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A golden age of consumer convenience is passing

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Re: A golden age of consumer convenience is passing

#61

Post by amelius »

alexfromapex wrote: post #6
Overtonwindow wrote: post #4

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.

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…

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.

Re: A golden age of consumer convenience is passing

#62

Post by pdimitar »

gsatic wrote: post #52
TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #13

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 wan…

Is HN an example of mindless consumption?

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.

Re: A golden age of consumer convenience is passing

#63

Post by [deleted] »

bicdez wrote: post #21
gniv wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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]

Re: A golden age of consumer convenience is passing

#64

Post by scarface74 »

alexfromapex wrote: post #6
Overtonwindow wrote: post #4

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.

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…

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.

Re: A golden age of consumer convenience is passing

#65

Post by pdimitar »

carapace wrote: post #50
fein wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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, chi…

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.

Re: A golden age of consumer convenience is passing

#66

Post by fein »

brasic wrote: post #57
fein wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

Re: A golden age of consumer convenience is passing

#67

Post by wswope »

rocmcd wrote: post #56
mumblemumble wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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?

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.

Re: A golden age of consumer convenience is passing

#68

Post by goatlover »

mythrwy wrote: post #58
TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #13

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 wan…

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.

Isn’t that entirely subjective? More interesting to how many people? Would people pay money to watch?

Re: A golden age of consumer convenience is passing

#69

Post by goatlover »

scarface74 wrote: post #64
alexfromapex wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

Apocalypticism is in vogue now. Everything is coming to an end.
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