It’s not even just the Internet. Marketing fucks up every aspect of our civilization. We can’t even handle having a professional election anymore without trashy ads and people acting like children. You can’t even watch legitimate news anymore. …nevermind mind whack kids pranking people on YouTube being used and turning into assholes for YouTube monetization.
Honestly I’m starting to wonder if the reason why we got ourselves into a ad filled hell hole is because we expect soo much to be free and those things have to make money somehow and server space and the electricity they run on aren’t free and the only people willing to spend money are whales and advertisers and from what I’ve been told YouTube was never profitable on it’s own for Google and the only reason they’ve been keeping the site on is because it brings attention to other Google services while also preventing competition so I greatly think we’d all benefit from being open to paying for sites that are like YouTube so YouTube and advertisers have some real competitors I don’t know how a my theoreticall site would profit without ads but it’s still sad that sites like YouTube are expensive and unprofitable making it so Google is the only option solely because they can afford the loses making yt premium even more greedy
IF you want to get down the rabbit hole of expectations. I lose 34% off my pay. Like that. Poof. Taxes. I lose another 50% of what’s left to rent and groceries (not eating out). That doesn’t cover internet or utilities. Then transportation. And that’s just essentially living. My place isn’t all that.
And now you want me to pay for every website I visit. Or every service I use? Or I don’t use them and just go back to “essentially being alive.”
And I’m in the top 20% of income earners according to recent stats, which is insane because I’m not making fuck you money.
I think the real issue is greed. There’s no need for Disney+ to cost $20 a month. There’s no need for me to pony up another $1.5 a month to get 50GB of storage instead of the 5GB they know you’ll outgrow in a week. There’s zero need to pay $18 a month for a blue checkmark. They tell you it’s because it costs lots and lots of money to operate and the ads just barely cover our costs. Sure.
It’s just greed. It’s all just amoral, unethical, greed. Right on up from the rent/mortgage to all the shit you buy or “consume.”
We saw this surge with COVID, GME, crypto, NFT, absolutely wild, insidious, and morally bankrupt schemes exposing just how much wealth is pooled away from working class (they actually call them ‘dark pools’, where money goes and disappears). Something clicked. And it became a feeding frenzy where everyone is just steadily driving up prices, but not a single company is unprofitable. All the lay offs? None of those tech companies were in trouble. In fact, most made record profits!
This answer confuses me. The message on that pop up is "buy YouTube premium, so you won't be stuck in our ad supported model" and now we're ranting that they need to find another model to finance themselves? Isn't YouTube premium exactly that?
I’m sure they can take a page from every online service before we entered the 2020s, where you could pay to enter without ads, like Netflix was. But no, the ad company has to inject ads into everything.
Alphabet gross profit for the quarter ending June 30, 2023 was $42.688B, a 7.85% increase year-over-year. Alphabet gross profit for the twelve months ending June 30, 2023 was $160.503B, a 1.7% increase year-over-year. Alphabet annual gross profit for 2022 was $156.633B, a 6.77% increase from 2021. Alphabet annual gross profit for 2021 was $146.698B, a 50.01% increase from 2020. Alphabet annual gross profit for 2020 was $97.795B, a 8.71% increase from 2019.
“Guys they don’t have any money, they just gotta be privacy vampires and spam us with ads, they have no other means of funding it!”
Alphabet gross profit for the quarter ending June 30, 2023 was $42.688B, a 7.85% increase year-over-year. Alphabet gross profit for the twelve months ending June 30, 2023 was $160.503B, a 1.7% increase year-over-year. Alphabet annual gross profit for 2022 was $156.633B, a 6.77% increase from 2021. Alphabet annual gross profit for 2021 was $146.698B, a 50.01% increase from 2020. Alphabet annual gross profit for 2020 was $97.795B, a 8.71% increase from 2019.
“Guys they don’t have any money, they just gotta be privacy vampires and spam us with ads, they have no other means of funding it!”
Maybe stop being a bootlicker for a company that used to be “Don’t be evil.”
Paying to remove ads is part of the ad business model. Upset your customer enough until they give you money to make it stop. Once you pay to remove the ads you have rewarded them for implementing ads which lets them know that implementing ads was a great way at making money.
So YouTube premium is not another model. It is the same model. Another model is paying for a service that never had ads at all such as NebulaTV or CuriosityStream.
Somehow? Paying to remove ads is rewarding ads thus causing more ads in the world. It’s not mysterious at all.
