If you Google 'DF Sponsorship' you can get all the info (&rates). I believe a weekly sponsorship is about $13k and he does $15k-20k per podcast across 3-4 ad reads.
It's adorable how you think it will improve how war is fought. These autonomous systems will always have a manual override and I will never believe that the review process will be given proper oversight. The armed forces will always err on the side of destruction in any potentially vaguely violent scenario. Fear and War is too prosperous to be peaceful.
If sports viewing goes online (like MotoGP) wouldn't the organization lose a considerable amount of money and effectively ruin their relationships with tv networks that pay serious money for rights coverage? I'm of the mindset MotoGP is doing ok because they never had insane tv rights viewership or distribution. Another example, the NHL has their online viewing program but it blocks out regional games or games with specific rights attributions.
And then, theoretically, let's say these organizations do survive by moving all (or the vast majority of) their viewers onto their own live platform - would that be considered a monopoly of some sorts by forcing out all the other players?
That being said, I'm totally ok with all of this because the cable box as we know it is dying fast and sports are the only thing keeping it alive.
They maintain production and distribution rights on their most valuable content, pay-per-view events that go for something like $60-80USD on cable. They compete with themselves by offering a yearly lock-in for what's basically the price of one of these events. It's not complete, since they don't have full distribution rights on their weekly show, which appears on their streaming service after a one-to-two week delay.
If the service takes off, that'll be a big nail in the coffin of TV sports. That said, it's had middling success to date (I haven't paid close attention, as I'm not a wrestling fan in the least).
Other sports contract out their production and distribution rights to TV networks, so trying to go to a streaming model will be very difficult by comparison. They'll be building out what is basically a full on-air platform at the same time they're building out a streaming service that can support the added demand of local viewers while simultaneously breaking off relations with their current broadcasters. And to make things even more complicated, some of those broadcasters own the teams they carry (in hockey alone, the NY Rangers and Cablevision TV are both owned by Jim Dolan, while the Toronto Maple Leafs are owned by a conglomeration of Bell and Rogers telecoms). With these complications, the rights may be the bigger block than the technology.
I tried using DDG... I used it for over a year. But I gave up - the search is seriously lacking. It's minor for large things, but really noticeable for more obscure searches. I went back to Google when I made my new computer 10 months ago and I will never take search for granted again.
Now, to have a little privacy with Google, I just use SEARCHONYMOUS which automatically avoids using my signed in email account for search and YouTube.
Really? I've been using it for a year and I've had no trouble finding anything on DDG. Sometimes if I'm looking up a very esoteric bug, I can generally get to where I need to be with a second opinion from Google, but 95% of my searches seem to do just fine with DDG.
Yes, you can customize Chrome's search box in "Manage Search Engines". I've setup a few frequent searches -- w=wikipedia, am=amazon, anything-you-want for site:anysite etc.
That feature is in almost every browser, and has been for a while. And it's great if you only use one computer all the time.
But I have my phone, my iPad, my personal desktop, my personal laptop, my work desktop, etc. Using the browser's custom search feature means I have to add custom search engines to every browser on every machine I use, OR I have to setup syncing between them all, which I really don't want to do, and isn't even really possible between e.g. Safari on iPhone and Opera on Linux. And even if that were easy, I really don't want to sync browsers on my personal machines with my work machines. It's a lot easier to just set the search engine to DDG, or go to the website and use !whatever from there.
I've been using DDG for a few years now, and I've been very happy with the search results. The biggest weak spot, IMO, is that they don't index as many old mailing lists and forums as Google. The only times I ever need Google are when I'm looking for very specific or obscure error messages which aren't always covered in regular documentation, but tend to be asked about on mailing lists.
That said, it wouldn't surprise me at all if the quality of results depends a lot on how the search is phrased and the topic being searched for, etc., so I could just be getting lucky.
