Taldan
@Taldan@lemmy.world
- Comment on The moment we've all been waiting for: you now can have targeted ads on your 2k smartfridge 6 days ago:
Streaming is a perfect example of this, as people don’t seem to realise just how expensive it is to maintain the infrastructure for it compared to traditional cable infrastructure
Much of the cost of streaming for platforms like Netflix, and especially YouTube, are due to the need to centralize it to allow for more data collection. The cost of streaming also gets overblown, by a lot. Companies like Google and Netflix are spending huge amounts of money trying to build out new features and offerings, like games, that make it look like maintaining the streaming service is far more expensive than it is
But that price was also only possible because of various venture capitalists investing heavily in Netflix
Netflix has never needed to rely on venture capital for their streaming platform. Netflix has made a gross profit every quarter since 2011 when this data starts. They have also had a net income all but one of those quarters, which is absolutely insane for a new tech company investing that much in R&D + licensing
The recent hikes (all the way up to what, $20?) are the result of venture capital drying up
No. They’re the result of perpetually increasing profit margins. They were very profitable before the price hikes. Their expenses have gone up far slower than their revenue. It’s simply extracting more wealth without providing additional value
as Netflix went from a market-shaker startup to revenue generating machine
It’s a bit pedantic, but Netflix wasn’t a startup when they got into streaming. They were an existing business that was profitable to fund their pivot to a technology platform
So how do you offset these increases?
Netflix has had an operating income (revenue - operating expenses) of $12.6B over the past 12 months. With ~300M subscribers, that’s about $3.50 per subscriber per month. Subscription prices are much lower in most countries than in the US. For the ~80M US subscribers, that is probably $6 in profit. The $5 cheaper ad tier is probably about what we’d expect their prices to be if they had simply continued to make a couple billion a year in profit. Also keep in mind they would probably get and retain more subscribers with a lower price, and their increased operating expenses includes them building out tons of stupid mobile games most people don’t want, and one-off necessary expenses like building out their original content capabilities
Note: This last bit is doing some napkin math and is subject to error. I didn’t feel like digging deep enough into their financials to get more exact numbers (such as the average subscription price for the rest of the world)
TL;DR – Much of the price increases and addition of ads can be attributed to increasing profit margins, not increased operating costs
- Comment on The moment we've all been waiting for: you now can have targeted ads on your 2k smartfridge 6 days ago:
How long until we have no real choice? The vast majority of TVs are smart TVs now
- Comment on The Answer May Surprise You 1 week ago:
The largest cost is going to be building out data centers and buying the chips to fill them. OpenAI has essentially been telling investors they’re only losing money for now as they build out infrastructure, but when that’s done they’ll be making money hand over fist
We have no idea what the compute costs actually are since OpenAI is a private company. It’s just a shift in the speculation that it’s higher than previously estimated
- Comment on Anon takes a DNA test 1 week ago:
Also “Turned out my father isn’t my real dad” is BS. Genetic test results are useless for determining such.
I’m so confused by this. Are you playing semantic games here? Because this is otherwise completely wrong, and contradicts the story you told before it
- Comment on 1 week ago:
That’s tough man. At least as a food service worker you’re contributing a lot to the economy. When I worked in restaurants, I worked a lot harder than I ever have in a corporate job, for far less money
- Comment on Bank Workers, Rejoice! 1 week ago:
Median home prices peaked at $216,000 in August 2006. The lowest they’ve been in 2025 is $414,000. You had some absolutely atrocious luck. You buy in Detroit or something?
- Comment on Square Enix says it wants generative AI to be doing 70% of its QA and debugging by the end of 2027 2 weeks ago:
So Square Enix is demanding OpenAI stop using their content, but is 100% okay using AI built off stolen content to make more money themselves
As a developer, it bothers me that my code is being used to train AI that Square Enix is using while trying to deny anyone else the ability to use their work
I could go either way on whether or not AI should be able to train on available data, but no one should get to have it both ways
- Comment on What is the catalyst that actually causes (financial) bubbles to burst? 2 weeks ago:
AI companies are more insulated from quarterly returns due to being private companies, and not being expected to have any profit, or even revenue growth
The only thing investors are looking for are user growth, and increase in AI capabilities. The second KPI being difficult to objectively measure
- Comment on What is the catalyst that actually causes (financial) bubbles to burst? 2 weeks ago:
The How Money Works video was decent, but I was annoyed he showed the Apple cash on hand chart without mentioning they peaked at ~100B, and the contracts we’re talking about are in hundreds of billions
Microsoft, for example, has about 100B in cash on hand. Their total liabilities have gone from about 2x their cash to 3x, which is effectively doubling the leverage
When you think about that additional debt in absolute terms, it’s huge. Historically companies wouldn’t be able to get to that level of debt simply because they lacked the cash to do so
- Comment on What 2 weeks ago:
That alien is a fellow Dvorak user! (aoeu is the Dvorak equivalent of asdf)
- Comment on It's official: Teamsters President Sean O'Brien is a **Class Traitor & Republican Stooge** - (Details in post body) 2 weeks ago:
Trump literally owns the country club for elites
- Comment on It's official: Teamsters President Sean O'Brien is a **Class Traitor & Republican Stooge** - (Details in post body) 2 weeks ago:
What’s with these top union people being so blatantly stupid, näive and gullible?
