There are going to be a large number of 18 year old s who's parents end up seizing the money somehow. And it will dramatically raise the risk of identity theft and someone trying to claim someone elses money as they turn 18.
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Phones did suck when they came out, but the 'killer app' / value proposition was obvious. The touch screen let you use the device as a phone or web browser / personal computer device, as well as functioning like an iPod / music player. It quite simply could do a whole lot more then other phones that were available and it could do it better.
The problem for VR is that it currently lacks a killer app, and magnified by the cost. The immersiveness of VR tech is pretty damn cool as it is, but everyone assumed that the killer app would be playing first person shooters in VR. That has not worked out as many thought it would. And the big problem is navigating 3d environments. The developers and hardware designers have not figured out how to reasonably model walking for 3 minutes in a straight line. How the hell do you walk at all when you cannot move your feet? If the game requires to to stand and move at all, you end up eating up a lot of space in the room your in, and for gameplay purposes it is very very small.
People tend to play console / PC games sitting down, and play for anywhere between 30 to 120 minutes at a time. Using motion controls for that long gets uncomfortable. And most people are not going to want to simulate walking / running for 2 hours while playing a FPS or open world game.
The tech is great for games where you drive a vehicle though.
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My impression is that Google has the money and capacity to indulge trying shit, but they also have an unrealistic expectation of return on investment on it. They will try stuff like Stadia to see if it works, but unless they very rapidly show a massive return on investment, it will get pushed aside as a distraction. The same shit happened with their youtube originals like Cobra Kai; They go far enough to prove they could be successful at it if they commit significant resources to it, but they are not willing to make that commitment, and they are not going to stick around to be a 4th place competitor in the market.
For Stadia in particular, the technology was there, but the infrastructure for wide consumer adoption was not. Stadia is great for slow playing games where input lag is not an issue (think Civilization, Darkest Dungeon). But they lacked original IP to draw anyone to the platform, their 3rd party support was bought and paid for (ie, they paid to get major multi platform titles onto their platform), and the most popular games of the moment suffer too much if there is any amount of input lag.
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I cannot speak for other major game developers, but this is what EA is leaning towards. It broke down to about 2/3rds wanting a hybrid home / work model, less than 10% wanting in office full time, and the rest wanting work from home full time.
And those numbers are going to be heavily influenced by what any given individuals child care situation, home work environment, and commute look like. The guy with a nice downtown condo less than 10 minutes from the office is going to feel different about coming into the office than the guy who lives out in the suburbs with a 40 minute commute that gets worse in bad traffic. And the guy who has a shitty home work environment (Room mates, small kids at home) may feel different than the guy who has a dedicated home office.
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The timescale matters a bit, but it helps to remember we are talking about an event that is happening in a timezone that is much more difficult to follow live. And I do not see anything in this article that talks about the impact of streaming, which keeps getting easier.
I wonder how this compares to viewership from 2008, and what kind of ratings the Olympics are generating outside the US.
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The point, as I understand it, is to make it as expensive and difficult as possible for them to keep up with the US. It is a stalling tactic. By the time they catch up, the rest of the world will have moved onto the next thing. If it could entirely hamstring them, great. But even if it cannot, it will slow them down.
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When internet based subscription streaming required hard to obtain technical expertise and infrastructure, the competitive edge went to Netflix, Amazon, and Google. The content creators and owners were content to license their content and get paid that way. But now Disney and Warner and the rest are standing up their own services and using their content libraries as the selling point. That left Netflix, Amazon, and Google with lower quality content that no one was rushing to fork over $15 a month to have access to.
Google took a stab at competing in that space with youtube premium, but bowed out since they make way more money for less effort by running youtube. Netflix and Amazon still have original content, but not enough of it; If you only wanted to watch Stranger Things, you could use a free trial, binge it in a weekend, and let the trial expire.And Disney and Warner can still create their own original content, which is easier to use as a selling point due to leveraging existing IP (Like the Disney+ Marvel shows). So the advantage shifted away from Amazon and Netflix.
Amazon and Netflix buying up smaller movie and TV studios like MGM is the next obvious move to make.
