...I want to see the special #2 pencil they're gonna use to wind the tape back up when it gets garbled and spit out of the player.

A while back, RT tried different techniques to appease their corporate overlords.

The most egregious I recall was when they tried to introduce manufactured, positive reviews well ahead of the general release window. They did this to trick early bird types that would be looking for an RT score and maybe not come back to check for updates. Bad movies would have an 80%+ score until a few days before when the real reviews would blast the movie and drop it into rotten territory. That was kind of obvious to regular visitors so they cut that practice out.

The influencers aren't as clumsy anymore, but they can't hide the problem they've created: Everything can't be various degrees of "fresh" at ROTTEN Tomatoes.

Posted by someone who clearly hasn't driven much in the United States.

Europe != USA, but Europe !== USA.

Why in the fuck are WiFi provisions in the same bill as federal public land sales and tax cuts??

Using the middle initial imparts extra formality, and in some corners, respect and importance to the individual's name.

Trivia - In my church (LDS/Mormon), it is traditionally ingrained in the Mormon culture to say the full name of every "apostle" or "prophet".

The odd tradition likely started as a practical way to differentiate Joseph F. Smith (a president/prophet in the early 20th century) from the original founder Joseph Smith (died in 1844). My guess is that it sounded unique so it became the Mormon version of, "So and So THE THIRD" - only without the disdain and with some religious reverence/awe sprinkled on top.

So now we have leaders with names (in any church PR) like David O. McKay, Harold B. Lee, Spencer W. Kimball, Howard W. Hunter, Gordon B. Hinckley, Thomas S. Monson, Russell M. Nelson... and so on. Joseph Fielding Smith was the only exception (since "F" was already taken).

I recently test drove a Mach-E, and I mostly liked it. It was the first electric car I've tried out that felt like a regular car, and it wasn't too expensive.

But I had to take it off my list because of the giant touchscreen and a general lack of knobs/controls. The salesman said, "Well, if you sync it all up with your phone, you can do a lot of what you want to do with speech and an app." Thanks, but no thanks. I want to get in my car and drive - not geek out with computers.

(To pour salt in the wound, new cars are getting an extra knob in place of the stick shift. That's the only place I don't want a knob...)

Broadcom long since shit on the VMWare individual customers.

I've purchased VMWare Workstation or Fusion for development for years over other products because it "just worked" (for the most part). I've been using Fusion for upwards of the last decade.

As soon as I heard that Broadcom bought VMWare, I reached out asking about long-term plans for Fusion - support, licensing, etc. "You shouldn't see any changes," etc. was the response. Then this year, out of the blue, updates on Fusion stopped working. You now get a "can't connect to server" error. Broadcom pulled the plug on updates from public servers. Now you have to uninstall and reinstall any updates they may or may not release.

I know i'm not even a microbe on the asshole of a tadpole to Broadcom, but it didn't take them long to prove they're definitely fish fuckers and/or (like Kanye) like fish sticks.

What certifies what music is? Was it pounded on a buffalo drum? Plucked on a string? Chanted in gothic cathedrals? Played in royal opera houses (or not)? Is it printed and sold in a store? Music label contracts? Radio playtime? MTV airtime? Napster availability? Youtube/Spotify/Amazon has it?

Now it's "Did humans make it?"

In the end, the same rule has always applied: "I play, therefore I'm music."

The things you cut out were all loaded with sugar - the cocaine/crack looking stuff you buy in bags/buckets, and the heroin-looking corn syrup in jars.

Sadly, food companies have been jamming that dope into everything that they can. Us Americans shouldn't have to go out of our way carefully reading nutrition labels (all while doing grams to teaspoons metric conversions) or avoid entire aisles in grocery stores just to avoid weight gain.

Ok, I misused the word incel. I meant "insular, anti-social, introverted, possibly neuro-divergent, IT employee".

Do you feel better, Anonymous Coward? *Sigh*... What a sad loser. I may be done with Slashdot's crowd at this point.

Higher than average salary === Less job security.

And yes, MANY of us in the tech field are overpaid. That's just part of the risk.

Corollary: If you're underpaid in tech, you either love the job/culture/cult you're in or you're an incel that can't stand change.

Congratulations, Mr. Lee. "Innovators' like you are helping to turn America's higher ed system "degrees" into the fancy toilet paper that a typical degree from Belarus or Congo would be worth.

Colleges will likely have to turn to extreme measures to survive. Don't be surprised that if by 2030, all college exams will be done with pencils and paper, in Faraday cages.) Maybe now's a good time to invest in Bic or Dixon Ticonderoga?

Whenever a politician decries the loss of "states rights", it's a bullshit argument. How do we know this? Because unless you go back to the Constitutional Convention era and the infancy of this country, damn few people have gone to sleep genuinely worried about "states rights" on their own.

Instead, there's always some other dark, hidden motivation lurking behind it.

I work at a higher ed institution stateside, and we're back to five days a week now by school presidential mandate. The public reasoning is, "The students need to have everyone available to them in person when they're here. Give them the best experience possible by being here to immediately help." The private reasoning is, "I know that some of you can and probably should work from home, and that 2) this 'collaboration is better' line some say is bullshit for jobs that people need to be locked in a closet to concentrate better. But the campus looks WAY too empty -- we need bodies here! And I can't tell a majority of college employees - faculty, student affairs, campus police, parking, etc. - that the non-student facing, all-day computer jockeys get special privileges. That majority would go ape-shit, and with all of the societal pressures coming down on higher ed we don't need that right now. Just be thankful that you make as much or more than them while getting the public sector perks. So please do your part by shutting up and dealing with it."

In short: Until human beings stop being petty and jealous (e.g. human), PHBs will always have that leverage over their employees without some pandemic-level emergency scaring some humility into everyone.

As long as everyday people can't go into a marketplace and effortlessly, ubiquitously use it, that's not gonna happen.

Even if it did become the world's currency, imagine the power consumption needed to power it for everyone.

And then don't forget the world's banks. They'll want their cut of the action, too.