...total fucking fraud...

In the last couple years, I've had to return items that were definitely not the specs advertised. One was a USB sound card advertised as stereo input but turned out they just duplicated the left channel to the right. One other item was a SATA DVD recorder that claimed certain speeds, but after 3 burning failures, I checked the specs with "wodim -prcap" and found those claims were complete BS.

The one that was truly dangerous though was the burner replacements for my propane grill. The originals were showing their age after 4 years so I made a purchase and accepted the Amazon sponsored choice. Big mistake. They looked OK, but after using twice a month for 4 or 5 months, I noticed the flame pattern looked off on part of the grill and food was flaring up on one spot. I checked the burner in that spot and found a crack in the top of the burner blasting out a solid flame. I ordered replacements again, but this time directly from the grill manufacturer. The burners I got look the same, but I found they weigh at least 50% more. When I took the old replacements off, the cracked burner crumbled the rest of the way in my hand. If I hadn't caught it, the eventual outcome would have been explosion and fire.

Release the Epstein Drive files!

As a former IBMer, let me explain the acquisition process.

Those back office teams are what IBM values the 2nd most from the acquisition. They didn't buy Red Hat for the people, they bought it for the Intellectual Property.
Once the IP is inventoried and audited, the layoffs will start for the engineering, product, sales, and marketing teams. Wait for an announcement for a small layoff sometime between March and June of 2026. The sales team will likely see one at the end of the year when IBM wants to find a way to avoid paying bonuses based on meeting sales targets.

If you want a real world illustration, look what IBM did to Lotus after their purchase.

I've used AI for a number of tasks trying to analyze data in datasets. I've also used it to perform searches and found that more than half the time, there is not-valid data. Even after using various prompts to discourage "guessing", I've been validating the responses and finding a large number are just outright fabrication. If you're using AI to do research or find citations and claiming it as your work, you do so at your peril!

I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further.

They can keep their data private by licensing it for $350,000 per year or $250,000 per year if they sign up for a 3 year term.

For the first time in my life, earlier this year, I had to file an FCC complaint when I tried to cancel my Spectrum Internet.
We had them for over 4 years and decided to switch to Verizon Home 5G because Spectrum had been ratcheting up our bill in $5 increments for the last few years. There were also a number of outages and the we NEVER came close to the advertised speed.

I reached out to the online chat support and asked if we could cancel and they said not a problem. After 45 minutes of them pushing for answers why we wanted to leave and one offer after another to stay, I was informed that they couldn't cancel the account over chat and needed to do it through the cancellation number which they gave me. I called the cancellation number and between being on hold and again having the rep offer several incentives over the next hour to stay, was informed they couldn't cancel and we had to call the main number. My wife called a 3rd person the next day and after an hour was told they would cancel, but since we were cancelling a day into the new billing cycle, would still have to pay the full month unless we just stayed for the rest of the month. That's when I opened the FCC enforcement complaint.

I got a call from FCC enforcement the next day and confirmed my grievances from the report and was informed someone from Spectrum's main office would be calling. The next day I got a call from Spectrum and they confirmed the account was closed and credited our account the amount due since we were only 3 days into the billing cycle. The amount of time it took for my wife and I to try and cancel Spectrum service? Over 3 hours. The amount of time I spent on the phone with the FCC and Spectrum to resolve the complaint? About 15 minutes.

To Hell with subscription services and their cancellations. They drag things out until you either give up or get pushed into a new billing cycle. They need to pay dearly when they pull stuff like this.

Sorry to reply to myself. Her name is spelled "Melania". I hit the submit button instead of edit.

This is the same Amazon that had $40,000,000 to license a documentary about Milania Trump.
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fco...

They don't want blame for higher costs due to tariffs? Screw 'em. The last few items I bought from Amazon were either not the specs that were listed or were very likely outright counterfeit. I was willing to gamble if the price was cheap and hope the value was there, but the prices have been creeping up long before these tariffs were in place.

