Every now and then we want to sit down to a movie that’s not on Netflix, basically the only streaming service we want. Usually Google Play did the trick, rental was a bit more than our neighbourhood Blockbuster used to be, but not by much and for once or twice a year, it was a good fallback.
Last night we wanted to watch Barbie. Google Play had it, I clicked the link from the search and rented it. The rental expired immediately and it wouldn’t play. Turns out, as of 17 Jan, Play is finished and I had to go to Youtube.
OK, Barbie “with ASL” wasn’t a deal breaker, so I got a refund from Play and rented from Youtube. I started the rental, but it wouldn’t play, displaying
“Error 99,999. Please update your browser”
What? My Firefox was up to date, as was Brave, my current Chrome based fallback. Neither worked.
The internet told me the solution was to route all my DNS traffic to Google’s 8.8.8.8 DNS server.
No.
I called Google help, their solution was “Install Google TV”.
No.
I could rent on Crave TV if I spend $22/month on a subscription first.
No.
We found it on Amazon. I’ll cancel my new free trial of Amazon Prime membership before 30 days are out. 
Still $7 to rent it, but whatever.
Tell me again how this is easier than getting a DVD from the Blockbuster at the end of my street?
Piracy is nearly always your best, and most convenient, option. I don’t bother trying to rent anymore, since the whole process has become such a pain in the ass.
Yeah, not going there personally, I just want it to be easy to spend my $7 on a rental.
For a while, when Netflix was the only streaming service in town, they were an adequate replacement for Blockbuster and really took a dent out of piracy by being more convenient. I even got to watch weird Danish black comedies, or practice my German.
Now it seems like every provider wants to become a private data reseller and chokepoint intermediary. Netflix’s streaming infrastructure is a bit of work, but eventually it was going to be replicated, and now it’s no longer a competitive advantage and we’re back to companies with low-return business plans trying to do the “lock in” thing to juice revenues.
They have indeed sown the seeds of their own destruction.
Almost OT, but I think the way forward has been shown us. In 1954, Ontario 
got ahead of enshitificatory practices in the grocery industry by establishing the Ontario Food Terminal. It became the clearing house for most produce in the province, and dominates the wholesale market for fresh goods in the GTA. Governments have always set the rules for markets, perhaps it is time to “nationalize bandcamp” and similar services in the sense of structuring the markets and clearing houses.
That, of course, requires a skill set rarely evident in tech-cowed politicians, but I can hope…
Here is how platforms die: First, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.
It can’t die soon enough with policy changes and privacy violations like this. 
I don’t know which pisses me off more - the likelihood that they’ll publish misinformation, or the demands that users provide their real PII to remove the falsehoods. 
Maybe the escape plan in Finding Nemo had some good points. Would people want a Fishbowl so full of scum that they can hardly see any fish? I’d love to see the day that managers are afraid to even look at it.
I never go there, so I just checked in my password manager to see if I had a login for them. Turns out I deleted it in June of 2021, probably for some other privacy violating enshittification reason.
Does anyone know which version of Firefox was the last one that allowed users to clear their caches w/o deleting all the cookies? I’m seriously contemplating installing it, clearing my cache, then re-installing the latest version.
Settings → Privacy and Securty → Clear History. Tick “Cache” (v124)
This is, unfortunately, also the version that no longer works with my bank, who seems to transmit lots of cookies to non-bank sites. 
Thanks for the reminder; I just cleared my account, although it was on an alternate email and all chaff and smoke screen anyhow. 
Now, if I could only get rid of LinkedIn. (Their app was the first to really annoy me, and it must have been over 10 years ago, by uploading all of my contacts without my being aware of what it would do. It was basically the end of me using any commercial apps. Even GMail works adequately for me over the mobile web version.)
Thank you very much, Simon.
Glad I couldn’t be talked into joining linkedin. Eesh!
I’m sure Glassdoor got pressure from corporations to post real names, since people use it (in both good and bad faith) to gripe about their old jobs all the time.
But the headline is a little misleading, as what has happened is that they are now storing identifying information in their data about you and forcing people onto their new partner’s app fishbowl? If I’m understanding it correctly. Still pretty bad, though. They claim that you’ll still be anonymous, but they have your data stored from fishbowl (where it puts in your info without consent), and that can likely be breached… so… not good.
It’s a bummer that they found a way to taint the experience of what otherwise sounds like a strong (and perhaps unnecessarily punishing) sequel to a beloved game. I love Capcom, but every now and then they go out of their way to piss off gamers. And they were fully aware of it this time, otherwise they wouldn’t have buried the microtransactions in the developer notes.
Since this thread is now closed…
… this link seems appropriate to post here and sheesh it’s bad:
https://www.cnn.com/travel/boeing-737-max-passenger-boycott/index.html
‘I want to get off the plane.’ The passengers refusing to fly on Boeing’s 737 Max
Ed Pierson was flying from Seattle to New Jersey in 2023, when he ended up boarding a plane he’d never wanted to fly on.
The Seattle resident booked with Alaska Airlines last March, purposefully selecting a flight with a plane he was happy to board – essentially, anything but a Boeing 737 Max.
“I got to the airport, checked again that it wasn’t the Max. I went through security, got coffee. I walked onto the plane – I thought, it’s kinda new,” Pierson told CNN. “Then I sat down and on the emergency card [in the seat pocket] it said it was a Max.”
He got up and walked off.
“A flight attendant was closing the front door. I said, ‘I wasn’t supposed to fly the Max.’ She was like, ‘What do you know about the Max?,’” he said.
“I said, ‘I can’t go into detail right now, but I wasn’t planning on flying the Max, and I want to get off the plane.’” …
… Pierson has a unique and first-hand perspective of the aircraft, made by Boeing at its Renton factory in the state of Washington. Now the executive director of airline watchdog group Foundation for Aviation Safety, he served as a squadron commanding officer among other leadership roles during a 30-year Naval career, followed by 10 years at Boeing – including three as a senior manager in production support at Renton itself, working on the 737 Max project before its launch. …
Well, shit.
The cool thing about affinity was always its independence and pledge to never ask for any subscriptions. This is the FAQ for this acquisition. Emphasis mine
Canva’s business model is subscription, are there any plans to change how Affinity is sold?
There are no changes to our current pricing model planned at this time, with all our apps still available as a one-off purchase. Existing Affinity users will be able to continue to use your apps in perpetuity as they were originally purchased – with plenty of free updates to V2 still to look forward to!
So, what will V3 look like?
Also, this is interesting to read:
We have to say that selling Serif was not on our minds at all, but when Canva contacted us (only a couple of months ago!) there was something about it which just felt right.
Sounds like the smell of gigantic amounts of money for the owners was just too strong.
By all accounts they were doing well as an independent company. This is also yet another European startup gobbled up by Silicon Valley.
(Canva is an Australian company, but it is inflated with Silicon Valley VC cash)
ETA: at least the fact that they were against subscription until today means I can continue to use the software I have already bought, no matter what happens in the future
