Why TV Lost - <AUTHOR> http://paulgraham.com/convergence.html

<comment><USER2> My brother writes for TV. There is quite an age difference between us; he's older. The industry still does not fully comprehend the Internet as it relates to its future. The other day we were having dinner and my brother said he wishes he could just cut the middlemen (the producers/networks) out of the equation and become a distributor on the Internet himself. He's tired of being creatively limited by their vision -- or lack-there-of.

He was surprised when I said that it was well within his ability to do this already. Not in a "woohoo I put up my own website with my own shows" kind of way, but in a "I have become my own virtual CDN via EC2 et al" kind of way. He argued that would simply make Amazon and the infrastructure providers into the new middlemen. Perhaps, though that might be like saying that my computer use is being held hostage by the electrical company. In theory it is, but in practice it does not feel like the very exploitive sort of middle management that exists in the entertainment industry.

I've done some work for this industry and the key point you have to understand is that, whereas "Can we accomplish this?" is a matter of technological feasibility to us hackers, it means something entirely different to entertainment industry folks. To them, it is more of a legal matter. The whole industry is mired in a complex web of contracts governing every detailed aspect of intellectual property. So, when we scoff at how long it took the networks to get something like Hulu up on the Internet, understand it was a bunch of lawyers holding up the process. Then, when you get around some of the service's limitations (e.g., geoblocking) understand that too, was a dumb legal requirement. Everyone involved knows these restrictions are circumventable but, they must be in place for the existing contracts not to have to be re-negotiated.

Talk to anyone that's worked on the iTunes infrastructure. From what I gather, at least initially, getting an album onto the iTMS involved dozens of contracts. It made getting an iPhone application onto the App Store a cakewalk in comparison.

Where a startup could provide tremendous value, it would be in overcoming the legal hurdles to distributing content on the Internet. Spend the money on the lawyers to setup all the contracts that you need, so you can get unsigned artists onto your content distribution network, but more-or-less play by the rules of the current industry. These people are afraid of change, so you don't want to come out of left field in the way you operate. Then, when you become the new boss of the industry, tear down the stupid legal constraints that stifle creativity and innovation, and makes the Internet pretend to be something it is not.

The networks are vulnerable. Writers, actors, and other workers hate working for them because they take huge cuts of revenue and then play accounting games to take an even larger portion. There's a reason the unions there are so strong. They're united in their hatred of the middlemen. On the other side of the coin, us consumers hate the networks too. Most of us are tired of their antics.

So, any startup willing to take on this challenge would have a friendly set of content suppliers, and a captive audience. Just get yourself the best lawyers you can probably find, because you will need them ;)

<comment><USER3> You can make a TV show and distribute it to everyone easily. That's not the problem. The problem is getting together the budget to make a good TV show, then making the ad revenue off of that show you need to make that profitable.

Hulu might make that possible, but it hasn't yet.

<comment><USER4> It actually has been done. Joss Whedon produced Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog during the writer's strike. It was definitely a high quality production. And it was well received. Also, after DVD's and songs on Itunes, Joss Whedon has recouped all of the costs.

I do see your point though. Making high quality video is very hard. It cost Joss Whedon around $200,000 to make. And Joss Whedon has a cult following, so just having his name on it gave the project a lot of P.R. And Joss Whedon has been involved with Hollywood movies and television shows, so he has the experience necessary to make a high quality show.

I wonder if the entertainment industry is headed to a model comparable to venture capitalism. Media Companies might be forced to split their services into two sections. They would act like a vc firm and give money to producers in exchange for a percent of the gross. And they could sell access to their distribution network. I'm sure that no media company would want to do this willingly though. It would mean giving up control over the ip rights, and they would have to find new distribution methods.

Hulu:[http://www.hulu.com/watch/28327/dr-horribles-sing-along- blog...](http://www.hulu.com/watch/28327/dr-horribles-sing-along-blog-act-one)

Wikipedia: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Horrible%27s_Sing- Along_Blo...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Horrible%27s_Sing-Along_Blog)

<comment><USER3> Yeah, when Radiohead did well releasing a CD online, everyone said "see, it works for Radiohead, it can work for anyone." The problem is that anyone is not Radiohead, or Joss Whedon. Recouping $200k is neat as an experiment, but hardy the foundation of a replacement to television as we know it. One episode of your favorite TV drama alone likely costs much more than that. If your favorite TV drama is Lost, it's 50x that.

The entertainment industry already has a model very similar to what you just described, just instead of distributing it over the net, they do so to theaters and customers by way of DVD. See [http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/movie- distribution.ht...](http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/movie- distribution.htm) . It explains why you see two or three production credits before the opening sequence of each movie, those are basically their equivalent of VCs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "[2] Copyright owners tend to focus on the aspect they see of piracy, which is the lost revenue. They therefore think what drives users to do it is the desire to get something for free. But iTunes shows that people will pay for stuff online, if you make it easy. A significant component of piracy is simply that it offers a better user experience."

Man, is this ever true. I like to watch tennis a lot - which, being a niche sport, is often not on TV. The memphis finals were televised in some places, but not others. There was a web stream, but dig this - it was not available in the US because of broadcasting rights. And it was limited to PCs (not Mac's)!

So I'm thinking about anti-piracy efforts, including a lot of moralizing about how piracy is the equivalent of stealing (which, in some cases, it may well be). A network bought coverage, declined to air it in my area, but also banned a web feed that I would have gladly paid for, but with DRM that prevents it from working on my Mac.

But I shouldn't watch a rogue feed, because Piracy would be, you know, wrong. I should just be a passive viewer and decide to enjoy what the network decided I should be watching that day.

Keep in mind, I'm more than willing to pay. I'm _trying_ to pay.

<comment><USER6> Their assumption, and it's true for most people, is that you're going to watch something. If they don't put tennis on, you'll watch whatever they do show, even if it's arena wrestling. So even by watching something niche that they wouldn't broadcast anyway, you're stealing.

<comment><USER5> This probably isn't true for tennis, but it probably is true for a lot of things. So you may have a pretty good reading on the mentality of the networks here.

I'm not sure they're quite that sophisticated, though. I think they're reasoning is more along the lines of "I own that, _I_ decide how and when it will be viewed!" Kind of a total war mentality, where they're even willing to shoot themselves in the foot to defend copyright.

I don't know much about copyright law, but this behavior does seem to run counter to the _spirit_ of the law, which is to encourage the creation and dissemination of content by granting a "temporary" monopoly for the creator. In theory, this would expand the amount of content available to the public. But what I constantly encounter is the use of copyright to _restrict_ access to content by limiting what I can view, see, hear, or read - as well as attacking the technologies that promote the dissemination of content because they are used (extensively, I admit) for copyright violation.

It's all gone so wrong. Because congress has shown a willingness to grant extensions to copyrights that were set to expire, and the supreme court has decided that copyrights with repeated extensions don't qualify as copyrights in perpetuity, it's hard to believe that the monopoly is temporary. For all practical purposes, it's permanent - and the copyright cartel is more than willing to use them to shut down the tech factor.

I do agree with PG that there's no turning back the tide. The computer will defeat the TV. But the temporary delay can be a real pain in the ass.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is many years premature. It may come to pass, but is nowhere near that now. TV is still by far the most common way of watching television shows (and watching television shows is still the most common way of wasting time) and overall viewership is increasing every year. This trend doesn't seem to be changing for a few reasons.

1) TV screens are much bigger and cheaper. They don't need the resolution a monitor does. Watching on a small screen is something you're happy to be able to do on a plane, but would never want to do on a day to day basis.

2) Bandwidth is still not there, especially for HDTV, and progress seems to be stalled. I still have pretty much the same connection for the same price that I did 5 years ago, and I'll likely still have it in 5 years from now. Mark Cuban talks about this a lot. Fiber to the premises may solve this one soon for some subset of the country, but by no means everyone.

3) Live television is nearly non-existent online. It can't handle it. The bandwidth to stream the Superbowl to everyone who wants it doesn't exist. Sports are a huge part of the TV viewing audience.

4) Many people like to watch shows as soon as they're released. The internet is terrible for this. I personally download mine, but I do so knowing that I'm always going to be watching the Daily Show from 2 days ago. If I were a TV addict (i.e. normal American) that would be unacceptable.

5) Content quality is better than ever. Single camera sitcoms, pay channel dramas, reality tv (if you're into that). Almost everyone agrees this is a golden era of television.

If you really think that more people are watching TV on a computer than on a good old-fashioned TV, you need to come down from your Silicon Valley mountain for a while.

<comment><USER7> _Live television is nearly non-existent online._

I wish I could post the graph of unique visitors that the founders of Justin.TV sent me. But while their actual numbers are presumably secret, I will say that I have never seen a steeper graph of a one-year period from any YC-funded startup. And I have seen some steep graphs now.

<comment> old-gregg ... which supports a few other argumets Matt's making, because justin.tv is probably the most famous YC startup among my non-programming friends: we all watch live college football and european soccer games on it, re-translated by users with TV tuners.

