Yeah, but those pennies are worth today's dollars

I have a Samsung Galaxy S7 that I expect to last until the touch screen dies, or I drop it from some incredible height or I begin to think it ugly. I replaced the battery once already. Battery replacement was obviously not intended in the design. But I found patience, and some minor tools were adequate to open the phone up. I did purchase a replacement back in case I broke the original during the process. But replacement battery and plastic back were readily available on the net (approx USD $20-$30.) and as long as they continue to be there should be no problem with maintaining the phone. I have found that the design is for built in obsolescence based on eventual battery failure. This was confirmed by an app, AccuBattery, which indicates that if the battery is charged only to 80% of capacity then its life span is extended to several multiples of what a battery charged to 100% each time will experience. I can see no reason why a phone cannot be designed/built which takes this into account, only allowing charging to 80% of capacity.

As a biker I can testify that the insect population in the Central Valley of California has plummeted even within the past 10-20 years. When I first started riding you couldn't cross the Central Valley without stopping to clean your windscreen/face shield (I have a full windscreen). Last year I rode from SF Bay to Mariposa for the 49'er Rally and got less than six (6) bug splats. Makes you wonder what poisons they're spraying on the crops out there and whether those same poisons affect humans directly.

One issue that I've seen time and again is that the company wants to run its business strictly by algorithm and not having any human oversight. It simply doesn't work. The state of AI is not to a level capable of this and may never be. But having human oversight costs and these companies are unwilling to do what is necessary to make it right.

Not sure if it counts in this discussion but also TV programs. I just returned from a 2 week stay in Germany. There were two english channels on most hotel TV's. One of which was "Russia Today" (boring). So I turned to NetFlix where I found "The Good Wife". After watching a number of episodes - I got interested. On returning to the US I can no longer watch the remaining episodes. So it's buy the DVD's or circumvent NetFlix's asinine restrictions. Is there an alternative to NetFlix? The only other program I've found of interest on NetFlix as of late is "That 70's Show".

I'm a competitive fencer and coach fencing. One of the issues we have to deal with is that all too many children and teens do not have the physical dexterity/agility that one should expect. As a result we spend a lot of time playing games whose sole purpose is to get the student to be aware of their own bodies. They can't run, throw, or perform many physical activities at a level you would expect of children at their ages. They quite often do have very agile thumbs and hand eye coordination suitable for playing playing electronic games. I haven't seen any studies on the matter but suspect that this will follow into later life. If you don't develop physical skills as a child will you be able to catch up in later life? Way too much computer game time and home schooling are my two biggest concerns with current pedagogy practices.