I swear there are people out there who would say, "But I thought that was the indicator telling me my headlights were on!"

Where I live I need to use a combination of low and high beams because there are no street lights in my neighborhood. Fortunately my car has "auto high beams" so when it detects enough light coming at me they cut down to low beams... but I am also attentive enough to turn them down manually when I see people walking (my neighborhood has no sidewalks either) so I don't blind them as well.

I would much rather watch older TV shows than anything new. It's not just nostalgia... they're just that much better or more fun.

The way I learned it in the Red Cross's Advanced Lifesaving and Water Safety Instructor classes, as well as the PADI Rescue Diver class... Rescuer's Rule 1: Protect yourself first, or else there will be N+1 victims.

You could always require the phone be tied to the parents'/legal guardians' phones and that the parents would have to do the authorization. For the edge cases of legally emancipated, something could always be worked out where the date of birth (and nothing else) is added by an official organization that would handle it. The parents would then be able to do the equivalent of MDM similar to how it is done when you get a corporate phone.

Revenue enhancement.

You never know. You may have an ID ten tee user error going on. You might have some honeypot machines looking to see whom they can trap, or maybe a testing lab that does regression testing. There are several reasons... some legitimate, some not. I've worked with systems in the past that had to use the original installation with no updates... as idiotic as I thought it was. It was some kind of "business decision" and like it or not, I did not have the authority to update the machines.

Wow... you went from zero to super moron in no time flat. Try digging into your personal memories... or talk with your friends, if you have any... about your time back in school. Or has your programming wiped out all of your memories?

It's the law that Governor Tim Walz signed that requires tampon dispensers in all school lavatories, whether they are for the girls or the boys. I also think they're chasing the wrong bogeyman... putting them in the girls' lavatories and women's bathrooms for the adult faculty makes a lot of sense... and in a men's bathroom for the adult faculty probably won't faze many of them... but put them in the boys' lavatory and your janitorial staff will be unclogging toilets and sink drains a lot more frequently, and it will keep happening until those dispensers are empty and not refilled. Doing stuff like that is just second nature to a pre-teen and teenage boy.

Heh. That's what I get for not charging forward on that idea many years ago. :)

Yes, you are.

Tell me you do not understand how Java or a scripting language works versus how a compiled language like C does without telling me.

Congratulations! You just proved my point. By abstracting stuff like that away, you lose the ability to keep it under direct control. Yes, it is extra work for the programmer, but it also means you can guarantee the efficiency of the final product versus writing stuff that goes into a black box that magically does things without telling you how it does them.

You need to scroll up. Apparently someone did it 16 years ago.

Down mod? Nah. I've actually held a similar opinion... that languages like Java were the start of this downfall because while they were great for product delivery speed, they actually hurt the ability to program because they took away the need to understand efficient program statements and ways to minimize resource usage while maximizing speed. If I were 20 years younger, I could probably write a doctoral dissertation on this.

The data are being sold and replenished faster than anyone can remove it. It's like trying to empty a sink with a bathroom paper cup while the water is running and filling it at a faster pace.

It does when you conflate it with Quality of Service dictating bandwidth needs, which is what many people do. Video conferencing requires a high rate in both directions. Video streaming or downloading major software installers requires a high download rate. Browsing the web requires low rates most of the time and will need some burst speeds here and there to acquire some content. Those are basic needs to provide proper QoS for the services requested.

As long as the endpoints are effectively anonymous, then you meet what is needed. If, however, I choose to pay for expanded services because I do a lot of video conferencing, that's on me... not on federal regulators. If Comcast (example) elects to speed up their VOD services within their own network, that's on them... not on federal regulators. If Comcast (example) purposely decides to slow down direct connections to Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, etc, that becomes an anti-competitive practice and is certainly already within the realm for federal regulators to hand out penalties.

... that they mandate some kind of permanent watermark that identifies the content as AI generated. That would protect people now and in the future.

Agreed. You would think LinkedIn would be a site that should eschew political debates and focus on professional connections... which it kind of did way back when. I'm not there looking for political activism. I'm there looking for job-related things: potential career moves, continuing professional education, and focus groups relating to specific technologies. Most of the time when I even bother to check the site all I am doing is scrolling past stuff that is little more than fluff with the occasional tech-related questions/information. Don't even get me started on all of the irrelevant ads that seem to be about 25-35% of the feed.