We have W+ and Prime and these are probably the main 2 sites I cross-shop these days. They don't overlap entirely; Amazon sells a lot more variety under its own return policies etc, while Walmart is better for things like motor oil that they have locally (if you wanted to go into a Superstore). But there's enough overlap that it's worth cross-shopping, for now.

One does wonder what they are thinking - why would anybody want or tolerate this?

Most ads we are stuck with because we want the media or service that the ads support. Oh, you want to watch two teams of 53 millionaires play football? OK, but 30% of your time will be watching ads.

On a fridge what is the payoff?

Yeah, growing up in the cold war it was a foregone conclusion the commies would always lose because central planning doesn't work. You'd hear the story about a factory overflowing with left shoes and no matching right shoes were being made. I still think there is some truth to it, but China has been on a run for quite a while now. I am skeptical of any narrative in which a key element is them being very stupid.

Something that seems to constantly get lost in this discussion is that violent crime in the US is not particularly high right now by historical standards - e.g. murder:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

If you were to ask the average "person on the street" to guess the murder rate, it would probably depend hugely on whether a school shooting or racially- or politically-motivated murder was currently a big media story. But that hardly corresponds to your risk as an individual.

Oh yeah, I've had that experience where a co-worker "points" to something on your screen by touching it, evidently in the midst of eating a big greasy cheeseburger.

And quite different than the US: "Mainline railroad electrification in the United States is quite rare in comparison to most European or East Asian rail networks, with less than 1% of mainline trackage in the country being electrified"

(wikipedia)

You're making a huge mistake by substituting your list of complaints for the actual question at hand - 'will I more likely be better off if I do or don't go to college.'

The answer is still quite clear. Look at this, the part about changing attitudes is interesting in some way, but the facts pertinent to somebody making this decision is the graph of median annual earnings for those with vs. without a college degree. People obsess over small relative shifts in this size of the gap, but it's nowhere near disappearing - it's huge. https://www.pewresearch.org/so...

Also near-perfect drafting to reduce air resistance.

80% less than cars is a lot less, but I'm kind of surprised it's that much. It actually makes me wonder how a Prius would fare compared to a klunky old half-full (per load factor statistics) Amtrak train.

It's a good point. I was reading the summary thinking the terminal state of social media sounded a lot like TV always was.

That's just the nature of life in general, to expand to fill the niche, even at the cost of other things that were previously there, until carrying capacity is reached. If anything humans are pretty unique in exercising at least some restraint, particularly as we are now poised for a drastic voluntary reduction in population over the next hundred years or so - an instant in the scale of things.

Is it sad or "fucked up"? I suppose, compared to some imaginary ideal that never existed in reality. But at some point it's like getting angry with dandelions for trying to grow in your lawn. We were never not this and neither was anything else.

I don't think slashdot is overrun with bots. It's too small a target. I think that's why (a few) people still come here.

Stuff can be figured out, like refueling a helicopter while it's carrying a load:

https://taskandpurpose.com/new...

...but anyways, it does seem like a fixed-wing plane could drop a huge blade using guided parachutes or dropping the blade to skid to a stop

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

The article does discuss that issue, and it can't be dismissed, but says at least Japan checked and pruned their records in 2010. It was prompted by a really extreme example of pension fraud:

The national inquiry was launched after the remains of Sogen Koto, believed to be the oldest man in Tokyo at 111, were found in his family home 32 years after his death.

Wow, they did get greedy didn't they - trying to push it to 110+, as if that wouldn't draw scrutiny. Per wikipedia:

Two of his relatives were arrested in August 2010, and subsequently charged with fraud.[10] Prosecutors alleged that Michiko Kato, 81, Kato's daughter, and Tokimi Kato, 53, his granddaughter, fraudulently received about ¥9,500,000 ($117,939; £72,030) of pension money.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Vigo aside, I thought all the steps involved in reconditioning the stolen phones were quite elaborate. Interesting that it requires site spoofing which means they haven't developed a technical means to defeat the phone's security measures.