They (all major streaming services) throw away millions on series they never release, they reduce spending on new series, and yet they still manage to increase the cost of the service - and some are even adding pre-roll advertising?
I was a huge advocate for these streaming services, but with the unjustified pricing hikes, ongoing georestriction of content, and the addition of advertising into a paid service, it has now come full circle and I feel the return to torrents is inevitable.
I like JustWatch. Search for a show, it will show you where it's available for free, where it's available with subscription, and where you can buy it... and not just the major services, but TV channel sites, too. (Note, I'm Canadian, and it's showing Canadian TV, like CTV. No idea if they just happen to be Canadian, or they show what's available elsewhere.)
Shows what's trending across services.
Also has a "new" tab. Select which services you subscribe to, and it will show what's added to each service. It seems to remember my service selections via a cookie, so I don't even have to bother making an account.
Funny because I'm using Spotify paid and I'm getting closer and closer to cancelling that with all the bugs and advertising. Using a web player the music just mites itself for 10 seconds at a time, skips tracks on its own. Pauses. The mobile app hits you with full screen ads and big banner ads at the top that you can't disable. It's the most annoying service I use for streaming.
I've stopped listening to specific podcasts that, even with premium, play ads [1]. I knew instantly that those were not inserted by the podcasters themselves because, as always, the ads played in my local language instead of the language of the show.
It is very easy to be a monopoly, especially one that was first in a certain market, or which can use various tactics to make you use their service. You dont remember how Apple would upload some album into your device without your consent?
I find it fascinating how many people allow monopolies for just laziness: "Steam is so great because I have all games in one place - I dont need 20 shortcuts on my desktop". Then Steam (for years - I think they fixed it now and it opens in few seconds, without asking you to login every day), takes 2 minutes to start because it was written by cheapest bidder + it can close your account so you lose all your games.
Multiple services are a way for actual market competition. Otherwise everything becomes Disney, who churns multiple crappy Marvel movies every year (current blockbuster cinema is mostly rubbish), or everything becomes Neflix where quality is trash, but hey actors were chosen by an algorithm (Ozark - or what was the show name, basically took popular actors and a popular theme and made a show with no interesting plot, no interesting dialogue).
So scary to see that people agree with that, because they are lazy. This is some Idiocracy level.
By the way, since we are on hacker news: nearly all, if not all shows are on the pirate websites.
The point is that 20 streaming services with all the shows would be _fine_. They could compete on UI, delivery and price, not on exclusive content.
Steam having every game is great for me. I am happy for loads of other game stores to exist and sell me stuff and store my saves and let me download infinitely etc.
I don't want no competition, I want no exclusive games and high fragmentation
The point is there isn't actually competition on the streaming services: there's competition between the media companies on the production of content, who then restrict the availability of said content to a subset of services. Instead of the situation with music where it's normal that an album is at the very least available on the big 3, if not many others. And there's generally not a shell game where things start and stop being available as well. An actually competitive market would separate the streaming services from the content production and the incentive would be for the content to be available on as many platforms as possible and the platforms would compete on quality and features instead of how much of a catalog they can license this month.
(similarly with steam: the blowback on epic was due to exclusive games, not the mere existence of it. Steam-exclusive games are also a problem, but generally one which comes naturally from its market position and not artificially through contracts)
> everything becomes Neflix where quality is trash, but hey actors were chosen by an algorithm
I always thought that the algorithm had some successes (at least "back in the day")
e.g. The myth is that House of Cards came out of Netflix realizing that there were a lot of fans of Kevin Spacey, people wanted a complex story line etc. [0]
More recently, I kind of agree that the "enshittification" is starting to kick in but not sure how much of that is monopoly vs oligopoly. Which is sad b/c the big data, when used correctly, DOES lead to "sleeper" hits with different story lines/plots, old actors in new roles etc. This in turn makes me wonder if things were better under the old advertising/commercial supported model where ratings led to more ads which led to better writing etc. In other words, the networks knew exactly what was bringing in the revenue so they sent dollars to those shows. With Netflix, you know what people are watching but not necessarily what brought them to Netflix in the first place.
I always assumed that enshittification was a consequence that {more volume} + {lower costs} was more profitable than {less volume} + {higher costs}.
Which is why you don't see it in growth companies (they have organic growth as they acquire customers), but you do see it once growth plateaus (financial optimization very quickly leads to "minimally-acceptable content for most-users").
I agree with the sentiment, but the entertainment industry is largely built on a spread of various more or less risky bets. Usually from a single giant budget of a studio, and focused on ensuring a constant release timeline.
And this isn’t a Netflix or streaming thing - the big 5 studios and tv industry have always had cases just like this one. We would have to take a look at the rest of that spread to figure out whether this is more or less business as usual.
> Netflix (or any streaming service) users are not captive audience. The network effect for such services is next to nil.
Their moat is in the content and licenses they've acquired.
You can't watch Stranger Things anywhere else. They make a lot of original content to widen their moat and keep eyeballs returning to their platform.
Netflix also currently has (I believe) exclusive streaming access to Breaking Bad (though you can "purchase" episodes on other platforms). And they maintain lots of these licenses to bolster their in-house content.
There will be more industry consolidation and eventually the content you want will live under one platform (when not sublicensed).
That's my point. They have to continuously invest in content to keep you as a subscriber. They can't simply enshittify [1] their service and expect customers to stay, unlike, say, a social media platform.
> They have to continuously invest in content [...] They can't simply enshittify
Enshittification (as coined by Doctorow) has a very specific meaning. This is not it. They are only increasing their prices, and introducing ad supported packages for those who don't want to pay.
They are free to sell their content at any price they want, and we are free to leave at any time. No one is captive (unlike social media, as mentioned above, where you stay because all your friends stay).
as usual the stock market is to blame. in the 100 years or so it’s existed, the BBC has never really had a sustained drop in content quality, and yet its model is somehow taboo
The BBC's content quality varies a bit, and generally production values are worse.
The acting is better than most US shows IMO, but that's not the BBC. The directing, cinematography aren't nearly as good; often very formulaic (e.g. Sherlock), and special effects are 30 years behind many US equivalents.
In other words, the bit that the BBC don't control the creation of, the raw acting talent, is often the best bit. And writing, which they do control some of, is also generally of a reasonable to extremely good standard.
Having said all that, the BBC's model is "create a law that says we must be paid". I don't think that's taboo in any shape or form, but it is quite a tricky thing to pull off in 2023 with the sensitivity around rent seeking.
writing and acting are basically all that matter. acting is reliant on direction, so the idea that the direction is bad is out. writing is also massively influenced by the broadcaster, special effects are irrelevant if you’re not a child, and what cinematography can you point to in American TV that’s better? maybe you’re confusing films with TV
ITV and Sky manage to find plenty of poor actors, so clearly having good actors is not just some inherent unearned feature of British TV
besides all this, the BBC is much more than just dramas. it has the best documentaries bar none; some of the best and earliest sports coverage; probably the highest quality tv news and interview work; probably the best late night show; BBC radio 4; a hundred great podcasts; they literally invented TV streaming. etc etc etc.
>“create a law that says we must be paid”
this is a misconception. if you don’t want to pay for the BBC, you don’t have to. it’s just a crime to use it without paying. the same as its a crime to use the train without paying. and presumably if you found some way to hack netflix and use that without paying, that would be a crime too
I’d say there’s far less sensitivity around rent-seeking than there ever has been since WW2, as long as it’s for private interest. there’s murdoch sensitivity around setting up new public bodies that benefit society, if that’s what you mean
> ITV and Sky manage to find plenty of poor actors, so clearly having good actors is not just some inherent unearned feature of British TV
Sure, and good British actors do well in the US. The BBC just is more prestigious than ITV/Sky, and might pay better. BBC also has its share of bad actors, of course. I'm just saying that the quality of top British content is more coming from the acting (down to acting schools) than the production house.
> this is a misconception. if you don’t want to pay for the BBC, you don’t have to. it’s just a crime to use it without paying
I think this is a little tricksy - the BBC has had pretty dystopian ads[0][1] out for a long time that mean people pay the licence fee just out of worry about being caught.
> the BBC has never really had a sustained drop in content quality
The article is about a Netflix sci-fi show. The BBC just point blank refuses to make those despite the enormous popularity of the genre; the history of BBC sci-fi is so tiny it would fit on a postcard. What little it has made is either meant for kids, or is a comedy, which nicely sums up the Beeboid attitude to the sort of people who like it. You can't experience a drop in quality if there's nothing to drop.
And in this we see the reason why the BBC, despite its enormous budget, is quite simply no threat to Netflix and never could be. The quasi-communist license fee approach insulates it from what people want so well that it can ignore the most popular type of TV show for ideological reasons and nobody even bothers to complain, knowing full well that it's pointless. 99% of the energy of the BBC's critics gets absorbed trying to push back against its bias in news reporting, leaving none left for trying to improve its entertainment output.
