Most chromium hit pieces come across as evangelical and this one is no exception.
From my personal perspective, Firefox gets the job done but Chromium is undoubtedly the better browser. On desktop and mobile, the difference is felt even more on mobile.
Every time I found an obvious bug or got an unpolished experience on Firefox, I hated it even more.
Whatever data the author thinks they are hiding away from Google, they are (un)knowingly giving it to Mozilla. Even worse if they are using Google to search.
It has always been possible to open YouTube links on VLC. If you want to do so with even less clicks from your browser, there's a open with mpv extension. Can't link it now as am on mobile.
Not too long ago I was constantly facing this kernel bug [0] that would kill audio whenever system memory would be under moderately high load.
It's fixed now but it's kind of insane that the kernel would mess around with components as critical as sound for desktop users.
[0]https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pipewire/pipewire/-/issues/22...
Major studios give creative concessions to foreign markets like China in order to be allowed into their film market. It was incredibly naive of Netflix to think they were too big that they could ignore feedback and input from strong audience bases. You can't build a mass market product based on servicing the needs of a woke minority in a functional market. The market will quickly remind you of this mistake when you don't have any more investors pumping funds into the business.
They need more than an ad-supported tier to come out of this. In the midst of a shaky market and lowest ever subscription numbers, they have no choice but to cater to all walks of audiences if they are to survive.
And spend less on shows, I was seeing crazy budgets to the tune of $30M per episode[0] on the new upcoming season of Stranger Things. That's now bad for the bottom line.
I can spend weeks without calling anyone but I'm currently using a SIM registered by a sibling for those few times when I really need to.
Can I walk over to the NIMC (Identity Management commission) office to get one? Yes. Will I? We'll see about that.
Oh, and I forgot to mention that the process of getting the national identity number is fraught with corruption and you might typically need to pay under the table to fast track it.
I concur with everything the author says here. If you want to visualize this for yourself, just take yourself back to the whole science/anti-vaxx debate we've had the past 2 years. That was a pretty accurate picture of the biblical tower of babel. Social media as a tool keeps sowing more division than ever because that's the growth incentive and we are too afraid to kill the golden goose. Once the metaverse becomes a thing, we will have better bricks to build the tower even higher.
China is soon going to overtake the US as the world hegemony. This disruption will have devastating effects. The accelerated move to the 4th Industrial Revolution will be even more disruptive, unlike anything we as humans have ever known. We keep on ignoring the global warming threat because we think our survival will be under threat if we go cold turkey on fossil energy and the creature comforts necessary to forestall the climate disaster. The covid pandemic gave us all a unique opportunity to recalibrate our collective lives. Today, we go about our daily lives as if the past 3 years was just a bad dream. I very much doubt we can make it through another global pandemic on a scale as or bigger than covid was in the near future.
>China is soon going to overtake the US as the world hegemony.
I don't think this is guaranteed. I think the world should be prepared for it, be resilient against it, and (ideally) undermine it if possible.
Six months ago, I don't think many would have guessed that all of Europe, including Germany, would unite in ending their relationship with Russian fuel. Perhaps at some point, the free world will unite in diversifying or ending their relationship with Chinese manufacturing.
The rest of your analysis I agree with - the automation/"AI" process marches on. Ownership of production and capital continues to concentrate, and population grows while employment needs will shrink for non- and semi-skilled workers. Oh, and climate.
> >China is soon going to overtake the US as the world hegemony.
>I don't think this is guaranteed
This is very much assured. Only a matter of when. It may take 2-3 decades to realize but it's gonna happen if China's growth rate [0] continues as US GDP [1] steadily declines. Though with the current geopolitics around the Russia/Ukraine war, maybe China may threaten to invade Taiwan and speed up this process of dethroning US as the top super power.
6. My favorite prediction. Twitter continues to ignore any of Musk's offers. Musk sells his 9% stake. Price goes down. Continues to go down since Twitter('s mgt) is full of shit. Elon gets in an offer when price is languishing at low $30's. Twitter has no choice but to take Elon's offer.
Covid will remain an endemic crisis always looming as you rightly point out with the events in Shanghai. Vaccines and multiple boosters won't stop infections and hospitalizations. At this point, if you are alive we have to assume you have developed some immune response to some variant of COVID. Am more disturbed about the overwhelming lack of research on natural immunity and other possible treatments. Vaccine over-reliance is akin to taking a shot in the dark.
dexamethasone, monoclonal antibodies, molnupiravir, paclovid, as well as all the work on ideas good and bad that did not pan out? And I think there's a decent amount of research on natural immunity going on? (not sure how to measure what you describe as an "overwhelming lack of research")
I hold my ground and there is an obvious reason why none of the promising anti-inflammatory drugs which have been used in the past to deal with flu haven't seen the light of day. IMO Covid infection was only considered a death sentence because at first we did not have any patient care focused on treatment of known symptoms through the stages of the sickness & foolishly ignored any potential alternatives or rather the scientific community was co-opted into praising mRNA and look nowhere else. Remdesivir is one of the hush hush alternatives proven to have some success with covid treatment but it never comes up. Anywhere. Nevermind that the FDA approved its use for mild-cases treatment. The scientific community let us down a big one on this. Look at masks now. They backtracked on the effectiveness of that.
This isn't true for biodata or medical related data.