Surely it's an act of fraud to sell someone something that you do not own or to sell rights (ie: in perpetuity) for something you only hold transiently?

Sounds liike class-action lawsuit time to me.

And this is why I still buy my music and my favourite movies on physical media. It's another reason that piracy will never die until the day that we can gain a transferrable (cross-platform) life-time license to watch/listen to media that is streamed.

It was bad enough that I had to buy my favourite music on vinyl, then buy it again on tape, then buy it a third time on CD. Just what *are* you buying?

If it's a license to use/liste/watch then damaged media should be replaced for the cost of that media.

If it's just the media you're buying then what's wrong with ripping and burning?

Yeah, because I mean we don't see any EVs catching fire do we? And EVs are *far* less demanding of their batteries than a craft that flies.

I mean... an EV runs for about three hours on a charge, a flying craft runs less than 1 hour so puts three times the load on the battery. An EV is usually slow-charged but to be even remotely economically viable a flying craft will have to be fast-charged *every* time.

Nah... Lithium Ion batteries treated in this way will *never* catch fire -- don't believe all that deepfake stuff showing Teslas and other cars burning like road-flares.

These things *do* fly but they are a very, very, very long way from being economically viable.

In essence we have something that serves the same role as a helicopter but:

a) has a much shorter range/endurance
b) requires much longer to refuel
c) can not autorotate in the event of power failure
d) is unlikely to be able to land fast enough in the event of battery fire
e) uses batteries that, in this application, have a life measured in just a few hundred cycles

The bottom line is that there's no way to make money from this until we have a new generation of safer, more energy-dense, longer-lived battery technology and despite all the claims of "breakthrough" developments, lithium-ion batteries remain the most viable batteries we have. I watch the tech wires and every few weeks there's another of these "breakthroughs" but we just don't see them coming to fruition as a commercialy viable product for any number of reasons.

In the meantime, little display flights like this prove nothing -- if there is a demand (and that's largely unproven) then helicopters will provide the solution for quite some time to come.

A lot of people are going to lose their shirts by investing in this stuff. Trailblazers can often be found lying lifeless alongside the trail as those who come later step over their corpses on the way to success.

I'm 70 years old and the Beatles were a big part of my youth. Their music was so varied and powerful.

Sadly, this latest track is nothing but a cynical attempt to squeeze more blood out of a stone.

It lacks so much of the *real* Beatle's music and I find nothing of merit in it.

Back to my original vinyls and the trove of MP3s I've ripped from them I guess.

Fixed that for you :-)

But you're right... When I first started in the YPP I was earning such good money that I decided to go full-time. I was making about $4K per month with only about 80K subs and half a million or so views a month. This was, of course, when membership of the YPP was by "invitation only".

Since then I've seen my income continuously eroded by YouTube's own lust for revenues and things such as a couple of adpocalypses etc.

Now I earn under $1K per month, despite having more subs, more views and more videos.

If it wasn't for my support over on Patreon I'd be back to flipping burgers.

Also, when I started YT *valued* all of its creators. They listened, they fixed problems and they were there to help if things went wrong. Today, they're only interested in helping those who have at least 10 million subscrbers or are tied to the MSM.

Just look at the situation Louis Rossmann finds himself in right now. A creator with 2 million subscribers got two community strikes because his company made an app that allows people to follow people on multiple social media platforms without having to subscribe directly. Louis is also the guy behind the "Right to Repair" movement and he is a very ethical, honest and worthy individual. However, YT doesn't like people that don't sing only from their corporate hymn book and so he's been whacked hard.

Then there's that 3D printer channel that YT demonetized for allegedly including videos on how to 3D print firearms (which they didn't by the way). When the owner of the channel announced that he'd found sponsorship to make up the lost YT earnings, they simply deleted his entire channel. He was innocent of the allegations they made against him.

Meanwhile, a very large creator called sssniperwolf was able to get away with doxing someone and posting videos of minors in sexually compromising circumstances -- they got nothing more than a "temporary" demonetization. Even that was only for one of their channels until the public outrage forced YT's hand to demontize all her channels -- but likely only for a couple of weeks.

Money talks in the halls of YouTube and it is about time they changed the name to CorpTube because there's no longer much room for "you" in it.

Now that small to medium-sized creators have built the platform into a virtual monopoly, YT is happy to kick them to the curb and focus only on the big earners.

Seriously... do they not understand how the US political/legal system works these days?

Money *buys* politicians who make the laws and even if that fails, when conficts make it to a courtroom, he with the biggest wallet inevitably prevails.

Money is power, money is influence, money is law :-(

Forget the quality... feel the width! :-)

I wonder if the recent "invalid traffic" situation with YouTube content creators who've seen their revenues slashed by up to 90 percent on unfounded allegations that they've been generating false traffic to their videos is just a further demonstration of Google's lack of ethics and their greed?

