There is extensive work being done in this field, and steady progress is made.
You'll recognize it by the array of acronyms you've seen used for video: MPEG2, H.263, WMV, MP4, H.264, HEVC, H.265, etc.
These each represent different compression and container technologies from various competitors or standards bodies. And, over time, they get better and better at compressing video.
They don't actually improve that much because of better math (compression algorithms) but rather get better because of Moore's law. The math is fairly well known and unchanging, but Moore offers more encode/decode power in silicon which enables real-time capture or rendering of these tightly-packed, mathed-out compressed files.
The trick, as usual, isn't just to get a better compression, but also to get that standard widely used across media companies and hardware makers.
For example, the smartphone video era was powered mostly by MP4, a file format from the MPEG and the ITU (Moving Pictures Expert Group, International Telecom Union). It is a.k.a H.264.
The reason a common standard works so well is that phones/players can have a dedicated hardware acceleration chip that renders the video. This makes for fast decoding, and lower power consumption than the alternative: running a software decoder on your general processor. Dedicated hardware means your phone battery doesn't die after 30 minutes of video.
H.264 is currently getting replaced with H.265, a.k.a HEVC, although it is not a sure thing until this achieves mass-market acceptance.
Anyways, this has been ridiculously simplified because the video encoding, compression, and transport world is so fucking complicated I cannot ever get my head around it.
Suffice to say that it is very difficult to take a MP4 file and compress it, because it has already been compressed like the earth's core by dedicated hardware.
"The term lobbyist has a standard English meaning"
Yes. And it is Techdirt that seeks to use that English meaning.
It is YOU that seeks to use some website where lobbyists can use loopholes to avoid being "officially classified" as a lobbyist.
If I fish, every day. And sell my fish for money. And live off that money. But I DON'T get a fishing license. Am I not a Fisherman? In English as in reality, I am, but legally, I'm not.
Re: Re: Aiding and Abetting The Shill Commissioners
I agree with you that, on the present subject, it is unproductive. That is because people will take the accusation like babiest and lash back.
It is the fear of this blowback that keeps journalists from stating the obvious and true. Blame is avoided, although it may have been earned.
It is this chilling effect that invites further misconceptions that "gov't" sucks, versus a more appropriate explanation that one party is more or less responsible.
Accountability goes out the window.
To avoid such confrontation is co-dependency. It is expedient, but it is not a good thing.
"the agency that can and does result in inconsistent progress (even though partisan infighting is often intentionally used by companies to sow division on non-partisan issues like net neutrality). "
You are providing false equivalence and not calling a spade a spade.
There is one political side that is consistently on the consumer's side, and another political party whose reps are consistently the seemingly tone-deaf apologists who just happen to support incumbent positions.
Put more clearly: Dem Commissioners more often support consumer interests and GOP Commissioners more often support incumbent positions. The GOP Commissioners like Ajit Pai and Michael O'Rielly consistently side with incumbents. Not surprising, since the GOP commissioners are almost always former (and future) incumbent lobbyists.
I know you don't want to get political. Nor do I. But what has being polite and offering false equivalence taught us? I still don't think this is political to state that it's the GOP at the FCC that's selling the citizens down the river. It's just reality.
Even if you accept Jamison's Fantasy #1, that there is growing competition, so no anti-monopoly regs are required.
You still have the challenge of explaining how we don't need any Net Neutrality protection in an era where all the network operators are vertically integrating by buying up content companies, TV networks, and production. You have to also create a fantasy where vertical integration isn't a thing. That's a harder delusion to sustain.
"Yes, There's Lots Of Fake News On Facebook, But Is It Really Changing Anyone's Mind?"
I agree with you, Masnick, that it is not "changing" people's minds from L to R or R to L. It's not "changing" their minds in the sense that they're not going to vote differently after reading their Facebook-fed news.
But it IS changing people's minds in another important way. It is cementing their minds, and further locking in their chosen narrative. That is a change in the mind. It makes it harder to bring people back to a shared set of facts...facts that more or less represent reality.
(Yeah, reality is hard to define, and always subject to some bias. That's why I say "more or less" represent reality.)