I don’t see that at all. He knows exactly what he’s doing: Selling out the union for his own gain. It’s not incompetence – it’s greed
- Comment on hmm breakfast 2 weeks ago:
I like how different people have said each different item is the main cause of heart disease
- Comment on monumentale 3 weeks ago:
Each line is 10,000 characters and the function only supports
shortprimitives - Comment on monumentale 3 weeks ago:
Yes, and it only returns, “I can’t even”
- Comment on monumentale 3 weeks ago:
we don’t use this without first writing proper unit tests for our changes, integrating them with the regression tests, and thoroughly documenting our changes for the next developer that has to work on this
I’m an optimist, and it’s technically possible
- Comment on LA considers raising minimum wage for some construction workers — possibly up to $32.35 an hour 3 weeks ago:
Separate minimum wages doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. Especially when it’s so hyper specific:
minimum wage that would apply to construction workers on any housing project with 10 or more units and a height of up to 85 feet
So we’re incentivizing smaller buildings, which is the exact opposite of what we need. Large, single-family homes being the only housing allowed in large swaths of cities is what got us the housing crisis. Now we’re incentivizing them even more?
Construction workers currently earn a median wage of $18 per hour in L.A. and frequently face wage theft
The fact they’re nearly doubling the prevailing wage for construction on apartment buildings, without addressing wage theft makes it abundantly clear this bill is about disincentivizing dense housing
It’s just a bill to further inflate housing prices dressed up as helping workers. The main group that will benefit from this is wealthy landlords
- Comment on Space is beautiful 3 weeks ago:
As if we’re not already doing that
- Comment on Ok, boomer 3 weeks ago:
Oh don’t worry about that, they already caused their havoc
Thanks to the FAA’s shoestring budget, they don’t have the funds to just issue an STC to allow existing planes to use it. Each plane owner will have to pay for one to be issued. It costs me $200 to get one issued. It costs that much because the FAA hasn’t had the budget to upgrade their systems, so handling applications takes a lot of labor. They need to manually verify the make and model of aircraft will not be at risk of adverse effects from unleaded gasoline, since safety > all else
It’s a good thing the FAA verifies this, but it shouldn’t be such an inefficient process. The only reason it’s so inefficient is because conservatives have gutted federal agencies for so many years. MAGA will still point to the inefficient process as an example of why they should keep cutting funding, “see how inefficient the FAA is? They don’t deserve our money!”
- Comment on Ok, boomer 3 weeks ago:
The FAA finally approved 100UL (unleaded), so the US is on track to stop using 100LL in most cases within the next 20 years
EPA has tight regulations on washing your plane though, so there’s no problem with lead /s
Disclaimer: It’s better than nothing that the EPA tried to do something, but the government really should have gotten their shit together and approved 100UL decades ago
- Comment on Ok, boomer 3 weeks ago:
I know the US is one that has 100LL
- Comment on Mandatory programmer outfit :3 (First post) 4 weeks ago:
I’m just giving you shit as someone who is finally kicking their Windows addiction
Have you tried gaming on Pop yet? I’ve heard it works pretty well. I went with CachyOS to replace my last Windows box since games were the only reason I kept it around. Not absolutely loving Arch/Pacman yet though…
- Comment on Mandatory programmer outfit :3 (First post) 4 weeks ago:
I’m not trying to gatekeep or anything. It’s just to me like pineapple on pizza or socks with sandals are to other people: A crime against humanity worthy of the death penalty
For the record, I’m a staunch supporter of pineapple on pizza and socks with sandals, and I’d support pardoning anyone guilty of either crime
- Comment on Mandatory programmer outfit :3 (First post) 4 weeks ago:
POP_OS, SteamOS, and presumably Windows10?
The fact they’re using a Windows UI for all of them is so cursed T.T
- Comment on Introverts of our era spend their time on their computers, but what did introverts do before? Like when literacy rates were lower (pre-1950s)? Or before the printing press? 4 weeks ago:
For much of America, going on walks isn’t a pleasant experience. Most people live in car-centric areas, where you will have the noise, fumes, and dangers of cars at all times
- Comment on Amazon hopes to replace 600,000 US workers with robots, according to leaked documents 4 weeks ago:
Exactly. Automation will be replacing jobs. It’s an economic fact. Instead of fighting it, we need to be focusing on making an automated future equitable for as many people as possible
- Comment on Honestly Bizarre 4 weeks ago:
Why you hatin’ on mushrooms? They’re a fungi, if you get to know 'em
- Comment on It's not? 4 weeks ago:
Technically there are regulations, but they’re almost universally sidestepped. Every dildo is a “novelty” not to be inserted in the body is the most common way to avoid the regulations. No government body seems to care
- Comment on some days i cant even 5 weeks ago:
The “missing nothing” part is problematic. Many creatures rely on leaves to survive or reproduce. Fireflies are a common example. Their population has been decimated by the complete removal of leaves as standard practice
I cannot understand why people are so intent on removing every leaf from their yard
- Comment on some days i cant even 5 weeks ago:
I look forward to seeing less leaf blowers in general. I don’t get the obsession with getting rid of leaves. You’re damaging the local ecosystem for what? The ability to watch your grass turn brown?