Comments by "Gareth Hart" (@tgheretford) on "Louis Rossmann" channel.

  1. Getting worse in the UK. You don't just have the cost of the item or service but you now also have mandatory service charges, tipping up to 20% and beyond, enforced by guilt and other charges that can double the price.
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  2. I fear vaccine passports will lead to Digital ID which will ultimately lead to a Social Credit System.
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  3. Everyone enjoying their free trial of "you will own nothing and you will be happy"?
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  4. They want to get rid of all the third party apps by making it so non-viable to operate in order to make themselves the exclusive avenue for the site... which then makes it far easier to paywall it for everyone. Twitter and YouTube are heading that way too. ETA: Based on the revenue per user now, if Reddit charged $4.99 a month for access, they'd only need 2.5% of current users to sub to break even. $5.99 = 2% of users. And so on. ETA2: The current situation with tech firms reminds me of what happened with both the UK satellite television industry and the mobile phone networks. Back in 1990 we had two competing satellite operators. Both stated publicly how many viewers each had. Until someone internal asked how much they were making. Turned out both were making big losses. And both realised that if they did not change tack and merge, they'd both be insolvent. So they merged and instead of focusing on numbers of viewers, quickly adopted a (near-)universal paywall, bought the live football rights and focused on average revenue per unit (ARPU). They're now the biggest pay TV company in the UK. In terms of the mobile phone networks, they also used to focus on numbers. Until the 2008 financial crisis. When they suddenly realised like the satellite television platforms that they need to focus on ARPU, not on customer numbers. So my phone network I was on sent an ultimatum to a number of subscribers who were not making enough money - pay double or leave. Many left but the company was now in better financial ground despite having less subscribers, they paid more. So much so the other networks followed suit. Basically, history never repeats but it rhymes.
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  5. Probably a case that the way to unlock the DRM will check first to see if you're subscribed to Premium Prime and if you are not, will only happen once the ads have been shown. That is likely the way YouTube will go as well.
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  6. I knew streaming services would go the same way as satellite and cable subscription services did. As will YouTube Premium.
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  7. There is a reason why pay TV broadcasters no longer relies on pay-per-view per programme and does not implement per channel subscriptions. Viewers would rebel and it would become prohibitively expensive to watch everything people wanted. That's why everyone from traditional pay TV platforms to modern streaming platforms bundle content, it works out cheaper and a better proposition for viewers. Asking people to pay directly for everything they consume, particularly during a cost of living crisis, is a tall order. Advertising works better in that regard because its still paid for by consumers but through the products they buy as opposed to a single tier cost that everyone, rich or poor, must pay to play.
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  8. This is what happens when we treat every single aspect of life as a line on a balance sheet. Including the two year old child's safety. Grossly immoral.
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  9. This is a particular problem for platforms like the Sega Saturn which has seen an emergence of interest in recent years from people who likely bought a PlayStation in the 90s, took interest at the Saturn exclusive games that passed them by until now but can't afford to buy them because the prices are too high. Nor is there any interest from publishers to release a Sega Saturn Mini console or re-publish the games. Case in point, it had probably the best rated Bomberman game of all time but Konami who now own the rights is never going to re-release it.
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  10. They will charge twice. Once for the air you breathe out as a "carbon charge" and again for the air you breathe in as a "clean air charge".
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  11. Be the change you want to see and paywall your videos.
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  12.  @thomastomtom2010  There's a very small minority of women who think that a man asking her out justifies reporting him to HR or the Police for harassment. The man asking her out doesn't know if she belongs to that small minority. A lot of men have had to deal with the thought of their life, social status and career being destroyed. Pair this with 99% of men having absolutely no shot of being able to defend himself in a disclipinary or court of law whom will find against him, you can see how a man might be on edge when considering asking someone out.
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  13. It's just a mask to protect others... It's just social distancing to stop the spread... It's just a vaccine passport to boost vaccine take-up... It's just non-removable batteries to prevent injury... It's just digital rights management to protect consumers... It's just serialisation of parts to deter theft... This is how we end up in this situation.
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  14. The advisors responsible for these measures will never, ever announce that the pandemic is over and ask to remove the mask mandates (the mask acts as a constant reminder of pandemic and danger as opposed to a viable and successful non-pharmaceutical intervention which prevents cases and lowers the case numbers). Because when they do, they lose their power and influence. Lockdown and mask mandates end when we, the public, say it ends.
