Interesting to see you haven't seen problems with working at the shelter. How many are short term visitors moving on? How many are there because of real medical bills? Remember you only see a snapshot at that shelter.

All that being said, I am one of those one hospital visit away from poverty. I spend fairly wisely, but not perfect. I have a medial prescription that is over $7,000 per month. I was lucky. I was able to get the last slot for assistance from the pharmaceutical company for that drug. I actually spend $5 out of pocket. My spouse has a $35,000 per month prescription that is currently 100% covered by assistance from the pharmaceutical company. Again we are lucky. If either of those assistance programs go away we have to stop taking the prescription. Why? I don't make $35,000+ a month to cover them. I have a house payment. I have Medical insurance. I have utilities. I have car expenses so I can work, etc.

Based on the ariticle, I am slowly falling out of mid-middle class into lower-middle class. Why? Because where I live is depressed. I do not live in a "big" city. I live in a smaller city far outside any really big city, I work 2 jobs, both in slowly conglomerating industries which is forcing wage freezes (I haven't seen a raise since 2016) and even cut hours at both jobs. I'd love to move, but again the area is depressed and I cannot sell my home or scrape together enough money to cover any loss on it so I can move.

Remember not everything is obvious.

That $200/hour? That is the price they charge.

Out of that comes about 10% needed to cover further education for themselves and any staff, as required by the bar and in some places law. Another 20% is taxes in one form or another. Another 10-15% is to cover office upkeep, excluding wages for staff. And finally between 40 and 50% is Staff Wages and benefits. That leaves a very small amount for the Lawyer themselves. The smaller the office the higher the percentages taken from the overall income. This is why most law firms are partnerships of 3 or more lawyers. They can't afford to go it alone for any length of time. They need the 3x or more per hour income to cover the costs and to re-use the staff across the many lawyers to spread out the percentage out over those multiple hourly income streams. Now add in AI, and the lawyer may see in increase in his percentage, but you still need the people to check the LLM since the LLM is till a toddler.

Had to log in to come say this, but looks like you beat me to it.

If climate change, especially man-made of man-aggravated, climate change doesn't exist how can we have a law limiting liability in court?

By proposing this bill the Republicans just stated that is "is" something. Way to shoot yourself in the foot.

Az

From a ESP (Email Service Provider) standpoint part of the issue is the recipients.

ESP wants to block all of auickbooks@notification.intuit.com because of all the phishing scams, but they can't. Users "need" (I disagree) it because they have multiple vendors who send out their invoices using that exact same address. So these phishing emails get through because someone "needs" their vendors (possibly intentionally) insecure server emailed invoice.

Come on people! Why aren't the vendors using their own email address. It can be configured in Quickbooks, it takes a bit work work and someone with at least a little bit of email server knowledge to get it set up. Why shouldn't we block vendors who are too lazy or too technologically challenged? If they are cutting corners, too lazy, or too tech challenged why should we even use their "regular" service in the first place?

I can say similar things about Google/gmail, Microsoft/outlook, Apple/icloud, and yahoo services. All it takes is a small bit of work and you have your own domain name to send from and not the providers, making it easier to add exceptions when needed, or better yet block when things go bad.

For a single domain, this is easy. For 20? 50? 1000+? not so easy.

It looks to be a poorly done job, until you find out that there are a users who want to see everything because they doesn't want to miss something important like their brother's cousinn-in-laws, child's pet's birthday picture from whomever may have taken it. These same users will complain if an email takes more than 20 seconds to get from Gmail/Outlook/Yahoo/etc to their mailbox. Now spread that over 1000+ domains on a mail server and you have a recipe to disaster that makes even the hardest working ISP's look bad.

I won't say all ISPs are good, or bad. Just remember that you see the output from the ESP that has to cover 1000's of different requirements vs the 1 set of requirement for your self run mail server..

