On Sun, 22 Mar 2020 at 21:20, Grant Taylor via NANOG <nanog@nanog.org> wrote:

What was wrong with Internet scale multicast? Why did it get abandoned?

It is flow based routing, we do not have a solution to store and lookup large amount of flows. -- ++ytti

Grant Taylor via NANOG wrote on 22/03/2020 19:17:

What was wrong with Internet scale multicast?  Why did it get abandoned?

there wasn't any problem with inter-domain multicast that couldn't be resolved by handing over to level 3 engineering and the vendor's support escalation team. But then again, there weren't many problems with inter-domain multicast that could be resolved without handing over to level 3 engineering and the vendor's support escalation team. Nick

On Sun, 22 Mar 2020 at 22:43, Alexandre Petrescu <alexandre.petrescu@gmail.com> wrote:

On another hand, link-local multicast does seem to work ok, at least with IPv6. The problem it solves there is not related to the width of the pipe, but more to resistance against 'storms' that were witnessed during ARP storms. I could guess that Ethernet pipes are now so large

This is a case where the cure is far worse than the poison. People do not run IPv6 ND like this, because you can't scale it. It would be trivial for anyone in the LAN to exhaust multicast states on the L2 switch. It is entirely uneconomical to build L2 switch which could support all the mcast groups ND could need. So those do not exist today, defensive configuration floods the ND frames, just the same as ARP. You also cannot scale interdomain multicast (bier is trying to solve this), because every flow S,G needs to be programmed in HW with list of egress entries, this is very expensive to store and very expensive to look, it is flow routing. Today already lookup speeds are not limited by silicon but by memory access, and the scale of the problem is much much smaller (and bound) in ucast. -- ++ytti

On 23/Mar/20 05:05, Aaron Gould wrote:

I can see it now.... Business driver that moved the world towards multicast .... 2020 Coronavirus

Hehe, the Coronavirus has only accelerated and amplified what was already coming - the new economy. You're constantly hearing about "changing business models" or "needing to be agile" in the face of the Coronavirus. A few businesses saw this and switched from product to value, years ago. Many feel it in their bones but are too afraid to make the switch. The rest don't see it at all and are wondering what the heck is going on. I empathize.

Also, I wonder how much money would be lost by big pipe providers with multicast working everywhere

Money is going to be lost, for sure, but not to Multicast. That tech. is dead & gone. Mark.

I'm in Ohio. Dewine announced a stay at home order in the middle of the day. Our uplink that feeds more urban customers, kept increasing as per usual. Our uplink that feeds exclusively rural customers, leveled out - the usage peaked at 1600!!! I'd never seen it not peak at 2000-2400 at night. Josh Luthman Office: 937-552-2340 Direct: 937-552-2343 1100 Wayne St Suite 1337 Troy, OH 45373 On Mon, Mar 23, 2020 at 6:19 AM Alexandre Petrescu < alexandre.petrescu@gmail.com> wrote:

Le 23/03/2020 à 04:05, Aaron Gould a écrit :

...

I can see it now.... Business driver that moved the world towards multicast .... 2020 Coronavirus

I should abstain from writing about this but I think the situation of virus with a crown version year 2020 is not yet understood on business.

There are signs business would work as before: business challenges that we know worked are now tested with sponsoring open source projects on 3D-printed ventilators (respirator).

Other signs I see seem to differ: same kind of projects but not looking for money. That might not amount for 'business' but might save lives equally well.

It is not clear to me where it is heading to, probably a mix of the two.

And it is not clear to me where multicast might fit into this, because presumably an Internet-connected ventilator might not have much data to send, depending of course, if one wants to put a measurement device on another side of the planet and the breath on one side, and the air pressure might need to be transmitted instantaneously, like 'remote surgery' needs to transmit haptic feedback effect across long distances.

It's all hypothesis and speculation from my part.

Alex, LF/HF 3

...

Also, I wonder how much money would be lost by big pipe providers with

multicast working everywhere

...

-Aaron

-----Original Message----- From: NANOG [mailto:nanog-bounces@nanog.org] On Behalf Of Alexandre

Petrescu

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Sent: Sunday, March 22, 2020 3:41 PM To: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: Sunday traffic curiosity

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...

What was wrong with Internet scale multicast? Why did it get abandoned?

Grant Taylor via NANOG wrote on 22/03/2020 19:17: there wasn't any problem with inter-domain multicast that couldn't be resolved by handing over to level 3 engineering and the vendor's support escalation team.

But then again, there weren't many problems with inter-domain multicast that could be resolved without handing over to level 3 engineering and the vendor's support escalation team.

Nick For my part I speculate multicast did not take off at any level (inter domain, intra domain) because pipes grew larger (more bandwidth) faster

Le 22/03/2020 à 21:31, Nick Hilliard a écrit : than uses ever needed. Even now, I dont hear problems of bandwidth from some end users, like friends using netflix. I do hear in media that there _might_ be an issue of capacity, but I did not hear that from end users.

On another hand, link-local multicast does seem to work ok, at least with IPv6. The problem it solves there is not related to the width of the pipe, but more to resistance against 'storms' that were witnessed during ARP storms. I could guess that Ethernet pipes are now so large they could accomodate many forms of ARP storms, but for one reason or another IPv6 ND has multicast and no broadcast. It might even be a problem in the name, in that it is named 'IPv6 multicast ND' but underlying is often implemented with pure broadcast and local filters.

If the capacity is reached and if end users need more, then there are two alternative solutions: grow capacity unicast (e.g. 1Tb/s Ethernet) or multicast; it's useless to do both. If we cant do 1 Tb/s Ethernet ('apocalypse' was called by some?) then we'll do multicast.

I think,

Alex, LF/HF 3

On 23/Mar/20 12:18, Alexandre Petrescu wrote:

I should abstain from writing about this but I think the situation of virus with a crown version year 2020 is not yet understood on business.

There are signs business would work as before: business challenges that we know worked are now tested with sponsoring open source projects on 3D-printed ventilators (respirator).

Other signs I see seem to differ: same kind of projects but not looking for money.  That might not amount for 'business' but might save lives equally well.

It is not clear to me where it is heading to, probably a mix of the two.

It's going to be a battle between putting capitalism marginally aside and keeping humanity a going concern. I laugh when I see the news and hear some countries talking about how they are first to do this and the first do that, or the first to help this and the first to help, or the first to discover this and the first to discover that re: the Coronavirus. Okay, you're the first, and then what? What good is you being #1 if I am too poor or too dead to buy any of your #1'ness? But I digress. The world has been at 100% speed since 2010. This "forced leave" should be used as a great opportunity to slow down, take a step back, and think about what REALLY matters. The companies that will survive and do well in the new economy (during and post-Coronavirus) are not the ones that can gain the most profit, but the ones that can gain the most profit while actually caring about humanity, and offering real value (which = individual + company-wide fulfillment) Nothing against Mr. Gates, but let's not wait until we are 60+ to realize all the billions we've made can actually make meaningful, valuable difference, on a large scale. #ProfitAndFulfillmentIsTheNewGame

And it is not clear to me where multicast might fit into this, because presumably an Internet-connected ventilator might not have much data to send, depending of course, if one wants to put a measurement device on another side of the planet and the breath on one side, and the air pressure might need to be transmitted instantaneously, like  'remote surgery' needs to transmit haptic feedback effect across long distances.

I honestly don't think Multicast features anywhere on today's public Internet. Mark.

On Mar 22, 2020, at 13:41 , Alexandre Petrescu <alexandre.petrescu@gmail.com> wrote:

Le 22/03/2020 à 21:31, Nick Hilliard a écrit :

...

Grant Taylor via NANOG wrote on 22/03/2020 19:17:

...

What was wrong with Internet scale multicast? Why did it get abandoned?

there wasn't any problem with inter-domain multicast that couldn't be resolved by handing over to level 3 engineering and the vendor's support escalation team.

