They were only superficial competitors. I think JCPenny was clothes and maybe housewares. Sears was the only major mall chain to have tools and they were beloved. In the midwest, we had other stores as well, but the anchor stores were mostly selling clothes, perfume, jewelry, etc. Malls were pretty much for women, with the exception of Sears...a refuge for dads to hang out while their wives and daughters went shopping. It was also a good place to get a new washer/dryer, microwave, etc.

I love tools. Woodworking is a hobby and when I started, I couldn't afford everything I wanted, so I spent a lot of time on subway rides looking at the catalogs from Sears, Rockler, etc. However, I also have a peculiar habit of looking at people's garages. If you leave your garage open on the path I walk my dog, I'll stand at the sidewalk and look. If you invite me into your house and we pass through the garage, I'll look at your tools (not touch, I'm not rude)...but I'll look at anything people leave out. I also hang out with a lot of old people because my parents and in-laws are old.

The red or black craftsman toolchest is ubiquitous...not in young people's homes, but in retiree's. Those things last forever and every garage for everyone above 60 seems to have one. If you're under 40, it's probably HF (US General, Icon, etc) or Husky. They're often dented, kinda dusty, stickers and shit on them...but they're all over. Until 8 years ago, you could only buy those at Sears.

Young people?...husky wrenches everywhere...Old people?...pretty much all Craftsman. Unlike power tools, people rarely replace standards wrenches. I've seen guys that have their dad's old rusty wrenches hanging from the 50s.

There have always been other options than Sears. They just were popular and well liked....kind of a cult. It reminds me of CostCo. A huge percentage of people I know are costco cultists. They do all their shopping there, not just bulk stuff. Costco is nice...but if you do your research, you'd know they're not often the cheapest. They often give you good stuff at a reasonable price, but not the best stuff, not the best price, not the best value...just reliably good. In my mind, Sears was that before...not the best, not the cheapest, but close...and you could go there and buy ANYTHING. You could get a $2000 behemoth Craftsman table saw that is entirely cast iron and weighs more than my prius. You could get a shitty $100 table saw that seems designed to cut off fingers and wobbles when you place a heavy board on it...depending on your budget....meaning you could get the very best tools one could need...or the shitty ones at home depot.

Famously, Jimmy Carter's staff got him a gift card to Sears when he left office...so he could do woodworking in retirement.

I don't know what era you grew up in, but when I was a child, Sears and Pennys were direct competitors. Sears just had a better catalog and automotive section. People going to malls would go to both to see who had the better deal on competing items. Especially for clothing. Montgomery Ward was a competitor, but they were the Chrysler to Sears/Penney's GM and Ford, the third wheel that no one went to first.

Sears fate was sealed the moment Amazon was created. The "vulture capitalist" just squeezed what value he could from the dying remains. With their catalogue business, and being "America's general store", they were in the perfect position to move from paper catalog to Internet based ordering. They adapted too late. Malls and physical department stores are never coming back at a level necessary for a Sears to thrive. It's Amazon and everyone else now.

Sears had a different audience than JCPenny. Sears was a beloved tool retailer with a cult following and well regarded for their appliances. JCPenny was a place for cheap clothes that are higher quality than WalMart. To me, that's like comparing In & Out to McDonald's. They have superficial similarities, but one was beloved and the other was "just fine." Sears appealed to dads and was a treat for many working class dads to go to. If they were well run, they'd be vibrant today. JCPenny...their primary audience was moms buying clothes. No one "wanted" to go there. It was just cheaper than Macy's or Dillard's (or whatever your better anchor mall store was).

If Sears removed themselves from the mall and invested in quality tools, perhaps appliances, they could develop a nice niche. HarborFreight has gone from the shittiest tool seller to trying to be Sears now...offering a 1st party comprehensive lineup and is thriving, from what I can tell

No one wants to buy clothes from Sears. However, they could easily take customers from Harbor Frieght, Lowes, Home Depot, Best Buy, etc...cater to older dads...give a nice experience...be convenient to get to (malls suck today)...resurrect their tires service and make it compelling.

