Everything about this appears to be a good thing to me. I honestly don't understand the negative comments.

Is "not productive tasks" a way of saying it's unworthy to use it to simply solve our own private little problems? We have to be making money with it for it to be worthy of its use?

Hey, I'm still going to use it to find why my keyboard and mouse quit working while the computer emits the "USB disconnect" and "USB connect" chimes in a sequence 1/2 to sometimes 3 to 5 seconds apart. Well, I asked ChatGPT, and it turns out to be a bad idea to plug your keyboard and mouse into a hub, rather than directly into the computer. Further, the USB cable might be bad. So, I discarded the current cable, broke out a spare, "new in package" 10' braided USB cable and plugged it into the back of the computer, and the wireless transceiver for the Microsoft 3050 keyboard and matching laser mouse, and it has worked perfectly ever since (2 days now.)

So is that unworthy? I didn't make any money. I might have saved some by not having to take it to a service center, except I have a Best Buy membership and Geek Squad service is included, so it wouldn't have cost me anything either. It might have cost them some "no increased revenue" work to figure that out for me.

I'm sure there's a publication somewhere that I could RTFM and find out that it's a bad idea to plug a keyboard and/or mouse into a hub and that a particular piece of wire might be a problem, but I have 1000's of pages of tech-oriented manuals to RTFM, and ChatGPT was a lot faster.

So is that righteous or not?

Dumped cable last year. Sling / Disney+ / Paramount / MAX / Dirtvision / Peacock / Hulu / Starz. With all that, which does add up to some serious $, I don't have the local channels, all of them. I still need an antenna if I want some of the less traveled channels. Plus, last Memorial day, the information was lacking for me to see the Coca Cola 600 after watching the Indy 500. Turns out it was there, on one of the streamers I'm paying for, but searching for it was a bear. Failed, missed seeing the NASCAR event. That would not have been an issue with cable. But cable is about $treaming + $150.

I dumped cable in large part because their attitude toward 24/7/365 internet was lacking, manifesting in a 7 hour absence of the internet for a PLANNED maintenance event. Other cable companies I've had experience with in the past were always able to restrict that to less than an hour and occurring in the wee hours of the morning. But no, these guys have to take it out all Sunday morning. Not all of us are sequestered in church for 7 hours of Sunday morning.

That, and recent system changes precluding getting a cable card and using the really fabulous alternative that is Tivo caused me to switch. But I'm still not 100% happy, it's really tough to find neat stuff on streaming, even if its on something you're paying for but just can't locate, like my NASCAR fail. I'd like to have cable again, but... their internet sucks... and they're expensive.

How many accident reports cite "excessive acceleration?" Aren't they mostly "speed was a factor?"

I see it as a joy limit, since acceleration is fun. But otherwise, I've noticed quite a few limited access highways with "no merge area" meaning it dumps you right into the stream of traffic, where you better be going with the flow of traffic when you get there. The slower your car accelerates, the harder that is to do. My twin turbo Ford Edge ST will do it with a bit of strain. I think it's 0 - 60 is around 6. Would I like it to be 4? Yes. That maneuver would be less challenging. And you can't expect those in the lane of traffic to slow down for you, either. From Facebook videos posted by truckers, we see that some, a significant percent, do not even attempt to slow down, since they're big and heavy and believe they can do anything and not get hurt, which is sometimes contradicted by the video subsequent to their deliberate T-boning of unsuccessful merges by "4 wheelers", they end up rolling their big rig in a ditch. But driving can be a literal battle with traffic, where performance is armor. Higher values of dV/dT, both positive and negative, is a plus in my book.

"Facebook is giving up the external like button." OK, I'm totally blown away. What's an "external" like button? Is there an "internal" like button? Is it just another way of saying that all "like" buttons are going away?

Subject 2, what's with all the hate for Facebook? I don't use Twitter / X, Truth Social, Tic-Toc, Instagram, or really any other platforms. FB goes away, and I'm disconnected from around 200+ friends, 'cuz I don't have most of their emails, and wouldn't want to be on a yahoo-groups-like email remailer just to stay up with what everyone is doing. Groups.IO succeeded yahoogroups, but I get little out of it, although I'm on ham radio and sports car club of America-related groups. Again, FB goes away, and my comms with significant people are diminished. So again, why the hate?

It won't work. Make it permanent, then all those things to which people commute in the dark to get there, will adjust their hours for light during that travel, so in a few years you'll be right back to "standard" time with 9 AM to 4 PM school, 10 AM to 6 PM work, and you still won't be able to get your yard work done on weekdays after work + commute, and have it interfere with golf / fishing / whatever on the weekends - can't go play because mowing, weed whacking, leaf raking, hedge trimming, watering, etc. The "switch" is necessary to prevent that.

My Nav system is 2 Garmin Drivesmart 65's, that I can transfer between cars including a rental car. I'm loading them up with a lot if island waypoints in the next few months, then they'll travel with me to Hawaii where I'll know how to get where I want to go, such as the spur road up Mauna Kea. Try loading a car mfgrs GPS with your own waypoints in a rental. And it will handle "hands free" comms with the phone. That cuts out a lot of the car's native electronics right there. Only need to rig something for audio from sats or AM/FM, and maybe the phone's storage, just don't ever turn on the car's native audio. They're taking this crap way too far.

Touch your phone, something bad happens, 1 - 5 in the slammer. No thanks, phone is dead to me in the car. My current car has a CD player, I burned a serious large array of books on tape CD's for entertainment, I think the CaseLogic weighs about 5 lbs. They can take AM out of the radio. Then FM. Satellite. Silence is golden. And if the CD player goes away, then there's always the 1979 Walkman on Ebay and some ear buds. Geeeezzz... 1200 mile drive to Las Vegas coming up Thursday and Friday, I'll just watch the scenery and pop a disk into the slot. (Why haven't they outlawed touching CDs too, like touching phones?)

