LJPUK:

Apple today increased their service pricing across the board and it was enough for me to realise Apple Music no longer makes sense when I’m already paying for YouTube Premium. Apple Music goes up to £11.99, YouTube Premium is £12.99 and on top of a good music service you get no ads on YouTube.

This is actually why I’ve always argued against streaming music services in general. You are not in control.

Distilling my longtime argument down to its simplest bit, I’d ask “do you want to pay $10 a month for music for the rest of your life?”

But truly, it was never going to just be $10 per month. The price was going to go up over time. It was going to get more expensive to have access to the same music.

If you purchase your music, though, I think most people would reach a point in their life where they stop buying new music entirely or they’re only buying a few albums per year. The cost of music would go down for you over time.

Yes, if you already pay for YouTube Premium, a dedicated music streaming service like Apple Music doesn’t make much sense. But I’m not positive a streaming music service makes much sense long term, at all.

➝ Source: ljpuk.net

I didn’t know this existed.

I don’t expect I’ll actually use it much, since I generally am not on my phone while riding in a vehicle. But if I ever found myself in a situation where I needed to use my iPhone while in the passenger seat — to look up information during a road trip, for example — I might give this feature a try.

➝ Source: m.youtube.com

I canceled my YouTube Premium subscription recently. We were paying $23 a month for the family plan and I thought it would be worthwhile, as an experiment, to see how things would be without it.

The extra $23 in my pocket each month will be a welcome change. Not that it’s a particularly expensive subscription, but it does add up over time. That $23 each month is $276 a year, which is nothing to scoff at — just ask your favorite compound interest advocate.

Having ads on YouTube is not a great experience, though. Obviously. But I have a plan for how I’m going to eliminate ads without a YouTube Premium subscription.

On iOS, the solution is actually quite simple. Rather than using the native YouTube app, just open the YouTube website in Brave. Brave’s built-in ad blocker will prevent ads from loading on the platform. The same method works in Brave on desktop as well.

Lucky for me, Brave is already my default browser on both platforms. So I don’t need to do anything differently on desktop and it’s just a matter of using Brave for YouTube on my iPhone instead of the YouTube app.

The much trickier platform is Apple TV. Unlike iOS and desktop, there’s no web browser to fall back on. Instead, I’m using a nifty little VPN trick. You see, YouTube doesn’t display ads in some countries — you can connect to a VPN and route your traffic through Albania to prevent ads from loading on YouTube.

I have the ProtonVPN app installed on all of our Apple TVs and we just connect to Albania before using YouTube and then disconnect the VPN when we’re done.

In addition to my primary methods for watching YouTube on each platform, I also have a handful of other options at my disposal.

I have an Invidious instance setup on my Umbrel. It’s a front end for YouTube that strips a lot of the annoying features and eliminates ads. This is what I use for tracking newly published videos on my favorite YouTube channels.

The reason Invidious isn’t my primary method for watching YouTube, though, is that YouTube often makes changes that breaks Invidious’ functionality. So there are occasional times where it just doesn’t work at all.

I can also use Parabolic on my Framework, which I use for downloading one-off videos for playback later.

On our Mac Mini home server, I’m running MediaHuman YouTube Downloader. The app is setup to automatically download new videos from a small set of channels. The videos are added to folders that Plex is indexing, so shortly after they are uploaded to YouTube, the videos are visible in our Plex library.

Lastly I have iSH Shell on my iPhone with yt-dlp installed through pip. It’s painfully slow to use compared to other options and makes my iPhone a bit toasty during use, but it’s useful in a pinch when I want to download a video.

As an additional benefit to making this change, I’m hoping the extra work required to watch YouTube without ads will introduce just a little bit of friction, ultimately reducing the amount of time I spend on the platform. I’m not obsessed with YouTube or anything, but it has become a bit of a crutch for me whenever I’m looking for a cure to boredom. It would be better if I spent that time doing, at least slightly, more productive tasks.

From Turning Point USA’s Twitter account:

It is with a heavy heart that we confirm that Charles James Kirk has been murdered by a gunshot that took place during Turning Point USA’s “The American Comeback Tour” campus event at Utah Valley University on September 10, 2025.

