YouTube TV sharply increases monthly subscription to $64.99 - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/30/21308449/youtube-tv-price-increase-64-99-viacom-hbo-new-channels <comment><USER2> ObShameless reminder that [https://puffer.stanford.edu](https://puffer.stanford.edu) remains free of charge.

The site streams San Francisco affiliates and local stations of NBC/CBS/ABC/PBS/FOX/CW as part of a university study on video streaming algorithms -- it's essentially a big A/B test to try to reproduce or clarify some of the findings in the research literature. We're now posting all our data and analysis each day. Research talk here: [https://youtu.be/63aECX2MZvY](https://youtu.be/63aECX2MZvY)

The content is... well, it's U.S. network television and associated daytime programming. But some people like it! And it's free (for people inside the U.S.).

<comment><USER3> I'm no lawyer, but it doesn't exactly seem legal. Streaming free local network broadcasts was definitively ruled as illegal by the Supreme Court in 2014 -- remember that was Aereo's entire business model. [1]

It seems like the Stanford service is trying to justify themselves by being an academic study and limiting to 500 concurrent participants... but it's telling they don't list any legal justification on the site, and merely generically claim:

> _Stanford respects the intellectual property rights of others. If you > believe your copyright has been violated on a Stanford site, please notify > firstname.lastname@example.com and give notice as stated under > Reporting of Alleged Copyright Infringement._ [2]

I'm honestly shocked this ever passed Stanford legal review. Maybe it never did?

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

[2] [https://puffer.stanford.edu/terms/](https://puffer.stanford.edu/terms/)

<comment><USER4> I never understood what the business interest of the tv stations was in preventing streaming online. They already give away for free the stream over the air. What gives? Do they make money on the antennas or receivers or something?

<comment><USER5> They get paid by the cable companies (or YouTubeTV style equivalents). It's not too much (~$0.40/subscriber IIRC) but it obviously adds up.

They don't get that money if you use an antenna, but that's a small market compared to the internet. Most people who use antennas won't pay anyway, and broadcasting gives them access to the network.

But opening up streaming will draw a lot of people who would otherwise have a cable subscription. Which will lead to much more cord cutters and cut into the carriage fees from the cable company.

<comment><USER6> I have heard that small cable companies pay upwards of $11 per month per sub in retran fees. This article from the industry says..."According to Kagan, the average retrans fee charged by a broadcast station will reach $2.93 by 2022, putting it behind only ESPN ($11.08) and cable channel TNT ($3.09)." [1]

This increase by YTTV is driven by the leverage that ViacomCBS has because of the CBS locals then own. They are forcing YTTV to take these network. Until retransmission consent is changed, we are stuck paying the local station holders despite the fact that their content is free OTA.

[1] - [https://www.multichannel.com/news/is-the-retrans-cash-cow- ru...](https://www.multichannel.com/news/is-the-retrans-cash-cow-running-low)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> For any YouTube TV PMs reading, I just added an event to my calendar marking the day I'll cancel my account. Thanks for the helpful reference to the exact date my current rate expires. Spectrum is offering more channels for $45/month and you don't even need a cable box if you're using an Apple TV. YouTube TV is an OK service that is very rough around the edges and I won't miss it a single minute after I cancel.

"This new price reflects the rising costs of content, and we also believe it reflects the complete value of YouTube TV"

Your price does not reflect the complete value of your service, but happy churning.

<comment><USER8> Not the same. Only works at home

<comment><USER7> A road warrior VPN setup running on a Raspberry Pi 4 and placed in your home costs less than $50. There are 1000 reasons to have one anyway, and watching TV while traveling is also one of them. I know for a fact the Spectrum TV app works quite well under this setup.

<comment><USER9> You'd expect the average Joe to do all of this ?

<comment><USER10> The average Joe isn't subscribed to YouTube TV in the first place, are they? They're usually paying their cable/telco for TV service. (Which, as it happens, already comes these days with mobile wi-fi streaming of the same content via the provider's apps.)

<comment><USER11> Not sure that's a given. Anecdotally, quite a few people on my friend circle hate cable and have YouTube TV for sports and a few minor things.

No data but I'd assume YouTube's biggest pull is people young enough to hate cable but old enough to use YouTube often and have $$ to pay for the convenience

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Have they figured out how to play the show you click on yet? No. $50 a month and the basic functionality of the app doesn't even work. With a Chromecast, it's even worse. Eventually, after clicking back and forth, disconnecting and reconnecting, it may play. Then you have to turn off the closed captioning for every single show even though it's off in the settings. Then it randomly stops at times. The ui displays the wrong show. And they have the gall to charge even more for this shittiest motherfucking app I've ever had the displeasure of using. This engineering team should be fired. They should be ashamed of themselves. They can't even make the app play a single video without problems. I've been putting up with it for years now just because of certain channels my mom likes, but no more. Fuck this garbage app. I've submitted dozens of support requests and the only people dumber than the engineers, project managers, and others who work on this app are the idiots running customer support. Fuck them all. They can shove this fucking app right up their ass.

<comment><USER13> Sounds like you have a generation 1 Chromecast™ and bad WiFi. We hope you'll try YouTube TV again with a Chromecast Ultra™ and a Nest Wifi™ 3 pack. Take care!

<comment><USER14> Please tell me this is a parody of the support responses?

<comment><USER15> The ™s make me lean in that direction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I love YoutubeTV, and I've been using it for years. This is probably enough to get me to cancel, though. It started at $40 when I signed up a couple years ago, they raised it to $50 last year, and now $65 for just a few more channels (and among them, only one I even want).

I wish they'd offer a more a la carte option. I'd be willing to pay $10-15 per major broadcaster's channel collection, or $2-7 for individual channels (depending on quality of programming). I might even land at $50 or more with my channel choices, but I'd prefer to pick what I'm paying for instead of subsidizing dozens of channels of programming I dislike (and quite a few that I would prefer to boycott entirely).

<comment><USER17> I don't understand why they don't do that with YouTube channels too [edit: as in "sub to each channel a la cart"]. Let users pay $1 or $2 a month to disable ads on a channel (or $10 a month for "YouTube Premium"). That seems much more sustainable than relying exclusively on ads for income and loosing potential subscription customers to Patreon. They could even offer higher priced, per- channel subscription tiers that add flairs to comments and unlock emojis like Twitch.

Twitch, Floatplane, and Patreon are all proof it's a viable strategy.

Ad revenue has proven to be terribly unstable and YouTube is extremely expensive to maintain. They should be desperately trying to diversify their revenue.

Right now, every video that isn't "advertiser friendly" is dead weight and money on the table.

<comment><USER18> > I don't understand why they don't do that with YouTube channels too. Let > users pay $1 or $2 a month to disable ads on a channel (or $10 a month for > "YouTube Premium"). That seems much more sustainable than relying > exclusively on ads for income and loosing potential subscription customers > to Patreon. They could even offer higher priced, per-channel subscription > tiers that ad flairs to comments and unlock emojis like Twitch.

Complex subscription options are one of the easiest way to lose subscribers.

> Twitch, Floatplane, and Patreon are all proof it's a viable strategy.

It's far from being proven:

[https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/23/crowd-funding-platform- patre...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/23/crowd-funding-platform-patreon- announces-it-will-pay-out-half-a-billion-dollars-to-content-creators- in-2019.html) [https://www.fool.com/investing/2020/01/15/amazons-twitch- hit...](https://www.fool.com/investing/2020/01/15/amazons-twitch-hit-a-wall- in-live-streaming.aspx)

> Ad revenue has proven to be terribly unstable and YouTube is extremely > expensive to maintain. They should be desperately trying to diversify their > revenue.

Source? Alphabets ad revenue is extremely stable for the company and keeps on growing. So is YouTube share in it. Ad revenue for creators tho - that's a different story.

<comment><USER17> > Complex subscription options are one of the easiest way to lose subscribers.

Source? Twitch and Patreon get along just fine. The existing options can continue as they are.

> It's far from being proven.

YouTube has already swallowed the expensive part of the deal - creating a video hosting platform. I'm just asking them to augment their monetization scheme that other platforms have already demonstrated demand for.

> Source? Alphabets ad revenue is extremely stable for the company and keeps > on growing.

Source for what? Of course YouTube is expensive. It's expensive to host content at that scale. It's expensive to regulate content at that scale to comply with the law and satisfy ad partners. I don't know what else to say. I don't know if YouTube operates at a profit or not, but that's not really relevant.

What matters is YouTube's profit is almost completely dependent on their ability to sell ads. Content without ads can only benefit the platform if it drives premium subscriptions or drives users towards content with ads.

<comment><USER18> > Source? Twitch and Patreon get along just fine. The existing options can > continue as they are.

It's how human brain operates. We're very easily overwhelmed with multiple options.

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/iese/2018/11/05/cant-decide- wha...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/iese/2018/11/05/cant-decide-what-to- order-why-the-human-brain-struggles-with-plenty-of-choice/#707b95455768)

> Source for what?

Source for a claim that selling ads is extremely unstable. Check alphabet or Facebook earning reports from last 10 years.

