That’s not how I read it at all

By supporting work on a freelance basis for these topics, Valve enables us to work on them without being limited solely by the free time of our volunteers.

Seems pretty explicit to me. Valve is allowing some arch linux contributors to work freelance for valve and get paid money to work on the things they would otherwise be working on for free. This allows these contributors to spend much more time working on these things because they can treat this work as the-thing-I-do-to-put-food-in-my-mouth rather than something extra they would do on the scraps of time they have on the side.

It’s one thing to pay, and another to be squeezed dry.

When ads were mostly static banners on websites almost nobody was blocking them, because they were mostly unobtrusive.

However, they would often link to shady websites that would install random crap, so the usecase for blocking them was already there.

Then they became animated, and they multiplied. It was one at the bottom of content at first. Then a couple. Then two vertical banners on the sides too. Then more rectangular banners here and there for good measure.

Then they became unkillable javascript popups, then proper new browser windows. Then autoplaying videos with audio were added. And this is just the visible stuff. Add tracking pixels, tracking cookies, browser fingerprinting, and tons of other spying technology deployed under the guise of “but the content is free”.

After every step the use of ad and tracking blockers became more legitimate as serving ads moved further and further away from paying for free content and squarely in the space of selling user data collected without consent for huge profit margins.

If ads and subscriptions were enough to just make a normal amount of profit, very few would be blocking ads or pirating content, because the amount of ads or the price of subscriptions would be reasonable and affordable.

But since everyone wants to make a 1000% markup on the content they generate, they will drive their very own paying customers away.

Youtube could have served me a couple ads per video and I would have kept using it forever. Instead they served me a minimum of 20 ads per video, so now they will serve me zero, forever.

Netflix could have gotten 12 euros every month out of me for their dwindling and dwindling content selection. Instead they wanted 14 after a while. And 17 after a while. And 19 after a little while more. All the while refusing to serve me the 4k content I paid for.

So instead they now get zero too.

I am very happy to pay for content, and a lot of people like me. But the comment you originally replied to was in reference to youtube increasing the price of their subscription by ludicrous amounts. You replied there content isn’t free, and I replied that youtube has no problem making money. The increases are not to keep youtube afloat, is to make youtube make 10 billions in profit rather than 8 next year.

It’s not about paying a fair amount of money for content, it’s about making you pay all that you can give and suck you dry.

So to your question “how do you pay for content/services in general?” I answer “with money”, but that is not what is happening here.

Youtube revenue in 2023 (before these price hikes) was 31.5 billion USD.

The revenue for the entirety of alphabet in 2023 was 307 billion USD.

Youtube alone generated 10% of the entire revenue of alphabet’s portfolio in 2023.

Yes, revenue is not profit, but I could not find profit figures for youtube.

Alphabet’s operating income for 2023 was 84.3 billion USD. Assuming a similar proportion of revenue to operating income (I know, hella extrapolating, but again no direct sources for youtube) that would put youtube’s operating income in the ballpark of 8 billion USD.

It’s not that they aren’t making money because people are “stealing” as you say from poor little indie company youtube. It’s just that they want more more more MORE MORE MONEY.

Because of course they do. It’s never enough.

Edit: because I forgot to link my source: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1652044/000165204424000014/googexhibit991q42023.htm

The entire studio behind Life by You has been liquidated and everyone in it fired.

Better hope Paralives and InZOI are good, otherwise Sims will be without a competitor for 20 more years.

Does it trigger you that I am saying that Russia invaded Ukraine? You seem to be quite tilted about it. Maybe learn the meaning of words before using them, I am being the opposite of evasive. You said I am wrong, and I said I have nothing to be wrong about because I did not provide opinions, only a single fact: Russia invaded Ukraine.

Goodbye

Maybe try debating people when you learn to form coherent thoughts. What I said is “Russia invaded Ukraine”, there is no bad faith or lying about it. It is an objective fact.

It does indeed seem that someone is stupid and lazy between the two of us, try looking in a mirror and you’ll find them.

I know I’m wrong? Notice you replied on my first and, at the time, only message in the whole thread. And my statement is the fact that Russia invaded Ukraine.

So no, I don’t know I’m wrong. In fact I know I’m right.

Nato is a defensive alliance, not an offensive one. The only way it could be perceived as a “threat” by Russia is id Russia had intention of expanding in that direction.

And what happened to the self-determination of countries, if countries like, say, Sweden and Finland want to join NATO as additional defence against a militaristic expansionist Russia, that is absolutely their right.

But since you are not debating in good faith, I’m not gonna spend more words and effort on this.

Was it western hegemonic interests that started an invasion of Ukraine? I seem to recall it was Russia.

Seems like a bad idea unless she’s very familiar with the projects she would help document. Documentation is notoriously not something that can be produced by a newcomer, because it requires experience that a newcomer doesn’t have.

I guess the best way for a newcomer to help would be to try to use the product and ask every little question they have to make sure they receive the correct answers and context and, at the end of the process, enough knowledge would be gained to contribute at least one piece of documentation. But the bulk of the knowledge would still come from people that already know the product, so in terms of efficiency it’s way worse than having the authors write it.

