Ted "Series of Tubes" Stevens?

And, like anything, rent prices are a function of the demand and the supply. Housing is artificially scarce and often employs protectionist policies to inflate the price so it can be used as an investment vehicle for rentiers.

That's why you have cities like San Francisco with moratoriums on apartment construction or questionable zoning laws that promote suburbanization: the goal is to drive up prices and prevent competition from pushing them down.

The demand for housing is inelastic, so the supply is the main driver of the cost, since the demand side can't drive it down by not buying.

Illegal retaliation at worst, violation of the WARN Act at the least. The game industry tends to make significantly less than "normal" software engineering positions, but you can still bet that people making $60-80k can take legal action better than fast food workers or whatever. Many of them may even have legal insurance or lawyers on retainer.

It's almost as if a simple mechanical switch and direct wiring is far more reliable than trusting a computer for no reason.

Signed,

A software engineer

It is. That's exactly what Cumberland Farms, In and Out, or 7/11 is. Maine is just twenty years behind the curve usually, and has more surviving rural ones that haven't been paved over by big chains yet.

I just moved out of state and there's no shortage of gas station convenience stores that sell pizza, chicken and whatever. Hell, konbini are a huge deal in Japan and go all in on the food.