as I do a lot of 3D printing and some designing, I've dabbled in Blender a few times. My wife knows it better than I do, since she spent a lot of time working with a friend to learn to use it to create 2D animations. Now, it's her "go to" tool to help edit our existing .STL files when we need to modify one. (Personally, I still get by with TinkerCAD for the basic things I need to do.)

The one downside I've observed with her trying to co-author/edit work with her friend online is the way Blender seems to require all of the project contents in a specific folder path? Maybe someone here with more knowledge can correct me if this is wrong/user error? But her laptop she used for the animation projects has a mess of folders on the Windows desktop that apparently can't easily be moved without breaking Blender's ability to open them properly?

It seems like her friend would send her a zip file of a project and then she was stuck putting it back in the same path he used. I remember that being the workflow of old desktop publishing packages like Quark Express on the Mac, many years ago. But I thought it was almost extinct in modern software.

Ah, ok. I follow that. The tariffs were pretty temporary though, so by the time people ran out of inventory of many things already in US warehouses? It was coming to an end by Supreme Court ruling.

I'm not sure I'd put a lot of stock in business leaders claiming they're essentially paralyzed due to unpredictable markets, over any of that?

Again, I'd blame AI for most of the current upheaval, with regard to memory and SSD prices going through the roof.

The tech field is clearly in a downward spiral in America, but honestly? I don't see how you can blame Trump directly for much of that? I mean, everyone seems to agree the rise of AI changed the whole playing field, but Trump didn't cause that to happen. He did a bit of bandwagon-jumping so he could talk about it and give it a new name. (Who cares?)

The general economic downturn due to rising diesel fuel costs and the like? Yeah, that's his to own but doesn't explain tech hurting proportionately more than other career paths?

This is what I expected, and I'm basically fine with it.
Trump created this whole mess so now he gets to deal with it.

There are still people viewed as more reasonable/moderate Republicans who got re-elected, such as our Illinois State Representative, Amy Elick.

But clearly, we're just watching that political pendulum swinging back, as it swung forth.... Same old, same old. I predict a whole lot of time wasted simply trying to undo Republican changes without regard to their merit, while older Democrat policies get brought back out. No thinking outside those boxes.

We should could use another primary cellular carrier to compete with the "big 3". I'd prefer Musk tried to start his own, vs buying in to be yet another carrier relying on the other company's towers for service.

I recently discovered a real problem with cell service NOT being directly with AT&T, Verizon or T-Mobile. We have broadband bundled with a cellular plan through Spectrum. The price was good and it just seemed to make sense. Spectrum uses Verizon's towers for its cell service, and most people are happy with Verizon's coverage. BUT, we've had several Spectrum outages recently, including one that lasted throughout the day, where our cellphones suddenly went into SOS mode and could do nothing but dial 911.

At first, it made no sense to me. Why does my broadband going down have anything to do with my cellular connection??

That's when I started asking questions and found out the cellular data packets to and from my cellphone have to be essentially "tagged" as coming from a Spectrum customer, so Verizon's systems know it's ok to allow it through. When Spectrum goes down, it often breaks this tagging functionality so my phone becomes an unknown device trying to use Verizon's network without authorization.

Considering that even if I had VoIP phones at home, they'd also be down with a Spectrum broadband outage? This means I'm completely cut off from calls or texts.

This motivates me to bail on these bundled deals and to go with a separate plan with a major carrier. I just dislike only have the 3 options for them.

IMO, this whole incident is just an all around mess. I mean, obviously it illustrates another big failure by police departments using Flock and not enough common sense or restraint. But it's also about a towing company unable to do its job correctly. And lastly, it sounds suspiciously like the victim is trying to milk the situation for as much as she can get.

By that, I mean, the towing company DID agree to make things right with the bumper they partially tore off. But coming back after that to demand a mechanical inspection, which found bad ball joints and tie rods/tie rod ends? That doesn't really add up as damage the towing company could have done. A torn bumper would be due to anything from attaching the tow hook to the wrong place and pulling it off to the (more likely) scenario of accidentally damaging it while towing it over a curb/speed bump,etc. or when lowering it back to the ground.