There are plenty of ways to not make it an all or nothing service, but that is at least the most straight forward. You could potentially give some of it away and then have to pay for the rest. Or have some stuff for free and more premium content is paid for. Or perhaps based on bandwidth with video quality / resolution.
Anything that is not ads is going to be an improvement.
All those are fine suggestions, but a “free with ads” option isn’t that bad either; the real problem isn’t the ads themselves. The real problem is how intrusive the ads are, how many of them there are, as well as much information they (and YouTube) collect on you. Plus, in this case, the company in question isn’t exactly a small company who is financially struggling. It’s the classic capitalist problem of “infinite growth”, where your profits have to be constantly increasing.
But there’s nothing inherently wrong about the idea of having ads, just like there’s nothing inherently wrong about youtubers having sponsors.
You’re right, but premium is too expensive. They make a pittance per ad view, but expect a user to pay $14/m to get rid of them? The math doesn’t math.
I don’t mind ads as a concept. The issue is how invasive and numerous they’ve become. Get back to the days when ads were just banners around the actual content or an easily skippable video that plays before what I’m trying to watch and I’ll happily disable my ad blocker for you. Unfortunately hardly anyone does that anymore because they view it as a missed opportunity to make even more money.
I’m not against using ads to support websites but it’s the same basic concept as piracy. If you make the experience of playing by the rules so unbearable that it seems easier to go out of my way to avoid it then I probably will.
What everyone else said but also they still collect and do whatever they want with your data even if you pay them. They purposely made everything more shitty and then charged to put it back to how it was originally. Also, they stayed free as long as they did to kill off the competition and it clearly worked. I just can’t ever justify giving them money. Especially with the double dip on my data.
I’ve been around since YT red, and while Google Play Music was a better app, I am OK with YT music and primarily watch YT over the other sites and yt music is all I listen to in the house or car. So, while not cheap $22/mo for premium family fits my needs.
I’d be OK if yt allowed me to skip/blocked sponsored ads too. At least on PC sponsor block works well. For my TV its a few more hoops to get that there, which I haven’t done. Not terrible to ffw across them
I’m not paying them a penny either way, but if you’re going to, wouldn’t you want more features for your money, even if you don’t use them? Or are you suggesting they charge less for a subscription sans music?
This is a bad move that’s anti-community and user-hostile. Hopefully it also fucks over the monopoly they’ve been trying to get over communities. People need to stop defaulting to putting their communities under .world jurisdiction and use other, smaller, and more relevant instances instead.
ssh, Call of Duty, email, random voice-call software on strange ports - all of them work fine. People have problems with websites.
Plenty of websites of course are fine, the problems present when people use search engines and find a bunch of guff written by a bot, Paywalls, and sign-up screens.
They say the best way to predict the future is to create it, so if you want to help there, ‘make good art’, write and share good content, don’t feed the machine. Sounds like you’re doing that already if you’re on Lemmy.
And if you want to check out a quieter corner of the internet, where things aren’t all in-your-face-sing-up-click-here-now-NOW-DOIT…download the lagrange browser and check out Gemini. It’s a mostly plain-text protocol, where people read and write, and sometimes share whacky music.
This is, quite easily, one of the dumbest comments of all time.
You are free to setup and run a server, and create whatever experience you’d like. With how cheap hosting is it would probably be free for you to do for quite a long time too.
Not really. It’s the difference between sustainability and perpetual growth. The problem with all these services. Is that no mater where you tend to fall along them. There’s always someone below you gouging to make just a little more money. And everyone above them has to do the same to either make ends meet, or gouge and get their own growth. Capitalism at a basic level abhors sustainability. After all a CEO of a company can be fired for failing to maximize the company’s bottom line. Regardless of whether or not it was legal to do so or sustainable.
People don’t ask themselves why things cost as much as they do. They simply assume that there’s a reason. And just absorb the hit. In terms of it and telecommunications. Processing power continues an unabated growth as well as Network transmission speed. Yet despite being able to handle more load and more traffic easily. Cost always goes up. It can’t even just stay the same for any length of time. And capitalism’s profit motive is solely to blame.
Slower? The guy said he does 15mph, that’s pretty standard bicycle speed for me, I could go faster if I’m trying to really race somewhere but then my leggies get tireds >.<
Electric motor scooters are pretty neat, I wish I had one, but they’re sooo expensive :-(
One day, after the apocalypse makes money obsolete, I’ll take one from an abandoned shop while I’m scavenging for food :-D
What is a amateur?, with my crappy mountain bike I can do 30-35km/h on flat ground, for 30min comfortable, And still get passed by people on race bikes.
