Machine learning has some pretty cool potential in certain areas, especially in the medical field. Unfortunately the predominant use of it now is slop produced by copyright laundering shoved down our throats by every techbro hoping they’ll be the next big thing.

That’s cool, and I’d love to see it. “wage” means hourly payment for time worked. Anything else is a benefit or whatever - but not wage. Wage theft is not getting paid wages due.

Vacation time is not the same as hourly wage.

I don’t think we really disagree here. You’re focusing on what people are. I’m focusing on how they see themselves. They’re not necessarily the same things.

Doesn’t mean you don’t call yourself middle class, because at least you’re not homeless. At the very least, “lower-middle class”

20-something years ago PBS had an excellent documentary called “People Like Us: Social Class in America” to show, well, social class in America. If you can find it, or at least clips of it, I’d recommend it. There was one cutscene with a bunch of people being asked which class they see themselves as, and pretty much everyone felt they were “middle class” - but you could tell by the way they presented themselves (clothes, jewelry, etc) that they were all over the place.

Pretty much everyone calls themselves middle class. Outside of the extremes one would expect, there will always be richer and poorer people among you, meaning you’re in the “middle” - whether you’re struggling to make rent or debating whether or not to go to the vacation home this weekend.

Use it or lose it is very common, even in (US) government employment.

Ask anyone who works support how fucking stupid the general population

They’re going to have a huge selection bias though - much of the “general population” will start elsewhere with things like documentation or brains.

I forgot about that! And most songs sound like ass when you hear it over a phone, especially before whatever they did in the last decade to make voice calls more clear

I don’t think that’s going to be an unpopular opinion around here. Maybe a little tricky in the logistics of distinguishing between an artist and influencer and finding an artist who you like and can pay for a phone background, but other than that you’re not going to find many Lemmings saying “no, pay an influencer!”

Remember when people paid for ringtones? Doesn’t mean it isn’t stupid, especially as a subscription, but people do stupid things and other people take advantage.

If everything is running on renewables, cool. Until then, there’s still the opportunity cost.

Not really. There were plenty of random pages, but you really had to seek it out to see it. Now an overwhelming majority of non-ad posts are stuff like this (and I wouldn’t be surprised if they pay to have this stuff seen, basically making it an ad)

I’m not sure that’s necessarily true. There are plenty of military contractors out there, and a driver is the kind of position you would expect to be likely contracted out. That in no way makes one a soldier.

Hard bread with hard ingredients (like meat chunks or salami), soft bread with soft ingredients (like egg salad). I’d call a burger medium soft, and ciabatta is too hard for that

The Bolt is ok. It has a screen and Android Auto and stuff, but I only use it for Android Auto navigation and energy stats when I’m curious. For pretty much everything else, there are good ol’ fashioned buttons.

Oh, it does have OnStar and some stuff associated with that, but GM discontinued the worst of it after a class action lawsuit.

Part of the problem comes when companies go out of their way to provide a service on their end that could be covered reasonably easily on the consumer’s side of things. Why put a few cents worth of storage in a device and make it locally accessible when you can make it cloud-connected and hosted to turn it into a revenue stream?

Another example, GM has had OnStar for ages. It does the same things your cell phone does, so it’s hard to justify the subscription. Plus Android Auto/Car Play works really well and relies on something you update more often. So naturally, GM revamped their infotainment to do the things you’d have your phone do and got rid of Android Auto/Car Play.

I’m not a fan of the company, but at least this one has a handful of different platforms underneath it - Oculus, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook. Having Facebook the product and Facebook the overarching company kind of ads a little complication.

I don’t quite feel the same way about Alphabet/Google, but at least that’s more subtle.

X can fuck the duck right off.

They don’t already? My library system has since at least the early '00s.

It’s a battery. You put it in the car, and it powers it. How much support does the manufacturer need to provide that can’t be baked into the initial cost?