Agreed. Amazon customer service is mostly automated and basically non-existent.

I have a relative who is an Amazon seller and I help him with the technical/internet side of his business. He had gotten his products approved by Amazon and had sold them for several years. Then after several years, we had to go through the approval process again, including the photo graphs of the product.

I sent the photographs for re-approval, but they kept getting rejected, but no reason was given. There was no real appeal and no way to talk to a human. I kept re-submitting the photos (it took several tries) and included a note saying these are the exact same photos we used initially several years ago.

Eventually they were approved. I guess a human eventually read my notes.

I would have happily bribed an Amazon employee in order to save myself the weeks of frustration I endured.

No one gets a job with the government because they like hard work.

During the height of Covid, my local high school was NOT going to flunk anyone not meeting standards. Students were given multiple opportunities to meet the bare minimum standards. A 20% grade average was deemed good enough for a passing grade.

The exception that proves the rule.

Couldn't this be circumvented by bringing two phones to Russia?

1. Give phone #1 to the Russians to install the tracking app.
2. Once you are back at your hotel, power down your phone and place it inside some sort of Faraday Cage-like device.
3. Power on your second, spyware free phone.
4. Profit ???

"Worcestershire" has entered the conversation.

I work in IT support and I deal exclusively with 4 year college educated people every day (I work in health care). When the users create a support ticket, approximately 75% of them can't clearly explain what exactly their problem is. I am astounded that these college educated professionals cannot create clear, concise explanations of what their issue it. No one in our organization uses ChatGPT yet, so AI isn't to blame. There is something about our educational system that over looks the development of this crucial skill.

IIRC, the Robot 'toon had they/them pronouns and all the other characters had their pronouns listed in their bios. I think that qualifies as 'slightly' woke.

"...and often results in significant weight loss" True, but they weight can come back over time.

I believe you are correct. The dvds are stored in a carousel that is accessed by a robot 'grabber'. The kiosk's operating system/dvd rental software are hosted on a Windows PC. When I worked at Redbox, I never heard the name 'Flextronics', but it wouldn't surprise me that they used a COTS system.

Banks and Airlines can still find Cobol programmers. I'm guessing what Sonos used to originally write their App was more modern than Cobol.

Even though they say no DNA tech was used, that is the only thing I can think of that would link him to the crime scene. Also: when someone goes to trial, doesn't the prosecution have show all the evidence they have and how they gathered it? I remember reading over a decade ago the FBI was following a mafia figure and they had a way to turn on his cell phone and record his conversations without the cell phone appearing to be powered on. Even thought this was a super secret ability and the CIA didn't want it known because it was using the same trick on people it was surveiling overseas, the information had to come out because the US Justice department had to release how it recorded the conversations. I find it very strange that no mention of this 'new technology' is mentioned anywhere. Unless this new technology is organizing all of the evidence in an organized fashion in Excel or PowerPoint and the Kansas cops noticed an obvious oversight the original investigators overlooked in the 1980s.

I recently saw an 80 year old steam locomotive (Big Boy 4-8-8-4) making its way across the midwest and I thought that was a fairly impressive feat of engineering and engineering support. But what NASA has done and continues to do with Voyager is truly astounding. 50+ years exposed to the vacuum of space and extremely low temperatures. All changes done entirely by remote commands. Is there any other type of engineering feat that compares?

I would say both deserve a hearty slap on the back and a boisterous "well done!".

If they aren't, they need to turn in their Nerd Cards.