Safeguard

They will claim: "He is always sleepy and slow, and SUDDENLY he is fast and upbeat? He must on some stimulants! We cannot have a President on stimulants!!"

I guess only in the sense that both parties are right wing? One is just extreme in that direction?

We need a new corona that targets christo-fascists...

Because of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unPVf0sqAKI and also: https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/tesla-batteries-range/ and also: https://ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/news/2023/09/11/is-your-car-spying-on-you--almost-certainly--new-report-says

I can go on and on. I love the tech, I hate the companies. Plus: the build quality just does not seem to be existent in this space.

I agree, west Taiwan will eventually fall back into the hands of the people in Taiwan. And the country will be whole again.

They where using words like "purchasing", and asking just as much for the digital files as for the DVD's. If they where even available.

So it makes sense people where seeing it as "owning". And then looking puzzled when Sony decided to break into their own devices and delete files..

I have family that FINALLY see that DRM is a thing in their lives, and they DO NOT like it.

I used to have Netflix, HBO Max, Youtube Premium, Disney Plus, Amazon Prime and "Videoland". But since I used Linux, I could not stream with a higher bitrate. I could not download for offline playback, I had to jump through hoops to get things to play every now and then.

They also did not always have everything I wanted to see, or I had to pay extra for "premium early access" (Disney).

So I was fed up, learned about using multiple usenet backbones, how to send sabnzbd through VPN's, Radarr, Sonarr and Overseerr. Now I only have Netflix and Youtube Premium for my wife. And Plex for myself. And access to much more content.

And I do not consider it stealing, i consider it to be the natural result of them trying to gouge me while still not providing me.

I think Netflix would simply see that as a nice extra benefit. But the main reason is to "stick it" to the writers/actors. Without incurring the wrath of customers for the price hike themselves, they will just point their finger....

They've made Linux gaming a thing. And there where no players there either. So I do not believe that is their actual reason.

The actual reason is that Valve does not want to be beholden or locked to a corporate entity like Apple or Microsoft. They would be very dependent on the whims of those companies.

Linux gives them a platform where they know and can influence it's future.

Perhaps, and this is very cynical of me, they are thinking, how can we make folks feel bad against the writers and actors?

1. price hike and people pay for it: They blame the writers and actors for the price hike.
2. price hike and people do not pay for it and leave, Netflix and people can blame the writers and actors as well. ("see!?!?! those demands are just not accepted by people!!!! ")

It's the only reason for the price hike I think.

I would actually pay for Youtube Premium Family, where it not for the fact that it does not work with gsuite accounts (which I have for my family).

We have spotify for the family, and I would cancel that and switch to youtube and music premium of google. For three dollars more we get ad-less youtube as well as music.

Sorry google, gotta pay attention to these things.

I remember there used to be an idea floating around of paying pennies for sending email a few years ago. It would combat spam, since it would not be economically viable to send millions of emails. It failed; since it would kill email, no-one wanted to pay and lock access rights to a certain group of people.

Elon is claiming he wants this for combating bots and scraping. Whether true or not, he will realize soon enough though that people will not pay for it. (Perhaps even find out it's not bots, but actual people downvoting him)

(At the same time, it's a bad thing we do not want to pay for good journalism/info, it leads to free ad-riddled sites with shitty click-baity content. The good stuff is behind paywalls, and therefore not available to the general public. This leads to a breeding ground for conspiracy theories. Since those are available for free (they want the message out there) and the actual researched stuff is hidden behind those paywals)