I agree completely, and I think it's only a matter of time until the short haul is completely autonomous. The trucking industry is slowly working themselves out of a job, and it's not just deplorable working conditions, or terrible pay, outright fraudulent schools, or the predatory trucking companies, it's also the rising cost and antipathy towards the very, very very critical role that truckers play in modern society.
I was reading a book recently called "the secret life of groceries" by Benjamin Lorr. He took a ride with truck drivers delivering groceries, and he found that they are terribly abused, underpaid, and that the truck driving schools will literally clean out halfway houses, drug clinics, shelters, anyone they can find who will sign on the dotted line and what is little more than indentured servitude.
If anything, deregulation of the trucking industry has had the exact opposite effect. There should be stringent rules on the drivers, but just as equally stringent rules on those that employ and train them. It's a horribly abusive industry, and we should regulate it.
Something I did not see in this article at all was what they defined as unhealthy food. Heavily processed foods are bad for you, everyone knows this, but this entire article and lawsuit skips over one very important point: people choose to eat those foods. 40 years of education about processed foods, fat, sodium, carbohydrates, all of that, Hasn't done anything to diminish that.
Rather than spend that money suing giant food companies who are going to probably win in court anyways, put that money towards feeding children in schools, breakfast and lunches that are healthy, nutritious, and filling. Put that money to feeding the homeless. This just feels like Headline grabbing.
I read that the syrup is stored in these special tanks, and when it's mixed with the carbonated water, it comes out as the best tasting, freshest Coca-Cola you can get. It's always tasted amazing at McDonald's. Almost like bottled Coke.
Supposedly McDonald’s is the only business that gets the syrup distributed in metal kegs. Everyone else gets the plastic bags, which could lead to some taste difference.
I am pretty sure I could blind taste test canned vs bottled soda.
AFAIK they are completely phased out in the soda industry (including McDs). They are very popular in the home beer brewing community because they are easy to clean and the right size for your typical homebrew batch (20 litres). They've become difficult to obtain in recent years because they are not being used in industry any more so there's no secondary market.
Some players are making them new, but they are quite expensive. I used to have a couple of regular beer kegs on "long term loan" from Heineken because I was not able to source cornys for cheap.
Definitely depends on the store in my experience (Aus), I think some may not maintain their machines as frequently/well, or maybe even deliberately watered down. Glass bottle Coke is the best coke imo.
I think all of this has gone overboard, even though I agree that children should not be exposed to pornography, I don't know what to do about it because I expect parents to monitor their child's Internet usage, which is a losing ideal. Are there better alternatives?
Just because something isn't ideal doesn't mean it's worth making a law about. Running with scissors -- not best practice. Worth trying to legislate? Absolutely not.
Somebody who's 17 choosing to look at porn? Not in America's top 1 million problems.
As a culture we just have to come to accept that parents should be responsible for managing kids’ devices, and provide them with the device-level tools for doing so. If a parent lets a 10 year old hang out in a sketchy alleyway every weekend, we would blame them for the inevitable consequences. Why do we not blame them for failing to monitor what their kids are up to online?
And before someone tries to bore me with anecdotes about how your particular kid evaded whatever restrictions you put in place, I think if kids put in thoughtful effort and planning to evade restrictions then parents are off the hook. Same as if a kid stages an elaborate ruse (one that would fool most parents) to get out of the house and drink with friends. That’s not on you. Parents aren’t prison wardens and we shouldn’t ask for a police state to fill in parenting gaps.
Making the state into the parent will affect us all, not just kids. I (and plenty of others) will fight to the end to preserve the last vestiges of the free, open internet. Overlay networks and even sneakernet if necessary. We’re not going to accept authoritarian control of communications no matter how much politicians want it.
Well said. This is a social failure being exploited by shrude politicians to usurp more authority. Replacing parents with the state keeps playing out, and keeps being a horrible idea.
A fraction of the money poured into these mass surveillance systems and proposals would have gone a long way in developing better parental control software.
If startups build parental control it carries the wrong incentives.
Realistically what's needed for proper parental control.
1. Software that parents can install on phones, and computers (which comes as an upside of less lockdown on devices)
2. A way to whitelist websites and applications (particularly for phones).
3. A way to share, reuse and collaborate on whitelists. No enforcement of a central authority.
Why do we need to do something? Is there really such a problem that needs to be solved? Because I see so many people who grew up with unrestricted access to the internet and did not go around watching every beheading or BDSM porn video around like everyone seems to think kids do today despite them being easily available at the time, and when they were come across they certainly didn't get everyone fucked in the head because of it. Everyone knew rotten.com, everyone was using napster/kazaa/mirc that was full of porn and BDSM and snuff videos. If we were going to have problems, people 40 years old now would have signs of it and be messed up, except they aren't.
If we had a way to prove age without revealing any other identity that could be used for tracking/profile building. I don't see that being supported by the tech industry though, as they are almost completely reliant on tracking to earn money.
So it is up to me to monitor your child? I don't work in porn or an even remotely related field but I have to implement age verification now because of Texas's law. Someone explain to me how this is protecting any children.
