28 ms·

Cloudflare TV

696 points by eastdakota 6y ago

eastdakota 6y ago
Details and rationale: https://blog.cloudflare.com/ladies-and-gentlemen-cloudflare-tv/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/ladies-and-gentlemen-cloudflare-...
- m0sth8 6y ago
  Hi Matthew. Is there a way to connect with the team behind cloudflare.tv? We're building something similar (netflix original for tech conferences and meetups) and would be happy to talk with like-minded people.
  - eastdakota 6y ago
    Sure. Email: daneatcloudflaredotcom.
- Someone1234 6y ago
  After reading the schedule... I understand how this benefits Cloudflare, but I don't really see why I'd tune in. Seems like a mix of Cloudflare ads and "technical" content that is barely technical. More vague TED Talk-style philosophy. If I had to describe who I felt was the target demographic, I'd name middle managers who work in tech but don't actually know much tech. I mean they have someone from McAfee talking about security, and title it "Cyber: The New Frontier," it is so cringy, and they seemingly don't realize that. I obviously don't speak for others, so maybe I am wrong and there is a lot of people who want to watch video content showcasing corporate America's biggest tech illiterate "tech" luminaries, spouting their outmoded concepts of what the future will be like from the viewpoint of ten years behind the cutting edge.
  - def8cefe 6y ago
    > If I had to describe who I felt was the target demographic, I'd name middle managers who work in tech but don't actually know much tech. Who do you think gives purchase approval for Cloudflare services in an organisation?
    - cocktailpeanuts 6y ago
      that's why it's underwhelming. its best case scenario is a marketing channel, not a revolutionary new distribution channel, which is what i would have expected from a company like cloudflare.
      - def8cefe 6y ago
        Let's wait two days, tune in and see instead of jumping to conclusions. No reason to shit on something we don't know all the details about.
      - ativzzz 6y ago
        Well it literally came from their marketing department per the blog post, so that's exactly what it is.
  - derefr 6y ago
    Perhaps the same people who watched TechTV back when—teens with aspirations of becoming technical people, looking for an approachable semi-educational product, that can be justified/excused as being an entertainment product.
  - spsrich2 6y ago
    McAfee? It has to be a joke. Worthless bloated crapware
- js2 6y ago
  This should be the submitted link. I was taken to a Live Broadcast and had no idea what it was and had to come back to the comments here to understand.
  - jacurtis 6y ago
    Same here. I dove into comments to figure out what I was looking at. I sort of figured it out by poking around but was looking for explanative context.
- racecar789 6y ago
  I could see myself tuning in a couple times a week.
  - atomi 6y ago
    Yeah. I think I could get into something like this that I can have playing in the background that I may or may not be giving my full attention to but that is technical enough so that I stay focused and in a learning/working mood.
- solidasparagus 6y ago
  Content is king and the content for this channel is poorly advertised. If you are launching a video channel, there shouldn't be 1000 words before you mention what the content is. Instead of focusing on describing why you built it, focus on telling people why they should tune in.
- dang 6y ago
  We've changed the URL to that from https://cloudflare.tv/live https://cloudflare.tv/live, since it has more information and the latter seems to be dormant at the moment.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
calcifer 6y ago
Seems like a useful service, but there is something quite ironic about having a video titled "The Risks of a Consolidating Internet" [1] hosted by Cloudflare. [1] https://cloudflare.tv/best-of/478d779664ac0f7ae7fe21064bdcb44c https://cloudflare.tv/best-of/478d779664ac0f7ae7fe21064bdcb4...
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- ocdtrekkie 6y ago
  I'd argue CDN services are our best defense against centralization like AWS and GCP. Cloudflare makes it possible for me to host something out of my house without getting taken down by a mild amount of attention.
  - CameronNemo 6y ago
    One of AWS' most important services is CloudFront.
  - dannyw 6y ago
    Only if you don’t start using all of the “lock-in” features like edge workers or page rules.
    - tick_tock_tick 6y ago
      I mean it takes time to switch between vendors but most other CDNs support similar stuff.
  - cirno 6y ago
    Outside of DoS'ing (which is admittedly Cloudflare's wheelhouse, but a rare concern if you aren't posting anything controversial or in a highly competitive space), you can host a site on a $5/month VPS and very trivially withstand being the top post on HN, making Reddit r/all, etc. Not even 10% CPU utilization at peak. And that's without even going to the extreme of making your site static.
ireflect 6y ago
This is really interesting and I hope it's a success. It seems like it's intended to be 80% useful and 20% tongue-in-cheek joke. I'm skeptical that viewers will prefer this live scheduled format rather than simply posting all the videos to be viewed on-demand. Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of this anachronism (and especially their 80s-era channel ID logo to go along with it) but personally I prefer to consume videos from tech conferences on-demand. [1] It looks like they are also posting the videos for on-demand viewing in the Best-Of section, so maybe the live scheduled format is just a delightful gimmick. [1] https://media.ccc.de https://media.ccc.de is my favourite
- eastdakota 6y ago
  We think interactivity is key, hence why we are prioritizing as much live content as we can. Site will become more and more interactive over time.
  - ireflect 6y ago
    Oh cool, that makes sense. I wish you all the best!
  - phasetransition 6y ago
    Somewhat tongue in cheek, but you would do well to find a Maria Bartiromo for Cloudflare TV. A decade + ago, one of my closest friends was a day trader, and while inherently skeptical of CNBC, he and his cohort routinely tuned in to watch her.
  - wise_young_man 6y ago
    Why is it one cannot still register a new domain using Cloudflare? As someone who worked at a registrar before and managed ICANN compliance and registry connections, this isn’t a hard problem at all. As a long time user, customer and promoter, this is puzzling to me to see change in direction and lack of product focus on what brought initial interest (DNS) to Cloudflare in the tech world first with the VPN stuff and now this TV stuff.
- ShroudedNight 6y ago
4636760295 6y ago
Let me guess, this is a new content marketing channel?
cocktailpeanuts 6y ago
at first i was very excited just hearing "cloudflare TV", but it doesn't look like this is what i was expecting. i don't really get the point of this. it's just another live conference broadcasting platform? why would people use this instead of just broadcasting on YouTube? Maybe i'm missing something but feels like just another marketing scheme that came from someone saying "hey this coronavirus is supposed to be the fad of the day for video startups, we should do something too". the 24/7 aspect is cool and it is this point I was excited about. I thought they would do something different, instead of building a service dedicated to a fad which is probably about to expire. p.s. The "online conference" angle is not a good idea. Those who say "all tech conferences will die after coronavirus" have probably never been to tech conferences. Most people go to tech conferences not to watch speeches but to network in person. And there's a big difference between networking in person and doing it online in a public place. This problem may be solved in the future, but not through a live video platform, but probably through an AR or a VR platform.
- eastdakota 6y ago
  What were you expecting?
  - cocktailpeanuts 6y ago
    I was not expecting anything that has to do with coronavirus, and I was expecting something that takes advantage of the strengths of cloudflare the company that no one else has. As I said, the 24/7 idea has huge potential and I think cloudflare is well positioned to do something in this arena.
    - eastdakota 6y ago
