Hardly ever use Windows myself, but I’m pretty sure you can just download it from Microsoft and refuse all the nags to register it when you are installing it.

Linux, dovecot, postfix and a large quantity of pain medication.

ahem - nobody I know will use X.

Operating Revenue: 33,723,297,000

Cost of Revenue: 19,715,368,000

Gross Profit: 14,007,929,000

Operating Expense: 7,053,926,000

Operating Income: 6,954,003,000

The valuable commodity is data. Think of it like eggs. The users are the chickens. Google runs the poultry farm.

Sounds like it won’t be long now…

CNN - The US Senate Budget Committee is launching an investigation into whether Florida’s state-backed home and property insurance company has enough money in the bank to withstand future disasters, as scientists warn warming oceans and sea level rise are making storms more destructive.

Citizens Property Insurance Corporation exists as a so-called insurer of last resort - if owners cannot convince a private insurance company to cover their property, Citizens will step in. It insures about 1.3 million policyholders in the state, who typically pay more money for a policy that covers less.

But as coastlines disappear and storms get wetter and more dangerous, risk is through the roof for many of the properties Citizens insures, putting intense financial pressure on the state-backed company. During a March press conference, Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis said, “I think most people know Citizens has not been solvent.”

https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/30/business/florida-insurance-senate-investigation-climate/index.html

climate change is like pressure building in a bottle. You can only cork it for so long before there’s some kind of structural failure and the champagne is all over the floor with broken glass everywhere.

meanwhile in the US:

Affordable home insurance is getting increasingly hard to find in wildfire-prone areas in the West. Climate change, along with flammable fuel buildup, is causing bigger, more frequent and more destructive wildfires, putting more and more homes at risk. Meanwhile, climate change is also driving other costly disasters, such as hurricanes and flooding. https://www.hcn.org/issues/56.1/wildfire-homeowners-insurance-is-going-up-in-smoke