Once they know it's possible, people want a one click solution for anything. The subject being taboo has nothing to do with it.
This is one reason why Youtube, Spotify, Steam and Netflix did such a good job combatting piracy for music, video games, and movies, while ROM sites are still a ubiquitous problem for 20 year old consoles. Youtube, Spotify, Steam and Netflix made content easy to get. There's no equivalent for most ROMs, so they're still widely pirated.
Streaming services would be forced to compete in everything except content. Creators would still be paid.
Copyright isn't a natural right, it should be continually adapted to serve the public.
What are the problems with this?
My personal views, of course.
One big problem with compulsory licensing is that rights organizations that manage the payment of royalties often become very powerful themselves and are sometimes seen as copyright bullies. For example, ASCAP, which represents composers and licenses musical compositions rights, pursued the Girl Scouts for unlicensed singing of campfire songs. [3]
[1]: https://www.copyright.gov/licensing/m200a.pdf
[2] example: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/nov/24/taylor-swif...
[3]: https://www.nytimes.com/1996/12/17/nyregion/ascap-asks-royal...
Essentially, they both mean that creators don't meaningfully get paid, only that Spotify appears legitimate due to the breadcrumbs and "exposure" they do give out.
E.g. Bandcamp is better than piracy, but I'd argue piracy is better than Spotify.
Except now, as an independent artist I can get easier exposure on Spotify and build up more income from live shows, merch and whatever else as a result. My closest fans will still often buy from band camp, or buy a vinyl or whatever. Except now I have a ton more fans than I could have reasonably achieved in the iTunes era
And the distribution of wealth has stayed relatively similar - huge artists (The Taylor swift’s of the world) continue to be minted, small unknown artists continue to make a comparatively tiny living - except now many, many more people can make that living and stream music
I can't see how Amazon and Netflix could push prices up without unlawful collusion? But if they did push prices up for all media how would they sell their service?
It's not unheard of for major players to have contracts that say 'if you're offering this to another company for less per unit than you are to us then you agree to reduce our price accordingly', the idea is just to make that lowest price universal so that.
I sell license for prints of my painting to Acme for £5 then ABC can print the same painting and pay me £5. As creator I can choose not to sell the work for £5, but that's no different to now; what I wouldn't be able to do is restrict who - in the wholesale market - could buy the work for that price.
The fundamental trust of copyright is literally to make things worse for consumers to the benefit of producers. If you see consumers being inconvenienced in an expensive way as a problem then you haven't engaged with the problem copyright is here to solve.
Copyright is to enrich the public domain. It's foundation in the West is Queen Anne's statute which followed on from printmakers making their own regulations. It shifted power from the printmakers to the creators, buy it served the public domain by having a limited period of protection and by preserving copies of works which could be referenced.
It made things better for the public because after 7 years (IIRC, I think it was later extendable to 14 years) the work was free to get printed anywhere vastly aiding the spread of culturally important works. The fundamental bargain also aided the demos (as opposed to the consumer, per se); that bargain being that a creator could exclusively - with the backing of the law - control reproduction during those 7 years and so profit sufficiently to continue creating further works without having to seek a patron.
Copyright is supposed to be, and was, about liberation of creators from control; and democratisation (making available to the people) of works.
The change I propose aids creators getting paid, and aids works benefiting the public. Moreover, it wrests some control from the "printmakers" in keeping with early copyright laws.
Consumers have a right to consume or not consume, but they may not limit creator's freedom, nor by "restricting copyright to force delegation".
Creators may choose who to sell to, with you there. But then we (the demos) may choose to not give copyright protection. We're not limiting creators freedom, we're limiting who we choose to protect from the open market.
It's our job, though, to make that available and easy for creators (e.g. kudos to RMS for making and popularising the GPL).
But no one should be able force anything on _all_ creators.
PS: Well, the outcome would be that creators would stop create at all, and in some cases that might be fair and just, but that's another topic completely. E.g. some societies regard as fair and just limits on drawings of humans and animals, so there's no such drawings. And they see it as fair and just.
But demos doesn't mean "we, consumers" -- it means "we, the people". As in, the body politic, from whom all laws and therefore copyright ultimately emanates. Creators only have those copyrights because we've granted them. This is a law of man, neither God-given nor a law of nature -- we can, if we want, un-grant them.
The other things I did recently: 1) paused Google YTTV because NBA season was over 2) canceled Netflix because I never watch it
I've been watching content (some of it very old, like The Larry Sanders Show) on HBO Max, but the app on Roku is *SO HORRIBLE* I'd rather pirate content and watch it on PLeX.
The Amazon app/UI is *HORRIBLE*, too. Like multiple seasons are separate items? WTF. I'll download series I have access to on Amazon just to avoid that app.
Not only that but I've even seen the seasons presented in no order whatsoever: i.e Season 2 followed by Season 8. It is nonsensical.
Fun fact: previously it tried to cooperate with the content owners and removed content by request, so the UX was considerably worse. But then, someone successfully litigated to block them 'forever' in Russia, so... They restored all prevoiusly removed content and now it has almost everything I ever wanted. Great win!
The VPN jumping lunacy bothers me. I moved countries - great so I can't use Disney+? I get it, but that now means I have to download (your new) content because you won't actually let me buy your content, directly from you. For the first couple of months I continued to pay for the service. Eventually I decided that if you don't want me as a customer, I don't feel bad about downloading it. Sad really.
The only reasonable option is to pirate.
That became worse in recent years when titles on digital distribution platforms e.g. Steam had music removed due to expiring licenses. This meant a game you had already downloaded and installed would be downgraded unless you were quick enough to stop the automatic updates for it.
Zero control over playback speed is the deal killer for me.
And, no qualms of conscience there at all?
And I pay for Plex.
https://iknowwhatyoudownload.com/en/stat/annual/2021 If you flip thru the years at least the top movies in 2018 have more downloads than the top movies in 2021. I think that can somewhat safely answer your questions.
EDIT: WRONG because as a comment points out below older movies also might just have been downloaded more over time.
From this site, it doesn't look like their was much of an uptick in top downloaded movies from 2019 to 2020. And in general torrenting has been growing less popular.
