A 442 liter freezer costs 600 Euro and cosumes 160W for an average energy consumprion of 277 kWh per year (Whirlpool W3RHS44EW). This is on the big and expensive end for freezers, regular fridges could be more expensive because they can have more gadgets like the ice cube machine that push the price up without move a lot the power consumption.
A monosplit unit of comparable price consumes 1KVA and consumes an esimated 1020 kWh per year for air conditioning. (Samsung Wind-Free Comfort Next Monosplit 12000BTu)
I'ver choosen brans name systems, going for not brand name, you can get less expensive appliances of course. But the elephant in the room is te installation. To install a freezer, you buy it, you get delivered, optionally you clean the inside with glass cleaning spray, way a day and inset the plug in asuitable socket, wait a day to go in temperature and then put the food to freeze in. Easy and fast.For a split unit you have to install the internal and external units, connect them with the pipes and with the electrical wiring, that is non simple asplug a socket, but it's error prone, then you have to make the vacuum and put in the correct R gas. If they sell a canister to you, because most of R gases are dangerous and therfore not available to the general public
Th the end there's the final boss. If you live in an architecturally important building, you need the permit from the "Superintendency of Archaeology, Fine Arts and Landscape" think a group of HOA Karens looking at the color you want to paint a wall or the blinders, but actually a government official. Basically al building made before WWI are considered important, and there are a lot of these in city centers.
Older buildings that were made for cold winters, so easy to heat an keep the temperature, so retrofitting an air conditioner it's expensive, difficult, and not very effective.

Corporate mergers have in most cases another effect: companies that once made great products, after the merge they start to make an inferior product and the brand name either is dismissed or it's used to rebadge stuff made by totally different companies. I'm Thinking about DEC, Compaq and HP, for instance, where the results were ditching the Alpha CPU architecture for the Itanium one, while firing the engineers that designed the Alpha architecture and inteas of selling printers that were reliable, robust and cheap to operate are now selling crappy printers that need very expensive ink cartidges. C-level people and shareholders are getting a lot of money anyways, but customers are getting a worse service.
So at the end I think that the messages are also for sugarcoating the negative effect on the society in general and not only with the people affected directly: think about datacenters and the damages that are made with the construction and the operation of these. I remember the mall frenzy nearby me that was like twenty years ago: I remember that people against them were signed as Luddites, but now there are a lot of malls that are downsizing and closing. An interesting tidbit is that one of those mall projects that was proposed in 2009 never started because of the protests of people that used the park and the amateur football field where part of the mall was going to be built. Now the mall builder decided to redo the project and make a smaller mall, preserving the park and the football field, because now having a big anchor that also sells electronics and home appliances doesn't make sense anymore: it's better a pick and pay section in the almost grocery anchor and people using e commerce to order stuff.

I think the biggest problem is that a career path where AI could be used heavily and is also advertised and pushed as a workforce reduction tool is way less interesting than other career paths.
Learning programming, graphical design, musical composition, 3D rendering and so on requires time and money and hard study. If one perceives that after years of university the job offers will be very few, even if they like the subject, they will choose a different field.

BMW to cut up to 8,000 jobs . The problem isn't limited to BMW but also to other brands. Maybe they should find what customers really want and not what is getting them bigger profit margins only. Especially when cars are become more and more expensive, and car dealers are more interested to sell loans and insurance than actual cars.
People then could stop to buy new cars or look at other brands that are selling cheaper models with less gadgets. It happened with Japanese brands, then happened with Korean brands and now it's happening with Chinese brands.
And by the way the BYD SEAL looks cooler than the BMW i4.

The biggest problem is the family. If in a family they give a table to watch slop videos to four years old, and smartphones to eight year old without checking them, the battle is lost anyway.
Electronics companies are still making feature phones, if the problem is to remain in contact, there's a cheap technical solution. Mandating interoperable protocol for messaging to the OTT will also cut the problem that people are using Whatsapp instead of SMS.
The problem it's not technical, but it's a social problem, because some parents will gift they kid expensive smartphones instead of feature phones, to show as a status symbol.

I think is a bit like what happens on retail. The same or very similar product is sold by Aldi as WORKZONE, Lidl as PARKSIDE, MXD at MD, DEXTER at Leroy Merlin and so on.
And if you search it sometimes you can find the exact same item sold on Aliexpress or Amazon with a strange brand.

Also Biodance is legit. https://biodance.com/

Except that only a tiny percentage of people don't buy it, the corporation will not notice it.
On the other hand because videogames aren't essential items, one could simply spend their money in other videogames or even other things.

I think a sonic espresso machine with sonic teameri it's going to be a great prop to be in the TARDIS.

I'm not going to buy it, for me it's better the Jolla phone in that category. And for me the ideal smartphone is a cheap Motorola bought for 170 euro at the grocery store, with a bundled charger and a cover.
I think that for kids that phone could be an interesing idea, but it's expensive.
I can unsertant that somebody could like that phone, but not me. It's like the Kobold: my neighbour has one and says it's a great vacuum, but I'm ok with a 50 euro one bought in a discount. different people different needs. And yes like the Kobold, I'm not going to buy one.

ITÃs not the equivalento of the Trump phone, because is an original product, it runs Sailfish OS like the Jolla Phone, has better specs than the typical flip "senior" phone, like the ones made by Nokia or Panasonic and has some hints of the retro look.
I think that phone isn't clearly for people that are in retrogaming or retrocomputing but another demographic. The price it's quite high, so it isn't a kids' phone and neither a senior phone.
I think that it's aimed to "hipsters" that like to have a quirky thing to show at their friends, so the fact that it's expensive in that case it's a plus, and also the fact it's different: a Jolla phone looks like a smartphone, this is different.

Ony if they are ads for the local cat and dog shelter. Adopt a puppy! Please!

I think that data centers are hyped by real estate people, building some construction it's always good.
Twenty years ago there was a construction wave on building malls, until some of them started to become dead malls. One place proposed was near an airport, but at the end nothing was done and the project was scrapped because it was clear that nobody was interested to have a shop opened there, especially because having a jet taking off or worse making a go-around doesn't make the better shopping experience. Now somebody wants to build a datacenter in the same area, because now it's the thing to do.

I you look at computer engineering course, they aren't vocational and make you learn on how to program, especially because they are electronic engineering geared more towards digital and microprocessor circuitry.
Unfortunately employers tend to prefer people with a MsC rather than people that made vocational schools, and then find that people just graduated don't know the latest technology they use.

I think that a Sinclair C5, modified to use lithium batteries could outperform that rating too. And a tram doesn't have a steering wheel too, at most a point switch remote control, and for it's intrinsic properties, having steel wheels running on steel rail instead of rubber tires on asphalt, it's more efficient than an equivalent bus.