That is a lower circle of hell.

It didn't suddenly go that way. It was always the plan. A loss leader.

Chokepoint capitalism moreso than enshittification. Both are terms from Cory Doctorow.

First new word I learned on lemmy a few months back.

I think of it multiple times a day when browsing my RSS feed

yeah that's basically what this

That's what China is trying to do with their EVs in other markets right now too as another example.

Well it may not be accurate or effective, but at least it's expensive.

Not just that, but the big value proposition was supposed be that you wouldn't need sysadmins. In practice, these services are so complex that you need a dedicated skill set to use them, except now it's specific skills for each provider that aren't directly transferable.

Streaming is still cheaper than cable

That really depends on where you live. With my current provider here in the Netherlands, I would be paying 12.50 euros extra for TV.

Netflix standard is already more expensive than that at 13.99.

I use Stremio which has tbs torrentio plugin. But what are the others?

Oh that's very exciting!

Jellyfin FTW! Free for all.

It's just greed. Companies exist to create profit for their shareholders, any social value they produce in the process is strictly incidental.

thank you. came to the comments to say exactly this.

cloud could be cheap, but it's a lot of work, or at least attention. people get disappointed with the costs, paradoxically, because cloud is easy and, as you put, versatile. and often between any two options allowing to do the same thing, the easier one will be more expensive.

the biggest irony of the cloud is that many companies it seems, just like different species evolved into crabs, discover that all they need is a couple of own servers in a managed hosting environment, a CDN and outlook.

Indeed.

Cloud is useful for things like flexibility - you need massive dynamic expansion/contraction of resources? Cloud can do it... But at a cost.

Or for a startup - you need resources quickly, but don't want to invest in physical hardware because that's a risky investment if the business doesn't survive. But again, it's not cheap.

Worst of all, each cloud provider has a convoluted system of features, by design, intended to lock you in to their system once you learn it. So you still have staff dedicated to that.

The problem with cloud is much better explained here (I have no idea who this person is, just found their blog to be well written).