      Let's see how it evolves. As I wrote in the blog post, this is fundamentally a medium to allow us to experiment with new things and see what resonates.
  - owaislone 6y ago
    I was expecting a video streaming CDN so anyone could build a Youtube/Twitch competitor without having to deal with storing, transcoding and (live)streaming video. I vaguely remember AWS offering something like this. Not sure how much money there is in this market but definitely sounds like a great product fit for someone like Cloudflare.
Havoc 6y ago
Some really interesting topic there. I hope it's sort of tech TED type thing.
rmason 6y ago
I think that this has awesome potential. I've asked them if they're open to individuals or groups producing a show and getting an hour on their schedule.
bdcravens 6y ago
So it's a YouTube channel on a schedule as opposed to on-demand. A quick check shows much of the content is actually already available on YouTube. What's unclear is if there is content available only here, such as actual live content.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
ck2 6y ago
got excited that someone was maybe finally going to fix all the stupid stuttering, broken stream, lagged to hell home webcams that the billion dollar newsmedia still hasn't solved after four months because everyone insists on using wireless everything stacking the latency but this is interesting too
- adrianmonk 6y ago
  Call me cynical, but I think they're choosing not to fix some stuff on purpose. If they fixed it, their news personalities would look less "in the trenches". If the video has flaws similar to what viewers themselves experience when they try to make Zoom work, then it helps the news media cultivate a relatable "we're all in this together" feeling. It has become its own cinematography / production style just like the shaky cam style is used to make documentaries feel more authentic or action movies more chaotic.
html5web 6y ago
It’s so fast ! Let me know if anyone else experiencing the same feeling!
crazypython 6y ago
I hope they let others place ads on it. Then it will be real "TV."
opportune 6y ago
Seems like a proof of concept of what some future feature of https://www.cloudflare.com/products/cloudflare-stream/ https://www.cloudflare.com/products/cloudflare-stream/ might be able to provide? I'm a little confused as to whether that product as-is provides the ability to stream live, but their blog mentions cloudflare.tv being live multiple times. If so, this is a cool proof of concept of the live capabilities!
bawolff 6y ago
Perhaps im missing something, but the vision seems to be: imagine putting conference recording on youtube, but with a less convinent technical platform and content that's not interesting/marketing BS. What exactly am i supposed to be excited about?
somehnguy 6y ago
Seeing a lot of dislike in the comments here. I think its a neat idea and am going to give it a shot. It might be just what I was looking for tech related background noise to throw on the TV while I'm working.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
yalogin 6y ago
What is this about? This is not even April 1st.
trog 6y ago
I'm a generally technical person and I'm simply flat out uninterested in video content - the stuff that will be on this sounds broadly interesting to me but I'd rather read it in article format. I understand video "performs" well in a lot of contexts (and thus is of particular interest to marketing people) but I am always surprised when content targeted broadly towards the technical community is done in a video-first manner. I know a few other people that feel the same, but I can only assume that Cloudflare have done some research on this and figured out that we're in the minority, and there is enough of a technical audience that would prefer to watch this kind of stuff than read it. I know it's a lot of effort (although maybe automated transcription tools have simplified this?) but it would be awesome if text transcripts were made available of some of this content for the weirdos like me out there :)
- sufyanadam 6y ago
  I'm one of those people who feel the same. I'd rather read than watch.
- inopinatus 6y ago
  That’s an “it depends” for me. I do always want the transcript, but let’s appreciate that a competent lecturer brings a topic to life. You don’t have to be Richard Feynman, but you do have to reveal and conceptualise at a pace an informed and inquisitive brain latches onto. Most video content is not at this level; it’s often either glibly oversimplified (content marketing), bogged down in minutiae (how-to guides), or buried under irrelevancies (what’s up guys). There is something I’d often prefer to consume as a AV recording, and that is interviews/panel discussion. The nuances of articulation, even body language may be informative. Compare and contrast the transcript with the video at https://www.erlang-solutions.com/blog/let-s-talkconcurrency-panel-discussion-with-sir-tony-hoare-joe-armstrong-and-carl-hewitt.html https://www.erlang-solutions.com/blog/let-s-talkconcurrency-... for example.
  - galaxyLogic 6y ago
    A good lecture is a good lecture but that is subjective because it depends on the level of knowledge each listener has. Whereas if I am reading I can easily skip the parts that seem too elementary to me, and read many times the paragraphs that seem difficult. A live lecture is better than video lecture because you can ask questions.
dijksterhuis 6y ago
I'm loving the synthy 80s ident. @eastdakota any chance of a link to the musician who wrote it?
- DL302 6y ago
  A quick shazam yields "Particle House Feat. Le June - I Don't Mind." Cloudflare seems to be using the instrumental version [found here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63P67ZdKhXk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63P67ZdKhXk]
  - eastdakota 6y ago
    Think that’s right. We licensed something. Though we are working to compose the official Cloudflare TV theme song.
  - dijksterhuis 6y ago
    Brill. Thank you!
peteforde 6y ago
I'm wrong about all sorts of things, but I have a funny feeling that we're going to look back someday and see this as the first of many companies of a significant size launching something that looks just like a TV station. I can't emphasize how incredibly brilliant this is: it appears to be a perfectly curated combination of pure marketing webinar, tutorials, educational lectures and who knows what else. This is an example of a new micro-format, in the same way that the NYT won a Pulitzer for their oft-copied Snowfall. http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2012/snow-fall/index.html http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2012/snow-fall/index.html In an era where SEO has ruined the cozy internet, content marketing is transparent and many people just don't trust the media not to lie to them, the idea that a company like CloudFlare could task a team with essentially launching the nerd equivalent of CSPAN (if not CNN) seems to me like something a genius would come up with.
- texasbigdata 6y ago
  Agree. But would you pay for it?
  - staticautomatic 6y ago
    One pays for it by being a Cloudflare customer.
- hardwaresofton 6y ago
  IMO this might serve two purposes -- marketing and to showcase the fact that they can run your TV station. This might be advertisement/marketing on two levels; both consumers and large corporations that might want to host a TV station.
  - eastdakota 6y ago
    :-)
  - peteforde 6y ago
    Respectfully, you're thinking too small. Of course CloudFlare can host your TV station. They carry a significant, double-digit percentage of total internet traffic. The impressive feat here is having the brand position and cultural currency and strategic foresight to launch and run a 24/7 TV station. That is high on the list of non-trivial, capital intensive things to do. No, what this does is introduce CloudFlare as a media distribution channel, in the same way that Masterclass, Netflix, Twitter and Fortnite are media distribution channels.
wolco 6y ago
I like the concept of live tv playing around the clock. Does it end Sunday 2am or is this ongoing?
- eastdakota 6y ago
  Plan is to keep it going as long as there’s interest. We’ll keep filling in slots 7 days out with new live content as well as best-of content that’s already aired.
RyJones 6y ago
I know my employer, the Linux Foundation, is trying to find good platforms for our events. When will this be opened up?
- jon_dahl 6y ago
