Do we have a gigantic budget deficit because of 2017's Tax Cuts and Jobs Act? That cut taxes, but didn't really create jobs? Shouldn't we find every way we can to increase revenue? Like hiring more IRS agents to go after wealthy tax cheats? Oh, no, we have to let those people go because we have to reduce spending. Cutting staff at National Parks, where the park brings in more revenue than it costs to run? Got to cut those positions, too, even though people will have a worse time, and maybe not spend as much.

We did have that. And then the Destruction of Governmental Effectiveness people went and laid off a big chunk of the staff at FDA and CDC and NIH, so now we won't have any new vaccines approved, because there is no staff to verify the results and approve them.

Reality keeps reinforcing Stephen Colbert’s observation that “reality has a well-known liberal bias.”
Conservatives hate that, and think that by insisting that such liberal bias be countered with their viewpoints, even though they are not of the reality-based community.

I replaced my NetGear readyNAS with a Synology server a couple years back. ReadyNAS is no more. It looks like Synology isn’t to be trusted any more, either. Fewer and fewer choices.
And there are good reasons to buy a specialized device, rather than rolling your own. Power consumption, noise, and heat; a dedicated appliance is better on all three than building it yourself.

The mac always has a mouse and a mouse pointer; iOS has a touch-screen, and for those with a Magic Keyboard, also a cursor. So a Mac app on iOS with keyboard could be fully functional, but frustrating to users who are used to touch input. iOS apps on a Mac, though, won't have access to features that rely on touch input. I can see Mac laptops getting a touch screen, and then maybe have the touch screen detach from the keyboard, and become a convertible. But only if Apple sees the market for such a device (which could happen if Windows convertibles achieve a sizeable market share).

I bought an M3 MacBook Air last year after I got frustrated that I couldn't run an IDE on an iPad Pro. My iPad is aging, and has a cosmetic crack in the screen (now underneath a screen protector, but that trapped a visible mote of dust that's another annoyance). So a 13" M5 iPad Pro and Keyboard might be good enough that I could sell the MacBook Air, and travel with one device rather than two.

Cheapest per mile, sure. But there are a lot more miles between China and the US than there are between Detroit and Windsor.

That is not what price elasticity means. Price elasticity is the percentage change in quantity demanded divided by the percentage change in price. So if you are selling 100 units a day at $100, and phi is 0.25, then for a four dollar increase in price you would lose one sale per day. It is also not a fixed value; it will change based on the state of the economy, the level of price, and available competition.

If price elasticity is 0, then customers will pay whatever the asking prices is (think cancer drugs; how much would you pay if you had cancer and this drug cured it? Nearly everything, right?), to infinity, e.g. for a basic commodity, where you can sell all you have at the market price, but if you try and charge above the market price, customers all go to your competitors and you sell nothing.

Once again, the people in this administration demonstrate they have no idea what they are doing.

I‘ve been a fan of Anker products for a while, not knowing they were a Chinese company. Chargers, battery packs, cables. Fortunately, I have enough for my needs for a while. I‘m not sure what I‘ll do when it needs replacing.

Apple doesn’t sell iPods any more.

Let's see, I bought a 27" tube TV with stereo sound in 1989 (with S-Video as well as NTSC inputs!), and then a 43" 4K set in 2015 to finally upgrade, and my newest one, another 43" 4K, in 2017 for the guest room, trying to beat tariffs the first time. And there was a 43" 4K computer monitor sometime in there, too. Does that count? I will only buy new TVs/monitors when the old ones die or turn 25, I guess.

Where are my mod points when I need one. Laugh out loud!

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.