There are many HOA's that force residents to take cable and/or internet service from an "approved" provider and the amount is included in the HOA's mandatory fees. They don't block you from receiving service from a different provider, but you still have to pay for the HOA-approved service even if you don't use it. So competing services find it very hard to gain a foothold because people will just use the service they are already forced to pay for. Often these providers that have sweetheart deals with the HOA quickly moved in to get deals signed because they knew competition was coming, even if the HOA residents didn't, so they offered slight discounts if the entire HOA would sign up, and the deals typically include a long term contract (five years or longer) so even if the HOA residents now have buyer's remorse, there is nothing they can do about it until the contract runs out (and that assumes the residents even have any say in the matter, which they may not depending on how the HOA is structured).

If the Biden administration and/or the FCC really want to increase competition, these types of deals need to be nullified and banned.

OPNsense is a great choice, and there is a free version that gives you all the features you need for a home router. Some people are saying pfsense/opnsense as if they are the same, but they are not. PFsense is more of a commercial product now. My understanding is that OPNsense was forked from PFsense several years ago and since then the two projects have gone their separate ways, but for a home user I would say you'll likely find OPNsense the better choice nowadays. There is a commercial version of OPNsense but it in my opinion it offers nothing a home user would really need, so just stick with the free version.

I don't disagree that reading paper books may have certain advantages, but there are just two things everyone should keep in mind:

First, if students learn to read using mostly paper, will that put them at a disadvantage later on when they are forced to switch to digital formats? One could make the argument that it's easier for kids to draw using crayons but if they want to be a professional illustrator, at some point they're going to need to switch to paint or ink, or in today's world, a digital tablet. Same thing with reading - sure, start a kid out with physical books, but once they are too old for Dr. Seuss, it might be time to start thinking about acclimating them to the digital formats they will encounter later in life. That is not to say that those digital formats could not be improved to more closely replicate physical books, but like it or not paper is slowly disappearing from modern workplaces for several good reasons (everything from climate concerns to shitty printers) so students should be prepared for digital reading.

The other point is, for those who try to make it sound like the people selling cheap computers to schools are somehow evil because they are only in it for the money, do you think that book publishers are on the side of the angels? Some college textbooks are outrageously priced, and there is no good reason for it except that some book publisher is raking in huge profits, at least until students figure out how to obtain the book without paying for it. Seems to me like we ought to be looking at the backgrounds of those pushing for a return to physical books, to make sure they are not in some way affiliated with the publishing industry, or the paper industry, or a trade group representing book stores or some other entity that would benefit financially by a return to paper books.

Again, I am not saying that the people advocating for paper aren't making good points, I'm just saying this study kind of sounds like something that would be put out by people with their own axe to grind, and we should be careful about adopting a "paper good, digital bad" dichotomy without bearing in mind that somebody's going to be making money either way. And for people with certain types of disabilities or impairments, paper books may be a non-starter, so we need to keep those folks in mind as well.

Oh, and one final thought - keep in mind that political groups can manipulate what goes into both physical and digital books (the state of Texas has been censoring school textbooks for decades). But if a book is online, it may be easier to get to the uncensored information, and the book can be more easily revised (or perhaps annotated) if it is found to contain political bias. So you may also see certain political groups pushing for a return to paper books because they feel they have more control over what goes into them. If they are willing to ban certain books outright for various reasons, you know they would be willing and eager to censor printed textbooks to conform to their world view - and in fact they have been doing so for years.

Even in the 50's, 60's and 70's there was a lot of crap, you just are either too young to remember or have forgotten about it because it is almost never played on the radio anymore. If you are of a certain age and ever rode a school bus where a top-40 radio station was played through a loudspeaker, you may remember the groans when certain songs came on. Strangely, these often tended to be the type of songs your parents would love! But I do agree that the algorithms on services like Spotify and Pandora are terrible. It is so rare for them to play a song I haven't heard before but actually like that I've pretty much given up on them.

I agree that the analogy of two 800 pound gorillas is an apt one here, but wouldn't the smart thing be to let the two of them fight it out, in the hope that one will take out the other or (better yet) they will both take each other out?

Because after all, any precedents set regarding Apple's anti-competitive behavior will also surely be applied to Microsoft. Apple will make sure of it!

