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Netflix: What Happens When You Press Play?

highscalability.com

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Re: Netflix: What Happens When You Press Play?

#101
post #98

I love how Netflix is so open about their architecture, but I have one strong criticism. After trying to get Spinnaker running, which is like 10 services for a fairly straightforward application, and reading about how Netflix has Cron jobs running to 'clean up' data inconsistencies... I started to think Google has a better approach to scaling the code. Netflix is strong on eventual consistency, and making services as…

> Netflix is strong on eventual consistency, and making services as small as possible. Having tried to build something in that image, holy shit the issue of distributed transactions becomes a nightmare. Distributed transactions are a sure sign that your service boundaries have been incorrectly drawn.

Not according to Google :). They actually support and encourage distributed transactions across boundaries.

Imagine all the data Google stores with your user profile across their hundreds of application boundaries. To keep things consistent you would either need to store all profile data in one massive service or support distributed transactions.

The Netflix model is fault tolerance, with every service supporting various failed profile update scenarios. Google just decided to add distributed transactions support to spare all that overhead.

Re: Netflix: What Happens When You Press Play?

#102
post #100
post #2

> I pulled this chapter together from dozens of sources that were at times somewhat contradictory. Facts on the ground change over time and depend who is telling the story and what audience they're addressing. You know old time journalists had a solution to this. Interviewing subjects with first hand knowledge. I know I rag on highscalability a lot, but I feel like they deserve it. They've written multiple articles a…

I get your point, but how many of these tech companies will actually authorize their employees who know what they're talking about to speak freely with tech reporters about how their system works? I would figure most would redirect you to a PR flunky to feed meaningless corporate-speak to any reporters, and then it's all "Netflix uses the latest internet technology to ensure the best possible viewing experience for a…

Reddit is constantly out presenting, talking, and even writing about architecture, culture, and our unique challenges.

Netflix seems to be similar. Their open source record speaks for itself, and their technical blog and presence at conferences and meetups is outstanding.

Source: though these opinions are my own, I work on Infrastructure at Reddit.

Re: Netflix: What Happens When You Press Play?

#103
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve hated it since pressing play stopped being necessary to start video playing. Now I have to keep the focus bouncing around or else whatever it’s currently on will start yelling at me. Can’t just stop and look around at what’s on screen. It’s stressful. [EDIT] in fact, now that I think about it, I almost never just browse the catalogue anymore, while I used to a lot. I open it and go to search ASAP, then close it…

Yes. And it gets worse -- I really hate the new "fake auto-play". On our Roku, if you sit on a movie or show for just a few seconds, Netflix starts auto-playing a video. But it's not the real show anymore, it's a weird custom-Netflix-made background advertisement for the show using random clips set to odd royalty-free stock music that is specifically not from the show/movie you are actually on and doesn't match. It k…

All of the complaints in this chain are things I like about the Netflix UX. Just to give some perspective.

I use the Netflix homepage primarily, rarely searching. I've watched those ads they play and then started watching the TV show/ movie they're for.

Re: Netflix: What Happens When You Press Play?

#104
post #2

> I pulled this chapter together from dozens of sources that were at times somewhat contradictory. Facts on the ground change over time and depend who is telling the story and what audience they're addressing. You know old time journalists had a solution to this. Interviewing subjects with first hand knowledge. I know I rag on highscalability a lot, but I feel like they deserve it. They've written multiple articles a…

Hi Jeremy,

I'm very sorry if I've misquoted you or quoted you out of context. I'd certainly correct them instantly if contacted. I've searched my email and I don't see any corrections, so I'm not sure how I can make amends.

I pull a lot of quotes from a lot of sources. Many thousands a year. My goal is always to highlight ideas that I think might help readers do their job better. Highlight is they key word here. That you say those sort of things often is not surprising. My hope is always readers will be made curious enough to follow the link and learn more on their own.

And unfortunately there is no "they" at HighScalability.com. There's only me and there's only ever been me. So all mistakes are mine and only mine. There's never been much money or time to be as comprehensive as I'd like.

I do the best I can, but I often fall short, no doubt. I'm not a journalist. I never said I was. I'm a programmer. Have been all my life. I started this blog a long time ago. It was just stuff I found interesting. For whatever reason it got popular for awhile so I tried to make something out of it. That, like most of the industry is petering out now, so we'll see what the future holds.

The point about interviews is a good one and one I've wrestled with. Over the years I've conducted a lot of interviews. Much less so lately, and that's for a reason. I've learned that presentations at major conferences are usually the best resources. Presenters put a huge amount of effort into making those talks. And everything they say is open and approved for public consumption by definition.