I don't think this is something justin.tv is happy about because it kind of transforms "broadcast yourself" into "share your cable subscription with strangers" and inevitably leads to a conflict with Fox+ESPN+friends [and possibly with cable/sat. providers too]

It all comes down to bandwidth. It doesn't exist and the situation is not improving, I'm 100% with Matt here. Even ESPN's premiere 360 offering pretty much sucks, let alone Justin's streams: they're basically backups for people who don't have TV access (on the road, in another country, etc).

Security-minded, TCP-dominant, firewalled to death "Big Internet" is simply the wrong platform to stream live HD video. Having worked at an IP-based HD video surveillance startup I was amazed at how hard it was to reliably push high-def streams over TCP/IP even within a large _local_ enterprise network. Most of our IP was all about bandwidth management. I honestly can't even imagine what would it take to stream even CNN to all their viewers, let alone superbowl.

<comment><USER8> Broadcast has bandwidth. Computers have brains. Why are these two competing? Broadcasting a signal that means something to computers, and having computers then marshal that for users is way more profitable.

Easy place to start - start hiring a small TV station for an hour in the morning, somewhere in amongst the informercials, and broadcast a signal that people with TV Tuners can decode. Using some variation of colour 3D barcodes, say. Have the TV Tuner decode software use this hour to pump content into squid or some other form of web cache.

Monetisation strategy: give people the ability to vote on what gets broadcast based on their cache logs.

<comment><USER9> Sounds like a lot of work compared to using Hulu or BitTorrent. The Internet bandwidth costs more, sure, but it's convenient. Lazy wins.

<comment><USER8> Where there is a price difference, there is an arbitrage opportunity. Sure it's a bunch of work, but it only has to be done once. With something like software radio it can even be invisible to the end user. It becomes a usb dongle that feeds them high def youtube et al.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> TV lost? While I agree with many of the points PG brings up, I feel something is missing.

According to Nielson, TV viewership is at an all time high ([http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/tag/total-us- television-...](http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/tag/total-us-television- viewers/)). Also, Oscars had a 13% increase from last year with 36.3M viewers. 50+M viewers watched Obama's inauguration on TV.. not on their computers. And of course, we know that those teenagers who are using social apps still cast more votes for their favorite american idol contestant than the sum of adults cast for president. (btw, if anyone knows where to get an annual histogram of viewership in US, that is what I was really looking for). TV viewership may indeed plummet in the future, but as of right now its at an all time high.

Then, I can't help but notice that I still procure my internet from my cable provider. And that same cable provider is not only actively fighting against network neutrality, but they are also blocking my ability to download anything from Torrent. They are far from beaten.

Lastly, what is the real difference between watching shows on my TV verse Computer. They are both using digital pipes, they both have microprocessors, memory and HDs - one has a bigger screen than the other (usually). The only real difference, and increasingly so, is that one is proprietary, and one is open. TV has not lost.. their content is (unfortunately) as relevant and abundant to the average American as ever.

All TV has lost is utter dominance - much like MS windows lost its utter dominance with the adoption of Linux and the rise of OSX (but they are still #1 by a lot). However, whether its piped through a monitor or an HD flatscreen, the US consumer will continue to glue their eyeballs to the content we call TV today for some time before open content can even begin to realize the same advertising dollars as the proprietary networks do.

<comment><USER11> _All TV has lost is utter dominance - much like MS windows lost its utter dominance with the adoption of Linux and the rise of OSX (but they are still #1 by a lot)._

Both TV and Microsoft lost. They just aren't quite dead yet - it takes time for giants to fall.

<comment><USER12> So losing 'utter dominance' is the same as 'lost'? I agree that it takes time for giants to fall, but I don't really believe the race is anywhere near over.

That said I would bet on Netflix or Amazon (or even Microsoft) to give us the next generation of TV before any of the networks do.

<comment><USER13> Yes, losing 'utter dominance' is the same as 'lost' when it's a game of monopolies. The internet has become a viable competitor to the TV networks, which makes this an entirely different game than a few years ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Southern hemisphere calling – things look a bit different from here due to the different network and broadband environment, but the basic principles cross borders. I'd just caution about assuming TV=American TV. Sure, the US situation is as interesting as hell but you're missing a lot of cool stuff happening in other places. Looking at the global impact of a profoundly disruptive technology it helps to take a more global perspective.

I spent most of my youth working in network TV, then moved to talk radio and the last 15 years in internet, most recently running the online video output for a newspaper publisher. I moved to that job explicitly because I wanted to have a hand on the knife that killed broadcast TV. Always wanted to live in the future, to do what I could to bring it on, and I saw the power of the networks as retarding at best and toxic at worst. Couple of years down the track, I realize things ain't that simple. I no longer see a simple dualism, TV vs the Internet. Audiences are not fleeing one monolithic platform for another, they are fragmenting. This is how Nielsen can find that TV consumption is at record highs (151hrs/wk in US, according to a Feb 09 survey) while internet usage is also rising. God only knows what crap is in that 151 hours, but the same can be said of internet video.

There's a new ecology of media emerging, as a profusion of digitally networked screens fill our living rooms, pockets, desks, cars and hands. To my eternal joy it doesn't look like it will settle to an ossified steady state any time soon, unlike TV and Radio which have been using the same model for 70 and 50 years respectively.

Now I think the internet will no more kill TV than TV killed radio or radio killed cinema. Despite DVDs and huge plasmas, cinema is doing just fine. There'll be less money for the successors of broadcast networks, fewer ad dollars split more ways: so inevitably less money not just for the corporates but also for the production crews and creatives. Cheaper TV. We will have an ecology: a whole lot of fizzing and spitting new beasties have crawled out of the media swamp and the big old beasties (a) don't like the look of it at all, they don't play by the rules, and (b) don't realize being eaten alive by ants is still being eaten alive. Many of the networks will collapse; certainly the corporate structures are unsustainable, but people will still want communal big-screen narrative experiences, and will want them well made. That costs money and takes, for better or worse, concentrations of expertise, machines and skills that cost money.

We make short feature material, quite profitably, subverting a;ll the TV [production models we can, but have discovered where the bottom limit for professional ad-supported shortform online video is.. and it's higher than you think. Any fool can make a video and whack it up on YouTube as a hobby, and not make a living. To make hundreds of videos over a span of years, supporting several staff and turn a profit is not so easy. Fortunately the audience fragmentation means we can turn a buck from any number of iterations, including broadcast TV.

Network TV ain't dead, you can't kill it with a stick, it's a zombie which has no brain to speak of yet hungers for yours. It's going to be with us for a long time yet: but as one of the crowd, not the bully on the block.

</comment><comment><USER15> Interestingly, another thing TV has done to adapt is create content that expires very quickly. Reality shows like American Idol and Big Brother are unlikely to end up downloaded, because they're not worth watching if you don't watch them right away.

This is probably a huge component in why there are so many more reality shows these days.

Breaking the broadcast model also won't work for those, because their value is precisely in the fact that a lot of people watch them, so that they become gossip points. I know some people who watch reality shows only because they know that's what will be discussed around the water fountain the next day, and so they want to be sure to be "in".

I agree that that's a pretty small niche to fit all of today's TV industry, though.

<comment><USER16> Actually, I wanted to refute your argument with a data point.

American Idol is the most DVR'd show in history. Even tho part of the "process" is to watch and TXT your vote (for a fee), it turns out many people are passively watching the show. They DVR it, watch it, and wait it out till next week.

Essentially, this is the first evidence of internet lurking crossing over to Reality TV contests.

But otherwise, you're completely right. TV is watercooler talk.

<comment><USER15> Interesting, I didn't know that. Thanks for sharing that data point!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I am not sure, maybe a lot of TV viewers actually are very passive. What always gets me about TV is the constant overexcited talking, which acts like brainwashing. TV shows (series) are another matter, but I think there might be a market for the constant babbeling brainwash. The primary function of TV is to switch off the brain. The internet can't really replace it, because choosing which shows to watch would be work.

Also lately I had this thought that maybe it is not even so bad. Consider a person who watches TV shows for all their lives. Chances are their lives will be much more exciting than the average person's live, if they really live with the TV show characters. They'll experience every conceivable and inconceivable human condition there is. Not that I recommend it myself, but still...

<comment><USER18> Listening to people talk is relaxing.

'Switching off the Brain' is a somewhat pejorative way to say it. You don't call a massage 'switching off your back muscles.'

<comment><USER17> Not sure I buy that - not in the stressful way TV people talk. As I said, overexcited, they constantly have to convey the impression that something exciting is happening.

When was the last time you felt relaxed like after getting a massage from watching TV?

<comment><USER18> I rarely watch TV. Chronic stress is a concern for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "The TV networks already seem, grudgingly, to see where things are going, and have responded by putting their stuff, grudgingly, online. But they're still dragging their heels."

The TV industry is a complicated business, with a lot of buying and selling instruments that technologists outside of the industry generally don't understand. So, the industry is brushed off as a bunch of "laggers" as was describe to me by one VC group.

And because the new media channels (GOOG, etc) brush off the vagaries of the business (selling methodologies, the role that Nielsen plays, service and relationships), they're failing miserably at getting their hands on any significant portion of that 30b annually that TV ad revenue is putting on the books.

