Minor point of order good sir, B5, as good as it was, wasn't the first show with a planned multi season story arc. The first American show was Hill Street Blues (1981) and there are earlier examples from the UK including The Prisoner (technically it only counts as 1 season but the story was split into 3 distinct parts with different themes) and Doctor Who would frequently revisit previous story lines. It could also be argued that ST:TNG had a multi season story arc with Q and Picard, they definately got the hang of it with DS9.

It's a bit of a shame what happened with B5, it was originally planned for 5 seasons but WB wouldn't commit to the 5th season so JMS had to wrap it up in the 4th... so he was effectively out of ideas when they greenlit the 5th.

This is one of the biggest signs that AI's about to take a huge stumble and probably a fall as well... Musk is gloating about how much it's going to take off.

A rather significant point of order good sir,

It's not Autism. Actual functional autistic people really don't need the comparison, they're not like Musk at all.

Musk has a complete disconnect from reality and is insulated from the consequences of his actions. This is the ideal environment for an antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) to flourish. Musk might also have ADHD, but again that's not to blame for how he acts and the disregard he has for anyone but himself, that's far more the realm of an ASPD. Autistic people do feel empathy, they're just not able to express themselves normally, people like Musk have no empathy what so ever.

I think we need to stop using autism as an excuse... especially for things like sociopathy and psychopathy.

Just like the Office Ribbon caused a complete breakdown... oh wait, it didn't.

The "users can't accept change" excuse hasn't been valid for nearly 20 years now as almost everyone who grew up without a computer is nearing retirement. It's as stale and wrong as the "but who do I sue if things go wrong" argument (you can't sue MS if things go wrong, they have pages of legalese in the T&Cs expressly to prevent this).

People will adapt, those that don't will just find themselves in crappy, dead end jobs.

This. Bureaucracy is a function of size, not ownership.

I've worked in more small companies (sub 5000 employees) that have far too onerous bureaucracies compared to their size, more political infighting and fiefdoms than any of the government departments I've worked for. You understand why something the size of the NHS has it's bureaucracy, it's fucking massive so it can't function without it... However a mid size consultancy firm shouldn't have more, let alone significantly more and the NHS is pretty efficient once you consider how big it is and how many different functions it has to perform.

It's just the typical anti-union propaganda that gets passed around by the Daily Mail. It never actually happened.

Unions are not completely innocent by far but they exist for a reason and that reason is that bosses were left unchecked for far too long and far too many abuses were committed. If we tallied up the abuses by companies vs the abuses by unions in the same time frame, you wouldn't even be able to see the abuses by unions column if the graph were projected on the side of a 20 floor building.

Yep... I have one word, just one word: Debt.

The average person has gotten themselves into debt up to the hairline and seems to have lost no appetite for getting more. Back when I was a lad, saying you were living payday to payday meant that you were in trouble, that at the end of the month you couldn't put any money away for things you want (cars, TV, a holiday, et al). Now people are routinely living debt repayment to debt repayment. Money comes in on pay day and is instantly consumed servicing debt, so living expenses are put on the card (which for some reason people have started treating credit like it's their money) thus starting the cycle all over again, meaning all of their next pay is going to pay off the things they bought this month. Almost no savings and no safety cushion if they lose their job.

The idea back when I was a lad was that you could afford to pay your mortgage/rent for a few months if you lost your job. Of course not everyone did but most people understood you needed that buffer of savings just in case.

Historically Russia has been terrible at electronic warfare and espionage. Ukraine would give evidence that is still the case.

Russia's espionage was good because they were extremely good at managing the human element (whilst western nations were pretty bad at it). They were able to set up spy networks undetected and were good at finding people to flip. Western powers usually ran rings around them on electronic surveillance and cryptography.

The biggest threat to the west from Russia (or anyone else) isn't electronic, it's who is compromised by Russia (notably by money).

Yep, terrible headline for something we know has been happening since we started forming governments. Their spies spy on us, our spies spy on them, their spies are spying on our spies spying on their spies spying on our spies spying on us.

The big question is how successful they are at it? Russia has traditionally been quite good at spying but that's because they were able to find people to turn easily, techwise they usually couldn't get anything working.

The thing is, in the mid 10's all the douchebags sold their BMW M3s and bought Audis... So you could buy a BMW without being a dick. However now you can buy an Audi without fear because all the dicks have sold their A4s and bought Teslas.

The biggest dickbag brand is a cyclical thing. It's Tesla's turn now, it'll be someone else in 5-10 years time.

Also, Beeemer == BMW motorcycle, Bimmer == BMW car.

Sony wasn't particularly good in quality to begin with... See: the Sony Timer. It just had a brand following which it's been shedding year after year.

Quality wise, the Koreans came in and ate their lunch, price wise the Chinese are eating everyone else's lunch.

HP... Most laptops I just reinstall the OS from the source media but HP especially. Even MS makes it easy to download it these days.

Dust off, nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

This,

Healthy alternatives are available and people are not addicted to unhealthy food like they are to nicotine (if you go of chicken nuggets, you don't get withdrawal).

My concern is, as what happens with so many good intentioned ideas it gets implemented poorly. See the UK's sugar tax, good idea in practice but realistically just shifted the problem to foods and drinks that were not covered (and also didn't raise nearly as much as predicted).

People forget that it wasn't just the high tax on tobacco that reduced it's usage, it was the concerted efforts to stop young people from picking up the habit in the first place that really cut down on tobacco usage. Without an effort to educate as well, efforts to restrict will be at best ineffective but more likely counter productive.

Part of the problem is that a lot of people can't recognise unhealthy food, especially as a lot of it is window dressed as healthy. "low fat" but high in sugar, high carb or high calorie products marketed as "gym food", so on and so forth.

Here in the UK (and many other nations) there have been attempts to put warning labels on them (like the hexagons commonly found in South American nations) but these small warnings are often overshadowed by smarmy marketing using weasel words and pictures of happy, smiling healthy people on products that are well, shit.

Another part of the problem is that a lot of people have no idea how to cook, what foods go with what, how to prepare vegetables (other than boiling the shit out of them). Basic cooking lessons are stupidly hard to find and online recopies that call for 100s of specialist ingredients are counter productive too.