Zagorath

I subscribed to YouTube Red back in the day, when that’s what it was called.

Then circa early 2018 they changed the rules for monetisation from the previous 10k lifetime views to 1k subs & 4k watch hours over 12 months. That was when I unsubscribed from Red and installed an ad blocker. I had always been anti ad-blocker because my view was that people creating content deserve to get paid for it. That’s still my view in principle, but the increasing enshittification of the web thanks in no small part to shit like this from Google has meant I weigh the pros & cons differently. YouTube showed me very directly that they don’t care about supporting their creators. So I decided I didn’t want to support them anymore. It’s not like this was the first problem…the whole “where’s the fair use” thing came before that, and many other events besides. But cutting off small creators like that, without even grandfathering in existing creators who had been monetised with that threshold, was the last straw for me.

It was also Google’s fault that I moved from Ad Block Plus, which I chose specifically because of its “acceptable ads” policy (basically: let through ads that aren’t obnoxious), to uBlock Origin, which lacked such a policy, after YouTube tried blocking ad blockers from YouTube, and UBO was quicker to adapt.

That’s twice now that Google’s own actions have directly led to me supporting them less than I used to. This won’t be the third time, but only because I have no more cuts to give.

Back when they had the Curiosity Stream bundle content discovery basically didn’t matter, because they barely had any content. You could check the site like two or three times a week and there’d be like 4 or 5 new videos each time.

It’s expanded a huge amount since then. And they’ve added a larger degree of content discovery stuff. Personally I mostly just go straight to the “Latest Videos” section (which, unlike the confusingly-similarly-named “New Releases” section, only shows the latest videos from channels you follow), but there are a bunch of other ways you can let it suggest content to you.

I don’t really want to give Murdoch the clicks, and the non-paywall link doesn’t work. Anyone got a quick summary?

That’s why I pay for Nebula. Others should too, or for other similar platforms that support creators more directly.

I subscribed to YouTube Red back in the day, when that’s what it was called.

Then circa early-to-mid 2018 they changed the rules for monetisation from the previous 10k total views to 1k subs & 4k watch hours over 12 months. That was when I unsubscribed from Red and installed an ad blocker. I had always been anti ad-blocker because my view was that people creating content deserve to get paid for it. That’s still my view in principle, but the increasing enshittification of the web thanks in no small part to shit like this from Google has meant I weigh the pros & cons differently. YouTube showed me very directly that they don’t care about supporting their creators. So I decided I didn’t want to support them anymore. It’s not like this was the first problem…the whole “where’s the fair use” thing came before that, and many other events besides. But cutting off small creators like that, without even grandfathering in existing creators who had been monetised with that threshold, was the last straw for me.

It was even Google’s fault that I moved from Ad Block Plus, which I chose specifically because of its “acceptable ads” policy (basically: let through ads that aren’t obnoxious), to uBlock Origin, which lacked such a policy, after YouTube tried blocking ad blockers from YouTube.

That’s twice now that Google’s own actions have directly led to me supporting them less than I used to. This won’t be the third time, but only because I have no more cuts to give.

I believe the Facebook glasses do have this.

The problem is just that the light is rather easy for an end-user to remove. And that it may be too dim to clearly see in brighter situations.

Mine have interchangeable lenses, so I can swap them out for yellow or clear lenses if the light isn’t so bright but I still want UV protection, protection from magpies, or something to block the wind in my eyes.

Well I could have said Nebula, except that Kurzgesagt was on Nebula, and chose to leave it because they wanted to leech off of other creators on that platform and everyone else said “lol no”.

Oh, Veritasium actually ended up taking that propaganda down? Neat.

Regarding Kurzgesagt, it’s been obvious he’s a grifter for a very long time.

It started when a YouTuber whose channel is called Coffee Break reached out to Philip of Kurzgesagt as part of a video he was doing into the flaws of popular science communication. Specifically, about some significant errors in K’s video on Addiction. Instead of agreeing to collaborate, or even giving a simple “not interested, sorry”, K took an instant accusatory tone, claiming CB must have been making a “gotcha” piece. CB and K agreed that they would talk more about the matter to try and assuage K’s concerns, but K kept stalling while working on a retraction video, at which time K took down the video that was the impetus for this discussion (shortly after, as one of those aforementioned stalling efforts, having said “I never could bring myself to take it down”, claiming it would be “cruel and unnecessary” to do so—funny, considering in his AMA attempting to spin the story, he said “I was really stressed out about the addiction and the refugee video for years. Being finally open about my mistakes and deleting them felt like weight leaving my body.”). The Refugee video was also taken down along with the Addiction one that CB was interested in.

