11 ms·
Some personal news
- Amorymeltzer 4y agoDiscussion here from last week when this was first "announced" (81 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35707372 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35707372
- ghaff 4y agoHe seems to have done a pretty good job of negotiating his contracts with respect to owning a lot of his model IP moving forward. Still needs to find a platform/pub moving forward of course but far from starting from scratch.
- Shank 4y agoQuoting this here for the added context: > Much of FiveThirtyEight’s vital intellectual property — such as the election forecast models — is merely licensed to Disney. The license term for these models expires with my contract this summer. I still own these models, and can license or sell them elsewhere. This is one hell of an agreement to have with your employer. That was my next question given that most of FiveThirtyEight was Nate's own work, and he had very good insight to have an escape hatch. I really hope to have the power to do this one day.
- JamisonM 4y agoI wouldn't presume that most of it is Nate's own work. (I suspect that for most sports he is delegating but "owns" the output, he does seem to directly build most of the political stuff.) Isn't this what the Skype guys pulled off with Microsoft too?
- mcastillon 4y agoNate got his start in this world doing baseball forecasting (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PECOTA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PECOTA), well before he delved into politics. Jay Boice definitely doing much of the heavy lifting these days, and deserves more personal recognition than he currently gets. But I wouldn't discount the amount of work Nate personally put in on the sports front.
- JamisonM 4y agoI don't entirely disagree. We know from his public statements that he personally builds the political models. I think he is personally invested in the baseball modelling but we know it is a team effort and 538 is doing a lot. Nate is a media figure, he has to delegate.
- labster 4y agoWhat interest would the Mouse have in numerical models? They want entertainment IP, not weird programs that they have no experience marketing or hiring people to run. They’re not just going to transfer it over to Pixar so the guys behind Cars 2 can predict the next election. Disney wants the talent. It’s just not as valuable to them as keeping Nate happy
- alkibiades 4y agogiven that they own abc news and espn among others, they have a lot of interest
- Reubachi 4y agoDisney is a multi industry conglomerate interested in understanding/manipulating public policy and political trends through numerical models in the same way you would be interested in your local politics and it's trends. They're also not just after "entertainment IP". In fact I'd say they are one of the premier proprietary data analytics orgs with respect to park management, fast passing, queuing. Same with Market Research on film/animation, they've quite literally been doing it since it's been a thing.
- the-printer 4y agoYeah, this is what stood out to me also. It’s likely a lot more than other people in his position could say.
- tootie 4y agoThere's some reporting that Disney execs didn't fully comprehend the terms he had when they decided to release him and now they're scrambling. https://www.semafor.com/article/05/01/2023/abc-news-struggles-to-replace-nate-silver https://www.semafor.com/article/05/01/2023/abc-news-struggle...
- scoofy 4y agoWow... if that's true, it's some real amateur hour idiocy. As much as I like the brand, I'd trivially stick with Nate, especially if he somehow got the old band back together: Harry, Claire, etc.
- ghaff 4y agoI'm not sure how much I'd read into that. Maybe some Disney execs have seller's remorse (or never wanted to sell in the first place). But, at the end of the day, a lot of the "IP" is pretty much public in considerable detail. (That said, having some explicit ownership is a good way to avoid unnecessary haggling with lawyers.) And if Disney had actually wanted the full analytic and writing ability of FiveThirtyEight surely even an entertainment exec would realize you're giving that up if you let those people go.
- ehaveman 4y agoi was struck by that as well. smart long game moves.
- threatofrain 4y ago> NATE DOT SILVER DOT MEDIA AT GMAIL DOT COM Artifacts of another age. This stuff won't work anymore.
- nighthawk454 4y agoPresumably it's not super serious as there's a mailto link right before it
- walrus01 4y agoparticularly odd when natesilver.net and natesilver.com are both domains that exist and presumably owned by him (for well known public figure trademark reasons), he can't just point the MX for them at gsuite and then set up an inbox?
- Blahah 4y agoThat opens a surprisingly large landscape of possible attacks and failure modes. The jsit obvious subset being things that happen when your paid gsuite gets disabled (not paying, abuse report, etc), or the domain lapses or is taken over. A basic free gmail account is very stable compared to almost any other option. L
- walrus01 4y agosomebody of the public profile of Nate Silver presumably can hire IT/network people who know how to securely run authoritative DNS (or hire it out to a highly trusted third party as a service), so they can point the MX anywhere they want, and either do email in-house or hire it out to an email service specialist or big cloud service provider. The risk of having the gsuite paid services shut off are about the same as any other high dollar value paying customer using gsuite or office365 as an email service.
