[HN Gopher] A golden age of consumer convenience is passing
___________________________________________________________________
A golden age of consumer convenience is passing
Author : RickJWagner
Score : 101 points
Date : 2022-08-17 11:46 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ft.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ft.com)
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Take advantage of your local library's disc sharing programs.
| maxerickson wrote:
| Paying a subscription for siloed content was never convenient,
| and the price increases for the ad free packages aren't that
| steep.
|
| I don't have much of an opinion about delivery apps because they
| weren't ever viable here.
| bit_savager wrote:
| > "I'm not reading your site if you paywall it. There are too
| many other free resources that are just as good if not better."
|
| This really indicates what our economy has become. Everybody
| talks about the two business models companies employ; ad-
| supported or fee-based. These are the selling models
| Occasionally, piracy is discussed. While it may be a business
| model, piracy obviously isn't a selling model. It is a consumer
| consumption model though.
|
| We do have another consumption model that is more difficult to
| see because it does not include any explicit agreement between a
| company and a consumer. This emerges from companies that begin
| using loss-leading (money-losing) models to gain customers,
| initially. They then expect that they will generate a network
| effect or be able to rely on inertia (what Malcolm Gladwell
| generalizes as "sludge") to retain those customers when they
| later change their model to something profitable. This fails
| because there is always another business trying something
| similar. Each of these companies has the same global reach and
| customers can switch easily between them so they just hop from
| one unsustainable bargain to the next optimizing their own costs.
| They are disloyal leeches. I don't say that to be derogatory; it
| just seems the best description.
| togs wrote:
| > They are disloyal leeches.
|
| Consumers are _mercenary_ , as are companies, and that's the
| rational way to be in an economy of scale, where loyalty is
| "brand loyalty". If consumers aren't loyal, it's a failure of
| the company's marketing.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Would you read my comment if I paywalled it? Seriously doubt
| it.
|
| It's not like these little journal articles are the ultimate
| truth we all need to read. It's just a guy publishing his views
| on some topic. Views likely biased by his stakeholders at that.
| Views likely manipulated by PR firms if not government
| entities. Essentially propaganda advancing some narrative. When
| governments want people to view propaganda, they pay for an
| aircraft to airdrop leaflets. Yet we're expected to pay for the
| privilege of consuming their information?
|
| Truth is on the internet if they want people to read their
| views they have to actively go out there and post them. _They_
| have to pay money and /or time to make it happen. They don't
| get to demand payment because opinions are infinite. Paid
| journals are a relic of the old world and its media where they
| had printing presses that made literal newspapers with columns
| on them and that was the only way to get a mass audience.
| That's over now. They need to deal with that fact or go
| bankrupt.
| tobyhinloopen wrote:
| Cookie wall. Choose your subscription.
|
| Yep, I couldn't agree more, title.
| ljsocal wrote:
| Try an ad-free (or substantially reduced) life for a month or
| two. Stop watching/reading any ad-based content. It can have a
| positive effect on your outlook.
| neea wrote:
| Paywall
| fein wrote:
| Ironic that a site posting an article critical of the end of
| consumer convenience is sitting behind a paywall.
| brasic wrote:
| Why is it ironic?
|
| One reason all these services are introducing ads is
| consumers' learned unwillingness to bear the full costs of
| the services they enjoy.
|
| I might argue that the true irony is grumbling about a news
| provider very reasonably limiting their product to those who
| have paid them.
| fein wrote:
| It's ironic because it's an upfront inconvenience to read
| what is ostensibly an article critical of how consumers are
| being inconvenienced.
|
| I'm not reading your site if you paywall it. There are too
| many other free resources that are just as good if not
| better.
| brasic wrote:
| At the risk of belaboring my point, even if what you say
| is true this attitude is a root cause of this unfortunate
| situation.
|
| Good journalism isn't fungible -- it costs money to
| produce. When we actively choose to not pay for media, we
| have no one but ourselves to blame for the awful biased
| or clickbait junk that results.
| fein wrote:
| We are on a discussion board. I'm not going to pay for
| every paywall to access every article, and if a
| journalist wants me to read and discuss their article, it
| needs to not be paywalled.
|
| You could say that posting a paywalled article on a
| discussion board is just an ad for paywall subs.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| I finally broke down and paid for YouTube Premium. There is
| literally no other option to watch YouTube on a TV nowadays. It
| is absolutely mindblowing the level of nonstop ads they shove
| down your throat in-between (and during) every single video now.
| Completely unwatchable otherwise. And it's impossible to buy a
| dumb TV in 2022, so you're stuck with the official Android/Roku
| YouTube apps that have no ad-blocking capability. Even pihole
| doesn't work anymore; they've obviously figured out how to get
| around the DNS issue. It just seems like every day things are
| getting worse.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| >And it's impossible to buy a dumb TV in 2022, so you're stuck
| with the official Android/Roku YouTube apps that have no ad-
| blocking capability.
|
| You can just do literally the same thing you'd do with dumb TV
| and connect computer to one of it's HDMI ports. "Smartness" of
| a TV does not take away any feature from it, unless you're so
| hurt by software updates - which you can simply disregard by
| not connecting the TV to the internet.
| [deleted]
| another_comment wrote:
| >> There is literally no other option to watch YouTube on a TV
| nowadays
|
| I use https://github.com/yuliskov/SmartTubeNext Smart Tube Next
| on a Firestick. I side loaded both the beta and release
| versions with adb. I have not seen a commercial since. If
| Release doesn't work, try Beta. One of them always seems to
| work.
|
| >> And it's impossible to buy a dumb TV in 2022
|
| Next best thing: I bought a Samsung TV last year and never
| accepted the Terms and Conditions. No ads.
|
| Edit: fixed link syntax
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| As longs as you don't rely on The Algorithm (i.e. you watch a
| fixed set of channels), you could probably rig up some kind of
| NAS to TV streaming set up, using ytdlp to download videos to
| the NAS.
| prmoustache wrote:
| Why don't you use a regular computer plugged to the TV? All you
| need is a wireless keyboard+trackpad combo.
|
| With firefox and an ad blocker I don't have any youtube ads.
| Also netflix shows start faster on a browser than they did when
| I was using a chromecast.
| fein wrote:
| As far as I can tell, ublock origin still works without a
| hitch, so just hook up a laptop/ tower to the TV and run YT in
| a browser?
| carapace wrote:
| I see this sort of thing as a tax on the less-
| technologically-sophisticated. That's the essence of the
| whole tech business culture: Morlocks and Eloi.
|
| SPOILER ALERT
|
| > A work of future history and speculative evolution, Time
| Machine is interpreted in modern times as a commentary on the
| increasing inequality and class divisions of Wells' era,
| which he projects as giving rise to two separate human
| species: the fair, childlike Eloi, and the savage, simian
| Morlocks, distant descendants of the contemporary upper and
| lower classes respectively.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_time_machine
|
| Here the "classes" are derived from technical skill and
| knowledge. It might seem bizarre to us here on HN but just
| knowing about e.g. ublock origin let alone how to install it
| makes you one of the elite.
|
| I don't really know how to feel about all this. On the one
| hand, it seems regressive to me to herd folks into silos and
| milk them (FAANG). On the other hand, people have to take
| some personal responsibility for their own education and
| agency, right? Computers aren't really that hard? No one's
| holding a gun to their heads to make them use FAANG products
| and services. Certainly, the options to live a more free and
| open life are there, eh?
|
| Mickey Mouse finally goes out of copyright next year.
| pdimitar wrote:
| It's really 50/50 because _many people don 't know it's
| even possible_ to have the better experience. Exploiting
| them and herding them into silos is extremely unjust. They
| should be educated or they should at least ask some
| techies. But I partially agree that even they should strive
| to inform themselves better because nobody is going to go
| to them and strike a conversation exactly on this topic.
|
| As for the others, there I am fully with you. They are
| quite aware it can be done and they just can't be bothered
| to do it. To me that's an informed choice and thus --
| consent. They don't get to complain about squat because
| they made the conscious choice.
| gniv wrote:
| When casting to the TV you get ads, even though you don't in
| the browser! I just tried it, since I had the same idea.
| bicdez wrote:
| Plug your laptop directly in via HDMI/DP.