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  15.  @JanHavel  YouTube is currently testing universal DRM for YouTube on TV users. If that is successful, it will roll out everywhere and Google can set it up so nothing is decrypted unless you pay for premium or view ads.
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  16. Thank goodness that my printer has ink bottles to refill it. No chip, no DRM, no bull.
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  17. The latest anti-right to repair rhetoric in the UK, because of a number of fires from lithium-ion batteries, specifically but not exclusively with e-scooters and being the focus of BBC Radio 4, there is a push to remove the ability to repair or modify any product "for your own safety" and others. Because they believe we are a danger to ourselves and others and can't be trusted. Which will herald everything not being your property and done on a subscription basis. On the GTA front, I bet the next game will be multiplayer only and behind a paywall from day one.
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  18. Companies have figured out how to moneitse items based on time and value. Used to be that you pay for parts, labour and materials. Now they want recurring revenue post sale for as long as the item exists.
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  19. Facebook had a similar issue in the EU. Their response was to put up a paywall. Google will follow suit.
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  20.  @olejniczak12  KitKat sponsored the vending machines in Theme Hospital. Back in 1997.
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  21. Businesses dealing with cash and needing it to be transferred (cash-in-transit) or kept securely do pay a fee for that service and that is passed onto the consumer through increased prices. Which is not the case with card payments. Cash or card, you're still paying a fee one way or another.
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  22. The next argument will be "why should just 1% pay? That isn't right, moral or ethical. Make everyone pay. And then, if they get value forever, make it a permanent ongoing cost rather than a one-off cost". They would argue that everyone paying the same on the same playing field is fair. It's a debate ongoing in FOSS as people look toward paywalls as the equaliser in funding for everything.
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  23.  @mirey-lamb  I know projects are increasingly going down the Patreon/monthly donation route as opposed to one off donations. My understanding of FOSS is that it's free in freedom and not in beer. Seemingly Red Hat doesn't think a subscription service violates FOSS licences.
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  24. Those who live in apartments and terraced housing have the additional problem of not being able to charge their cars at home. Not without trails of cables coming out of homes onto the sidewalk (or pavement where I am from). Unless you can get cars to be as functional as a petrol car where you can fill it up in minutes, there will be a good number of people who practically can not own an electric car. That is if, in the future, most of us can still OWN an electric car!
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  25. And so the march of everything embracing enshittification continues.
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  26. First they'll demand Physical Rights Management for products under their intellectual property. Then we go down the road of them seizing the product you paid for and justifying that it isn't stealing when they do it.
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  27. Wearing a mask for just a couple of months? No. The measures to mitigate from the dangers of terrorism are still with us almost twenty years on. In the UK, we are slowly making face coverings compulsory in more settings (the boiling frog analogy, in order to bring permanent change, you do it slowly - see eBay's home page change from yellow to white) where eventually it will be treated in the same manner as going out with your genitals on show in public. By legal force.
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  28.  @tissuepaper9962  Cash still has costs associated with the handling and processing of it. And those employees don't work for free. Regardless of which payment method you use, there are costs.
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  29. It's not just the Governments of the world that consider VPN's a thorn in their side, corporations do as well when it comes to residential usage, particularly avoid geo-blocking of copyrighted content. Any opportunity to restrict the freedom of the Internet for the populous outside of the state and corporate world "for your own safety" was always sadly inevitable. I'm in the UK so I can't air my grievances officially but I would personally recommend every single American citizen do so. This is bad and there will be consequences beyond the borders of the USA.
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  30. I wonder how long before they pull this nonsense on free users who don't have ad-block enabled to nudge everyone onto Premium (and eventually, Premium with ads)?
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  31.  @Venezolano410  Until your Linux distribution implements a "code of conduct" that will allow anyone 'harmful', 'offensive' or 'discriminatory' to be denied the ability to use that distribution. And then the rest follow suit. What then? BSD? Haiku? TempleOS?
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  32. Wait until companies perfect the four pillars of funding - paying a one off fee for a "licence" plus a monthly subscription fee for access, microtransactions for each item you consume and advertising/sponsorship in said item. All at once. It's when, not if.
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  33.  @Ultima64  The Labour Party plans to bring an amendment to ban VPN's in the Online Safety Bill. If that does not succeed, its only a year before they're are likely to be in power and can bring in their own VPN ban.