I must have been asleep the day paying for things became communist. the BBC has the same payment model as netflix, except you pay yearly instead of monthly, and it’s done on an honour system instead of at the door. total communism, man
>no sci-fi
Doctor Who? Life on Mars? Red Dwarf? Doctor Who is arguably the biggest or second biggest sci-fi show of all time. it’s certainly the biggest to remain under one name
>the most popular kind of tv show
it may be the most popular in your circle, or your mind, but this is demonstrably, obviously untrue
>ideological reasons
what ideology is against sci-fi? are you trying to claim the BBC are luddites? or that sci-fi is inherently… right-wing? or what?
>bias in news reporting
why not just cut to the chase?what you really mean is “I’m compromised intellectually by my political position”
License fee evasion is one of the top traffic sources in the British court system, the idea that it's done "on the honour system" is mendacious. There are people in prison right now for not paying it. The BBC is at its most foundational level a state-backed company built on state power.
Doctor Who is a children's show and dates from the 50s. There have been reports for years that BBC executives hate it and would love to kill it, prevented only by its popularity [2]. Red Dwarf is a comedy and hasn't been made for decades. It was greenlit only because the BBC had spare budget left over from some other show, not because they actually wanted to do it. As I said: the BBC thinks sci-fi is for children or to laugh at, and barely even that.
> it may be the most popular in your circle, or your mind, but this is demonstrably, obviously untrue
The BBC was fundamentally founded on a deeply classist Reithian ideology and it has never fully discarded this culture. It thinks its primary role is to improve the public and TV/radio production is just a means to that end. Given a choice of making an expensive period drama (what it calls "culture"), an expensive lecture on climate change or an expensive sci-fi/fantasy show they will never pick the latter, it just culturally displeases their executives at a very fundamental level to do so. Netflix also has problems with ideology [1] but it doesn't hold them back to the extent of neglecting whole genres of TV/movie output (with the possible exception of news, but you could argue that combining entertainment and news isn't natural and only an artifact of bandwidth constraints in earlier eras). Netflix's primary mission is just to give people what they want to watch.
it’s not communism if you don’t have to pay for it. it makes me so angry that politically compromised right-wingers choose to misunderstand this. if I go to the supermarket and just walk out with my shopping, that’s a crime in the same way that it’s a crime if I get on the train without paying or turn on the BBC and watch without paying, this isn’t some authoritarian communistic impingement upon your rights, it’s just goods and services. and before you repeat that “state-owned, state-backed” nonsense, publically-owned bodies are not communism. the military is not communism. the NHS is not communism. the BBC is so far from communism it’s a joke.
you would think that right-wing people would love the BBC’s model. the BBC isn’t funded through taxes, the consumer has choice, it’s constantly being restricted in order to maintain private competition, but no. why no? because “BBC bad” is constantly pushed through the right-wing media because they have a literal direct profit motive for you to see it as bad.
if the BBC doesn’t fit your incredibly specific ideas for what content it should pursue, how about this? just don’t pay for it. watch something else. vote with your feet like you can do with any other streaming service. send them a letter telling them why. you can be damn sure they’ll pay more attention to it than Netflix would.
finally, “mendacious” means lying, I’d make sure to understand my words before I use them, if I were you
> if you don’t have to pay for it ... the BBC isn’t funded through taxes, the consumer has choice ... just don’t pay for it. watch something else ... vote with your feet like you can do with any other streaming service
You keep talking as if the license fee is a normal TV subscription. Are you British because there seems to be a really deep misunderstanding here?
The license fee is a tax. You have to pay it if you watch or record any TV broadcast and that includes streaming, any live TV at all in the UK, and that applies even if you never watch the BBC and don't want to. Got a Sky TV or cable subscription? Doesn't matter, you still gotta pay the BBC. There is no just watch something else and don't pay. There is no vote with your feet. That's why it's called a TV license and not a BBC license.
what I don’t understand is why people say things that they don’t know are true. you can’t know this is true, because it isn’t. next time the tv license people send you a letter, actually read it
"You need a TV Licence to watch or record programmes on a TV, computer or other device as they're broadcast, and to watch on-demand BBC programmes on iPlayer"
In this thread you keep insisting I'm lying and I keep showing you, with evidence, that you're wrong, but you just keep doubling down and ranting about right wing people. What specifically do you object to in my description?
I pointed out that you (probably accidentally) accused me of lying, if that’s what you’re confused by? or do you mean that I accused you of being confidently wrong? being wrong isn’t lying
does the fact that you were completely misinformed about the main substance of the previous comment not make you question the grounding of your opinions on this? where did you get the idea that you needed a TV license to stream, or do anything other than watch live TV?
> where did you get the idea that you needed a TV license to stream, or do anything other than watch live TV?
You're arguing with a straw man. I've never said you need to pay the license if you only watch Netflix. I've said that the tax structure protects the BBC and allows it to ignore popular types of programming. You've been unable to refute this point and so have segued into trying to argue that the license fee isn't really a tax, which is (a) not a point I made and (b) wrong.
You can avoid the license fee by watching only US based streamers on a laptop as long as you don't care about news, sport or any of the other categories of TV that Netflix doesn't provide, just like you could always avoid it by not having a TV or radio. That doesn't mean it's not a tax. Other taxes you can avoid by choice include: income tax, auto taxes, taxes on flights and so on.
I suspect you're being confused by the definition of "streaming". Most streamed TV is still considered to be TV because it's a live broadcast (a channel, that you could tune into). iPlayer is the closest to a UK Netflix and that is also covered. It's only non-BBC "video on demand" that isn't taxed (yet!)
As for lying, you have constantly made statements like that I "choose to misunderstand" or that I'm saying things that are "obviously untrue". I know in your mind technicalities are everything and you think you've never accused anyone of being dishonest, but by the rules of normal conversation you have, repeatedly. And you never apologized when I showed you hard data disproving these "obviously untrue" things.
here’s your argument: “the BBC doesn’t focus on my genre enough therefore the entire thing is bad, but it’s especially bad because I’m convinced that I’m required to pay it to watch any relevant TV (also I think they’re politically biased but that has nothing to do with any of this)”
if you think I’m somehow avoiding your argument, or finding technicalities, I’ll address each part
>the BBC doesn’t focus on sci-fi enough. (or sci-fi and fantasy when it suits your argument).
I’ve already linked to the BBC’s large selection of sci-fi and fantasy programming, which you ignored. I also pointed out three major, popular sci-fi shows, two of which you dismissed, despite both being wildly popular with adults, and one you ignored. one of which is possibly the biggest sci-fi show ever, and has just made a £100m deal with Disney+ to be broadcast internationally, which really does indicate executives’ lack of interest
also, do any of the other British channels have consistent sci-fi output? no, except publicly-owned and license-fee funded channel 4. how strange.
>I’m required to pay the license fee, therefore this perceived lack of sci-fi media content for me to consume is a quasi-communistic authoritarian impingement upon my freedom
if streaming - the primary form of TV watching for most people these days - is allowed without a license, then it’s not really required, is it?
so is streaming allowed?
you first argued that streaming just isn’t allowed explicitly by the rules, then when it was pointed out that this is unsupported by the article you linked with, you either tried to redefine what streaming is to fit your original claim, or illustrated your quite incorrect conception of what streaming actually is
no streaming service is “a live broadcast” or a “channel” that you tune into. they’re apps, on your TV, or on a set-top box, or yes, on a laptop, that you use over wi-fi. in short, streaming is watching video over the internet, which is mostly how people watch TV these days. and it’s not covered. how do you mostly watch TV?
approaching your position more broadly, there’s this possible implication that you would be okay with the BBC, if it just had a Star Trek or a Black Mirror, or Altered Carbon or whatever your standard for sci-fi is. this seems really odd. would the BBC be bad for not having one person’s desired selection of horror shows? they have a big audience too. or what about basketball coverage? plenty of viewers for that. is this true? if the BBC did fit your ideas for what it made, would you be okay with it? or are you politically against the entire idea of its existence in the first place, and this sci-fi thing is just a proxy argument?
besides all this,
the “strawman” accusation is often the resort of someone who has been found to be wrong about something key and is trying to cut their losses. it’s only a strawman if it’s not central to the entire thing we’re talking about. if it were really a strawman, you wouldn’t continue to try and argue the point for another two paragraphs. it’s either a strawman, or something you’re going to viscerally argue, but clearly not both.
and accusing you of choosing to misunderstand is not accusing you of lying, but accusing you of being subconsciously compromised by your political position. lying to yourself but not me. I suspect that if you gave the BBC a fair go, you would find a lot to like
"Live TV" includes streamed live TV and "broadcast TV" is always considered to be licensable.
You can avoid the license fee only if you watch exclusively internet streamers like Netflix which aren't TV channels. Which means: no TV news or sport. Pretty major components of why people watch TV to begin with.