Ball joints and tie rod ends wear out from many dozens of thousands of miles of driving. They can also get damaged from collisions that cause sudden impacts, such as getting t-boned by a vehicle that rams into a wheel/tire and forces it to bend/turn. If simply towing the car and getting a plastic bumper caught on a curb or whatnot broke the tie rods and popped ball joints loose? They were already in bad shape and unsafe to drive on.

If you think about it? Most arguments against mergers have to do with it being bad for consumers because they lose options and prices for the service are free to go up. In this case, DoorDash can make a strong argument that grocery shopping for people was never really their focus, so they're expanding their offerings, vs creating a monopoly on food delivery. BUT, they're creating a near monopoly on the gig worker! Not that long ago, we had other players in the space like Postmates, but they were bought up since then.

I'm old enough to remember the computer bulletin board system (BBS) days fondly. I ran my own BBS for over a decade, in one form or another. At the end, I moved it to kind of a hybrid setup where I had 4 dial-in phone numbers for modems, but also a 128K ISDN circuit to the Internet. Most callers used it as a way to access some Internet resources while others started connecting to the BBS itself via the Internet.

Ultimately, BBS sysops (the jargon for system operators) realized we were at the end of an era. The Internet simply made the hobby of BBSing obsolete. Why limit oneself to using a specific bulletin board system and whatever limited options it has on its menus, when a raw Internet connection allowed hopping all over the world to content of all types -- even accessing multiple screens of it simultaneously?

Even back then though? I think many of us mourned the lack of personal connection that caused. On a BBS you used regularly, you had typically 100-500 or so somewhat regular users to interact with. Most were in your same geographic location. It wasn't uncommon to organize gatherings so people could meet the real humans behind the screen names/handles.Message topics were more relevant to where you lived. People could actually request 1 on one chats with the sysops, and most people got to know them pretty well.

The Internet doesn't "need to die", but maybe more people should make the effort to seek out and use web sites offering quality content, vs a habit of spending most of their time on big-name social media sites? I know for me, a good example for this is cars. I've always been kind of an auto enthusiast, and I used to always seek out a web message forum for any vehicle I purchased, and immediately join as as new member there. These days, I see all these enthusiast type groups popping up on Facebook -- but none of them offer the depth of information the dedicated web forums have. You just wind up with thousands of people in the Facebook group asking the same questions and wanting to show off photos of whatever they did cosmetically to their ride. The message forums always seem to have a few regulars who REALLY know the car inside and out. I'm talking master mechanics who have taken the whole vehicle apart and put it back together again, in their own garage. And they post a LOT of "how to" type message threads and more.

IMO, people are making too big a deal out of the touchscreen functionality. It's not really a big reason someone would buy this new Macbook Pro. It's simply something Apple said they were finally able to add to a good OLED display without adding weight or thickness to the machine.

I had a Lenovo ThinkBook 14" laptop my workplace issued me that had a touchscreen display, and I basically just forgot it existed on it. That said? It was finally useful in one situation where I had it on a docking station with dual external displays. I configured our VoIP softphone to use the laptop's own display so I could tap to call people from the directory.

This is just the latest, greatest iteration of Maxbook Pro with the latest ARM processor in it and a number of small design improvements. (EG. It has an audio profile now for listening to music with the lid closed on it. That's a feature I'd actually use sometimes and wondered why none of my other laptops ever had it.)

I would assume places felt unsure they'd really get their data back by paying the scammers who locked their files down in the first place.

There are plenty of stories about people who paid the ransoms and never got their data unlocked afterwards.

If someone came along, pretending to be the good guy who could break the lock for you or your business? Wouldn't you prefer to pay THEM, rather than rewarding the criminal who created the problem in the first place?

