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If something has genuine entertainment value, why wouldn't people create it because they want to be entertained, or to entertain others? Without needing to worry about money to survive, lots of people would pursue arts, literaly just producing "entertainment" for others.

I don't understand how you get the idea that without profit motive nobody would be creative, or life would turn gray and bland. Restaurants would be just as popular or more popular: people would take more risks and try new things because they aren't afraid of failing and potentially ruining their lives. Similarly with movies: most junk produced now is just the same playbook because it is guaranteed massive profit; there's little creativity involved.

Huh. Yeah that must be a thing with newer models. Mine doesn't have any magnets, and its not in a shape a case would even make sense. I do press a button to dismiss the "screensaver" (the thing that keeps you from accidentaly turning pages with side buttons when not in use), but I don't see an ad on that screensaver. It's pencils laying on a book, and has been for about a decade now.

I'm always amused at how much I see misogynistic and ableist slurs getting "removed" censored from all these people who are supposedly Righteous Heros while they insult others for not supporting Ukraine, or being anti-USA or whatever it is. They don't seem to have any self-reflection when it comes to insulting others for not being Righteous while simultaneously using degrading slurs and terms.

"One of, if not the most, powerful international issue lobby is that of the pro-Israel crowd.". More background is available here.

Some of the top recipients 2021-2022:

The top recipient of pro-Israel funds in the 2018 midterms was Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) with $546,507. Menendez is the ranking member on the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) received the second-most with $349,437.

When looking at the overall numbers for all Pro-Israel bribe money to congress, there are 16 members of congress who have received over $1M USD. Here are the top 10:

Dynamic ad length wouldn't be an issue for chapter markers, or "tone delimited" podcasts (the first two categories). It would only be a problem for the third category, which is already the more difficult of the three.

There seem to be three categories for how podcasts deal with ad spots.

Some podcasts mark their ads inline by using Chapter Markers. For example, ATP marks its ads by putting them in a new chapter with a name like "Ad: X". In theory, you could have a player that skips any chapter who's name begins with "Ad: ", though I don't know of any existing apps that do that. Unfortunately, the number of podcasts using chapter markers seems to be a small portion of the podcasts I listen to, so this wouldn't be very useful.

Another method that could work on some podcasts that don't use chapter markers is identifying a delineating tone. Using ATP as an example again, every ad spot starts with the same jingle, and ends with the same jingle. In theory, an app could skip the delineated sections. Mind you, this would require work from the user to set up (or it could be crowdsourced): you would have to tell the app what specific sound snippet delineates the ad read. Luckily, many podcasts seem to be structured in this way, with a clear audio cue to delineate ad spots.

Then, you have really free-form podcasts where the hosts may just say, in everyday speech, something like "time for ads", and the ads will insert. Sometimes it's always the same phrase (e.g., the use of the phrase "the money zone" on MBMBAM), but that's not always the case (e.g., there is seemingly no consistent verbiage in the Aunty Donna Podcast). This category is the most difficult to deal with.

In summary, I don't know of any existing apps that enable skipping ads for any of these three categories. Of the three categories, one is very easy to implement, one less easy, and one quite difficult. All potential solutions would require a shared/crowd-sourced database of which category each podcast falls into, at the least.

Correct.

Pi hole does not work for YouTube (or Twitch or many others). It doesn't work for services who distribute ads from their own servers.

If you had Android instead of iOS you may have been able to use an ad-free youtube client and cast to TV, but if you're streaming on the TV, or from iOS, I don't know how you'd go about blocking ads.

I suspect that the way they came to that conclusion was: any post mentioning one of those groups, that also had a negative sentiment rating, meant that sentiment was directed at that group. Which is horribly dishonest. What's more likely is someone to be angry (which registers as negative sentiment) about those groups being mistreated or what have you. By the naive approach they seem to have taken, that's indistinguishable from being mad at that group.

Also, the methodology they describe, and the conclusions they come to don't align. They don't describe any methodology by which they could determine that the identities are being attacked. It would be like if they concluded some cause-and-effect relationship but their methodology had absolutely no way of establishing a causal relationship in the data.

I don't follow. When you say magnetic cover, do you mean some of the newer models? Also, what does pressing the button to unlock it do? Does that turn on wifi or something? I have to press a button to turn my Kindle 4 "on" (aka remove the screensaver and show my book) but that doesn't cause an issue.

I have a Kindle paperwhite without ads, worth paying extra imo.

Pro tip: if you leave off wifi for long enough, the ads seem to expire and they're permanently replaced by some generic pencils image or something. And, since having wifi on can cause the kindle to overwrite your cover images, I sync with calibre over USB anyway. I have the ad-supported Kindle 4 from 2011 and haven't had ads on it since 2012.

It's upsetting. I've worked on projects that have received NSF funding before, and if the final result was this? I'd never be able to secure funding again.