Look, we already have confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance in our amazing, faulty, monkey brains. This kind of news filtering just worsens those already big problems. This takes our human blind spots and wraps them around us 360 degrees.
This isn't new. This exact negative outcome was predicted when the "personalization" of search and news really started taking off in 2010. Tim Berners Lee wrote an article about the "Hotel California effect" for the Guardian, and Eli Pariser published his book "Filter Bubble". They predicted it would reduce the quality of critical thinking, and they were right.
I agree with you that just "blaming Facebook" for the election is a bit of a stretch, but you're wrong to act like it's not an important part of what needs to be fixed...somehow.
What's the fix? I dunno so far. But I think we should "nerd harder". This problem is not intractable like "encryption with backdoors". Maybe we also should "journalism harder", "ethics harder", and "policy harder".
The impact Social Networks have on bubble thinking can be reduced, and that's a worthy objective. As long as we share on planet, it's better if we share one version (more or less) of reality.
Re: Re: Re: "This isn't a post to mock Ben...as he mocked us."
Coyne, you're right, if said in English, which this is, since the "hoisted..." quote is not part of the English lexicon. Petard is also now a fully English word, pronounced in a way that rhymes with...um...retard.
Art G's point (irrelevant in this case) is that in French pétard has a silent "d" at the end.
The benefits of trade are seldom discussed, and probably not at all in this political campaign, because they're like a third rail. That's wrong, and will result in the wrong policy.
The negatives of trade are well-known. Some will lose jobs to people abroad willing to work for less. That's a real cost, and any person who loses such a job disproportionately pays the cost of trade.
But the benefits are bigger, and accrue to everyone who buys stuff at lower prices. Since the rich buy more, one could argue that the benefits accrue to them, but the fact is, cheaper goods enable the middle class and poor to buy some amazing products at some very low prices -- products that they might not be able to afford without trade.
Trade also brings varieties and diversity of products, which is an arguable benefit to all.
Whenever somebody says "I am against free trade", it should be a given that they are also saying "and I think we should pay higher prices for most things as a cost of stopping trade." But Trump, and many others simply don't understand that the implicit second part MUST travel with the first.
Economists, who usually disagree, are almost unanimous (87%) in saying "free trade is a large and unambiguous net gain for society*".
The question, therefore, should not be whether we support free trade or not, but rather: how do we ensure a more equitable sharing of the gains from free trade?
Note: I'm not talking about the TPP, which is less about free trade, and more about corporate greed and control.
TD has NEVER been about "first to scoop the story". Yes, you absolutely should go elsewhere if that is what you seek.
TD would have no shame in picking up a story that they missed 2 weeks prior, or a year ago. Who cares, so long as it's an important story, and TD can offer a new or rare analysis?
Of course, if we're being serious, you should go elsewhere for "scoops" or "BREAKING!!!" news, and then also come here for "the rest of the story".
Yeah, this is stupid of the CBC. Basically, the app is just delivering them listeners, delivering them increased influence, community, and ad opportunity. Should CBC not pay the app for that instead of vice-versa? Meh, no, should be deal-free and just how it goes.
Cable Industry But the precendent is strong. The Cable industry has been paying broadcasters for decades to extend their reach and bring them more viewers. I've never understood why cable companies (and thus their customers) should pay a broadcaster to pick up and repeat their free-to-air signal, but there it is.
"How does this make any sense at all? Now, there's something to be said for sometimes having an outsider's view on things, and no one's arguing that he needs to come from the internet industry or anything like that."
So Mike is specifically, and carefully, NOT taking a rigid "principled stand on that particular principle".
Masnick makes it clear the problem is NOT that Oetti is not from the industry, but rather Oetti is bad because:
"But Oettinger not only seems to not understand and not care...also seems to have no problem playing political favoritism with old legacy industries."
You have criticized something in the article that is specifically mentioned as NOT being the argument of the article.
