Interesting thread. But I don’t understand why the data needs to be collected and correlated by a third party, can’t the ads themselves detect views and clicks? (that’s what they need right?)

Or am I missing something about the process?

Yeah I’m not paying for something and it still be illegal. I’d rather stick to piracy. I get your point and if it works for you that’s cool. But it’s not for me.

A good usenet setup with the Arr stack can automatically download basically anything you want and costs tens of dollars per year to run with very little, if any risk. (have there been any prosecutions for people downloading from usenet?)

With a little bit of work and an old computer for a server you can basically run your own automated piracy streaming service.

Disagree. In order to keep those keys secure they can’t publish them, so they’ll have to license some sort of decryption chip. That just pushes the price up as some manufacturer ends up taking a cut from every player sale.

Also means you can’t do what you want with it. You probably can’t play it on an open source device. Etc etc.

I won't. "Copy protection" is much more about restricting and potentially even removing your access to something you've paid for than it is about preventing copying. I am not willing to buy something that can be revoked when alternatives are available.

I know, I modified it to make more sense for video.

I know. I changed the terms. Pray I don’t change them further.

Someone go make Steam for videos and I'll pay for media again. My stipulations are:

• Once I buy it, it's mine forever (otherwise piracy is better)
• The file is high quality, DRM free, and in a selection of standard formats (otherwise piracy is better)
• I can redownload it from the service at any time (otherwise piracy is better)
• I can get everything I want to watch (otherwise piracy is better)

Guaranteed they’d find a way to double dip. Price gouging, restricting content behind further paywalls, adding ads anyway… absolutely they’ve investigated all those and undoubtedly more.

Switch to Firefox, Chrome is their biggest lever to force this kind of stuff onto people. While Firefox exists and it remains uncool for them to block it they’ll have to compete against piracy and adblockers which will limit their ability to aggressively monetise.

Switch to firefox!

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It’s pretty common for corporate stuff (legal or otherwise) to start with no payment changing hands, just a contract. Then an invoice lands either monthly or on completion afterwards.

That makes it easier for the work to actually start (otherwise you need to engage the finance dept up front and they’re often slow), and once the contract is signed and the work started that’s the sales process complete.

I know, but those techniques are more likely to cause selection weirdness than flexbox/etc, which is why I mention them specifically.

On mobile: multiple top and bottom tool/nav bars that automatically show/hide themselves when you scroll. They’re invariably more irritating than if they were just pinned at the top of the page (or perhaps viewport, but ideally page - I can scroll to the top of I want it back)

On desktop: animations tied to scrolling.

Anywhere: any kind of popup, modal, etc that I didn’t click on something to get. Please fuck alllllllll the way off.

The browser implements the text selection behaviour, but how infuriating it is depends on how convoluted your page construction is.

On a simple page with no floats, overlaid elements, negative margins, absolute positioning, hidden stuff, and other css layout tomfoolery, it’s perfectly predictable. It’s only when designers do designer things does it start to break down.

Reddit has long paid mods to be “Community Builders”. Ostensibly they’re there to help other mods build their subreddits, but actually what seems to happen is they spam low effort posts like the ones described (the “question style” post is very popular) in lots of subreddits.

I’ve posted this before but here’s more info:

Have a look at this user’s posts prior to the blackouts: https://old.reddit.com/user/WelshCai/ Lots and lots of low-effort posts in various UK subreddits.

And read this (which was posted after he got accused of being a karma farming bot), note the admin comment confirming it: https://old.reddit.com/user/WelshCai/comments/130zbw6/i_am_a_community_builder_for_reddit/

This link confirms that Community Builders are “vetted and paid by Reddit for their time”: https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/4418715794324-What-is-the-Community-Builders-Program-

Despite claiming they work with mods, the mods of those subreddits don’t seem to be aware of this, as evidenced by this post: https://www.reddit.com/r/Leeds/comments/138gi40/reddit_community_builders_please_read_details/

I mean I’m still out here rawdogging usenet without a vpn. I keep waiting for the great crackdown on usenet but it never comes… Surely that comes before any VPN crackdown.

Ooh so it’s mainly a way to dodge regulations so you can use land designated for farming to make money by generating electricity.

That makes sense, because a much more practical way to install solar is above open air car parking…

One gold upvote costs $2, the recipient might get either $0.90 or perhaps $1. But most likely they’ll get nothing.