  Hey - we'd love to help you out with this at Mux. Hit us up.
- dknecht 6y ago
  We will blog about that in the next few days.
kvothe_ 6y ago
In general I prefer to read than watch technical content. When you read you can go at your own pace, reference a paragraph/graphic from earlier in the article, reread parts, go fast or slow. Whereas a video it's hard rewatch by rewinding. Limited to 2x max otherwise can't hear a word. Video is more limiting.
mattweinberg 6y ago
I (not a Cloudflare employee) am actually being interviewed on here along with a friend, Thursday at 1pm EST: https://cloudflare.tv/schedule/2tGlq0ue3jrGuAegeq60fD https://cloudflare.tv/schedule/2tGlq0ue3jrGuAegeq60fD Two doctor friends and I collaborated to make a site that matches PPE donators with hospitals/nursing homes/fire departments/etc that need PPE ( https://maskaherony.com https://maskaherony.com ) . Over 30,000 masks have been donated so far. It’s all volunteer-run and no money changes hands. We host it with Cloudflare Workers Sites (I built it in Jekyll). I assume that much of the interview will be my friend focusing on the medical match aspects and what she’s seeing in hospitals. I’m just the lowly tech guy, she’s the one doing the hard work and saving lives. Check it out if you can!
historicaldrink 6y ago
@eastdakota are you transcoding the vod content alongside any live stuff using a traditional playout mechanism or are you able to leverage existing pre-transcoded VOD assets for non-live content?
ttul 6y ago
This the future of content marketing.
ironhaven 6y ago
Something similar to this is Game Done Quick[1] which is a week long speed running competition. Because it is always streaming you can turn it on and see what game is being played. I would look at the schedule and make plans. "better tune in Wednesday because they are playing brood war". I might tune in to this "Cloudflare TV". Also when i was watching the best of video on bots there was a error saying "Quota exceeded". Not sure why that popped up. [1] https://gamesdonequick.com/ https://gamesdonequick.com/
- tialaramex 6y ago
  Brood War seems like a weird example because it's mainly a multi-player game. Did somebody really run the SC1 Brood War single player campaign at a GDQ? Or were you just picking a random game name as an example? I mostly watch TAS Block myself.
  - lwoo 6y ago
    KingDime played Protoss campaign in SC: Remastered in 2019 [1]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dI-R0qVvg4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dI-R0qVvg4
gkoberger 6y ago
I like this idea! We did something similar a few weeks ago (https://wapi.fm/ https://wapi.fm/, a radio station that was live for 24 hours), and people seemed to really like it.
blntechie 6y ago
Never had any video begin playing as fast as those in this. Even faster than YouTube.
- dpc_pw 6y ago
  Combine: * good peering all over the world * vast resources in datacenters to host it * minimum actual usage * the fact that it is not one of petabytes of videos that have to be stored somewhere, but a smallish content that fits in memory and it's rather unsurprisng.
- OJFord 6y ago
  Wow, yeah, had to try after reading your comment - really is remarkable, it just starts. (And I didn't realise I would notice something faster than Youtube, which previously seemed fine.)
asdfk-12 6y ago
There's an awesome potential here to not turn into another convoluted youtube clone bloated with ads... lately with all of the censorship happening on Google services it's heartening to see another vendor entering the arena, with good curated content to boot. Simple interface and amazingly good quality. Happy investor here.
quadhome 6y ago
What timezone is this all in? The schedule doesn't say.
- mkl 6y ago
  This really confused me too. It doesn't seem to say, but it does show the current time as an orange bar on the schedule. With that additional information, I can tell you that it is in NZST. (Okay, no, it's probably just in whatever your browser says your local timezone is, or something like that.) I think it needs to say so. Things on the internet are very rarely in the correct timezone for me, so I generally just assume times given are incomprehensible hashes. I can count on one hand how many "live streams" I've watched live.
- eastdakota 6y ago
  It’s your local time zone.
nojvek 6y ago
Really cool. More than just the techy talks I am more interested in their nerdy cooking show and where they goof around. Would love to see things like twitch where they share their screen and write interesting things or play a game. I watch Suz Hinton (@noopkat) from occasionally and her stuff is pretty entertaining (Aussie accent helps too) They should get interesting folks like that on the show. The MIT AI podcast by Lex Fridman is pretty brilliant. He gets high caliber folks on his podcast. That level of intellectual curiosity would deffo make the TV station a hit amongst the niche community. It almost makes me wonder why YC never thought of this.
Raed667 6y ago
I loved working with Cloudflare Stream. I can't wait to see your live streaming solution.
flyGuyOnTheSly 6y ago
How difficult is it exactly to do what chaturbate does for example? I have been looking into how I could setup a similar broadcast on demand service for some yoga studios that I help out with (zoom is terrible for online yoga classes... it distorts music... no paywall possible... video/audio quality is all around terrible compared to chaturbate... etc). Is it really that hard to chunk video as it comes in, and re-distribute it via websocket or something to web browsers? How does chaturbate do it? Does anybody know?
andrewrothman 6y ago
This has me feeling excited for something new and interesting. I'll be watching on Monday.
thuruv 6y ago
It's like we never watch TV? This can serve a great purpose of youtube and learning altogether. We always can stay reading articles. But I just view this as a place where we can watch some great(?!) tech videos when needed.
reilly3000 6y ago
I can't get enough of that groovy loop they are playing behind their intro sequence. I miss having viewing events on a schedule, and hope this succeeds for them.
graiz 6y ago
Ok. Let's put aside the content that Cloudflare will produce. They aren't a content company. What they are showing is that cable is dying and using Cloudflare technology they can standup a global 24-hour TV station. How many TV stations are there around the world? A lot and the future of TV is certainly digital. I don't care about the content but if they can pull this off then it's a showcase to every one of the tens of thousands of QVC, MTV, BBC, CSPAN, Discovery Channel, networks that they don't need the big cable players to broadcast anymore.
- mike_d 6y ago
  > it's a showcase to every one of the tens of thousands of QVC, MTV, BBC, CSPAN, Discovery Channel, networks that they don't need the big cable players to broadcast anymore You can start your own satellite TV channel for about the price of a midsized car. IPTV is quite popular in non-Western countries and providers will basically distribute your channel for free. What Cloudflare is trying to dop is stress test their video platform before they try and go hard to steal customers from Akamai, LimeLight, and Level3/CenturyLink.
p4bl0 6y ago
The constant comparison with MTV is weird, but fun. Here is a proposed parallel grid: Next: tech job interviews. Bug raiders: bug fixing live. Pimp my web: Xzibit manages a team of front-end engineers. Jackass: Programming drones that do stupid things.
- squidi 6y ago
  Jackass should be people pushing code live without testing and monitoring how it breaks the site VH1 Behind the hits style show: Walk though git history of a famous repo
  - p4bl0 6y ago
    > Jackass should be people pushing code live without testing. Ah yes, that's better!
- xwdv 6y ago
  Compile'n Out: Improv coding and sketch comedy between developers golfing out code in hip cargo cult languages. Startup Cribs: Come tour the sickest offices that venture capital money can buy. Dev Moms: Women in tech share the struggle of being a woman in tech and also being a mother.
Brosper 6y ago
I don't understand this idea, I thought that VOD is the best way to publish video?
oarsinsync 6y ago