|
| Buy an air mouse/keyboard to control it from your couch.
|
| Here's an example: https://www.amazon.com/Wireless-
| Keyboard-W1-Multifunctional-...
|
| The flexible sovereign combo of a general purpose computer
| and a user agent.
|
| I use a forever-docked ThinkPad x230 under my TV, which can
| do 1080p and 802.11n (5GHz).
| [deleted]
| fein wrote:
| I second the wireless mouse/ keyboard and will add that I
| bought a trackball mouse just for this, and it's a
| wonderful fit. No worrying about a proper surface for
| moving a mouse around.
| gniv wrote:
| Thanks for the tip. It works with both an HDMI cable and
| wirelessly via AirPlay.
| pessimizer wrote:
| I've been doing this for many years. The latest
| incarnation is an Intel NUC, which you can also use for
| other random home server stuff, and for vintage console
| emulation.
|
| What we need is a good, simple dumbtv interface for a
| computer with network access and a DVB card/stick. One
| that can also bring up a full-screen browser window to
| deal with streaming service DRM. Have been considering
| getting something together with rust+gstreamer starting
| by cloning my old Philips dumbtv interface while using
| mplayer/mpv hotkey standards for everything else.
|
| The all-encompassing, endlessly complicated yet somehow
| still inflexible Kodi is a bad solution for people like
| me. Let's start by making a dumbtv out of a cheap linux
| box + a monitor.
| fein wrote:
| Perhaps too inconvenient for some, but use an hdmi cable
| for a direct hookup instead of (I'm assuming) a chromecast.
| Maybe I'm just old fashioned at this point, but my "TV" is
| just used as a monitor to a dedicated media tower running
| windows.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| I have an Amazon FireTV and one day, when I had my work
| Windows PC at home, it could stream via Bluetooth (like
| an external screen). There was lag when starting /
| changing videos, but otherwise it seemed to work well
| enough.
|
| Don't most smart TVs have Bluetooth today? In my case,
| the FireTV is plugged into my (dumb) PC monitor.
| [deleted]
| r3trohack3r wrote:
| A chromecast, from my understanding, is just a web browser.
| Your device pushes a URL to the cast and the cast loads the
| web page.
|
| It's not surprising you can't cast without ads - adblock
| would have to be installed on the chromecast not the device
| doing the "casting."
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| There are ad-free versions of YouTube for Android TV.
| idbehold wrote:
| I recently did the same. I swear they dialed up the ads to 11
| in the last year. I was going to start tracking the ads:content
| ratio. I recall once for a 5 minute video I got: two 15sec un-
| skippable ads before any content, then a 15sec un-skippable ad
| followed by a skippable ad (7sec) at 1:15, then another two
| 15sec un-skippable ads at 3:10. I decided two things: the cost
| of premium was less than how much I value my time (watching
| ads), and that I enjoy the content available on YouTube more
| than similarly priced media subscriptions (Netflix, Hulu,
| Disney, etc.).
| zo1 wrote:
| Not directed at you, but the DNS thing I have to say something
| and will keep doing it. We got hoodwinked with HTTPS. We handed
| over to the tech giants, on a silver platter, a secure and soon
| to be unstoppable mechanism that allows them to go straight
| from their servers to our eyeballs. We gave up our ability to
| control and intercept the content flowing through our networks
| and PCs.
|
| The DNS and other Pihole stuff is a last ditch effort and a
| poor hack when really we should be able to inspect and alter
| all packets going through our networks.
|
| And you see it. Your pihole hack doesn't work anymore. Because
| that was always a loophole and they're closing it now again
| with DoH (DNS over HTTPS).
|
| All under the guise of privacy. Because somewhere sometime a
| long time ago an ISP added ads to your web pages and redirected
| DNS.
| lpapez wrote:
| Just take the Raspberry you are using for the PiHole, slap on
| Firefox+uBlock on there and you are good to go.
| ducharmdev wrote:
| I feel like I'm about to get to this point myself. It's
| absolutely insane that any decently popular video will cut to
| ads so often, without any regard for continuity. Much worse
| than cable ever was.
| xabaras wrote:
| I'm using SmartTube app on the FireTV. Works pretty well, no
| ads you can also pair your phone and cast. Just make sure app
| is always up-to-date, youtube keeps changing things and breaks
| app from time to time.
| blablablerg wrote:
| Ehh.. with an android TV media device you can sideload
| something like smarttube next and have youtube on your TV
| without ads.
|
| It requires some investment of time and money, sure, but
| nothing outrageous and far from impossible.
| amelius wrote:
| Convenience will destroy the world.
| scrlk wrote:
| https://archive.ph/2hy4E
| Nemo_bis wrote:
| This has nothing to do with convenience, it's about business
| which run large losses to expand their customer base. What Matt
| Levine calls the "MoviePass economy". https://archive.ph/bHsJV
| zackmorris wrote:
| I don't buy the premise of the article.
|
| I think that convenience will get harder because the economic
| system in the US prioritizes everything but automation. Have a
| business plan where you can hire tons of people? Great! Here's
| your loan. Have an asset as collateral or the money itself before
| you need it? Great! Here's at least that much money. Have an
| invention to completely solve the problem of delivery because
| robots grow food in your backyard? Get lost!
|
| I often think of the lyric from the Cheers theme song: "making
| your way in the world today takes everything you've got". Well,
| Millenials and Gen Z have about half the disposable income that
| Gen X had, and Gen X has about half what the Boomers had. In
| other words, it was 4 times easier to make it in the 80s than it
| is today. I was there, I remember what leisure was. And art and
| civic engagement and public works and everything else that we've
| all but lost today. Now our cities don't even have safe drinking
| water. That kind of travesty was unheard of in the 80s.
|
| As the realities of late-stage capitalism crush down on the world
| harder and harder, the cost of making it will eventually pass
| what people are willing to pay. I think we're seeing the start of
| that with The Great Resignation and #vanlife.
|
| If my feeling on this is correct, then deregulation and lower
| interest rates will speed the decline. Stuff like austerity
| backfires, and half the population knows that through experience
| now since stuff like 9/11 and the housing bubble popping.
|
| So any hope of fixing supply chains powered by low-wage workers
| in the third world is a fantasy. They've seen the internet, they
| know that their best shot at a better life is not to succumb to
| servitude like their parents did. They're all going to organize
| and demand better compensation, like they should have done a
| generation ago.
|
| Another way to look at this is that the value of things stays the
| same, but the value of currency falls. In another 10-20 years,
| currency will be so worthless that a home in some cities might
| cost $10 million. We're losing the ability to buy things because
| we can't hedge against that with our own ability to make things.
| kaiuhl wrote:
| The irony of the article behind a paywall.
| beloch wrote:
| "The money thrown into the convenience economy has also created a
| crowded marketplace. Couch potatoes can choose between Netflix,
| Amazon Prime, Disney Plus and others, and a glut of ultrafast
| delivery and takeout services; ride-seekers can switch between
| Uber, Lyft and Bolt. "
|
| Home video and taxi-cab service are _very_ different sectors.
|
| Uber has engaged in some pretty "creative" (i.e. unethical)
| business tactics to muscle their way into the taxi industry while
| avoiding both regulations and the payment of decent wages. They
| moved fast, but it was only a matter of time before government
| regulators (and their own reputation) caught up to them.
| Transportation is, indeed, something that's going to go back up
| in price in the short-term, if only because Uber and the Uber-
| wannabe's were using a business model that was _never_
| sustainable. I 'd expect considerable contraction of this market
| as multiple companies fight each other for dwindling profits.
|
| Home streaming, on the other hand, is simply coming off of a
| pandemic boom. When people were stuck at home, surprise surprise,
| they watched a lot of TV. Demand will correct to no less than
| what it was a couple years ago. The problems streaming providers
| face are entirely self inflicted. e.g. Fragmentation. It's going
| to remain hard for any single streamer to make as much as Netflix
| did when Netflix was pretty much the _only_ streamer. Expecting
| consumers to pay five different companies on a monthly basis for
| what basically amounts to "channels" is not a delusion likely to
| persist much longer. We might see cable-TV style aggregation of
| streaming services take over, enabling users to pay a single
| monthly bill for all their streaming needs. Unlike
| transportation, there are free alternatives to streaming (i.e.
