Some of these ISP charges ARE like Sales Tax - and a home on one side of the street in a different city will pay a different "telecommunications tax" rate than a home directly on the other side of the street. In some cases, crossing the street even puts you in a different state with very different taxes. Since people generally don't share the precise coordinates of their service address when visiting a web site, an ISP has no idea what fees will be when they advertise a price even in a targeted ad. For "broadcast" ads, it's obviously impossible for them to do so.

They now have a store in Santa Clara just a few feet from the San Jose city line on north side of Stevens Creek just a few hundred feet east of Lawrence Expressway.

I wonder how many people have no idea it there even though it's now been open for several months. It's not terribly visible as it's tucked into a strip mall type environment with a shared parking lot where a Bed Bath & Beyond used to be.

Years ago they closed their store that was in north Santa Clara - likely because of competition from Fry's which was still pretty good at that time.

There used to be a Micro Center in Santa Clara, CA but they had to compete with Fry's sprinkled around the area and closed. Then Fry's died a slow and painful death and we had a void in that space. There were businesses like Central Computer on the one side of the market and like Best Buy on the other side, but a void in between. Fortunately Micro Center recently opened a new store in Santa Clara and it addresses some of that void (and more of if one only considers the portion of that void that Fry's filled in the last couple years of its existence as a terminal patient).

Unfortunately, Micro Center seems to have commissioned sales people who are there primarily to sell you stuff rather than help you.

I found it slightly annoying when I purchased a cheap laptop there shortly after they opened the new store and the sales lady had to make sure that I met her manager who could "thank me" for the sale - which added several minutes to my purchase as she went to fetch the manager who then came over and said something along the lines of "Hello, I'm Joe - thank you for your purchase today" and shook my hand with zero enthusiasm -- adding zero value and measurable cost to me. This was reminiscent of Fry's which alarmed me a bit. Oh, and trying to sell me an extended warranty on a $10 mouse at the checkout was rather annoying.

Aside from that, it's nice to have something in that market segment now.

Maybe there is hope for you as Micro Center takes advantage of the Fry's void.

It's worth pointing out that some years ago Japan had the highest suicide rate in the developed world but private gun ownership was almost entirely nonexistent due to very strict gun control laws in Japan. Suicide is a cultural problem, not a tool problem.

It's also worth noting that many of the murders (not all homicides are murders - shooting and killing an intruder in your home is always a homicide but is rarely murder) via firearms are where both parties are participating in or chose to associate closely with criminal activity in some form.

And that goes double if your child has problems like this child did. It is the parent's job to accommodate such problems. The world can't be dumbed down to protect the most disabled member, child or otherwise, of society.

Although, I suspect it is not the case that the "kid would have been fine" in the long term no matter what the mother did as he's quite likely severely disabled and would have needed a conservator for life - i.e., option 2 - eventually.

I've mostly seen this ridiculous argument used by people trying to figure out how to prop up the postal service to protect union jobs.

They also come up with all sorts of things unrelated to mail delivery that USPS "could" do to survive. The most common one is to "provided banking services" (usually including loans - so USPS would be in the credit business and have to deal with collections and bankruptcy). Since there are far fewer post offices than there are other physical banking locations that provide banking services, I don't understand why these people think that low income people, often with limited transportation options, will travel much further to use USPS banking services rather than other competing banking services closer by. Also I doubt that those who distrust banks would be more likely to trust the USPS (esp. those who are not in the country legally).

I respond to the "constitutional argument" with something like:

Congress also has the power "To borrow money on the credit of the United States". Does that mean that Congress would be required to borrow money even if the national debt had been retired and the government was running surplus? Congress also has the power "To declare war" so does that mean that if world peace breaks out, the US will have to declare war against some country?

Perhaps his kid is working those long hours not just to earn money but to, at least in his mind, to help build his career.

Or, maybe, he's at a promising startup that's yet to release a product (let alone go public) and has gobs of stock options and he's not really working "shifts" but ends up working those sorts of hours to help make the company the next Alphabet so he will be a centi-millionaire or better. Paying a dog walker is pretty cheap if that's the case.

Or, maybe, he's earning a lot per hour and much more than he could make elsewhere but a requirement of the job is to work those long hours so leaving "early" would cost him his job, not just a few hours pay a week.