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Most people assume that the way the system works is that as a companies revenue / earnings increases, there will be more investors buying shares than selling, and so the price will go up. The inverse is also assumed to be true. If the company is struggling, there will be more sellers than buyers, and the share price will go down.
This has never been the case. What actually happens is that regardless of the reason for it, as long as there are more investors are buying shares than selling, the share price will go up. That dynamic has almost nothing to do with how the company is actually performing. The only reason that the share price has any relation to the company's performance is that most investors are rational.
The initial GME / Reddit thing happened because of a kind of rational reason; Someone realized that the investors shorting the stock had overdone it and made themselves vulnerable. A massive hedge fund could have done the same thing if the people making decisions were willing to tolerate the risk. Retail investors kicking in pocket change at what was initially a junk stock are much more risk tolerant.
But now that it is succeeding against all reasonable expectations, the motive has mutated. It is no longer about a crowd of retail investors looking to exploit a mistake by the 'smart money'. Now it is a meme based war of 'the common man' vs 'big money'. So this will persist until enough retail investors blink and cash out to allow the smart money to no longer be overextended.
So think of the issue like a software bug in legacy software that has always been present but never fully exploited until now.
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I understand that for many products, the local market may have different price expectations; Back around 2005, I would assume a $25 DVD player would be a piece of crap while in Japan that price point (after currency conversion) was seen as reasonable. I also get that in many instances, a given company may find a particular market to not be worth the effort and may just license their product or IP to a 3rd party, and that the Geoblocking is meant to both protect that agreement and to protect the original market's price integrity.
But that 2nd reason is bullshit.
But if your product is something that can be represented as a binary file and transmitted over the internet, Than your better off releasing the damn thing globally at a consistent price so that every legit sale will give you the same profit.
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Freedom of speech and Freedom of movement are two pretty fundamental rights in modern democracies. There are not many justifiable reasons to limit either. So consider the following hypothetical scenario.
Lets say Self Driving Tesla's operating on an Uber like system become a thing. Tesla owns all of them, and you can hail them as needed. Lets say it captures 60% of the market for all personal driving trips in urban areas. Lets say Elon Musk takes the company private. And lets say that one day Musk gets into politics, and decides to stop accepting ride hails from members of 'that other political party he does not agree with'.
Are you suggesting that his private business should be FORCED to give a ride to someone he is not comfortable with giving a ride to?
Social media plays an important role in modern society. Censoring individuals, even ones as dangerously obnoxious as Trump, is not something to be done trivially.
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For legal and tax purposes, yeah, bitcoin is generally treated as an asset by governments.
But any damn thing is a currency if enough people collectively agree that it is one.
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I recall that when Disney bought most of Fox that people were concerned about Disney becoming a monopoly. At that time I remember thinking that Disney is essentially a content creator with a massive library, and the ability to distribute digitally. However, they cannot prevent competitors from distributing. The old hollywood 'studio' system had a monopoly where the makers of the movies also own the retail distribution channel by owning the theaters. With the internet allowing anyone to upload, Disney cannot block a competing creator from making their work available.
Warner however is potentially a different beast. AT&T bought Warner. So there is a potential for a vertical monopoly from creation of content (owning movie and TV studios), to distribution channels (HBO Max), and owning the networks that competitors need to use to offer competing content.
It is not a big threat as long as Net Neutrality stays strong, but it is still a threat.
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My first thought on reading this was that some California Hipster was unimpressed with Covid-19 and wanted to go old school with his infectious disease.
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If someone is going to use Crispr for disease proofing banana's, then they may as well bring back the Gros Michel / Big Mike Banana.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
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I recently had my 2nd child, and I have been living in a large-ish 1 bedroom apartment with my wife and first child because the rent was damn good and the location excellent. I live in the greater Vancouver area, and housing prices are stupid. Getting a 2 bedroom place is very likely to double my rent for a lesser location and an overall smaller square footage unless I am willing to increase my commute from 'less than 30 minutes by transit' to 'about an hour and requires a car'.
A conversation with a friend indicated an opportunity at his workplace, and I took a shot at it and got it. I managed a 20% pay increase too.
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What this country needs is a good five dollar plasma weapon.
