Also, online services built into these will die before the speakers do.

I am not sure however if your estimation is correct for all cases. The amount of killed tweeters I have seen would not have happened with an active speaker..

My 1978 (no brand) speakers are still in excellent condition, so are the 1991 Bose. Hifiberry works fine. ymmv

And as a known electronics guy people bring their broken stuff to me for at least the last decade.

If you handle stuff correctly it will survive. But the point about reliability is to also take into account how stuff survives when it is abused.

Apologies. Next time they'll do a 10-year study on the subject before daring to comment on a public forum, ensuring that each and every angle is covered so that le smart folks like yourself will be able to sleep at night.

Now maybe that is because I am an electronics guy and people come to me with their broken stuff and I see what actually breaks, but isn't the point of a public forum to say something and be occasionally wrong? Should I rather have stayed silent?

I don't know about you, but if some knowledgeable person corrects me, I am grateful for getting a check on my perspectives. This is the value of discussion.

I'd say active (especially digital active) is too much of an improvement to pass up, but if you only want to talk about waste and reliability, try to find about support and spare parts company policy. Some prestigious passive brands like Revel have some forum horror stories about lack of spare parts for 10 year old models that barely got discontinued while Genelec says https://www.genelec.com/product-warranty-lifetime

Also, as someone mentioned, advanced (thermal based) limiters saving tweeter voice coils.

Disclaimer: I am a fanboy owning a pair of 8341A.