If GOOG is supposed to be setting the example for a new media channel penetrating the legacy media industry, so far they're doing a lousy job. TV booked 18b up front during 2008 buying season, while Youtube struggled to clear 200m by year-end. <http://www.rbr.com/media-news/advertising/12912.html>

And now GOOG flopped on radio: <http://www.rbr.com/media- news/advertising/12895.html>

The problem is that while the technology is there to change the face of media consumption, traditional media still produces the best content, and content is still king. If traditional media is not convinced that the new channels can protect spot value, there's no way they're going to give up prime content on a first run basis: [http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2009/02/goog...](http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2009/02/google_devalues.php)

Don't confuse prime re-runs that you might see on Hulu with real value content. The real value of that content was determined when it was running on TV, which is why we get to see it at all on Hulu.

GOOG recently did a deal with NBC for some inventory. Here's how I imagined the negotiation went down.

GOOG: Hey NBC, let us help you sell some of your inventory. Just imagine the reach your advertisers can achieve! NBC: Ok, how do you plan to sell the inventory. GOOG: By auction, using our online TV Ads application. NBC to assistant: Ok, hand 'em that bag of crap (remnant inventory) over there and let them try to sell it. GOOG: Come on, can't you give us anything better than that? NBC: Look, four things are sold by auction: 1) art, 2) heirlooms, 3) foreclosures, and 4) crap. There's no way we'd let you touch our gold inventory with that model.

It was easy for TV technology to take off originally 70 years ago, but it won't be nearly the same cakewalk this time around just because the technology is superior and people are using it. Like with the oil-based economy, there's a huge amount of infrastructure in place for creating and selling content that was built and refined around a legacy technology. So suggesting that TV is dead is every bit as wrong as suggesting that the oil industry is dead.

And approaching the problem from this point of view is I think a much better business move than as PG suggests, "Now would be a good time to start any company that competes with TV networks." This is equivalent to suggesting that somebody needs to come up with a Tesla for the TV industry.

I love what Tesla is doing, but we know they're not going to rake in the bucks for their effort. Their best chance for some bucks is a fat exit.

The solution is the hybrid engine, developed by a group who know the vagaries of the business from the inside, but can help realize the technology that the new media channels offer. Shameless Plug: This is exactly the project that my team is working on.

</comment><comment><USER20> "TV" can mean many things:

1\. The content, which, as others here have stated, is here to stay for quite some time. And this is what the networks (NBC/Fox/etc.) do best so I think they're going to be around much longer than the RIAA. It's very inexpensive to record quality music using home equipment (hence RIAA is screwed), but home videos are still far from the quality of network produced shows. There is a downward trend in cost to produce TV shows and movies, but it isn't quite as cheap and easy yet.

2\. The big screen in the living room. This too is here to stay, though it will evolve from just a medium to watch TV shows and movies to something that'll be more interactive+connected+social.

<comment><USER21> I think a large part of the problem is that the content is increasingly crap!

My TV watching is basically Food Network, Ovation TV (artist & musician documentaries) some History channel, a bit of Discovery channel (Mythbusters & Dirty Jobs), Cartoon Network adult swim and movies. I haven't watched broadcast TV in almost a decade and I don't get the local satellite feed. My local news comes from the radio during my commute.

Fox, ABC, NBC, etc. simply don't exist for me. CNN I have watched exactly ONCE in the last year: I heard that a plane landed in the Hudson river and I rushed home to watch it on TV then got disgusted by the usual crappy CNN coverage and switched it off.

A local bar could have an open mike night streamed online and I would watch that (with the bar's name prominently displayed in the background) over just about anything on TV. And when I got tired of watching I could go to the bar :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> It would be cool if a video camera manufacturer integrated their device with a web back-end. Automatically compress and upload videos, and tag them from your camera. Basically reduce the friction required to publish and organize your content. It would be killer to integrate this with something like Facebook groups...

<comment><USER23> This is pretty close to reality in the form of the Eye-Fi: www.eye.fi. The sd card automatically uploads pictures/video over wifi to your computer and/or certain social networking sites.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Does this open up room for content-providers in other silos to expand into the TV space? For example, magazines. Wired tried to start a science series on PBS a couple years ago and it flopped. Could it work as an online-only thing?

</comment><comment><USER25> I think it's dangerous to declare this contest over. Clearly, the large interests on the losing side of this battle aren't willing to go down without a fight.

Between net-neutrality, restrictive piracy laws and all sorts of anti-consumer tools we are far from seeing the notion of TV as it currently exists being effectively replaced.

</comment><comment><USER26> Great essay. I don't agree on the locality point, I think that there are enough people that a genuinely local oriented web model will succeed. But writing my reply lead me to post "The Days of the Internet as Haven for Citizen Production are Numbered." The nub of that argument is:

Despite any of the talk about Net Neutrality, networks are right now enforcing a tiered level of offerings that disadvantages production at all service levels. Where I live I can only get a 6 MB incoming line. Outgoing I'm limited to half the speed of a 1990s era 512k connection. They will not even sell me more if I am willing to pay extra!

We have seen this happen before. Broadcasting itself started out as an open platform, built by innovators, nurtured by government and fostered by and for educators. Once it was developed industry moved in. Promising improvements they pushed every notion of citizen production aside. It required, we were told, trained industry professionals to do anything worthwhile.

Cable did the same thing. Begun in rural Pennsylvania as a means to deliver broadcast signals to rural homes, CATV (CoAxial cable TV) used the promise of localism through channels dedicated to educational and governmental services and Public Access TV, to take on the broadcast network monopoly. Once it had its toehold, it starved and marginalized those channels. That same thing is happening today with the Internet.

YouTube, we're told, is filled with marginal citizen-produced nonsense and gets most of its traffic through pirated programming. Remix culture — citizen use of the mediasphere — is criminalized as piracy. And every attempt to by you and me to upload quality versions of what we produce is literally slowed down (and deteriorated) through service tiers that won't permit fast uploads.

Don't get me wrong, citizens reap great benefits from the Interent and we will see vast improvements over what we had before. We'll even be permitted to produce in the margins. But it's obvious to me that the days of the internet as citizen's media production haven are numbered.

The full post is here: [http://themoderatevoice.com/26956/the-days-of-the- internet-a...](http://themoderatevoice.com/26956/the-days-of-the-internet-as- haven-for-citizen-production-are-numbered/)

</comment><comment><USER27> I especially liked pg's statement "But it was connecting to other people that got everyone else: that's what made even grandmas and 14 year old girls want computers."

The power of point-to-point cannot be overestimated. Indeed it had great impact in getting people to sign up for Internet access and connect a computer to the Internet in the first place. I discovered online interaction in 1992, when I attended a conference about homeschooling in Washington state and saw a demonstration of the Prodigy online service there. I made sure to connect a modem to my computer (remember dial-up?) and soon entered into interesting conversations with people all over the country about a common topic of interest. None of the content I was reading was produced by professionals--it was all parents talking to other parents. My online interaction completely displaced TV from my life, and soon greatly reduced the number of postal letters I sent to friends, because I could reach most of my best friends online anyway.

Sometime a while later in the 1990s, I saw an analysis in an industry magazine about whether the main application of the Internet would be broadcasting of professionally produced content or point-to-point communication. That analysis pointed out that at that time the revenues of the Baby Bell companies were MANY times greater than the revenues of all the movie and TV production companies. Point-to-point is where the revenue streams are. Broadcasting doesn't draw in as much money, because it doesn't appeal to as many audience members in as many ways.

My use of television now consists just about entirely of watching the local TV news and one network news program broadcast to my home with my children. We don't watch any dramas, and only occasionally watch Saturday Night Live's opening segment. (We don't subscribe to cable and live in an area with an unwatchable digital signal, so we resort to just one analog broadcast signal at the moment.) TV is expendable in our house. Internet-connected computer use is indispensable.

</comment><comment><USER28> "Hacker News" is showing its entrepreneurial, money-focused side in this discussion. You have to be obsessed with business models to be convinced that television is "losing" to the internet, just like you had to be obsessed with business models to believe that the internet was "killing music" a few years ago. Everybody still watches television and uses it as a cultural reference point when relating to other people. Despite the flourishing variety of internet-native art forms, people still turn to television for a regular fix of programming. The appetite for television programming is just another entry on the long list of things that the internet, which "changes everything," isn't actually changing.

You can pass hours of time on YouTube, but the content, while passably stimulating, just doesn't bear repeating. You can't crack your friends up by making some sly reference to it a month from now. Unless, that is, you're watching something that is well-written, well-produced, and well-acted. And in that case, you'll probably call it "television" to distinguish it from random thirty-second clips of some guy farting at his cat (America's Funniest Home Videos notwithstanding.)

When music moved from live venues to vinyl, it was still called music. When it moved from vinyl to cassettes to CDs, it was still called music. Now it's on the internet, and it's called... music! Television programming has been called "television" or "TV" for over half a century. I bet people will still call it "television." We think about it as "television versus the computer," but the younger generation thinks, "Why is it so hard to find television on the internet? I want to watch TV on my computer, not on the TV." That isn't contradictory at all. That's just the way the words are used. If you pick the right meaning of "TV," then TV might die, but it isn't interesting unless you stand to make or lose money on it. The TV that most people care about has a long life ahead of it.