> I keep reminding our team that if we're trying to follow in the footsteps of MTV — and its greatest success was "Jersey Shore" — then the bar is pretty low. Sounds like they need a few more GenX's on their team to help them understand the real impact MTV had. I'm struggling to see a world where CFTV has even half the cultural or generational impact that MTV had. You may not respect or value what MTV has become, but if you grew up with MTV in the 80s and 90s, you might have a better appreciation for how high the bar actually is.
- hitekker 6y ago
  Thanks for pointing this out. A disrespect for their predecessors inclines me to believe CloudfareTV is just another corporate vanity project.
NetOpWibby 6y ago
This seems really cool, looking forward to checking it out.
po1nter 6y ago
A bit off-topic but I find the effect when you mouse over the logo is very uncomfortable to look at.
tibbydudeza 6y ago
I don't get it ... it reminds me all too much of Robert Scoble when he moved over to Rackspace of all places to produce content.
kabacha 6y ago
I'm in a constant perplex by Cloudflare. It's one of those mega corporations that seem to consist of 95% marketing and sales. Looking at the program table I can't help but have this feeling reaffirmed. > I keep reminding our team that if we're trying to follow in the footsteps of MTV At this point I'm commenting to be a part of one of the biggest "hey there fellow kids" events in recent tech history — lol.
tortila 6y ago
> Michelle Zatlyn, Cloudflare co-founder and COO, is doing a weekly series called “Yes We Can” highlighting women entrepreneurs and debunking the myth that there are no women in tech Did the author just come up with this myth? Personally I’ve never heard such a statement. Not trying to undermine the issue of under-representation of women, but this could’ve been worded in a better way
teddyh 6y ago
I guess they had to do something to prevent multicasting from coming back.
Mindwipe 6y ago
A session on censorship under the guise of "protecting kids" with someone from Common Sense Media and no counter. And it's a pre-record, so no questions. I guess that's to be expected from the company that just launched the homophobic web filter.
Foe 6y ago
It’s like Microsoft’s Channel 9, Learn TV: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/tv/ https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/tv/
sixhobbits 6y ago
Genuinely curious, My possibly biased perception is that people in Europe are more "internationally aware" (for lack of a better word) than those in the US. e.g. a website that is built in Europe but likely to attract international interest will include a timezone. The schedule[0] for this just has dates and times. I have no idea when anything is, though some of it looks interesting. Is there a "default" timezone that Americans assume on an American-centric site that doesn't actually state timezones? California? [0] https://cloudflare.tv/schedule https://cloudflare.tv/schedule
- kidsil 6y ago
  In my experience it's usually EST timezone (Eastern Time Zone). Currently that's UTC-4.
  - tcberry 6y ago
    That is usually true for a lot of timezone-free times for U.S.-based companies, but the article states that the inaugural broadcast is 12 PM Pacific time (PDT), which is UTC-7. The schedule lists this broadcast as occurring at 12 PM, which aligns with it being set to Pacific time. Makes sense, as Cloudflare is based in San Francisco.
- kozziollek 6y ago
  I think it's just local ;) I'm in CEST (UTC+2), so it's 12:22 pm right now, and schedule page shows that orange line in 12:00 PM box. But I agree - it should mention timezone or if it's local time. I saw "AM/PM" and also assumed it was some "stupid" American time.
- kiliankoe 6y ago
  My (grossly over-simplified) experience has been that European services tend to focus a lot more on localization than US-based ones, with the latter focusing a lot more on time zone issues, since that is a topic very relevant to the US. Not so much in Europe, where most countries share the same time zone with their neighbors and are only situated in a single one themselves.
- 6y ago
jonplackett 6y ago
Seems like someone has too much venture capital.
7ewis 6y ago
Will the videos be uploaded somewhere like YouTube after airing?
mikece 6y ago
I love the concept and the comparison to MTV. Have Cloudflare considered getting Adam Curry (from MTV’s Headbangers Ball) on as a contributor? Adam is quite the geek in his own right and is the inventor of podcasting and the first podcast.
mwexler 6y ago
I find video abusive to my time. To consume the content, which I assume is the author's intent, I must give up my time in whatever chunk the author chooses. But I can consume text at my own pace in multiple methods. Tech usually prefers async, decoupled processes. Advertising and attention-for-money, however, demand a synced experience. If I'm looking for entertainment, sure, video, audio, whatever. But if I want to learn or be informed, why should I have to waste time? If this is just the "how should creators get comped" discussion ("attention gets ads to reward content creators", etc), fine, but in a case like parent post, better use of cloudflare means more $ for them, so they probably want consumption. So, why video? I've said this before and gotten feedback around "diff people need diff modalities to consume info" and "video can be more effective than static text". All true, which is why having text as an option is important; just video is as bad as, if not worse than, just text.
- faeyanpiraat 6y ago
  I’ve started learning angular, and watching a couple of explaining while actually coding vids related to how angular works, tips and tricks, rxjs patterns, etc.. really helped me understand how it works. For vids where the ppl speak slow, i up the speed to 1.25 or 1.5, which helps sometimes. For introduction to some new tech it’s fine.. Of course I have to go actually read the docs and start coding stuff, which takes way more energy, but now the vids convinced me this worth investing my time into.
tristor 6y ago
I would much rather read an article. I can't watch a video while I'm doing other things, but I can have an article up and go back and forth with it.
sbilstein 6y ago
I find it very difficult to pay attention to video content or audio content without getting distracted or just wanting to turn it off. I wonder if anyone has tips for how to improve my concentration. Funnily, I don't have this issue with music or with movies/TV. It's just lecture formats and podcasts that don't work for me. I much prefer to read articles, guides, transcripts, etc.
- wrigby 6y ago
  I find it really helpful to actively take handwritten notes, for two big reasons: Firstly, hand-writing notes without falling behind the content forces me to choose the most relevant information presented and reword that information into a concise-enough form that I can quickly write it down. This helps me actually process the content instead of just hearing it. Mentally, it feels like the information soaks into my brain, rather than bouncing off of it. Secondly - and this is comically simple, but just as important as the first - it keeps my hands off of my keyboard/mouse, so I don't get distracted by other interesting things on the Internet (like HN) and tune out.
GNOMES 6y ago
Am I missing something, or will they make the videos available in an archive later?
buzzert 6y ago
Surprised at all the negative comments here. Did no one else grow up with TechTV? The sheer mention of TechTV in the article got me really excited. I, for one, watch technical videos all the time but not for the purpose of explicitly learning something (as a lot of people here say the medium is an inefficient way to do so), but instead for entertainment. Certainly beats watching reality TV or whatever the hottest Netflix show is.
couchand 6y ago
I really can't wait for Silicon Valley Squares. https://cloudflare.tv/schedule/5OGa585usFPJqixCNnazhC https://cloudflare.tv/schedule/5OGa585usFPJqixCNnazhC
programbreeding 6y ago
Tuned in to watch the initial broadcast; unfortunately I'm having a lot of issues with it streaming. Good luck to the team responsible for getting it going!
godelski 6y ago
So I tuned in and it was hard to watch because during the Galileo presentation I was getting a lot of hiccups and sputtering. I had to stop watching because it was impossible to follow along. Is anyone else experiencing this issue?
rafaelturk 6y ago
What I really wish is for a Hacker News TV
foobiekr 6y ago
The only one of these I want to watch, "Inventing the Future in 1983" doesn't play.

