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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 8th, 2023

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  • I’m not as optimistic as you.

    Hosting video is really expensive. Making video is really expensive. YouTube was losing money for about 15 years despite having a monopoly on online video for most of that time and the best advertising tech in the world. I don’t think it’s possible to make a free competitor to YouTube.

    On the paid side, there’s plenty of streaming services that are making money. But you have to be already established in order to get a contract. And since you will typically have to use social media in order to get past that initial barrier, it might as well include YouTube.

    However, my guess is that YouTube makes the majority of it’s money from larger channels. If the larger channels all join paid streaming services(e.g. Nebula) then gradually that may be able to bring YouTube down.





  • So I have a theory that the carrying capacity of a car has nothing to do with the size of the car and everything to do with how much the owner cares about the car and the comfort tolerance of the passengers. Out of all the loads I’ve observed carried with a car(pickups count as cars but not vans or trailers) the biggest are always in a small beat-up old car full of tolerant and poor young people. I can’t think of a time when I’ve tried loading a car and stopped because the car is too small, it’s always because the owner objects.










  • Yes, even for them, the information they can get through a phone is lifesaving. They can learn how to build water supply and sanitation systems and shelter. They can learn how to farm and forage for food. They can find the best way to cross international borders and become a refugee. And so on, they can improve every aspect of their lives. Information is power, and with a smartphone they have access to the entire world, rather than just word of mouth knowledge in their local community.

    Obviously, places without any form of electricity are screwed, but satellite internet is rapidly becoming cheaper and more accessible so soon they won’t even need cell coverage.



  • Mobility scooters, public transport, ect. Because of the overfocus on cars, acessibility is badly neglected and this needs to change.

    What about the people that are unable drive a car because of physical or mental disabilities or age? Or the people that are allowed to drive but shouldn’t? There are vastly more of them than people who couldn’t ride a bike but can drive a car.

    And yeah, unfortunately getting rid of cars completely is not going to happen, but cars will work so much better when the only people driving are those with no other alternative.

    Fuck cars is about using our resources better to improve mobility for all.


  • Towards the end of the video he addresses the point that the optimum speed of cars is around 60(or I thought it was 70).

    This argument doesn’t apply here because that figure is for a car traveling at a constant speed on a straight, flat road with no wind. E.g. a freeway/motorway. In a city, a significant amount of the energy is used to speed up and slow down at intersections.

    Remember the kinetic energy formula, Ek=1/2 mv^2 . That tells you that accelerating a car to twice the speed takes 4 times the energy, or in other words it takes 4 times as much fuel to get to 60 as it does to get to 30.

    This extra energy to get up to speed is going to far outweigh any benefit from less rolling resistance at 60 compared to 30.