@carnage4life When I’m at Dublin Airport, I just get a taxi at the rank. It’s now cheaper and easier than any ride-hailing app but about the same price as it always was. Experience of taxis in Paris is similar (just hail one down on the street)! London seems to be one place where Uber/Bolt etc. are still cheaper but that’s because traditional Black Cabs were always on the high side.

@carnage4life

yeah. as a species, we seem to keep falling for "really cheap taste until they drive the competition under/out of biz, then jack the prices to where they were".

perhaps we should be more suspicious of the same market expansion method drug dealers use? :)

@carnage4life I don't think we're quite there on streaming. Netflix is only $12 or something (I forget) vs $70+ for cable with anything of value rather than Fox News type drivel. If you want variety, the combined bill may rival cable, but the big problem with cable was always paying for the awful shit you didn't want just to get a few good channels.

@carnage4life I was wondering when the whole cloud idea would start to go wrong

@carnage4life there are always new shareholders demanding a return.

@carnage4life I remember the first time my dad described what cable TV was supposed to be in the 80’s: “you pay for it so there’s no ads”

@carnage4life Does it mention Airbnbs too? it should

@carnage4life when was cloud cheap? Someone telling me they have cheap cloud is just telling me they have no idea how the billing works.

@carnage4life but they've all but destroyed the taxi/cable/"physical software" industries since. AS THEY PLANNED to from the start.

@carnage4life Not quite there yet. People don’t factor in the extra taxes, fees, including CABLE BOX RENTAL fees that really increase the price of cable. I pay $35 for FIOS, $73 for YouTube TV, Disney+ for $12/month, this is way less than I was paying; around $160/mo for cable TV plus slower internet.

@carnage4life Ask not for whom enshittification piles; it piles for thee. @pluralistic

@carnage4life Streaming certainly is now cancelling shows prematurely the way network did. 😕

@carnage4life@mas.to That was Uber/Lyft's game plan from the start. Bleed VC money until you drive taxis out of business, walk away with the IPO money laughing all the way to the bank, then screw both the customers and the drivers.

Really, this wasn't rocket science. The game plan was obvious from the very start to everyone except the people who didn't want to see it. The "gig economy" is just another incremental refinement of exploitation.

@carnage4life

How long before it comes for LLMs and image generation too?

My thoughts here: https://josephtlucas.github.io/blog/content/aml_for_profit.html

@carnage4life Spot on. My wages have stagnated for 15 years but almost everything else has increased in price, or decreased in value, or become a never-ending nuisance in terms of its cost-management.

@carnage4life I know about that stuff. I been exploited all my life. -- Elwood Blues

@carnage4life I personally would never ever subscribe to cable: I hate advertisements, I love one-tap cancel, and I love being able to watch with Audio Description track or random Japanese/French dub to practice languages and watch at 1.5x speed.

Even if I’m able to get these latter technical features via apps while on cable, the pay-to-have-no-ads is worth it for me.

@carnage4life It's fair to gripe about this, but I feel a bit more empowered since I can sub/unsub in a more a la carte way, plus I feel like there are shows with better stories/production values/acting that I actually want to watch.

Plus it's on-demand, which cable never was. You can explore more and skip it if you don't like it (music streaming too).

I do worry about quality dropping with the cost-cutting efforts that often accompany businesses looking for profit growth in mature markets.

@carnage4life @tk it really fucking does.

@carnage4life ride hailing was only cheaper because no wage protection for drivers & no control over quality of service or vehicle. As standards are put in place the costs start matching up.
Never a fan of ride hailing. It was a phase

@carnage4life The cloud was always at least 3x physical hardware.

@carnage4life