If its possible to watch the video, then it's possible to watch the video without ads.

Worst case scenario: videos can be downloaded and adverts stripped from them. (If you can watch it, you can copy it.) Would you be prepared to trade, say, a 20 minute timeshift delay on your YouTube videos' initial publish time for no adverts? I would.

In addition to other reasons already given, commercial software may contain licensed code, libraries, assets, trademarks, and other IP that cannot legally be given away for free, or under an open source licence.

Sure, it may be possible to strip those things out, but that may leave the software broken or fundamentally changed, and it may be a significant amount of work to do, which am author or publisher is not likely to spend on abandoned software, especially if their free release would compete with any current products.

Sorry, but this is completely wrong.

Windows has ACLs and they are an important part of Windows administration, and used extensively for managing file permissions.

Windows has supported ACLs on NTFS since Windows NT & NTFS were released in 1993 (~~possibly partly influenced by AIX ACLs in the late 80s~~ influenced by VMS ACLs introduced the early 80s).

ACLs were not introduced to standard POSIX until c.1998, and NFS and Linux filesystems didn't get them until 2003. In fact, the design of the NFSv4 ACL standard was heavily influenced by the design of NTFS/Windows ACL model -- a specific decision by the designers to model it more like NTFS rather than AIX/POSIX.

Technically, at the filesystem level, exFAT also provides support for ACLs, but I am not sure if any implementation actually makes use of this feature (not even Windows AFAIK, certainly not any desktop version).

OMG I can't believe you had the audacity to write an answer about cats in response to a serious question that is clearly about goats.

And many "circles" aren't circles either, but 2D torus approximations. The edge of a true circle is made of infinitesimally small points so would be invisible when drawn. And even if you consider a filled circle, how could you be sure you aren't looking at a 1-torus with an infinitessimally small hole? Or an approximation of all the set of all points within a circle?

Clearly, circles are a scam.

In this thread: people who don't understand what power is.

Power isn't something that is "pushed" into a device by a charger. Power is the rate at which a device uses energy. Power is "consumed" by the device, and the wattage rating on the charger is a simply how much it can supply, which is determined by how much current it can handle at its output voltage. A device only draws the power it needs to operate, and this may go up or down depending on what it's doing, e.g. whether your screen is on or off.

As long as the voltage is correct, you could hook your phone up to a 1000W power supply and it will be absolutely fine. This is why everything's OK when you plug devices into your gaming PC with a 1000W power supply, or why you can swap out a power-hungry video card for a low-power one, and the power supply won't fry your PC. All that extra power capability simply goes unused if it isn't called for.

The "pushing force" that is scaled up or down is voltage. USB chargers advertise their capabilities, or a power delivery protocol is used to negotiate voltages, so the device can choose to draw more current and thus power from the charger, as its sees fit. (If the device tries to draw too much, a poorly-designed charger may fail, and in turn this could expose the device to inappropriate voltages and currents being passed on, damaging both devices. Well designed chargers have protections to prevent this, even in the event of failure. Cheap crappy chargers often don't.)

Back in the day, I discovered I could i) print over IR to our office's HP laser printer from my Psion organiser, ii) print control codes from the built-in OPL language to change the display message on the printer. I would occassionaly send messages like "insert coin", "too much paper", "grammatical error", etc. when colleagues were printing.

Why is everyone up in arms about this?

The legislation specifically excludes open source software. Has nobody in this discussion actually read the proposed legislation?

From the current proposal legislation text:

In order not to hamper innovation or research, free and open-source software developed or supplied outside the course of a commercial activity should not be covered by this Regulation. This is in particular the case for software, including its source code and modified versions, that is openly shared and freely accessible, usable, modifiable and redistributable.

There is also a clause that states those using open source software in commercial products must report any vulnerabilities found to the maintainer.

That article is absolute trash. It's a pulsar. There are no "perplexing messages". They don't "strongly believe" that it's aliens or any deliberate communication at all.

The article is just making stuff up.

If you go to the source of the story, The Mirror (the fucking Mirror!), despite the misleading sensationalism, even that points out that the scientisits ruled out artificial sources within hours of its discovery, concluding it is a neutron star or white dwarf.

You really have to do a shit job at reporting to do worse than the Mirror!

Fair point. And yes, there's just so many ways he could have made money from third party apps and their users without trashing them. The AI explanation just didn't make any sense to me at all.

A business brain would have followed the money. He's just following half-witted ideas/ego. I don't think he really realises or understands what he had.

You know the phrase "business genius"?

Spez is a business idiot.

He's had money thrown at him from VCs, thousands of people generating content, and administering content for free, sitting on a goldmine of data and goodwill and Community spirit, and he's managed to lose money, burn bridges, and fuck up the whole deal all for thppe sake of chasing a few dollars of API revenue and a bruised ego. All while others make millions and gain significant community support using the exact same data with business models he could have just copied or shared in.

He's had every opportunity. He's fucked it up at every step.

Business idiot.

Fire spez.

The more time I spend on lemmy, the less I'm missing reddit.

Lemmy feels fresher, more positive, and faster. It's a bit rough around the edges, but things will only improve, and there seems to be a large number of people willing to get involved and help out.

Even if the current blackout amounted to nothing, at least Lemmy has had a boost in users and engagement. Lemmy and the fediverse will learn lessons, improve, and fix bugs, and will be here for the next time reddit fucks up, and gain even more users.

I think I'll be staying regardless, reddit has been pissing me off for the last couple of years. It was mainly the lack of a viable alternative that kept me there.

Sp*z has fucked up badly this time. And he will continue to fuck up.