696 points by eastdakota 6y ago

Details and rationale: https://blog.cloudflare.com/ladies-and-gentlemen-cloudflare-tv/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/ladies-and-gentlemen-cloudflare-...

m0sth8 6y ago
Hi Matthew. Is there a way to connect with the team behind cloudflare.tv? We're building something similar (netflix original for tech conferences and meetups) and would be happy to talk with like-minded people.
- eastdakota 6y ago
  Sure. Email: daneatcloudflaredotcom.
Someone1234 6y ago
After reading the schedule... I understand how this benefits Cloudflare, but I don't really see why I'd tune in. Seems like a mix of Cloudflare ads and "technical" content that is barely technical. More vague TED Talk-style philosophy. If I had to describe who I felt was the target demographic, I'd name middle managers who work in tech but don't actually know much tech. I mean they have someone from McAfee talking about security, and title it "Cyber: The New Frontier," it is so cringy, and they seemingly don't realize that. I obviously don't speak for others, so maybe I am wrong and there is a lot of people who want to watch video content showcasing corporate America's biggest tech illiterate "tech" luminaries, spouting their outmoded concepts of what the future will be like from the viewpoint of ten years behind the cutting edge.
- def8cefe 6y ago
  > If I had to describe who I felt was the target demographic, I'd name middle managers who work in tech but don't actually know much tech. Who do you think gives purchase approval for Cloudflare services in an organisation?
  - cocktailpeanuts 6y ago
    that's why it's underwhelming. its best case scenario is a marketing channel, not a revolutionary new distribution channel, which is what i would have expected from a company like cloudflare.
    - def8cefe 6y ago
      Let's wait two days, tune in and see instead of jumping to conclusions. No reason to shit on something we don't know all the details about.
    - ativzzz 6y ago
      Well it literally came from their marketing department per the blog post, so that's exactly what it is.
- derefr 6y ago
  Perhaps the same people who watched TechTV back when—teens with aspirations of becoming technical people, looking for an approachable semi-educational product, that can be justified/excused as being an entertainment product.
- spsrich2 6y ago
  McAfee? It has to be a joke. Worthless bloated crapware
js2 6y ago
This should be the submitted link. I was taken to a Live Broadcast and had no idea what it was and had to come back to the comments here to understand.
- jacurtis 6y ago
  Same here. I dove into comments to figure out what I was looking at. I sort of figured it out by poking around but was looking for explanative context.
racecar789 6y ago
I could see myself tuning in a couple times a week.
- atomi 6y ago
  Yeah. I think I could get into something like this that I can have playing in the background that I may or may not be giving my full attention to but that is technical enough so that I stay focused and in a learning/working mood.
solidasparagus 6y ago
Content is king and the content for this channel is poorly advertised. If you are launching a video channel, there shouldn't be 1000 words before you mention what the content is. Instead of focusing on describing why you built it, focus on telling people why they should tune in.
dang 6y ago
We've changed the URL to that from https://cloudflare.tv/live https://cloudflare.tv/live, since it has more information and the latter seems to be dormant at the moment.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

calcifer 6y ago

Seems like a useful service, but there is something quite ironic about having a video titled "The Risks of a Consolidating Internet" [1] hosted by Cloudflare. [1] https://cloudflare.tv/best-of/478d779664ac0f7ae7fe21064bdcb44c https://cloudflare.tv/best-of/478d779664ac0f7ae7fe21064bdcb4...

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ocdtrekkie 6y ago
I'd argue CDN services are our best defense against centralization like AWS and GCP. Cloudflare makes it possible for me to host something out of my house without getting taken down by a mild amount of attention.
- CameronNemo 6y ago
  One of AWS' most important services is CloudFront.
- dannyw 6y ago
  Only if you don’t start using all of the “lock-in” features like edge workers or page rules.
  - tick_tock_tick 6y ago
    I mean it takes time to switch between vendors but most other CDNs support similar stuff.
- cirno 6y ago
  Outside of DoS'ing (which is admittedly Cloudflare's wheelhouse, but a rare concern if you aren't posting anything controversial or in a highly competitive space), you can host a site on a $5/month VPS and very trivially withstand being the top post on HN, making Reddit r/all, etc. Not even 10% CPU utilization at peak. And that's without even going to the extreme of making your site static.

ireflect 6y ago

This is really interesting and I hope it's a success. It seems like it's intended to be 80% useful and 20% tongue-in-cheek joke. I'm skeptical that viewers will prefer this live scheduled format rather than simply posting all the videos to be viewed on-demand. Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of this anachronism (and especially their 80s-era channel ID logo to go along with it) but personally I prefer to consume videos from tech conferences on-demand. [1] It looks like they are also posting the videos for on-demand viewing in the Best-Of section, so maybe the live scheduled format is just a delightful gimmick. [1] https://media.ccc.de https://media.ccc.de is my favourite

eastdakota 6y ago
We think interactivity is key, hence why we are prioritizing as much live content as we can. Site will become more and more interactive over time.
- ireflect 6y ago
  Oh cool, that makes sense. I wish you all the best!
- phasetransition 6y ago
  Somewhat tongue in cheek, but you would do well to find a Maria Bartiromo for Cloudflare TV. A decade + ago, one of my closest friends was a day trader, and while inherently skeptical of CNBC, he and his cohort routinely tuned in to watch her.
- wise_young_man 6y ago
  Why is it one cannot still register a new domain using Cloudflare? As someone who worked at a registrar before and managed ICANN compliance and registry connections, this isn’t a hard problem at all. As a long time user, customer and promoter, this is puzzling to me to see change in direction and lack of product focus on what brought initial interest (DNS) to Cloudflare in the tech world first with the VPN stuff and now this TV stuff.
ShroudedNight 6y ago

4636760295 6y ago

Let me guess, this is a new content marketing channel?

cocktailpeanuts 6y ago

at first i was very excited just hearing "cloudflare TV", but it doesn't look like this is what i was expecting. i don't really get the point of this. it's just another live conference broadcasting platform? why would people use this instead of just broadcasting on YouTube? Maybe i'm missing something but feels like just another marketing scheme that came from someone saying "hey this coronavirus is supposed to be the fad of the day for video startups, we should do something too". the 24/7 aspect is cool and it is this point I was excited about. I thought they would do something different, instead of building a service dedicated to a fad which is probably about to expire. p.s. The "online conference" angle is not a good idea. Those who say "all tech conferences will die after coronavirus" have probably never been to tech conferences. Most people go to tech conferences not to watch speeches but to network in person. And there's a big difference between networking in person and doing it online in a public place. This problem may be solved in the future, but not through a live video platform, but probably through an AR or a VR platform.

eastdakota 6y ago
What were you expecting?
- cocktailpeanuts 6y ago
  I was not expecting anything that has to do with coronavirus, and I was expecting something that takes advantage of the strengths of cloudflare the company that no one else has. As I said, the 24/7 idea has huge potential and I think cloudflare is well positioned to do something in this arena.
  - eastdakota 6y ago
    Let's see how it evolves. As I wrote in the blog post, this is fundamentally a medium to allow us to experiment with new things and see what resonates.
- owaislone 6y ago
  I was expecting a video streaming CDN so anyone could build a Youtube/Twitch competitor without having to deal with storing, transcoding and (live)streaming video. I vaguely remember AWS offering something like this. Not sure how much money there is in this market but definitely sounds like a great product fit for someone like Cloudflare.

