NevBlog

Neville's Digital Surrogate Brain

interesting

The Backbone of the Internet

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Here’s an interesting thought:

“The Internet” still runs on servers and cables, and the companies that run the most bare metal on the internet are:

– Amazon: 32%
– Microsoft: 20%
– Google: 9%
– Alibaba: 6%
– IBM: 5%
– SalesForce: 3%
– Tencent: 2%
– Oracle: 2%

That means as you’re reading this on your phone/tablet/desktop, some bits and bytes travelled either by air or physical cable to a metal server likely controlled by one (or several) of the companies listed above.

You might be reading my words originating from a cluster of servers just like this!

Seinfeld vs. TV today

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In 2023 you’d have to combine the top 5 highest viewed episodes of television shows, just to equal just one mid-sized episode of Seinfeld 😮

This random episode they are comparing is not even in the top 50 most popular episodes of Seinfeld either:

One thing to note is that viewership of a show nowadays is probably spread over TV broadcasts, internet streamers and social media….so it’s difficult to calculate FULL viewership.

This is the full infographic this info was pulled from:

The end state of content

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In a perfect world without inefficiencies, a content creator should get paid for their work directly from the person consuming.

You watch my video –> You pay me a fraction of a cent.
You read my article –> You pay me a fraction of a cent.

Pretty simple.

However there’s many limitations to this:

  • Our payment systems can’t do fractions-of-a-cent transactions efficiently. Sending $0.01 would cost you at least $0.30….. 30 times the cost of the transaction itself!
  • People don’t want to manually click “pay” for every video/article they consume.

However it seems like the “pipes” needed to implement a system like this are being built.

Basically the answer I can see is crypto:

  • With BTC you can already send one-hundred-millionth of a BitCoin (0.00000001 BTC).
  • The transaction fees will eventually be so small they’ll essentially be “free.”
  • I sent a BitCoin Cash transaction and the fee was 0.000019 BCH, or $0.0043. That means I can send someone 1 Cent USD and the transaction free wouldn’t even dent the transaction.

Presumably as all these networks become better, faster, cheaper, and more ubiquitous, we’ll be able to see systems where creators get directly paid for their content.

Envision a browser setting that allows you to “Tip the internet $5 every month.” It would automatically tally up or track the content you liked, then distribute that money to the creators.

  • $0.03 to Neville
  • $0.45 to Mr. Breast
  • $0.12 to Green Day
  • $0.04 to The New York Times
  • $0.32 to The Joe Rogan Podcast

…basically you could directly support all the creators you love and barely break a sweat on your budget.

You would be sending maybe fractions of a cent to some creators, but if they make millions of views it could really add up.

I don’t think this is the end-all answer, but it’ll be a new revenue stream for creators in the coming years.

Warren Buffett Old Interview

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I enjoyed this old interview with Warren Buffett (1985):

Berkshire Hathaway was 20 years old at this time.

“If you buy things for far below what they’re worth, and you buy a group of them, you basically don’t lose money.” 1:05

 

Q: Warren, what do you consider the most important quality for an investment manager?

A: It’s a temperamental quality not an intellectual quality. You don’t need tons of IQ in this business. You do not have to be able to play three dimensional chess. You need a stable personality. You need the temperament that neither derives great pleasure from being with the crowd or against the crowd. This is not a business where you take polls, this is a business where you think. Ben Graham would say “You’re not right or wrong because a 1,000 people agree with you or disagree with you. You’re right because your facts and your reasoning are right.”

 

“The real test of whether you’re investing from a value stand point is if you care if the stock market is open tomorrow. If you’re making a good investment in a security, it shouldn’t both you if they close down the stock market for 5 years. All the ticker tells me is the price. Prices don’t tell me anything about a business. Business figures themselves tell me about a business. I’d rather evaluate a business first without knowing the price, so the price doesn’t influence me, then look at the price later to see if it’s way out of line than what my value is.” (2:20)

 

“There may be many wonderful pitches to swing at, but if you don’t know enough, you don’t have to swing. You can sit there and watch thousands of pitches and only swing at ONE when you know a bunch about it. I might not swing for 2 years. It would bore most people, and certainly boredom is a problem with most professional money managers.” (5:50)