But then again, there weren't many problems with inter-domain multicast that could be resolved without handing over to level 3 engineering and the vendor's support escalation team.

Nick

For my part I speculate multicast did not take off at any level (inter domain, intra domain) because pipes grew larger (more bandwidth) faster than uses ever needed. Even now, I dont hear problems of bandwidth from some end users, like friends using netflix. I do hear in media that there _might_ be an issue of capacity, but I did not hear that from end users.

On another hand, link-local multicast does seem to work ok, at least with IPv6. The problem it solves there is not related to the width of the pipe, but more to resistance against 'storms' that were witnessed during ARP storms. I could guess that Ethernet pipes are now so large they could accomodate many forms of ARP storms, but for one reason or another IPv6 ND has multicast and no broadcast. It might even be a problem in the name, in that it is named 'IPv6 multicast ND' but underlying is often implemented with pure broadcast and local filters.

In most cases, though “local” filters, they are filters at the hardware interface level and don’t bother the OS, so… WIN! Also, in most cases, the solicited node address will likely be representative of an extremely small number of nodes on the network (very likely 1) so the number of CPUs that have to look at each NS packet is greatly reduced… WIN! Reducing the network traffic to just the ports that need to receive it is a pretty small win, but reducing the CPUs that have to look at it and determine “Nope, not for me.” is a relatively larger win. If the host properly implements IGMP joins and the switch does correct IGMP snooping, we get both. If not, we still get the CPU win.

If the capacity is reached and if end users need more, then there are two alternative solutions: grow capacity unicast (e.g. 1Tb/s Ethernet) or multicast; it's useless to do both. If we cant do 1 Tb/s Ethernet ('apocalypse' was called by some?) then we'll do multicast.

My inter domain multicast comment was largely tongue in cheek and was never intended as a serious proposal. There are a plethora of issues with inter domain multicast including, but not limited to the fact that it’s a great way to invite smurf-style attacks (after all, smurfing is what mcast groups are intended to do). Owen

It failed to scale for some of the exact same reasons QoS failed to scale - what works inside one administrative domain doesn't work once it crosses domain boundaries.

Plus, there's a lot more state to keep - if you think spanning tree gets ugly if the tree gets too big, think about what happens when the multicast covers 3,000 people in 117 ASN's, with people from multiple ASN's joining and leaving every few seconds.

add to that it is the TV model in a VOD world. works for sports, maybe, not for netflix randy

I think that's the thing: Drop cache boxes inside eyeball networks; fill the caches during off-peak; unicast from the cache boxes inside the eyeball provider's network to subscribers. Do a single stream from source to each "replication point" (cache box) rather than a stream per ultimate receiver from the source, then a unicast stream per ultimate receiver from their selected "replication point". You solve the administrative control problem since the "replication point" is an appliance just getting power & connectivity from the connectivity service provider, with the appliance remaining under the administrative control of the content provider. It seems to be good enough to support business models pulling in billions of dollars a year. This does require the consumption of the media to be decoupled from the original distribution of the content to the cache, obviously, hence the live sports mismatch. But it seems this catches enough of the use cases and bandwidth demands, and to have won the "good enough" battle vs. inter-domain multicast. I would venture there are large percentage increases now in realtime use cases as Zoom & friends take off more, but the bulk of the anecdotal evidence thus far seems to indicate absolute traffic levels to largely be below historical peaks from exceptional events (large international content distribution events). -- Hugo Slabbert | email, xmpp/jabber: hugo@slabnet.com pgp key: B178313E | also on Signal On Sun, Mar 22, 2020 at 3:51 PM Mark Tinka <mark.tinka@seacom.mu> wrote:

On 23/Mar/20 00:19, Randy Bush wrote:

...

add to that it is the TV model in a VOD world. works for sports, maybe, not for netflix

Agreed - on-demand is the new economy, and sport is the single thing still propping up the old economy.

When sport eventually makes into the new world, linear TV would have lost its last legs.

Mark.

But that’s already happening. All big content providers are doing just that. They even sponsor you the appliance(s) to make more money and save on transit costs ;)

Noted; this was a comment on what's already the case, not a proposal for how to address it instead. Apologies as I used poor phrasing here. -- Hugo Slabbert | email, xmpp/jabber: hugo@slabnet.com pgp key: B178313E | also on Signal On Sun, Mar 22, 2020 at 6:45 PM Łukasz Bromirski <lukasz@bromirski.net> wrote:

Hugo,

...

On 23 Mar 2020, at 01:32, Hugo Slabbert <hugo@slabnet.com> wrote:

I think that's the thing: Drop cache boxes inside eyeball networks; fill the caches during off-peak; unicast from the cache boxes inside the eyeball provider's network to subscribers. Do a single stream from source to each "replication point" (cache box) rather than a stream per ultimate receiver from the source, then a unicast stream per ultimate receiver from their selected "replication point". You solve the administrative control problem since the "replication point" is an appliance just getting power & connectivity from the connectivity service provider, with the appliance remaining under the administrative control of the content provider.

But that’s already happening. All big content providers are doing just that. They even sponsor you the appliance(s) to make more money and save on transit costs ;)

— ./

On 23/Mar/20 05:51, Owen DeLong wrote:

How do you see that happening? Are people going to stop wanting to watch live, or are teams going to somehow play asynchronously (e.g. Lakers vs. Celtics, the Lakers play on November 5 at 6 PM and the Celtics play on November 8 at 11 AM)?

Further, it would be more accurate to say that events with large live audiences are the only thing propping up the “old economy” and sport is probably by far the largest current application of live streaming.

I'll admit, this is not an easy one to solve. The problem you have is the kids who are driving the new economy have little to no interest in live sport. Old timers like ourselves still like watching live sport, and even better, betting on it for those who consider that an extra sport of sport. The kids are not into all of that, and despite the growth of online sporting conventions (eSports, Fortnite tournaments, Twitch binging, e.t.c.), it doesn't even register as a rounding-error on the balance sheets of the traditional sports establishment. To you pysch. majors, that means, "We - the old guard - don't care about any of that :-)". Linear TV networks know that most homes moving to VoD would prefer a sports-only package, so that they can pick that up from them and keep movies and series on VoD. However, the linear TV networks are leveraging that to keep pushing their traditional bouquets because then they have the justification to "charge that little bit extra" in order to deliver all the other content that sits side-by-side with sports. As I've been saying before, the Coronavirus has amplified and accelerated the realization that the old economy will not survive in this new digital era. As this applies to sport, Formula One have cancelled a heap of grand prix weekends this season, but this has forced them to, for the first time, hold eSports options, just this week:     https://www.grandprix247.com/2020/03/23/zhou-wins-virtual-bahrain-grand-prix... Is that a sign of things to come, yes and no. "No" in that there is simply too much money with the traditional setup to put aside for the bigger picture, but "Yes" in that during times like these, there might be way for folk to get their fix, unless you are a  purist. But even then, how long can you hold out for if another pandemic in 20 years loses us 2 whole years? One could speak of hybrid solutions where you watch linear TV, but then engage with the match/program online. In 2013, I saw a number of equipment vendors developing walled-garden solutions around this, and it was great. But as we all know, the kids gravitate to simpler solutions that offer obvious value, are downloadable from a public market store, and cost zero. So now, watching anything on TV means engaging via Twitter, not via some walled-garden app only open to a few, ships with a price tag, and crashes more than it is usable. In South Africa, our incumbent pay-TV provider is trialing offering some pre-dated sports content (amongst other channels) available for free (and only) online, as streamed live TV:     http://www.capetalk.co.za/articles/378021/dstv-offers-free-channels-and-show... This is both on the back of the Coronavirus, but also to trial options to satisfy those who don't want all the channels they offer, but just sports. Where all the VoD providers are letting linear TV networks keep running away with this model is by all of them chasing us to give them our US$10/month for what they feel is the killer VoD service in the world. As I've mentioned before on this list, consumer fatigue due to the "yet-another-new-VoD-provider-today" syndrome is growing. For as long as each VoD provider is competing for our business, linear TV will remain relevant because it's easier and cheaper for a consumer to give a linear TV provider one cheque that covers a variety of channels, vs. paying US$10/month for every VoD provider. And now major sports events and/or channels are also in the VoD game, each of them also charging US$10/month. It starts to add up pretty quick, and in the end, the case for linear TV is only strengthened. If linear TV is going to enter the new economy (especially to hit the kids), current VoD services are going to have to figure out how to aggregate. And if they don't, we all know who the one left standing is more likely to be :-). So let's keep watching this "linear TV for sports" thing develop. I hope to provide better insight in about a year :-).