Havoc 6y ago

Some really interesting topic there. I hope it's sort of tech TED type thing.

rmason 6y ago

I think that this has awesome potential. I've asked them if they're open to individuals or groups producing a show and getting an hour on their schedule.

bdcravens 6y ago

So it's a YouTube channel on a schedule as opposed to on-demand. A quick check shows much of the content is actually already available on YouTube. What's unclear is if there is content available only here, such as actual live content.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

ck2 6y ago

got excited that someone was maybe finally going to fix all the stupid stuttering, broken stream, lagged to hell home webcams that the billion dollar newsmedia still hasn't solved after four months because everyone insists on using wireless everything stacking the latency but this is interesting too

adrianmonk 6y ago
Call me cynical, but I think they're choosing not to fix some stuff on purpose. If they fixed it, their news personalities would look less "in the trenches". If the video has flaws similar to what viewers themselves experience when they try to make Zoom work, then it helps the news media cultivate a relatable "we're all in this together" feeling. It has become its own cinematography / production style just like the shaky cam style is used to make documentaries feel more authentic or action movies more chaotic.

html5web 6y ago

It’s so fast ! Let me know if anyone else experiencing the same feeling!

crazypython 6y ago

I hope they let others place ads on it. Then it will be real "TV."

opportune 6y ago

Seems like a proof of concept of what some future feature of https://www.cloudflare.com/products/cloudflare-stream/ https://www.cloudflare.com/products/cloudflare-stream/ might be able to provide? I'm a little confused as to whether that product as-is provides the ability to stream live, but their blog mentions cloudflare.tv being live multiple times. If so, this is a cool proof of concept of the live capabilities!

bawolff 6y ago

Perhaps im missing something, but the vision seems to be: imagine putting conference recording on youtube, but with a less convinent technical platform and content that's not interesting/marketing BS. What exactly am i supposed to be excited about?

somehnguy 6y ago

Seeing a lot of dislike in the comments here. I think its a neat idea and am going to give it a shot. It might be just what I was looking for tech related background noise to throw on the TV while I'm working.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

yalogin 6y ago

What is this about? This is not even April 1st.

trog 6y ago

I'm a generally technical person and I'm simply flat out uninterested in video content - the stuff that will be on this sounds broadly interesting to me but I'd rather read it in article format. I understand video "performs" well in a lot of contexts (and thus is of particular interest to marketing people) but I am always surprised when content targeted broadly towards the technical community is done in a video-first manner. I know a few other people that feel the same, but I can only assume that Cloudflare have done some research on this and figured out that we're in the minority, and there is enough of a technical audience that would prefer to watch this kind of stuff than read it. I know it's a lot of effort (although maybe automated transcription tools have simplified this?) but it would be awesome if text transcripts were made available of some of this content for the weirdos like me out there :)

sufyanadam 6y ago
I'm one of those people who feel the same. I'd rather read than watch.
inopinatus 6y ago
That’s an “it depends” for me. I do always want the transcript, but let’s appreciate that a competent lecturer brings a topic to life. You don’t have to be Richard Feynman, but you do have to reveal and conceptualise at a pace an informed and inquisitive brain latches onto. Most video content is not at this level; it’s often either glibly oversimplified (content marketing), bogged down in minutiae (how-to guides), or buried under irrelevancies (what’s up guys). There is something I’d often prefer to consume as a AV recording, and that is interviews/panel discussion. The nuances of articulation, even body language may be informative. Compare and contrast the transcript with the video at https://www.erlang-solutions.com/blog/let-s-talkconcurrency-panel-discussion-with-sir-tony-hoare-joe-armstrong-and-carl-hewitt.html https://www.erlang-solutions.com/blog/let-s-talkconcurrency-... for example.
- galaxyLogic 6y ago
  A good lecture is a good lecture but that is subjective because it depends on the level of knowledge each listener has. Whereas if I am reading I can easily skip the parts that seem too elementary to me, and read many times the paragraphs that seem difficult. A live lecture is better than video lecture because you can ask questions.

dijksterhuis 6y ago

I'm loving the synthy 80s ident. @eastdakota any chance of a link to the musician who wrote it?

DL302 6y ago
A quick shazam yields "Particle House Feat. Le June - I Don't Mind." Cloudflare seems to be using the instrumental version [found here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63P67ZdKhXk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63P67ZdKhXk]
- eastdakota 6y ago
  Think that’s right. We licensed something. Though we are working to compose the official Cloudflare TV theme song.
- dijksterhuis 6y ago
  Brill. Thank you!

peteforde 6y ago

I'm wrong about all sorts of things, but I have a funny feeling that we're going to look back someday and see this as the first of many companies of a significant size launching something that looks just like a TV station. I can't emphasize how incredibly brilliant this is: it appears to be a perfectly curated combination of pure marketing webinar, tutorials, educational lectures and who knows what else. This is an example of a new micro-format, in the same way that the NYT won a Pulitzer for their oft-copied Snowfall. http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2012/snow-fall/index.html http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2012/snow-fall/index.html In an era where SEO has ruined the cozy internet, content marketing is transparent and many people just don't trust the media not to lie to them, the idea that a company like CloudFlare could task a team with essentially launching the nerd equivalent of CSPAN (if not CNN) seems to me like something a genius would come up with.

texasbigdata 6y ago
Agree. But would you pay for it?
- staticautomatic 6y ago
  One pays for it by being a Cloudflare customer.
hardwaresofton 6y ago
IMO this might serve two purposes -- marketing and to showcase the fact that they can run your TV station. This might be advertisement/marketing on two levels; both consumers and large corporations that might want to host a TV station.
- eastdakota 6y ago
  :-)
- peteforde 6y ago
  Respectfully, you're thinking too small. Of course CloudFlare can host your TV station. They carry a significant, double-digit percentage of total internet traffic. The impressive feat here is having the brand position and cultural currency and strategic foresight to launch and run a 24/7 TV station. That is high on the list of non-trivial, capital intensive things to do. No, what this does is introduce CloudFlare as a media distribution channel, in the same way that Masterclass, Netflix, Twitter and Fortnite are media distribution channels.

wolco 6y ago

I like the concept of live tv playing around the clock. Does it end Sunday 2am or is this ongoing?

eastdakota 6y ago
Plan is to keep it going as long as there’s interest. We’ll keep filling in slots 7 days out with new live content as well as best-of content that’s already aired.

