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He was a very readable columnist for PC Mag among other places. He was also more focused on being interesting and at least a bit provocative than being correct.

He was a hilarious curmudgeon.

Agreed.

There have also (rarely) been intra-fault earthquakes. A fairly large one in Kansas if I recall correctly.

I don't really know the history but physical bonds and stock certificates were things within my lifetime. Safety deposit boxes for such were also a thing.I've never had one but my parents certainly did.

Microsoft had a lot of CD sets back in the day when there was bit of wonder that you could have all this stuff on your local computer. There was a lot of things related to music, maybe natural history, etc.

There are plenty of anecdotal examples of co-CEOs not working very well.

Yeah, JC Penney was not Apple Stores (which by the way probably looked awful to a lot of people on paper--see Microsoft's attempt to clone). But JC Penny was a discount brand whose shoppers absolutely weren't looking for an expensive Apple Store experience.

The sound and visual recognition around a lot of things is pretty impressive and I imagine it will work its way into less obstrusive AR in a lot of ways over time.

Well, yes, although the ag school at Cornell has plenty of domesticated animals on campus.

Church in a lot of places.

Water is definitely an issue--I thought it and didn't write it down. The heat, yes, but also a dry heat :-) so some evaporative cooking; I think Intel has at least one fab plant in Arizona. As I say, no longer really in the space, but areas of the northern Midwest not subject to flooding are possibilities. For datacenters, onsite technical staff is not really an issue as datacenters have very little of that after initial construction.

There also used to be bearer bonds. In part because of concerns about money laundering, a lot of more or less untraceable large monetary instruments have gone away.

I've been out of direct involvement in the space for a while, but my understanding that Arizona nad parts of Nevada were probably the safest locations with respect to natural disasters that could affect data centers.

Not on my property in New England certainly. In fact, just went through an (expensive) process with a neighbor who wanted to get property lines squared away after they were botched on the initial property subdivision. We were fine with a handshake but both of us knew they really needed to be legalized with easements and such or any sale could become a nightmare.

In MA, there are a number of documents you can use. I don't have a Social Security card and haven't had in decades and got my REALID.

There are a lot of FOSS projects that aren't sponsored in a major way by corporations: LibreOffice, SQLite, the Linux desktop interfaces, a number of languages... I won't claim that corporations don't support those and others at all. Yes, many are attached to foundations for solid governance reasons. But there are many popular projects that largely exist outside of major corporate backing--especially direct financial support (as opposed to letting some engineers be involved part-time.

I no longer have an SS card--which was in a wallet stolen years ago--or, perhaps, a birth certificate which I looked for recently but couldn't find. I do have a passport.

It doesn't take much. A neighbor and I just had to deal with a bunch of property line confusions in the US where a property subdivision 25 years ago wasn't handled correctly. None of us really cared but it would matter in the event of an eventual sale and it cost thousands of dollars in surveyor and legal fees.

ADDED: We also had a bunch of easements and cooperative maintenance agreements that were only partially documented in the deed and mostly done via a handshake. So we got that all squared away in the expensive binder from the lawyer.

Sovereignty has gone from being a theoretical concern that a lot of cloud (esp. AWS) advocates poo-poohed to something that is a very real concern in the minds of many. It's not just US foreign policy either. It's even within Europe--to say nothing of things related to China.

Honestly, I think a lot is pretty well documented. But people don't have a good sense of what an inch more or less related to the seat actually means and don't necessarily know how picky a given airline is going to be on the size and weight of carry-ons. I expect that the carryon I routinely take on United might be an issue with budget European carriers.

I'd add that, in spite of a US and probably SV focus, it's very geographically distributed. Back in my BBS days, we actually had a core of local participants who got together IRL from time to time.

I suspect there are a lot of reasons. You don't have men and their housewife for the most part. So the typically male Lions, Elks, etc. clubs don't fit as well with modern lifestyles for that reason in part. Bowling nights went out of fashion. People are less likely to to be clustered in a town/small city for work. There are just a lot of reasons why routinely heading down to $PLACE with all the guys after work just isn't that popular any longer.

They're getting from Point A to Point B for a pittance. What more should they expect?

Was having a lot of house stuff redone after a kitchen fire. Not Ikea, but had a mail order bedframe. Just had the contractor's people put it together.

I did assemble some Ikea cube-type storage after a lot of my house interior was redone. It was a bit of a pain but it's now very satisfactory storage in a couple of closets. And it wasn't that expensive even with delivery. (The nearest Ikea is far enough it would have ended up being a full-day trip.)

I don't love my Ikea dresser and my recollection was that it was a PITA to assemble. But it works pretty well and it would have been thousands of dollars more to get the equivalent new hardwood dresser. As you say, something from an antique store would almost certainly have been less satisfactory on a day to day basis and would have come with its own set of transportation etc. hassles.

New York is... New York. I've spent a lot of time there, and even lived there for a summer. I was at a board meeting down there recently and a new young ex officio member basically asked "How do people deal with the confusion?" It is what it is. And it used to be worse.

And then they complain about seat sizes and baggage dimensions.

Just had a friend give one to me. If I want an entire album and the CD is the same or less than the digital version, why not? Ripping takes a minute or two.

My digital collection got really messed up at one point partially due, I'm pretty sure to Apple Match. At one point--early in the pandemic I think--I spent a day or two whacking my collection back into some semblance or order. For example, I had a lot of titles that weren't actually attached to a file.

There's probably some truth in that although, if you didn't have to collect a large volume of music whether purchased or copied in some form, I'm not sure the incentives are there to get started in any serious way. It is also true that, for me at least, I purchase very little music these days and basically don't pirate at all.