Remember, this discussion started with a question about live-streaming church services.

In the “new normal” of a COVID lockdown world, with the huge increase in teleconferencing, etc. there may well be additional audiences for many-to-many multicast that aren’t currently implemented.

IMO, the only sane way to do this also helps solve the v4/v6 conferencing question.

Local Aggregation Points (LAPs) are anycast customer terminations. Backbone between LAPs supports IPv6-only and IPv6 multicast (intra-domain only). LAPs are not sharing routing table space with backbone routers. Likely some tunnel mechanism is used to link LAPs to each other to shield backbone routers from multicast state information.

Each “session” (whether an individual chat, group chat, etc.) gets a unique IPv6 multicast group. Each LAP with at least one user logged into a given session will join that multicast group across the backbone. Users connects to LAPs via unicast. If voice, video, slide, chat streams need to be separated, use different port numbers to do that.

Perhaps I'm biased, but while there might be a model, I don't think Multicast is the tool to drive it. Mark.

On 23/Mar/20 22:54, Owen DeLong wrote:

That hasn’t been my observation at any of the local sports bars. I actually have little to no interest in live sport (except maybe the occasional curling match, yeah, I’m not just old, I’m odd).

I think we each need to define what we mean by "the kids" :-).

Live sport seems quite popular among kids and millennials, at least in the US.

Yes, but as a proportion of those who drive how the Internet is re-defining traditional economies, how does that track? From an African perspective, my anecdotal observation is that it is mostly really young kids (you're talking from as little as 4 - 5 years old) and women (both young and old) that are influencing this "I don't care about how it all works, just get me my value" paradigm that is the new economy. And in both cases, the majority of them don't have a penchant for sport, live or on-demand. Much of that is relegated mostly to men, from early-teen boys all the way to us geezers, a demographic that, in my observation, don't use the Internet as dynamically as "the kids" and women.

Personally, I wish I could stop paying the “fee for access to local sports” that my linear provider charges every month.

Africa's primary sports broadcaster, amazingly, includes access to all sports, games and matches (regardless of their significance) as part of the flat monthly subscription fee. Whether your poison is boxing, motor racing, football (American and soccer), basketball, the Olympics, baseball, rally cross, iron man, e.t.c., local and international. They do not have a pay-per-view concept yet. It is something they are considering as a way to keep themselves relevant in a VoD world, but for now (and since ever), all major and minor sports events come for no additional cost.

Nonetheless, the younger people around me supposedly driving this new economy seem very focused on their love of live sports.

Would be interesting to know what age these "younger people" are, and if they are male or female. I've found the gender does actually matter, when it comes to watching sports.

Well, for the moment, live sports aren’t happening, at least locally, so how to televise them isn’t exactly an issue.

We all agree on that - but almost every sports event considered (until the rolling lockdowns) how they can continue their events with some combination of the Internet in play. The thing with sport, though, is that participants have to play. No players, no event. So even if there was a good solution to moving sports to the new economy, scenarios like the Coronavirus keeps players off the playing field. That doesn't mean that outside of these extreme cases, sports organizers aren't considering how to use the new economy, especially when those driving it will have far more influence on it, than traditional sports lovers.

I don’t think eSports will replace traditional sports,

And they were never meant to. Just like Formula-E and Formula One, it's just another avenue open to those who are interested. It's not meant to replace what the petrol heads like.

I think that for now, the sports organizations facing a sudden and dramatic loss of revenue and progressively more distressed fans are grasping at straws to find ways to keep their fans engaged, hoping for a near-term return to normal revenue activities. Remains to be seen how well that will work.

And that is the new economy that the Coronavirus has amplified and accelerated. Listen to your customer, engage them, and offer value (not product). Every industry is affected. No one is immune. Old, traditional models, as sensible as they seem, are going to be challenged, and a ton of them will simply disappear. For every call we make to Google Maps to get us from point A to B, there is a shop selling an atlas that is going out of business. You can't blame the Google, or the user, for that.

These have already been tried in a variety of ways, usually with limited success.

My advice is use the little time and money you have now to experiment with new models. 99% execution, 1% strategy; not the other way around. Don't wait until all the money and time runs out to experiment, and then you don't have any left of either.

This idea that things can cost zero is the most frustrating part. I’m so tired of not being able to buy apps instead of rent them. I’m fed up to here with apps that come with ridiculous loads of advertising. This shift from an ownership economy to a rental economy is terrible and I wish that we could somehow educate the kids on how much more it actually costs them.

Possibly the worst artifact is the “If you’re not paying, you’re the product” and the number of millennials that view the surveillance economy with a kind of “Yeah, so what? Privacy is so 1990.” attitude.

The folk on this list understand how it all works, which is why we either don't have Alexa in our homes and seal our laptop microphones and cameras with gaffer tape. For the rest of the world, they live in the Matrix, and to them, they spend more time chasing value. Being concerned about what they are giving up for that value is counter to their thought-process. The clever companies that know how to keep delivering that value will keep their customers hooked to "renting" it from them.

Yep… It’s also growing because as they fragment further and further (e.g. Disney launching their own and pulling content off Netflix), each one sucks just a little bit more with each transition and the price to the consumer to get everything they want keeps going up. Eventually, aggregators that can offer some form of a la carte licensing are going to spring into existence to meet that demand, but for now, the content providers aren’t ready because they haven’t lost enough customers to this frustration yet.

Agreed.

Not so sure about that. More and more people I talk to are finding less and less interesting on Netflix. Producing their own content has been Netflix’s response, but eventually, that model just turns them into yet another single-studio outlet.

You spoke too soon:     https://finance.yahoo.com/news/netflix-market-cap-surpasses-disney-123801623... But yes, I see what you mean; and for as long as VoD operators keep this as their goal, linear TV will never die.

If I had to wager on the last man standing in that arena, I think I’d say Disney to win, NBC/Universal to Place and tough to say who picks up the Show position.

I disagree, if your position is a global one. Sure, Disney are very likely to challenge Netflix in the U.S., but they don't seem - to me anyway - like they have the right DNA to take their game global, in the way Netflix has, and does. Netflix have 3 very key things going for it that give it far greater global presence than any other U.S. VoD service provider:     - Their own-produced content, meaning they can release without restriction.     - Their own, well-deployed network, meaning performance is always excellent.     - Country-specific content to identify with the locals. DIsney and many of the new VoD providers with a Hollywood background are relying on their "vast" libraries that made them wealthy decades ago to take over Netflix's market. The problem is my kids aren't interested in the "Lion King", for example. That's for you and me, the old timers; they have zero interest in trying to figure out who "Mickey Mouse" is. It's just the way they are...

You enjoy. I have no actual interest in linear TV for sports and amusingly, the linear programming that I do watch is recorded by my TiVO and time shifted so I can skip the stupid commercials.

For me, it's about seeing every business squirm as they are forced to re-think old strategies. The Coronavirus caught them off guard, but it was always coming.

The only time I watch ads is when they’re more interesting than the superbowl, which is pretty much every superbowl.

Well then, I'm sure you enjoyed Volvo's clever "interception marketing" number from 2015's superbowl:     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzWlm9PFamQ A perfect example of the new economy, where your competition is anyone with an Internet connection and an idea :-). Mark.

