It's a phase change alloy, when writing a high powered laser is used to melt the alloy, when it cools quickly it becomes opaque. When erasing, a lower powered laser heats up the disc and returns it to its transparent state. A reading laser isn't powerful enough to change the phases at all. So, you have the idea right... just no magnets involved.

I recently used Avis, they were totally cromulent.

For me, it's no more reddit on mobile but I'm not blocking it any time soon. If it's a Google result, so be it, there's still useful content over there.

It does not. I don't use Wayland honestly so I'm not sure what window manager(s) would be comparable.

I'll check it out, haven't used XFCE in about a decade.

For me, it's Fedora + KDE when I need a GUI. I used to be an AwesomeWM guy for a very long time but I needed a proper GUI for my 5 year old. I'll convert her to i3 or Awesome one day....