Alternative perspective: Imagine being lifted up, being able to see the stars for the first time. The absolute wonderment of it all. Only to be put back down, never to be able to see them again. Almost seems cruel


Streaming is a perfect example of this, as people don’t seem to realise just how expensive it is to maintain the infrastructure for it compared to traditional cable infrastructure
Much of the cost of streaming for platforms like Netflix, and especially YouTube, are due to the need to centralize it to allow for more data collection. The cost of streaming also gets overblown, by a lot. Companies like Google and Netflix are spending huge amounts of money trying to build out new features and offerings, like games, that make it look like maintaining the streaming service is far more expensive than it is
But that price was also only possible because of various venture capitalists investing heavily in Netflix
Netflix has never needed to rely on venture capital for their streaming platform. Netflix has made a gross profit every quarter since 2011 when this data starts. They have also had a net income all but one of those quarters, which is absolutely insane for a new tech company investing that much in R&D + licensing
The recent hikes (all the way up to what, $20?) are the result of venture capital drying up
No. They’re the result of perpetually increasing profit margins. They were very profitable before the price hikes. Their expenses have gone up far slower than their revenue. It’s simply extracting more wealth without providing additional value
as Netflix went from a market-shaker startup to revenue generating machine
It’s a bit pedantic, but Netflix wasn’t a startup when they got into streaming. They were an existing business that was profitable to fund their pivot to a technology platform
So how do you offset these increases?
Netflix has had an operating income (revenue - operating expenses) of $12.6B over the past 12 months. With ~300M subscribers, that’s about $3.50 per subscriber per month. Subscription prices are much lower in most countries than in the US. For the ~80M US subscribers, that is probably $6 in profit. The $5 cheaper ad tier is probably about what we’d expect their prices to be if they had simply continued to make a couple billion a year in profit. Also keep in mind they would probably get and retain more subscribers with a lower price, and their increased operating expenses includes them building out tons of stupid mobile games most people don’t want, and one-off necessary expenses like building out their original content capabilities
Note: This last bit is doing some napkin math and is subject to error. I didn’t feel like digging deep enough into their financials to get more exact numbers (such as the average subscription price for the rest of the world)
TL;DR – Much of the price increases and addition of ads can be attributed to increasing profit margins, not increased operating costs


How long until we have no real choice? The vast majority of TVs are smart TVs now
The largest cost is going to be building out data centers and buying the chips to fill them. OpenAI has essentially been telling investors they’re only losing money for now as they build out infrastructure, but when that’s done they’ll be making money hand over fist
We have no idea what the compute costs actually are since OpenAI is a private company. It’s just a shift in the speculation that it’s higher than previously estimated


At this point most people just throw pennies away. At best they’re being saved in a change jar to be brought to the bank. Almost no one is using pennies for payment of goods and services. It’s a useless waste of money to produce and congress should have gotten rid of them decades ago
The only issue here is that it isn’t congress getting rid of it. It’s the president taking power from congress to get rid of it


You’re missing the point because they didn’t use precise language
Congress establishes what coins and bills are to be minted. The executive branch executes that directive. Congress has directed the executive branch to mint pennies. The executive branch determined 0 is a number of pennies to mint. The Mint is not minting pennies, despite congress directing them to do so
If the president is allowed to interpret laws congress passes so broadly, it gives an incredible amount of power to the executive branch. Historically, the president hasn’t been given nearly that level of authority
It’s illegal because congress said to mint pennies, but the executive branch is not minting pennies


Someone else mentioned children waiting for the bus get run over at a much higher rate if it’s dark early in the morning, which is a pretty valid argument
That being said, I’d much rather it get dark later in the day


50 cent piece would be the way to go. Should then also really push $1 coins, and add in a $2 and $5 coin, although I don’t know if Americans would realistically use them. Coins are much more durable than paper currency though, which would save a lot of money long term


Canada was a decade ahead of the US when it came to implementing tap. It’ll take the US a long while to get to the same level of universal acceptance, starting from so far behind


That seems off
Where are you getting this millions of years number? Seems really unrealistic considering millions of humans live at altitude and have barely enough oxygen in the air as it is


I agree getting rid of the penny is a good thing, but it’s really bad that this is setting a precedent to give the president a lot more power
It’s also a really poor implementation considering the government has given no guidance on how businesses must handle it


No, actually I never heard that. Where are you getting that from?


That sounds like what they’re saying, but they don’t provide any reason for us to believe them


The truth can absolutely be a bad thing. If google reports an important vulnerability, then buries it in CVE slop for 90 days, and publicly announces details of the important vulnerability that hasn’t been fixed yet, it would be worse than if they had never reported it
The 90-day publishing window is tough when OSS projects are getting buried in AI slop reports
That’s tough man. At least as a food service worker you’re contributing a lot to the economy. When I worked in restaurants, I worked a lot harder than I ever have in a corporate job, for far less money
Median home prices peaked at $216,000 in August 2006. The lowest they’ve been in 2025 is $414,000. You had some absolutely atrocious luck. You buy in Detroit or something?
Didn’t they do that a long time ago? I remember ~10 years ago Microsoft had a big push to get all SDEs to become SDETs. I think that was just before their push to make devs into DevOps


You’d likely have to pay for it
Much better way to get rid of them: Submit a FOIA request for their data. So far many cities are simply getting rid of them to prevent that data being public
Even if the government is happy to comply with the request, the data is a powerful tool to sway public sentiment. Camera near some bars? Request the data from 1:30-2:30 each weekend morning. Near a church? Request the Sunday morning data. Whole lot of people will realize how dangerous Flock cameras are when you anonymously post lists of people doing various things to one of those neighborhood apps
Note: The government can charge “reasonable” amounts based on costs incurred complying with a FOIA request. I recommend keeping your requests narrow as a result


I don’t find that to be a particularly helpful boycott. Boycotting several large corporations like that takes a lot of effort. That’s effort that can be used for more effectively directly fighting Trump
Call your representatives, protest, rally voters, etc. are far more effective with less impact on your life
Technically correct, but media never uses it that way. People generally do not differentiate the two
The fact she is making this distinction, which she has never made before for anyone, tells me she’s priming her audience to be okay with rich and powerful men raping underage women