It’s not a trap, it’s an intentional choice, and a very profitable one. Imagine you sell a lot of a product but costs make up 90% of revenue. Then you double the price and as a result sell half as much. Your costs stayed roughly the same, maybe went up a little. So now instead of making 10% profit, you are making 40-45% profit per item. Now imagine your sales declined by less than 50% and how much extra profit that would be.

Prior to the pandemic companies would be careful about raising prices. If they raised prices by 5% and lost 10% of sales, that was less profitable than not increasing the price. But the legit supply chain shortages during the pandemic made them realize that a larger subset of customers were willing to pay significantly higher prices than they thought, and they also realized they had less competition than they thought, and now everything costs double and we all just call it inflation, because that’s what inflation is. When the price of everything goes up at the same time.

It will continue until either there is nothing left of the upper middle class, or the upper middle class stops paying. The poor and lower middle class are already priced out, and companies do not care.

"Microsoft applied a data-driven approach to find out which features to add now, which features to add later, and which to completely avoid.

Unfortunately, for the enthusiasts who had a left-aligned or vertical taskbar in Windows 10, you would have to settle for the fact that Microsoft’s data shows such users are really small when compared to the number of users who are asking for other newer features in the taskbar."

100% of the users that are smart enough to care about moving the task bar are also smart enough to turn off all optional telemetry. This sadly a part of why tech companies are making products for the dumbest people and pushing away power users.

I watched it twice and I couldn’t really tell. It’s switching between scenes so fast I can’t really focus on any part. I am on a phone too, so it’s small.

Prices are high everywhere, so while it’s way more expensive than it was, McDonald’s is still pretty much the cheapest option.

A large value meal costs ~$9, and there is a 20% discount for using the app at $15, so if 2 people go or you bring some home it’s ~$7. Every $60 you spend nets you free happy meal too.

Meanwhile a local place charges $20 for a burger and fries, no drink, before tip. The grocery store is up to $8.99 a pound for hamburger meat, so while it is still cheaper to make it yourself, by the time you include cooking ingredients it’s pretty comparable.

Do it from their website (settings then account)so that you can fill out the exit survey and tell them why.

People yearn for the time when a man could work 40 hours a week and afford to support an entire family, and buy a home, and buy some nice appliances, while still getting vacation time.

That time was factory work in the 50s. But it wasn’t the factory work they want, it’s the wages. They don’t realize that factory work now is the conditions you mentioned plus less wages than McDonald’s.

Custom Android ROMs based on AOSP, which is the open source parts of Android. I used to use LineageOS back in the day.

Before buying a phone, make sure that it has an unlockable bootloader and a custom ROM of a recent Android version. Note that some phones have multiple versions for different regions and some might not be unlockable, while others are. For example many Samsung international phones are unlockable, but none of the USA models are.

Note that many commercial apps like Netflix, Pokémon Go, bank apps, etc. will refuse to run if your bootloader is unlocked. It also permanently trips Samsung’s Knox.

I have the same TV and built a custom stand for it. Doesn’t change the fact that the included stand is a bad design.