> I don't know if YouTube operates at a profit or not, but that's not really > relevant.

How is operating at profit not relevant in a context of a business model? Especially when suggested business models of companies that lose money, like patreon, as a something that YouTube should be doing.

We're so deep in the bubble now. Real business models and profits are irrelevant as long as they seem cool.

<comment><USER17> > It's how human brain operates. We're very easily overwhelmed with multiple > options.

Then just present those options intelligently. Without overwhelming the user. I'm not convinced the model I'm proposing is that complex. Many content creators supplement their income with this exact model, but YouTube doesn't get a cut.

> Source for a claim that selling ads is extremely unstable. Check alphabet or > Facebook earning reports from last 10 years.

Earning reports do not reflect the revenue earned from each ad. Alphabet is a massive company that serves ads on much more than just YouTube. The mounting interest YouTube has shown in "advertiser friendly" and "kid friendly" content demonstrates how concerned they are regarding their ad revenue.

> How is operating at profit not relevant in a context of a business model? > Especially when suggested business models of companies that lose money, like > patreon, as a something that YouTube should be doing.

You keep bringing up how Patreon isn't doing well as though it's obviously the fault of the monetization model, rather than the extraordinary cost of deploying a diverse content hosting service that has to compete with established giants like YouTube. YouTube already has that part done. They are paying to host the content no matter how they monetize it. Why do you think deploying a new, optional monetization option will result in a net loss?

I brought up Patreon, Twitch, and Floatplane because they demonstrate there is demand for that model. If YouTube offers it, people will certainly buy it. Just the a la cart, per-channel, tiered subscription model. That's it.

Whether or not YouTube operates in the black is not particularly relevant. I'm talking about augmenting their existing ad-based revenue model, not replacing it. For the overwhelming majority of users, it wouldn't change a thing, but YouTube could stand to bring in a lot more revenue from the minority who would be willing to purchase payed subs to support the platform and creators.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> YouTube TV had enough channels at launch. They kept adding channels that I didn't want and charging for it. This went from best value to worst value in three short years.

Not sure what the old media hacks are trying to accomplish here.

<comment><USER20> > Not sure what the old media hacks are trying to accomplish here.

They're trying to keep their channels artificially expensive and trying to limit the success of (previously) less expensive TV channel platforms like YouTube TV. They don't want to give ground on that, because if they do then it's a big freefall down to what the real value of their channels are.

They make an enormous amount of cartel-capture money from the high cost subscription services like traditional cable and DirecTV. In their ideal world, absolutely nothing would change about that (other than prices always going up over time).

<comment><USER19> They have lost almost 4 million subscriber this year. And streaming companies, such as YouTube TV, have also lost subscribers. So these people just stopped.

<comment><USER21> > So these people just stopped.

I suspect a fair number of people just don't care about TV as much as the experts thought. Netflix plus Amazon Prime and a season pass of Dr. Who is about all I can watch anyhow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Really not surprising that old media still has pull like this.

I enjoyed using YouTubeTV during this past college football season, but I won't be renewing this year. It was already iffy at best with Coronavirus, but now with this price hike YouTube can forget it. Probably exactly what old media wants from us anyway so we go back to cable. Forever a cable cutter.

If needed, I'll go back to Sling despite it going up as well when it first got started, but not as dramatically as YouTubeTV. Sling Orange + sports package will be $40, which is good for the few months I need it. At-least we still have some other options out there instead of having to go back to cable.

<comment><USER23> Yeah, we just cancelled as well after we realized we haven't logged in for a few months. I have it mainly for sports and those don't exist right now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> At $20 they were disruptive, at $65, they are dead to me. I will be interesting to see how many others leave. The "teaser" cable package is more channels and half the cost.

I think it is just a continuing trend in Google getting squeezed harder and harder by the falling search advertising margins and no replacement or even side hustle to compensate.

Just before Google winks out of relevance I expect to see them try to charge people to use maps.

<comment><USER25> They definitely charge people to use maps... A lot.

<comment><USER26> corporations aren't people, despite a lot of hand wringing to the contrary

<comment><USER27> Corporations aren't people. (Just to hammer it in..)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> At least they were nice enough to include a link to cancel the service in their email about the price hike. Seriously! Other services purposefully make it difficult, so props to Google for doing the right thing there.

I liked the service but I just don't use it enough to continue. I'll re- subscribe when they drop the price again.

<comment><USER23> I agree, it was really easy. Unfortunately I first pressed the "manage my services" button which took me down a deep rabbit hole of other google services.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> That cost is nearly double it's original price 3y ago, and looking at the recent channel additions -- I'm not sure the users will be convinced it's worth the extra cost. I wish someone would have a selection like:

$5 - one channel

$7 - two channels

$10 - five channels

$20 - fifteen channels (you pick)

$50 - 40 channels (we pick)

$50 + $15 - 40 channels (the $50 package), plus <package B>

<comment><USER30> YouTube is not the content producer, rather strikes deals with content producers. The reality is there is consolidation in the media world, with a few mega corporations managing most channels. They typically bundle a few channels together for vMVPDs/MVPDs, for leverage - "you want channel X, you must also get channel Y."

Source: I head a Product organization at a mega media org.

<comment><USER31> Honest question: why do big organizations do this?

I mean, I get it: you're making people pay for stuff they don't need. You can charge a higher price despite users not actually watching everything they buy. Clearly, this tactic must work at some level, or else they wouldn't do it.

On the other hand, there are users like me who take one look at that and say, "ew", and walk away from TV completely. And it's not like I'm unwilling to pay for content, I just want to get what I want when I want it and not pay for the privilege of wandering through this ridiculous maze of content that no one cares about.

Maybe I'm being naive, but it just seems to me like this is a strategy that's going to kill the cash cow on the long run. Am I wrong?

<comment><USER32> Subsidizing new content and making it easily discoverable are the primary reasons for bundling. When new content comes to you for free with your existing purchase, the only thing stopping you from trying it out and potentially getting hooked is your willingness to commit time to it. If every piece of content had a price associate with it, people would be much less willing to try new things. This same principle applies at both the individual show level and at the channel level. The people selling you this content want you to consume as much as possible so you don't associate your purchase with a single show and end up canceling HBO once Game of Thrones ends.

You can see how this lack of bundling might impact content by looking at movies which are traditionally more a la carte. Movies are produced under the assumption that they all need to be financially self sufficient. The end result is that most content produced is either blockbusters based off big budget IP (which tries to address discoverability) or low cost and easy to produce content that can potentially be hugely profitable if it hits. The mid- budget TV (traditional TV mainstays like sitcoms would generally fall into this bucket) would likely disappear if everything was purchased a la carte.

It is also worth considering that most of the streaming content providers all do the same bundling as the traditional powers like Viacom. The difference is that the Netflixes of the world don't organize their content into channels. However there are definitely different verticals within these companies. Netflix has one for comedy[1] that is the equivalent of Viacom's Comedy Central, they just don't actively separate this content from the rest of their catalog.

[1] - twitter.com/NetflixIsAJoke

<comment><USER30> That's exactly right. I can't talk numbers, but a consumer is more likely to stick with a channel/app by X% (where X is a significant number) if s/he watches Y shows. Y increases as X increases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> This is certainly CBS Viacom flexing their influence. Youtube TV without CBS and their sports coverage is dead in the water. That gives them leverage to force feed the other Viacom junk. Even the official blog post announcing the changes sounded like more of a resignation.

Unfortunate. Too much money for me and I won't be continuing my subscription.

</comment><comment><USER34> YouTube TV is nowhere near good enough to demand that high of a price. The shows are limited, the DVR interface is terrible, and the DVR barely even works. It's nowhere near as good as Vue was.

<comment><USER35> Disagree, and I doubt you're a regular user of YouTube TV given your comments. "The shows are limited" doesn't even make sense; you get access to the live feed of all the channels in question. The DVR works perfectly in my experience over the last year or so; it has never failed to record what I wanted it to record.

<comment><USER34> I use it every day. It's just now getting Comedy Central. I tried to DVR an episode of Atlanta and it just didn't do it. It did record an episode later on though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> So it's just cable with extra steps now. Nice.

I really don't expect too many people to stay subscribed, unless they're relying on the (sketchy) revenue stream that's people who subscribed once and then forgot all about it.

<comment><USER13> I would doubt more than 1% are in that category - $50 (now 65) a month raises more mental alarms than your old $11 Netflix subscription.

<comment><USER37> Well Netflix 4K is $16 a month. Which pretty much puts it above Disney+ let along D+ with Hulu/ESPN. Then you have HBO which still acts as if they are truly premium, if anything they are the binge a month channel.

Many made the joke when Cable companies started losing subs to internet streaming sites that people would end up paying more. The big catch is most people forget to factor in their internet cost writing it off mentally as "I was already going to have it", a sentiment the streaming services want you to have.

<comment><USER38> > The big catch is most people forget to factor in their internet cost writing > it off mentally as "I was already going to have it", a sentiment the > streaming services want you to have.

