I’m not as optimistic as you.

Hosting video is really expensive. Making video is really expensive. YouTube was losing money for about 15 years despite having a monopoly on online video for most of that time and the best advertising tech in the world. I don’t think it’s possible to make a free competitor to YouTube.

On the paid side, there’s plenty of streaming services that are making money. But you have to be already established in order to get a contract. And since you will typically have to use social media in order to get past that initial barrier, it might as well include YouTube.

However, my guess is that YouTube makes the majority of it’s money from larger channels. If the larger channels all join paid streaming services(e.g. Nebula) then gradually that may be able to bring YouTube down.

Yes, even for them, the information they can get through a phone is lifesaving. They can learn how to build water supply and sanitation systems and shelter. They can learn how to farm and forage for food. They can find the best way to cross international borders and become a refugee. And so on, they can improve every aspect of their lives. Information is power, and with a smartphone they have access to the entire world, rather than just word of mouth knowledge in their local community.

Obviously, places without any form of electricity are screwed, but satellite internet is rapidly becoming cheaper and more accessible so soon they won’t even need cell coverage.

2. Those in extreme poverty need access to more important things than access to these gadgets.

We’re going down a sidetrack here but this is just false. A smartphone these days is a ticket to many things required to live. Applying for jobs, applying for government services, buying essential items cheaply, cheap/free education.

Don’t buy a Windows key. If Windows was installed initially it should remember your hardware and activate. If it doesn’t, there’s numerous ways to pirate Windows.

Why would you hand your browsing data to the VPN company? It’s just moving the problem.

Debian. The basic install is very bare bones.

I liked Quora as recently as a few years ago, it had some nice explanations that you couldn’t get anywhere else. Obviously you have to take everything with a grain of salt, but you have to do that anywhere on the internet.

Further evidence for this is ChromeOS. It’s just a Linux distro, but worse. It does little more than run Chrome. Yet it’s popular. Anyone that tolerates ChromeOS would have an even better time on most of the standard distros if they had someone to set it up for them.

The same could be said for K-9. What more could you want from an email app.

That sounds like a great outcome for the original company

Elon must have spent so much on x.com yet it still redirects to the primary URL twitter.com

Paracetamol is not considered an anti-inflammatory.

Why would there be load on the clutch if the handbrake is on?

Conversely, I’m so opposed to the enshitification that I’ve carefully tailored my internet usage to places that aren’t shit and have no prospect of becoming shit, like Lemmy. Since I don’t even have the motivation of not supporting an evil company, I’m more addicted that ever.

Which makes the argument that heat pumps don’t work in the cold completely wrong from a user perspective.

I disagree, a lot of white collar work is simply writing bullshit.

Probably some people, back when smartphones were novel in 2007.

At this point though, it’s tacky and implies that you don’t care enough about the conversation to turn it off.

Sure. Australia has had mandatory helmets since 1990, and there’s been endless studies and debates since then, it’s still ongoing. I could find no clear evidence that helmet mandates decreased overall harm over any timeframe.

To quote a review I read from 2007

The following general principles should have widespread support: (1) Any legislation (including helmet laws) should not be enacted unless the benefits can be shown to exceed the costs. Ideally, the benefits should be greater than from equivalent ways of spending similar amounts of money on other road safety initiatives.

And their conclusion did not find a consensus other than

A majority of brain injuries >AIS2 are caused by bike/motor vehicle collisions. Traffic calming, enforcement of drink-driving laws, cyclist and driver education, or other measures to reduce the frequency and severity of bike/motor vehicle collisions, may therefore represent more cost-effective ways of reducing serious head injuries to cyclists than helmet laws. Indeed, countries with the lowest fatality rates per cycle-km also have the lowest helmet wearing rates

Given that, helmet mandates are a bad law that takes away our liberties for no proven benefit.

Why is a electric motor overheating dangerous? Surely any electric car is going to have a system to throttle itself if overheating is an issue, and it will need that with or without gears.

The fastest accelerating electric cars are single speed, presumably because it’s not worth changing gear when you only have 2 seconds.

I can see why it might be useful in specific product categories, but when it’s not helpful for price or performance or reliability, that’s going to continue to be niche. The real problem electric cars need to solve right now is cost and a gearbox isn’t helping with that.

Discouraging people from driving is a good thing, although with the amount that’s wasted on pointless expressways some governments haven’t noticed yet.

Anyway, there’s clear evidence from countries with mandatory helmet laws that it discourages people from cycling.