Now you’re the one making ill-fitting analogies. Aaron Paul doesn’t have to do any addition labour each time someone watches Breaking Bad. He’s not required to be in the barn, it’s just got an image of him painted on one wall.

To over-extend the analogy further; if I build a barn and the farmer agrees to pay me $X for each cow living it, what should happen if he starts storing wheat in it instead? I signed a bad contract, but it’s still the terms I agreed to. I’m not automatically entitled to go back and change them.

I fully support the workers protesting for whatever form of payment they want. There’s no reason why streaming services shouldn’t pay residuals if that’s what the workers want.

That doesn’t mean they’re entitled to additional compensation for labour they’ve already done. If they did the work for an agreed price that wasn’t linked to the future profits then they shouldn’t complain just because the future profits are greater than expected. Equally if you take your compensation as a share of the future profits, you can’t complain if they’re lower than expected.

The grey area in all this is when contracts have been badly worded and the rights holders are trying to use these loopholes unfairly. If someone negotiated to be paid $X every time an episode is aired, it creates a big problem with the rise of non-broadcast TV. It’s not realistic to claim that a show is ‘aired’ every time a single person streams it, but equally it’s not fair say they aren’t being aired at all just because they’re streaming on demand instead.

I don’t know what the best solution is. Future contracts will certainly be worded with streaming mind, but what (if anything) should be done about previous contracts is a much more difficult issue.

Am I not allowed to ask questions as part of my investigations?

I personally work in two creative fields (photography and software design) and in neither case are royalties a normal thing. If I take photographs of your new product so you can advertise it or build a website to help you sell it then I’m paid for the job I do, not based on the amount of money you make afterwards. The full value of my creations cannot be determined until years afterwards, but that doesn’t change anything.

The value of labour is not always dependent on the value of the finished product. If it was then a truck driver hauling a load of computer parts would be paid hundreds of times more than one hauling grain.

There is nothing wrong with choosing to be paid royalties, but there isn’t an automatic entitlement to them on moral grounds. Choosing to sell your labour or creative works for a fixed fee is a perfectly valid option, but if you do you shouldn’t complain when the farmer starts using the barn as a restaurant and starts making ten times more money from it

Why should he be earning anything from it at this point anyway? If I’m paid to build a barn for a farmer, I’m not entitled to a percentage of the farmers profits every year he uses the barn. It’s his barn, I just worked to create it. If I’m the camera guy on a movie, I don’t get residuals for years afterwards. I get paid for my labour and then move on to the next job.

Aaron Paul did a stellar job playing Jessie in Breaking Bad, but why does that entitle him to rent every time the character is shown somewhere? He was already paid handsomely for his labour. Why should he be paid more when he’s no longer working on it?

Power line adaptors aren’t bad, but they are hit or miss. If they hit, they’ll work well and solve all your problems for minimal cost and effort. If they miss you’ll probably never get them working properly. It’s a bit of a gamble, but I wouldn’t rule them out.

Wireless range extenders/access points/mesh networks are the reverse. They’ll almost always work, but they make the inherent problems with WiFi worse. More latency, more congestion, more interference. They’re not without downsides.

Running a cable so you can move your router to a better location would be my number 1 choice. Ideally somewhere where you can plug multiple devices (TV, consoles, pc, etc) into it so they aren’t competing with the devices that really need the WiFi.

Talk to your landlord and tell him you’d like to install a network socket so that the whole house gets better WiFi, and that you’ll leave it behind when you move so it won’t leave any mess and will benefit future tenants too. Most landlords I’ve tried this with have jumped at the chance.

Failing that, dropouts suggest interference rather than just signal problems. Try running a channel monitor on your phone and see if there’s anything using the same channels as your WiFi, try switching to another channel and look for anything happening that coincides with the drop-outs (microwave, certain lights, electric motors running, etc).

Lastly a better modem might just do the trick. I’ve found that anything running OpenWRT is ten times more reliable than most other options, particularly when placed under heavy load or difficult circumstances.

Reminds me of the debate following the release of The Life of Brian between Michael Palin and John Cleese against Roman Catholic journalist and satirist Malcolm Muggeridge and the Bishop of Southwark, Mervyn Stockwood. The Month Python guys run rings around them because the film makes fun of organised religion, not Christian beliefs. Good Omens was similar. It doesn’t attack God or Christianity, it pokes fun at humanity, and at the angels and demons that have gained human traits.

Link to the debate if you’ve never seen it: https://youtu.be/ZYMpObbt2rs

What are your underlying models of the world built out of? Because I’m human, and mine are primarily built out of words.

How do you draw a line between knowing and understanding? Does a dog understand the commands it’s been trained to obey?

What if you could have free healthcare without insurance or paying any more tax than you do at the moment? Because that’s what the article is claiming should be possible.

I installed Microsoft Office on your parents computer…

Word to your mother