RyJones 6y ago

I know my employer, the Linux Foundation, is trying to find good platforms for our events. When will this be opened up?

jon_dahl 6y ago
Hey - we'd love to help you out with this at Mux. Hit us up.
dknecht 6y ago
We will blog about that in the next few days.

kvothe_ 6y ago

In general I prefer to read than watch technical content. When you read you can go at your own pace, reference a paragraph/graphic from earlier in the article, reread parts, go fast or slow. Whereas a video it's hard rewatch by rewinding. Limited to 2x max otherwise can't hear a word. Video is more limiting.

mattweinberg 6y ago

I (not a Cloudflare employee) am actually being interviewed on here along with a friend, Thursday at 1pm EST: https://cloudflare.tv/schedule/2tGlq0ue3jrGuAegeq60fD https://cloudflare.tv/schedule/2tGlq0ue3jrGuAegeq60fD Two doctor friends and I collaborated to make a site that matches PPE donators with hospitals/nursing homes/fire departments/etc that need PPE ( https://maskaherony.com https://maskaherony.com ) . Over 30,000 masks have been donated so far. It’s all volunteer-run and no money changes hands. We host it with Cloudflare Workers Sites (I built it in Jekyll). I assume that much of the interview will be my friend focusing on the medical match aspects and what she’s seeing in hospitals. I’m just the lowly tech guy, she’s the one doing the hard work and saving lives. Check it out if you can!

historicaldrink 6y ago

@eastdakota are you transcoding the vod content alongside any live stuff using a traditional playout mechanism or are you able to leverage existing pre-transcoded VOD assets for non-live content?

ttul 6y ago

This the future of content marketing.

ironhaven 6y ago

Something similar to this is Game Done Quick[1] which is a week long speed running competition. Because it is always streaming you can turn it on and see what game is being played. I would look at the schedule and make plans. "better tune in Wednesday because they are playing brood war". I might tune in to this "Cloudflare TV". Also when i was watching the best of video on bots there was a error saying "Quota exceeded". Not sure why that popped up. [1] https://gamesdonequick.com/ https://gamesdonequick.com/

tialaramex 6y ago
Brood War seems like a weird example because it's mainly a multi-player game. Did somebody really run the SC1 Brood War single player campaign at a GDQ? Or were you just picking a random game name as an example? I mostly watch TAS Block myself.
- lwoo 6y ago
  KingDime played Protoss campaign in SC: Remastered in 2019 [1]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dI-R0qVvg4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dI-R0qVvg4

gkoberger 6y ago

I like this idea! We did something similar a few weeks ago (https://wapi.fm/ https://wapi.fm/, a radio station that was live for 24 hours), and people seemed to really like it.

blntechie 6y ago

Never had any video begin playing as fast as those in this. Even faster than YouTube.

dpc_pw 6y ago
Combine: * good peering all over the world * vast resources in datacenters to host it * minimum actual usage * the fact that it is not one of petabytes of videos that have to be stored somewhere, but a smallish content that fits in memory and it's rather unsurprisng.
OJFord 6y ago
Wow, yeah, had to try after reading your comment - really is remarkable, it just starts. (And I didn't realise I would notice something faster than Youtube, which previously seemed fine.)

asdfk-12 6y ago

There's an awesome potential here to not turn into another convoluted youtube clone bloated with ads... lately with all of the censorship happening on Google services it's heartening to see another vendor entering the arena, with good curated content to boot. Simple interface and amazingly good quality. Happy investor here.

quadhome 6y ago

What timezone is this all in? The schedule doesn't say.

mkl 6y ago
This really confused me too. It doesn't seem to say, but it does show the current time as an orange bar on the schedule. With that additional information, I can tell you that it is in NZST. (Okay, no, it's probably just in whatever your browser says your local timezone is, or something like that.) I think it needs to say so. Things on the internet are very rarely in the correct timezone for me, so I generally just assume times given are incomprehensible hashes. I can count on one hand how many "live streams" I've watched live.
eastdakota 6y ago
It’s your local time zone.

nojvek 6y ago

Really cool. More than just the techy talks I am more interested in their nerdy cooking show and where they goof around. Would love to see things like twitch where they share their screen and write interesting things or play a game. I watch Suz Hinton (@noopkat) from occasionally and her stuff is pretty entertaining (Aussie accent helps too) They should get interesting folks like that on the show. The MIT AI podcast by Lex Fridman is pretty brilliant. He gets high caliber folks on his podcast. That level of intellectual curiosity would deffo make the TV station a hit amongst the niche community. It almost makes me wonder why YC never thought of this.

Raed667 6y ago

I loved working with Cloudflare Stream. I can't wait to see your live streaming solution.

flyGuyOnTheSly 6y ago

How difficult is it exactly to do what chaturbate does for example? I have been looking into how I could setup a similar broadcast on demand service for some yoga studios that I help out with (zoom is terrible for online yoga classes... it distorts music... no paywall possible... video/audio quality is all around terrible compared to chaturbate... etc). Is it really that hard to chunk video as it comes in, and re-distribute it via websocket or something to web browsers? How does chaturbate do it? Does anybody know?

andrewrothman 6y ago

This has me feeling excited for something new and interesting. I'll be watching on Monday.

thuruv 6y ago

It's like we never watch TV? This can serve a great purpose of youtube and learning altogether. We always can stay reading articles. But I just view this as a place where we can watch some great(?!) tech videos when needed.

reilly3000 6y ago

I can't get enough of that groovy loop they are playing behind their intro sequence. I miss having viewing events on a schedule, and hope this succeeds for them.

graiz 6y ago

Ok. Let's put aside the content that Cloudflare will produce. They aren't a content company. What they are showing is that cable is dying and using Cloudflare technology they can standup a global 24-hour TV station. How many TV stations are there around the world? A lot and the future of TV is certainly digital. I don't care about the content but if they can pull this off then it's a showcase to every one of the tens of thousands of QVC, MTV, BBC, CSPAN, Discovery Channel, networks that they don't need the big cable players to broadcast anymore.

mike_d 6y ago
> it's a showcase to every one of the tens of thousands of QVC, MTV, BBC, CSPAN, Discovery Channel, networks that they don't need the big cable players to broadcast anymore You can start your own satellite TV channel for about the price of a midsized car. IPTV is quite popular in non-Western countries and providers will basically distribute your channel for free. What Cloudflare is trying to dop is stress test their video platform before they try and go hard to steal customers from Akamai, LimeLight, and Level3/CenturyLink.

p4bl0 6y ago

The constant comparison with MTV is weird, but fun. Here is a proposed parallel grid: Next: tech job interviews. Bug raiders: bug fixing live. Pimp my web: Xzibit manages a team of front-end engineers. Jackass: Programming drones that do stupid things.

squidi 6y ago
Jackass should be people pushing code live without testing and monitoring how it breaks the site VH1 Behind the hits style show: Walk though git history of a famous repo
- p4bl0 6y ago
  > Jackass should be people pushing code live without testing. Ah yes, that's better!
xwdv 6y ago
Compile'n Out: Improv coding and sketch comedy between developers golfing out code in hip cargo cult languages. Startup Cribs: Come tour the sickest offices that venture capital money can buy. Dev Moms: Women in tech share the struggle of being a woman in tech and also being a mother.

