Does this work in the US? Even with an iPhone and Apple Pay, this sounds like an interesting approach.

While I agree with the anti Oracle sentiment, that’s 21,000 employees that didn’t say they wanted AI BS. The suits and ceos that do this aren’t the ones that pay the price. It’s always the ordinary people like you and I.

It's amazing that I work for a large European company in America and am forced to accept calls or come into the plant 24/7.

It's almost like it has to come from a government to make corporations behave.

I have colleagues that have their out of offices set to "I'll be available by cell or email" or somesuch. Mine doesn't say anything, and I don't check it unless I want to. My vacation time is MY time.

I have been recovering from my 4th COVID infection. I've told people, it's not Pokemon, I've NOT gotta catch em all. Seems bad luck, my immune system, or shitty people I work around will continue to give it to me. 🫤

Yes they are. As I am at home with COVID for the 4th time. I interviewed a guy in a small room a week ago Friday, and he coughed all through the interview. I was masked. He wasn't. Two of us caught it. And I found out today they hired the clown. There are strong desires to cuss him out on his first day. Fuck that guy.

I used it when my wife was at the hospital and they had a public wifi network with no password. I already have Google One, so it was a no Brainer in my case.

I wish I shared your optimism.

Alabama guy here. So disappointed in my state. I’ve been pushing for Doug Jones, but I keep getting, “I don’t like Doug Jones!” He’s better than an ignorant washed up Florida man half ass football coach. I’ve not heard the sack of nails before. I’ve heard box of rocks bag of hammers. Gonna keep it and add it to my repertoire.

macOS: Lack of official support for models that are still relevant. I've got the last MacBook Pro that was fully upgradable, a mid 2012 model with a dual core 4th gen i7. You can upgrade everything in it, and I have. 16gb of RAM, two disks, one an SSD, and the other a large HDD. But the latest official version of MacOS is Catalina. But I'm running Ventura on it now with no issues. And in similar respect, no upgradability at all of the new Macs after purchase. It's very anti consumer.

It shouldn’t be a crime to send my child to a better school system than I can afford to live in.

I live in a poor area of Alabama, I’d give almost anything to be able to pack my shit and get my children to a better school district.

I can speak a little on this. I am a resident of Alabama in one of the poorer counties, Pickens. Median household income per Wikipedia is $26,254. I'd say that ranks pretty low. 20% of families, and 24% of people here live below the poverty line. I have lived here all my life. Prior to COVID in the US, our only local hospital closed in 2020. It is now a 30-40 minute drive to Tuscaloosa or Columbus MS for emergency care on a good day. There are local clinics, but nothing for OBGYN care or emergency treatment. There was a doctor who came to the local hospital weekly for local appointments prior to the closure.

During my wife's first pregnancy, care was pretty good even having to drive the 40 minutes to each appointment and waiting in the car. (During COVID, the OB offices would only allow the patient inside).

The second pregnancy my wife miscarried towards the end of the 1st trimester, and we had to wait until the following day to come back for her D&C procedure. She collapsed the following morning at the hospital due to blood loss. Or what I'd call lack of care from Alabama hospitals. Thankfully, this was prior to Alabama's new silly abortion and pregnancy laws. I can't imagine how this would've been handled then.

Her third (and hopefully final from both of our standpoints) pregnancy went fairly well, but it sure seemed the doctors and quality of care and ability to do things changed between the 1st and 3rd pregnancy. The only thing I can think of is Alabama's new stupid laws around pregnancy. I'm glad we are both done with having kids.

We aren't well off, but compared to many here, we are. I can't imagine it working out well for many of our fellow citizens in Alabama.