Anytime we pass a law, or make a contract assuming good faith, one side will try to abuse it. Think of:
- this story above - copyright law - tax law - gov't power to snoop
The reason is that is is a power/effort mismatch. On one side you'll have the mass of the population with very limited information and limited incentives to act. The majority will just coast along with the rules in good faith, as expected. On the other side, you have an organized, financially motivated, highly informed agency that will hire teams of lawyers and technologists to spend 50 hours a week to try to skirt around the rules.
Any rules or deals that are made in "good faith" will be like a cheap bicycle lock. It'll keep the honest ones honest, but won't last long against the motivated baddies.
Don't forget that the ABA has moral suasion at play here. They are a group that profits from additional lawsuits, and even fangless letters such as C&Ds.
Anti-SLAPP laws may instill more faith in the law, but they also would mean less work for lawyers, even if only slightly.
Maybe the ABA likes pointless legal machinations. They increase billable hours.
"So, once again, we'd like to point out that this is as problem that the internet community needs to start solving now...But there has to be a better way."
Hey, isn't this YOU saying "Nerd harder!"?
I get it, this problem isn't intractable, but still...
On the post: AT&T Just Showed Us What The Death Of Net Neutrality Is Going To Look Like
Re:
You'll recognize it by the array of acronyms you've seen used for video: MPEG2, H.263, WMV, MP4, H.264, HEVC, H.265, etc.
These each represent different compression and container technologies from various competitors or standards bodies. And, over time, they get better and better at compressing video.
They don't actually improve that much because of better math (compression algorithms) but rather get better because of Moore's law. The math is fairly well known and unchanging, but Moore offers more encode/decode power in silicon which enables real-time capture or rendering of these tightly-packed, mathed-out compressed files.
The trick, as usual, isn't just to get a better compression, but also to get that standard widely used across media companies and hardware makers.
For example, the smartphone video era was powered mostly by MP4, a file format from the MPEG and the ITU (Moving Pictures Expert Group, International Telecom Union). It is a.k.a H.264.
The reason a common standard works so well is that phones/players can have a dedicated hardware acceleration chip that renders the video. This makes for fast decoding, and lower power consumption than the alternative: running a software decoder on your general processor. Dedicated hardware means your phone battery doesn't die after 30 minutes of video.
H.264 is currently getting replaced with H.265, a.k.a HEVC, although it is not a sure thing until this achieves mass-market acceptance.
Anyways, this has been ridiculously simplified because the video encoding, compression, and transport world is so fucking complicated I cannot ever get my head around it.
Suffice to say that it is very difficult to take a MP4 file and compress it, because it has already been compressed like the earth's core by dedicated hardware.
On the post: Referring To Your Unenforced Trademark As A 'Lottery Ticket' Is A Great Way To End Up With Nothing
Why No Perjury Charges?
On the post: Trump Telecom Advisor Doesn't Think Broadband Monopolies Are Real, Wants To Dismantle The FCC
Re: Re: Re: Fact check fail
Yes. And it is Techdirt that seeks to use that English meaning.
It is YOU that seeks to use some website where lobbyists can use loopholes to avoid being "officially classified" as a lobbyist.
If I fish, every day. And sell my fish for money. And live off that money. But I DON'T get a fishing license. Am I not a Fisherman? In English as in reality, I am, but legally, I'm not.
On the post: Trump Telecom Advisor Doesn't Think Broadband Monopolies Are Real, Wants To Dismantle The FCC
Re: Re: Aiding and Abetting The Shill Commissioners
It is the fear of this blowback that keeps journalists from stating the obvious and true. Blame is avoided, although it may have been earned.
It is this chilling effect that invites further misconceptions that "gov't" sucks, versus a more appropriate explanation that one party is more or less responsible.
Accountability goes out the window.
To avoid such confrontation is co-dependency. It is expedient, but it is not a good thing.
On the post: Trump Telecom Advisor Doesn't Think Broadband Monopolies Are Real, Wants To Dismantle The FCC
Aiding and Abetting The Shill Commissioners
With this
"the agency that can and does result in inconsistent progress (even though partisan infighting is often intentionally used by companies to sow division on non-partisan issues like net neutrality). "
You are providing false equivalence and not calling a spade a spade.
