Gen Xers also have a lot of debt: https://money.com/generation-with-most-debt-gen-x/

The other take I've read is that this time, he surrounded himself with idealogues who are more effective at enacting their agendas. Apparently the folks around him last time either weren't adept at getting things done or would undermine him, at least partially. And had a lot of turnover, lol.

Agree.

This part is what I have trouble understanding. I thought that ultra wealthy people and large corporations had the most political capital, and that their interests would restrain Trump. A lax H1B program is good for tech businesses. The tariffs are bad for most businesses. Too much immigration crackdown is bad for a lot of businesses. All of these policies or actions go against what I understood to be the interests of those with actual political capital. And in favor of whom? Steven Miller? Scott Bessent? It doesn't make sense to me.

I still feel like books are an amazing educational technology. Whenever I want to learn something new, my first preference is to get a good book on the topic. I appreciate books so very much.

So maybe newfangled ed tech stuff is hard because they're competing with one of the greatest inventions of the human race.

I miss minidisc. It was really cool. There was a short window of time when the disks were much cheaper than flash memory offering an equivalent play time.

Agree that old school digital is the way to go if they want to avoid streaming. Personally, I use a dedicated MP3 player and hook it to my computer with a USB cable to update songs / playlists. I buy MP3s or rip them from CDs. Talks, podcasts, or audio dramas, I'll find some way to convert to MP3.

Good point with USB sticks if they want removable media. Usually those don't plug into players though. I did have one player with the USB plug built in! It showed up like a drive, but it also had a headphone jack, buttons, and a battery.

Other digital cards might work too. I had an MP3 player at one point that took CF cards. I'm sure there are some that use SD or micro SD cards.

Going even further back, CDRWs and minidisc both involve removable rewritable media while still being digital.

Right. Honorable mention for minidisc players. I had one of those before flash memory became cheap and remember it fondly.

I got one of the $30 ones, it's been working for a while now, and I'm happy with it. The interface is a little clunky. I was wondering whether I was just lucky and looked it up. I has over 7500 reviews and an average 3.9 star rating; that seems pretty solid. Looks like they've been making it for several years now.

The taxes go to the military industrial complex. Those come off the top.

Is the minimum wage increasing in real terms, as in accounting for inflation?

The sort of things you're asking for are not the kinds of things that show up on technology news sites, which often cover new technology or research.

I just find it curious that you frequently comment on here to the effect that the topic of the article is vaporware or unproven or unlikely to work, etc. It's tech news. It's about forward looking stuff.

Maybe there's a "proven technology monthly" magazine or something. I don't know. Or maybe you enjoy posting these things for whatever reason, but the whole endeavor seems to stem from mismatched expectations.

Some country in Europe started migrating their defense operations to Libreoffice for this reason. Possibly Germany.

Ah, didn't read your comment closely enough and missed the insult. I work as an electrical engineer, but I don't work on anything fancy and can guarantee you that nothing I work on would be a good topic for technology news. It's still interesting to me, which is enough.

It's probably a good thing that there are people researching more "out there" designs or techology. If they succeed, great. If they don't, odds are they learn something useful along the way and maybe even develop spinoff technology, techniques, or products.

Moltex Energy has some practical reactor designs in this area. They're actually working on building one.

I'm starting to think a site specializing in "news" about proven technologies might be up your alley. Nothing about research or up and coming stuff, only articles about things that have been working for years.