I rented a Fiesta when I was there for work and I think I hit about 110mph, but I live in Detroit and our highways are nicknamed the Michigan Autobahn so 90+ is not unusual. What was unusual and required some attention were the cars coming up behind you at over 150mph. If you chose to pass you had to look a lot further back to see if anyone was coming or you’d cut some Porsche/Merc/Beemer off.
I had a lot more fun on the twisting back roads in Germany and Belgium

XP was kind of a F up for MS, they gave us a really decent OS that raised our expectations. People ran that for almost 2 decades because no one wanted the new OS’s MS was putting out like ME and Vista. Win 8 was out when XP support fully ended and many people chose to go with the older Win 7 because it was less intrusive and more like a PC OS instead of trying to become like a Apple/phone/tablet interface. XP>Win 7>Win 10>Win 11 imo and all the unmentioned weren’t worth upgrading for, but I don’t use my phone for the internet and I’ve been using a PC for over 40 years. We like what’s familiar and we can use without having to think too much about the tool used to achieve what we’re doing. I have Win 11 on a laptop and I have to jump through a lot more hoops to control my desktop, who can pull my info, what can install, what can run in the background. And every update I have to do it again because they add shit back in again along with new stuff I don’t want or need. Win 10 professional at least minimized how often they’d add new stuff or change my existing settings. Win 11 Pro doesn’t seem nearly as friendly.

I recently added a printer to my PC. Having to launch that antique spooler window from like Windows 3.1 to print is a bit hilarious

I love India and the people from India. I worked in IT for Ford for over 30 years and had a lot of Indian coworkers and traveled to India a few times for work. Like others have said, all of them came over through technology jobs. Unfortunately many companies in the US play the green card game to keep your wages low. Finding a company that will help get your card is very tough. If you can handle the learning for controls engineering, a 2 year degree will get you a good paying job in a lot of the western world helping companies with their automation of production lines. One of my friends who had all the needed skills wanted to come to the US so much but his pronunciation of words was really bad and it was very hard to understand him so he could never get past an initial interview.
But I agree about the current state of India but nationalist leaders are gaining more power and Modi is an example of that. His playing the Hindu and nationalist card over and over again is an example of that. When I’d walk around it was always amazing to see stone and bronze workers doing work that’s been done for hundreds of years along side shops with ISO certification making advanced tooling and micro parts. India is where the Bronze age meets the digital age. I’ve never seen that anywhere else. China is probably the closest but I didn’t see as much technical incongruity on one street like I would in India.
As a worker and many agreed with this view, Indians and many Asians are great at following orders which is what they grew up with, but thinking out of the box was usually a challenge. I believe the freedoms of the west allow people more ability to see things differently and we feel like our view/idea/opinion has value and should be heard because of the differences in the individual. Because of that we’re more willing to contemplate other methods in our own heads about possibilities instead of just doing what rote learning taught and not go against the grain with teachers, bosses, etc. Like you’re finding, seeing what others choose not to see is a challenge. The young are the future and need to stand up for the view of the world they want. It has to start at the local level with enough force to be a regional power. Unfortunately the nationalist have a lot of thugs to do their work and wrack havoc on people trying to bring about change that would challenge those in power and bring more power to the individuals.

Unfortunately most rails are owned by those moving freight and they have right of way on their rails over transit trains. Every auto factory has rails connecting it so it is feasible with a little change and many suppliers are near the factories so light rail and bus service could feed those locations.

I worked with a lot of people making close to 6 figures who only had a 2 year associates degree in controls traveling right along side of me. They made more than me with less education but more technical skill. It’s also a job market that is growing like crazy; automation.

I had a triple major of Psych/Soc/Phil with the intent of teaching. My focus in Philosophy was mostly logic and analytical reasoning. I ended up marrying my GF and had to quit college in my junior year and go to work where I ended up doing a lot of computer work on the IBM XT. One late night working on electronic bids for parts we sold I realized computers are not going anywhere and focusing on that would get me out of this sales job. I went to Control Data for a year which got me in the door of a company. Programming was nothing but logic which was my focus in college so it came pretty easy to me. That was 1989. I contracted to Ford for the next 30+ years doing everything from data analysis at the start to SQL and DB’s for a while, and then I ended up on teams delivering software to the plants. I always wanted a job that would allow me to see the world and for over 20 years I traveled on the corporate dime, including an around the world trip for work in Asia and Europe on the same trip. I traveled almost 300k miles on planes during that time and had a chance to see how people live and work all over the world.

IMO no comparison to a nice pair of sandals. My grandkids got me some with pins? or whatever they’re called in them. They’re like slippers around the house and about as comfie but walking they’re not as nice as good sandals and driving in them is not great. However it is nice having an enclosed toe. If I had been wearing my sandals on a walk the other night when I caught a stick with the tip of the shoe it would have torn up my toe so they do offer more protection than an open toe sandal

I’ve seen 3 major highways built around Detroit while I’ve lived here. There was very little choice among normal citizens who live in the line of “progress”. 375 ruined some dynamic neighborhoods because those people lacked the power to force a change in the proposals. 696 spent significant additional money accommodating the citizens who had the power to modify the proposals. Highways make cities very unwalkable as well as taking space that could be better used

Yeah, I’m still sitting on my Roku for the time being. I keep all my other TV connections dumb so my TV and Blu Ray don’t have my WiFi info. I did finally get a HDMI for my laptop to connect to the TV to watch racing on YT without ads which is an adequate backup option now. I have studio monitors on my PC that are better than the soundbar/Sub on the TV, but when friends are over the TV works better for watching stuff

Odd. I’m able to listen to music there still

Not all of my Ad On’s are for YT, but yes I run a JS blocker and also block video’s and sound on all sites except YT

I actually liked and used the old pull up menus in Windows. Starting at Win10 I put everything I use on my desktop and avoid as much of Windows functionality as I can and turn off everything I can. I don’t want an Android or IOS type interface on my PC and will go to Linux at some point as Windows pushes that envelope further, or switch to some WinServer type setup where they allow the owner a lot more control of the OS

I’ve been tempted to sign up as well so I can stream to my TV through their app. I can block anything I want through my PC but smart TV’s are too locked down for my technical knowledge so I get ad’s which is unacceptable

I run uOrigin, flashblock, JS disabled, No Overlays, and DDG’s privacy ad on’s and I have no problems with YT

I actually do have an MSI laptop. I forgot I had read so many negative reviews of the Asus that I went the other direction. After posting that I got on my laptop and realized my mistake and remembered the negative reviews about them

For desktop motherboards I’ve usually gone MSI but my gaming laptop is an Asus and is a little over a year old. It’s worked perfect since I got it and I’ve had zero problems with it. The Nvidia GPU and laptop fans sure do sing when I’m playing games though

I got my first notification on my Win10 Pro box today about support ending too

I did corporate training for an international company for about 20 years. Once when I was in Mexico something happened in class and I said something was okay and used my finger and thumb to make the okay sign. They kind of laughed and started talking among themselves. I guess the okay sign means asshole in Mexico so when they explained that I laughed with them and said I didn’t know that. One of the jokers in class said “yeah, okay we believe you” and gave me the okay sign. lol

If youtube shows me anything but music video’s in my home page I tag them as do not like and don’t show this type of content