My father, years ago (mid 1990's) leased Dell desktops for his law office. He did the 4 year lease they offered at the time. When it came time to upgrade after 2 (as part of the lease) I had to spend 4 days backing up and clearing drives to make sure nothing private left the office. That is 4 days down time. That is 4 days at $50+/hr. Once the drives were clean we sent the systems back. Dell wanted them back and promised next day delivery for the new ones. 8 days later they arrived.

Reminder: LAW office.

Once everything was back up and running, I looked over the details of each system. The upgrade? Newer hardware? No. Better hardware? No. SAME HARDWARE, including chip serial numbers in many cases (The law office documented EVERYTHING with pictures, inside and out). They changed out the drives, and the cases but put most of the same hardware back in the new cases.

Let us just say that the next hardware was purchased (buy, not lease) from a different vendor on Dell's dime, and was significantly better hardware, that lasted more than the next decade until he retired. Hardware was running Windows 7 easily by the time it was scrapped and the only reason it wasn't running Windows 8 was that by that time the new License agreements meant that Lawyers should (legally) never use a Microsoft product again.

Read and understand the EULAs. It will scare you what you are giving up to these companies even when purchasing.

So you want to use your apple wallet for ID. What happens when Apple decides to suspend your account?

If they wanted to the Carriers could track where these come from. Say it comes from some India call center it then goes through a India Telecom then transfers to the international Carrier AT&T, then from AT&T to Verizon to a specific number. That person at the number asks Verizon where ti came from. Verizon says AT&T, not you ask AT&T they cay India Telecom, then you contact them. If they don't wish to answer (assuming legal warrant of some sort) then AT&T can be legally compelled to de-link India Telecom, stopping the mess.

Every Telecom carrier has a record of origin point and destination. It may not be the original point, just the origin point for their carriage. That should be used. No carrier should be exempt from being an accessory to this fraud.

This makes no sense when you look at it. We are trading one foiegn power for another. Makes me wonder what the REAL reason for this change is.

I still sell Dialup, yes actively sell it. We don't have many dialup customers but in rural Michigan even Starlink can be a problem to use, if it is even available to you..

Average speed on the crappy (aka rotting) lines here tops out around 32K. Too many line-share's, bridge taps, and outdated Remote Terminals (Teleco lingo for Multiplexing, Wire tap boards, and Local area control systems).

Unfortunately because of the way the system is set up it only works in our state, and even then if you happen to dial a 'local long distance' number (i e: next town over) to connect it won't. It has to be one of the Local numbers. Again because of the primary telephone company and how they handle the number routing.

Az

I forgot to add, we have a (hard) copy of each and every paper we have ever published. Can these new all electronic news sites and advertising sites say that?

We know who advertised with us in 1905, and how much they paid for that ad, what they advertised and for how much because we still have the hard-copy. We know who advertised with us last month. We have the hard copy and the digital copy.

Local store wants to have a Nostalgia day? No problem we can pull up the old ads and help them build it. Can these new sites do that? Most don't keep more than 3 years of history, if that.

Sorry to disappoint. The internet is only part of the equation. What is killing (not killed, yet) the newspaper industry is a combination of rising costs (Paper, Ink, Replacement parts, Delivery fees, staff wages) and loss of ad revenue (which is were the internet comes in).

I work for a small-town newspaper. We cover 3 1/2 Counties. Circulation is over 50k for a daily paper. We have been there since the late 1880's. We continue to put our news. In the early 1900's we averaged about 40 pages a day. Now we are down to 16 (always based on 4 pages). Back in the early 1900's we averaged about $0.5052 (in 2025 money) per page gross profit. Now, about $0.0032 per page. Yes, we track it down to that level and have since 1905.

The are multiple reasons:

- First is the cost of paper. In the 1900's paper was cheap, and I do mean cheap. A roll of paper was maybe $100 (again in 2025 dollars) and now they are upwards of over $500 per roll (thanks Trump, we can't buy US paper, it isn't made. We tried.) We need 2 rolls per day.

