It's a really fun game! One frustration - and probably a realistic one - is that there aren't nearly enough jobs and they don't pay well enough to break even with the hotel costs.
Indeed. It's an absolute pain in real life trying to go south to Gare Montparnasse when you've just arrived at Gare du Nord - your options are: to walk, which takes forever; to take a bus, which is still rather slow and awkward with luggage; or to take the Metro, which is only a bit faster and even more awkward with luggage - there aren't any lifts at the Montparnasse Metro station!
The other aspect to consider is changing requirements. Maybe a device capable of transmitting PSTN-level audio quality wirelessly would have been popular twenty years ago, but nowadays most people wouldn't settle for anything with less than 44.1kHz bandwidth. A faster processor means that there's some room for software upgrades later on, future-proofing the device and potentially reducing electronic waste. Unfortunately, that advantage is almost always squandered in practice by planned obsolescence and an industry obsession with locked-down, proprietary firmware.
I'm not aware of any single furry emoji, but I've noticed a lot of furry communities on the Fediverse using custom (non-Unicode) emoji packs; see [1] for how that might work. Also an example of the feature in use[2].
Companies in western democracies usually pay tax in addition to their workers and owners, but don't have representation in parliaments separate to that of their workers and owners. Questions about whether robots have the right to vote has more to do with their humanity and less to do with their tax liability in such societies.
I have my browser set to clear cookies and site data automatically, so I'm not sure if my experience of YouTube shorts is typical, but I have a pet theory about why the feelings you describe are so common. It seems like a big part of the addictiveness is not that the content is eye-catching, although this clearly has an effect. The platform gives you a quick way to move onto something else by scrolling/swiping, which means I find myself caught in a cycle of:
1. seeing AI slop or a unoriginal 'comedy' sketch,
2. thinking "eww get this off my screen",
3. scrolling down to the next video; jump to step 1
On the rare occasions that the algorithm does show something genuinely interesting or creative, I watch to the end of the video and feel a lot more satisfied about spending time on it. That's not to say that long-form videos can't be distracting and addictive, but I would posit that 'shorts' engagement is actually driven by disgust rather than curiosity. I now avoid YouTube shorts like the plague, because life is too short to experience that volume of disgust in it.
I'm not sure that's relevant to Chat Control. What's at stake here is not a definition of 'acceptable communication' in public, but the possibility of all private communication being scanned.
That's not to say that private communication can't already be illegal; mere 'conspiracy' is a crime in many places. Yet the level of surveillance that would be enabled by legislation like Chat Control is greater than any other in history. Even notorious agencies like the Stasi had to pick and choose their targets based on prior suspicion, simply because of the logistics involved in traditional surveillance.
We don't fully know what effects this kind of unceasing, universal monitoring would have on society, and what little historical precedent exists doesn't bode well. Restrictions on public speech however are pretty well understood; we've had censorship in various forms pretty much everywhere in the world at one point or another. We can look to history for lessons about what happens, and can properly discuss (even if not agree!) about when censorship is good or bad for society.
My comment is 100% relevant to the comment I was replying to. (Sometimes I do wish people who down vote were forced to comment why they were making such erroneous decisions)
And again with the passive aggressive "downvote because you have no ability to explain your disagreement"
Edit: To anyone reading and thinking of joining in to any of the discussions, the message is clear - Facebook or Reddit level of inanity is all you will find here.
This isn't even close to true. The people who are serious about privacy and the open Web, and in the technologies posited to bring that about (such as self-sovereign identity and federation), tend to spend much more money.
They buy servers to self-host services, extra hardware to store data locally and domain names to let others find them. Those who cannot afford it sometimes join niche communities like the Tildeverse as an outlet for the interest.
In my experience it's largely the 'just not interested' camp who always go for the free webmail and whatever free messaging service comes with their phone.
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