[Midwit meme goes here]

Much the same as in Europe, and for mostly the same reason.

Look at it from the employer's viewpoint - we've made it extremely risky to let someone go, so naturally employers become very risk-averse when hiring. If a new employee doesn't work out and needs to be let go, that opens them up to all links of legal liability. Well over 95% of legal troubles employers have are labor issues.

If we had at-will employment (like we used to) and employees couldn't sue for [you name it] if they get laid off, employers would be much more willing to take a chance on a new hire.

Europe has free tuition, but a very limited number of slots for students. Most would-be students can't get in. (Mostly the bar is based on grades.)

In the US everyone who wants to go to college, can. Somewhere.

Honestly I think the European system is better but it's incompatible with the American idea that everyone is good enough.

Similar to how free medical care works in Europe - it's free, but the state decides how much you can get. If you're too old/too sick to be worth treating, you're not treated.

Corporations, like Soylent Green, are made of people.

Article is paywalled.

What do they mean by "portable chargers"? I hear people call USB cables "chargers" and others call USB power bricks (AC --> 5VDC) "chargers".

Maybe they mean portable battery banks?

--Confused

The problem is that higher education is attempting to do two different things: (1) educate and (2) certify.

Split them.

Universities shouldn't grant degrees - they should just teach.

Those who want degrees should have to pass a test. Doesn't matter how they got the skills or knowledge - if they can prove they have it, they get the degree.

Consider:

Yes, MSFT has an interest in selling upgrades and cutting support for old Windows versions, but to the extent they persuade unsophisticated users to move to TPM 2.0 hardware, they're increasing users' security.

And, arguably, the security improvement is worth more to the average user than the cost of upgrading. (This is of course debatable.)

For some users this will be a clear win, for others a lose, but MS is not doing anything to prevent *sophisticated* users from using old hardware. And presumably sophisticated users can figure out for themselves if the security improvement is worth paying for.

Jeff, it's your dammed newspaper. You own it. You don't have to sue. Just tell them to stop it.

Is it really smart to fund BOTH sides of a lawsuit?

What's the point of owning a newspaper if you can't tell it what to do? Newspapers don't even make any money!

You mean the stockholders of the auto company that made the AI car? I think it's fair that they take that liability - their company didn't make the car safe enough.

As with everything, you need to compare cost vs. benefit. An xray machine that could kill a patient needs ways to be sure it can't don't that. (Maybe not by fixing the software - I can imagine other ways).

A DNS sequencer? A device that in the worst case can't hurt anybody? Don't bother. You'd be making things worse by slowing down medical progress.

The real problem is the one-size-fits-all and gotta-cover-regulator's-ass attitude of the FDA.

Sometimes there are 3rd parties, or regulations, that require clauses that nobody intends to enforce.

I don't know if that's the case here. The appropriate thing is to get the "won't enforce" thing in writing, with a clear agreement that it supersedes anything to the contrary in the main contract.

If the founders were really promised the clause wouldn't be enforced, that should be binding on the VCs. But of course it's extremely difficult to prove.

As the saying goes "oral contracts aren't worth the paper they're written on".

Neither of those make him wrong tho. If you want to convince me he's wrong, you'll need some actual...evidence.

The original line used Dallas. Kubrick changed it after JFK got shot.

Given that NASA's plan of record is to land astronauts on the moon in a SpaceX Starship, just put the astronauts on the Starship when it leaves Earth.

No need for Orion. If Starship isn't yet mature enough to put people on, put the astronauts on a Dragon and have them meet the Starship in orbit.

Either way - no need for Orion or SLS. And it'll save 70% of the cost of each flight. Or more.

Orion and SLS are a welfare program for second-rate space engineers. Have been for a while.

In the 19th century US newspapers generally didn't pretend to be politically neutral - there are still hundreds of US papers with the words "Democrat" or "Republican" in their name, from that era.

At the time each paper had a political viewpoint and was proud of it. In such cases political endorsements make perfect sense.

In the 20th century the press decided that it should be neutral and objective, and not take sides - just report the news.

If you're trying to do THAT, you should be consistent and not take sides - let your reader decide.

In the 21st century, most of the media seems to have decided that they're going to take sides but pretend that they're objective.