- Second is the cost of the aluminum plates we need, daily, to print the paper. We buy them by the Ton (think about a 1/2 height pallet worth) every 3 months. That's over $5000 for something we use once then thrown away. (local recycling company likes us and helps cut our overall cost of those plates down)

- Third is the cost of ink. We buy in bulk 3 times a year. The heavily concentrated ink run us about $20K per year. In the early 1900's that same ink for the larger run was around $500 per year in 2025 dollars. We did use less color back then.

- Fourth is the cost of staff. We have less than 50 employees now but the average wage is at about $18/hr. In the late 1900's the average wage was $12/hr and the early 1900's it was closer to $5/hour, again adjusted to 2025 dollars. 5 years ago we had 3 people in "Customer Service" our front line at the office. They took calls, handles Circulation, Classifieds, and routed things to reporters and Advertising staff. Now we have 1, which happens to be vacant at the moment. We put out notices we are hiring. 5 years ago we had over 100 applicants for the positions, so far after a month, we have had 3. Two of them wanted way more money than we can afford to pay, and the 3rd.. while they may get hired they are not going to last. Stereotypical Millennium attitude just isn't a good fit for Customer Service.

- Fifth is cost of hardware to even make the paper. Our press was put in place in 1968. It still runs. It still puts out very good quality papers, but it is 50+ years old. Parts are hard to find. We were lucky and were able to buy a duplicate press in 2000 from a newspaper that was going out of business. We have plenty of spare parts, at the moment. A replacement press? That is upwards of $20 million and at least a year before it can be installed. We use Intel Macs for most of our systems and will be using them until they fail. We can't afford to replace desktop machines whenever the OS and hardware manufacturers say we have to. We even have a test program to see if we can migrate most of our hardware to Linux and keep using the hardware even longer. $200-500 per machine (used/refurbished) is too much if we have to replace them every 3 years. We still have a couple of old WindowsXP machines, and several Mac OS9 machines around for specialized hardware controls. Replacing those? Won't happen as the hardware they control would also have to be replaced at costs upwards of $500,000 each. Next is the software need (not want, NEED) runs us over $500/month. We don't get a choice, there isn't a viable alternative to them, We have had to get creative in how we use the software by sharing a single machine, remotely, so that 4-5 people use a single copy of the software. Per the ToS and EULAs we are using the software legally. (IP is important to us) Just means time-sharing a single machine. Oh yes, and it can't be upgraded any further since at least one of the programs no longer is being supported and it's replacement doesn't work at all on any hardware we have. Windows 11 only with, currently, cutting edge hardware just to do a simple layout. The older software we use runs on Windows Vista through 10, or Mac OS 10.11.5 though 10.11.9. We use the Mac version on 10.11.9 and have that machine imaged and duplicated in storage in case of hardware failure. Just more cost, but cheaper than buying the subscription-only newer version and having to replace hardware every 2-3 years because they say we have to.

- Sixth is loss of Advertising revenue. This is the one we all are debating in this thread. The local stores are now running their own online advertising, and really upsetting the local people (we get calls daily). for example the local supermarket stopped all print advertising back in March. They went to digital only delivery through their own (horrendous) app. We lost over 100 subscribers (according to their statements at cancellation) for that one alone. This is the big one. Advertising is where a paper makes its operating costs. Without decent advertising the paper has to cut something. We cut non-reporter staff at first, then pages, and now have had to cut reporters (happily through attrition). We have had to expand into digital marketing and are learning fast about the different platforms and their ins, outs, and quirks. None are great but they all have a place.

- Seventh, and the last major issue is Postage. We deliver through the USPS (cheaper than paper route delivery people) and they keep increasing the costs to us, now twice a year. On July 7th, 2025 that overall price for our daily deliver went up $65 per day. That is after going up nearly $100 in January, $75 last July, and nearly $80 in January 2024. On top of that delivery times have gotten longer. We deliver DIRECTLY to the USPS offices in our area for local distribution and sometimes our customers don't get it until the following day, Those that are out of our area are seeing 2 to 3 days to get a daily paper. One person across the country from us has told us they are seeing a 4 day delay on getting their paper. We do NOT get any sort of credit or refund for missed delivery and end up have to spend MORE sending a paper, first class, to the customer, and extending their subscription by a day or two to keep them from cancelling.