And now onto the rural hospitals part. As mentioned above, our local hospital closed just prior to COVID. I am a first responder as a volunteer fireman for the community. With the closure of the local hospital, our local ambulance company (which is coincidentally managed by a company from Tuscaloosa county) has been hard pressed to keep up with emergency demand. They may have 2 trucks on a good day to cover a population of 20,000 people spread over 900 square miles. (2300 km2). It is not unusual for us to wait 40 minutes or longer for an ambulance. Our situation is also not helped by frequent flyers or people that could get there on their own but think going by ambulance gets them in and out faster. (it's a really common misconception.)

Prior to the local hospital closure, we'd work a code all the way to the hospital in the back of an ambulance with the paramedics. Nowadays, the ambulance arrives, we state how long we've been doing CPR, the ambulance crew observes, sometimes assists, and watches, gets an ECG reading, calls the doctor on duty at one of the ERs, and if there's no good news, we stop there and tell the family we've done all we can. It FUCKING SUCKS. At least prior to the closure, they had that hope as we loaded them into the ambulance and left with them that maybe they'd make it. Nowadays, you're there for all of it. The initial hope, the shock, the crushing realization. It takes a toll on all of us. Volunteers are down, and I can't help but think the stresses of all this are a major part of it.

And the final kick in the dick for all of this is remember where I said our local ambulance service is managed out of Tuscaloosa? Tuscaloosa fines them if they don't have an ambulance available. Our county has no such stipulation. So if their county's ambulances are tied up, ours get pulled over there, and we are left with nothing and no local care.

There has been a major push by local mayors to get funding to open the hospital ER back up and use the hospital part as a mental health unit for teens from across the state. We thought a good deal had been reached, but our own state senator out of Tuscaloosa shot it down and spent the money elsewhere. I'll remember that next time I vote, and I've been telling everyone that I see in the community to remember it also. The mayors even got a group together to go to the state capital and make their case only to be told that they thought they were speaking to the wrong committee about it. So we were told to wait until 2024 and see what happens. I suspect nothing will change in this dump, and people will continue to suffer. That's what I expect.

Sorry for the long rant, this is something I'm directly involved with, and rather passionate about. Thanks for reading this far if you have.

My wife had a miscarriage a few years back. Yeah. All we got for our trouble was a massive bill. 0/10. Fuck this shit and this place.

Man I was looking at one of the Bambus to supplement my old Monoprice Maker Select. I was hoping to something with less fuss.

I would highly recommend the hand of thrawn duology as well.

So I've been wondering this for a while. Is there a way for Google to associate my usage of Newpipe or similar to my actual Google account? I hate all the ads, but don't want to lose all of my Google account stuff. I've got a lot invested in it.

Visited Nova Scotia for work several years ago. I'd go back in a heartbeat! Sign me up, and it'd get me out of Alabama.

I am struggling on this one.

I want to say the 4th, but that may be rose tinted glasses. SNES and Genesis were amazing, games were finished, no DLC, no updates, no accounts, no online, but the more I look at it, the more I think that is rose tinted because of other family and societal issues at the time. But 16 bit hardware is ALWAYS special to me.

Then I’m tied on 6th or 7th (6-7, if you will). The era of local co-ops with Xboxes and 360s (I think you could link 360s the same way?) networked together is hard to beat. Halo-Halo 3 with friends are some of my fondest teenage memories. 16 people on 4 Xboxes was amazing, and I’m sad it’s not really a thing anymore. My PS3 still gets used, my Wii is amazing, it opened up games to non gamers. My GameCube was awesome for its time. It’s tough to say. But I’m gonna go with 7th gen for my halo 3 and halo 3 master chief 360, sadly gone now.

I left after they banned Apollo and other apps, but it’s a mess when it shows up in my search results nowadays with the unstoppable app prompt on mobile. I’d I accidentally click a Reddit link while searching, it’s an automatic back for me. They treat their users terribly.

Good news, you’ve not missed anything. It’s a shit app for the id4 at least.

There is also a PC based offline barcode generator called Zint. I've used it a lot over the years. It can generate regular barcodes, QR codes, or other ones. It's very handy. You can generate using batch files with it also, if you have a lot to do.