However, the numbers on this site in general don't sanity check very well for me. For example, the End Game Avengers movie, which was incredibly popular, was only downloaded: 2,890 times in 2019? That doesn't seem high enough to me.
So yeah, not 2,890. Think millions.
This makes far more sense, I wonder why their numbers are so bad.
It's nothing like the old days where we had to wait several weeks to watch Game of Thrones legally, though.
I don't have the exact numbers on hand, but from memory it was something that around 40% of us were doing back in 2013, had dropped to around 15-20% by 2018-2019, and is now at just above 20%.
Then I tried to set them up on the iPad.
There was about 5-10 specific shows they wanted to watch, what I found was that they were literally spread across more than 5 services, with one show each. Not a single one of them had 2 of the shows they wanted to watch.
They were already set up with Foxtel and had been using it for a couple of years, they watched shows on it regularly and knew how to do everything up to hitting the 'cast' button.
So I set them up with the other services, bummed an Amazon account off a sibling, signed them up to the 3 or 4 free services we have in Australia, think I subbed to one other one or something too. I can't even remember what they all were there was so many. I put the icons all in the same place on their home screen so they knew those apps were all the streaming ones etc etc.
I logged into a few of the accounts a week or so ago and they haven't watched a single thing. Not even on the Foxtel, which they were already using, and now they've stopped using it.
It seems to me like they've just hit a wall of complexity and thrown their hands up and said fuck the whole thing.
And you know what? I'm right there with them. Half way through the set up, trying to do the right thing, I was an inch away from throwing my hands up and saying fuck the whole thing as well. It would be far easier for everyone involved if I just brought a hard drive with new shows around for them every few months.
There was another thread here yesterday where some bloke was going on about how he couldn't understand why people wouldn't just spin up a linux box or something instead of using Discord.
Well, this is it. It took my parents months to get used to using one app, and adding something as simple as another couple of apps to the mix has turned them off the technology entirely.
When you introduce anything other than the absolute most simple UX, you risk losing part of your market entirely. You're not building stuff for other software engineers or other TV network execs or whatever your job title is. Everyone trying to carve out their own piece of the pie is just smashing the pie to bits for everyone else.
When it was just Netflix, piracy was almost dead. Now, it's going to come back, unless content distributors can find some way to work together. That goes for music, TV and games. All 3 ecosystems are running into the exact same problem.
I do this for my family. 3TB external HDDs, each time I see them they give me the old one and I give them a another one freshly topped up (things added/removed based on suggestions/requests).
It's been a smashing hit and they all love it.
We all loved Netflix when it came out and paused doing this for a while, but it wasn't long until the fragmentation and geoblocking led to more requests for certain shows popping up again, and now we all pretty much got rid of all our streaming services and are back to the HDDs.
Right. They need to swallow their pride and realise there needs to be a way to have one interface that shows you all the content you can access from the subset of services you subscribe to, in a searchable way. My Netflix shows, Prime shows and Foxtel shows should show up side-by-side in the interface. They can put a ribbon on it and/or an opening title to tell me who the distributor is.
Purchasable/rentable content can appear in a separate section, and when I can buy content from two or more services I have an account with, present them all and let me choose which one to use.
One of the most annoying scenarios I seem to find myself in all too frequently is trying to get to the episode list for a series. The assumption that most of my services make is that when I click on the series card in the list of shows, the thing I want is to automatically be taken to where I left off. This is fine when it works (although it's a big damn assumption that the app correctly preserved where I left off, and even when it does that often dumps me into the credits for the episode I finished last night). But when I want to see the episode list, I feel like I just have to flail about and curse at the TV until I stumble upon the right sequence of buttons to get to what I want.
That's not even to mention the incredibly disheartening recent changes to the home screen of my (Shield) Android TV, where half the home screen is now taken up with ads for programs I will never watch on services I don't even use.
It does make one rather miss the days of a folder full of AVIs and VLC. I also had a nice Plex setup at one point. Maybe one of these days I'll get off my ass and heed the call of the open seas.
There was a little upkick at the start of the pandemic according to Sandvine, but Sandvine's methodology is not watertight and lots of people staying at home with not much to do seems a more likely culprit than service fragmentation.
You can throw money at directors, and actors, but there are just so many great movies, and most were made by hollywood years ago.
The owners of those great films, started their own streaming service.
But, nowadays it feels like Netflix’s catalog is full of its self made titles(Some of them are great), but less and less “popular” ones that we heard of somewhere and just want to watch.
If I am expected to shuffle around multiple streaming subscriptions, and pay for them individually, it is not that different from the cable TV model that these guys took on against.
Sailing the high seas indeed!
Now, of only there was a way to have a moderated search for all content on all trackers.... Maybe there is one already, and its just that i don't know it?
It has mostly russian-dubbed content, but it usually has original soundtracks, too.
Also, now it is probably better than ever (didn't watch anything for quite a while, so it's a guess), because films are currently released on VOD concurrently with premieres in theatres, and that means that good quality content appears immediately, and not after theatrical window
The only example I can think of is Nintendo Online. You can play select NES and SNES games on the Switch with a N.O. subscription.
I collect ROMs, I've got damned near 4Tb worth. I collect for two reasons:
1. Archiving 2. Most of the "good" vintage games carry ridiculous prices. Games that had over 10 million copies pressed going for $100+. Even if we assume 1 million were destroyed, that's still 9 million copies floating about. Not exactly rare or worth $100.
I don't disagree that the market is small, though. But Nintendo does have a chronic problem of under-manufacturing desirable hardware. Like, if you want a SNES Classic (good emulator, fantastic controllers), you'll have to pay 2-3x the original price. Nintendo could do another run of them every year for basically no effort, and they just...don't.
If you mean third party solutions I think there is at least one project that aims to be compatible with various original cartridges but its name eludes me at the moment. [edit] It's Polymega though it doesn't support N64 it does support SNES/Megadrive/NES/TG16 and a number of CD-ROM based consoles.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2134113860/warrior-64-c...
But yeah, Nintendo could have done this years ago had they wanted to.
$20 is exceptionally expensive for a Japanese game.
