Netflix To End DVD Rentals As Streaming Fails To Live Up To Its Full Potential

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the meet-the-new-boss dept

Netflix executives this week announced that they would finally be putting their traditional DVD rental service out to pasture starting on September 25 after 25 years of little, red envelopes. From a blog post by Netflix co-CEO Ted Serandos’ intern:

Our goal has always been to provide the best service for our members but as the business continues to shrink that’s going to become increasingly difficult.

You might recall that the last time Netflix tried to slowly back away from the traditional DVD rental service, it didn’t go so well. In 2011, the company prematurely attempted to separate its streaming and DVD rental services into two companies, with the new DVD arm named Qwikster. The effort saw major customer backlash (in part due to price increases) and was doomed from the start.

The death of Netflix’s mail delivery DVD business is anything but surprising. That said, streaming as a fully symmetrical replacement for traditional rentals hasn’t quite lived up to its full promise. As some were quick to note on social media, Netflix’s ever-shrinking streaming catalog can’t hold a candle to the DVD-era’s original selection of content, especially when it comes to older titles:

Problematic, especially given the ongoing, multi-front war against libraries.

There’s of course additional trouble in paradise. Netflix, now seeing slower growth internationally, has, in recent years, pivoted to more intensely nickel-and-diming its customers to appease Wall Street’s unyielding demand for improved quarterly returns at any cost.

That has included not just a more streamlined, sometimes lower quality catalog, but consistent, monthly price increases. Then there’s Netflix’s clumsy efforts to crack down on password sharing, a phenomenon Netflix whole-heartedly embraced when it was a pesky, disruptive upstart.

Netflix’s policy and politics have also shifted for the worse. The company that once fought for popular issues like net neutrality ultimately sold those principles down river once it itself became massive and politically powerful, leaving activists and consumers to fend for themselves. (That’s proving problematic now that the EU is considering a telecom-backed tax on Big Tech).

Elsewhere in the streaming sector we’re watching as mindless consolidation results in streaming empires that are keen on constantly raising consumer prices, yet somehow too cheap to pay artists’ residuals or employees, resulting in both layoffs and streaming catalogs with giant holes that didn’t exist in the traditional DVD era.

The whims of the DRM era also mean you don’t own what you buy, and Wall Street pressure has a lot of modern streaming companies now acting and sounding a lot like the widely despised cable TV giants they once disrupted.

None of that’s to say that streaming hasn’t been hugely innovative and more convenient, but greed, incompetence, and an all pervasive “growth for growth’s sake” mindset have certainly muted the technology’s full potential.

Filed Under: blockbuster rentals, dvds, evolution, net neutrality, netflix DVD, streaming, tv, video
Companies: netflix

The Electric Car Could Finally Put AM Radio Out To Pasture

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the it-was-nice-knowing-you dept

There’s a long way to go before the electric car revolution even comes close to the version that currently exists in everybody’s heads. Getting enough rare-Earth minerals to ramp up EV production at the scale most have in mind will be a big challenge. Then there are other issues related to safety thanks to EVs’ incredible acceleration combined with higher-end EVs incredible weight.

One less dramatic challenge created by the inevitable ascension of the EV has emerged: vehicles don’t always play well with AM radio. As a result, many automakers are considering eliminating AM radio from electric vehicles entirely, marking the end of, or at least some meaningful shrinkage in, overall AM radio usage.

Since EVs generate more electromagnetic interference than gas-powered cars, they can potentially disrupt the reception of AM signals causing static, noise and an annoying hum. This could be managed with shielding cables, filters and careful placement of the electrical components, but Tesla, Audi, Porsche, Volvo, and Volkswagen have found it more economical to cull AM radio functionality from EVs entirely.

FM radio doesn’t appear to have the same interference issues and should be safe. But AM broadcasters aren’t particularly thrilled about it, often arguing that AM radio remains an important communications medium for minority communities and during emergencies:

“It’s a killer for us because most of our listening audience is in the morning drive and afternoon drive, when people are going to work and coming from work — and if we’re not there in their car, we’re nonexistent,” said Ron January, operations manager at WATV-AM, an adult contemporary station in Birmingham, Ala.

