Fonts do have patents and copywrite laws as “works of art” or in the methods to convert what you see on a computer to your printer or whatnot. For example here’s the history of Calibri:

The Typography Group at Microsoft is responsible for both fonts and the font rendering systems in Windows. Since version 3.1 the primary font system built into Windows has been the TrueType system, licensed from Apple in a deal (with hindsight) remarkably beneficial to Microsoft. Working with Monotype, the Microsoft Typography Group produced fine TrueType versions of Arial, Times New Roman and Courier New, tuned to be extremely legible on the screen; these were all ready for the launch of Windows 3.1. Since then these core fonts have been developed to cover more and more of the world’s languages. In the mid-1990s under Robert Norton a program of truly new type designs was begun, using TrueType technology to render faithfully the bitmaps and outlines designed by Matthew Carter (Verdana, Georgia, Tahoma) and by in-house designer Vincent Connare (Trebuchet, Comic Sans). Until August 2002 these “core fonts” were offered freely over the Web, where they made an undoubtedly positive contribution in terms of legibility and font choice. In 1996 the OpenType initiative with Adobe was announced; this is touted as the end of the font wars’, whereby advanced multilingual text layout becomes available, native rendering of PostScript fonts becomes part of Windows 2000, and unwieldy font formats are rationalized. In 1998 the group announced ClearType. This is a very ingenious method to increase legibility on color LCD screens, individually targeting the 3 subpixels (red, green and blue) that make up each pixel. Such a leap forward in readability on these screens is a crucial element to the success of nascent eBook technology. Simon Daniels at the Group’s website keeps font fans and font developers up to date with most aspects of the digital typography scene, and communicates the technicalities of how fonts work in Windows. Updating us about the current (October 2000) activity of the Group, Simon notes: 1999 saw several members of the group leave to join Microsoft’s eBooks group. These included technical lead Greg Hitchcock, developers Beat Stamm and Paul Linerud as well as former Monotype hinters Michael Duggan and Geraldine Wade. The past twelve months has beeen a rebuilding period for the group, with numerous new hires [sic.] replacing earlier departures. The Group continues to provide font related services for Microsoft, and freely licensed tools and technology to the wider type development community. On August 12, 2002 Microsoft discontinued the free availability of the “core fonts”, noting that “the downloads were being abused” in terms of their end-user license agreements. Most commentators took this to mean the company objected to the fact that the fonts were being installed with Linux distributions.

https://www.myfonts.com/collections/calibri-ms-font-microsoft-corporation

Waiting for the rename to copad AI.

It’s real… https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/trump-meet-venezuelan-opposition-leader-machado-after-praising-its-government-2026-01-15/

Their papers should be just a uno reverse card and a one way ticket to Europe.

“Please check this box saying we can do whatever we want with your data please and thank you”

Rename it for the current president and phrase it like it’s preventing aging republicans from dying and allowing liberals to overwhelm “us” at the polls.

Then basically rebuild the ACA under the new name after running it through a few translator apps to avoid plagiarism/s.

Snapshot of comments in those posts. Mostly just governance drama.

From the new fork https://web.archive.org/web/20260107095954/https://www.reddit.com/r/Piracy/comments/1q1we4e/the_revanced_situation_is_crazy_a_new_project/

From ReVanced side

A major contributor submitted a big core change (fingerprint/patcher internals). Maintainers pushed back hard on design and maintainability. The contributor felt stonewalled, got personal, and eventually left. After leaving, they forked the project, copied large chunks of code, squashed commits, stripped contributor history, and allegedly violated GPLv3 rules by changing licensing and attribution. That’s the heart of the dispute.

From there, both sides started accusing each other of bad faith, harassment, threats, ego, gatekeeping, you name it. A small group rallied around the fork and started saying “ReVanced is dead” which… yeah, that’s the part that caused panic. – AI generated summary of a 40~ pg document that someone from ReVance uploaded

Basically the contributor proposed a major redesign to the patcher’s fingerprint system that worked short term but papered over deeper limitations. The maintainers saw it as a band-aid approach that would lock in technical debt and cause long term maintenance problems, so after extensive review they rejected it and pushed for a more fundamental solution instead. The contributor took that personally, issued merge-or-else ultimatums, then left. After leaving, they copied large parts of the code into a new repo, rewrote history to remove attribution, changed licensing in ways that likely violate GPLv3, and went public claiming ReVanced was “hostile” or “dead”. … For context, the fingerprint system is how ReVanced finds the right parts of YouTube’s code to modify even as YouTube updates and shuffles things around. Inefficient or overly abstract changes increase the chance of things breaking later. The contributor wanted a quick duct-tape style fix, the maintainers wanted a proper redesign, and it all spiraled from there.

