I'm American and Gen X. The Gen X thing is actually important. We were the original video game kids. We were the first generation to enter the work force where everybody in an office had a PC on their desk. We should be way better at tech stuff than we are. One of my high school classmates, who was a nurse by the way, almost brags that she "can't use a computer at all" and does everything tech related via her phone. This has not always worked in her favor. I have friends around my age who have no idea at all how to send money via Pay Pal, Venmo, etc. One friend who is an attorney and runs a small but reasonably successful legal practice with his wife (also an attorney), just kind of has his eyes glaze over and acts like "it's TOO hard!" if he has to click more than 2 buttons to do anything on a PC. Now if Gen X, again my generation, is like this, imagine how utterly hopeless older generation people are. My late uncle, a silent generation guy, kept creating new accounts on Facebook every time he forgot his password because that was somehow easier for him than trying to get help with the password. Sigh.

So I have a Gne X friend who got scammed a few years ago. We'll call him Adam. Adam's job is an elementary school teacher. His computers skills are very poor. On a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being great and 1 being terrible, I'd rate him a 2. He's a 3 at absolute best. How bad is he? Attach a USB flash drive to his PC and ask him to save a document to it. He has no understanding at all how to change directories so the document will save to a new place. He got scammed because of his poor computer skills and the fact that he doesn't do his own income taxes, which as I will explain led him to believe a false claim the scammers made and this false claim was what made the scam work.

It was during summer break from teaching and one morning his mind was distracted over some activity he had coming up in a few days. He was on his PC, probably visiting a site he really shouldn't have been on, and some pop up appeared claiming that his PC was under attack, but click on this button and we can help you save it. The distraction thing played a huge role in why he clicked on the button. He clicked on it and immediately got contacted by "Microsoft Support" and got on a phone call with the scammers. They told him some wild tale about his bank account possibly being compromised, so he gave them control over his PC and allowed them access to his online bank account. Some banks have an offer on their websites where you can "apply for a loan in minutes", so with control, the scammers did that. They did not actually get any money but the loan application got approved and that approval changed some sort of total in his account to show the addition of the loan amount. With that change, they convinced him that scammers had deposited money into his account and he would have to pay taxes on that money, so he was in big trouble. That's not how US taxes work. If things worked that way, Elon Musk and others like him could destroy their critics by making massive deposits into the critic's bank account, taking the money back, and laughing as the victim had to pay taxes on a, say, $100 million deposit that is now gone. So the scammers got him to use his bank money to buy Amazon gift cards, which he transferred to them as they assured him it would "protect" his money from a big tax bill. I think that after that they tried to get even more money from him and that finally made him suspicious and the call ended, but his bank account was drained of a little under $20,000. So these scammers pray on people with weak PC skills and little knowledge of how the US income tax system works and that's how they get suckers to give them money.

I'm not even sure if it's that deliberate, or it's just the fact that Trump is thinking about rigging the election... so he talks about rigging the election.

But it's hilarious how consistent the pattern is. Normally with something like that there's just a few occasional examples. But with Trump if he says "Democrats are kicking puppies!" chances are that we're about to find out that Trump kicked a puppy.

He's not a genius, I sincerely think he's average to slightly below average intelligence for a software dev. Just look how clueless he really is when he pretends to be a technical guru in front of actual experts.

That doesn't mean he doesn't have some exceptional skills, but IQ isn't one of them.

First, he's hard working, at least in spurts (during critical deadlines), and he's willing to make and implement big decisions quickly. Just look at DOGE, Republicans have been trying to lay waste to the US government for decades, but Musk is the only one to actually do it. It was a complete disaster, but it wasn't ethics or common sense that stopped the previous attempts, that's a legit talent for Musk.

Second, CEOs aren't allowed to lie, but Musk has figured out that you can get around that by building a cult of personality and then making ridiculously optimistic predictions and then sell minor advancements as progress. The result is he has a core group of retail investors that buy his stocks based on vibes and refuse to sell once in. Since these retail investors prevent the stock from going down too much institutional investors also jump in on the ride. It's basically tulip bulbs.

