How many fifteen year old laptop drives have you tried to spin up lately? Now compare that failure rate with optical or tapes.
As I wrote above, the life has been extended (it used to be a lot of failures in a lot less than fifteen years) but the underlying modes of failure like the one I mentioned above are still there. Another unpowered failure mode is highly polished parts diffusing together over time so the drive "sticks", once again less of an issue than it used to be due to design changes taking that into account - quite a lot of it done around 2000.

The only thing that makes any sense at all for consumers is USB hard drives

They have a far shorter average offline life than the optical media. For one thing the bearings have a finite life as the lubricant breaks down over time - a lot longer than it used to be but still less on average than media problems with the optical disks.
What is viable is to shuffle stuff off those USB drives onto newer ones a few years down the track, but if you are not prepared to do that eventually the optical stuff is going to come out as far more reliable.

That's just shifting the problem to someone who cares far less about the problem than you do. It leaves you one corporate restructure or changed business plan away from losing the lot and one backhoe incident away from not being able to get it when you want it.
External USB drives are a very good stopgap or even ongoing solution for home users that don't want to mess about with optical media.

All that said, in purely biological terms there's some people that don't fit the standard definition, let alone the more stringent sporting definitions (eg. the athlete in the 1970s who failed to test as genetically female but has given birth twice without any artificial assistance), so it's nowRe:I thought Nix was only for lice!?here near as sharply defined or simple as you suggest.

but you still can't do stuff like change the shoulder-to-waist ratio, hand and foot sizes, etc

All statistical. Apart from body hair I'm sure it possible to find more "manly" looking women out there than most of the males posting to this site - though outliers people are a pretty varied bunch.

And this is also neglecting many other things, such as that men's and women's brains have different structures

Once again, those people in the middle and statistics come into play, a range instead of ones and zeros.

Too long, but it did happen in the end.

Since they were long dead, most definitely not.

And unlike actual nobility, ties of blood or marriage

With respect didn't you notice THE MAIN CHARACTER.

Only one geologist has been there and we've only got samples from a small number of locations, with not much of an idea about what is even a few inches beneath the surface.

Bit of a long time for the "great men" to be "on strike" isn't it?
Since it's set in the USA, IMHO, that book is a kick in the face for both democracy and capitalism. Somehow American society is so useless in Rand's eyes that only a small nobility can keep it going. That is the exact opposite of the reality of the wide road to prosperity in the 1940s and 50s when she wrote the book.
That book is not for you or me, it's for someone with a rich daddy that has brought them up to be ruthless and amoral.

Anyway, I think it's poison preying on the young and naive for a wide range of reasons and I've probably vented enough on that. I accept that you have a different view and that you probably do not see it as a deliberate kick in the face to a society that was built by people that actually did something instead of sitting on a throne issuing orders.

Sorry to post so much but the massive clue is about people of ability going away to come back after society has collapsed under the weight of socialism. That should remind you of something. Something from around 1917, and then wishful thinking about it collapsing soon after, which didn't happen in Rand's lifetime. The bit that gets me is all those Rand people of ability can be born to it without having to actually demonstrate it. It's a toxic message that is the antithesis of what modern society in the west is about.

I glanced at her biography and saw that not only had she lived in the US for many decades

FFS she was immersed in the bullshit factory of Hollywood and wouldn't have known a normal US workplace if it fell on her.

None of them share the radical viewpoint of Ayn Rand

That's my point, they are all heirs to George Washington instead of King George or the Tsar.
If you read stuff about or set in 19th century Russia before reading Rand it all stands out like dogs balls - especially little Princess Dagny.

Maybe you should write a book about such a parallel universe. I'm sure you could make it entertaining if you try.

You don't even have to go back as far as Rome. In the 1200s in England rich people were sometimes getting married in Churches because the Church had a nice big hall, then things went on from there. It was seen as a secular thing with a blessing on top if you could get it. It's still very much a secular thing in terms of property etc.
One problem we have, especially in the USA, is "fundamentalists" who see religion at the core of EVERYTHING. Anything connected with a Church in any way back when they turned up a century ago is especially a religious issue to them. I think we need a modern Luther to nail stuff on their doors to tell them to be as tolerant as the mainstream that let them exist in the first place.

Too bad it became more complicated and scientific

It started that way FFS. Seriously guys, how many PHP cut and paste dudes know assembly for a CPU, any CPU? Programming has got a lot LESS complicated and scientific over time, far less than when Grace Hopper was at the keyboard.

The Friday night fight designed to get those "Men's rights" types out from under their rocks and looking at whatever ads Dice puts up is late this week.

Yes I know some of the MRA types got that way from not being able to see their kids or something - rant at the courts and not some feminists who still can't get into a movie awards night without wearing high heels - go for the people with real power instead of the almost totally powerless.