They have already practically ended it. The official process makes the user jump through so many hoops - registering account, using it for 30 days (!!!), installing their app, begging for unlock through it, getting random errors which the official support refuses to explain (!!!) and only after that having the chance to try to hit the daily unlock request window which lasts less than one minute each day (!!!) - that it is practically non existent. Fuck the fucking fuckers.

NY Times has a freaking great data visualisations, they are (were?) employing a wizard in this space, doing custom extensions on d3.js.

That’s a fucking Google, an advertising company, for you.

Nissan also detects you having sex in the car and phones the info home.

Ads were already there for years - for Facebook, TikTok, Candy Crush, and who knows what else.

I would say this is embarrassingly unprofessional, but the truth is this is just normal these days - normalized by Facebook and Android - and I’m just old and used to better software.

I switched to Linux the same year they appeared.

I expect this to proceed similarly: many companies and funding dollars will burn in flames and still, the world will be a different place in a decade thanks to this technology.

“Chrome users” or “Chrome under windows users” would be closer to the truth. Still, quite a screw up.

That’s “crowdsourced”, i.e. manually done by volunteers on per-video basis.

I haven’t signed in with the Microsoft account in the first place.

“each new connected TV platform user generates around $5 per quarter in data and advertising revenue.”

Fuck me, this is the amount of money that’s enough motivation for them to ruin my experience and make me angry?

I guess regular users have much higher tolerance to ads than me, but our home has a strict zero ad policy.