That does actually make me feel better knowing that DW4 would cost $100 if it were "new" now.
These days a sealed copy of DW4 graded at 7.0 will run you $1549. I'd be nervous paying anything less than $170 for a working cartridge alone right now.
As a consumer of these things, I've thought many times how easy it would be for someone to just print off "original boxes and content" for these old games, and sell them as if they were mint. As someone who wants this kind of thing... please don't be afraid to charge premium prices for replicas! As long as you tell us it's a replica, and it's high quality - everyone wins. Once enough time passes, replicas and forgeries all just become history.
The evidence presented does seem like a bubble, with scam/fraud properties.
I too tend to think of ROMs as strictly images of non-volatile chips, alone, but it's interesting that when we're in computer emulation territory, it's really only the size that's different; a CD iso feeds into a PS emulator pretty much the same way a rom file feels into a SNES emulator - it's just a document.
Once the market becomes completely fragmented, a new service offering to bundle it back up will inevitably come along.
You'd think they'd make their money and move on to new creations. You make something, it's successful, you make your money for 5 years or so and then it's public domain. You'd have to make new stuff to make more money. No. Copyright holders feel entitled to extract value out of their "property" essentially forever. It's the ultimate in rent seeking.
Since then the cycle to make/market/distribute/profit off a product has gotten much faster.
If anything, copyright should be shorter than 28 years. Not longer.
I love the original The Matrix(1999) movie. But it has had it's day in the sun, earned money and become "old news" at least 10 years ago.
In a "free market" sense, 12 years is a long time to have a monopoly on IP. If you have failed to make whatever money you are going to make of this IP by 12 years, then you are sucking at your marketing/use-of-IP and there should be "competition in the market" with your IP, to best make use of it.
But I agree with you, I'm surprised Steam doesn't have a way to get old ROMs.
Not quite old ROMs, but gog.com sells old computer games prepackaged for Dosbox, which because of that work on Windows, Mac and Linux. That's basically the old PC computer equivalent of what I believe Nintendo does by shipping the emulator with the ROM when you buy it through the Virtual Console so it runs as a whole.
Back in the day I was a big fan of an SSI game called Imperialism - this game pretty much refuses to run on modern software - it needs DOSBox to run smoothly and even then it does custom cursor stuff that tends to screw up very obviously on modern systems - the GOG version of the game runs smooth like butter.
Why would I ever pirate a copy of Imperialism and spend a day actually getting it set up to run sorta decently on my machine - when I can grab it off GOG for 1.89 CAD? A day of my time, even an hour of my time (even my leisure time), runs well above 2$ at this point - the convenience is there so pirating becomes a bad value proposition.
They sell old games, e.g. Sonic the Hedgehog: https://store.steampowered.com/app/71113/Sonic_The_Hedgehog/
That's a Windows program that runs a Sega Genesis emulator that loads the game's ROM.
In many jurisdictions (AU, UK), it would be legal to copy them to another device you own, such as a hacked PSP, under the "format shifting" exemptions.
Licensing hell.
https://kotaku.com/the-sad-story-behind-a-dead-pc-game-that-...
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/no-one-will-sell-no-one-liv...
Great games. Recently - well a year ago - played through them with a friend coop.
A good thing overall, tbf.
Agree, I think a more general term for 1 click solution is ease of use.
Its the same reason why people compromise for privacy and use main stream products like google maps.
Had we kept the 28 year copyright duration from 1831 almost all ROM images would be in the Public Domain now.
For example indie creator studio makes video game for the PS1. It's a huge hit, they go on to make other popular games, and one day Microsoft buys them, morphs them into an in-house team. And then one day you realise you're arguing that, Microsoft (now the owner of the license) should release this Sony Playstation game. No. Not going to happen.
When this stuff happens for individual humans, often even if the money doesn't mean anything to one person who is an obstacle, it does mean something to their co-creators and they'll do it for that. For example it would be possible for Alan Moore to have blocked a lot of stuff that uses his work, from the V for Vendetta movie (which lots of people liked but I felt missed the whole point) to the re-issues of Miracleman, but while Alan doesn't care about money, the artists on that work do, and him blocking it would hurt them. So e.g. that's why modern copies of Moore's seminal run on Miracleman say they're by "The Original Author" in big text but never mention Moore by name, that's his condition, he doesn't want the Mouse's money, but his artists do.
Corporations don't care though. If they can inconvenience a modern competitor by snuffing out an important cultural artefact that is exactly what they'll do.
I'd actually advocate outright abolition of copyright. The associated moral rights have some place, but copyright is almost entirely a means for corporations to try to control culture for their own profit and we don't need it. But 28 years is a more acceptable middle ground I guess.
That still protects the individual artists and perhaps the Banskys but doesn’t unnecessarily lock up these old games
Much like Netflix, the reality is that people aren't actually very interested in old shows apart from a handful of super famous perennials which are already available anyway.
They say they are in surveys, but consumer behaviour does not back that up. They just use newer content in practice.
e.g. https://archive.org/details/internetarcade
I didn't know how to filter out the romhacks, if you scroll down the majority of the collection is original games.
The demand is there, it's just a question of having a convenient enough package
They already do this, you need a Switch online subscription to access the NES/SNES ROMs they have available
There's not a lot of incentive for some of those groups to come together, but I imagine even if most could be assembled, Nintendo would be particularly resistant.
Technically, GameTap had some really neat little features. For example, it would track your high score for most emulated games, and for really old games where the score would rollover to zero, it noticed that and would let you see your effective grand total score. So there would be a global Galaga leaderboard that could happily go into the millions.
Regarding the success of the service, Gametap was live for a few years. It totally had its shot. GameTap was regularly advertised on TV. It had a pretty big library covering a dozen or so platforms: Several Ataris, ColecoVision, Intellivision, Sega, PC games, and more. They did a few high profile things like buying some failed MMOs and keeping the servers running for all GameTap subscribers.
At the end, I think it turned out that the folks who get really excited about playing ColecoVision games are the same folks who are very comfortable downloading ROMs.
I think it may just have been ahead of it's time in terms of model in the era of battlepasses, paid online and gamepass, as well as monthly paid streaming services in general.
