HamsterHookah

Gotcha-- I was talking about if the idea is novel without prior art or whatever, and under the business method portion of the utility patent. I had an idea I wanted to patent using those means, which would be software based, is why I ask. And whether or not it's wholly defensible is probably not a big deal for me, as the main value in the very early innings is ideally to act as a sufficient enough deterrent and potential headache as a "competitive moat" so it's not just easily stolen.

@TwiceHorn why did you say Patent (NO!)? Patents seems like a good thing

Bump-- anything ever happen with this idea OP? @Doc Reeves

Americans racked a record amount of debt last year — and a growing number are missing repayments. Total household debt hit $16.9 trillion in the fourth quarter, up $1.3 trillion year-on-year, according to data from the New York Federal Reserve. Mortgage balances climbed to $11.9 trillion, up about $1 trillion from 2021, while credit card balances grew 15% to $986 billion. Delinquencies rose across all debt categories, with younger borrowers struggling especially wit https://finance.yahoo.com/news/troubling-signs-emerge-as-credit-card-debt-hits-record-high-160607906.html

Yea I guess I missed how that was relevant to what I said (in response to Helobious), which was in response to middle school and specifically called out 13 and 14 year olds. Or maybe you weren't responding to me? I just feel like there is a huge chasm between a 13/14 year old and a 17/18 year old, as a risk factor, for being in and around an environment that is supposed to be centered on education, but is prevalent and rife (using other posters words here) with the hard drugs that are now more commonly a lace-risk of something that can be "one pill, one kill" as the PSA goes.

Specifically I was responding to the guy who said a paraphrase of "dude, it's normal for kids in middle school from 13 and 14 years old to be dealing and doing a bunch of hard drugs like coke and xans-- did you just fall of the turnip truck?" I get with highschool when you are 17 or 18 and hopefully have some higher order thinking-- but man...13 and 14 year olds are babies.

You are telling me that 7th and 8th grade in Westlake is rife with drugs? I don't live there, but this is from the half a dozen people you know?

I'm stuck in a time loop so that means I've only worn 7forallmankind jeans for the last 15 years. They have gone from chic to cheap and basic, which seems to have followed my general downward trajectory as well.

I actually agree y'all both-- No Way Home was the best of the poopoo platter you mentioned (though I would argue BW was better), but also No Way Home (and BW) kinda sucked. Tallest midget syndrome.

Like Babe's, but worse. Sweet.

No kids in my middle school were dealing hard drugs. The fact that you are saying that is normalized is very sad. If it is a known thing, it is child neglect, if not abuse, to put your kids in an environment where these things (coke, xans and now fet) are prevalent.

Oof. Eternals was really bad.

It's not just you, early reviews I saw (from last night) were pretty bad.

Disagree. This is a whole mood and the vibe I strive for daily.

They got a G-league player a bogus 10 day deal to be an NBA player for the dunk contest instead. Coo, coo.

This. And I was probably one of the few who really liked Vucevic and thought he was a really nice player. He was just old and getting older (while on the Magic) and you could see the writing on the wall.

Do you guys remember the LaMDa engineer (Google's version of generative AI) who was fired last summer because he got spooked that it was sentient? I still think he was a bit loony, but I do have more sympathy for him now. https://mashable.com/article/google-engineer-fired-ai-lamda-soul-sentient

Gotcha-- I still think there are too many unknown and constantly changing variables to all this before we can really know what the settled landscape in 3 to 5 years will look like. Still a lot of immaturity and iteration in this space. That said, this is *something* from the latest earnings reports: https://techcrunch.com/2023/02/16/paramount-earnings-q4-2022/

It's not ready yet, news at 9.

Yea, what I meant to convey was that all this studios and content/IP owners stopped selling to Netflix (your original point on why NFLX won't exist in 3 years is because their content sucks and have no sticky content like the Friends, Seinfeld, etc. etc.) and they all stopped selling to Netflix at the same time. It appears as of today, there has been an about-face and these studios are now looking at the market and their own P&L and saying "are we really a general content delivery? what do we want to be? We can sell some of our tier-2 IP again because a) pay-TV is dead/dying and so they aren't going to put it on their cable channels and b) to your friend at peacocks point: "For Peacock, NBCUniversal basically said, “Every high-quality show that we have in development for our broadcast network or our cable networks like USA isn’t even going to start there.” FX in 2019 announced that they were going to double their original programming hours. Then in 2020, Disney said, “Actually FX on Hulu is going to get half of that, it’s never going to show up on FX”. And by the way, everything that does appear on FX is going to be on Hulu twelve hours later with or without ads. There’s kind of no turning that around." This can only help Netflix, whether slightly or more materially, to survive the 3 year mark you mentioned, but generally overall, I think.

That is fantastic lol im dying. NDT was funny but it was the kid shoulder leaning the JPOW cannon fire for me.