It reads oddly for you to present something unequivocally true as a catch, especially during a pandemic when most people are especially relying on internet service to talk with friends and family, work, and education.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> If they keep increasing the price every time they add more channels pretty soon it'll end up being the same as the old cable subscriptions. What happened to a-la-carte channels?

<comment><USER40> > If they keep increasing the price every time they add more channels pretty > soon it'll end up being the same as the old cable subscriptions.

It's already ahead of many cable plans.

> What happened to a-la-carte channels?

Most of the cost isn't per-available-channel (and having more freedom to pick and choose increases costs), so per channel charges would be much higher than current package charges divided by channels, high enough that even though people like the idea in the abstract, they'd flee from it in concrete form.

<comment><USER41> What about base + a-la-carte blocks in the same blocks they have to pay for them? Why has no one offered this yet?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> The content providers want Youtube TV to fail, and are doing it with forced bundling that increases the price. There's no other explanation.

In hindsight, it was stupid for Google to get into a business where they cannot control pricing.

</comment><comment><USER43> Disappointing, as Youtube TV's low entry price for the last several years took the wind out of Playstation Vue, which I really enjoyed. It's frustrating to see the big tech companies engage in monopolistic, anti-competitive behavior by selling services at a loss to drive out competition only to then jack up prices.

<comment><USER44> I doubt this is intentional. Google has no moat here - they own none of the content they provide, and the content owners have all the leverage over price.

<comment><USER45> It's just odd that they bothered getting into this space in the first place _and_ that they used their YouTube brand for this - "YouTube" was meant to disrupt and subvert established television, not become a part of it.

I guess Google's thinking was that the data about what people are watching was worth something which would allow them to extract higher ad revenue from TV- provider-ad-inserts as they'd be more targeted than the general-audience ads you get with traditional cable/satellite TV - but Sling and PS Vue have the same proposition to advertisers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> [https://pluto.tv/welcome](https://pluto.tv/welcome)

Pluto.TV is free because of commercials, and it has 250+ channels. It has a TV guide for what is playing and while it has no DVR it has the ability to start a movie from the beginning so you don't miss it.

<comment><USER47> I've never heard of this before now. It looks legit. How are they able to remain free? Do they inject more ads than the already existing ones? It's not like TV doesn't already have ads.

EDIT: Okay, looked at the channels. Looks like they just don't have the expensive ones (ESPN, etc). So it doesn't have the sports people want.

<comment><USER48> I am one of the people that only has YouTube TV for sports. However, they cancelled Fox Sports and added a bunch of other stuff that is not sports.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> The whole streaming platform war is beginning to resemble the Stone Soup parable. At some point, no platform will have enough content for anyone to care to subscribe (arguably now). Someone needs to come along and convince them all that sharing is in everyone's best interests.

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

<comment><USER50> That reminded me of Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup ("dcss"), which is a pretty great free-to-play game.

[https://crawl.develz.org/](https://crawl.develz.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> I was thinking the other day: if you replace the word "commercial" with "ad", it somehow seems much more ridiculous to be spending $50+ month for a video service, only to still have to sit through countless ads.

It seems obvious, but for some reason, I accepted that TV will have "commercials", but I always associated "ads" with computers. Maybe it's a regional/language thing...IDK.

</comment><comment><USER52> Cancelling. Really really terrible to do this in the middle of a pandemic. Who cares about these extra channels?

<comment><USER53> Same here, I cancelled immediately. I swallowed the previous price increases but this is getting close to regular cable TV. I switched to YTV to avoid cable to begin with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> I signed up for YouTubeTV quite recently (at the beginning of last baseball season) at $40/month. I'm pretty surprised to see in such a short span of time it has gone up to $65.

If things were normal right now I'd probably just shrug it off, but between no sports and quarantining with family instead of at my apartment I have basically been paying for nothing for 3 straight months now. This is definitely pushing me over the edge to cancel.

Maybe next spring I'll reconsider, but this doesn't seem like a great move to me right now?

</comment><comment><USER55> What's more interesting to me is that Google only has ~2M YouTube TV subscribers. Perhaps there's newer metrics now.

[https://twitter.com/RichLightShed/status/1224454820309811202](https://twitter.com/RichLightShed/status/1224454820309811202)

That's nothing, and in my mind - doesn't bode well for the long-term prospects of the service.

I've been a subscriber for about a year, but with the price increases, and the interface on AppleTV that seemingly wants to always show me Tennis when I turn it on, and suggest I resume programs which were recorded 3-6 months ago, it's got a very long way to go before it's got the usability of TiVo.

At this price, they're pushing me back to cable TV with a locked promo rate.

<comment><USER56> That's $1.5Bn/year in revenue for a 3-year-old product that just rebroadcasts content. How is that "nothing"?

<comment><USER57> I could've sworn I was doing something wrong with my math give your the parent comment to yours, so I'm glad I saw this -- my math was right, after all!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> $779.88 a year? Yikes. That's a _lot_ of money.

<comment><USER59> Isn't that A LOT more than just getting cable for Internet+TV? I mean, YouTube doesn't include the $50/month I'm paying for internet.

<comment><USER60> YouTube TV's value proposition includes DVR and, if you're in your home area, the ability to fast forward through commercials for DVR'd content.

The tricky part I'm noticing is how traditional providers are bundling. Mediacom provides internet, cable, and phone service in the Midwest. My parents got a better total price for the same service by bundling it all together. When I look at pricing, the marginal cost of basic cable TV would be a few extra dollars per month.

I'm definitely switching away from YouTube TV, but need to decide if I should go with basic cable (which won't have everything my household desires) or Hulu.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Unless you must have live sports/CNBC or can't have your internet slow down, how are YouTube TV or cable packages attractive? We have Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, and Apple TV+. Even when the free/promotional periods are over, they would still end up costing less than a semi-decent cable package, but with way more useful content (in fact, more than we could ever hope to watch), and little to no ads.

<comment><USER62> >Unless you must have live sports

From these comments at least, it seems like this is pretty much their entire audience.

<comment><USER63> Which makes this seem like a very bad time to raise prices, with so many live sporting events cancelled because of the pandemic.

<comment><USER64> Both baseball and basketball are starting up again at the end of July.

<comment><USER63> But the NBA will only be playing 8 games plus playoffs, and MLB will only be playing 60 games (one third of a regular season), right?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> I like the service in general ok, but YouTube TV has the worst DVR interface I've ever used. It's worse even than any of the shitty one-off cable company boxes.

For $65/month, it would be nice to at least have a decent interface. Google pls buy Tivo and incorporate that.

</comment><comment><USER66> If you're looking for a new service, we built a tool that lets you add your favorite channels and makes a recommendation.

[https://thestreamable.com/matchmaker](https://thestreamable.com/matchmaker)

</comment><comment><USER67> Who's with me to start the Ron Swanson streaming channel? It'll have all the worthwhile channels: hunting, fishing, _and_ woodworking.

<comment><USER60> I wonder what the cheapest way to do so would be? Something through YouTube would allow easy account management, consistent interface people are familiar with, no concern regarding bandwidth and scaling - but I'm entirely unsure if there's a way to do so within the TOS and YouTube structure.

Planet Money had an episode on starting a small cable TV channel. [https://www.npr.org/transcripts/471633490](https://www.npr.org/transcripts/471633490)

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> "This is just like cable but with extra steps"

I don't get how everyone was in the "cut the cord" movement not too long ago when all we really have done is create another cord. $70 a month is way too much for a bunch of channels included with basic $30 package in my area:

[https://www.moneysavingpro.com/tv-providers/comcast- channels...](https://www.moneysavingpro.com/tv-providers/comcast-channels/)

<comment> p-law You have to watch Comcast, though. Does the quoted rate include their local station rebroadcast fee? Their "sports fee"? These two together were something like $14/month -- and not disclosed in the price of any package -- when I finally dropped their scammy ass about 16 months ago. PLUS any boxes you may or may not have to use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> I was on the fence at $50 and will be cancelling as I don't care anything about these new additions. I can think of many things I would prefer to spend the $180 price hike on. Seems like they should be doing these expansions as add-ons if they don't want to see people like me churn.

</comment><comment><USER70> I've had it since day one (actually since dogfood) but this is it, I just cancelled.

It's a shame because it really is a great service. The infinite DVR basically lets you build up your own on demand library of any show.

In the end I was only in it for the live sports. Those aren't even on anymore and when they come back they'll be cheaper on Hulu.

</comment><comment><USER21> It's increasing in price by one Netflix.

I can't grasp paying $65/ month for all my streaming combined, let alone just one service. I could buy a season pass to 3 new great shows every month for that much.

</comment><comment><USER71> When it increased to 50 that was my upper limit. I had to cancel my subscription today.

</comment><comment><USER72> I was on the fence and about to cancel, since it's the media subscription service I pay the most for and get the least use out of. This makes the decision easier...

</comment><comment><USER73> [https://try.philo.com/](https://try.philo.com/) is $20 a month is great. It is missing some news stations, but Pluto tv is free and has a lot of news and a mystery science tv 3000 station.