There is one political side that is consistently on the consumer's side, and another political party whose reps are consistently the seemingly tone-deaf apologists who just happen to support incumbent positions.
Put more clearly: Dem Commissioners more often support consumer interests and GOP Commissioners more often support incumbent positions. The GOP Commissioners like Ajit Pai and Michael O'Rielly consistently side with incumbents. Not surprising, since the GOP commissioners are almost always former (and future) incumbent lobbyists.
I know you don't want to get political. Nor do I. But what has being polite and offering false equivalence taught us? I still don't think this is political to state that it's the GOP at the FCC that's selling the citizens down the river. It's just reality.
On the post: Trump Telecom Advisor Doesn't Think Broadband Monopolies Are Real, Wants To Dismantle The FCC
Even If You Buy Fantasy #1
You still have the challenge of explaining how we don't need any Net Neutrality protection in an era where all the network operators are vertically integrating by buying up content companies, TV networks, and production. You have to also create a fantasy where vertical integration isn't a thing. That's a harder delusion to sustain.
On the post: Yes, There's Lots Of Fake News On Facebook, But Is It Really Changing Anyone's Mind?
Not The Only Question
I agree with you, Masnick, that it is not "changing" people's minds from L to R or R to L. It's not "changing" their minds in the sense that they're not going to vote differently after reading their Facebook-fed news.
But it IS changing people's minds in another important way. It is cementing their minds, and further locking in their chosen narrative. That is a change in the mind. It makes it harder to bring people back to a shared set of facts...facts that more or less represent reality.
(Yeah, reality is hard to define, and always subject to some bias. That's why I say "more or less" represent reality.)
Look, we already have confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance in our amazing, faulty, monkey brains. This kind of news filtering just worsens those already big problems. This takes our human blind spots and wraps them around us 360 degrees.
This isn't new. This exact negative outcome was predicted when the "personalization" of search and news really started taking off in 2010. Tim Berners Lee wrote an article about the "Hotel California effect" for the Guardian, and Eli Pariser published his book "Filter Bubble". They predicted it would reduce the quality of critical thinking, and they were right.
I agree with you that just "blaming Facebook" for the election is a bit of a stretch, but you're wrong to act like it's not an important part of what needs to be fixed...somehow.
What's the fix? I dunno so far. But I think we should "nerd harder". This problem is not intractable like "encryption with backdoors". Maybe we also should "journalism harder", "ethics harder", and "policy harder".
The impact Social Networks have on bubble thinking can be reduced, and that's a worthy objective. As long as we share on planet, it's better if we share one version (more or less) of reality.
On the post: Appeals Court To Cops: If You 'Don't Have Time' For 'Constitutional Bullshit,' You Don't Get Immunity
Math Is Hard
er...incrementally. Alternatively
“if there’s two[persons inside] there’s four, if there’s four there’s sixteen, if there’s sixteen there’s 256, and exponentially on up,”
or, how about
“if there’s one [person inside] there’s two, if there’s two there’s three, if there’s three there’s five, and Fibonacci on up,”
or the primary option
“if there’s one [person inside] there’s three, if there’s three there’s five, if there’s five there’s seven, and primes on up,”
On the post: In Rare Win, Man Arrested On Bogus Drug Charges Gets Everything Back, Including $150,000 The Government Really Didn't Want To Give Up
Re:
On the post: Long Time Mass Surveillance Defenders Freak Out Now That Trump Will Have Control
Re: Re: Re: "This isn't a post to mock Ben...as he mocked us."
Art G's point (irrelevant in this case) is that in French pétard has a silent "d" at the end.
On the post: Long Time Mass Surveillance Defenders Freak Out Now That Trump Will Have Control
Re:
Masnick is not even slightly immune from the suffering of the surveillance apparatus.
This is more of an "I told you so. PS. Thanks for f-ing us over."
On the post: US Admits TPP Is Dead, TTIP On Life Support... But Beware Of What Comes Next
The Wealth Benefits Of Trade
The negatives of trade are well-known. Some will lose jobs to people abroad willing to work for less. That's a real cost, and any person who loses such a job disproportionately pays the cost of trade.
