You are probably right that low quality clickbait, or ultra long-form content couldn’t survive under that model. Also, the recodes and regional hosting for sites with a global reach adds cost.

With that said, I wonder if the economics work out better for a group of people who share an interest and want to cultivate a community around it. All 10k channels don’t need to go on one server. For me, I think being decentralized is a key part of the benefit. I see the folks on urbanists.video doing the peertube thing very well. I talked to them a while back because I couldn’t find a way to pitch in for server costs and it sounded like they were self-funding while they figured out their open collective. We’re limited on what we can learn from them because the viewcounts aren’t in YouTube’s ballpark and the creators post both places and probably owe a lot of their exposure to the YouTube algorithm rather than Peertube. Nevertheless, the Urbanism folks have sown the seeds to get out from under YouTube’s thumb and Google themselves will water that seed by enshittifying their own product. I’m curious to see it continue to develop.

Does anyone around here run a Peertube?

The real cost of a centralized platform like YouTube also includes giving up the freedom of communities to set their own standards, and while it isn’t a monetary cost, I think it’s worth careful consideration.

It could be a good thing to have an internet with less slop and more high quality content produced by people and for people. How we decide that will likely be contentious. I’m sure there’s some very rich people out there who would be thrilled if poor people couldn’t afford to be heard outside their own communities.

Not everything is worth the disk space it’s saved on (and 3 backups of course). YouTube has become increasingly filled with such content. That AI generated listical video of the 10 best ways to painlessly pluck nose hairs probably won’t make the cut. If users have some skin in the game, if it feels like their space and their communities again, perhaps things will improve.

Some sort of torrent tube that let’s you seed what you star react could be a useful way of giving videos wider reach as they gain popularity within an organic community. Upvotes would mean something if every upvote stored a 1MB video fragment on your device for seeding.

My bank has a mobile site that is more functional than their app. I guess that’s not the case for every bank.

For #3, how much would it actually cost to host a medium sized YouTube channel on peertube? I top off my prepaid hosting costs every few years to cover my website’s remarkably high traffic (just me and a few other people :P). Consequently I have no idea how much it would cost to self host a site with actual visitors and video content.

My dad bought me an ifixit repair kit for my birthday or Christmas or something and it is absolutely up there with the best, most frequently used presents of the last decade. It had the weird Ring doorbell bit when I tore down Amazon’s spy doorbell. It has an odd bit for my ebike, it has all the computer and phone repair tools to crack open modern devices. This was more of a phone/tablet/computer kit. Maybe Ifixit or someone else will make a repair kit specifically for vehicles with anti-consumer “features”

Still hurts like hell though… from someone who once accidentally rolled up the window BEFORE pulling my head in. :-D

Me too, I added more than I could use because today’s gaming rig is tomorrow’s server. Now I’m debating if I should sell a few sticks but who knows when, if ever, I’ll be able to replace them.

Will it Minecraft (with mods) is also the test I apply to every system I build or buy

I once slept in an apartment directly across the street from a broadway-sized LED billboard. It was a comparable experience to staring into those LED headlights. You could see it change >>through<< the blackout curtains.

I don’t trust Microsoft’s motivations, but these are all important considerations you bring up.

The lowest step of pushiness is a tray icon. Cinnamon did(does?) it like this. You have an exclamation point in the tray if you have updates available, otherwise it’s a green check mark on a shield. I thought this was an elegantly simple and effective solution though, as you point out, easy to ignore.

On the other end of the spectrum, Microsoft have gone to the extreme: you will upgrade, you have limited options to defer, you will backup to our cloud. Updates show up and you get to be surprised every upgrade cycle when something that was formerly working is broken.

I will always opt for freedom for myself and others, but I imagine a middle ground that holds the hands of non-technical users would look something like the warning when you access about:config in Firefox. “Here be dragons!”

Ultimately, on a normie-focused OS it may even be useful to provide the user with information about backups and let them choose. "Having a backup reduces your likelihood of losing your cat memes by %. By confirming below you acknowledge that cloud backup will not be set up. To avoid data loss, please follow the 3-2-1 backup methodology (link).

Confirm (y/N)

Yeah, hopefully Patron doesn’t roll over and just removes the option to do it in iPhone. Taking away functionality will make Apple look bad, which they deserve.

Seriously, they were the poster-child of a “good” phone manufacturer. Like the “don’t be evil” version of Google, there was a time when I was comfortable recommending them. Not any more. Let’s hope they find their way.

Sad. Having used the OPX, OP6T, OP9, and briefly the OP10, I can honestly say their hardware is usually pretty good. I went to Graphene on a Pixel for the software. Software was always Oneplus’ weak point so it’s extra silly that they’re doing this. So many hobbyists have bought OP hardware and used it with software of their choice. They started co-developing their Oxygen OS with Oppo a while back and that’s when it really went to hell.

Yeehaw! Sounds like you are set for a while. If you get replaced by AI, you could sell 32 gigs and live off that for a couple of years while still being able to run a zillion tabs at once!

I feel similarly. I pretty much maxed the RAM on my DDR5 gaming/daily driving desktop before this. I wish I had also maxed the RAM on my DDR4 server, though I did acquire significant storage space and a new SSD while it was more affordable. If we see a reasonable dip in storage prices or RAM, I’m buying spare drives in the sizes I use so I can be a bit more insulated from market swings and will have spares on-site immediately if needed.

It can be hard to convince partners and family, so congrats on the success. My partner worked in IT support but is not a computer person and does not own a PC. I simply provide a family Linux computer and some hosted services to be used by anyone in the family, usually EndeavorOS with KDE. They are aware of world happenings to understand why it is important and the biggest complaint I received was that I need to apply more scaling because the text is too small. :D

With all that said, I think both our situations are anomalous, though becoming more common.

I’m aware of Stash. I wouldn’t have thought of it and that might actually be a good solution. I’ll spin up a copy and see if it’ll work. Thanks for the suggestion. :)

Or they’ll bundle it directly with the compute they want to sell you so that you dont even have the option of using your own PC and all devices on the network are 100% validated and controlled by them.

I remember a time when Skype already existed and we would still pay for long distance phone minutes to call our German relatives because they hadn’t updated their internet since the Kaiser was in charge. :-P In the last few years, their speeds are much more comparable to ours.

Great to hear. I might give it a try in a limited area, like meeting people from a new hobby or friend group, then expand from there if it works f or me. I definitely see the benefit, especially for ADHD types who might otherwise forget to call someone for 1…2…3…12 months. :-D Thank you for making a cool piece of software.

Looks good. I’ve considered a personal CRM for some time and have been using Obsidian a little bit. Having said that, I am open to something more tailored to the task. A question: what would it look like if someone wanted to export their data out of this tool later? Do I need to be a programmer to migrate away or is it relatively simple?