I don't know if you like podcasts, but Know Your Enemy is a take on the right from two leftists who used to be conservatives who approach it from an intellectual POV.
I linked to the political magazine that helps support them since it gives some rundowns of their topics that might give you some of the sources that can be read instead of listening to their podcast, if you'd prefer.
Losing access to personalized YT would suck, but losing decades of emails would suck even more (when I initially got GMail, I imported all my old emails in ... I guess I should probably look at making a backup periodically, like I used to). I share your sentiment that I fear what these companies are going to do next in the pursuit of more money they can burn and/or give to shareholders as they continue to tank their reputations.
I, personally, don't see that happening, but I can easily imagine them making it a TOS violation to use adblock and then killing your account if you continue to do so :-/
Same with Google's ads in general. For a long time they were whitelisted by default on just about every adblock list out there because they were so unobtrusive it didn't make sense to bother blocking them, especially when you compared them to the other ads that were common at the time. They were also generally relevant ads, so people actually did click on them and use them since it actually related to the thing they were searching for.
They're obviously more profitable now, but you have to wonder by how much and if they'd be a more trusted company today (and what's that worth monetarily) if they hadn't gone down this race to the bottom.
When I installed fdroid from their website a month or two back it was like 2 or 3 clicks. Then whenever I want to install anything from there it's an extra click or two over what it would be from Play.
I've seen people click through way more complicated processes than this without even knowing they did it. Modern computing has taught people to just keep hitting whatever the approval text is (yes windows, I really do want to copy all of these god damn files. Yes, really, I still do! Yep, again, ALL of them!)
Right‽
The movie was unbelievably dumb and personally I loved it! Dunno what that guy wanted/expected out of the movie, but I feel like it delivered on what the title promised me
Ah, my apologies for the assumption, it's been almost a year but I'm still too used to Reddit apparently!
Yes, the default launcher had ads, the SHIELD itself didn't, but I also didn't like any of the 3rd party launchers I used but I don't remember specifically why. Then, the SHIELD stopped booting so I didn't want to buy another one and went with the ATV instead.
As I mentioned, I wouldn't necessarily recommend it to someone who knows they'd regret not having the cast functionality, but, if you just want a device that works very well and doesn't ever have so much as a hiccup during navigation, it's been great!
I would still recommend the SHIELD for someone that wants cast or who wouldn't have a problem with (mostly) relevant ads being shown on the device (stock).
Yeah I used to have a PC and a Harmony remote that would send macros to a custom script and Kodi would do different things or it could switch to Netflix and ... Like, we just want to watch a movie or TV show not have to perform tech support whenever Netflix changed their webpage!
My SHIELD would just randomly restart itself until eventually it stopped coming back online.
I definitely got my monies worth out of it, but didn't like that a device with no ads all of a sudden became a device with ads (and this is a Google thing not an Nvidia one, but still)
You specifically said you use a 3rd party launcher. You know why you specifically mentioned that.
We're a non-iPhone household and went with the AppleTV when my Nvidia SHIELD died.
Ads were getting put on the SHIELD and I definitely didn't want to buy another one because of that and it has been a while since its had a refresh, so went with an AppleTV instead.
The device itself is fantastic, the UI is so smooth and so much nicer. OTOH, I miss being able to cast to the TV more than I expected. It works decently with the Macbooks though (we're a weird household ... like Macs, hate iPhones).
So ... if ya'll have iPhones or don't care about casting, I'd definitely recommend an AppleTV with Plex (the Dropout, Youtube, Disney+ apps are all good too).
ETA: Apple is also making some pretty awesome TV content as well and IIRC you'll get a couple months free with the purchase ... verify that yourself though in case they've removed it, but Foundation, Severance & See are fantastic shows if you're looking for something to watch.
Dishwashers are a luxury, but they also use a LOT less water than you'll use manually washing dishes and (as long as you clean their filters and use the right detergent) generally do about as well as a bored person doing the dishes will do (ie every now and then you'll find one with gunk but not too frequently).
Personally, my household has 3 adults and I would go for the full size dishwasher and figure something else out for storage ... It's also possible the smaller ones might be perfect for baking sheets and whatnot. If you haven't, try to do a mock layout with painters/masking tape and see what you can make fit in that space to try and help with planning, if you can.
With all that said, worst case scenario if no one wants to manually wash dishes, you have to run it twice in one day, every now and then, which doesn't seem horrible.