How many 'skills' did you learn in high school and in college that you never used again? I can name a few... Geometry proofs. The Canterbury Tales (anything to do with it). Alternate Interior Angles. Algebra (any of it).

What you are now seeing is the Employers (those people who pay for skilled work) re-evaluating what Value a college degree has to them. It used to be that if you had a degree, as an Employer, I could see a measurable increase in skills that applied directly to my need for a particular set of skills. The new employee with the degree measurably outpaced the one without.

Today? That gap is either significantly narrowed or is gone. And this debate we are participating in here is one of the results of that. The people doing the hiring are the ones questioning the value of the degree. The people trying to get hired - the ones who took the classes and got the degrees - are just the victims in the middle.

Should academia strive to build The Everyman? When people are spending time to take classes / gain skills that aren't aligned to the requirements of the target position, and when at the same time they are failing to learn key skills for that target position, I'd say "no" to that question.

You graduate with a degree in Accounting and you can't tell me what it means to "recognize" revenue... but you can talk at length about the French Revolution? There's that Everyman again...

I didn't say anything about particular "degrees"... I said classes taken and skills taught.

"Should a person go to college for a non-viable degree? Maybe they will pay but not get a job using that degree."

I think this is one of the true failings of our current education system. And it's across the board, across many ages. Who is tracking the usefulness / applicability of classes taken and skills taught?

In High School in the US, we give diplomas to kids who were made to take geometry and algebra, but who don't understand how a loan works.
In college in the US, we give diplomas to kids who were made to take English Literature to get their Electrical Engineering degree.

It seems like at no level of academics does anyone go back and see if what is being taught is applicable and still necessary. They strive to build The Everyman, but fail at the core mission more often that we'd like.

Because the protections in Section 230 are directly modeled after the protections from other Common Carrier regulatory schemes. "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider"

The shield from the inherent liabilities of the content being hosted is predicated on the understanding that the platform is simply that - a neutral platform. It does not create content, it only removes content that is unambiguously illegal, and by continuously maintaining this neutrality it is rewarded with a shield from potential content liability lawsuits and criminal actions.

Those sponsors that pay the bills will need to understand that their advertising rates may go waaaaay up if the platform they are advertising on gets caught removing not-illegal material that corresponds to a particular viewpoint (political, religious, etc.) and they lose their shield of immunity.

Being able to send the court a letter that is essentially a Get Out Of Jail card, one that says "Yep, you need to dismiss that suit because we can't be sued for this" is an amazingly powerful tool.

You are correct - if you aren't paying for the service, *you* are probably the product.

Except that they are. When they decide that there are (otherwise legal) topics which shall not be discussed on their platforms, they have strayed away from the concepts that brought us the protections of Common Carrier.

"I'm not liable for the content on my platform" , "I'm protected from liability for the editorial decisions made about content on my platform" and "I have Free Speech Rights to make whatever editorial decisions on any content posted on my platform" are not concepts that can coexist. Something has to give. If you want to remove content, fine... but you no longer have immunity from either civil prosecution (you are taking action against a group of people you disagree with and they sue you) or criminal action (you just so happen to take down all content posted by a particular protected class of people).

The shield of immunity is supposed to come with significant strings attached. These companies are trying to cut those strings.

If the content doesn't break a law and you make an editorial decision to remove it, then you have moved beyond the role of Common Carrier... that's the short-short-short version of the "this is the line that must be crossed" I've heard from legal experts in the past.

Being immune from prosecution and/or civil suit because you are simply the medium the information flows across is a huge thing. The protections come with huge strings, those primarily being that you don't make content-based or viewpoint-based moderation decisions. Your decisions to remove content are based on criteria that do not help or hinder any particular political or religious or (insert other component) here... but that do clearly prohibit material deemed against the law.

It's when you stray into prohibiting a particular topic of conversation when you get into danger. I sat and watched test Facebook Messenger conversations on people's phones disappear when they mentioned Hunter Biden and laptop in the same discussion. A conversation between two individuals, not posted to the world at large, disappeared. That was an example of a "subject that will not be discussed on this platform". That's a clear violation of the concept of Common Carrier protections.

If you don't want the protections of the Common Carrier concept, you don't have to pursue them. But if you do pursue them, that inherently means your platform will be carrying opinions you may disagree with.

The trap we've fallen into is not understanding the difference between "Hate Speech" and "Speech I Hate".

You can't simultaneously argue "We're immune from being prosecuted for taking down protected speech because we're just a middleman, - treat us like a Common Carrier" and "We have First Amendment Rights as a company to promote or suppress the viewpoints according to our opinions".

You can't say you're claiming immunity because you treat everyone fairly, and then argue that you also have the right to treat one viewpoint differently than another.

I know for some time, there were concerns from the power companies about end users feeding power back onto the grid. Anyone have any insight into the current state of this? I know I remember hearing "the power grid, at the edge, was designed for flow in one direction only" or something to that effect.

for sustainable energy at the quantities we need, at a reasonable risk and cost. LFTR used to be the tech I thought would win, but now I've been moving more towards the molten chloride salt fast reactor concept. Liquid fuels at reasonable temperatures, no massive containment vessel needed, no hydrogen explosion risk like at Fukushima, can even 'burn' existing PWR waste.

I really hope both sides of the political spectrum give this a chance and don't just shoot it down like the last few times it's been brought up.

Not sure they've thought through this one completely...

Then you disagree with the New Jersey law that would have mandates after Smart Guns could be sold, they were the only types of guns that could be sold x days later?

Last time I worked with the airline industry, they were still heavily reliant upon mainframe systems. That means putting redundant equipment at diverse datacenters is more costly. It's not like spinning up a new rack of x86 VMWare servers.

Government gives a monopoly to an entity (be it themselves or to a commercial entity). Government in return negotiates (strongarms) for 'free' services it would otherwise have to pay for. Monopoly is broken - and people are surprised that the government might now have to pay for those 'free' services?

Who did they think was actually paying for those 'free' services beforehand? Are they really that blind?

... plane outside the confines of the device and make it communicate over a common (not hardened and not separate) channel/network.