At CES, the Verge’s Nilay Patel interviewed Vizio CTO Bill Baxter, who
told her that when it comes to the surveillance features of his
company’s “smart” TVs, “it’s not just about data collection. It’s about
post-purchase monetization of the TV…[When it comes to ‘dumb’ TVs,]
we’d collect a little bit more margin at retail to offset it.”
The remarks come in the context of the low margins in the TV market,
which Baxter gives as 6%, and how companies like his are driven to seek
out other revenue streams for their products.
But Baxter also implies that he doesn’t believe there’s a market for
dumb TVs, even at a premium. This is certainly what I discovered last
year when my family bought a house and went TV shopping: there were no
panels large enough for my wife’s satisfaction (she’s a retired pro
gamer and wanted a really big screen) unless we were willing to buy a
set with several kinds of built-in networking and sensors that would put
our home under surveillance.
In theory, you can turn all that stuff off, but then you have to trust
that the manufacturer is both honest and competent, both of which seem
like needless risks to take, especially in an era when companies face
virtually no liability for product defects, routinely cover them up, and
threaten whistleblowers who disclose their sneaky data-collection and
poor software quality.
Forget the calendar. Just as the 19th century didn’t really end until Armistice Day in 1918 and the 1960s counterculture lasted well into the 1970s, the 21st century didn’t begin at the end of 2000. It began in 2014.
In that year, drought conditions in California hit record highs, prompting fears of massive fires in the future. America watched transfixed as civil unrest was live-streamed online following the police shooting of teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. Sen. Bernie Sanders started to make headlines as a possible 2016 contender. Republicans swept the Senate and gained the largest majority in the House in decades, leading PBS to go so far as to say “there are no more moderates.”
The feeling in 2014 was of waiting for something to happen. And five years later, it feels like it was the year the world we’re living in now began to take shape. The phrase ‘jobless recovery’ got thrown around and it looked like the big banking reforms promised in the wake of the 2008 recession weren’t going to happen. In Texas, the fracking bubble burst when the world oil markets were glutted, deflating hopes of a continuing boom-time.
We weren’t going to return to the old normal. We were starting something new.
"The idea that Tlaib somehow sunk to Trump’s level just by declaring “we’re gonna impeach the motherfucker” reduces the president to an aesthetic problem. There is substance to Trump’s cruelty. The president does more than refer to immigrants as “animals”; his administration puts migrant children in cages. The difference between Trump and various bombastic Democrats is a material one"
I’ve begun to find Medium more interesting recently. I think the platform has started to hit on what its business might be, which is a kind of text version of “This American Life.” I really like what their new editorial team has been doing, so much so that I became a paying subscriber.
I was skeptical when they said their future was in subscriptions, because I tend subscribe to things that have a clear identity — The New York Times, say; or have an overwhelming abundance of stuff I’d like to consume (Netflix; my cable TV bundle). When Medium made its big pivot last year, the big question I had was whether Medium could be one of those two things. What, really was Medium about? What was I paying for? And at first the answer just seemed to be “You’re paying to be able to read a lot of … stuff. Tailored to you! And our algorithms will show you a lot more of the same kinds of stuff.”
The problem is that, well, there’s the Internet, and if what Medium is offering me is a bunch of undifferentiated content (and really, if you’re referring to stories written by people as “content,” I’m pretty sure you already know that it’s going to be undifferentiated), well…there’s the Internet.
But then Medium launched its magazine, and I was hooked. The monthly issues are first-rate, and for that alone I’m willing to subscribe. The Medium editorial team is a great idea, well executed, and it provides a clear identity for at least a part of the platform.
The problem I see for them now is that the best thing they have, a really nice online magazine, with a great reader and writer UX, isn’t really what you’d call a big business. I’m sure Medium’s response will be that this is a demonstration, that other people will see this as a viable use case, create their own great magazines on Medium, and $$$.
I’m essentially paying my $50, basically 1/3 of a Netflix sub, for that monthly magazine right now. But how many people in the U.S. are there who are willing to do that, when there are so many free alternatives out there? Are there enough to support real news orgs? Even in the glory days of Time magazine, when it had 5 million subscribers, the majority of the revenues came from advertising — what does a completely user-funded publication look like?
And, and I know this is not Medium’s problem to solve, but it’s a real problem: What does our democracy look like if they only people who have access to real, trustworthy information are the people who can afford to pay for it?
Our New Gilded Age is defined by its oligarchic concentration of wealth
and power: not just how much wealth is controlled by the 0.001%, but how
many of our key markets are dominated by just a handful of players –
sometimes just a single company.
In a new, visual report, the Open Markets Institute presents an
easy-to-understand snapshot of market concentration in more than 30
industries, with historic data showing how the concentration has
increased over time.
While digital markets are among the most concentrated, the report makes
it clear that this isn’t a “new economy” phenomenon – otherwise, why
would beer, a business that has its roots in ancient Egypt, be as
concentrated as it is?
"You can ask anybody. It’s their biggest worry: how do I acquire efficiently? Well, Reddit has the most vibrant fanbase. Fanatics, these are your word-of-mouth people who are going to preach to the world about the amazingness of Westworld, Game of Thrones, The Bachelor, RuPaul’s Drag Race. Any programming, it’s on rRddit. So you get that multiplier effect from your biggest fans and disciples. And so for us, we’re already seeing that in our business for the entertainment industry. Everyone’s like, oh yeah, I’m on Reddit. I know exactly where my fans are."
This, from an interview with Jen Wong, is interesting, because I actually think Tumblr is an under-appreciated player here. Some of the best fandoms are on this platform, and it’s an opportunity for sure
An important property for an election is finality: you want a well-understood process that makes people confident in the result. The paper-based process used in most states today isn’t perfect, but it’s pretty good on this score. Each vote is recorded on a paper ballot that’s available for anyone to look at. Everyone understands how paper ballots work. People can observe the vote-counting process to verify that no ballots were altered. So not only does the process usually lead to an accurate count of peoples’ votes, it also builds public confidence in the integrity of the result.
Blockchain voting would be much, much worse. Hardly anyone understands how a blockchain works, and even experts don’t have a good way to observe the online voting process for irregularities the way an election observer does in a traditional paper election. A voter might be able to use her private key to verify how her vote was recorded after the fact. But if her vote wasn’t counted the way she expected (or wasn’t counted at all) she’d have no good way to prove that she tried to vote a different way