| piracy) that consumers will turn to in increasing numbers if
| streaming providers stay on their current course. This alone
| dictates that streaming _must_ become more convenient in the near
| future, not less so. Showing ads on a service that isn 't free is
| outright suicidal.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| When your only skill is something that most Americans learn in
| HS (drivers licence), then you cannot really expect to earn
| more than minimum wage, which will never be a "decent" wage,
| almost by definition.
|
| Uber is also going to run into the issue that if they want to
| charge much more than they do now, it is often more sensible to
| use some other means of transportation because it will be too
| expensive and, well, people can trivially do the work
| themselves.
| armchairhacker wrote:
| I was going to say, streaming with "gig economy" ride sharing
| are completely different.
|
| Streaming really has no right to not be "convenient". The only
| reason it's reverting to inconvenient is because of beaurocracy
| and aggressive licensing and copyright enforcement. One can
| argue that it costs money to make movies and producers need to
| get that money back, but even older movies which have already
| been released and made huge profits are no longer available or
| available on different platforms. Then there is region locking
| and overlooked movies which are flat-out unavailable. Because
| of all this, there is widespread piracy, and afaik if you have
| a good pirate setup streaming is still very convenient.
|
| On the other hand, the convenience and low price of ride-
| sharing and delivery apps was unsustainable, temporary, and
| didn't even really exist in the first place. When you get an
| Uber it costs like $10 for a 10-minute ride on a good day, and
| the delivery fees are often as much as the cost of your meal
| itself. Yet Uber doesn't even make profit (I don't know how
| that works and they're not bankrupt, they have external funding
| but are allegedly losing money every year on their actual
| services). You can't pirate a free ride or meal.
| overeater wrote:
| > Uber has engaged in some pretty "creative" (i.e. unethical)
| business tactics to muscle their way into the taxi industry
| while avoiding both regulations and the payment of decent
| wages. They moved fast, but it was only a matter of time before
| government regulators (and their own reputation) caught up to
| them. Transportation is, indeed, something that's going to go
| back up in price in the short-term, if only because Uber and
| the Uber-wannabe's were using a business model that was never
| sustainable. I'd expect considerable contraction of this market
| as multiple companies fight each other for dwindling profits.
|
| I want to push back on calling Uber's methods to avoiding
| regulations to be unethical, separately from discussing the
| wages. When they were starting, taxis had regulatory capture
| with their de facto monopoly. Lobbying over many decades
| prevented fair and healthy competition for out-of-date
| reasoning (like medallions and landmark tests). To break this
| corruption required illegal (and gray area) techniques, but I
| don't think it's unethical to destroy something that is
| unethical itself. Not all positive change can happen from
| following all the laws. Had they gotten shut down in the
| beginning, I think that would have been a major societal
| negative, and other ride-share companies coming on their
| coattails would not have happened.
| jeromegv wrote:
| That's the problem. You are unwilling to discuss the wages.
| This predatory capture also existed to ensure a decent wage.
|
| Uber did everything they could to hide the true cost of being
| a driver. Tons of sneaky fees. Gray area for insuring your
| car. Dropping drivers wages just after they bought their
| vehicle from a Uber financing program.
|
| There's a reason the quality of Uber drivers went down, the
| good ones realized that there was no money to be made once
| you accounted for all the hidden cost.
| Aunche wrote:
| It's not like the average taxi driver was rolling in cash
| either. There are plenty of hidden fees with leasing a cab
| and medallions as well. I have little sympathy for taxi
| industry because half the time they try to hustle me.
| friedman23 wrote:
| > That's the problem. You are unwilling to discuss the
| wages. This predatory capture also existed to ensure a
| decent wage.
|
| So a few got a highly inflated "decent" wage and the people
| that desperately needed this work are just out of luck
| because they can't afford a medallion?
| TheAceOfHearts wrote:
| Media embedded advertising has already been a thing for years,
| but companies hate leaving money on the table so they cannot
| resist the temptation of showing more ads.
|
| I wonder why it is that Steam hasn't had any issues remaining
| such a successful video game platform, while other forms of media
| have struggled to keep up.
|
| You're competing with piracy, but you throw ads in my face. I can
| download any show or movie I want and have it playing in minutes
| without having to deal with multi platform bullshit. That's real
| convenience. Oh, and the show or movie never gets taken away
| because some execs decided to be greedy.
|
| Although at this point I'm so fed up with most modern media that
| I've lost any interest to watch it, even if it's free and in a
| convenient format. Most stuff doesn't even seem interesting
| enough to pirate.
|
| The age of mindless consumption is nearing an end. I'm hopeful
| that the future will be a mix of locally crafted consumption
| balanced with a healthy mix of content creation.
| fxtentacle wrote:
| The age of mindless consumption has fully arrived, with AI-
| driven platforms like TikTok feeding you endless content for
| free. It's just that selling behavior manipulation of your
| users (e.g. ads) turned out to be a better business model than
| (honest) subscription payments.
| hirundo wrote:
| > The age of mindless consumption is nearing an end
|
| I think the only thing that could do that is a degree of
| general poverty so great that mindless consumption immediately
| impacts survival. And even then some people would choose
| intoxicants over food and shelter.
| HellDunkel wrote:
| What is locally crafted consumption?
| smitty1e wrote:
| Artisanal cheeses and beers, for example.
| jcranmer wrote:
| > I wonder why it is that Steam hasn't had any issues remaining
| such a successful video game platform, while other forms of
| media have struggled to keep up.
|
| Well, Youtube's ad problem comes from the fact that it is run
| by the largest internet advertiser. Netflix--video streaming in
| general--suffers from the fact that there are very few major
| content producers, and after seeing the monetary success of
| Netflix, the content producers decided to create their own
| streaming platforms and deliver their content only via them.
|
| While there have been attempts to build alternative video game
| platforms than Steam (notably Epic Games Store and Origin),
| they haven't been able to enforce an exclusivity deal of the
| kind that showed up in video streaming. I'm not entirely
| certain why, but it seems to be a mixture of the lack of
| centralization in developers (so must-have is much less a
| factor in video games as it is for movies), the need for multi-
| platform distribution anyways to reach consoles, and the
| necessary social media integration (you need friend lists to be
| able to invite friends) making fragmentation more painful for
| users.
| nasmorn wrote:
| Origin is so bad that nobody would ever install anything but
| an exclusive from there. I would rather install a new App
| Store.
| xbar wrote:
| Yup.
|
| Thanks, Unity CEO.
| LtWorf wrote:
| Both origin and epic do not support having a space in your
| password.
|
| I'm sure the rest of the code is top notch as well :D :D
| bobthepanda wrote:
| At the end of the day a movie or tv show is a non-interactive
| stream of media that has two states, play or pause. (Rewind,
| fast forward and skip sometimes too.)
|
| A games launcher is a lot more complicated. A few publishers
| have tried their hand at it (EA Origin, Ubisoft Uplay) and
| for the most part they suck.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| I disagree re Netflix. They invented their own problems by
| pivoting from an video platform to a platform that measured
| itself by how much attention it could steal or time it could
| waste.
|
| You may recall they were patting themselves in the back by
| adopting this strategy of minimally viable programming. Well,
| Disney got their shit together and turns out people want to
| watch good TV. Whatcha know?
|
| It's a management failure and the ad pivot is a bigger
| failure. If there was a board with a clue, they would fire
| the management and start over.
| rowanG077 wrote:
| Epic game store definitely tries to enforce exclusivity.
| Prime example beeing Square Enix games. FF7 Remake first
| released on Epic Game Store and only much later released on
| Steam. Kingdom Hearts still isn't available in Steam and
| probably never will be. It's one of the prime reasons I will
| never buy from them. That way lies madness.
| jcranmer wrote:
| Yes, they've _tried_ to, but as I 've said, it hasn't been
| particularly effective. Most of the games that had the
| year-long Epic store exclusivity period happily released on
| Steam at the end of that period.
| fossuser wrote:
| > " I can download any show or movie I want and have it playing
| in minutes without having to deal with multi platform
| bullshit."
