Wow, brazen racism and elitism. Of course, it's ok because it's targetted at someone who disagrees with your "right-think" ? This is part of the reason Trump got elected in the first place.
Yeah, millions of Trumpflakes (God, I wish I came up with that) got their precious little feelings hurt so badly, it motivated them to go to the polls in droves and propelled good ol' orange-face to victory.
Trump won because he's a good salesman and enough Americans were stupid enough to buy his bullshit. His pitch sounded good if you had an entirely broken bullshit detector. Bring back well-paying blue collar jobs, undo the ACA clusterfuck, keep those nasty terrorists/mexicans out, drain the swamp, and something to do with "Merry Christmas". But if you believed a billionaire, born with a silver spoon in his mouth, is going to do anything to help out anyone except his rich amigos, have I got a bridge to sell you.
Truth is, whether you vote for the right or the left, you're just picking which set of rich assholes get to have you underfoot. The right have just done a better job of convincing the average American that their boots hurt less.
I like my Internet free, but recent article in The Atlantic made me second-guess this.
Then you misunderstand the concept of Net Neutrality. It does not guarantee that there has to be a competitor to eBay, for example. What it does guarantee is that if you wanted to start a competitor to eBay, or you're a customer of a hypothetical new auction site, ISPs can't give preferential treatment to traffic from eBay because they had the resources to pay to be in the "fast lane".
To see the future, look at the wireless industry, where it already pretty much doesn't apply:
Net Neutrality is supposed to prevent shit like https://www.t-mobile.com/offer...>this, where an ISP gives preferential treatment to specific sites, or on the flipside, throttles sites that haven't coughed up their "protection money".
Most wireless providers these days also scale down (usually to 480p) and recompress any video you stream - significantly reducing the quality from what was provided by the server of the original site.
Then there's my personal pet peeve - tethering fees. Many wireless providers actually expect you to pay an additional monthly fee, to share the same high-speed data allotment *you're already fucking paying for*, with another device. This would be tantamount to the water company putting individual water meters on each point-of-use in your house, and charging a higher fee for potable uses, even though it's all exactly the same water.
Maybe its because I don't generally drink and eat at the same time, I don't wash my food down....so, ANY roast turkey I've ever had, tastes mostly like dried cardboard to me.
Fried in peanut oil, it's one of the most moist and delicious things you can put in your month. (as terrible as that sounds)
But if you don't want to deal with 4+ gallons (hey, it's a US holiday, so imperial measurements, baby!) of expensive, hot, highly flammable cooking oil, try an electric roaster instead. Yeah, those things you see stacked to the ceiling in Walmart the second after they toss out all the pumpkins and plastic skeletons. Inject the turkey with this stuff, rub it with peanut oil, sprinkle on some poultry seasoning, and toss in the electric roaster. Use one of these thermometers, so you don't let the heat out of the roaster constantly checking the turkey.
The skin will look ghastly, but the meat will be every bit as succulent and delicious as if you'd fried the bird. If this still doesn't convince you turkey is a fricken awesome meal, I suppose you could always celebrate Thanksgiving with a cold Soylent meal replacement shake.
Most people don't like when DST ends, not when it is in effect.
You have to be a morning person to actually like DST. Fuck that. Anyone who enjoys being awake at the crack of dawn should just get up early of their own accord.
If you ask me, the biggest waste isn't daylight. It's all the road space, electrical generating capacity, and cell network bandwidth that goes unused every night, because there's a silly stigma against working the graveyard shift. Unless you work outside, it makes absolutely no difference whether the sun is shining over your place of employment. Convince half the population to be nocturnal and you've doubled the capacity of your roads, without paving a single new lane.
Oh, but it so is. Trump has made a point, over and over again, of announcing policy over his personal Twitter account; he himself reminds us regularly that Twitter is the main way to "get his message out" (sic).
Seems like something out of Idiocracy, where you've got the POTUS giving his personal endorsement to a for-profit social media company.
That, and he pretty much uses it to slander every company he doesn't like. How that is even remotely considered acceptable conduct for the POTUS is beyond me.
Remember forks censorship is ok when the left does it.
