Yekrats - Slashdot User

Comment For science! (Score 2) 160

by Yekrats on Thursday January 25, 2024 @12:16PM (#64187392) Attached to: Streaming Pirates Are Hollywood's New Villains

I can't believe that Slashdot made us look up these sites on our own, and not post their links for us.

They made me look it up, through DuckDuckGo, behind a VPN, wearing rubber gloves.

This is for scientific research only and no consumption of any of the links here: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.firesticktricks.co...

For the benefit of science!

Comment It's all part of the "Enshittification" process (Score 1) 212

by Yekrats on Wednesday November 22, 2023 @04:56PM (#64025133) Attached to: YouTube Says New 5-Second Video Load Delay Is Supposed to Punish Ad Blockers, Not Firefox Users

Cory Doctorow posted a few months back about the process of Enshittification.

1. First you create a great service. You lock in users and advertisers. Users are dependent on the content. Advertisers are dependent on the users. This crowds out the competition.
2. Once they are locked in, you leverage the suppliers to squeeze more money out of them.
3. Then, then you leverage the users to squeeze more money out of them.

We're in that third stage with YouTube. Google has *content* going back 20 years. The only way to access that content is to go through its gauntlet of irritating ads, or play cat-and-mouse games with avoiding ads.

The open-source alternative PeerTube is interesting, which is on the same "Fediverse" network as Mastodon. Anyone can spin up a PeerTube server. However, storing videos is somewhat expensive. But if enough people do it, the costs go down. I would much rather pony up $5 or $10/month to own my own video hosting space, rather than $12/month giving to Google!

Comment Cxu vi ankoraux estas Esperantisto? (Score 3, Interesting) 368

by Yekrats on Monday October 03, 2011 @05:05PM (#37593546) Attached to: Ask William Shatner Whatever You'd Like

Bill, you're well known in the Esperanto world as the star of the pre-Star Trek thriller "Incubus", written and performed in Esperanto.

Cxu vi ankoraux regas vian Esperanto-kapablon de tiu filmo?
(Have you still retained your Esperanto ability from that movie?)

Cxu vi uzis gxin iel ajn poste?
(Have you used it an any way afterwards?)

[Sorry, folks -- I'm using the X-system here instead of actual Esperanto characters, because Slashdot doesn't seem to like Esperanto.]

Thanks!
Amike kaj dankeme,
Scott S.

EA Flip-Flops On Battlefield: Heroes Pricing, Fans Angry 221

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday December 02, 2009 @07:50AM from the put-your-money-where-your-gun-is dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Ben Kuchera from Ars Technica is reporting that EA/DICE has substantially changed the game model of Battlefield: Heroes, increasing the cost of weapons in Valor Points (the in-game currency that you earn by playing) to levels that even hardcore players cannot afford, and making them available in BattleFunds (the in-game currency that you buy with real money). Other consumables in the game, such as bandages to heal the players, suffered the same fate, turning the game into a subscription or pay-to-play model if players want to remain competitive. This goes against the creators' earlier stated objectives of not providing combat advantage to paying customers. Ben Cousins, from EA/DICE, argued, 'We also frankly wanted to make buying Battlefunds more appealing. We have wages to pay here in the Heroes team and in order to keep a team large enough to make new free content like maps and other game features we need to increase the amount of BF that people buy. Battlefield Heroes is a business at the end of the day and for a company like EA who recently laid off 16% of their workforce, we need to keep an eye on the accounts and make sure we are doing our bit for the company.' The official forums discussion thread is full of angry responses from upset users, who feel this change is a betrayal of the original stated objectives of the game."

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