|
| Is this as true as it once was? It seems most of the old
| trackers are offline or dead now. I'd guess because of the
| success of streaming services finally meeting the market
| demand. It's also possible I'm just old and out of the loop
| now.
| no_time wrote:
| The availability of content is still superior to paid
| offerings. The problem is discoverability.
|
| 10+ years ago you could get a well seeded torrent anything by
| googling "anything+torrent". Nowadays you can still get
| anything but you have to be way more tech savvy and have to
| break out of your comfort zone. This could mean invite only
| sites,Russian speaking sites,Fiddling with baidu download
| scripts etc.
|
| Seeing how much activity peak mininova had[0] compared to the
| public tracker offerings of today makes me a bit sad. There
| are still great places to leech some warez but "the more the
| merrier" is always true for p2p based sharing :^)
|
| [0]: https://web.archive.org/web/20090114215808/http://www.mi
| nino...
| Jiro wrote:
| I've literally looked for things that I could reasonably
| expect to be on the Internet and couldn't find them on the
| Internet. The newest hot thing is still available, of
| course, but an obscure 5 years old show may not always be.
| nemothekid wrote:
| > _I 've literally looked for things that I could
| reasonably expect to be on the Internet and couldn't find
| them on the Internet._
|
| Everything is in private communities now. Almost all the
| content you can think exists on usenet, but all the good
| indexers are invite-only (and often pay to play. My
| usenet subscription + the yearly fees to various private
| trackers was just a little less expensive than Netflix
| (up until the most recent price hike).
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Be like me and keep seeding the stuff that's going to be
| obscure in 5 years.
|
| Of course, you'll need to wait for me to open up my
| client every couple weeks, but you'll get it eventually.
| Sholmesy wrote:
| usenet is taking off in a big way (does 1979 tech really
| count as taking off?).
|
| Alternatively, invite-only/private torrent trackers are
| as good/better than the old days.
|
| Way harder for regular folks to break into the scene, but
| it's far more "professional"(?) now
| no_time wrote:
| With all due respect, probably you just have to look
| harder. I managed to track down a clean scene release of
| an 18 year old PC game[0] just a few hours ago with the
| help of Yandex and the offline translator plugin for
| Firefox.
|
| [0]: https://predb.de/rls/Wings_Of_War_DVD-HOODLUM
| Lev1a wrote:
| I wanted to watch the currently in-progress season of a
| certain anime via the usual legit sites like Crunchyroll,
| Funimation, etc. All of this anime's seasons are now "not
| available in my region due to licensing issues".
|
| The DVD/Blu-Ray season sets cost 85-90EUR each(!!!) for 13
| (~20-22 minutes) episodes per season. That price to me is
| simply unacceptable, since that's more for one season than
| the entirety of series like "Friends" or "House, M.D.",
| either of which provide vastly more content and are WAY more
| popular than any anime.
|
| As it stands now, I'll probably just wait until the last six
| episodes of this season become available then use the free
| "test period" for the "aniverse" channel on Prime Video, on
| which I arbitrarily can't watch 1080p HD because I have the
| absolute audacity of not using Windows (a problem which
| downloads from certain ... 3rd-party sites do not share).
| charcircuit wrote:
| >and are WAY more popular than any anime.
|
| Which is why they can get away with charging less per copy.
| hakfoo wrote:
| But it's a self-perpetuating death loop problem. At those
| prices, the only buyers are extreme fans buying it almost
| more like a merchandise item (compare figurines) than
| people who want to view the content. I know this is a
| thing in Japan-- the anime releases tend to be a few
| episodes at a time, at prices that would be considered
| astronomical most places.
|
| There are potentially many market equilibria-- selling
| 200 copies at $100, 400 copies at $50, or 1000 copies at
| $10.
|
| If they switched to a bargain-priced model, you enable
| tsundoku-style purchasing-- put up a big display of
| "here's a hundred back-catalog series, 13 episodes on two
| DVDs in a flimsy cardboard sleeve for 1000 yen each",
| people would be willing to take much more risk on buying
| them.
|
| Arguably, there's a lot of information being lost because
| they only see purchase data of people hardcore enough to
| pay the current high prices. (I wonder if to an extent
| this impacts anime's tendency for fanservice choices--
| they're chasing an artificially narrow market)
|
| There's still the opportunity for price-discrimination
| for fanatics with limited editions with better packaging,
| extra content, and feelies.
|
| It's interesting to contrast that the price of manga was
| almost impossibly low. In Japan, (at least it used to be)
| like 1/3 the price as in the US for a 200-page volume,
| and the omnibus magazines were pretty cheap, which made
| it more amenable to risk-taking purchases.
| somenameforme wrote:
| The same thing is frequently true of Japanese video games
| as well, often seemingly arbitrarily costing several
| times comparable titles. I'm quite curious what drives
| this "cultural" phenomena. It seems almost certain that
| their price:demand curve is messed up to the point that
| lowering the price would result in increased revenue, but
| they seem very content to stick with this system -
| apparently outside of games as well.
|
| Anybody with any insights into Japanese culture/business?
| I've always wondered why this was, or if it's something
| as simple as inertia.
| goosedragons wrote:
| Japanese manga is still really cheap. The latest volume
| of One Piece is 484 Yen on Amazon Japan which is about
| $3.50 USD. An English US volume is $10. Books in Japan
| are absurdly cheap in general, I believe by law.
|
| Anime though is often way way cheaper in the US although
| that may have changed since Sony started buying up most
| of the players. Although this does have some downsides as
| US releases are usually hard-coded to have English subs
| on when using Japanese voices, no Japanese subs etc. to
| try and discourage reverse importing. But yeah easily a
| 5th the cost of collecting the whole set from the
| Japanese releases. Only Aniplex (who Sony owned) would do
| the garbage $80 for 2-3 episodes in US.
| EB-Barrington wrote:
| Hi, yes, as true at it ever was. Indeed, the choice is wider
| than all the paid streaming services combined.
| geraldwhen wrote:
| Google and bing filter out the results you want. Other search
| engines work fine.
| johnmaguire wrote:
| Yes, this is absolutely still true if you have access to a
| couple private trackers.
| Fezzik wrote:
| TPB is still going strong. Older content is sometimes
| difficult to find but anything new or even slightly popular
| from the last 50 years is more-often-than-not obtainable.
| somenameforme wrote:
| More so than ever before. The only difference is that it's
| all a lot more decentralized. The easiest source of
| information is from legal filings. A lazy way to get this it
| to search Google for whatever, and at the bottom it will
| state something like 'In response to US DMCA we've removed
| [x] results from this page. You can read the complaints here,
| here, here...' Read the complaints. Otherwise you can search
| for more select filings. For instance this [1] is an older
| report from the RIAA on "Notorious Markets." They're quite a
| friendly organization - providing URLS, descriptions, and
| details on each site even including their modus operandi.
|
| Also if you happen to speak a language outside the big
| Western languages, then it's all trivial and a simple search
| anywhere will yield even better than above.
|
| [1] - https://torrentfreak.com/images/Notorious_Markets_Submi
| ssion...
| ElCheapo wrote:
| Imagine a world where anyone who wants can set up his little
| torrent seedbox sharing with the whole globe some content
| they really like without worrying about getting a nice little
| letter in the mail. I'm pretty sure if people were free to do
| so (and cheap and easy commercial options sprung up) we would
| be able to find any content we desire and download it and (if
| it's popular enough) even stream it
| davidgerard wrote:
| For comedy gold, look through the DMCA notifications that
| Google links you to, and that's your index of helpful and
| current torrent sites. Many are very usable through machine
| translation too.
| notsapiensatall wrote:
| Among other things, Steam is not operated by a publicly-traded
| company.
|
| They don't need to answer to faceless shareholders at the end
| of every quarter. They can settle for making whatever they
| consider to be "enough money" without chasing endless growth.
| nemothekid wrote:
| Netflix is publicly traded and had managed to avoid shoving
| ads down the throats of user for almost as long as Steam has
| been around.
|
| Steam is moreso lucky that the PC market was pretty much
| ignored by all the large game publishers for a very long time
| and had very little competition. We will see what happens in
| another 10 years now that even Sony is launching it's own PC
| launcher. PC is now more important (even Japan is finally
| opening to the gaming PC scene).
