8 ms·

I don't think software in general is flat, but video streaming is a mature technology and it's pretty easy to get good enough video streaming that customers don

I don't think software in general is flat, but video streaming is a mature technology and it's pretty easy to get good enough video streaming that customers don't care about it as a differentiating factor. If 8k TVs or VR suddenly take off, they might be able to take advantage of it, but right now it's only a minor advantage (in cost savings primarily). Customers choose based on content, not based on who's better at video streaming.

johnsmith1840 1mo ago
Mature is like saying CPUs are mature. Technically true but the entite world is actively trying and failing to be taiwan. Video streaming is amoung the hardest technologies you can possibly make beyond a single cluster scale. Youtube is my favorite engineering system to read about. And man... chatgpt has a LOOOONG way to be able to make that from scratch. There is an argument though of "good enough" I don't think it logically holds since our entire ecobomy is built on that literally not being true but who knows.
- TheCoelacanth 1mo ago
  I'm not saying it's not hard; I'm saying it's not a competitive moat. There are hundreds if not thousands of companies that successfully run streaming services and I doubt that any of them are more worried about the technology than they are about the content.
  - johnsmith1840 1mo ago
    True, but it's also pretty hard to tell the fuzzy edges of that. We are not privledged to info like "videos loading x% faster resulted in y% retention increase" Obviously a big company can push a big project I thought you were in the camp of a vibe coder going up against netflix and winning. Even before AI competition always caught up that really hasn't changed and basically is my point. AI doesn't change your competitive advantage against another company doing the same thing it's all down to operation excellence.

8 ms·

I don't think software in general is flat, but video streaming is a mature technology and it's pretty easy to get good enough video streaming that customers don

by TheCoelacanth 1mo ago

johnsmith1840 1mo ago
Mature is like saying CPUs are mature. Technically true but the entite world is actively trying and failing to be taiwan. Video streaming is amoung the hardest technologies you can possibly make beyond a single cluster scale. Youtube is my favorite engineering system to read about. And man... chatgpt has a LOOOONG way to be able to make that from scratch. There is an argument though of "good enough" I don't think it logically holds since our entire ecobomy is built on that literally not being true but who knows.
- TheCoelacanth 1mo ago
  I'm not saying it's not hard; I'm saying it's not a competitive moat. There are hundreds if not thousands of companies that successfully run streaming services and I doubt that any of them are more worried about the technology than they are about the content.
  - johnsmith1840 1mo ago
    True, but it's also pretty hard to tell the fuzzy edges of that. We are not privledged to info like "videos loading x% faster resulted in y% retention increase" Obviously a big company can push a big project I thought you were in the camp of a vibe coder going up against netflix and winning. Even before AI competition always caught up that really hasn't changed and basically is my point. AI doesn't change your competitive advantage against another company doing the same thing it's all down to operation excellence.