Every time someone is like: “what? You don’t have cable you weird person you!” This is why. Got tired of paying a premium for commercials and over the years the commercial breaks got longer, and longer and longer. Hey cable subscribers...go ahead and channel surf and take some stats on how often a commercial is playing as you iterate through each channel. It’s ridiculous. Netflix is alright with me.
I'm a cable subscriber. I haven't watched an ad in nearly 20 years. DVRs solved the ad problem years and years go.
(don't get me wrong—Netflix is great, too. And also torrents. Not even thinking about ads is better than fast forwarding through them).
Every minute a kid watches a stupid Netflix kids show is a wasted minute they can be stimulating their brain positively instead of numbing it with manufactured industrialized content. Having said that my kids do get a couple hours on the weekend and it's actually fascinating to see what happens when they put the iPad away. It's almost like they need a half hour or so to re-adjust to real life after all the stupid con…
I just wanted to say that I agree. I live in Denmark where we have public service TV for kids which is orders of magnitude better than the crap on Netflix.
> Ublock doesn't cover mobile devices though It does on FF for Android!
The context here is youtube. When you're watching a youtube video on android, it's either in the youtube app, in a webview, or in the browser. The first two are not covered by ublock and the last one is the least likely to happen. (in my experience anyway)
NewPipe on Android. Superior to the Youtube app in every way.
The biggest one I’m always reminded of is “Do you have a phone?”... The always-on, cloud-connected device that you carry everywhere at all times?
> The always-on, cloud-connected device that you carry everywhere at all times? You're doing it wrong. ;-) It's easy to leave your tracking device plugged into the wall at home, just like a landline, or put it in "airplane mode" when you don't want to be tracked or bothered.
A phone can still track you even if location services are disabled [1], and it can be used to remotely listen to you even when powered off [2]. On my phone, airplane mode does not disable location services.
The only way to be certain that your phone is not tracking you, 24/7, would be to do as you suggest and leave it elsewhere. And even then, it can still be used to monitor conversations in its vicinity.
I'm not overly concerned about these things, but it's good to be aware of the ways that your device can track you.
Lots of studies on video games show cognitive benefits, actually[1]. I seriously doubt all video games are cognitively beneficial, but it's ludicrous to just dismiss them all as a monolith. Most of the people who are paranoid about video game "screen time" seem to just be extremely ignorant, and unwilling and/or disinterested in alleviating that ignorance. They've already decided that video games are garbage for the…
There's simply no need for them. The world and life in general are full of so much experiences and activities that wasting life away on a couch playing video games is simply not the best use of ones time. That's just my opinion. The only downside we see as parents is that it's very difficult to get our kids on playdates with other kids because all their friends want to do is sit in front of a screen. My kids don't ev…
I like how you just ignored the cognitive benefits I brought up because it's too inconvenient to your narrative.
Thanks for confirming what I suggested: people like you have already made up their minds, facts be damned.
I have an iPhone, an Amazon Echo, and a Google Home device. I recently had to watch live TV because I was watching a sports game, and the number of ads that targeted my listening devices was obscene. Every other ad was either for the Echo or Home, or for something unrelated but mentioning 'Hey Siri, tell me about [product being sold]'. To me, it feels like it's an effort to subvert the always-listening/always-watchin…
I am not surprised at this ad abuse at all, and nor should you be. These devices are made and sold by companies for whom user tracking and monitoring is their main business.
Maybe an analogy in poor taste, but the premise of BBT is basically “look how many negative stereotypes of scientists and engineers we can get our audience to point and laugh at, if we take our lazy awkward mean-spirited writing and put a laugh track over the top”. Try searching for versions with laugh track removed to get a better sense of the writing per se without the extra emotional manipulation. Compare with Sil…
I find this sentiment interesting. I find BBT hilarious and identify with the characters. I often drag my wife to watch a specific BBT episode to get her to understand the way I think or understand the way I was in the past before I met her. I don't find it demeaning at all. I often find it hilarious and say, "yeah, that's me right there!" I see myself in Sheldon, Leonard, and Howard all of them. Raj, not so much. I…
It’s for those of us who aren’t able to express ourselves using the characters. My family, friends, and outsiders use the stereotypes to label me or describe me in ways I find incorrect. It’s not a knock against those it does, I’m just incorrectly placed and it’s frustrating. In some ways, yes, it’s hating the symptom and not the root, but I’m only human despite my steadfast nihilism.
Interesting. The one good thing with ads on the web is that it works as a micropayment. I wonder how a service like Youtube would work without ads ? I currently have a no-ads subscription on Youtube (packaged with a google music, so it is pretty attractive to me) but I don't think this service would work as a gated subscribe only website.
Brendon Eich is working on "Brave Browser", which aims to use Ethereum to enable an ideal relationship between consumers, content producers, and advertisers.
A relationship that still includes advertisers is never ideal.