It's the theater experience.

Go watch the movie, and not have to make the popcorn, not have to clean up the place after eating the popcorn, while a good percent of the reason for the theater is to get out of the house, not enjoy it in the house. House is almost 24 / 7 / 365 anyway, esp. if you're retired, and getting out is variety. Experiencing the movie with others, even strangers, has some value as well. And the folks that work at the movie are pleasant. Everything about going to the movie beyond actually watching the movie are things that mostly don't happen at home, and add to the experience. I see most everything in the movie, except when it doesn't make it to my small-town, 6-screen theater. This little theater is a top-notch experience, with the best seats I've experienced anywhere, that lay pretty much flat, and are overstuff as heck. The front row is still a good seat. But if it doesn't come to the local theater, and isn't touted as some of the really high-rated offerings that are worth a 60 mile round-trip, then yeah, I might see it at home for the 1st time.

I believe the maximum good could be extracted from a complete rebuild of the infrastructure pointed specifically at competing with highways.

The easiest way is the "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em" approach and engineer railroads to quickly and efficiently load and unload automobiles. That way, people could drive their vehicles onto the trains, the train in transporting them and their vehicle would eliminate the park your car then rent another at the other end annoyance and expense, and most positively physically get those cars off the road. The big win for it is that if the train were electric, then it could artificially make every car that uses it, all the way back to a Ford Model T, into an "electric car" for the trip, and completely avoid the car's pollution. And of course there are other benefits like reducing traffic accidents.

Yes, it would be a monumental engineering and infrastructure investment, but a revolutionary leap in efficiency and pollution mitigation and safety.

All for it, but just do it by building EV's that are in EVERY way better than ICE's. My ICE will do what I want done and no EV on the planet will currently match its performance. Fix that, and make the EV affordable, and I'll buy it. I would LOVE to have an EV, but I need certain things done that an EV cannot do. Yes, it has to do with range and charging.

The Chinese will ruin the car markets the same way they have ruined others, but undercutting manufacturing expenses with slave-labor wages and real slave labor, as well as manipulating currency so that yes, the Chinese would fuck up the domestic auto industry, it would go away like the domestic electronics industry and the domestic textiles industry and the domestic (you name it) industries while putting everyone you know into poverty and probably yourselves as well. Is that what you want, the USA as a 3rd-world nation? That's what awaits if we let the damned communists wreck our prosperity. I say let no Chinese cars enter the country, and build all the cars we can right here in the USA. The alternative is worse than the Great Depression, as there would be no chance of recovery, ever.

Oh, as a conservative, lemme take a crack at that!

Global warming appears to us to be a weapon of the left to destroy society as we know it, via spending it to death on climate situations that cannot be cured no matter how much money is spent, for the purpose of replacing our self-government with the dictatorial aspirations of the leftist elites. Their goal is to seize total control, for their fun and profit of course, while subjugating the vast majority to virtual slavery. They have gone too far in that direction already from shipping the good-paying jobs of manufacturing out of the USA, and have made multiple attempts against the life of the President who is trying to bring that industry back to the USA.

The estimate at one time was fifty trillion dollars to do what is necessary to mitigate climate change. I'm not sure if that was world-wide, or just the "US share", but it doesn't matter in the manner of being at ground zero for a five megaton nuclear explosion or a 50 megaton nuclear explosion, the results would be the same. Fifty trillion dollars is ludicrous, unattainable, and an amazing thing that those who propose it have not been more forcefully opposed than what you have seen to date. And since it is unattainably expensive, the thought is to continue as we are, and learn to adapt to what ensues, while not pauperizing the world and coming under the jackboots of a leftist elite that will do nothing but pleasure themselves at the expense of the masses.

"And what if killing industry could helpo fight Global Warming?"

It sure will. We can roll back the industrial revolution, do everything with animal power, put the majority of the population back to the production of food on farms and ranches, and probably see the vast majority of the world's 8 billion people starve to death. But the planet would recover.

It was when Soviet planners and 5-year agricultural plans that failed miserably because the economy can't be planned from a central authority successfully. Only free market capitalism can allocate resources in the proper proportions to satisfy societal needs. Gov't edits for things like EV's are doomed to failure. The way to get 100% EV use is to make EV's the best choice for absolutely everyone. Nothing else will ever work, people will end up keeping their 35 year old ICE vehicles that do what they need done.

Last weekend I ran America's oldest, longest, toughest car rally, the Press On Regardless rally in the northern part of the southern peninsula of Michigan, and the southern part of the northern peninsula of Michigan. It went past midnight 2 days in a row, when even many gas stations were closed, and no EV chargers were seen anywhere out in the woods of those areas. There were two events, one on Friday, the other on Saturday, with Friday being about 280 miles, and Saturday about 240. High accelerations and cornering forces consumed gasoline at an accelerated rate, forcing refueling of my car that normally gets nearly 400 miles on a tank on highway driving. Run the Press On Regardless rally in an EV? Don't think it's going to happen any time soon. Maybe if Toyota comes out with their 900 mile per charge solid state battery, I can buy it and run that rally with their 900 mile EV. But again, that would be the market determining successful choice of the customer for an EV, not some government edict making ICE unavailable. I'd just keep my 2019 Ford Edge ST until the wheels fall off, with no gov't edict preventing me from running the Press On Regardless rally.