Well SK, you may as well run out and buy your Fuel Cell car then. Over the past 10 years auto companies have managed to get a whopping 4800 of them on to the road, (though limited California for some reason.) I mean Tesla is selling that many M3s in a month but they're sure to go bankrupt any time now and I'm sure that nobody else is foolish enough to follow Tesla down that dead end road.
If you're looking for suggestions, the most popular is the Toyota Mirai. It's got a blazing fast 0-60 time of 9.4 seconds, which is 0.1s faster than a Volvo 164 (which blazed into the market in 1969!) It goes up to 310 miles on a single tank of hydrogen which coincidentally is exactly the same distance that the Tesla M3 LR goes but that car uses batteries, YUK!
Because your battery powered H2 car uses hydrogen to recharge it's pack, you get the privilege of laughing at those silly M3 owner who plug their cars in overnight when while they sleep, because every few days before you go to bed you get to drive to a hydrogen pump, and once there, you can fill your empty tank in about 6 minutes for the low, low cost of about $100 USD. (Pro tip: make sure you move next to a high pressure hydrogen pump as the low pressure ones can only fill you half way and that would make your $60,000 car only good for a commute of 75 miles away from said pump...). But hey, that's the price you pay for Hydrogen: Super high energy by weight but crazy low by volume. Anyway, that will change soon with all the new hydrogen infrastructure being installed. So far we've been building them out at the fantastic rate of 2-4 pumps per year nationwide over the past decade and at a cost of (usually) less than $2M per pump to install I'm sure that will accelerate soon.
It's fun to read the comments and watch the haters who have been convinced for years that EV's have no future continue to try and twist themselves in knots because reality refuses to conform to their delusions.
Microtargeting. Not just from the Chinese, from any foreign government. AI is used to build a profile of you and then you are served content through facebook/twitter etc. designed to influence you to support or oppose certain policies. Sometimes it's very crude but done well, you will never notice it at all.
There was/is clearly a coordinated effort to try and impact the audience of Captain Marvel. Most folks, if they are truly not interested in seeing a movie don't create accounts and begin to shout at anyone who will listen that are not interested in seeing said movie.
If anyone has been paying attention to what's been happening in the world of weaponized trolling, this should surprise no one. Paid foreign actors who are looking to sew discord (in largely western society) are taking up both sides of many issues (social and political) they think can be blown up into a polarizing argument. They spam away on social media, youtube, twitter etc. Along they way they hope to drag as many folks as possible into the never ending argument quagmire. By dividing a population and causing internal turmoil, they create space for their political overlords to operate with less outside scrutiny.
Don't play their games. Next time you think you should argue with some idiot on the internet save your energy for things that actually matter.
Tesla is selling everything it can shove out the factory door without spending a dime on marketing, unless you count the costs of Elon's tweets. By the end of this year/beginning of next Tesla will have completed another giant factory in Shanghai along with several lines at the Gigafactory in Nevada and will begin pumping out hundreds of thousands, if not millions of model Ys annually. This car will occupy the most popular automotive segment currently, the small SUV/CUV category. This car will be significantly cheaper and easier to manufacture than the model 3 turned out to be. (Don't take my word for it, this is what the experts like Sandy Munro believe. Go ahead a google it.) This timeframe is when most other manufacturers are actually just going to be dipping their toes into the EV waters with some initial tepid offerings. Unfortunately this means they are about to get blown out. Tesla has cannibalized the luxury to downmarket pathway for EV development. Other manufacturers are going to have to try and compete against a company who is able to profitably make high quality long range EV's while their own EV programs are still in their infancy. Tesla learned some expensive lessons with the M3 program and they still managed to turn it into the best selling EV worldwide. This room for error is no longer available to other manufacturers.
The US market will hold on to gas burners longer, but the Chinese market (the largest in the world) will aggressively phase out ICE vehicles as soon as the supply of EV's enables them to realistically do so. This if for a number of reasons but primarily to try and get a grip on rampant air pollution in cities as well as trying to locate the center of the new auto industry in China. European cities are also farther along than North America in cleaning up their air. A few have already started banning IC engines in the cores of cities for that very reason and this trend will accelerate, again, as supply of quality EV's make it feasible to do so.
Cost of batteries is also falling, though not as fast as some would like. OTOH, really significant R&D investments in batteries has really only started a handful of years ago and won't bare much fruit in the real world for 5-10 years. There are several promising pathways to double or triple energy densities while increasing longevity and lowering recharge rates.
