Mr Trump’s lawyers notified an appeals court earlier this week that their client has failed to raise the capital to cover the bond, saying finding a surety company to help them was proving a “practical impossibility”.
The former president has approached “about 30 surety companies through four separate brokers”, his attorneys said, but had so far come back empty-handed in the face of “insurmountable difficulties”.
“Critical among these challenges is not just the inability and reluctance of the vast majority of sureties to underwrite a bond for this unprecedented sum, but, even more significantly, the unwillingness of every surety bond provider approached by defendants to accept real estate as collateral,” his attorneys wrote.

Wait, so you’re telling me that all those surety companies aren’t willing to loan money to a known grifter who is famous for not paying back his loans? I’m shocked, I tell you, shocked!
Ok, not that shocked.

While I do enjoy the place, it can be an echo chamber. And you seem to have upset the Indigo Blob.

I hate the Orange Baboon as much as the next person, but from the article:

The Justice Department opened the latest case in 2019 under former President Donald Trump.

Unless Time Cook has a sudden change of heart and starts sucking up to Trump, I doubt that Apple is going to get a free pass.

Absolutely, no matter how careful they were about the relationship, Willis had to know this could create the appearance of impropriety. Which is exactly what the judge ruled and likely any sane judge would have ruled. Willis may as well have asked, “how can I snatch defeat from the jaws of victory?” Because she absolutely found the answer.

For the US, the change would be minimal. The economy of Cuba is so small by comparison and they don’t have a heavy industry or tech sector to offer much to the US economy. Most outflows of money would likely be in tourism by US citizens to Cuba. And maybe some businesses would find ways to offshore some work. But again, I think the overall impact would be small.

As for Cuba, it really depends on the Cuban Government. Trade with the US and tourism are likely to have a much larger impact (as a percentage of GDP) on Cuba. The country could well see a sizeable influx of foreign cash. Managed well, this could create a lot of opportunity for the Cuban people. Managed by a corrupt regime, intent on enriching itself and it’s friends, this could lead to the same type of misery which usually results from corrupt government.

Some games don’t hold up well , some do. I have a few I still go back and play from time to time. Others, I let sit in my memory and view through the rose colored glasses of nostalgia. I can certainly understand leaving a game in either state. For example, I’ll likely never play Microsoft Flight Simulator 2 ever again. But, just thinking about it brings up happy memories of hours spent with my father learning to fly a Sopwith Camel. And that’s how I always want to remember that game.

The account is used for the ancient VPN software and all of our ssh management tools

And windows login if you’re using windows.

If you’re using one password for all those things, you’re doing it wrong. Even if the passphrases you pick are easy to remember and type, they should be distinct.

That’s basically a Diceware passphrase. And, it’s kinda ok. The amount of entropy is pretty significant (close to what the comic lists, if the Wikipedia article has it right). And it’s really easy to add more entropy. I often recommend passphrases to my users (I work in Cybersecurity) and use them myself. Take a sentence, with spaces, capitals and punctuation. Now throw in a few numbers for fun and stop worrying about brute force attacks, until some idiot decides unsalted MD5 is perfectly fine for storing passwords. Most such passphrases will blow right past the 4 words in that comic and are very easy to remember. Even better, make that the passphrase for your password vault (oh look a plug for KeePass). Then have the rest of your passwords all be unique, 20 character jumbles of letters, numbers, and special characters.

Also, enable Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) wherever possible. Even if it’s just a One Time Password (OTP) sent via SMS (which is a shit way to do 2FA), that’s better than no 2FA.

While I wouldn’t have wanted to support the place,

a collection of historic Bibles, including William Penn’s own

would have actually been interesting to see. For all the harm done in the name of Christianity, there is also a lot of amazing artwork and historic significance tied up with it. It’s just better done in an actual museum and not a religious nutjob propaganda space.

I remember Windows XP coming out and we all mocked it as Windows but with an interface by Crayola. But I’d gladly have that Crayola interface back rather than the flat modern crap we have now.

Tyres go bad through the vehicle’s weight, so either raise the vehicle enough so they don’t touch the ground, or remove wheels and put it on stands.

So what you’re saying is that having the car up on blocks, in my front lawn, is a good idea.

I guess, this confuses me too sometimes since I’ve never owned a pet, but I’ve definitely heard of pet owners refer to their pets as quasi-children.

While people can and do love their pets very much, I’ve not found the bond with a pet to be anywhere near the same as a bond with my children. At the risk of sounding like a monster, I’d explain it this way:
My wife and I had a cat die last year after about 17 years with us. We also have kids the oldest of which is not quite a teenager. So, there was some significant overlap and I cried in the vet’s office holding my dead cat for the last time. But, if I had ever been put in a position where I had to choose between protecting one of my children or protecting that cat, there would have been no hesitation in choosing my child over the cat. There was a very strong bond with my cat, but it doesn’t even come close to the bond with my children.

Maybe this will be different for other people. And yes, we referred to the cat as “our fuzzy kid”. But, when you get right down to it, no he was never at quite the same level.

Ya, my printer leaves a lot to be desired and I had a heck of a time getting even one to print cleanly. So, I didn’t want to have one fail and ruin the batch. I did print the last two I needed together, over night. Was running out of time and just went for it.
Each one was about 4.5 hours printing and 10-20 minutes of cleanup. These required a lot of supports. I did 24 in total.
But, they were a hit at the party, so it was worth it.

I’m a lot like a guard. But, it’s now much easier and more profitable for the criminals to steal or hold for ransom information. So, instead of guarding a warehouse or office, I guard that information.

Because of competition. Let’s say Company A makes widgets and, owing to people having more money, tries to raise prices. Along comes Company B, which also makes widgets, who recognizes that they can out-compete Company A on price. So, they either don’t raise their prices as much or they keep them the same. Company A is now stuck either accepting lower sales, or lowering prices to compete. Once Company A reduces prices (because they want to survive), they put Company B in the same situation until prices stabilize at some smaller profit margin.
So basically, the exact same supply and demand curves which keep prices stable now. It’s not like businesses aren’t already doing everything they can to separate you from your money.

In the end, it such a system would likely lead to some inflation. With more money in the economy, there is likely to be more demand for goods. If supply doesn’t expand to match the new demand, prices will go up. At the same time, increased consumer spending is often a good thing, so long as it doesn’t expand so fast that it creates shortages. It may also push up wages for unskilled workers, and those positions may now be harder to fill, commanding higher wages. It may also drive even more automation of unskilled jobs, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Those jobs are almost certainly headed for automation anyways; so, it’s better for society if we get out in front of that trend and avoid having a large pool of young, unemployed and disgruntled people running amok in society. Much better to have higher taxes which are used to keep the unemployed youth at least mostly gruntled instead. But, that’s bad for rich, greedy assholes who would rather walk a tight-rope of just enough bread and circuses and full on civil unrest.