<comment><USER74> Thanks for the suggestion; I'm trying it out now. Looks like Chromecasts aren't supported, but they do have a Roku app. The Roku interface seems to be much better than Youtube TV's!

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> Sort of related:

I've noticed that regular Youtube has been cranking up the ads quite a lot lately.

I view most of my youtube on the TV, via their crappy HTML-based Apple TV app. So many ads to suffer through, suddenly.

On the desktop, it seems like they've suddenly started work against that one chrome extension I've loved the most: The one that blocks the ads from youtube.

I can't see myself subscring to youtube red or whatever they call it. Just not going to happen.

<comment><USER60> I've noticed a significant uptick in ads as well. The ad quality is akin to ads on streaming-specific apps.

It's not uncommon to only have ~4 different ads shown to you on something like CBS Mobile. They have the potential to target ads, they have an app installed (and all the privacy implications that go with it), but somehow they're showing the same 30 second ad 4 times in a row to make up a commercial break.

Others are far better. For a time, ESPN's app would simply show the logo and repeat the same ~4 second music loop until the commercials were done.

<comment><USER75> Yeah, the ad quality is horrible. I'm in Sweden; I've seen/skipped through all of the local ads like 200 times each by now. At least it feels like that.

Sometimes you get something new - it's always some poor american local company that made their own ad (often some construction company targetting home owners) but messed up the geotargetting, I presume.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> I was already considering cancelling but this is the nail in the coffin. We don't care about the added channels. Also, the recordings are usually messed up. It will be a new show but think it's already been watched. So we typically turn on the show in between its air time just to catch it. The iOS app makes it easier to choose which to watch. We mainly watch on Apple TV and the UI is not very good... good bye.

</comment><comment><USER77> When I first signed up it was great value at $35/mo. It's dramatically been increasing since adding little value. I literally just want CNBC, ESPN, ESPN2, CNN, FOX NEWS, ABC, NBC, FOX, CBS, TBS, and TNT. I have gotten zero value from my nearly doubling of monthly price.

      Original signup June 2017 - $35/mo
      Price increase June 2019 - $49.99/mo
      Price increase August 2020 - $64.99/mo

<comment><USER66> Hulu Live TV has all those channels for $55.

[https://thestreamable.com/matchmaker?channels=cnbc,espn,espn...](https://thestreamable.com/matchmaker?channels=cnbc,espn,espn2,cnn,fox- news,abc,nbc,fox,cbs,tbs,tnt)

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> Google has successfully recreated cable TV along with the awful "pay top dollar for stuff you don't want" pricing model... wonderful.

</comment><comment><USER79> Well, it's not like nobody predicted this. We're back to cable, but even more expensive. Somehow even a company with a monopoly on the internet eyeballs still bows to the old barons.

</comment><comment><USER80> Yikes.

I really felt "meh" about YouTube TV when I used it. To make matters worse about a 5th of the things I asked it to record ended up being the wrong thing. No idea how they managed it. All I got back when I reported the incorrect recording was a "whoops, sorry".

</comment><comment><USER81> I was already on the fence at $50, as I don't watch many of the channels. Primary use was for local, and just a couple of other channels. I'll keep it for July, and then use that time to get an attic antenna setup, and then look at an antenna + Sling option, or some other setup.

Overall, they need to split into multiple offerings so they can still present some value options. I don't watch sports, so that was already a waste of money in the subscription for me. These new channels do not add anything I'll be watching either.

<comment><USER82> Definitely get an antenna for local OTA channels. Cheap and great picture quality. Does not even need to be a complicated antenna. We have some plastic square thing draped around a clock on a wall and it works perfectly. We only have one TV hooked up to the cable box in our house because antenna + streaming covers 99% of our TV needs. If I could stream the in-market NHL team, I'd ditch cable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER83> 10 years ago I imagined online live tv would become 100% alacarte, pay just for what you watch... but unfortunately we continue to pay for tv like we always have, we just got rid of the box (in some cases not even the box).

I have tried Sling and have used all service's free trial, but at the end of the day I am not willing to pay full price to watch 10% of the content. I do miss watching live sports... and thankfully, we are getting more streaming options now.

</comment><comment><USER84> Anyone else using Locast? Works well for us (where we are regular rabbit ears don't work).

</comment><comment><USER85> Started at the beginning but all things come to an end. What was once a sports centric + news service has become more and more bloated. Is the audience really cord cutters? As it is probably far cheaper to get a cable+internet package than just internet + yttv.

In honestly, was probably gone once baseball started as they recently dropped YES network. Same goes for many friends in the north east who were also using yttv.

</comment><comment><USER86> So you want me to pay for the privilege of watching a mind numbing stream of psychologically manipulative advertisements interspersed with the toxic, propaganda laden death throes of the legacy media? No thanks.

YouTube Premium may already be censored by a paranoid AI taking personal kickbacks from Jimmy Kimmel Show, but at least I can still find good content with a little effort.

</comment><comment><USER87> What's the point of YouTube vs xfinity? It would be interesting if they let you pick a la Carte but no one wants to do that (lower fees)

</comment><comment><USER88> While this price change is certainly impactful, I wanted to see if my experience is universal.

Does the swipe behavior in the iOS Youtube TV app (and only the Youtube TV app) drive you crazy? It's the only app where it will consistently move two tiles with the same force any other app requires for one. After about a day of the free trial I gave up because it was that frustrating.

</comment><comment><USER89> They seem to be making a fundamental mistake in calculating their prices?

It seems when they add a new channel that costs say 100M pa to broadcast they divide the cost by their existing number of subscribers and mark up accordingly.

surely everyone else does it by "in five years i will have all the subscribers so divide by that number"

</comment><comment><USER90> It's the endless cycle between bundled and a-la-carte (regardless of medium).

Cable TV was already priced optimally and digital versions are just catching up. People want more channels from a single source, but each person wants their own selection. Bundling brings down overall cost and provides many more channels, especially smaller ones with more niche content. A-la-carte can be cheaper (not always) but is limited in content.

Add in licensing and rules by content producers and there's no escape. Something fundamental needs to change beyond just the delivery mechanism of video. Many people now watch Youtube creators as a replacement for TV so maybe that's the future altogether.

</comment><comment><USER91> If you are on Spectrum, check out the TV Choice package as a decent option for a la carte. It's $28/mo (including the broadcast fee) on a 2-year promotion. I get all the local channels as well as 10 channels that I pick (which includes ESPN/2/FS1). They have decent app support, and while the app blocks certain channels (like ESPN) while not on the home network, the subscription allows you to use the ESPN app anywhere.

[https://www.buyinternetcable.com/blog/spectrum-tv-choice- cha...](https://www.buyinternetcable.com/blog/spectrum-tv-choice-channels- list)

</comment><comment><USER92> Did patio11 start working at Google instead of Stripe?

More seriously though, it looks like people are overwhelmingly not happy about this change. Google already launched a special form to give feedback:

[https://support.google.com/youtubetv/contact/yttv_price_hike...](https://support.google.com/youtubetv/contact/yttv_price_hike_survey))

Their youtubeTV support pages also have a banner stating:

"We are experiencing high contact volumes and longer than normal wait times. If you have feedback about our updated price, we encourage you to fill out this form. Find information about our updated price on this Help Article or on our blog post."

<comment><USER93> Interesting URL. You don't often see a company refer to their own action as a "price hike".

<comment><USER22> Probably because those who made that feedback page are the same people within the YouTube team that actually use the service and feel the same as we do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER94> Over and over, customer surveys showed people want a la carte cable. They perceive their high bill as paying for 100 channels they have no interest in to get 3 they want. And yet, no provider will offer it that way.

<comment><USER90> Because it's not profitable and users always want more, it's just that each person wants a different set of channels.

</comment></comment><comment><USER95> Couldn't YouTube TV at least do what other providers and cable companies do- have different packages with different sets of channels? That + the DVR functionality/etc just might be enough to make it worth it to enough users instead of only having this noncompetitive high price-point.

I can't stand _any_ normal cable TV other than sports, so both YTTV and cable are not for me at all, but my local cable company offers enough channels at less than $65 that even if I _did_ decide to pay for cable TV, YT TV is a tough sell.

</comment><comment><USER96> Personally I might keep it at $65 if they had just value added youtube premium with it. I was hoping they would do this at some point as an option. But will most likely not happen.

</comment><comment><USER97> Gen Z speaking: Why would anyone ever have wanted that, even at 40$?

<comment><USER98> Live sports: football (pro, college), baseball, basketball (pro, college), hockey, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER99> I'm 31 and I find this totally _insane_! Why would you pay $65/mo for something that has 8 minutes of commercial for every 22 minutes of content? Regular TV is dead to me now that we have streaming services. I'll pay for the content, but don't waste my time trying to make more money by showing me ads. I haven't had a regular TV connection since leaving for college.

</comment><comment><USER100> The amount of money I would pay monthly for ALL the TV shows I care about delivered at mp4/mkv files that I can stream to any of my devices without commercials/tracking and with good subtitles is probably close to $150+/mo.

