This is one thing I actually like them doing. I’m a social watcher and also have other things to do; I want to talk about an episode with friends afterwards, and the phenomenon of racing to binge watch an entire series in one or two sittings ruined that. (As well as forcing me to stay away from half the internet until I’ve binged the series myself due to spoilers). I don’t like being “forced” to binge, much rather savour it one episode at a time as it’s produced, really take in and enjoy and discuss the details of each one. Really makes you appreciate it more IMO.

I see your financial argument though, I guess you could wait until a series is over and then subscribe for 1 month and binge away. Or, of course, yarr.

I’m with you on the high seas ever since Star Trek bounced around from place to place. When you’re thinking “uhhh which do I watch this particular spinoff on, is it Netflix or Amazon Prime or…” it’s already too much like hard work. Then they decided to make the latest exclusive to Paramount, yet another subscription. Eh, nah, at that point it’s time to make like Tascha and Yarr it.

However in part I think the comparison to cable (or would’ve been Sky here) is psychological. With those big services you’re still effectively paying to watch a few shows a bunch of different “streaming services” (channels/networks in that case) but as it’s all bundled up into, say, £60/month, you don’t think about it. Or, the average person doesn’t - personally I’ve never justified that much to watch TV. Now that it’s split out into different payments, £10 here for service A, £10 there for service B, the waste of paying so much to so many different services just to watch a few shows becomes more apparent.

Was going to say piracy then realised you said the general public. I don’t think piracy will ever be as prolific as it was when you could just physically hand your mate a VHS tape - torrenting etc is a bit complex for most, as well as the risk of your ISP getting in touch. Those in the know use VPNs and the like but this is a bit techy for the general public.

I think they’ll just cough up. Most average people don’t micromanage their finances so they don’t notice how a tenner for this streaming a service, a tenner for that streaming service etc ends up adding up to more than their cable/satellite/etc subscription did. They just see “a tenner for Paramount” (or whatever) in a vacuum and figure that it’s not much, rather than adding them all together to work out what their monthly TV cost is.

Huh, wow, someone talking sense on the subject and not getting downvoted to oblivion.

Some instances will be more averse to legal risk than others. Some will also lean more towards “censorship” (showing bigots the door) whilst others will be “free speech encouraged” (full of them). That’s the beauty of the fediverse. Pick your poison. Why go all pitchforks and DDOS attacks etc against an instance that doesn’t share your values when it’s piss easy to just switch to one that does?

(I’m somewhere down the middle on the piracy subject. I believe in supporting small individual developers trying to feed their kids. But Adobe and the like can go fuck themselves)

I keep trying to be charitable and think of it in an “incompetence rather than malice” way, but Linus lying, twisting and tripling down isn’t making it easy.

My point about still being able to charge stands. I’ve seen OSS do it - if you want it quick and convenient you pay e.g. through Google Play store or official website. Yes cheapskates will compile it themselves or fork it or grab a free version from F-droid etc but they were probably going to pirate it if it was closed software anyway.

You do know that it’s possible to charge for, pay for and financially support open source software, right? There are even things like Patreon as well.

Let’s be honest though, when everyone is shifting to the fediverse to avoid corporate shit, they’re more likely to gravitate to other things that are free and open and be less interested in something closed and for-profit

Connect seems good enough to me

Wow it’s ALMOST got a slice of the operating system pi!

This (within reason and legality obviously)

It’s a case by case thing. Admittedly I’m defending myself here as I’m 41 dating 25 and I will never assume to be a good person or doing the right thing but am at least trying. Basically minding and respecting the gap but allowing the fact we fell in love to go ahead and happen.

• Both guys (idk, I heard age gaps are more common with gays anyway?)
• He was the one to approach me and ask me out, I’d thought about it but was reluctant to, turned out he got there first
• I check regularly that he’s happy and remind him of where the difference will be in 9 years for example
• It’s an open relationship, largely for his benefit and freedom (of course I get some fun too) and heck we’re not actually all that sexual between ourselves
• I’m not in any rush to pin him down, and often say he’s free to do what he wants, enjoy the 20s fully and decide for himself if he wants a future with me or not. If one day he finds someone closer in terms of age or distance and wants to let me go, of course I’ll be heartbroken but love and want the best for him so would respect the decision - hopefully ultimately remaining friends and lives made richer than when we started.
• To be honest, whilst I know it’s not a good thing, I’m a late bloomer, so in various ways kind of like the same age but sadly in an older body

I’m not gonna be like “oh I’m a good person so it’s fine”, I don’t know that. I might be an asshole. I can only try, based on things like the above, hopefully without being labelled something nasty.

(Who am I defending against anyway? Probably my own conscience.)

41 dating 25, we’re both happy but guess I should hand myself in somewhere ;~;

But yeah definitely looking younger than 36 based on these standards 😅

I literally saw it everywhere on Mastodon, like, I honestly never saw anyone say it directly, just “birdsite” or a censored version. So I adapted to be polite. And sometimes forget which form of fediverse I’m posting on.

I may be misremembering but seem to recall them being early to Tw*tter too. Good sign

Yes and bearing in mind that at this point justice is probably considered a “woke” concept and he’ll get cheered on.

Yeah that’s the worry I was alluding to in my second paragraph and I don’t know what the answer is. Probably that it’s a fundamental problem with capitalism.

The recent climate scares shook me up, I’m embracing whatever we can do to reduce our impact. A lot of it is small, but it’s voting with the wallet.

Thing is, the whole economic system relies on a steady stream of “buy a replacement”. If you make something that lasts forever, the maximum number of sales you can make is around 8 billion (usually less). So stuff needs to wear out and break. I’m sure as heck going to challenge it regardless.

And honestly a recent sustainable purchase was a toothbrush by Suri (my old brush broke. It’s still greener to use what you already have if it works). As a very sleek, quiet, well designed product that feels of a high build quality it’s debunked the thought of sustainable meaning “same thing but with sacrifices”. It proved to me that some sustainable stuff can actually be better.

I’m a bit less worried after reading this comment, which explains things like how they DON’T want it to be “DRM for the web” and the proposed measures to prevent it. https://github.com/RupertBenWiser/Web-Environment-Integrity/issues/28#issuecomment-1651129388

At least one of them requires buying a Google phone to install it on :)

In fact probably all decent compatible phones still involve licensing fees to Google in the purchase price, all of the “alternative” OSes still rely on Google to develop the code base that they copy and strip down, etc. The only other one I can think of is Ubuntu phone, which would be so incomplete you might as well carry a dumbphone at that point.

Trouble is that means using an iPhone. I just came from there. Apple suck in their own unique ways and are no better really.