Yes, please reboot it and put us back in the 90's. That was a decidedly more optimistic time.

... and we could call them television networks, and America would be great again. ;)

Federation is exactly the criticism against all the web 2.0 platforms (Facebook etc.) when they first came out nearly 20 years ago, and nobody heeded the warning and everyone jumped in and signed up. The only truly federated communication platforms left are email and shared-hosting blogs.

The reason blogs won't be popular again is because you have to pay a web hosting fee and learn a little bit, and those are two huge barriers to entry.

Email is still viable because businesses use it and there's enough network effect to keep it going, but I interact with teenagers due to some high school volunteering I do and trying to get a teenager to use email is futile. They won't respond to a message, and the most common reason they offer is, "oh, my phone doesn't tell me when I get an email message."

The vast majority of people who use social media don't care about any of the issues discussed in the article, and need the service to be really, really simple to sign up for. A federated system by definition requires you to make a choice, and a choice is a barrier to entry, so a federated system can never be as simple as a walled garden. Then you have to remember that their only reason for going on these platforms is because someone they want the approval of (or to sleep with) is already on there. If your business plan doesn't include a method of attracting and keeping these socially attractive individuals, it'll fail. The number of people willing to sign up for a social media platform because it has a bunch of privacy nerds hanging out on it is vanishingly small.

Except all the things that catapulted China forward are now gone (working age population bulge, peaceful relations with US, globalization, etc.)

What's the best technology Russian fabs have now, 90 nm? You don't want to hamper the rest of your country by forcing everyone to buy your own sub-standard technology. Do you think the companies building these chips for the government have any incentive to innovate? They have a locked-in market! It's like Boeing building rockets for NASA.

It's actually the last year where anything really creative came out of Hollywood. It's also the year Being John Malkovich came out, if I'm not mistaken. Since then you don't see anything risky or creative. It's just formulaic and a rehash of old ideas. Including the non-existent Matrix sequels.

Yes, but they only offer it for 55 and older, I think. I have several friends and relatives who had shingles way younger than that.

Minor quibble... the economy doesn't depend on you throwing stuff away, but given the very low cost of mass manufacture, coupled with how quickly we're still coming up with new and better designs, and relatively poor quality for most electronic gadgets, the whole system does depend on the ability of consumers to get rid of e-waste cheaply and easily.

Hi had chickenpox on my 10th birthday, and it ruined it. All I got were get-well-soon gifts and none of the toys I'd asked for, lol. And the itchiness sucked. And since I've had chickenpox, now I'm liable to get shingles as an adult, which is very painful, I hear. Ya darn kids don't know how good you have it with yer chickenpox vaccine.

I figured most people just had term life now. Does the article only address whole life policies?

How on earth would it pay out more than it takes in? That's impossible. You don't actually want a payout. Do you not understand the point of insurance?

You are correct, but the time to do this would have been 15 to 20 years ago, at the peak of millennials graduating and entering the workforce before the boomers really started to retire en-masse. Since then the number of workers as a percentage of the population has peaked and started to decline, so the economy is going to incentivize people to work more hours, and it'll actually try to get a few younger boomers to delay retirement or come back out of retirement for a few years to help out. We're already seeing it with wages increasing. True, inflation means prices increase too, but the net effect is that people who are working can still afford a significant proportion of what's being produced, and people who retired thinking they had enough money in the bank will find that it can't be stretched as far as they think. The net effect will be a large transfer of wealth from the boomer generation to their kids' as retired people spend their savings just to be comfortable.

Since when was doing things that were previously thought impossible so ripe for criticism.

Since the reporters gave up on journalistic integrity, stopped trying to be unbiased, and decided to take sides in the culture war. The one where "they've" decided that Elon Musk is "da enemy" and so anything related to him must be evil.

Think about that the next time you're out holding a sign that says Gays for Palestine, then. ;)

Seniors are a large voting block, but they're hardly a majority. There's another reason voters, as a whole, support Social Security. Middle aged people don't want to be on the hook for the financial illiteracy of their parents.