Theoretically this could result in a win-win for consumers. Or it could be one of those cases where the only real winners are the lawyers involved.

All I will say is that as a long time Apple user I was MUCH happier with my Apple hardware and software a decade ago than I am today. The REAL winner in all this could be Linux, if only they would change their attitude toward people who only want to be users of an operating system (not coders or people who enjoy tinkering around for a day or two trying to get a piece of hardware to work. In other words, people who just want an operating system to work and be mostly invisible otherwise. Ubuntu and some of its derivatives get us part way there, but not fully).

If you'd ever had my junior high school Algebra teacher, you'd think quite differently. I was good at math all throughout elementary school, and even in my first year of junior high. In first grade, when the other kids were struggling with 2+3=5, I was adding and subtracting out to three and four digits, and my answers were almost always right. From K-7 I don't think I ever got less than an A on any kind of math.

Then in seventh grade they gave us an "Algebra Aptitude test" to determine whether we should take Algebra in eight grade. Of course since we had not been taught algebra, it could not really determine how well we would do in it. But what it really could not account for was the eighth grade algebra teacher.

This teacher was quite possibly the worst math teacher ever. For one thing it was obvious that he hated having to work with kids. He treated us all like we has just escaped from reform school and all had the IQ of a turnip. He would get in front of the chalkboard and draw things out and ramble on and I don't think anyone learned anything from him, but you dared not ask him a question because he'd humiliate you in front of the entire class by telling you how stupid you were, and he'd moan and groan about why they sent him such stupid imbeciles to try to teach algebra to. Oh, and he kept a big old paddle hanging next to the chalk board and I think he actually used it on a student once or twice (probably for chewing gum or something). You may think I am making this up, but in the 60's in some school districts teachers were still allowed to paddle students, though as far as I know he was the only one that actually did it.

So, we were all scared stiff of the guy and tried to interact with him as little as possible. Now, my theory is he knew he was a crap algebra teacher and he probably barely understood it himself, but as long as he could keep the kids from asking questions, he could fake his way through it. He'd convinced himself that it wasn't him that was stupid, it was us.

Still I did okay in the first marking period, because I could figure out what I was supposed to learn from the textbook. I think I may have only got a B, but in his class that would have been at the top of the curve, if he had graded on a curve.

But then we got to FACTORING POLYNOMIALS. And that might have been some ancient dead language as far as I was concerned. I did not grasp the concept. I could not understand why anyone would ever want to, or need to factor a polynomial. My parents couldn't help, they had never taken algebra. And so I had to struggle with this on my own and I think it was the first time I ever failed a course, and I failed hard. And it had a domino effect - after that I was never good at any math related class, and my grades plummeted in other classes as well. The only way I was even able to graduate high school was by demanding that they no longer give me college-prep level courses (at that point I was determined I'd never go to college, and I never did) and just give me the same classes that the other non-college-bound kids were taking. Then, at least, I could maintain decent grades.

It wasn't that I didn't try to learn that algebra, I really did, it just simply wasn't coming to me. Now maybe there were environmental factors as well, like all the lead in the environment back then, or the pesticide that my dad sprayed around the house to kill ants (later taken off the market because it was so dangerous to humans), but all I know is that where before learning had been fairly easy, suddenly I couldn't get anything. Not that that particular school system was at all conducive to learning (I would say they were a good 20 or 30 years behind the times in many ways) but I always look at that algebra class as the big failure in my life, after which everything sort of took a tumble.

My point is that you come across as extremely condescending, and you remind me just a bit of that algebra teacher. Even with effort, sometimes there are concepts you will just never get. You would be the type to blame the students for their failure, rather than considering that there might be other factors at play.

But also, I would point out that programming is a lazy person's profession. We program computers to do the things we don't want to have to do manually. I would postulate that lazy people might, in fact, make the best programmers because they are more motivated to find a way to eliminate all the drudge work. The problem is that the writers of computer LANGUAGES aren't nearly as considerate. One reason BASIC was so popular is that all the keywords were mnemonic. When you looked at a BASIC program, if you knew English you probably could figure out what the program was doing. Languages like C are terrible by comparison, in my opinion those are the polynomials of computer languages, the languages that look like they were written to intentionally make programming difficult. Even Python is more difficult to grasp, in part because they insist on using words that are meaningless to the average person, such as "tuples".