This wasn't "the left". It was a lone wolf performing an act of digital vandalism, and he'll face the consequences of his actions.
That being said, it might benefit his approval rating if Trump spent less time incessantly whining on Twitter about sensationalized issues du jour, and more time learning how to suck less at being president. He could start by reading the Constitution.
Have you noticed your Internet bill going up lately?
This.
I've had Earthlink through BrightHouse the last several years. It used be significantly cheaper than the "internet only" price offered by BrightHouse. The price has slowly been creeping up, and now that BrightHouse has been gobbled up by Charter Communications, it's only a matter of time before there's a big price increase.
As a 1%er who doesn't need more tax cuts, I can't help but to shake my head at all of the dumb people who vote to make their lives worse.
A common reason many Americans vote Republican is that they simply believe the burden of socialist programs will fall hardest upon them. I.e., the poor will be exempt due to low income, and the rich will exploit tax loopholes to avoid paying their fair share, so who does that leave holding the proverbial bag? Sadly, this isn't too far from the truth.
There's also a prevailing attitude in this country that you shouldn't be punished for being successful. The meme of hard work equals success is instilled since a young age, and it easily leads to the logically fallacious belief that someone who is successful must have worked hard to achieve it. Why would you want to punish those who have worked the hardest, with higher taxes? Ironically, many 1%ers do understand that social programs are investments back in to society, rather than a punishment. Hence why the most productive cities generally lean Democrat.
Why am I not counting my Bitcoin riches right now? Because the last time Bitcoin crashed to $250ish, a strange thing happened: I still had to spend most of the money I make on cost-of-living expenses. But for the sake of argument, let's say I had $250 to blow on some cyber magic money back then. I'd have around $6k today, which would certainly be nice, but not exactly time to pack up the truck and move to Beverly Hills.
Hell, I could've made myself rich by investing in a shitload of R-22 (yes, refrigerant), years ago when the phaseout was first announced. But again, bills...
Somehow part of my post disappeared, and I didn't pay attention to the preview. It was supposed to read:
Not sure if you're being sarcastic, but there's only two choices if you want a current generation sub-5" smartphone: Sony's Xperia Compact line, or the iPhone. If you want a 4" smartphone that isn't a clamshell packaged pile of crap, permanently stuck on an outdated version of Android, the iPhone SE is your only choice. Because somewhere along the line, every Android phone manufacturer simply decided to concede that market to Apple.
I'm sorry but the iPhone 8 and iPhone X are crap. The best phone on the market right now is the iPhone SE.
Not sure if you're being sarcastic, but there's only two choices if you want a current generation only choice. Because somewhere along the line, every Android phone manufacturer simply decided to concede that market to Apple.
Can we all just take a minute to sit back and remind ourselves this is not normal.
We were warned that perhaps it was a bad idea to give nuclear launch authority to the crazy real estate mogul/reality TV star. But the electoral college made sure the 'merica contingent prevailed.
Anyway, as I was saying before I was so rudely modded down for stating the truth...
I'm thoroughly convinced the whole "snowflake" thing is just projection. If you keep your easily butthurt supporters worried about things like football players kneeling and keeping Christ in the winter solstice festival, maybe they won't notice how much you suck at being president.
MAGA: Make Armageddon Great Again
If Trump does get us into a nuclear war by the holiday season, at least Weird Al already made the perfect soundtrack.
Not only do all of these States continue this ineffective program, it has been proposed in several more states as the true driver behind it is Conservative ideology that the poor are mostly lazy addicts. Something which ironically their own data disputes
Poor: People who, despite their ample income, can't help themselves from spending it all on hookers and blow.
Yup, that sounds about right up conservative alley. They really can't seem to wrap their heads around the fact that not everyone can find a well paying job. That and if you're barely keeping the rent paid, why in hell would you want to spend money on illegal drugs?
I agree that people should want to be productive members of society. However, people aren't paid according to the contribution they make to society, but rather how the market values the goods and services they produce.
