The reason why blank media disappeared is because demand evaporated. 800 Megabytes? 5 Gigabytes? Really? No one wants storage that small any more.

A real programmer can write Fortran code in any language.

The source of the joke is that all programming languages have their own unique idioms and features. Some concepts are implemented in many languages, and transfer easily. Others aren't.

Coal power plants around here (southwest ohio) are being decommissioned because they're too expensive to run. Natural gas, wind, and solar are taking their place.

There's an obvious economic driver for shifting demand from when a resources is expensive to when the resource is inexpensive. If a building's owners have a contract with the utility provider for time-of-day billing, and electricity is cheap at night and expensive during the day, then there's incentive for shifting the electric load from day (A/C) to night (power the freezers, and thaw the ice during the day to avoid daytime electric charges).
If the local utility gets enough electricity from solar, and the duck curve means electricity is cheapest in the afternoon, and more expensive at night, then the building owner should just go ahead and run the A/C during the day, and maybe the freezers, too. The capital costs to build the ice electricity time-shifter may or may not still be low enough to fit within the savings the system offers.

I'm still a big fan of gravitational confinement fusion reactors. They're exquisitely simple. You need a safe distance, though.

The old pattern of electricity being cheaper at night, because everyone uses Air Conditioning in the afternoon and demand is at its peak, is going to change. Solar provides power during the day, and not at night. As the fraction of electricity from solar goes up, the increase in afternoon supply will match that daily usage pattern.

The economic justification for batteries is that you fill them when electricity is cheap, and deplete them when it is dear. Utilities will have incentives to match the price customers pay with the supply-and-demand balance.

I started with BASIC, then a little assembly language (that I really didn't get), and then Pascal, APL,C, C++, and then TCL, Prolog, SQL, Rosette, and LDL++ all for one project. When Java came along, that (and HTML and Javascript). Then Python.

How did the work week in America go from 72 hour (6 days, 12 hours per day) to 40 hours? Unions, and then legislation. Of course big employers are going to expect long hours of work for as little pay as possible. There was some violence along the way, as there always is when there's a lot of money at stake. Worth it? Yes.

It keeps the bitcoin that Texas has accepted off the market, limiting supply, keeping the price high for just a little while longer.

Exactly. It's a way to prop up Bitcoin with taxpayer dollars, because they're running out of marks in the general public. Gives the insiders a chance to get out near the current absurd price.

What is Bitcoin good for? Transferring ransoms, yes; purchasing illegal contraband, stolen goods, yes. What else?

Or they had the company they are leading sell the real estate to a firm they secretly control, for a below-market price. Loot the shareholder value for themselves, and leave the company's shareholders, suppliers, employees, and customers in the lurch when the hollowed-out corporate shell finally collapses.

Apple had practice. 680x0 => PowerPC => Intel (both x86 and then AMD/64) => ARM/Apple Silicon. The transition was always accompanied by a compatibility layer that ran the old instruction set.

Where are my mod points when I need them? Itanium/VLIW/Itanic was a failure.

Star Wars, released in 1977, raised movie ticket prices to $4. Adjusting for inflation, that's $20.80 with October 2024 dollars. I forget what the Matinee discount was back then, a matinee for $12 today doesn't seem to be unreasonable.

Snacks, on the other hand...