People should sit back and enjoy the ride. There will be bumps along the way but it's not often we get to see a major industry forced to reshape itself. The game now is to see who actually makes it...
It wasn't more than 6 months ago Tesla was the most shorted stock in history. You wouldn't know it by listening to the talking heads at places like CNBC but the shorts have been quietly tiptoeing to the exits. At this point, short interest in Tesla has basically halved... This means that even the folks who have campaigned against Tesla in the past are no longer willing to put their money were their mouths are...
According to the article, the author speculated that the ultracaps were not what Tesla was really after. Rather, it was the dry electrode technology they're probably after because it will drive down manufacturing costs while increasing cell performance and longevity...
Rapid charging is and will be a convenience for MOST EV owners. Yes, there are folks who don't have access to a plug and rely on rapid charging alone, but those folks will largely disappear as municipalities adopt policies that expand the availability of home charging for those that rent. In the end charging an EV will always have a cap on how much can be charged because folks can and will simply throw up solar panels if charging station owners get too greedy. Oppose this with gasoline which you have to buy regardless of the price if you want to drive. With fossil fuels you are at the mercy of a few large refiners who charge whatever they think they can get away with.
The real solution to folks who rent and don't have access to plug for their vehicle is legislation requiring landowners to make access to a 120v (minimum) outlet for any parking space they provide a regulation along with a reasonable fee for electricity used. Then municipalities need to expand on-street options such as incorporating a viable outlet on all street fixtures such as lighting standards. They should also should include some level 2 charging infrastructure on public parkades and find ways to encourage places like malls to do the same. Municipalities need to incentivize businesses to also incorporate charging infrastructure into their parking lots.
Folks who live in northern climates may be thinking to themselves: "Wait a minute, a lot of this is already in place to service block heaters on cars now..." and they would be right. However, northern climates that see substantial time with sub-freezing temps will need to upgrade these connections to 240v since when temperatures are well below freezing, EV's use a substantial amount of the current from a 120v circuit just to keep the battery warm therefore will need a greater supply to enable them to recharge overnight.
In the end, all most all the infrastructure is already in place to accommodate large numbers of EV's in cities. It's more a matter of political will to ensure that the everyone gets on the same page rather than any technical challenge in rolling out the solutions. The simple fact is that most potential EV owners will be able to get by with a basic 120v plug if there is access to occasional use lvl2 charging located nearby and high voltage DC charging for those longer trips. (With a few exceptions such as the previously noted outdoor charging through cold winters.)
I get the vinyl sales. The record is iconic and the box art is a key part of the package of 'owing' a record. A vinyl copy is a physical thing. I can see how a true collector would insist on the vinyl copy for their shelf along with a digital one for their devices. With the unlimited streaming services, all you're doing is renting. Besides, I would think that purchasing the vinyl record at a concert will do more to support your favorite band than just streaming.
Does vinyl sound better? I won't touch that one with a 10 foot poll. I'll let the audiophiles and philosophers grind on that one for the next infinity.
As for cassettes... I don't see a need for these things to come back. They were garbage when they were in their hayday and they're garbage now. Perhaps a nostaga wave from the 80's kids... I hope to see these things die out quickly again.
I don't understand why these folks are upset. Tesla's are made in America... so... jobs... and If EV's ever gain significant market share, the price of gas will plummet. They can fuel their trucks at rock bottom prices!
The trouble is that by saying things like this, Trump hands her defense team a legitimate argument that this extradition request is, at least in part, politically motivated. Judges do not like this kind of thing and it just increases the chances that she may not be extradited to the USA regardless of the case against her there.
In the bigger picture, countries that form treaties (like the one that Canada arrested this lady under on behalf of the USA), are generally like-minded. If one side starts abusing these treaties then they're apt to fall apart. This makes things harder for everyone.
Finally, this kind of shoot-from-the-hip, talk has real consequences in lives. In retaliation for this arrest Canada has already had two of its citizens detained in China for the thinly veiled purpose of putting pressure on the Canadian government. Regardless of the truth of Trumps statements, the simple fact that he's making them is making life difficult not just for Americans but for her allies as well.