Do you have a computer telling you that speed or are you just making a guess? Because I find it unrealistic to be +30 kph on flat ground with a mountain bike for 30 minutes.
I say this because I have a gravel bike and can only keep +30kph for long periods if I’m on a slight incline and I’m pedaling with a purpose (not full sprint, but you wouldn’t see a commuter pedal that hard)
On average people in commuting bikes will most likely be at around 15kph, low 20s on descents.
Fo sho. My buddy bought one and talked it up. I tried it out as I was interested in a new chair since my work from home ability had recently increased from 25% to 50% arouns 2018. My broke ass 10+ year old chair from college was wayyy more comfortable. Invested in a ~$250 office chair after that. Have had it for 5 years, work from home 75% of the time, amazingly comfortable and it still looks like new.
I bought my Steelcase Leap V1 from a guy who did just that - bought chairs from office sales, replaced bad cushions, cleaned and greased them up, then resold them out of his garage. Bought mine early pandemic. Still feels as good as when I bought it.
I use a wooden chair from a dining room set probably, never got the hype over chairs. I’m not hard-core gaming but I’ve sat in it for maybe 8 hrs a day before doing school stuff and it never gets uncomfortable
Waaaay long time ago one of my school friends was both a videogame junkie and car guy. This was before ‘gaming chairs’ were really a thing, but his solution was to hit a scrap yard and salvage the most comfortable seat he could find from a junked car. He mounted that onto an office chair swivel base.
To date, the most comfortable “gaming” / office chair my butt has ever had the privilege to occupy.
I have no idea what a car seat would cost from a scrap yard, but if your the tinkery type and looking for a new project…
I’ve been thinking about doing this because I have a herniated lumbar disk and every seat hurts except the seat in my truck. Hopefully this it a temporary situation but it is insanely comfortable, maybe worth it.
Worse case scenario, your back still hurts but you have an insanely comfortable computer chair!
Well… not really. Actual worse case is it fucks up your back even more. I also have a herniated disc, and I can say a lot of the things that make it feel better temporarily are making it worse in the long run. Taking pressure off of it with comfy chairs or braces etc feels good, but that pressure is what keeps your back muscles toned, which are what -should- be taking pressure off the spine. So, the more you rely on short term fixes, the more you’ll become dependent on them.
I’d honestly talk to your doc about it - if you’re not already seeing a physical therapist, get a referral. They can hook you up with some exercises to keep things manageable; and that’d be the person to run any abnormal seating plans by.
This is true. Gaming chairs are a scam. They’re made in China and sold in bulk to wholesalers for $40 who mark them up and sell them for $600. I have one and hate it, it’s hard as a rock and not adjustable.
Buy a used Herman Miller. I know someone linked a gamers nexus video before, but you really really do not realize how bad most chairs are until you sit for ten hours straight in a Herman Miller, and have zero pain afterwards. And then that chair will last you several decades. There’s a reason they are constantly for sale. Those chairs literally outlast businesses.
My wife has bought several gaming chairs over the years. None of them have any breathability and she just sweats like crazy whenever she sits in one for a long period of time.
I wouldn’t put this on my CV, because employers would likely think I’m taking the piss, but my most saleable asset is that I can take an awful lot of crap before I ultimately walk out.
I know, but I’ve got bills to pay and kids to feed. I worked for 15 years in the same place, it wasn’t horrible until the end. Then I changed it up, working more hours and earning more money but I feel like this place is taking significantly more out of me than the old place did; or maybe I just don’t have as much time to recover now I’ve got 2 kids instead of 1.
I hate my job. I hate how it dictates my life and how despite working a 50 hour week (and my partner working 20 hours) we still barely afford to make rent and feed our kids, but I’m not sure how we’d escape this nightmare short of winning the lottery.
Same. It’s one of my great shames that I just absolutely hate the interview process for tech so much that I put up with a lot of shit to avoid having to look at the job market again.
Same with dating. Not sure what I’d do if me and my SO broke up. Both dating and job interviewing require taking a lot of rejection.
Company I worked for back in the 90's had several large call centers and these tactics were literally in the HR handbook.
