We can never be guaranteed that any patch that Microsoft releases for their products is real or even works properly...

There are plenty of other option now. Even DoD is reconsidering it's options due this the mess that this merger is causing.

Even if you're paying for premium, if you have an ad blocker enabled, it will lag like crazy. Definitely considering cancelling everything Google related that I'm paying for (greedy aholes!).

There are actually too few "pros" to hire. Most of the "IA people", and I use that term loosely, I work with don't have a clue what they're doing.

On the helpful side, it takes them out of the voting pool as well...

If you have a Microsoft system, your system is constantly leaking data to Microsoft. Smartscreen for the OS and web browser, in the name of security, are constantly sending data about what you're downloading, what sites you go to, what apps you're running/installing, etc. to supposedly help keep you safe while MS collects all that data and does who knows what with it. You can try to kill parts of it with local and/or group policy, but you cannot completely kill it (just like the other telemetry they collect).

Spot on. Look at the photos of Trump and Putin together - nothing but smiles from Putin. I don't think Putin has smiled since his orange buddy lost bigly. And let's not forget Trump having secret meetings with Putin (no interpreters or note takers on the American side at least) and the theft of classified documents (makes you wonder why there were so many empty folders - my guess is that he already sold the contents to the highest bidder).

Definitely agree. I've got a 15 year old Dell 3100cn that prints almost as good as the day I got it and still is running with the original toner cartridges since I don't print much. I can't imagine how many crappy Epson inkjet printers and clogged, dried out cartridges I would have went through in the same time frame along with the cost of all that ink and replacement heads and printers. My first and only inkjet was an Epson and it was so much trouble, I've never gotten another one from any vendor and never will. Laser definitely seems the best way to go and if you want quality photo prints, there's a lot of companies out there like Walmart and Shutterfly that do an excellent job when you need/want that type of quality print. For Epson, this is simply about greed and not what works best for the consumer.

Then those people working from home figured out they could pretend to work from home and get the same paycheck....

Definitely agree. Wasn't it just a little while ago that if you made changes to your own local hosts file to blackhole telemetry going to Microsoft, Defender would step in, consider that your hosts file was affected by malware and reset it (I might have the process slightly wrong, but the gist is Defender wouldn't let you block your data getting to Microsoft). If possible, it's time to dump this "insecure by default" OS and move to Linux if your work loads and habits can support it.

Every US military base of the appropriate size should have at least one of these. Lots of bases have lots of open spaces that might be a good fit for these and security will be tight being that they're placed on a military base. In addition, the bases could sell power back or supplement the local communities if additional power is needed if they're spec'd correctly and the base will have a secure source of power for it's own needs helping to offset the costs to the US Gov't.

Just saying....

These companies should not be allowed to settle for an undisclosed sum and then say they're innocent. If you had to pay out to keep the facts a secret then you're most likely guilty. This should not be a recourse available to these companies. They should have to go through full disclosure and then a jury trial if warranted based on the facts. Paying off the prosecutors should not be an option.

One other big problem are the contractors building these projects for the Gov't. Their main emphasis is on keeping the contract as long as possible vice getting the job done and moving on to the next project. This results in pretty much the standard "behind schedule and over budget" that you see for a majority of big Gov't contracts and some of the poor workmanship coming out of the billions of dollars spent for something, because then they can say "hey, we can fix that for you for another couple billion dollars". Since the Gov't allowed mostly all the contractors to merge into only a handful of "too big to fail" contractors, it's not like there's even much a way to bring in competition to make it better.

Based on Texas's past rhetoric, I'd say they'll probably try to blame the Solar and Wind industries for the outages instead of the poor management of their grid.