On 31/Mar/20 23:22, Owen DeLong wrote:

From my perspective, anyone born in this century pretty much qualifies as a kid at this point. Maybe even the last 3-4 years of the previous one.

To a great extent, yes. But I'd say the last 15 years have been very telling.

Turning consumers into products. Personally, not a fan and I think GDPR is a sure sign that there is a backlash coming. The main reason it is tolerated so far is most people aren’t aware of what it really means or even that it is actually happening.

Right - I'm speaking to the global view, and not a personal one. I do everything to stay away from being surveilled beyond what I am comfortable with, but taking a global view, we are the minority. For as long as I can foresee, I don't see us becoming the majority.

4-5 year olds don’t define the economy today and likely won’t have significant input into it for at least 10-11 years.

My observation is that they are _NOT_ the ones influencing this.

Ummh - the kids aren't "directly" participating in the economy, but they are certainly influencing. When your kid cries his lungs out because the walk from home to grandpa's meant he wasn't on Twitch, it makes you, the parent, re-think how you keep them connected between dead zones. What devices you buy them to keep them happy. What car you drive to keep them connected. Which services you purchase that support that mobility. Which restaurants or playgrounds you take them to where they can get free wi-fi, and on and on and on. The kids don't have to be direct economic contributors to have an influence on those that do. That has always been the case since we had to raise them, but now more so because of the new economy this Internet thing is birthing. For the last 8 or so years, I've resisted my wife's persistent pressures to get the kids a phone. They are now going to be 13, and I promised them phones when they either turn 20, or go to work and earn their own cash to buy their own phones if they want them sooner than that. I feel I had a handle on that for as long as I can remember, but in this hyper-connected world where school assignments are sent via e-mail, I may have to give in sooner than I planned :-\. Ah well, I had a good run :-).

That rather, it is the very large corporations and their ability to leverage big data and the surveillance economy for fun and profit that are driving this.

I won't argue with you there.

I will admit that 4-5 year olds are probably the most likely demographic to have no inkling as to what giving up their personal data means. I suppose rather like tobacco companies that getting them hooked in young does serve as a competitive advantage.

Haha, you place plenty of faith in the adult public. Almost everyone that I know who has no idea about how the Internet works (or cares to), will click "Yes", "OK", "Submit", "Proceed" without hesitation, just so that they can start using that app immediately. Where you and I may care why Apple will automatically sync. call logs between devices signed into the same iCloud account - and maybe even detest it - the majority of the adult population will see that as a convenience, as they can then remember who they called when, just by looking at any device.

I wouldn’t know. I’m not a subscriber and not particularly interested in any of their products.

Fair enough. Again, my view is not a personal one, but rather, what the wider world is doing.

As I said, I wish I could get the local $CABLECO to turn off my “access to local sports” and stop charging me a monthly fee for something I don’t want.

Sounds like you should, as some like to say these days, "Cut the cord" :-).

All genders seem to be relatively equally represented. Age range is probably about 7-25. Here, it seems there are as many female sports fans as male among the younger crowds.

That's interesting. It's not the sense I get in Africa (or in Asia-Pac, when I lived there). Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying women aren't into sports, I'm saying my observation on this side is not as much as men. I wonder if the female sports lovers in the U.S. mostly gravitate toward a single sport, or if that is evenly spread across the sport spectrum.

Sure, they’re all desperate to try and find a way to preserve their revenue stream.

Being an F1 fan, Mercedes and Red Bull are now manufacturing breathing aids to help with Coronavirus patients. Talk about that ugly "business strategy" word I hate to use - pivoting :-). No industry is safe.

Perhaps Twitch won the lottery as professional sports may be forced to move to remote competition via gaming consoles. :(

I tend to doubt it as I think fans will find other things to do rather than make the migration.

Yes and no. I think traditional fans that like to enter stadia or go to the track will find other things to do because they are purists. But there are plenty of kids that are into gaming, play eSports and are used to congregating on Twitch. They'd rather spend ticket money for a real live event on a new computer rig to improve their online sporting/gaming presence. The kids (and anyone else with an affinity for that avenue) will likely be the ones to take sports digital. Hard to predict, but will be interesting to watch, as it definitely has an impact on network operations, going forward.

I wasn’t the one arguing that they would. Seems your trying to argue both sides of the coin here.

And there's nothing wrong with that. My view of the new economy is not an all-or-nothing scenario. Many shifts will happen, but we'd be wise to understand why some either won't, or will have a significant lag in doing so. My prediction is that those who offer the most basic services, i.e., where your hands, feet, and muscles are required, will always sustain, simply because we can't eat bits, or wear them, or sleep in them, or bathe them.

Well, I don’t see the 49ers ever offered value, or product, but that’s just my opinion, obviously.

Right, but again, the view is a global one, not a personal one. Sports is big business because ordinary people are willing to pay good money to enjoy it. It gives them value, whether that makes sense to some of us or not. Rinse and repeat for every other business out there, and its patrons.

Certainly at the moment they don’t seem to be offering anything, even anything like what they previously offered. Remains to be seen whether the NFL and its ilk will survive this process or not. I have to admit, I won’t mourn their loss if they don’t make it.

Yes, it will definitely be interesting to see.

Uh, no… You’ve got that ratio way out of proportion and it’s not an accurate statement at all, except the last part.

My example about Google Maps and the atlas was meant to be overarching, and not specific. My point is that many things we used to either do or pay for in the traditional economy have now been simplified and made available online. Either via a web site, or most likely, an app. When we buy stuff online, the shop down the road suffers. The gas stations suffer because we don't drive our cars to that shop. The little coffee shop inside the gas stations suffers because we are not at the gas station to buy gas. The company that makes the straws that you use to stir the sugar in the coffee you would have bought will suffer because, well, you didn't buy the coffee. The newspaper kiosk that is right next to the gas station won't sell any papers because you are not going to the gas station anymore, but more likely, because who reads newspapers in 2020? When the shopping centres start to close because we prefer to buy online, what about the security guards that worked there? The bakery that worked out of the shopping centre would close down because we buy online, and the airline that used to buy bread from them for inflight meals now has to increase prices because they had to switch supplier. When you choose to work out with an online session (as many are doing now due to the Coronavirus), there is a gym membership that could get cancelled. So your gym trainer suffers. The company that made the gym equipment suffers. The company that maintains the gym pool suffers. The power company that sold electricity to the gym suffers. My point, for everything that we used to do in the traditional economy that transitions into the new economy, someone out there is suffering. Whether that's good or bad, or whether someone is to blame or not is irrelevant to Average Jane, because she just sees value in the convenience of buying online, regardless of the trickle-down effect.

I don’t blame google or amazon. Just like I have no sympathy for the taxi cartels that were crying “they’re stealing our business” about Lyft and the other ride-share companies. In fact, when the taxi cartels were getting away with pressuring cities like Los Angeles to do crazy shit to stop Lyft and the others from doing airport pickups, I rather went to extremes to apply opposing pressure…

And the traditional probably will die, unless they find a way to adapt and play the game like Uber and the rest. That's the deal, short of gubbermint decree. In South Africa, the postal company (a gubbermint function) was asking for a new law to prevent private delivery companies from handling packages under 1kg. I have no sympathy for that... if you have the time and energy to spend in keeping yourself afloat through artificial means like litigation, then you have the time and energy to adapt your business model to the new economy and survive by offering value. Failing that, you're welcome to die.

I’m not in that position, fortunately. Old economy, new economy, either way, they still need pipes to move bits. I’ve always been mostly on the execution side of moving bits.

