Jeez .. all of these self-centered entitled brats thinking the world revolves around them. No one has to change for you. Life isn't fair, get over expecting it to be. 90% of you will probably use a free AI to write it anyway.

Or, accept the reality that you don't have to go to college, and you don't have to go to a particular one just because your guidance councilor/parents/friends think you should. Grow a pair and chart your own course through life. College is only required for a few fields, and even those have workarounds. No one says you have to go full time and as soon as you graduate either. Or get a degree, going part time and taking specific classes can be far cheaper and may not even require the standard application. And you might find an employer to pay for it via a tuition reimbursement program. Aren't you the generation that wants to change things??

However, I will acknowledge that the traditional essay is an idiotic requirement. The only thing the essay should ask is 'Discuss what you expect to be the cost of college and how are you going to pay for it'. If someone can't do that simple task, they probably aren't smart enough to go to college in the first place.

After renting a Tesla a couple of weeks ago, I'll never own an electric car. Sure, the acceleration is great, although unnecessary. But it's like learning to drive all over again. it's difficult to know how fast one is driving as there is no engine sound. The jerky deceleration as the regenerative breaking kicks in was nerve racking. The car itself was noisy, far to much road noise for a car this expensive. Charging at the office was a PIA, one had to download an app and request permission because they were private, and then discovered that the car didn't have an adapter so I had to go to a Tesla charger, wait in line to use, and sit on my ass in a parking lot for 20 minutes to take it from 25% to 80% after just two days of local driving. The damn thing shut off at a traffic light when I opened the door because I thought it was not closed tightly and only knew it when the light changed to green and it wouldn't go. And the field of view was just awful, forcing me to rely on video cameras far to often.

Granted, some of these things are just related to the learning curve and my co-workers did tell me "you get used to it". But I didn't see how ANY of them contributed to an improved experience over my truck. And many contributed to unsafe driving. Sorry Elon, your 'encyclopedia of control settings' on the dash is one of the worst ergonomic setups I've ever seen. I want buttons and levers for commonly used settings, like wiper intervals.

I'm 100% for removing all subsidies and government programs to increase the use of electric cars. Let the market decide. It may take another 20 years for us boomers to get out of the way. But at least *I* won't have to pay for it.

What a reasoned, well thought out argument. Thanks for contributing.

Since you don't want to be thought of as a hypocrite, I assume you will also be supporting changing all of the place names in Australia to their original Aboriginal names on all maps. Sydney would become Warrane, Melbourne becomes Naarm, Brisbane -- Meeanjin. and so on.

I mean, India did it after the British changed many of their names. Bombay is now known as Mumbai. Many others were changed.

People living in wildfire prone areas are just as responsible for making sure they have insurance and a disaster plan as people living in hurricane, earthquake, tornado, and other areas. If your house burned down because of wildfires, the only one responsible is you for choosing to live in a wildfire prone are, i.e. all of southern California. When my wife and I choose to move to Florida, we picked a home that was well away from the shore and have been through 4 hurricanes without any damage. Unlike idiots that want to live near the shore. Climate change truth .. a 9 foot storm surge doesn't care about 2 inches of ocean rise. When we moved to Tennessee, we picked an area with a gentle slop on two acres with limited trees to reduce risks during wildfires and heavy rains.

Stop blaming damage on climate change. There have been wildfires and hurricanes in these areas throughout recorded history, it only take one to destroy YOUR home. If you didn't have a plan to save your important belongings or museum pieces or you let your insurance lapse, there is no one to blame but you. (Insurance companies have to give notice, if someone didn't renew because of the cost, it's still their fault they didn't have it because they choose to live in the wildfire zone that is southern California and pay the exorbitant real estate costs.)

We all have to live somewhere, expecting others to protect us because of our choice is simply irresponsible.

You keep using that word 'everyone'. I do not think you know what it means.

Not 'everyone' uses Facebook for news.

Not 'everyone' gets there ideas from a single infuencer, no matter what platform they are one.

Not 'everyone' believes what they are told and isn't capable of doing their own fact checking.

Sure, there are a lot of people that are easily fooled. But that doesn't mean the rest of us can't do our own fact checking and should have our information castrated by those in authority. Too many people use excuses like 'think of the children' and 'if one life could be saved, it would be worth it' to restrict freedoms in order to push their agendas to trust anyone implicitly.

I finally bit the bullet, enabled my TPM module, and told it to upgrade.

Now if they would only tell me why it downloads, goes through the upgrade process, and then removes it. It actually says on the screen that it's removing it . Yet all I get is a useless error code that basically says 'something is wrong .. you need to figure it out on your own because we are too lazy to provide a text file somewhere that explains why'.

Washington DC doesn't appear to have gotten the memo. It's still pretty full of old white guys (of which I am a member). Boomers aren't going to stop voting, so until the younger generation comes up with any good alternatives willing to run, it's going to continue to be more of the same. And I've got news for you, being a politician isn't as easy as one thinks, it takes an awfully thick skin. Those easily offended need not apply.