As someone who now works in health care (not the UK), I can say that this is dumb. Fax machines are actually very convenient since most documents are still filled at least partially by hand. In order to email, I would have to log onto a computer, wait for it to secure-boot then scan the doc in then open email, attach and send. For privacy reasons every time I walk away from a computer, it must be logged off. The other issue with sites that use email is that any documents with personal information (that would be all of them) must be encrypted using a unique password that must be pre-arranged with the recipient. Therefore, before I can email someone their document, I must call them and work out a password with them This would not be any great burden if it was only once a day but with the amount of documents flying around, the simplicity of dropping a document in the feeder and pushing a single button is invaluable.
The other reason that email is frowned upon in the healthcare industry is that it's far too easy to print multiple identical copies of documents. Patients more and more often want their prescriptions emailed to them and I have to tell them no. How great would it be to get a prescription for Oxy over email and then print a hundred copies, one for each pharmacy in the city?
Additionally purpose built energy storage products use a different chemistry than those that began life in an automobile. The chemistry used for grid storage have a much greater cycle life at the cost of peak charge and discharge.
For all the people crying about TV getting too expensive, get yourself an OTA digital antenna. Free local channels. In areas that have only one cable company this IS your competition to that company for TV. If you can't live without 4K streaming well then get out your pocketbooks.
We're all entitled to our opinions. I don't see synthetic hydrocarbons winning vs pure electric for 2 main reasons.
First, charging is far cheaper. Converting electricity to hydrocarbons is very inefficient as it has the same problem as hydrogen, you must create the product, ship and handle it before putting it in the car, all of which adds to the cost of fueling your vehicle. Internal combustion vehicles are also maintenance hogs as compared to EV's. All of which means that your cost of ownership over the lifetime of the car favors the EV and the gap is only going to get wider with time. That you can generate your own power for your car at home is a huge thing for lots of people as well.
Second: Convenience. What could be more convenient than only having to only stop for 5 minutes to refuel?... not having to stop at all! The cognitive hurdle that most folks who've never owned an EV can't seem to get over is the fear that you're going to be spending 10mins - an hour at a charger to add meaningful range back to your car. It's not till they own an EV that they realize that starting each day with a full charge means that stopping to charge outside your home or workplace is a very rare occurrence. Yes, there are issues with folks who don't have their own garage but those can largely be resolved through policy changes since there's no technical reason we cannot have a robust on street charging network. Those people who do drive 500Km daily and would thus require significant recharging delays are a minuscule portion of the motoring public and those folks may opt to say with liquid fuel despite the added cost. That's entirely fine. As the public gains more experience with EV's the fearmongering will fade and more and more folks will make the switch.
Cable sucks. At one point, you could mindlessly flip through channels till you found something that sparked your interest. That no longer works since each channel take so long to load. Channels also got greedy. They applied for and received layers of subchannels which were subsequently filled with inane crap nobody wanted but were forced to purchase because the desirable content keeps being locked away further and further up the chain. End result: Hundreds of channels that are utter crap blocking you from the few shows of interest.
For anyone out there who hasn't got the newsflash: OTA digital works great. You get your local channels for free and there's a good chance that the picture quality is better than cable. You can build your own OTA antenna, (instructions all over the internet) or just buy one from the dollar store. If you're feeling particularly rich, Best Buy has them for anywhere from $20-$100. Even if you have no intention of cancelling cable, you should still get one for those times the cable is out.
Cable has ruined the customer experience. Flipping channels was a somewhat enjoyable (if mindless) activity when there was less than 50 channels and they could display in a fraction of a second after changing the channel.
Now there are thousands of channels (many duplicate) which take 3+ seconds to change and whole blocks of numbers just not available anyway, a cumbersome and slow digital 'guide', hundreds of low tier 'filler' channels which must be purchased before in order access the small amount of desirable content far up the tier.
Don't play the game. Get yourself a $20 digital OTA antenna. (You may have to invest in a signal booster if you live far outside the city limits) and find an affordable internet wholesaler/reseller then pick no more than 1-2 streaming services. Make that 'must view' show a social experience where you make an event out of viewing by going to a pub or friends house. Invest $2-$5 in a no-log VPN to enhance your privacy on the internet anywhere public wifi may be used (side benefit: no content is unavailable;)
Slashdot Mirror
Common' VW, stop hyping concepts and start delivering cars...
How is this comment insightful? The author didn't even bother to put his/her name behind it. Clear ideological drive-by.