Dads are underserved. Sears could really appeal to that market. 30 years ago, dads in the midwest LOVED Sears for the manly stuff and ignore the weird clothes section.

Communism didn't save the world and is now out of fashion.

Surely this popular belief (with or without factual basis is irrelevant, see "religion") could not be exploited by those with ulterior motives. Humanity are too virtuous for that. Elections prove it.

That's absolutely not the case. You say something offensive, I don't want you banned...I want the right to tell you to go fuck yourself. EVERY FUCKING "Free Speech Absolutist" doesn't want free speech, but a free, passive audience where they can say whatever they want without feedback. For awhile, ever right wing asshole on slashdot was complaining about free speech when people called them assholes for their comments....and were horrified at the downvoting system

Free speech goes both ways....feedback is speech...being booed is free speech. Free speech is not a magic privilege where you can say whatever you want and we'll patiently listen to you....you have the freedom to say what you want without being jailed by the government...not the freedom to force an audience to listen to your bullshit without feedback.

First of all, free speech absolutism is childish and stupid...no...no one actually wants free speech...we're in the age of AI and Russian troll farms...no one wants "speech" that is fraud or clearly lies. Yeah, it makes you feel good to say you're for free speech, but you don't want to listen to a nonstop stream of lies and commercials and scams. Modern technology allows bad actors to overwhelm audiences in ways that the founding fathers could have never anticipated. In 1776, it was easy to read a newspaper and say "this is a lie"...they didn't receive the same lie 1000x in their e-mail, texts, and various online outlets. People like Putin have figured that if you lie forcefully enough, the opposition eventually cedes.

Secondly, people who use "free speech" in comments and sentences are the ones most likely to be fragile when reading opposing views. Free speech isn't a hall pass to be an asshole and not face social consequences. You have the right to be an asshole....I have the right to call you an asshole...either of us can get downvoted on platform for our words and behavior....that's free speech.

Inevitable. LOL.

The EU will break up before it truly bans ICE engines. It's not going to happen in our lifetime. Brussels may impose a penalty of some kind on member states that don't comply, but it'll be fairly cheap. Some tax or another will be imposed, everyone will claim victory, and ICE vehicles will continue to roll off production lines on the Continent.

OK, spotted the guy who either has no kids or was absent while the wife did all the work. First of all, please kindly go fuck yourself with your judgmental bullshit. Parenting is fucking hard...mistakes get made. Should Roblox get sued?...no...can parents supervise every fucking minute of their kids life?...no, they can't. If you think they can, you're fucking stupid. If a parent says they can be on top of their kids online interactions, they're lying...probably to themselves. You can't shelter children perfectly from all that is bad in the world.

However, while parents can't nerf the world, you can't go the extreme other direction and think a parent is a criminal because their kid was on roblox, a child-friendly platform, unsupervised for 30 minutes. Parenting is really fucking hard...convince a woman to reproduce with you and you'll experience this yourself.

If you've ever actually used Roblox, you'd know it's actually pretty strict with moderation. Again, please fuck yourself and your stupid misinformation. Kids get banned all the time for stupid bullshit. My son got booted because some petty bratty kid reported him because his character was standing in the kid's way. His friends have had their accounts permanently banned for routine swearing (like screaming "shit" after dying). They have very strict AI moderation and users are banned for the flimsiest reasons...including stuff most of us would consider kids being kids.

I've literally been on that platform for 100s of hours playing games with my kids. I've never seen anything inappropriate beyond teenagers cursing and saying offensive things teenagers say (calling each other gay, for example, as an insult). I've never seen anyone contact me nor heard of anyone trying to contact my kids or any other players.