Unfortunately there is only 1 way to realistically do this and it involves piracy and costs somewhere from free to <$15/mo (+hardware which can vary greatly).

</comment><comment><USER101> For the few months I tried YoutubeTV, the stream consistently failed (especially for live sports) and I reported it several times. I finally disputed three months of their charges with my credit card company. Google accepted the disputes within a day and effectively gave a $150 refund. I later canceled, but important to know they're willing to give out their crappy service for free without a fight.

</comment><comment><USER102> These OTT retransmission of mostly FTA broadcast channel services haven't caught on at all anywhere globally except the US, and that seems to have been mostly a focus of unsustainable pricing.

It's a shame the US sector is so badly regulated. Must carry obligations and effective competition mean many of these bits of structural weirdness didn't happen elsewhere.

</comment><comment><USER103> I prefer them asking for money upfront instead of selling ads and becoming controlled by the people who pay for those ads.

</comment><comment><USER104> [https://www.locast.org/](https://www.locast.org/) Don't pay for TV

</comment><comment><USER105> Increases like this will accelerate the jump away from cable. There is no infrastructure costs comparable to physical cable, or last mile boxes and equipment. Just OTT.

I've recently started watching more YouTube and while the production quality might not be where people like, you can certainly find meaningful content for non-fiction.

</comment><comment><USER106> I was planning to start using YTTV when sports start up again. We were using Hulu Live before and, while it wasn't terrible, I wanted to give YTTV a try.

This price hike kills that option. I will go back to Hulu or, more likely, just add TV to my monthly Fios package.

</comment><comment><USER107> This is getting out of hand, at this point, going with the special deals at Comcast is a better option.

<comment><USER108> Comcast is $10 per TV (unless you're cool with Roku) and the cord-cutter apps have good support on a bunch of different devices you can plug into your TV. I think Hulu still wins unless you want all of the channels.

<comment><USER109> And sports fees, broadcast fee, fake fees that they try to pass off as government mandated taxes, HD technology fee, etc.

And with s contract....

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER110> Add another cancellation. This was enough for me to dig up the account info for my internet provider to see if they offered a streaming service. They do, and it's $24.99/month plus $5 for the cloud DVR. That's less than half of your new rate. Dumb move.

</comment><comment><USER111> Still a good value. Comparable cable service in our area still hovers around $95/month, plus this has better recording and works on many devices (simultaneously!). We've had it for two years and no complaints -- we recommend it.

</comment><comment><USER112> When I ditched cable TV my bandwidth usage skyrocketed. Now that the prices are closer, there seems to be almost no benefit to streaming TV. My Internet will be faster and Xfinity's apps are as good if not better than YT.

</comment><comment><USER113> Price hike and still no NHL Network or NFL Network/Redzone option. Good-bye YTTV!

</comment><comment><USER114> I've resigned from TV be it cable or online version ages ago and have never looked back. Not paying crazy price for bunch of garbage with the one or two channels I've used to actually watch. Goodbye vultures.

</comment><comment><USER115> So YouTube is the same as cable TV now, but in a worse quality?

Is Google running out of money?

</comment><comment><USER116> I still don't understand, and refuse to pay for, basic TV in the United States. Bunny ear is now a digital receiver with even more local broadcast options. And yt brings no value add, imho.

</comment><comment><USER117> We don't have this in Europe. Does it carry in show adverts as well?

<comment><USER118> Yes.

You get the same ads as when the show is airing live and if it's a local market slot you get a dark screen with text saying it's taking a commercial break.

When watching shows you recorded as a DVR you can skip them by fast forwarding.

When watching shows YouTube tv has offered that you didn't record you get preroll and in-line ads that are usually unskippable just like Hulu.

<comment><USER117> Thanks. That's horrific.

<comment><USER119> A European will have a big problem to understand how you can pay that much money to submit yourself to this torture...

<comment><USER117> Having really only watched TV, in my university years through piracy, or later through dvd, streaming services etc. I have become so sensitive to interstitial advertising that I can't stand it.

I have recently returned to watching golf by subscription to sky sports golf. They often mirror the NBC/CBS advertising schedule instead of using the clean feed. Totally ruins the golf tournament. I have to pause 45 mins before I watch and use an app I've written to quickly jump the two minute ad breaks.

I've spent much time in American hotel rooms. Watching TV there is like entering an ADHD simulation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER120> I didnt realize that it was already $50/month... I didn't signup at $35 because I thought that it was too much...

I get more than 50 HD channels for free over the air and I watch only 3 of them.

</comment><comment><USER121> I paid Google for Google One and it doesnt include Youtube Premium, their own video service. Whilst Amazon Prime gives you Prime Now, Prime Video and Prime Delivery. Much better value.

</comment><comment><USER122> Starting to remind of Amazon Prime, which started out at $79 a year for two day shipping and is now $120 a year for two day shipping plus a bunch of crap I don't need or want.

</comment><comment><USER123> There are so many free alternatives now days... PlutoTV, Locast, Plex & Tubi. These combine with Netflix or Prime Video or even TV+ is more than enough.

<comment><USER124> The distinction that needs to be made is that people aren't typically looking for _things to watch_ , they're looking for a _specific_ thing (generally live sports).

</comment></comment><comment><USER125> Good of them to do this thing to people's credit cards, inside of a major economic crisis.

Google must be close to death! A business needs money to survive, don'tcha know.

</comment><comment><USER126> I must've been living under a cave. This is first time I'm hearing about YouTube TV. Might be because I cut the cord many years ago.

</comment><comment><USER127> The amount of ads I'm seeing on YouTube is pretty insane recently. Google must be under quite some pressure to make money.

</comment><comment><USER128> I've had it for at least a year and it blows away the competition in most respects. This is a fair price.

</comment><comment><USER129> So, what's the best way for me to watch SNL, Rachel Maddow, Rick and Morty, and Brooklyn Nine-Nine? Hulu?

<comment><USER130> Netflix and YouTube with ExpressVPN?

</comment></comment><comment><USER131> Is a ploy to make people feel good once they lowered the price to the new still sharply higher price.

</comment><comment><USER132> Hey, I decided to minimize YouTube and pay for Nebula even before the price hike :-D

</comment><comment><USER133> I used it 2 years ago to watch the olympics. Going to have to find an alternative...

</comment><comment><USER134> You mean to tell me people actually clicked that YouTube TV ad?

</comment><comment><USER135> Key question: why would you watch broadcast TV?

<comment><USER136> For local content, mostly news & sports, but maybe also lifestyle stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER137> A dying service milking some last few dollars

</comment><comment><USER138> Is it at least ad-free for that much?

</comment><comment><USER139> Wow this kinda blew my mind. I never knew there were tv sites like Hulu tv, or even YouTube tv...

And the prices! Outrageous. I'm glad I stick with Netflix.

</comment><comment><USER140> I gave up MythTV for this crap

</comment><comment><USER141> Jesus. If I was subscribed to this, in my local currency this would cost me 347.61 moneys each month right now. Ugh.

</comment><comment><USER142> Still no weather channel?

</comment><comment><USER143> So now they'll charge you $65/mo to watch ads every 10 minutes? Where do I sign up?

</comment><comment><USER144> youtube, no longer the loss leader of the internet?

</comment><comment><USER145> YouTube TV still exists?

</comment><comment><USER130> Didn't even know people still paid for TV but reading this thread surprised me. I would say this industry is dead with the upcoming generation but guess I'll be surprised again

<comment><USER109> Really? Are you going to do the feigned Slashdot era ignorance "Do people still watch TV? I haven't owned a TV in ten years"?

82.9 million households have cable

[https://nocable.org/learn/cable-tv-cord-cutting- statistics/](https://nocable.org/learn/cable-tv-cord-cutting-statistics/)

There are 128.53 million households in the US.

That means 65% of households have cable.

So what are the statistical chances that you don't know anyone that pays for cable? Those numbers are somewhat skewed lower as far as cable TV because I don't believe it counts OTT providers like Youtube TV, Hulu Live TV, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER146> I didn't know we were at the place to have nuanced discussion on Youtube TV benefits

If you pay for:

Youtube Music

Youtube Premium

Youtube TV

Youtube Kids

I question your entire decision making process.

Am I missing something here?

</comment><comment><USER147> Price hike aside I cannot support a company that abuses creators. It used to be such a great source of knowledge and content but now it's been gutted and has become just as mind numbing as daytime TV.

</comment><comment><USER148> Think this may have an effect of pushing more people to get adblockers and Netflix subscriptions than anything else. Or they just want people to get free Youtube so that they have a wider audience of ad viewers to sell to advertisers.

<comment><USER149> You may be confusing YouTube TV (a replacement for cable TV) with YouTube Premium (ad-free access to YouTube and Google Play Music).

