You worry about uncertainty. There is no uncertainty in this flow chart. Worrying about things that are defined and known is not healthy, but that’s not to say that stable people never worry about things they know the solution to or never worry even though there aren’t any real problems. The distinction really is if you’re able to make yourself stop worry or not, in a healthy way, or if worry consumes you to the point of anxiety.
FLAC is going strong I’d say. MP3s are a different matter where you can only find the most popular stuff and some incredible niche stuff. The coverage is piss poor. Further I’d say it’s equally YouTube that killed music piracy (in the scene sense). Anyone can just run a YouTube downloader and find just about any song they’re interested in. And if you think they quality of that sucks then you can find most of the lossless stuff in scene releases.
For me the answer is that I need off site backup anyway for stuff like important digital documents, passwords and more. For me a dedicated storage provider I trust far more than Google/Apple/Microsoft which all have a financial interest in understanding me and my patterns to better sell additional services too me. So I use Dropbox but if you’re more technically inclined and have a lot of data then something akin to say Wasabi could make financial sense.
For sure higher but still not high, we’re talking single digit percentage failed drives per year with a massive sample size. TCO (total cost of ownership) might still come out ahead for Seagate being that they are many times quite a bit cheaper. Still drives failures are a part of the bargain when you’re running your own NAS so plan for it no matter what drive you end up buying. Which means have cash on hand to buy a new one so you can get up to full integrity as fast as possible. (Best is of course to always have a spare on hand but that isn’t feasible for a lot of us.).
It’s just the cheapest type of drive there is. The use case is in large scale RAIDs where one disk failing isn’t a big issue. They tend to have decent warranty but under heavy load they’re not expected to last multiple years. Personally I use drives like this but I make sure to have them in a RAID and with backup, anything else would be foolish. Do also note that expensive NAS drives aren’t guaranteed to last either so a RAID is always recommended.
Yes it absolutely is impossible (even though it shouldn’t be) so regulation is needed to make being a bag of dicks illegal or disadvantaged (like say the safety labeling on cigarettes, they’re legal if they’re labeled but no company would willingly label out that their product is dangerous).
Amazon can provide better prices and fuck over their sellers because they’re being major douchebags in ways that shouldn’t be legal and if it wasn’t competing with them would be much more feasible because you wouldn’t have to be just as much of a shitstain to compete.
But. Around the world people aren’t really voting for regulations either, it’s generally neck and neck between forces that wants far less regulation and more power to business and the ones that want more regulation and to reign in companies. So what I state here as obvious and needed is a hot topic for debate which blows my mind. We’re callous fucking beings.
EDIT:
To answer your initial question, because it’s the morally right thing to do to show solidarity with people that are effectively forced to work in shitty conditions in Amazon warehouses and to stop them killing smaller stores and retailers that provide far more jobs, spread wealth far more evenly and generally is vastly better for both the country and the world even though it might cost you 10-60% more on average and will be less convenient to you.
EDIT2 electric bugallo:
Also to clarify I’m not saying you’re a bad person, you’re absolutely not from what I can tell. You’re just human like everyone. I’m not without fault and buy shit I really shouldn’t as well, like stuff out of china when bespoke alternatives exist far closer. It’s just painfully obvious with your story that we, the people, can’t self regulate for the benefit of our fellow humans and the planet we all depend upon. Sorry for ranting towards you, and for any ill feelings I bestowed upon you.
It’s very obvious that consumers are completely unable to “vote with their wallets” for anything but convenience and low prices. Workers rights, equality, morals you name it are for the vast majority waaaaaay down the scale compared to price and convenience.
This is a case study on why regulation is very much needed, even though we really should be able to do with out.
I feel the only thing they do well in my area is provide safer access to random bits and bobs that I buy from AliExpress. But that business is not what makes them rich, of course. It’s people buying everything from them, but that that is even compelling is mind blowing to me due to how atrocious their website and shopping experience is. And I work in e-Commerce as well…
You’re speaking like there literally aren’t any online retailers in the US, is that really accurate? And question free returns are literally the law here…
Are other online retailers so hopelessly sucky that you can’t live without Amazon over in the states? It just blows my mind because Amazon honestly sucks compared to the more local stores where I’m at in the Nordics.