This is a killer feature for me as well. Unfortunately DDG's results for other things lack compared to Google, like searching for specific technical things like "how do I do this in code" or "wtf computer why are you doing this specific thing". Google's also a lot more helpful with forum threads in their results.
I read that as well. It seems that location based business (ie: restaurants) seem to have an easier time getting one but unfortunately my client is not.
Just a bit annoying because as algorithmic it may be, I feel like I've provided all the resources to get one.
In my view though, the gig economy is just not sustainable. Look at sites like 99 Designs... You have an incredibly large workforce with an incredibly large spread of skills doing a lot of work for marginal payout. As these populous-run services become more common, it will only dilute the value pool for those in it... If you have thousands of people saying they can do something for a fair or cheap price, it only reduces the ability of the next worker to charge more, despite the fact they might have better skills. Price wins over quality 99% of the time, in my experience.
It's crazy because the competition is pretty much 100% internal and at some point, internal competition of anything will lead to systemic destruction of something critical if there is no authority figure demanding internal combat needs to stop.
And let's face it, a company like Uber or Airbnb will never tell its participants that they can't drive more often or share more rooms because that will limit their product offering. Also, the government won't, can't, and shouldn't interfere either.
It will solely rely for the workers of these sites to form unions agreeing upon their own quality standards and reflective pricing and will act as a group against the interests of the corporation they are inherently the product for... But pardon me for my cynicism, we're not at the point yet were self-preservation supersedes the desire for just a fractionally larger income.
I don't think it can be generalized to the entire gig economy. In particular, things that require physical interaction (like Uber and AirBnB) do well, compared to remote-computer jobs like 99 Designs where everyone is competing with third world contractors who have much lower cost of living.
I think we'll see some follow the Uber model as it evolves - subject to some reasonable regulation in the long run but still basically wiping out previous industries. And as much as I like Uber the product, I sure as hell do not want Uber the business setting labor standards that will govern the lives of millions in the 21st century. The business is great, the management is borderline evil. Which is better than the taxi industry where the business is awful and the management is totally evil but local only...
Ok, but then Uber will have to bear the full purchase, financing, depreciation, maintenance, garaging, inventory, theft, and insurance cost for potentially millions of vehicles.
If it's not Uber, someone else offering a similar service will eventually allow people to submit their own self-driving car to a driving pool when they're not personally using it.
Or people will buy a car and submit it to Uber's pool for some return, as an investment. Minimises Uber's costs which will mean they can expand aggressively.
No because the cars will be the electrical storage for most of the non baseline load in a city. So cars will be part private property and part public transport - fleets of mini vans driving around and nipping off to the charging station at peak demand times.
The gig economy will only die when humans price-gouge each other so immensely that robots are the only viable option - even though they can carry a higher entry cost.
That seems unlikely considering Uber's entire business model is based around offloading as much of the liability and risk as possible onto their "contractors".
It's the degree of market saturation, so we're both right... 99 Designs is on the extreme saturation end whereas physical ones like Uber are not. But ideologically, the problems they share stem from "more providers = dilution of profits".
And it's terrible because they only way to compete as a business against Uber, is by "forcing" the participants to offer more services at an equal or slightly higher price, or do the same services for cheaper. And that is inherently not good for either a business or it's product (which happens to be us humans, in this argument) - and that is why you don't see identical services popping up.
Price only wins over quality when there's zero relationship with the customer (as with 99 design).
You don't have to win solely on the innovation/creative front; clients want to feel safe in hiring you, they want to feel heard. You can project authority by blogging, speaking at conferences, open source work. Sometimes you can win a gig simply because you project the attitude that you can get shit done.
There are so many other ways to win besides quality of work (with much larger payouts!) and it always starts with building relationships.
It doesn't surprise me, but I am amazed every time I see something like this and realize all over again just how little of the world I've seen.
I would suppose I've traveled more than the average individual, but I'm still missing out on so many things. This type first-hand cultural learning is what truly excites me.
I don't see any other occurrence of the sponsors name.