Oh come on, be honest now, it's totally better! Back in the '80s the homeless were sitting on the street corner tweaked out on drugs while begging for change. Now, in 2025, those same homeless people sitting on the street corner tweaked out on drugs and begging for change gets to scroll through Slashdot on their dubiously acquired smartphone!

See, isn't that so much better!? /s

I'm Canadian, but I'll write it as though I'm in the US - or at least try to - so as to reduce confusion.

3. Elections are now publicly funded.

1. 1. Media, both physical and digital, organizations are required to provide a reasonable amount of free advertising space to local, and federal leadership, candidates starting six weeks prior to the election date. No campaign advertising is permitted outside this timeframe; yeah yeah, First Amendment, but if we're already modifying the Constitution might as well add some language regarding election campaign speech.
2. 2. All campaign paraphernalia: posters, signs, buttons, etc... will be provided to the potential candidate by both the state and federal government.
3. 3. To prevent an unfair advantage to any one candidate, they will receive the same predetermined stipend to be spent on incidental items not covered as campaign paraphernalia: food, hall rentals, music licensing, safety inspections, transportation costs (I'm thinking presidential and senate races should be government covered due to the large amount of travel they need to do during the campaign).
4. 4. All candidates will provide a detailed account of how the allocated incidental campaign funds were used, any significant expenses outside of typical campaign activities are fraudulent and will be prosecuted; I don't want to see someone who swiped the wrong card at dinner get busted, but we also want to make sure people don't have a way to transfer the funds offshore and bolt.
5. 5. Any candidate who has failed to win three consecutive elections will be barred from participating for ten years.
6. 6. Should any successful candidate elected to office create, and have passed, legislation which is later adjudicated to have violate constitutional rights and no appeals are remaining will immediately be removed from office and barred for life from running for office. If the next election if more than six months away after this occurrence, a new election will take place in the affected area within six months. Additional campaign funding will be provided due to the shorter timelines a "snap election" calls for.

Unfortunately I'm not sure how we cover off independents, potential new candidates, or the creation of new parties. You can't make people pay to run for office, though the system is largely pay to win anyway, since anyone is supposed to be able to run. At the same time we also don't want thousands of people applying to be a candidate, we'd need some way to weed out the "joke" candidates from the ones who are actually serious. I'd also like to see a proficiency test which proves candidates have a general idea of the existing laws, both at the state and federal level, and what the Constitution does and does not allow but again I'm not sure that would be legal since anyone is supposed to be able to run.

Either way, when it comes to elections, the only way to fix the problems we have now is to get private money taken entirely out of campaigning and elections.

There's a middle ground between doing nothing and full government control, we just have to find it and make the rules tight enough to close loopholes which could be used to skirt them. Though, from what I've been seeing lately, "ghost jobs" are typically being used to skirt rules around the hiring of foreign labour over qualified local candidates.

I live in Canada, so this doesn't exactly apply to a US discussion, but we do have a similar problem here so perhaps there's some overlap. We're seeing companies advertising "ghost jobs" for $37/hour doing things they should have zero problems finding someone local to do: tow truck drivers, dump truck drivers, restaurant managers, applications developers, equipment installers, welders, butchers, pharmacy assistants (non dispensing), admin assistants, long haul truck drivers, etc...

Hell, I've even seen "sandwich artists" listed at $37/hour! Which unemployed young person struggling to find do you know who wouldn't jump at the chance to earn $76k annually making sandwiches?! Anyway, they run the ad for a while then go running to the feds, "Oh noes! We couldn't find anyone local who were qualified to do the job, can we apply for a Labour Market Impact Assessment now?", requesting approval for the hire of a foreign worker to do the job instead.

Honestly though, I don't know how we'd enforce a law like this but I have some broad ideas:

• * Employers requesting foreign talent, claiming they're unable to find any local talent to fill the position, must pay that worker five times the local market rate typically earned by local talent for the role. It's an excessive amount, I agree, but if they truly need that employee due to their ultra unique and difficult to find skill set they'll still gladly pay it, simultaneously such an excessive wage requirement discourages employers from shopping for below market rate talent and contributing a negative impact to the hire-ability of job seekers in the local labour market.
• * Before employers are allowed to post they're looking for a new employee they need provide the government with details of what the job is, what specific skills they're asking for, and the expected salary range. 90 days after the ad's original posting they need to provide details on who specifically applied for the role, copies of their resumes, which of those potential applicants were interviewed for the role, and any notes / recordings taken during the interview. Right now we're all relying on "trust me bro" when employers say they can't find someone, but we obviously can't trust them so we need to have someone checking their work to verify the veracity of their claims.

