They both agreed with each other but were arguing with a strawman. One said

their precious smartphones might be problematic.

The other said

maybe smartphones play a role

Which mean the same thing.

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.

It isn’t on a mobile device where you might go out of wifi or cellular coverage. But it’s probably a good thing as I don’t want my tab habit wearing out my disk

2FA is entirely offline. So it’s not really the same service and there’s nothing to breach.

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.

Unlike Google Maps, OSM is just as useful if you don’t drive. I love it for walking and cycling, it’s got all the little paths, categorized correctly.

What are you talking about? If we limit this discussion to somewhat democracies, the government is a net benefit. Without it there would be anarchy.

The government is the cause of and solution to most problems in society. Better governments are possible, but it’s a hard fought struggle.

Third party servers aren’t always enough. Microsoft managed to ruin 3rd party Minecraft servers.

Looking at history, it feels more like an attempt to make sure the poorest don’t fall into the “nothing left to lose” category that can cause so much trouble.

That’s because it is. That’s the point of welfare, give the poorest something to lose and they won’t revolt. Even if it’s the most meager, unfair, dehumanizing scraps.

Debian. The basic install is very bare bones.

By the way, 1 tablespoon of peanut butter does not weigh 14.79 grams. 1 US tablespoon is a unit of volume that’s equal to 14.79 milliliters(mils). Grams are a unit of mass. In order to convert between them we need the density. Because the metric system is great, the density of water is 1g/mil, so 1 US tablespoon of water weighs exactly 14.79 mils. However the density of peanut butter is a bit higher, so the US tablespoon of peanut butter will weigh a bit more.

Additional pedantry, yes I did have to write US tablespoon every time. A US tablespoon is 14.79mils, a metric tablespoon is 15mils, a traditional Australian tablespoon was 20mils although now they mostly use metric tablespoons.

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.

Yes, they are also as painful as possible for every other browser. That’s the point.

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.

I haven’t had any issues with Nextcloud yet. But any torrent client refuses to work. I’ve tried various qbittorrent containers, transmission, deluge briefly, they all work for a while but eventual refuse to do anything.

Side note, MSR dragonflys are the shit. I love everything about them, the literal drink bottle of petrol you have to carry around, the crazy aluminium foil windshield, the pumping, the way they spray fuel everywhere as you light them, then the tower of flame that almost burns down the building as it primes. Cheap to run, indestructible, perfection.

They meant Citizens United v. FEC, a supreme court case that allowed much more election advertising.

If you take this argument (socialism) to the extreme, grocery stores shouldn’t profit either. Only the workers that produce the thing can profit off of it. I’m not sure of the logistics of that, I guess the government has to own the stores?