</comment><comment><USER29> Mark Cuban has a counterpoint:

[http://blogmaverick.com/2009/01/27/the-great-internet- video-...](http://blogmaverick.com/2009/01/27/the-great-internet-video-lie/)

Not that I agree with him, but it's nice to have discourse.

</comment><comment><USER30> I don't think you can lump all TV together. I think a more accurate title would be "Why TV Lost in the US" And one of the reasons would undoubtedly be the awful quality of most US programming.

</comment><comment><USER31> Bravo, This is such a good article. As a filmmaker myself, (foureyedmonsters.com) what I'm very interested in is partnering with exhibitors with a universal license that makes managing re-distribution very simple. I would love to put a more advanced creative commons license on a film that would then allow TV brodcasters and other digital exhibitors to put ads on it, sell it, project it at events or even distribute for free but always sending 50 percent of gross revenue back to my piece of contents royalty collecting agent. I imagine a world with lots of very small production companies all using these up and coming standardized licenses and then a social web that just passes that content where ever it needs to go translating and even re-editing as it moves through the swarm.

I've co-founded a research and development project to function as a think tank designing this future model.

For content creators there is a big focus around compensating the creation of culture. If society considers culture to be a valuable thing, then that culture will earn it's value back. In other words, we won't see inflated monetary compensation to content creators, but there will be compensation that supports them making more. That is if anyone cares about the things they make. And that's I suppose why we call this democracy.

</comment><comment><USER32> There is little flaw in the essay - it has forgotten about humans and human nature e.g. I am very young I go out to play - on rainy days and when my friends are away I watch kids TV (available pretty much all day)...Time moves on...I am a young care-free teen and I have face-book, computers, etc. and rip-off music and video and watch TV on the Internet, I have social networking and on-line games and have XBox and PS3 and Wii all over the place....Then reality dawns slowly but surely...I am a young adult and I have to get a job because Dad lost all his money in the recession and he wont give me endless bundles of cash anymore or cover my bills...I use the WWW to find one...If I am lucky (having studied and not "googled off" at school) I get one and I have to work hard BUT I suddenly have MY OWN money and I enjoy that and I go out, join the tennis club, local gym, go to bars and clubs...Lo and behold I find a soulmate and after much vexing (or not) we move in together..I work; she works, we get home and we cook and boy are we tired and we cannot be bothered to fire up the computer and go to Face-book, Google, Find, Search, Look, Hunt on the WWW (anyhow did that in the office)... What a long day its been; We sit down in the living room and switch on the TV and RELAX...

</comment><comment><USER33> _TV is premised on such long sessions (unlike Google, which prides itself on sending users on their way quickly) that anything that takes up their time is competing with it._

We've received a steady stream of feedback regarding Stormpulse.com from people who are abandoning TV coverage of hurricanes (yes, even that of The Weather Channel) in favor of our site. We're also happy to be the owners of Stormpulse.tv.

</comment><comment><USER34> A decade ago, I would've bought satellite TV, heck even 5 years ago. Since the original Xbox was hacked and broadband became commonplace, I have watched less and less TV. I watch anything I want to on my AppleTV. Youtube, iTunes and Boxee are an incredibly disruptive combination. Our TV has an FTA digital tuner built in, which died two months ago. We haven't replaced it, we just watch TV even less. When the switchover happens we probably won't bother at all.

For me, Boxee is the most disruptive offering I've seen and it's precisely a combination of the social and Internet-based elements that makes me try to convince everyone I know to use it. I don't see Boxee killing TV, but like XBMC before it, it's one hell of a disruptive concept.

I also agree that some sort of set top box combining telephony, TV, Radio and Internet will displace regular TV. Cable and telephony companies have already been moving towards this with 'triple play' offerings.

I on the other hand have had this kind of integration since 2003 with MythTV.

</comment><comment><USER35> "Facebook killed TV"

Can someone explain that line to me? I don't see facebook mentioned anywhere else.

I generally consider myself pretty on top of ways to watch TV on my computer (I've been doing the RSS bit torrent thing pretty much since it's been possible), but I have never seen any common thread between facebook and tv. "Internet killed TV" I can agree with.

<comment><USER36> The connection is that the internet really took off when people realised you could use it to connect with each other in new and interesting ways.

YouTube, Facebook, Myspace etc are among the most visited sites and are all about connecting with each other.

Among the younger crowd, people spend more time online than they do infront of their TV.

So, While Facebook itself didn't kill TV, the assertion that social activities online killed TV is becoming increasingly true, especially as more content producers start distributing their stuff online.

Paul just put it in a broad manner (although not 100% accurate, but close enough).

<comment><USER35> Facebook and youtube/hulu/pirated TV shows are worlds apart to me. Facebook is something you actively take part in, you contribute to. This has almost nothing in common with the passive entertainment of TV that people enjoy. I didn't cancel my cable connection because facebook, AIM, or any other social connecting mechanism came around; it's because I found I could spend my passive hours (read: not typing things) on a computer instead of a TV.

<comment><USER37> It has nothing to do with the nature of the activity. Graham's point is that the social networks provided the last stimulus needed (over the last 30 years) to get computers into daily use in almost every household in the first world.

You didn't cancel your cable, but you likely spent more time in front of the computer after picking up AIM and FB than before. This signal indicates the front edge of a trend. This is visionary stuff, not hindsight.

<comment><USER35> Ah, I see - thanks for the explanation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I wonder why this isn't happening faster.

I mean, I'm not a big YouTube fan: I normally get linked there to metalworking/machining videos but once there I stay for a long time. YouTube is really sticky. This kind of stuff is candy for me and linked with well _targeted_ ads, the provider can make money. I know that if I'm watching some guy in a basement show how he built a CNC lathe, I wouldn't mind even really obvious product placement or a short 10-15 second commercial _about machining_ before the video starts.

There are many, many talented people out there who could be making their own videos and profiting from it. Is the problem just lack of sponsorship or a good advertising model?

There has to be business opportunity here. Maybe a site that video artists can go to with samples of their work looking to be matched with suitable sponsors.

</comment><comment><USER38> Tv usage is up more than ever and continues to grow every year. I don't think TV has lost at all yet. And I don't agree that networks are grudgingly putting content online. Hulu is an object of much affection in the video viewing world, so much so that it warranted Super Bowl ad space.

</comment><comment><USER39> Selling a file or piece of plastic is dead. A one to many broadcast model is dead. Embrace piracy of content. Creating a different value add for the consumer that enhances the user experience while concurrently building community will create a loyal following (which equals higher ad rev). Quality of content is not really the issue. It's all about the story you are telling(LonelyGirl15). Ask Speilberg, Lucas or Scorcese...they will tell you the same thing.

Ultimately it is about content that is relevant to the affinity group that supports it. The toolset or technology that supports it will become secondary over time.

</comment><comment><USER40> Two things in support of PG's case:

1\. In the HD flame wars (Blue ray Vs HD-DVD), Blue ray has emerged the winner, but may not actually so. It seems that people would rather stream/ download HD stuff over the internet. As of today, this is easier on the PC than the TV.

2\. Growth of HTPC: If your only complaint on PG's article is about the monitor size/ quality this fixes it. You can now connect your TV to the computer, and the PC will fetch content from internet, record your shows automatically and also enable you manage your digital content. Networked home entertainment is the thing of the future.

</comment><comment><USER41> To compete with TV you need to provide the couch potato experience, I don't think TV will ever lose its current position, instead what will happen is the TV will just bring the web based content to the living room.

<comment><USER9> If it does that, then it's essentially a computer in the shape of a TV.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Actually, I recently read an article about how people have been watching more TV while also increasing how much time they spend online. There are as many TVs as people per household in the US. I don't think the two will ever converge. I mean think about it -- people are buying fewer desktops and more netbooks now. Netbooks and the cloud are the future of "computing" as we know it. TVs will just get bigger, and they'll be things we use at home. So... the two will coexist peacefully as always.

Though, Paul has a point. Computers can serve the function of TVs.

<comment><USER43> He said "Facebook killed TV," but I often check Facebook on my laptop while watching TV. Netbooks and PDAs take it a step further - letting us multi-task our slack time.

<comment><USER30> Most people I know do as well. I think the article has many such flaws.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> There is more than one dinosaur in the room.

I predict that internet enabled computers (of some form - I'll borrow pg's footnote #3) will also be the dominant delivery medium for radio and telephone service.

</comment><comment><USER44> Maybe TV lost, but Hulu is owned by NBC and Fox, and Hulu seems to be doing a pretty good job. So perhaps the TV networks are a bit more on top of this transition than the music companies were.

</comment><comment><USER45> pg- small typo:

 _They thought they'd be able to dictate they way shows reached audiences._

\-->

 _They thought they'd be able to dictate the way shows reached audiences._

<comment><USER7> Fixed; thanks.

<comment><USER46> An even smaller one:

[3] Or a phone that is actually computer.

\-->

[3] Or a phone that is actually a computer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> People may still watch things they call "TV shows," but they'll watch them mostly on computers.

Is that really true? Source?