Does that mean it never happens?...of course not, but it's much rarer than in schools, parks, the grocery store, etc. Also, it's bullshit to sue them. I think they take reasonable actions. Where there are people, there will be crime. However, there are AI filters + moderation. If people figure out you're up to no good, action is taken. There are infinitely better ways for pedophiles to find victims than Roblox. In my mind, it's like trying to get laid at the church when there are 4 bars down the street.

Keep in mind. Roblox is a mixture of social media, gaming, and the best child-friendly programming environment I've ever seen. My children were building their own custom games at age 8. It got them into scripting and hacking around, modifying existing games. It's a great creative outlet and great for teaching game design or general programming (in Lua). It's a great way for them to keep in touch with their friends who moved far away. It has many good things going for it that are very positive for children.

However, it's also really fucking profitable. They have every incentive to keep criminals off the platform. Parents spend a shocking amount of money giving kids Robux, the in-game currency...for a lot of kids, that's what they ask for every christmas and birthday from their relatives. Pedophiles?...I'm confident they're not very profitable...kids spending relative's money to buy pointless items?...really fucking profitable...but only if parents think it's safe for their kids.

These conservative culture warrior incels are so fucking ignorant...they go on message boards and claim the Roblox corporation is more interested in pedophilia than being billionaires. I am confident anyone who can get into a leadership position at a large SV corporation likes money more than touching children....especially in the most indirect way on a very restrictive platform that probably attracts the wrong type of kids anyway.

The most versatile, repairable, recyclable materials for bridges if one can afford them are steels which can be cut, welded, and easily inspected using proven methods then scrapped and recycled efficiently with many of the standard steel sections easy to cut and resell for less critical reuse.

Cheaper concrete destroys reinforcement bars and mats by corrosion which is a major reason why the US infrastructure repair bills are so expensive. (Small and medium bridges can be replaced by portable metal bridging which can even be rented for use on short-term projects. Some WWII Bailey bridges remain in daily use because there's no reason to install a downgrade that's difficult to remove vs. swapping parts, weld repair or disassembly and replacement with similar.) Portable bridging in military usereliably withstand thousands of heavy wheeled and tracked military vehicles

"Shotcrete" is a handy coating and good for the developers trying this out, but the TCO and averting traffic delays due to repair time also matter.

Automated NDI inspection robots designed for these would be a very good idea to save labor. Bridge inspection robots are not new. Check out these inspection and maintenance robots:

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3F...

Aside from the obvious privacy issues, the concern I have is that this product seems to be positioned as a medical device, but lacks any information about how it is measuring what it purports to measure. What studies support the analyses it claims to perform, and how are its methodologies validated?

It's deeply deceptive to sell a product that claims to track health-related data without disclosing how accurate or meaningful it is. Not only is such marketing exploiting the uneducated public and leading them to believe in snake oil, it also creates confusion, sows distrust of legitimate medical devices and therapies, and may actually lead consumers to make incorrect decisions about seeking medical advice. For instance, one can reasonably envision that someone who buys this product could believe that it could justify less frequent colonoscopies. That could be a fatal error.

So you see children having fun playing lame video games with their friends and your mind thinks "groomer!" "pedophilia!!!" Seriously...you think you're insulting me by calling you an "awful parent," but you completely lack any credibility. There's clearly something wrong with you if your mind goes to that. However, you clearly have never been on the platform.

The most common complaint is not criminals, but the excessive AI moderation. My kids have gotten kicked off a few times for routine swearing...the same shit you get in trouble for at school, but nothing hateful...like audibly saying "shit" when they get killed in a game with the mic on. They've gotten kicked off for many seemingly bullshit reasons, including just random kids acting like dicks.

Any pedophile on Roblox today has to be very careful...because my son has gotten kicked out of a game for standing in someone's way too long. Their threshold for booting you is pretty low and his friends have gotten their accounts completely banned for saying the F word too many times.