But this is well into straw men territory. This thread started with me saying that the tax-based structure of the BBC lets it ignore sci-fi. Now you're arguing that you don't have to pay the tax if you are willing to forego the benefits of live TV, which is a point I readily concede because it's irrelevant to the one I made.
Honestly despite paying for netflix, I never stopped using torrents, even for netflix shows.
Their UI is terrible and the geographic limitations are annoying, your watch list is unusable and the suggestions keep getting in your way. It's like their are not using their own product, and netflix is the least bad of the streaming services.
Much easier to use the stremio app for most things.
I personally use Trakt.tv to see popular and trending content. Then you don’t have to pilfer through each individual app or service.
The other plus side is that this is content that people are actually watching (via marking as watched for tracking or scrobbling) so you also get the positive benefit of seeing what people are watching, not just things that Netflix or other providers want you to watch or who has paid the top dollar for your eyeballs.
The early, cheap phase of streaming was funded on the back of overpriced, bundle cable subscriptions. I think it's underappreciated how much streaming gutted this business model. Not that it was justified per se, but streaming went from a nice bonus on top to an "oh shit, we killed the golden goose" for the content industry.
Therefore, I think what we're seeing is inevitable. Higher prices, more silos, and a possible return to bundling or similar. And probably with less content to go around. That will push some into piracy, but we all know that never made up a substantial fraction of users in the first place.
A lot of, if not most of, our modern tech economy over the last 10-15 years is all very economically nonviable. It only worked because of ZIRP and free money. It's all unsustainable and fake. It would be nice to get back to an economy based in reality, but that would undo all the "progress" we made since the dotcom bust and 2008 crash. Can't let that happen, so we'll probably keep the coke fueled party going so the crash will happen when it's somebody else's responsibility.
I just wait until I can buy it on the Apple TV store or I don’t watch it. Torrenting and maintaining the software to play movie files on my TV takes time and it just isn’t a priority for me.
To be honest all you need is a torrent client, HDMI cable and a laptop. Not much time required. With slightly more effort you can even intall Plex or Jellyfin on your laptop, and stream directly to your smart tv.
It’s not difficult, it’s just not a priority for me. I fiddle with computers all day at work. I don’t watch enough television to justify prioritizing that kind of set-up.
For new people getting into it, there are quite a few traps that make it really easy to download malware or sign up for phony services pretending to be popular torrenting sites. As with all things, it's easy once you know how to do it, but the learning curve has gotten trickier over time as search engines have been flooded with malicious misdirections that no one seems incentivized to clean up.
Jellyfin had been great for me, but the setup for jellyfin and the optional niceties like homeserver with NFS, auto download new episodes, Socks5 VPN proxy, subtitles, remote control, getting jellyfin on each TV, etc. definitely looks daunting to the outsider. I've gone all the way with everything I've mentioned, and IMO is worth it. After initial setup, it's been low maintenance. My next upgrade will probably be to replace my NUC with a formal RAID setup like synology, but I haven't filled my current drives yet.
> Soon after he signed the contract, Mr. Rinsch’s behavior grew erratic, according to members of the show’s cast and crew, texts and emails reviewed by The New York Times, and court filings in a divorce case brought by his wife. He claimed to have discovered Covid-19’s secret transmission mechanism and to be able to predict lightning strikes. He gambled a large chunk of the money from Netflix on the stock market and cryptocurrencies. He spent millions of dollars on a fleet of Rolls-Royces, furniture and designer clothing.
wtf, I was expecting some chaos on a Hollywood studio, but that's a bit much.
Sounds like he had a schizophrenic psychotic break. His behavior and especially his conspiratorial comments are classic schizophrenia. (Source: My sister and late aunt are schizophrenic)
unrelated but this is why whale hunter companies exist. Why bother with volume when if you position a product to extract the most value from someone that can make one purchase $$$$ vs hundreds/thousands of smaller ones.
Not to mention F2P games, which make a small amount of money on their “monthly pass” IAPs, but make tremendously more on the “whales” who will buy $99 pack after $99 pack to stay competitive/max-out the characters they love.
> Netflix executives grew so concerned with Mr. Rinsch’s behavior that they consulted with the Los Angeles Police Department’s threat management unit, a person with knowledge of the matter said. A Police Department psychologist reviewed Mr. Rinsch’s texts and emails and concluded that he didn’t seem like a threat to himself or others.
Were executives concerned about possible risks to people, or were they trying to use (misuse?) the police to establish the conditions for a contract clause or insurance policy?
Rinsch sounded from other assertions in the article like he was having some kind of mental health and/or substance challenges. But I don't understand the uncritical acceptance of this bit by the journalist.
> A correction was made on Nov. 22, 2023 : An earlier version of this article misstated the status of Carl Erik Rinsch’s series when Netflix bought the rights to it. There was a script, but it was not complete."
'is not complete' can mean many things.
Also Netflix initially planned more than one season, but then they backtracked when the script was extending beyond the first season - there seems to be a gap in the narrative of the article.
> Netflix gave Mr. Rinsch final cut, a privilege it had previously bestowed on only a few directors. And it assured Mr. Rinsch and Ms. Rosés that they would remain “locked for life” to all subsequent seasons and spinoffs
vs
> Mr. Rinsch had missed several production milestones and was toggling between two versions of the script, a shorter one that matched the original 13-episode plan and one twice as long that would have required greenlighting a second season.
Also 'missed several production milestones' is a bit vague. That year we had Corona, which would naturally lead to some sort of delays.
>Also Netflix initially planned more than one season
No they didn't. The article is pretty clear that they only greenlit one season. That 'locked for life' quote is saying that if Netflix decided to buy more seasons and/or spinoffs, Rinsch was guaranteed involvement, aka Netflix couldn't just fire and replace him (like NBC did to Dan Harmon on Community for example).
>Were executives concerned about possible risks to people, or were they trying to use (misuse?) the police to establish the conditions for a contract clause or insurance policy?
this kind of just seems like the system work as intended. if you are thinking you need to call the police to perform a wellness check on somebody just for the purposes of covering your own ass, you're probably justified in calling for a wellness check.
The threshold for someone to be unwillingly forced to undergo a psych evaluation is rightfully rather high. Not being carted away certainly doesn’t mean that doing that kind of check isn’t justified.
Granted innocent until proven guilty, but I wouldn’t hedge my bets on anyone from Hollywood being a paragon of moral justice oppressed by the powers that be, unless you want a nasty cut from Occam’s razor later on that week
Especially given the rest of the behavior detailed in the article, which as always, no one ever reads
> Rinsch sounded from other assertions in the article like he was having some kind of mental health and/or substance challenges. But I don't understand the uncritical acceptance of this bit by the journalist.
Presumably that was one of the "detailed questions" that he "declined to respond" to.
IMO Dune needs to be a tv show that likely runs several seasons so all the world and backstory can be explored properly so the audience can get a full experience.
Think The Wire in terms of plot discovery and forwarding (leaves out bogus exposition, means you have to pay attention to get things etc that moves along at a good pace and has forward development each episode.
It would be expensive, but it’s the only way I can imagine Dune being done to its fullest extent on screen
SciFi did a fairly good job, with two 3-part miniseries.
They show their age, but the acting was great, and they did a fairly decent job of honoring the spirit of the books.
Swapping Alice Kriege for Saskia Reeves (as Jessica) was a bit jarring, but, at least, they both looked old enough to be Paul's mother (as opposed to his sister).
James McAvoy did a great job. It was probably one of his earlier leading roles.
The problem is that nobody wants to acquire Dune to be a critical success. It needs to be a commercial success.
This of course implies the addition of much lazier exposition than The Wire, which IIRC never had more than about 4 million viewers. I'm sure it's different in the streaming era, but more and more, audiences are making it clear that they are definitely not tuning in to shows that require thought.
If anything streaming makes shows like The Wire more accessible and viable as commercial successes. It's hard to keep details in your head when the show airs an episode once a week, and if you're tuning in for the first time you've got no idea what's going on and find something else to watch. Neither of those issues he to exists with streaming, although more and more they're switching back to an episode a week model, but rewatching episodes in between weekly releases is an option now at least.
We are still in the early days of figuring out what works.
One issue: media execs don't know anything except "that was profitable, so let's do it again". Have you noticed that Netflix now has fifty cooking shows, split between one-shot game shows and tournaments/"reality" dramas? "Iron Chef" worked and "Top Chef" worked, so they get cloned and slightly modified. All of these sink.
For a long-form SF/F show, what hasn't been done?
- two 1 hour chapters weekly
- dropping 2-4 1 hour chapters at a time, rather than either single episodes or the whole season
- irregularly sized episodes matching the plot
- six episodes of rising tension, a flashback episode to explain backstory, and then a finale that begs for a second season (just kidding, Netflix seems to think that's optimal already)
This is the one I've been thinking about for a while. I'm not sure why the MCU or Star Wars aren't doing more of this. They've kind of figured out how do to different sized plots (Daredevil vs. Avengers, Rogue Squadron) but why aren't they more connected? Why aren't they doing more multimodal storytelling. Have a big blockbuster movie, a 90 minute heist movie, a prestige tv season about politics, one about the military. Have some books about complicated stuff, a video game about the actiony parts, tiktok and instagram as storytelling devices instead of martech, etc.
