Sure, that's basically how Kindle pricing works ($X with ads, or $X+$Y without ads) and it's infinitely better having the choice. If Amazon ever gets rid of the without ad version they will lose me as a customer overnight.
Likewise, there are a whole lot of products that don't have an "unsubsidized" version that I simply refuse to purchase (or have purchased and returned after confirming that they will not work when locked in IOT jail where they can't talk to the internet.)
I would encourage you to partake in sharing files with your neighbor, and on the occasion you feel strongly you want to support something, get that subscription for a month or buy some merch or similar to show you really appreciate what you watched.
It's what we've come to. If buying isn't owning, piracy isn't theft. And in a market where data theft is built into the price, well... you are the one to set the price and the recipient of who you deem deserves it.
>If Amazon ever gets rid of the without ad version they will lose me as a customer overnight.
Didn't they already remove the option for a completely ad free prime video experience or am I hallucinating that? They have such a ridiculous hold on the e reader market I feel like it is just matter of the next down quarter.
They seem to own 75% of the market, and I think you can get pretty much every book on every device, right? Of course your existing library is locked-in; ideally, that'd be illegal.
Worse - they actually can remove books that you've purchased. Not only revoke license for future downloads - but actually remove them from your device.
Does it actually make a difference?
I have an old Kindle (from 2013 I think) and I opted for the ad version. I only see ads on the lock screen, which means I never really read the ads. The few times I’ve looked at them intentionally, they were books I’d never consider reading, just from the title and cover; in other words, a terrible ad for the recipient.
Does the ad-free version not collect your data too?
I don't actually care if they collect my data in that particular case. There's really nothing of significance that Amazon gets from my reading habits that it Visa doesn't already get from my purchasing the book in the first place.
I care if I see ads, even if I "don't read them". And when it comes to other devices, like IP security cameras I might care a lot more about whether the manufacturer has access to the device once it's set up.
My goal was just to point out that there is at least one existing case where you can pick between a subsidized and unsubsidized (or less subisdized if you prefer) product, and having the choice is strictly better than not having the choice.
> I don't actually care if they collect my data in that particular case. There's really nothing of significance that Amazon gets from my reading habits that it Visa doesn't already get from my purchasing the book in the first place.
Visa knows you bought a book. That's all they know. Amazon knows that you actually read the book (or didn't), how long it took you to read the book, how many times you read it, every date/time when you opened it, what specific pages you flip to and re-read later, etc. Maybe you consider that data to be "nothing of significance", but Amazon doesn't see it that way. They spend a lot of time and money collecting, storing, and analyzing that data and it isn't because they didn't think it's worth anything.
I'm reasonably certain that I am about as old if not slightly older than the invention of in-ear headphones. I'm also reasonably certain that I have always used "headphones" to refer to any small portable speaker designed to inject sound directly into the ears. I'm absolutely certain I have never used the term "earphones", although "ear buds" was/is a common synonym for in-ear headphones.
Then the US English is winning out because we never said earphones over here. I’m much older so have a clear memory of when they hit the market. We said earbud for a while but that was a momentary distinction and it seems we’ve mostly reverted to our generic term of headphones (which lacks any distinction on form factor ) so we use it for pretty much any and all cases.
I actually think the AirPods naming helped this as it’s kind of a clunky product name that’s nearly a misnomer if you consider iPod is still a part of our vernacular. I don’t hear people saying “where are my AirPods?” Instead it’s “where are my headphones?” Had it been called AirBuds then maybe it would have stuck since ear buds was a thing.
As I think back, I feel like earbud is distinctly tied to the corded iPod accessory. As that died out, so has the term.
This nipple is adapted for insertion into the ear, and is ordinarily covered with a rubber cover to lessen the friction against the orifice of the ear.
The fact that there are "cloud pricing" and "schedule a call" links already tells me all I need to know. Doesn't seem like this is a product that is really competing with SQLite at all.
That's just because they're using a different scheme to fund development. SQLite has its paid support and consortium, while Turso is leaning on cloud hosting and the paid support that comes with that. Both can still be used standalone and unsupported, completely for free.