I think another issue is employers simply don't want to spend the time, at market rates, doing any on the job training for their new hires anymore. Employers these days seemingly just want someone to come in pre-trained, already having the exact specific skillset they're looking for. I can appreciate concerns of their training someone only to later have them jump to a new employer, though instances of this happening could be mitigated effectively by having a better work culture, work life balance, robust benefits, and the payment of sufficient compensation where the employee they'd spent all that time training won't want to leave. But let's be honest employers don't want to do that and would rather hire a way less expensive, easily exploitable, foreign worker to do it; until they receive permanent resident status, which takes years, they're effectively locked to that employer.

But honestly any law like this will probably consist of lax enforcement with token fines high enough to appease the public, who aren't used to seeing a number that large in their bank account, while being low enough for companies to see it as the "cost of doing business". Then the agency which gets created to police this, or the agency tasked to handle it, will receive substandard government funding thus ensuring any complaints received will take years to investigate and even more years to litigate - but hey, some politician is gonna get a nice little photo op for "sticking up for the little guy" that'll look good in a campaign ad.

Probably because, for many people, YouTube is used like cable TV was back in the day - something you put on for noise while you focus on something else. Feeding you something you'd already seen and possibly enjoyed lets you fulfil that need by providing something familiar to have on in the background so you can focus on the other task.

It's like throwing Star Wars on for the umpteenth time, sometimes you really want to watch it while others it's just something you can have on in the background while doing something else simultaneously giving you the opportunity to "take a break" when the Falcon gets caught in the tractor beam.

"My cousin's best friend's roommate was making fun of me for being lazy by staying in my room all day, when I caught them conspiring to sell my stuff and kick me out I stopped paying the 10k per month keeping them afloat and left. Days later I had 32 missed calls and numerous panicked texts..."

Don't get me wrong, I don't mind stories and often listen to audiobooks to help me sleep - if the AI voice is good and the story remains somewhat coherent I'll throw one on if I'm having trouble sleeping, saves money on buying audiobooks. But you can really tell the people who are trying to build a channel with decent narratives against those just looking to flood the algorithm, filling the space with rambling stories containing repeated details coupled with massive inconsistencies; the seemingly mousey unemployed [insert familial / friend archetype here] working out of their bedroom suddenly has 27 businesses worth a gazillion dollars with them being a well known figure amongst the same social circles their judgemental peers engage with.

Just because I'm tired and trying to sleep doesn't mean my brain stops working, I'm a systems and data analyst by trade so once those inconsistencies hit my brain can't help but hold on and now I'm wide awake again - thanks AI...

While in Boy Scouts, a three year adventure to learn just how much I hated camping, I'd spent a few weekends working on my nature badge planting trees. A regional farmer wanted to turn one of their fields back into a forest as a windbreak to prevent soil erosion on their other plots. I can never remember the name of the place and can barely remember where it is, I was a kid, but if I'm out driving and see the landmarks I'd remembered from back then I'll drive by.

40 years ago it was an empty field with a bunch of saplings, there's a forest there now and I gotta admit I feel a sense of pride for helping to do that - I mean think about it, I... me!, helped to make a forest once.

If you have kids around 10ish years old and see flyers for this around town looking for volunteers to plant them, sign up. It's easy to do and every time you drive by, watching it slowly turn into a forest, you can all feel a sense of accomplishment because it's not often a person does something so obviously impactful and beneficial to their local area.

Looking at the lifetime (MAX) stock price graph on the Google shows that, over time, Intel has a period of low cap followed by periods of increased growth. Current price is about $20 a share and with typical periods going up to the high twenties low thirties - seem like every 20 years or so there's a "wave" where the cap goes insane, but the overall value of the company appears to be somewhat stable.

So you gotta ask yourself, are you a betting person? Do you buy now, or wait a little longer in the hopes it goes even lower, then hold on to it long term waiting for AMD (or another competitor) to make a mistake so they can take on more market share before selling your stake?

All the "doom and gloom" is stupid, recent share price trends came off the back of the pandemic where people were quarantining and buying PCs to pass the time - that market has more or less dried up now and Intel is going back to it's more "stable" operating mode. Personally I prefer long term stability, not that I play the stock market directly, as I'd prefer to see returns over time versus taking a huge risk and losing my shirt hoping for that "lottery" win that's more luck than skill.

Not gonna talk about their chip issues this year, still rocking a 2009 iMac with a Windows 10 install as my daily driver and not really looking for a screaming new machine at the moment, but whatever problems they're having are also cyclical - AMD kicks their ass for a while then Intel catches up and kicks their ass, then AMD catches up to kick their ass again.

