I remember, back around 2000, hearing the various pundits explain how, any day now, TiVo would start giving away their hardware and subscriptions for free. Aft

I remember, back around 2000, hearing the various pundits explain how, any day now, TiVo would start giving away their hardware and subscriptions for free. After all, the company was collecting vast quantities of data on people's viewing habits, including which commercials they were watching instead of skipping, what parts of shows were their favourites, what episodes they liked and hated, and connected viewership graphs between shows. Getting more data from having more subscribers would more than offset the costs of passing out free DVRs. As for how well that plan worked, I just visited their website to see if they were even still in business. That was for data that's far more valuable than atmospheric data. Despite all of our advances in data mining and machine learning, there doesn't seem to be that much actual value in data.