I really don't know where your problem is coming from. I assume you're here because you're an IT guy. Me too. My Roku has worked fine for about 10 years now. Everything that connects to it is via wifi. NO ISSUES. NONE. I stream TV from Xfinity via wif ito the Roku and again - NO ISSUES. I have a more modern Roku that I use in a different part of the house, but my main TV is about 10 years old and the newer Roku can't form a stable HDMI connection with it. I'm guessing it's an old HDMI version issue with the TV, but the older one still works with the old TV so I have kept it.

I agree he has an extremely high risk tolerance, though that doesn't make him a good person.

His car company is pretty small as car companies go, SpaceX means some new satellites, but Starlink is the only thing that's really making a difference to normal people. And Neuralink might help a lot of people in the future, but it largely R&D now.

His wealth doesn't come from what his companies have done. It comes from his ability as a promoter and its ridiculous effect on the stock price.

He worked hard to get Trump re-elected, if he was in fact the tipping point, he has harmed the environment far more than he has helped.

Not to mention all the potentially hundreds of thousands of people who died due to his cuts to DOGE.

It sounds like this is more to do with your ideology than Elon Musk.

Humans are tribal, in modern times that tribe is usually their nation, and they care deeply about the survival of their tribe.

If immigration is seen as changing the fundamental nature of that tribe (nation) people will resist it.

We need to figure out a way to deal with that fact if we want to continue to have relatively open borders.

Disclaimer: I'm American, so I'm coming from an outsider's perspective. For the record, I was opposed to Brexit.

The reason the EU should insist on a minimum "stay out" time if not a "Once you leave, you NEVER get back in" approach is that you don't want asshole counties like Hungary (in the Viktor Orbán days) or the current leadership of Slovakia threatening to leave and/or cause havoc unless you buy them off. My personal opinion is that the UK should never be allowed back in to show that once you leave, you leave forever. I would make an exception for North Ireland in that if they choose to reunite with the Republic of Ireland, they should definitely be allowed to be part of the EU as part of the Republic of Ireland.

It's not hype, Anthropic is literally saying there's no actual risk they're aware of.

What actually happened is they refused to let US Intelligence agencies use their models to perform illegal surveillance. So now the US government is illegally punishing them.

The whole point of stock markets and such is that you have hard core rational investors ensuring valuations are accurate.

But Musk figured out that you don't need solid fundamentals, all you need is a hyper-loyal core following of retail investors who support you regardless of fundamentals. So you just bullshit just enough to keep them happy, without crossing too far into fraud, and the retail investors stay on board.

The retail investors create a floor for the price and their crowing about their winnings creates a bubble. The institutional investors then see what's happening and hop along for the ride.

The result is the two most overvalued companies in history (Tesla and SpaceX). In theory, the whole pile eventually comes crashing down, but just like any bubble the fund managers who buy are unlikely to be the fund managers left holding the bag.

Would make sense, if you're right handed and turn to the right you're leading with your dominant eye (and hand) so better able to handle threats that emerge.

Similar if you choose to pass someone on the left, you present them with your stronger (right) side.

But this study supposedly found no correlation to handedness, so either something else is going on or maybe a sample size issue.

Drop the bigotry. They left because their land was being given away by Western superpowers to a bunch of foreigners. They did exactly what any group of people would do. And they had a far better claim to that land than Jews who hadn't lived there for centuries, especially considering those Palestinians were actually descended from the ancient Israelites.

On the other hand the ethnic cleansing in the West Bank being carried out by Israeli Settlers, with the support of the Israeli government, is not typical or excusable.

The main difference is that this technology will be harder to contain. A terrorist burying a landmine in a park is plausible, but not the most practical attack.

A terrorist letting out a few of these things in a park... that is terrifying.

What a shock that the "Palestinians" were unwilling to allow a different ethnoreligious group to move into their homeland, and give them the choice of being second class citizens or expelled from their territory entirely.

Who could imagine that they would have reacted exactly the same as literally every other group of people on the planet?!?

I switched to Ubuntu, but I know Redhat pushes their patches upstream like crazy.

Do I need to worry as well?

That's fine.

If we don't support our media we're going to lose our national identity.