my tivo likes columbus day

the wall street journal covers people who fight with their tivos and other recommendation engines over their preferences (which has apparently come up in a couple of sitcoms).

the real problem is that there isn't a single place that data used to feed into the recommendation engine is accessible, and no way of figuring out why a particular suggestion was recorded. you can view the upcoming suggestions, and rebalance things by rating those shows, but there's no easy way to figure out that the one random episode of some show you recorded is what is making your tivo start to record the korean news every night.

the strangest suggestion my tivo has ever recorded was a 15-minute educational film about columbus day on pbs. it is usually busy feeding me the simpsons, friends, and seinfeld reruns. i need to upgrade my tivo so it has more room to record suggestions—i feel like i'm losing out on serendipitous suggestions due to the tivo's obsession with frequently rerun sitcoms.

(wsj link via jd lasica.)