Now that Artificial Intelligence is a thing, maybe the day will come when we can tell a computer program what we want to accomplish in plain language, and it will generate the code for us. That, it seems to me, should be the direction we should be aiming for in programming languages, not making them so difficult (especially for people who aren't good at memorization) that potential learners give up on programming out of frustration.

PLEASE try to explain this to the Penguin-heads who seem to be laboring under the impression that everyone can learn, and should have a burning desire to learn Linux and their favorite programming languages. The concept that most people want to be just users of an operating system, and want to be able to use it as easily as possible without searching the web for a day or two when something isn't working, totally escapes them. The concept that not everyone can, or has any desire whatsoever to "send code" also seems to blow their minds!

Actually the word you are thinking of is Prosopagnosia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosopagnosia This is sometimes called "face blindness" and is described as "a cognitive disorder of face perception in which the ability to recognize familiar faces, including one's own face (self-recognition), is impaired, while other aspects of visual processing (e.g., object discrimination) and intellectual functioning (e.g., decision-making) remain intact." Aphantasia is a somewhat similar condition, but not the same thing. The best way to describe the difference (to an adult, anyway) would be to say that if you are trying to engage in self-stimulation (for erotic purposes) but can't remember the face of someone you found attractive, but can otherwise visualize an erotic setting, you probably have Prosopagnosia. However if you can remember the face of someone you were attracted to but can't visualize an erotic situation, that would be Aphantasia. And if you can't visualize the face or the situation, you may have both conditions.

Except that if Apple acts like Microsoft, what incentive remains to pay the "Apple Tax" on Apple-branded equipment? If MacOS is going to adopt the bad parts of Windows then might as well just run Windows and save money!

Oh yeah, because recompiling a kernel is a trivial exercise for every MacOS user... (that was sarcasm in case you couldn't tell).

And you really think that someone who designed a keyboard with a keylogger built in would not also make it appear as much like a legitimate name-brand keyboard as possible, including masquerading as a genuine Apple keyboard?

Exactly. This is a very good and concise explanation of why these types of firewalls are important. In fact this is why I wish Linux developers would make a more serious effort to develop such a firewall for Linux users (I know about OpenSnitch and also the OpenSnitch fork that is actually still being developed, but both appear to be one-off projects that are not an official part of any Linux distro).

While this would be a stop-gap solution, it would only be effective if you knew the IP addresses (both IPv4 and IPv6) of every server that the favored Apple apps might use. Building such a list might be difficult at best, and you could never be sure if you had every IP address, especially if Apple could add new ones at any time.

I think it would be really difficult to find and disable all Apple apps in MacOS, particularly those that may be hidden from the user and that run in the background.

Very rarely are firewalls used to block outbound except in corporate environments... In most end user scenarios, everything is allowed out.

That is not correct with regard to Mac users, at least not the "very rarely" part. There is a rater popular program called Little Snitch for which many Mac users pay good money, in order to be able to send and approve/disapprove traffic going out of their systems. This change by Apple breaks Little Snitch and similar programs, at least with regard to traffic to Apple servers. Even if you don't want to block traffic to Apple's servers 100% of the time, there might still be times where you would want certain programs to not have the ability to connect (such as anything that sends out your Apple login while you are using an insecure public connection), and Little Snitch was great for that until Apple did this.

I know of at least one Mac user that has been buying Macs since the days of the Power PC but has said he will never buy another unless Apple either reverses this or the developers of Little Snitch figure out a workaround that makes their product work again for those connections (apparently they are working on it).

For me, this just makes me feel like Apple is trying to take over ownership of MY computer. I paid good money to Apple to PURCHASE a computer, not lease one or rent one, and Apple should not be trying to basically install malware to block the effectiveness of security-related software that I want to run. Maybe you feel that such software does nothing useful, but that is your opinion which which I strongly disagree. But I am more concerned about the arrogance of Apple trying to subvert the functioning of that software. If a third party did this we'd all be properly labeling it as malware but because some people seem to think Apple can do no wrong (obviously I'm not one of them) they are willing to overlook this intrusive behavior in MacOS Big Suck.