If they are doing it right, it's more likely that you end up with Facebook having a profile of all the sites you use Facebook to log into, and a shadow profile for /each/ of the websites you don't use, rather than one shadow profile for all of them. That said, they may not have done it that way, and using another tool to hamper Facebook is going to be still useful, but even without it's just individual website analytics, which is less useful than browsing analytics.

Of course, then there is an arms race, where Facebook starts trying to stitch together browsing by using timestamps or referral codes of you clicking a link on one site taking you to another site, and so on. Blocking scripts works every time (60% of the time).

You mean the Democrat who created concentration camps for US citizens who happened to have Japanese ancestry?

My counting might be a bit rusty, but it looks like that list has 3 Apple products, two after Jobs (although the Xbox controller does have a very Jobs era Apple vibe). The watch and the ear tampons. What do you want to bet Jobs had started them working on a watch before he died? Even if not, that means one hit. I'll give you the earphones as a solidly post-Jobs product, but I think it's very much an example of the failures, rather than a success.

All titles and honorifics are adjectives. Reverend, Doctor, Her Majesty, the Honorable, Ambassador, Senator, Mr., etc, are all adjectives, but that doesn't make them not titles. Some are because of who you are (Mr.) some are because of what you own (Laird/Landlord, Captain), some are from a job or position you hold (Honorable, Reverend, Senator, Captain), and some are due to merit (Doctor, Captain... again). They are still titles. And a title is an adjective. And I'm pretty sure almost no one reveres Jessie Jackson, so as far as adjectives go, that is pretty weak.

The argument here is that Engineer should be like Captain. It's a title for people who do engineering (captain a boat), but it's also a certification (military rank). It doesn't mean my father is guilty of stolen valor even though he was never in the military when he calls himself captain or goes pays his mooring fees to the harbor patrol when they come along side and ask for the captain.

How is that for pedantic?

Because "Sign Language" as a single language doesn't exist. For example, American Sign Language, is used in Canada, the USA, Guatemala, and a to a lesser extent in a handful of countries in Africa and so on. The UK has a different one entirely, so people that can talk to each other in English can't easily talk to each other in sign. Same with Japan, France, Spain, etc. There are more than 100 types of sign language, so it's the same basic problem, but after all the effort, only a small subset of the people can understand anyway.

What if you think of it more like spec writers, creating articles or short stories and trying to sell them to a publisher? If someone emails me an article for my (non existent) news blog, and I decide I don't want to buy it at my standard $0.02 per word, I don't have to tell them why, just that the answer is "no thanks" and then we move on. Does making it automatic change this dynamic? Does saying that sometimes I'll pay $0.05 per word if it meets certain criteria like how often they send me articles or the content change this further? You seem to be saying that it does.

The fact that they will let you post things even if they won't pay is the divergence in my analogy, but they aren't making money on a video without ads just the same as the poster, so at that point its a lot more like letters to the editor or comments on a news post. They add value to the platform by existing, but no one is arguing that people leaving rants below the article should be getting a slice of the pie.

I do not have to say why I am not buying a product. I also don't have to say why I'm going to stop buying a product. It's often courteous to tell someone working on spec why you didn't want what they offered, but I am pretty sure no one is accusing Alphabet/Google/Youtube of being courteous. Unless the monetization agreement says something about saying why when they tell you no (and without looking, I'm gong to go out on a limb even without reading it and say it definitely doesn't say that they will give you an answer), then the only hope is common decency, which everyone agrees is lacking on Mountain View.

I'm no flavor creating expert, but I read that article (not for the first time) and I'm pretty sure saying that it's a debunked myth is a little overstating it. It seems like if you were going to create a flavor of a fruit, and you find a chemical in the fruit that can be synthesized and smells and tastes like that fruit, at which point you declare mission accomplished (even if it's not quite perfect), you did in fact create a flavor based on that fruit.

What do you want to bet if they had created the artificial flavor and it didn't taste like the fruit they were trying to make, that they would have kept trying? I know what you are thinking, "but this is based on what ALL bananas taste like, not just the Gros Michel." If at the time practically the only banana is the Gros Michel and they are trying to make a taste like bananas, it's a distinction without a difference. Saying the fake flavor doesn't taste significantly more like the Gros Michel than the Cavendish would be a better argument, but even that article says it tastes significantly more like the Gros Michel (or that the Gros Michel tastes like the flavor).

Regardless, if the flavor was generated today, it's almost certain that the fake banana flavor would have been decided a failure because it doesn't taste enough like the bananas we eat and they would have gotten closer eventually, or not come out with a banana flavor. They didn't then, because they got close enough to call it a success. That sounds like it's based on the Gros Michel to me.

You will at least once... Dead people file their taxes one last time (estate).

Further, that's shotgun value. With Netflix, they can show my retired parents a completely different ad on the exact same show than they will show me or my wife - so instead of paying, (using your numbers) $0.032 per viewer with the expectation that about half of them will be misfires (or $0.064 per minute of hits from the advertiser's side - this number is carefully crafted by hand from whole cloth), they can narrow their focus and charge closer to $0.0544 per minute with the expectation that they will be paying for maybe only 15% misfire (same value to advertiser of $0.064 per minute, but more income per ad for Netflix).

And that doesn't even start scratching the surface of the value of a well targeted ad to the right audience - I get a few hundred dollars in swag a year from companies trying to bribe me to listen to their sales pitches. If the right company can get commercials that hit me and people like me, it's really easy to pivot money for sporting event tickets and iWatches into a few dollars per ad. I'm guessing there isn't a company that is willing to pay a few dollars each time they get in front of the correct person, but it only takes a few IT Directors/Purchasing Managers/CEOs to vastly change the math on how much advertisements are worth to Netflix. Suddenly we aren't talking about 13 minutes per day, we may only be talking about a few minutes per day. Maybe two ads when you open Netflix - one from an outside company, then one about the new releases on Netflix you may not know about. Then maybe one when you switch from one program to another. Or an interstitial ad every third time it moves onto the next episode. Sparse enough to keep you from ending your account, and short enough that you don't just wander away from the TV when it starts playing an ad.

The counter-point would be that many subscriptions are less used than others, and the underused ones subsidize the more thoroughly used ones (like gym memberships). My family racks up a few hours per day of use, while my parents may only do a couple hours per week (they have cable TV that they use more often). Converting my family to ad supported might improve the bottom line, but my parents subscription would stop being as valuable to them.

Of course that ignores the fact that I will go back to visiting our good friends in Sweden for my media before I pay to watch ads again, but that's only tangentially the point.

What's hard about offering a link to sign up outside the app is that it's prohibited by Apple, and will get your app removed. Which circles right back around to why they are complaining.

But what percentage of all driving is done at night? I would assume substantially less than during the day. I only about 10% of my driving is in the dark, so if I am representative (extrapolation from one case is fun), that's a significantly more dangerous section of time.