These companies seem to forget that the main thing holding them afloat is the ability to watch it simply at a low cost. Pirating is very easy and there are plenty of tools to achieve this same goal if prices keep going up.

I’ve already abandoned Netflix. I would rather pirate shows I hear are good than mindlessly scroll on that platform while paying $240 a year or whatever.

This is wonderful to hear. I hope this helps move people away from google and their products.

I prefer Rectangle. Free and fast.

My thought exactly. Really enjoyed this article. Thanks OP! I’m excited they are releasing more about their findings. I would also like to know what questions the new technology has answered beyond more dynamic pictures. I guess this photo wasn’t possible with Hubble?

Same here. It brings back some nice nostalgia. The new memes sometimes don’t do it for me.

Pay moderators and app developers that help make communities thrive? Hell no. Pay people to contribute content? Yes! That’s the way! Force the community with money. Yes!

I feel old when I think “kids these days” but I do wonder if there is a deep, fundamental problem with TikTok, Reels, YouTube shorts, and such. I taught in the HS for awhile this past year and I felt like the students had a very short attention span. How are they supposed to give sustained focus to learn something when they are training their brain for short, 90 second (or shorter) bursts?

I’m glad it’s not only me that feels this. Google has lost a lot of my trust. I am not inclined to try something new that launches as it’s likely to be short lived. Why invest in something they will shut off in a year or two or change the name (what’s it now, Google Talk, Hangouts, Duo, or some other shit?).

This article is well written, but the intense focus on TikTok is strange. I don’t understand how TikTok can be a source of true information or a town square for that matter. The videos are incredibly short and then the next one comes. You see a lot of dumb shit and stupid memes. It’s sometimes good at making people feel like they are learning something, but when you ask those people what they learned, they can’t synthesize or explain what it was they supposedly digested. To me, TikTok seems like pure dopamine hits without any sustainability.

Twitter, with its short character count, wasn’t any good for debate or sustained learning either. It was good for being a dunk tank—a place where people try to dunk on each other. It also became an echo chamber that helped polarize people politically. I don’t really understand the appeal of Twitter.

I don’t really understand how North Korea continues to exist. I guess they aren’t sanctioned hard enough? I guess it’s hard to get in spies? I guess it’s hard to remove Kim? They seem so weak, but they keep slowly developing into some weird sort of threat.

The interviewed protesters sound a little whacky. Maybe the cars are doing surveillance with the police, but that idea seems far fetched and unrealistic. Maybe I’m wrong.

I agree with more public transportation, bikes, and so forth, but I also agree with self driving cars. I dream of a future in which all cars are driven automatically without human drivers. Humans are very fallible and we all know, in almost every city, how many shitty drivers there are. Autonomous vehicles could fix this.

Maybe I’m missing something, but who would want a self driving car that monitors your eyes, forcing you to look at the road? The purpose of self driving cars should be that you don’t have to look at the road.

Regulators: “We will approve self driving cars, but only if there is a driver acting like they are driving.”