I found it most informative to see these two topics adjacent in my feed...
"Aerion Shuts Down, Halts Work On Proposed Supersonic Business Jet"
and next we have
"Space Plane Startup Promises One-Hour Rides to Anywhere on Earth at 9,000 MPH"
I am going to guess that the latter company will be a "replace all" article with the former article within a year or so...

If the goal was just to move closer to DC then NoVA would have been a much better choice. RTP has a lot of the same corporate goodies (cheap office space) as NoVA but in general it'll simply be far cheaper for Apple and hugely cheaper for employees. Price a 3 BR, 2BA house in Wake County (NC) and a similar home in Alexandria, VA or any other DC-adjacent county. Not even close. When I covered customers in NC a lot of companies moved their data center operations to either RTP or Charlotte. Even the grunt level workers could live like kings compared to their former homes in Northern New Jersey or the NYC area.

There is a secret weapon in RTP. It's got huge amounts of bandwidth, second only to the DC area. IBM's (now defunct) networking division used to be there; back in the day when IBM was a major federal supplier it paid to have a large data pipe. It was followed by a huge Cisco presence in the late 90's and early ought's. And there are many relocated data centers that have taken up the slack. And as IBM shrinks there's plenty of cheap office space and/or land in RTP. I'm surprised this hasn't happened earlier. True, HB2 didn't help and yes our numb-nuts legislature will no doubt try something similar but our Governor (Roy Cooper) knows which side of the bread is buttered...

I use almost all of the choices depending on the platform. On Windows I use almost all except the old IE. Primarily I use Vivaldi on Windows but right now I have Vivaldi, Edge, Firefox and Chrome up and running on my Windows desktop. On iOS I use Safari but am given Brave another try. The latest Brave for iOS is pretty snappy; the original Brave was slow and buggy. Occasionally use Chrome or Firefox on my iPad. When I was working with Linux I'd use Firefox or whatever the customer would allow me to install.

I've learned the hard way not to fall deeply in love with a particular piece of software. I use whatever browser strikes my technical fancy and often whichever browser supports plug-ins that I have found useful. Clear as mud? Yep...

Not necessarily. Here in North Carolina we've been the beneficiary of a huge exodus of financial and tech companies (tech operations to RTP and corporate/financial management to Charlotte). You'd think half of Charlotte is from New York and a good chunk of the RTP area is from northern New Jersey.

I moved to NC in the early 1990's just before this migration started. At the time it was wildly predicted that this would push NC into being a deep blue state but thus far (maybe twenty years down the road) this simply hasn't happened. This is in no small part thanks to the ludicrous jerrymandering the GOP has used as a poison pill against the Yankee invasion. But that was done well into this migration from the north. And running awful candidates has (John Edwards, Cal Cunningham to name two) hasn't helped the Democrats' case here.

Dunno why everybody assumed that just because you knew how to code or was a sysadmin Ninja you'd automatically vote Democrat. Turns out that isn't the case.

Voting patterns here tend to move more with overall demographics (age and race) more than anything else. And we haven't run out of angry white votes just yet.

And agree on the homelessness. I did a lot of travel to the Bay area during the late 1990's and into the first decade of the 2000's. The homeless situation was bad when I first started traveling there and got noticeably worse as time went on. Anyone who wants to talk about homelessness/mental health needs to spend some time on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley.

One word recommendation: Dragnet.

I would like to see drivers banned until they have been thoroughly tested. A learner's permit and a graduated license isn't "thoroughly tested." Looks like neither of us will get our wish.

Seconded. My 85-year-old father has had an iPad literally from day 1. My brother was living with my parents when the iPad came out and he went to the nearby Apple store and got them both 1st gen iPads. My brother has since passed away and I updated his iPad to a 3rd gen model and got a matching model so I could help him out over the phone...something that has turned out to be almost unnecessary.

Yeah, it was a metric ton of money but thus far worth every penny. My mother is home-bound and my Dad is her primary caregiver. He greatly enjoys the iPad and has had no trouble using it. He has virtually abandoned his old Mac G5 tower. The iPad is a great social connection to his remaining college chums and keeps him in touch with the grandchildren on Facebook. He loves to play various word games like "Words with Friends."

To be fair, this could all be done with a modern Android-based tablet and I don't think my Dad would have any trouble with it but honestly I'm not going to change horses mid-stream. But the huge app base for iOS helps greatly plus a good deal of my brothers and sisters plus their children have iPads so things are just easier. I never thought I'd advocate for monoculture like this (or even appear to) but this has brought a great deal of joy into my Father's life as my Mother's health has gone downhill over the past few years. This alone has made the iPads worth every penny.

My advice: look at an iPad first but whatever you do don't cheap out.

How exactly is this different from private sector work? Please, I have time. Having worked on both sides of the fence, neither appears to have a lock on inept morons.

What again? Someone call Chet Heath!

Spring Comdex in Atlanta? Thanks for the t-shirt! I remember that one since I followed Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer into the ballroom. At that time he did not have an entourage -- by Comdex 1995 he was surrounded by easily 75 folks and it was like watching a school of fish move about in a reef. I couldn't believe someone that wealthy had such a bad haircut. I still have my "Blue Ninja" t-shirt somewhere and a couple of copies of Warp still in the shrink-wrap although I plan to have the 6'x3' OS/2 banner draped over my coffin.

My father (now 83) got the original iPad literally the day it came out. Yes, it was expensive but he's really loved it. He plays online games with my sister, nieces and nephews. We set him up to stay logged on to facebook to get the latest grandbaby pictures from my nephew's wife. My brother taught him to buy ebooks, too. He loves to read and is an inveterate insomniac so this alone was worth it. Now if he can't sleep and nobody is awake to play Scrabble, he can download a new book that catches his interest.

He has a computer (old G5 Mac tower) but rarely uses it now since the iPad can be used virtually anywhere in his home.

It's also reduced the number of "how to" and troubleshooting calls we get from him. For an 83-YO former pastor he does pretty good technically and recently figured out how to properly install the OS/X drivers on his G5 for a scanner/printer on his own.

Short answer: by all means get an iPad. It has the richest set of games and social media connections. My $.02.

It's not a "solution" so much as closure for a raw wound in American history. I'm not sure you can fully appreciate that aspect of this moment. It's also about finishing a job that was started ten years ago. And finally it's about a very real projection of power to send a message to a section of the world that's full of leaders who grow their fan base on the notion of Western (not just American) weakness and moral corruption. I'm sorry you're so worried about blowback on your soil. It's a legitimate concern. But respectfully let me remind you that OBL and his group has demonstrated time and again that there are no civilians in this war and that any reason, no matter how flimsy, seems to be good enough for to commit a terrorist act. Everyone is fair game and that includes our friends, allies and neighbors in addition to a very significant number of Muslims. As callous as it sounds, I'm going to savor this moment. It is important. Tomorrow will have to take care of itself.