I think you’re massively downplaying how much of a hit this will be.

Let’s say you make $100k/year. Think about the lifestyle it allows. You’ve just been informed that it’s now going part time, and you’ll only be making $15k/year. How far does that get you?

Now, you’re expecting someone else to pay for that advertising spot, so it won’t be that bad. But who is even eligible? Microsoft’s Bing is the obvious answer, and probably DDG. The rest of the default search engines aren’t even general web searches.

Do you really think that either of them are going to pay any significant amount to be the default? Especially when most people are going to change it back to Google anyway, since these are automatically people willing to change to a different browser?

Sure, they might be willing to pay something. But it won’t be anything close to what they had before.

Beggar’s night is not the same thing as Halloween. Some areas designate a specific date and time for the kids to do trick-or-treat, not on Halloween. This is beggar’s night.

Music and right-wing politics are weird. I can’t even begin to count how many bands were proudly anti-war in the 70s. Then there’s the punk movement, which was highly critical of Reagan and Bush.

I guess music and a message of hope/protest works better than a message of oppression, especially when appealing to youth.

Many items are already packaged to protect them from damage in transit. If it’s already in a box with Styrofoam inserts, there isn’t as much value on wrapping it again.

That said, there are countless items at Amazon that are not protected like that. Amazon also won’t pay their employees enough to care, nor give them the time to make any such decisions.

I can confirm that All on Sopuli is regularly inundated by suggestive (but usually not outright pornographic) anime pics. Most of these are the “Moe” communities, but there are a handful that specific to the franchise the characters are from.

SuprNova was the big one for me. Everything else was either redundant (Like RARBG) or just faded away (like my Usenet sources). I didn’t have any replacement lined up when SuprNova died.

There’s a certain point where they become abandoned property, and you can just do with them whatever you want. My guess is that it’s some point after the existing contract runs out, plus 30/90/365 days or whatever. Possibly requiring a court order, public notice, or something else. This will depend entirely on your jurisdiction’s laws on abandoned property.

The weird thing about this claim is that these aren’t deal breakers. It’s possible to get insurance for exotics like McLaren or Bugatti (although no idea if GEICO does those); it just costs a lot.

I’d really like to hear more about those underwriting standards.

I once heard it described as a “3 day relationship between a 13-year-old and a 16-year-old that left 6 people dead”

Presumably, “other places” refers to other insurance companies. IOW, GEICO is (allegedly) denying them coverage. OP is hoping that Allstate, Progressive, etc will also deny coverage.

My point is that every company is a tech company.

It’s easy to think of tech as being companies that primarily produce electronics or operate information services, but that’s not the case. Every company uses (and often creates) technology in various forms that benefit from standards and interoperation.

Connected devices benefit from standardized Wi-Fi. Cars benefit from standardized fuel- both in ICE (octane ratings, pumps) and electric (charging connectors, protocols). It even applies to companies that make simple molded plastic, because the molds can be created/used at many factories, including short-term contract manufacturing.

It’s very much the Oracle model.

A long time ago, Oracle DB could handle workloads much, much larger than any of their competitors. If you needed Oracle, none of the others were even a possibility. There are even tales that it was a point of pride for some execs.

Then Oracle decided to put the screws to their customers. Since they had no competition, and their customers had deep pockets (otherwise they wouldn’t have had such large databases), they could gouge all they wanted. They even got new customers, because they had no competition.

Fast forward and there are now a number of meaningful competitors. But it’s not easy to switch to a different DB software, and there are a ton of experienced Oracle devs/DBAs out there. There are very few new projects built using Oracle, but the existing ones will live forever (think COBOL) and keep sucking down licensing fees.

VMware thinks they are similarly entrenched, and in some cases they’re right. But it’s not the simple hypervisor that everyone is talking about. That can easily be replaced by a dozen alternatives at the next refresh. Instead it’s the extended stack, the APIs and whatnot, that will require significant development work to switch to a new system.

I almost included that exact clip, but felt like it was too off topic. Glad that I’m not alone on thinking that

I remember seeing an analysis that said the reason nothing sticks to Trump is that there’s just so many negative stories that none of them really gain traction. There’s nothing simple like “But her emails!!!” To get anyone riled up.

They each have their own protection detail. Each will quickly move to protect the one they are responsible for, which will mean separating them (probably by a lot of distance).

Someone under SS protection can choose to waive it. There are some former presidents who deemed it unnecessary later in life.

No idea about the rest of your hypothetical

Often there are contracts. Sometimes for a very long time, often multi-year. There are sometimes escape clauses (like a morality clause for a spokesperson), but these aren’t easy to invoke.

I suspect many of them are up for annual review/renewal, when they can be terminated without penalty. It might also just be an attempt to get better terms.

Shrinkflation is smaller quantities and/or higher prices. This is actually tracked in a variety of places.

Changing to a cheaper recipe/supplier is very hard to put metrics on, and isn’t tracked anywhere that I know of

Uber’s insurance is pretty bad. Many get the additional coverage from their regular insurer anyway because of this. That coverage also (usually) applies to this situation as well.

How close are these surrounding towns? What’s the population, particularly for the demographics you would appeal to?

Often, it’s not worthwhile to bring your favorite culture to your home. Just go to the culture where it already exists. Often, these quiet, boring places are populated by people that WANT to live in a place that’s quiet and boring. It doesn’t make much sense for anyone to move there if they don’t.