"If we go to December 2012, this is when you have the Sarandos’ quote of “Our goal is to become HBO faster than HBO can become us”. I think you reasonably could’ve assumed that for the next several years, Netflix obviously knew most of their competitors were going to take their content back and they were going to stop licensing. But I think they were surprised that all of them — essentially save for Sony which didn’t have its own direct-to-consumer platform — did so. When you go to early 2020, you have Paramount, Warner and NBCUniversal all say, “We’re done selling to third parties.” A year earlier, you have Iger say, “Disney/Fox are done selling to third parties.” That same month, you have Lionsgate Starz say, “That going forward we’re going to contain all of our franchises”. Now, as you and I talk in February 2023, every single one of those parties, with the exception of Disney/Fox have said, that they’re going to start licensing to third parties once again and there are reports that Iger is looking to do that for Disney/Fox. So you do have the best-case scenario where I’m not saying you’re going to get the best stuff, I’m not saying you’re going to get it in the volumes you hoped for, and I’m certainly not saying you’re going to get it in the volumes you did midway through the last decade, but every single one of those companies are willing to sell again.

I'm starting to think that we are a nation of consumers now who will literally not stop buying things until we are all broke and in the ditches of the muddy streets. And even then we will have a smart cell phone with cash app. Sane, rational policies to try and get people to stop buying crap is not going to work in 2023, I guess is the fear.

Cool title if nothing else. What is Noir Alley?

Reading an interesting interview (paywalled so I will paste here): One thing that I think people forget about is Disney’s contractually obligated to buy Hulu as soon as next year, I think at a $27 billion valuation — that valuation was set at a more optimistic time for streaming is I think is a fair way to put it. On one hand, aspects of Hulu feel very successful. I think the ad-supported tier everyone is pointing to and saying, “Look, Netflix, this is why you need to be doing ads”. Hulu is actually making more on its ad-supported tiers than on the others because it’s such an attractive proposition for advertisers. On the other hand, what does Hulu stand for again? I’m preaching to the choir here, but the space is begging for some consolidation. I’m still not sure why Peacock exists, I’m still not sure why Paramount Plus exists. The Hulu original concept seems like is what ought to exist. You mentioned it’s just a tab internationally, should it be just a tab in the US? Should Disney actually try to reverse a transaction and sell it to Comcast? What do you see as the output here? Yeah, I think we’re at an interesting point where I agree with everything that you’ve said and that leads you to say it’s pretty hard to make the argument that Disney should spend $9 billion to buy out the remaining third that they don’t currently own. If the best way to drive value through the catalog is through the platform they already own rather than the platform they’d be buying to own wholly. Let’s also go back to early 2020. In early 2020, Iger said the plan was for Hulu to launch around the world and then later the company came to a conclusion that actually if we do that, then Comcast owns a third of that. Why don’t we just do the exact same thing but through Star, a brand they don’t participate in. And by the way, Star internationally is usually folded into Disney Plus, but in some markets it is a standalone service including live sports and so we see actual examples of launching a Hulu-like service abroad without calling it Hulu and thereby cutting Comcast out of there — this is one of the reasons why Comcast is understandably salty. But the result of that is it’s thus hard to imagine why buying the remaining third out is worth $9 billion. But then if you’re Comcast given the streaming turndown, you’re looking at the market value or the equity value of Warner Bros Discovery being $35 billion, how do you justify spending $18, $19 billion for the two-thirds of Hulu that they don’t own? And so I think you’re at a weird spot where both entities understandably see value there, but they don’t want to pay what they would ask the other party to. What about ESPN? Because I think there are multiple moving pieces here, which is very fascinating. ESPN had so much value to Disney when it was the anchor of the bundle-within-the-bundle, and given that the price of ESPN was not just the carriage fees that ESPN charged, but the carriage fees that every other single Disney channel could charge, and they would raise prices on all of them. Another interesting point is that it feels like we’re at peak affiliate revenue, because last quarter linear TV had six points of growth from contractual rate increases, and that growth has been outpacing cord cutting for a long time, but cord cutting was now up to five points of decline. So there is one point of increase in the linear TV bundle, and it feels like that’s about to tip over. So, how does ESPN fit in? Iger said two things that were interesting. One, he’s like, “We need to be more disciplined in our spending.” He said this in the context of the NBA, and I think ESPN has shown to be more disciplined, particularly by passing on the Big 10 Football rights. At the same time, he’s like, “Yeah, it’s going to be over-the-top at some point, not yet, we need to have better pricing power”, which seems to auger towards we need to have everything. They did put ESPN in its own division, which makes it a lot easier to spin out even if he’s wants to say we’re not doing it yet, but are they just in a, “We’re not sure what to do with this property” mode right now? It certainly looks that way. I would say that when Iger came back in November, he first and foremost needed to reset the strategy internally to change the things that he thinks Chapek was doing wrong or to reflect the changes in the environment that are different than when he passed the baton, but he was also building himself some breathing room. I think that when you take a look at the announcements from last week, it’s actually a remarkable example of building breathing room, especially under activist assault. He does all of these things, he says, “We’re not going to spin off ESPN, but we’re going to separate its financials.” “We aren’t sure about general entertainment, but we’re not making a commitment to Hulu.” “We’re going to place control back in the hands of creatives and yet we’re going to reinstate the dividend and pull out billions of dollars in additional cash flow.” “We’re not sure when streaming is going to become the quality business investors focus on, but we’re going to renew our focus on linear.” It’s clear that he’s trying to tell the Street — and then he of course used the aforementioned phrase — “Everything’s on the table”, and so I do think that he is broadcasting to the Street, “Give me a little bit of time, I’m going to figure out the best arrangement for the pieces”. There’s no way to read that other than to say, “If it makes sense to spin or sell ESPN, I will do it”