This. It's just another form of hidden inflation at play.
Smartphones, appification, and self-service is usually a downgrade from immediately preceding solutions for everyone except young folks who are money-poor and time-rich, so think nothing of wasting the latter. But this state flips for most around the time they start their career, or at the latest when they start families.
Big difference for ffmpeg especially (but I imagine for curl too): it's not just one guy in Nebraska. Seems to have a very healthy community of devs involved in it.
Sponsored segments is no different to Netflix (and other producers) selling "product placement" in TV shows or films. If anything they are far more subtle and effective as the viewer isn't usually aware.
I remember once watching an episode (can't remember the show) where the dialogue included characters talking about how good their new car was. The B-rolls would show almost every angle of the car too.
Sure enough, according to the end credits, the episode had product placement from the car manufacturer.
This instance it was a little _too_ obvious but I have no doubt I've been exposed to hundreds of in-film/show adverts.
I learned wheel building many years ago from Sheldon's website and that lead to many great memories fixing other racer's wheels around camp fires in my 20s.
Similar story. As a student I bought an old bike and restored it thanks to lots of info I found from Sheldon. And building a wheel was such a fun but weird experience. Part mechanics, part art.
I ended up writing my thesis on bicycle wheels after this. Or, it's a thesis on optimization algorithms, but I managed to play around with optimizing wheels as the "real world application". https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10410813
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