That’s exactly how it works, well other than me having the dates off as the Boomers weren’t even born when Social Security was enacted by FDR. When Social Security was enacted, retirees started receiving benefits even if they never paid into the system, which was paid for by the current workers who were paying into the system. It’s been like that ever since. Social Security is also not a pension.

You are correct that for most people would be better off investing their Social Security taxes into a hedge fund but workers don’t really have a choice in the matter.

That’s not how Social Security works. The money the Boomers paid into the system went to paying benefits for the previous generations. The benefits the Boomers (at least the ones that have retired) are getting now is being paid by the workers in the younger generations. While it’s true the program has run a surplus, if the young taxpayers stopped paying into the system that surplus wouldn’t last very long.

Not that I disagree, but 90 would be silent generation.

That’s interesting. I’ve always wanted a bunch of blinkenlights but they also needed to be functional and serve some purpose. Kind of like the old Thinkpad I have that has a whole row of status LEDs under the screen. A bunch of meaningless lights just for the sake of having lights always seemed pointless.

Anyway, with the last PC I built, the RGB stuff was pretty much unavoidable. I still went out of my way to get a case without a window though. I do have the RGB on, but it’s a solid blue-greenish color so there’s a bit of glow coming out the back of the case.

It’s fine for things like office PCs where you just need it to work, don’t want to spend a lot of money, and performance doesn’t really matter too much.

My experience is an MBA from a T10 school is just as useless. On top of that, they think they should be paid more because of the school they went to.

The sad thing, some of the material in an MBA program can actually be useful. It’s just the type of people who enroll in these programs aren’t the type to actually learn it and will just coast through doing the bare minimum. Or I suppose today, using AI to cheat. This is even more so for the people who think that the key to success is having a big name school on their resume. If anything, I’d put more weight on an MBA from no-name state U than T10 school. Which still isn’t much, but anyway.

Has Lenovo stepped their game up recently? Work used to be all Lenovo, and a few years back they switched over to Dell because the Lenovos just weren’t reliable. Which is a shame because I still think the Lenovos are better designed with better keyboards, screens, port layout, etc. but it’s all moot if the thing craps out after a couple of years.

It’s the explanation for why the Allies could spot their planes in situations where they would otherwise not be easily visible. If it happens a few times you might write it off as luck, but if it keeps happening over and over you might get suspicious.

With that said, I don’t think they really bought the carrots thing. Both the Allied and Axis powers knew about radar and how it worked. It’s just the Allies figured out how to build and deploy their systems first.

Wesley Willis

The article is about what to do with all the actual physical coins. I would assume the treasury will start gathering them and scrapping them. The old copper coins can be recycled easy enough as there’s plenty of demand for copper, but I have no idea what they’ll do with all the zinc (copper plated) coins. Apparently they don’t know either as there isn’t any plan in place.

Supposedly when the mint decided to start pulling the 1943 steel cents from circulation years ago they ended up dumping a bunch of them in the ocean to get rid of them. Some people consider that an urban legend but perhaps that could happen.

If I really wanted something like that, I’d just buy a dumb fridge and rig up a camera inside of it.

It actually wouldn’t surprise me to learn that most Windows installs nowadays aren’t pre-installs but rather images deployed from a corporate IT department.

In some ways the biggest danger for Windows in the home market isn’t Linux or Mac but the people who decide they’ll just use their phone or tablet for everything. Then again, I’m not sure if Microsoft even cares about the home market.

The battery has a charge curve. What does the most wear or damage to the battery is the ends of the curve - either deep discharging the battery or charging it up fully to the point where it cannot take any more charge. It’s up to the manufacturer where they want to put 0% and 100% on the curve - to protect and extend the life of the battery most manufacturers don’t put 0% and 100% at the extreme ends of the curve.

If I had to build such a system, instead of a few satellites with really big mirrors I’d instead have a massive number of small satellites with smaller mirrors. Obviously then any area I’d want to light up, I’d have to hit with a number of the satellites - probably dozens at least or even hundreds of them for decent sized area. That would at least alleviate a few of the problems - aiming would be easier. As satellites move out of range new satellites would be moving in range. Long shadows from the angle of satellite near the edge of their range wouldn’t be as much of a problem as I’d be hitting any spot from a variety of angles. That the satellites would be useless for about 75% of their orbit I could make up for by launching even more satellites.

Of course, it would still be hugely impractical and there would still be major limitations. I’m still not sure how you could manage the aiming - the satellites would have to be continuously adjusting their aim to track their target. Reaction wheels can only do so much and using thrusters you’d burn through propellant like crazy. Launching the required array of satellites would be outrageously expensive and you’d need thousands of them. Eventually something would go wrong - you’d have a collision or one would break up and you’d Kessler yourself right out of business.

You can always just use set compatible.

Actually, one of the reasons that vim “won” over many of the other vi-like editor clones back in the day is that it tried to behave like vi as closely as possible, whereas many of the others didn’t.

A lot of problems basically boil down to using an nVidia card and dealing with their drivers. Either use an AMD GPU/APU or if you don’t need anything fancy the iGPU in an Intel CPU.

There’s always Don’t Starve which definitely fits the mood, though I’ve always found that game insanely difficult.

I’m much the same way. Wasn’t really a conscious decision either - it’s more of I had better and more interesting things to do and gradually the amount of time I spent watching TV and movies dwindled down to basically zero.

SD cards. They won’t be completely gone, but will probably be regulated to pro cameras and a few niche applications. As storage goes, hard drives outside of data centers. Right now they are still hanging in there as cheap external storage for things like backups, but in 10 years they’ll probably be gone in that application.

Fluorescent lighting. Granted it’s already on the way out, but in 10 years you may have trouble finding bulbs and your only options for an old fluorescent fixture will be either to replace it or an LED retrofit kit. Possibly the same thing will apply to sodium vapor lighting.

Manual transmissions. While the internal combustion engine will probably still be hanging in there, my guess will be finding a new car with more than 2 pedals might be a challenge.

Meanwhile, my work Windows laptop is significantly slower to wake up now as I’m forced to hibernate it thanks to them removing S3 sleep in favor of the modern standby shit.