Spyke

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It’s time for Americans to embrace small cars

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My current car is an '07 Yaris. It's totally bare bones, but everyone who has been in it comments on how spacious the interior is.

I've always driven small cars, because they're economical and I've never needed anything larger. I hate that small hatchbacks are so scarce in the US and that our roads are overrun with ludicrously huge pickups and SUVs. We transitioned from land yachts to small cars in the late 1970's and 1980's, we could do it again with the right incentives.

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Microsoft to kill off VBScript in Windows to block malware delivery

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Another confirmation here. At my previous job, I was they guy who built Access databases and wrote VBA code. While not ideal, it was a very small business (less than 10 employees) and it was fit for purpose.

When I got a new job at a company with almost 3,000 employees, I was like, "Finally, I'll be working somewhere that has proper IT resources." Ha! I soon find out that my department runs critical business infrastructure with Excel macros. And we have a proper IT department.

As everyone has already said, if IT resources are in short supply (or the wait is too long, or building projects with IT support is a PITA), then people will build systems with the tools they have at hand. And that's often MS Office.

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Hexbear federation megathread

MHO... I would not miss Hexbear at all if they were defederated. Most of the content I see from them is pretty obnoxious, and even the "nice, polite" posts have a strong sealion scent to them. I block most of their communities when I encounter them in my All feed, and will probably block the instance once Lemmy has that capability.

That being said, I support the decisions that @sunaurus is making in regard to Hexbear. His decisions about site administration and moderation have always been sensible and competent.

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The Media Still Doesn’t Get Biden Voters

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The article addresses that. Because the media doesn't report on Biden supporters, the public gets the impression that no one likes him much. I also think approval ratings are not contextualized well, because you rarely see how many people who disapprove of Biden's presidency are right-wing and how many are leftists.

From a personal perspective, while I was not a reluctant Biden voter (would have never voted for Trump), he was far from the top of my list in the 2020 primary. I think, considering the obstacles he's faced, Joe has been a much better president that I expected. That's in spite of Republicans ratfucking student loan relief and robust electoral reform.

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Democrats Set High Price for Helping McCarthy Avoid a Shutdown

The only strategic thinking that McCarthy seems capable of is, "How can I keep my job today?"

He could have been more bipartisan, he could have made deals across the aisle, he could have reigned in some of the clownshow investigations his side of the aisle have been promoting. He might have been able to put together a centrist coalition that would have neutered the Freedumb Caucus. But McCarthy, like most Congressional Republicans, is incapable of complex thought.

And now he's stuck. If he makes a deal with the Democrats to avert a shutdown he loses his job. If there's an extended government shutdown a lot of Republicans are going to lose their jobs next year. Not to mention the pain a shutdown will cause to ordinary Americans (as if any Republican cared about that).