Here's a fun technical secret about GameTap. Several of the companies that we bought licenses from barely knew they owned the games and definitely didn't have any original binaries or source, and for the obscure consoles/titles, we sometimes could only find cracked versions online. Those would usually have crack intros (it was the birth of the demoscene!), though, and we clearly didn't want to use them. Ultimately we cheated. We just launched the game by loading a save state just past the crack intro.
Then suddenly the highest court disallowed it. Guess what, we still pay the copy tax.
Clarification: The copy tax was meant to compensate copyright owners for consumers making copies (for private use) of purchased media. It was widely interpreted as to allow downloading from the internet as well (even from pirated sources).
COVID hit recently graduated Gen-Z incredibly hard. There's huge groups that are/were unemployed and then there's huge groups who are sexually repressed due to quarantine. Across the whole world, too*. Many can easily make more than min wage, and in certain niches you probably don't even have to be 'conventionally beautiful' (sorry to use this term, but it's important I think) to make a living or solid portion of a living on there.
For $$ per hour worked, why would they field low wage, menial jobs with a risk of COVID?
And if you price model right, you don't need thousands of fans, just a couple really dedicated superfans/whales.
* Consider the value of dollars/euros/pounds in poorer countries!
There's a big movement to gain a lot of followers on social media like TikTok and then redirect those followers to their $5/month OnlyFans. There are a lot of people making a living or at least significantly boosting their income from this model, and they don't have to leave the house to do it.
https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/hip-hop/9550662/b...
Making $1.4 million per month and growing, has 4 employees, outsources every chore she can, posts content on all the social media platforms, and grinds 12 hour days on Twitch. [2] Doesn't spend most of the money, is learning about and trying out investments.
Interestingly she doesn't think that this type of top-heavy earnings situation will be sustainable, that the revenue will be more evenly distributed in the future. Even so, she considers her biggest competition to not be up-and-coming people, but instead existing influencers who might bring their audience to OnlyFans.
Definitely not a common success story, but it's pretty interesting how it is possible to have insane success when applying well-reasoned growth strategies and keeping up the grind.
--
[1] https://investmenttalk.substack.com/p/confessions-of-an-only...
[2] In the linked interview she still says 8 hours for Twitch, but she has stepped it up since June.
The median viewer count is likely single digits.
Though I can say with considerable certainty that a lot of wannabe Twitch streamers think that being a streamer just means having people watch you play a game, which may be true for story-driven games that don't get a lot of viewers, since it creates a more movie-like experience, and may be true for highly-competitive games where you can watch someone make amazing plays. But for the rest, you need to have the charisma and creativity to create entertaining commentary and audience interaction.
Nobody wants to watch an average Joe play World of Warcraft.
It's super toxic for society since it's literally "winner takes all".
Skilled crafts here can generate a more money in the first 10-20 years of a career than what you make with a university degree desk job. One factor is that you can get into the labor force much earlier, don't neglect that 3-5 years head start when saving for your first house loan. After that, it depends if you're doing the extra hours, weekend and night shifts.
After that the masters degree jobs get the advantage. The craftsmen either they worked their way into a more supervising role or are not able or willing to do the lucrative labor hours.
The decline in crafts like baker or butcher is attributed to the long and weird hours, more than the pay. There are simply not enough to replace the
+ the aging work force.
Most tradespeople prefer to work on new builds, large amounts of stable work, without the hastle of renovating existing structures and all of the hidden issues that are quickly exposed once the surface has been taken away. (So... technical debt...)
As a contract IT consultant - sure, sometimes I take small "side-hustle" contracts if I am not swamped by my primary gig - but, I couldn't pay all mortgage if I was reliant on just taking small/odd jobs. Same goes for tradespeople.
This isn’t 1800. Moving back for a job is trivial when the alternative is being unemployed.
It’d be like saying you can make a million as a waiter or cook, because of a small business owner who opened a restaurant.
https://www.ziprecruiter.com/Salaries/What-Is-the-Average-HV...
Most of them still prefer to surf than work !
Then you work for someone else and probably make $80k or $90k, then you start your own business.
In terms of supply/demand Australians are extremely house proud and spend an insane amount of money on renovations, upgrades, etc, so all the trades are always slammed. Have been for 20 years.
For sure there are common skills that all electricians share regardless of country, but there are still significant differences between countries, like in the UK ring circuits are common, but are against code in the USA.
licensing process that doesn't care about relevant unlicensed experience
The problem with unlicensed experience is that it provides no assurance of knowledge of code or safe wiring practice. Like when I found that my house had several MWBC's, but on one of them, the previous owner (or someone he hired) had replaced the tied-handle breakers with untied breakers, which leads to a very unsafe situation (another common mistake with MWBC's is moving breakers around and putting the hots on the same hot leg, which can lead to an overloaded neutral). Or worse, when I mapped out my outlets and found that the owner had put a 30A breaker on the 12 gauge wire leading to the garage outlets, presumably he was tripping the code compliant 20A breaker and "solved" that with a bigger breaker.
But if a guy who is a master electrician in El Salvador can sell himself as an electrician here, then a homeowner may trust him to do major electrical work "Permits? Naa, you don't need permits for this, that'll just make it more expensive. Trust me! I'm an Electrican and I've been doing this work for 20 years back home"
Where in live in the US, the housing market is exploding. It is impossible to find these workers, licensed or not.
He also does landscaping, tree removal, fence repair, house painting, trash hauling, electrical, plumbing and general dentistry (if you ask).
The two class of jobs are so different. Scalability, physicality, career path, longevity etc all comes into picture.
The discussion has been going around in cycles for many years.
Trades are solid career choices but it's hard work and you expire at about the same rate as a software dev.
It's a similar story for other trades, machinist is $47k, welder is $44k, plumber is $56k, HVAC is $50k.
Then when we look at other technology jobs, PM, IT, etc, the story is similar to developers, high median salary with a multiple of jobs available over the trades.
I do know though that it’s pretty common for the seller to write the note financing the deal, especially when the buyer is a soon to be former employee. So financing is often within reach.