We're not talking about the momentary value of labor versus its perceived contribution to the betterment of society - this is about a hypothetical future economy where automation has simply eliminated the need for many jobs to be performed by humans. Throughout most of history, if your job had become obsolete due to progress, you'd simply re-train for something applicable to your skill set. That solution is only sustainable as long as jobs remain available in other fields which require similar skill sets. As an ever increasing number of jobs are eliminated due to automation, there will be proportionally greater competition over the few jobs which remain.
It's inevitable that some people simply won't be able to, or simply won't want to re-train for another job, just to fight tooth-and-nail against everyone else who is doing exactly the same thing. So, you give them a UBI and tell them "Thanks for playing Capitalism, better luck next time, here's your parting gift!" Meanwhile, you've got the people who own the robots, and those lucky enough to still have marketable skills, flaunting all the great stuff they're able to purchase. Please tell me that's not a recipe for disaster.
The reason capitalism has worked so well (nitpicking aside) is that perseverance is generally rewarded. Yes, there are plenty of examples of people who work hard and don't get paid well for it, and people who barely work and rake in the dough. But by and large, for most of western civilization, if you're willing to work - you'll find the means to support yourself. Take away that drive to succeed (because we're talking about this hypothetical future where jobs are scarce), and where does it leave your society?
and I'm guessing we're not going to do a damn thing about it because a good chunk of us can't bear the thought of somebody having a nice things in life and not working relentlessly to get it.
Nobody is ever going to get nice things without working hard to earn them. At best, they'd have their basic needs met and probably not feel much fulfillment in knowing their existence amounts to being a burden on society.
Charles Dickens pretty much nailed the conservative mentality towards this in A Christmas Carol. If those who are unable to work can't make use of the existing social services already in place, then they may as well die to eliminate their burden on society. Notwithstanding the negative stigma associated with suicide, obviously.
Automation reduces the need for human labor, yet all humans need to be productive members of society. It's quite a paradox to solve. To paraphrase Agent Smith from The Matrix, there is another society on this planet that found a way for every member of their society to be productive: The Amish.
I'm sure it did, but if it were only them, then Trump would not have won. He won because he had support from non-white and non-male voters.
I never said Trump only had the support of the younger, straight, white, male voters. I said his campaign promises resonated especially well with them. Look at photos/videos from his rallies. Hillary didn't have anything like that. It's hard to get anyone excited about the status quo. It was also painfully obvious Hillary was being disingenuous in pandering to Bernie Sanders supporters, after his loss in the primaries.
The media (or "fake news", if you prefer) would have you believe that Hillary makes her "deplorables" remark, and *poof*, there goes the vote from a whole bunch of registered Republican voters who were on the fence. Trump calls Mexicans "rapists", and *poof*, there goes his Latino support down the drain. Actual psychological studies have shown most people's political views aren't quite so malleable, and hearing negative information/facts about their chosen candidate can, paradoxically, further reinforce their support. The irony is, most of us know from personal experience how futile it is to argue politics with family/friends/online, yet will simultaneously hold the belief that some voters must be flip/flopping between candidates when an "October surprise" is unleashed.
If you look at the number of eligible voters who simply didn't even vote, it becomes obvious that rousing your supporters and getting them to the polls is far more important than the exercise in futility of attempting to convince your opponent's supporters to change sides. Most of Hillary's TV ads were slinging mud at Trump. Most of Trump's TV ads were about the jobs he'd be creating, how he'd be protecting the safety of our country, and how much less taxes the average American family would be paying.
Bullshit. She is a corrupt, lying, manipulative globalist.
Both candidates were pretty well hated. Perhaps pretty close to equally.
Thing is, as I said, Trump had a slick sales pitch for his candidacy. More jobs, less taxes, healthcare back to the way it was before Obama fucked with it, less people at your local Walmart speaking non-English languages, and a big push back towards "traditional" American values. I'm sure that resonated well with the younger, white, straight, male voters, who presumably imagined themselves driving off into the smog-filled sunset, in their brand new Ford F-150.
Of course, the real reasons the American Dream(TM) is out of reach for so many Americans is a myriad of complex economic factors, and really can't be solved with the stroke of a president's pen. But overly simplistic proposed solutions to complicated problems fit well in a tweet (and they also make good chants at political rallies e.g. "Build the wall!"), and when things don't actually work out, you can always blame it on obstruction by the opposing party.