- Blahah 4y agoThe question was why not, and the answer was because it's more risky. Why would Nate Silver want to do all the things you correctly listed as options when he can simply use the safer, more simple, free gmail option?
- somethoughts 4y agoIt feels like a waste to not just figure out how to have the founder buy back the domain name/trademarks.
- beerpls 4y agoI really lost any semblance of respect for Silver after the 2016 election Analysis after analysis about how Hillary was a sure thing. It was an absolute echo chamber and the election completely lifted the curtain for me
- sdfghswe 4y ago> Analysis after analysis about how Hillary was a sure thing. Really? I think I remember him giving Trump 30% on the night? EDIT: Got it - some people struggle with incorporating uncertainty into their reasoning.
- cvalka 4y agoCorrect. He was right about the 2016 presidential election.
- khazhoux 4y agoWhat does it mean to be "right"? A pollster claiming Trump:Hillary at 99:1, 50:50, or 33:66 could all claim to have been "right".
- dllthomas 4y agoFor the individual prediction it's impossible to say, so you reward the people who got it right based on how likely they said it was, and you penalize the people who got it wrong based on how unlikely they said it was. If we apply a proper scoring rule, over time the you score better by giving better calibrated guesses.
- khazhoux 4y agoI agree with this. But the original statement is poorly phrased, that "He was right." He was perhaps more right than others who gave Trump lower odds. But there's not an absolute right/wrong (unless someone gave 100:0 odds).
- Wowfunhappy 4y ago> It’s not just that I think these models have a lot of journalistic value ...do they, though? I'm actually not so convinced in the journalistic value of FiveThirtyEight. It's something I've thought about before. FiveThirtyEight's political forecasts absolutely provide a desirable service! Who doesn't want to know who will win an upcoming election? But is it good for people to know who is more likely to win an election? Are these predictions beneficial to society or democracy? I sometimes think they may actually be harmful, decreasing voter turnout by convincing people (correctly or incorrectly) that the result is preordained. That's not to say Nate Silver is doing anything wrong by making FiveThirtyEight available, but he tends to talk about it as a sort of public good. I'm not sure whether that's accurate.
- jdm2212 4y agoAs opposed to horserace election coverage, which is the single biggest focus of all of American journalism for the year or so leading up to an election... which is of greater journalistic value?
- RC_ITR 4y agoSimply looking at 538 during election cycles makes it hard to argue they aren’t a horse race tracker (they literally started as a sanitized gambling odds site and Nate’s new book is about gambling). They’re just the guy who went to the stables before to see who was eating the most hay.
- jdm2212 4y ago538 absolutely is horserace coverage, but unlike basically all the other election coverage, it's rigorous, impartial, and intellectually honest.
- RC_ITR 4y agoEh, eye of the beholder. I honestly mostly follow the sports odds and I’d argue that Nate’s models are some of the most biased out there for that.
- MR4D 4y agoAfter watching this and the DPReview saga, there is only one takeaway: Don't sell your company unless you are prepared to walk away and do something else - because at some point you're going to be forced to do so whether you want to or not.
- paxys 4y agoOr do exactly what Nate Silver did – negotiate the contract in such a way that you still have control over your IP if they decide to terminate you or sunset your product. Of course chances are that you don't have the kind of leverage that he did, but still...worth a shot.
- MR4D 4y agoI agree completely. I wasn't thinking of addressing my comment to stars like that but more towards mere mortals like me. Given that we're on HN, I probably should have thought that thru a bit more. Either way, very glad that Nate was smart enough to license everything. Kudos to him for being a shrewd negotiator.
- throw7 4y agoWas 538 journalism? I never followed them. Only on occasions of them being quoted with some type of forecast.
- paulcole 4y agoI don’t think anyone can answer this to your satisfaction without knowing your personal definition of journalism. Because I believe the question you’re really asking is, “Was 538 what I consider journalism?” When I typed “define journalism” into Google, this came back: > the activity or profession of writing for newspapers, magazines, or news websites or preparing news to be broadcast. So yes, 538 was journalism by at least one definition of journalism. Here’s one more definition: > Journalism is the activity of gathering, assessing, creating, and presenting news and information. It is also the product of these activities Another yes! We’re 2 for 2!
- slondr 4y ago> Was 538 journalism? Yes, it was, and still "is" until they take the website down: https://fivethirtyeight.com/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/
- pessimizer 4y agoAll fact-based reporting on politics and current events is journalism. I'm sure some of your HN comments have been journalism. 538 is a bunch of opinionated statistics and bad editorial. Squarely in the center of journalism.
