As the son of a mechanic, I was explicitly barred from becoming a mechanic. The hours can be long, but they are more inconsistent than anything. In the summer it's hot and even hotter under engine bays, in the winter it's cold and melting snow/ice cause constant drips from cars.
The physical demands are real, you will likely have back/neck problems from leaning into engine bays, looking up constantly, contorting your body to get at a bolt or connector.
You are constantly exposed to toxic fumes and chemicals in the air and on your skin. You will be burned from hot exhaust, cut open on dirty rusted metal, bruised from impacts or falling objects, hearing loss from air lines hissing, air tools and hammering on parts. Those are the lucky ones... unlucky ones get eye injuries (even with 'safety' glasses), severe burns or cuts and broken bones from crushing injuries or even death from a variety of sources.
The pay structure promotes cutting corners and speed. You are paid X hours for a task even if it takes you X*2 (oh no!) or X/2 (oh yeah!) hours. You don't get extra time and pay to clean dirt and mud from an area to prevent contamination or just do a good job in general.
Vehicles are generally designed to be easy to assemble, not repair. This is why a mechanic may spend 5 minutes cutting a hole in a plastic fender well to access a bolt and plug the hole afterwards. That bolt is easily accessible when the engine is removed, but dropping an engine (they come out the bottom easier) can take 2 hours. With a shop rate of $100/hr+, you'll want the quick hacky fix to replace that $10 gasket.
Often, there is no workaround like that, so you're racing the clock... hoping something else doesn't break along the way or you get hung up on a rusty bolt. And when something does break, you hope to any god that will answer you that you can get the part in a short amount of time.
$160k is not enough for some of those talented guys... they are like professional athletes in the sense that it's a young man's game and your body is getting used up every day you're in there wrenching.
A Mac dev type using a 5-year-old machine, I will believe it when I see it. I know a few older Macs still kicking around, but those people use them for basic stuff, not actual work. Mac people jump to new models faster than Taco Bell leaves my body.
I worked as an Engine Machinist for a time, and I was told that lead in the fuel aided in sealing the valves, kept valves cooler by helping seal the valve, possibly acting as an impact damper, prevented valves from sticking to the seat and slowed corrosion. When lead was removed from fuel, common practice is to use a valve seat insert made from a different material, usually a high nickel alloy.
Lead fuel was during a time when the cylinder heads were mostly cast-iron, and the valve seat was cut directly into the head. Cast iron is an interesting material, it's reasonably durable, but it corrodes/rusts very easily, especially when exposed to moisture. Gasoline and ethanol both have water as combustion byproducts, so when the engine is off and cools, some of that moisture condenses inside the engine.
Running straight ethanol in an engine without corrosion resistant materials causes much more wear over time because it tends to strip the protective/lubricative oil barriers away, causing iron to corrode when the engine isn't running. Modern engines are aluminum heads with valve seat inserts, stainless steel valves, better piston ring materials (high chromium I think? these were cast iron in the past).
Ethanol has a significant detergent/cleaning effect, even when at 5-10% concentration in gasoline. The valve stems also get some of their lubrication from the fuel, and gasoline is basically a thin oil, and provides protection to mechanical components, better yet with additives. Ethanol is also a difficult fuel in a cold start situation and requires good compression and a strong ignition system to kick it off.
I suspect the whole reason to want to keep lead was motivated by the bean counters involved. They saw a cost savings with lead in the fuel. Cheaper materials and no tooling changes. This means more profits.
> Modern engines are aluminum heads with valve seat inserts, stainless steel valves, better piston ring materials (high chromium I think? these were cast iron in the past).
You say "modern", but that's a fairly typical 1980s car engine.
AD/Entra is pretty good in my experience working with it. Self-hosting Entra is basically running a Windows Server + Domain Controller, or one of the alternatives you mentioned. Not something I would typically recommend to a customer unless they already had it running and were experienced in it.
IMO, the best way to "handle identity across Windows and Linux" is Microsoft's own tools. You can join Windows, Mac, and Linux machines into Entra now. For $8 a month you can get an F3 license for a user. This gets you the MS Office Suite (web only) plus Intune/Endpoint Management for 5 active devices, licensed Windows 11 Enterprise (good for machines without an included windows license), the ability to control Device Policy and Conditional Access Policy. The F1 license ($2.25) might work, but don't quote me on that (read-only office, no mobile apps, no Windows Hello for Business).