Look, you clearly have pedophilia and presumably right wing incel/extremist thoughts on the brain, given your casual and incorrect usage of the word "groomer." Where there are people, there will be crime, but I don't think the risk on Roblox is any higher than anywhere else on the internet. Your concerns are purely theoretical and don't apply, especially these days, with how strict moderation is.

They make a FUCKTON of money...that game is a money-printing machine...they're not going to let pedophiles ruin that.

But then again, if you're a QAnon nutjob, no sense in letting reality get in the way of your fun conspiracy narratives. Yup...the Roblox corporation...they'd rather fuck children than be billionaires...right???

Most people are not "deeply stupid". But that post was deeply arrogant.

Roblox is a giant video game platform that provide benefits that greatly outweigh the risks. The fact that you see a giant platform of kids having fun and think "pedophilia" says a lot more about you than the world. If you have such urges, I'd recommend you see a professional and get some help. Way to say you're an incel without directly saying it. First of all, every place children have ever been can be abused by motivated enough bad actors.

If you ever convince someone to reproduce with you, you'll understand children need all the activities they can get. You can't eliminate a great, positive platform just because of a theoretical concern. I have literally spend hundreds of hours in Roblox, not by choice, but because my kids love it when I join in and help. I've never seen anything resembling pedophilia. No one contacts me or asks for info. My kids have never reported that happening to them. It must happen, but it happens at the park, the grocery store, etc. No actual parent is in a place of such control they can eliminate every suboptimal option to get through the day and encourage their kids to learn or at the very least have fun.

As much as I hate the games on Roblox, I must concede, it's a wonderful platform my kids use to hang out with their friends, including a few that moved away. It combines social media, gaming, and one of the very best programming environments I've ever seen. It's encouraged both of my children to begin programming and designing their own games....but hey, you see all that and think...ooh, is there kid touching involved??

The internet went to shit due to social media making it easy for the stupidest people you've ever met to effortlessly present their "hot takes" about current events....even worse, find a community of people just as bad and worse. And by "hot takes," I mean all their shitty thoughts so disgusting and basic that even the Daily Stormer wouldn't touch it with a 20 foot pole.

YouTube was a massive improvement in our lives because it removed the barriers for motivated people to share content. That's the key part...the motivated part. Even uploading a shitty video takes some effort...and even the biggest moron can see that their shitty shaky iPhone video needs better framing and editing.

People will read my asshole cousin's completely uninformed rants about vaccines and government oppression and even ignore his grammar mistakes. Even if you don't want to, it shows up on your feed. He has no clue he's a total fucking moron....and I don't mean because he disagrees with me (I enjoy reading sincere and thoughtful expression of views I find repulsive, to understand the other side)...I mean the way he makes his arguments, how incoherent his writing is, how lazy and basic his arguments are....how poorly he expresses himself. But!!!!...he has no clue and a handful of even dumber and more vile friends who tell him he's a genius.

No one wants to watch a first-timer's YouTube video.

As shitty as it is to say, barriers to entry are a good thing. In 2005, if you had a rant, you had to crack open a book to express yourself. You had to be motivated to get anyone to see it. In 2025, you go into the app you already have installed to see pics of your grandkids (or more realistically if you're extremely vile, your neighbor's grandkids)...and just let your thoughts flow and they can easily go viral.

You want to make a video that's not horrible?...you need to buy gear, you need to think about lighting, you need to think about flow...if your writing sucks?...well, it made sense in your brain...if your video sucks?...well, that's usually immediately obvious when your picture is washed out and blurry and the camera shakes and people are looking up your nostrils because you're holding your phone wrong and you see all the parts that you should have cut out.

It takes a decent writer to be a good editor....it's safe to say nearly anyone can immediately see the difference between good and bad video.

OK...sold...I need a union. Where can I find one? There's none active at my company and I haven't heard of any software engineer unions at all...and I've been very active in the tech community for 25 years. Oh and if the answer is "go start one yourself?"...go fuck yourself.

I think I would benefit from a well run union...I just know of none...even googling, I don't see any in my area.