deeper. That was enough for me to distrust it further. I already assumed they'd be storing everything else, including any prompts I fed to the AI. This is the internet, and that's valuable data. So, I'm sure they're going to store that and try to find ways to monetize it.

I may be out of touch, but the general idea (back when I was working on my Ph.D.) was that if you were paying for grad school you were doing it wrong.

The thinking was that if you had the skills and grades, you'd be able to find funding for your graduate education. (You may still need to pay for living expenses, and that sort of stuff.) I had the grades/background to get scholarships, and much of my research was sponsored.

I suppose that's no longer true.

But, yeah, the idea was that if you had to pay for grad school, then you were better off seeking gainful employment.

That said, I have some pretty strong opinions with the idea that everybody needs to go to college. While I paid for my kid's education, one of them is a pediatrician and the other dropped out entirely. I think they both made good decisions.

I suspect that artistic welders could get jobs. They'd not be as artistic as they'd like, but they'd be welding.

Also, I wonder how many of these degrees are all that valid. I don't want to point fingers, but some parts of the globe have a reputation for less than ideal academic scruples.

You probably have TPM 1.0. Linux doesn't do much with it, but it can. Your keyring may be stored in TPM. If you regularly use passkeys, that too *can* be stored in the TPM (though most password managers just store it on the device locked through the keyring).

I'm not even a wee bit interested in Windows 11, but I hear about it a great deal. So, I sort of end up having to at least be familiar with the MSFT news. I have a lot of UNIX in my background and switched to Linux almost as soon as I could, just after retiring. I'd played with Linux. My company used Linux on the servers and a few developers picked it for their workstations. But, I didn't convert 100% to Linux on the desktop until 2007.

I don't think I could live comfortably with just 8 GB of RAM. I'd have to change some habits. I like a lot of things open at once and have browsers with many tabs open. That's generally where my RAM goes. I can live within 16 GB of RAM, but I prefer at least 32 GB.

As for your old laptop, there are many refurbished laptops (especially at sites like NewEgg) that can be had for not much money. I'm not really a 'refurb' kind of guy but I did buy a refurbished desktop as an experiment to see what I could get for $100. I was pretty impressed. Refurbished laptops seem pretty popular among some Linux users. They seem to like the ThinkPad models quite a bit.

I think you may be missing something. Though, it could be me...

The comment was saying that MSFT required 'new' hardware for Windows 11. That's specifically referring to the TPM 2.0 requirement. That's the only 'new' hardware requirement for Windows 11.

That's what I was responding to. TPM 2.0 has been out for years. It's hardly new technology at this point. Granted, some folks will still have older devices. But, the tech isn't new. It has been around for more than a decade. It's not dissimilar to dropping support for 32-bit systems. Yes, technically, a small percent of people will need something 'new' (or just a bit more recent). MSFT knows that number with a good deal of accuracy.

If enough people call a fart a burp, it isn't going to smell any less. Using the wrong word in hopes that it may someday be correct doesn't mean they're currently correct. Though, I suppose we've already ruined education and standards for a wide swath of the world.

I'm a (retired) mathematician. More specifically, my degree is in Applied Mathematics.

I mention that so that this makes sense: I'm a firm believer in the scientific method. I am a true 'science cheerleader'.

But, I know that the science isn't always correct. Quite often, it's just the best working model we have. We don't always, one might say we seldom do, have a complete understanding. If we did have a complete understanding, we'd stop doing science. There would be no need to continue. We have working models that are adequate for making predictions, and we have those models because of observation, testing, and data. I'll also point that science must be falsifiable. If it's not falsifiable, it's not science.

Then, there's businesses and humans motivated by profit.

They marketed Thalidomide for morning sickness when the drug had never been tested on pregnant women.

I don't think that's a failure of science. I think that's a failure by humans. It's not the scientific method that was wrong. It was the lack of science that was wrong.

On a positive note, this changed drug policies around the world. So, there's that. It was also sold over the counter, though it only stayed that way for a few years (in some nations). It didn't take them too long to figure things out, just a few years.

Thalidomide was also never authorized in the US. I forget the lady's name but he was quite vocal in the matter because he knew that the drug had not been well-tested. So, Thalidomide was never widely distributed in the US. During the trials, some US doctors had (and prescribed) the drug to people. While still horrible, it meant that the US was not impacted nearly as much.

Anyhow, the lady that stood up to the pharmaceutical company here in the US was even given a medal. I'm too lazy to look up her name. That brain cell must have popped or something.

"new"

I'm not a fan of MSFT. I'm a Linux user. Hell, I'm even an admin on Linux.org. (It's the same username, so it's not like I'd be hiding very well.)

I say that just to demonstrate that I love me some Linux. (I used a lot of UNIX systems back in the day.)

But... TPM 2.0, which is the 'new' hardware requirement, was released in 2014. Sure, it took a couple of years for mass adoption, but the average desktop computer user replaces their system anywhere from 2 to 3 years or 5 to 8 years, depending on who you ask. They're generally considered out of date in 2 to 3 years, but lots of people don't replace them quite that quickly.

So, TPM 2.0 would be in wide use.

And, no, they shouldn't still be supporting 32-bit computers.

Yup. If you follow the link in the article, it takes you to an article I read about a month ago.