SpaceCadet
Streaming services, digital services in general, should be made to compete on having the best platform, not on exclusive content.
The way to get that is to split them and say: a streaming provider can’t be a content creator as well. That way, content creating companies would be incentivized to sell their content to every streaming provider at a price that the market will bear, and streaming providers would be incentivized to compete on providing the best experience to their users.
I’ve no problem with paying for good services
Exactly. It used to be that netflix was all you needed to get most quality content, and it was a fair deal for customers: you pay a reasonable monthly amount, and you and your family gets convenient access to most streamable movies and TV series.
Now that quality content is spread out and locked out over half a dozen other streaming services, and subscribing to them all is not just a hassle but also incredibly bad value compared to the original offer.
In a healthy competitive environment, you would expect companies to counter reduced value by increasing customer value in other ways or by reducing prices, but instead we got price hikes, lots of low quality filler content, crack downs on password sharing, advertising, various unpopular UI changes and other service reductions decreasing value even further.
To solve this, I think the content producers and streaming services should be split up, because right now they’re not really competitors in a true sence but small monopolies who each clutch the keys to their own little franchises. It should be noted for example that music streaming works a lot better: there are various competitors that each hold a viable content library on their own, so you don’t need more than one music streaming service. IMO that’s because Spotify, Tidal, YT Music, etc. are merely distributors and not the actual producers.
Move your .weechat directory out of the way, to see if the problem is in your profile or with the weechat installation itself.
Can someone explain how Biden is supposed to do this?
He already has the authority to do this through the lend-lease act for Ukraine.
Republicans are tilting further and further toward Russia and away from Ukraine
So you’re saying that Biden should carry out the Republican agenda out of fear for … the Republicans?
Independents don’t understand why we should be “spending” millions on another country.
Nice attempt at concern trolling.
You are “spending” the equivalent of 3% of your military budget to take out one of your two major adversaries without spilling a drop of American blood. That is a bargain any day of the week. I put spending between quotes by the way, because the bulk of the equipment being sent to Ukraine is not manufactured new nor does it not come from active inventory but from old stocks that would have to be disposed of soon anyway. If “independents” don’t understand that, perhaps we shouldn’t pay too much attention to what those “independents” think.
But that’s all besides the point. The article is not even about the amount of money or equipment, but about certain critical equipment that he has been witholding or been indecisive on against the judgment of military advisors, out of some misplaced fear of provoking Russia. Things like: longer range missiles, cluster munitions for HIMARS, tanks, permission for European partners to send fighter jets, … We are asking Ukraine to fight in ways the US or NATO would never fight.
This indecisiveness, which isn’t exclusive to Biden but to all Western politicians, has direct implications on the battlefield and is costing Ukrainian lives. Western politicians have this holy fear of making a wrong decision, so they tend to draw out the decision making process until they are confident about making the decision. This wait-and-see attitude may work well in peacetime, but in wartime not making a decision is also a decision and it is often the worst decision.
Take for example the issue of Western tanks and IFVs to help Ukraine’s counteroffensive. There were already calls for this in late spring 2022. By autumn 2022 the Russian army was in ruins, but Ukraine lacked the means to push their advantage home. In the end, the decision was delayed until February 2023. This delay gave ample opportunity for the Russians to mobilize troops and build extensive fortified lines.
The same thing with the fighter jets, we all knew it would be a difficult and long process and not an immediate fix, but if the pilot and crew training had started a year ago, we would be in a much better position today.
Girl = neutral (das Mädchen)
No idea why lol.
Mädchen is a diminutive, and all diminutives are grammatically neutral.
It’s the same in Dutch btw, and my girlfriend who is learning Dutch is frequently abusing this as a cheat code: whenever she doesn’t know the gender of a word, she’ll just use the diminutive and it will automatically be neutral.
Belgium, 48. I drive a manual transmission. I never had a car with an automatic transmission.