Interviews with someone like me are often a bother, a time sync, so I don't usually get as much out of them. Interviews have a high overhead, taking a lot of time to setup and there's often a lot of red tape and legal wrangling that must go on to get access and content approval. Which is again, why, presentations are such awesome resources.

This article was derived mostly from people working on a project making a major presentation or from primary sources writing an article. I couldn't do better than that.

And regardless, I would still make mistakes. Believe me. It's surprisingly hard to make sense of an interview and turn something from thread mode into document mode. That process is an error prone one because I have to fill in the gaps and there are always gaps.

It's rare that I've ever just published an interview. I don't think they are that useful in general. I want people to read a highly condensed document they can get something concrete out of with minimal effort or just ignore easily if it's not relevant to them. The strange style I've developed reflects that goal. This article was of course different because it has a different audience.

So again, I apologize. But I guarantee my mistakes are never intentional, never for money, and never for lack of caring or effort.

Re: Netflix: What Happens When You Press Play?

#105
post #104
post #2

> I pulled this chapter together from dozens of sources that were at times somewhat contradictory. Facts on the ground change over time and depend who is telling the story and what audience they're addressing. You know old time journalists had a solution to this. Interviewing subjects with first hand knowledge. I know I rag on highscalability a lot, but I feel like they deserve it. They've written multiple articles a…

Hi Jeremy, I'm very sorry if I've misquoted you or quoted you out of context. I'd certainly correct them instantly if contacted. I've searched my email and I don't see any corrections, so I'm not sure how I can make amends. I pull a lot of quotes from a lot of sources. Many thousands a year. My goal is always to highlight ideas that I think might help readers do their job better. Highlight is they key word here. That…

Just wanted to chime in and say thank you! I've enjoyed reading your blog a lot!

Re: Netflix: What Happens When You Press Play?

#106
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi Jeremy, I'm very sorry if I've misquoted you or quoted you out of context. I'd certainly correct them instantly if contacted. I've searched my email and I don't see any corrections, so I'm not sure how I can make amends. I pull a lot of quotes from a lot of sources. Many thousands a year. My goal is always to highlight ideas that I think might help readers do their job better. Highlight is they key word here. That…

Just wanted to chime in and say thank you! I've enjoyed reading your blog a lot!

Thanks, much appreciated!

Re: Netflix: What Happens When You Press Play?

#107

There's something about this article, it kind of feels like a sequence of staccato thoughts. It feels like it kind of jumps around.

I did try to tell a story, but I don't think I succeeded as well as I would have liked. It definitely does jump around more than it should. It's hard to cover the important bits and link them seamlessly together. I'm just not that good a writer.

Re: Netflix: What Happens When You Press Play?

#108

Author uses acronym CDN without first defining it. Explain Like I Do Not Already Know What You Are Explaining.

Crap, you're right. I thought I covered it earlier in the book, but I really don't. I do expand the acronym earlier, but that's way too early to be relevant here. I'll fix that. Thanks!

Re: Netflix: What Happens When You Press Play?

#109
post #104
post #2

> I pulled this chapter together from dozens of sources that were at times somewhat contradictory. Facts on the ground change over time and depend who is telling the story and what audience they're addressing. You know old time journalists had a solution to this. Interviewing subjects with first hand knowledge. I know I rag on highscalability a lot, but I feel like they deserve it. They've written multiple articles a…

Hi Jeremy, I'm very sorry if I've misquoted you or quoted you out of context. I'd certainly correct them instantly if contacted. I've searched my email and I don't see any corrections, so I'm not sure how I can make amends. I pull a lot of quotes from a lot of sources. Many thousands a year. My goal is always to highlight ideas that I think might help readers do their job better. Highlight is they key word here. That…

I want to concur with others, big fan of your work dude. Parent comment is being rather thankless to put it mildly

Re: Netflix: What Happens When You Press Play?

#110
post #96

> Netflix Saves Money In AWS How much of it due to special discount that netflix gets from AWS. Would a company thats not highly visible as netflix save the same amount of money ? > Recommendations. I find netflix recommendations pretty bad. Does it really work for other people?

It's not visibility, it's how much you spend/use. I'll bet there are large companies out there you've never heard of that get just as much of a discount from Amazon as Netflix does.

I bet very few do I remember watching someone high up from Netflix presenting at a conference he quoted that they get 70% discount.
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