I hacked my Firefox with an enterprise settings file to turn off the notifications. The 'Enterprise Policy Generator' add-on is very helpful at ending these annoyances. I'm still happily using Firefox 68 ESR. I should not have had to do this though, but who ever said Firefox engineers were listening to actual users.

Where I am in Arizona, our local cinema is scheduled to re-open in the next two weeks, with masks required.

Seriously, if people believe masks are a nuisance/mark of the beast/government plot in general, how many will keep them on when the lights go down?

I thought so. I won't be back.

The second scenario was the Sopwith Camel from SJC (San Jose/Mineta) to SFO (San Francisco), through fog, while navigating class A airspace. Basically, your grounded indefinitely.

You seem to have not lived during the 1980's and the Gipper's tariffs on imported vehicles (https://www.csmonitor.com/1981/0320/032039.html).

While European and Asian consumers got more modern and fuel efficient vehicles over the decade, we were left with vehicles and engines that were 1-2 generations behind because:

  A) they were already developed and all the tooling was in place to make them for the non-competitive US market without any changes in cost to build.
  B) the US manufacturers hiked their prices for more profit, while still selling the older designs.

Yes, the Big-3 got some breathing room after the prior few years gas rationing and milking their sales of land-yachts (ala the current trucks/suv's/etc), but they lost any sense of innovation for the US market. Just find any old car mag from the 80's and you can see the lustful prose for a Euro-spec Ford Escort vs. the detritus foisted upon the US consumer.

Its a good thing to have standards and goals. Nobody's going to spend a fraction of a cent more than they have to. There is no competitive market, just a race to the bottom.

The few dollars for $SERVICE1, $SERVICE2, and $SERVICE3 are even easier to get 'buried' when they are lines on your credit card bill between the lines of $RND_CHARGES.

Walmart mastered this with their app. If you search for something that doesn't exist in their catalogue, it show you random other crap.

I don't care about junk mail, or 'direct to consumer postal advertising.'

Its not like my mailbox lights up and makes constant noises every time something arrives over the course of the day.

Free market works best also when there is not artificial scarcity. Why do you need a prescription for anything? Why, if you have the knowledge, should you not be able to just go the the pharmacy yourself and buy medications? have lab tests? etc?

I know when I have an ear infection and can treat it myself -- if I have access to the correct drugs. I am not going to try treating a myocardial infarction on my own using $WEBSITE.

But where would the dark money fit into this scenario? We have to have PAC's and other organizations involved or else those with money won't be heard.

Omeprazole and some SSRI's have gone through this process where the isomer is repackaged as latest and greatest .

This would be just like thanksgiving dinner with my crazy uncle Melvin, or maybe we could reframe it to be like 'Cliff' from the 80's sit-com Cheers.

Anything that spouts random, unvetted, feces is about as useful as Facebook for facts.

Every one of them has mandatory binding arbitration clauses that disallow class arbitration. Nothing will come of this.

Obligatory, "How can it be secure/private/etc. when it runs Windows 10" comment that I know will be downvoted....

What's next people? Coffee machines that prevent you from using your own coffee that didn't come from the manufacturer of the coffee machine?

They already have those, its called K-Cups.

Im stuck using Propel (a relic of dial-up) on my internet connection and I regularly get intercepted by Cloudfire, shopping cart subsystems, and other third-party apps thinking im trying to do something nefarious.

Heaven help you if your browsing in a non-linear fashion (control-click) with multiple tabs set to load in the background while your browsing.

I usually just give up and look somewhere else.