- Willish42 4y ago> There are also some complicated cases — for example, for some of the sports models, I own them, but Disney gets to keep a copy when I leave. As others have mentioned, he's very wise to have negotiated contracts so he keeps some IP, but those sports models might be what generate the most revenue. Are there precedents for this in the tech world, where somebody can legally bring IP with them to a new role but the old employer/competitor keeps an exact copy? Seems like an unusual arrangement that'd be hard to sell the upside to somebody competing with Disney/ESPN. Also, that [poker bluff](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cVrlVzoh48 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cVrlVzoh48) was very entertaining to watch. Apparently Nate's quite the poker player (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nate_Silver#Economic_consultant:_2000%E2%80%932004 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nate_Silver#Economic_consultan...)
- FreakLegion 4y ago> Are there precedents for this in the tech world, where somebody can legally bring IP with them to a new role but the old employer/competitor keeps an exact copy? This is actually the standard arrangement, depending on how you define "tech world". In California for example a Proprietary Information And Inventions Agreement will include a provision along the lines of: > If, in the course of my employment with the Company, I incorporate a Prior Invention into a Company product, process or machine, the Company is hereby granted and shall have a nonexclusive, royalty-free, irrevocable, perpetual, worldwide license (with rights to sublicense through multiple tiers of sublicensees) to make, have made, modify, use and sell such Prior Invention. Notwithstanding the foregoing, I agree that I will not incorporate, or permit to be incorporated, Prior Inventions in any Company Inventions without the Company’s prior written consent. Meaning anything you created before remains yours, even if, out of the kindness of your heart, you allow your employer to benefit from it. What's unusual in Silver's case is maintaining that arrangement for a) the founder of a company, and b) through an acquisition.
- bee_rider 4y agoHow much value does the model actually have, in and of itself? It’s just a bunch of correlations, right? The value of the model is in the reporting that he does using it (articles, podcasts). The competition would get value from having him host a show about it on their platform. Disney… I wonder if they even care about the model, or if they just took a license to it/current copy thing because, I dunno, maybe he offered it for really cheap. I mean can you imagine, 538 but without the main character? It would be incredibly lame.
- alfalfasprout 4y agoDisney and WB Discovery seem to have totally lost any vision for their future. 538 has a very clear value proposition outside of exposing nerdy polling and forecasting breakdowns for a small group of wonks. It's the place a lot of other folks source for rigorous tracking+forecasting of elections, sports, etc. It's good. Disney, however, seems to be putting out a lot of crappy content on their Disney+ platform that rates poorly and is expensive to produce. The Mandalorian + Andor are great but the other recent Star Wars IP is horrible and cost them a fortune.
- chucky_z 4y agoThis is why they just recently changed CEOs. You're going to see the ship changing direction over the next 2 years back to a more familiar course.
- legitster 4y agoA melancholic development. But in a way, kind of relieving. I think Nate Silver and his team did an amazing job making statistical analysis interesting and transparent and trustworthy. On the other hand, 538 was a weirdly sterile website to actually read. On the rest of the internet you have raging and bombastic news designed to elicit feelings and (most importantly) clicks. 538 tried their best to fit in this world, but you were still just reading data analysis about other news or topics.
- whyenot 4y agoI take it Disney owns Fivey Fox? That's kind of a bummer.
- paulgb 4y agoThe last tweet from Fivey Fox's account, just after the second round of layoffs was announced, is ominous https://twitter.com/FiveyFox/status/1651634606272126995 https://twitter.com/FiveyFox/status/1651634606272126995
- dgdosen 4y agoNate, I'll work with you...
- gnicholas 4y ago> Much of FiveThirtyEight’s vital intellectual property — such as the election forecast models — is merely licensed to Disney. The license term for these models expires with my contract this summer. I still own these models, and can license or sell them elsewhere. Sounds like he had some good leverage going into this deal. Why would Disney have agreed to a temporary license, as opposed to a purchase of this critical IP? Regardless, good for him.
- JamisonM 4y ago> Why would Disney have agreed to a temporary license, as opposed to a purchase of this critical IP? It was probably a risk hedge from them.. he would have wanted a lot more for the full enchilada and they didn't know how it would perform in the future. And now his work is not hard to reproduce so it wasn't a bad call. Every political data team I have heard reporting on essentially concedes that whatever they do ends up more-or-less matching 538.. so it is hard to extract surplus value but also easy to hit that mark roughly. I follow the NHL and there are a lot of models, they disagree in certain details but they largely agree and the "winner" at the end of any given season isn't winning by much.. even private data isn't a big boost.
