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

Look at Ms. Moneybags; I’ve seen pastry chefs go into that much debt in culinary schools just to make $30,000/year!

Google:

This happened all the time on the New York Subway when I lived there 20+ years ago. But there you were usually only 2-5 minutes away from the next station and you had the ability to go to a different car, so most people just ignored them. You’re not going to find many commercial flights that are less than an hour gate to gate, though, and frequently many hours in duration.

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!

I’m realizing I like smash burgers from fast food places. For me Shake Shack tops that list, with Freddy’s a close second. I was surprised at how good I thought Sonic’s smash burger was since I usually haven’t been overly-impressed with their food. Not a smash burger, but I do like Five Guys, although they’re really expensive. None of those I would describe as particularly fast, though.

For something that’s actually fast, as in my food can be ready as soon as I get to the window from when I ordered at the drive-thru intercom I’d say Wendy’s is currently my favorite. They changed their burgers after founder Dave Thomas died and I haven’t liked their changes to the traditional lineup, but the Double Stack or Baconator/Baconator Jr. are good. The others like McDonald’s, Burger King, Hardee’s/Carl’s Jr. are consistent, rarely bad but also rarely great. You’re in Canada and I’ve noticed when we go visit my wife’s parents up there that McDonald’s is often running some limited-time variant on their burgers, often the quarter pounder, and sometimes they’ve been good, or at least interesting. We don’t seem to get those in the US, so if you want a fast food burger you might want to at least try them since you have easy access.

My recommendations might not mean much, though, because I haven’t been particularly impressed with the A&W burgers I’ve had in Canada. I’ve already forgotten what I really don’t like with them even though I had one a few weeks ago, but I think it’s something like the buns are weirdly grainy and the meat is loose and has an odd flavor. I like the root beer, though, in spite of your paper straws that start breaking down way too fast.

I had not seen the news about Shanahan being in a car wreck!

Wait, are you my child? They’re doing something extremely similar

There are two startup passenger jet manufacturers building factories at the Piedmont Triad Airport in Greensboro, NC. One is Boom SuperSonic, the other JetZero. Of the two, I think JetZero is most likely to succeed. If they can actually deliver 50% less fuel burn than the current offerings from Airbus and Boeing they will have airlines clamoring for their aircraft. Even if Boom gets their plane in the air (itself a big question mark since all the engine suppliers told them they could not build an engine to their requirements so they decided to also build the engine themselves), it’s not clear to me that there’s a more viable market today for supersonic air travel than there was when the Concorde was flying. Plenty of people would like to fly that fast, but I don’t think there are plenty who can afford it.

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.

“Our viewership numbers are not looking good, so let’s give them to investors less often so we don’t scare them.”

GameStop beat out Hot Topic in bidding for ThinkGreek, with a winning bid of $20/share compared to Hot Topic’s bid of $17.50

So many of the foreigners visiting for the World Cup have missed out on another great American culinary tradition smh my head

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.

I’m assuming one or two significant players will go bust, but probably not the biggest like Google, Microsoft, Amazon. They might take some serious hits, and they’ll deprioritize AI, but still exist. Maybe someone like Oracle or xAI goes under and gets parted out like an airliner getting scrapped. A lot of data center projects will be cancelled, others will shut down, and the local politicians that pushed for those data centers will see their political careers end as their districts are left with big empty buildings and infrastructure debts that will be hard to pay.

Even when it was easily proven incorrect it remained a common talking point from people opposed to EVs. Much of that opposition was for ideological/financial reasons, so facts didn’t really matter.

I think the smaller character limit comes in from Asian countries if they don’t use the basic Latin characters that came out of ASCII. But yes, there’s no reason for the service provider not to offer unlimited SMS messages other than greed/lack of competition. I remember over 20 years ago reading a high level phone company employee talking about how the SMS plans were basically printing money for the phone companies because it cost them almost nothing in terms of bandwidth, utilizing an otherwise unused part of the connection protocol. Back then most companies charged for the messages as in @OP’s question, and the plans were relatively expensive. Nowadays most plans I see in the US and Europe offer unlimited talk and text, or limits that are so high they would be hard to reach. I think it’s a combination of competition and smart phones offering SMS alternatives that offer more functionality while using a tiny fraction of your data allowance, or none if you’re on WiFi.

It says that process doesn’t apply for HFS+ encrypted Time Machine drives? I think that’s the only place I’ll be impacted

Most big game companies are public; Valve is not. It’s easier for companies to think long-term when they’re not beholden to investors. With the right leadership/ownership it’s easier to look at a long-term strategy even if that comes at a short-term loss. That doesn’t mean that will always happen, but it seems more likely to happen in a smaller private company than any publicly-traded company.

Thank you for giving the explanation so I didn’t have to (used to work in broadcast TV including sound and station engineer)