I agree, it is basically just a retirement home for elderly nations. May as well be comfortable as you slip into oblivion.

It's non-voting stock, but I'm not comfortable with this either.

Define "plenty" as a percentage of Windows Home users. Hell, define it in terms of the overall workforce.

Then tell me how much effort is justified in catering to them.

I'm sorry, that came off harsher than I wanted. I'm not changing it, but I want you to know I'm not trying to be mean.

You're still thinking like a pro user in a work setting. They just want to use their computer. They don't want to have to worry about updates. They don't want to worry about patching vulnerabilities. They are not comfortable touching settings. So, get that out of their way and let them use their damn computer!

The update issues you brought up are not common in a home setting. They are more common with the software people use at work, and then they come to us to complain about it. That just doesn't happen very often at home.

I'm neither "the linux crowd" nor autistic. I'm baffled by people getting bent out of shape over things that don't affect them and benefit the people who are affected. Nobody here should give one rotten rat turd about something being automated that they like to do manually in a different OS.

Let's look at it like this:
Something is changed in Windows that would annoy me if I were affected, but I am not, so I don't think about it.
My wife is affected but did not notice and would not have found annoying if she did. She would be happy that something she isn't comfortable doing was done for her automatically.

So, why would I come here and whine about how terrible that change was?

You mean the reason this is a good idea? I do care about those people. I know they don't think about updates or security. Automating things to keep them safe sounds good to me. That it might annoy me is irrelevant because it won't affect me. I don't want to have to make sure my wife's computer is updated and she doesn't know how.

Are typical users of home computers (that is, not at work) very likely to be dependent on keeping a specific version of some software for compatibility reasons? I doubt it. Are typical home users likely to forget to check for updates? Absolutely. Why? Because THEY DON'T CARE. They don't want to deal with any of that stuff, they just want to open a browser and assume they're safe. They're afraid to touch the things you (and usually I) think are important.

So... aren't you "caring" about those users as if they shared your wants and needs, as opposed to first considering what their wants and needs might be? They don't want to worry about this stuff, they just want it to happen in ways they won't notice. This I have learned from far too many years of supporting them.

Yes, so it is not, "what people are willing to pay", it is the intersection between the supply and demand curves. These curves both continue past that point, so there will be people who are willing to pay more than the market price. Their existence, like the existence of suppliers who would sell higher volumes for lower prices, is not a factor in the market price.

Scalpers break market and legal rules to extract some of the potential excess.

Do you have those answers? (sincerely)

Are any of them answered by this article about stopping it? (somewhat snarky)

Oh, I wasn't saying that at all. I meant it as more of an, "I agree, but don't forget these important bits".

As I recall, tickets are often non-refundable.

Well, they say it will facilitate secure, transparent, etc. transactions, but that already exists. I just don't see any problem solved by crypto, nor do I see any actual benefit. Unless you're one of the people burning GPUs to create nothings.

I still say this is driven by the ambiguity around the word class. There is no real class system in the US, just loose distinctions between income levels and job titles. Thus our "ruling class" are people with job titles like Senator, Councilman, or Deputy Director. The UK has a real class system, with royals, a hereditary nobility, clergy, commoners, and the very wealthy commoners they call the Middle. Does it play any real role in British society? Not as much as it used to, but some.

And that's why I would distinguish between what we might call a ruling class in the US from the UK flavor. Vestiges of aristocracy mean they still have a formal ruling class, so it wouldn't be correct to call non-members the ruling class. There are the people who actually rule, but they are not a class as defined under the British class system.

Fun note, this is how acts of Parliament begin:

Be it enacted by the Queen's most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows:

Which I snipped from one of the acts defining how one becomes a member of the de jure ruling class.

Because politics simply shouldn't drive that much of one's life. I don't think about how Bill Gates and his successors donate so much to Democrats when I open Excel, nor do I suffer any subconscious twinges. Those issues don't belong in that part of my life. My life decisions do not take into account anyone else's political preferences. I believe it would make my life measurably worse if I did.

And that's why it bothers me when people do let the political preferences of people they have never even met dominate their minds. I actually care about mental health, and it breaks my heart to see people driving themselves insane over someone else's opinions.

I had an experience with mayo very similar to your cream cheese incident. I still won't eat it, but I have discarded the associated phobia. It didn't have any real impact on my life though, just like not eating cream cheese didn't impact yours. But spending tens of thousands of dollars is a significant life decision and letting irrelevant nonsense drive that decision is neither healthy nor wise. The only person impacted by that decision is the buyer, who ends up not getting the car they had wanted, and Musk goes on being completely unaware and uninterested.

I'd like to be able to also assume that we wouldn't use the trackers if they didn't work at all. That's implied by the smugglers having to look for them instead of just unpacking things in a metal warehouse, but...

Well, when States issue financial instruments, aren't they usually some sort of bond issued to raise money? I don't see them raising money here, but then I can't for the life of me figure out why cryptocurrency exists at all, let alone why a State would issue it.

My reasons for wearing foil underwear are far sexier than that. I'll send you some pics.