- ghaff 4y agoAnd who knows how much of this Disney really cares about going forward outside of the Nate Silver Brand--and had they had wanted that they'd have kept Nate Silver.
- JamisonM 4y agoCalculating the difference between the 538 brand and the Nate Silver brand at the time of acquisition was probably a bit of a toss-up too. Nate can move on to a substack that generates $2MM a year with 4 staff and be happy while Disney runs 538 at a reasonable margin and be happy and I guess everyone is a winner?
- eclipticplane 4y agoIn the meteoric rise of 538, Nate could have easily walked into NYT or any other tech-forward media outlet and negotiated to retain the models. Disney would have lost out then.
- gensym 4y agoAs a DIS shareholder, I'm livid. Losing the rights to use the best election forecasting models in the business a year before a Presidential election is monumental fuckup. This is one screwup that can't be placed at the feet of their previous incompetent CEO.
- eqmvii 4y agoDo you really think it brought in that much money? I'm sure they had plenty of data when they made this decision.
- bee_rider 4y agoIn the grand scheme of Disney stuff, it probably didn’t make much money relatively speaking, but it seems weird to get rid of it right before the season where it’ll make any money.
- prepend 4y agoOr after its 2016 performance they didn’t expect it to make that much so a year of salary was more than earnings.
- HDThoreaun 4y ago538 was not wrong in 2016. They were actually one of the outlets that gave trump the best odds.
- prepend 4y agoIt’s not that they were wrong, they weren’t useful for what people want. What people expect and what is possible is out of sync and I think people misunderstood FiveThirtyEight for many years and thought it was an oracle. It’s not.
- prepend 4y agoWas it really any better than NYTimes or CNN? I think it’s pretty unremarkable these days and I don’t think Disney is losing revenue or prestige.
- ftxbro 4y agoNow that Disney owns the FiveThirtyEight trade name I want to see how it's integrated into the Star Wars franchise.
- gnicholas 4y ago"538" can be hidden inside of "BB8", given the shape of the chars.
- ftxbro 4y agoThis is now canon for me. > "In July 2013, ESPN (owned by Disney) acquired FiveThirtyEight, hiring Silver as editor-in-chief and a contributor for ESPN.com; the new publication launched on March 17, 2014." > "BB-8 was first seen in the 88-second The Force Awakens teaser trailer released by Lucasfilm (owned by Disney) on November 28, 2014"
- ehaveman 4y agothis is the way.
- Steltek 4y agoNever tell me the odds!
- khazhoux 4y agoC-3PO: Sir, the possibility of successfully navigating an asteroid field is approximately 3,720 to 1! Han Solo: Excellent analysis. Chewie, Leia, prepare for surrender.
- bighoki2885000 4y ago[dead]
- prepend 4y ago> Much of FiveThirtyEight’s vital intellectual property — such as the election forecast models — is merely licensed to Disney. This seems odd that Disney would buy FiveThirtyEight but not its IP. How common is this? If I were buying a data journalism company known for its models, that seems like something important to purchase. This seems like a curious contract negotiation and seems like a mistake on Disney’s part. Or a future lawsuit if there’s a difference of opinions.
- enkid 4y agoDisney is a media company that was dabbling in data science because of its name recognition. It almost certainly didn't have the strategic vision to care much about something as nerdy as the intellectual property being used to generate that name recognition.
- netsharc 4y agoI mean, 538 was under the NYTimes.com domain before that, it's not like Nate had to sell, and when he agreed to move to ESPN/Disney, he surely had more of the bargaining power.
- jdlshore 4y agoFiveThirtyEight made a big splash in its 2008 election debut. According to Wikipedia, there were numerous media outlets competing for its content in 2010. That likely gave Silver a lot of leverage. The same is probably true in 2014, when FiveThirtyEight moved from the New York Times to ESPN/Disney. Interestingly, the deal with the NYT was that the entire blog was licensed. For the deal with Disney, it seems like Silver gave up a lot more, and only kept control of the models.
- parekhnish 4y agoBefore Disney/ABC get any -ideas-, might be a good chance to get our hands on at least their data[0]! [0]: https://data.fivethirtyeight.com/ https://data.fivethirtyeight.com/
- lee101 4y ago[dead]
- ehaveman 4y agoi'm super curious about the book!
- bighoki2885000 4y ago[dead]