What better way to boost your profits than to tell creators that "one or more of your videos has received invalid traffic" and therefore we're reducing the amount we pay you by up to 90 percent -- yet ads continue to run with the same frequency on those channels as they did before.

Surely Google's not pocketing the difference are they? Nah... they'd *NEVER* do that.

These creators are not told which videos are the problem or where the "invalid traffic" is coming from but they are told it is the creators responsibilty to ensure that no invalid traffic is generated. Most creators have found no change in their analytics with the vast majority of their traffic coming from Google and YouTube itself -- but YT/Google's ears are closed and they simply tell the creators to fix the problem.

He maybe white but I think his neck could be red.

"A computer problem" has become the new "The check is in the mail".

I agree... that 3.5mm jack was useful. Even if they had to remove the jack it would have been good to leave the audio output availabl;e via some solder-pads, that would have cost nothing. Not having looked at the full specs yet, am I correct in assuming that the VID pads are for composite video output -- or have we lost that too?

I see no sign of any journalist being involved here. In fact, all the journalists have left the building when it comes to news reporting these days.

All we have left are some directionless interns who paste their bylines onto press releases and some AI that plucks "facts" out of its digital backside.

Perhaps Russell Brand is right when he claims that the legacy MSM is colluding with governments to destroy true journalism and replace it with an "official line" of disinformation that favours both groups.

Oh yes... take something with the utility of a helicopter, cripple its range and endurance, increase the time taken to refuel by an order of magnitude, eliminate the safety element of autorotation in the event of power failure and then remove the pilot so that (like the 737 Max 8) it becomes reliant on buggy computer code -- then stuff it with 4 or 5 delicate human beings.

This sounds like a recipe for disaster.

We've had VTOL air taxis for decades, they're called helicopters and they are generally reliable and cost-effective. The thing is that we don't see a lot of helicopters used as air taxis because the demand simply isn't there. Making a far worse helicopter won't improve this sitation at all and those who are pouring money into these flights of fantasy will lose their shirts.

You mean like this? Magpie attacks Google Wing delivery drone

"Close call" is a far better description than the regular nomenclature of "near miss".

The reality is that the FAA is spending *FAR* too much time villifying multi-rotor drone users to be paying attention to the very real threats that airspace users face.

The death toll assocaited with manned aircraft colliding with other manned aircraft is astonishingly high -- yet never, in the entire history of the planet, anywhere in the world, has anyone died as the result of recreational multirotor drone use. FACT!

The FAA is strongly focused on spending inordinate amounts of time, effort and money trying to reduce the death toll (which stands at zero) associated with recreational multirotor drone use -- while seemingly content to allow people do die with unacceptable frequency in the skies in other PREVENTABLE incidents that do not involve drones at all.

Why is this?

Well it's all about $money$. The FAA was even happy to let Boeing self-certify in the case of the 737 Max-8, and look how many lives that cost.

However, a child with a 250g foam RC model of a piper cub will, as of September 16, have to spend upwards of $100 to fit an electronic "remote ID" device to their toy in order to meet the "safety and security" diktats of Congress through demands made of the FAA in the 2023 Reauthorization Act.

Also, when you look at the many committees and consultative bodies that the FAA uses to create and update laws relating to drones and RC model aircraft, there is not one single representative who speaks solely for the hobby community -- this despite the fact that the hobby represents the single largest user of unmanned aircraft systems in the USA.

Instead, these committees and groups are filled with "industry" representatives from the likes of Google, Boeing, Airbus and others who now seek to effectively shut down the hobby in favour of making money from the 0-400ft airspace. Remember that the aviation and space industries as we know them have been built by people who began their interest by way of model aircraft. Once the hobby is decimated by over-regulation it will be these very industries who suffer for lack of new talent and enthusiasts.

Indeed, much of the technology used in today's commercial, industrial and military drones saw its genesis in the hands of hobbyists. One piece of software (Ardupilot) is open-source and can now be found in a huge swathe of commercially available drones/UAS... all thanks to the work of hobbyists.

Once the hobbyists are gone, the USA will continue to lose ground in this area when compared to other nations.

So, perhaps, with all this in mind, the FAA would be well advised to focus on the *real* aviation risks that continue to claim lives on a regular basis (such as those addressed in the NYT story) and leave the proven-safe foil that fly RC planes and helicopters to enjoy a hobby that is vital to the lifeblood of the aviation and aerospace industries.

As a footnote: the FAA has mandated that *all* drones (including RC model aircraft and even RC model gliders) weighing more than 250g must have "Remote ID" transmitters fitted to them. In the meantime, there is no requirement for manned aircraft operating in Class G airspace to have the equivalent (ADSB) and so preventable collisions between manned aircraft will continue for the forseeable future because eyes are not always enough to ensure safety.