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| What was the rationale for publicly-traded companies again?
| Because it sounds like having publicly-traded companies make
| things worse for the companies themselves and for society in
| general.
| ChrisLomont wrote:
| Steam still has shareholders to answer to, with the same
| human motives as any shareholder, so I don't think this
| argument holds water. I suspect they'd try to get whatever
| growth they can because otherwise eventually someone will
| overtake them.
|
| And empirically they are still growing at rates [1] not
| common among any class of companies, so someone there is
| certainty pushing for incredible growth.
|
| [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/308330/number-stream-
| use...
| notsapiensatall wrote:
| The difference is that their shares are not publicly
| offered. Their shareholders much more likely to be people
| with vested interests in the company's long-term health,
| rather than retail investors and hedge funds who reliably
| demand short-term returns.
| nightski wrote:
| Retail investors and hedge funds do not always demand
| short-term results. If that was the case, Tesla and
| growth companies like it would simply not exist on the
| stock market. Instead, they are wildly popular.
| LtWorf wrote:
| But they plan to make money from selling the stocks, not
| from actual dividends.
| ChrisLomont wrote:
| The majority of public shares are held in long term
| investments like 401ks, whose owners are most certainly
| interested in long term growth. Buy and hold is by far
| the biggest amount of investment type of stockholder.
| Most people don't care to fiddle with microtrading.
|
| As the buffet bet made clear, and as the majority of
| advice and investors do, long term ownership outgrows
| those chasing short term returns, despite pop belief.
|
| I think you vastly overestimate the dollar amounts behind
| stock owners.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Also I'm pretty sure they are making enough money as they
| are. And don't need to chase that ever increasing stock
| valuation. Which might not even mean increased profits.
| Jensson wrote:
| But public stocks seems to focus on valuation over
| profits, which is reasonable given how things turned out.
|
| Apple going from 1 trillion to 2 trillion valuation is
| much more valuable to shareholders than Apple paying out
| 100 billion in profits. But if the stocks aren't publicly
| traded then the main pay-out are the profits, so they try
| to maximize profit over growth, which is probably much
| healthier for the economy overall.
| nightski wrote:
| This is false. Amazon had zero profits for a very long
| time and was publicly traded. It did very well. There are
| numerous examples like this.
| Jensson wrote:
| That is exactly what I said, publicly traded companies
| cares about growth over profits, while companies that
| never intends to go public and therefore doesn't benefit
| from valuations tend to care about profit over growth.
| ChrisLomont wrote:
| Profit and growth go together. In Amazon's case lots of
| profit is what fueled their growth: at each point they
| made far more money than needed to sustain, so they
| bought growth instead of paying out to shareholders.
|
| The two are intricately related.
| gsatic wrote:
| Is HN an example of mindless consumption?
| pdimitar wrote:
| It's definitely not its design goal as far as I can tell.
| However we the people in general have addictive tendencies
| and we're just kind of turning HN into every other
| compulsively scrolling social media.
|
| But that's on us.
| aranelsurion wrote:
| Maybe not. As far as I can tell it doesn't prioritize
| engagement/hours spent over everything else, first page is a
| mixture of very niche stuff and very common stuff with very
| little clickbait either way.
|
| To me HN feels like having a conversation with an interesting
| friend. It's not necessarily the most productive thing to do,
| nor it has any other major goal inherent to it, still at the
| end of the day it doesn't feel mindless or time lost.
|
| To compare, if I use Twitter for 10mins, it's 1min of
| entertainment at best and 9minutes of
| bullshit/flamebait/doomscrolling/shallow crap that makes me
| feel dizzy by the end of it.
| JanisErdmanis wrote:
| > I can download any show or movie I want
|
| The golden age of movie piracy has already passed. It is
| becoming quite hard to pirate 10y+ movies at a good quality.
| Also, streaming services do offer remastered film versions
| rarely available for pirates.
| skocznymroczny wrote:
| Steam was at the right place at the right time. Also it was
| more insidious in its behavior. Throughout the late 2000s and
| 2010s most AAA games were Steam releases only. Even boxed
| copies were not much more than a Steam code. This allowed them
| to build a powerful network effect. At some point gamers were
| demanding that any new big release was a Steam release ("no
| steam no buy").
| jabbany wrote:
| This does make some sense. Games are big (file size wise) and
| prone to updates. Steam helped handle this distribution in a
| reasonable way.
|
| It's also why people prefer app stores or package managers,
| because they give a predictable distribution experience over
| hunting for scattered software.
|
| I'd say the problem with Steam is that it should have a
| community-run alternative/competitor. There hasn't been much
| push for one since Steam isn't a walled garden and Valve has
| historically been pretty ethical, but still...
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > Games are big (file size wise) and prone to updates.
| Steam helped handle this distribution in a reasonable way.
|
| Indeed. Steam is the original package manager of Windows.
| It's so good that nobody really remembers what it was like
| before Steam. They don't remember downloading and manually
| applying half a dozen incremental patches to their games.
| People are used to its incredible convenience now.
|
| As far as DRM content licensing digital fiefdoms go, it's
| certainly the least bad. It's easy to forget that we don't
| really own anything on Steam. It certainly pisses me off
| when other studios start launching shitty alternatives to
| it that are even worse in every single way.
| blibble wrote:
| > I wonder why it is that Steam hasn't had any issues remaining
| such a successful video game platform, while other forms of
| media have struggled to keep up.
|
| it's privately owned
|
| and by someone that loves video games that was already wealthy
| when he founded the company
| AstralStorm wrote:
| Steam is successful because its advertising is rather low key,
| showing a popup with offers, and providing a search, directory
| plus suggestions. Their gain is from consumer analytics too.
| (They also take a cut for using their platform from the game
| developers or publishers.
|
| It also provides some added value like achievements, basic
| social media in forms of forums and chat, some (somewhat broken
| at times) controller handling, some bug reporting, cloud save
| handling, voice communication handling, even some space to host
| game related content. On the whole, more value added than taken
| by paltry ads. The bigger value minus is the "Steam DRM" -
| requirement for an online connection to use the downloaded
| application. And providence help you if you post inflammatory
| comments under an account that owns game access licenses. You
| will lose that.
|
| The other ones don't do it quite as effectively, esp. the
| suggestions part. Being a game library and download service is
| not what makes Steam in particular good, though it is an
| essential part.
| pdpi wrote:
| It's important to take Steam DRM in context. In a world where
| DRM was becoming more intrusive by the day, and you had to
| contend with every game having its own unique way to mess
| your system up in its fight against piracy, Steam provided
| one single DRM system that almost everybody agrees to use.
| For consumers, worse than no DRM, but miles ahead of the
| status quo it replaced.
|
| Also, Steam does have an offline mode. You just have to ping
| the mothership every few weeks iirc.
| P5fRxh5kUvp2th wrote:
| To add to this, the original Witcher is the game that made
| me decide I was never again going to install a game
| directly. It was going to be steam or gog, and I've kept to
| that over the years with few exceptions (rpg maker games,
| etc).
|
| As a freelance developer I would run vmware with a
| dedicated partition for the VM. The VM was linux and the
| partition itself was either ext3 or reiserFS (can't
| remember).
|
| Since Windows didn't recognize the partition, the DRM for
| witcher repartitioned that drive so it would have a
| "secret" partition to track who knows what.
|
| That affected my ability to earn money and was doing things
| to my PC I would never have accepted if asked.
|
| compared to that, steam is a godsend. I understand people
| complaining about steam, but to this day I'm still a huge
| fan of steam for what it forced the gaming industry to
| accept.
|
| I still prefer GoG due to its policies, but steam is
| fantastic.
| plonk wrote:
| You can download all 3 Witcher games without DRM after
| buying them on GoG. Did you have the standalone version?
| I don't understand why they put a DRM in it.
| vorador wrote:
| Yeah it feels like people forgot about the Sony Rootkit DRM
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_roo
| tk...) that ended up exploited by malware.
| KiranRao0 wrote:
| In some ways, Steam has provided an experience better than
| having no DRM. I can hop in a friend's computer and
| download any game I've purchased. Or I can delete old games
| to free up space and redownload them later (without having
| to deal with DVDs or external USB drives).
