I have both current Linkbuds. I love the concept of the first one but they are uncomfortable for me no matter how I wear them (unless I damn near have them hanging out of my ear, but then they sound bad and fall out easily). The S model is one of my favorite earbuds I own. Super small and light with great sound and fantastic ANC and passthrough. Not quite the same as a truly open earbud though. I want to try the BOSE clip on one's, but like you said they are pricy.
I searched the specs on the battery, and the same exact battery with leads already soldered to it came up from quite a few different sources. Some of them had a small white 2-pin connector, I'm not sure if it would be compatible with the green one that is on the battery in the article, but it would be an easy fix for somebody into electronics (even with parts and tools off Amazon, if not DigiKey or something). All that said, it's still bullshit the company is still around but isn't supporting a 10 year old $100,000 mobility device relied on by someone who is disabled. The headline makes it sound like he's screwed though, and that's hardly the case. This is an easy fix.
Yes, but the "demand" that you are talking about is for cheap on the consumer side, not on the producer side. It may (arguably) still be cheap food on the producer cost side, but the consumer price side has gone insane. The quality definitely is shit.
I'm almost 40 and a lot of my cars in my teens and 20s were from the '80s and '90s. Almost everything I've owned has had at least a rudimentary cruise control although there are some ('80s Bronco II, '95 Miata, early '90s 240sx, 99 Impreza Wagon) where it was broken or I just never used it.
All that said, I LOVE the radar controlled cruise control on my current vehicle. I've used it for at least 20,000 miles of driving at this point. Interstate, highway, city, you name it... Pretty much any time I want to maintain a steady speed over 28 and there's not a lot of stop and go traffic. I hate thinking about life without it now (and I hate using standard cruise control without radar)!
Bags by itself sounds weird, but beanbags doesn't bother me.
Cowboy hat, maybe?
Edit: No, more like a Mountie hat.
They should just swap their Jesus out for the one from the game The Inquisitor. That would be way cooler, I'd even consider going back to the church.