Hillary's campaign didn't really hinge on her promising much to the American public beyond continuing the status quo. She had hoped voters would simply be so repulsed by Trump (and perhaps his positions on the issues), that they'd hold their nose and vote for her - or at the very, least stay home on election day if they were planning on voting Republican. Turned out not to be a winning strategy.
Trump won because there are a lot of foolish Americans who bought up the line of shit Trump was selling. Bring back jobs (reanimate the corpse of the late Steve Jobs)! Build the wall (and pay for it by selling grappling hooks to Mexicans)! Make healthcare affordable (by kicking off the sick people, duh)! Lock up Hillary (???)! Abolish the EPA (How bad can that possibly be?)! MAGA (Buy a stupid red hat)!
Hillary never really managed to coalesce her voter base around anything quite as rousing. The best thing she had going for her was that she wasn't Trump. She needed a miracle, not some protesters staying home.
For the last 10 years all phone companies have been doing is trying to make a "better iPhone" (as in the 2007 original).
I'm actually pretty disappointed in what passes for improvements on current-gen Android smartphones: Curved glass (because fuck perfect display geometry, I guess), rounded display edges (CRT nostalgia?), no headphone jack, on-screen navigation buttons (because some designer decided physical buttons are ugly), and all screen sizes below 5.2" are reserved for bargain-bin prepaid crap phones.
My top-loader washing machine doesn't look much different from the ones sold back in the 70s. I probably wouldn't have bought it if it had all sorts of superfluous features and embellishments, from 4 decades of "innovation". My current laptop doesn't look significantly different from the nearly 11-year-old laptop it replaced. Perhaps one day the smartphone industry will stop trying to shoot for the moon with "innovative" new designs, and just stick to improving performance, camera quality, and battery life.
Until a voice assistant is part of an affordable robot which can perform basic home chores (laundry/dishes/cleaning/mowing/take out the trash/etc.), I have no interest in one. Turning lights on and off, operating the TV, and ordering things online is not high on my list of tasks which need automation.
Try playing Pokemon Go in a rural area and you'll quickly understand why people cheat (GPS spoofing) at that game. Unlike deathmatch/PvP battle games where you're being a dick to legitimate players by cheating, PoGo's cheat simply enables you to play the game without having to walk/drive all over creation.
Naturally, Niantic regularly flips their shit over people cheating. It seems they don't want people who aren't willing to waste a ton of gasoline to enjoy playing their virtual cockfighting game.
... but I think it would be better to just quarantine all of the cheaters together so they can only play with each other.
This.
The negative stigma against cheating at video games really didn't start until most games went in the direction of online PvP. Pepperidge Farm remembers official strategy guides (printed on actual dead trees), Game Genie, and when developers actually included cheat codes in their games. Video games are just supposed to be entertainment - not a personal quest towards enlightenment. IMHO, all this taking games too seriously has sucked the fun out of gaming.
Being banned for cheating is like Hasbro confiscating your game of Monopoly because you didn't want to follow the official rules. Rather than ban 300k players, simply separate them from the non-cheaters, and let them have their free-for-all with each other. Problem solved, everybody is happy.
All the hate comes from the people who saw that same post, and -didn't- chuck in a few hundred bucks like you did.
As the saying goes: hindsight is 20/20. The technology landscape is littered with revolutionary ideas which totally flopped. DigiScents, the:CueCat, Divx, every early 2000s "Internet Appliance", disposable digital cameras/camcorders, self-destructing DVDs, etc. If I had thought any of those things was worth investing in, I'd have lost money, every time. It was entirely reasonable to view the concept of peer-to-peer currency, released by an anonymous developer, with a healthy dose of skepticism.
This was just one of those rare cases where betting on a long shot paid off big.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow, brazen racism and elitism. Of course, it's ok because it's targetted at someone who disagrees with your "right-think" ? This is part of the reason Trump got elected in the first place.
Yeah, millions of Trumpflakes (God, I wish I came up with that) got their precious little feelings hurt so badly, it motivated them to go to the polls in droves and propelled good ol' orange-face to victory.
