Pumping is very energy intensive. At around 2000-3000 ft the energy needed to pump fresh water starts to equal the energy needed to desalinate the same amount of salt water.

Even if it’s just going up then back down again like the Tehachapi Mountains only like 1/3rd of the energy can be reclaimed.

So back of the napkin, for a decently sized 1000 token response you’re talking about 8s/3600s*1000 = 2wh which even in California is about $0.001 of electricity.

It’s egregious now but at the time it wasn’t crazy because software developers often made way less than that when going through traditional publishing routes. Plus everyone was just happy to be making money off the new platform.

Another way to think about it is a good that we once bought for private use where it sat around underutilized the majority of the time is instead being allocated in data centers where we rent slices of it, allowing RAM to be more efficiently allocated and used.

Yes it sucks that demand for RAM has led to scarcity and higher prices but those resources moving to data centers is a natural consequence of a shareable resource becoming expensive. It doesn’t have to be a conspiracy.

Second, all those alternatives you described are also not great for user privacy either. One way or another you have to try to associate requests with an individual entity. Each has its own limitations and downsides, so typically multiple methods are used for different scenarios with the hope that all together its enough of a deterrence.

Having to do abuse prevention is not great for UX and hurts legitimate conversion, I promise you most companies only do it when they reach a point where abuse has become a real problem and sometimes well after.

- Account creation usually happens before plan selection & payment. Most users start at free, then add a CC later either during on-boarding or after finishing their trial.

- Virtual credit cards are very easy to create. You can signup with credit card with a very low limit and just use the free tier tokens.

And the homepage says in bold letters “The PeerTube mobile app for Android & iOS is out!” but it’s not a link! There’s a link further down but it goes to this article where you then have to scroll.

Not every site has to be super conversion optimized but it’s just common sense to put a CTA at the head of an announcement. joinmastodon.org gets it!

It probably helped that it was a cut and dry case - the thief took the keys from inside my house and I called the cops seconds after I saw him drive away with it.

> The West Hollywood, California-based company also gave a severance package to staff who were unable to relocate, in what the CWA alleged was an attempt “to silence workers from speaking out about their working conditions,” according to a statement from the organization.