I mean, it probably would’ve been ideal then but as usual, America was recovering from/embroiled in the last Conservative disasters (financial crisis, Afghanistan/Iraq.) And Obama had just burned a lot of political capital giving people healthcare.

My regular stream site started having issues tonight, so this was kind of miraculous timing! Hopefully one of these works!

Awesome, much appreciated!

Fair enough! Thanks!

So say I’m dumb and don’t know how to find a fork like that…

I cancelled prime when they first introduced ads. But the delivery fees without prime, damn. I think I’d pirate shows if I got prime but I’m pretty sure that just makes them think they should invest in fewer shows. And damned if, pre ads, prime didn’t have a lot of my favourites (boys, invincible, end of the expanse etc.)

What a ramble. I’m just torn.

30 years seems reasonable. On an unrelated note, Audrey Hepburn died 31 years ago.

Except that definition had an absence of evidence.

It’d be weird after half a century of tv, if suddenly in the 2010s it somehow escalated all the self harm/suicide stats.

This might help you understand the issue with reddit, which apparently has yet to ever cover its operating costs within a year:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/eriksherman/2024/02/26/reddits-ipo-filing-shows-lots-of-losses-after-nearly-20-years/

Kind of eye opening, even if you vaguely understood the situation beforehand.

I think you’re misunderstanding my point.

You can still use reddit for free, that won’t change. That is because to reddit you are cattle, the product, what is being sold.

And as long as you are a product, reddit is going to extract as much value from you as they can. It’s why their valuation is in the billions, you are lucrative cattle. And qs someone who has wrangled that cattle, spez is taking his cut.

These are sites premised on free labour but the end user pays nothing to enjoy the site.

As much value is created by those volunteers, the operating/dev costs are very real and can’t just be hand waved away.

Probably very unpopular thoughts but…

A) How many of us wouldn’t angle for an almost 200 million dollar payout? Seriously? All of us are too good for that?

B) Social media like reddit is basically free for users and costs way more than most of us could afford to run. We probably need to figure out some middle ground where people expect to pay a few pennies for something they use for hours a day. Unfortunately, advertising etc has conditioned/conned people into thinking everything should be “free” and with ads.

If you buy a car and don’t use it, you’re in much the same situation. You have an expensive thing gaining you no value. At worst that money could be in your savings. I imagine a company could find more productive uses for that capital. (A decent chunk of capital mind you, Google paid about 10% of its annual profit for a pair of offices in 2018.)

Sure, you could sell the car but you’re going to take a loss as office vacancy rates are at what I assume are historic highs (in Canada it’s about 17%).

The more conspiratorial minded may also point out that most CEO level folks or board members are pretty likely to have a lot of their wealth tied into the market, a not insubstantial sum of which is tied to corporate real estate. A significant disruption there could cost those folks and their friends heavily. It’s a little conspiracy minded for me but also not so much so that it feels ludicrous.

CS50 covers pointers, objects, classes etc and will give you a solid foundation. Fully recommend though, fair warning, it’s challenging. Tideman nearly crushed my soul.

Ha, completely forgot about this.

You should read that article carefully though. They even outline why this is a money maker later:

You might be wondering, how did I get $1650 in total revenue from a $1500 sale? Well, it’s true, because you were able to take 10% of the gift card in breakage income, and on an individual order/customer it can look funny, but on the whole, with your P&L, it’ll be offset by another gift card purchase not being used and money that was “indefinitely deferred!”

So, uhhh, I guess I’d ask, why would you comment on something about which you know nothing?

The inspiration is just having programmed guard rails, not the actual three laws.

Yeah but not at the same quality. And my preferred game is hockey where high quality really makes a difference.

I’d pay for cable for the one/two (please God, two) months my team is in the playoffs.

Nope, the money is counted as income straight away. Think about the process: person gives cash for gift card. Merchant now had the money and a promise to give that amount of inventory at a future date. Some of those promises are never acted upon, in which case merchant has the gift card money AND the merch which they can also sell.