Allegro is full of refurb mini PCs, mostly Dells. It is complete computer for less than $100 [0], like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40697831 says, it is very hard to beat it in terms of value.
That said it is much harder to get nice notebook/tablet, the wear and tear is very visible on screens/keyboards.
[0] to my surprise the one I grabbed had an internal mono speaker(not beeper) somewhere in the case.
A catch? You need between 50k and 200k euro for renovation, depending on size, and if you change your mind there is no one to sell it to recoup the cost. There is no local job market either. That leaves retired couples and digital nomads, and neither of them actually wants to live in "middle of nowhere", far from health services or any entertainment. I mean, the core issue in all of those depopulated towns is that everyone left to live in better places ...
However as someone who lived in the area I want to point out that the offer is neither a scam nor a meme.
There are people buying these houses (not in droves), and a few communities achieved repopulation. The 1€ offers are an expression of a larger sentiment of the local gov having genuine interest in you moving there, and a promise that they won't drown you in needless bureaucracy or otherwise push you out. And, if you interested in such a renovation project, it's a genuinely great offer ofc.
Agreed on your points on quality of living though, that is indeed the crux.
Patrica seems like a no brainer for a summer house 60km from Rome. Looking at the pics it seems idyllic.
Do a low effort bare minimum renovation for 50k and share it with some friends or family.
There has to be some really bad catch. Like no road or a 10 000 euro a year sewage fee or whatever. Maybe there is a litteral gatekeeper in the village that wont let you in through the gate if he does not like you.
There should be enough Romans (are people in Rome called that?) to fill up cheap mountain houses.
That's a rough commute with a lot of narrow one lane roads in the mountains, almost no medical infrastructure, and the nearest school is in another city (edit: this is wrong - there is an outpost for the local comprehensive school in Patricia)
A lot of people seem to forget that Italy was for all intents and purposes a developing country until the late 1990s-early 2000s (unless you count Turkey, China, Malaysia, Serbia, Russia, and Thailand today as developed countries), and a lot of small towns and villages in Central and Southern Italy are still underinvested
Based on Google Street View, it looks like the kind of small town you'd see depopulated in interior Guangdong or Central Anatolia.
What are you using as a your definition of developed? There are urban, developed parts in all those countries, as well as rural, undeveloped areas with no/few humans in the United States.
Developmental indicators like HDI, childhood mortality, access to clean water (not a right in Italy until 1996), etc.
If Italy in the 1990s was a developed country, then a lot of countries treated as "developing" today are actually developed, hence why I gave the examples of Turkey, China, Malaysia, Serbia, Russia, and Thailand - countries that are "developing" yet have sustained developmental metrics comparable to Italy in the 1990-2005 time period.
G7 was created by the then 7 largest Oil importers in the aftermath of the 1973 oil crisis. While it has connotations as a developed countries group, the reality is that Italy's developmental indicators lagged compared to much of Western and Northern Europe until the 2000s.
I don't know about OP but in Poland https://yanosik.pl/ offered such deals ( https://payhowyudrive.pl/ ). It is probably a bit self defeating - the app's main function is warning about speed traps, that means unsafe drivers as significant part of its users.
Ignoring the question if USA is actually behind: there is a very strong technology catch-up effect. Some countries started mobile phones with 3G, and never wasted money on quickly outdated analogue/2G hardware. New banks created in 90s in Eastern Europe also benefited from not having 30 years old legacy mainframe systems running COBOL.
> There are endless streams of psychopath male leads and damsel in distress characters, with predictable story lines and pretentious dialogues.
I mean - it sells. Is it readers fault if other authors write unpopular stuff? "Royal Road" is my guilty pleasure. Almost everything there conforms to that quoted scheme but even among mountains of crap there exist various degrees of quality. That said the popularity isn't strongly correlated to that - checking 2 authors I follow one has $300/month on Patreon while other $20k/month.
Personally, I think this is where Patreon (and similar) shine. Allows 'true fans' to support directly with a much smaller cut than traditional distribution/publishing mechanisms, whilst also not requiring long-term subscriptions.
Honestly Royal Road is a treasure. It's the only site where I actively click on t he ads because the ads are all for new stories and there's a decent chance I'll like one.
There might be other explanations, thought not necessary better. For example maybe they are following Steve Jobs' dream of single button apps? All not essential features confuse people[0]. Google have already hidden "cached" version link in tiny hamburger menu.
Or they assume they know better what the users wants than the users themselves. YouTube straight up ignores dislikes - and will show disliked video in mixes or at first place of search results.
If we give Google the benefit of doubt, maybe people just kept accidently blocking useful sites and later complained they couldn't find anything? Thought Steam deals with that perfectly: search results start with disclaimer:
"8,875 results match your search. 2,053 titles have been excluded based on your preferences." - and it takes 2 clicks to go back to unfiltered results.
[0] - well, at least Gnome project follows that idea, killing any discoverability
It is actually quite common in hellish world of printers, but with a bit more plausible deniability. "Our printed page counter indicated the cartridge/drum needs replacement, we couldn't know it was half full / it is all to preserve maximum quality" - so typical bullshit, that people somehow already got used to. The consumer electronic is already crazy, I mean people mod-chipped Keurig to use "pirated" coffee.
[0] to my surprise the one I grabbed had an internal mono speaker(not beeper) somewhere in the case.
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