Not everyone punches a time clock and only does so to earn an hour's pay.

Being "skilled up" mostly just means that you keep your skills matched to the relevant skills for today's job market, not yesterday's job market. In a field that changes fairly quickly, that is a continuous process for anyone who wants to remain employed in the field over a full 45-50 year career.

One problem is that people who are attracted to a field may have unique skills and, more critically, interests that align with the field at the time the enter it. However as the field changes in what it requires, those people may not be nearly as interested in the field and therefore less motivated to continue to "skill up" because it seems like work to do so rather than a pleasurable exercise in its own right.

For some planes the Maximum Take Off Weight (MTOW) is quite a bit greater than the Maximum Landing Weight (MLW). These planes will (typically) have the ability to dump fuel to get down from MTOW to MLW more quickly if necessary.

Some planes, however, have a MLW that is not much (or perhaps any?) less than MTOW and don't have the ability to dump fuel - presumably in most cases enough fuel will have been burned by takeoff, climb, and going through checklists before landing (and perhaps circling a bit to use fuel) to get under MLW. For example, modern 737s don't have the ability to dump fuel.

An overweight landing isn't necessarily unsafe for the passengers and crew - but it can cause expensive damage the plane and, at a minimum, require time consuming maintenance checks taking the plane off the flight line (i.e. $).

Also, the Dreamliner's wings are known for being very flexible (by design) due to their use of composites. One can't directly compare the wing flexing of, say, a 747 with a not-dissimilar wingspan from the 787 but using "conventional" wing materials with that of a 787 with composite wings.

I make the argument because I understand the law in the US (from which my reference point is - perhaps Swedish customers would have different recourse for example) and prioritize that over emotion.

Now of course we don't know from the linked article what the arrangement was between the entities involved in the sale or even where the sale occurred (which could affect what law is applied).

For example, when a company goes bankrupt and is liquidated in the US, the trademarks are sometimes sold - but that in no way obligates the purchaser of those trademarks to provide warranty service on products the bankrupt company had commitments to provide (the customers can queue up with the other creditors for compensation based on loss of such service options). However the acquiring company certainly can provide such warranty service if they choose to (perhaps to protect the value of the trademark they just purchased).

they acquired the customers and continued accepting payment and providing the service under the same public trade name

It sounds like they were weren't billing or receiving payment ("consideration") from the "lifetime" subscribers so no "consideration".

It's not uncommon for a trademark to be sold and the acquiring company does not assume liability for the actions of the original company. This sometimes happens in bankruptcy in particular.

It's true that laws are different in different countries. I was speaking from the standpoint of the US. If they continued to demand payment from a "non-lifetime" subscriber, that subscriber and VPNSecure may have a contract. However presumably "lifetime" subscribers were not paying or being asked to (until now) so I suspect the courts in the US would not consider consider those subscribers as having formed a contract with VPNSecure as there was no consideration demanded or provided.

In the US anyone can also send a cease-and-desist letter (or a birthday card) to anyone they want. Of course the recipient can ignore it - then the sender may choose to file a lawsuit against the recipient for whatever grievance they have.

They also acquired the customer lists.

The details are not clear, but it's certainly possible to acquire a customer base and a subset of customer subscription contracts without acquiring all of them.

Not necessarily.

One can acquire, for example, just the patents of a business, or their patents and a trademark, or just one of their manufacturing buildings.

In this case, the acquiring company claims they acquired “the technology, domain, and customer database—but not the liabilities” from VPNSecure. If true, the "lifetime subscribers" beef and remedy is with the owners of VPNSecure (which is probably devoid of assets).

PIPs are always stacked against you. Management will move the goalposts or kill your project.

That's only true for bad managers. Good managers initially set the goalposts so far away that the clock will run out before they can be reached by the PIPed employee.

This does, however, require some management skill and understanding of the employee being PIPed. The initial position of the goalposts has to seem reasonable to outside observers while being something that the targeted employee can't get close to in time.

If the manager locates the goalposts correctly, the PIPed employee gets so demoralized from day one that they make almost no progress on moving towards the goalposts so if they challenge the location of the goalposts at the end of the period management can dismiss them with "Even if you are correct in asserting that the goalposts were set too far away, you didn't even gain five yards in the sixty days you were given and there's no question setting the goalposts far beyond where you reached would have been reasonable".