Exactly my thoughts. I don't think Tik Tok falls under any significant national security concerns though, that part of the action seems like a farce. Invoking national security might be the primary thing enabling Donald to block Tik Tock and other Byte Dance properties in the US.

...for a reason. Or "halo" products. The top model is rarely the top selling product. The top selling product is usually in the mid or low ranges. I don't know why this is any kind of a surprise.

>How can you really consider 4 million units sold a niche though?

To put in context, WiiU, a console widely considered to be a failure, sold 13.56M units over its entire lifetime. Maybe VR is not a niche but it's not really a success that all the big studios clamoring to serve with AAA titles just. Maybe Half-Life Alyx will be the "killer app" that pushes VR to a wider audience. Everything I've seen previously feels like fancy technology demonstrators rather than confident games.

True, but there's going to be a cost somewhere.

They're gonna have to recover that money somehow and I don't see how Seinfeld can really pay back like that.

I'd really prefer they invest in new content than spend such enormous sums getting 20-30 year old content.

I suppose having some name recognition in the catalog has an effect in itself. I really disliked how hard Netflix was pushing their own titles.

Agreed on all points. The network effect is a big factor in a lot of those points, it's hard to justify switching platforms as a lot of things have to be there to make that work and to have people buy into it.

It's been the "year of Linux on the desktop" for at least the 20th straight year, with the occasional hand-wringing about how the clueless user* isn't playing ball with their ambitions of global Linux domination. Meanwhile the user can be smart or not, but at the root of it, I think they would rather spend their spare time and energy on other things than try to figure out how to fit Linux and free software into their lives. When they do use Linux, it's been obscured in different ways such that they don't know what's really under the hood, such as the router, their phone, tablet or even the occasional Chrome book.

* sometimes they're outright called demeaning things, sometimes it's implied

I get the impression that it's a startup that only bought the brand name. Nothing else about the old company, good or bad, was brought in. So you're right to be wary.

It could also be in their best interest to market pie-in-the-sky dreams in the hopes of growing the market beyond their conservative internal estimates. They probably still benefit six different ways even if "self-flying cars" don't catch on the way the marketing suggests.

I won't say it won't happen. It's probably going to be super expensive though.

We don't even have meaningfully self-driving cars. As yet, AFAIK, full collision avoidance still isn't available in UAS, even the super high dollar systems. UAS have a pretty poor accident record too.

I think it's telling that they attack the messenger instead of pointing out any of the supposed errors. I mean the problems of the messenger may be valid but if it just turns out to rest on the ad hominem against a lengthy report, then there's not much weight to their response.

Do they only allow the TI-84? My school allowed either a Casio (model # forgotten) or a TI-84. I used the Casio for a while but I realized the coin cell batteries to keep them going was going to add up over the years. I know HP had some good calculators that some college classes allowed.

It is all silly but there's a method to the madness. It's a simple continuation of the push for "bezel less" devices. Eventually the notches won't be needed but for now there's no great way around it. I don't think there's a display that is good for shooting a front-facing camera through it (yet). I doubt a phone without a front-facing camera would succeed. The phones with a pop-out camera are sillier than the notches.

Netflix didn't do that at the start, they licensed a bunch of existing content. I don't know if they intended to make their own shows from the start, it seems like they decided they needed to do that because the incumbent content owners started making their own streaming platforms and wouldn't license to Netflix as much anymore.

Four screens in a household really doesn't seem unrealistic.

> In which case this is really Netflix lowering rates...

Lowering rates of *what*? They added the 2 screen / HD tier at a higher price, a 4 screen / 4K tier for even more money, and base tier is a one screen SD tier at the legacy HD price. Notably, the title selection has gone down a lot too.

Maybe lowering rates of account sharing? If so, I haven't seen or heard that happen yet. I'm surprised they haven't cracked down on that, maybe they're smarter than I give them credit.

Telling people that they "misunderstood" when they understood perfectly well is gaslighting. If that's really what's happening then it's really sad that they stoop to that level.

I wonder what this alleged thermostat is, if it exists because even a poorly designed connected thermostat should still operate with lower bandwidth. The wording in the paperwork suggests that you might have problems accessing it remotely and that only makes sense if the internet is disconnected. Well, maybe if you have a saturated link combined with a shitty router.