- Welcome to the Malware-Industrial Complex (MIT) — brilliant phrase, sound analysis.
- Stupid Stupid xBox — The hardcore/soft-tv transition and any lead they feel they have is simply not defensible by licensing other industries’ generic video or music content because those industries will gladly sell and license the same content to all other players. A single custom studio of 150 employees also can not generate enough content to defensibly satisfy 76M+ customers. Only with quality primary software content from thousands of independent developers can you defend the brand and the product. Only by making the user experience simple, quick, and seamless can you defend the brand and the product. Never seen a better put statement of why an ecosystem of indies is essential.
- Data Feedback Loops for TV (Salon) — Netflix’s data indicated that the same subscribers who loved the original BBC production also gobbled down movies starring Kevin Spacey or directed by David Fincher. Therefore, concluded Netflix executives, a remake of the BBC drama with Spacey and Fincher attached was a no-brainer, to the point that the company committed $100 million for two 13-episode seasons.
- wrk — a modern HTTP benchmarking tool capable of generating significant load when run on a single multi-core CPU. It combines a multithreaded design with scalable event notification systems such as epoll and kqueue.
ENTRIES TAGGED "netflix"
Four short links: 14 February 2013
Malware Industrial Complex, Indies Needed, TV Analytics, and HTTP Benchmarking
Four short links: 5 February 2013
Web Tooltips, Free Good Security Book, Netflix Economics, and Firewire Hackery
- toolbar — tooltips in jQuery, cf hint.css which is tooltips in CSS.
- Security Engineering — 2ed now available online for free. (via /r/netsec)
- Economics of Netflix’s $100M New Show (The Atlantic) — Up until now, Netflix’s strategy has involved paying content makers and distributors, like Disney and Epix, for streaming rights to their movies and TV shows. It turns out, however, the company is overpaying on a lot of those deals. [...] [T]hese deals cost Netflix billions.
- Inception — a FireWire physical memory manipulation and hacking tool exploiting IEEE 1394 SBP-2 DMA. The tool can unlock (any password accepted) and escalate privileges to Administrator/root on almost* any powered on machine you have physical access to. The tool can attack over FireWire, Thunderbolt, ExpressCard, PC Card and any other PCI/PCIe interfaces. (via BoingBoing)
Strata Week: Add structured data, lose local flavor?
Wikidata's structure vs. diverse knowledge, and a look at the many factors behind Netflix's recommendations.
A critic says Wikidata could undermine Wikipedia's localized information. Also, Netflix explains why its recommendation engine is much more complicated than most people realize.
Commerce Weekly: Small banks lagging in mobile
Small banks struggle with mobile and a look inside Netflix' data.
As banking goes mobile, smaller banks must find a way to keep up. Also, Netflix data is deconstructed at the Strata Conference, and commerce-related highlights from the Mobile World Congress.
What happens when an old law is updated for the digital age?
Attorney Dana Newman discusses a proposed update to the '80s-era Video Privacy Protection Act.
The '80s-era Video Privacy Protection Act had the unintended consequence of inhibiting consensual sharing of video viewing habits. Attorney Dana Newman weighs in on updated legislation.
Top Stories: December 5-9, 2011
A vote against frictionless sharing, a look at cloud security threats, and why the open sourcing of Data.gov matters.
This week on O'Reilly: Mike Loukides explained why there's little value in frictionless sharing, Jeffrey Carr examined the significant security threats attached to cloud services, and we learned why the open sourcing of Data.gov is an important milestone for open government.
What publishers can learn from Netflix's problems
Tim Carmody on the lessons from Netflix and the facade of inevitability.
In this interview, Wired.com writer Tim Carmody examines the recent missteps of Netflix and he takes a broad look at how technology shapes the reading experience.
Four short links: 2 December 2011
Changing Education, Netflix Open Source, LLVM3, and Open Sourced Transcription Tool
- Challenges in Teaching Biology — everything that Alison says about teaching biology is true of teaching computer science. Read, learn, evolve.
- First Open Source Netflix Projects Released — Curator makes Apache Zookeeper easier to use. (via Ian Kallen)
- LLVM3 Released — these are key tools for reliable development of fast systems. I think of it as JVM without the bloat, though undoubtedly that’s unfair to both Java and LLVM. (via Hacker News)
- Scribe — Zooniverse tool for crowdsourcing transcriptions. (via Tim Sherratt)
Four short links: 1 August 2011
Visual Illusion, Newspaper Economics, Native Web Apps, and Document Store Query Language
- The Flashed Face Effect Video — your brain is not perfect, and it reduces faces to key details. When they flash by in the periphery of your vision, you perceive them as gross and freakish. I like to start the week by reminding myself how fallible I am. Good preparation for the rest of the week… (via BERG London)
- The Newsonomics of Netflix and the Digital Shift — Netflix changed prices, tilting people toward digital and away from physical. This post argues that the same will happen in newspapers. Imagine 2020, and the always-out-there-question: Will we still have print newspapers? Well, maybe, but imagine how much they’ll cost — $3 for a local daily? — and consumers will compare that to the “cheap” tablet pricing, and decide, just as they doing now are with Netflix, which product to take and which to let go. The print world ends not with a bang, but with price increase after price increase. (via Tim O’Reilly)
- Phonegap — just shipped 1.0 of an HTML5 app platform that allows you to author native applications with web technologies and get access to APIs and app stores.
- UnQL — query language for document store databases, from the creators of CouchDB and SQLite. (via Francisco Reyes)
Visualization of the Week: A map of regional movie tastes
Netflix's local favorites reveal regional film preferences and oddities.
Do our movie preferences vary by location? A visualization of Netflix rentals and views suggests that they do.
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