The solution here is to build more higher-density housing options. Tokyo has very affordable real estate because dwellings are appropriately-sized for dense urban lifestyles and are nearly uniformly mixed-use buildings with retail space on ground floors and residence/office above. Combine this with lax zoning and you have a recipe for affordable housing.
Comparing this to my own city of Melbourne, Australia: high-density dwellings are generally constrained to innercity suburbs and are still seen as undesirable compared to free-standing homes or semi-detached houses. Councils restrict the development of new high-density or mixed-use buildings for what amounts to NIMBYism. Inadequate public transport in the growth areas of the Northern and Western suburbs increases dependence on roads and freeways.
There are options to support affordable living in cities that don't involve covering our farmland and wildlife reserves with uniform white plaster cubes.
I see the same sort of thing happening in housing, and I think it's because the nature of the thing has changed.
Houses used to be for families; they were often quirky or strange or emergent, with weird layouts or materials. They may have garish wallpapers or floor to ceiling wood panelling. But these touches were reflective of the personalities of the owners. They met the needs of the specific people who inhabited them.
Nowadays, as houses are more of a commodity, they must be generic. All flat white interiors, straight corners, no cornicing or archetraves or plasterwork or anything to give the home a unique character. Instead it must be a blank canvas such that any inhabitant can put his own things inside it to make it his.
Computers are the same; what was once a niche product for enthusiasts and businesses has now become an instrumental part of nearly every moment of nearly everyone's lives. Thus they also must be generic and same-y, with limited avenues for superficial customisation, so that they can be interchanged or upgraded without jarring the user against the new version or device.
Personally I prefer radical customisation and quirkiness. I find it charming. But it seems that those who are designing (or perhaps only selling) the things disagree with me.
Perhaps just coincidence but I found it interesting to realise that buildings and animals followed a similar structural development trend: both started off with externally structural components (exoskeletons and structural walls) that evolved to become internal structural components (endoskeletons and load-bearing columns with concrete flooring).
The Grayjay Android app (which I use regularly) has a "Recommended" tab under each video that provides anonymous recommendations based only on the video you're watching. I recall them asking me to opt-in to the creation of a database like this as well recently, but I don't think it's available yet.
I was thinking about how to solve this given that one of the primary problems is that of fast, global content distribution. I like the idea of paying people in crypto as part of a ledger transaction to host and serve content, like bittorrent with a crypto payment. Unfortunately I can't also think of a way to prevent such a system from being abused to distribute harmful media such as CP. I guess it's not like this isn't a problem with BitTorrent today though.
It seems that the US Government introduces a new bill of this form every few years; SOPA & PIPA, COPPA, CISPA, etc. Will governments (particularly the US government) simply keep attempting this until they get one through?
I love the idea of such smaller communities and the "old web" style of interaction, but for me the issue is one of discoverability. How do I find and follow people? Does anyone still use RSS, or are we relying on Mastodon/ActivityPub? Bavk in the day this was the purpose of search engines, but it seems that now such small pages are scarcely even indexed...
I have a similar desire for laws; they say "ignoratia juris non excusat", "ignorance of the law is no excuse", but that is only a fair rule if the law can reasonably be known. No-one could possibly know all of the law, so expecting everyone to know it is an unreasonable standard (unless we can make the law very brief).
I have a similar issue with Caprine, the desktop frontend for Facebook Messenger. I have not however messed with my datetime settings, not is it such a big issue that I have taken the time to try to fix it (I don't use Messenger often and on desktop even less).
I just use domain forwarding to have my inbound emails to my custom domain address land in my plain old Gmail account, and outbound ones to forward to my domain. All the benefits of Gmail at no cost.
Comparing this to my own city of Melbourne, Australia: high-density dwellings are generally constrained to innercity suburbs and are still seen as undesirable compared to free-standing homes or semi-detached houses. Councils restrict the development of new high-density or mixed-use buildings for what amounts to NIMBYism. Inadequate public transport in the growth areas of the Northern and Western suburbs increases dependence on roads and freeways.
There are options to support affordable living in cities that don't involve covering our farmland and wildlife reserves with uniform white plaster cubes.