Time sucked into Netflix or similar, weekly:
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- By the end of 2026, how useful do you think agentic/multi-agent AI systems will actually be in your daily work or personal projects? Posted on March 11th, 2026 | 24722 votes
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- By the end of 2026, how useful do you think agentic/multi-agent AI systems will actually be in your daily work or personal projects? Posted on March 11th, 2026 | 40 comments
Units? (Score:1)
It's in SI, so seconds, right?
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Dunno. This is Slashdot where the use of unusual units is common. I picked a random unit from the obligatory XKCD [xkcd.com] and voted based on that.
It may be that cars are different in the US, but isn't Randal's turn signal blinking a little slow. If he's got an old car, he might want to check the bulbs are all working correctly.
I'm not sure, when I drove in the US I only saw about 2 others use their turn signals at all.
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Dunno. This is Slashdot where the use of unusual units is common. I picked a random unit from the obligatory XKCD [xkcd.com] and voted based on that.
It may be that cars are different in the US, but isn't Randal's turn signal blinking a little slow. If he's got an old car, he might want to check the bulbs are all working correctly.
In most older cars, the turn signal relays are designed in such a way that if a light goes out, the remaining lights actually blink faster, not slower.
At least, that's been my experience, though I admit that my knowledge to this end is pretty much exclusive to American cars.
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Dunno. This is Slashdot where the use of unusual units is common. I picked a random unit from the obligatory XKCD [xkcd.com] and voted based on that.
It may be that cars are different in the US, but isn't Randal's turn signal blinking a little slow. If he's got an old car, he might want to check the bulbs are all working correctly.
In most older cars, the turn signal relays are designed in such a way that if a light goes out, the remaining lights actually blink faster, not slower.
At least, that's been my experience, though I admit that my knowledge to this end is pretty much exclusive to American cars.
Conversely, if there's another power draw, they'll blink slower. Which why I said working correctly, not blown.
But I suspect its just a design flaw on his car as Japanese and European cars changed the design of the circuits changed decades ago to alleviate this.
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Regardless, my curiosity has been piqued as to just what kind of car the author of XKCD drives...
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It's not about cell phones.
Who would be so stupid as to signal what they're about to do to all their opponents?
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I've heard Chicago is "challenging" as well...
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So funny, I wish I had mod points for this.
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Hours!
Mea culpa -- edited to fix ;)
Tim
None so far (Score:5, Funny)
I don't think any time has been sucked into Netflix thus far. They do have a lot of hard drives, but they're spread out far enough that the density is nowhere near enough to form a black hole.
Insensitive clod (Score:3)
I'm not sure it counts as abstaining when there isn't an similar service available to me...
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I've got more stuff to watch on my DVR than I have time for now. I have to actually make time to watch Game of Thrones.
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No cable, so my TV is used for playing video games and watching Netflix/Amazon videos.
So, it comes to less than 5 hours a week -- usually, I watch an occasional movie or an episode or two of some of my favorite shows.
With a full time job that entails travel, wife and a newborn baby, and school part-time, I am lucky if I get more than a couple of hours a week of "down time".
Re:Insensitive clod (Score:5, Funny)
I'm not sure it counts as abstaining when there isn't an similar service available to me...
Coincidentally, the average Slashdotter could say the same thing with regard to sex.
Similar? (Score:1)
Like watching DVDs I own or renting DVDs or something more like watching Hulu maybe.
Nope. Don't watch Netflix or Hulu or any on line streaming video other than the occasional music video or guitar instruction video.
My time is spent working on computer projects, learning/playing guitar, and reading books with occasional DVD watching.
[John]
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hey...you have just described my life...WTF? ;)
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Hours; sorry about that. Femtoseconds would be a good backup, with appropriate interval selection, but ... hours is simpler.
missing option (Score:4, Insightful)
None - Not interested. Abstinence implies that I'm fighting off the urge to view. We have cable at home for the wife and kids.
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Yes it does, The practice of restraining oneself from indulging in something, typically alcohol or sex.
GP is right, Abstinence means refraining from something which gives you pleasure, netflix and its ilk do not give me pleasure.
Re:Time was sucked (Score:2)
I got sucked into a lot of urgent network administration for the ex-wives and the kid, so I guess w/travel time I lost quite a few hours.
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You said "YOU" that's my point. I personall lose no time staring at the glowing "TV" box. They do. Now the glowing "Monitor" box is a different story.
Does free video servers count? (Score:4, Insightful)
Like YouTube, Hulu, etc.?