They created absolutely hostile and demeaning waiting and interview environments, often deliberately scheduling 100 people to come in at the same hour, to then interview them throughout the day.
But if they were told to come in at 8, the earliest anyone who was a legit candidate would be interviewed was near noon, to then rush the interview because it was lunch time, making the rest wait another hour.
The 4 hours before noon, they'd call in people like once every 30-45 minutes, but these people were plants and would arive 30 minutes before they would be called in.
Out of 100, there were usually only 30 or so left around noon and 20 when they actually started in the afternoon.
And out of those, they'd still only interview half, reschedule the ones they thought looked most desperate, to see if they would come back for another interview.
And the people they did interview that day, if they actually recruited 1 or 2 out of them, it was a special day.
Thing is, they pulled that shit for 1 year and then their reputation preceded them and no one would apply anymore.
The company was American and trying to pull that shit in Belgium.
It didn't work out for them.
Heck, they ended up shutting down most of their European operations not that many years later.
I went to an interview once, got there 15 minutes early so the secretary told my that I got early and the interviewer is nit ready, which is of course fine by me. She told me to sit somewhere and wait. I waited 45 minutes (30 minutes after the interviews should have started) and than just walked a way. On the way out the secretary ask me where I’m going I told her that it’s rude to keep me waited like this and I’m not interested. She tried to convince me and went to get the interviewer, but went anyway when she done that.
Some people think their time is more valuable than others
Firefox Multi-Account Containers lets you keep parts of your online life separated into color-coded tabs. Cookies are separated by container, allowing you to use the web with multiple accounts
That way you can seamlessly have multiple accounts for a specific site open side by side (for example, your work and your personal mail with the same mail provider). Especially amazing if you’re an IT contractor who works for multiple clients.
Hi fellow IT contractor, thanks for sharing! That is awesome. Just installed and works like a charm. I was using Chrome profiles for this, but having all in one window is much easier.
Yeah it is also good for a bit more privacy on the internet. I have separate containers for Amazon websites, Google, banking etc. Even more powerful tool if you pair it up with a VPN - can have different VPN locations on each container so break up attempts at tracking and profiling you across the web.
Yup, and there are dedicated extensions to manage them individually paired together with noscript. I have one of each for the couple major sites I occasionally use to contain all their tracking.
This is one feature I literally can’t do my job without. Used to have 3 separate browsers installed + opened at the same time for all my various Azure accounts till FF saved the day!
This is super useful for any sort of development work - you basically get unlimited, separate private windows that you can log into stuff separately.
I use it for multi account switching on Reddit, I still do a lot of scam bot fighting over there and being able to easily switch between several users is really helpful.
If all else fails, just tell the interviewers something along the lines of
“I was so excited about this opportunity that I wasn’t able to sleep last night. I apologize for not being 100%.”
Most people have experienced being too anxious/excited to get a good night’s sleep, so if you are up front about it, they will probably be more forgiving than if you just try to power through and fail.
Hey! My husband is thinking about doing something similar with his, can you share any resources you used? He’s done programming before but never with a raspberry pi, and he’s not sure where to start.
You can follow pi hole website to do it pi-hole.net
Very easy, straight forward, and well explained.
The only thing you might want to check before buying something or trying this is if your router allows to set custom dns servers. Basically,connect to your router, and check the step 3, and see if it has the option for it. From my understanding some might not have the option.
Not necessary, but a next step can also be to install a VPN and route your mobile phone thru it too. Means you are also covered on the go, so no ads on mobile too , when you aren’t home too !
This is great advice. The other advice I would give is to make sure the household is prepared for the impact of routing everything through a pihole. There are quite a few things out there on the internet that will simply stop working with the default block lists. Yes, that is obviously the point. But it is helpful to prepare everyone with how to do temporary allows, and have a strategy for what type of things you might want to whitelist and which you’re content with leaving blocked. Otherwise it can be very jarring especially at the beginning.
Despite the Capitol’s riot, a survey showed 1/3 of Americans thought Biden’s presidency was illegitimate. The conservatives see the lawsuits as political prosecutions.
I’d say unless the non-trump voters come out to vote in a historical number like the last election, he stands a good chance of becoming a president again. And a number of states have passed laws that would make it harder for some subsets of voters to vote.
Between All Your Base Are Belong To Us and Peanut Butter Jelly Time, you guys are giving me a trip down memory lane! Or down CanIHazCheezburger and Shoop Da Whoops (although those are more recent, I believe)
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