I own a tiny indie studio in Chicagoland and my peers own the some of the huge studios in Chicagoland.

Cinespace is dead right now. It has ONE show active. The other studios are so dead that they're secretly hosting bar mitzvahs and pickleball tournaments for $1500 a day just to pay property taxes.

My studio is surprisingly busy but I'm cheap and cater to non-union folks with otherwise full time jobs.

That's a bit like asking a new company with heavy manufacturing infrastructure to turn a cash profit the first year.

The whole idea is that with the base software done, they keep adding the extra features necessary for more people to file, with more and more able to each year.

Okay, I think that you're too close to the experience - you made it, why can't others?
Basically, I'm taking more of a statistical approach - in the sense that for each obstacle you put in front of a bunch of students, a percentage will fail. You don't want to give students any more excuses to fail than you can.

I think that I 'm not going to use high school scores as a hiring metric, period. Heck, not even a college degree.

The real question would be whether de-emphasizing homework and weekly testing improves performance or not. "Too much testing" is a refrain I heard a lot a few years ago.

In this case, note how I said "I'd object" not "I object", IE "I would object to"
Basically, race was not mentioned in the article, but I could see somebody trying to use it in the actual system, so I addressed it.

Indeed. When I started high school, besides the teachers, they had 1 principle, 1 vice, 1 secretary, and 4 counselors who handled things like college applications, technical schools, and such.
When I graduated, they were up to 4 vice principles, 12 counselors, 6 secretaries, and 8 security guards.

I'm well used to exams that will give you a C if you score only a 41 out of 100 from college. Called "grading on a curve", though some classes have been around long enough that they're averaging over multiple classes and multiple years. Then you have tests like the ASVAB, SAT, ACT, etc... They're all curved and otherwise adjusted from raw score to the final.
Depending on the teacher, the curving system can be extremely complex. They can chuck outliers like the student who regularly scores 20 points over everybody else, decide that 10% of the class is getting an A, declare that 80% of the class is getting at least a C, etc...

That said, I'd object to using color of the skin for padding purposes.

Eliminating homework actually makes some sense - in the age of AI, it is too easy to fake much of the time, and is one of the things that tends to separate out the low income types from achieving as well as high income types, because one of the things high incomes enable is time savings. If you have to get a job as a teen to keep your family housed, well, that's less time for homework. If you can afford to be driven everywhere, that's time saved over the bus. If you have to visit the library for internet access, that's extra time needed. Etc...
Same deal could be argued for weekly tests. Performance capability at the end is what matters.
Mind you, I remember my parents talking about the New York Regency tests, which wasn't 100% of the grade, but could replace your grade if you did better on that test than what the teacher awarded.
Had an uncle who hated one of his teachers, and it was mutual. He got an F in the class, which was upgraded to an A because he aced the regency test. Note: This was so rare that he got investigated for possibly cheating, because the test was deliberately harder than the class.

Lost my grandmother to lung cancer that metastasized to the brain. There is some urge towards violence, yes.

Well, in this case rsilvergun is actually right about long prison sentences not deterring crime.
Well, that's the "short" simplified headline, at least.
The more correct statement would be that the deterrence effect of long sentences is minimal compared to the other factors.
It's basically a triangle:
Certainty of punishment: The more certain they are to get caught, the more effect it has.
Immediacy of punishment: The faster the punishment takes place, the more effect it has.
Severity of punishment: The harsher the punishment, the more effect. At least in theory.
What research has shown is that that certainty and immediacy beat severity every single time.
Even the NIJ agrees:
1. The certainty of being caught is a vastly more powerful deterrent than the punishment.
2. Sending an individual convicted of a crime to prison isn’t a very effective way to deter crime.
3. Police deter crime by increasing the perception that criminals will be caught and punished.
4. Increasing the severity of punishment does little to deter crime.
5. There is no proof that the death penalty deters criminals.

I think they're still using faxes for legal purposes even today in Japan.

