This was how the BMW i3 worked. It was a rather novel design that included an optional small electric scooter motor in the rear that had a 2.5 gallon gas tank. When the battery was low, it would be charged by running the small generator.
This was clearly a wonderful idea but it was hamstrung by a silly California rule requiring the gas range to be less than the electric range to qualify for rebates. With a 6 gallon tank, the car would have been able to do ~300 miles instead of 170 and would have been parked in everyone’s driveway.
An added benefit was that the car could use existing gas station infrastructure when you needed to travel long distances.
> it was hamstrung by a silly California rule requiring the gas range to be less than the electric range to qualify for rebates.
The problem is that BMW wanted to get the same amount of credits as a pure-BEV. California anticipated that a car with 300 miles of gas range might spend much of it's life being driven on gas if there was no penalty for doing so... and in fact that is exactly what happened with many European plug-in hybrids sold as company cars.
California never gave BMW the credits, but BMW decided to keep the dinky gas tank anyway, so that's on them.
> and in fact that is exactly what happened with many European plug-in hybrids sold as company cars.
The counter force to that is that lease car drivers have to meet certain fuel efficiency goals, so, adopt an efficient driving style and plug in the plug-in hybrid instead of ragging it around; I'm not sure what the consequences were though, probably more taxes. Either way, enough of a push for my colleagues with plug-in / hybrids to do the thing.
Some friends of mine in the Seattle area had one and absolutely loved it. It was a very practical car for commuting within its range. The extender was barely audible when running.
I think the goofy styling was probably as much of an issue as the tank size.
Not a board game… but highly recommend Magic Puzzle Company puzzles as gifts for family and friends who aren’t quite ready for intense games. A bonus is that Susan Kare (of Apple/Next fame) designed the logo and branding.
In the same vein, I really enjoyed Vizzles [0] which is a regular puzzle with themed "riddles/puns" (the ones we've done so far were plays on words of movies and books), and also Odd Pieces [1], in which you construct a puzzle that is _slightly_ different from what you see on the box (the "lore" is that the puzzle you construct is at a moment in the future of the scene played out in the box).
I found these to be refreshing twists on typical puzzles, which we enjoy a lot as well.
Steve Jobs famously said that he saw the computer as a "bicycle of the mind." He saw technology as a tool to amplify humanity's abilities.
Mark Zuckerberg has chosen to build a "casino of the mind." Facebook and Instagram have been purpose-built to amplify and prey on humanity's weaknesses.
The fact that "Meta" is now trying to make their casino _even more_ addictive to compete with TikTok does not bode well for the world.
While casino is probably the best comparison, I've always thought of social media as kind of the high fructose corn syrup for this generation. We took something that in small doses isn't really an issue and over optimized without thinking of the human cost. We've figured out the most addictive part and have turned that up to 11 and are now realizing, "oh shit, maybe that was too much".
This is the problem with most "free" digital services now: games, social nets, news sites, etc. They are optimizing user behaviour to cater their customers (advertisers), so they estimulate addictive behaviour.
I blame advertising based internet. It pushes the wrong incentives for service providers.
I know it's hard to imagine, but there are many sides to these stories. Things really aren't so black and white. You really have no idea just how hard these guys worked or the struggles they had to go through. I'd recommend you read Alexis's post from back in 2010: http://alexisohanian.com/keep-calm-carry-on-what-you-didnt-k....
Reddit was born out of the first Y Combinator batch in 2005. This batch turned out to be an exceptional group of people who helped make Y Combinator into Y Combinator. But it was far from a forgone conclusion that they would be successful or that Reddit would one day become a top five website on the internet.
My experience with Alexis and Steve is that they're extremely generous, helpful, and have set the tone for the "pay it forward" spirit of Y Combinator's alumni network. I'd encourage you to wish them the best of luck instead of hoping someone takes them down.
There are actually a number of VCs showing up right now to address this pain point.
They're tending to fund profitable B2B companies with $5-40m in annual revenue and explicitly state that they're content with the option of 3-5X returns (while still hoping for more).
When I was in high school (quite a long time ago now), I'd try to buy 2-4 albums a month. That was an average cost of $25-$50 to listen to 20-50 new songs... some of which I enjoyed, some of which I didn't.
$10 per month to listen to almost anything is such an astounding underpricing of the value I personally derive from the service. I can hardly believe my good fortune to be alive at a time when I can pay so little to listen to so much with so little effort.
And this is exactly why the music industry is failing.
Even if every American paid $100 per year, that maxes the revenue at $30 billion with no further growth possible.
Now how much of that it going back to the music creators? Almost zero.
If I take your high school numbers and extrapolate ($250/year across 300 million) with a $.50 per CD (20 albums per year) we get a $75 billion business with $3 billion actually going back to artists. For 20,000 CD's (roughly the number of releases last year) that's 150,000 per year back to the CD creators.
That's an ENORMOUS difference.
Yes, these are all bounds (not everybody would buy--there were fewer CD's in the past--CD's were more expensive to produce), but you can see the difference.
Now, this isn't all Spotify's fault, but the middlemen are taking WAY too much out of the pie.
