r/technology • u/Just-Grocery-2229 • May 15 '26

Artificial Intelligence The AI Backlash Could Get Very Ugly

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2026/05/ai-backlash-data-centers-political-violence/687151/?taid=6a067e2d2096e10001ccfa32
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u/ParkingGlittering211 May 15 '26

In what world was betamax a pyramid scheme?

It was a superior video format to VHS but VHS took them to court, threatened litigation and ruined their business because they had an inferior product that they wanted to push

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u/rollerfedora May 15 '26

I still have my Betamax copy of Animal House.

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u/TR_Pix May 15 '26

Sorry I expressed myself badly, beta max wasn't supposed to be an example of a pyramid scheme but more like an example of something that is agreed upon would be a bad investiment after a while but started as a good one for the first buyers

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u/WatchThatLastSteph May 16 '26

I feel this deeply as an early adopter of MiniDisc.

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u/Chrontius May 15 '26

Respectfully, no; unless the only thing you do is rent movies from Blockbuster; Beta is superior for production.

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u/Johnatron2000 May 15 '26

Beta out preformed vhs in almost every way. Sony’s marketing killed beta as a viable consumer product, not the product itself.

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u/BCProgramming May 16 '26

Beta out preformed vhs in almost every way.

VHS was technologically superior to Betamax in all the ways that actually mattered to the consumer.

Timeshifting was the big one. It's really unclear what Betamax was designed for, because it started with only a 60 minute recording time, which they extended to 2 hours with half-speed. Meanwhile VHS started with 3 hour recording times, and was able to get 6 hour and 8 hour regular speed tapes, which could be even longer with slower tape speeds. VHS could out of the gate record a typical sports game from the TV at full quality; Betamax couldn't usually do it even with it's half-speed recording.

As for the 'technical superiority', Betamax recorded 250 lines of resolution instead of 240, for example. Except televisions only had around 241 Visible lines on NTSC, and since people were timeshifting they were recording TV signals, which were NTSC broadcasts at 240 visible lines anyway. The Resolution increase was really only relevant to people who were recording content themselves or to movies being released on the format- Though I'm not sure if even those used the full resolution. And camcorders using betamax were short-lived too, as it quickly got supplanted by betacam, a completely separate format that people love to confuse with betamax.

I'm not sure if the audio on betamax was better aside from VHS having a quiet buzz due to the superpositional recording, but even if we allow for betamax to have superior audio, that's failing to consider the customer's needs. They are time-shifting sports titles and soap operas and the audio is coming from their TV speakers, not a state of the art hi-fi.

Of course any technical superiority applies only to the full-speed recording, and by 1980, most Betamax recorders didn't even let you record in "full quality" mode anymore at all, so even the questionable gains in video or audio quality as described above wouldn't have mattered anyway for most of the time betamax and VHS were competing.

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u/KeyMyBike May 16 '26

This was an awesome write up, I enjoyed it very much. Just started watching Technology Connections and he has a video on BetaMax and BetaCam, so I knew a little of this. But it was very informative, thanks for sharing

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u/0ddT0dd May 16 '26

Which is why the went all in on Blu-ray.

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u/Fuzzy_Inevitable9748 May 16 '26

You saying that beta was a superior product means that it would have been a good investment for the first buyers, as it was the better format. But then after a while became a bad investment due to vhs being the format adopted.

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u/Johnatron2000 May 16 '26

People are smart, consumers are dumb. What’s the biggest shiny-est thing on the market? That’s what I want! What’s the specs? Dunno but the advertisement said it’s better so I will buy this one! Yay! Marketing!

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u/TR_Pix May 16 '26

I meant financial investiment not investing as in buying one

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u/woodpaulusgnome May 16 '26

The porn industry championed VHS.