If you have a kid under 18, unknown caller from local area code could be an emergency from their school, daycare, or a random person.

Now what I have taken to is just immediately hanging up on unknowns the first time they call. If it is a legitimate real human, I hope they will think it was a phone glitch and call back right away.

Free phone calls are a scourge on civilization and civilized behavior. It should cost $0.05 complete a call to a USA phone number. The cost would put the scammers out of business immediately.

$0.05 per call would be no real burden on any legitimate use. (And no, I'm not sympathetic to the "legitimate" political callers, surveys, "legitimate" sales, or "charities.")

10 years ago, social media was exciting. Social media let you see content from people you cared about. Then came "influencers" and now comes AI-generated junk. Multi-billion-dollar businesses now depend on history not repeating itself.

In my great grandparents era, getting a letter in the mail was exciting. Then came bills and marketing junk mail.

In the 1960/70s, CB radio was exciting; then it turned into a cesspool.

40 years ago, getting a phone call was exciting. Then came free international calls and junk robo calls, and now people don't even answer the phone.

35 years ago, usenet was exciting, then came spam, 1990's-era "me too" posts, and AOL users. And usenet became useless.

30 years ago, email was exciting. Then came "legitimate" marketing mails and illegitimate spam, and email is nearly useless and certainly not fun.

Your passkey is bound to one or more physical devices, like a phone, such that without the device you are screwed, right? Where you still have to either have a biometric read or enter a password/pin, right? So it's really no better than those dongles we used to carry around in the 90s that generated a new code every minute?

If everything is protected by passkeys, how do I get my life back if I'm traveling, have to evacuate my hotel due to a fire and am on the street with nothing but the clothes on my back? Or if I'm mugged by a criminal or the government and lose all of my electronics?

No, these items are a realization that 21st century knowledge work is different from 19th century factory work.

The entire 20th-century workday structure seemed to have been built around 1800s industrial-revolution factory jobs with some "work-life balance" features added in later: 8-hour workday, 5-day workweek, paid vacation days, etc. But that's not the only work model. Half of my grandparents were farmers. 3/4ths of my great-grandparents were farmers. They were home when their kids came home from school and had flexibility to do things during weekdays or take a break between tasks.

"Paying people for not working" is also a 19th century factory concept where work got done at a point-location in the factory. Or where most 19th/20th century knowledge work got done at a point location on site -- e.g., a drafting table or laboratory. Even RTO champions realize that much of the knowledge work gets done during the coffee breaks, or lunch, or in the parking lot. Or, even for in-office workers, thinking about work during the commute or at home.

Remote work creates real challenges, including development of junior employees and company culture. The 5-day workweek and 8-hour workday created challenges too. But creative solutions to those challenges are more likely to succeed than trying to drive workers back to a work model based on the pre-PC, pre-network mid 20th century office.

Store bought mass-produced bread: yes
Bread baked in the store: maybe?

But under some definitions, even homemade bread made of nothing but flour, salt, water, yeast is considered "ultra processed."

I could probably name 100 American billionaires without Google or any other resource. Balmer, Bezos, Brin, Buffett, . . .

Not to mention that implementing a wealth tax in even one country, let alone globally, is a logistical and bookkeeping nightmare. The only beneficiaries would be the accountants and lawyers working for both the wealthy and the government.

Even for a highly fungible asset class like publicly-traded stocks, can you imagine the effect on the stock market and economy if large holders of public companies had to dump 2% of their shares every year to pay tax? Not to mention asset classes like factories, land, and artwork.

-Obsession with having the absolute latest software update at the expense of testing time and quality control.

-"Security" bloatware that causes more problems than it protects against.

-Large organizations that could reasonably provide functions on-premises moving every function and service to the cloud with real-time dependence on third parties. It's one thing to buy software from a third party and run/update it locally. It's another to rely completely on that third party being up and managing their own updates.

The reason the airline is collecting DOB is to comply with TSA's "Secure Flight." Secure Flight involved a TSA mandate to collect gender and DOB to reduce the TSA's press humiliation from stopping and harassing every person named David Nelson, Robert Johnson, and some other common names, because the names "matched" the TSA's secret due-process-free No-Fly-List. (NFL). The NFL grew from under 600 names in 2001 to over 81,000 names in 2016.

Implementing the DOB check reduced the false positives enough that the mainstream press moved on to other distractions. (Fighting the NFL continues in court in spite of government stonewalling; See FBI v Fikre.)

Like many of these IT privacy and security problems, the true fix is to stop collecting and using data irrelevant to the actual function. Other than knowing if a passenger is eligible to be a lap child (must be under 2), age should be irrelevant to the airline.

This entire robo/scam call problem wouldn't exist if it cause a nominal amount (say a nickel or even a penny) to ring any phone in the USA other than 911.

If it cost the scammers $50,000 to ring 1 million American phones, their scams could never be profitable.

I don't care who the $ would go to -- telco, govt, charity, or recipient of the call. But it would fix the problem.

Phone calls have fallen victim to the tragedy of the commons. When I was a kid, i was taught to respectfully answer the phone. Now when the phone rings, if I can't ID the caller as known, they're lucky if I grunt and give them 10 seconds to prove themselves legit.

Most studies that claim masks don't work are really analyzing if mask mandates work. IMO mandates do not work, because mandates have to have exceptions. (mask breaks in school, lunch, people who can't wear masks, etc.) and because people choose not to use them properly (worn under the nose, using cloth bandanas as mask, etc.).

I've yet to see one piece of evidence that a reasonable effort to use a reasonable quality mask properly doesn't help reduce spread. But that means actually wearing the mask properly and not taking it off even for eating/drinking, etc. That requires *individual* commitment and effort which cannot be forced through a mandate.

I don't know anything about how the financial system works in Australia, but from a USA perspective I don't think we're remotely ready for this when it comes to major transactions.

Every time I have bought or sold a house, there has been at least one large bank check involved. What replaces that? Every time I have bought a car, there has been a large bank check involved. Some dealers might take $5K or so on a credit card, but that's nowhere near the price of a new car. In both of these cases, the deed/title gets signed (and keys to the house/car transferred) simultaneous with the check being handed over. I've done wire transfers, but they are expensive, surprisingly slow, and complicated by hoops you have to jump through because wire transfers are strongly associated with scams.

If you rent a house from a non-tech small landlord and they want the rent on the 1st of the month, what are your non-cash options other than a check? (Note, a bank's "bill pay" service would just mail a check to the landlord, so that's not an answer. Walking cash to the landlord's bank doesn't seem reasonable either.)

Also, more and more businesses in the US are playing the "3% extra fee for using a credit card" game in an attempt to make up for inflation by nickel/diming customers. When they do that, I pull out a personal check.

The new Freenet is written in Rust.

lol - same thing with pilots ;)

Thank you!