I drove a car in 1985 that got 70 mpg on the highway. It was a 1985 Chevy (nee Suzuki) Sprint. I drove it a couple of times from my home in San Diego, the 340 miles to Las Vegas. Upon arriving in Las Vegas, I went to a gas station to fill up and was astounded that I got 70 mpg on the trip. Not to forget the car was very peppy, and I was able to hold it at 70 mph going up the 15-ish mile Halloran grade just east of Baker California. This was with me and my wife and a backseat full of luggage. Brand new, I paid a little over $5K for it, and kept it for several years. I got 40-50 mpg around town.

WHY can't we get THIS kind of mileage today? Yeah, I know, all the smog malarky that wasn't on that little car. I would have thought that hybrids could approach this kind of mileage, but they seem to be stuck around 50 on the highway. We seem to be going backwards here, folks..

I also use Firefox pretty much 100% exclusively, and I frequently get a nice white blank page.. I've come to the conclusion that this is telling me I don't need to see what the page contains. Fortuanately, websites that are critically important to me don't do this.. so far.. knock on wood...

Its the same here in Las Vegas, your only viable choice is Cox or CenturyLink. I'm stuck with Cox preferred (150/10mbps) at $88/mo. At my address, all I can get with CL is 10mbps DSL, however, a friend of mine who lives 4 blocks south of me, called me one day a few months ago and told me he'd just dumped Cox for CL and he got fiber (100/100) at their $49/mo "lifetime" price. I immediately called CL, thinking they'd finally "fiberized" this neighborhood. Alas, it was not to be, the website and a call to them assured me that I could get a whole 10mbps DSL at my address for $49/mo "lifetime".... oh yeah, like I'm gonna drop 150/10 for 10/10mbps, even with the lower price.. Not in THIS lifetime, CL.. sigh

I just hope he doesn't get pushed up against the wall and decide to push the button (nuclear). He's already put the nuke forces on higher alert.. God Bless and protect the world from this madman.

You forgot those of us who refuse to deal with Apple. Over the years I've owned ONE Apple
product, that being one of the old 90s iMacs. I got it for free and ran Linux on it for a few months before it died. I'd rather not have a phone than deal with an iPhone, so Android is my alternative.

Yup.. I have a Pixel3XL, and it also got the Android 12 upgrade, and I REFUSE to pay $600-$1000 for a damn cellphone. I paid $150 for this 128mb Pixel3XL and am on Tmobile's $25 Connect plan. In other words, I'm going to use this phone until it dies or I break it.

Since the universe is supposedly infinite, how in the world can these scientists claim, with ANY accuracy, such a minuscule number for black holes? Compared to infinity, 40 quintillion IS a minuscule number. Did they *count* them?

Yup..My "year of Linux" was 2010, when I retired from 20 years of dealing with the insanity that IS Microsoft, and moved over to my "first love" Linux. I discovered Linux around 1994 and used it for a
project at my -then- company. Unfortuantly, since most of the companies I worked for - up until 2005, were strictly Windows shops, no Linux in use. The company I worked for between 2005 and 2010 had a 100 node Linux compute cluster and the senior admin wasn't very familiar with Linux, so I got the nod to add support for that to my workload.

When I retired in 2010, I decided that enough was enough and, having watched MS "jump the shark" with the abortion that is Windows 10 (I actually LIKED Win7) I couldn't be happier with Linux as my daily use OS.

Back in the mid 90s, I had a '91 Toyota 4x4 pickup, with the 22R 4 cyl engine. I loved that truck and went offroading with it endlessly, however I learned that if you wanted a 4 wheel drive Toyota pickup, you'd be FAR better off getting one with their V6, as that 22R 4 cyl engine was just too underpowered for the additional ~900 pounds of the front axle, plus it got horrible gas mileage, but previously I'd had an '86 2x4 pickup with that same 22R engine and it had plenty of zip and got great gas mileage, although, since I'd just moved to Las Vegas, and the '86 did NOT have a/c, my first summer here was HELL....

But here's the kicker that really pissed me off. At just a bit over 120K miles, the timing chain let go. Fortuanantly I was sitting in line at the local Toyota dealer waiting for them to open to get an oil change, with the engine off. When they opened and the line started moving, I turned the key to start the engine, and all hell broke loose. Horrible grinding noises, so I stopped cranking. I knew it was some bad/expensive, and had one of the lot guys help me push it up to the service writer. Told him what happened and left the truck with them. Got a call the next day from the SERVICE MANAGER telling me what happened. The timing CHAIN let go, which, according to the manager, WAS NOT SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN!! Fortuantly, since it wasn't running when the chain let go, the damage to the engine was somewhat minimal, and it only cost me $1600.. NOTE: Found out later the service managers statement was a bit of a spin, where this actually DID happen far more often than it should. This was my last Toyota..

I suspect maybe .0001% of the users of an Alexa unit know how or have the equipment to SEE how much data it uploads/downloads, and the fact that it does this 7/24. That crap is banned from any network I control..

I bought one of the Alexa Dots a few months ago, with the idea of using it to listen to SiriusXM music channels next to my bed. I found that the speech quality by "Alexa" was so muffled that it was almost completely non-understandable. The interface was so convoluted, I wound up peddling the damn thing on eBay for about 1/2 of what I paid Amazon for it. What a piece of crap.

I hear the word "trust" and "Microsoft" in the same sentence and I fall on the floor laughing my ass off..

AND, don't forget, stealing your data, and hiding behind a 1000 page EULA that NOBODY reads. But if you DO read it, you'd run screaming.. A friend of mine who is a lawyer, read the whole thing and his comment after finishing? RUN.. RUN FAST.. ANYTHING BESIDES WINDOWS.. His law office is now on Linux with ONE system on a heavily castrated Windows for things that Linux/Wine doesn't do well.

Don't forget their need to mine every byte of data from YOUR machine and "monitize" it.. Fuck Microsoft.. Been 100% Linux for the last 11 years...

You're insane if you're putting your life savings into bitcoin or any other blockchain-based "money"... Its just like gambling (LITERALLY JUST LIKE GAMBLING) so if you have any braincells in functioning order, you only spend/bet WHAT YOU CAN AFFORD TO LOSE... Really simple idea..