In addition, there are so many entertainment options that music has to compete with that it will never get back the privileged position it had in the late 60's to early 80's before both VHS and videogames.
this is my whole point I've been ranting about -- Spotify absolves peoples' guilt but they are just feeding the middleman, who seems to be taking the WHOLE pie.
i think pure torrents + physical sales would actually result in better money for artists than the same situation + Spotify.
You may not like ads but they heavily subsidize great content. In fact, the price of a New York Times subscription would be close to $1,500 per year if it weren't for advertisers keeping it closer to $300 (and that's if all their existing subscribers could even afford it).
Alexander Hamilton (newspaper owner, secretary of the treasury, founder of the Bank of New York) said:
"It is the advertiser who provides the paper for the subscriber. It is not to be disputed, that the publisher of a newspaper in this country, without a very exhaustive advertising support, would receive less reward for his labor than the humblest mechanic."
The fact is people dramatically underestimate what it costs to produce high quality content and that as a rule you'd need to spend much more than you'd expect to have access to it.
Advertising has essentially made information free or cheap for the user for a long time. Just because you think ads are ugly and annoying doesn't change this fundamental reality.
Yes I totally got that when Newsweek published an article called "In defense of Goldman Sachs" came out the day after their 2009 bonuses were made public. Of course there was nothing in the world to defend GS (or Newsweek for the matter who got sold for 1 USD a couple of weeks later IIRC).
I killed my subscription the next day.
I guess if GS wasn't sponsoring, the article would never have appeared or made frontpage, but it did.
The current "advertising model" leaves most newspapers open to foreign interests which go against press freedom almost all the time. That's why WikiLeaks published more interesting content in 5 years and made more scoops than the entire western press in ~ 30 years or so.
In this new Digital Age, the Press needs to find a new model - which mind you, I don't have a clue what exactly should be, since advertisement is what GENERALLY makes the world go round - or face extinction.
"In this new Digital Age, the Press needs to find a new model"
It did. In this digital age, small time publishers and blogs can now have an audience thanks to advertisers. If they're popular and providing great content they will, at minimum, make enough to cover the cost of hosting. They have a potential viewership of 6 billion people. Without advertisers, this just wouldn't exist. The internet would be different at the fundamental level.
Most people severely underestimate what advertisers bring to the table in terms of enabling content producers.
That's nothing, that's like microwave heated food.
In Greece you can buy newspapers (paper or digital). You'll see ads from banks, drinks and state-owned organizations (Lottery games, etc.). So basically they are financed from the very same people they should be exposing, that's why in 40 years of bank-state back-channeling and corruption no one has ever been seriously exposed. Not to mention that freedom press in Greece 84th between Togo and Kosovo. Note that USA is 32 and UK is 29, not exactly freedom champions. It's not because they kill journalists, they fire them :-)
This fact is why newspapers are dead, and online content continues to blossom. In the information age, there's absolutely no excuse for the content they produce to cost $1500/year per subscription.
In fact, that's where we hit the real problem: the kind of content that is covered with advertisements is usually not very good content to begin with.
This is especially true of content aggregators and meta sites such as Reddit and to some extent, this website. The content isn't even theirs: they are simply hosting a discussion forum about the content. A new-agey one instead of the old BB sites, but it's nonetheless exactly the same.
What content providers should be learning is that people are willing to pay for good content. Quality absolutely matters. The 90s and 00s were all about quantity, but now we're up to the rafters with disposable content. Look at the shows with the best ratings today: Game of Thrones, Mad Men, Breaking Bad. Exceptional content quality, heavily pirated because the content creators have failed to adapt to new media distribution. The fact that I can torrent GoT more easily than I can view it from HBO is tragic.
There absolutely is a reason why it's expensive. In fact, I could easily make a case that as a society we'd be better off if more money was invested in creating quality content.
Believe it or not, the subscription costs usually only cover the delivery and printing fees. Historically, subscription revenue has never been a real profit center because it's always been the best interest of a publication to build a larger circulation to increase ad rates.
Now, the internet has brought certain efficiencies to what it costs to distribute content. But it hasn't necessarily impacted what it costs to create quality content. With ad rates being lower online than they are in really any other medium, ad revenue isn't supporting the creation of quality content like it used to.
While Game of Thrones exists on a no commercial network, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and many more of your favorite cable television shows rely on both ad revenue and subscription revenue to exist. HBO has a cost north of $15 per month depending on your cable network, whereas AMC (which runs commercials) costs about 27 cents in your bundled cable package which is about 2% of the cost of HBO. That's a colossal difference and yes, advertisers, are subsidizing that dramatic cost differential.
I'm trying to learn more about this issue. Could you elaborate on the evidence for people willing to pay for good content? I know almost no one who pays for TV a la carte through iTunes or Amazon.
I also don't understand why Game of Thrones supports your argument. Of course the shows that are pirated the most will be the ones that are (1) popular and (2) expensive or hard to access. And of course if those shows were cheaper they'd be pirated less. But I don't see how that relates to the idea that people are willing to pay for good content. My roommates pirate GoT, but I am skeptical they'd pay even if it was available for $4.99 an episode.