Roughly 47 million Americans, or around 20 percent of the total U.S. public, still listen to AM radio, whether it’s religious programming, actual local community news, or right-wing propaganda. But between AM’s aging core userbase, AM radio’s steady decline in Europe, and the shift away from it in EVs, the medium’s days as a mainstream technology could be numbered.

Filed Under: AM radio, automakers, evolution, EVs, fm radio, interfernece

DailyDirt: Digging Up The Past

Too Much Free Time

from the urls-we-dug-up dept

Though replete with accurate models, well-tested theories and millions of specimens, we’re still a long, long way from having a complete picture of the history of life on earth. New discoveries can still upend everything or point to entire unexplored aspects of our prehistory — and yet, slowly but surely, scientists are building a catalog of all that can be known about living things. Here are some of the latest projects helping to fill in branches on the evolutionary tree:

• After over 60 years known only as the “Tully Monster”, Illinois’ 300-million year old state fossil has finally been identified. Turns out it’s a relative of modern lampreys, and what researchers thought was its gut was actually a proto-backbone. [url]
• Scientists in Chile have genetically altered chickens to grow “dinosaur legs” like their prehistoric ancestors. They aren’t trying to build Jurassic Park, just to better understand how avian dinosaurs evolved into modern birds. [url]
• The world’s oldest land fossil is a fungus that was feeding on something even older. Scientists have long puzzled over its exact role in evolutionary history, but it may have given rise to the first complex-plant-bearing soil. [url]

After you’ve finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

Filed Under: biology, biotech, chickens, dinosaurs, evolution, fossils, gmo, life, prehistoric animals, tully monster

DailyDirt: A Place For Everything, And Everything In Its Place?

Green Tech

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

It’s not easy to be an environmentalist. If you look into anything deeply enough, you’ll find complications that make it tough to paint in black and white without shades of gray. What disruptions of an ecosystem are good or bad? If you think that any disruption is bad, well, too late — people (and nature itself) have been mucking around with local ecosystems since life began. Biology is just a messy field. Invasive species are generally painted as harmful, but it’s not always the case.

• Goats on the Galapagos Islands were introduced in the 16th century, and the goat population grew to over 250,000 — eating just about anything they wanted, including endangered tortoises. The goats were killed off completely using Judas goats to help hunters find the last few goats in hiding. Radiolab has a fascinating podcast on the story of shooting every single goat (except for the Judas goats). [url]
• Not all invasive species are destructive, and people have been moving around plants and animals for centuries. Arguably, preventing invasive species is a futile task because ecosystems are meant to change and adapt — and species are going to go extinct. Globalization isn’t a recent phenomenon for biology. [url]
• If you’ve ever had a pet goldfish, maybe you’ve thought about setting it free in a local pond or lake — but you really shouldn’t do that. Canada is warning its citizens about enormous (former pet) goldfish that are crowding out native fish species and threatening the ecosystem, but hardy goldfish are also invading US fresh water, too. [url]

After you’ve finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

Filed Under: biology, ecology, evolution, extinction, galapagos islands, goldfish, invasive species, judas goats, native species, project isabela

DailyDirt: Don't Make My Brown Eyes Blue!

Studies

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Eye color isn’t a simple single gene trait. In a rare 1% of the population, some people have two different colored eyes or eyes with multiple colors (aka heterochromia iridum). Most people have brown eyes, but it’s easy to change your eye color with contact lenses to any color you want — even scary unnatural monster eyes. Eye color doesn’t seem to have much meaning — as long as you don’t teach kids otherwise — but genetic studies will probably find some interesting correlations in the future.