Another example is trucking. Plenty of trucking businesses were built by a lone operator rolling profits into more trucks and hiring drivers. Given the intense competition for CDL drivers today though it wouldn’t be my first pick.
The SF saleries are inflated BS because they are insanely high even compared to one of the most expensive countries in the world.
She describes it as a bimodal distribution. One (smaller) group of people with trades are willing to work anywhere whenever. They work in fly-in camps with limited work seasons and practically unlimited overtime. Since there’s nothing else to do, they log enough hours to get into double and triple time. The other (larger) group goes home after work and their overtime is limited to nonexistent. The pay is so different between the two groups that if they’re analyzed together, the statistically typical tradesperson looks nothing like the typical tradesperson.
A good plumber in my area (Seattle) is pulling in $60/hr minimum, and that is after the employers cut.
A plumber with some seniority is going to be making over 100/hr.
An experienced electrician is also well over 100/hr.
Granted if self employed they all have a higher tax burden and pay their healthcare costs, and driving between sites is a pain, but 100/hr makes up for a lot of that.
The trades people I know are booked out months. The general handyman I use is only booked out 2-3 weeks, and he comes in at an affordable $60/hr!
Next time a plumber stops by to fix your water heater, have a chat with them. Some of the ones I've talked to live in very nice custom built luxury homes that they designed themselves.
https://www.indeed.com/career/journeyman-plumber/salaries/Se...
Speaking of "250K" as a number, every single offer over 250K+ for someone with no experience, on levels.fyi, in seattle, was either for someone hired at L4 at Google or Facebook (usually this means a PhD hire), or a Facebook "rockstar" signing bonus, which I think levels.fyi mis-estimates (the "recurring" comp is lower than 250K, you get something like 120 base, 40 stock/yr, 100K signing (+ your normal annual bonus of ~15K). That's 200K/year over four years, not 250).
And last time I checked those packages had serious compensation cliffs after the first few years!
Software developer compensation is seriously bi-modal, most developers even in big cities are working at a fraction of FAANG pay, doing routine maintenance work.
Finally in seattle a top electrician makes 100/hr or ~200k/year. A top developer with similar years of experience makes $500k and never has to crawl around in your nasty attic and gets amazing healthcare and free food.
The money may be approximately comparable (outliers in both camps excepted) but all the trade people I know that have established themselves have very flexible work schedule. They have all the demand they can take so when they want to work 60 hours weeks they do. But since work is per job, when they want to work a few hours a week or take time off, that's also possible without repercussions.
Meanwhile in software land it's either great pay at 60+ hours a week, or nothing. Oh and "unlimited vacation" (aka don't dare take vacation ever).
Tradepeople also don't have standups or agile soulcrushing BS and their experience is respected.
This is just not true. There are loads of FAANG developers making well into 6 figures with 40 hour weeks.
I realize it's rather irrational but I personally don't think I could stomach the non-salaried lifestyle. A day of vacation is a day's wages lost. I'm sure it's something you learn to live with but I appreciate that the cost of taking time off is quite abstract for me.
It’s boring and you can practically feel your brain turn to slush.
Getting challenges on the job is a requirement for a good job.
First, work schedule. Keep in mind that, as another commenter pointed out, tradespeople often go through booms and busts, just like any other profession. The difference is that with tradespeople its a lot more obvious, since they still on a job for a few weeks, rather than a few years. On the boom, the tradespeople get a better deal out of it, because they get more work, whereas office workers of course only have the one job. In the busts, the office workers come out better, as the tradespeople have less work, whereas the office workers remain the same as they were in the boom.
Next, hours and vacation. I may be an outliner here, but my hours are the standard 9-5 and I get a fixed 30 days vacation a year, and flexible working (including working from home). As for unlimited vacation = no vacation, and 60+ hours is required, that seems more like a bad office culture/employer, no different than a tradesman would get a bad client. Again, its only more noticeable in office jobs because your there for a long time, whereas a bad client will only be a problem for a number of weeks (though potentially more if they hold off on paying). While we're at it, the same could be said of "their experience is respected". That's based on your employer, not your job.
Finally, standups, agile and office politics (assuming thats what you meant by BS). Its true, tradespeople don't need to suffer with that, but they do need to suffer through a hell of a lot of health and safety precautions and government red tape. Of course you can get some cowboys who don't bother with that, but that seems no different than the programming teams that don't do standups, agile or office politics (apart from the fact that one team is less likely to kill people). I would also mention the physical health issues that it can cause, but programmers get a similar thing through sitting for so long and you graciously didn't mention that.
I don't think being a tradey is a bad job, not at all. Its just not perfect, and like any job has its pros and cons. I too have fantasised about going into that line of work, but I imagine if I did, I'd end up fantasizing sitting in a comfy chair all day building software. As I said, the grass is always greener on the other side.
You should line up several interviews all in the same week and play the offers against one another. At least one should be over $150k, and possibly over $200k. That highest number then sets a floor that everyone else will need to rise to as you negotiate. Politely ignore claims that offers will explode; they won't. Add options/RSUs, and you may be shocked at the amount of compensation you can get.
You can actually do it.
The numbers aren’t inflated, they’re just not equally distributed.
Literally interviewed with a small startup (around 20 people total headcount) less than a week ago. The offer was for a base salary of $180k+grand promises of equity given out that should grow 15x and make one rich, but whatever, because equity at this point is just imaginary monopoly money worth pretty much nothing right now, so lets omit that part completely. But even with that in mind, $180k of pure cash just from base salary is more than doable. And I am not even a senior level or anything like that. Technically the company is in NYC, but the position is fully remote, which makes it even more lucrative for people who want to live in cheap COL states (no salary adjustment, which works out great for this scenario).
It’s not “fair” but it’s worth your time to look into getting into the US tech sector. Your skills have the most market value their.
Most senior salaries around here seem to be in the $95-120k range, so when I see similar numbers for "entry level" roles, it always perks me up a bit.
Not saying I disagree, but yeh, its not unique to software dev it seems
These numbers are all for remote roles for SV-based companies. You can also check salary on levels.fyi.
