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In 2012 Youtube did the Red Bull stratos live stream with 8m concurrent users. We're 12 years later, Netflix fucked up.

by Thaxll 2y ago

MichaelZuo 2y ago
The average quality of talent has gone way down compared to 2012 though. E.g. the median engineer, excluding entry level/interns, at YouTube in 2012 was a literal genius at their niche or quite close to it. Netflix simply can’t hire literal geniuses with mid six figure compensation packages in 2024 dollars anymore… though that may change with a more severe contraction.
spaceywilly 2y ago
To me the difference is that in 2012, you had companies focusing on delivering a quality product, whether it made money or not. Today, the economic environment has shifted a lot and companies are trying to increase profits while cutting costs. The result is inevitably a decline in quality. I'm sure that Netflix could deliver a flawless live stream to millions of viewers, but the question is can they do it while making a profit that Wall Street is happy with. Apparently not.
Mistletoe 2y ago
The funny thing is I was just reading something on HN like three days ago about how light years ahead Netflix tech was compared to other streaming providers. This is the first thing I thought of when I saw the reports that the fight was messing up.
lxgr 2y ago
But is there a way that Netflix might have learned from all of Youtube's past mistakes? The only reasonable way to scale something like this up is probably to... scale it up. Sure, there are probably some generic lessons, but I bet that the pain points in Netflix's architecture (historically grown over more than a decade and optimized towards highly cacheable content) are very different from Youtube, which has ramped up live content gradually over as many years.
SoftTalker 2y ago
2012 live video was what, 480p?
- jeffgreco 2y ago
  That’s about what Paul Tyson was looking like at times.
- heraldgeezer 2y ago
  No? In 2012 most already had fiber net here. Are you young or poor?
  - crysin 2y ago
    At least in the US "most" most definitely did not have fiber, at best maybe FTTC.
  - slices 2y ago
    living in a major US city in 2012, we had ancient DSL
reaperducer 2y ago
In 2012 Youtube did the Red Bull stratos live stream with 8m concurrent users 8m vs 60m. And not in 4K. Not a great choice for comparison.
- MuffinFlavored 2y ago
  Source for Netflix pulling 60m streams to watch Tyson/Paul?
  - nosequel 2y ago
    https://about.netflix.com/en/news/60-million-households-tuned-in-live-for-jake-paul-vs-mike-tyson https://about.netflix.com/en/news/60-million-households-tune...

In 2012 Youtube did the Red Bull stratos live stream with 8m concurrent users. We're 12 years later, Netflix fucked up.

by Thaxll 2y ago

In 2012 Youtube did the Red Bull stratos live stream with 8m concurrent users. We're 12 years later, Netflix fucked up.

The average quality of talent has gone way down compared to 2012 though. E.g. the median engineer, excluding entry level/interns, at YouTube in 2012 was a literal genius at their niche or quite close to it. Netflix simply can’t hire literal geniuses with mid six figure compensation packages in 2024 dollars anymore… though that may change with a more severe contraction.

spaceywilly 2y ago

To me the difference is that in 2012, you had companies focusing on delivering a quality product, whether it made money or not. Today, the economic environment has shifted a lot and companies are trying to increase profits while cutting costs. The result is inevitably a decline in quality. I'm sure that Netflix could deliver a flawless live stream to millions of viewers, but the question is can they do it while making a profit that Wall Street is happy with. Apparently not.

Mistletoe 2y ago

The funny thing is I was just reading something on HN like three days ago about how light years ahead Netflix tech was compared to other streaming providers. This is the first thing I thought of when I saw the reports that the fight was messing up.

lxgr 2y ago

But is there a way that Netflix might have learned from all of Youtube's past mistakes? The only reasonable way to scale something like this up is probably to... scale it up. Sure, there are probably some generic lessons, but I bet that the pain points in Netflix's architecture (historically grown over more than a decade and optimized towards highly cacheable content) are very different from Youtube, which has ramped up live content gradually over as many years.

SoftTalker 2y ago

2012 live video was what, 480p?

jeffgreco 2y ago
That’s about what Paul Tyson was looking like at times.
heraldgeezer 2y ago
No? In 2012 most already had fiber net here. Are you young or poor?
- crysin 2y ago
  At least in the US "most" most definitely did not have fiber, at best maybe FTTC.
- slices 2y ago
  living in a major US city in 2012, we had ancient DSL

reaperducer 2y ago

In 2012 Youtube did the Red Bull stratos live stream with 8m concurrent users 8m vs 60m. And not in 4K. Not a great choice for comparison.

MuffinFlavored 2y ago
Source for Netflix pulling 60m streams to watch Tyson/Paul?
- nosequel 2y ago
  https://about.netflix.com/en/news/60-million-households-tuned-in-live-for-jake-paul-vs-mike-tyson https://about.netflix.com/en/news/60-million-households-tune...