Of course, if the authors are unwilling or unable to write good (or any, even) documentation, having someone that has the will to gather the scattered information into a central place and work on it so it’s digestible and high quality is still unbelievably useful.

But yeah, my point being that documentation is far trickier than it seems as far as open source contributions go.

Ah, no idea about live streams as I don’t watch those. I would imagine they have a different format for those as two ads every 2 to 5 minutes wouldn’t work for those.

Now that I think about it, it may be because I don’t have an account so maybe google has less data to harvest and sell and so I get more ads. Unfortunately they might think that this would make me think “I should make an account” or “I should buy youtube premium”. Instead, I just think I need to avoid that place as much as possible.

Except 10 to 20 seconds of advertisements play every 2 to 5 minutes. It’s not a matter of patience

It is genuinely infuriating to the point I simply uninstalled youtube on my iPhone and switched to using web-based alternatives. And yes, no need to lecture me on apple, I only have an iPhone for reasons. I’d rather have a linux phone instead.

2 ads play every time you start a video. Maybe you’re watching a playlist and realize 5 seconds into the video that you already watched this one, so you click the button to go to the next video.

Two more ads, no matter that you got two ads literally 5 seconds ago.

Looking for a specific video that you don’t quite remember the title of? That’s right, two ads every time you go “hmm no, it wasn’t this one”.

Two more ads are also guaranteed to play within at most minute 2, usually just after 60 seconds. So that’s a minimum of 4 ads in the first or second minute of any video you watch. After that, the amount of ads varies, but in my experience it’s not less than two every 5 minutes, and they happen randomly.

So every 5 minutes at most you get 10 - 20 seconds of advertisements in the middle of a sentence. Wanna go back 10 seconds to refresh the context that was lost by the jarring interruption? No problem, have 2 more ads. Sometimes as much as 3 times in a row.

The worst offender I had was a 30-ish minute video where, and I swear this is neither exaggeration nor hyperbole, two ads would play every two minutes, for the whole video (it’s also the video where I got two ads playing when I scrolled back 10 seconds, 3 times in a row). So overall on that 30 minute video I must have got around 45 to 55 ads (2 at the start, 2 every 2 minutes, 2 almost every time I scrolled back 10 seconds).

There are plenty of pasta dishes and sauces that use cream, and while sour cream is not used in italian cuisine I think it tastes amazing :)

So I can absolutely see sour cream working in pasta

I am always amazed by how the japanese are often times very willing to experiment and be inventive in terms of melding their own culinary culture with foreign ones, considering the isolationist and conservative history and reputation they have overall as a people.

To me, that simply says that food really is one of the universal languages.

I’d love to try this dish if just for experimentation, although I suspect it wouldn’t be something I’d have more than once lol

Yeah, no judgement here, when one is poor they gotta do what they gotta do, and ketchup is probably cheaper than decent tomato sauce in some parts of the world I would imagine.

That said, I am willing to bet that the same pasta but with actual prepared tomato sauce (that means put it on the stove, let it simmer, add some salt, maybe a bit of pepper or a pinch of chili flakes if you like, and a drop of EVO oil when it comes off the heat) in place of ketchup would be even better.

Although in your case, the ketchup recipe likely brings back happy emotions relating to your childhood which, after all, are also part of the food experience. Cheers!

+1. Arch is super easy to install, just open the install guide on the wiki and do what it says.

It’s also really stable nowadays, I can’t actually remember the last time something broke.

As a counterpoint, on ubuntu I constantly had weird issues where the system would change something apparently on its own. Like the key repeat resetting every so often (I mean multiple times an hour), weirdness with graphic drivers, and so on.

That said, I also appreciate debian for server usage. Getting security updates only can be desirable for something that should be little more than an appliance. Doing a dist upgrade scares the shit out of me though, while on arch that’s not even close to a concern.

Lol that’s what I noticed too.

One side wants less people to die, the other side wants fascism and racism. Please help me compromise.

So are you saying that me pushing a pregnant woman down the stairs is the same as doing so to a non pregnant woman?

Imo, no. Pushing a woman is assault, pushing a pregnant woman is assault and something else (another post suggested something akin to manslaughter, which I think fits if the assault causes a miscarriage)

the pro-life response is simply that the unborn child doesn’t get a say in the matter.

Correct. An unborn child doesn’t get a say in whether they are aborted or born. They have no opinions, they have no wants. The unborn child cannot consent to being aborted but they cannot consent to being born either. The only valid opinion and choice is that of the mother, because it’s the mother’s life that is very physically (and eventually also mentally, socially, etc) affected by the pregnancy.

Which is also why I said that pushing a pregnant woman should have harsher penalties than just assault: it also endangers or destroys something whose state of being only the woman should be in charge of.

It’s like if I pickpocket your wallet that’s stealing, but if I steal the wallet from your house that’s also breaking and entering.

As an italian my strong belief is that your wife should put whatever she wants on pizza. Hell it’s a flatbread with condiments, go crazy. It’s meant for it. If you want a none pizza with left meat, you should have a none pizza with left meat.

Now if you put ketchup on pasta, I will judge your culinary literacy. Ketchup makes for a terrible pasta sauce