|
| The tradeoff is handing over the control of my game library
| to a company. I can see how that tradeoffs can be
| compelling to some and not worthwhile to others.
| kranke155 wrote:
| The thing is Valve is the sort of company that has built
| that elusive relationship - trust - so much so that I
| would expect them to arrange for some way to keep people
| most of their games if the service was shutdown, and if
| they didn't, it would be a surprise.
| Semaphor wrote:
| It's also important to remember that SteamWorks DRM is
| optional. There are many games that will work without steam
| installed.
| lossolo wrote:
| Most of the games from big studios still use their own DRM
| on Steam because Steam DRM is worthless, I can crack it in
| 5 seconds for any game on steam, that's why you often see
| games that have Steam+Denuvo or Steam+CustomDRM.
| wongarsu wrote:
| Steam's most important advertising is actually quite in your
| face, and used to occupy a good part of the gaming sphere for
| a couple of weeks each year: their sales with discounts
| between 50-90% (calculated from the current "regular price"
| which for older games is often already far below original
| retail price). They've switched it up in recent years, making
| the summer sales tamer in exchange for more weekly sales, but
| the concept stays the same: sell "old" games for prices you
| can't refuse. And that's why people don't mind: when they
| tell you it's a great offer it genuinely is.
|
| Everyone else in gaming is fighting for the newest releases.
| That's the battleground XBox and Playstation use, and that's
| where newcomers like the Epic Game Store try to beat Steam.
| Steam meanwhile is pretty toned down on new releases, and is
| going for long tail sales instead.
| newaccount74 wrote:
| They are really good at it, too. Fallout 4 for just 8EUR?
| Brilliant, I've heard so much about it, let me check it
| out. But just 5EUR more and I get all the DLC? And there's
| a bundle with Skyrim? Before I realise whats going on I
| spent 30EUR on games released a decade ago that I don't
| really have time to play anyway.
| gopher_space wrote:
| Bethesda releases aren't games you play, they're hobbies
| you pursue. Imagine all the enjoyable hours you'll spend
| browsing nexus and creating a stable environment for
| _each_ of the games you own. It 's almost like having an
| aquarium.
| pixelrevision wrote:
| Skyrim is the raspberry pi of video games. So many hours
| getting something "just right" to the follow up by never
| using it for that purpose. Always good to have around
| though just in case.
| dixie_land wrote:
| For me it's about context. Steam ads do not bother me that
| much since it's easy to turn off/dismiss, but also
| importantly they're "first party" - I'm already on steam and
| a gaming mood so I don't mind checking out offers for other
| games.
|
| Streaming ads are annoying because under no circumstances I'd
| be thinking of picking up tampons while watching a football
| game.
| flyaway123 wrote:
| What's your thoughts on targeted ads in general?
|
| Setting aside the ease of dismissing - would you be willing
| to give up some data to allow them to be smarter (having
| more context)?
| orwin wrote:
| Not OP but honestly i am tired of it. If i'm on
| stackoverflow, i want to see ads for a new course, a job
| posting or a clickbait tech article on a new stack that
| makes Java bearable. When i'm researching some obscure
| history, i don't mind ads about JC Martin latest book
| available on amazon (and i might even buy it!), and when
| i'm looking for camping gear, i don't mind ads for other
| camping gear.
|
| That i get ads for camping gear when i'm looking for
| information on the French second restoration, and when
| that ad takes my whole screen, i get fed up and reinstall
| ublock.
|
| It's easy. I know one person who made a lot of money from
| blogging. Affiliate links + direct ads to Festool or a
| know paint company. It beats adtech by a mile five years
| ago (for revenue at least). I think it doesn't work as
| well now with Intagram and tiktok, but he still get money
| from that.
| dixie_land wrote:
| In a hypothetical world where personal data is securely
| shared and stored, I'd prefer a more targeted ads (if ad
| free is not an option or the price of that option does
| not justify the content)
|
| I personally do not mind the idea of targeted ads and
| data brokers but as a software engineer I know my data is
| not safe due to ignorance or incompetence
| joshvm wrote:
| Well with the right approach, you don't need to give
| _any_ data. I 've said before on here that I think
| affiliate marketing is acceptable for text content, if
| the thing that I'm recommended is actually something I'd
| use. Caveat is it should be both obvious it's an
| affiliate link, but also unobtrusive and I should gain
| value from the material, not just link-stuffing every
| other word in a recipe blog.
|
| The video equivalent is the sponsored segment, which
| producers insert because they know people block ads and
| they don't make enough from YouTube alone. These _can_ be
| good if they 're actually relevant to the content. The
| problem is when I'm watching a video about coffee and the
| presenter tries, for the umpteenth time, to sell me
| Squarespace. Usually the product in the video is also
| affiliate-linked in the description (plus all the AV gear
| the producer uses) In contrast, I'll watch someone like
| MarcoReps shill me JLPCB because _he 's using the boards
| in the video_ and they actually look good.
|
| In both cases, I think targeted affiliate advertising can
| work if it's done well, and it's a lot better than
| generic follow-me advertising that has no relevant to the
| page content.
| cebert wrote:
| I am not willing to give up my personal data for the sake
| of advertising. I don't understand stand why advertisers
| need to be so intrusive. If you visit a tech news site vs
| a celebrity news site like TMZ, you can make some
| generalizations about the audiences without more evasive
| targeting.
| shakow wrote:
| > "Steam DRM" - requirement for an online connection to use
| the downloaded application
|
| It's not a requirement. It's to the discretion of the game
| developer on whether or not they want to require it to play
| their game.
| kroltan wrote:
| True, but it's (as far as I know) the only DRM that is not
| listed in the store page. "Third party" DRMs like Denuvo
| must be listed there, but Steam's gets a free pass.
| boredtofears wrote:
| I often wonder how much better the click through rates are
| for Steam than the ad industry as a whole. I'd estimate that
| I typically click on at least 4-5 ads on the steam home page
| a week. I actively enjoy scrolling through them to see if
| there's anything that looks interesting to me.
| polishdude20 wrote:
| What also helps if having a non garbage client. The Xbox
| windows client? Are you kidding me Microsoft?
| mythrwy wrote:
| It's a strange state when YouTube videos of villagers in Africa
| building a mud hut or a guy in Asia building a fish tank taken
| with cheap cameras by amateur videographers are many times more
| entertaining then Hollywood blockbusters that cost 10's of
| millions to make.
| goatlover wrote:
| Isn't that entirely subjective? More interesting to how many
| people? Would people pay money to watch?
| bicdez wrote:
| > The age of mindless consumption is nearing an end.
|
| How so?
| Jimajesty wrote:
| I feel like clicking the link and getting hit immediately with
| four tiers of subscription option from the Financial Times was a
| strong enough case in point that I scarcely needed to read the
| article itself.
| plonk wrote:
| The prices are awful too. It's clearly not targeted at random
| people wanting to stay informed.
| honkdaddy wrote:
| I had to go check - $40/mo for a digital newspaper?! Surely
| this is aimed at a different demographic than mine, because I
| can't imagine anyone I know paying that for news.
| umeshunni wrote:
| I know many Finance/Wall St and (Financial/Management)
| academic types who pay for FT.
|
| It's high quality, financial news with a European
| perspective (vs the WSJ which is very US-centric). I assume
| they keep the prices high enough to support their
| operations without having to dilute their coverage for the
| mass market who will want their celebrity news, daily
| outrage fodder, censorship etc.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Probably one of the few places that charges what things
| actually cost when you remove advertising from the
| equation.
| tinsmith wrote:
| I clicked because I thought it was Fortean Times. Oh well.
| suzzer99 wrote:
| I'm the dinosaur that still watches most content on a DVR. The
| fast-forward button never fails.
| quietthrow wrote:
| Can you explain your setup a little bit. I have sling and I can
| record shows that are store in their cloud. however the fast
| forward is not exactly smooth to skip ads. most of the time Its
| skips a little too far ahead or too early and I end up fiddling
| with it going forward and backwards to be in a reasonably right
| spot (~5 secs before the ad finishes or after it finishes.)
|
| 1) Are there any devices available that allow recording
| effortlessly and then allows skipping adds equally
| effortlessly?
