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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

#101

Post by no_time »

Jiro wrote: post #97
no_time wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 muc…

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.

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

Re: A golden age of consumer convenience is passing

#104

Post by tomjen3 »

beloch wrote: post #86

"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 mu…

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.

Re: A golden age of consumer convenience is passing

#105

Post by Scoundreller »

Jiro wrote: post #97
no_time wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 muc…

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.

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.

Re: A golden age of consumer convenience is passing

#106

Post by NoboruWataya »

wswope wrote: post #67
rocmcd wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Re: A golden age of consumer convenience is passing

#107

Post by tomjen3 »

hotpotamus wrote: post #11
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…

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 enrapture…

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.

Re: A golden age of consumer convenience is passing

#108

Post by NoboruWataya »

dymk wrote: post #71
rkagerer wrote: post #70

Well, paywall that this certainly don't do anything to help consumer convenience stick around.

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.

They do still show you ads if you pay them though, which is kind of annoying.

Re: A golden age of consumer convenience is passing

#109

Post by charcircuit »

Lev1a wrote: post #79
gonehome wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “ 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.

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 85-90€ 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 li…

>and are WAY more popular than any anime.

Which is why they can get away with charging less per copy.

Re: A golden age of consumer convenience is passing

#110

Post by kranke155 »

KiranRao0 wrote: post #85
pdpi wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

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.
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