No, if you're talking "Learjet" it is much better. Even a turboprop King Air, and not putting up with the various abuses of dignity administered by TSA as well as "the rulz" for TSA that they themselves violate anyway (personal experience, so yes, it happens, and was moderately expensive) will be a probably unsuspected driver for people to abandon scheduled airlines altogether in search of some comfort and tranquility undisrupted by "the authorities."

I'm not in the same stratosphere of those that fly 1st class and would seek a better way, but I can seek a better way by flying "Ford" on the "Interstate Airlines" and avoid all contact with "the authorities." Additionally I get to experience unusual foods along the way as well as some really nice scenery that is totally invisible at 29,000 feet. Last year, I needed to be in Minneapolis to "work" an event that would have paid my airfare and rented me a car in Minneapolis. But, instead, I drove my Ford from Granbury, Texas to Minneapolis, 1025 miles, starting in the morning about 6, and arriving that night about 11. I haven't been on an airline for quite some time, measured in years, and have been having trouble getting my mind around having to fly to get to Hawaii, the last state that I have yet to visit. I'm 78, and time is getting short, so the bucket list item may occur this summer. But I will dread what may happen while I try to transport $13K worth of camera equipment I consider necessary for a pleasant vacation destination.

But flying is the pits. Flew to a road rally in Oregon. Rent a car, rig it to run rallies with all the rally electronics, and compete. Well, one of my electronics was a lead-acid battery, a sealed unit, that is specifically allowed by TSA rules. Didn't matter, the TSA guy in Oregon didn't like it, and I had to abandon it there, costing me about $40 for a new one later, plus the hardware and time to connect it all together to once again power my rally electronics. Plus, doing that, I'm always terrified of them forcing me to "check it" in the hold rather than in my carry-on bag, which cannot survive the mechanical bruising that it would receive if travelling like that, so I would instead be forced to exit the plane with my fragile electronics, miss the event I was travelling to, and probably ruin the entire year's effort at winning the championship. Sooo... much easier is to get in the car, throw everything I need inside it, and drive. NY to LA, it doesn't matter, anything is better than flying commercial. A nice bizjet as a private thing with no TSA, sure, I'd do that. But I am not so inclined to throw $$$ around like that. But there's lotsa folks that would, and there goes the pollution that they're trying to reduce by cramming everyone into everyone else's lap. It's all going to go really badly, I think.

I get that there may be some nature worship going on, but the fact is that there may be a way to tame nature a bit so's not quite so many people get killed, and maybe they could even clean the place up a bit. No mystical soul-experience is worth people dying when they don't have to. If we can build robots to do what we want to be able to do anyway, which is wilderness rescue, we should build them.

Solar should be really intense up at altitude, the robot may have to stop and rest from time to time while recharging. Installing a power grid up there may actually be feasible if the robots do it.

I'm Republican and form my opinions by observation, not necessarily what a party member or leader says. I've been saying to anyone who will listen, for a long time, that the Post Office gets a bad rap, and are very good at what they do. Several years ago I even had the situation where I ordered similar items to be delivered as packages from the same source. Said source put one in USPS and one in UPS on the same day. USPS beat UPS in that instance. Otherwise, I don't have instances of lost mail. I receive mail in a reasonable time unless it comes from China as a package of something I ordered, in which case it is generally egregiously slow. I'm waiting on a T-shirt I ordered over 3 weeks ago which coincidentally originates in China, and just got a notification 2 days ago that they've shipped it. That's neither postal systems' fault, but it will be quite a while before I get it via both postal systems. I remember ordering film from NYC photo vendors when stationed in the Panama Canal Zone in 1970 - 71, and we always speculated that it came by pack mule through Central America, it took so long. But it was an APO address, it was just slow.

As for actually mailing letters, I did so yesterday to get a replacement for my damaged Senior National Park lifetime pass, where I had to send them the damaged card before they send me a replacement. Otherwise, the way to do it is at a park where they have the ability to distribute such passes. Even then, one is advised to call and make sure they actually have such passes. I'm near Fort Worth, Tx and a search for such a facility yields Big Bend National Park which Google Maps says is 479 miles and 7 hours and 5 minutes driving each way. Simply buying a new one for $80 would be far cheaper than making that drive.

Several weeks ago I sent a physical check and auto registration renewal via the US mail to the local entity that processes them, receiving it back in a couple weeks saying they need my date of birth, phone number, and email address written on the check. I looked again at the instructions I received with the notice that I needed to renew the registration now, and can't find that requirement. I did, however, find the fine print that said that it could be done online, which I did, and bypassed the finicky system that wants special information written on checks. But it seems the gov't is "into" the USPS as a good or best way to do things.

