Look into used Bolt EVs, many are in the 12-14k range after tax credit, 230 miles on a charge, no bells and whistles, drives great. Many have new batteries after the recall that happened a few years ago.

Getting really sick of the “hurr hurr ads bad only idiots don’t use adblockers” circlejerk on here. I pay $8 for YT Premium which seems super fair for the 10-15 hours of content I get on there a week. I like supporting creators, a lot of which rely on ad revenue to continue making their channels.

For the rest of you that thinks you have the moral high ground from blocking ads, what do you think the solution is? Subscriptions don’t work, paywalls are easily bypassed, and more reasonable ads don’t generate enough revenue to keep sites in business. Content shouldn’t just be free, people deserve to be paid for their work.

Should the free internet just die and become a series of subscription silos? It seems to be going that way, and more ad blocking will just accelerate that more.

Is this still really a thing? I remember getting some viruses from ads in the very early days of the internet, like late 90s / early 2000s, but can’t remember getting anything in at least the last ten years.

I find these kinds of posts to be so entitled and pessimistic. Yeah, prices have definitely gone up, but the tech solutions are almost unilaterally better than their replacements.

• Streaming: you don’t actually have to subscribe to every single streaming service, and most are dead simple to cancel (good luck canceling your cable service). Most are very lax about sharing passwords, or have cheaper ad-based tiers if you want to save a bit.
• Uber: you can summon a comfortable car that seats up to 6 and can set your destination as well as multiple stops, and have it pull right up to where you are, often in 5 minutes or less, without needing to talk to or hail someone. In the US prices have crept up but in other countries it’s still a bargain compared to taxis, which are sometimes run like a racket.
• Cloud: I don’t even know what this is doing here since we are talking consumer tech and this is more about B2B services. For the consumer the cloud is still dirt cheap and transformative, and doesn’t even have a “back in my day” equivalent.

Everything is amazing and no one is happy.