I wish this were true! The problem with Linux is that it is constantly changing. I have been using it for 30 years and have built my own embedded distros from scratch. Yet every time I turn around there moving this setup file to another directory or changing out that language for a slightly incompatible newer version. Trying to configure and maintain a box is a constant battle.

Windows is the polar opposite. The ui may have some annoying changes but under the hood it is frustratingly stable, often remaining unchanged for 20+ years (even the bugs live forever). Users crave simplicity and consistency. It is something Linux still needs to figure out.

Not really, my parents voted for him twice, and will vote for him again, but they are very careful around me to act like they would not.

Ultimately tech is a tool to help automate and solve people’s problems. You want to get close to the people your solving problems for so you can get feedback and figure out how to do your job. Your organization may not do this for you. I spend a lot of time on forums listening to my users, and do a lot of extra testing to make sure I’m solving there problems and not making new ones.

I agree with the first point completely. The apps are usually good for practicing vocabulary, but languages are dynamic, and change based on what was previously said. Talking to someone, anyone, is going to get you up and going a lot faster. Granted, finding someone willing to spend hours talking to you when your just learning can be hard. Look for apps that try to hook learners up.

I’m not sure where you are, but try to find an English community. If your in an English speaking country that is basically any community. If your not then look around for where the English expats hang out. When I was in Cameroon we had an “american club” that everyone was a part of. Having a common interest helps a lot in motivating everyone to talk together.

In a pinch you can force yourself to watch English television, possibly with subtitles. This helps your comprehension but lacks the back and forth of actually talking.

We need to implement ranked choice voting for all of elections. A third party candidate should not be something scary we hide from.

Intelligence is a collection of multiple things. Curiosity is a contributor, but far from an integral part.

Someone can be a brilliant mathematician, capable of computing complex equations that would stump most computers (metaphorically at least), but they may utterly lack creativity and curiosity. In any definition of intelligence we would consider them highly intelligent.

On the flip side someone may be completely filled with curiosity about the world, but lack the intelligence to read or write.

Technically that is a learned skill, this is why intelligence is really a fairly useless measure. What is intelligence? Memorizing lots of facts? Having loads of education? A built in understanding of the world that others lack (common sense)?

I think what really matters is that you find the thing in life where you fit, rather than worrying about how we measure up. I have known very intelligent people who were worthless human beings, and simple minded people who made the world more special every day. We focus too much on being smart, it is one of the least important attributes.

I know it is not your question but… Everyone says pockets for women’s fashion but that is not the most important. At least here in the US the most important is having proper sizes on clothes.

For the most part men’s clothes let you pick things right. You know your waist and inseam for pants, and often have a proper size for shirts and collars.

Women’s fashion often has no size other than the ambiguous s/m/l/xl indicator and teen/woman’s/plus often use the same tag to indicate wildly different sizes. On top of that, when close use a measurement it is not grounded in reality, so a 14 at one shop may be a 16 at another, and neither are a direct measure of your waist. Finally women’s pants only come in 3 lengths (petite, tall, or not specified) and it is difficult to find most combinations.

The best thing we could do for fashion in any sex is to standardize sizes globally and make them all based on a tape measure measurement. That way you could buy 32x30 pants online knowing they will fit, no matter the brand.

I did not read the story, but I am upper middle class with two kids in college. I don’t know that discriminates is the right word, but college is a huge burden on middle class families. If your income is low enough then you qualify for federal aid, and the vast majority of scholarships are class/race/gender based so it is difficult to get much support for middle class students.

My kids did qualify for a small merit based scholarship that the collage provided. But in spite of having very good grades, and very high SAT scores, neither got any other assistance.

The reason I don’t call it discrimination is two fold.

1. the assistance is there to try and help make it possible for lower income students to go to college. This is not a bad thing for our society and we should not be turning on each other crying unfair.

2. the real problem is that college is unaffordable. If it cost $10k to get a 4 year degree then middle class parents would have little trouble paying for it. When it is closer to $50k-$100k, then that is out of reach and no one can really bear the cost.

We need to focus on making colleges more affordable (probably by making them simpler, with less “perks”), and not focus on who gets the smaller slice of the pie.

I was a young programmer during the dot com boom. Old school companies like sears and newspapers were scared of the internet. They would occasionally try something small and half hearted on the web but never really tried to figure it out.

Sears is a great example. 20 years before the web they had a functioning mail order service with stores and warehouse all over the US. They were very close to what a modern Amazon is, without the web presence or rapid delivery. If they were brave they could have been Amazon, selling online and delivering to there extensive store network.

Newspapers had a very busy classified section. That could have been moved online easily enough. But they wanted to charge for there classifieds, while eBay or Crageslist let you post for free, making money off of add revenue or a broker fee.

They also were very popular with local advertisers, and could have transitioned there newspapers online for free with the same local advertisers. Instead they tried to charge or resisted being online at all, leaving room for other services like yahoo (later Facebook and Google news) to fill in the news business.

Finally if they had been smart they could have made a news sharing service among the papers (nexus, etc) that could have forced Google news to pay a small fee every time they shared a story, providing a steady revenue service.

I see a time in the future where traditional papers fully die, and something new rises from the ashes. My guess is it will be a return to local news, but with a very small staff running the whole show online.

My grandparents grew up on the depression. They had a very simple life. They had a tv on wheels that lived in the closet and only came out once a month or so to watch a football game. They had a radio they turned on to listen to classical music while working. And they had a newspaper and magazine subscription.

They woke up early, tended to there chores and to the garden. Then they would eat a leasurly breakfast with lots of little plates and saucers (egg cups, juice, coffee and water glasses, etc), basically it was an activity that took an hour. Then more chores.

My grandma always had a project going, making cookies for a neighbor, helping someone find a job. My grandpa would spend most of the day in his workshop repairing lawnmowers or building fun inventions (solar ovens, bird houses, etc).

Lunch and dinner were also big presentations that took an hour. It was not always a lot of food, but they took a lot of time with it. After diner they would sit in two chairs side by side reading books or more often than not just sitting quietly. Neither talked much, they were just content to be.

They ran some errands occasionally, but there only big event for the week was going to church. I don’t remember them ever going out to dinner or even to a friends house, though they did have friends who stopped by.

Mostly they were content to do very little. They were never bored, or at least they were content to be bored. I think the one big negative all technology has brought us is that we’re restless if we can’t find something to do. We don’t enjoy just sitting and listening to life.

Yes and no. Newspapers could be read the next day, after the original purchaser was done with it. And it was easy for a restaurant or business to share newspapers among many clients. Plus of course radio still provided free news that was quality.

The big problem now is that the best news sources are the most locked down. And the worst news sources are the most open. So it is difficult for a quality piece to make the rounds. Even if a link to an article could be shared for free, even if the website was locked down, things would be a lot better.

Finally newspapers charged for the cost of printing but made money off of advertising and classifieds. There is very little cost (per view) to digital publishing. If newspapers had embraced the Web 20 years ago they could have been Facebook or eBay, rather than having all there core revenue fall away.

Loco-Roco for the PSP. As a game developer, I consider this to be the pinnacle of game development. It is completely original, uses only two buttons, super intuitive, yet your drawn into it and want to play for hours. It makes me sad that few have heard of it.

Toy Story on the sega genesis (and snes) is a close second. It is actually a bit of a hot mess, each level is a completely different style of gameplay. But it is super rewarding to fight your way through to the end. And it showcases so many different styles of gameplay.