Brosper 6y ago

I don't understand this idea, I thought that VOD is the best way to publish video?

oarsinsync 6y ago

> I keep reminding our team that if we're trying to follow in the footsteps of MTV — and its greatest success was "Jersey Shore" — then the bar is pretty low. Sounds like they need a few more GenX's on their team to help them understand the real impact MTV had. I'm struggling to see a world where CFTV has even half the cultural or generational impact that MTV had. You may not respect or value what MTV has become, but if you grew up with MTV in the 80s and 90s, you might have a better appreciation for how high the bar actually is.

hitekker 6y ago
Thanks for pointing this out. A disrespect for their predecessors inclines me to believe CloudfareTV is just another corporate vanity project.

NetOpWibby 6y ago

This seems really cool, looking forward to checking it out.

po1nter 6y ago

A bit off-topic but I find the effect when you mouse over the logo is very uncomfortable to look at.

tibbydudeza 6y ago

I don't get it ... it reminds me all too much of Robert Scoble when he moved over to Rackspace of all places to produce content.

kabacha 6y ago

I'm in a constant perplex by Cloudflare. It's one of those mega corporations that seem to consist of 95% marketing and sales. Looking at the program table I can't help but have this feeling reaffirmed. > I keep reminding our team that if we're trying to follow in the footsteps of MTV At this point I'm commenting to be a part of one of the biggest "hey there fellow kids" events in recent tech history — lol.

tortila 6y ago

> Michelle Zatlyn, Cloudflare co-founder and COO, is doing a weekly series called “Yes We Can” highlighting women entrepreneurs and debunking the myth that there are no women in tech Did the author just come up with this myth? Personally I’ve never heard such a statement. Not trying to undermine the issue of under-representation of women, but this could’ve been worded in a better way

teddyh 6y ago

I guess they had to do something to prevent multicasting from coming back.

Mindwipe 6y ago

A session on censorship under the guise of "protecting kids" with someone from Common Sense Media and no counter. And it's a pre-record, so no questions. I guess that's to be expected from the company that just launched the homophobic web filter.

Foe 6y ago

It’s like Microsoft’s Channel 9, Learn TV: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/tv/ https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/tv/

sixhobbits 6y ago

Genuinely curious, My possibly biased perception is that people in Europe are more "internationally aware" (for lack of a better word) than those in the US. e.g. a website that is built in Europe but likely to attract international interest will include a timezone. The schedule[0] for this just has dates and times. I have no idea when anything is, though some of it looks interesting. Is there a "default" timezone that Americans assume on an American-centric site that doesn't actually state timezones? California? [0] https://cloudflare.tv/schedule https://cloudflare.tv/schedule

kidsil 6y ago
In my experience it's usually EST timezone (Eastern Time Zone). Currently that's UTC-4.
- tcberry 6y ago
  That is usually true for a lot of timezone-free times for U.S.-based companies, but the article states that the inaugural broadcast is 12 PM Pacific time (PDT), which is UTC-7. The schedule lists this broadcast as occurring at 12 PM, which aligns with it being set to Pacific time. Makes sense, as Cloudflare is based in San Francisco.
kozziollek 6y ago
I think it's just local ;) I'm in CEST (UTC+2), so it's 12:22 pm right now, and schedule page shows that orange line in 12:00 PM box. But I agree - it should mention timezone or if it's local time. I saw "AM/PM" and also assumed it was some "stupid" American time.
kiliankoe 6y ago
My (grossly over-simplified) experience has been that European services tend to focus a lot more on localization than US-based ones, with the latter focusing a lot more on time zone issues, since that is a topic very relevant to the US. Not so much in Europe, where most countries share the same time zone with their neighbors and are only situated in a single one themselves.
6y ago

jonplackett 6y ago

Seems like someone has too much venture capital.

7ewis 6y ago

Will the videos be uploaded somewhere like YouTube after airing?

mikece 6y ago

I love the concept and the comparison to MTV. Have Cloudflare considered getting Adam Curry (from MTV’s Headbangers Ball) on as a contributor? Adam is quite the geek in his own right and is the inventor of podcasting and the first podcast.

mwexler 6y ago

I find video abusive to my time. To consume the content, which I assume is the author's intent, I must give up my time in whatever chunk the author chooses. But I can consume text at my own pace in multiple methods. Tech usually prefers async, decoupled processes. Advertising and attention-for-money, however, demand a synced experience. If I'm looking for entertainment, sure, video, audio, whatever. But if I want to learn or be informed, why should I have to waste time? If this is just the "how should creators get comped" discussion ("attention gets ads to reward content creators", etc), fine, but in a case like parent post, better use of cloudflare means more $ for them, so they probably want consumption. So, why video? I've said this before and gotten feedback around "diff people need diff modalities to consume info" and "video can be more effective than static text". All true, which is why having text as an option is important; just video is as bad as, if not worse than, just text.

faeyanpiraat 6y ago
I’ve started learning angular, and watching a couple of explaining while actually coding vids related to how angular works, tips and tricks, rxjs patterns, etc.. really helped me understand how it works. For vids where the ppl speak slow, i up the speed to 1.25 or 1.5, which helps sometimes. For introduction to some new tech it’s fine.. Of course I have to go actually read the docs and start coding stuff, which takes way more energy, but now the vids convinced me this worth investing my time into.

tristor 6y ago

I would much rather read an article. I can't watch a video while I'm doing other things, but I can have an article up and go back and forth with it.

sbilstein 6y ago

I find it very difficult to pay attention to video content or audio content without getting distracted or just wanting to turn it off. I wonder if anyone has tips for how to improve my concentration. Funnily, I don't have this issue with music or with movies/TV. It's just lecture formats and podcasts that don't work for me. I much prefer to read articles, guides, transcripts, etc.

wrigby 6y ago
I find it really helpful to actively take handwritten notes, for two big reasons: Firstly, hand-writing notes without falling behind the content forces me to choose the most relevant information presented and reword that information into a concise-enough form that I can quickly write it down. This helps me actually process the content instead of just hearing it. Mentally, it feels like the information soaks into my brain, rather than bouncing off of it. Secondly - and this is comically simple, but just as important as the first - it keeps my hands off of my keyboard/mouse, so I don't get distracted by other interesting things on the Internet (like HN) and tune out.

GNOMES 6y ago

Am I missing something, or will they make the videos available in an archive later?

buzzert 6y ago

Surprised at all the negative comments here. Did no one else grow up with TechTV? The sheer mention of TechTV in the article got me really excited. I, for one, watch technical videos all the time but not for the purpose of explicitly learning something (as a lot of people here say the medium is an inefficient way to do so), but instead for entertainment. Certainly beats watching reality TV or whatever the hottest Netflix show is.

couchand 6y ago

I really can't wait for Silicon Valley Squares. https://cloudflare.tv/schedule/5OGa585usFPJqixCNnazhC https://cloudflare.tv/schedule/5OGa585usFPJqixCNnazhC

programbreeding 6y ago

Tuned in to watch the initial broadcast; unfortunately I'm having a lot of issues with it streaming. Good luck to the team responsible for getting it going!

godelski 6y ago

So I tuned in and it was hard to watch because during the Galileo presentation I was getting a lot of hiccups and sputtering. I had to stop watching because it was impossible to follow along. Is anyone else experiencing this issue?

rafaelturk 6y ago

What I really wish is for a Hacker News TV

foobiekr 6y ago

The only one of these I want to watch, "Inventing the Future in 1983" doesn't play.