And radio host is infinitely more "high skill" than disk jockey... I mean how hard is it to press play on someone else's music... at least a radio host might need to talk.

Which is pretty much the last bastion of radio in most countries, definitely in Australia... talkback radio.. However I can see this being replaced by AI relatively shortly as the people who call into talk back radio tend not to be very bright and all the AI needs to do is regurgitate some nonsense about immigrants to keep them angry and afraid (occasionally interspersed with how bad young people are, the odd mention of druggies doesn't hurt either).

It's a hip hop and R&B station, they don't play music either.

It does go to show that the quality of radio show hosts is pretty abysmal if they can be that easily replaced by AI... Then again, I don't think many people actually listen to the radio, it's mostly background noise to prevent people from being alone with their own thoughts.

Their strategy will be to get it preinstalled or otherwise trick people into using it.

Things like this will force more and more countries to adopt European style GDPR laws. That is not a bad thing.

So... what you're saying is that if your job requires a lot of talking and not much doing you're better off in the office... If your job is productive than you're better off away from the former category.

Yep, if the average listener can't tell the difference between AI and human generated content then music has already died.

Realistically it did in 1997 with the introduction of Autotune. No longer did you even need to sing to be able to be a pop star... now almost all of them are so auto-tuned you they literally cannot reproduce anything like what their recorded music sounds like. This is the holy grail for record companies as they literally get to own the sound and there is nothing the so-called "artist" can do about it... Well we don't call them artists any more, now days it's "performer".

Which is why I intend on giving the US a wide berth until it sorts it's shit out... deporting people without cause is the act of some shithole banana republic... sending them to a foreign prison without even a charge, let alone a day in court is North Korea level banana republic shit.

And yes, 35,000 ft is a wide berth. We let paedos closer to schools.

And making the US tax system even more opaque than it already is, is the first step in making you pay more tax without recourse.

Much of the UKs tax system is automated, it's good as it makes it simple to pay and to claim. However the system is still transperent. I can easily find out what I owe, what I've paid and determine if I've paid more, less or pretty much what I should.

This is simple because access to the tax system is essentially free.

By limiting access to the IRS, you're making it easier for the rich to avoid tax and the average person to be slugged more. Which is the plan in case you hadn't noticed (and I suspect at least 77 million did not).

It's not just the bribes... Sorry, the Trumpettes get really upset when you use that word and we can't dare upset their widdle feelings... Erm.. Gratuities in advance that got paid. This is part of Trump and the Republicans war on the lower and middle classes by making it harder to pay less tax. Trump wants to give huge tax breaks to all his rich friends but even he, on some level, knows that he cant do that unless he has some way to make up the deficit it causes. The easiest way is to find ways to make you, and every other average American pay more tax.

Removing simple ways to file taxes is the first step to making it harder for you to claim deductions or even, to know how much tax you've meant to have paid so that it can be more easily raised without being noticed.

This is what happens when you make "tax the rich" into dirty words. And for the avoidance of doubt... you're not what we mean when we say "rich"... not even if you earn, say, $174,0000 a year.

Yep, the idea of America becoming leader again is pretty ludicrous. To borrow an Americanism, you've screwed that pooch, although most of the damage has been done in the last 2 months, it's really a culmination of the last 25 years of Republican fuck ups slowly diminishing US power and decreasing trust in the US. Americans, especially Republicans believed too much in American Exceptionalism, so much so that they couldn't see the harm in the rest of the world watching it fail and boy, has it failed.

When the US sorts it's shit out and decides it wants to rejoin the international community, you'll be partners at best, not leaders... And you'll only be partners if you limit the amount of damage Trump does in the mean time. For this, you really have no one to blame but yourselves.

That being said, Europeans have long memories... So if you can sort your shit out quickly enough with as little damage as you can, we'll remember that for a long time we were allies.

Don't worry, your awesome TV is looking around for some open wifi networks to connect to.

Airframes have lifespans measured in decades, cabins tend to be measured in years. Most cabins are refitted about every 8 years or so, so IFEs tend to be designed to last that long.

Budget airlines have been getting rid of seat back screens for years because it saves a few pennies and a few grams. Less about maintenance as they're not an expensive item to maintain.

This is more about AA marketing than cost savings. They've already taken the seat back screens out of their narrowbodies although they're still offering free inflight entertainment via personal devices connected to the internal wifi (it's shit). Free internet is also likely only to be on domestic US flights as trans-ocean flights tend not to have sufficient coverage.

You sound surprised by this. What's life like under that rock?

I suspect, in my cynical way, that this will just be an upsell... We'll give you "free" wifi that will be slow as dogshit in mid-December Scotland or you can pay a "low low price" to get a slightly faster version. Not like airlines don't have form for this.

Besides, I'm old and curmudgeony, why do people need internets on a flight? Use the time to disconnect and relax. Read a book, watch a movie, play a game if your seat has enough space.. Stare out the window or *gasp* how about exercising your imagination. I've come to the conclusion that most people don't have ADHD, it's just if they stopped talking, scrolling or otherwise keeping themselves distracted they'll hear their own thoughts and realise what a vapid and vacuous person they are.

A long flight is time I use to disconnect, catch up on a movie or TV series, the world will burn on it's own just fine without me for a few hours.

For years we've been hearing how other nations aren't trustworthy enough to have any power over the internet, control over DNS, et al... Now all of a sudden you want us to pay for it... Give us equal rights then ask for money.

If recent days have shown anything, it's that the US should not have control over anything more important than a teaspoon.

The driving was fine, orbital space is 840 million kilometres and they still couldn't park.