Brilliant! Of course, there is the small matter of their already being a whole class of chemicals called alum X-P

each additional year companies delay upgrading equipment results in a productivity decline of about one-third of a percent

How is that even measured? Someone needs to tell us how not having the latest and greatest phone reduces productivity. The four basic uses are making/receiving calls, texting, checking email, internet. How can a 2024 model phone possibly be that less "productive" than a 2025 model?

As for PCs, the vast majority of people use Word, Outlook, and a browser (usually the memory hog Chrome followed by Edge). Again, explain how a PC which is three years old reduces productivity in this day and age.

This article almost sounds like an ad to get people to buy things to keep the economy rolling rather than a serious discussion.

Want the simplicity of what Notepad used to be? Mousepad is for you. Too bad it's not available for Windows.

Windows users will just have to suffer with whatever complex, bloated piece of yak manure Microsoft comes up with next.

Those exist, but divide the view count by number of comments. It will show for the most part thousands of views per comment. That means most people aren't using the social part. I've yet to ever write a youtube comment, but I use it daily. So if you asked me if I use YouTube you'd get a yes, but it's not social media for me. If you limit it to those who read/write comments it would be fair, but I'm not sure they did that.

Replacing the mouse has no effect. And this has happened over years.

I'd say the same for YouTube. It's used to watch videos. The number of people who comment on them is minimal compared to the userbase. I'd be very curious to the exact definition of "social media" they use is. I don't think it's what most people consider to be social media.

Dig a bit deeper and you can save money by skipping the nuclear-reactor part; just heat the water for your steam turbines with the geothermal heat that's already present down there.

Not anything. Especially when dealing with nuclear. There are some parts that once degraded cannot be safely replaced. For example, the containment unit. And others where making a new one makes more economic sense than replacing even when technically possible. What state this plant is in I have no idea, and am not qualified to have an opinion on. I just hope experts are making the decision based on economics and power requirements and not politics.

No, it isn't. You're absolutely deluding yourself. And even if it was, nobody uses it to actually write anything. Learning to write (vs read) would be, is, and has been for 50 years an utter waste of time.

If AI has never eaten a grilled cheese sandwich, how would you expect it to know what a protein shake is?

I have the issue where not every mouse click is recognized. On anything. Web page, form, MS Office software, third-party software, Windows itself, text field, you name it. I'll click somewhere, the mouse directly on what needs selected, and nothing happens. I have to click again to do what I want.

I first noticed it in W10 and it has continued to W11.

The "pandemic" showed that the kids could do the schoolwork in 3 hours, so what were they doing the rest of the day?

Learning social skills by having to talk (how horrible!) to other people face-to-face. Interacting with people from different households (the travesty!). Hearing people with opposing points of view (madness!). Getting off their fat ass and walking from class to class (will this never end!). Not looking at their screens (this is the last straw!).

The pandemic work from home move gave employees more power while managers and top leaders had a more difficult job as their control over staff was reduced. The decline in the job market and RTO have reduced employee power while making the jobs of management and top leaders easier. So, it is pretty natural that staff will feel reduced well-being while management enjoys a tighter grip on employees and easier hiring. Whoever gains power feels better than the ones who lost.

You're not three quarters as clever as you think you are being. While some sex chromosome anomalies leave the individual sterile, others do not. Moreover, even if individuals are in reproduction this does not mean that the individuals are polar opposites. Many plants are fertile hermaphrodites, while others are single sex, and there's an argument that other species have more than two sexes. Indeed, I recall a lesson in a population genetics class in college about a plant with many many sexes, any two of which can reproduce... I thought it was clover or lavender, but unfortunately cannot find a citation to substantiate that. Of course humans aren't plants, but they simply serve as an example of how complex seemingly simple systems really are.

This ignores the "right"'s extensive efforts to suppress voter rights, not to mention the inherit voter suppression of much of the population in our fucking electoral college that effectively lets land vote. This is only further exacerbated by distortion by several layers of first-past-the-post in most cases: whomever wins the most votes in a district wins the district. Whomever wins the most districts in the state gets all the marbles; except for Maine and Nebraska, there it's proportional. Whomever wins the most marbles is awarded the presidency. Even without gerrymandering, such repeated rounding errors stack up.