I also credit Neopets, but it was really the confluence of Neopets, MySpace, Geocities/Tripod, Xanga, etc. that really formed the base for so much of my career.
As a parent with a child with mild-to-moderate hearing loss it is heartening to know that the hearing aid technology is progressing, and progressing well!
He's been using a pair of Phonak Skys since infancy, and while they can be tuned by the audiologist I sometimes wonder what it'll be like if and when he gets his next pair.
My son is 14 and has a moderate to severe loss. During his younger years we had a big clunky behind the ear type of aid and it was fine for a while. But tech progressed and we started noticing that he was having trouble hearing "s" sounds. I researched and got him the Oticon Real and it's been amazing and his speech dramatically improved with the new tech. There have been a lot fewer problems with wind noise and he can talk and pay attention in loud environments like school or a restaurant. His grades shot up.
The newer tech is definitely worth it but spendy. There are times though when I'm a bit jealous, too! He can turn them off when he doesn't want to hear and can listen to anything on his phone over bluetooth, as well as take calls. And he never wakes up at night because of noise :)
Well, tech has progressed in the couple of years since I looked at things. The best thing to do is to get a good audiologist who can recommend devices that work best for the kind of loss.
You probably already know this, but if not, I urge you to learn sign language as a family! Hearing aids will always be helpful for when he's out and about in society with people who don't know sign language, but it's a much more reliable, concrete, comfortable way to communicate with people with hearing loss than hearing aids, and it both had extra benefits for people with full hearing and people without.
We did this ages ago at our company (back then we were making silly Facebook games, remember those?)
It was by far the most fun, productive, and fulfilling week.
It went on to shape the course of our development strategy when I started my own company. Regularly work on tech debt and actively applaud it when others do it too.
I would love something that is close to phpBB but slightly more modern. Like, phpBB but with federation support and a clean API would be great. But most modern forum-like software is Reddit clones.
How I miss my script kiddie days of being 15, downloading "nulled" versions of vBulletin off of Limewire and throwing them up on pocket money paid cPanel web hosting account waiting for it to upload on my parents 56K.
Is this even the case anymore?
The government has shown to turn a blind eye when natural disasters affect states that voted majority voted for the other party. Their own citizens.
If you were stuck overseas but are an outspoken Democrat, I would not count on your government to get you home.