A slightly smaller headache in the US is to file a complaint with your states attorney general.

As a warning, mailbox.org recycles old email addresses after a 90 days/1 year/2 year holding period after deregistration. Consider your own threat model before you use one of their domain emails. https://userforum-en.mailbox.org/topic/2366-address-recycling-reuse

https://mailbox.org/en/prices/#compare-all-features--2

So Linux is a collection of different software, companies and volunteers. If you think of cars Linux is basically a paper design of an engine that anyone can use for free. Then Ferrari, Toyota, ford and all the other companies build their own physical engine on top of that. Some of the companies have “dealerships” or support but they primarily cost a lot of money and cater to companies, not people. There’s no Linux store the way there would be an apple or Microsoft store.

The comments here are right, in that most computer repair shops should be able to figure it out the same way you can take almost any car to almost any general mechanic. There might be some complicated issues that requires someone who’s good with that specific brand, but a basic install isn’t super complicated in the same way changing the oil on a car should be straightforward for all mechanics.

Since you’re in a rural community you can either do it yourself, try to find another computer repair shop, or ask a friend/family member nicely in exchange for food, money, whatever (please don’t assume this person wants to be your dedicated support person). Linux is great and it can be pretty straightforward if you dedicate some time to learning.

If you do it yourself or have a friend do it:

1. buy 2 flash drives that are at least 8GB
2. go to windows website and download the windows 11 media creation tool.
3. run the media creation tool, select one of your usb drives and go through the steps to create a “bootable USB for windows 11”. This is your failsafe if anything goes wrong. Label the usb and put it somewhere safe.
4. find a “brand” aka distro that you like. Visit their websites and look at the pictures, themes etc. Friendly options are zorinOS, Linux Mint, and Ubuntu. Framework’s website has some options and instructions.
5. follow that distros instructions or the instructions on framework’s website to create a second “bootable USB”. Don’t use the same one you used for windows.
6. The next steps will erase everything on the framework laptop including windows 11/10. Follow your specific guide.

GUI for managing fingerprints/PAM that allows complicated or at least some customization with PAM such as requiring password on first login then allowing graphical fingerprints for sudo, unlock and other prompts with fallback to password.

1GB is probably enough to run one basic service without a GUI. If you want anything more than that you’re going to probably end up running out of RAM and hitting the SWAP file–grinding everything to a snail’s pace. Useful projects here might be to add smarts to something dumb around the house or making an old printer support wireless printing via cups.

Like others have said if you want to tinker, a virtual machine via virtualbox or VMware is free for your use case.

If you strongly prefer hardware, an old PC will probably be cheap or free.

If you really want a pi you’ll probably have to look for something that has at minimum 4Gb (which will be easy to outgrow), recommending 8GB+. Note that raspberry pi’s run best on the official power plug as a USB-a to micro/c won’t provide enough power to be stable and will cause weird issues or crash the pi under heavier loads or when drawing power from the pins.

I’ve heard recommendations to review Windows Internals 7th edition: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/resources/windows-internals. It’s dry but informative.

A lot of airlines do https://www.obesityaction.org/resources/to-buy-or-not-to-buy-an-extra-seat-2/

I googled the echo flex and I don’t see any evidence someone has gotten the bootloader unlocked or have been able to install a custom ROM/OS. Depending on the generation the flex is based on, it could be Linux or android based. Have you been able to access the os on your devices? If not, you might have a lot of work on your hands to get enough access to install any kind of non-stock OS.

My understanding is that hba cards support virtualization better than passing sata directly through. But if you’re not virtualizing the NAS, I wouldn’t see an issue with a reputable motherboard that has enough sata ports at 6 Gbps.

For the cheaper expansion cards I’d see that as a central point of failure and would recommend an hba card over a cheaper alternative.

Overall the marketing is dishonest/over promises and there’s some previous lack of transparency with data breaches along with being closed source. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NordVPN#Criticism

There’s just better options: https://thatoneprivacysite.xyz/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZpHizpZSPQ

It’s apparently real.

https://archive.ph/IBcmJ

Define “due taxes”? It’s all a net loss bc “we” paid so much in nontaxable stock options to our senior leadership so they could borrow more money and buy a 2nd plane to get from their private island to their new boat.