You won't believe it, but 300K+ for new grads (undergrads) isn't even unheard of if you look at places like Citadel & Jane Street, tho of course the hiring bar is very high at these places.
Side note - fan of your username.
Im in the late stages of my career and after owning my home for 15 years my mortgage is far less than rents in my area, my salary has gone up a ton over the years, and my house has appreciated a ton.
If you are a dev early in your career and in a big city, stick it out. Get into a big company that gives you stock options that are worth something, but a house when you can, and start working to max out your 401k. In all likelihood it will pay off in the long run. My old boss called it the “get rich slowly plan”. As a person that grew up really poor and has been in tech over 20 years, I can assure you it pays off.
Real estate is a tricky thing. I wouldn’t buy it for the sake of expecting it to go up in value. I’d buy it because you need housing.
Barring catastrophe, it will almost certainly go up if your time horizon is longer than 10 years. If you are in a big city, the populations are growing faster than new housing is being built. On top of that, there is no space to build many new single family homes so those will go up even more if you own one instead of a condo or townhouse.
I bought my first house at the peak of the last bubble. Ten years later I sold it for more than I paid for it, and those last few years my mortgage was a fair bit lower than rents for a comparable place.
Most people simply haven't wrapped their head around exponential growth. Our economy grows exponentially, and our population has historically (there are signs this might be changing). Unfortunately, I think our environment can't sustain that, but as long as it does, things will go up if your time horizon is long enough.
Edit: also, I’m not suggesting that your home value will double in 10 years. Not sure where you got that idea. My point does not assume or require doubling in 10 years.
Although you're not wrong, and crashes absolutely happen, I feel like I have been hearing that for at least 30 years now.
Just when it seems like things can't continue, the market always seems to find a way to support the higher prices.
For example: https://www.forbes.com/advisor/mortgages/what-is-the-40-year...
It's probably only a matter of time until the 40 is the new 30 year loan for everyone...
- vacations
- cars
- all online purchases
- most hobbies
- etc...
When I moved to NY, I expected that my (much higher than before) salary would barely allow me to buy a car. Instead, I ended up with the best car I had ever owned up to that point, and went on craziest vacations. I also lived in the shittiest place ever before and after.
I totally agree that the non-FAANG companies have terrible dev pay. But most of the FAANG companies have offices well beyond just SF/NYC, so the opportunities are definitely available.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_...
https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/164047/umfrag...
https://www.handelsblatt.com/unternehmen/gehaelter-so-hoch-i...
Aren’t women over-represented on the supply side while men on the demand side though? I don’t think gen-z as a wholesale cohort makes sense.
Mostly artly because women work in segments that were hit harder - services and the like. And partly because childcare is more on them, mothers were even more likely to loose jobs.
Because after shit pay being the desk girl at Walmart Tire Center for 2yr you can easily convert that into a service writer job <fast forward 40yr> and then retire from your job as regional support manager for <company that makes industrial doodad>
Compare with thotting around on the internet where you can make a ton of money up front but you're basically racing the clock because your body won't be nearly as lucrative of an income at 30 and you'll be starting from square one-ish. Can you potentially take the cash and pivot into a career that will carry you to retirement? Sure, but it takes a work ethic and level of discipline that is uncommon.
It's like the female equivalent of being a marine rifleman for several enlistments. You get out at ~30 with few marketable skills, hopefully a good work ethic and a high liklihood of f-ed up knees.
Likewise, they might be cagey enough to learn the backend of their backend business, and come out of it with video editing skills and whatnot, possibly segueing into an advanced education in media.
For some professions and companies it won't matter but for others it'll matter a lot.
Because we have just started with all of this, and we also don't know the future, it's hard to 'price in' what the future cost of doing this kind of work with respect to future options.
That said, Sylvester Stallone did porn films, but that's also a specific industry, pre-internet.
-former infantryman
You've learned a variety of skills, probably had to face some challenging missions, been exposed to other cultures, learned to work within an organization, probably have highly conscientious posture.
Anyone in 10 years and never had a leadership position at all you'd have to question a bit (they should for sure be sergeant) but ideally would be prepared to be a regional manager for retail or Wallmart Center Manager. The more easy going and communicative would work in sales. Almost anything operationally oriented.
Contrast that with a sex worker who will unfortunately have a narrow set of options because a lot of companies just won't hire for that reason.
But, from the contact I’ve had with the military (been close to several people who have either enlisted or commossioned experience, did the ROTC basic camp but chose not to contract) that's not particularly likely unless you are either actively avoiding or completely unsuited for leadership.
And even then you’ll probably have some leadership experience.
> You're on roughly equal ground with someone who's been a warehouse laborer or janitor for an equivalent period of time and on lower ground than someone who at least has industry adjacent experience.
Even if you somehow manage to be in that place skill-wise (and I think, leadership skills aside, that's unlikely), you are still better off career-wise, because essentially all public and many, especially large, private employers apply systematic positive preference for veterans in hiring.
I can think of a few obvious ones just thinking about ‘military’, but wonder if there’s anything specific to being an infantryman?
You float the idea of perpetual growth in any other context, and you'd be called a fool, but apparently the economy doesn't obey the same rules of common sense.
Well, I hope you're right.
Ah, the old everything that goes up must come down strategy.
> You float the idea of perpetual growth in any other context, and you'd be called a fool
You float the idea that global information communications are going to shrink and you'd be called a fool.
But there is also a more long term trend of people having less and less sex and more and more porno consumption. But that can't go forever, at one point if all girls in the world are on sex workers then they will be much more offer than demand.
A girl on OF, to make a living, let's say 3k per month, needs to have 300 guys paying for her. But a guy is not paying for 300 girls, maybe 10 max, so the platform needs to have 30 times more guys than girls. Which is unsustainable in a world with 50% girls/50% guys.
Which is a good news imho. The day that having sex for girls is a normal thing (No this is not normal thing today). Then a lot of things will be much simpler for everyone
It also seems (from actual published data) that the distribution is super weighted towards the top performers. That being said, even an extra 1k a month is pretty sick for posting topless photos if your regular income is less than 40k or you are in school.
I only question that line because I can't even deal with the rest of your post.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/234863/estimate-lgbt-population...
