The videos you watch don't have intrusive sponsorship segments then?

I suspect it has in most households -- even boomer ones.

The problem is that nobody wants YouTube to be just like broadcast and cableTV was. The thing that made YouTube so compelling and so popular was its authenticity and variety -- but the management at YouTube are carefully killing the very thing that made it great.

Ever-growing levels of ever-more intrusive advertising. Ads that are (at times) 90 percent scams. Ads and content that are low-value AI-slop which, once the novelty value wears off, will drive people off the platform rather than onto it. Endless spambot comments on videos. -- all these things are slowly souring the formula that made YT what it is today.

Creators are complaining, viewers are complaining and pretty soon, advertisers will be complaining because viewer numbers will decline.

Many creators (such as myself) are now switching to self-hosting via a federated network of servers that we host ourselves (PeerTube or similar). Doing this frees us from the tyranny that is YouTube's arbitrary and unchallengable AI content moderation and it's unwillingness to deal with bogus copyright claims and strikes.

We have reached "peak Youtube" and just like so many companies that have become a huge part of our ever-day lives, it will now begin an ever-steepening decline.

If YouTube doesn't deliver what viewers and creators want they will find an alternative and the self-hosted federation of servers overcomes the single largest hurdle to creating a YouTube competitor -- the problem of matching the company's vast storage, processing and bandwidth capacity.

Watch this space... things are about to get exciting again!

That's right... you don't *really* think YT is giving you a choice do you?

I do not make shorts, I do not want shorts but without using plugins I can not avoid shorts. Successful companies are generally built on tailoring their offerings to match the needs/wants of their customers so YT once again proves that WE are not the customers, we are the product!

Just as with their AI deepfake detection system, YouTube has once again created a problem (Shorts addiction) so that it can deliver a solution (this auto-turn-off function).

I'd actually prefer that it didn't create the problems in the first place.

YouTube is a trainwreck right now and mid-tier creators are not valued at all. Just look at what they have to put up with

YouTube creates a problem (by integrating VEO3 into its platform) and then offers a solution -- but only if you surrender your government ID to them.

This is dystopian.

If you're stupid enough to buy a bed that goes berserk when the Net goes down then you deserve to wake up vertical and sweating!

Why on earth would such a contraption require cloud-based support for its core functionality?

This subscription-based model has gone way too far when, if the internet goes down or you don't pay your subscription, you can't even get a good night's sleep.

Hey, I'm still waiting for the year of the LAN and the paperless office to arrive. Linux on the desktop... that's a long way off (says the guy who's been using Linux as his go-to OS for nearly 20 years and has no regrets.

Sad I used mine to buy pizza :-(

Who said I wasn't vaxxed? I did get vaxxed because I crunched the numbers and weighed up the risks and uncertainties. At 68 years of age I figured I'd be better off being vaccinated, even if there were unforeseen risks associated with the vax that may surface ten years down the road. My point was that others may have different risk factors so for them the results may be different. It's about freedom of choice.

As for "putting others' lives in danger" -- we were all told that vaccination would protect us so why would we be worried about unvaccinated people in the general population eh? Unless we were being lied to?

Yeah, and what about channels such as one of mine that still has a community "warning" on it, simply because I made a video in which I suggested that the decision whether or not to get vaxxed should be an individual one, based on one's own risk profile and other factors. Apparently that was "medical misinformation". I refuse to take the "training" program required to remove that warning because that would be effectively accepting that I was in the wrong -- when I strongly believe I was not in the wrong and my post was *not* medical misinformation. A man without principles is not a man at all.

What the hell are they smoking?

Numerous very experienced people have correlated a great number of the so called "drone" sightings with the ADSB tracks of legitimate aircraft and not one shred of evidence has been presented that these "sightings" are actually drones operated by Russia or other bad actors.

Remember New York and New Jersey last year when the skies were filled with "mystery drones" that turned out to be simply scheduled night flights of passenger jets and helicopters?

Then there was a spate of "drone" sightings over US Military airbases in the UK. These turned out to (once again) be misidentified manned aircraft, including F15s from the base itself!

So now exactly the same hysteria is sweeping across Eastern Europe with unskilled observers claiming to be seeing "drones" when in fact they're simply seeing lights in the sky that are navigation lights from aircraft and even balloons smuggling cigarettes.

If the Germans open fire on these "mystery lights" then there is a huge potential for tragedy here because they really won't listen to people much smarter than them who on two previous occasions (NY/NJ and Lakenheath) provided all the information needed to debunk the allegations of "drones".

Yes, as someone who's used Linux for almost two decades I sit here and smile at how the masochistic Windows users are squirming :-)

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The FAA has not yet finished working on part 108 (flight beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS)) of its regulations for drones. This means that right now all drone operations must be done within visual line of sight of the operator or by a special waiver. One of the conditions of part 108 is that drones must have a "detect and avoid" capability that would prevent this sort of incident from happening -- so how did it happen?

If the drone was being flown by visual line of sight then the operator should have seen something as big as a crane.

If it was being flown under a waiver and the FAA has already mandated "detect and avoid" as a requirement for BVLOS then someone wasn't complying with the terms of the waiver.

And all for what -- so your tube-socks will arrive 15 minutes faster?

I have been a part of the drone community and industry for more than 15 years and I can tell you that B2C drone deliveries, outside of a few specific cases, will never become practical. The likes of Amazon and Google are far more interested in the data they can scoop up by flying drones over urban/residential areas than they are in actually delivering stuff. They also both realize that the *real* money will be made from creating a UTM (unmanned traffic management) system which is like ATC for drones. Both these companies are very much into infrastructure provision and the UTM that will be needed for large-scale drone operations is the perfect target for their expansion.

Don't be fooled, "drone delivery" is just a diversion while they prepare their UTM plans and claim that "we have more experience than anyone in drone traffic management". Despite that experience, Amazon has a record of setting stuff on fire and crashing into cranes while Google's Wing craft have been known to black out wide areas after performing "precautionary landings" on high-voltage power lines.

If a kid can't fly their 250g drone in a park without all sorts of tests and a digital angle-bracelet in the form of "Remote ID" then clearly this tech is way to dangerous to have giant delivery drones laden with god-knows-what falling from the skies across our cityscape.

Even good audiophool speaker cables cost more than this -- but you can't really put a price on silver-plated cryogenically treated 101% pure copper wires that have been braided by the hands of virgins under a blue moon whist facing directly East into a 5 knot wind at 37.5 percent humidity precisely located over a suitable warp in the magnetic field of the earth.

And yes, you can definitely hear the difference, especially when using 128kbps MP3 files!