Better yet, this needs to be the law of the land for all parties. Once someone reaches 60-65 or so, they need to step aside and serve at most in an advisory role. Let the younger crowd take the helm of leadership.
Between this, and their binding arbitration debacle a while back, I will never use their products. Had a Roku back when they were first released (and before they became awful as a company) but haven't used it in years. No interest in giving assent to corruption and corporate overreach.
"...8% more protein and 7% more fat than regular rice"
Let's see, 100g of cooked rice has 2.7g protein, 0.3g fat and 28g carbohydrate, according to USDA data. The stated increases yield 2.9g protein and 0.32g fat, not exactly a stunning increase. Referenced research is behind a paywall so I cannot discern from that how accurate this is. None of which, of course, detracts from its value as proof of concept.
Same here. I had an additional cable channel subscription through Prime, which I've now cancelled, as I don't wish to tolerate any advertising in my video stream, so I will simply stop watching any video on Prime. And as you pointed out, the quality of Prime video offerings has been in decline of late.
Why won't I leave Prime (yet)? Because I have an "Amazon" visa credit card, with an admittedly serious 5% permanent discount on all purchases from Amazon (as well as companies they own, such as Whole Foods.) I won't stop purchasing products through Prime just yet; am simply careful to avoid anything that looks problematic, price-gouged, or needing aftersale support, and the discount lock-in is too attractive to me to ignore for now. But video? I can always find it elsewhere.
Same goes for "FreeVee" because "Free with ads" isn't free.
I get that the majority, perhaps the vast majority, would prefer such a socially high touch "bulletin board" model, but... some of us run away screaming from such things. I find Discord impossible to navigate in terms of finding discussions of issues that have already occurred, and having to perform my own "archeological excavation" to discover the tidbits that are actually relevant to me is orders of magnitude harder and more irritating than, say, perusing/searching a discussion forum or similar online venue.
For those of us who came of age during the "RTFM before bothering anybody, dammit!" attitude toward supporting engineers, looking for already posted answers to a problem that likely someone else has already solved is vastly superior to bothering someone about a problem they might well be tired of talking about for the 100th time.
I've never been good at "conversation" in real life or online; some of us simply aren't and have/find our strengths elsewhere, and increasingly it seems all online discussions about, say, issues around a game published by a small indie vendor are being pushed to Discord and in some cases even shutting down other online communication channels in favor of that. A vendor who keeps its online discussion forums available and supported is always going to get a lot more interest from me than what I see younger companies doing.
Maybe it's just a big cultural shift, and I am no longer relevant. Not ready to "go away" just yet...
Ownership is indeed the other reason I don't do streaming. I pay for a track or album, download it, and it's mine.
I do see this capability disappearing in coming years, however; especially with growing use of "AI" tools to, say, craft ever more complicated barriers to avoiding rent-seeking.
I tried a couple streaming services a while back, and them rather annoying. I've discovered a lot of good new bands through Bandcamp, just reading about related bands in genres I like. The annoyances of the various streaming services just push me away, and yes, potentially to my own detriment in missing out of artists I might not discover any other way.
I too loved Bandcamp for its sane approach to acquiring new music; unlike "most people" I refuse to use the streaming-only services, and insist upon buying albums and listening to exactly those selections I choose (and I prefer to listen to albums in their entirety, even today).
Perhaps I'm just old and set in my ways, but choices made by others, especially algorithmically generated "options maximizing my engagement", hold no attraction for me whatsoever. Losing such freedom of choice would be painful in the extreme.
This right here. Either we collectively as a species take steps right away to correct course and achieve a sustainable now, or nature will do it for us; and the latter will occur cataclysmically. The former, too, except hopefully with less loss of life.
This. When all else fails, and this is the only way, then it is the way. I, too, am more than happy to pay $ for a high quality physical media, but if they aren't satisfied with my one time purchase, and instead choose to force me to pay for each subsequent rewatch if that is what I desire, then they will no longer get my business, and I'll find other ways to get what I want. Why should I not?
If an outhouse was nearby in the past, there was a pretty big hole associated with it which may still be around. Might not be pleasant to discover by accident...
The point is that ideally all food processing occurs in your own kitchen. Of course the food you end up eating will be comprised of multiple ingredients; by only buying food ingredients that are in their original unprocessed form, and combining them yourself in constructing a meal, you have full control over the ingredients you are consuming.
Concur on this about avoidance. From my own experience at a startup years ago, the corporate counsel was pretty much hostile to any GPL libraries being used in the companies product, and was especially hostile to the AGPL, categorically refusing to support use of anything using the latter.
Just say no. If the added fees are known up front, take business elsewhere. If they're only revealed after the fact, I would become That Ugly Customer, and they would never get my business again. If enough do this, then behaviors will change, especially if such businesses are retaliated against. As they should be.
I used to trust them a whole lot more, too. But of late it seems Amazon is leaning toward a cesspool of price gouging, and I've noticed a lot more of the presented results are "Sponsored".
Along with that, I stream movies on my TV, running clients, usually Netflix or Prime Video, on my xbox. Increasingly the Amazon prime video client wants to present me with options to "Rent or Buy" instead of free offerings (I am a Prime subscriber after all, and seek to take advantage of the free streaming offerings), sometimes a page of results will contain nothing but pay-to-play offers.
The problem WILL be solved one way or another. Either we willingly make the changes necessary to render our existence sustainable at current population levels, or our environment will force those changes upon us in much more urgent terms, with the end result of reducing our population as necessary until our footprint is again sustainable. I have no hope that the former case will be the one pursued, human nature being what it is.