SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the I-owe,-I-owe,-it's-off-to-work-I-go dept.
Another day, another record broken.
The debt held by US households has surpassed its pre-2008 record, several financial outlets note. A peculiar spotlight in the associated numbers falls on student loans, where delinquencies are multiple times higher than for other debt types: 10 percent is the norm.
That's some pretty troubling news for the economy [and wider society], notes Rana Foroohar at sister outlet the Financial Times. First off, there's the association between the rise in student debt, and a decrease in home ownership for young people. This connection is exacerbated by them millennials increasingly turning towards income-based repayment programmes, which spread out the debt over more years.
Secondly, the level of student debt delinquencies ain't changing: the 10 percent figure is a near-constant over the past 4-5 years. People who've ever had a delinquency -- even if they recover -- have a much lower rate of home ownership at age 30 as compared to their non-defaulted compatriots. Not having a home means not filling it with stuff, and filling with stuff is kinda what the economy is based on.
Then, thirdly, it's not only students that are hit by student debt: increasingly, their parents are taking on debt too, to help out. Fuel for that debt sandwich is something peculiar: the rate of inflation in college admission costs is three times higher than the consumer price index. Must be that college professors wages have increased a lot, then.
Given that boomers and their millennial offspring are the two largest voting blocks in the US, a snappy future president-elect might consider raising the issue a bit.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday May 19 2017, @04:31PM (3 children)
Did the TV work well with the computer? in these times of incompatible protocols, HDCP (DRM), spy-r'-us etc.
I guess the remote control thing hasn't been resolved yet.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday May 19 2017, @06:13PM (2 children)
The TV was for the living room. It has a smart TV built in, sadly, which I do not use or ever want to use.
I use a Roku 3 on that TV as well as a DVD player (not Blue Ray) and a Chrome Cast.
The Roku will easily play video from a server on the local network. But not the audio on most. I can understand Roku not wanting to license that audio codec. The irony is that the Roku will play mp3 audio just fine. Even before the mp3 patent expired.
I'm going to re-rip some of our DVDs but with audio being mp3 this time. Other video files can be easily processed with ffmpeg so that the video codec is "copy" and the audio is re-encoded to mp3.
I'm not sure what remote control thing you are referring to. The TV has a remote. It a lot of configuration, menus, etc. Configuration of the WiFi (no way!), etc. But I only use four buttons of that remote's many buttons: Power, Input, Vol+, Vol-.
No cable. I have tried an antenna, but don't really care for it, and nothing over the air is worth watching on network TV, other than PBS. But PBS is a nice app on the Roku.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday May 19 2017, @07:20PM (1 child)
Maybe you can start a small project to reflash the smart TV into BSD or Linux?
For the audio isn't there like raw PCM or a FLAC option?
My remote control idea was to be able to control the TV from a computer such that one playing one source the TV can be told to switch to that etc. And doing it using Ethernet or so instead of placing a IR emitter wired to some microcontroller near the TV-set.
I'll agree on shit-on-tv.. ;-)
Good as computer output unit. Worthless as a receiver of big corp trash.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday May 19 2017, @07:36PM
So many project ideas. So little time. I don't know anything about BSD. Other than some dabbling with Raspberry Pi and Arduino, I generally prefer to work at much higher levels of abstraction these days. Back in the 80's I would have been more interested in a project at this low a level. These days I think of C or C++ as very low level -- close to the machine. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
I'm talking about the audio being AAC in DVD's I ripped in the past. I wish I had used mp3 as the audio format in the ripped video file that sits on my server.
The remote I mostly use is the Roku remote. Or the DVD remote. Recently I started watching Babylon 5 on DVD again. Just about done with season 2. But I've got Netflix, Hulu (no commercials), HBO, Starz, Amazon Prime, PBS (free), and Sling. Not sure if I like the Sling content, may not keep it.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.