Users complaied about the price to go ad-free (something like $25 per year).

The commenter revealed that the actual revenue from ads was much more than $25 per year. Every person who purchased the ad-free option actually cost them money.

----- The lesson I took away is that ads pay more than we expect, though i didn't know the specifics of YouTube.

By providing an ad-free option, they are really allowing the user to out-bid the advertiser.

I think for most people, they would not be willing to pay more to avoid the ad than the ad seller is willing to pay to show it. It's a weird conundrum--but people are very cheap.

Cameras are legal and too useful to ban. Facial recognition is just software.

And it's getting easier to make. There are open source solutions for facial recognition.

If I search for 'astronomy', Google doesnt earn any money whether i go to the Wikipedia page for astronomy, or Joe's astronomy site, right?

I used to use all sorts of small websites in 2005. But by 2015 I used only about 10 large ones.

Like many changes, I cannot pinpoint exactly when this happened. It just occurred to me someday that I do not run into many unusual websites any longer.

It's unfortunate that so much of our behavior is dictated by Google. I dint think it's malicious or even intentional--but at some point they stopped directing traffic to small websites.

And like a highway closeure ripples through small town economies, it was barely noticed by travellers but devestating to recipients. What were once quaint sites became abandoned.

The second force seems to be video. Because video is difficult and expensive to host, we moved away from websites. Travel blogs were replaced with travel vlogs. Tutorials became videos.

Someone else mentioned the analogy of patients preferring physicians of a given sex.

I would not be surprised if they find a way around this by just having riders 'select which driver you want'. Effectively putting the onus on the customer to do the discrimination.

> Add to this fatuous criminal charge the sad reality that the process is often the punishment. Even after Mr. Left's innocence gets determined by a jury, there's the strong possibility that he'll depart the courtroom to go home to the Poor House.

> See: Wall Street Journal 8 November 2015

> I Was an Oil Spill Scapegoat -- I helped cap the Deepwater Horizon well, The Justice Department then turned my life into a legal nightmare

> -- Kurt Mix, BP drilling engineer, who published a blistering commentary about the US Justice Department immediately following a major revision to the case. After two years of expensive, life-upending dealings, all of the felony charges got dropped, and, "I would plead guilty to a minor misdemeanor for deleting a set of text messages without BP’s permission—something I had acknowledged doing from the very beginning."

> Good luck Mr. Left...

I thought this was interesting on went down the BP prosecution rabbit hole.

The writer suggests this likes it is rare. But organ donation is rare. And rabies is even rarer. That it has happened _three times_ seems surprising to me.

Normal people despise being lectured by celebrities about social or political issues.

No one seems to care that Apple has never allowed freedom on their devices. Even the comments here don't seem to mention it. Google was at least open for a while.

Or maybe no one mentions it just because the closed iPhone is a fait accompli at this point.

Maybe we just need to change the constitution--which I know is technically possible but im practically it's frozen. It's like a legacy API no one wants to touch.

But if it works, then maybe it's what we need.

I think I am more interested in the mechanics of how this happens. Why do we need to attach riders / sneak in legislation? What changes could we make to the constitution to avoid this?

It seems to me that there are many conflicting interests. We want simple taxes but we also want special protections and carve-outs.

I have no idea if this is feasible.

For one, we are just discussing financial ruin. Not deaths by guns or cars. And it does not impact you. Or else you would need to just regulate poor spending habits. At worse.

I think in principle just about everyone agrees in freedom and liberty where it does not affect society. We usually disagree just about what constitutes 'affecting others'.

How do you sleep at night, knowing you're a nosy fascist?

I'm writing this because I want you to know what you're depriving me of. Because _other_ people make poor decisions, we need to take that decision away from everyone.

If i wanted to learn just so i have a concept of what an os does, what would you recommend?

I'm not trying to write operating systems per se. I'm trying to become a better developer by understanding operating systems.

It's interesting how powerful contraint solvers are (Ive never used one).

But actually all of these problems are fairly simple if we allow brute force solutions. They just become stacked loops.