4 ms·

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 jus

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.
  - eastdakota 6y ago
    Well, we did have to build that in order to build this. So… possible we'll expose more of that in the future. One step at a time.
    - adamw2k 6y ago
      Appreciate that the company's founder and leader is on here replying... Even if the OP.
      - chipperyman573 6y ago
        Just want to predict it now - this year's cloudflare birthday thing?
    - godelski 6y ago
      I think one of the interesting things that could come out of this is making it easier for universities (we're talking covid related problems) to stream/record their classes and make O(ish)CW a more accessible thing. Essentially each university has their own YouTube. Then the university could have more control over who has access to what. For example, you can only access lectures to classes you're enrolled in if the uni wants more control. I think this is one of those problems where you never know how someone is going to use tools until you get your hands on them. I used to work for an engineering firm and when we bought our first 3D printer it was a toy. Then we started to realize that it could build tools that we needed on the fly and soon we had a dozen and they were always printing something. We didn't know how to use it until we had it. Also, thanks for participating in this thread.
  - leourbina 6y ago
- Jugurtha 6y ago
  Not parent, but I thought it were a TV stream that filmed Cloudflare teams solving problems. Similar to the documentary[1] "Aardvark'd: 12 Weeks with Geeks" where they show the life of interns developing an actual product at Fog Creek, the first paying customer, bug fixes, etc. I appreciated that one, as I did "Code Rush"[3], an embedded documentary following people at Netscape in 1998, even shows the moment Jamie Zawinski bringing the source code and uploading it, or moments where they needed Apple to greenlight using proprietary code, trying to reach Steve Jobs, and ending up implementing it. Another one I liked was "Downloaded", a documentary about Napster with the main people (Sean Fanning, Sean Parker, Ron Conway, etc.)[4] PS: Since you're here, I was unable to log to my CloudFlare account for more than a week, reset my password an everything, but always couldn't log in until a couple of days ago. I would have wanted to see a video on the background of the issue and how it was resolved : ) [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NRL7YsXjSg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NRL7YsXjSg [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aardvark%27d:_12_Weeks_with_Geeks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aardvark%27d:_12_Weeks_with_Ge... [3]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Q7FTjhvZ7Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Q7FTjhvZ7Y [4]: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2033981/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2033981/
  - eastdakota 6y ago
    That's an interesting idea. Will suggest to the programming team. Probably tricky while we're all working from home. But… maybe in the future. A mini version of that is a show that John Graham-Cumming, our CTO, is going to be hosting weekly: https://cloudflare.tv/schedule/3RbW4iJZAbfN9OetUovuQ2 https://cloudflare.tv/schedule/3RbW4iJZAbfN9OetUovuQ2 "Join Cloudflare CTO John Graham-Cumming as he interviews Cloudflare engineers and they discuss a 'war story' of a problem that needed to be solved — and how they did it."
    - lstamour 6y ago
      That does sound interesting, but the link says it streams 6:30-7am. (I presume that’s a local time for my time zone?) Any chance it will show up as a podcast or on YouTube, or available to watch at another time?
- skybrian 6y ago
  I was kind of hoping for a place where people could broadcast live music concerts. (An alternative to YouTube and Twitch.)
  - ShroudedNight 6y ago
    Are music concerts materially different from other activities one would stream live? I guess traditional audience participation via call and response would at least put a fairly strict upper-bound on latency...
    - skybrian 6y ago
      No, they aren't that diffferent. It's just an example of something one might want to do with live video.
  - chipperyman573 6y ago
    Why did you assume that's what this would be?
  - bovermyer 6y ago
    Fortnite is doing this, oddly enough.
- m01 6y ago
  I was hoping for a live streaming system involving Multicast. Cloudflare seems like the sort of company that could pull that off. Netflix is another, if they did live video.
- unixhero 6y ago
  Congrats with the announcement! I dont understand the negativity. Looking forward to seeing your channel and your format. Maybe it will work maybe not. Great initiative. I'm from the industry, and people I work with were excited about the news. Responses here in this thread remind me of /r/linux culture. Strange, it's a HN I haven't seen.

