One of our kids went to a middle school where they were a "no homework" policy. The reason? Some kids didn't have parents to hold their feet to the fire to get it done - socioeconomic problems, home/life/work issues, etc. So it was considered an "equalization" tactic.

This would all be fine, if everywhere, including private institutions, everything was equal. But it's not, and neither is the kind of education kids receive both on and off campus. Certain things require extra effort outside of the school system. Taking homework away from the kids also left us playing liar's poker each day to figure out what they did in class, and/or how do we know if they actually understand the topic.

I'm sure teachers don't want to take loads of homework on any more either. There's not a teacher I've met in the last 10 years who isn't required to do some absurd level of extra school stuff at all times... I'm pretty sure most work 50+ hours a week at a bare minimum. I can totally see why they would love to have no homework as a policy.

Perhaps if people are going to live to be 85+ years old, and thanks to advances in AI and the like have to be continually trained and re-trained for various things over time, we should stop this mad race to get kids through school and into college or the workforce by 17. The promise of "good jobs" and "careers" is entirely broken at this point - kids are still going through the motions to prove their worth somehow to society, but with fewer and fewer rewards for their efforts.

It's a fair statement, and one I long thought very possible. I watched a pretty long video on why it actually doesn't work out quite frequently for commercial buildings to be converted into residential housing. It was an eye opener. Apparently quite a few would require being razed to the ground and just start anew, something extraordinarily expensive and time consuming.

In order to understand business leaders' push to back to the office, you need only understand commercial real estate. If people don't come back to the office, businesses supporting these behemoths close down too - it's overnight recession, and land / office values crater.

Maybe WFH could be done over the span of 30+ years or more in order to stabilize things, but I don't see a large-scale work from home happening any time soon.

We moved from VMWare to Nutanix. Is there an open source platform with the same feature set as Nutanix, and support we should consider?

First, your goal going to college should be to learn _way_ more than you did ever in high school. Most people find it's where your real learning begins. It's a time to grow, experiment, and dream big. For many, it's also a time to take all the required courses necessary to do what are considered professional jobs - engineering, science, math, medicine, the list goes on.

Secondly, you've eliminated the 4 year degree barrier which is still actively deployed nation-wide by companies for jobs which otherwise have no business *requiring* a 4 year degree. The lack of a 4 year degree can be weaponized to reduce pay during employment negotiations. The same talking heads advising people on TV and YouTube to not get a college degree, somehow don't seem to have followed that same advice themselves.

Each step in education to a point provides you more choices, and sometimes more upward mobility. You can always, always find the one-offs, the make-it-rich-quick stories - but the reality typically doesn't reflect their luck.

I remember joining the military as a private, no college. It wasn't even six months in that I fully regretted that decision, suddenly understanding that even doing two or three years of college first could have drastically altered my lifestyle. 35+ years later, I've never regretted for a moment spending the money (which took years to pay off) or time invested in my college education.

I spend all my time grinding and doing actual work, when what I obviously ought to be doing is applying for grants so I can research the blindingly obvious.

About 33% of IBM's employees are in India currently. Estimates show that IBM employs less than 100,000 people in the United States, down from ~ 134,000 in 2007... and continues that downward trend. IBM has an estimated 10 times more job openings in India than the United States in March 2025. Stats show September 2025 job openings as follows: India 2400+, USA 400+, UK 125+.

I'm not sure the author was incorrect in describing the best path to get hired by IBM at this time?

I can tell you why. Look back a few years ago when their pricing literally doubled almost overnight. Go Google their cost increases over the years. Also, how they took existing features in a tier and shifted them to a more expensive tier, leaving people in the cold. It's why I scrambled to move from GitLab to Gitea a couple years back.

The modern lesson for us all is this: once VC money or going public is assured, just start the clock. Because you'll be parting with more of your money "real soon now".

That seems out of hand.
I've had Teams running all day, and have used it multiple times for conferences and chat. Currently sitting at 138MB of RAM.
I opened edge and navigated to MSN. Let it sit there for a while. Currently it's at 520MB of RAM.
My Chrome browser with 10 tabs open, some of them running "apps" in the background is at 2GB of RAM.

I think you might have other issues.

I wish we could leave behind this absurdist concept that everyone has to be desperate and miserable in order to produce good / fast work.
If that were the case, then every CEO should get 5 hours of sleep a night and report daily to the rack for a short bout of torture. I mean, how else can they possibly make the business thrive?
Unions and capitalism can survive and thrive together... people need to quit proferring ths binary choice.

Thank you for this thoughtful, informative reply.

I've been using this for years to "tame" the amount of nonsense that Windows spews forth and/or collects about me.
I'm sure there are other more invasive or useful apps which do similar things, but I've had consistently good results.
https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10/

Will they actually *do* something this time, or just participate in "Public Lamentation Theater" like a couple of weeks ago?

Hello there - any options you might suggest for Spanish study for an English speaker?

Microsoft Teams.

(ducks)