The city builder game Cities Skylines (and the sequel) both use .ogg for the in game music, ads, etc.

The first computer I ever personally owned was a Timex-Sinclair 1000, a hand-me-down from my computer programmer older brother who bought it new and played around with it for a while then gifted it to me. (I was about 8 at the time.)

By that time, though, I’d already had quite a bit of experience using, programming, and playing games on both an Atari 400 and an Atari 800. My best friend’s electrical engineer dad bought them as an educational toy for my BFF, and I was a beneficiary. (For the record, My BFF is still my BFF almost 45 years latertruth.) He had a neighbor across the street with an 800, and I still remember dialing across the street with the old acoustic coupled modem to trade games like “Caverns of Mars”.

I love trying to explain to college age kids what it was like to have spent *forever* programming ELIZA out of “101 BASIC Computer Games” only to have your other brother walk across the living room and trip over the power cord “accidentally” (he was a jerk, but I love him anyway), causing you to lose all that work.

I’d never trade what we have now for what we had then, but I sure am glad I was there!

Although the article most directly references the problems in high schools in different areas, I see the same problems in my NYC (CUNY) community college. The transition from in-person to online classes via teleconferencing was so rapid that a large proportion of the students were unable to adapt. In the first few days after classes resumed, class attendance was _sparse_ (read: down by 50-60%), and many of the students that did show up for the meetings were using their cellphones or tablets to connect. Some were even connecting using really poor cellular data, sitting outside trying to get signal. (I asked.)

I'm lucky, I'm a retired, middle-aged, former military tech geek with modest-but-not-insubstantial means (GI Bill + retirement) trying to get back into the academic swing of things after 20 years out of the job market. They're not. The majority of the people I attend class with are minorities, internationals, or first generation college students, and after spending close to two years getting to know them, they're not generally 'flush with cash' or living in the lap of luxury. To their credit, the CUNY system put a pause on the system they called a "Recalibration Period for Educational Equity", and have been doing everything they can to get students supplied with laptops, tablets, etc. They have sent numerous e-mails and texts, and even changed some of the end of semester grading policies. Attendance in my classes has improved a bit (it's probably only down 25-30% now depending on the class).

However, CUNY is pretty well funded system, as are the private colleges in the Tri-state. For smaller systems and those that have been ravaged by tax cuts and de-funding, this transition is a really heavy lift.

The best solution that I can see is for large telco providers (i.e. - Verizon, AT&T, etc.) to provide mobile hotspots to students in need. Heck if the FAANGs wanted to jump on the badwagon, they could probably build a lot of customer loyalty with a (relatively) small investment. For areas with no cell service, this might be an opportunity for good ol' Elon to get StarLink up and running, and distributed to students in those areas. Somebody needs to do *something*, and these tech billionaires who spent so much money trying to grow their fortunes need to bite the bullet and pay it forward.

After a career in the military, I retired, and now I'm studying engineering (specifically mechanical, but with the intent of moving into an aerospace program). I see this 'bloody-minded' problem solving thought process quite frequently in some of my engineering specific classes and while working on research. Many of the engineering and physics professors I have don't seem to be able to look outside of the way they've always done things, or beyond using a very algorithmic problem solving approach. Don't get me wrong, for complex problem solving, these ways of thinking are extremely useful, and should absolutely be taught.

One issue I have come across is that some of the professors eyes glaze over when presented with a student that has as much experience (if not more) with a given system/material/construction method/etc than they do. (i.e.- One student in the program has been working as a machinist and doing CAD/CAM for several years, and I was a network and security administrator back in the dotcom days.) One of my physics professors was delighted to learn that navigating ships involves a huge amount of vector math. It's obvious if you've ever done it, but if you've been teaching mechanics the same way for a couple of decades, it can come as a surprise.

All of these people I'm talking about are extremely intelligent folks, and most of my engineering professors are quite accomplished in their fields in the non-academic world, so it's not a problem of brainpower. It's a problem of thought process lock-in. Honestly, IMHO it's a problem with the way engineering is taught in the modern academic setting. In the past, engineers were not just individual problem solvers, they were also artists. However, in modern engineering education (at least what I have seen so far), the closes anyone gets to artistry is AutoCAD or SolidWorks. I think a lot of the 'intuition block' that happens with some of the people I've been working with, both students and professors can be attributed to the lack of requirements for art and/or humanities training. I'm currently working on an undergrad research project with a faculty mentor and alongside several students (each of whom has their own project.) When problems arise with material behaviors/unexpected results/etc, things come grinding to a halt. Sometimes the problem does require algorithmic thinking to solve, but I see so many instances where if they were more at home with their intuition, the problems could be solved much more quickly and elegantly.

Actually, I have the original 20 MB drive, from 'my' (read "my dad's but he didn't know how to use it") PC XT from approximately 1984, and it still works (if you can find a controller). The 135 MB drive from my (read my) Compudyne 386/33 from ca. 1990 still works as well. The 386 mobo continued as a server well into the late 90's so be careful...not all old tech is as ephemeral as the cheap, disposable modern stuff.

As a content producer vice a content consumer, SSD's are about 'tits ona bull' useless. I need fast, fast write. I only care about fast, fast read when I'm playing back, and the real-world playback advantage of SSD drives in a production environment is not so great as to counteract the write disadvantage.

For the record, SSD's will have to reduce themselfes in price to about $.10/GB before I'm willing to swallow the performance his caused by slow NAND writes, and I think I'm not the only one tht thinks this way.

Apple, however, is playing smart by combining the advantages of the two drive types in a single form factor. The "OS/application SSD drive" + mass storage HDD is a very smart combination, it's just too damned expensive. The rent is too damned high!!!

Wait....I'm supposed to AVOID the cos-playing female types in Tokyo? Why the hell else did I go all the way to Japan, then? To buy electronics hardware that I can get way cheaper in Shanghai? I think not!

Next think you know, you're going to be telling me not to go to a ramen shop because you can get packaged stuff cheaper at the conbini.

*DOES NOT COMPUTE!* *DOES NOT COMPUTE!*

For the record, the "cosplaying female-equivalents in Akiba" are pretty and they smell nice...even the dudes...(Don't ask, it was a confusing summer.)

And walking through herds of "herbivore men" that swarm Akiba gives you this sudden feeling that for the first time in your life you could actually kick someone's ass at something more than Mario Kart or a Halo death match.

SHEESH!

I have to agree with your disagreement.

If you read the Governor's other tweets, you can see that he clearly was making a difficult decision to take a man's life. The fact that he used new technology to let us see the process should be lauded, not decried. Now the people will have to face the results of their votes for politicians who are "tough on crime". Thankfully Gov. Herbert has put a human face on the debate.

Although the squeamish and European out there find it 'barbaric' or 'unfeeling', a multiple murderer got his. This man was not some "poor wretch" who was "wrongfully convicted". He was on trial for murder when he MURDERED ANOTHER PERSON. If ever there's an argument for capital punishment, this guy was it. So no-one should shed a tear for him, save his family.

As for the firing squad, Mr. Gardner CHOSE to be executed that way. If the criminal chose the means despite less painful options, then whether you consider a firing squad humane is irrelevant. It was his choice, and it's a somewhat free-ish country.