I wonder if they'll discover bulletin board systems (BBS) like we used to use before the internet was even a thing.

Seems to me there might be a proliferation of such systems appearing in Oz. I wonder if they could even "import" content from other mainstream social media platforms such as Facebook, YouTube etc like FidoNet used to do with usenet postings. Now *that* would be interesting.

Hey... come to think of it, let's just revive usenet and be done with it!

I have a bunch of old data stored on Kodak Gold CDRs from the 1990s. Kodak claimed 100 year archive life -- although I guess this was just a "best guess" based on accelerated aging tests.

Perhaps I should check them and make sure that bit-rot hasn't set in.

Otherwise I don't bother with backups, they're far too stressful. I mean... if you're backing stuff up you've got to choose the right media, keep a copy off-site and have a restore strategy in place. If you don't backup then none of this is a worry any more. I'm sure AI will fix everything if I get a hardware failure, corruption or malware on my active storage media.

Carpe diem solves everything!

eVTOL man-carrying craft (flying taxis and flying cars) are not yet economically viable -- and won't be until we have a whole new generation of batteries with higher energy densities and cycle-lives. At the current cost of operation, these are a solution looking for a problem.

Hell, China can't sell all the EVs it makes so the chances of them selling any of these is....

As holder of the domain aardvark.co.nz I can already feel the benefit.

The videos you watch don't have intrusive sponsorship segments then?

I suspect it has in most households -- even boomer ones.

The problem is that nobody wants YouTube to be just like broadcast and cableTV was. The thing that made YouTube so compelling and so popular was its authenticity and variety -- but the management at YouTube are carefully killing the very thing that made it great.

Ever-growing levels of ever-more intrusive advertising. Ads that are (at times) 90 percent scams. Ads and content that are low-value AI-slop which, once the novelty value wears off, will drive people off the platform rather than onto it. Endless spambot comments on videos. -- all these things are slowly souring the formula that made YT what it is today.

Creators are complaining, viewers are complaining and pretty soon, advertisers will be complaining because viewer numbers will decline.

Many creators (such as myself) are now switching to self-hosting via a federated network of servers that we host ourselves (PeerTube or similar). Doing this frees us from the tyranny that is YouTube's arbitrary and unchallengable AI content moderation and it's unwillingness to deal with bogus copyright claims and strikes.

We have reached "peak Youtube" and just like so many companies that have become a huge part of our ever-day lives, it will now begin an ever-steepening decline.

If YouTube doesn't deliver what viewers and creators want they will find an alternative and the self-hosted federation of servers overcomes the single largest hurdle to creating a YouTube competitor -- the problem of matching the company's vast storage, processing and bandwidth capacity.

Watch this space... things are about to get exciting again!

Almost zero coffee is grown at n the USA. Only a couple of small farms in Hawaii can grow it.

All coffee and tea is imported. Have you started breaking your coffee.habit yet? That is a huge part of regionalization. Wait until conservatives find out no more coffee and tea.

That's right... you don't *really* think YT is giving you a choice do you?

I do not make shorts, I do not want shorts but without using plugins I can not avoid shorts. Successful companies are generally built on tailoring their offerings to match the needs/wants of their customers so YT once again proves that WE are not the customers, we are the product!

Just as with their AI deepfake detection system, YouTube has once again created a problem (Shorts addiction) so that it can deliver a solution (this auto-turn-off function).

I'd actually prefer that it didn't create the problems in the first place.

YouTube is a trainwreck right now and mid-tier creators are not valued at all. Just look at what they have to put up with

How about a temp regulating bed so in the winter it is a nice warm and on those extra hot summer nights it is nice and cool.

They need multiple sensors and such to regulate the beds temp vs your bed heat at the time.

What they donâ(TM)t need is an internet connection?

YouTube creates a problem (by integrating VEO3 into its platform) and then offers a solution -- but only if you surrender your government ID to them.

This is dystopian.

If you're stupid enough to buy a bed that goes berserk when the Net goes down then you deserve to wake up vertical and sweating!

Why on earth would such a contraption require cloud-based support for its core functionality?

This subscription-based model has gone way too far when, if the internet goes down or you don't pay your subscription, you can't even get a good night's sleep.

Hey, I'm still waiting for the year of the LAN and the paperless office to arrive. Linux on the desktop... that's a long way off (says the guy who's been using Linux as his go-to OS for nearly 20 years and has no regrets.

Sad I used mine to buy pizza :-(

Who said I wasn't vaxxed? I did get vaxxed because I crunched the numbers and weighed up the risks and uncertainties. At 68 years of age I figured I'd be better off being vaccinated, even if there were unforeseen risks associated with the vax that may surface ten years down the road. My point was that others may have different risk factors so for them the results may be different. It's about freedom of choice.

As for "putting others' lives in danger" -- we were all told that vaccination would protect us so why would we be worried about unvaccinated people in the general population eh? Unless we were being lied to?