Ill deal with the fallout I guess.

I'd like to address this. I dont tip when I walk up to pick up stick order booth and collect the tray and walk over to my table. Thats not above average. If I am seated, and I talk to a waiter who takes our order and returns with the food, of course I tip. But why tip when YOU ARE THE PERSON TAKING YOUR FOOD TO THE TABLE AND BUSSING IT TO THE TRASH?

I already said that in my original post.

Just what the fuck do you think I don't know?

Let me make this simple for you: Microsoft refuses to install Windows 11 the laptop. Support for Windows 10 is ended. I already told you I'm not jumping through stupid hoops to extend support for a mere 10 more months.

There may be shady workarounds for all of those known to MS MVPs, but this thread was supposed to be about the average Joe who allegedly can't figure out how to attach a printer to a Linux box.

On the other hand, Microsoft trying to write an OS in Rust will reveal absolutely every defect present in the language.

Unless they write their own, which is quite likely as they'd rather have defects they can ignore.

So mount new radars on the most distant wind turbines. Then they'll get an even earlier warning on the incoming Belgian drones.

The Windows 10 partition on my laptop doesn't "work" anymore like the Linux partition does (and Windows 11 won't work at all). If I ever do boot into Windows on that machine again, I'm going to have to airgap it (no, I'm not going to jump through their increasingly silly hoops to "extend" support).

I guess the average Joe would just keep running that unpatched OS as usual indefinitely, since ignorance is bliss.

All businesses should pay wages and charge prices inclusive of all their costs. Tipping culture is a shit solution to a ship problem. Never leave a tip on the credit card line. I --always-- put $0 and then put cash on the table or in the card-folio. Why? Because then the waiter gets to determine how the tip is managed, and I will sometimes not tip if the service wasn't above average (or I wasn't a problem customer, customizing dishes or being a needy table). I want the waiters to negotiate a good wage, I want the prices to reflect it, and I want this half-baked solution to go away. Can I afford it? Yes. But I am not a fan of negotiating with myself, which this constantly makes me do in my head "what was the service worth"? Not a fan. Get rid of it. Pay your wait staff, get rid of tip lines. Oh and I never --ever-- tip at a drive through. Im paying for merchandise. Sorry Starbucks.

The fact that the company filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy is absolutely an indicator that the FTC failed its job. Its job (whether it should have it or not, is up for another conversation) is to prevent market abuse of monopoly. Amazon was not in the robot vacuum business, and this business was not buying a robot vacuum maker. There was no loss of choice etc. It went bankrupt, which indicates no market abuse was happening (it wouldn't have failed). I think shareholders have a legal case against the government (FTC?) for costing them loss of value. Regulators need a damn good reason to stop acquisitions. Like if Apple wanted to buy Android from Google, etc... but this was absolutely not that. It was just a large acquisition from every government's favorite target: Amazon. The animus in non-elected regulators is bad. The reform needs to be court rulings. If the FTC wants to block a deal, the FTC should sue to stop it in court, and the court should make a decision. If your trophy wall is blocked deals, and you are the judge, then you are going to block deals that shouldn't be blocked. Its that simple.

I thought that the point of automation was to free us up from tedious tasks so that we have more time to do fun things like shopping for stuff.

If AI ends up taking over for *all* our mental activities, then what are we supposed to do with our atrophied brains? Maybe it's all a nefarious plot to turn us into H. G. Well's Eloi.

Abandon hope, all ye who press enter here.

Now, yes, there are predictions that you could get a supermassive black hole launched into space, especially during a galaxy merger if the velocity of the smaller black hole exceeds the escape velocity of the combined galaxy.

But I'd be wary of assuming that it's a launched black hole, unless we can find the merger it comes from. There may be ways for such a black hole to form that cause the stars to be launched away rather than the black hole being flung, and if a galaxy isn't rotating fast enough to be stable, one could imagine that a sufficiently small galaxy was simply consumed by its central black hole. Both of these would seem to produce exactly the same outcome, if all we have is the black hole itself and a velocity.

I'm not going to say either of these is likely in this case, or that astronomers haven't examine them (they almost certainly have), but rather that we should be cautious until we've a clearer idea of what the astronomers have actually been able to determine or rule out.

Some cold gas thrusters adjusted their attitudes and relative velocities "like Maverick's signature "hit-the-brakes" move in the movie "Top Gun.""

Sensationalizing much??

I use my iPhone or my HomePod when im actually home. This is a shit decision to buy an internet connected alarm clock. However, with Office 365, every fucking company switched to subscription, especially in software. Remember when apps were one-time buys? Recurring revenue has become the only meaningful way of driving valuation (otherwise BMW wouldn't have started charging monthly fees for seat warmers).

Honestly I wouldn't want the Trump administration to have a say so in what companies are allowed to acquire or get acquired. There is way too much politics involved and having Trump picking winners and losers (which let's be honest, is probably about who sucked up to him that week) is a very very bad idea. I get in 2022 this was done in the Biden administration, but really no administration should have a say so. The right answer is to have the markets sort it out by themselves and consumers should leveredge boycott more powerfully, frequently, and potently to disrupt business that abuse. I dont trust government to know what's best for me. I know what's best for me, and I trust my fellow Americans to make decisions for what's best for them without Trump's administration trying to guise itself as a guardian angel on my shoulder controlling what I have access to and not.