Well SK, you may as well run out and buy your Fuel Cell car then. Over the past 10 years auto companies have managed to get a whopping 4800 of them on to the road, (though limited California for some reason.) I mean Tesla is selling that many M3s in a month but they're sure to go bankrupt any time now and I'm sure that nobody else is foolish enough to follow Tesla down that dead end road.
If you're looking for suggestions, the most popular is the Toyota Mirai. It's got a blazing fast 0-60 time of 9.4 seconds, which is 0.1s faster than a Volvo 164 (which blazed into the market in 1969!) It goes up to 310 miles on a single tank of hydrogen which coincidentally is exactly the same distance that the Tesla M3 LR goes but that car uses batteries, YUK!
Because your battery powered H2 car uses hydrogen to recharge it's pack, you get the privilege of laughing at those silly M3 owner who plug their cars in overnight when while they sleep, because every few days before you go to bed you get to drive to a hydrogen pump, and once there, you can fill your empty tank in about 6 minutes for the low, low cost of about $100 USD. (Pro tip: make sure you move next to a high pressure hydrogen pump as the low pressure ones can only fill you half way and that would make your $60,000 car only good for a commute of 75 miles away from said pump...). But hey, that's the price you pay for Hydrogen: Super high energy by weight but crazy low by volume. Anyway, that will change soon with all the new hydrogen infrastructure being installed. So far we've been building them out at the fantastic rate of 2-4 pumps per year nationwide over the past decade and at a cost of (usually) less than $2M per pump to install I'm sure that will accelerate soon.
It's fun to read the comments and watch the haters who have been convinced for years that EV's have no future continue to try and twist themselves in knots because reality refuses to conform to their delusions.
Microtargeting. Not just from the Chinese, from any foreign government. AI is used to build a profile of you and then you are served content through facebook/twitter etc. designed to influence you to support or oppose certain policies. Sometimes it's very crude but done well, you will never notice it at all.
That's it? You're upset because BL said that she wants more people to be included in a press tour?
There was/is clearly a coordinated effort to try and impact the audience of Captain Marvel. Most folks, if they are truly not interested in seeing a movie don't create accounts and begin to shout at anyone who will listen that are not interested in seeing said movie.
If anyone has been paying attention to what's been happening in the world of weaponized trolling, this should surprise no one. Paid foreign actors who are looking to sew discord (in largely western society) are taking up both sides of many issues (social and political) they think can be blown up into a polarizing argument. They spam away on social media, youtube, twitter etc. Along they way they hope to drag as many folks as possible into the never ending argument quagmire. By dividing a population and causing internal turmoil, they create space for their political overlords to operate with less outside scrutiny.
Don't play their games. Next time you think you should argue with some idiot on the internet save your energy for things that actually matter.
Tesla is selling everything it can shove out the factory door without spending a dime on marketing, unless you count the costs of Elon's tweets. By the end of this year/beginning of next Tesla will have completed another giant factory in Shanghai along with several lines at the Gigafactory in Nevada and will begin pumping out hundreds of thousands, if not millions of model Ys annually. This car will occupy the most popular automotive segment currently, the small SUV/CUV category. This car will be significantly cheaper and easier to manufacture than the model 3 turned out to be. (Don't take my word for it, this is what the experts like Sandy Munro believe. Go ahead a google it.) This timeframe is when most other manufacturers are actually just going to be dipping their toes into the EV waters with some initial tepid offerings. Unfortunately this means they are about to get blown out. Tesla has cannibalized the luxury to downmarket pathway for EV development. Other manufacturers are going to have to try and compete against a company who is able to profitably make high quality long range EV's while their own EV programs are still in their infancy. Tesla learned some expensive lessons with the M3 program and they still managed to turn it into the best selling EV worldwide. This room for error is no longer available to other manufacturers.
The US market will hold on to gas burners longer, but the Chinese market (the largest in the world) will aggressively phase out ICE vehicles as soon as the supply of EV's enables them to realistically do so. This if for a number of reasons but primarily to try and get a grip on rampant air pollution in cities as well as trying to locate the center of the new auto industry in China. European cities are also farther along than North America in cleaning up their air. A few have already started banning IC engines in the cores of cities for that very reason and this trend will accelerate, again, as supply of quality EV's make it feasible to do so.
Cost of batteries is also falling, though not as fast as some would like. OTOH, really significant R&D investments in batteries has really only started a handful of years ago and won't bare much fruit in the real world for 5-10 years. There are several promising pathways to double or triple energy densities while increasing longevity and lowering recharge rates.