I have a Netflix connection and I am in Finland. 98% of the time, when I search for a movie/documentary/series on Netflix, it's unavailable for streaming (mostly because the content for Netflix Finland is far less than that for US). Then, I have to head over to PirateBay to get the stuff. It's the fastest way. I could order a DVD from Amazon UK or Germany, but then it would take at least a week.
As long as content producers and distributors fail to find a faster way to distribute their offerings, I think piracy will continue and grow.
Startup idea: A for pay private tracker with deals with the media industry.
You could track seeds, peers, etc, and pay the media companies a license per peer (whatever). Could probably get a good picture of piracy of each piece of content as well.
Oh man. I'd pay $20 an episode if they had readily available. Even $50 if it had subtitles. I hate waiting, even a hour to download and crossing my fingers the quality is good.
> I know almost no one who pays for TV a la carte through iTunes or Amazon.
You now know of me. I spend around $50/month downloading content from Amazon, be it music or tv. I would buy Game of Thrones as it came out if I could, but I can't.
Absence of evidence isn't the evidence of absence. Especially if you've done no investigation.
>I am skeptical they'd pay even if it was available for $4.99 an episode.
$5 might be a bit steep for some, $2-3 is just about perfect. But honestly I'd still pay $5 for content created at this level, if not just to encourage the people creating this quality of content to keep doing it.
Your skepticism is powered by your lack of knowledge and research. Do the work, then come back and comment.
Actually, this is an issue I'm trying to research and understand better which is why I asked you my questions. Sorry if I offended you.
One thing I did try to find before asking you was data on the size of the a la carte TV/movie market. Anecdotally I know no one who buys TV shows (probably because I'm poor and tech savvy), but I thought I might be able to find comprehensive data to change my beliefs. Unfortunately my Google Fu was not good enough to find anything. I thought you might have a source you could share with me.
(To be honest, I think your response was rude and I feel a little hurt. But it's ok.)
Edit: In hindsight, some of the fault was mine. Of course there are people willing to pay at every price (that is the idea behind a demand curve). I guess what I'm really getting at is what are the best estimates of the shape of the demand curve. Would HBO make more money if they made GoT more accessible/cheaper? Is there evidence that a $2-$3 price point would be better than $5 price point? What are the price elasticities of demand? I guess I kind of wrapped up those more subtle questions into the question of people being willing to pay for content.
Game of Thrones is available on both iTunes and Amazon Instant Video for $2.99 SD / $3.99 HD per episode. I'm not sure if that counts as "failing to adapt to new media distribution".
> the price of a New York Times subscription would be close to $1,500 per year if it weren't for advertisers keeping it closer to $300
The fact that this model works well on dead-tree newspapers, does not mean that it should be copied on the internet. We have tools to customize how sites are displayed, ads shouldn't be a sacred exception.
> You may not like ads but they heavily subsidize great content. In fact, the price of a New York Times subscription would be close to $1,500 per year if it weren't for advertisers keeping it closer to $300 (and that's if all their existing subscribers could even afford it).
???
You are off by a factor of 3, given that you're assuming no elasticity of demand.
In the last quarter, the New York Times obtained 46.8% of revenues from circulation, 47.8% from advertising, and 5.4% from other.
Once upon a time, newspapers had more advertising revenue. But today, they're already well on their way to a world of digital nickels, where they have to get their bulk of revenues from subscribers.
I seriously question the figures you've stated, but either way, it's not comparable to this situation.
Reddit doesn't create content. Reddit is a content aggregation service just like HN. You could probably make the argument that some subreddits generate content, which I would not disagree with, but Reddit doesn't pay for that content creation.
Also, plenty of blogs aren't ad supported, or aren't primarily ad supported. I can't remember the last time I visited a "popular" blog and they didn't have an ebook or some other form of merchandise for sale.
It seems to me that those that are most reliant on advertisements are those that house communities or just regurgitate content from other sources. If those sites all died tomorrow, I probably wouldn't care. (That includes HN and Reddit).
"It is the advertiser who provides the paper for the subscriber. It is not to be disputed, that the publisher of a newspaper in this country, without a very exhaustive advertising support, would receive less reward for his labor than the humblest mechanic."
This doesn't make sense. My understanding is that newspapers weren't primarily ad-supported until the 1920s, when new technologies enabled nationwide economies of scale for both newspapers and ad buyers. Is this not correct?
Newspapers were largely ad driven since their "modern day" inception in the early 1700's.
I'm going to need to write a blog post about this since I'm seeing so much confusion about how we got where we are and why we've ended up with ad models we have. It may take me a month or two to get to, but I think this community would benefit greatly from it.
The thing is there are people who won't click on ads no matter what. So in case it is pay-per-click showing ads will accomplish nothing. In case of pay-per-view it is just a waste of you and advertisers money. Maybe they are ok with that, but I am not obliged to help.
This was clearly a wonderful idea but it was hamstrung by a silly California rule requiring the gas range to be less than the electric range to qualify for rebates. With a 6 gallon tank, the car would have been able to do ~300 miles instead of 170 and would have been parked in everyone’s driveway.
An added benefit was that the car could use existing gas station infrastructure when you needed to travel long distances.