It's at least notable that the plastics industry documented the possibility that microplastics were accumulating in the human body. But with there being such limited knowledge on what harm they do, if any, just by being there? I don't see why this would have sounded any alarms back as far as 1974?

Comparing this to cigarette manufacturers is a little disingenuous, IMO. That's an industry that encountered mounting evidence that smoking was doing harm and even killing people, yet they doubled-down, paying off researchers to try to find as much contrary evidence as possible to deny it.

It seems pretty logical that ANY substance we're exposed to can enter the human body, and many of those substances could stick around in a microscopic scale. The more important question is whether or not it matters from a health perspective. We developed some of our plastics BECAUSE they were inert materials, deemed fairly safe to use in the medical field (surgical tubing and so forth). Maybe that was a big mistake, but most of the concerns I hear voiced right now amount to wild guesses. "Look at the increase in things like obesity, or cancer! Maybe it's the microplastics!" There are MANY other possible causes in play, so jumping to the conclusion microplastics are the next cigarettes is .... unreasonable.

One of the things people keep overlooking with skilled trades is the physical labor required. I know quite a few people with an I.T. career they're in largely because they have physical issues or limitations (bad back, for example) and it's not realistic for them to just hop over to a skilled trade like a plumber, where they're going to have to crawl under cabinets or into crawlspaces under porches all day long.

If you're still young, absolutely. It's not a bad time to consider a skilled trade to make a good living and escape the AI threat. But for the middle aged and older folks? Not always realistic.

This has always been the thing of science fiction (Star Trek universe being a great example). There's this idea that humanity will automate and invent so much technology that nobody has any work left to do.

In realty? Nobody on the planet has ever reached this point before in history, to prove it really happens.

All I *do* know is that in my own life experience, EVERY time I use a new tool or gadget that promises to save me time and make my life easier? Whatever time it saves is immediately claimed someplace else. In many instances, the claimed labor and time savings turns out to be artificial. (EG. I've owned several Roomba type robot vacuums. Even though each one I tried was an improvement over the old one? None have ever truly eliminated the time and labor I would have spent vacuuming by hand otherwise. What inevitably happens is they don't get certain areas clean enough, so I have to go back and deal with those myself. Then, they need maintenance and cleaning themselves, which requires a lot of time taking them apart and getting lint and hair unwound from places it wasn't supposed to be. Next, something wears out or breaks, costing me more money AND time to repair it or replace the worn part.)

I think all we might really see is some temporary pain around unemployment as we collectively re-think what kind of labor/work we still want to pay people to do.

AI clearly can't do ANYTHING physical, so that severely limits what jobs it can take from humans. Robotics can do physical tasks but we're still FAR from it handling random tasks that humans do easily. Our robots tend to be purpose-built. One may be able to scan inventory on store shelves, but it can't go clean up a spill in an aisle. Another may claim to do security duty but probably has to call in to humans if anything bad happens to it.

Geez people.... Regardless of who is President, the issue here is worth taking a good look at. $2 billion is a LOT of money to burn through each year! And this is a program that arguably went FAR beyond what people expected it to do (ensuring libraries and schools had an afford Internet connection). Handing out free hotspots to people? Yeah ... I'd rather not fund THAT with my tax money. Just use free public wifi like the rest of us do.

Really, I think most of the hate comes from the way the self-checkout kiosks were handled and deployed. The systems themselves aren't so awful.

Hindsight is 20-20 and all that... but I think they should have only deployed them for the "12 items or less" type of express checkout. That would have helped acceptance and adoption. The people only trying to buy a few items are the ones prioritizing getting in and out quickly, even if it takes doing something differently than before.

Self-checkout gets exponentially frustrating when you have a lot of groceries like fresh foods where you can't just scan them. You've got to look them up on the touchscreen. That and purchases like alcohol where a human still has to check your ID before the process can complete.

Customers start feeling like they're doing a job that cashiers get hired for, so why aren't they getting a discount for it?