Trump won because he's a good salesman and enough Americans were stupid enough to buy his bullshit. His pitch sounded good if you had an entirely broken bullshit detector. Bring back well-paying blue collar jobs, undo the ACA clusterfuck, keep those nasty terrorists/mexicans out, drain the swamp, and something to do with "Merry Christmas". But if you believed a billionaire, born with a silver spoon in his mouth, is going to do anything to help out anyone except his rich amigos, have I got a bridge to sell you.
Truth is, whether you vote for the right or the left, you're just picking which set of rich assholes get to have you underfoot. The right have just done a better job of convincing the average American that their boots hurt less.
I like my Internet free, but recent article in The Atlantic made me second-guess this.
Then you misunderstand the concept of Net Neutrality. It does not guarantee that there has to be a competitor to eBay, for example. What it does guarantee is that if you wanted to start a competitor to eBay, or you're a customer of a hypothetical new auction site, ISPs can't give preferential treatment to traffic from eBay because they had the resources to pay to be in the "fast lane".
To see the future, look at the wireless industry, where it already pretty much doesn't apply:
Net Neutrality is supposed to prevent shit like https://www.t-mobile.com/offer...>this, where an ISP gives preferential treatment to specific sites, or on the flipside, throttles sites that haven't coughed up their "protection money".
Most wireless providers these days also scale down (usually to 480p) and recompress any video you stream - significantly reducing the quality from what was provided by the server of the original site.
Then there's my personal pet peeve - tethering fees. Many wireless providers actually expect you to pay an additional monthly fee, to share the same high-speed data allotment *you're already fucking paying for*, with another device. This would be tantamount to the water company putting individual water meters on each point-of-use in your house, and charging a higher fee for potable uses, even though it's all exactly the same water.
Maybe its because I don't generally drink and eat at the same time, I don't wash my food down....so, ANY roast turkey I've ever had, tastes mostly like dried cardboard to me.
Fried in peanut oil, it's one of the most moist and delicious things you can put in your month. (as terrible as that sounds)
But if you don't want to deal with 4+ gallons (hey, it's a US holiday, so imperial measurements, baby!) of expensive, hot, highly flammable cooking oil, try an electric roaster instead. Yeah, those things you see stacked to the ceiling in Walmart the second after they toss out all the pumpkins and plastic skeletons. Inject the turkey with this stuff, rub it with peanut oil, sprinkle on some poultry seasoning, and toss in the electric roaster. Use one of these thermometers, so you don't let the heat out of the roaster constantly checking the turkey.
The skin will look ghastly, but the meat will be every bit as succulent and delicious as if you'd fried the bird. If this still doesn't convince you turkey is a fricken awesome meal, I suppose you could always celebrate Thanksgiving with a cold Soylent meal replacement shake.
Most people don't like when DST ends, not when it is in effect.
You have to be a morning person to actually like DST. Fuck that. Anyone who enjoys being awake at the crack of dawn should just get up early of their own accord.
If you ask me, the biggest waste isn't daylight. It's all the road space, electrical generating capacity, and cell network bandwidth that goes unused every night, because there's a silly stigma against working the graveyard shift. Unless you work outside, it makes absolutely no difference whether the sun is shining over your place of employment. Convince half the population to be nocturnal and you've doubled the capacity of your roads, without paving a single new lane.
Oh, but it so is. Trump has made a point, over and over again, of announcing policy over his personal Twitter account; he himself reminds us regularly that Twitter is the main way to "get his message out" (sic).
Seems like something out of Idiocracy, where you've got the POTUS giving his personal endorsement to a for-profit social media company.
That, and he pretty much uses it to slander every company he doesn't like. How that is even remotely considered acceptable conduct for the POTUS is beyond me.
Remember forks censorship is ok when the left does it.
This wasn't "the left". It was a lone wolf performing an act of digital vandalism, and he'll face the consequences of his actions.
That being said, it might benefit his approval rating if Trump spent less time incessantly whining on Twitter about sensationalized issues du jour, and more time learning how to suck less at being president. He could start by reading the Constitution.