I'm not sure any of us can say we are "safe" from the effects of the new economy. Yes, pipes are needed to move the new-economy bits; people still need water, food, clothes, electricity, wood, fuel and all the other real things necessary for basic human function, despite some idea that all of those things can be "automated". We can't eat automation. And we can't eat bits. If some large corporation is coming into your backyard offering their services for free so you can be their product, and forcing traditional companies that offered services for a fee into selling those services at or below cost, there will be an impact. It's difficult to "evolve" away from offering basic pipe, because physical infrastructure is the basic need for the new economy to develop. However, it doesn't mean that we won't need to make changes to how we've operated in the past, as cost and price pressures from "the big boys" shave those zero's from our P&L's, and all the pleasures and joys that come along with it:     https://www.euronews.com/2019/03/11/vodafone-plans-1130-jobs-cuts-in-italy

Meh… I think the most clever companies are the ones who have found ways to keep their products hooked to them while delivering their value to their true customers. Unfortunately, I think they are also among the most despicable form of parasite we’ve ever seen.

I don't disagree. We don't have to like them, but we can concede when they are "clever".

Market cap is merely one measure. It represents the current market opinion of the legitimate sale price of the company and little else.

I'm not a stocks guy - I find financial engineering annoying. But for those to whom it matters...

Nonetheless, even if Netflix turns out to be a better single-studio outlet than Disney, everything I said still holds true.

Probably, yeah. Curious to see where it goes.

Really? Are you sure you’re accounting for all that is Disney?

I know how large they are. Having all these companies is great. Means nothing if you can't harness them all to show your customers value. They have a great opportunity here, I just haven't yet seen them execute it, globally. Also, I'm a patient, observant man :-).

So can Disney, Comcast/NBC/Universal, and Time Warner.

Will the Hollywood legends be happy to release all their content in all their territories of business, worldwide, at the same time? They've been very keen on region rights, et al. That's where I am saying Netflix - with their original content - have an advantage.

Disney has a lot more of this than I think you realize.

I'm talking about their own network, not through the use of a 3rd party CDN. But if you have more information about this than I currently know, would be grateful to hear about it.

Not sure about the international extent of Comcast and/or Time Warner.

No clue, I haven't seen them feature in many places outside of the U.S.

This statement tells me that you CLEARLY have underestimated the vast extent of the Disney reach and don’t realize how many things you wouldn’t expect when you hear the name Disney are owned by Disney.

On the contrary, as stated earlier. Disney do have an opportunity to pull it all together. Will they, remains to be seen. Where I really think Disney and the Hollywood types have a huge advantage over Netflix is in cinema releases. They have, traditionally, made movies for cinema, and collect plenty of cash at the door during an opening weekend. The new economy (especially one in this Coronavirus era) considers that I can enjoy value and convenience without leaving the house. If they can adapt their business model to deliver box office cinema movies to the home, over the Internet, worldwide, at the same time, it would be a windfall of massive proportions, given even the kids don't mind leaving their devices and paying for another episode of "The Avengers". Of course, they'd have to "get over themselves", and that's where I feel they may miss the boat, if they don't. Short of that, it will be a slug-fest with Netflix. I know some movies that have either just left the theatres or still there have been brought early to VoD:     https://www.techhive.com/article/3532460/movies-available-for-streaming-earl... But like I keep saying, every business will suffer:     https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2020/03/coronavirus-movie-release-calen... The Coronavirus has merely accelerated and amplified what has been in the pipeline for yonks.

Again, I don’t see every business squirming. I see lots of businesses squirming.

You seem to think some businesses won't feel the pinch. I wouldn't blame you. But every business will be affected, one way or the other. Even Uber, which is probably the epitome of the new economy in its most simplistic form, can't carry on its business because the Coronavirus has us all locked up. No business is safe. No business is immune. Find a way to adapt, or die. How did Uber adapt their business? Uber Eats - and that actually makes them money, compared to their classic ride share service. Even in the new economy, you can't sleep soundly.

I see some businesses that were poised to take advantage of this (and yes, Netflix was one of them), and I see some businesses that have been easily adapted. I also see some businesses that have chosen to be flat out despicable in the process, among them Whole Foods and Amazon, both of whom could have chosen to be public heroes with very little effort and instead chose to be 19th century plantation owners.

Agreed.

Admittedly, 2015 was one of the years I was lucky enough to avoid the Super Bowl.

I stopped going to PTC a few years back. It's the only time I remembered when the Super Bowl was coming up, as the teams all spent a week or so in Hawaii around the same time :-). NFL isn't big in Africa, hehe.

Hats off to volvo for a clever bit of trickery, but I didn’t even know it happened and don’t feel like I missed anything in the process.

Again - global view, not a personal one. But yes, Volvo adapted cleverly, and used the Internet to - there's that dirty word again - "pivot" a traditional marketing strategy into one the kids of this time can understand and engage with. All the best apps on your phone probably don't have a large billboard, TV or newspaper ad that made you hear about them. Most likely, you heard about them from a friend, a group of friends or, at worst, some random Youtube thing when you were too late to click "Skip Ad". That's the marketing of the future - if you make something that people want to use (not pay for), they will market it for you.

Meh.

I’ve got an internet connection and lots of ideas. What I don’t have is the capital to hire the necessary additional expertise and convert them to products. Further, since I want to play in the anti-surveillance economy with products that are directly opposed to those in the surveillance economy, it’s unlikely I can get funding or that the products I would like to make would actually win in the market place.

No one said it would be easy :-). But don't worry, there is a kid somewhere half way across the world that isn't worried about any of those things, hehe. Mark.

On 1/Apr/20 21:46, Owen DeLong wrote:

I don’t pretend to have a global view. I have my own perspective. I do my best to understand perspectives of others. Claiming to be able to speak from a global view is beyond my abilities. I am truly impressed that you are able to do so.

Please teach me how to develop such a perspective.

There was a time when having a different mobile phone was the thing. The smaller, the better. Then there came a time when running a different OS on your phone was a thing. Symbian or Windows Mobile or BlackBerry. Then came smartphones in 2007, and owning an iPhone was a thing. Then there was a time when having certain apps was a thing. Then Samsung and Google hit the scene and owning one was a thing. Then there was a time when having a certain version of Android was a thing. In 2020, nobody cares what phone you have, how large or small it is, what apps you have or use, or how long your battery lasts. In this hyper-connected world, all most people care about is utility and value. If 2 billion people of God's green earth can all coalesce around Facebook and WhatsApp, how different are we, really?

Yes, but the solution to that is education.

In this new economy, the concept of how the kids learn is changing fast. While we want to force many of them to follow the traditional schooling system we all went through, I'm not sure that's the right approach anymore. Information is a commodity now, and the kids will learn the way they want to, formal schooling or not. So yes, education is certainly how you fix this. But how do you effectively get that message across to a set of people who will only tune into what they like, when they like, and find all your rules boring and overbearing?

Not so sure about that. I think that GDPR and similar legislation sweeping through the world is an indication that more and more people are becoming aware of the issue, even if the tide is not yet turning against the surveillance economy.

When this lockdown is over, I'll randomly ask the kids, street vendors and taxi drivers what GDPR is. I'll let you know what I find :-).

Only among the weakest-minded parents.

The world is a diverse place.

Actually, it makes me rethink whether the child should be using Twitch at all. When my child cries her lungs out because she’s deprived of some app or connectivity for some period of time, the result is that she loses access to that item for a significantly longer period of time. It only took a few instances of this for her behavior to shift from temper tantrum to negotiation.

Good man.

Keeping my child connected is absolutely NOT a factor in an automotive purchase decision in my household. It’s a byproduct of keeping me and/or my wife connected, if it is a consideration at all. (So far, not).

Good for you, and the Mrs.

Mobility services, again, focus is the needs of the adults in this area. The child has a wifi-only iPad and a bare-bones unlimited plan on her mobile that comes with 2GB of LTE high speed data per month and drops to 128k after she burns through that (usually in the first 5 days of the billing cycle, though she is getting better about rationing it and paying attention to when she’s using mobile data vs. wifi.

