I have a startling revelation. Upon closer inspection it was a piece of wood.

I have lied to you all.

I’ve been on and off with Linux for about 15 years and just want to counter some of the people trying to troubleshoot or criticize to say: it can be really tough.

We need our computers to work and we expect things to function correctly.

I’ve used dozens of distros over the years. I was a super early Arch adopter, mained Gentoo for about three years, ran my own BSD server for programming projects, and still maintain several small home Linux servers. And even I sometimes want to pull my hair out trying to get semi-new hardware working right in my distro of choice. I spent three hours today fighting Nvidia and sound drivers and eventually just had to give up on that machine after being told that what I want just flat out isn’t supported in Linux on the hardware I have.

Take a breath, set it aside until you’re ready to take another crack at it, and know that it’s a journey. You’ll get there or the software will catch up and meet you halfway. No shame in being frustrated :)

Not mine, but my sister accidentally kicked a tall floor lamp over in her sleep. It landed right next to the glass aquarium her hamster was in. It had one of those really bright incandescent 100w bulbs.

Poor little guy cooked to death like a Thanksgiving turkey.

IDDQD

Unfortunately options are becoming increasingly limited. My guess is that they’re making more money cramming in ads for people that tolerate it than they are losing money from people who refuse it.

I’ll have to sit down tomorrow to go through these ones, but thanks for listing them all out in such a nice format!

Sounds awesome! On the list.

Well the allure of Rhys Darby might be enough for me to stomach some of it. Time will tell though.

It’s not though! I’ve done 500 episodes of my own podcast and we never charged for a single episode or ran a single ad. Not one single time. We have a Patreon, and it’s optional.

And yes, I’m willing to pay for podcasts if I think they’re worth paying for. I’ve donated to shows I enjoy and paid for others before. I see no issue with people getting paid for their work.

No apology necessary! Many of these are still ending up on lists that may or may not get listened to one day :)

I’m looking to avoid doing that and avoid ad-driven shows in general, hence the original question. I have a few that I tolerate it on, but largely looking to avoid it where possible.

I assume the first one was a typo and you meant Cryptid Factor? Seems like a really cool show, but unfortunately opens straight up with ads. First one was for 1-800-Flowers and then on to one for Rocket Money.

I’ve listened to this one before! Pretty interesting show, but unfortunately opens with several minutes of ads. Latest episode is about two and a half minutes of ads right off the bad, although one is their Patreon.

Unfortunately not a thing on RSS, and I try to spend little time on YouTube. Thanks though!

Any corporate sponsored advertising. Platform, sponsorship, whatever.

The ads on their RSS feed seem to be auto generated and inserted. Lots of shows use that kind of service.

Gaaaaah look at that face! ♥️

Oh wow I didn’t realize it was so simple. I couple just slap that into a bash script and save the effort of going through a website…maybe even use it for bulk processing when I get lots of recommendations.

Thanks for this clarification. Certainly something to be aware of and pay attention to, but a little less instantly alarming than the OP title.

Oh they will, I use a website that yanks the feeds. Having them all in one list like that makes it easier for me to parse through them though.

If you ever need to yank the RSS from a show then I have lots of success with: https://www.labnol.org/podcast. It’s specifically for just this kind of thing. Weirdly a lot of shows, even on their own websites, don’t make RSS feeds readily available.

I bought a new TV last year after my Hisense kicked the bucket and had a similar experience.

Not sure if it applies to your situation, but I just factory reset my TV, never enabled wifi, and hooked up a smart device I had lying around (Nvidia Shield). Now it all works great and if the smart functions upset me I can throw just the smart TV part in the trash and go back to my VCR.