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>

This is how "it" begins... hundreds of millions of PCs with AI-enabled processors, all interconnected via the internet into a huge cybernetic processing array -- then the code drops and *bingo*... game over, "sentience" and the end of mankind's reign on planet earth.

Okay... it's just a dystopian thought based on "The God Question"

I'm just glad he sorted out that Ukraine/Russia war so quickly. How long did it take? Less than 24hrs wasn't it? </SARC>

Yeah, I have a dumb-phone with a *real* keypad and multi-tap SMS entry that cost me $29. It does *everything* I need it to do because I only do voice/SMS -- for everything else I have a computer within easy reach.

How do I pay for my parking?

Easy... I live in a small town without parking meters or other such fees.

My phone is also pre-paid and I top it up with $20 worth of credit every six months or so.

Cheap, cheerful and very cost-effective.

I see no need to spend US$600 on something that does what I'm already doing.

I'm probably one of the very few who's been in the microcomputer industry since its inception way back in the 1970s.

What a ride it has been!

I recall building my own systems with 8-bit processors and just a few hundred bytes of precious ram. Clock speeds were barely a megahertz at the time but still we managed to overclock these systems and run 110 baud TTY connections at almost 200baud (non-standard of course).

The only language available back then was the native machine code of the processor being used, all hand-assembled unless you were lucky enough to have access to a minicomputer and a suitable cross-assembler.

Even once microcomputers became available in retail stores as something you could buy off the shelf, things were very basic (no pun intended).

During those early days, Microsoft was the language company (mainly selling BASIC) and Digital Research was the OS company (selling CP/M).

And that's how things went for a few years... until IBM released their PC, when everything changed.

Suddenly Microsoft was the OS company (PC/MSDOS) and Digital Research was relegated to being a language company (primarily Pascal MT+).

It's been a wonderful 50+ years and to be honest, I'm surprised that Microsoft is still around. I guess the fact that it is speaks to the power of a de facto monopoly when properly managed.

What will the next 50 years hold and will Microsoft still be in business when the calendars tick over to 2075 I wonder?

So black is the new blue?

Do I see a TV drama series in the making?

At least the acronym won't have to be updated.

But if you have no internet... how would you get the update? :-)

No bricking then.

As if I don't get enough spam in my inbox, now it's here as well.

Thank you for your post, I will be sure and avoid the company you mention and advise my friends to avoid it as well.