If so, then yes a lot and daily. Who needs a TV unless you use it to watch there? ;)
"watching TV" = viewing video (Score:4, Insightful)
heh...it should...*all video* should count in these surveys...if people answered honestly the average time per week would be around 30 hours.
people dont want to be thought of as the "type who watches alot of TV"
i have had good friends claim they "never watch TV" or "don't even own a TV" but bing-watch season after season of shows on Netflix, Project Free TV, youtube, hulu.com, etc etc
apparently, to some people it doesn't count as "Watching TV" unless its delivered via Coax Cable or OTA Antenna...
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I download about 30 hours a week, but I don't actually watch any of it. I just archive it in case I'm ever bored so I have something to watch should I ever actually want to numb my brain.
And most of what I actually do watch isn't new material, but stuff that's been off the air for a few years -- like Red Dwarf.
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how much would you say you actually watch, averaged out?
for me it depends on which shows are in new episodes. i'm mostly 'caught up' to where all i am interested these days is new stuff
right now, we have daily show, colbert, workaholics, girls, broad city, new girl, parks & recreation, AND community all in new episodes so...that's 7 hours for me
plus i watch rachel maddow usually every weeknight so that's 8 total
8 plus random stuff i might watch...
so right now I'm probably in the 10-15 hr per week if i'm
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I do want to make that distinction for sure. I do watch a lot of movies and series but I don't do it on TV.
So don't think of me as the "guy who watches a lot of TV" but the "guy who plays games a lot and watches stuff on netflix more than the average TV user". ;)
So your friends are right.
average watcher (Score:2)
dude, you watch an *average amount of TV*
just own it
stop lying to yourself & others about who you are...i think its time to come out of the entertainment closet.
your friends/loved ones already know about your habits...all you're doing is holding yourself back from what you enjoy & being a wimpy bitch
why be ashamed & hide who you are???
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Nah I consume movies and tv shows but I can't in any way call it watching TV.
I don't pretend what I do is any better, just that there is a difference.
Reason I care to call them different is because I don't pay to get all programs I don't care about on TV but pay for the movies and shows I do want to watch.
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Right you are, and wrong I was, and corrected are the options. Sorry about that!
Time is an illusion (Score:4, Funny)
I have my own collection of DVDs (Score:3)
And when I feel like watching I pop one in and watch as much as I feel like, turn it off and finish (or not) later. Currently watching some Three Stooges single-reelers after Amazon dropped the price of the entire collection to $30. Quite amazed how good the production quality of these series was.
I may go months between watching DVDs and then go through several in a short time span. Paying for a service I wouldn't use often doesn't seem to be a good move. Besides, having my own discs means I can decide I want to watch something right now and there it is. It's an adequate solution to a non-existent problem.
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Time . (Score:2)
I spend at least 5 or 6 Time per week on these types of services.
Usually a whole time per day.
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In this context, wouldn't eight frelling dollars be more appropriate?
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and its only eight fucking dollars. In this context, wouldn't eight frelling dollars be more appropriate?
Frakking right!
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I don't have a Netflix subscription (Score:3)
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I'm really getting tired of this phrase.
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I live in Australia, you insensitive clod!
I can barely stream a 2 minute YouTube video without it stopping 5 times to buffer, let alone a 30 minute TV episode, god forbid an entire movie.
Usenet plus Sickbeard means we get stuff overnight or during our domestic off-peak hours (i.e. when we're at work), and watch it on stored media.
I weep for the neutering of the NBN.
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The irony with that is Australians have twice the ISP quality available to them then we do in the U.S. I honestly believe Australians get the same poor speed because of all the packet filtering done on your traffic.
Crunchyroll+Netflix (Score:3)
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Yeah... yet another useless, ameri-centri service. Just like that much-hyped and even more useless Netflix.
Sorry, due to licensing limitations, videos are unavailable in your region.
Why Netflix more useless? Well because at least thanks to Crunchyroll we got HorribleSubs. And over the past few years, CrunchyRoll's subs actually have reached the "good enough" level.
4-year-olds, Netflix and Cell Phones! (Score:2, Funny)
So, sometimes I babysit a sweet 4-year-old girl. Remembering being young, and bored as hell in a car, I have a tendency to give her my cell when going from place to place as there's only so much value to staring outside at the same thing over and over again. My cell is outfitted with apps and some media for her age. Apps like Endless Alphabet, Monkey Lunchbox, The Math Tree and so on alongside Pixar and older Disney shorts.
Thing is, my phone also has Netflix and Netflix is set to allow cell data use...
So I
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Haha, my suggestions list always goes something like:
Action Adventure movie, My Little Ponies, Horror movie, Super Why, Adult Comedy movie, Thomas the Train and on and on and on.