Turso is arguably positioned slightly better as a standalone product seeing as it's using a more traditional open source "bazaar" model, as opposed to SQLite's source available "cathedral" model.
There's a lot _I_ don't understand about LLMs, but I strongly question whether there is a lot that the best experts in the field don't understand about LLMs.
Our theories of how LLMs learn and work look a lot more like biology than math. Including how vague and noncommittal they are because biology is _hard_.
this is an argument against LLM cognition. we don't know anything about the human brain, and we don't know anything about LLMs, so they must be similar? I don't follow
It's an argument that we don't need to understand LLMs to build them. But mostly it's just a statement of fact to promote correct understanding of our world.
Also, not all of the admin overhead would disappear if we got rid of means testing. I don't have the expertise to come up with a specific number, but I'd wager that getting half the admin costs back would be the absolute best case. I still support simplifying means testing for benefits programs, but not because it's going to magically free up a consequential amount of money.
> Also, not all of the admin overhead would disappear if we got rid of means testing.
Exactly. The same conversation happens with discussion about eliminating private health insurance: Other countries with nationalized health care still have their own overhead. It's less than the overhead of a private healthcare system, but not by as much as everyone assumes. You could completely eliminate the overhead of private health insurance in the United States and it would only change the situation by a couple percent, though most people assume it would be much, much more.
The only real use case for these is occasional chemistry usages.
But very very very very ignorant people still insist gold is some sort of useful store of value for the apocalypse or something.
People with large gold reserves in 1930s Germany did no better than any other Germans in an environment with failing fiat currency. Primarily because they were being put into camps and their gold was confiscated by a criminal regime.
Oh, yeah... that's definitely not what I had in mind lol. I don't own any gold, but I do have a single silver 1oz coin and imagining that in bar form only brings to mind Zoolander jokes.
I have literally never met a developer who does this (including myself). 99% of all PRs I have ever created or reviewed consist of a single commit that "does the thing" and N commits that fix issues with/debug failure modes of the initial commit.
You never design a solution which needs multiple architectural components which _support_ the feature? I do, and would make little sense to merge them as separate PRs most of the time as that would mean sometimes tests written on the inappropriate level, also a lot more coordination and needs a lot more elaborate description then just explain how the set of components work in tandem to provide the user value.
The really weird thing to me is that the check marks don't persist across categories. I.e. I marked the story about Youtube as "read" in the "World" tab, but it doesn't get a check in the "USA" tab. Seems like the feature is pretty half baked.
I believe the 100k are those that took the "deferred resignation program" at the beginning of the year. They have been getting paid to not bother showing up to work all this time, but are finally coming up on the date where they will all officially resign. Those people are choosing to leave.
It was voluntary on paper, but there was a clear threat that if you didn't take it there was a good chance you would be fired with no severance. Whether this threat was implicit or explicit depended on what department you were in.
Source: Federal workers I know personally, and numerous public statements from DOGE officials and cabinet secretaries when this offer was made.
> “The reality is clear: A large-scale reduction, in response to the President’s workforce executive orders, is already happening. The government is restructuring, and unfortunately, many employees will later realize they missed a valuable, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” the official said.
It was actually and completely voluntary. My only source is that I am a federal contractor who was invited to at least some of the all hands meetings where this was discussed within my agency. The federal government is _huge_ and obviously I can't speak to every single agency, but at least for mine there wasn't even a hint of pressure to take the offer.
DRP was voluntary. Some people who took it would still have a job tomorrow if they hadn't. Others who took it were in a situation where they were likely going to get RIF'd. DRP gave them a better off-ramp than the severance package under a RIF. For them, it wasn't really voluntary but more a "Well, I'm losing my job anyways might as well get the best deal I can out of this shitty situation." Many others took it because they were going to retire this year anyways, so why not?
Likewise, there are a whole lot of products that don't have an "unsubsidized" version that I simply refuse to purchase (or have purchased and returned after confirming that they will not work when locked in IOT jail where they can't talk to the internet.)
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