(Uhh. I have no idea how to quote things correctly. :)

<comment><USER48> Frankly, they're doing it now. As it is, the cable/satellite box is a computer. IPTV makes the packets conform to what we think of as "internet traffic". And there's OTA television to mobile phones in Japan. Boxee is nothing more than a purpose-specific browser.

<comment><USER49> Your tv may already be a computer, as well. Recent Samsungs run embedded linux, for example.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> TV is stuggling to accept the inevitable transition/metamorphosis into a TV- computer hybrid. Neither won or lost, they will simply converge.

People like sharing big-screen audio-visual entertainment in shared spaces. People like shows and movies and games and sharing. People will have a large- screen device called a TV in their living room for the conceivable future.

The _broadcast model_ will soon be obselete, but the TV itself will not die any time soon.

</comment><comment><USER51> The big budgets in TV production I presume are the result of formed habits, similar to getting used to driving a gas-guzzling GMC T-Rex SUV. I have trouble imagining companies like Pepsi handing over their ad budget to Internet guys. But sooner or later exactly this will happen. Just like the Obama campaign was not managed by a large advertising company but by dedicated Web guys, who understand "social" communication involving real people (grassroots).

</comment><comment><USER52> I wonder how people would react if one of the big boys would just put up a torrent tracker with TV shows, with commercials.

On one hand, commercials would be skippable. But then, increasingly, so are on TV. Would commercial-free torrents appear on pirate bay? I doubt it, no real incentive. Would people really skip them consistently? Some yes, some wouldn't. If the commercial is short and reasonably interesting, why bother to fast forward every time?

<comment><USER53> Here's my guess:

Just like people make custom, amateur soft-subs these days for both pirate and legit DVDs, a file-format for reprogrammable program time-lines would be invented pretty quickly basically editing out the ads runtime.

I'm not going to say I could make it in five minutes, but it should be pretty trivial to implement a plugin for this kind of thing. Heck, base it on Avisynth and on the Win32-platform you already have 99% of the groundwork done for you.

These custom time-lines would probably be indexed, by show, season and episode, with direct links to the legal torrent all at one place.

And I doubt anyone would be able to argue that files denoting time-lines could in any way be illegal.

<comment><USER54> eg: <http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/HTML/en/edl.html>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> I already watch all my "TV" online, and I tell my TV addicted friends that they will too, in the near future. I would never go back to broadcast television - instead of thinking "I wonder what's on tonight?" it's "Hmmm, what do I feel like watching right now?"

BTW - I'm 50 yrs old, and I worked in television, including production, from 1989-2003. Now I work online, at home, when I want...

</comment><comment><USER56> "TV" simply explains the device by which video media is communicated. It's a relic from a time when there was no other way to get such media in the home. The Internet IS TV just as much as TV is the internet. The one who is able to reach the end-consumer will win, and in these days when information is all over the place, the landscape is getting more and more competitive.

</comment><comment><USER57> Internet increases connectivity therefore long tail becomes even shorter than TV's one. netflix' data should confirm it.

The general idea of the essay is false now (TV hours > internet's one).

IMing or twittering on iPhone is not the same as watching a TV program simultaneously with millions of other people.

<comment><USER12> _IMing or twittering on iPhone is not the same as watching a TV program simultaneously with millions of other people._

There is something here with the simultaneous viewing concept, or maybe we can call it collective experience. There is something amazing about sharing in an experience with millions of people at the same time. For instance, election night, 9/11, the Super Bowl, or even finding out who shot JR. Granted we do this today through many mediums (e.g. Twitter during the inauguration), which only serve to augment to core TV experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> More people in the US watched more hours of TV last year than any year before. Indeed, every year a new record is set for hours of TV watched. Nielsen's 2008 figures show 151 hours of TV per month, 3 hours of online video and 4 hours on mobile phone and other devices. So exactly what are we discussing here?

</comment><comment><USER59> I find irritating at least the signal/noise ratio of tv and radio shows, im spoiled by being able to proactively choose what im going to hear or watch (via podcasts, reading on the web,etc) instead of pasively watching tv. So, afaik, tv and radio have been dead for a couple of years.

</comment><comment><USER60> You forgot to mention the $! How are these internet companies going to make money buy producing shows and letting the audience watch it for free? All the advertisers have not shifted their budgets online because they can get greater reach on TV and it is less expensive for them!

</comment><comment><USER61> PG, where's the etherpad stream? (There's probably an ironic reality TV show joke I'm missing here.)

<comment><USER7> Sorry, I wrote this one in vi. I was in the middle of writing it when Jessica had George. When I restarted working on it recently, I didn't bother importing it into Etherpad because I thought it was already nearly done. (Wrong there, as usual.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Although strategically it has lost, in my opinion the "strategically" means "will lose quite surely". There are quite many countries where it has still many years before it, in particular because it is a cheaper entertaining and will remain for some years.

</comment><comment><USER63> As entertainment moves online, shows will no longer be constrained by the 30/60 minute time frame. This should help remove filler and/or add additional useful content. This, in turn, should drive an overall increase in quality, at least at the margin.

<comment><USER64> Films aren't constrained in length technically, but they all end up about the same length - probably related to how long one can sit passively for. What really drives the 30/60 minute timeframe? Is it medium or culture? Does shifting online really change that? A medium can change quite quickly, but culture changes far slower.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> I respect points he made but it was Media Metrix or something like that has reported that hours watched has reached a new all time high.

Another contradictory point is there is IPTV. TV stations can deliver customized programmes with this.

</comment><comment><USER66> Is there a video equivalent of last.fm? With a place where people could share their watchlists, and a good source of video material (whether based on Bittorrent or iTunes, or both), we could easily forget TV broadcasting in a few years.

</comment><comment><USER67> These arguments are even more true for books, where production costs amount to a laptop and the time spent. Yet, we do not see so many novelists circumventing the traditional publishers and publishing on their own.

</comment><comment><USER68> I can't believe nobody has mentioned pornography. Low production costs, varied format, and internet delivery. This displacement of TV shows has already been proven as a successful business model.

</comment><comment><USER69> The Internet will enable metavision, a complete replacement for cable companies and broadcast networks ... where you can watch and interact with multiple live channels simultaneously.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Since we have a new medium, are there new monetization methods available beyond subscriptions and/or advertising?

The dinosaurs are only scared of their profit disappearing.

</comment><comment><USER70> <http://camorra.org/swann/?p=230>

</comment><comment><USER71> PG, is your site down? I cannot access the article.

</comment><comment><USER72> Word-of-mouth took on a new form.

</comment><comment><USER73> why would telivision lose? from:11yrs old samantha gadbois</comment>


CBM 8032 AV - <AUTHOR> https://roberthenke.com/concerts/cbm8032av.html <comment><USER2> A more technical writeup of the equipment used for the performance:

[https://roberthenke.com/technology/inside8032av.html](https://roberthenke.com/technology/inside8032av.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> > The CBM 8032 AV project is an exploration of the beauty of simple graphics > and sound, using computers from the early 1980's.</comment>


Lyft says its revenue is growing nearly 3x faster than Uber's - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/12/lyft-says-its-revenue-is-growing-nearly-3x-faster-than-ubers/ <comment><USER2> Sounds nice from a PR standpoint but you can't really compare the two companies based on revenue growth. Lyft is still a smaller company so in a global industry it's much easier for it to grow faster on a percentage basis. They're still expanding to cities where Uber already exists. If you started a rideshare company and gave 11 rides this month you'd be growing 10x faster than Lyft.

<comment> juicy-fruit I agree. They just recently entered Canada (and it seems only one province), so of course they are going to have bigger revenue growth than Uber as they enter new markets.

A stretch: is Lyft going to use these metrics to go public before Uber to hype itself up?

<comment><USER3> Incidentally, my experience with Lyft here in Canada has been pretty dismal. On average pretty terrible drivers. I have a feeling Lyft is getting all the Uber rejects. If that's the case, this is going to derail Lyft's Canadian debut pretty badly. I wonder if this is a common problem when they come into an Uber-dominated market.

<comment><USER4> I've seen these anecdotes one way or the other (pro/anti Uber/Lyft/whatever) and I think they're all pretty useless when trying to extrapolate to the broader population. One thing that is abundantly clear, at least in the US city where I live, is that Uber and Lyft are pushing hard for the same pool of drivers; many drivers drive for multiple ride share services. I'm extremely skeptical of "one company's drivers are better" stories given they're all largely the same drivers.

<comment><USER5> Agreed, every driver I've asked is on both apps and switches freely to make money.

They might stick with one for a bit to get certain bonuses but there's no long term loyalty for any of them.

<comment><USER6> So we need a car sharing aggregator app now? How do I know which is cheaper, Lyft or Uber, when I ask for a ride?

<comment><USER7> You can try Apple's Maps app. (Does Google Maps have it to?) There is a 'ride- share' choice (or some similar terminology) when choosing route methods, and selecting it presents both Uber and Lyft (if you have the apps installed) and side-by-side price comparisons with the ability to book right there. It should be noted that integration with the Maps app is handled by Lyft and Uber themselves - they can choose what values to present to the user.