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The profiles are a fairly recent feature and while we took advantage of it as soon as it was added my profile still influenced by the time preceding profiles. Additionally the application for the device we use didn't have a search feature enabled when using the childrens profile so for a long while my profile still got used for the kids.
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Dunno, but temporarely a lot (Score:2)
Boy am I glad that I didn't break my leg last year. Netflix isn't here that long. Finally I have time to watch some shows that I just didn't get to previously.
Much more than I realized....(yes I'm American) (Score:3)
So at first I thought, nah, not that much. But then I really thought about it. It adds up quick.
If every night during the week I watch 1 1-hour show with my wife before we go to sleep. Then a movie on each day Sat and Sun, that's already like 10 hours! I didn't realize I was spending so much time watching TV (or at least the modern equivalent of TV). I could easily see someone who is NOT a TV-a-holic put in 20 hours. All you have to do is watch a movie a day, maybe two on weekends, and you're already up there.
That being said, its not like I sit and stare at the screen blankly. Usually my wife and I will converse about whatever it is we're watching, and frequently the weekend shows get interrupted with kids, games, phone calls, reading a magazine, or heck sometimes even sex.
But yeah, I was a little shocked and disappointed in myself when I realized the hour count was so high, because I'll bet its even higher for my kids. I'll have to look into that.
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I wonder what my "average" would be. I generally binge on a TV show, where I do something like 4 to 6 hours a day for a week or two, then I don't watch anything for a month. And before anyone decides to create an actual average based on those numbers, keep in mind I pulled them straight out of my ass.
If there is a good series I'm glued to it (Score:1)
Re:If there is a good series I'm glued to it (Score:5, Informative)
If you're into British TV and are willing to try sitcom-type dramas, look at As Time Goes By. Judi Dench is at the top of her game and it's very amusing, and not nearly so implausible as storylines go as many other sitcoms. I also recommend the Granada Television version of Sherlock Holmes with Jeremy Brett, the vast majority of the episodes are quite good. We've also found a liking for New Tricks, Inspector Morse, and Inspector Lewis.
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I also watched all the Black Adder episodes too.
Not sure if you saw, but they added the Black Adder Christmas Special a month or two ago; not as funny as the series, but still worth a watch.
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> They can't do all of Doctor Who, the BBC literally doesn't have all of it anymore due to a series of purges of their collection of old content in the seventies.
They can do everything from Pertwee forward. These were all shown on PBS stations in the 80s and 90s. Anyone that wanted too could have taped them all (I did).
It's only the first two doctors where lost episodes are a problem.
The selection of Classic Who on Netflix is pretty worthless.
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Netflix? What's that? (Score:2)
So I put "netflix" in Google, get the first link which seems to be related to a company calling themselves Netflix, and then I realise how unimportant they really are.
Sorry, Netflix is not available in your country yet.
Enter your email & we'll let you know when Netflix is available.
No thanks, enough spam already.
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So I put "netflix" in Google, get the first link which seems to be related to a company calling themselves Netflix, and then I realise how unimportant they really are.
Has it occurred to you that it's not netflix that's unimportant, but your country?
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It seems that for Netflix, most of the world [thebestofnetflix.com] is unimportant. Population-wise they cover only a small fraction. And as long as most of the world is unimportant to them, they're unimportant to most of the world.
But then, to me, the part of the world where they have their stronghold is pretty unimportant anyway.
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People make it sound like their decision to target the American market is totally arbitrary. That's being willfully ignorant.
Cue the accusations of American exceptionalism.
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I'm guessing it's differences in copyright regimes. At the very least, negotiating streaming rights with major rights-holders in one country must be exhausing and traumatizing. Having done that for one major country (your own home country and primary market), I could understand being hesitant about doing the whole damn thing over and over again in one tiny* country after another, in the face of borderline-chauvinistic media-corporation protectionism (not to mention "cultural protectionism"... I'm looking at
Online?! (Score:3)
Seriously, we collect media and have for a very, very long time. We have about 800 titles on VHS, close to 550 on Laserdisc, several hundred DVD, and probably 80 Blu-Ray. We also have a smattering of S-VHS stuff that I recorded from broadcast that we occasionally watch. We're somewhere over 1500 titles once redundancies across formats are eliminated from consideration.
As much as I wish that I could simply subscribe to a service to get all of the content that I want, there are too many conditional things going on, like a content provider having content seasonally blocked (recent issues with Grinch come to mind) and having titles withdrawn after awhile. Sorry, I want to be able to watch what I want to watch, when I want to watch it, with no revocation or special conditions upon my watching. Similar reasons are why I'm hesitant to hostile to medialess books and music. I don't want my music collection to go away simply on account of a hard disk drive failure (a'la iTunes) or for my books to go away because the reader croaked, and I don't want a company being able to censor me (like the irony in the withdrawal of 1984 from readers) because of some company-to-company dispute.