You can try and blame the boomers, but from the millennials on down, they haven't really done all that much to change anything. Except act as entitled brats who demand employers bend to their will because working 8 hours a day is "too hard and I can't see my friends and I need to be able to wear pajama bottoms to work so I can be true to who I am". And other Gen-Z BS excuses for just being lazy. (Which not all Gen-Z are, just the ones that use these types of excuses and think TikTok is full of great ideas.)

Some People Were Freaking Out'

There ... fixed that for you

I recognized the problem in 1989 and over the course of 2 years had updated all of our code to support years above 1999 using a very simple routine that performed date comparisons and did date arithmetic instead of doing it directly in the code. I was able to do it at my leisure as I worked on updates to the code during the normal business process.

I'm sure there were many software engineers that were just as observant.

Only the ignorant and unprepared panicked...

Versus all that new Kamala was a complete economics moron whose stated programs would have driven this country further towards recession/depression/inflation. Biden showed his mental incompetence many times but those with TDS refuse to accept it and find a worthy alternative much earlier in the process.

If anything, Biden/Kamala supporters are just as much to blame because they never gave independent voters a viable alternative to Trump by calling out the lies regarding Biden's abilities earlier on and then not demanding a real candidate instead of Kamala, who had already been soundly rejected by the Democrat voters 4 years ago.

I'll continue to dump money into my 2002 Dodge Ram that gets 10mpg as long as I can find parts for it. They've already made it almost impossible to get a truck with an 8ft bed unless it's custom ordered. And yes, I need it because I do real work that baby trucks can't handle efficiently.

I say remove all audible seat belt warnings and let evolution sort it out. The same is true for huge labels on hair dryers warning of the danger of using them in the shower and similar warnings that only server to keep stupid people alive. And don't give me that 'think of the children' BS, if the parents are stupid, the kids probably are also. Because that's how genetics works.

It's not illegal to fly properly registered drones at night with the appropriate licenses. Except in no fly zones (or over crowds and a few other items). That could well be why no one in power is doing anything. You can't just shoot down a drone flying legally, all one can do is try to find the operator and question them. Modern flying rules require the operator to keep the drone in sight at all times, with some exceptions for licensed operators. Modern legal drones are equipped with transmission equipment to identify them, so again, finding them shouldn't be an issue. If they don't have the radios, then they are illegal and could be taken down.

My 'guess' is if they aren't being actively taken down, they are doing nothing illegal. Like it or not, it's not illegal to fly a drone as long as one obeys the regulations.

When telephone poles started to be erected, there were a lot of people worried they might fall over and kill someone. 100 years of technology hasn't changed people, only given the ignorant more things to be ignorant of.

I get it, I drove BMWs and Chargers and Vettes and such when I was young. Usually a friend's car or a rental. Most fun car I ever owned was a Pontiac GrandAm.

Whenever I drove them in a way to have a fun driving experience, I was an inconsiderate asshole. Pure and simple. Quick takeoffs from stop lights, weaving in and out of traffic, taking corners waaaayyyyy faster then I should have.

In more modern times, I often hear the sounds of weed whackers when idiots wanting a fun experience supe up their 4 cylinder POS with idiotic spoilers and noisy mufflers and feel it's appropriate to have a fun experience at 2am. And think their moronic cars sound cool. Yep .. more assholes.

Nothing wrong with wanting to have a 'fun' driving experience. It just usually doesn't belong on public roads.

And there is a 100% chance you are some type of snob or elitist. Did you have a point??

BTW .. I owned a (used) CRV once. Got rid of it because I do understand what a quality driving experience is. Doesn't mean it wasn't a half decent car for the amount of money I paid for it, never had a repair in 3 years.

I'm 65 and have never gotten any certification. And get paid very well.

Certification is useless and doesn't provide any insight into how much value a prospective employee is. I watched a guy get Linux certification in 2 days, I doubt if he was qualified to be a Linux admin. Although hiring him as a junior and seeing if he can learn would be a possibility. My company wants people to get certification, but from what I an tell, I know far more about AWS than my other team members that are certified since they are always coming to me for help.

Smart people don't need IT certificates, and good IT bosses don't use them when making hiring decisions.

Be that as it may, my employer provides free LinkedIn and Udemy classes and will pay for certification. I took a couple of classes and felt t hey were useless as they teach to the test and didn't go into any depth. I miss the old days of actually attending classes where the instructor had real world experience and is more than willing to discuss topics in more detail.

That's right .. give corporations yet another reason to use AI and get rid of undependable humans that will strike if they feel slighted in the least.

All they have done is advance the inevitable takeover of the majority of their jobs. They should study up on directing AI and reviewing AI output since those will be the only job left for their skills.