Why is DRM necessary? In the EU, many countries mostly just use digital watermarking for their native language e-books bought from stores (e.g. Germany and the Nordics). We got the music industry to get rid of DRM on music files. I'd argue watermarking is enough to discourage people, and no matter the DRM or no DRM all books still find their way to shadow libraries. I agree, as Terence also argues, that this is a very non-intrusive DRM, but which still has many problems of.. just being a DRM solution for one. The licensing fee to allow support for LCP is also absurd, and ranges from a few thousand USD to tens of thousands. There are therefore no FOSS apps capable of supporting the DRM, like KOReader or Librera. The solution in itself is not fully FOSS either.

And aren't you annoyed by their arrogant tone and how they try to blame, guilt, and threaten their way forward?

I'd recommend reading Orwell's earlier works (which might or might not be public domain in the US, but is in Canada, Australia and parts of the EU). Like "Down and Out in Paris and London". Nothing at all like 1984 or Animal Farm, but still really good.

As mentioned, this is one of the reasons why Adobe DRM couldn't longer be used according to the interpretations of the EU directive, and why they "had to" remove the option to download the DRM-protected ePub file and move to an app instead where they could make text-to-speech work.

I do a lot of personal surfing on my work computer... But in my country the employer isn't allowed to track what I do on the computer as long as I haven't committed a crime 🤷

The information superhighway as we called this thing way back when. Wikipedia, the Internet Archive, Gutenberg, free MOOCs, shadow libraries and what not are a godsend.

Very nice. I should get back into it

Really nostalgic about the times when you were taught computer stuff in physical books. The only ones I have nowadays in physical format is Code Complete and Clean Code...

I really really doubt this is due to political reasons. Especially as Sweden Democrats have zero influence over practical, administrative procedures. Sweden is the furthest from a corrupt country when it comes to enforcement of law and order. Sweden's immigration rules and framework is super strict and even affects kids who were born there and lived there 20 years, who have never lived in their parents home country. They still get deported sometimes. It's awful. But blame the right thing.

I've never heard of someone sharing university course material on a tracker or similar for people to download. But have you checked whether there are any MOOCs from reputable universities that are similar to the one you linked? They are often free.

Dystopia. Is this really common in the U.S? Both RTO-mandates and this "coffee badging" as a way to get around it? My company in a different country has a policy of 50% WFH, but nobody cares and I sit at home the majority of the days. Here it seems like WFH is here to stay.

On a related note, what math should one know? Are there any upsides to go beyond everyday math? To brush up on lost math skills? I've forgotten most of my math classes, as I wager most have...

Hasn't RSS support been dropping these last few years? Last I heard was that RSS was dying, though I don't know how true that is.