OkayBuddy44

So annoying when the proles don't vote the way they're told

Arguably, that's exactly what it was designed for.

There was a very contentious split many years ago now (Bitcoin Cash vs Core fork) regarding this point. Until then, it was taken for granted that block size would continue increasing in proportion to transaction volume in order to facilitate such use. This was Satoshi's expectation, and there was little-to-no discussion otherwise. Quite suddenly, a few powerful, well-positioned people (with conflicting interests in the form of their Lightning side-chain solution) conspired to form a consensus of limiting on-chain transaction bandwidth via astroturfing and comprehensive censorship.

Whether they were responsible visionaries with the foresight to avert disaster using a novel solution, or spiteful saboteurs driven by greed and power, is up to the reader. Un/fortunately, they were very successful.

There are "colleges" that are literally just fronts for student visas. Canada just uncovered 10,000 fake student visas; the Australian government recently closed 150 colleges that don't even actually exist.

All of these 'students' are now illegally in these countries, and realistically most will not be caught and deported. Perhaps the worst part is that even at the scale of this fraud, it pales in comparison to the mind-boggling number of students being legally permitted entry to these countries, most of them from India.

Convenience, I guess. I'm not that deep into the piracy world that I even know of all my alternatives, to be honest.

I pay a reasonable subscription fee, download the app on all my devices, and watch whatever I want.

The app is compatible with all of my devices, isn't broken, there are no unreasonable limits or restrictions, and no ads. That's a lot more than I can say for the 5 or 6 subscriptions it replaces.

The real "financial damage" here is depriving ordinary people of an affordable alternative to the increasingly exorbitant cost of streaming services. We just want our bread and circuses while the world burns, is that too much to ask?

If you want to watch your favourite sportsball team, there are jurisdictions where you need 4+ different subscriptions (and still won't have access to all games).

I am currently trialling IPTV because my legit subscriptions (i) do not allow me to login on more than x devices, which is an unnecessary restriction and incredibly inconvenient, (ii) have broken functionality in their app that I rely on, (iii) no longer support my device, despite it being perfectly capable, so the app has been automatically deleted from it, (iv) ads.

I remember when Netflix first appeared and there was a shift away from piracy and all of its risk, quality issues, illegality, etc to the convenient, affordable, legal alternative. Unfortunately we have reached a point now where these media companies have recaptured their power and control, and are wasting no time screwing over paying customers in the most cynical, usurious ways they can invent. The equilibrium is shifting back to piracy, where the consumer has the power, and the big players offer custom apps, great quality, no ads, reasonable restrictions, etc.

The one I use (one of the biggest) only takes crypto, either directly or by paying with your card through Moonpay.

Right, and I'm using it here as a lens to try to understand how a little brown boy can be invited to the White House to meet the president as a misunderstood engineering prodigy, while my experience is that this would see a little White boy ignored (because this is nothing special tbh), shunned (for being a nerd), or even expelled (for trolling the school with a fake bomb).