13 ms·

I wonder if the ad bombardment we are suffering for some years now will eventually reach a critical point to trigger mass exodus or protests. TV got annoying w

I wonder if the ad bombardment we are suffering for some years now will eventually reach a critical point to trigger mass exodus or protests. TV got annoying with ads and viewership greatly decreased but that was caused by the emergence of the internet I think, what new technology options we have to escape the current ads to? The only other hope is that the massive amount of money in ads and data collection is actually a bubble that will collapse btw. Ben Krasnow is the guy behind Applied Science youtube channel[0], I highly recommend checking it out [0] https://www.youtube.com/c/AppliedScience https://www.youtube.com/c/AppliedScience

jamincan 5y ago
His channel is an increasingly rare gem. It's very high quality and interesting content without all the extra cruft that is inescapable now, even with some of the better channels.
- bkraz 5y ago
  Thank you. I make a conscious effort to avoid the craft that I hate so much myself. Luckily, I have a day job that allows me to treat the channel as a hobby -- I know others are not in this position. Other downside is that the day job takes time away from making fun videos :) let me know if anyone has a topic suggestion.
  - why_Mr_Anderson 5y ago
    Hi Ben, after yet another (3rd I think? could be 4th) round of binge-watching all your videos, I was wondering if you made any progress with "Wire EDM" that you mention in one of your videos. That process is (for me, at least) pretty much pure magic. And the resulting cuts are just unbelievable.
    - bkraz 5y ago
      I haven't worked on EDM in a while. Check out BaxEDM and his other customers for a DIY wire EDM design. The BaxEDM channel recently showed one of those ultra right tolerance sliding parts where the joint disappears.
  - jamincan 5y ago
    Honestly, just keep doing what you're doing - I don't think you've produced a video yet that I haven't found captured my interest. I'm sure you'd be tinkering and experimenting regardless of whether you shared your work on youtube, and I'm just thankful that you take the time to document it and share it.
- ithinkso 5y ago
  If you're looking for other similar gems I also highly recommend Huygens Optics [0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/c/HuygensOptics https://www.youtube.com/c/HuygensOptics
elric 5y ago
Digital TV in Belgium now includes unskippable ads, including in recordings of those shows. The reason why people switched to digital TV subscriptions, of course, was to be able to skip those ads in the first place. Apparently Netflix can afford to offer a wide variety of content for a small monthly fee, without any ads, and spend money on content creation; but digital TV stations somehow don't make enough money off of subscriptions which are an order of magnitude more expensive. Economies of scale, perhaps?
- tehjoker 5y ago
  There's no "enough" under capitalism, so every medium will eventually reach maximum ad saturation.
  - elric 5y ago
    I've never encountered any ads in printed books. Edit because I can't be bothered to reply to all the comments below: excerpts from other books (often by the same author, or in a similar genre) are not ads IMO. They're not intrusive. They're pretty much always relevant. They're fun to read. They don't contain tracking cookies. They're as benign as it gets.
    - jjgreen 5y ago
      I've read a few cheap paperbacks from the 1930s and 40s with a couple of pages of ads at the end; mostly for trousers, hairpieces or departments stores. Strange.
    - notyourwork 5y ago
      Ever read a newspaper or magazine?
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - squarefoot 5y ago
        They're completely different from books in this context. A newspaper is usually read within hours from its print; a magazine within days; a book might require six months or six years to be read. Nobody except maybe the same publishing company and a few other businesses would have use for ad space that would require so much time to be seen.
JJMcJ 5y ago
> trigger mass exodus Or YouTube. Without blockers or YouTube Premium, it's getting to be like watching old shows in syndication on one of these TV stations you can never remember the channel number for. Five minutes of The Dick Van Dyke Show, five minutes of ads for things not available in stores, back to the show etc etc.
- swayvil 5y ago
  Speaking of free markets. This will certainly improve the looks of the privateer estuary. Invest now.
- emerged 5y ago
  The best is when the YouTuber bakes their own ad into the video so it can’t be skipped, and then that ad is interrupted by a normal YouTube ad. Yesterday I watched a video where a normal YouTube ad was immediately followed by a baked in ad and then that was again followed by another normal YouTube ad.
  - Beaver117 5y ago
    Try SponsorBlock
swiley 5y ago
The ad bombardment will be the end of non-free software.
- lrem 5y ago
  Weren't there ads in Ubuntu?
  - genewitch 5y ago
    There were suggestions when you used the meta?(windows) key and then typed something in Ubuntu. Windows does this too, I forget who did it first. I went from xp x64 to win 7 ultimate to win10pro and managed to keep the telemetry to a minimum as much as I could. IIRC the Ubuntu change was pushed in a non-LTS distribution. As an aside I think 5 year LTS is too few, with the advances made in AI/ML in the last decade five years on os support means that 80% of all the tooling is broken now, at least without spending lots of time backporting or hacking fixes in.
    - pritambaral 5y ago
      > advances made in AI/ML in the last decade five years on os support means that 80% of all the tooling is broken now, at least without spending lots of time backporting or hacking fixes in. Ubuntu LTS releases are 2 years apart. You don't have to keep using 5-year old LTSes, do you?
  - lmm 5y ago
    There were, briefly. Hopefully they learnt their lesson from the backlash to that.
cwkoss 5y ago
I wish there was a good legal way to punish people who make bad ads. Maybe we need some sort of consumer collective to organize boycotts?
- AnimalMuppet 5y ago
  "Bad" isn't the issue. It could be a perfectly "good" ad (whatever that means), and I still don't want to see it. Stop shoving it in my face. (If you define "bad" as "in a context where ads should not be", I think I agree with you.)
  - cwkoss 5y ago
    Yeah, I mean both in content and context. If people could organize to they extent that one of the worst offenders' businesses would be metaphorically burned to the ground once a year, I think that would have an effective deterrent effect.
    - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
      That's inadequate. You're just burning to the ground a corporate shell from which the profits have already been removed. Instead, jail the person behind it.
flyinghamster 5y ago
I'm already there. My TV set hasn't been used as a TV since before the pandemic, even Windows 10 is a complete non-starter for me let alone Windows 11, and if one of my favorite Android apps decides to get obnoxious with ads (hello, Scanner Radio!) it gets the ax.