Eventually special effects will become so easy to do well that a cheaply produced Dune will capture all its facets. Although you'll still need a good writer to make it compelling.
I would say the opposite. The first book is good, but pretty typical sci-fi fantasy fare. The next books are what really fleshes out a really interesting concept, this universe where humanity is far more advanced than today in a humanist way instead of technologically.
They also help make the point of the first book clear - that Paul wasn't a hero, but a tyrant. This is easily lost in the first book because of the comparison with the Harkonen and the previous Emperor, and because we're used to rooting for the main character. But Herbert's point wasn't to further the myth of the philosopher king, but to dismantle it - which is quite rare in fiction, and made extremely clear throughout the series.
I'd also say that the exploration of Leto II's psychology in the God Emperor of Dune was the most interesting writing in the series, so that's what I'd consider the pretty clear high point.
SciFi did a miniseries, just before or just after they changed their name. It wasn't bad. I think it was about 10 hours.
The problem is that a lot of the payoff is at the end of book 3, and then book four tips the whole thing upside down with some deep religious and philosophical elements that I'm not sure everyone is ready for.
I'm always a little surprised how few people have read Dune relative to Lord of the Rings, but the more I think about Dune the more I get it.
I don't understand all the love for Dune. I read it, it was ok, and that was it. 3 underwhelming film adaptations is more than enough.
Special effects don't make a movie anymore. What matters is plot (and music). For example, "Colossus the Forbin Project" is very good. Some other very good scifi movies:
> I don't understand all the love for Dune. I read it, it was ok, and that was it. 3 underwhelming film adaptations is more than enough.
It's the Count of Monte Cristo meets Star Wars, with great world building, pretty good plot and characters and a lot of interesting philosophy, sociology, strategy and tactics. What's not to love?
The scifi miniseries was decent. The 1984 one was...barely Dune, though I enjoyed it. The current one is the first really good adaptation IMO, I don't think it's overrepresented at all.
You should read the count of monte cristo, it’s in an entirely different league in terms of writing compared to Dune. The philosophy is transparent, the tactics and strategy are basically nonexistent, and the sociology is missing any kind of coherence.
Kinda strange considering its movie that turned him away from making big movies. He hates the final version, was not allowed to the cutting room and the studio basically tried to make very different much more pop shorter vision with material Lynch shot.
I think there are still rumors about him having/making directors cut that could happen. That would surely be very dofferent movie.
I agree so much. The new dune is expertly made but it washed of so much of the trippy stuff from books. Even the aesthetics are playing it on the very safe side.
Then again this is the directors style. It would be probably end up worse if they would bend too much out of their comfort zone.
While Dune can certainly stand on its own as a great work, it's best appreciated as a critical response to the utopic techno-determinism of Asimov's Foundation series. The discourse between these two series contains some of the most interesting ideas ever penned in science fiction. I think you'd need to read at least the first three Foundation books and the first four Dune books to get a handle on it, but this is a good primer: https://www.oreilly.com/tim/herbert/ch05.html
I'm not sure I understand why you find those lines particularly comedic. Campy? Most definitely. They also don't really work out of context, so I sat down and watched the actual scene and well... they're still not a particularly funny line, and I don't think the scene is meant to be funny. Are you suggesting that they're intentionally hamming it up? Honestly, I can't even tell if this point.
Wikipedia seems to support this theory as well:
"Lorenzo Semple Jr. wrote the script. He later recalled:
Dino wanted to make Flash Gordon humorous. At the time, I thought that was a possible way to go, but, in hindsight, I realize it was a terrible mistake. We kept fiddling around with the script, trying to decide whether to be funny or realistic. That was a catastrophic thing to do, with so much money involved... I never thought the character of Flash in the script was particularly good. But there was no pressure to make it any better. Dino had a vision of a comic-strip character treated in a comic style. That was silly, because Flash Gordon was never intended to be funny. The entire film got way out of control."
It seems like the kind of show that would fit well in mystery science theater though. This is likely just one of those things that is more of a time capsule, or a period piece, it's likely very difficult for people who grew up watching this type of show to be able to objectively have an opinion about it without nostalgia creeping in.
Personally, I can't fathom thinking the 1980s Flash Gordon was a good movie while the 1980s Dune movie was not.
It was supposed to be an acting vehicle for a football player. It's so camp.
But it also has Max von Sydow in it, and Brian Blessed is every bit as over the top as he is in season 1 of Black Adder.
It occupies much the same genre as Big Trouble in Little China and the Evil Dead movies. If you're looking for something deep, you're in the wrong place.
There are some fun themes in there and I appreciate that it begins as a somewhat typical "hero's journey" tale and then turns that whole idea inside out. I like the intrigue and plotting and how various factions are always plotting several steps ahead.
But none of that is why I absolutely love Dune (the novel). For me it just has this vibe that I've never been able to explain.
Maybe that's why I like it: because I can't even figure out why I like it.
Anyway, that's all crazy subjective and I can easily see why many are not enchanted by it.
Star Wars: I saw it the day after it was released. It was groundbreaking in every way. Nobody had seen anything like it before. It just blew everybody away. ESB just did not have the impact SW did.
T1 was very focused. Again, nobody had seen anything like it before. The terminator stayed true to form in its relentless purpose, summed up in Reese's little speech. T2 rehashed the same plot, adding an asperger sidekick robot for comic relief. (I thought Harlan Ellison was way off base claiming that T1 was stolen from him.)
These are great sequels, but they are Hollywood action movies compared to their predecessors. I do prefer ESB, but Star Wars has better structure and a more satisfying ending, so it is close.
The best thing about ALien is that when it came out, you had no idea who the "hero" was in the crew. Tom Skerritt was the biggest star, had first billing, and was the white male captain. There was no expectation the someone else would be the hero and survivor.
And you have to let everybody know just how bad you think Dune is, in the most snarky and belittling way possible. Seriously, every reply of yours on this entire topic is combative.
Have you considered what your agenda here is, and whether you’re participating in this discussion in good faith?
Oof, looks like I touched a nerve. I’m providing a measured response to the unexamined breathless enthusiasm for mediocre writing. I’ve had to talk lots of people into reading a second sci-fi series because they started with Dune and decided that the genre isn’t worth it.
Dune is fine. But people need to re-read it as adults or something before extolling it’s virtues from the rooftops as they do in this thread.
You should consider that you feeling attacked is as much about you as it is about me.
I’m not feeling attacked, and didn’t say I was. I'm just sorry for the folks you’re responding to.
Edit to clarify: for the precise reason that “you have terrible taste” is ad hominem, and contributes nothing to the discussion. This isn’t appreciated on HN.
I think if you worked on your delivery you might find folks have different reception to your ideas.
I might give your words some weight if it wasn’t for the great big pile of upvotes on my comments. I like that reception just fine, but thanks I guess?
If they have an issue they are welcome to raise it, no need to go white knighting people.
I enjoy Aliens—it's the bigger, more over-the-top production of the two.
But I prefer Alien for its intimacy and slowly growing horror. John Hurt's character's arc stunned me as a child, and is still one of my favorite turns of storytelling. I love the set design and overall tone of the movie. It's a different space mood than other space movies. And it nails that feeling of being hunted on a spaceship (so far as I would know).
There’s so much good dialog in Aliens that I’m always amazed was written in the mid 80s and would play just as well if it were new today (mostly spoken by Hudson): “Game over, man!”, “yeah, but it’s a dry heat”, “ Somebody said "alien" she thought they said ‘illegal alien’ and signed up!”
Aliens is more of a vanilla monster movie than scifi. I don't recall any science in it, other than the setting.
Alien was based on a short story in "Voyage of the Space Beagle", though the implementation of it was fresh. The discovery and exploration of the alien's life cycle was good scifi.
Can't agree with you there. I think even Cameron would be the first to say that Aliens is primarily a thrill ride. But it is also objectively true that at least two hard scifi elements provide the scaffolding for the events of the movie.
Two of the most central themes of the movie were fairly hard sci-fi... although admittedly one of them was nearly entirely deleted from the theatrical cut.
One: What would a person experience after decades of hibernation? In many ways the film revolves around or is set in motion by Ripley's extended cryosleep after Alien. She is now alone in a strange world where her skills are no longer relevant or current. This primes her for manipulation by Burke. She has also missed out on her deceased daughter's entire life, which primes her to think of Newt as a surrogate daughter and protect her with a mother's ferocity. (Unfortunately, the exposition about her daughter was removed from the theatrical cut. Huge miss.)
Two: How would mankind react to alien contact? Would we treat it with ontological reverence or would it be business as usual for warmongering corporations? The second half of the movie is set in motion by Burke doing the latter on behalf of Weyland-Yutani.
