Where I live, for example? My only broadband option is Spectrum/Charter cable, and their gigabit Internet (which only provides 40mb/sec upload speeds) costs me about $110 a month. A relative few people in my city can also choose AT&T fiber where they pay a little bit less for gig fiber, but it's bidirectional so a much better value proposition. For 3 years now, though? I've been checking to see if AT&T fiber is available at my house, and they keep saying no. There's very little evidence they had any interest in expanding their fiber infrastructure in my city at all. I think they only brought it in, initially, for E911 services as part of some big modernization push. And they discovered it was easy enough to branch it off from there to a few neighborhoods to sell it.

Clubs are worthless, all it takes is a pair of bolt cutters to remove it.

"But my club is made of diamond!"

Too bad your steering wheel isn't. And it remains plenty functional with a single cut in it, which is all that's needed.

Certifications to me felt like a drawback if i see them on a resume. They make no sense. It's pay-for-paper, the classes often come with indoctrination into a product line, no real quality I've seen from those with certifications except for lacking knowledge in anything not in the class.

The only benefit I could see, is someone changing professions later in life who isn't able to go back to school. But for someone junior - go to frigging school, even if it's junior college. For someone who did this later, then you can tell that they have some real job experience even if it's not coding, and that's a bonus. Just don't aim for the bottom, and certificates are sort of like aiming for the bottom; the least effort possible to try to convince someone to hire you instead of one of the millions of offshore rote programmers who are cheaper.

a board made up of mostly elected members and a few appointed ones

The cost isn't zero, this perk does cost them money. The venn diagram of "people who work at Microsoft" and "people who would pay for the best game service" aren't two circles, there is going to be significant overlap.

I agree that this isn't a good idea. If only for the bad press.

On the one hand, I can see this guy's point of view. He made an agreement with some people and his own moral code won't allow a breach of that agreement. I am the same way.

On the other hand, the clock is ticking on the charge state of those cells... The sooner you can read the data, the better.

Honestly, it's hard to predict with Amazon.

On one hand you have Rings of Power and Foundation, but on the other hand, you also have Reacher, The Boys, and The Terminal List.

I am going to be cautiously optimistic.

and yet I can still get my 1960s vintage Omega worked on and repaired.

You can probably get parts for just about any Benz ever made, EVER too, at least if you are willing to pay.

Apple watch parts - not available at any price quite possibly.

it's a hardware feature that unilaterally overrides and disables my ability to automate the software