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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

#191

Post by bsder »

overeater wrote: post #129
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…

> 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…

> I want to push back on calling Uber's methods to avoiding regulations to be unethical, separately from discussing the wages.

Nope. Uber doesn't get a pass.

Uber could have confined themselves to the secondary cities with terrible cab service. Basically that's any city in the US other than New York and Chicago. People would (and some did!) have greeted them like liberators. For example, taxi service in Las Vegas was horrible until ridesharing showed up. San Diego taxis to the airport never showed up on time before ridesharing. etc.

Had Uber built up a commanding service in these secondary cities, they would have had all the momentum they needed to run over the incumbents in New York legally.

But, no, Uber decided they couldn't simply be a profitable business. Oh, no, they have to be unicorn-level and that wouldn't happen unless they were in the biggest cities right off. And then, when they showed up, they didn't even try to follow regulations with a fig leaf and were operating blatantly illegally.

And this is all on top of the fact that Uber and Lyft are skirting minimum wage laws.

Re: A golden age of consumer convenience is passing

#192

Post by U6XWpjvdqi4xTPJ »

gonehome wrote: post #28
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…

> “ 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.

Just hop on over to Rutracker, there's plenty of stuff. And Usenet is still great for movies and TV, although in my experience music is getting a lot harder to find (the wide and free/cheap availability of music streaming probably has something to do with this).

Re: A golden age of consumer convenience is passing

#193

Post by P5fRxh5kUvp2th »

plonk wrote: post #151
P5fRxh5kUvp2th wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add to this, the original Witcher is the game that made me decide I was never again going to install a game directly. It was going to be steam or gog, and I've kept to that over the years with few exceptions (rpg maker games, etc). As a freelance developer I would run vmware with a dedicated partition for the VM. The VM was linux and the partition itself was either ext3 or reiserFS (can't remember). Since Windows…

You can download all 3 Witcher games without DRM after buying them on GoG. Did you have the standalone version? I don't understand why they put a DRM in it.

This was back when Witcher first released, they removed the DRM at some point.

Here are a few links referencing it.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/33250/discussions/0/558752451...

https://www.gog.com/forum/the_witcher/tags_drm_in_the_witche...

Re: A golden age of consumer convenience is passing

#195

Post by U6XWpjvdqi4xTPJ »

Scoundreller wrote: post #105
Jiro wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The problem with seeding, for me, is that it effectively implies a need to keep two copies of content. One however you downloaded it and then one actually named properly and stored in a reasonable hierarchy... (Not to mention all the *.nfo and *.lnk they include!)

Re: A golden age of consumer convenience is passing

#196

Post by kiririn »

ramesh31 wrote: post #9

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…

There is likely a free ad free method of watching YouTube on your TV. Anything based on android or LG webOS has ad-free YouTube apps (that don’t require root etc), and with the added benefit of skipping sponsor segments

Re: A golden age of consumer convenience is passing

#197

Post by bubblethink »

bsder wrote: post #191
overeater wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> I want to push back on calling Uber's methods to avoiding regulations to be unethical, separately from discussing the wages. Nope. Uber doesn't get a pass. Uber could have confined themselves to the secondary cities with terrible cab service. Basically that's any city in the US other than New York and Chicago. People would (and some did!) have greeted them like liberators. For example, taxi service in Las Vegas was…

But why ? You start with the place with the most impact and deal with the long tail later. So NYC should be the first. Several states don't allow direct sales of electric vehicles despite how well it works in other states. It's a pointless legal issue that will drag on for years/decades. If Tesla et al. had the same impunity and legal cover as Uber, they would be selling everywhere, and we would all be better off.

Re: A golden age of consumer convenience is passing

#198

Post by massysett »

quietthrow wrote: post #114
suzzer99 wrote: post #102

I'm the dinosaur that still watches most content on a DVR. The fast-forward button never fails.

Can you explain your setup a little bit. I have sling and I can record shows that are store in their cloud. however the fast forward is not exactly smooth to skip ads. most of the time Its skips a little too far ahead or too early and I end up fiddling with it going forward and backwards to be in a reasonably right spot (~5 secs before the ad finishes or after it finishes.) 1) Are there any devices available that all…

I used to use MythTV. I even built a PC with a device that could pull video from a cable box. There’s an IR blaster that will change channels on the cable box, and then a little box that takes the component video from the cable box (no DRM on that) and encodes it (to MPEG-2 if I remember?)

MythTV will process the shows to flag commercial breaks, which you can then skip automatically.

MythTV looks like it’s still an active project.

I stopped using it because I just don’t watch much TV these days and I just got tired of maintaining it. Renting the DVR from Comcast is worth it to me for my meagre needs. But if you’re into TV and don’t mind some geekery, MythTV is definitely a powerful and flexible system.

Re: A golden age of consumer convenience is passing

#199

Post by U6XWpjvdqi4xTPJ »

overeater wrote: post #129
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…

> 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…

> When they were starting, taxis had regulatory capture with their de facto monopoly.

That might be true in some areas, but it certainly isn't in others. And nothing was stopping Uber from being a regulated taxi operator. Instead they were just friends using a networking platform to give each other rides (imagine heavy air quotes throughout that sentence)... while the networking platform set the prices and set the costs and took a large cut...

And in reality Uber et al are already far more expensive than taxis were before they took over. They're also subject to most of the same regulation... except the ones that kept pricing down and predictable/plannable... as taxis were, to boot.

Re: A golden age of consumer convenience is passing

#200

Post by U6XWpjvdqi4xTPJ »

bsder wrote: post #191
overeater wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> I want to push back on calling Uber's methods to avoiding regulations to be unethical, separately from discussing the wages. Nope. Uber doesn't get a pass. Uber could have confined themselves to the secondary cities with terrible cab service. Basically that's any city in the US other than New York and Chicago. People would (and some did!) have greeted them like liberators. For example, taxi service in Las Vegas was…

> Uber could have confined themselves to the secondary cities with terrible cab service.

They've improved certain qualities of cab service here in Austin (like availability) but they've also severely diminished other qualities (like knowing that your driver won't drive straight past the exit because they don't speak English and don't know the roads and don't look at their GPS; or like demand-based pricing).

> People would (and some did!) have greeted them like liberators.

Yeah, because they were running a huge loss-leader to make themselves seem better than the competition until the competition was gone.

I agree that they don't get a pass but... ugh. Their practices, ignoring all law and regulation which apply to them, were not/are not okay no matter where they took place.

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