TIL that you can get much lower online prices if you use a local library computer. Another reason to hate retailers.
Lora Kelley took a trip to the New York Public Library for us and compared prices against a personal iPhone. The results? A box of Apple Cinnamon Cheerios and a pack of toilet paper were nearly 20% cheaper on the library desktop.
If I were a company looking to optimize profit by pricing goods at whatever limit the targeted consumer demographic would be willing to pay for, I would use a VPN as a signal to raise the price.
It doesn’t matter who that consumer is behind the VPN. The VPN itself is a monthly subscription, and that indicates he/she has at enough disposable income to afford non-essential services.
To that point the library computer is free. I don’t know anything about VPNs or how to use them and I definitely shouldn’t have to pay for something for basic privacy. Library users improve the demand for libraries. Using a library computer is a win in basically all ways that really matter.