#5 | Posted by sitzkrieg

How so? I mean things happen when responding to disasters. Doesn't matter how good the operation. You are dealing with Ill prepared and often poor organizations at a city, county and state level to coordinate, volunteers that have rolled into the areas, etc.

Trump during his presidency came in and screwed up FEMA and the states by reversing everything communication wise - look it up. FEMA aid has to be requested by the state and granted powers as well - don't forget that.

Look FEMA is not great, it could be but it would require massive investment and removal of Bureaucracy. MAGAs in particular don't want that though.

#5 | Posted by commnotes

I have been seeing a lot of price drops.

Sure it's "wants"? Remember who he was buddies with. Maybe they had a fall out over that...

I am skeptical. Overall the unemployment rate is increasing, repos and foreclosures are on the rise, etc. I feel it is too little too late by the fed and we will be skidding until into the new year and then we will see if we crash land or not.

I agree. I can only wonder what she thought of her husband's namesake son though...

#4 | Posted by LampLighter

I like that about Europe in general. No rush, great service normally and even better food.

#14 & 15 | Posted by sentinel

Yes and Yes. It really picked up steam this summer.

The other things is a "surcharge" on your bill to help with rising costs - credit or not. They hit me with this one every place we went in Chicago it seemed. Some places let you choose not to pay it - if you can believe that.

He didn't like both being a meme after and worse - clearly losing. Nobody loves a loser in his book.

Gen Z shouldn't be allowed to treat themselves to anything nice, ever, if they can't afford to also subsidize big business's labor expenses.

#2 | Posted by NerfHerder

What nonsense. 9 out of 10 places I eat at are locally owned. One way or another you are going to pay for it.

That said the Credit Card surcharge is driving me nuts. It was built into your pricing for ever (or should have been) and now I have to pay an additional 3% to use my card. Not just Restaurants, oil change places and other places are suddenly charging. I am ready to start busting out the check book on them.

Hey, just look at the company Trump keeps and praises accused of certain behaviors...

#10 | Posted by Tor

Probably printed on the paper of endangered trees and covered in the skin of endangered animals too...

Just sayin' - the odds are high.

But seriously you know it is seriously bad when Xitter's bot slaps a warning on it instantly and automatically.

RFK Jr.: "I only drink raw milk."

...Says the guy with the brain worm.

This has been going on for some time. My Gen Z aquaintances's informed me about how the thing in their generation is more a my place or your place thing and not going out a "third place". They get together and cook and play games and what not. Don't get me wrong we did that too - but even if we didn't go out to the restaurant, we ate and then "pre-partied" before going to a club, bar or other event. They don't even do that now - all they do is hang out at each others place. As for gaming... We did that too just not board (or rather bored) games. If it wasn't on a computer it involved cards.

The thing is the sky high prices are driving everyone else away from going out now. We went to a "nicish" local Italian restaurant this weekend - they have a nice garden you can dine in. A glass of wine was $14 for something we pay $8-9/bottle for. Beers were still $6 which was acceptable. Anyhow two of us all in with appetizer and desert was $114. That same place used to be $65-70 for that before COVID.

#2 | Posted by RightisTrite

You are even if you think you are not. In the grand scheme if you are not an important person, it is all about propaganda campaigns.

#3 | Posted by lfthndthrds

Vizio was the one that started it all. And at the time there was push back. Now they are fully Chinese owned and controlled. The military has been warning against TLC for over a decade, they are CCCP controlled and are a TRUE trojan horse. I am sure all TV manufacturers do it but be aware if your TV is made by a Chinese owned company. (Not a Samsung TV made in China for example - South Korean company manufacturing in China) Stay away from Vizio, TLC and LG to name some of the biggest.

As for the rest? What do you expect from streaming services? Cable used to do it to the degree they could but now? Yikes. We have been being fed the same 5 ads over and over on Google TV. Stuff we have zero interest in interestingly. It is to the point we are both ready to drop them. They have put forced ads in the DVR for anything more than about a few days old too.

#16 | Posted by danni

This would certainly help them but it goes further. In my case I have no children so when I am elderly, I have no one to look after me other than my wife... Even people with kids often don't have that benefit. My elderly neighbor's only son lives an hour and a half away for just one example. I look after both my mother and uncle - I only can do so much for them though. I would have my mother move in but she doesn't want that and my uncle - just not going to even offer long story.

#19 | Posted by donnerboy

While this is true, a call from the Kremlin to citizen Trump is going to be listened to.

ALL American utilities are facing cyber attacks. Frankly every organization out there is facing them daily. I am focused on security constantly and I have dedicated security professionals in several organizations. I am telling half of you here nothing new...

Email is the worst. I know someone that left a big security software company recently. He was kind of high up in the organization and a long time employee. The official stats put compromise by email at about 90% of all compromises and their company does too, but he says the reality is more like 98%. And anyone trying to sell you on AI is the answer - well it simply isn't at this point. Any reputable email filtering company is leveraging it as part of their scanning. Some of the stuff that has made it through our email filtering just boggles my mind. The things people open double boggle my mind. Train them all you want they are still people. One we had in the last month - Subject - "Information on your upcoming special bonus", mailed from a .jp email address from outside our company? No words in the body? Just and Excel attachment? I better open that... And I can't even begin to tell you it came from NOBODY in our company and didn't pretend to.

Today's EDR (antivirus) software is good. Management of the software is the real issue. You can't count on the companies to manage them and 3rd parties are a true roll of the dice. Some of the biggest breaches happened under the nose of very reputable security organizations. Everyone heard of Crowdstrike because they screwed up in a massive way recently. I don't run them but IMHO theirs is the best on the market at the moment. I recently had a behind the scenes look at their platform. They are ahead of the rest, again IMHO. There are several worthy competitors SentinelOne, CarbonBlack, PaloAlto, TrendMicro being some of the best. But it all comes down to the existing MITRE ATT&CK matrix (road mapped method of compromising a computer) and detecting new unmapped methods AND effectively blocking them.

My physical sites are hit with what reach "scan" level events daily. They are probably hit another 10 to 20 times a day on ports that don't reach scan level events (3 ports or less in my settings). I actively block half the countries in the world at this point because we should not have incoming traffic from them. All that to say, the US is still open and there are a lot of compromised computers in the US being used for the same thing. Staying on top of Firewalls is a top priority.

I definitely employ a few layers of defense but we are a private company so we are a bit more nimble in being able to adjust to the threat landscape and have owners that understand how high of a priority it is.

#8 | Posted by danni

Don't underestimate the collective power of Stupid people. You have Desatan after all.

#6 | Posted by e1g1

Well if you are retired you don't have to worry about abortions... And hey if you like extreme weather it is the capital of that.

I wonder if that tissue can be produced in a lab.

(Queue partisan politics)

LOL is right... Wow.

#7 | Posted by commnotes

Open to inspection by whom? You mean like those Cyber Ninja idiots and their partners who caused Maricopa county to have to buy new equipment? And depsite allll the bluster found no evidence? Or that blabber mouth pillow biter who has to pay up after being proved wrong on his claims?

Please. There is a process. There are requirements to be met. If they are not sufficient CHANGE THE LAW. But nooooo, all we get was because Trump was smoked it has to be fraud.

One can only wish these voters understood the implications for them but so be it. He wants to let overwhelmingly red areas of red states suffer I am all for it, they will convince themselves it is the right thing and vote for the GOP anyhow.