May he be received into the merciful arms of our loving Savior, who suffered and died for Charlie.

We ask that everyone keep his family and loved ones in your prayers.

David Heinemeier Hansson, on what he thinks we should do in the wake of this:

Continue to show up with our ideals held high while we debate strangers in that noble search for the truth. Where we share our excitement, our enthusiasm, and our love of technology, country, and humanity.

I think that’s what Charlie Kirk did so well. Continued to show up for the debate. Even on hostile territory. Not because he thought he was ever going to convince everyone, but because he knew he’d always reach some with a good argument, a good insight, or at least a different perspective.

You could agree or not. Counter or be quiet. But the earnest exploration of the topics in a live exchange with another human is as fundamental to our civilization as Socrates himself.

Don’t give up, don’t give in. Keep debating.

Josh Ginter, in his weekly Sunday Edition:

I’ve shed some tears. A young father with largely the same list of values was killed for having those values. To be sure, his realm of impact far exceeded mine. He presented those values boldly and often discussed them with less grace than those values deserve. But he and I — and I’m sure millions of other young fathers out there — were not all that different. […]

Kirk didn’t deserve such a death. Kirk posed no harm to anyone. He existed to share the gospel truth with those who were directed to listen. Alas, Kirk’s purpose was fulfilled. He met his Saviour. And God, as He has always done in the past, will use the event for His eternal glory. There has never once been a successful story of shutting down the gospel truth from spreading across the globe. The gospel works best in the valleys.

I wish I had the words to describe how I felt through this. Some kernel of wisdom that I could impart on the world that would help us all better understand how to process this horrific event. I don’t know if that’s something I’m really capable of.

Charlie was a father, a husband, a Christian, and an activist. Like Josh mentions above, I also share many of the same values that he espoused. He was too young and the world is a worse place without him. I hope, in his absence, there are many more that take on the baton of his work and continue to encourage dialog and hearty debate.

The final bit I’ll share, is Charlie’s response when asked how he wanted to be remembered on an episode of The Iced Coffee Hour:

I want to be remembered for courage for my faith. That would be the most important thing. The most important thing is my faith, in my life.

A great guide, as you’d expect, from Retro Game Corps. I recently purchased a Retroid Pocket 5 and used this guide to set it all up with the best emulators, front-end, and other necessary utilities.

➝ Source: m.youtube.com

I haven’t finished listening to the whole episode — it’s over six hours — but what I have listened to has been entertaining and informative. DHH’s enthusiasm about Linux, Ruby, and programming is infectious.

If you prefer the audio version, you can find it on Lex’s website.

➝ Source: m.youtube.com

Matthew Weber:

Well, in my quest to track every minute of my day, I installed a tracker for my browser. In the last week, I’ve spent over 15 hours on YouTube. And that doesn’t count any time I’ve spent on YT while mobile. Of which, I’m sure there’s probably an equal amount. 

That’s horrendous.

I can’t even blame background music, I don’t think, since the browser tracker only tracks the damn webpage when it’s in focus and active. So that means I spent that much time actually watching YouTube videos.

I spend too much time watching YouTube videos as well and am looking to try and cut back in the coming weeks.

My current plan:

• Subscribe to more podcasts — including channels on Odysee, which, conveniently offers RSS feeds that work in any podcast app that supports video.
• Setup an Invidious instance to follow a smaller number of channels. I’ve done so on my Umbrel Home, but I could have used a public instance or installed it by another method.
• Go to Invidious when I want to watch something instead of YouTube itself — either new videos from my subscriptions or search. That should help keep me from aimlessly browsing.
• Try to find a new show to watch, which will keep more of my time in Plex.

I’m not doing any tracking of my usage at all, but in the past few days it sure seems like I’m navigating to YouTube’s website less frequently.

➝ Source: mtwb.blog

Kevin Rose is rebooting Digg with Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit. I was a huge fan of Digg in the early days and am excited to see what this reboot has in store.

They’ve published a quick promotional video on YouTube, but it doesn’t shed any light on what to expect.

➝ Source: reboot.digg.com