<comment><USER8> Google Maps absolutely has this as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I remember when Uber was clearly dominant. That was over a year go. For the past two conferences I've been to, including the one I'm at now(Ember Conf), EVERYONE has been using Lyft.

It really is possible for a company to piss off enough people.

<comment><USER10> Anecdotally I haven't found this HN-wide negative sentiment of Uber (and narrative of its decline) to be shared anywhere else in the US.

My extended family in the southeast and northeast US is familiar with Uber (without using it), but they haven't heard of Lyft. When I lived in Chicago, most of my peers had Lyft, but Uber was the always the first choice.

Does anyone else see the same trend? The bay area certainly seems to be Lyft- dominant, but I haven't seen that anywhere else.

<comment><USER11> True. Here in Europe in general, Lyft is uknown, but, at least here in Greece, everyone sings the praises of Uber, in comparison to the terrible service normal taxis provide.

HN is not only a regional but also an ideological bubble, and it seems to hate companies that are doing well for themselves (except Apple and Musk-affiliated gigs).

<comment><USER12> Why do you think HN hates companies that are doing well for themselves?

Doing this is way more exhausting than cheering them on (see SpaceX, people have fun in those posts). "Oh this company is doing well and I'm jealous"? Seriously don't know how that's enough.

There's a slightly less nefarious interpretation which is that people have different values, and disagreement happens.

So many people are extremely happy to see other people's success here, for example Lyft here. But what you might think is unimportant virtue signalling is something other people actually care about, sometimes deeply

<comment><USER13> Are you sure about your first assertion? It is well known that HN is gratuitously negative about everything. SpaceX is the exception, rather than the rule - and you'd be hard pressed to find another company with quite such a positive reputation on HN.

<comment><USER14> I attribute SpaceX and Tesla love to the "ask a kindergartner what they want to be" phenomenon.

Everyone, regardless of field, can relate to rockets and cars.

Far fewer people would relate to, say, optimizing insurance benefit payments.

<comment><USER15> It's deeper than that. People here like Tesla because it's forcing other car makers to build decent electric cars. That's something that needs to happen if we're going to move away from fossil fuel dependence.

SpaceX is cool because there's a really good chance they'll be more successful at missions to the moon and Mars than NASA has been recently. They're both forward-thinking companies.

<comment><USER14> My point being there are thousands of companies doing interesting and "good" things. But Tesla and SpaceX definitely seem to get _more_ of a positive reaction than the others.

Not saying they aren't doing good things. But they get more credit than the good things they're doing would merit. And probably more than even effective PR can explain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > Lyft provided this stat shot, which also includes some highlight numbers on > its performance thus far in 2018.

Where's the data for this?

> with a particularly strong Q4 during which its revenue outpaced Uber's by > 2.75x

How much revenue did Lyft pull in? Or Uber? This article isn't very good.

<comment><USER17> +1, was looking for these comparisons. Very vague article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Agree with all the comments here about how the actual statistic here shouldn't lead one to the conclusion that it may on the surface. But... Every time I've visited a big city of the last few years, "Uber" has been the verb for just grabbing a ride-share. My last 2 visits to a big city over the law few months, "Lyft" has been the go-to that people talk about. I'm pretty sure the tide is shifting in Lyft's favor, this specific statistic and its flaws aside.

<comment><USER19> This is very anecdotal. I really wish we had data on market share, costs, revenues, etc. Obviously we won't have even most of the picture until both companies are public, but at this point it seems like all of these articles are just speculation. When I interned at Uber, media estimates were pretty inaccurate.

<comment><USER20> > When I interned at Uber, media estimates were pretty inaccurate

How confident were you in the accuracy of the internal numbers being shared? ;-)

Devil's advocate question for sure, but I've been at companies where real numbers of all kinds were casually inflated internally during communications for morale (or just to flatter management's ego)..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Well of course. What a dumb title. Lyft is smaller than Uber (drivers, user base, and operating markets). They have more room to accelerate their revenues because every time they add a market it has a larger impact on their added revenue. The title is just stupid because I can buy a cab tomorrow and also claim that my revenue is growing faster than Uber.

</comment><comment><USER22> If you're in the US it's easy to forget that Uber is very world-wide and as a frequent traveller I use it nearly everywhere I go. Lyft is mostly US-only right now.

It's much nicer and easier to get an Uber at most airports and know you're not getting screwed, communicate your destination easily when you don't speak the same language and know that they take payment by card -- rather than arriving at the destination, having already asked if they take card payment, they said yes, then suddenly they don't.

</comment><comment><USER23> Achieving 3x is easy when your revenue was lower to begin with.

</comment><comment><USER24> I've had difficulty getting Lyft's in DC. They may have to increase prices to encourage more drivers to fill demand.

<comment><USER25> Where and when in DC? I haven't had a problem in the least, around DuPont, admo, or even SE, never bothered checking Uber prices/availability.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> My gut says Juno is dark horsing and about to make a splash. I have no proof for this outside of my gut, but the way they are laying up reminds me of early day uber. My main point of reference for this feeling is the drivers, if I get a lyft driver with 4.9 or 5.0 rating, they inevitably try to push Juno during the ride, however the value prop to the rider is somewhat compelling: the drivers are compensated to a higher degree (lower fee) however, the must maintain a 4.9 on other apps, and an equivalent on their app, consequently, the caliber of chauffeur on Juno is quite high.

<comment><USER27> the last i heard of juno, they were acquired and drivers were upset about being screwed over in the deal (their RSUs were almost worthless). Just googled around and couldn't find any updates, do you know what happened? Are they seen as driver friendly again?

<comment><USER26> I mean I'm seriously not shitting you when I say every single rider I've gotten on lyft in the last few months who have a 4.9 or above and genuinely provided great service (one dude still had candy/water!) has pushed Juno on me. I asked the lady I had yesterday why she isn't using Juno and she said she wants to, they treat the drivers well, she just can't get an interview to be accepted as a driver till.. uh... April?! I was pretty surprised.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm not sure what's impressive about growing revenue in an industry that has no obvious economies of scale. This seems like a case of "sure we lose money on every ride, but we'll make it up with volume!"

Looking at it another way, given a huge funding pool (say $10B) a modestly competent company could outpace both Uber and Lyft in revenue growth by the end of the year simply by subsidizing rides even _more_. The initial skepticism towards ride sharing services is gone and there's little keeping customers and drivers loyal to either Uber _or_ Lyft.

</comment><comment><USER29> UBER has already cemented a path around the world. He is facing legal battles in an attempt to demonstrate that his business is legitimate and beneficial to society. All others will have the facilities to travel in this vacuum.

But it will reach a point where the dispute will not be with the old business models related to mobility. And at this point, it will make sense to compare these companies. But at the moment it makes no sense to compare revenue.

</comment><comment><USER30> Nitpicking: Does "3x faster" mean at 300%, or at 400%? I would say 300%, but when you say 50% faster I would interpret it as 150%.

It is a expression with no clearly defined meaning, and really shouldn't be used.

<comment><USER31> > Does "3x faster" mean at 300%, or at 400%?

It's 300%. If company A is growing 10% every month, and company B is growing 30% a month, people would call B's growth 3x faster (30/10=3).

<comment><USER30> I understand, but the expression is nonsense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I can improve my running speed 3x than Usain Bolt in next week if I want to.

</comment><comment><USER33> [xkcd: Fastest-Growing]: [https://xkcd.com/1102/](https://xkcd.com/1102/)

</comment><comment><USER34> Who cares ? Is it profitable or not ?

<comment><USER35> That doesn't matter right now. It eventually matters, but when you're in a new category and fighting for marketshare and brand awareness, it's fine to invest in the form of losing money today. Nearly every company more complicated than "selling hours of labor" goes through such a phase.

(No doubt that some companies take it much too far, but profits are not critical in this stage of any online/mobile ride-hailing company.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I launched my new app last week, calculated the growth rate this week and I am growing INFINITY week over week yoohoo!

<comment><USER37> Is INFINITY the new MOON?

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> After I rode in an Uber with a self-proclaimed rapist driver, and Uber's response was "we'll consider limiting his access to uber", I uninstalled. Fortunately, the police took the case a little more seriously than Uber did.

</comment><comment><USER39> Pardon the micro-rant, but this is yet another great example of fake news. It's everywhere.

Factually accurate, but none the less closer to bias / propaganda than truth. Unnecessary and inappropriate.

Techcrunch (and all others who choose to deny their journalistic responsibilities) should be embarrassed for being so willing to publish such click bait-y headlines.

Perhaps greed isn't so good after all?

</comment><comment><USER40> Uber could (and eventually will destroy) Lyft in one fell swoop. They're just holding back to appease the government atm.

<comment><USER41> _> They're just holding back to appease the government atm._

Perhaps Uber should first try to get profitable.</comment></comment>


I was partially deaf for the last couple of years - <AUTHOR> http://bycomet.wordpress.com/2014/02/24/ear-wax-i-was-partially-deaf-for-the-last-couple-of-years/

<comment><USER2> A taxi driver once told me great story about an old man in his local bar. * _pushes light gently to provide suitable on-boat ambiance_ *

'Gunner' McIntosh _(or similar: this was Glasgow, Scotland)_ had been deaf since he operated a big anti-aircraft in the Second World War. He would sit in the corner of the bar and the regulars would have to shout at him to be understood.

