jj4211

YouTube started in 2005, but was not really a "streaming service", it hosted random internet posted videos. The concept of engaging with the big content rights holders wasn't remotely in sight back then.

Hulu came out a year after Netflix started streaming, by about a year. Hulu was inspired by Netflix's move to have actual traditional media content as a streaming service instead of ad-hoc video uploads like youtube.

RealPlayer offered technology for websites to provide videos, they themselves I don't recall being a streaming platform in and of itself.

Whatever one may say about Netflix, they were right there in the beginning with streaming traditional, professional media content. Yes, video playback over the internet wasn't new, but that's a technical detail that enables, but is not the core of the "streaming service" business model.

The thing is this really depends on the speed of some financial events, not some technical failing.

Notably, if OpenAI has to cancel any of their commitments to buy hardware because they find they have neither the money nor can secure even more debt to cover, that event would potentially cause the bubble to pop, even for hypothetical companies that may have been more responsible and might have a viable business approach. Those commitments are coming up, and a lot of analysis struggles to see how they will fund those commitments.

The thing with this bubble is that the investors don't get the nuance and will flee at signs of trouble in any of OpenAI, Anthropic, or a handful of others, and Altman's leadership has made trouble at OpenAI very likely, but the investors don't believe it and won't believe it's unique to OpenAI, even if it would be.

Google is only worse by virtue of their reach. OpenAI and Anthropic don't have the reach yet, but they absolutely will get there given the chance.

Before Google had the reach it has now, it was widely regarded as a comparitive 'good guy' and people believed in the "don't be evil". Lo and behold once they got going, "don't be evil" went away.

Plus they have a hook with the common folk, the phone steers you toward Gemini (Android phones, obviously, and Apple currently partners with Google for Gemini for iPhone...).

For Claude and OpenAI, you have to explicitly want to go out of your way to use them, or use them indirectly through another service that has a hook.

Claude seems to have some software developers explicitly preferring them, though a alot of the corporate money is on Microsoft and Microsoft leveraged Visual Studio and Github to become the business-friendly frontend, and sure, you can use Anthropic models too... Though Microsoft ultimately has control of what is reasonably available and how much each one costs. Anthropic has a shot but I could see Microsoft pivot to really mess with Anthropic. The one gap in Microsoft strategy is the "native AI" workflow where Claude Code has won hearts and minds, but it uses massively more tokens for frankly marginal or sometimes negative value compared to a more curated use in-editor.

OpenAI I see as the most exposed. Lot's of data showing they are suffering from people being over the fad of going out of their way to use ChatGPT, especially since their phones have started embracing 'default' Chatbot. Software developers that are inclined to use LLM are also inclined to be pretty dismissive of anything other than either Anthropic or open weight models, depending on their inclination. Also Altman seemed the most agressive in committing to spending money they didn't have, though all of them exhibit this to some extent.

I predict Microsoft ultimately pivots to in-house models and convinces the businesses to go that way. Apple may continue with Gemini or roll their own eventually. Anthropic currently has the stronger position between OpenAI and them, but I think you are right that both have risk of just being left behind.

They would be happy to have a 'low volume, high value economy'. Only trinkets for them to trade among themselves at relatively high price, while they have no use for and therefore no interest in the bulk of the population. There is a reason they are very keen on surveillance and "law enforcement" because they think that might keep the rabble away from them cheaper than trying to appease the rabble.

Hell, they would be even happier to ignore the 'rabble' altogether. You at least had to keep the slaves vaguely alive.

There's a reason Larry Ellison said ""Citizens will be on their best behavior, because we’re constantly recording and reporting everything that is going on", they want to contain the "unwanted" and keep them from being a risk while excluding them from the 'economy' to the extent feasible

Sure, those are premium things, but don't actually drive the manufacturer's cost as those come mostly for free.

So it drives bigger margin for them instead, but at the expense of people perceiving EV as somehow fundamentally too expensive.

You have a rough point, but a $20k delta is too much. Thankfully, the comparison is between a "special" car and a boring workhorse, so the price delta isn't reflective of the practical choices. 7-passenger PV5 looks to be about $50k, so less than $10k delta between a Sienna and a comparable EV van. Still a pretty big gap, especially to take up front, but closer to reasonable given your reasons. We are seeing the gap close more aggressively in the 5-passenger segment, but 3-row still has been focused on EV only for 'premium' experience.

People talk about that topic all the time.

The drive train generally doesn't need service. You don't have to change oil, you don't have to change transmission fluid, your transmission probably won't grind itself into metallic dust because the transmission is a single speed and it's certainly not a CVT. You don't have a timing belt to change, or a serpentine belt to change, or an air filter to change. You don't have to sweat an emissions problem, you don't have to worry about error codes about running too rich or too lean. You don't have to worry about your headgasket leaking. You don't have a bay of stuff heated to around water's boiling point for extended durations accelerating wear on various hoses. You aren't going to have a belt tensioner go south, the DC/DC converter is less likely to lose it than an alternator. You won't need to replace spark plugs, you aren't going to have a turbo that screws you over.

Instead of all of that, you have a pretty bullet proof drive train except that the battery will chemically wear, but even that seems to be not as bad as believed with battery management systems babying the batteries. The car almost certainly weighs too much, which will manifest in handling and tire wear.

And of course, there's gas v. electric. If (and sadly only if) you charge at home, an EV in my area is roughly like having a hybrid and $1.00/gallon gas. If you charge publicly... yeah that's priced really high.

So at one point, there will likely be a huge single expense for the battery. However, that is instead of frequent oil and air filter changes, occasional belt replacement, and a host of likely repairs that a gas car generally incurs over that sime time. One very big expense at once instead of tons of little expenses and a few big expenses.

If the initial cost of the vehicle were competitive, hands down the EV is going to be the right choice if you can charge at home. Trickier question in an apartment or renter's scenario.

It's also because of the scrapers.

Without javascript, you can't realistically do the "prove you are human bits", which I seem to have to do many times a day this year.

Anubis did implement a 'No-JS' challenge, but it's super trivial for scrapers to overcome. They just have to parse the refresh tag and retry after the specified interval. Not even 'proof of work', but increasingly the proof of work isn't considered sufficient and many sites are back to the captcha family of bullshit.

The paradox of a good company and product.

Make a good product with good ownership terms by the customer, and why would there be repeat business?

Frankly, that second idea seems really consistent with whatever residual brand value they have.

Unfortunately, they got burned by doing it poorly around 2017 and seem to have been scared off of playing in that space ever.

The first is probably already done but maybe not enough to keep the niche afloat. If the GoPro's need replacement, then they won't have a reputation for durability. If they keep going, then why replace your old one when it already does 4k 60fps? Problem is either they need replacement and erode brand strength, or are durable and can't compete with already owned product. That path probably most likely ends with selling themselves to some other company that will probably slap the name on random Chinese cameras.