Here in the UK, we have Lord Alan Sugar.

Alan is our "guy on The Apprentice". He made his money selling consumer electronics (Amstrad), but what most people don't know is that most of his income now is from his office property empire.

Somewhat predictably, he seems to appear in the papers decrying the awfulness of remote working every other week or so.

You're right, it's not really a conspiracy - it doesn't even need one. Just a bunch of self-interested assholes all acting in their own interest and trying to convert their clout into pressure to return to the office.

...thing where it's decided by committee that a new sequel to something or other 'needs' to be made FIRST, then story, SECOND.

If you've got a great idea, maybe go with it then, but all these forced sequels - especially w/o long term direction (as in the latest Star Wars movies), are just a waste of talent and money.

For those that doubt this, the British Medical Journal has a great article about it

My wife and I were dining at our local restaurant and I was scrolling through my phone for something when she says, "Hon! Help them, please." A middle-aged out of town couple were seated behind us and were asking their waitress where the nearest charging station was. They were told, 'I THINK there's one at the gas station up ahead...' Bad advice.

It turns out that the couple had rented an electric car from an agency located in a airport about 60 miles away. They had flown up from Florida, dropping everything they were doing, as the woman's mother here in PA, had fallen seriously ill. The problem was, the rental company at the airport had no more gas powered cars. Desperate, they decided on the electric, in spite of never having driven one before.

They had NO IDEA whether it was a Tesla, or not. I asked them to show me, so they took me out and I determined it was a Polestar 2. Being in a rural area, I'd never seen one in real life, but knew of them due to a personal interest and knowledge of EVs (I own a Bolt).

The nearest DC fast charging station (EV America), was back where they came from - about 25 miles back - and according to my apps - there were NONE to the NW, where they were heading. The man told me he LOVED the pickup - which would partly explain why he had only *49* miles charge left, (additionally, they told me it only had 1/2 a charge at the airport!), I gave them the bad news. They weren't happy.

On top of that, when I tried to help the man put a charging app on his phone, he couldn't remember the phone's password to install it. I had to put the address into Maps for him and his wife had to act as co-pilot, holding the phone and giving directions, as they couldn't figure out how to use the car's GPS.

I gave them all the knowledge I could about DC fast charging, showing him the port and describing how to operate it. I don't know if they made it or not. I DO know that the couple were confused and angry - barely knowing enough from the airport that it 'didn't use gas'.

RIDICULOUS!

I'm in a DC fast charging desert out here in rural PA. I got my Bolt and we use it for 95% of our driving (mostly local), and I charge it with my own panels.

This should NEVER have happened! They would've been better off getting an Uber to take them to a rental place that had an ICE vehicle. This is NOT the way EVs should be introduced to the general public - the rental company should have had trained people to give them SOME direction AND had a fully charged car.

Just a reminder to the dreamers out there, there are still MANY places in the U.S. without suitable charging ability - and I say this as an owner: I love my Bolt, but I have a specific use case. They are NOT for everyone... Yet.

It's funny how selfishly maximising your own utility is the foundation of capitalism until it means less work being done for the Man.

A single bitcoin transaction consumes enough electricity to power the average UK household for 2-3 months, and generates about half a smartphone of e-waste.

And you can't ignore mining costs, because the network depends on the participation of miners as well as full nodes, which aren't cheap to run either - verifying every block is not a zero cost operation.

That's 5 orders of magnitude more than a VISA transaction.

Wait, so it's only a waste when the government does it?

Guess you'd better get off the internet (aka DARPAnet, project of the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency). Developing it was a waste.

Also any local WiFi LANs, since they were invented by the Australian government research agency, CSIRO. What a waste.

Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc.

Don't forget non corporate COBOL users.

e.g. The UK Department for Work and Pensions.

- Pays out £70,000 of transactions per SECOND
- Despite frenetic activity on their new systems and having an in-house staff of over 700 developers, the "over 50% COBOL" statistic still stands

Also, a GPG web of trust for peer review. Reviewers can get their public key signed by other experts to build up their reputation as an expert on X. Then they sign their reviews of papers, and you can verify whether they are an expert in the field they are reviewing.

But... Space going to space can't wait.
Space space wanna go to space yes please space. Space space...

SpaaaaaaAAaaaaaaAaaaace!

On a more serious note, never forget Hanlon's razor, and feel free to let the willfully ignorant thin out their own herd, as long as they don't hurt anyone else in their quest to shuffle their mortal coil.

... with nuclear waste.

Since the spate of nuclear tests in the 60s, carbon-14 levels still haven't dropped to baseline.

There's also a market in pre-nuclear age steel for use in applications where sensitive equipment would be affected by the cobalt-60 that contaminates our entire steel industry because it uses the air that we soiled with nuclear explosions.

However, we've not all mutated into comic-book superheroes or Cronenberg monsters.

Stuff gets contaminated with stuff. It's generally only a problem for biological lifeforms when natural processes concentrate that stuff and it's toxic to them.

GPS can't send shit. It's a receiver only, it picks up signals from satellites in frigging space. If your phone could send signals to space it would cost, and weigh, a fuckload more.

There's no remote tracking without a cellular modem or other transmitter to send the coordinates resolved by the GPS receiver across a terrestrial network.