171–180 of 231 posts
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The prices are awful too. It's clearly not targeted at random people wanting to stay informed.
I had to go check - $40/mo for a digital newspaper?! Surely this is aimed at a different demographic than mine, because I can’t imagine anyone I know paying that for news.
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…
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This is false. Amazon had zero profits for a very long time and was publicly traded. It did very well. There are numerous examples like this.
That is exactly what I said, publicly traded companies cares about growth over profits, while companies that never intends to go public and therefore doesn't benefit from valuations tend to care about profit over growth.
The two are intricately related.
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For me it’s about context. Steam ads do not bother me that much since it’s easy to turn off/dismiss, but also importantly they're "first party" - I’m already on steam and a gaming mood so I don’t mind checking out offers for other games. Streaming ads are annoying because under no circumstances I'd be thinking of picking up tampons while watching a football game.
What's your thoughts on targeted ads in general? Setting aside the ease of dismissing - would you be willing to give up some data to allow them to be smarter (having more context)?
I personally do not mind the idea of targeted ads and data brokers but as a software engineer I know my data is not safe due to ignorance or incompetence
It’s not just about on demand online services. Inflation is sky high everywhere, that will eat up a lot of convenience in daily life. There is a small chance that this will reduce wealth inequality but it may be only temporary.
High rates of inflation increases wealth inequality over time.
Those working paycheck to paycheck (or anything close to that; ie income dependent) can't outrun it, attempt to hedge against it, or typically even keep up with it. They rapidly fall behind. Their standard of living gets demolished quickly, as they're very sensitive to price increases on staple goods, energy costs (whether heating or gasoline et al.), or rent.
The capital / asset classes can keep up with or outrun inflation however. And the impact on them in terms of standard of living is entirely trivial. Elon Musk at $200 billion isn't much richer than Bill Gates was during his peak circa 1999-2000. Inflation adjusted they're quite close. The rich have kept up with inflation because they own assets that are capable of doing so (primarily equities, although other rich-person asset classes have done moderately well also, such as art and extremely valuable real-estate), the rest of the people largely have not kept up (and never will in the case of high inflation).
On top of this, the Fed's perma low rate program, required by the US Government's debt situation, bolsters the wealth inequality significantly by artificially inflating assets such as equities and housing.
Workers primarily do well in environments of low inflation with a supply / demand imbalance for labor (in favor of labor). That environment existed, most recently, in a stable manner, in parts of the 1990s and from roughly 2014-Covid.
I finally broke down and paid for YouTube Premium. There is literally no other option to watch YouTube on a TV nowadays. It is absolutely mindblowing the level of nonstop ads they shove down your throat in-between (and during) every single video now. Completely unwatchable otherwise. And it's impossible to buy a dumb TV in 2022, so you're stuck with the official Android/Roku YouTube apps that have no ad-blocking capa…
It requires some investment of time and money, sure, but nothing outrageous and far from impossible.
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Steam was at the right place at the right time. Also it was more insidious in its behavior. Throughout the late 2000s and 2010s most AAA games were Steam releases only. Even boxed copies were not much more than a Steam code. This allowed them to build a powerful network effect. At some point gamers were demanding that any new big release was a Steam release ("no steam no buy").
This does make some sense. Games are big (file size wise) and prone to updates. Steam helped handle this distribution in a reasonable way. It's also why people prefer app stores or package managers, because they give a predictable distribution experience over hunting for scattered software. I'd say the problem with Steam is that it should have a community-run alternative/competitor. There hasn't been much push for on…
Indeed. Steam is the original package manager of Windows. It's so good that nobody really remembers what it was like before Steam. They don't remember downloading and manually applying half a dozen incremental patches to their games. People are used to its incredible convenience now.
As far as DRM content licensing digital fiefdoms go, it's certainly the least bad. It's easy to forget that we don't really own anything on Steam. It certainly pisses me off when other studios start launching shitty alternatives to it that are even worse in every single way.
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> Uber has engaged in some pretty "creative" (i.e. unethical) business tactics to muscle their way into the taxi industry while avoiding both regulations and the payment of decent wages. They moved fast, but it was only a matter of time before government regulators (and their own reputation) caught up to them. Transportation is, indeed, something that's going to go back up in price in the short-term, if only because…
That’s the problem. You are unwilling to discuss the wages. This predatory capture also existed to ensure a decent wage. Uber did everything they could to hide the true cost of being a driver. Tons of sneaky fees. Gray area for insuring your car. Dropping drivers wages just after they bought their vehicle from a Uber financing program. There’s a reason the quality of Uber drivers went down, the good ones realized tha…