He wasn’t thinking ahead there was he. But then again in the Sith world, a clone of you would probably stab you in the back and replace you. The rule of 2 doesn’t allow clones ;D

Piracy, cable TV, cord cutting.

You’re throwing a lot of words together without making any argument.

YT is winning the battle against blockers as evidenced by the extreme vitriol toward them here right now.

YT are winning at business: they are massively successful.

YT are winning competitively. Just listen to the cries of monopoly around here. That’s how strong YT are.

YT won my business by making something I use every day and mostly can’t find a substitute for.

What are they losing again? They’re not even losing the ad blocker users, who clearly and obviously depend greatly on YT or they wouldn’t be so mad that their free ride is over.

Explain to me again how someone who writes an ad blocker gives you the idea that YT is supposed to be creating an egalitarian world? That part made no sense.

It’s not a “maybe” for me. I haven’t seen a YT ad in years. That’s Premium.

That’s exactly right!

All you have to do is look at other streaming services which are subscriber-only to see the truth of what I said. Even the ones that have ads are not doing backflips to cram them everywhere as the other commenter complained, because ads are just supplementary revenue, not primary. The subscription model is incredibly strong historically and currently. It’s patently ridiculous that you think you can wave it away so easily. You’ll also notice that most other subscriptions are cheaper than YT Premium - because they’re going for subscriber scale where YT has a powerful ad business in place that subscriptions replace.

If you’re not following me, I’ll simplify: if everyone on YT has to subscribe, as on Netflix, it in fact would cost a lot less. But you don’t, so you get ads up the wazoo.

I’m even more baffled by your criticism that YT cares more about shareholders than creating an egalitarian society. Thats true of literally every business including the one you work for. YT never said they were trying to make society egalitarian. Where do you even get that shit from?

Once I was moving house and we set an old couch out on the sidewalk. It was very large and heavy so we were concerned that no one would take it. But we lived in a poorer area where most everything got taken, and sure enough it did disappear.

A few more days went by and we continued packing to move. The big day finally arrived and I went out that morning to greet the mover truck and found that whoever took the couch had come back and returned it during the night! I was like “you can’t do that!” LOL

That’s a good question because the clone army based on Jango Fett shows that cloning tech is basically perfected in this universe. But the conditions were less than perfect in Palpatine’s case. Jango Fett was there in the facility, young and healthy and giving fresh blood samples daily. Palpatine died unexpectedly, was already old, and they might have had to clone him from whatever they could find, like the smell of his farts on his throne cushion or whatever. Cloning is copying so source fidelity matters.

It’s not like YT is a democracy LOL

And YT was never free. It has had ads from the beginning. Perhaps not its very first months as a startup but those were supported by its seed investment capital so obviously a special and finite circumstance.

YT is ad supported. It always had been. Free services need to make money somehow and ads are one way. It is baffling watching people realize this for the first time because they’ve been shielded by their ad blocker for years, but dude, here outside that little bubble, in the real world, this is how things work.

Oh it’s a shitty story no doubt.

I’m just arguing against this notion that Palpatine was put back on the screen with zero explanation of how he returned from the dead.

LOL I donate to my instance, “bro.” Lemmy costs money. You’re just freeloading for the moment.

Did they not show a cloning facility that was constructing bodies for him? And have we not seen that force users consciousness survive after death? And wasn’t there a whole setup for his consciousness to be transferred into a new body through some dark side ritual? It wasn’t a great explanation but it was sufficient. I’m confused about why people think this was entirely left out. That one line of dialogue is bad but just because those characters don’t have an explanation doesn’t mean we as the audience do not. We do!

Most homeowners don’t need better than HF. If you start getting into more sophisticated equipment their quality can be really problematic but for all the basic stuff a homeowner needs: hammer and pliers, HF is one-stop.

From there you have to be careful, but gems can be found. I’ve been using their 120V 2HP dust collector in my wood shop for years now and it is an insane value for a decent machine.

It sounds like you went to several physical stores and when their stock on hand was not sufficient you concluded your only option was Amazon. What about the rest of the internet?

I’ve been deeply hooked on Amazon for a long time and trying to wean myself off of it for a variety of reasons. The most helpful thing in this, I’ve found, is Apple Pay.

I happen to use an iPhone and Apple Pay is easy. It is increasingly accepted everywhere, making any online store a one-click purchase. Maybe for you it would be PayPal or Google Pay but whatever your preference is, these payment services have come a long way.

For years I was stuck on Amazon because of the convenience. I am not ashamed - convenience is a real benefit when life is busy. And I had everything set up on Amazon, and they had most things available in their search.

But Google Shopping also has almost everything in the world available and most or all the retailers there accept Apple Pay. So now I just do that. It works just as easily.

You can even search on Amazon and then take note of the name of the seller and search the internet for them and then buy direct. Most have websites because Amazon fees eat into their profits. They would rather sell direct. And easy payment services plus ecommerce platforms like Shopify and Square make it easier than ever.

Amazon is becoming a cesspool of Chinese scams these days. I am tempted to say that I still prefer Amazon because the returns are easy but the fact is that I have HAD to return a lot of things to Amazon because they were not what I thought I was buying or they were just absolute shit quality or arrived broken.

So the point remains: you have alternatives. Use them. If you want physical stores, that’s another matter entirely and I agree those are getting fewer and worse. But Amazon doesn’t always beat them on price. You should check every time and you might be surprised. I was in my local CVS and I saw they had the exact LED bulbs I needed to buy but I thought they’d be too expensive there so I checked Amazon on the spot. CVS beat them by a couple of dollars. So check every time!

I did $390 in charitable giving last month and paid $23 for YT Premium. My priorities are just fine so please don’t lecture me on how to spend my money.

I can point you to some people who need your money more than you do. Are you going to give it to them? Why not?? Doesn’t money flow to those who need it??? Isn’t that how this works???

Everyone in every aspect of this economy tries to get the most while paying the least. I swear people in here are bitching about absolute economic basics that they themselves are guilty of.

If you hate monopolies, go pay for Nebula and Curiosity stream like I do.

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Don’t worry, I spent zero seconds considering who you might be. I’m arguing with your point of view as expressed here by you but also similar statements by others.

They’re not getting it for free. They pay video creators. And they know that the more they can pay them, the more and better content they will get.

And with any product pricing, there is always a balance between charging less to get more customers, or charging more to get more money per customer.

I’m pretty sure YouTube knows more about how to price their service than any of us.

This is not double dipping, because the value of your data is factored into the subscription cost.

Personally, I don’t care that much if I watch YouTube videos about Game of Throne and then see ads for HBO House of the Dragon in Google search. But that’s me. I don’t have this overinflated concept of how precious my YT watchlist is to me.

An old coworker of mine started a company that was an ad network that paid YOU for your data every month, drawing from the ad revenue they got from using your data. The fact is that your data is not worth very much at all on the open market.

With some exceptions I think all the “BUT MY DATA!” is disingenuous pearl-clutching. Because everyone ITT has a credit card in their wallet right now, and that company has sold their personal information and purchasing habits thousands of times over and they’ve never cared.

But suddenly they have to sit through a YT ad because their ad blocker got killed, and now people suddenly care about their data, and fairness to creators, and capitalism, and privacy!

All those are just ways to legitimize the fact that people lose their minds when they have to wait 15 seconds to get the thing they want for free. They’re ashamed to admit that they are that childish, so they make it about their deep, deep commitment to data integrity.

People need to take a step back from their devices IMO.