The ones with actual users ...

These are the sort of self-generating monopolies I've seen in the past 25 years of the internet.

Effectively, everyone goes there because everyone goes there.

A bit more than herd mentality, but makes any startup something which requires large amounts of energy to succeed and then keep going. Never stop.

Twitter has self-inflicted wounds, thanks Elon, but continues to limp along. I find myself less likely to visit because -- not everyone is there any more.

Not all Venture Capital are angels, some come in and kill the fledgling company and take it's IP, others wring it dry over months or years while skimming money off the top. Never occurs to some investors a company could be the next Alphabet or Meta.

This would then block the future as depicted in Minority Report.

"Hi there! Would you like to buy another [highly personal and embarrassing item]?"

There's a relief.

I visited Activision in the mid 1980s, when it was a shoe-string operation. Games for the C64 were coming along and quite impressive, including Little Computer People, which was running on a desk over a weekend to check for stability.

Seems it's all about IP these days.

They're coming for the upper bands which were available to Ham Radio enthusiasts. FCC doesn't care about us anymore.

Such a useless post and reflecting lack of actual knowledge of Fry's.

20 some years ago I bought my first laptop (still have it) at Fry's in Sunnyvale. It was still in the little grocery location, the shelves (and even former refrigerated goods) aisles has resistor and capacitor models sticking out of the floor. It's long since become some health club or other business after Fry's moved to a big store a couple blocks away.

In the hey day of the stores on E. Arques, E. Brokaw and E. Hamilton had about 40 or 60 cashiers, the queue moved pretty swiftly and they didn't take American Express. I tried to buy my first digital camera there and found that out. Went over to Wolf Camera to pick it up. Anyway, over the past few years I've visited the number of cashiers has dwindled down to only a handful. Few floor walkers, where once they were all over you, asking if you needed any help. Last visit I didn't see one at all.

At the end Fry's probably only had a dozen people working in each of their giant stores, a far cry from the hundreds they employed a decade or two before. The downsizing has been happening over time. Weep not for droves of employees losing their jobs, weep for the few who worked in desolate stores, with unstocked shelves who knew the writing was on the wall. They've been circling the drain for years.

The main hurt here is losing a chain which once carried just about everything the home hobbyist/maniac could ever want. That's been going on with the closure of Weird Stuff and Halted Specialties. I'll have to look to see if there's anyone left who sells components, wire, cable, solder, special tools, etc. I'd say they failed to plan well and we've known the eventual source of stuff is going to be our mailbox.

A number of sci-fi writers have already explored the topic of us creating something which provides the perfect breeding ground for the kinds of diseases which would wipe us out. I believe there's merit in considering these possibilities. We don't yet have enough data to determine if GMO crops are going to produce some new vile bug which would prove disastrous, however findings now state that advances against pests and organisms (fungal, viral or bacterial) only beat the organism for a few years, before they adapt (clever little buggers) and start over from square one. What do we do if we create a host for a super bug? Not like we can modify our own DNA every few years to keep ahead of the game.

In America you're supposed to be protected from this approach "We'll look around and then use what we find to prosecute you for something, whatever seems to fit." Though the media, interwebs and presidential candidates will destroy you at will, simply because they can.

What? They don't take Bitcoin payments at the revenue office?

I have Windows Update on a pure as-needed basis and glad I do after hearing about the supremely unethical 'Hey! Upgrade to Windows 10! Hey!' nag that came in some updates.

On another front a friend was having trouble with his boot drive and as we were shutting it down Windows jumped in to install a bunch of updates - that finished corrupting the boot drive and many, many hours were dedicated to recovery and repair.

I'll give these patches a look but want no shady behavior out of the Redmond Mob.

I'd still fire up the old version and play it. So many happy memories. I also was lucky enough to enjoy the color versions of NetHack, Larn and Moria on the Amiga.

I've had a Scroll labeled FOOBIE BLETCH, waiting for this day.

As Terry's daughter is overseeing his properties I expect she won't go all Rowling-Warner on something like this.

Don't stand to close to the fire, you may get high.

A shed-load of grave robbing is a shed-load of grave robbing, damned for an ounce or a shed-load. Amazing what passes for science now.

I happen to know where there's a grave with a Ferrari in it, can I get the car in the name of Science?