People should sit back and enjoy the ride. There will be bumps along the way but it's not often we get to see a major industry forced to reshape itself. The game now is to see who actually makes it...
It wasn't more than 6 months ago Tesla was the most shorted stock in history. You wouldn't know it by listening to the talking heads at places like CNBC but the shorts have been quietly tiptoeing to the exits. At this point, short interest in Tesla has basically halved... This means that even the folks who have campaigned against Tesla in the past are no longer willing to put their money were their mouths are...
They are the cutbacks are mostly in the S and X program. They are established cars and have room to become more efficient.
According to the article, the author speculated that the ultracaps were not what Tesla was really after. Rather, it was the dry electrode technology they're probably after because it will drive down manufacturing costs while increasing cell performance and longevity...
Rapid charging is and will be a convenience for MOST EV owners. Yes, there are folks who don't have access to a plug and rely on rapid charging alone, but those folks will largely disappear as municipalities adopt policies that expand the availability of home charging for those that rent. In the end charging an EV will always have a cap on how much can be charged because folks can and will simply throw up solar panels if charging station owners get too greedy. Oppose this with gasoline which you have to buy regardless of the price if you want to drive. With fossil fuels you are at the mercy of a few large refiners who charge whatever they think they can get away with.
The real solution to folks who rent and don't have access to plug for their vehicle is legislation requiring landowners to make access to a 120v (minimum) outlet for any parking space they provide a regulation along with a reasonable fee for electricity used. Then municipalities need to expand on-street options such as incorporating a viable outlet on all street fixtures such as lighting standards. They should also should include some level 2 charging infrastructure on public parkades and find ways to encourage places like malls to do the same. Municipalities need to incentivize businesses to also incorporate charging infrastructure into their parking lots.
Folks who live in northern climates may be thinking to themselves: "Wait a minute, a lot of this is already in place to service block heaters on cars now..." and they would be right. However, northern climates that see substantial time with sub-freezing temps will need to upgrade these connections to 240v since when temperatures are well below freezing, EV's use a substantial amount of the current from a 120v circuit just to keep the battery warm therefore will need a greater supply to enable them to recharge overnight.
In the end, all most all the infrastructure is already in place to accommodate large numbers of EV's in cities. It's more a matter of political will to ensure that the everyone gets on the same page rather than any technical challenge in rolling out the solutions. The simple fact is that most potential EV owners will be able to get by with a basic 120v plug if there is access to occasional use lvl2 charging located nearby and high voltage DC charging for those longer trips. (With a few exceptions such as the previously noted outdoor charging through cold winters.)
Hello?! Trump doesn't need Congress because Mars is going to pay for it!
I get the vinyl sales. The record is iconic and the box art is a key part of the package of 'owing' a record. A vinyl copy is a physical thing. I can see how a true collector would insist on the vinyl copy for their shelf along with a digital one for their devices. With the unlimited streaming services, all you're doing is renting. Besides, I would think that purchasing the vinyl record at a concert will do more to support your favorite band than just streaming.
Does vinyl sound better? I won't touch that one with a 10 foot poll. I'll let the audiophiles and philosophers grind on that one for the next infinity.
As for cassettes... I don't see a need for these things to come back. They were garbage when they were in their hayday and they're garbage now. Perhaps a nostaga wave from the 80's kids... I hope to see these things die out quickly again.
I don't understand why these folks are upset. Tesla's are made in America... so... jobs... and If EV's ever gain significant market share, the price of gas will plummet. They can fuel their trucks at rock bottom prices!
The trouble is that by saying things like this, Trump hands her defense team a legitimate argument that this extradition request is, at least in part, politically motivated. Judges do not like this kind of thing and it just increases the chances that she may not be extradited to the USA regardless of the case against her there.
In the bigger picture, countries that form treaties (like the one that Canada arrested this lady under on behalf of the USA), are generally like-minded. If one side starts abusing these treaties then they're apt to fall apart. This makes things harder for everyone.
Finally, this kind of shoot-from-the-hip, talk has real consequences in lives. In retaliation for this arrest Canada has already had two of its citizens detained in China for the thinly veiled purpose of putting pressure on the Canadian government. Regardless of the truth of Trumps statements, the simple fact that he's making them is making life difficult not just for Americans but for her allies as well.
