Sooner or later, everything old is new again.
We may be at this point in tech, where supposedly revolutionary products are becoming eerily similar to the previous offerings they were supposed to beat.
Take video streaming. In search of better profitability, Netflix, Disney, and other providers have been raising prices. The various bundles are now as annoyingly confusing as cable, and cost basically the same. Somehow, we’re also paying to watch ads. How did that happen?
Amazon Prime Video costs $9 a month and there are no ads. Oh, except when Thursday Night Football is on. Then there are loads of ads. And Amazon is discussing an ad-supported version of the Prime Video service, according to The Wall Street Journal. That won’t be free, I can assure you.
Paramount+ with Showtime costs $12 a month and the live TV part has commercials and a few other shows include “brief promotional interruptions,” according to the company. Translation: ads.
Streaming was supposed to be better and cheaper. I’m not sure that’s the case anymore. This NFL season, like previous years, I will record games on OTA linear TV using a TiVo box from about 2014. I’ll watch hours of action every weekend for free and I’ll watch no ads. Streaming can’t match that.
You can still stream without ads, but the cost of this is getting so high, and the bundling is so complex, that it’s getting as bad as cable — the technology that streaming was supposed to radically improve upon.
The Financial Times recently reported that a basket of the top US streaming services will cost $87 this fall, compared with $73 a year ago. The average cable TV package costs $83 a month, it noted. A 3-mile Uber ride that cost $51.69
A similar shift is happening in ride-hailing. Uber has been on a quest to become profitable, and it achieved that, based on one measure, in the most-recent quarter. Lyft is desperately trying to keep up. How are they doing this? Raising prices is one way.
Wired’s editor at large, Steven Levy, recently took a 2.95-mile Uber ride from downtown New York City to the West Side to meet Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi. When asked to estimate the cost of the ride, Khosrowshahi put it at $20. That turned out to be less than half the actual price of $51.69, including a tip for the driver.
“Oh my God. Wow,” the CEO said upon learning the cost.
I recently took a Lyft from Seattle-Tacoma International airport to a home in the city. It cost $66.69 with driver tip. As a test, I ordered a taxi for the return journey. Exact same distance, and the cab was stuck in traffic longer. The cost was $70 with a tip. So basically the same.
And the cab can be ordered with an app now that shows its location, just like Uber and Lyft. So what’s the revolutionary benefit here? The original vision was car sharing where anyone could pick anyone else up. Those disruptive benefits have steadily ebbed away through regulation, disputes with drivers over pay, and the recent push for profitability. Cloud promises are being broken
Finally, there’s the cloud, which promised cheaper and more secure computing for companies. There are massive benefits from flexibility here: You can switch your rented computing power on and off quickly depending on your needs. That’s a real advance.
The other main benefits — price and security — are looking shakier lately.
Salesforce, the leading provider of cloud marketing software, is increasing prices this month. The cost of the Microsoft 365 cloud productivity suite is rising, too, along with some Slack and Adobe cloud offerings, according to CIO magazine.
AWS is going to start charging customers for an IPv4 address, a crucial internet protocol. Even before this decision, AWS costs had become a major issue in corporate board rooms.
As a fast-growing startup, Snap bought into the cloud and decided not to build it’s own infrastructure. In the roughly five years since going public, the company has spent about $3 billion on cloud services from Google and AWS. These costs have been the second-biggest expense at Snap, behind employees.
“While cloud clearly delivers on its promise early on in a company’s journey, the pressure it puts on margins can start to outweigh the benefits, as a company scales and growth slows,” VC firm Andreessen Horowitz wrote in a blog. “There is a growing awareness of the long-term cost implications of cloud.”
Some companies, such as Dropbox, have even repatriated most of their IT workloads from the public cloud, saving millions of dollars, the VC firm noted.
What about security? Last month, Google, the third-largest cloud provider, started a pilot program where thousands of its employees are limited to using work computers that are not connected to the internet, according to CNBC.
The reason: Google is trying to reduce the risk of cyberattacks. If staff have computers disconnected from the internet, hackers can’t compromise these devices and gain access to sensitive user data and software code, CNBC reported.
So, cloud services connected to the internet are great for everyone, except Google? Not a great cloud sales pitch.
What do you think the majority of people are doing now?
I do agree with the previous comments though that UBI can’t successfully exist by itself. Heavy regulations and consumer protections will have to be revamped but that needs done regardless of UBI or not. It’s the same vein as the loan forgiveness program the Democrats tried to implement in the US, they never actually addressed or promoted any policy change that was needed in higher education costs.
The mental gymnastics are interesting though. The same people who scream to vote for the “lesser of two evils” will not use that premise for actual policy. Inflation will go up regardless of UBI (as we’ve seen from corporate greed), any type of shelter during record making climate dangers is better than homelessness.
Also, I take offense to the drinking pasta water comment (not really offended but it’s funny you commented that). It’s literally how ramen is suppose to be consumed.
The pasta water was just thrown in to contrast with the champagne.
I’m not totally against some amount of UBI, especially if AI does what some claim, but don’t thing it will give “freedom” as the person I replied to thinks. It’s will be a small supplement at best, especially in the near term. And the idea what freedom is gained from dependence on money from the government makes no sense. Everyone existing solely on UBI would be at the mercy of the government providing it. That doesn’t sound very free to me.
Ah yes, as opposed to my dream of entirely depending upon wealthy people to employ me so I can survive.
Wealthy people or wealthy government… dependence is dependence.
Right now people have the option to start their own business and work for themselves if they don’t like the idea of working for someone else.
I don’t want to jump in on @zeppo@lemmy.world 's chance to reply but he stated basically what I would’ve replied with above. I believe that UBI wouldn’t change how things work, it would reset it to a previous economic time but with more equity since everyone would get it (getting back to livable wages because it’s supplemented by the UBI). The government’s have shown a failure of holding capitalism responsible for distribution of wealth (stagnant Fed minimum wage, forcing unions to accept terms/not strike) so subsidizing wages seems more of a greener pasture than our current trajectory.
You would still be able to start your own business, I don’t think anyone is calling for UBI mixed with communism (government owning all production). Rather, some breathing room to return to more prosperous times where you have more options.
I agree the “freedom” some would experience would be hardships trying to live off of it. It’s hard and mentally draining work to be more self sufficient as humble homesteaders will attest to(it’s a rather well put together video from a contestant on the “Alone” series). But, atm most people can’t afford to start their own business or even realistically consider leaving their current workplace. Dropping into higher education for a career change without incurring enormous interest is near impossible without support (as climate regulations are needed, some jobs will have to be lost and those people need reassurances they can find a new path). Hell, use your UBI supplement to help take a vacation more than once a decade if it helps with mental health, fix a car instead of purchasing a new one (lower climate impact), etc etc.
There’s just a plethora of problems atm that constantly get politicized or fail to have common sense policies implemented to help the situation. UBI would be a catch-all for a lot of those programs. Instead of battling it out on each front constantly (lobbyists, activists, personal conflicting interests from those elected), this would be a nuclear option to end the war (feels insensitive with the current Oppenheimer/Japan stance, but was the best metaphor I could come up with atm).
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=R1MNE6RUdgg
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.