That would shift the numbers a little, yeah, but not enough to account for the OP's estimate of a 30:1 male/female ratio.
Median OF revenue per creator is $180/mo for equivalent of a full time job.
https://sea.mashable.com/culture/17130/top-onlyfans-creators....
^ https://mrq.com/blog/only-fans
> https://ranking-fans.com/ - Seedlist and Fans Sorted by total fans; accounts where fans are not available have been excluded. Many accounts listed as having the most fans are free accounts used by OnlyFans models who also possess paid accounts. However, as fan numbers were only available for the free accounts, these have been disregarded for the purposes of this story. Likewise, "free" accounts where subscription is free but photos provided required payment have been disregarded. Accordingly, the only data shown is for paid accounts with high subscriber numbers. In some cases, models possessed multiple paid accounts. In these cases, only the one with the highest subscriber numbers has been tracked. Monthly earnings are based exclusively on the individual account assuming no media requires additional payment and disregarding tips and similar voluntary costs. Similarly, free trials and discounts have been excluded. Accordingly, all monthly earnings are estimates reflecting the monthly payments of subscribers over the long term.
Many factors can lead to this, but that's not surprising, the law of distributions when it comes to things like this is that there are incredible earners and then a massive drop off and long tail.
> for equivalent of a full time job.
You added this, I don't doubt that some people put in a lot more effort than the monetary amount they get back- but the inverse is also true and no source claims that "you get $180 for a full time workload", because that's impossible to measure at scale.
Men I assume given the amounts of money they’ll spend on OF and the m/f ratios on dating apps?
Gen-Z is less sexually active than previous generations. Significantly so. They've been exposed to porn at an earlier age (owing to earlier access to the internet and the ubiquity of pornography online). Porn use was already common among them. The lockdown made things worse, but the status quo was already in place.
> There's huge groups that are/were unemployed and then there's huge groups who are sexually repressed due to quarantine.
This false anthropology must die. Pornography is incredibly harmful to those that consume it. It enslaves a person to his passions. It feeds his lusts and deranges his desires. It makes him or her incapable of relating to the opposite sex in a healthy way, whether in the strictly sexual sphere or not. Lust blunts the mind and renders one incapable of thinking clearly. The consumption of pornography only feeds the sexual passions, further entrenching lust and often generating paraphilias and fetishes as the titillating novelty wears off. Emotions become disordered. Someone who has a porn habit becomes locked in him or herself. The stereotype of a lonely and smarmy 40 year old locked in his parents' basement masturbating to porn is a pithy illustration in many ways. It is the image of an emasculated, impotent wretch deranged by his vices and disorders. This has nothing to do with his lack of a sexual relationship and everything to do with how he views sexuality. He is not master of himself.
Frankly, we'd be better off permitting (regulated) prostitution. There seem to be plenty of women willing to provide these services and plenty of men who are slaves to their lusts (men tend to be more vulnerable to porn addiction and lust than women, but yes, it is true that it is not a problem exclusive to men). At least with prostitution, you're having sex with a human being instead of abusing yourself alone in your room. But ultimately, our view of sexuality must be restored to a healthy one and not the depraved one proposed by liberalism. I suspect the "asexual movement" is a subconscious reaction against the obsession with sex in our society. Excess in one direction tends to produce excess in the other. But maybe it will at least legitimize celibacy again. You don't need sex to have a happy life, contrary to the propaganda of the last few decades or so.
I will add that porn use is an industry fueled both by a corrupt society and people in power who recognize that those who are slaves to their passions (and lust is but one of them) are easy to control. Oligarchies are prone to let such vices flourish because it keeps the populace impotent and consumed with themselves instead of threatening the usurpers who have managed to gain tyrannical control. Porn appeals to prurient interest which is why it is so useful in psychological warfare (a rather stark example is the broadcasting of porn on captured Palestinian television by the Israelis; you think they were trying to liberate them?). Sexual liberation has made people easier to control. It has truncated their humanity, warped them, and turned them into sex robots.
> Sexual liberation has made people easier to control. It has truncated their humanity, warped them, and turned them into sex robots.
This is entirely based on nothing. Even worse, it ignores the much more direct and relevant innovations in the area of controlling populations - propaganda and advertising.
> a rather stark example is the broadcasting of porn on captured Palestinian television by the Israelis; you think they were trying to liberate them?
No, they were trying to shock and humiliate Muslim sensibilities, similar to stashing pork on busses. Sexuality is not some secret sauce of controlling people - there are much more direct ways of doing so, especially with the power of a state like Israel.
Or rather: Paradoxically, what's truly prudish -- and I mean this literally, "overly prudent" -- is to short-circuit your sex drive with porn, because you fear the consequences of real sex.
Lust is good. It helps you overcome social risk aversion, and bond with another person.
But that's the point: You have to have those relationships.
You'll be happiest if you have lots of sex, as part of how you form and participate in a committed relationship. And your "base" urges, far from being bad, can help drive that.
Ridiculous.
it is important that such platforms do exist (if they implement proper safeguards) and that these content creators are not stigmatized.
In this case, I think the friendly way to interpret that comment is as an attempt to anticipate and pre-empt a very common and harmful misconception about sex workers.
I read it as saying that it shouldn't need to be stated, ideally, that she is brilliant because of stigma around sex work and workers. That we have then freedom to do this as we please in the USA, it's legit work, and many people of all intelligence levels and circumstances may choose to do it.
It's a strongly worded opinion and with Afghanistan thrown in, but we all know the Taliban's history of repression soo.. I think it's worth everyone seeing.
Maybe comments should read each others’ future, unwritten comments in the most charitable light possible. Otherwise it starts looking like we’re writing up preemptive strawmen.
Also, it is quite clear that comment was written to elicit sympathy. I can see why someone gets angry when intellect is used as a justification for sympathy.
That is important to point out, as sometimes people generalize or attack people, unfairly, based on these things.
Also, don't be so mad. It comes off as bad faith.
Tell me you don't understand sex work without telling me you don't understand sex work.
it is true that the intelligence argument was arbitrary (it is my assessment of her) and perhaps clumsy. but again, go have a look on your favorite social media how these people are considered.
