Unfortunately it's not that cheap in many other countries and YT has been actively blocking VPNs so some of us would end up paying more just for YT than for Netflix and PrimeVideo combined. There's a lot on YT but most of it is crap and not worth paying for.

The irresistible force (movie/recording studios) versus the immovable object (the US government's support for AI).

Finally, the studios seem to have met their match.

This can't end well for anyone.

I asked Gemini and it said, with authority that it was never wrong. </satire>

When it's wearing its YouTube hat, Google says

so they always side with those who claim copyright infringement in any uploaded content. As a result, videos and even entire channels get unfairly removed.

However, when Google is wearing its AI hat *it* claims that is is exempted from copyright because of "fair use" -- *without* waiting for the courts to decide.

Come on Google... you can't have it both ways -- either you need the court's consent for "fair use" or you don't. Which is it?

Not just trashy but scammy!

I've been reporting YT ads for their "scams and deceptive practices" and all I get is... nothing.

Even on X @teamyoutube simply says "Thanks for bringing this to our attention — we'll pass this along & handle all the next steps from here" yet, weeks later, the same scam ads continue to run.

Nothing buys immunity from the TOS more than an advertiser's wallet.

While I agree that touch-typing isn't the primary skill of a competent, fast programmer -- it is still an amazing skill to have.

Although I've been touch-typing for almost half a century, it still fascinates me that the words appear on my screen simply as I think them. I don't even have to speak those thoughts -- my fingers automatically race around the keys and the words appear. It's almost like a direct interface between my mind and the computer.

Yes, I'm pretty fast -- about 140wpm which makes the whole experience even more fascinating since the words appear almost as fast as I think them.

Would I recommend that people learn touch-typing. Hell yes... I think people should learn *everything* they can, while they can. When you're young it's so much easier to learn than when you get old (like me). There are so many things I wish I'd learned when it would have been easier to do so -- foreign languages, playing a musical instrument, etc,etc.

However, here I am, a relic of the past. I can program in assembler for lots of 8-bit micros from the Signetics 2650 through the 8080, Z80, 6502, 6800 etc; BASIC, Pascal, C, Modula2, Java but now I'm faced with learning the intricacies of Python, Kotlin, Rust and crafting AI queries. It's getting harder every day because my brain seems to have simultaneously run out of RAM, CPU cycles and backup storage all at the same time :-)

I considered uploading to X but discovered that unless you pay them a monthly stipend, you can only upload very short vids (90 seconds I think).

So, if you do start paying them and upload longer vids, what happens if you stop your payment either voluntarily or perhaps because you die? Will your longer vids suddenly disappear?

None of the alternative platforms offer any kind of guarantee of continued service... hence people are far better off to self-host and federate if they are in a position to do so.

I agree. I spend about 12 hours a day working behind a computer keyboard/screen so when I'm not working I simply have no desire to carry a smartphone. I have an old-fashioned phone that only does SMS and voice -- I don't want to be connected to the internet 24/7.

What about *my* freedoms and rights?

The hypocrisy that is YouTube just gets worse by the day.

People like Jeff have perfectly good, harmless content flagged and removed for specious reasons while the company continues to profit from scammy ads that promote fake "health hacks", counterfeit electronics goods such as the fake "Sandisk" SSDs being pitched right now, "laser welders" that turn out to be just soldering irons, water-blasters that are nothing of the sort, etc, etc.

I (and thousands of others) have been reporting these ads using the mechanisms built into YouTube and also through @teamyoutube on X but the ads continue to run until the advertiser's spend is exhausted.

Surely, after a while someone must wake up to the fact that if YouTube/Google isn't going to act when these scam ads are reported and simply continues to profit from them then they become an accomplice to fraud and should he charged as such.

I've heard from hundreds of people who've lost money after being duped by these fraudulent ads and even when THEY complain to YouTube with their proof, the ads keep running.

Now there seems to be a lot of bonafide channels being deleted for "scams and misleading practices" without warning. Perhaps YouTube doesn't like the competition whenit comes to scamming -- it wants to retain its crown as "best scammer"?

It's a shame Jeffs video was pulled because I'm encouraging people to set up their own VOD servers and federate into a global network coordinated by independent search engines. This is the only way to dethrone YouTube now that it's clearly become an evil entity.

Four or five years ago I trialed Adobe's Premiere video editing suite and found it to be quite good. However, when I did some simple math it became obvious that the subscription model was going to be a huge financial penalty over the coming years so instead I opted to use Davinci Resolve.

Resolve offers a totally *free* version of its video editing/compositing software (Adobe's trial was just a 28-day one) so that immediately warmed me to Resolve.

After a couple of months using the *free* version of Resolve I plonked down my hard-earned cash (just US$300) to buy a "studio" license which gave me a few extra features and the satisfaction of supporting a company that was offering real value. At that time, Resolve was at version 14. Since then there have been six major new versions of the software and I'm now running the latest release. The total cost for these version upgrades has been... $0.00. Yep, Black Magic Design (the makers of Resolve) have offered all those updates and new versions to existing users at no extra cost.

Resolve has never been sold with a "lifetime license" but this is surely as close as you can get to one. Of course they may decide at some time in the future to start charging for upgrades but they're not making stupid "lifetime license" claims so nobody will complain if they do.

If I compare the total cost of ownership of the brilliant Davinci Resolve and Fusion combo that I paid $300 for to the amount Adobe would have charged me (and still be charging me every month) I am so much better off financially that it's not funny. Even better... I'm not locked-into a cloud-based service that would see access to all my existing projects effectively disappear as soon as I stopped paying a monthly stipend.

Yes, there *are* alternatives to "software as a service" monthly subscription rip-offs but you have to vote with your wallet if you want to support them.

YouTube calls them "ads" but most of us know them as *SCAMS*.

Whether it's some ludicrous (and potentially dangerous) "7 second health hack" that will fix your incontenence, diabetes, brain-fog.. [insert malady here]" or a laser welder that turns out to be a chintzy-cheap soldering iron, the scams that masquerade as ads on YouTube grow in number and magnitude every day.

If a content creator is even alleged to have engaged in "deceptive practices" or "scams" then their videos or even their entire channel is deleted without delay but when tens of thousands of people report scam-ads on the platform, those scams continue to run for months or until the advertiser's budget is exhausted.

Hypocrisy rules supreme over at YouTube!

As for the AI determining the placement -- this only happens if the creator has enabled mid-roll ads so we can't blame YouTube (yet) for this. As a modestly successful YT creator (3 channels with a total of over 500K subs and 150 million views) I refuse to use anything other than pre/post-roll ads. I value my viewers too much to subject them to having my hard work interrupted by an ad that seeks to scam them out of their hard-earned money.

If other creators took this stand, instead of being greedy, we'd all be a whole lot better off. And the day that YouTube forces mid-rolls on us is the day I'll be shutting down my YT channels -- even though it's my full-time gig and has been for over a decade.

Anyone remember Kim Dotcom? A foreigner who has never set foot in the USA but they're extraditing him for allegedly breaking US laws.

Um... have you heard of FireFox????

In 20 seconds you can switch from Google to DDG as the default search engine.

I fondly recall the days when you could disable Javascript in your browser and the internet still worked. Since this is likely a Javascript-based exploit triggered by PHP code on the server then turning off Javascript would be a great mitigation -- but even if you could find a browser that allowed you to disable JS, it would instantly fail to render every website you visited.

Ah... the good old days of static HTML <BLINK>Yippee!</BLINK>