Mac and Linux machines aren't as robust as Windows for endpoint management. But the core features you'd want are mostly there. Apple business manager is needed and has to be paired with Entra, but it's not completely terrible. The Microsoft documentation is actually very helpful here.
Fair point - Microsoft has definitely made it easier for cross-platform deployment with Entra ID, and for many orgs the F3 license math works out.
May I ask, has the fact that the data and service is under US residency and subject to US laws ever been an issue for you? That's the niche I'm trying to understand - whether it's big enough to matter or just an odd edge case.
To me the solution is: Ban homework. All projects, essays, tests, etc are done at school on air-gapped machines or written by hand. Work is monitored by the teacher with video surveillance in 'test halls'. Cell phones can be kept in a small locker. If the student needs to be reached, a parent or whomever can call the school. Internet research should be done in a separate environment, printed out, then taken to the 'work' location. Like how you used to photo-copy sections of a book. Printed text can be cataloged by the school and compared to completed work for plagiarism.
Take away the internet. Except in a research/library scenario. Give them a limited time to complete tasks. This would promote a stronger work ethic, memory/recall and more realistic to time management skills. They need to learn to rely on themselves, not technology. The only effective way is to remove tech from the equation, otherwise the temptation to cheat to compete/complete is too strong.
> To me the solution is: Ban homework. All projects, essays, tests, etc are done at school on air-gapped machines or written by hand.
Rather: don't grade homework. Make the homework rather the preparation that if you did it seriously will prepare you for the test (and if you didn't do it seriously, you won't have the skills that are necessary to pass the test).
> This relegates the use of AI to personal choice of learning style and any misuse of AI is only hurting the student.
I'm a teacher. Kids don't have the capacity to make this choice without guidance. There are so so many that don't (can't?) make the link between what we teach and how they grow as learners. And this is at a rich school with well-off parents who largely value education.
The problem with this strategy is that homework is mostly a tool for learning, not checking progress. Most teachers use homework as a way to get an extra hour or two of learning in each week for the students. If we remove it there will be less learning time available. So you’re gonna have to expand the school day or school year which means more teachers which is expensive.
If homework is not used to check progress, then cheating on it is not a problem.
Don't grade homework. Only grade work done in school. Students who cheat on their homework are just deterring themselves and won't do as good at the in-class, graded exams.
Well it comes down to what the point of school is. If the goal is just to figure out how competent a student is, sure, but if the goal is to educate students then reducing the amount of time they spend on school work will lead to worse outcomes.
This page is 5.0kb and only has 6 other assets. those assets, after being cached, means you get a page load in less than 1 second. Every. Single. Time. This page would load well on a dial-up connection from the 90's.
I will say that as a Windows Administrator, the overall quality of the OS has fallen, and more attention is put into 'features' compared to performance, reliability, etc. I shouldn't have to wait for right click menus. 4gb ram should be a viable web browser and basic Office machine, even in 2025. The bigger and faster machines get, the lazier software companies get.
Generally, Windows is reliable for my Org. The OS is decent; yes it is annoying to have to remove the adware from an office machine. I struggle to understand why 16gb with a good SSD is the bare minimum to make the OS feel like it has a sense of purpose. I have 10-year-old hardware running Linux and mechanical drives that performs really well and only slows down when you're asking it to do heavy lifting.
Pen and paper only? Lock them in a faraday cage to keep RF from going in or out? RF jamming? In-person testing only. No devices, period. Supply hearing aids, glasses and even clothing if you have to.
AI systems can be fooled, people can be bribed, cameras and detectors can miss things. To me it's a risk vs reward equation. If the risk of getting caught is greater than cheating, people will generally not want to cheat. If there is no risk at cheating and only something to gain, cheating will be rampant. If you get caught cheating and there is no jail time, no financial risk, and you can take the test again... why not cheat? Make the barrier to cheat incredibly high and the cost of cheating even higher.
> Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.
Or in the context of AI:
> Give a man code, and you help him for a day. Teach a man to code, and you help him for a lifetime.
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