He was discussing options where people oppose both ads and subscriptions as methods of payment for consumed media.

IMO YouTube Premium is the only subscription that I will probably never cancel as not only does it pay more to content creators than ad revenue does (per individual viewing), it directly financially supports the hundred-odd creators I enjoy (large and small).

If the cost is too high for you to justify, you can band together with friends to split the costs of a Family Plan and/or do as I do and VPN back to my home country where the cost is significantly less than it is where I live now!

…or it’s available on the service you subscribe to, but not in your region.

I just thought it was a speech impediment… 🤷🏻‍♂️

I doing think it was an one thing, but more-so a build-up over time - a death of a thousand cuts, if you will:

It was a cultural moment generally, just think back to all of those celebrity commercials (“I’m Mr. T and I’m a Night Elf Mohawk”). All cultural moments pass eventually.

The third expansion (Cataclysm) was quite weak to begin with; coupled with a lack of content in the tail-end of the second (Wrath of the Lich King), which itself was incredible - narratively wrapped up the story that began all the way back in Warcraft 3.

So a lot of people chose that time to bow out of the game, as it required a fair bit of time dedication and seemed like an appropriate time to do so - given the narrative pay-off.

Lastly, the introduction of a number of game tools to automate the group composition process meant that the impact of player reputation on servers was severely diminished. Before then, there players who were toxic (stealing items, intentionally killing the group, failing quests) were infamous on a server.

Once this tool was further opened up to allow for groups to form across multiple servers - the sense of community was shattered as you would have no way to know if the person from another server was good/bad etc. it stopped being about bringing in the individual player, and just getting a body in to fill a role.

As someone who was lucky enough to get to experience those first ~6 years; it truly was lightning in a bottle.

20 years on, I am still friends with a number of those I met in WOW - and an in contact with a few more beyond that!

Unfortunately, it does feel like that sense of community those early years fostered are long gone, save perhaps a blip when Classic first launched.

Who knows when the next game will come along, which will be able to foster such relationships.

If it’s within your budget, grab a Steam Deck and use it in docked Desktop mode. It’s a pretty great introduction into Linux IMO, especially due to the fact that Valve themselves are maintaining the OS, and since it’s running on a fixed hardware platform - most online solutions should be applicable to any problems you may encounter.

Worst case, you don’t like it you can always eBay it off to recoup most of your costs?

IMO: Pirate it guilt-free without a second thought. If you enjoy it, and deem it worthy of a rewatch - then buy the DVD/Blu-Ray.

Then rip a quality copy of it, and delete the previously downloaded one.

Whelp, never comment again - because you aren’t going to be able to outdo yourself after this Masterpiece. 👌🏼

It’s not a stupid decision, but a stubborn one.

I’m 100% OK with that; Apple is heavy on design aesthetics. If a user doesn’t like that, they can just use their own preferred mouse - wired or otherwise.

Need to leave some features out intentionally, to add later to the PS6 as a selling point and incentivise customers to upgrade!

I assume because Firefox has been a ‘niche’ browser for a long time (pretty much for as long as Chrome as existed?); so the users tend to be a combination of die-hard fans and neurodivergents - two groups who tend to not do well with change of any sort (even cosmetic).

In order: Soy, Coconut, Almond, Macadamia.

Almond uses way too much water to be environmentally sustainable, and macadamia just has a weird after-taste that I don’t like.

Soy has a bit of a bad reputation (unfairly so, due to bad ‘bro science’); but I quite like the taste and it has a pretty low emissions/water footprint comparatively.

With the current attrition rate of Russian forces, these 3K troops will likely be expended in ~2.3 days…

I know the whole USB-A super-state thing is a meme at this point, but you can easily plug in cables first try with these two points:

1. USB cables tend to have a logo on the upwards facing part.
2. If you know/can visualise how the PCB is mounted, you can identify which was is up on the port.

That being said, USB-C is definitely more convenient overall - but I do wish the cables were male and ports female (think Lightning), so that the most fragile part of the connector was on the cable and not the device. Because when that breaks, it’s easier to get a new cable than re-solder a port.

It was called Kurushi here in our neck of the woods; and I’m glad I’m not the only person who still intensely remembers that game from a demo disc.

I ended up picking up a mint copy to add to my collection; well worth it IMO.

Barbaric, and needlessly cruel.

Every day just brings more and more evidence as to just how little Netanyahu and the IDF think of their Muslim neighbours.

But they’re the wrong type of brown people, so they hardly count. Merely collateral damage in the search for more beachfront property hostages.

This is the correct answer; after the whole USB 3.2 Gen 2 2x2 (hands of blue) bullshit, I wouldn’t trust that team to name a park bench in the middle of the desert. Let alone something important and universally used.

Ill give you this; it was so bad that it looped all the way around and ended up good despite literally everything.

I definitely enjoyed the hell out of it as a kid, but let’s not pretend that it was anything approaching a faithful adaptation.

While this is definitely an interesting proposition, for most people in the US wouldn’t something like Mark Cuban’s CostPlus drugs website be a more reasonable solution?