Puerto Rico is not autonomous. In Puerto Rico v. Sanchez Valle, the US Supreme Court found that sovereignty of Puerto Rico ultimately resides in the United States Congress. The US Congress can pass a law for Puerto Rico and there is nothing anyone in the Puerto Rican government can do about it. US Congress has ultimate control over Puerto Rico (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PROMESA as an example). That isn’t autonomous.

“If Congress chose to alter Puerto Rico’s political status, it could do so through statute regardless of whether a plebiscite were held or what sentiment such a vote revealed.” Political Status of Puerto Rico: Brief Background and Recent Developments for Congress (https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R44721/7)

Puerto Rico had been owned by the United States since the US took it during the Spanish-American War in 1898. It is part of the US. There have been multiple votes asking if they want to become an official state of the US. Other countries don’t get the choice to become US states. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territories_of_the_United_States#Incorporated_vs._unincorporated_territories

You don’t need a passport because it is inside US borders.

I would agree with this except that I don’t have faith that it won’t be leveraged as a way to get out of a whole crapload of taxes. I’m pretty sure that unemployment insurance, and a lot of the federal taxes, are based on wages and not tips. Also what is the limit? Can I pay my friend $50 to mow my lawn and tip him an extra $25,000, just so I can get around the limit for a gift tax? I wouldn’t trust a Republican administration to implement this without making it easier for Rick people to avoid paying taxes.

I know that Pixel 7’s and above support it. There are Reddit posts showing they have the feature already. Satellite messaging is just using standard 4G/LTE from Starlink. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is only an OS update away for most newer phones.

Looks like it’s been available on some android devices for at least a month. I don’t know about free though, I think it depends on your carrier. I know T-Mobile has been talking about supporting it using Starlink satellites.

https://www.reddit.com/r/tmobile/comments/1ct1no1/satellite_messaging_option_appeared_on_my_pixel_7/ https://www.t-mobile.com/news/un-carrier/first-spacex-satellites-launch-for-breakthrough-direct-to-cell-service-with-t-mobile

This is the best answer I’ve seen in this whole thread. You’re right that the key is not needed. Microsoft identified your system components and did the original activation based on the hardware you’ve got on your computer. All you need to do to bring back a licensed copy of Windows is to reinstall it.

New Caledonia is part of France, it’s not a different country. If you are a New Caledonian, you are a French citizen.

I get alerts on my Android for an Airtag I keep in my backpack all the time. My phone gives me the option to make the Airtag play a sound.

On Debian, you have to be root or a sudoer. Those commands are there, just not in the path of regular users.

He didn’t post a $5M Bond. He put up cash. Makes you wonder if the companies that provide bonds may consider him to risky to bond.

Probably not that deep. I’ve heard there are definitely discounts. That doesn’t count for much though when it still increases your cost 6x.

Yes they will get paid eventually. They put that into law after 2019. If you are furloughed, you cannot use leave. Even if you are emergency essential and still working during the shutdown, I don’t believe that you can be paid for leave (but you can still take it if it was scheduled before the shutdown).

Just make sure it’s RFC 2324 compliant. You don’t want it throwing any HTTP 418 error messages.

If you’re having power on issues, I would make sure you are using a standalone power brick. I’ve used a Surface Pro for work and I’ve found that sometimes when connected to the docking station, it wouldn’t power on. When connected to a standalone power brick it usually would. For a standalone power brick, I’ve used both the one that came with the Surface and also a 65W USB-C adapter with a USB-C to Surface per cable.

To your point, geostationary satellites are in orbits around 22,300 miles away while Starlink is in a LEO orbit ~342 miles away. At the speed of light, that’s an additional quarter second round trip time minimum. Absolutely forever in internet speeds. My experience with GEO is a latency >550ms round trip. With the TCP/IP protocol built the way it is (aka, three-way handshake), a webpage wouldn’t even start downloading until almost 2 seconds have passed.