Have you noticed your Internet bill going up lately?
This.
I've had Earthlink through BrightHouse the last several years. It used be significantly cheaper than the "internet only" price offered by BrightHouse. The price has slowly been creeping up, and now that BrightHouse has been gobbled up by Charter Communications, it's only a matter of time before there's a big price increase.
As a 1%er who doesn't need more tax cuts, I can't help but to shake my head at all of the dumb people who vote to make their lives worse.
A common reason many Americans vote Republican is that they simply believe the burden of socialist programs will fall hardest upon them. I.e., the poor will be exempt due to low income, and the rich will exploit tax loopholes to avoid paying their fair share, so who does that leave holding the proverbial bag? Sadly, this isn't too far from the truth.
There's also a prevailing attitude in this country that you shouldn't be punished for being successful. The meme of hard work equals success is instilled since a young age, and it easily leads to the logically fallacious belief that someone who is successful must have worked hard to achieve it. Why would you want to punish those who have worked the hardest, with higher taxes? Ironically, many 1%ers do understand that social programs are investments back in to society, rather than a punishment. Hence why the most productive cities generally lean Democrat.
You can't stop crypto-currencies.
Another tool for the already-rich to get richer.
Why am I not counting my Bitcoin riches right now? Because the last time Bitcoin crashed to $250ish, a strange thing happened: I still had to spend most of the money I make on cost-of-living expenses. But for the sake of argument, let's say I had $250 to blow on some cyber magic money back then. I'd have around $6k today, which would certainly be nice, but not exactly time to pack up the truck and move to Beverly Hills.
Hell, I could've made myself rich by investing in a shitload of R-22 (yes, refrigerant), years ago when the phaseout was first announced. But again, bills...
Somehow part of my post disappeared, and I didn't pay attention to the preview. It was supposed to read:
Not sure if you're being sarcastic, but there's only two choices if you want a current generation sub-5" smartphone: Sony's Xperia Compact line, or the iPhone. If you want a 4" smartphone that isn't a clamshell packaged pile of crap, permanently stuck on an outdated version of Android, the iPhone SE is your only choice. Because somewhere along the line, every Android phone manufacturer simply decided to concede that market to Apple.
I'm sorry but the iPhone 8 and iPhone X are crap. The best phone on the market right now is the iPhone SE.
Not sure if you're being sarcastic, but there's only two choices if you want a current generation only choice. Because somewhere along the line, every Android phone manufacturer simply decided to concede that market to Apple.
Every day, we seem to have another crypto-currency being touted and most seem like vapor-ware.
Founders are gonna put on a good show, then take investor money and run.
That's the very definition of alt-coin: A pump-n-dump scam to obtain more BTC, by trading something worthless in exchange.
And then BTC gets exchanged for USD... So, it's ultimately just one big elaborate scam to get what people really want - good old American cash.
Can we all just take a minute to sit back and remind ourselves this is not normal.
We were warned that perhaps it was a bad idea to give nuclear launch authority to the crazy real estate mogul/reality TV star. But the electoral college made sure the 'merica contingent prevailed.
Anyway, as I was saying before I was so rudely modded down for stating the truth...
I'm thoroughly convinced the whole "snowflake" thing is just projection. If you keep your easily butthurt supporters worried about things like football players kneeling and keeping Christ in the winter solstice festival, maybe they won't notice how much you suck at being president.
MAGA: Make Armageddon Great Again
If Trump does get us into a nuclear war by the holiday season, at least Weird Al already made the perfect soundtrack.
Not only do all of these States continue this ineffective program, it has been proposed in several more states as the true driver behind it is Conservative ideology that the poor are mostly lazy addicts. Something which ironically their own data disputes
Poor: People who, despite their ample income, can't help themselves from spending it all on hookers and blow.
Yup, that sounds about right up conservative alley. They really can't seem to wrap their heads around the fact that not everyone can find a well paying job. That and if you're barely keeping the rent paid, why in hell would you want to spend money on illegal drugs?
I agree that people should want to be productive members of society. However, people aren't paid according to the contribution they make to society, but rather how the market values the goods and services they produce.