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  34. I think the reason you may be expecting blowback in the comments for the concept of paying for value is that you're gaining excellent value from YouTube to host and serve your content at no cost to you. In any other media industry, you pay for the hosting and bandwidth and customers pay for the content and bandwidth. If you hosted it on your own website, you would have to pay for the hostage and bandwidth and likely have to charge per video and/or charge a monthly fee. Everything online and offline will go behind a paywall, I fear. From alarm clocks, food delivery and apps to YouTube, Twitter and Reddit.
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  35. I get tired of pointing out reality and then getting called "negative" because not everything in life is fair and not everything is positive 24/7 like people want you to believe.
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  36. The alternative was paywalls for every site. Life would get very expensive quickly if you had to pay for everything.
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  37. I think the thing that people should be disgusted at is not the people using this service, but the monetisation of loneliness.
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  38. I'm not sure how it harms the creator as they've already been paid based on analytics that are already there even if you use SponsorBlock and you were never going to buy from the sponsor anyway. An argument could be made that blocking ads harms the creator as they do get paid per view/click. But then we get to the argument of - how do they get paid because increasingly, channels want to be paid? Channel memberships and Premium are voluntary (for now) and most people prefer free. Premium itself is extortionate in terms of price and the loopholes people were using to get it cheaper are being closed by Google (it could also constitute fraud). There is a free market option - paywall - but that will disenfranchise 99.9% of your viewer-base.
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  39. The streaming services are following the same trajectory as the cable and satellite services did at the end of the 20th century. Spoiler - it doesn't get any better from here, folks.
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  40.  @gundoxcrit1652  How about the companies still provide the service and collect/use/profit off of/advertise based on your personal data and paywall content and show ads and sponsorships to you? Because that's the direction streaming services are heading now. Satellite and cable TV went down the same road in the 90s. As far as they're concerned, when it comes to making money, all the money is not enough money.
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  41. How long before Reddit demand visitors to their website pay to view each page?
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  42. Widevine is already used for paid-for content on YouTube and will likely extend to all the free content too. Google invented it. There's more DRM shenanigans going around to control content and restrict freedom. See the recent attempt to encrypt "free-to-air" ATSC 3.0 terrestrial channels in the USA.
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  43. Chances are those workers are wearing masks out of fear of being fired if caught not wearing one when required to outside of work.
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  44. I suspect the executives, shareholders and investors in the companies that lost billions will not be sitting back with popcorn. They may have lost billions but they still have billions to pay for the best lawyers. And they will have the ear of the SEC and FTC. The problem that will sink Elon is that as he stated publicly that paid subscribers will have their posts promoted, they become a publisher of curated content and not a platform.
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  45. I worry that YouTube's solution is going to be Widevine in the same way they use it for paid-for content. DRM is already starting to be rolled out on free-to-air television with ATSC 3.0 for the same reason, to control content and restrict your freedom.
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  46. Same thing happened with satellite and cable TV in Europe in the 80s onwards. Free became subscription without ads and then the ads started to creep in to where we are now - expensive subscription with advertising at the same level as free-to-air broadcasters. YouTube Premium will go the same way. Mark my words.
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  47. If anything kills off the advertising revenue model for YouTube, this will be it. If advertisers pull their business en-masse, no amount of preventing ad-blocking will prevent the inevitable realisation that their only remaining path to financial survival will be to paywall everything.
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  48.  @flameshana9  Alongside content behind the paywall. As you'd need to verify your financial details and identity to prove who you are and that you are a real human. It's been thing for a while with satellite and cable broadcasters and recently became a thing with on demand services.
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  49. For these garbage companies, any amount of money is not enough money.
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  50. The one problem of the new model of funding everything directly by consumers as opposed to indirectly via advertising and sponsorship is that it heavily shifts the cost of running services from higher spending, richer consumers to everyone. It's a bigger burden on the poorest. Companies have now figured out that it's more profitable to run everything as a service than to have you pay a one off fee with the additional benefit of you never owning anything. By moving away from ads, we may be creating an even bigger problem where the poorest can no longer afford to live and companies cannot afford to raise wages to meet the higher cost of living. If we get to a point where the likes of Best Buy can no longer make profit from your data and advertising and now charge a subscription fee to access their retail service, everyone else will follow and we're in big trouble.
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