• DNA analysis of ancient humans can determine eye color from 24 locations on the human genome. As long as enough DNA remains to be analyzed, researchers can determine hair and eye color for specimens that are hundreds of years old. [url]
• About 17% of the world’s population has blue eyes, and if you don’t like contact lenses to change your eye color — you can turn your brown eyes blue with lasers. There’s actually no blue pigmentation for blue eyes, so a laser ablation technique can remove brown pigments and change a person’s eye color permanently. [url]
• All blue-eyed people have a single, common ancestor who lived about 6,000-10,000 years ago. Originally, everyone had brown eyes. [url]

After you’ve finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

Filed Under: biology, dna, evolution, eye color, farsightedness, genetics, heterochromia iridum, mutations, myopia, nearsightedness, vision

DailyDirt: We Are Star Stuff And Genetic Mistakes…

Green Tech

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The history of evolution has been largely erased by time and poor record keeping. Sure, we still have a few genomes that look remarkably similar to ancient organisms, and we can try to make some educated guesses about how life on earth developed. We might even be able to re-animate some extinct animals, but we’ll never be able to re-capture the full environment and complex ecology that no longer exists for our most distant ancestors. Still, it’s fascinating to study evolution and to try to witness it in action.

• The first multi-cellular organism lived about 800 million years ago, and no one knows how that happened exactly. The rise of multi-celled life relied on a protein (GK-PID) that happens to result from a mutation on a single gene. Without this minor change, life on earth could be little single-celled organisms (or not-so-little single celled creatures like Gromia sphaerica). [url]
• Since 1954, some Japanese researchers have kept fruit flies in the dark to breed them for 1,500 generations (and counting) to watch how mutations might help these flies adapt to living in total darkness. Sequencing the genome of Drosophila melanogaster specimens reveals dozens of possible genes that deviate significantly from normal flies and enable these flies to detect pheromones better (among other things). It might take a lot longer to witness the evolution of a new species (if we can agree on how to define a species, that is), but this dark-fly project also might not last much longer. [url]
• About 500 million years ago, an invertebrate animal mistakenly inherited twice its usual genetic material with a extra copy, and then that genetic doubling happened again in the next generation. These kinds of mistakes happen from time to time, and they’re sometimes unstable — but genome duplications can also lead to more complex cellular communication systems and novel protein developments. [url]

After you’ve finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

Filed Under: biology, biotech, dark fly project, drosophila melanogaster, evolution, genome, gk-pid, gromia sphaerica, life, multi-cellular organisms, proteins, single celled organisms

DailyDirt: Nature Doesn't Play By Our Rules…

Studies

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Biology does whatever it can do, and it’s usually pretty messy about it. Just when people think they’ve figured out a nice hierarchical system for classifying plants and animals and microscopic organisms, we find out that there’s more going on and some things aren’t as clear cut as we thought. We could divide up life into several kingdoms and/or three domains, but taxonomy isn’t getting simpler with time. Life is a continuous spectrum that can’t be separated easily, and classifications could become even more complicated in the future. If you thought a platypus was weird, check out a few of these creatures.

• The tardigrade (aka water bear) is a strange eight-legged critter that is so resilient that it can survive in space — and it can inherit genes from its environment. Horizontal gene transfer from bacteria, fungi and Archaea has contributed to about 17.5% of the tardigrade’s genome, making it the record holder for an animal. For reference, the human genome has 5-8% of its DNA from foreign sources like retroviruses. [url]
• Solar-powered sacoclossans are herbivorous sea slugs that can absorb chloroplasts from their food and use these disembodied algae parts as both a form of camouflage (from the green color of the chloroplasts) and as a source of energy. These chloroplasts don’t get passed down to offspring, but young sacoclossans eat algae and obtain chloroplasts just like their parents did. [url]
• A new species of ‘coywolf’ is emerging in eastern North America from interspecies breeding, resulting in an animal with wolf, coyote and dog DNA. Millions of these animals populate a vast geographic area including rural and urban environments. These adapted coywolves can eat a variety of things — from discarded human foods to rodents and small mammals like cats — and hopefully these animals aren’t related to Michael Corvin. [url]

After you’ve finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

Filed Under: algae, biology, chloroplast, coywolf, dna, evolution, genome, life, nature, sacoclossan, tardigrade, taxonomy

DailyDirt: Messing With Mice Brains

Studies

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The genes that make humans distinct from other animals are being narrowed down. We have a lot in common with other mammals and especially other primates, but relatively tiny differences in a set of genes could explain how human language and intelligence evolved and developed. Understanding the complexity of human intelligence and genetics will likely take decades or longer — and we may never fully understand every aspect of consciousness. However, we’re making some progress and creating some smarter mice along the way. Check out a few of these experiments.