I'm delaying all that for as long as I can. For the moment, they are reasonably sociable human beings, whose first words when they enter someone else's home aren't, "What's the wi-fi?" I'll enjoy these moments. This hyper-connected world is only going to get worse.

IMHO, if parents are catering to a greater level of screen addiction in their kids, they’re not teaching their kids a variety of important life skills.

True story.

I’m not as convinced of this as you are, but time will tell.

There is definitely behavior in evidence that aligns with your statements. However, there is less evidence to support your conclusions of the reasons behind that behavior.

I like studies and papers and all that, but I also have a healthy dose of 1+1. I'm not always right (if ever), but I don't strive to be. I'm just observing my surroundings.

LOL

My daughter has a phone. She’s 11. She’s had a phone since she was 7. However, she has that phone for the convenience of the adults. It provides an easy way to track her whereabouts and an easy way for us to get in touch with her to coordinate things. Any other benefit she derives from the phone are “privileges” subject to restriction (her phone has parental management on and most of the settings are locked down. She cannot install new apps without specific permission (enforced via the app store) and she has a very limited set of apps on the phone.). The web browser is disabled on her phone. She’s required to put it in “airplane” mode before school each day and take it out of “airplane” mode when she leaves school each day.

Again, not because she wanted a phone, but for the convenience of the adults in the household.

Growing up, we waited for our folks to come pick us up from school. Sometimes, when they were late, they found us crying, and that was a guaranteed slap across the face. We stopped crying for them being late after that. For my kids, their school has a phone booth. They know our phone numbers by heart. We give them a calling card. Else, we'll pick them up from school when it closes for the day, or receive a call from their teacher or principle as to an emergency. If they are not at school but also not at home, they are with us. We bought them cheap tablets (those no-name brand ones that run some dodgy version of Android) which we lock up for the entire week of school and only release to them after class on Friday evening. They will enjoy that for the weekend and return them on Sunday night. Rinse, repeat, until the school holidays. Obviously, they know their way around the Internet more than I or the wife probably do, but we can all enjoy 5 days of them not staring at a screen, unless it's 25 minutes in the evening for all of us to catch the day's local soap episode on the tube :-).

Not at all. I believe that a higher percentage (3-5% or so) of the adult population understand and actively try to avoid surveillance vs. the 4-5 year old population (close to 0% even know the word surveillance).

Mostly agree - I think the adult % is lower than that, if you consider "adult" in this hyper-connected age is anyone over 13. Certainly, many adults are concerned about privacy, especially of their kids being online (whether they can actually control it or not is an entirely different matter). However, I'm not so sure they are as vigilant when it comes to themselves. As part of my DJ'ing thing, I am now holding shows online, streaming to Youtube and what-not. I installed an app to turn my phone into a 1080p camera... cheaper than buying a new web cam or trying to turn my idiotic Go Pro camera into a sensible digital device. This app won't allow me to use until I give it permission to access both my camera and microphone, even though I only need the former. Fair point, you can disable the mic in the software once it's loaded, but you can't open the app if you take away its ability to reach the microphone as a base rule. Plenty of social apps used by several adults behave in this way. For those that are configurable, it's too much admin. for folk, and they simply trust the app's author to "have their best interests at heart". And as I said before, people will give your app one try, maybe two. If it's too complicated, they move on, and part of that includes them tapping every little dialog box that says, "Agree and Continue".

Yep… As I said, 95-97% of adults are in this camp. But I bet it’s closer to 100% of the 4-5 year olds, given the chance.

You're generous on the adults, but agree re: the kids :-).

Actually, I appreciate the way Apple has done this. They specifically don’t use your data, they just transport it. They encrypt it so that even they can’t see it.

Google, OTOH, not so much.

iCloud is the opposite of what I am railing against. It’s rather well implemented and does contain strong privacy protections. So much so that it has frustrated multiple governments.

Subpoena — Give us user X’s data. Apple — Well, we can give you the encrypted stuff we have, but we don’t have the key, so good luck with it. Government — Decrypt it for us. Apple — We don’t have the key, we can’t do that. Government — Install a back door. Apple — Uh, no.

This almost went to a US test case after the shooting in San Bernardino in 2016.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI–Apple_encryption_dispute

Though that was an iPhone and not iCloud, it showed Apple’s commitment to getting this right. The only reason it didn’t become a test case was because the FBI found a third party that hacked the phone for them (the vulnerability they exploited was limited to older phones, Apple hardware of the time could not be broken this way).

It’s not clear how the case would turn out or what Apple would do if they lost.

I largely agree with how Apple (advertise that they) protect privacy. But my point wasn't that or to pick on them. My point was very few of us will actually check to verify that the privacy claims being advanced by a service provider or vendor are actually true. Most people will blindly assume that the provider has their best interests at heart, has thought about it all, and that they can take them at their word for it. After all, they are a big name brand with a globally-recognized company logo and service, surely they did they checked all the boxes before pushing out this app/service, right? Most folk will go after the convenience, because in that convenience, they perceive value, and the providers know how to keep that value coming to them to retain their patronage. You, me and the rest of the folk on the list will be a little bit more discerning, a lot less trusting, and generally always suspicious. But that's about what, +/-10,000 people in a sea of billions? More, obviously, but you know what I mean. And corporations aren't trying to "unhook" eyeballs from this paradigm, because that's what brings the money in. Heck, I wouldn't mind a piece of the action myself :-).

Well, $CABLECO is also $ISP and $ISP+$CABLE < $ISP alone in this weird world of perverse economic incentives, even after accounting for that annoying unnecessary charge.

I’d love to switch to a different $ISP, but unfortunately, the choices here are Comcast ($CABLECO) CMTS and AT&T ($TELCO) DSL. I get 200M/5M from $CABLECO. The best $TELCO can do is 1.5M/384k (on a good day when it’s dry outside).

As such, I’m kind of stuck.

I hear you. It's kind of crazy, actually, isn't it :-). I've found you get a lot more flexibility in plenty of countries around the world you, ordinarily, would not expect, if you use the U.S. as an economic gold standard :-).

Oh, gender roles remain much more traditional in Africa and to some extent in Asia than in the North America, Europe, and Australia, no question about that based on my observations in fairly wide travel.

No, it's not that. Rwanda has over 60% of women in gubbermint. Namibia is just over 46%. South Africa is at about 43%. Worldwide, that's #1, #6 and #10, respectively. In that top 10 list, the only European country that features is Sweden, at #7. Mexico is at #4 with just under 50%, and represents all of North America. Don't even know where Australia ranks. My point is, culturally, while gender roles may be alive and well in Africa, Asia-Pac and Latin America, women in these countries have the same level of access to programming as their fellow men do. They just have significantly less interest in it.

I don’t have data to support this, but it seems to apply equally well to at least Football and Baseball. Less so to the gear-head sports, but the female audience for those seemed to be growing there too.

I'll spend some time observing this more. Fascinating...

Ford had to be ordered to do so. First reasonable EO to come from the Orange Idiot. (though he resisted doing it as long as he could)

:-)... no one is immune, not even Orange.

Perhaps. The question remains whether that will result in long term economic viability.

Well, as with pretty much any business in 2020 that needs the Internet to support not only its growth, but its survival, straight-up "Here's a service, pay me money", is not going to be a viable model for most anymore. The model now is: acquire the user, retain the user, use data provided by (or learned from) the user to make the actual money. Then retain that user further so that if the initial reason you acquired them is no longer working, pivot that to something else (e.g., you stop selling books and move into online retail + cloud computing) to keep them so you can keep using their data to keep making the actual money.

Not really. Online games are relatively low bandwidth compared to streaming video.