<comment><USER148> Hmm yep I definitely was lol</comment></comment></comment>


Check web servers using Node - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/dpweb/peng

<comment><USER2> It would be great to check status codes, I'll probably send a pull request.</comment>


Prime Time for Paul Ryan's Guru, Friedrich von Hayek - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/26/magazine/prime-time-for-paul-ryans-guru-the-one-thats-not-ayn-rand.html?pagewanted=1&_r=3&smid=fb-share&pagewanted=all

<comment><USER2> "Ryan has repeatedly suggested that many of his economic ideas were inspired by the work of Friedrich von Hayek, an awkwardly shy (and largely ignored) economist and philosopher who died in 1992"

Most certainly _not_ 'largely ignored' in the UK.

[http://www.cps.org.uk/blog/q/date/2012/05/08/happy- birthday-...](http://www.cps.org.uk/blog/q/date/2012/05/08/happy-birthday- friedrich-von-hayek/)

[http://www.radicalphilosophy.com/commentary/david- camerons-t...](http://www.radicalphilosophy.com/commentary/david-camerons-tea- party)

Interesting that the US right wing candidates are beginning to read Hayek. See _Ill fares the land_ by Tony Judt for a polemical response to Hayek's influence in the UK

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/apr/11/ill-fares- land-t...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/apr/11/ill-fares-land-tony- judt)</comment>


A route-matching, block-based way to handle deep links - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/usebutton/ios-deeplink-sdk?src=HN

<comment><USER2> with unit tests ! nice !

<comment><AUTHOR> Is there any other way? :p</comment></comment>


Nasdaq ITCH - <AUTHOR> http://www.ryanday.net/?p=573 <comment><USER2> Some things to think about:

      - 50mb is >> total cache on most systems you'll use.
      - This is far from the only function you need to optimize.
      --> The best performing algorithm in a micro-benchmark can be sub-optimal in real use.

      - You've got a fixed-for-the-day list of <10k <9 letter unique upper-case strings
      - The bulk of them you'll process are <= 4 letters (CMCSA/CMCSK be damned).
      - The median is 3 and the mean is <3.6.
      - The symbols aren't anywhere close to uniformly active
      --> Benchmark with a typical data stream, not a uniformly distributed one.

      - You're likely not even considering trading most of them.

      - How much better is your algorithm than the obvious binary-search?
      - Or worse -- plain'ol front-to-back linear search?
      - Are you sure you understand 100% of how the computer works?
        --> Yes? Mail a check to Goldman and find a better line of work.
        --> No? Test it with a quick benchmark.

      - Is binary search cache friendly?
      - Why not? Plot out the memory accesses if need be.

      - What's wrong with taking a linear-interpolated guess?
      - Is that cache friendly? .. or could it be?
      - When your guess misses, what's that cost?
      - Can you think of a cheap modification to lower that cost?
      - Is the distribution really linear?

      - What's wrong with a "perfect hash function"?
      - Does it need to be perfect?

Incidentally, hardware wins at this function. You can just generate logic to do all the if symbol == "XYZ": return 3's in parallel.

<comment><USER3> This is a crazy smart comment. Thanks.

... is anyone really using hardware to do this, by the way?

Hardware regexing at this scale is practically a COTS part, or was when I stopped doing network security products in '05.

<comment><AUTHOR> Unfortunately it's not that simple anymore. You actually have to do most of the order-book-building legwork to figure out if the quote is relevant: every order modification message, such as canceling an order or execution, omits the ticker. Makes sense: after all, the add-quote actually tells you the ticker, so there's no need to repeat that info.

This is where it gets tricky. FPGA based systems don't really give an edge here, and tilera-based solutions are still nascent

<comment><USER4> This craziness is what happens when you try to implement a specialized algorithm on a general-purpose state-machine. What stupid thing is a "cache" anyway, but an optimization because we are not using real computers but hugely complex state-machines called CPUs. FPGAs are as close as a real computer as we can have today.

<comment><USER3> The parallels to high end network security are again interesting here; for instance, on the more interesting network processors, memory accesses were asynchronous, and instead of a "cache" you had a manually addressed "scratch" memory with latency comparable to registers.

... because "general purpose cache" wasn't helpful, but "exploitable locality" definitely was.

<comment><USER5> That's pretty close to how the first NVIDIA GPGPU (G80) worked. There was no cache, but only different kinds of memory, of which one was as fast as registers. Optimal access to RAM memory was possible with a limited set of access patterns, so "caching" had to be managed carefully manually.

In later GPUs they (mainly due to programmer laziness :-) ) switched to a more GPU-like automatically managed general purpose cache. The problem was that in most cases, being able to quickly write code that is reasonably fast was more important to developers than being able to squish out every cycle (though I believe it's still possible to disable the cache and manage it manually...)

The problem with automatic cache is the same as all "intelligent" CPU features, the CPU tries to predict what the program is doing, the programmer has to predict what the CPU will predict to optimize for that CPU. In the next generation of the CPU, the CPU vendor will try to optimize again for programs currently around. In the end, optimizing becomes much more complex.

There's certainly an advantage to keeping the logic "dumb" and simply having the software manage everything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This sounds like the beginning of a fun project. However, may I humbly suggest a few things?

(In 2005, I built a system to do interesting computations on each stock option tick. The volume for the time was pretty high. Each time the IBM stock, for example, moved a penny, this generated 400 quotes. While small by today's volumes, 100k quotes with an OAS calculation with a binomial matrix on each tick was a challenge. So I am not totally unfamiliar with these throughput issues.)

And Python was used, but only on the GUI side, presenting the results. While I didn't measure it, I feel quite confident in saying that Python isn't going to keep up. At the risk of being a premature optimizer.

Before you optimize the stock look-up function, you might want to look ahead a bit. veyron has commented below or elsewhere that a very important calculation is going to be your total holdings on each tick. This is how you will calculate your risk, or at least the fundamental start.

Another thing to consider is your goal in trading. How will you be making money? For example, will you be buying/selling on, say, 10 second intervals and collect profits from that? Or longer intervals? Shorter?

Whatever your overall strategy function is, you will spend some time in that calculation. Will you do it on every tick? This computation time might well at this point be unknown. If it is an interesting calculation, it might well be complex.

So how is a startup going to deal with this firehose of a problem?

Well, consider splitting up the processing. One obvious way to do this is to filter tickers you are interested in in one box and push a much more manageable stream to your main logic box. Perhaps start with one frequently- traded stock, tune your algorithms. This will be a rich learning experience.

Then, watch the CPU percentage. If it is above 60% at 0910 central, maybe start profiling your code. Your time-consuming parts will surprise you.

If it is going well, and you want to expand, consider adding one box for each stock that you plan to trade. You can do it for about $200 diskless, quantity one retail. Perhaps put the quote stream or a divided quote stream on a multicast channel, two NICs per box. Allocate a pre-determined amount of capital for each stock so they don't need to coordinate to give you your risk calculation.

Also, the idea of High-Frequency Trading is kind of a fractal concept. On the low end, you have a trading situation that is slightly more active than a day trader. On the high end, you have boys who rewrite network stacks in windows or linux for their boxes co-located with exchange points in New Jersey, where the cables are measured to the inch so everybody sees the tick at the same time. Those are the 100 nanosecond boys. These are the fellows who order servers by the multiple racks of 30. And they trade in a whole different style --their net hold time might average out to zero, but because of agreements they have with the exchanges, they have to stick with the market when it takes a dive.

So don't try to be them at the start.

In summary, success here will come more from the engineering than the computer science, and not trying to beat the big boys at their game.

</comment><comment><USER7> I suspect you'll want something a touch faster than O(l) for every lookup, in fact given the previous constraint of memory being no problem, you should instead use a hashtable.

<comment><USER8> Exactly. I was amazed at how little ground was covered by the end of the post, off on a yak shave for the part of this problem that is _not_ hard or novel.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm happy someone was interested enough to just start coding :)

</comment><comment><USER9> Here's some trivial YAML-driven python code: <https://bitbucket.org/cdtitch41/itch41/overview>

It doesn't construct books or anything else sophisticated but it may be of interest to ETL folks.

</comment><comment><USER10> Lots of parallels here: <http://www.weatherlabs.com/2011/08/device- detection.html>

</comment><comment><USER11> Thanks for all the comments! Veyron had told me a hastable would be a better idea. I have been reading about creating a perfect hash so I don't have to deal with collisions, although I'm (obviously) not the best algorithm guy. So that post may be coming soon.

I had thought that due to the extreme low latency that a hardware solution would be required. So that may be the next place to start experimenting.

</comment><comment><USER12> Is there a place where we can download end-of-the day ITCH data? There are so many HFT/LLT outfits out there with this data; surely one will be generous enough to release it for free or some trivial amount?

<comment><AUTHOR> I looked into it: it's expensive to redistribute market data (you have to register with the various exchanges to redistribute their data, and its not cheap). Though nasdaq did have some data available on their ftp site: ftp://emi.nasdaq.com/ITCH/</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Best Books for Novice Hackers? - <AUTHOR> Hey all
Been programming on and off for around a year. It's getting somewhat enjoyable but find much of the literature I've came across is aimed towards beginners or towards professionals. Thus I kind of get stuck repeating concepts, doing tutorials or venturing into career knowledge for developers - which I don't want to be.
Does anyone any cool book suggestions around 'hacking', E.g throwing together and building projects recreationally? <comment><USER2> I was thinking about your dilemma and recalled an old web page I used for OpenScad coding, it was called "10 things to know how to do in OpenScad to become dangerous" or something like that.