According to the taxi driver, the night before giving me a lift, he had walked into his local bar and bellowed a greeting at the old man, as usual, and in response the old man had jumped out of his skin.

It transpired that earlier in the day, during a medical check-up, a doctor had discovered both his ears had been blocked by a massive build-up of earwax and behind that there was ancient cotton wool that had most-likely been placed there by a young Gunner McIntosh during the war.

Once removed, he said, he had the hearing of a healthy 21-year-old man.

</comment><comment><USER3> I lost hearing in my left ear for the same reason. Ear kept blocking up more and more frequently until it stayed permanently shut. Tried the store peroxide kits, they didn't work at all for me. It's such an unnerving experience because you really fear it's something permanent.

Finally got it cleaned out by a doctor, and just wow. It really is as if you have bionic hearing. Everything sounded enhanced, and had a lot of extra treble. Very much like you've turned up the volume by 50% or so. Things like the garage door opening became too loud to bear, and I had to cover my ears for it.

For a few days, I had wondered if this was how we were supposed to hear, and that my hearing was just impaired for a long time. But it quickly fades back to what you're used to as your ear builds up a normal, healthy amount of wax again. Still, for those brief few days, it's quite the experience.

<comment><USER4> > But it quickly fades back to what you're used to as your ear builds up a > normal, healthy amount of wax again.

No, it fades back because your brain re-adapts. It's somewhat similar to day/night vision, during blockage the ear/brain complex cranks up sensibility to try and hear things, once the ear's clean it dials back sensibility because there's no need for it.

There's no such thing as "heatlhy amount of wax" because it's not supposed to build up (let alone build up so much it block out the ear canal or presses against the eardrum, which is how it lowers hearing). Normally, earwax is secreted in the outer third of the ear and slowly travels outwards before flaking out.

(I say that being a frequent sufferer of accumulating and impacted earwax, earwax buildup is one of the banes of my existence)

<comment><USER5> Yeah, me too.

Once my ear got clogged,as happened with the original poster. However, the auditory impairment was nowhere that much. It seems that, as long as there is a path to the outside, you can hear almost as well.

Once it happened, I now have to go to the doctor 2 - 4 times per year to get it cleaned. If I don't let it build up that much, then the cleaning is easy. And, as the doctor is a specialist, he will not use the syringe, unless as a last resort.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It always strikes me how often we hear that folks either won't go to the doctor to get something looked at, or they go to the doc and get the answer and then simply aren't compliant. If it's broken, fix it. I've never understood the logic behind avoiding the doc.

<comment><USER7> The best are people who lie to the doctor. Unless you're hoping to defraud someone (get meds, insurance, whatever) it's not only pointless, it's so counterproductive.

"I haven't pooped in a week." "Hmm, how many servings of roughage do you eat per day?" "All of them. I eat ten apples for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and I eat the solids left in the juicer after making my all-organic smoothies." "OK, I guess we'll have to do a DRE. Do you mind if my interns help?"

"How often do you floss." "Ten times a day." "That's curious, because your gums started bleeding like a Tarantino movie when my hygienist waved the box of floss in your general direction."

I learned the hard way when I faked appendicitis and ended up in surgery when I was 12. :-)

<comment><USER8> I tried lying to the dentist when I was a kid about how often I brushed my teeth. He just laughed at me.

<comment><USER9> I always had the opposite as a child. They would commend me on how I must have done a decent job since the last checkup. Reality is I probably only brushed/flossed 3 or 4 times in that interval.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As a kid I once lost a tooth and wanted to keep it, but since I had nowhere to put it at the moment, I shoved it into my ear. Then I forgot about it.

So of course a couple of weeks later I was at the doctor with a blocked ear. When it came out, he was rather surprised - said that he'd removed all kinds of things from kids' ears, but never before a tooth...

</comment><comment><USER11> Glad it was just wax and that your hearing's ok. As somebody who is quite deaf I heartily recommend that people pay attention to their hearing. Get a test to establish a baseline and then check every 5-10 years if no problems or ringing, shorter otherwise. And if you find yourself losing soft consonant sounds, or piss off people with your tv volume, get it checked ASAP.

Hearing loss sucks as even with modern aids, hearing in crowds tends to be difficult at best. Oh, watch your meds for things that can cause sudden loss (aspirin?).

I'll admit that's its nice to feel music, though, rather than just hear it...

</comment><comment><USER12> Haha I'm an MD and I like doing that because of the immediate results :-)

<comment><USER7> The pop is awesome. Also, the sheer grossness of a really good extraction is a thing to be respected.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I had it for a couple days, fun times having a cold while in an airplane, :p. Turning my head sideways and shaking fixed it.

As for the unease with noises, I guess it's understandable; one, the people that don't mind are probably used to it. Two, if you haven't been able to hear for a while, your hearing will get sharper and it'll have much more of an impact.

Three, I too get uneasy when having to listen to busy train stations and the like. I usually wear earbuds (with music) for that reason. And get stressed / uneasy whenever those don't work.

</comment><comment><USER14> James Altucher had the same thing happen to him. He even had the same reaction once it was over: "I'm a superhero!"

[http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2012/03/about-the-time-i- went-d...](http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2012/03/about-the-time-i-went-deaf/)

</comment><comment><USER15> Awesome story! I always wonder how safe for your eardrums it is when they rapidly inject water into your ear like that. Also, if you have mild tinnitus from going to concerts and such, not having your ears blocked helps a ton with not hearing it.

</comment><comment><USER16> Car horns are meant to be used in emergencies only, mostly to prevent accidents. Unfortunately in some countries like Israel (where I live) it has become more of a device for expressing anger or frustration.

<comment><USER17> Similar happenings here in India. Everyone honks for every 10th breath they take while driving.

<comment><USER10> True story: I've worked on a QA workflow system for a large car maker. One of the tickets I saw said something like this:

Problem: Cars delivered to India come in for warranty repairs of the horns unusually often.

Root cause analysis: The horns are designed for 50k activation cycles. Due to the more intensive use in India, this is insufficient.

They were still debating whether to build in a sturdier horn everywhere or just for the Indian market...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> 500 rs?? Good thing you don't live in the states, would have been a 5000 dollar operation!

<comment><USER19> Normally I'm happy to jump into a "bash US healthcare" conversation, but as someone who recently experienced exactly this issue off-insurance, I can tell you that office visit + procedure runs anywhere from $200-$400 out of pocket. Since it's a 5 minute in-office thing, most of that cost would be hidden behind a copay to those with decent insurance.

Nothing like 500Rs, to be sure. But not quite four figures yet.

<comment><USER18> As most people don't have 500 dollars to pay the clinic up front, this would have been an ER visit for the majority of Americans.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> wow, this happened to me too, the deafness came to me really quick, one ear and the other one. I was very nervous, I thought some thing serious was happening to my hearing. I had a doctor check out my ears, it turned out to be a small pea sized earwax in both of my ears...</comment>


Paul Allen says non-Hodgkin's lymphoma has returned but voices optimism - <AUTHOR> https://www.geekwire.com/2018/paul-allen-says-non-hodgkins-lymphoma-returned-voices-optimism/ <comment><USER2> Paul funds some interesting brain research:

[https://alleninstitute.org/](https://alleninstitute.org/)</comment>


Who invented the lightbulb? - <AUTHOR> https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/who-invented-the-lightbulb/ <comment> m-i-l If questions like this become political within a US-specific persepctive, they can have an element of nationalism when considered with a more global perspective.

Many people in the UK know the story of UK-based Joseph Swan developing his own bulb, patenting it, setting up a company and selling it, supplying homes and businesses such as The Savoy, and then a US marketer called Edison later coming along and taking credit for all of these achievements. There are similar stories too, e.g. UK based inventor (James Dewar) inventing the vacuum flask, a foreign company (Thermos) later claiming it as their own. And beyond the UK, most French people will say the Lumière brothers invented cinema, but UK people will point to the Roundhay Garden Scene shown in Leeds several years earler, and of course if you're from the US you'll probably think that was Edison too.

Not trying to take any particular sides, just trying to make a point that your country of origin can have an impact on what you learn (and perhaps also that this article is a little US-focussed).

<comment><USER4> Bill Bryson's book _Made in America_ , although mainly about language (US v British English), also deals with many false and/or disputed claims about who invented what.

On the language side, it also points out that many "Americanisms", oft-derided by certain sorts of English people, are actually nothing of the sort, but rather original English retained in American usage.

An entertaining and informatie read, in my opinion.

