This was what led me to quit Facebook as well. I just got a real sketchy feeling sharing photos of my family knowing that other people would see them intermingled with all sorts of awful content.

Don't know how widespread it was, but for my wife who had bi-weekly Covid tests for work they also started testing the samples simultaneously for the flu.

Not just more ads, but longer ones as well. We used to use youtube to put nursery songs on in the living room for our kids. All of a sudden we notice it's 15 minutes into an ad for the state of Ohio. So many less interruptions now that we play them off Spotify.

I frequently get double ads nowadays, they are really pushing to a Youtube Premium signature

Honestly though, why not pay for premium? It’s a little expensive, but it’s a more sustainable ad free streaming. Seems like a win in my book.

Ads are going to be the end of us all if you ask me. Completely perverse incentives. Make people feel bad so they CONSOOM? Dark stuff.

Different from the OP, but Youtube Premium now feels like "we will just make YouTube worse and worse to sell Premium".

Even with all of the pushing toward Premium they have done for me, the only values I even know are "you get the ad blocker experience without installing an ad blocker" and "we stop blocking picture-in-picture support".

I hate that ad blocking causes the channels I watch to not get financial support, but at this point I refuse to let Google be the middle-man and make money off of providing a purposely horrific experience.

What if they just stopped the free version entirely and became paid-only like Netflix, Disney+, etc.? There's no reason they have to offer a free tier at all. To the extent that the paid tier makes them more money, I understand why they'd push people onto it.

> What if they just stopped the free version entirely and became paid-only like Netflix, Disney+, etc.?

Those are cheaper than Youtube Premium, for more exclusive content.

I have two Chrome browser personas (actually quite a few more for work reasons, but two I have open permanently). One with adblock the other without (also due to work reasons). If I use yt on the adblock free one I am bombarded by ads. With adblock? All is fine.

Exactly this. I never see ads on youtube from my desktop, and I don't use youtube on phone. When a friend wants to show me some youtube video they like on their phone, its always a bit of shock how annoying those ads are. I don't have any premium account, just usual set of blockers.

I've became super allergic to ads generally quite some years ago, not watching any channel on TV, just movies/tv shows streamed from PC. Can't and won't go back, ever.

I feel the same way about being 'allergic' to ads. In contrast, when my friend watches youtube on the TV, he is bombarded by ads and doesn't seem to care at all.

I don't mind the premium to pay for ad free youtube. Also the free Play Music (RIP)

I would recommend Firefox focus for mobile. When navigating to the YouTube site I experience no ads.

They will “optimize” for more ads till people stop going to YouTube for videos. As shown by search, Facebook, etc that limit is far, far higher than people expect. I am not sure if any of them have reached the limit yet.

And they still don't seem to have given up the hope that I'll sign up for the YouTube f&*&(ing Music trial one day. Won't you have some dignity, Google?

100% agreed - it even seems to happen to me if the text is older or takes a little more time to process. I listened to an audio copy of Candide while commuting by car and when I reached the end I remember being struck by the fact that I had no idea what had happened!

Always interesting to find 'local-only' chain things. For what it's worth, I think the brats are at the Milwaukee and Green Bay Costcos as well.

The diet sodas are getting crushed along with the regular: http://fortune.com/2017/04/19/coca-cola-pepsi-dr-pepper-soda...

Oh wow, water it is then. Thanks for the correction.

After 3 Fitbit Charge HRs dying on me within a year, I've left FitBit and moved on to Garmin. It's a shame because my Flex was solid for multiple years.

I've had the exact same problem both with the Flex and then with the Charge HR. Their hardware quality is just terrible, especially given that they're expected you to pay >$100 on their devices! I now go out of my way to actively dis-recommend Fitbit (as I've done in this comments thread).

hmm, that is the opposite of my experience. My mom has an original fitbit and me and my wife have the fitbit charge HRs. I actually thought when I read the title that it was due to lack of demand as everyone I know has one and sees no reason to get a newer one.

I think the biggest failure of RedBox is that people don't seem to realize you can complete the entire transaction online and reserve the movie. I can reserve a movie Friday morning, then drop by the grocery store Friday night to pick it up along with whatever I need for dinner. So easy, and I get to watch in BluRay quality for $2!

If you are already familiar with .NET, you might find some courses on Microsoft Virtual Academy a good starting point. There is a web development category: https://mva.microsoft.com/training-topics/web-development#!i...

Looking at the courses available, I would probably start with: https://mva.microsoft.com/en-US/training-courses/getting-sta...

then look into either ASP.NET MVC: https://mva.microsoft.com/en-US/training-courses/introductio...

or ASP.NET Core: https://mva.microsoft.com/en-US/training-courses/intermediat...

This is coming from someone that hasn't actually used these, so take my recommendations with a grain of salt.

I always say college was very practical learning as at different points in time I was able to kill a mouse with both algorithms (this very book) and computer architecture.

It took you 2 books to kill 2 mice, but I'm sure with more observations it would have been obvious that your approach was actually O(logN).