That might be a problem if they discover the 2nd phone during the customs inspection.

Some sort of dual-boot phone where you can have it running image 1 when you go through customs and install it and image 2 after a reboot.

And I'm a big fan of misdirection actually. The last thing you want to do is put the phone in a Faraday cage, because that means that you're officially untracked, so they might come looking for you. I'd argue that it would be better to plug it in to charge next to a device playing "sleeping noises", like you're taking a nap, or even just watching TV. Toss a towel or something on top of the phone so the camera isn't useful, or better yet, just a view of the ceiling (with lights from the TV reflecting off as appropriate).

Basically, "expected" information is much better than "no" information. A facebook page showing that you like cats stuffing themselves into small boxes is better than no facebook page at all.

Have you seen the ammo they're issuing at times?
I wouldn't count on it not jamming due to how corroded a lot of the ammo is.

Gap doesn't matter so much as maximum load. It also depends on the latitude. Down south, load at night tends to be lower.

Oddly enough, 100 Amps and -100 amps is a 200 amp spread, but both are exactly the same stress on the power line.

However, it may come to the point that a working couple with solar power and 2 EVs they want to charge overnight might be encouraged to add a battery to the system, because if EVs become sufficiently common, they can be a HUGE load leveling power - back when I looked at it, energy use during "the day" tends to be around 50% higher than at night. It's when I came up with a carbon-free estimate of around 40% nuclear, 20% wind, 20% solar, and 20% other stuff like hydro and geothermal (based on energy produced). Basically, if "day" is 6 points of power, "night" would be 4 points. So 20% solar would provide that extra 2 points during the day. 4 points of nuclear provides 2 points day and night, leaving wind to make up another point, and everything else (much of the peaking capacity) finishing it off. Single digit accuracy, so it ending up 35% nuclear wouldn't be any concern.
This was before battery prices dropped like an order of magnitude, by the way.

You make a good point on the videos - remember how I cited the lack of work as "suspicious" in the BMW video, I can't help but think that they might consider the actual work to be confidential proprietary knowledge.
So they censor (don't release in the film) so much footage that we don't actually see the cars being made. Meanwhile, with the Tesla video, they proudly show us pressing, welding, dipping, painting, and assembling of the cars. Both by robots and people. Though a lot of the people seem to be more inspecting work done by robots than doing it directly.
I do remember reading in places that Tesla actually has the most automated factories because Musk pushed very hard on that, even if he ended up backing off a lot.

Hmm... Man-hours per car would be a legitimate measure. Though you could see some slight differences there - logically a bigger more complex car would require more work in total, so even if it takes more man-hours, the assembly line could be judged more automated because the robots still take up a greater share of the "work" than humans. But that also raises the question of how you assess different tasks, like say the difference between conducting a couple hundred spot welds vs installing an alternator or plugging in wiring harnesses.

It's just that, well, looking at the parking lots might not give you a good idea. First is because as somebody else mentioned - how do you know those are employee cars and not freshly manufactured cars awaiting shipment?
Second would be that you could have a huge parking lot for legacy reasons - more people worked there before they automated more, or even when they built the place. Or contingency - they have it because it was cheap to build at the time, and they might need more parking later. Like when a car company experiences a downturn and vehicles pile up for a bit.
Then, as you identify, is the plant also an administrative center? Do you have lots of accountants parking there along with the auto workers?
It's just that, well, I found a video of each factory, it's just that the BMW factory has a suspiciously small amount of actual work happening to the cars. The Tesla video actually shows robots working, moving parts, presses pressing, etc...
I mean, I know that the BMW video is half the length, but it mostly seems to consist of partially completed cars moving along conveyor systems or literally just sitting there.

What is your source on that being the "most automated" car manufacturing plant in the US?

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

Now, maybe they're avoiding showing the robots in the BMW plant, but I'm seeing a LOT more automation beyond cranes for moving cars in production around in the Tesla video.