The terraforming stuff.... yeah I agree it's just a setting.
You do raise some good points. I never thought those issues were the central theme of the movie - just a setup for, for lack of a better term, a bug hunt.
Science fiction doesn’t imply science being in it.
>fiction based on imagined future scientific or technological advances and major social or environmental changes, frequently portraying space or time travel and life on other planets.
Aliens isn't much more than NYC with monsters in the sewers, with a different backdrop. It was ok and I didn't feel like it was a waste of time, but that's about it.
I don't know if that bit of dialogue was in the original script, but it is pretty much the story of how the actress Jenette Goldstein went to audition for the movie - she thought it would be about immigrants (she was one herself, an American in the UK).
Agreed, the dialog had some good laughs. When Paxton asks Gomez "did anyone ever think you were a man?" and she replied "no, did anyone think that of you?" A comeback worthy of Winston Churchill.
Not GP, but I think I made it to about 20 pages into the third book before giving up. I actually enjoyed the first book, but it just got more ponderous as it went on. And this was around the same time I read the Foundation series by Asimov, so I didn't necessarily need at pot-boiler.
I'm not sure if one of us misunderstood "pot-boiler" but Dune is surely no popcorn entertainment. It felt ponderous because its author invests much time into the development of characters, philosophy and politics. It's not for everybody, but it surely is not a pot-boiler.
It’s a cargo cult. Dune itself is pretty standard sci-fi. The sequels are where it goes from good to great. People deify the first one because they think that’s where the great reputation comes from, not understanding that the really interesting stuff is in the later books. I mean, the giant worm-man, the endless clones experiencing existential dread, and the trans stuff all come after book 2 and really after book 3.
I've only read the series once, >20 years ago, but I thought the opposite. To me it started out good but ended weird and stupid (I admit I remember almost no details though, so can only give the impression I'm left with). I've read other books I thought much better than any of them though.
I couldn't make it after the second book, Dune Messiah. But I enjoyed the games, especially the RTS, the miniseries and the recent movie which is quite good.
All of those are popcorn. Even Alien - which is a jump scare creature feature expanded with some token politics and superb horror aesthetics. And Star Wars, which is a fantasy for ten year olds in space (according to George Lucas), but with ground-breaking special effects.
Dune - the book - is not popcorn. The series is probably the most brutally surgical examination of power, politics, religion, and economics ever to appear in print.
There are giant worms and weird drugs and such, but they're all metaphors.
If you're looking for the literary equivalent of CGI, that's very much not what it's about.
>with some deep religious and philosophical elements that I'm not sure everyone is ready for.
This is how I felt about Battlestar. I barely remember watching the original series as a kid, but I just remember a couple of character names, Cylons (which I thought were cool), the space ships, and the human in the dark room ontop of the pyramid shape the Cylons talked to. That was it. Then I watched the reboot, and was shocked by the religious overtones. Clearly, I never researched anything about it until that point, and then it all made sense.
I'm nervous about Buck Rogers (biddybiddup, what's up Buck!) might turn out the same way on a reboot.
Religious overtones or are ancient religious texts the original sci-fi where its adherents a few generations removed never got the memo? Only kinda joking. I too picked up on battlestar, resurrection, the twelve tribes (or colonies?) lords ok Kobol and so on. I think someone told me at some point the original was Mormons in space.
The original show's creator, Glen Larson, was a Mormon - so it tracks that the show incorporated a lot of that theology. Also, one of the main antagonists is Count Iblis, someone who seeks to lead the colonists to follow him, though he is revealed to be essentially a prince of darkness. "Iblis" is the Islamic name for Satan, so another religious element. Even his backstory is similar to the Abrahamic view of the devil, "he [Count Iblis] was previously a Being of Light who fell from grace after using his powers for evil purposes."
Ron Moore's reimagined version of Battlestar includes strong themes of reincarnation and life being a cycle, which also tracks with Moore's past interest in Hinduism and other Eastern religions.
You can never reboot Max "perhaps you should execute their trainer" von Sydow as Ming the Merciless. Melody Anderson. Queen soundtrack. A true masterpiece.
Slightly unrelated, but there is a 19 hour fan-edit of the Hobbit + Lord of the Rings -- i.e someone glued all 3 Hobbit movies and all 3 LotR movies into a 19 hour video.
In the "2-3 hours of the hobbit which was good" are you including the animated versions as well? I'd be hard pressed to find 2-3 hours from the travesty that Jackson made
Even in LOTR there are some wobbly sections outside the big story beats, when you re-watch it now. It's a good book to film adaptation of difficult material though.
With all of the creative licensing that was taken with the content, I was really hoping that the Hobbit would have reduced the camp and gave it different tone to match the rest of the "universe". Instead, we got 20 minutes of dwarves throwing plates around and singing songs that does nothing except show examples of how the thinnest book was turned into 3 friggin' movies.
That's just one of the issues I had, but they don't get any nicer from there
Different person, but just about everything. It simply wasn't enjoyable, at all. I'm just talking about the first hobbit, I have somehow managed to purge the memory of seeing the others from my memory.
I liked the LotR adaptations, though there were a few things I was pretty disappointed with.
But when it came to the Hobbit films it was a different story entirely, I saw the first and didn't love it. I saw the second and actively disliked it, so I figured I'd save myself the pain and haven't seen the third and I have no intention of watching it.
It's a shame that it was badly rushed, and split (needlessly) into three parts. But despite the close association it didn't ruin my enjoyment of the LotR films, which I rewatch every few years.
You probably want the "Maple Edit" of the Hobbit (also known as "J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit"). It is 247 minutes and is setup as a single film with intermissions.
"people copied our cool effects for Matrix 1, what if we make the action scenes so long and expensive no one would even bother to copy them because they all went home before they were over?"
I wouldn't mind sitting in a screening of Dune pt1 followed by Dune pt2 when it comes out. Sounds like something Alamo would do. While not 10-14 hours, I would be willing to sit in the theater for 4-5 hours.
AMC by me did all 3 LOTR films in 3 nights just before the hobbit came out. I enjoyed it a lot but by god by the time the 3rd movie ended I was done, and then I still had to sit through another 45 minutes of endings.
Reminds me of the outrage over the $100M budget of Water World and how it barely got made. Today, a $100M budget is nothing. We've already had several $300M budget films this year.
Occasionally, they are aided (or hindered) in their travels by the ship's frustrating and only partially-functioning computer system interface, known as Mu Lambda 165 (portrayed by William Osler, who also provided the opening narration for each episode).
in retrospect the ark was in trouble, perhaps the AI was applying the emotive context in response to questions that are a misdirection of effort, considering the situation.
Wikipedia says The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction described the show as "dire" and The Best of Science Fiction TV included the show on its list of "Worst Science Fiction Shows of All Time”. But the full episodes are available on YouTube, so as a fan of 70s sci-fi, I’ll decide for myself. :)
It had some talent behind the writing, Ursula K. Le Guin, Harlan Ellison. For the first few episodes it seemed legit and to be going somewhere, but lost its way at some point. Production values were always quite low, but not that much different from Dr. Who from the same period.
I rate it as worthwhile from a sci fi archeology perspective, but not good in any traditional sense.
This is a long story that can be summarized as "Carl Rinsch is going to jail". The feds will charge and convict him of wire fraud and possibly other offences. But wire fraud is so broad it easily applies in this situation.
Failing to deliver on a project because of cost overruns, reshoots, whatever is one thing. Buying cars, "investing" in crypto and otherwise using the funds for purposes not reasonably defined within the contract is fraud, plain and simple.
Great piece by John Carreyrou, who broke the Theranos story and wrote the unbelievably entertaining Bad Blood. I wouldn’t be surprised if this story is his next book.
The first story in this class that I read was Empires of the Deep - really amazed me on two fronts.
First, the way the economics of these endeavours are so flawed that even the most passionate creatives / sponsors can't viably get the finished or near-finished product out to paying customers.
Second, that this stuff doesn't get leaked more often - especially recent examples. Wikipedia also has a running list of abandoned films, though it looks to be US / Euro-centric. [1]
They foucus on the dollar amount, but the startup graveyard of software companies who raised $50M or more by their series A or B that nobody will have heard of seems much larger. Movies and series seem pretty low risk by comparison.
A movie studio and a venture fund seem to have similar economics.
A single Netflix show does not have the potential to end up with multi-billion dollar per-year recurring revenues. The potential upside on a startup is far far large.
In addition, there are no low-risk startups. There are, however, relatively low risk films and TV shows to be made.
Heh, sounds like the next big Netflix white collar crime hit will be self-referential then. Will they reuse their Streamberry alter ego from Black Mirror or appear as Netflix proper?
In the same sense as a startup founder is the one with the money who hires people. Usually it’s somebody else’s money who is keeping a distance, and the producer/founder is making decisions on how to use it.