Re:Online?! (Score:4, Funny)
Love,
The MPAA
Not a model citizen at all (Score:2)
Sir, you are a model citizen. Keep up the good work. Love, The MPAA
Not at all. Remember, in addition to buying all that media, he explicitly said this:
We also have a smattering of S-VHS stuff that I recorded from broadcast that we occasionally watch.
Sony v. Universal pretty clearly indicated that building a library of tapes recorded off the air (as opposed to purely time-shifting) was not a fair use. So it's probably more like, "Sir, you are a model customer. Keep up the good work. Also, you will be hearing from our lawyers shortly. Love, the MPAA."
After all, there's hardly anyone the content industries love to sue more than their customers!
nothing...then I found something to watch. (Score:2)
Me personally? Very little time. (Score:2)
The rest of my family? Well, I'm pretty sure we're responsible for about 40% of global bandwidth usage during prime time.
No to Netflix! Down with DRM! (Score:2)
Netflix is one of the primary sponsors of Encrypted Media Extensions, [w3.org] also known as DRM for the Web. [fsf.org]
Therefore, I consider Netflix an enemy of the Internet. Since they do nothing other than distribute DRM media, it's easy to boycott the company.
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Need useful content first (Score:2)
Not the crap they have now.. Much like 'regular' tv, there is nothing worth watching.
None? (Score:2)
I mean, I watch Netflix fairly regularly during the week, but at least for everyone in our household, turning on Netflix rarely means stopping doing everything else. So does it classify as being sucked in?
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Wow, judgement call much.
For instance, last night my Wife and I put on some Netflix while we sat next to each other and talked about the recent weekend. If that's not spending time engaging in relationships, well damn, news to me.
Used to be less (Score:2)
DVRs are evil (Score:2)
I watch 3-4x as much TV since I got a DVR and could actually watch things on my schedule intead of theirs. Online video in various forms just ads to it. For once, I'm really glad of Sturgeon's Revelation - even 10% is too much!
Youtube and tutorials (Score:2)
I will watch turn right machine works, or ox tool co, or eev blog a few times a week to see tricks of the trade, otherwise nah
nielsen ratings (Score:1)
"Similar" = time spent watching TV? (Score:1)
Does that count as similar?
Roughly 5 hours ... (Score:2)
Roughly 5 hours. Between Job (part-time webdev), Coding/Fiddling with FOSS on my own time, Eveningschool (A-Level GED), Sewing (currently mending/pimping pants and sewing a pouch for my MacBook Air) and Tango Dancing there's not much time. I like to wind down during the weekdays with a movie though, even if it's late. Just watched Limitless (great one) and Contagion (dito) last week.
Last Weekend without planning to, I wound up dancing on friday, saturday and sunday. ... It get's quite adictive, especially w
Binges (Score:2)
Most of the time I feel like my Netflix subscription is a waste of money, even at the lowest $ amount. I often go a month or more without using it. But every other month or so, I'll go on a Netflix binge and watch an entire TV series all at once.
Lots of Netflix, no "TV" (Score:2)
On the 'plus' side, my family hasn't had "TV" for 5 years, so Netflix/Hulu/etc., are our "TV". If's amazing how much bandwidth you can get on the same budget if you don't waste money on cable TV or land lines! :-)
good times ahead (Score:2)
I remember saying that paying for cable TV would end up pushing paid television with commercials as the only TV available. Now people are popularizing DRM loving privacy pillaging commercial filled paid online versions of the same poor quality entertainment.
Depends... (Score:2)
Not a subscriber (Score:2)
I don't subscribe to Netflix
Does Amazon Prime count as 'similar' enough. I have that for the 2 day shipping, but haven't used the video part of it much.
But "The After" was a pretty good pilot - I wonder if they are going to continue it.
a nice exponential (Score:1)
The histogram looked so much like an exponential that I plotted the duration midpoints and votes.
hours votes
0.0000 4420.0
2.5000 3066.0
7.0000 2114.0
14.500 1388.0
29.500 488.00
45.000 141.00
fit: votes= 3935*exp(-0.0732*hours) R^2=0.976
Netwhat? (Score:2)
I don't watch TV, there's too much violence.
I was just reading Dickens.
Only video-type entertainment I have currently (Score:2)
I need network anyway and a $7.99/mo Netflix account supplemented by YouTube and whatever works just fine.
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the World is more than Downtown Seattle, yanno?
(BTW, I get better than 2MBit on my cellphone).