As someone who now works in health care (not the UK), I can say that this is dumb. Fax machines are actually very convenient since most documents are still filled at least partially by hand. In order to email, I would have to log onto a computer, wait for it to secure-boot then scan the doc in then open email, attach and send. For privacy reasons every time I walk away from a computer, it must be logged off. The other issue with sites that use email is that any documents with personal information (that would be all of them) must be encrypted using a unique password that must be pre-arranged with the recipient. Therefore, before I can email someone their document, I must call them and work out a password with them This would not be any great burden if it was only once a day but with the amount of documents flying around, the simplicity of dropping a document in the feeder and pushing a single button is invaluable.
The other reason that email is frowned upon in the healthcare industry is that it's far too easy to print multiple identical copies of documents. Patients more and more often want their prescriptions emailed to them and I have to tell them no. How great would it be to get a prescription for Oxy over email and then print a hundred copies, one for each pharmacy in the city?
Additionally purpose built energy storage products use a different chemistry than those that began life in an automobile. The chemistry used for grid storage have a much greater cycle life at the cost of peak charge and discharge.
For all the people crying about TV getting too expensive, get yourself an OTA digital antenna. Free local channels. In areas that have only one cable company this IS your competition to that company for TV. If you can't live without 4K streaming well then get out your pocketbooks.
Na, by the time any signals reach hostile aliens and those aliens can mount any kind of armed invasion a few thousand years will have passed.
We're all entitled to our opinions. I don't see synthetic hydrocarbons winning vs pure electric for 2 main reasons.
... not having to stop at all! The cognitive hurdle that most folks who've never owned an EV can't seem to get over is the fear that you're going to be spending 10mins - an hour at a charger to add meaningful range back to your car. It's not till they own an EV that they realize that starting each day with a full charge means that stopping to charge outside your home or workplace is a very rare occurrence. Yes, there are issues with folks who don't have their own garage but those can largely be resolved through policy changes since there's no technical reason we cannot have a robust on street charging network. Those people who do drive 500Km daily and would thus require significant recharging delays are a minuscule portion of the motoring public and those folks may opt to say with liquid fuel despite the added cost. That's entirely fine. As the public gains more experience with EV's the fearmongering will fade and more and more folks will make the switch.
First, charging is far cheaper. Converting electricity to hydrocarbons is very inefficient as it has the same problem as hydrogen, you must create the product, ship and handle it before putting it in the car, all of which adds to the cost of fueling your vehicle. Internal combustion vehicles are also maintenance hogs as compared to EV's. All of which means that your cost of ownership over the lifetime of the car favors the EV and the gap is only going to get wider with time. That you can generate your own power for your car at home is a huge thing for lots of people as well.
Second: Convenience. What could be more convenient than only having to only stop for 5 minutes to refuel?
Cable sucks. At one point, you could mindlessly flip through channels till you found something that sparked your interest. That no longer works since each channel take so long to load. Channels also got greedy. They applied for and received layers of subchannels which were subsequently filled with inane crap nobody wanted but were forced to purchase because the desirable content keeps being locked away further and further up the chain. End result: Hundreds of channels that are utter crap blocking you from the few shows of interest.
For anyone out there who hasn't got the newsflash: OTA digital works great. You get your local channels for free and there's a good chance that the picture quality is better than cable. You can build your own OTA antenna, (instructions all over the internet) or just buy one from the dollar store. If you're feeling particularly rich, Best Buy has them for anywhere from $20-$100. Even if you have no intention of cancelling cable, you should still get one for those times the cable is out.
Cable has ruined the customer experience. Flipping channels was a somewhat enjoyable (if mindless) activity when there was less than 50 channels and they could display in a fraction of a second after changing the channel.
;)
Now there are thousands of channels (many duplicate) which take 3+ seconds to change and whole blocks of numbers just not available anyway, a cumbersome and slow digital 'guide', hundreds of low tier 'filler' channels which must be purchased before in order access the small amount of desirable content far up the tier.
Don't play the game. Get yourself a $20 digital OTA antenna. (You may have to invest in a signal booster if you live far outside the city limits) and find an affordable internet wholesaler/reseller then pick no more than 1-2 streaming services. Make that 'must view' show a social experience where you make an event out of viewing by going to a pub or friends house. Invest $2-$5 in a no-log VPN to enhance your privacy on the internet anywhere public wifi may be used (side benefit: no content is unavailable