Ademonera
2d ago
If you believe your time is worth money, it might be worth the tradeoff to not have to bother. My main thing is I use iOS where you can’t get vanced YouTube apk or whatever. Until recently, my whole family was under a premium plan until they started gating location of family organizer.
I use YouTube 100x more than HBO Max or anything else. I feel the current price point is worth not hassling with VPNs / ad blockers and knowing I’ll never see an ad on any device.
Ademonera
2d ago
They’re getting progressively more aggressive on this front, though. It’s a cat and mouse game, so you may be right. Lately it sounds like they’ve been doing backend delays that force the duration of the ad to complete before you can view the video.
For those that just want to use the iOS app or use their TV’s built in app, it’s easier to stomach the $25 dollars a month. But I know a lot of people that won’t out of principle.
Ademonera
2d ago
That’s a fair assessment. It used to be their bread and butter, but they smartly repositioned. I still contend it doesn’t look good for them to have lost this generation’s console war, the smartphone OS war, and seem to be resting on their laurels with Windows. It shows a lack of vision and inability to execute. There are still a billion some odd Windows users.
Personally I was hopeful that the TPM gating for Windows 11 was the start of more forceful control over hardware so they could do a massive change for Windows 12 that would move on from legacy components. But I understand that’s not what their customers want. It’s just too bad that Windows is in such a bad state.
I still really feel like the lack of developer interest in windows is a major problem. Apple may not have the sway to enforce a 30% commission on apps like they do on iOS, but their guidance for making macOS apps is generally followed. Their developer community cares enough to follow their design guidelines and put polish into their apps. I don’t see the same for windows apps - there’s no vision or optimism about where the platform is going. Compatibility with old hardware means you’re going to see a lot of apps with windows XP/vista UI if developers aren’t passionate about the platform.
Ademonera
2d ago
So because YouTube is an essential subscription on the internet if you want to avoid being bombarded by nonstop ads, I use YouTube Music as my primary streaming app to avoid paying for another service. I’ve been beta testing their YouTube Labs ‘AI Hosts’ feature. I’ve been noticing a distinct lean towards the kinds of things.
It is comfortable summarizing a musician or a song. It will go on about an artist’s queer journey or struggles with mental health or how a song is meant to represent the Iraq War. It will also go into a Latino accent when playing songs or artists whose names sound like they’re from Central America, though the host is a milquetoast man.
I’ve been trying an experiment where I play traditional conservative, usually country, songs to see what it says about them. I’ve been trying old Johnny Cash, that Rich Men North of Richmond song, and old Dixie songs. Haven’t been able to get the host to comment on any of these. I was just thinking about how this should work if released out of beta.
It’s pretty hard to provoke the host to talk about certain songs. Sometimes it will describe the last track or the upcoming track - or the song / artist from either in general. Not easy to predict when it will jump in between songs.
I could be wrong, but it seems odd to let an AI talk about music with left leaning undertones but (possibly..) not do the same for right wing music because it’s not as ‘safe’. But then again, there is some left leaning extremist music à la ‘Punch a Nazi’ - should YouTube not allow their host to talk about real underground punk band origins or Dixie songs?
Seems contentious and risky to let your AI potentially talk about music or musicians with extremist undertones. But what about like Kanye? What should it say about his antisemitism? Should his name just blacklisted from mention by an AI host?
Music is the one place where there is little to no appetite for outright censorship - it is very bad PR to gatekeep music, in most cases. In Kanye’s case, you might get removed from official playlists, but they’re not going to prevent people from listening to your music.
My reply won’t be culture war focused BUT it is truly insane how poorly Microsoft has handled windows.
Consider that Apple has undergone a major architecture change and is a year out from fully phasing out Intel processors. This came with HUGE performance enhancements that make everything feel much snappier, not to mention battery life on mobile. One of the major notes on M1 was that it is ready the moment your MacBook lid opens. I’m sure a ton of work went into rearchitecting and rethinking core components to get there.
It’s shocking how performant and smooth macOS is. The beach ball is rarely, if ever, seen. They’ve had 2 major redesigns, which never feel half baked. They had enough sway over their developer community to get most of them to make Rosetta versions of apps that run better on ARM. But even fully emulated software runs better than it did on intel.
Meanwhile Windows 11 is like lipstick on a pig. They keep painting over the cruft that’s built up since windows vista, but have never actually rethought how the system works. They literally can’t because so many customers rely on old components they maintain compatibility for. Control panel is still kicking around, window scaling is still broken, etc etc etc. They have no pull over their developer community at all, so they can’t make hard choices that better the OS. Sure, they’re doing cool stuff like WSL and the terminal app. But everything is fundamentally just reskinned aero from 2007 and there’s no sense of vision.
It’s also janky as hell. Windows flash and resize when you click edit mode in Excel, a Microsoft first party app. If you have a filetype you want to open in a program that’s not in the default list, you get sent to file explorer to find the right exe file in program files (still have to see if it’s in x86). Every application install has a wizard and uninstalling an app probably needs a wizard too. No wonder Satya Nadella hates windows.
That’s why these ai features feel so dumb. They’re stuck maintaining support for old enterprise apps and everything is frozen in time as a result. I loath using my windows 11 ai enabled laptop with solid specs. It dies in like 2 hours and can never keep up with me. I wish they’d have made the right choices 10 years ago so I might instead be working with a modern and fluid OS.
Ademonera
6d ago
What if we had a ‘hear the other side’ cwr every few weeks? I want more neoliberals policy wonks in here. Tariffs are on pretty bad footing and nobody’s taken a crack at it. Economic arguments for high immigration etc. Theres been a lot of bad faith posting lately and we’ve been taking the bait.
Ademonera
12d ago
All things considered, I’m not too upset. I think it’s good to have an opposition that’s getting its footing back. It means that all these losers saying Trump is the end of democracy are wrong - Trump’s election motivated a bunch of Canadians to vote in the left and likely here too. It reins him in a bit to know he’s still got to play his cards right to win in 26.
Still feel like the momentum will slow - Momdommy definitely is different and built some enthusiasm for other races. People on twitter right now are like ‘woke is back!!1!’. Still think Trump is going to buck historical trends for midterm elections and keep congress maybe. He’s just so persuasive.
Yeah imo it’s great. Recommendations are solid and community playlists are really good. There’s a lot of edits that you can only find on YouTube, which is a nice bonus. Never used it for podcasts but I’m sure you can use it for ones that aren’t platform exclusive (and you can probably find a reup on YouTube anyways)
More options
Context Copy link