• Injecting human astrocytes (the most abundant cells found in the brain) into a mouse brain actually makes mice measurably smarter. This isn’t exactly the beginnings of the rats of NIMH, but the researchers are going to try rats next…. [url]
• Activating a certain gene called HARE5 (“human-accelerated regulatory enhancers”) leads to the development of bigger brains in humans — and perhaps other mammals like mice and chimpanzees. A mouse embryo treated with a human HARE5 sequence developed a 12% larger brain than a mouse embryo with a chimpanzee HARE5 gene. [url]
• Hundreds of mice have been genetically engineered to express the human version of the FOXP2 gene — a gene linked to speech and language. The resulting mice were able to learn a maze faster than control mice. And are you pondering what I’m pondering? [url]
• The ARHGAP11B gene could be a unique gene for developing modern humans’ massive neocortex. Adding this gene in mice gave them larger neocortices and brain folds (mice brains are usually tiny and smooth) — but the mice weren’t necessarily more intelligent. [url]

If you’d like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: animals, arhgap11b gene, astrocytes, brains, dna, evolution, foxp2 gene, genes, genetics, hare5 gene, intelligence, mice, neocortex, nihm

DailyDirt: You Tell Me That It's Evolution…

Green Tech

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The number of zombie apocalypse movies has been growing over the last few years, introducing “fast-moving” zombies and new kinds of swarming behaviors for the undead. The causes of the zombie apocalypse range from viral to supernatural, but the general awareness of biotechnology’s ability to create monsters is undeniable. Meanwhile, Mother Nature herself is creating her own deadly diseases (ahem, ebola) and is making them more difficult to eradicate. Here are just a few observations of evolution that we can hopefully learn from and use to prevent an extinction event.

• Maybe you’ve heard of a strain of group A Streptococcus because you’ve had strep throat. Beginning in the 1980s, strep strains have acquired four (just 4!) genetic modifications — via horizontal gene transfer and regular old mutation — to become a flesh-eating (necrotizing fasciitis) infection. [url]
• Researchers are looking at populations of Escherichia coli under various conditions to try to capture snapshots of genetic evolution in progress. There may be constraints on evolution, and mutations might not be as random as they might initially appear. [url]
• The Permian-Triassic extinction (aka The Great Dying) was an event about 252 million years ago in which the majority of life on our planet was extinguished. The cause is uncertain, but a recent hypothesis suggests that the transfer of two genes from one type of bacteria to one type of archaea resulted in a microbial bloom that disrupted our planet’s carbon cycle by pouring an exponentially-growing amount of methane into the atmosphere. [url]

If you’d like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: archaea, biology, biotech, carbon cycle, e coli, evolution, flesh-eating bacteria, horizontal gene transfer, methane, mutation, necrotizing fasciitis, permian-triassic extinction, strep

DailyDirt: Nature Creates Some Cool Stuff

Green Tech

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Insect evolution is pretty amazing in general, but there are a few examples that are almost incredible. For example, people have discovered enormous ant colonies, wasps that can create zombies, and the ways that insects exhibit a collective intelligence that looks surprisingly smarter than any individual bug. Considering that insects, by weight and numbers, surpass humans by at least an order of magnitude, we might want to keep an eye on these invertebrates. Here are just a few more fascinating examples of awesome insect abilities.

• An insect known as Issus coleoptratus apparently beat humans to the invention of the mechanical gear. This bug uses its gear mechanism to lock its hind legs together so that it can jump straight forward, and this is the only known example of a naturally-occurring gear in nature. [url]
• The dung beetle, Scarabaeus satyrus, is an astronomer, using its vision of the entire Milky Way to help it navigate at night. Without a view of our galaxy in the sky, beetles would wander and seem lost in experiments that show that dung beetles use astronomy for navigation. [url]
• Goniurellia tridens is a fruit fly that evolved very detailed images of ants on its wings. When this fly flaps its wings, it confuses its predators — but some observers say the images are of spiders (not ants) and trick spiders into thinking about mating (not eating). [url]

If you’d like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: ants, astronomy, biology, evolution, fruit fly, gear, insects, nature