Too late Broadcom!

I abandoned vmware workstation for libvirt/qemu at home.

Many other friends and colleagues who ran vmware abandoned it for Proxmox because of licensing cost.

Broadcom is still trying to strong-arm our biggest client into renewing with a 300% markup in license cost. The client is going to migrate to Azure and will do so as soon as the hardware support on our hosts expires next year.

Nobody needs this in theaters. The last 2 theater experiences we had we marred by the ripped seats we had picked online before getting to the theater, the garbage from the previous movie still in unused seats when the movie started, and the interruption of concessions workers coming in after the previews during the opening scenes of the movies to serve people too lazy to stand in line and get their overpriced snacks before the movie started.

We just don't watch new movies anymore. What's the point? They are available on streaming sometimes as soon as 3 months after theatrical release anyways.

So now the public schools have rights the parents don't have and can chemically alter their children without input. By force of law.

Aaaannd, you lost me. What law is in place that allows that? I'll wait. I have a relative with a gay grandson in high school and she keeps talking about how he's gay because the school "encourages" it. She has also said the school is going to let him have a sex change because the law says so. She can't list the law either.

Since you listed the Daily Wire link (a notoriously far-right rag). I also looked at the Court Opinion filing (google "case #23-1069 foote et al") and the following line caught my eye. It has nothing to do with chopping off genitals or forcing kids to wear rainbow colored clothes. It's about pronouns. If the kid wants to use a particular pronoun, the school isn't obligated to run to the parents and go "Quick! Quick! Your kid might be queer!".

Here is part of the summary directly from the case filing. I encourage anyone who wants to learn more to read the entire ruling.

"More specifically, it presents for our review challenging issues arising from the Ludlow School Committee's protocol ("the Protocol") requiring its staff to use a student's requested name and gender pronouns within the school without notifying the parents of those requests unless that student consents. Our appellants are the parents ("the Parents") of a Ludlow student who chose -- at school but not at home -- to go by a different name and to use different pronouns than those given to them at birth."

When I first read the headline, I wondered how believing in aliens would ruin the guys career. But then I got to "defrauded them through an alleged antigravity machine scheme". If your career's success hinges on people NOT finding out you scammed them, that might be the root cause of your issues.

I don't think your issue was self-custody. Your issue was a password service that bills itself as secure but was just a big, fat, target for someone with the time and resources to hack. Just curious, did you have MFA enabled for your LastPass account?

Gen-X'er here.
I grew up learning to always politely answer the phone with "This is Weeboo, how can I help you?".

Now, the vast majority of calls I get, despite being on the FTC Do Not Call list, are from robocallers. The calls are then transferred to a live person or "closer" who tells me they want to consolidate debt, give me a lower interest rate on my credit card, or help catch the hackers on my computer. All crap.

The elderly have it worse. If you try to explain to them they are talking to a malicious stranger, they counter with "But the caller ID says 'Card Services'" or "But I keep telling them not to call back and they keep talking." In the worst case, the elderly victim gives money or bank information to the predator and gets looped into other scams. In the case of one of my relatives, he likely gave away over $66k to "Microsoft" to help catch hackers and "Capital One" because the person on the phone who said they were with Capital One, claimed payment needed to be sent to cover the past due amount almost bi-weekly.

We no longer have telephones. We are now using multi-media communication devices that keep us connected in ways that didn't exist 50 years ago.
Wireless carriers need to start letting subscribers use Whitelists and screening free of charge. If a call or text not in the local address list comes in, it goes to Voice Mail or maybe a text escrow or maybe the caller needs to type a one-time passcode for the call to be completed. I have a Call Filter service, but I have to pay Verizon for it, there is a finite amount of numbers I can add, and the spam calls still come through.

My point is viewing that portable handheld computer we need for day-to-day interaction, business interactions, and financial authentication as a simple telephone is horribly narrow-sighted. The days of blindly trusting a stranger on the other end of a communication chain is just no longer feasible or safe.