And then CB started getting harassed. K called out CB, and many of K’s friends (other very large, powerful YouTubers such as CGP Grey and Philip de Franco) made very public statements to their audiences attacking CB. It ended up forcing CB into taking down his video, deleting a whole heap of tweets explaining what happened, and putting out an apology. Perhaps it was an apology that CB should have indeed made because his own response to K’s actions was rather hotheaded. But the need for an apology from K was much, much greater. And one never came. K used his larger platform to spin the narrative so that his large audience almost all take his side.

Incidentally, here’s the video that CB was working on at the time. Hari, the scientist discussed in the video whom K worked with on his video discussed earlier, communicated very well with CB on it.

Yeah, they left, along with CGP Grey, a very long time ago. The TL;DR of why is: as early members of Standard, they thought that they and the other early members should be entitled to take a larger share of the income from Nebula than newer creators. Everyone else thought it should be shared more equitably. Essentially, Kurzgesagt and Grey wanted to be able to leech off of the work of others, instead of operate in a worker-owned business where everyone is paid according to the value they bring in.

ReVanced also includes Sponsor Block.

Wait, other people don’t use spruiked?

I guess I should take the opportunity to point out that it’s pronounced “sprooked”. With the “oo” from “moon”, not “nook”.

IMO every dev/publisher acquired by MS was already tainted and on its way out

I’ll assume you mean the more recent acquisitions, not ones from back in the day like Ensemble Studios. Which admittedly they shut down, but the games that they made live on, published by World’s Edge, and are better than ever.

But yeah, with the exception of World’s Edge, it’s hard to disagree. Blizzard in particular was probably so tainted before that being bought out can only have helped them. At least under Microsoft’s ownership there haven’t been any sexual abuse scandals. Bethesda it’s hard to say. They certainly haven’t done anything great since Microsoft bought them. But I’ll hold off judgment until like 12 months after the next mainline Elder Scrolls game comes out…or the 12 year anniversary of the announcement/teaser, if it still isn’t out by then. Activision…I don’t even know what they do, outside of CoD.

The Xbox this article talks about is much, much broader than the console. Xbox is the name of the division of Microsoft responsible for games. If Xbox dies, so do Bethesda, Activision, Blizzard, and World’s Edge. We lose Elder Scrolls and Fallout, Call of Duty, Halo, and all three of the top real time strategy franchises: Warcraft, Starcraft, and Age of Empires.

I’ll be honest, I don’t really care about 99% of what Xbox does and it could go away in a heartbeat and I wouldn’t care. But that last 1% would be devastating. Age of Empires 2 & 4 and Age of Mythology are my top 3 played games of the last decade. In fact, aoe1, 2, 3, 4, and aom collectively make up 9 of my top 20 games by playtime on Steam, thanks to various rereleases. I would be gutted if I’m that went away.

Plus, there’s the wider impact. Half those mergers never should have been allowed, but now that they have happened, the amount of game devs who would lose their jobs if Xbox died would be devastating. That’s all their lives impacted. Many would probably have to leave the industry entirely and hope they can find work elsewhere. Others would be in a precarious position with a glut of workers making it easier for new employers to exploit them.

I suspect that Google doesn’t account for anything. If I had to guess, I’d say it assumes a certain pace as the normal walking pace, and leaves it at that. Elevation, traffic lights, fatigue, and any other factors that might affect it be damned. So its time estimations for a hiking route are going to be a lot worse than its regular walking estimations. And all that’s before you account for, as you say, individual differences.

Fwiw most people I’ve seen recommend switching from Organic Maps to CoMaps. The latter is a fork of the former, made because OM was being run in a very untransparent way, including (but far from limited to) the discreet use of closed-source code.

I don’t hike, but my experience with regular walking directions is that Google is regularly wrong…because it overestimates how long a trip will take.

Its directions for driving and public transport (at least where it has cooperation of the local public transport agency, as it does where I live) are excellent.

Cycling directions are the only one where I’d say a normal person’s experience is likely to be a bad one, with it regularly taking you on dangerous busy roads rather than nearby quieter streets or bike paths.

So I don’t find it particularly surprising at all that someone who isn’t a regular hiker would make the mistake of relying on it.

Yeah that’s an insane amount. Nearly 1 in every 50 joules generated is currently going to generative AI. That’s incredible for a single purpose.

Here’s my thought experiment: nothing changes.

I have literally never used it. I have one very simple rule for chat apps that I hold to over everything else. The user identifier must be a username or email address. It must absolutely not be a phone number or something else that intrinsically ties it to a specific device. What’s App has failed that test since before Facebook bought it. In a world where we have multiple devices and move between them often, it has always been insane to me that other people don’t think there’s a problem with using a phone number as a unique identifier for an individual. And it only gets even worse when you start adding international travel, changing your phone number, etc. into the mix.

The article is about the US

The headline is about an event that took place in Australia. The article is just a crap one all around.