It boils down to, of you want local news, then you need to get the local stores, even those owned by some big corporation, to advertise locally. Without that the paper has to cut something. First it will be staff, then pages, then quality. We had a copy editor. They retired, and now we let the word processors check the spelling and grammar. They do so poorly. Similar can be said for the modern LLM systems (they are NOT AI). They are not ready for main stream.

Support contract? No. It has all gone in-house for support. That's why they hired me. I'm good at working on old tech. Nobody supports that hardware any more. The Press is 50+ years old, the insert stuffer is 25+ years old and the label system is about 25-30 years old. They still work, and work reasonale well, especially for the age of each of the systems.

The $500/day for the laptop, is a side gig at this point. It helped me get the job at the newspaper. Both the paper and the local manufacturing companies need really old hardware and software to be able to talk to their multi-million dollar hardware that nobody can really afford to replace. It still works, except for the control system because those people keep moving on with newer versions that cannot talk to the older hardware. Some of them, like the newspaper, can't even get support from the original manufacturers because they either no longer exist, or no longer support that old but still working, hardware.

Replacement hardware for the newspaper is in the tens of millions. For the local manufacturers the replacement CNC systems start at $5 million and go up depending on what they need. Most do not see the need to replace them if they do not need to. Some of those "old" CNC machines are less than a decade old, and are sitting next to ones that are nearly 40 years old that work just as well. Both need my old style laptop to make changes. Why replace them, they still work. At $500/day with a need for 1-2 days a decade, why would you spend millions to replace a working device? That is what they are thinking.

Yes, these people are looking at upgrades. Yes they are looking at replacements. They are now gun-shy about the control systems. The big vendors aren't even offering any support for the control systems after 5 years. This is with these companies getting 20-30 loans, sometimes from the vendors themselves, to pay for these systems. I recommend to each of them, when they ask, that they buy at least 2 of the control machines (Desktop computers most of the time) and store one until the first dies. That cost is tiny compared to the cost of having to hunt for a new one in 15+ years. I also recommend open source and open hardware control system replacements for second and additional replacements. Saves a lot of hassle in the long run.

Buy the systems... interesting.

Do you want to come buy the new systems for the local newspaper?
    New label printer: $500,000
    New Insert stuffer: $1.3 Million
    New Printer press: $10+ Million.

All because we need to replace Windows XP with something newer.

What happens when it fails and we can no longer get parts? We shut down. We cannot afford a $12+ Million replacement. It would take us 50+ years, assuming newsprint survives that long, to pay it back. We are a small County-wide Newspaper. Somewhere around 20000 subscribers. Margins are already slim. How are you going to solve that? Probably the same way we are, buy making due and finding ways around any issue.

Az

We have an old Newspaper Laber called Prism. REQUIRES Windows XP SP2 due to 3 very old Propriety SCSI, and Serial cards to make it work. I'm looking for motherboards to replace the one we have before it dies. New hardware is upwards of $500,000 USD to replace it. Needs to have 3 PCI (1) slots. We can't get drivers for them either. Nobody makes them and the Manufacturer removed them.

I keep old hardware around to read old files. Have an old laptop that rents out for $500/day to local operations for their CNC machines. They need it maybe once every 5-6 years, for a single day. It has paid for it's old circa 2000 price 4 times over, and my time, since I started doing that. The business are VERY HAPPY to have it even for a day to upload new plans instead of having to purchase a new multi-million USD device to replace it instead.

THAT is the cost of closed source hardware.

Az

I go to the Movie Theater / Cinema to watch a movie. I don't want to interact with anything but the movie.

If others interfere with my enjoyment, I will take it out on the establishment for not enforce the no phones rules. To do this I will hurt them where it hurts most, their income. I will avoid them. I will ask my friends to avoid them. I will tell anyone who will listen to avoid them.