We're not talking about the momentary value of labor versus its perceived contribution to the betterment of society - this is about a hypothetical future economy where automation has simply eliminated the need for many jobs to be performed by humans. Throughout most of history, if your job had become obsolete due to progress, you'd simply re-train for something applicable to your skill set. That solution is only sustainable as long as jobs remain available in other fields which require similar skill sets. As an ever increasing number of jobs are eliminated due to automation, there will be proportionally greater competition over the few jobs which remain.
It's inevitable that some people simply won't be able to, or simply won't want to re-train for another job, just to fight tooth-and-nail against everyone else who is doing exactly the same thing. So, you give them a UBI and tell them "Thanks for playing Capitalism, better luck next time, here's your parting gift!" Meanwhile, you've got the people who own the robots, and those lucky enough to still have marketable skills, flaunting all the great stuff they're able to purchase. Please tell me that's not a recipe for disaster.
The reason capitalism has worked so well (nitpicking aside) is that perseverance is generally rewarded. Yes, there are plenty of examples of people who work hard and don't get paid well for it, and people who barely work and rake in the dough. But by and large, for most of western civilization, if you're willing to work - you'll find the means to support yourself. Take away that drive to succeed (because we're talking about this hypothetical future where jobs are scarce), and where does it leave your society?
and I'm guessing we're not going to do a damn thing about it because a good chunk of us can't bear the thought of somebody having a nice things in life and not working relentlessly to get it.
Nobody is ever going to get nice things without working hard to earn them. At best, they'd have their basic needs met and probably not feel much fulfillment in knowing their existence amounts to being a burden on society.
Charles Dickens pretty much nailed the conservative mentality towards this in A Christmas Carol. If those who are unable to work can't make use of the existing social services already in place, then they may as well die to eliminate their burden on society. Notwithstanding the negative stigma associated with suicide, obviously.
Automation reduces the need for human labor, yet all humans need to be productive members of society. It's quite a paradox to solve. To paraphrase Agent Smith from The Matrix, there is another society on this planet that found a way for every member of their society to be productive: The Amish.
I'm sure it did, but if it were only them, then Trump would not have won. He won because he had support from non-white and non-male voters.
I never said Trump only had the support of the younger, straight, white, male voters. I said his campaign promises resonated especially well with them. Look at photos/videos from his rallies. Hillary didn't have anything like that. It's hard to get anyone excited about the status quo. It was also painfully obvious Hillary was being disingenuous in pandering to Bernie Sanders supporters, after his loss in the primaries.
The media (or "fake news", if you prefer) would have you believe that Hillary makes her "deplorables" remark, and *poof*, there goes the vote from a whole bunch of registered Republican voters who were on the fence. Trump calls Mexicans "rapists", and *poof*, there goes his Latino support down the drain. Actual psychological studies have shown most people's political views aren't quite so malleable, and hearing negative information/facts about their chosen candidate can, paradoxically, further reinforce their support. The irony is, most of us know from personal experience how futile it is to argue politics with family/friends/online, yet will simultaneously hold the belief that some voters must be flip/flopping between candidates when an "October surprise" is unleashed.
If you look at the number of eligible voters who simply didn't even vote, it becomes obvious that rousing your supporters and getting them to the polls is far more important than the exercise in futility of attempting to convince your opponent's supporters to change sides. Most of Hillary's TV ads were slinging mud at Trump. Most of Trump's TV ads were about the jobs he'd be creating, how he'd be protecting the safety of our country, and how much less taxes the average American family would be paying.
Bullshit. She is a corrupt, lying, manipulative globalist.
Both candidates were pretty well hated. Perhaps pretty close to equally.
Thing is, as I said, Trump had a slick sales pitch for his candidacy. More jobs, less taxes, healthcare back to the way it was before Obama fucked with it, less people at your local Walmart speaking non-English languages, and a big push back towards "traditional" American values. I'm sure that resonated well with the younger, white, straight, male voters, who presumably imagined themselves driving off into the smog-filled sunset, in their brand new Ford F-150.
