I'm pretty sure someone powerful enough to be putting on a global misinformation campaign has no problem feeding those three news outlets whatever press releases or "news" they want. Not saying that this is happening, but the WMD misinformation wasn't all that long ago.

> In a year or two, when it becomes clear that there are certain kinds of things that can only be done on that years' hardware

Rather than argue speculatively like this, why not argue more concretely with a case where what we have have today is not possible with 3 or 4 year old hardware? I can't think of anything off the top of my head. Even if there is some technique like that, how widespread is its use in today's content? And how much would a person miss by not having that itty bitty feature?

PC gaming has worked fine on 5 (or more) year old hardware for a while now. It is not a requirement to have to max out every setting of diminishing return, all the time, or to miss an occasional Crysis like game that is intended to show the future than anything else. Our lives won't be empty without that extra little post-processing, which in most cases, would not even be something we would even notice unless specifically told about it. Statistically speaking, the users that chase the edge are a very small minority. Yet, we make them the face of PC gaming and chase away regular people to console gaming, which is far more expensive once all the costs are exposed, based on this faux need to upgrade constantly.

People. Bored, often too intelligent for their own good, people.

How long before trolls figure out they can drive their cars close enough and in such a manner that self driving cars execute lane changes to avoid accidents and pull off the freeway? Or until someone realizes they can jam the car's sensors and the poor passenger, with no access to a steering wheel, can't convince the car to pull out of the open parking spot it's convinced it's barricaded in?

How long before an Amazon delivery drone comes in to a house that's observed to regularly get deliveries and gets a blanket tossed over it before being purloined by nerds who just got a sweet free drone to try hacking?

Wind gusts happen. You can factor in for a typical wind gust, a severe wind gust, a once in a century wind gust. You can factor in for different types of hardware failure, for power loss, etc. You can factor in for trees, for tall buildings, for cables... They're finite problem sets.

But bored people? They're infinite.

> Which part of India are you in?

South.

> But some people I've talked to have indeed switched from TV to smartphone, and that's in the city outskirts.

Yes. So have I (I am in the outskirts of a small town, BTW). I do not watch any TV here and entirely consume my video via Internet (from my residential connection). But I do not represent an average Indian and would be a statistical outlier. So would the Indians that you are in contact with likely be. The Indians who work in engineering and science, especially those who do some overseas work (assuming it is these that you are in contact with), either perhaps moving back and forth or working with western clients, have developed country preferences and have similar ideas as slashdotters. But we are just a small demographic.

> I know several towns in Western Europe that used to share a single cell tower.

You are talking about having a single cell tower. The parent and I are talking about having a single shared cell phone for the entire village. It used to happen back in the land line era when a village might have had just one or two pay phones, but not now.

> Some villages only have one cell phone that everyone shares

You don't seem to be talking from experience and seem to be simply conjecturing. I am in India. I have never heard of any village sharing just one cell phone. It is not even plausible. Now, it used to be, several decades ago, that there were just a handful of landlines per village. But a cell tower will not be setup unless the provider is sure that there is demand for enough to make an economic case. And there always is. Mobile phones are not expensive (but not cheaper than the cheap options in US). Mobile plans are however incredibly cheap compared to US. I know poor ($13 rent for a family of 4) families in India who have multiple mobile phones, one per working adult.

> So think of it as each person in India putting out $1100 for their phone

Poor people are not buying smartphones yet (its the lower middle class and up that is driving smart phones now). They still buy Nokia dumb phones and are now beginning to shift to cheap Android phones at $100. Firefox Phone helps by further lowering that barrier of entry. The minimum monthly talk refill plan I know is 30 *cents*... very cheap. You may not get many outgoing minutes, but you don't get charged for incoming calls, unlike US. So everyone in India who needs one, can afford a mobile phone plan.

$1100 for a phone is very expensive in India. I know several people who have them, but they are all rich. And it is often a status symbol rather than for an actual need.

> which they use in lieu of land line, TV and computer

No one in India uses a smart phone in lieu of a TV. Having cable TV (60-80 channels) in India is very cheap ($3 per month in poor neighborhoods). Indian mobile data plans start very cheap ($2) but are not robust enough to be used for routine video consumption yet. They won't be replacing TV anytime soon. Anyone who owns a $1100 mobile phone already has a pricey HDTV.

Mobile phones are also not replacing computers yet since most of the phone users, unlike US, were not computer users to begin with. People here use cheap service stations nearby, to pay bills online, where the operator sits in front of an online PC, accepts cash and pays bills for a few cents of service charge. This is much simpler for most people than using data plans and mobile web apps, for now. Around here (a small town), there is such a tiny store for every neighborhood and they provide small jobs that serve populace that is not yet computer savvy enough.