At APRICOT this year, we had a paper that an author had submitted about the rise in game watching, i.e., kids that watch other kids playing games. Unfortunately, due to the Coronavirus and all that, he wasn't able to make it to Melbourne to give the talk. But it opened my eyes to what I was already seeing at home and in the general gaming community in South Africa. Twitch, UStream, Smashcast.tv, Youtube Gaming, Periscope, e.t.c., are starting to play their part in increasing the rise in online video traffic. The preso would have shown that in 2020, online gaming and game watching will be a US$170 billion business, growing to just under US$200 billion in 2022, with Asia-Pac leading that charge at nearly 50% of the market. So while we try to figure out whether Netflix, Disney+ and friends need to throttle back on video resolution in order to "save the Internet", I expect that by the end of this decade, we shall have had to engineer for a major rise in online game watching, as it appears that more kids watch others playing games online than actually play games themselves. Nothing special, it will just be more video - but not from the current usual crop.  

Of course the live streaming of video of online game contests could be a different matter, but I suspect that if the network becomes an issue there, they’ll simply develop “watch-only” clients for the games in question that take the same stream from the play server as any other game client. At that point, it’s a low-bandwidth thing again.

No, my focus is more on watching of games, live or post-event, not actually playing them. Turns out that ratio isn't 1:1 - more kids spend plenty of time watching games that were played in the past, than playing them. Especially those who don't have very advanced gaming rigs, or restrictive game-playing hours.

Now if you’re still operating a high latency or worse, a high-jitter network, then you’ll have some issues you’ll need to address as games are very sensitive to both latency and jitter, but that’s a solved problem in most of the developed world already.

It's the usual - get the game servers closer to the eyeballs, just as we did with other web traffic and CDN's.

Uh, no. First, no airline (at least in the US) is buying their bread from some local bakery. Second, the bakeries in shopping centers aren’t suffering from on-line sales because people want their baked goods fresh, not via overnight fedex. In fact, the proliferation of new bakeries that was happening prior to COVID clearly indicates otherwise. At least here in the US, people like their fresh baked goods and are willing to pay for them in person.

My point was every supplier has a supplier, and when supplies run low, they call on everyone. So while the little bakery down the road does not supply the airline directly, they probably support the company that supports the company that supports the company that does. Re: the mad-buying rush, same here, as with everywhere else I'm sure. The moment the prez announced the lockdown (3 days ahead of it), the panic-buying started. I've never seen more cars or people in one place at the same time. The worst was the day before the lockdown; you'd think we'd just been told Earth was relocating to another solar system and everyone wanted to make sure the ride would be filled with food, beer, toilet paper and hand sanitizer :-). But that's just a lapse back into human nature, and our intrinsic need for basic survival and preservation.

Sure… But really, I don’t think that’s permanent and most people that have gym memberships are paying for them on autopilot and don’t think to cancel even if they aren’t using it. Why do you think gyms never raise their prices on old memberships? They don’t want to do anything to remind that customer that’s paying and not using about that fact.

People that actively move from physical to online gyms will cancel their memberships. The rest that visit the gym 3 out of 36 times that they should be just "feel good" that the membership is there. All it takes is a kid with a 360-degree idea about getting rid of that membership and "getting results" from home, to flip the entire gym model on its head. And that's what I've been saying all along - the traditional gym model works, but they'd do well to adapt to the new economy while they still can, before they realize Uber came and stole their taxi rides right form underneath their sweaty palms :-).

Sure, but that’s been the case since before the industrial revolution. There’s nothing new about this from of economic evolution.

The industrial revolution was a major shift from the way economies were operated prior to it. Yes, the industrial revolution has given us technology and the Internet, and much of it still depends on it. But make no mistake, the industrial era, as a model for the future at scale, is pretty much dead. We are now in a digital era, where information is commoditized and everyone is hyper-connected to receive it all, good and bad. The industrial revolution focused on roles. The digital era wants impact. The industrial revolution focused on expertise. The digital era wants continuous learning. The industrial revolution focused on profit. The digital era wants care and compassion. The industrial revolution focused on giving instructions. The digital era calls for asking questions. The industrial revolution focused on knowledge. The digital era wants us to be curious. The industrial revolution set static goals for us to achieve (job, house, car, spouse, children, wealth, legacy). The digital era wants us to find purpose. It's going to hit. And it's going to hit hard! I mean, you are seeing it already with the Coronavirus, which has only amplified and accelerated the above.

There are still various moves afoot to try and cause additional regulatory burden and/or legislative difficulty for the app-based ride-shares and the so-called gig-economy.

It won't work, because for the kids, Command & Control is gone. You can't force them to use a service or system from which they do not derive value. One try, maybe two, and if they don't like your app, it's gone. Simple. And more importantly, your customers are no longer just the folk that walk into your store from up the road. They are anyone, anywhere, in the world, with an Internet connection. The Internet never had geographic boundaries. In the digital era, this is much more obvious.

Then if you really want to go through the looking glass, we’ve now got a president claiming that Amazon is “abusing the postal system” by being one of its largest customers.

And like all clever companies that think on their feet and pivot their model to adapt to the changing times in this digital era, what do Amazon do? Not fight, or try to take on Orange; they instead create their own form of "Uber" for deliveries (many of whom were former Amazon floor staff), and build an airline to ship goods. Simple. Adapt or die. Especially if you still have the money and time to do so. I have no sympathy for anyone that tries to stay in business through legislation.

Nobody is ever safe, economically speaking.

Yes, but as your body needs external nutrients daily to survive, you have to do whatever you can to improve your chances of economic survival - because even if we suddenly came to all of our senses and stopped aspiring to amassing as much money as we can in lieu of purpose, there will still be an economy, of some sort or other.

My favorite version of this was the real estate investor that tried to explain to me that now that we had virtual servers, the next step would be to virtualize the datacenter and eliminate physical infrastructure altogether. I wished him the best of luck with that plan and walked away shaking my head.

You should have offered him a seat on the B737-MAX to go visit the construction site on Cloud Nine, while you were at it :-).

Yes… The trick here is consumer education and regulation that requires fully informed consent by the consumer willing to become the product.

The reason these meet with such high success today is that most consumers don’t realize they’re becoming a product.

And to be honest, many don't want to know. Haven't you noticed that the first networks a new peer on an exchange point wants to have eBGP sessions with are always the same 4 or 5. The world over? And that they will fall (not bend) over backwards seeing to those sessions coming up like their entire network and business depended on them? Heck, they'd sign away their grandmother in a heartbeat for those eBGP sessions. Most folk don't want to know. They are just after obtaining their value.

Sure… But at the end of the day, someone still needs to deploy that infrastructure. Hopefully it will be a few years yet before that degrades salaries too far. Hopefully in about 15 years, I won’t care.

Well, in 15 years when you don't care, there are others, our kids, who will. What are we leaving behind for them? Many CxO's of many companies that are going to die because they refuse to adapt, are only sticking around to milk those companies until they have enough stashed away to say, "Right, I'm done. Time for someone else to sink this ship". They all already see the decline. They already see the new economy chipping at their heels. They just don't have the DNA or the culture to make the shift. For those, I have no sympathies, especially if you are wise to what's coming.

Sure, this is every day news regardless of industry.

Well, mobile businesses have been cash cows for years. All they had to do is sit at a desk, design swanky ads, find clever ways to sell the same Megabyte of data 50 times to the same person, and watch the ATM print money. Well, voice and SMS died, and Data growth is putting pressure on the P&L. Even when they made 110% margin back in the day, and are probably still at a healthy 40% margin in 2020, that's a big dip. And rather than find a way to pivot their business into one that offers value (connectivity is not value; what's at the end of it is), it's easier for them to do the usual - cut salaries, cut jobs, and save cash all the way into profitability.

Did you ever see the movie “Wall Street”?

Yep, both of them :-). It'll all come to a head. I mean, it's not like it hasn't happened before - 2000, 2008, 2010 and now again in 2020. They never learn.

That wasn’t about how large they are, but about how diverse they are.

I'm sure you know what I meant :-).