Sorry, but what's the actual corporate structure here?
For software companies, investments are nominal in the sense that they come with responsible CFO's, budgeting and reporting structures that would prevent the money from being vacuumed into personal accounts for investment gambling.
Is it really the case that a Netflix would just wire $11M based on a promise? Or that they would tolerate the kind of hostaging that insists on building v2 before delivering v1?
I assumed that anyone in any field disbursing $1M+ contracts has provisions for monitoring, bad faith, etc. (and clawing back misappropriated fund). But not here?
If the media giants were bidding on his work based on the shorts he produced to promote the show, they must have been pretty good. I find stories of destroyed talent like this one profoundly sad.
> [Rinsch] transferred more than $4 million from his Schwab account to an account on the Kraken exchange and bought Dogecoin, a dog-themed cryptocurrency.
Guy sounds like a dummy
> Unlike his stock market investments, this one paid off: When he liquidated his Dogecoin positions in May 2021, he had a balance of nearly $27 million.
Around 2021, Dogecoin was a very interesting short term investment, yeah. Everyone was high off of AMC and GME in the stock market, so people were actively investing and day trading. Elon Musk was talking up Dogecoin, keeping in mind this is when he was still very popular in a positive way, and crypto in general was doing really well around that time. I'm not sure that it's wise to throw money into it now though. Crypto has become a very polarizing topic with people, with a vocal group of people that absolutely hate it (some of whom have no idea what they're talking about, but there are absolutely genuine reasons to dislike it as it's implemented today), and it has a somewhat uncertain future with government agencies reigning in on it (which certainly needs to happen for it to have a future too, but governments today seem more content with pulverizing the tech into the mud than see it grow into itself while keeping it fairly regulated.)
> Crypto has become a very polarizing topic with people...
Certain people. I was involved from the beginning, and most of the OGs just shrug at the present day noise - the convert zeal being long exhausted by all the complaints about how PoW makes Mother Gaia cry. The people who have a crazy level of investment are the tech journalists that took very public positions badmouthing bitcoin. That is probably also true of anyone else who can't resist calculating how much their mistake cost them when they compared bitcoin to beanie babies at $150.
> ...which certainly needs to happen for it to have a future too, but governments...
Firing first in a duel, global economy style - that is why the foot dragging has been so protracted.
It's not quite the beginning but I bought Bitcoin anonymously using cash from Mt Gox in the rally up to $15 before it crashed back down to $5, and then ignored my wallet until it added many zeroes before I sold.
I still think that, as a concept, it's dumb as shit, even thought it was profitable for me. I just got lucky.
Huh, everything about what you said seems off to me.
How did you anonymously fund your account at Mt Gox? Because I only remember them taking bank wires. I don't remember them ever having any kind of payment provider that would have accepted anything like pre-paid Visa cards, and in any case: by the time btc was at $15 - there was only one money transmitter (that wasn't a bank) allowing btc related transactions. I know this because I was debanked by two banks and had my paypal account suspended around that time.
How did you come to learn about bitcoin, this "dumb as shit" concept? Buying drugs on Silk Road? Because most of the early people came to it from reading the white paper after seeing it posted on the cipherpunk mailing list, or on a board discussing Austrian-economics/anarcho-capitalism... for those people it was a political act - not an investment (as you seem to view it).
> How did you anonymously fund your account at Mt Gox? Because I only remember them taking bank wires.
Here in Japan you can make domestic wires anonymously using cash at an ATM (since it's such a cash-based society), and since Mt Gox was based in Japan you could fund your account with a domestic wire transfer
> How did you come to learn about bitcoin, this "dumb as shit" concept
Probably on IRC? I can't recall. It was still early enough that I got like 0.001 btc from one of those "btc faucets". It was fun when it was just this distributed tech demo, before people took it so seriously. The technology is cool.
What's dumb as shit is the idea of basing the future of finance on it.
Well you definitely have a very abnormal way of coming to it. I've encountered people who came to it for the pure love of technology - but they usually gravitate towards one of the shitcoins because they actually harbor a bit of greed and feel they "missed the boat".
> What's dumb as shit is the idea of basing the future of finance on it.
As I said, I burned through my convert zeal a long time ago... but your situation does have me curious. Do you have any formal experience with the backends making up the global financial system? Because I do, and it blows my mind that anyone trusts it at all. The US has, in recent years, proven itself to be such an awful steward of the global reserve currency that it is at the point now where multiple militarily weak states are openly discussing replacing the petrodollar with something else. A few years ago that would have resulted in a coincidental horrific end for them, but after the naked weaponization of the international financial system against Iran and then Russia... well the end is very near. All that is to say that it is now clear that everyone now knows a fiat currency controlled by a single interest makes a poor global reserve. Combine that with the likely future in which software agents need to directly handle money in order to pay their own bills... and meatspace money won't work, because humans are thieves with access to fraudulent chargebacks. What alternative could there be besides a crypto currency? I'm not saying it will be bitcoin, because there have already been several fedcoin lead balloons floated, but bitcoin has thrived in an incredibly non-permissive environment (economic, technological and political) for a long time now.
> I still think that, as a concept, it's dumb as shit, even thought it was profitable for me. I just got lucky.
What, specifically, do you find dumb as shit? I don't want to come across as confrontational here, but it's difficult to gauge how much a person knows about blockchain, its uses, current pitfalls, and the technology's mission. And these conversations usually end up in one of two ways for me depending upon how much the person on the other end actually knows. Either they know next to nothing besides how to buy and sell it, in which case, the conversation almost always tends to lean into pointless vitriol; or they actually know a lot about the current crypto industry, see it for all its weaknesses and none of the potential, and are willing to have a civil conversation.
Frankly, like the other user, I'm in the boat of thinking that our current financial system is in desperate need of some kind of overhaul. Blockchain/crypto could be a part of that overhaul, but doesn't necessarily have to be. But it's clear to me that something needs to change.
Anyway, I'm just always curious about other people's thoughts. I'd say the majority of people I talk to on this topic though just jump straight to abusing the person that's pro-blockchain-as-a-concept without having substantial reason for disliking it besides:
1) it's a huge waste of the world's non-renewable energy resources, which is not necessarily true, it's mostly only true for blockchains like Bitcoin or Ethereum PoW, there are blockchains that require substantially fewer resources to be a player on the chain.
2) That crypto prices fluctuate too much when cashing back out to fiat. This argument seems short-sighted, because in a possibly ideal situation you would never need to liquidate to a fiat. In an possible future (for blockchain) you would be able to pay for your morning coffee at a PoS terminal using your crypto wallet directly and there's possibly a government system that lays out the purchasing power of a coin. I use the word "possibly" a lot here to point out that there are probably competing theories on ideal implementations of crypto as a general and worldwide currency.
3) That the transactions per second (TPS) that a blockchain can handle aren't comparable to systems like VISA. That seems true, for now. Blockchain is still very much in the early stages of development, culturally and technologically. Keep in mind, fiat currencies have been around for nearly a millennia. A technical solution to replace an ancient system needs engineering time and public adoption.
If you have other reasons for thinking blockchain/cryptocurrency is dumb as shit, I'm very interested. And genuinely, I'm not being sardonic or anything else when I say that.
It has been a long time since I last debated this stuff, so it is funny to see the same talking points from 10 years ago.
1) PoW is the only way that is actually decentralized. If you want decentralized power over the currency - PoS will never work on a long time horizon, because you'd need some way of representing stake that is just impossible. As far as the whole "waste" complaint: relative to what? I've never seen a comparative study that included the entirety of the existing financial system. The academic papers I have seen complaining about bitcoin were full of comically bad errors: using geolocation to try and pin mining operations to nearest power plants, estimating hashes per watt based on FPGA or first gen ASIC miners, etc.
2) Bitcoin volatility has been going down every year, which makes sense given wider participation. Volatility is obviously different from price.
3) Bitcoin has had the capability for offchain transactions a long time now - using smart contracts with onchain settlement, so this really isn't a real concern any longer.
> 1) PoW is the only way that is actually decentralized. If you want decentralized power over the currency - PoS will never work on a long time horizon
There are proof systems that are not truly Proof of Work and are also not Proof of Stake. But sure, you're not wrong that proof of stake is not truly decentralized. Anyway, suffice to say I was not talking about Proof of Stake.
But you do bring up some thoughts that I've had previously, with regards to the energy waste in comparison to exactly what. Thanks for reminding me of it.
> There are proof systems that are not truly Proof of Work and are also not Proof of Stake.
Got any examples in mind? Because the only stuff that I can think of besides the two are convoluted Rube Goldberg methods of concealing what is actually PoS. Take any one of the goofy token based protein folding style coins as an example. Unless you are thinking of some kind of premined fedcoin, which is closer to a giftcard than a cryptocurrency.