It seems a commercial entity has grabbed the "become dangerous" expression nowadays and is offering courses.

But after a bit more consideration, the true value of that old web page was that it was infact a cheat sheet of sorts. Like you said beginners learn the syntax, professionals get way too in depth.

So here is a link to a bunch of cheat sheets, I hope this helps you in your hacking endeavors.

[https://cheatography.com/tag/programming/](https://cheatography.com/tag/programming/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! God speed</comment></comment>


Gogobot spammed all my Facebook Friends - <AUTHOR>

I innocently signed up for a site, Gogobot, using my Facebook account as I've done tons of times. Only in this instance Gogobot sent an email to every one of my FB "friends". So, to return the favor, let me tell the world about this underhanded, awful website. STAY AWAY! <comment><USER2> I got the same type of email from Path. A friend joined in and I got the message.

</comment><comment><USER3> How? I do not believe you can get an e-mail address for a friend of the user, only for the logged in user (and only with explicit permission).

<comment><AUTHOR> Dozens of my FB friends got an email that said "XXXX, I just discovered Gogobot. Please join me <http://apps.facebook.com/gogobot/?r=00bb></comment></comment>


Higher Social Classes Have an Exaggerated Belief That They Are More Capable - <AUTHOR> https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2019/05/social-class-exaggerated-belief <comment><USER2> Duplicate of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19991696](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19991696) (two days ago).

Keep in mind that the paper does clearly state:

>Furthermore, all three forms of social class were positively associated with actual rank, indicating that those with relatively high social class did objectively better on the flashcard game relative to their lower-class counterparts

This is a poor title and article if you take even a brief moment to view the actual correlations presented in the paper.

<comment><USER3> I find this the worst insult of being poor: to be assumed stupid.

But I mean, hey, if they did better on a flashcard game, then an unequal caste system is justified after all!

<comment><USER4> Don't worry not everyone thinks poor people are stupid. I am poor and know poor people are not stupid. In fact I am so poor I had to learn how to change so many broken things on my car it is now called Theseus Grand Voyager. I am so poor I had to learn to bake bread and feed my family from scratch. I am so poor that instead of buying the wooden building planks they have at Science World that my kids loved to play with I had my dad teach me how to use his table and chop saw and I made my own blocks out of scrap wood. I am rich in knowledge and feel rich to have my necessities for me and my family met. Most of all I am happy with my life. I just feel that I would not have learned nearly as much having money and the ability to pay someone else to do things for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This reminds me of the studies by Paul Piff:

[https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research/are-wealthy-more- narcis...](https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research/are-wealthy-more-narcissistic)

In particular, he demonstrated that in a rigged game of Monopoly, where one player e.g. starts off with more money than the others, that player will sooner or later demonstrate signs of feeling entitled and, in some cases, even attribute their victory at the end not to their initial advantage but to simply playing better than the other participants:

[https://www.ted.com/talks/paul_piff_does_money_make_you_mean](https://www.ted.com/talks/paul_piff_does_money_make_you_mean)

<comment><USER6> I'd again mention the ongoing replication crisis in psychology.

People have specifically attempted to replicate Paul Piff's numerous studies trying to assign various negative characteristics to those of upper social class. The results did find some correlations maintained, such as those between greed and unethical behavior, but Piff's keystone correlation between social class and unethical behavior was completely unable to be replicated.

I do not think people understand how bad of shape psychology is in right now, social psychology in particular. Social psychology replication studies tend to be hitting around 20%. For instance once again the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology comes up. It's interestingly enough the journal that published the study that this link is discussing, as well as the journal that Piff published in. Its current replication rate is 23%. [2]

[1] - [https://www.collabra.org/article/10.1525/collabra.166/](https://www.collabra.org/article/10.1525/collabra.166/)

[2] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis#Psychology_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis#Psychology_replication_rates)

<comment><USER7> > I do not think people understand how bad of shape psychology is in right > now, social psychology in particular. Social psychology replication studies > tend to be hitting around 20%.

Yes I think we do, at least on HN, because anytime any psychology study or result is mentioned at least two threads popup up citing the replication crisis.

The thing is, it kind of depends on how you define replication, also some of these studies were done decades ago, society has changed since then, possibly affecting the results.

How easy would it be to replicate the bystander apathy studies where people were in a smoke filled room after 9/11, for example?¹

It definitely should be taken into account, but it's much easier to tear down than to give a critical appraisal.

I don't mean to criticize your comment in particular, because it was actually a good appraisal of this particular body of work.

I do think HN has some biases² and the tendency to shout "replication crisis" in a self satisfied manner is one of the things that bug me the most about HN.³

1: [https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1969-03938-001](https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1969-03938-001)

2: No politics, but in human affairs, everything is politics.

3: Especially since most of us on here are from the hard sciences, which ironically are easier because they deal in concrete, measurable phenomena.

<comment><USER8> One other thing to keep in mind about social psychology:

[http://www.spsp.org/news-center/blog/stereotype-accuracy- res...](http://www.spsp.org/news-center/blog/stereotype-accuracy-response)

> Stereotype accuracy is one of the largest and most replicable effects in all > of social psychology. Richard et al (2003) found that fewer than 5% of all > effects in social psychology exceeded r's of .50. In contrast, nearly all > consensual stereotype accuracy correlations and about half of all personal > stereotype accuracy correlations exceed .50.

That is, stereotypes are frequently better predictors of human behavior than _bona-fide_ research in social psychology.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> We are just animals, if someone in a low social tier is constantly blocked and fed negative affirmations, while someone from a higher tier is constantly granted access and positive affirmations, one is being trained to feel more confident and capable.

If they dropped me into a town with a bunch of actors who all pretended to be in awe of my intellect, I would begin to think of myself as some kind of genius.

<comment><USER10> And you might actually become smarter. Ones ability to do some things - including mental tasks - is affected by their beliefs about their ability. That's not to say you can do anything you believe you can, just that belief can influence (not determine) ability.

<comment><USER11> What you're describing is the amazing benefit of both blind faith and confidence. There's jokes about piano teachers teaching kids extremely difficult classical sheets and the kids nailing it. Then someone says "how do you get them to play such difficult music?"

"Stfu, don't tell them it's difficult."

The older I get the more I realize most things are not difficult. I make them more difficult than they are. If you're in an environment where someone encourages you that "you can nail this on the first or second try", you probably will. Most of my work is me winging it. Especially when others fail. In things I really don't have any civilized justifiable reason to even attempt. But I, I don't know, just do things. Mostly with research. But yea. I started to find out, in the past... 5 years? ... that a lot of silver spoons feel the same way. They just do things. And it works for them because they don't have the emotion of difficult or easy.

That's probably the lesson in all of this. Do things. Don't worry about easy, difficult, credentials or sobriety.

<comment><USER6> Chess is probably the clearest example of this. Chess is not especially difficulty to become quite strong at - even as an adult. But there is an important catch there. Your improvement is nonlinear and difficult to predict. You can spend 6 months working tirelessly at the game and see no improvement. One extremely typical pattern in it is 'stair stepping.' You don't gradually increase in proportion to your efforts, you instead go up in spikes. You wake up and suddenly you're e.g. 100 points stronger than you were than when you went to bed.

This goes all the way to the top. Magnus Carlsen is currently the world champion, one of the most dominant we've had in a long time, and arguably the strongest player to ever live. And he had phenomenal success. He achieved his grandmaster title at age 13 and was nearly the youngest grandmaster ever. But here's [1] what's interesting. That's a graph of his rating progress - a much more readable table is at the bottom. Carlsen was advancing meteorically rapidly. Looking at his relative rating gains between each period:

\---

10/2001: Baseline (2072)

10/2002: +178

10/2003: +200

10/2004: +131

Then, as always, it happens:

10/2005: -11

\---

A player meteorically rising and spending immense amounts of energy on the game suddenly manages to achieve nothing but an 11 point loss over more than a year. Imagine if you, as an adult, were in the position and in spite of all your efforts over the past year - you did nothing but lose 11 points. I've coached people in that exact situation. And they tend to rapidly give up. Oh, they just don't have the IQ for it. Maybe they're too old. Maybe they're doing something wrong and start engaging in _genuinely_ wrong study habits. And so on.

These 'plateau' type events happen to literally all chess players. So it leads to the interesting thing that you'll find most chess players are both humble and arrogant. Humble as years of sport against much better players (as is required for improvement) will make you, but arrogant in the sense that they will never say never - even when things look incredibly grim. In effect you end up simultaneously humble and arrogant. I would expect that successful entrepreneurs and successful chess players share many of the exact same characteristics, as it's the same game in both endeavors.

[1] - [https://ratings.fide.com/id.phtml?event=1503014](https://ratings.fide.com/id.phtml?event=1503014)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> My son often talks of an animal, a dingo iirc, that wasn't socialized normally. Maybe it was orphaned and raised by humans?