That’s why I mentioned the specific ones that were global even before they were acquired by Disney. Disney’s been on a crazy buying binge ever since they got rid of Eisner (AKA Lord Farquaad and thank goodness he’s gone).

A lot of their purchases have been aimed at expanding their international capability.

That was my point. Domestically, they’ve been a very effective executor. Internationally, it’s just a matter of time and acquisitions before they find the right mix. Their domestic performance and conservative cash management has left them with a pretty strong war chest for international experimentation until they get it right.

Domestically in the U.S. doesn't really interest me, because everyone fighting over 330 million people (many of whom aren't economically addressable) can only take you so far. It's how they execute globally that I am watching, and where I think Netflix have done a fabulous job. I'm not saying they can't be unseated. I'm just saying Disney will need to do a lot more than "just show up".

I think this will eventually evolve over time. If Netflix shows stronger success, then all they have to do to kneecap Netflix is start doing so.

Why take that risk when you can sit back and see what happens to the other guy and make a later decision with very little cost and nothing at risk?

Because in this new economy, you are in a better position if you experiment when you have both the time and the cash. You have just about zero chance if you lose one or both of those attributes.

But it’s a fleeting advantage and it’s not clear yet whether it’s an actual advantage over-all.

I've seen it work in Africa and Asia-Pac, where folk who have never been interested in VoD services suddenly sign-up (even if for the free trial period) because of a show that spoke to them at a local, personal level, in lieu of some production made in a country whose language they can't speak. My boss' mother is pushing 80-something, and is an avid Netflix fan because they have a huge catalog of content made for her country. Before then, she couldn't be asked. The U.S. (apart from the Asians and Latinos) is mostly a single, English-based culture. My guess is you'd have a lot of Asians and Latinos watching plenty of related content on Netflix in the U.S., but that's just my 1+1, since I don't live there. This strategy is a hit for Netflix, because outside of the U.S. and the UK, most other countries have a diverse range of cultures within them, and English hardly features, if at all.

Disney’s own CDN is wider spread than I think you realize, but that doesn’t really matter… If you want to turn up a CDN overnight in a new territory, then all that is really required is VPS providers in the territory and the ability to deploy your CDN onto VPS. Disney definitely has both of those things. Beyond that, it’s just a matter of clicking the GO button for each territory you want to target. Then for places that show significant demand, you can deploy actual infrastructure later as a cost reduction measure to free you from the high cloud fees.

That's my point - it's the usual "99% strategy 1% execution" model... sit back, wait for demand, push the GO button. Since moving back to Africa in 2012, I spent about 5 years roaming Europe and the U.S. trying to talk every CDN provider I could find into building in Africa; and this was on the back of me doing all the hard work (space, power, cooling, bandwidth, remote hands, e.t.c.). All they had to do was put a warm body on the matter. Many scoffed. The few that listened saw the vision, and put both their feet in. Those are the ones sitting pretty right now, while all the rest are 4 years too late and scrambling with VPS providers that aren't always adequate. And yes, there is a reason Netflix are the #1 VoD provider in Africa, much like the rest of the world.

Sure, but at this point, it remains to be seen how many cinemas will exist post COVID-19.

Like I've been saying, many will die. They can blame it on the Coronavirus all they want, but that was merely an accelerant, and an amplifier.

Well, they already have the streaming capability for all of their “old” content, so really, that’s just a matter of making the decision to release new content through that mechanism. Of course it would also involve either adjustments to their revenue expectations for that or to their current pricing models for that service. Maybe something like Amazon Prime where some content is free and other is available for an additional fee.

And as they remain in that "just a matter of making the decision" phase, they keep losing ground. It's the 99% world vs. the 1% world. 99% execution, 1% strategy. Or as more dirty words would call it, "Agility". Move away from % points, and think about philosophy. Some failure and associated batteries included - but START!

I doubt that they will miss the boat entirely, but I think they’re watching CBS, Netflix, and Amazon Prime to see which model wins before jumping all in on digital.

Well, if anyone still thinks digital is the little brother to the industrial revolution, they are already late to the party. Luckily for Hollywood, they have deep pockets. But as you can see due to the Coronavirus, those pockets suddenly have a bottom when your traditional model is taken for a spin in the new rocket:     https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/18/movie-theater-owners-request-a-bailout-amid-...

Yep. I expect this to be an increasing trend. Netflix put a big finger-in-the-eye on the other studios when they simultaneously released the same feature in theaters and on streaming.

That's what I'm talking about... 99% execution, 1% strategy. Keep being agile, flip the game over and over and over; not only to keep your competition guessing, but also your customers. Just like in romantic love, customers who are always guessing, stay to find out what's next. It's quite simple, really :-). The goal is to keep your customers sticking around. You don't make money from empty seats.

No doubt. Never said otherwise. I figured this conversation was more about what would likely succeed vs. likely die as we move forward, not so much about the extent to which everyone would suffer.

Well, that's also relevant, because many companies will suffer in realizing they need to adapt to the new economy, and then survive. Yes, it will mean drastic changes to how the business is operated, staffing, services, e.t.c. But the biggest changes will be the two hardest ones to achieve: * Leadership philosophy; advancing to a style of humility, vulnerability, and most importantly, empathy. * Culture philosophy; is your goal profit, or purpose? Notice none of the two points above speak to titles, roles, experience, education, products, services, equipment, infrastructure, money in the bank, size of the team, number of Senior VP's, and all that stuff we've been raised to think is what will chart businesses into this new economy. The kids don't care if you're a famous CEO, a broke or wealthy one, if you advertise for an hour on radio everyday, if you have a fancy logo, if you are a Fortune 100 company, whether you have a PhD, or any of that drivel. All they care about it is, "Does his app work, do I like the service, am I willing to use it, does it give me value". The rest, these kids couldn't care less if you paid them.

Sure, but some are actually benefiting… Local grocers and warehouse stores as an example. Panic buying, more restrictive return policies, hoarding have all led to increased sales and reduced costs for them.

And what is it that those businesses do? That's right, sell real things. And what do real things do? Real things offer real value. People are always chasing value, in whatever form it comes. How it comes is the execution. The point is, are you offering it either way?

Also, this probably isn’t something you’re used to,...

Ummh, not sure what you mean... I mean, I'm healthy and all and rarely see the inside of a hospital, but my house isn't far from three or four in my neighborhood alone, so I can count the cars going in and out :-).

but hospitals are also seeing an increase in business in the US., as are urgent care clinics, testing labs, etc. That’s all big business in the US.

In South Africa, almost all the Coronavirus testing is happening at private hospitals, for reasons I'm sure you can imagine. Even though those hospitals are benefiting, I don't see it that way. In this country, the gubbermint have struck a deal with private hospital to share beds as patients overflow. Money is useless if we are all dead.

Impacted — Yes, but in some cases, positively impacted, not negative.

Well, that's a point of view. What good is money if the shop you used to run down to to spend it has closed down because they can't make rent, have had to lay off staff and are probably losing their home? It's a cycle - if one person loses out, many will. Having money in isolation is like being on an island by yourself with a case of hundred-dollar bills and gold. And that's why during this pandemic, even if plenty of private companies will "make money", it will only be useful if gubbermints dig deep into those coffers and bail out those that won't.

...

From a humanity perspective, an overburdened hospital is a terrible thing. From a P&L standpoint, it’s a goldmine. (at least the way health care works in the US) I’m not saying that’s a good thing or that it’s right. Just that it is how it works out.

Agree, but as above.

Well, yes and no. Uber is still allowed to operate here even in the lockdown, but I’m betting they are seeing significantly fewer riders.

Well, in some countries in Africa, it's totally banned. In South Africa, it's permitted to operate but only to transport essential service workers within a controlled window of hours during the day.

Well, if you find him, introduce us. I want to see the product implemented and deployed. If someone else has the resources to do that, I’m happy to work with them on the process.

I'm not a hater, I'll keep an ear out :-). Mark.