I'll refrain from talking too much about it, as I'm actually somewhat associated with the project, so take that as a disclaimer. But the first example that comes to mind is Chia's Proof of Space (and Time) which requires some amount of initial computationally expensive work to be performed to create what is essentially your hashes on disk, and then your farm (their verbiage for "mine") can be ran off of external hard drives connected to a Raspberry Pi.
Anyway, I'll forgive you for maybe not knowing about it, as it's a much smaller and newer project than the likes of Bitcoin or Ethereum. It's a nice project to point out though, as you don't need to be a whale to be a player and sign blocks. I just run about 24 terabytes of plotted out space on spare drives that I had laying around that I rotated out of my Plex server. I still get a win every now and again, but my cost to get going was extremely minimal.
There's a lot of FUD spread around about Chia chewing through SSDs for the initial work portion, which is maybe somewhat true? I used a couple of SSDs to generate my plots that I now use for video game storage that are perfectly healthy, so my advice to people spreading that FUD would be to use higher quality SSDs that are rated for high TBW (terabytes-written.)
Ah, yeah I'm familiar with it - a PoW scheme, where the work is memory cell wear. I feel for anyone who missed the incredibly short period of time where bitcoin gpu mining pools were anything but distributed space heaters... but I don't see a future in trying to chase that dragon. At least it isn't a mindless hardfork cash grab, or an unintentional joke like that time that communist redditors came out with a coin that would randomly delete balances at rest.
So I assume Netflix sued him for breach of contract? It doesn't seem like the world was deprived of any art except for whatever production wasn't greenlit because this guy was too busy making line go up to actually do his job.
How is this under arbitration not criminal charges? A director taking funds from the production to gamble them on crypto seems like it's wildly illegal right?
I'm afraid it won't happen because there has been so many movies out there which were inspired by it. It could never live up to its visual and mood simulacra.
Also, after they've killed The Peripheral before it actually got interesting, I don't think there is even interest in the plot out there.
In a quick google search it seems that supposedly there's a ongoing project on Neuromancer, although not much info is divulged.
But I agree with you: it would be EXTREMELLY difficult to live up to the book anyhow. Nevertheless, I think it will happen eventually: the book is incredible.
>>> He claimed to have discovered Covid-19’s secret transmission mechanism and to be able to predict lightning strikes. He gambled a large chunk of the money from Netflix on the stock market and cryptocurrencies. He spent millions of dollars on a fleet of Rolls-Royces, furniture and designer clothing.
Oh wow.
From a mental health stand point we hope he gets support
So many stories like this recently. Coyote vs Acme drama is so interesting as well. I bet the movie industry will become as crazy as the world of casinos
Very different situation. For Coyote vs Acme, the movie was finished properly and the only issue was WB projected it would make more money as a tax write-off. There was no malfeasance from the director/producer/etc.
For this one... well, read the article. The director/producer did some crazy stuff with the money.
It is not possible to make more money as a tax write-off. That's not how corporate income taxes work. The expense of making a movie can always be written off regardless of whether it is released or. If the studio decided not to release it then that was done for other reasons.
A failed film generates a write-off whether or not it's released. If released, then the losses (and associated write-offs) are taken over the course of several years, since many of the costs of the movie are treated as capitalized costs that get expensed over time.
If the movie is not released, then the expenses can get written off all at once. Due to the way financial accounting works (e.g. time value of money) an immediate deduction is more valuable than a deduction over time. In this case, the value would have been from offsetting profits from Barbie. It's a small savings, only about 6m in reduced taxes (on an approximate 30m writedown, taking into account that WB did not fully finance the film itself and so losses would be shared with the other investors), for an effective loss to WB of 24m.
Based on the 2x Budget principle (marketing and distribution combined are generally the same as the production budget), with a 70m production budget, Coyote vs Acme was expected to make significantly less than 140m gross if released. Given that they were willing to completely write off the film, this means they were expecting a total box office gross of significantly less than $115 million.
Bullshit. You can't write off "lost profits". The US corporate income tax code contains no such provision. Don't believe anything you read in the entertainment press, it's mostly fake news or at least not fact checked. Go ask your own income tax accountant if you don't believe me.
Using the correct accounting method (value based method) the value of an asset (the movie) includes its future profit value. If you then choose not to release the movie, the future profit goes to 0, and you can write off the loss of the asset value.
What basis do you have for that method? Your basis for capital losses is the amount you put into it. If you're writing it off, the value of the asset is by definition zero. The only way you could write off based on the value would be if you already paid capital gains on the value.
Ok, well then why didn't they release the movie? Why did they say it would be more profitable to not release it? You're either smarter than the entirety of Warner Brother's finance department, or wrong.
Because it was gonna bomb, and make less money than it would cost to market. It really is that simple. Warner/Discovery is mega-cash strapped right now. They may literally value $100m now more than $200m a year from now, as they have a massive debt to service.
Possibly because Zaslav, the new boss, hates cartoons (not hyperbole, he's said things to that effect himself) and that colored any judgment on the release of the film.
I hate Hallmark holiday movies (I don’t, but let’s be hypothetical for a second — i.e. not real), but if that were a way to make profits and I was the Hallmark CEO I would be releasing them daily during holiday season. It seems a little silly to think that the boss Zaslav would forego profit because he personally “hates cartoons.”
That is true, but nobody knows for sure how much a movie will make. Generally you know the more you invest into advertising the more people will want to see it, but how much return exactly every dollar spent on advertising will generate won’t be known beforehand.
The job of studio executives is to estimate this, and based on that make choices. This is based on some amount of objectiveish data (such as market research and comparative trends) but also has a large component of guesswork. And this guesswork is where his personal preferences can colour his decision making.
In other words if he would know it will make a lot of money he would release it for sure. You are right on that. But it is not known, and perhaps the objective indicators are ambigous or borderline, that is where his personal preferences might make a difference.
This is not a matter of who is smarter. The US tax code is very clear on that point and is not open for debate.
If the studio decided not to release the movie it was most likely because the expected marketing and distribution costs exceeded the expected revenue. Or maybe they didn't want a crap movie to damage the long term brand of a valuable character that they plan to leverage in other products.
> The US tax code is very clear on that point and is not open for debate.
Anyone who has ever worked with an accountant knows this isn't true. The law is a series of gray areas at best. You can have three accountants do your taxes and get three results, because each applies different interpretations to the laws. And going in front of a judge won't get extra clarity -- three judges would give you three different opinions.
> If the studio decided not to release the movie it was most likely because the expected marketing and distribution costs exceeded the expected revenue.
Maybe, but it tested better with test audiences than any other movie they release this year, so that's highly unlikely. Also, they specifically said they were doing it for the write down.
There are some gray areas in the tax code, but this isn't one of them. You write off your basis in a capital loss. There's no legal justification for writing off "lost profits". Trying to do so would just be tax fraud.
Even if that were a thing, the fact that it would cost more to release it than not shows that the profit value is negative.
>> The US tax code is very clear on that point and is not open for debate.
> Anyone who has ever worked with an accountant knows this isn't true.
The point being referred to here is that you can't take a deduction for profits you would have made in some hypothetical world where things had worked out better for you. It's not all gray areas, and this particular point is entirely un-gray. Nor does the article that you "tl;dr"'ed into this quip support you here. It just says that the studio decided not to risk any further losses.
Usually cash flow is the benefit, and perhaps a tax-year thing. Better to realize your losses next to your gains. Because if you can realize losses on profits you can estimate, you should start a startup that does this for LLCs.
While I do think it is unlikely that you can deduct “lost profits” by not releasing film, there are some interesting ways expenses of a film can be depreciated. See this form:
It is the only thing on the IRS website I could find about this and it does not tell the whole picture of the special depreciation method for films. The fact that this form can have you pay interest to the IRS if you incorrectly predict income reinforces the idea that you can’t deduct “lost profits”.
The books where also very different from each other, but with much superior result. Give them a try, if you want part of the fun of the first season. But the first season of the Netflix show is still muy preferred approach to this universe.
Same, I was pleasantly surprised by the first season and thought it was really good. Season 2 felt like a totally different show and was pretty much a generic bad action show.
Or more Electric Dreams! Great production value Philip K Dick short stories.
I haven't actually watched Altered Carbon but I have a trail of Takeshi Kovacs characters in various mmos and games, and am in general a Richard K Morgan fan. I loved Altered Carbon series. His recent-er Thirteen was fun imaginative Mars stuff. Market Forces is old old old & has a lot of mediocre aspects, but I loved the Car Wars style setting & corporate mercenary treatment.
That show butchered the original stories, though. And for some reason they picked some Dick's earliest and least interesting 1950s pulp-era stories, rather than the later, more mature. Autofac is the only classic that stands out, and the adaptation is both atrocious and unfaithful to the story.
Why not "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale", "A Little Something For Us Tempunauts", "Second Variety", "Impostor", "Faith of Our Fathers", "I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon", "Colony" or "Foster, You're Dead"? I wonder if it's because someone owns the rights? Some of these have already been adapted, though never faithfully.