jamincan 5y ago

His channel is an increasingly rare gem. It's very high quality and interesting content without all the extra cruft that is inescapable now, even with some of the better channels.

bkraz 5y ago
Thank you. I make a conscious effort to avoid the craft that I hate so much myself. Luckily, I have a day job that allows me to treat the channel as a hobby -- I know others are not in this position. Other downside is that the day job takes time away from making fun videos :) let me know if anyone has a topic suggestion.
- why_Mr_Anderson 5y ago
  Hi Ben, after yet another (3rd I think? could be 4th) round of binge-watching all your videos, I was wondering if you made any progress with "Wire EDM" that you mention in one of your videos. That process is (for me, at least) pretty much pure magic. And the resulting cuts are just unbelievable.
  - bkraz 5y ago
    I haven't worked on EDM in a while. Check out BaxEDM and his other customers for a DIY wire EDM design. The BaxEDM channel recently showed one of those ultra right tolerance sliding parts where the joint disappears.
- jamincan 5y ago
  Honestly, just keep doing what you're doing - I don't think you've produced a video yet that I haven't found captured my interest. I'm sure you'd be tinkering and experimenting regardless of whether you shared your work on youtube, and I'm just thankful that you take the time to document it and share it.
ithinkso 5y ago
If you're looking for other similar gems I also highly recommend Huygens Optics [0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/c/HuygensOptics https://www.youtube.com/c/HuygensOptics

elric 5y ago

Digital TV in Belgium now includes unskippable ads, including in recordings of those shows. The reason why people switched to digital TV subscriptions, of course, was to be able to skip those ads in the first place. Apparently Netflix can afford to offer a wide variety of content for a small monthly fee, without any ads, and spend money on content creation; but digital TV stations somehow don't make enough money off of subscriptions which are an order of magnitude more expensive. Economies of scale, perhaps?