Saw a review on YouTube, looks like a decent machine for modest tasks, where they'd addressed the "controversy". Guy just flipped it upside down, the black "top" looks pretty good and it had the added benefit of moving the headphone jack to the left hand side of the unit where he'd typically kept his headphones, keeping the two front USB-C ports clear.

It's not like there's a spinning disk or optical media in there and USB-C / Thunderbolt are unidirectional, just turn it upside down if you turn your computer on and off so much. I'm far more upset at the ridiculous pricing for the 32GB ram upgrade or the absolutely insane amounts they charge for internal SSD storage, there is absolutely no possible way for an $800/CDN base machine to suddenly cost $2,424/CDN - three times the price! - because I decided to drop in 32GB of RAM and a 2TB SSD!

I remember reading something a few years ago, at work so can't really Google it, that scientists did some experiments during that time after 9/11 when planes were grounded and compared local weather / temperature patterns against similar periods / patterns when planes were in the air flying around and did see a difference in the local climate / air quality.

Again, at work, so I don't have much time to go look up what they'd found - I just remember that they did find something.

Reading the article it seems like Apple is blocking EU citizens from making purchases, or downloading apps / software, from countries outside the one they were in when setting-up and linking payment information to their Apple accounts. If I'm reading this right then essentially it's saying someone living in Germany using a credit card issued by a German bank can't make a purchase from an iTunes Store / Apple App Store, or other media services ran by third parties, from an online store in France despite both countries being a part of the EU.

This stance lets Apple, and other third parties, put "geo-blocks" on pricing, discounts, and software downloads to specific countries within the EU despite the EU being one large economic block with open borders and open trade amongst member nations. The EU is basically saying you can't artificially prevent EU citizens from making purchases, whether in person or online, from any companies operating within the EU.

I know their gender but I was deliberately being obtuse for two main reasons:

1) I write a number of emails daily to a diverse group of individuals, some of whom use they / them pronouns so I was taking the opportunity to practice.
2) I didn't want gendered stereotypes getting in the way of the importance of the message.

No, they won't, because that's not how capitalism works.

The capitalist will see their employees doing five days work in four on one side with shareholders screaming for ever higher profits on the other and will make a business decision to have their employees go back to working five days while producing six days worth of work for the same pay - they get the benefit of higher productivity and the profits from that, pleasing shareholders, while you just get more work.

Capitalists will do everything they can to maximize profits to the exclusion of everything else and will fully expect you to do six days work in five for no change in pay. Governments, when they're working properly for their citizens, are supposed to be there to protect the people from being exploited like this.

They're supposed to setup rules telling companies who implement four day work weeks, finding employees can keep up with five days output in that time, should not only continue to be paid for the five days worth of effort they produce but when they have to work that fifth day then they will get paid the equivalent of the six days worth of production they're producing.

Capitalists won't do it on their own out of the goodness of their hearts, it goes against their fiduciary responsibility to maximize profits at all costs, so they have to be forced to do it by law so yeah, Government.

I have someone on my team like this, constantly working long hours over and above everyone else on the team. It's largely the company's fault by not bothering to hire replacements as people left the company or do adequate training, leaving them the only person remaining who largely knows a lot of the underlying processes.

The problem is they're so overworked, being pulled by a number of departments for their expertise, they look for any excuse to slack off! Asking them a simple question which would normally take ten to fifteen minutes for most ends up being a 45 minute affair whereupon you'll learn about their best friend's third cousin's roommate who knew a guy that knew a gal who knew a park ranger that went on a skiing trip that one time.

I get why they do it, they're stressed out of their minds and need a break, and I often just roll along with it because they'll throw nuggets of useful information about various processes and system into the conversation. But because the company hasn't prioritized having them stop working, instead of having them spend time transferring the work to other people while they teach those people how to do it, just ends up putting them even more behind and working longer hours.

What's worse is their retirement is less than 5 years away, it's gonna be so much fun after they leave.

Perhaps not, but there's definitely a conversation to be had regarding the opportunity cost and return on investment. A gigawatt can power around 750k homes, what is the "AI" doing that we'd want to divert a somewhat large city's power toward running it and is it worth it for the larger society as a whole?

Here, let me fix that for you:

"No sir, you can't go from A to B with that conveyance, because of the conveyance" is like saying, "No sir, you can't go from A to B with that particular conveyance as you have not yet demonstrated your ability to operate the conveyance safely though you will, as always, continue to remain free to travel from A to B using an alternate transportation method."

Take a bus, a taxi, ride a bike, scooter, walk - you got two feed and a heartbeat right, wheelchair, skateboard - absolutely no one is "restricting your movement" but if you want to drive yourself around town within an encapsulated one tonne guided missile designed mainly for the operator's safety, then larger society has a right to demand you demonstrate your competence before we collectively give you the privilege of doing so.