In fact, a faithful adaptation of a PKD story or novel has never been made. Which is odd, for two reasons. One, PKD wrote quite filmable stories, with excellent dialogue and well-paced plots that should not pose a problem for anyone trying to adapt them to screen.
And secondly, why would you change anything? You adapt PKD because of the idea and how brilliantly it unfolds to its conclusion; if you replace that with your own spin, it's no longer PKD. Blade Runner very much lacks the feel of a PKD story, for example (no absurdist humour, no existential angst, no color; everything is just drab and dreary, which is a property that plagued some of his mainstream writings but very few of his SF works; if BR feels like anything it's Flow My Tears the Policeman Said, which is a sad and bleak book).
I rewatch it once a year or so. I haven't caved yet and read the books. But I still hope for a 3rd season even though it is probably never going to happen
A show which cost $55M, not necessarily one which is worth $55M. The article gives me the impression that those funds weren't spent responsibly; for all we know, this could be the sci-fi version of The Room.
Losing the money to a crazy director who gambled it away is at least better than actually finishing the series but never releasing it to get tax write-offs (looking at you Max).
This isn't how tax write-offs work. The expenditures in the production of a film or TV series are always deducted from taxable net income regardless of whether the final product is released or not.
There are a plethora of reasons not to release a creative work. For example, you don't want to spend any more money on music licensing, editing, marketing, etc, that is unlikely to be recouped.
Certain expenses will be capitalized while the film is available for release/streaming. Depreciation/amortization will be years for the life of the film. But if you scrap it right away, you can deduct those expenses immediately.
Yes, but the reason to do this is that the film is ultimately going to cost more money than it is worth, or the gross represents a rounding error on the studio's balance sheet.
You wouldn't capitalize the expenses of a film that was expected to recoup any meaningful amount of money on release. Either the thing is already costing you more money than it is worth or is a brand risk, thus you look for a way to get out as painlessly as possible.
If the film was going to recoup at least the $10-$20M they'll save in taxes that FY they would release it.
The point is the property is worth negative or trivial value already. Either it's going to cost more to finish than it's worth, or it's worth next to nothing.
You really shouldn't take fake news organizations like CNN seriously on issues like this. They obviously didn't do even basic fact checking with a real tax accountant or lawyer.
It is though, I definitely had project not-launched which had expenses that accountants found much harder to justify then launched projects. Taxes isn't a hard science but a soft one, and when talking to a tax officer, as far as my limited knowledge goes, launching a product or movie does help to ease their fraud suspicions.
> For example, you don't want to spend any more money on music licensing, editing, marketing, etc, that is unlikely to be recouped.
I have no idea what "Max" is in the GP, but another big reason to not release a creative work is if audience feedback was negative enough that even releasing it for free would hit the value of your brand.
I know this is derailing the main thread, but then why are studios choosing not to release finished movies on streaming? It seems like they could recoup at least some of the expenses compared to just shelving the thing forever.
Because the money is gone without anything to show for it, after (allegedly) spending lots of it on... not TV show stuff. You don't see a problem with that? Did we read the same article?
I don't know about you, but if someone gave me $55m to make a TV show, I'd like to think I wouldn't blow $6m of that betting on the stock market. If even one of these allegations are true (and honestly I don't really see a reason to doubt them), this is a hilariously brazen misappropriation of funds.
Obviously we haven't seen the contract/deal he signed with Netflix, but I highly doubt it has language like "you can spend this money we're giving you on literally anything you want, including /r/WallStreetBets behavior".
> I don't know about you, but if someone gave me $55m to make a TV show, I'd like to think I wouldn't blow $6m of that betting on the stock market.
The article does claim he lost that, but then claims he made more back.
It claims Netflix transferred him $11M, he tried played markets and lost then speculated crypto and more than doubled the money, then bought toys, and was still up:
Netflix wired Mr. Rinsch’s production company $11 million... Rinsch transferred $10.5 million of the $11 million to his personal brokerage account at Charles Schwab... lost $5.9 million in a matter of weeks [then later] transferred more than $4 million from his Schwab account to an account on the Kraken exchange and bought Dogecoin ... this one paid off: ... a balance of nearly $27 million...
At this point, he's up. Then the spending spree "tab came to $8.7 million", but that still leaves more than the $11M.
But did it? Netflix probably wanted to make more money on this, and wanted to get audience growth. They have people they can absolutely use this to do this all by themselves, but they didn’t because that wasn’t what they wanted to do.
According to this site[0], their revenue for 2022 was $31.6B, so $55M would be approximately 0.17%. Stated otherwise, on average, they make $55M every 15 hours or so. So yeah, it kind of seems like a rounding error.
It's still around 180k of premium subscribers at 25$ per month for a year, not taking into account traffic costs. It's not nothing, it's lost cash and lost opportunity.
Well in this case Netflix is defending against a case in arbitration that they owe the guy an extra $14 million. Sure seems like they signed a very stupid contract.
Since we're discussing the economics of film/TV studios, and their weird decisions. I'd like to understand why the studios are still making Star Trek shows. Each one seems to be more poorly received than the last. That's costing studios far more than $55M. Picard alone cost ~$9M per episode according to Wikipedia.
Paramount+ took a few swings at this, and eventually they hit paydirt with Strange New Worlds.
The intention isn’t to make mediocre shows. The intention is to make a show which draws an audience, and Star Trek shows start with a decent base audience to make it worth trying.
Star Trek shows last for decades as revenue generators through syndication, streaming, merchandising, novels, movies, theme park events, and etcetera. A new series may draw people in, many of whom will stay to watch the older series.
Now that the series are basically only available on streaming through CBS/Paramount I don't know what syndication gains are being made, but I'd guess a huge percentage of the CBS/Paramount streaming subscribers are staying subscribers for the huge Star Trek library. It's an anecdote but the last time I quit Netflix was when they lost Star Trek and I realized I was basically only hanging on for Star Trek episodes (after about a year and a half I resubscribed for other content).
Eventually, you get one right, right? Even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while. Plus, there are so many Trekkies that will watch anything regardless of how bad it is just so they can bitch about it after watching it. They still had to watch it though, and that's about all that matters to the analytics.
It is strange they can fail so bad, since Star Trek is essentially a setup to make any story at all each episode. I mean, McFarlains comedy-as-an-excuse Not-Star Trek Star Trek is so much more Star Trek than the new series ... at a way lower budget. Imagine if they gave him the job instead.
I know, right? To me the essential Star Trek formula - at least of TOS, TNG and Voyager - is simply to have a team of competent professionals encounter all kinds of weird and wacky creatures and anomalies, and then to resolve those encounters in a peaceful way. It's a sci-fi anthology show that emphasizes the experience of scientists, engineers and diplomats over warriors, outlaws and extremists. One of the reasons I think new Trek fails is because even when they try to make it more episodic (SNW), the characters lack the idealism that makes the show different. The Orville, on the other hand, gets it exactly right.
That said, there is a case to be made that Star Trek is now more than just TOS/TNG/Voyager, and it already was that after DS9. So I don't begrudge fans of the dark, morally gray, against-a-backdrop-of-war stories getting to see more of that in new Trek. At least the animated shows (Lower Decks and Prodigy) keep the optimistic spirit of Starfleet alive, so there's something for everyone.
I would say Enterprise fits into the good guy optimism spirit? I was quite young when I saw it so dunno really. Saw it first for some reason, 10 years before half TOS, TNG and Voyager.
>It is strange they can fail so bad, since Star Trek is essentially a setup to make any story at all each episode.
The early slash fiction writers (almost all women) in the 1970s more or less viewed the science fiction elements like the Enterpise and the Federation as distractions, and got Kirk/Spock away from them as soon as the could to focus on their relationship. In other words, they were inspired by the close, John Ford-like camaderie between the two characters (or, if you choose to believe so, saw the clear sexual subtext below their heterosexual veneers) and used it as a springboard to tell the stories they really wanted to tell.
> Each one seems to be more poorly received than the last.
Only to a certain subset of "fans" who have made hating Star Trek a part of their identity politics, and a grift on Youtube. They've even started to hate Strange New Worlds, even though it should be everything they wanted.
In actual objective reality, each of the new Trek series has been highly successful.
> made hating Star Trek a part of their identity politics...
...The only reason anyone could dislike modern Star Trek: Because they want to </s>. No, I actually want to like the new Star Trek. I just found that to be prohibitively difficult.
> They've even started to hate Strange New Worlds, even though it should be everything they wanted.
Except that it wasn't. It feels like a modern Marvel film masquerading as Star Trek. With sassy Mary Sue characters that just quip back and forth sarcastically. The dialogue is honestly terrible.
> In actual objective reality, each of the new Trek series has been highly successful.
On Rotten Tomatoes Picard has an audience score of 57%. Discovery has 37%. About what I expected. Strange New Worlds is doing well though. I'm not upset that other people like it. I'd consider giving SNW another go, but I won't waste any more time with Picard or Discovery.
