"HA-HA"

I'm not saying drop ALL competitive entrance exams. I'm saying you should have enough of the "Junior College-equivalent"-level schools so that anyone with a pulse and the money can take first-term courses.

Leave the stress of competition for people who want to go to a mid-or-higher-teir school.

What is the value of a Junior College 2-year degree over a trade school that just grants a "career diploma"? In the United States,a 2-year degree with good grades can let you transfer into a low- or mid-teir 4-year school even if you barely passed high school and would've failed your entrance exams if you had taken them at age 18. You probably won't be able to transfer all of your classes, but you'll likely be able to enter as a sophomore.

Exampe: Teenager who COULD graduate in the top quarter of his class and score in the top quarter on SAT/ACT or other entrance exams is a lazy goof off. He barely passes high school and has a McJob for a few years. After a few years, he realizes he wants to go to University. Thankfully, he's in a country with 2- (and 4-year) community colleges. He enrolls in his local community college, gets straight As, then transfers to a mid-tier 4-year school. He completes his Bachelors, again with straight-As. He scores well on his graduate school admission exams and gets a Ph.D. from a decently-respected graduate school and goes off to have a rewarding, upper-middle-class career.

If he lived in a country where "if you don't enter college right out of high school, tough on you" was the way things were, MAYBE he would've gotten his act together well before high school, but more likely he would've been stuck with low-paying/no-college-required jobs his whole career. That would be bad for him, but it would also be bad for society.

Apple: "macOS Tahoe does not work with any Intel MacBook Air or Mac mini for instance"
OpenCore Legacy Patcher: "Hold my beer."

Sadly, this will probably be the end of the line for OCLP, since it's specifically Intel-only: no PPC (very old) and no "Apple Silicon" (not old).

It sounds like they need more universities.

IMHO, anyone who graduates from high school or equivalent should be able to get into a bottom-end-of-the-selection-scale college or university if they have a pulse and a bank account, no entrance exam required (if they are straight out of high school, they may need to spend a few years in the workforce to build up that bank account). Whether you can proceed towards graduation depends on how well you do each term.

If China doesn't have enough low-end colleges ("Community Colleges" or "Junior Colleges" in the USA), maybe they should create some.

That said, college isn't the best option for everyone. Your country's equivalent of a trade school, the military, or going straight into the workforce should be real options (not just the "you are too [dumb/lazy/insert pejorative term here]" for the other options) for high school graduates.

and not a moon of the next gas giant.

From Albino Blacksheep.

"They sometimes accidentally kill"

"The sometimes hack and slash and maim"

"Sometimes they slash human flesh"

And lets not forget the nursery-school-destruction scene in the middle.

Professor Hathaway, in the flesh, or not.

A generation or two ago, it was "Welcome to campus, here's your legal copy of Microsoft Office" for free or for a token price, all to get young adults hooked on the product.

It was the same with credit cards and other things too.

I assume college students got market-droid-driven freebies long before I went to school and I assume it's still that way today.

... until the presumably-push OTA updates.

I'm okay with OTA updates for non-safety items like a stand-alone enterainment system, but if it touches the drive train or any safety-critical systems, "nope."

I'd be fine with updates coming in the form of a product recall where you had to manually request the OTA update. By manually I mean toggle a physical switch that was actually part of the OTA circuit, not just a "soft switch."

Here's hoping the updates are signed. At least that would be something.

Either that, or people old enough to remember the K-Mart Blue Light Special - or even K-Mart itself - are taking the day off of Slashdot.

if his Daddy made a big donation AND his Daddy made him study well enough to get the minimum grades on the entrance exams.

After all, he did get into Wharton, and he graduated, which is no easy feat.

Whether he could've graduated from Harvard under his own merit (without cheating), or whether he cheated his way into or through Wharton, I can't say.

What you need for authentication without a computer:

* A very good fake ID.

What you need for offline authentication with a local authenticating computer:

* Name, address, picture, signature ID#, and whatever else is supposed to be on the ID
* Something that's hard to fake that matches your actual face or fingerprint (see above)
* A digital signature to authenticate everything above.
* On the authenticating computer, you will need a list of revoked signing certificates or canceled ID cards (excluding those revoked or canceled very recently). Of course, you need a program that will do the authenticating.

This can be done with plain old paper, but a laminated, stiff ID is less likely to smudge or crease. Smudges and creases make digital-signature-verification more difficult.

What you need if you have an internet connection:

Online authentication is simple: All you need is the ID# or some way to look up the ID# (name and address usually does the trick): The person who is checking you out just needs to look you up. If your face and other things match, you are that person (or a very very good fake).

None of these require a phone, much less a smartphone.

A plain old piece of paper with your government ID number, your picture, and other public info (address? height/weight?), a digital scan of your signature, all signed with a digital signature should be enough.

If there's any questions, the person accepting the ID can "phone home" to the government to pull up what SHOULD be on that piece of paper.

If you wanted to store a copy of the card on your phone, fine, but it would be functionally identical to the paper copy.

The picture and digitized signature would need to be printed out in such a way that minor smudges or crease marks wouldn't break the signature. The most obvious/naive way would be to use square pixels big enough to overcome typical smudges or crease marks.

This might mean the picture would be several times as large as a typical passport photo when printed out. It might also be in black and white or a very limited set of colors.

She says the new MART-series processors expect just a 25% gross margin. The scuttlebut says they are needed for something special so they got blue-lighted.

Adopt the leaf as legal tender.