Dominance behaviors in the species are hard wired biologically, but submissive behavior was learned behavior, so the animal in question never learned things like how ho back down from a fight. So the animal stood its ground, even when outnumbered and so forth. It simply had no other option, having not ever learned any of the not hard wired behaviors necessary to do something else.

It ended up in charge of the pack.

<comment><USER13> I believe the same thing happened at IBM in the 90s.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The methodology seems highly questionable. From the actual study ([https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/psp- pspi0000187.p...](https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/psp- pspi0000187.pdf))

"Social class was measured in three ways. To indicate subjective social class, participants saw an image of a ladder that 'represents where people stand in your country.' and selected the rung on which they felt they stood, relative to other people in their country"

"However, when difference scores were used (or the alternative joint-testing procedure), the conclusions were not so straightforward. Here, we found support for Hypothesis 1 only in the case of subjective social class. The difference score approach also showed that education and income were negatively associated with overconfidence, directly contrasting the results generated by the residual score approach."

So it's not so much that people from a higher social class are overconfident but that overconfident people appear to be from a higher social class due to their methodology and downstream assessment confirms their methodological bias. It's quite incredible this received as much attention as it did. Also this sample is limited to Mexican small-business owners applying for loans.

<comment><USER15> > It's quite incredible this received as much attention as it did.

Almost any piece of western media tries to paint higher classes negatively, so no, it's the opposite of incredible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> An exaggerated belief of performance in a flash card game might not indicate that belief is exaggerated in general. Maybe they have a heuristic like "I'm good at things" which gives a pretty accurate estimate of their performance on day-to-day tasks, and flash card games are an edge case that they're not good at estimating.

<comment><USER17> Please. Money lies. We all know it. People with money are deferred to, emotionally coddled, and ALWAYS given the benefit of the doubt. It is literally the foundation of Western culture. Those who have always had it live in a very delusional world that has always lied to them about their abilities. That's how we end up with a " very stable genius" as the "leader" of the western world.

<comment><USER18> But the noble poor man (or the noble savage if we look to the past) never cheats, lies, steals, etc. And if they do it's for survival or family or some other sympathetic cause.

Or we're all humans with normal human traits and egos to rationalize just about anything given the right circumstances.

<comment><USER17> Nobody said they didn't. Point was that people with "old" money who have always been of a higher social class than most believe falsley that they are better than they are, for the previously stated reasons. Yes, they are humans, and that's what happens to humans who are given too much. One of the many horrid things that happens to normal humans.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> There is a replication crisis [1] in the social sciences and most studies are not being replicated. [2]

Here is a study that is not able to replicate the most referenced study on subsaharan and Africa iq [3]. The tests were done on uneducated people, handicapped people, people in remote areas and in poor conditions ie under trees which is not the recommended test procedure. Higher scores were also intentionally dumped in favour of poorer scores for vague reasons with evidence of data massaging.

This kind of 'science' is extremely damaging especially when cherry picked results and sweeping conclusions that these kind of studies do not and cannot support are widely cited outside the scientific context by bigots and racists to construct a narrative that dehumanize others. The nobel laurette James Watson expressed 'gloom about Africa' on the basis of these studies.

There are a lot of well known funds like the pioneer fund [1] and volker fund that have spent tens of decades on 'race' science and that formed a lot of basis for Charles Murray's bell curve. There are not hundreds of heavily funded organizations in Africa and Asia trying to prove others are somehow lower iq or 'inferior'. This effort has been ongoing for over 250 years, first it was brain size and now its iq and evolutionary psychology. What exactly is iq measuring, can we measure something that we don't understand?

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

[2] [https://www.vox.com/science-and- health/2018/8/27/17761466/ps...](https://www.vox.com/science-and- health/2018/8/27/17761466/psychology-replication-crisis-nature-social-science)

[3] [http://www.iapsych.com/iqmr/fe/LinkedDocuments/wicherts2010....](http://www.iapsych.com/iqmr/fe/LinkedDocuments/wicherts2010.pdf)

[4] [https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Pioneer_Fund](https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Pioneer_Fund)

</comment><comment><USER6> The paper that this article is discussing was published in The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. That's interesting for two reasons. The first is that it's a rather well regarded journal with a very high impact rate. The other is because it's one of the journals that's driving the ongoing replication crisis plaguing psychology. [1]

In particular the journal this was published in was found to have an overall replication rate of 23%. Another way of putting this is that if you assumed the exact opposite of everything you read that was published in that journal (e.g. - what they claim is statistically significant, is not actually significant) you'd be vastly more informed than a person who took what was published in the journal at face value.

Of course that does not mean that this study is 'false', but you should take it with the same degree of credulity that you'd take something published in a venue when you know 77% of what is published _is_ false. I mention this largely because I think there's a substantial degree of dissonance between the crisis in psychology and people continuing to take studies in psychology at face value. It's illogical.

[1] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis#Psychology_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis#Psychology_replication_rates)

<comment><USER20> > _if you assumed the exact opposite of everything you read that was published > in that journal ... you 'd be vastly more informed_

I don't think the opposite of not knowing is knowing (the opposite fact) :-)

That said, I agree with your main point on an even wider level. I read such very general headlines and conclusions - and when I read the actual paper there is a very _specific_ and very limited experiment, with very specific people in a very specific context. I'm always left wondering how one gets from such a specific thing to such generalizations, especially when it's about such a complex subject as human behavior where tiny variations can produce radically different outcomes.

\---

PS: Animats says it's paywalled, but the PDF on the linked page is accessible and has the data and details? About the N=150,949 part:

> _EFL collected the data from small-business owners at the time they were > applying for a loan at a microfinance institution (MFI) in Mexico from 2015 > to 2017. As part of the loan application process, a prospective borrower had > to complete a short psychometric assessment developed by EFL._

That's just what I said, it's very specific.

> _The psychometric assessment that EFL developed consists of many modules, > one of which is relevant for the purposes of the present investigation: the > flashcard game. The flashcard game is a cognitive test on memory and > executive functioning. In the flashcard game, participants are presented > with an image; after pressing a key, they are shown a second image. > Participants are then asked to indicate whether the second image matches the > first. The flashcard game is scored based on whether or not the participant > correctly identifies a match._

and

> _At the end of the flashcard exercise, participants saw a question that > asked them to estimate how well they think they did on this particular > exercise relative to other applicants.... This question was added to the > psychometric application for the purpose of this study_

I don't know about others, but I have a hard time seeing such tests justifying the headlines.

<comment><USER12> _I 'm always left wondering how one gets from such a specific thing to such generalizations_

In this case, I will suggest that someone is simply marrying general "common knowledge" to the study specifics.

Classism is very real. I've become very aware of its effects in recent years.

My mother's mother came from a low level noble family that sold the title. I grew up in a nice suburb, daughter of a retired decorated soldier. I was one of the top people in my high school, arguably one of the top people in my state academically, based on placing 3rd in a statewide competition and being a National Merit Scholarship winner.

In recent years, I've been quite poor and spent several years homeless. My social experience suggests that my recent poverty completely wipes out the value of my academic accomplishments etc in the eyes of a great many people.

It's been a huge problem for trying to get my life back. In the eyes of many people, I'm too poor to be considered competent enough to hire for anything.

<comment><USER6> I think few people would disagree with you. But this is really the biggest danger. If you look at the studies that have been let's kindly say 'found to be less than well supported', you'd also find many that you would intuitively agree with the outcome of, or at least want to agree with. Psychology, and social psychology in particular, has a habit of confirming our biases and making us feel good. This, in turn, takes us off our guard for bad science. And by "us", I think this is something that's likely even issue within the field itself. You don't get a 23% replication rate without there being some very severe problems within a field.

Take for contrast, astrology. We all now know it's obviously fake. It even relies upon things we know are wrong, such as assuming planets can magically stop and start going the other way in their orbital trajectory. That assumption was based on an optical illusion driven by the assumption that everything revolved around the Earth. But for hundreds of years astrology was treated as respectable a science as any other. And I think it was for a similar reason. So compelling and entertaining are the correlations for astrology that even today you have millions, if not billions, of people that still partake in it to varying degrees.

The psychology replication crisis is, in my opinion, hurting science as a whole. We should not indulge bad science even if it happens to tell us what we want to hear. It's making a mockery of what science is truly about.

<comment><USER12> _I think few people would disagree with you. But this is really the biggest danger._

I was merely describing how such happens, not defending the process.

 _Take for contrast, astrology. We all now know it 's obviously fake._

You happen to be speaking to someone who has studied astrology in earnest and believes it has some merit. Astrology is not immune to the rubric "90% of everything is crap." "Sun sign" or "popular" astrology is often quite badly done, but serious astrology is highly mathematical and the practice of marking retrogrades is a perfectly accurate assessment of where those planets appear in relation to the earth because it is a geocentric model, having nothing whatsoever to do with a scientific belief in a geocentric model rather than a solar system.

Astrology is part of the spiritual beliefs of many people. It wouldn't be okay to casually suggest that Christians are nutters for believing Jesus rose from the dead.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>