<comment><USER5> "Soccer" is a good example of an Americanism that's not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Related: the Pleasanton fire department has the oldest still functioning lightbulb. Apparently it was manufactured in the late 1890's, and has been in service with the fire department since 1901.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centennial_Light](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centennial_Light)

<comment><USER7> Not the oldest still functioning light. But the oldest in normal use - <USER2> are older bulbs in museums that are turned on for special occasions (by experts doing their best to ensure it won't burn out). This bulb is installed and used as a bulb. (though mostly it is there as a historical element - modern bulbs produce more light and would have replaced it if there wasn't a historical reason to keep it around)

<comment><USER8> Many vacuum tubes from the 1920s are also still functioning. They end up being one of the most reliable parts of early radios. Transistors from the 50s - <USER3> meanwhile are having big problems..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Relevant: [https://news.stanford.edu/news/2012/december/wineburg- histor...](https://news.stanford.edu/news/2012/december/wineburg- historiography-zinn-122012.html)

> Wineburg, one of the world's top researchers in the field of history > education, raises larger issues about how history should be taught. He says > that Zinn's desire to cast a light on what he saw as historic injustice was > a crusade built on secondary sources of questionable provenance, omission of > exculpatory evidence, leading questions and shaky connections between > evidence and conclusions.

> Over time, however, a problem emerged as Zinn's book became the single > authoritative source of history for so many Americans, Wineburg said. In > substituting one buttoned-up interpretation of the past for another, > Wineburg finds, A People's History and traditional textbooks are mirror > images that relegate students to similar roles as absorbers – not analysts – > of information. Wineburg writes that a heavily filtered and weighted > interpretation becomes dangerous when "we are talking about how we educate > the young, those who do not yet get the interpretive game."

Also, Biden falsely claiming Latimer invented the lightbulb detracts from what is a fascinating story in its own right: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Howard_Latimer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Howard_Latimer).

<comment><USER10> According to the Wikipedia link, Latimer (together with a J. Nichols) got another patent related to lightbulbs a year before the one that's described in the article:

[https://patents.google.com/patent/US247097](https://patents.google.com/patent/US247097)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I really recommend "How Innovation Works" by Matt Ridley to better understand the history of different inventions and innovations. It also dispels the myth of the singular event of invention by a single person. Rather innovation is a process of compilation.

<comment><USER12> I would like to second - "How Innovation Works" by Matt Ridley is an excellent book. I see the kindle version is £1.99 on amazon.co.uk atm - what a bargain. Most innovations we all enjoy and cherish are a product of long chain of trial and error by different people at different times. Often the theory is understood poorly (if at all) at the time of the invention, and developed after. Luck plays a role in particular person X inventing Y at time Z. But given the number of other people (not-X) that come up with similar invention ~Y at similar time ~Z, looks like Y would have been invented by someone at about time Z.

<comment><USER13> Thanks. Now purchased.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "Who invented <X>?" is an almost meaningless question. Edison and Swan bear the primary responsibility for producing practical and economical lightbulbs and the electricity distribution systems required for them. But both men were undeniably standing on the shoulders of giants.

The same is true for almost any invention. Most successful inventions aren't created by geniuses out of whole cloth. Rather, inventions are often re- combinations of a variety of pre-existing innovations in a novel way that are practical and efficient. We should give praise to the people who made the litany of small contributions and improvements before the invention, but also recognize that the credited inventor(s) usually made a contribution that was more than the sum of the components.

To use a different example less culturally connected to our time, the ideas of differentiation and integration (they weren't necessarily called this) were fairly well-known before Newton and Leibniz. Those two independently recombined the existing knowledge into a simpler formulation (the fundamental theorems or calculus) and thus get the credit. They made these two concepts highly useful. Yet neither of them could have done his work without thousands of mathematicians who made small mathematical discoveries or inventions in the millennia before them.

Or in another example, Jim Keller recently said that "Moore's Law" is not a result of one set of principles applied repeatedly over the decades, but a result of probably hundreds of individual innovations.[1]

I personally think we should credit teams of people, but perhaps list the inventor who was most successful at producing the technology economically at scale with primary credit.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nb2tebYAaOA&t=1805s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nb2tebYAaOA&t=1805s)

</comment><comment><USER15> Credit where credit is due. The great West Indian fast bowler Michael Holding correctly gave Latimer the credit for the carbon filament. Politicians on the other hand, distort the message.

</comment><comment><USER16> This article downplays Latimer's contribution, presumably (and ironically) for the same political reasons it derides. Latimer's filament production patent made Edison's lightbulb viable as a mass-produced product. As with Shuji Nakamura, Isamu Akasaki, and Hiroshi Amano and their advancements with production of high-brightness blue LEDs, they did not "invent" blue LEDs, nor the numerous products enabled by the existence of blue LEDs. However, their contributions did indeed make the LED revolution possible in a fundamental manner, in the same way that Latimer's contributions (which did not end at the patent but included further research and consultation for fledgling electric lighting projects around the country) made the electric light revolution possible.

The three Japanese men above received many accolades for their work, including a Nobel prize. The crux of the controversy is white America's perennial reluctance to give just due to black innovators. Hyperbole becomes necessary to counteract their reticence. It would obviously be easier to simply be forthright about black contributions, but here we have yet another example of that not happening; characterizing Latimer's work as a "footnote" reeks of the aforementioned reticence.

</comment><comment><USER17> I gave a talk once at the then brand new science museum at La Vilette in Paris. A slightly chauvinistic pal from England came along and as we walked to the lecture hall he observed, sneeringly, "this is where the French pretend to have invented everything".

I thought he was being ironic but it turned out he really assumed pretty much everything in the last 500 years or so had been invented in England.

I assume the equivalent belief is probably pretty widespread.

</comment><comment><USER18> The ancient Egyptians with their [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dendera_light](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dendera_light) powered by [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baghdad_Battery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baghdad_Battery)

</comment><comment><USER19> "It was invented by Russian scientist and engineer Aleksandr Lodygin. In 1872 Lodygin submitted application of the patent for his lamp"

[https://russiapedia.rt.com/of-russian-origin/the-ilyich- lamp...](https://russiapedia.rt.com/of-russian-origin/the-ilyich-lamp/)

</comment><comment><USER20> Politicians before: "Vote for me, we will do xyz, create a great future and change history!"

Politicians today: "Vote for me, we will do xyz and change history ...books"

<comment><USER10> The heroes of yore were the ones who wrote history. I'm just an editor.

<comment><USER21> No one 'writes' history, that's why you need historians, they are the ones that can bring a matter into the right context and research why something was 'written' like it is, like it was a battle of 10000 Horsemen when in fact historians know that a that time in hole Europe maximal 3000 Battle-horses existed.

<comment><USER22> Well, history surely have a lot of good tools to cross information by now, meanwhile historians are still human beings happening in some specific socio- cultural frame. If you rely on someone else analysis – which is reasonable – being aware of the person profile is as important as the impact of the work on shaping society representations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Invented by Czech inventor Jára Cimrman. Undisputed fact.

<comment><USER24> Undisputed? I question that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> >While Edison's contribution to the lightbulb was significant, he did not "invent" the lightbulb. At most he put the last piece into place.....

So he did invent it. Being the first that puts stuff together to get a working result is exactly what everyone means if they say someone invented something. That it builds on existing inventions is the norm.

<comment><USER26> No, the article makes it clear that he "invented" the first commercially viable light bulb, not the first light bulb, period.

<comment><USER25> That's what an inventor does. He puts together something functional and usable. If someone tried before with limited success hes not considered the inventor. The plane wasn't invented by the people who died jumping off of things.

<comment><USER26> No, you're conflating two different things.

The Wright brothers are credited for inventing the airplane based on their first powered flight, even though this plane was in no way commercially viable or even useful. It was only a proof of concept.

Applying the same principle to light bulbs, you'd have to credit someone earlier than Edison. They had working, functional light bulbs, they were just niche.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Seems Edison invented the light bulb in much the same way Steve Jobs invented the modern smartphone.

Both took existing technology, added the missing pieces to make it a wide scale, must have product, created an ecosystem around it, and popularized it to the market, and reaped massive monetary rewards.

As far as the regular person is concerned, calling the person most responsible for the widespread adoption of a technology the "inventor" is probably more right than wrong.

<comment><USER28> That is entirely counter to the existing meaning of 'invention'.

The person to bring the first mature product to market is if anything, the antithesis of an inventor. Edison and Jobs were astute businessmen, and that is high praise enough. The CEO of Boeing did not invent flight, just because Boeing introduced the first modern airliners as people know it.

We do not need to add more superlatives to people who have already been deified in popular culture. Overloading terms like these, only serves dilutes their meaning, at the detriment of language at large.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you find your unknown unknowns? - <AUTHOR> Frequently with my dealings with impostor syndrome, I feel like I've built a tower but it is mostly scaffolding rather than solid foundation. Im not an architect so I dont know what I am missing.
Perhaps the best route is to just start from the beginning and slowly fill in the blanks(while also re-learning some things you already know well)
Im wondering if there is some way to discover the missing pieces of the tower and focus studies on those? quiz, app, etc. <comment><USER2> I think applying syntopical reading to the subject would help you to fill in the gaps. See the book How to Read a Book by Adler.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not sure if you are asking about programming, but you can always start from scratch and have solid foundations: [https://www.rust- lang.org/](https://www.rust-lang.org/)

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks scott. It's centered on programming but I find it happening frequently in side hobbies. woodworking, welding, electronics. There is frequently an easy solution if you have full training in an issue but often the solution can be tough to find due to wrong keywords/search terms.</comment></comment>