Sadly, those pesky physics stand in the way.
(No controllable way to "project black", meaning you need some blocking/filtering;
No practical way to project a picture without at least some optics: all the alternative things - like waveguides - which were tried turned out rather crappy)

There are some attempts at making smaller headsets (e.g.: some like Bigscreen are trying to be as light as an immersive VR can be) or less isolating (e.g.: stuff like Lynx has roughly similar optic to the AVP, but the mask is optional it's also usable with peripheral vision unblocked), but all these are still somewhat clunky, and still cost a lot due to manufacturing scale (compared to, e.g., Quest).
Note that they still cost a fraction of Apple's turd and also weight a lot less.

They got fired for disrupting a workplace and refusing to leave when they were told they were trespassing. Not for merely "expressing opinions".

I'd also be protesting if Google aided and abetted Hamas, which is the only actor in the conflict that actually has expressed genocidal intentions.

Absolutely. Everyone should act against any corporation that offers the slightest bit of support to Hamas.

Googlers are supporting a corporation that's violating privacy and enjoying monopoly or at least oligopoly power in many areas of business. Suddenly they get a conscience about something that's trendy and easy to virtue-signal.

Because, it's not a fuel?
Yes, demand on lithium is increasing as manufacturer of battery-powered devices ramps-up.

But the lithium in a battery powered device is merely a one time inital affair. Once the battery has been built you don't need any more lithium over the life time of the battery. There's no need to constantly pump more lithium into an EV for it to function.

Contrast this with the fossil fuel pipelines.

That's why switching to EV hasn't had an as dramatic effect on Lithium prices as ICE have had on fossil fuel.
Same reason why even if they EV are more complex to build and manufacturing one has larger climate impact than manufacturing an ICE, ICE's constant guzzling of gas overtakes EV's environmental impact after a couple of years (2 to 3 depending on the local energy mix).

(And similar differences of scale also concern nuclear power generation: yes it needs to "burn" a fissile fuel. But it uses so little of that fissile fuel and it amount for such a minute fraction of the overall cost that even insane fluctuations of prices would barely have any noticeable impact on electricity bills)

Anecdotal evidence, just like yours, but my very non-technical brother-in-law is perfectly happy running Debian Linux with XFCE4. Could he have set it up himself? Hell no. Can he use it once I set it up for him? No sweat.

Same with my late Mom. She was in her late 80s running Debian+XFCE4 because she knew if she needed tech support from me, I wouldn't be able to support Windows.

Or maybe disingenuously claiming a genocide is occurring while conveniently ignoring the, eg, 10x higher civilian death rate in the Syrian civil war is hypocritical? When it's Muslims killing Muslims in a war, it's apparently no big deal for the Hamasnicks.

Gee, it's not like the regular stuff Google does is unethical or anything. All the Google employees seem gung-ho about invading our privacy, enshittifying the Internet, running a virtual monopoly on the Play Store, etc, etc....

Maybe they're not in a great position to preach ethics.

Customer service jobs have seen high losses. As soon as the current AI is combined with a physical presence then jobs like stocking, shelving, janitorial services, security, and many more will see rapid replacement.

I agree there's a problem with confabulation. But see the CNBC article, 'TECHNOLOGY EXECUTIVE COUNCIL
Recent data shows AI job losses are rising, but the numbers donâ(TM)t tell the full story" where it says, "According to a recent report of 750 business leaders using AI from ResumeBuilder, 37% say the technology replaced workers in 2023. Meanwhile, 44% report that there will be layoffs in 2024 resulting from AI efficiency."

As I said,

You haven't been following A.I. closely have you? Because it's being used in many high value applications and exceeding the current human experts in those fields.

Even in it's current dumb state, combined with robots, the current A.I. can replace about 60% of human beings and that includes some fields that require a masters degree or doctorate to get a job.

Most manual labor jobs are easy to replace (stocker, shelving, janitorial services, landscaping, simple assembly, etc. etc. etc)
And A.I. is already replacing radiologists and other analytical jobs.

I agree with the other guy, if your breakeven is over 9 years, then solar isn't worth it yet.

Get a smaller off grid system for disaster planning and then wait for prices to drop further (and another 40% decline is due within the next 5 years.) Plus the panels are getting smaller for the same power. 10 years ago, a 100w panel was 32sq feet and $750. Last summer, a portable 100w panel was 16 sq feet and $129. A fixed panel was under $100 and also about 12 sq feet. And that's after 10 years of inflation on the price.

You face significant risk of inverter failure over 15 years. Maybe twice. At about 10 years, you would need new batteries.

But you can have a small, non-grid tied system to keep your refrigerator, a fan, a router, a laptop/tv, and a couple lights going. Saving a fridge full of food is both a reduction in misery *and* potentially a $200 to $400 savings so one disaster outage will reduce your payoff period quite a bit (2 to 4 panels are suddenly "free" or 1 battery is suddenly "free").

You haven't been following A.I. closely have you? Because it's being used in many high value applications and exceeding the current human experts in those fields.

Even in it's current dumb state, combined with robots, the current A.I. can replace about 60% of human beings and that includes some fields that require a masters degree or doctorate to get a job.

That's why you combine generation and storage (and note I didn't say "batteries"). That storage can include turning atmospheric co2 into fuel.

But underlying your point is that we simply have too many people. Generating baseline power for the current population is rendering the planet uninhabitable.

Seems to me that focusing on increased efficiency would have huge payoffs. Brains do this with a very tiny amount of electricity so the potential power efficiencies are vast.