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.
- eastdakota 6y ago
  Well, we did have to build that in order to build this. So… possible we'll expose more of that in the future. One step at a time.
  - adamw2k 6y ago
    Appreciate that the company's founder and leader is on here replying... Even if the OP.
    - chipperyman573 6y ago
      Just want to predict it now - this year's cloudflare birthday thing?
  - godelski 6y ago
    I think one of the interesting things that could come out of this is making it easier for universities (we're talking covid related problems) to stream/record their classes and make O(ish)CW a more accessible thing. Essentially each university has their own YouTube. Then the university could have more control over who has access to what. For example, you can only access lectures to classes you're enrolled in if the uni wants more control. I think this is one of those problems where you never know how someone is going to use tools until you get your hands on them. I used to work for an engineering firm and when we bought our first 3D printer it was a toy. Then we started to realize that it could build tools that we needed on the fly and soon we had a dozen and they were always printing something. We didn't know how to use it until we had it. Also, thanks for participating in this thread.
- leourbina 6y ago
Jugurtha 6y ago
Not parent, but I thought it were a TV stream that filmed Cloudflare teams solving problems. Similar to the documentary[1] "Aardvark'd: 12 Weeks with Geeks" where they show the life of interns developing an actual product at Fog Creek, the first paying customer, bug fixes, etc. I appreciated that one, as I did "Code Rush"[3], an embedded documentary following people at Netscape in 1998, even shows the moment Jamie Zawinski bringing the source code and uploading it, or moments where they needed Apple to greenlight using proprietary code, trying to reach Steve Jobs, and ending up implementing it. Another one I liked was "Downloaded", a documentary about Napster with the main people (Sean Fanning, Sean Parker, Ron Conway, etc.)[4] PS: Since you're here, I was unable to log to my CloudFlare account for more than a week, reset my password an everything, but always couldn't log in until a couple of days ago. I would have wanted to see a video on the background of the issue and how it was resolved : ) [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NRL7YsXjSg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NRL7YsXjSg [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aardvark%27d:_12_Weeks_with_Geeks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aardvark%27d:_12_Weeks_with_Ge... [3]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Q7FTjhvZ7Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Q7FTjhvZ7Y [4]: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2033981/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2033981/
- eastdakota 6y ago
  That's an interesting idea. Will suggest to the programming team. Probably tricky while we're all working from home. But… maybe in the future. A mini version of that is a show that John Graham-Cumming, our CTO, is going to be hosting weekly: https://cloudflare.tv/schedule/3RbW4iJZAbfN9OetUovuQ2 https://cloudflare.tv/schedule/3RbW4iJZAbfN9OetUovuQ2 "Join Cloudflare CTO John Graham-Cumming as he interviews Cloudflare engineers and they discuss a 'war story' of a problem that needed to be solved — and how they did it."
  - lstamour 6y ago
    That does sound interesting, but the link says it streams 6:30-7am. (I presume that’s a local time for my time zone?) Any chance it will show up as a podcast or on YouTube, or available to watch at another time?
skybrian 6y ago
I was kind of hoping for a place where people could broadcast live music concerts. (An alternative to YouTube and Twitch.)
- ShroudedNight 6y ago
  Are music concerts materially different from other activities one would stream live? I guess traditional audience participation via call and response would at least put a fairly strict upper-bound on latency...
  - skybrian 6y ago
    No, they aren't that diffferent. It's just an example of something one might want to do with live video.
- chipperyman573 6y ago
  Why did you assume that's what this would be?
- bovermyer 6y ago
  Fortnite is doing this, oddly enough.
m01 6y ago
I was hoping for a live streaming system involving Multicast. Cloudflare seems like the sort of company that could pull that off. Netflix is another, if they did live video.
unixhero 6y ago
Congrats with the announcement! I dont understand the negativity. Looking forward to seeing your channel and your format. Maybe it will work maybe not. Great initiative. I'm from the industry, and people I work with were excited about the news. Responses here in this thread remind me of /r/linux culture. Strange, it's a HN I haven't seen.