Dana Blankenhorn

Beyond Even the Cloudless Cloud

The impending failure of the “Cloud Gaming” movement points toward the end of the cloud decade.

Google’s “Stadia” cloud gaming service is proving a technical failure. The company claimed it would reach hundreds of countries. It reached fewer than two dozen. The company claimed it would solve the game latency problem. It didn’t.

It turns out that for a low latency application like gaming to work, content must be cached close to every player. If it’s centralized, then some players have advantages that render the game worthless. Or you can create a delay, making the whole game worthless.

Forced delays happened over a decade ago, in stock trading. A trading platform found that, by putting their data center close to the Hudson River, it could act on orders from Wall Street before centers further away, based on the speed of light.

The Trouble with Dictators

Russia may or may not invade Ukraine.

Either way, it can’t hold it.

Russia is no longer communist. It’s a personal dictatorship of Vladimir Putin. He holds all the reins of power. If a bus ran him over tomorrow, Russia would be plunged into chaos.

That’s why it doesn’t matter if he invades. Ukraine has spent a generation building a sense of national identity. They even have a democratic system that will let them choose a new President. Thinking they can be held down forever is naïve.

The Electric Car Bowl

While after-action stories about Super Bowl ads focused on cryptocurrency exchanges, electric car ads got more minutes.

That’s important because, if anything, electric cars are more imaginary than Bitcoin.

General Motors, Ford, Volkswagen, and a host of start-ups in the U.S. and China are all rolling out electric cars for 2022. They’re going after Tesla, now worth more than the rest of the industry despite representing less than 10% of the U.S. car market.

But while crypto is garbage, electric cars are real. And important.

On TV just now, I just heard someone ask why Russia is attacking Ukraine now, for the first time since 2014. The reason is the same. Oil and gas prices are near record highs. Russia is a huge exporter. The more Putin can control the market and scare the West that he might cut off supplies, the more money he makes. Ukraine isn’t costing him money. He’s making money on it.

But there’s a sell-by date, as the electric car ads show. The more we can drop demand for oil, by using electricity for cars, and devices like windmills and solar panels to generate it, the bigger the thumb we have on the price. U.S. shale oil producers cut production in response to falling prices, and banks aren’t backing any play to use debt to increase it, because they know what’s coming.

The next oil crash will be the last one.

Putin and the Saud family have no incentive to cut America a break, and every reason to boost the price. American producers have every reason to produce what they can now, but no incentive to invest in their long-term future.

The reason was all over your TV yesterday. Electric cars already dominate the luxury market. They’re headed directly for the mass market. Orders for electric vans and delivery vehicles continue to pour in. None of yesterday’s advertisers think things will be any different for them. Make all you can, make it today, and make money. Demand looks unlimited.

This is the most hopeful thing I can write for Valentine’s Day. Today’s crisis is going to pass. The war won’t be won on the battlefield, or at the negotiating table. It will be won as all wars are won, on the production line.