tehjoker 5y ago
There's no "enough" under capitalism, so every medium will eventually reach maximum ad saturation.
- elric 5y ago
  I've never encountered any ads in printed books. Edit because I can't be bothered to reply to all the comments below: excerpts from other books (often by the same author, or in a similar genre) are not ads IMO. They're not intrusive. They're pretty much always relevant. They're fun to read. They don't contain tracking cookies. They're as benign as it gets.
  - jjgreen 5y ago
    I've read a few cheap paperbacks from the 1930s and 40s with a couple of pages of ads at the end; mostly for trousers, hairpieces or departments stores. Strange.
  - notyourwork 5y ago
    Ever read a newspaper or magazine?
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - squarefoot 5y ago
      They're completely different from books in this context. A newspaper is usually read within hours from its print; a magazine within days; a book might require six months or six years to be read. Nobody except maybe the same publishing company and a few other businesses would have use for ad space that would require so much time to be seen.

JJMcJ 5y ago

> trigger mass exodus Or YouTube. Without blockers or YouTube Premium, it's getting to be like watching old shows in syndication on one of these TV stations you can never remember the channel number for. Five minutes of The Dick Van Dyke Show, five minutes of ads for things not available in stores, back to the show etc etc.

swayvil 5y ago
Speaking of free markets. This will certainly improve the looks of the privateer estuary. Invest now.
emerged 5y ago
The best is when the YouTuber bakes their own ad into the video so it can’t be skipped, and then that ad is interrupted by a normal YouTube ad. Yesterday I watched a video where a normal YouTube ad was immediately followed by a baked in ad and then that was again followed by another normal YouTube ad.
- Beaver117 5y ago
  Try SponsorBlock

swiley 5y ago

The ad bombardment will be the end of non-free software.

lrem 5y ago
Weren't there ads in Ubuntu?
- genewitch 5y ago
  There were suggestions when you used the meta?(windows) key and then typed something in Ubuntu. Windows does this too, I forget who did it first. I went from xp x64 to win 7 ultimate to win10pro and managed to keep the telemetry to a minimum as much as I could. IIRC the Ubuntu change was pushed in a non-LTS distribution. As an aside I think 5 year LTS is too few, with the advances made in AI/ML in the last decade five years on os support means that 80% of all the tooling is broken now, at least without spending lots of time backporting or hacking fixes in.
  - pritambaral 5y ago
    > advances made in AI/ML in the last decade five years on os support means that 80% of all the tooling is broken now, at least without spending lots of time backporting or hacking fixes in. Ubuntu LTS releases are 2 years apart. You don't have to keep using 5-year old LTSes, do you?
- lmm 5y ago
  There were, briefly. Hopefully they learnt their lesson from the backlash to that.

cwkoss 5y ago

I wish there was a good legal way to punish people who make bad ads. Maybe we need some sort of consumer collective to organize boycotts?

AnimalMuppet 5y ago
"Bad" isn't the issue. It could be a perfectly "good" ad (whatever that means), and I still don't want to see it. Stop shoving it in my face. (If you define "bad" as "in a context where ads should not be", I think I agree with you.)
- cwkoss 5y ago
  Yeah, I mean both in content and context. If people could organize to they extent that one of the worst offenders' businesses would be metaphorically burned to the ground once a year, I think that would have an effective deterrent effect.
  - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
    That's inadequate. You're just burning to the ground a corporate shell from which the profits have already been removed. Instead, jail the person behind it.

flyinghamster 5y ago

I'm already there. My TV set hasn't been used as a TV since before the pandemic, even Windows 10 is a complete non-starter for me let alone Windows 11, and if one of my favorite Android apps decides to get obnoxious with ads (hello, Scanner Radio!) it gets the ax.