Even in the city, you’d be better off choosing the school first and then the location. If you find housing in Brooklyn but a school in the Bronx that could still be a long commute just for class and will impact time available to work, socialize, or sleep.

The data here is old now, but you might find this article interesting to give you an idea of the scale of the Internet. Maybe consider that Google tries to keep a copy of most of the public internet (compressed) and assume that the whole thing would be several times larger. Never mind that there is a lot that’s not covered by Google (paywalls, non-public forums/Facebook posts, etc.) but then also services like the Internet Archive that try to make multiple time-stamped copies of the Internet, although I think they usually don’t save the images/videos.

To be short, terabytes might sound like a lot to an individual, but the Internet is several orders of magnitude larger.

I didn’t know King was a Microsoft subsidiary. Kinda weird for Microsoft to own Candy Crush

No one’s gotten into the actual “why” that I’ve seen. This goes back to the early days of the internet, or even computers, really. In the ’80s and ’90s computer screens were much lower resolution than today. The finer details of traditional typefaces were often lost. There was a big push to simplify and optimize for the screen. This also impacted the early days of the web. I remember the advice for amateurs was to design your pages for small resolutions screens, windows that were only 800x600 or even 640x480, which would work on a standard definition TV.

I remember the defaults in web browsers in the late ’90s were often badly spaced Times New Roman. People would try to code better fonts when they could define them, but they were still largely in the mindset of using fonts optimized for low-resolution screens. Worse, in the early days there were no web fonts that could be imbedded in web pages, so you’d have to try to pick a font likely to be on your readers’ computers, which usually weren’t great.

Nowadays basically everyone’s devices have high-resolution screens, and we have embedded fonts, so we don’t have to live our lives that way. Still, that decades-old advice echoes through in modern designs. And there are a lot of bad free fonts out there, with people unwilling to pay for a font or put in the effort to find a good free one.

As for what you can do? You can’t force everyone to change, but you can be the change you want to see. Encourage people to learn about good typography, which is not just fonts! Make smarter choices in the written work you produce yourself to show others the way. And to get by for now, change the default fonts the devices you use if possible, or individual apps or web browsers. You can even install browser extensions like Stylus to replace a page’s style sheet with a different, better one.

OP was making a point that was largely only apparent if the font changed

They already have authorized resellers, who they link to on their website. This problem would only come from unauthorized resellers, who would not qualify for warranty service. It might not help software support requests, but I don’t know how much support they offer for software since I don’t think they’re supplied with any. Anything hardware they should be asking for a receipt from an authorized reseller, and if the customer can’t provide it then it’s not covered by the warranty. And even if the customer can provide a receipt from an authorized reseller in their name, if it comes in for repair and has the wrong RAM then it’s not a warranty repair anyway (although I’m guessing for something this inexpensive they don’t repair individual units, they probably just send a replacement, so the counterfeit parts might not get noticed).

Didn’t know about that, although it makes sense. That does complicate things!

That’s a good point, there are still a lot of those information/alert radios around and they’re basically all a low powered AM station. That could be important for people driving by and not having that option reduces safety. I have a hard time believing that AM receivers are that expensive for cars that it’s really worth the trade-off. It’s probably not something that gets used often, but when it’s needed you want people to have it.

I believe they’re referring to buying up all of the copies of the hot new game or console, then reselling them above MSRP to make a profit in a time of scarcity.

I don’t remember scarcity being as much of a problem back then, nor was demand high enough for scalping to be common. It might have been less legal, too. As far as tickets to sporting events and concerts, back then it was illegal to resell them for more than face value in my state. That changed 10-15 years ago thanks to lobbying from Ticketmaster and affiliates.

It has also previously told us that it uses sophisticated AI systems to detect and combat fraud. So why did its AI not notice that the image on our listing was one of the world’s most famous buildings and appears in thousands of photos across the web?

The “sophisticated AI” failed at its job? I’m shocked. Shocked! Well, not that shocked.

I was thinking more about things that are written for Linux and not necessarily ported to macOS. When I’ve tried things in an ARM VM there seems to be a lot less software compiled for ARM.

I’d be interested in buying one as a headless server, but a lot of the FLOSS software I’d like to run seem to prefer x86 processors.

I don’t think there’s any legislated law that states that, but some courts treat it as a basic principle (especially in the state of Delaware). What I’ve usually seen as an early example of this is Dodge v. Ford Motor Co. from 1919. Henry Ford had amassed a surplus of more than $60 million (equally to more than $1.1 billion today) and wanted to reinvest that money in expanding the business with new factories while continuing to raise wages and cut prices on the Model T. As part of this he wanted to cease special shareholder dividends he had been playing out of the surplus. Brothers John Francis Dodge and Horace Elgin Dodge owned 10% of Ford and sued to keep the dividend payments coming.

The court ruled that Ford had to pay out a dividend of more than $19 million (more than $360 million today) to the minority shareholders. In the ruling, in a non-binding section, the judge wrote:

A business corporation is organized and carried on primarily for the profit of the stockholders. The powers of the directors are to be employed for that end. The discretion of directors is to be exercised in the choice of men to attain that end and does not extend to a change in the end itself, to the reduction of profits or to the nondistribution of profits among stockholders in order to devote them to other purposes.

Ford was accused of trying to turn the business into a charity. Behind the scenes, though, one of his main motivations for not wanting to pay the dividend was suspicion that the Dodge brothers were using the dividends from his successful business to setup a rival car company to compete against him, which was exactly what they were doing.

It seems the interpretation of the ruling is controversial, even as to whether “maximize shareholder value” is actually enforceable or what the judge meant. I continue to think that the more investors a company has, the less the company will be able to focus on what’s best for the company, customers, and employees in the long run.

This feels like Bender breaking up with the Planet Express Ship in the middle of battle.

“Eh, the moment seemed right.”

Legalized extortion. Interestingly, reading up on the organization, they seem to operate globally, not just in the US.

Article from August 20, 2003

Did you want to settle?
Never, never. That’s the difference between the way an employee and an owner thinks. They attacked my family’s name and came into my community and made us look bad. There was never an instance of me wanting to give in. I would have loved to have fought it. But when (the BSA) went to Congress to get their powers, part of what they got is that I automatically have to pay their legal fees from day one. That’s why nobody’s ever challenged them–they can’t afford it. My attorney said it was going to cost our side a quarter million dollars to fight them, and since you’re paying their side, too, figure at least half a million. It’s not worth it. You pay the fine and get on with your business. What most people do is get terrified and pay their license and continue to pay their licenses. And they do that no matter what the license program turns into.

I wonder if that little poison pill about having to pay the legal fees for the Business Software Alliance from day 1 is still true? I’d also be curious to see a follow-up today for how they’re using FOSS in their business. There are a lot more resources today than there were in 2003!

People keep acting like this is unprecedented, and maybe it hasn’t specifically happened this way before, but boom/bust seems to happen every few years.

To hear my dad and other older folks talk, though, it sounds like things were really good in the ’90s and they haven’t seen commission checks like that since.

Emporia, Virginia is another notorious one, right on heavily traveled I-95 as well as US-58. Virginia has front license plates, so the cars that don’t have front plates definitely aren’t from Virginia and if there’s a group of cars all going the same speed it’s the easy way to pick out the non-local. Saw it happen when I was a passenger.