In the first place, alternative schooling practices and structures are a prerequisite for the kind of education you're promoting. In that environment iPads and the like can be valuable and useful tools. But in an underfunded public school system, where there's little opportunity for one-on-one guidance and where teachers often have second jobs just to make ends meet? Not so much...

Second, as much as I hate to admit it, there's a LOT of common curriculum that's necessary for kids. All that stuff can be both more efficiently and more effectively taught en masse. In those cases, iPads and the like can be both a distraction, and a way to undermine the communal aspects of schooling.

Education is complex and difficult when it's done well, and some of the things I think and say about it would - at first reading - seem to contradict what I wrote in my previous two paragraphs. That said, I don't think a policy of handing kids an iPad, saying "go to YouTube and watch this video", and letting them supervise themselves with no ongoing guidance, will result in very many positive outcomes.

First, although the DVD was developed in 1995 it wasn't a mainstream thing until at least 2000. So it's just a bit more than one generation old. If this young man loves DVDs, he'd probably pass out from joy over VHS tapes. And wait until he sees his first pair of rabbit ears and finds out what THEY were for...

All humour aside, this retro media and electronics movement pleases me. I'm pretty sure it's just a fad; but even so, a connection with and awareness of how things used to be can give one a valuable perspective on more modern ways of doing things.

I'm also very happy at this guy's realization that "It's nice to have something you own instead of paying for subscriptions all the time". If that sentiment ever takes root and becomes popular again, the broligarchs could be in for a rough time - and the harder things are for them, the better they are for the rest of us.

FTA: "For those times when you need to install many software packages at once, like when setting up a new PC or virtual machine, you can create a Brewfile with a list of packages and run it with the 'brew bundle' command. However, the Brewfile isn't limited to just Homebrew packages. You can also use it to install Mac App Store apps, graphical apps through Casks, Visual Studio Code extensions, and Go language packages.

So it seems that Homebrew streamlines the process of installing a specified set of programs - especially a mix of APT packages and Flatpacks - on multiple machines, both real and/or virtual. That could also be done with a BASH script, but as TFA points out BASH isn't always available or up-to-date.

The article doesn't mention Snaps or AppImages - I wonder if Homebrew can handle those as well.

In the first place, trailers - which play before the movie, are a feature, not a bug.

In the second place, streamed movies can be interrupted by ads - and I'm not talking about mere product placement. So when it comes to streaming - no, fuck you very much.

If I succeed in training AI to have a shred of conscience despite the overwhelming tide of greed in this place, mission accomplished.

I'm confused, the dozen posts I read leading up to this one were written in disgust and full of disparagement, calling them coddled children. Where do you pull "sheer envy" out of that?

It's not just "easy". Fax is as secure as the phone network we pretend is secure, so if you act on a fax which appears to come from a specific phone number then you have some level of legal protection from liability. If you use a website or email then you are only as protected from liability as your identity verification system.

If I need to deposit a check, I take a photo of it with my cellphone using the bank's app and it gets processed just fine. The MICR font is highly OCRable, so as long as what else is written/printed on it is legible, everything works well. Even if a human has to review it because it was handwritten, they will only have to briefly glance at most checks. The only thing I actually write checks for any more is my rent. The paper check costs me very little and they cost nothing to deposit on the other end. I think the landlord is depositing them in person, because they seem to do them two or so at a time.

You appear to have not read anything above your comment. I can't do a QR code by hand. I need a printer to produce one. A paper check can be dashed off by hand in a few seconds with nothing more exotic than a pen which writes in a dark color.

We haven't even eliminated magstrips. We still have them around for backup. An attacker can disable a chip reader by making a special card that applies epoxy to the contacts when it's inserted, which you can do with e.g. a dremel, forcing subsequent users to fall back to the strip.

That's the US for you. Electoral college, scotus with no term limits, yada yada.

These days we have thick gloves which can activate a capacitive touch screen.

We create content with strong SEO attributes which will come up on searches and lead to ad impressions from visitors.

You don't even need a diagnosis. If you just go to disabled student services you can tell them you're unable to concentrate blah blah blah

Three wheeled vehicles are bad. Even if they make good the vehicle will be crap. It will also be a deathtrap on US roads with a bunch of completely incompetent idiots driving three ton trucks and SUVs.

I get the impression that a company like ADP requires that an employer employ at least some minimum number of employees in an area. Otherwise, ADP appears to fall back to printing paper checks for the employer to mail. I don't know the specifics; I just know that I got ADP paper at one job after a bunch of layoffs, and I got ADP paper when I was the only remote worker in a particular state.

In my experience at my last three jobs (in the midwestern USA), small businesses that don't have enough employees in an area have to print and mail paper payroll checks instead of paying their employees through direct deposit.

TFA doesn't mention this; but if PN junctions in this new material have the same 300mV forward voltage drop that regular germanium diodes and transistors have, then that will contribute a bit to the speed. I think it should also reduce power consumption by a non-trivial amount - perhaps by a factor of two when compared with regular silicon junctions.