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> Netflix does way more than "streaming big binary blocks of data from a CDN". Yes, but our point (or at least mine) is that it should not. Transcoding takes p

> Netflix does way more than "streaming big binary blocks of data from a CDN". Yes, but our point (or at least mine) is that it should not. Transcoding takes place once and for all when you first upload the video, then you can call it a day and let caching proxies distribute bits to people who want to download them. Do users benefit from the machine learning algorithms and statistics collected by Netflix? No. Managers and shareholders benefit from it, and they're gonna let such big corporations destroy our entire planet if that's what it takes for their fame and profits. Just think about the ecological impact of what you're building, for humanity's sake.

orf 5y ago
You’re focusing on the “ecological impact” of an event bus over the impact of massive transcoding jobs and the infrastructure required to serve it fast to users? > Transcoding takes place once and for all when you first upload the video, then you can call it a day and let caching proxies distribute bits Damn! You should let Netflix know that, I’m sure they would be relieved to know it’s as simple as that, as anyone who’s ever worked with serving video to many devices would attest! > Do users benefit from the machine learning algorithms and statistics collected by Netflix? Yes. Those metrics allow them to take targeted bets on new types of content that other studios might pass over, across the entire world. Your whole argument seems to be that “Netflix could be run with just python -m http.server /movies/, all these kids better get off my lawn because they are messing it up with all this complexity that I don’t appreciate because I’ve got no clue what’s required to build and operate something like Netflix at scale”. I don’t buy it.
- southerntofu 5y ago
  > You’re focusing on the “ecological impact” of an event bus over the impact of massive transcoding jobs and the infrastructure required to serve it fast to users? Not exactly no. I'm focusing on the excess, useless consumption of resources just to please psychopaths on a corporate board. Video distribution as a domain has inherent complexity that has to be dealt with, but there's obvious ways to greatly reduce the ecological impact of Netflix: - distribute videos P2P, enabling shorter routes and less "edge" infrastructure - remove all the useless DRMs so that people can share the videos on their USB key without requiring considerable network infrastructure But of course business-minded people can't come to terms with the reality of how much they're fucking the environment just for their so called "property rights" and for the sake of imaginary numbers and very real control over people/workers. > python -m http.server /movies/ Something like that. Better with a more solid HTTP server implementation (nginx?), and even better if you can replicate split/replicate the content across machines. Then you can leave Bittorrent protocol + HTTP(S) seeds do the job of delivering video on a budget. The only complex parts in such a setup is transcoding (but that's ok they've got machines to do it in advance) and maintaining a central database of everything available across storage servers (that's also OK given it's only a few million entries). > I’ve got no clue what’s required to build and operate something like Netflix at scale” Nope, i've got no clue, and i'm ok with that. I don't think anything approaching the scale of Netflix or Facebook should even exist. We need to dismantle industrial capitalism before it finishes dismantling our entire planet.
  - orf 5y ago
    Ok sure but in the meantime the point still stands: Netflix needs it, both they and consumers get value out of it and serving video at their scale to the number of devices they support is much harder than “use nginx”. If the system that enables these companies should be dismantled or not is a completely different argument to “should this event bus exist”.
    - southerntofu 5y ago
      > If the system that enables these companies should be dismantled or not is a completely different argument to “should this event bus exist”. Fair enough. But if the "170 MB of logs pre customer per day" suggested in another comment are even remotely true, that's still a huge mammoth to shave...

orf 5y ago

You’re focusing on the “ecological impact” of an event bus over the impact of massive transcoding jobs and the infrastructure required to serve it fast to users? > Transcoding takes place once and for all when you first upload the video, then you can call it a day and let caching proxies distribute bits Damn! You should let Netflix know that, I’m sure they would be relieved to know it’s as simple as that, as anyone who’s ever worked with serving video to many devices would attest! > Do users benefit from the machine learning algorithms and statistics collected by Netflix? Yes. Those metrics allow them to take targeted bets on new types of content that other studios might pass over, across the entire world. Your whole argument seems to be that “Netflix could be run with just python -m http.server /movies/, all these kids better get off my lawn because they are messing it up with all this complexity that I don’t appreciate because I’ve got no clue what’s required to build and operate something like Netflix at scale”. I don’t buy it.

southerntofu 5y ago
> You’re focusing on the “ecological impact” of an event bus over the impact of massive transcoding jobs and the infrastructure required to serve it fast to users? Not exactly no. I'm focusing on the excess, useless consumption of resources just to please psychopaths on a corporate board. Video distribution as a domain has inherent complexity that has to be dealt with, but there's obvious ways to greatly reduce the ecological impact of Netflix: - distribute videos P2P, enabling shorter routes and less "edge" infrastructure - remove all the useless DRMs so that people can share the videos on their USB key without requiring considerable network infrastructure But of course business-minded people can't come to terms with the reality of how much they're fucking the environment just for their so called "property rights" and for the sake of imaginary numbers and very real control over people/workers. > python -m http.server /movies/ Something like that. Better with a more solid HTTP server implementation (nginx?), and even better if you can replicate split/replicate the content across machines. Then you can leave Bittorrent protocol + HTTP(S) seeds do the job of delivering video on a budget. The only complex parts in such a setup is transcoding (but that's ok they've got machines to do it in advance) and maintaining a central database of everything available across storage servers (that's also OK given it's only a few million entries). > I’ve got no clue what’s required to build and operate something like Netflix at scale” Nope, i've got no clue, and i'm ok with that. I don't think anything approaching the scale of Netflix or Facebook should even exist. We need to dismantle industrial capitalism before it finishes dismantling our entire planet.
- orf 5y ago
  Ok sure but in the meantime the point still stands: Netflix needs it, both they and consumers get value out of it and serving video at their scale to the number of devices they support is much harder than “use nginx”. If the system that enables these companies should be dismantled or not is a completely different argument to “should this event bus exist”.
  - southerntofu 5y ago
    > If the system that enables these companies should be dismantled or not is a completely different argument to “should this event bus exist”. Fair enough. But if the "170 MB of logs pre customer per day" suggested in another comment are even remotely true, that's still a huge mammoth to shave...