Otherwise, I sometimes use the mail as a "sneakernet" way to send large files by placing them on micro-SD chips and putting them in an envelope and sending them. That's a cheap way to move data that isn't in a hurry, and one doesn't otherwise have a place to park it on the web, like putting it in DropBox and then giving the recipient the URL to access it. That works, but there's still practical size limits, especially if one of us doesn't exactly have "high speed" internet. I do at home, but if I'm not at home, then motel wifi may not be all that quick, and I could spend all night downloading something large.

Anyway, I'm Republican and fully support retaining the USPS just as it is.

Sounds like a job for some of these vaunted smart robots that don't breathe air and don't get tired and otherwise work like a human. They should be able to climb Mt. Everest and even heft an oversize backpack to bring trash and a lot of other things down, like maybe injured climbers, etc.

Witnesses saw an obvious kidnapping and did what? Nothing? I don't know about anyone else, but if I see such, I'm getting in my car, following, and vectoring the cops to the location of the vehicle. What would you do? And no, I don't need to be armed to do that. If they try to get away, I have twin turbochargers in the current ride. If I need to get away, I have twin turbochargers...

A higher highway death toll? Proponents of this have to be careful at milking their cash cow lest some who are either strapped for cash or just downright cheap get back off those roads and onto "surface roads" and drive, say, US40 instead of Interstate 70, where likelihood of crashes and traffic deaths are higher. Plus, congestion to towns that these old highways run thru could be another price to pay, as those places start screaming for a bypass, that also may go unused if it is again tolled and those cheap folks and strapped folks avoid it too.

And the family favorite "driving vacation", where you load kids in the car and go see wonderful stuff like geology and history and such may be a thing of the past when the tolls are too high. A dollar a mile? I drove 35,000 miles this year, a great deal of them Interstate Highways. $35K in tolls? Even $25K in tolls, and I'm using Route 66. Even at 1/10th that amount, 10 cents a mile, is still a lot of money at 35K miles. I currently do not drive any toll roads in what is now my home state of Texas, as I consider them totally unreasonable after traversing Dallas / Ft. Worth to inspect a used elliptical crosstrainer that I eventually bought and that one trip there and back was $45. No more Texas toll roads for me, there's always an alternative. Last week I drove to the Winstar casino in Oklahoma from Granbury Texas, avoided most of the toll roads and the I-35 construction and congestion by going north on "surface roads" until 10 miles from the casino where I got on I-35 along which the WinStar Casino sits.

I also avoid the Pennsylvania Turnpike, another hideously expensive ride, with many turns to be mindful of otherwise if you look away for a few seconds, and the road is always turning, and you can end up in a guard rail. Bad road, expensive road, and I use I-65 for the price of driving about an extra 50 miles. It's worth it, as the road is inherently less dangerous and is also free.

Switched 2 years ago. I do miss cable. DVR is one thing, internet via wire was another for a while until the power company also got into the ISP business and provided fiber.

Streaming has myriad options that are harder to manage than the offerings on cable. You can generally find whatever you're looking for, from the World Series of Poker to the next NASCAR or Indycar race with the cable. Not everything is on streaming. I couldn't find the Coca Cola 600 run after the Indy 500 in the evening last May. Supposedly it was on Amazon Prime but I never found it. And my strictly streaming solution does not have all the local channels, not even the 4 major network channels. I find myself still coveting a tower with an antenna, but that is pricey.

The deal breaker with cable was a combination of moving into a new house, and the cable folks blacking out the internet for 7 consecutive hours on a Sunday morning to do scheduled maintenance. All other cable-provided internet I've ever that had kept both the TV and if offered at all, the internet, active except for these planned maintenance events which would occur in the wee hours of the morning and last maybe 2 - 3 minutes. They always seemed to have a plan that would keep them operational for all but a tiny fraction of the day. So, this may only be the important factor that it is in my local area, with the cable company that serves just this area, rather than cable in general which I think is better.

Another factor is the cable changing their system so the gosh-awful great TIVO can no longer be used. And my current discontent was an over-the-air internet solution that was both geo-fenced so it would only work at my home location, so I couldn't take it traveling, and it's highly variable performance, when 300 MB/s was available sometimes, and at other times it might be 5 MB/s. Returned the equipment and moved to fiber when that became available.

I've considered re-adding cable but dang... $$$$. $310 / month when I gave up on it 2 years ago, but of course I had pretty much all their premium channels and the fast internet. Again, I do miss it, but wouldn't give up some of my streamers now, either, so... I guess I will be less than 100% happy in the future on this particular subject since when money is considered, there is no happy solution.

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.