Let's not lose perspective here - we're talking about entertainment companies. These aren't airlines, ISPs, or grocery stores, it's boob tube fodder.

If you can't afford it, you don't have to subscribe. When I was a kid, we didn't have premium cable TV channels because my folks thought it wasn't worth the money. We still went to the movies occasionally and rented tapes from the local rental joint (before they all became Blockbuster Video).

There's absolutely no reason that the government should be involving itself in entertainment industry mergers. It's as absolutely non-essential as non-essential businesses can get. The sun will still rise tomorrow if you can't afford to watch Game of Thrones, or whatever the current crap is that HBO is putting out these days. And... there's always piracy.

I don't think it's really about any of this. This smells to me like a pump and dump scheme. Get investors thinking this idea is hot shit because it's based on a well-established brand, and then make off with the money before anyone realizes the world didn't really need yet another microblogging service.

Why is "cooperating with law enforcement" a problem? Isn't the whole point of putting up a security camera so you can give evidence to the cops if someone is messing with your property?

Realistically, if you're doing anything illegal (now I'm imagining security cameras for your cocaine factory) it's probably not a good idea to be documenting it with your own cameras, regardless of whether they're connected to the cloud.

I've seen a few people on my Facebook feed post GoFundMe campaigns and they seem to roughly have about the same amount of luck as the woman who approached me the other night at the Target parking lot, asking if I could "help her out".

"Sorry, I don't carry cash." (I really don't.)

I guess success with crowdfunding depends on the social circles you run in.

(emphasis mine)

That just implies there's more people asking for money, not that they're having any luck actually getting some. I'd imagine it's gotta be pretty slim pickin's.

Yeah, go ahead and put "Didn't attend college, but I spent a lot of time reading Wikipedia, Reddit, and getting tutored by ChatGPT." on your resume and see how far that gets you. /s

You make it sound like we're living in Star Trek where money is no longer a thing and people just work to better themselves. Some people really do just want to see a few more zeros on their paycheck and who's to say that's less valid of a life goal?

I think this is less about the value of college and more about disillusioned Gen Zers who can't understand why they're not pulling down a six figure income for their first job and not scoring dates with 10s on Tinder.

Obligatory old CollegeHumor video.

The internet lead to a lot of wealth consolidation, too. They're demolishing my local mall soon, because who needs local stores when you can just send all your money to Amazon, right?

AI just seems like taking capitalistic greed to its logical conclusion.

But you still only have to walk a mile for a Camel. /s

Seriously though, lack of competition doesn't mean you'll have to drive 20 miles to a coffee shop. Sure, if you live out in BFE there may be insufficient population density to support a profitable business, but a balance sheet doesn't care whether you're Starbucks or Ted's Overpay to Watch College Kids Press a Button on an Espresso Machine Coffee Shop.

The end result of consolidation won't be that the coffee shop is far - it will probably still be very convenient, but it will be whichever company was most successful at crushing the competition, which may not necessarily require that their product offerings be made using high quality coffee. And that's what we're getting here with another entertainment industry merger: content that's like a mediocre cup of coffee.

Except that all of these older digital formats are essentially just obsolete storage media. You can rip a CD, DVD, or Blu-Ray to a more modern form of digital storage and have exactly the same content.

Media from the analog era, though - that actually worked differently.

Yes, but in the OP's example of someone collapsing because of a medical condition, that's generally not something people are motivated to record by a thought process along the lines of "I should document this in case it proves to be important to one of the involved parties." Usually, it really is because they're hoping it will score them some fake internet points when they post it on social media.

Many mobile banking apps allow checks to be deposited digitally now. Just endorse it, then snap a photo of the front and back and no trip to the bank is necessary.

Might be a regional thing, but here in central Florida the gas stations offering "cash discounts" are often still priced higher than other stations that don't play those silly games.

Or you could blame the store. Basically, every modern smartphone is capable of being your own personal self-checkout terminal, but only some stores have actually bothered to implement such functionality into their apps. So, it's the store that's making you go through a convoluted checkout process where you're stuck behind someone futzing around to get their payment method to work.