Of course, the real reasons the American Dream(TM) is out of reach for so many Americans is a myriad of complex economic factors, and really can't be solved with the stroke of a president's pen. But overly simplistic proposed solutions to complicated problems fit well in a tweet (and they also make good chants at political rallies e.g. "Build the wall!"), and when things don't actually work out, you can always blame it on obstruction by the opposing party.
Hillary's campaign didn't really hinge on her promising much to the American public beyond continuing the status quo. She had hoped voters would simply be so repulsed by Trump (and perhaps his positions on the issues), that they'd hold their nose and vote for her - or at the very, least stay home on election day if they were planning on voting Republican. Turned out not to be a winning strategy.
...If they had Hilary would probably be president
Trump won because there are a lot of foolish Americans who bought up the line of shit Trump was selling. Bring back jobs (reanimate the corpse of the late Steve Jobs)! Build the wall (and pay for it by selling grappling hooks to Mexicans)! Make healthcare affordable (by kicking off the sick people, duh)! Lock up Hillary (???)! Abolish the EPA (How bad can that possibly be?)! MAGA (Buy a stupid red hat)!
Hillary never really managed to coalesce her voter base around anything quite as rousing. The best thing she had going for her was that she wasn't Trump. She needed a miracle, not some protesters staying home.
For the last 10 years all phone companies have been doing is trying to make a "better iPhone" (as in the 2007 original).
I'm actually pretty disappointed in what passes for improvements on current-gen Android smartphones: Curved glass (because fuck perfect display geometry, I guess), rounded display edges (CRT nostalgia?), no headphone jack, on-screen navigation buttons (because some designer decided physical buttons are ugly), and all screen sizes below 5.2" are reserved for bargain-bin prepaid crap phones.
My top-loader washing machine doesn't look much different from the ones sold back in the 70s. I probably wouldn't have bought it if it had all sorts of superfluous features and embellishments, from 4 decades of "innovation". My current laptop doesn't look significantly different from the nearly 11-year-old laptop it replaced. Perhaps one day the smartphone industry will stop trying to shoot for the moon with "innovative" new designs, and just stick to improving performance, camera quality, and battery life.
Do as I do: Use none...
Until a voice assistant is part of an affordable robot which can perform basic home chores (laundry/dishes/cleaning/mowing/take out the trash/etc.), I have no interest in one. Turning lights on and off, operating the TV, and ordering things online is not high on my list of tasks which need automation.
Why bother cheating?
Try playing Pokemon Go in a rural area and you'll quickly understand why people cheat (GPS spoofing) at that game. Unlike deathmatch/PvP battle games where you're being a dick to legitimate players by cheating, PoGo's cheat simply enables you to play the game without having to walk/drive all over creation.
Naturally, Niantic regularly flips their shit over people cheating. It seems they don't want people who aren't willing to waste a ton of gasoline to enjoy playing their virtual cockfighting game.
... but I think it would be better to just quarantine all of the cheaters together so they can only play with each other.
This.
The negative stigma against cheating at video games really didn't start until most games went in the direction of online PvP. Pepperidge Farm remembers official strategy guides (printed on actual dead trees), Game Genie, and when developers actually included cheat codes in their games. Video games are just supposed to be entertainment - not a personal quest towards enlightenment. IMHO, all this taking games too seriously has sucked the fun out of gaming.
Being banned for cheating is like Hasbro confiscating your game of Monopoly because you didn't want to follow the official rules. Rather than ban 300k players, simply separate them from the non-cheaters, and let them have their free-for-all with each other. Problem solved, everybody is happy.
All the hate comes from the people who saw that same post, and -didn't- chuck in a few hundred bucks like you did.
As the saying goes: hindsight is 20/20. The technology landscape is littered with revolutionary ideas which totally flopped. DigiScents, the :CueCat, Divx, every early 2000s "Internet Appliance", disposable digital cameras/camcorders, self-destructing DVDs, etc. If I had thought any of those things was worth investing in, I'd have lost money, every time. It was entirely reasonable to view the concept of peer-to-peer currency, released by an anonymous developer, with a healthy dose of skepticism.
This was just one of those rare cases where betting on a long shot paid off big.