But the benefits are bigger, and accrue to everyone who buys stuff at lower prices. Since the rich buy more, one could argue that the benefits accrue to them, but the fact is, cheaper goods enable the middle class and poor to buy some amazing products at some very low prices -- products that they might not be able to afford without trade.
Trade also brings varieties and diversity of products, which is an arguable benefit to all.
Whenever somebody says "I am against free trade", it should be a given that they are also saying "and I think we should pay higher prices for most things as a cost of stopping trade." But Trump, and many others simply don't understand that the implicit second part MUST travel with the first.
Economists, who usually disagree, are almost unanimous (87%) in saying "free trade is a large and unambiguous net gain for society*".
The question, therefore, should not be whether we support free trade or not, but rather: how do we ensure a more equitable sharing of the gains from free trade?
Note: I'm not talking about the TPP, which is less about free trade, and more about corporate greed and control.
*Case for Free Trade:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_trade
On the post: US Admits TPP Is Dead, TTIP On Life Support... But Beware Of What Comes Next
Re:
TD would have no shame in picking up a story that they missed 2 weeks prior, or a year ago. Who cares, so long as it's an important story, and TD can offer a new or rare analysis?
Of course, if we're being serious, you should go elsewhere for "scoops" or "BREAKING!!!" news, and then also come here for "the rest of the story".
On the post: CBC Threatens Podcast Apps For Letting People Listen To CBC Podcasts
Stupidity...but With Ample Precedent
Cable Industry
But the precendent is strong. The Cable industry has been paying broadcasters for decades to extend their reach and bring them more viewers. I've never understood why cable companies (and thus their customers) should pay a broadcaster to pick up and repeat their free-to-air signal, but there it is.
On the post: Actual Creators Of Email Not At All Happy The Fake Creator Of Email Got Paid For His Bogus Claim
Re: Re: Re: I think we get the point.
His trolling must be true.
On the post: Are Robot Scalpers Ripping You Off? Do We Need Government To Stop It?
The Illusion of Ticket Prices
The farce is, there are basically no tickets available at that price.
It's all a scramble to try to capture the "Consumer Surplus" by price discriminating above that face value.
How dare the scalpers find that market disfunction and try to arbitrage when Bieber needs a new Ferrari!
On the post: Why Is Your Bigoted, Luddite Uncle Crafting Internet Policy In Europe?
Re:
"How does this make any sense at all? Now, there's something to be said for sometimes having an outsider's view on things, and no one's arguing that he needs to come from the internet industry or anything like that."
So Mike is specifically, and carefully, NOT taking a rigid "principled stand on that particular principle".
Masnick makes it clear the problem is NOT that Oetti is not from the industry, but rather Oetti is bad because:
"But Oettinger not only seems to not understand and not care...also seems to have no problem playing political favoritism with old legacy industries."
You have criticized something in the article that is specifically mentioned as NOT being the argument of the article.
On the post: Finally Come The Calls In Major Media To Rethink Canada's 'Notice And Notice' Copyright System
There is no Good Faith
- this story above
- copyright law
- tax law
- gov't power to snoop
The reason is that is is a power/effort mismatch. On one side you'll have the mass of the population with very limited information and limited incentives to act. The majority will just coast along with the rules in good faith, as expected. On the other side, you have an organized, financially motivated, highly informed agency that will hire teams of lawyers and technologists to spend 50 hours a week to try to skirt around the rules.
Any rules or deals that are made in "good faith" will be like a cheap bicycle lock. It'll keep the honest ones honest, but won't last long against the motivated baddies.
On the post: Chickenshit American Bar Association Scared Out Of Publishing Report Calling Trump A Libel Bully
ABA Self-Interest?
Anti-SLAPP laws may instill more faith in the law, but they also would mean less work for lawyers, even if only slightly.
Maybe the ABA likes pointless legal machinations. They increase billable hours.
On the post: 'Nice Internet You've Got There... You Wouldn't Want Something To Happen To It...'
Nerd Harder
Hey, isn't this YOU saying "Nerd harder!"?
I get it, this problem isn't intractable, but still...
Next >>