|
| 2) What are the non ad service options - Netflix, Prime Video,
| HBO, Youtube Premium?..what else?
| polskibus wrote:
| It's not just about on demand online services. Inflation is sky
| high everywhere, that will eat up a lot of convenience in daily
| life. There is a small chance that this will reduce wealth
| inequality but it may be only temporary.
| jeromegv wrote:
| Did inflation in the 70s/80s destroyed convenience?
| adventured wrote:
| > Inflation is sky high everywhere, that will eat up a lot of
| convenience in daily life. There is a small chance that this
| will reduce wealth inequality but it may be only temporary.
|
| High rates of inflation increases wealth inequality over time.
|
| Those working paycheck to paycheck (or anything close to that;
| ie income dependent) can't outrun it, attempt to hedge against
| it, or typically even keep up with it. They rapidly fall
| behind. Their standard of living gets demolished quickly, as
| they're very sensitive to price increases on staple goods,
| energy costs (whether heating or gasoline et al.), or rent.
|
| The capital / asset classes can keep up with or outrun
| inflation however. And the impact on them in terms of standard
| of living is entirely trivial. Elon Musk at $200 billion isn't
| much richer than Bill Gates was during his peak circa
| 1999-2000. Inflation adjusted they're quite close. The rich
| have kept up with inflation because they own assets that are
| capable of doing so (primarily equities, although other rich-
| person asset classes have done moderately well also, such as
| art and extremely valuable real-estate), the rest of the people
| largely have not kept up (and never will in the case of high
| inflation).
|
| On top of this, the Fed's perma low rate program, required by
| the US Government's debt situation, bolsters the wealth
| inequality significantly by artificially inflating assets such
| as equities and housing.
|
| Workers primarily do well in environments of low inflation with
| a supply / demand imbalance for labor (in favor of labor). That
| environment existed, most recently, in a stable manner, in
| parts of the 1990s and from roughly 2014-Covid.
| [deleted]
| ssivark wrote:
| If I were to venture a guess, that's likely what the article is
| about ;-)
| pdimitar wrote:
| I have YouTube premium and download everything that I like. A
| home NAS is extremely handy like that. Mine is not even 10TB and
| I still have more than a year worth of watching. Also it's not
| illegal because I don't distribute anything.
|
| I use a local website run by volunteers that ask permission of
| publishing houses before putting every scanned & OCR'd & spell-
| checked book in their online library. Again, not illegal, there's
| a clause for distribution when you work in something like a
| library capacity.
|
| I use a Twitch client to watch stuff ad-free because I don't use
| it so often so as to get premium. Or I just download the stream
| after it ends. Tough luck, Amazon, no money from me. YouTube's
| service is better anyway.
|
| ---
|
| The "Black Mirror"-ization of our economy has a very predictable
| ending but the execs are trapped in a bubble of yes-people and
| have no clue how the world out there works -- thus everything
| will continue going exactly as predicted by many. One part of the
| populace will remain in the bubble but there will be a lot of
| others -- like you and me -- that will do their own media
| collection and consumption, grow part of our own food, repair our
| own tech, craft items to use around the house etc.
|
| Corporations know no mercy and they will not stop however. They
| will keep changing the narrative ad infinitum until everyone is
| dependent on them at birth. But they won't ever get to that point
| in the first place and will inevitably fail. Normal people can be
| swayed only so far. That's the part that they are missing --
| which is quite puzzling to me, not like it's hard to figure it
| out.
|
| But I made my peace with the coming events. It's like watching an
| avalanche: you have a pretty good idea what it does and how far
| it will go and the damage it will inflict but physics doesn't
| care that you watch and know what will happen -- the event will
| happen regardless.
|
| The future is this: extreme segregation. Kind of like the big
| COVID-19 divide that happened even between people in the same
| family. That will keep happening in other areas of life. It's how
| people are.
|
| _C 'est la vie._
| 88840-8855 wrote:
| Can you be so kind and explain the setup behind the youtube-NAS
| bridge? Are videos being downloaded automatically? Are
| subtitles added to the local files? Do you have to manually
| select all videos you want to archive/safe on your NAS?
|
| What NAS do you have?
| NalNezumi wrote:
| > They will keep changing the narrative ad infinitum until
| everyone is dependent on them at birth.
|
| Welcome to life: https://youtu.be/IFe9wiDfb0E
| mumblemumble wrote:
| > I have YouTube premium
|
| I do, too. And every month I spend a little bit more time fast-
| forwarding past people awkwardly dropping pitches for NordVPN
| into the middle of their videos.
| pdimitar wrote:
| SponsorBlock helps but yeah, it can't cover everything.
|
| Rarely a problem for me though, I quickly filter out the
| sellouts.
|
| And it's still worth it for the occasional how-to video
| because part of the time I truly get helped. I can stomach
| some promotion (but like you I do dislike it).
| DocTomoe wrote:
| There are plugins that work surprisingly well in skipping
| that bullshit [1]
|
| [1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/sponsorblock-
| for-y...
| rocmcd wrote:
| WTF is up with Nord? I always felt that VPNs were a pretty
| niche tech tool, but I see those ads freaking everywhere. Are
| there that many people that use VPNs that warrant the ad
| investment?
| wswope wrote:
| It's economics: much like with car insurance, the market is
| a zero-sum game because the quality providers all more or
| less have equivalent levels of service - thus advertising
| becomes the most effective way to capture revenue, because
| prospective buyers don't generally have complete enough
| information to e.g. assess a firm's "operational
| excellence" or technical qualities on their own.
| NoboruWataya wrote:
| I don't agree that it's zero sum - this is a niche market
| that, if it could reach a broader audience, would
| experience an influx of new customers. That could
| potentially benefit all the players in the market, though
| of course it would benefit the company driving the
| popularisation the most.
|
| Personally I think that in marketing like this NordVPN
| are not trying to convince existing VPN users that their
| service is better than their competitors'. Rather, they
| are trying to convince non-VPN users that they need a
| VPN.
| Ekaros wrote:
| VPN marketing seems to boil down to two things. Either
| scaring people about their ISPs and "hackers" trying to
| steal something. Or circumventing geo-ip blocks... Now
| later is valid, but somewhat questionable use. And first
| depends, but probably not needed unless they really want
| to use that unsecured airport wlan...
|
| So it is really convincing people they need it. For those
| reasons...
| Theodores wrote:
| That is a really good point.
|
| Furthermore, it is marginal cost for the content creating
| peoples. They just have to read the script and roll the
| supplied graphics. If they get $1 from total sales then
| it is worthwhile if you are only getting 2K views. Maybe
| these VPNs offer a minimum fee and then commission on top
| so that there is always a payday, albeit small.
|
| None of them seem to record bespoke content where they
| demo the VPN for real or show how it works.
|
| The message has pivoted to getting content from region
| locked services such as Netflix.
|
| With car insurance (the last time I was watching TV, some
| years ago) they had rather silly 'meerkats' with Russian
| stereotype characters selling the insurance, with the
| people collecting the fluffy toy versions of the
| 'meerkats'. If you renew your insurance every year you
| get another 'meerkat' and soon the goal is to collect the
| set.
|
| Often it is the company that pays the insurance but the
| employee gets the 'meerkat', maybe to post to eBay...
|
| My niece's inheritance is mostly 'meerkat' toys and a few
| empty beer bottles.
|
| I am holding out with OpenVPN on a VPS until cuddly toys
| get given out with VPNs and they are advertised in every
| YT show with AI generated cuddly toys with AI accents.
| AstralStorm wrote:
| Unfortunately your downloads are either not actually legally
| owned by you, just licensed, and potentially subject to DRM in
| some cases.
|
| Same with the books. The library asking permission is actually
| good and what may make it legal. However, that is called a
| license and may have serious limitations.
| pdimitar wrote:
| Thanks for the clarification. Yep I know but enforcing this
| requires a game of whack-a-mole with tens of millions of
| moles to whack. I wish them luck.
|
| It's a thin ice, obviously, but let's also recognize the fact
| that they forced us to walk on ice in the first place. They
| made up the rules. Had there been any sanity in these people
| left a lot of money would have never been expended in making
| examples out of regular Joes and Janes.
