>And that's just bitcoin, stable coins are more reliable.

Until they submit to agnostic third party audits, they're not stable.

China doesn't have the same freedom of speech as the U.S.

You can't just ban companies because you want to. There are laws and protections from the government in place.

I mean, correcting factual errors is pretty good trait for a fact-checking site, right?

Yes, but surely you would do that first?

That's assuming that new facts never come to light over time.

"Making this bread really takes me back to growing up with the funerary pyres at Grandma's house"

I think the video conference market success is also linked to increased prevalence of camera us - i.e. mobile plans finally support streaming, laptops carry a camera as standard, etc. (Covid also increased demand)

If you're going to speculate on what's next for communication, it's probably best to follow the technology.

The market was pretty well primed pre-COVID. We were already doing a fair number of video calls at work, webinars (though usually just with slides) were very much a thing, and I guess a fair number of people would at least sometimes use Facetime to see the grandkids or whatever. As you say, webcams were getting pretty ubiquitous and mobile networks were improving.

When everyone switched to more remote interactions during the pandemic, it was natural to just really ramp up the technology they were already using and a lot of people were upgrading their video and audio gear to make videos anyway.

Not clear to me what is next. I'm pretty sure most people don't want a more immersive experience most of the time and some percentage of people resent peer pressure to be on video as it is--as noted in various comments.

ADDED: I do agree with one of the points I think Ben is making. There is still a lot of UX work that could go into simplifying screen sharing and other, for lack of a better term, multi-mode interactions.

Noob question: Can you do attestation with mobile web, or is it app only?

Sure, if your mobile device is only allowed to use "approved" web browsers. Which is one of the key harms to users that the proposed WEI standard will inflict.

Even the hotspots functionality is useful - if I'm in a new city, I can see the highlighted areas where the best restaurants and bars are.

My experience is the opposite - Chase nickle and dimed me and made me pay fees if I didn't jump through certain hoops. It made me go back to my credit union.

Thanks to modern banking, you don't need to be in the same city as your credit union.

I've used the same CU for 20 years, the last 8 of which has been 2000 miles away from it.

Yeah, was wondering where the combustion engine came in. It revolutionized agriculture.

Also, tea making was a huge sanitary step forward.