I think we must think about what the downside of kids maybe being introduced to porn really. Realistically, it is pretty low. Given that, we shouldn't really be giving up anything to try and stop it. I was exposed to porn several ways pre-Internet. Older siblings, news stands, late night cable. If I wanted more, I could get it. It was simply not a problem.
Maybe there is a problem for a tiny number of individuals, OK. A one size fits all approach like this still isn't the solution in these cases, though.
>I was exposed to porn several ways pre-Internet. Older siblings, news stands, late night cable. If I wanted more, I could get it. It was simply not a problem.
Yup. Me too.
And it goes back much further. Cf. "Pictures of Lily"[0] for a pop culture exposition from nearly sixty years ago. The point being that "porn" isn't anything new, nor was it difficult to obtain (hence a popular song about "porn") even before computer networks.
Edit: For those who would cite the current ubiquity of "hardcore" porn on the 'net, I'd say that's a difference in degree, not in kind. Something to consider.
Do something similar to what we do with video: make a government enforced voluntary rating system (that is, you use if you want, if you use and lie, the government hits you) with a standard where sites can tell their ratings to the clients.
Have the parents decide if they will use the rating for anything.
1. No smart phones for the child before the age of NN, me I say 18. A Smart phone makes a great High School Graduation gift.
2. Only internet access from a desktop computer with a hosts file that the child cannot change. That probably means no Microsoft Windows PC.
See: https://someonewhocares.org/hosts/
You either don't have kids, or your children are adults.
It's impractical in today's world to raise children without access to devices like tablets and smart phones. That's like having a sugar-free, no TV, hand-sewn, ect, ect, household.
What's more important is to know what your kids are getting into, making sure they are comfortable discussing what they see, and teaching them independent decision making skills.
For example, a few years ago, my then seven-year-old complained to me about all of the Jesus videos that were popping up on Youtube. I told her to thumbs down them, and now Youtube no longer suggests them. She also knows that if other kids watch Jesus videos, that's their right and to keep her mouth shut.
Videos about Jesus aimed towards children. She never showed them to me. I'm assuming they're either Bible stories, "Jesus loves you and died for your sins" kind of things, or otherwise typical American evangelizing towards children.
We aren't a religious household, but we do occasionally expose our children to religious things because we live in the US and it's a big part of American culture and my extended family. For example, when my oldest was into ancient Egypt, I watched the 10 Commands (Charton Heston Movie) with her, then read Exodus with her. I also explained that this is not literal history but that some people believe it is, and that she shouldn't discuss religion at school.
She saw the videos shortly after we read Exodus, so I wonder if she was searching for for clips from the 10 Commandments or things about Exodus.
The point that people are making is that while restricting overt internet porn does remove it from sight of a lot of kids, it will also continue to circulate as "samizdat" through whatever filesharing mechanisms exist. When I was at school someone got busted for distributing BBS porn on floppy disks, no network required. Now we have terabyte SD cards.
Absolutely true. When I was a kid a few people got in trouble for drawing and circulating pixelated “porn” on their graphing calculators. You can’t stop teenagers from being teenagers.
hosts file isn't even the correct tool for this job. I don't know why this is being suggested a serious solution. I can add domain names and chose which IP address they resolve to. It can't even block websites.
If I didn't know any better I would assume you are spreading misinformation to put children into an unsafe situation
Yes I know this is technically true. One could use iptables, but it is easier for people (users) to do this instead of getting iptables / pf or whatever configured. It is one size fits all.
Assuming the reason for these laws is to protect children from pornography, you could ask, what are the specific harms from pornography? You could identify those harms through scientific study (some have been done; it appears the harms are mostly due to a lack of education and understanding about what's going on in porn) and address them (educate children to understand what's going on intellectually/emotionally and how to treat people with respect). But that would require talking to kids about sex, which adults are petrified of. Our culture is puritanical, and uses fear and shame to avoid dealing with things like sex. It then perpetuates this fear and shame onto each generation, and it pervades every product and service we have. So we could try fighting the irrational fear and become less afraid of sex (and pornography would probably change because of it). But good luck doing that in this country.
A while back, in my country parents protested against their daughters getting free HPV shots.
Couldn't handle the idea that their kids are separately embodied beings, you see.
Plus I'd wager the long word "papillomavirus" scared most of those folks.
So now we have higher STD rates and a significant number of young women permanently traumatized by being denied healthcare just because their parents were too obsessed with their private parts.
As negative as it may be, I refuse to update iOS until liquid glass is dead. Apple always gives us something we didn't ask for and don't want, and sometimes takes away things we do like and want.
I avoided the entire butterfly keyboard/touch bar Macbooks by buying an older model (2015 MacBook pro, the last one with scissor switch until 2020) and not upgrading until M series. That turned out to be a good decision.
That's what I did as well, I waited until the touch bar and the butterfly keyboard were out of the flow and got a really fantastic MacBook Pro with touch ID. Dare I say it works better than my iphone.
It's not going away, but I remain hopeful it will be refined. macOS is the real casualty this upgrade cycle—iOS has problems but isn't fundamentally broken.
I really miss touch ID on my phone, all of the swiping is a little cumbersome and sore after a while. Stretching my hand to swipe up down and so forth. I deeply miss the home button.
