I'd also like to subscribe to some rate-limited plan for newspapers, magazines, and newsletters. I can usually find some workaround but it's too much hassle to do that for all the sites I'd like to read (and where I would be willing to give some limited amount of money).
After being away from it for a couple of years, I checked out Apple News+ again, and it's added a lot of newspapers and magazines in the time I was away.
The newspapers are almost all American, with a smattering of Canadian, but there seems to be a ton of British and Australian magazines.
It might be worth checking out to see if what's on offer matches your interests.
I don’t think it is, but I’ve seen someone make a browser extension to transparently add query parameters to always exclude some sites. I imagine doing the opposite (for some queries search only this list of sites) is also achievable.
This reminds of the quake when I was driving to Menlo Park and seeing large numbers of people walking down the Caltrain track after it had been stopped in between stations. It looked like a scene out of an apocalyptic movie...
A card processor for sale leads me to this comment:
"Finally, many customers found plugboard programming easier than programming with code, both because they were more familiar with it and because it is visual and direct."
I've had generally mediocre experiences with Apple products - the original MacBook Air, two iPad Minis, an early iPhone. And for whatever reason, I prefer Windows and Android to MacOS and IOS.
But I agree that an iPod with the click wheel is the pinnacle of human achievement. The iPod Classic was the best device I've ever owned.
The best thing imo about the clickwheel was it required no training or practice to use. Everyone and their grandmas can pick it up and just use it straight away. Very few hardware interfaces have ever achieved that ubiquity.
In the 1980s, I once boarded a Republic flight from Detroit to Houston. Unfortunately, the flight I paid for from Detroit to Houston was a different (and direct) one.
In Detroit, there was confusion on the plane as someone else had the same seat assignment but they found me another seat. They finally figured out I was on the wrong plane when we landed in Memphis. I was bounced off a full flight and had to wait 8 hours for the next plane to Houston.
Only one of the flight attendants seemed to pay attention to the flight number on my boarding pass.
I was also on a flight once to San Jose, California that had a passenger who was supposed to go to San Jose, Costa Rica.
Do you remember how you ended up getting on that flight?
This is what the logistics look like today for the two cases:
I. (I bought the direct flight)
A. Show up at the airport and check the board for a Republic flight from Detroit to Houston. Learn from the board where the checkin counter is.
B. Check in at that counter ("Final destination: Houston") and be issued a single boarding pass showing the boarding gate.
C. Show up at the gate, which displays information about the flight, including a final destination of Houston.
D. Board.
II. (I bought the cheaper flight with a layover)
A. Show up at the airport and check the board for a Republic flight from Detroit to Memphis. Learn where the checkin counter is. (They're both Republic flights, so this will be the same counter.)
B. Check in at that counter ("Final destination: Houston") and be issued two separate boarding passes, one for a flight from Detroit to Memphis and another for a flight from Memphis to Houston. Only the first one will have a gate number on it.
C. Show up at that gate, which, like the flight board, shows that the flight will be going to Memphis.
D. Board.
The flight number on your boarding pass wouldn't matter, because you'd be trying to board a flight to Memphis using a boarding pass that says you're flying to Houston.
I mostly remember being stuck in Memphis ~40 years ago...
I don't remember what boarding passes looked like then. I assume detachable, printed boarding pass stubs were not yet being used.
I actually started the trip in Grand Rapids, MI where I presumably checked in at the main counter, and received seat assignments for two flights (GRR => DTW, DTW => HOU (Hobby or International). I probably checked a garment bag.
I don't remember the circumstances in Detroit but somehow ended up boarding the Memphis/Houston flight rather than the Houston flight. I don't know if I was at the wrong gate because I read the wrong flight on the monitor, saw a gate with a sign that included Houston, or some other reason. I don't remember any boarding announcement so maybe I had a tight connection.
I then handed my boarding pass to the gate person and boarded the plane. It wasn't until there was a seat conflict in Memphis when a flight attendent noticed my boarding pass did not match this flight.
I suspect it was a one-stop flight rather than a hub-and-spoke connecting flight like I had in Detroit. Maybe the original signage listed both airports. I did not get off the plane in Memphis until the next set of passengers came on and someone said they had my seat. Then finally, an employee finally noticed I was on the wrong flight.
I do remember airline employees discussing that it was a full flight and they considered having someone on an employee ticket give up their seat but in the end they booted me off.
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