1: https://prostitution.procon.org/questions/how-many-prostitut...
scientific circles are quite a bit the same, in term screening and funding.
and yes we shouldn't forget the other ones (why not developing a better, safer and fairer platform btw).
The work she does is often stereotyped as being "dumb" or non-intellectual. To fight that idea, OP found it valuable to mention how smart she is and how these platorms provide a safe and profitable way to provide for her child.
Ask yourself - and I mean really ask yourself - what about that statement has you so angry?
1) that she is doing sex work, because she has no choice to feed her son, given her medical condition.
2) on an unrelated note: she is a brilliant and very intelligent individual.
3) point 2) was emphasized because for a significant part of the population, these two are incompatible, which is obviously wrong.
4) these platforms, while far from perfect provides some safety to sex workers. this important and fundamental: the sex industry, be it pornography or other, is dangerous to actress, actors and prostitutes alike. many get raped and/or abused, for instance.
5) on yet an unrelated note that she is a loving mom. moreover, an ex gf of mine, a past sex worker as well, is also a loving mom. i added this information because both in english and french slang, if you're mom is a sex worker, you and her are not good person. i don't think these children can openly talk about their moms' jobs openly at school without provoking major backlash, if not legal actions. and we live in a quite liberal country.
sorry not making all of the above clear enough.
alternative is social services.
To prevent illegal behavior, we should outlaw it!
Law is not powerful enough to protect someone from a violent partner. Restraining orders don't stop violence from taking place. They only promise punishment afterwards.
So you do not pursue a violent partner for child support, even with the law on your side. It is too dangerous.
Online sex work is the safer option.
Oh, also, you seem to have the idea that child support money is enough by itself for the costs of raising a child decently. It often isn't, you need another income source to cover it. In the example we are talking about, the person could not do a typical job, so they had to find an alternative and OF provided it.
i forgot to mention her mom is an hardcore and highly manipulative evangelist, as if life was not hard enough.
> If she is resorting to sex work to feed her son, what is she spending the father's child support money on?
That implies:
(a) there is father's child support (a sweeping assumption that is often wrong), and
(b) the father's child support is sufficient by itself to feed her son without needing to resort to sex work.
It's also suggesting that the mother is misusing funds somehow.
The distinction between "feeding" and "raising" you might have picked on would be, in my view, a quibble over a technicality. Child support is to contribute to the costs of raising a child, it's not earmarked to specifically cover food, and if you need extra income to raise a child, it's acceptable common language to phrase that as earning money to feed a child.
Edit: Downvoters, try a little harder. Engage your emotional core. Really work those empathy centers. Think about it: If nobody had to justify their existence, and people just allowed each other to exist, then we wouldn't have to weigh whether sex workers are more deserving of rights than computer scientists. We could allow both; we could allow everybody.
i agree and i am a computer scientist.
you don't need to go as far as afghanistan, i'm back from eastern europe where my friends from the LGBTQ community are literally being beaten by neo nazi funded by putin.
I think this is a missing piece of OFs popularity and usefulness to creators. Not only is it a centralized and (by now) well known site for this kind of content. OF deals with the payment processors, the charge backs, and the disputes. It is relatively seamless for the content creators in that regard.
You're completely correct here. The only other real option in this space is CCBill - and they:
a) only do payments - not hosting and everything that OF does
b) still take a ~18-20% cut, in addition to annual flat fees
c) are really fucking unbelievably terrible
Monero is ideal for this sort of thing.
It clearly doesn't meet the needs of these customers, regardless of whether or not it's "supposed to"
They want a solution for distributing adult content and getting paid for it.
By far, the single biggest hurdle here is payment processing - as evidenced by this whole OnlyFans fiasco. It's Visa and Mastercard who are pressuring OF - they've been doing this to sex workers for decades, but finally picked a fight big enough that it's getting real media backlash.
No, it's not, it's an umbrella term covering multiple kinds of sexually-explicit work people do, including prostitution, fetish modelling, camming, stripping, phone sex.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_work
> there is space for more than one terms.
That's right, there's more than one term. When you want to say something about porn actors, you can use that term. When you want to say something about sex workers, you can use that term. When you want to say something about artists, you can use that term. They are different but overlapping terms and which one you use depends on what you're saying.
Pornography is as much art as streaming video games or uploading card opening videos to YouTube are a form of art.
Pornography is entertainment, and not all entertainments are art. In spite of all the more or less recent porn videos labeled "Art Porn," which, in fact, rather depicts passionate sexual intercourse, pornography cannot reasonably be considered art in the traditional sense. Pornography does not elevate your spirit, it does not make you feel a broad range of emotions, and there is no real creativity, or it is utterly limited to a mediocre plot and a few different environments.
What definition of art do you have in mind that makes you think that pornography is art?
Not generally; its typically used either more broadly (though not strictly more broadly, as nonconsensual acts wouldn't generally be included) than “prostitution”: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_work#Types
Or strictly more narrowly than prostitution, as in:
https://theconversation.com/who-are-we-talking-about-when-we...
"Artist" might imply dilettante. "Worker" captures that they are doing it in order to get paid.
And the winner ist: viggity
Here is Twitter event by Tech Insider.[0,1]
[0] https://twitter.com/TechInsider/status/1430654887327682565
[1] https://twitter.com/TechInsider/events/1430648239171198984
I was the under the impression that Pornhub offers this? I have no idea how self-service it is though.
I love to browse by /r/all -- but I have spent a long while +Filtering out so many subreddit - and running it with Res and adblock etc... I have a super sleek and fun experience on Reddit with my 15-year-old account...
Some memes are cool - most are lame.
I have never been interested in 4chan nor twitter (I think twitter is the new "National Inquirer type" -- I think of tweets as those horrific multi colored snippet boxes on the front of tabloids.
I knew it was a thing, I knew of the memes, but to see both sides in arms over a company vs branding, creating their own website and content - and vanity domain as well.
People really do just want a one click solution for creating adult content, and consuming adult content.
And the memes, I think they're pretty toxic, 4chan, incel, reddit, twitter memes - I never knew there was that much angst.