That is a UI problem. Overlay icon or something like it - or setting to make sure all documents are also present on your machine. I absolutely do not want to know how it's implemented and where to look if it's cloud or not.
> We can't even accurately estimate the cost of a complex project given our choice of tools, let alone talk about costs and ROI with different toolchains for the same projects.
No industry can, unless it's something that has been done repeatedly before. If you ask a frontend designer specializing in WordPress to make a theme for WordPress and implement it, they can estimate it accurately.
What is thoroughly missing from this debate is the age old project management terms of scope and risks. As soon as you enter unknown land, the risk goes up. And risk means uncertainty and probably expenses. And if the people writing the checks change the scope, the original estimates goes out the window. If you're making a building, it's easier to understand that you cannot just change the scope after the blueprint is made. You have to get an architect to remake it, and everything done and ordered so far may or may not be salvageable. It happens in all industries, but just more so in software development.
If the alternative is simply killing a process or crashing the kernel, then surely a better approach would be to suspend the offending process and call a handle that does something. If you want that something to restart the machine, fine. You want it to notify the administrator, fine.
You're applying causation when there is no clear link. They are going out of business because they're being replaced by online entities. Before The Internet was a thing they worked just fine, again, as evident by the sheer amount of advertising in magazines back then.
They work in magazines and newspapers. An article delivered over RSS is basically the same as a magazine delivered in your mailbox. You may glance over it, but as long as it's delivered from the same servers as the actual content it's not blockable.
I'm not saying it should be a flashing banner on top, but it be somewhat incorporated in a format and length such that people aren't too annoyed - probably in corporation with the "sponsor". We know this works from the web because advertisers keep paying money for the ad space through articles.
If they use ad networks I can block it, but inline and serve from their own servers and I cannot. Maybe it'll work, maybe it will not, but I'm inclined to believe it will to the same extend advertising works in newspapers and magazines.
They're "sponsored by", just like some YouTubers do. So if your target audience is significant, you can choose to include something from a sponsor in return for a payment.