| rkagerer wrote:
| Well, paywall that this certainly don't do anything to help
| consumer convenience stick around.
| dymk wrote:
| At least it's not ad based. They sell content, and you can
| chose to pay them for the content or not. A respectable
| business model by comparison.
| NoboruWataya wrote:
| They do still show you ads if you pay them though, which is
| kind of annoying.
| pdntspa wrote:
| > all at minimal expense
|
| Come the fuck on. This may have been true during the honeymoon
| phase of these services where everybody was scamming consumers
| with the bait part of bait-and-switch, but it has not been true
| for quite some time. Any of these convenience services charge
| dearly for the privilege nowadays, through fees, hidden menu
| markups, shitty subscription "deals" (WOW, I can save 30% on each
| order for signing up for $9.99/mo or whatever... how about
| cutting 100% of my order fees for your BS recurring lineitem
| bullshit?), and just plain general price increases.
| Overtonwindow wrote:
| If I am paying for something I am not watching ads. I will cancel
| the service and find something else to do with my time, but I
| will never willingly watch ads.
| alexfromapex wrote:
| I knew this day would come and have been preparing. Every
| company I thought was trustworthy has proven me wrong. So now
| I've decided to provide my own services. I have a NAS and have
| digitized my movie and music collection and can stream it to
| any TV in my house. Netflix, Disney, etc can go pound sand. It
| has to be this way, as long as advertising remains legal, life
| will slowly approach a Black Mirror episode where things we
| once owned will become subscriptions ad nauseum.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Why is everyone acting so apocalyptic? Netflix is offering a
| cheaper tier with ads. If you don't want ads, keep paying for
| the tier you have been paying.
| DocTomoe wrote:
| Because that's how it starts. Eventually, the cheaper tier
| will be with more ads, the more expensive tier will no
| longer be ad-free, but have "some" ads.
|
| It has happened before. It will happen again.
| scarface74 wrote:
| HBO has been ad free since the 70s. There hasn't been a
| cable service or streaming service that started ad free
| and then didn't offer an ad free offering
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| All cable networks started ad-free because they charged a
| monthly subscription fee, then almost all of them
| gradually started introducing ads in addition to the
| subscription fee. HBO is one of the few exceptions. The
| fact that cable networks let you pay _a second monthly
| subscription fee_ for HBO hardly constitutes an "ad free
| offering."
| scarface74 wrote:
| Where does this myth come from? Cable was first used to
| bring network broadcast TV with ads to places with no
| reception. Then came the "Superstations" like TBS and
| WGN. That were rebroadcast of local stations over
| satellite. Then came ESPN, CNN etc. cable TV always had
| ads except for the premium channels.
| goatlover wrote:
| Apocalypticism is in vogue now. Everything is coming to an
| end.
| ehvatum wrote:
| Humanity has often been preoccupied by the impending end
| of all things.
|
| https://www.britannica.com/list/10-failed-doomsday-
| predictio...
| hotpotamus wrote:
| I could say a bit about well paid engineers who don't pay for
| the content they consume - it's something I've observed
| everywhere I go, and I don't think it's one of our more
| attractive qualities (I'm in there too). I also agree that
| advertising is an insidious force that corrupts nearly
| everything it touches.
|
| The funny part to me is that my parents do a fire safety
| puppet show for children and can keep them enraptured for
| half an hour with zero budget. For centuries, people have
| been entertained by Punch and Judy shows. It makes me think
| that maybe the $20M/episode stuff we do now is impressive,
| but perhaps a bit over-engineered.
| benj111 wrote:
| It isn't the over engineering that's the problem*. It's
| that if you're spending $20m it needs to appeal to
| everyone, not offend anyone, and you end up with blandness
| that doesn't say anything to anyone.
|
| That kind of budget suggests lots of cgi which is its own
| problem, but that's a different rant.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| Advertising corrupts even the things you pay for, but more
| importantly than that I did pay for Netflix and currently
| do pay for Disney+, but the amount people expect you to pay
| for their content is way out of the value you get out of
| it. Typically even the lowest levels you pay for on Patreon
| for a single podcast gets close to what you pay for Netflix
| for a month, which doesn't make sense from a consumer
| perspective.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| > I could say a bit about well paid engineers who don't pay
| for the content they consume
|
| That may cover many people, but GP's post seems different.
| They went out of their way to "digitize their [presumably
| bought] collection" just to be able to avoid ads.
|
| This doesn't sound at all like "not paying for the
| content", they're actually paying _above_ the content: I
| don 't think the NAS comes from the pirate bay.
|
| We've actually seen this in practice: when Netflix was the
| only game in town and carried everything ad-free, piracy
| cratered. Now that all the _paid_ providers are beginning
| to show ads, and you have to have 50 different
| subscriptions to watch what you want, piracy looks better
| again.
|
| I don't watch many movies / series / videos, so I'm happy
| with what I get with my Prime subscription, which I'd have
| either way.
|
| But now that more and more of my Spotify tracks are "not
| available in my region" anymore, I'm seriously starting to
| investigate alternatives. Spoiler: it's not another
| streaming provider. Rather, looking to buy a bunch of hard
| drives and dusting off my old cd player, so I can rip
| whatever CDs I can get my hands on at second-hand stores
| around me.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| I doubt the media company lawyers would see it that way.
| And while they're ghouls, they'd have a point too. What
| counts as paying? I've got a colleague who would never
| download a movie illegally; he simply has a constant
| stream of Netflix DVDs (they're still doing that in case
| you thought that business was totally dead) that he rips
| and then sends back. He's paying _someone_ for content,
| right?
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| I think the difference is that if you _buy_ the cd, even
| second hand, _and keep it_ , you're fine because you own
| it.
|
| At least in Europe, there's the whole "personal copy tax"
| that's levied on all storage media as well as a "private
| copying exception" to copyright law.
| buzer wrote:
| In Finland you are not allowed make a copy if you need to
| bypass a strong copy protection. According to decision
| from 2008 from appeals court (supreme court did not grant
| appeal) DVD's CSS is considered to be such. Given that
| it's not very strong from technical point of view and
| that pretty much all CDs do contain some form of copy
| protection it's hard to say if you are allowed to make
| personal copies of most of the commercial CDs.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| Fair enough. I don't really care for movies, so I
| wouldn't go through that trouble, but I don't recall
| having encountered any audio CD with copy protection.
| Would those work in a regular, old-style cd-player, like,
| say, in a stereo?
| buzer wrote:
| There has been various ones over the years. These include
| e.g. key2Audio, Cactus Data Shield & Copy Control. They
| generally played without issues on normal CD players, but
| I did hear that especially car stereos did sometimes have
| issues with them. The way most of them worked were by
| attempting to hide the audio tracks from computer CD
| drives to make the ripping harder.
|
| I haven't really used audio CDs for ~15 years so I don't
| know what the situation is these days. At least the
| technologies I mentioned are no longer being used to
| according to Wikipedia. One way to tell if the disc has
| these kind of copy protections or not is to check if it
| has the Compact Disc Digital Audio logo. It's trademarked
| and Philips does not allow using the logo for CDs that
| break the specification. They do however allow setting
| the "no copy" bit
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bozo_bit). No clue if that
| would be strong copy protection or not in Finnish courts.
| alexfromapex wrote:
| Yeah I agree, you should still pay for the content. I buy
| the music off of Bleep and 7digital and own all the movies
| no torrenting. If I could do it over again I'd build the
| NAS myself to save some money since that was the most
| expensive upstart cost.
| amelius wrote:
| There is a good side to the service economy: the stuff you
| don't own, you don't have to fix (it's the service provider's
| problem), and therefore there will be no planned
| obsolescence, and less waste.
| kderbyma wrote:
| agree. Or of I must....it will pirated site ads....on banners
| around my pirated stream without video ads...
| fezfight wrote:
| While I realize this is more of a sabre rattle than reality,
| hopefully in reality youre using ublock origin. You won't see
| any ads on that pirate stream.
| geraldwhen wrote:
| ffmpeg -i http://source.m3u8 -c copy out.mp4
|
| Ads defeated.
| happycube wrote:
| Fittingly, the article behind the link is paywalled.
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