Yes they do. My company is doing it too. Well technically they have stopped all new hires other than intern replacements, we treat our interns well and their salary these days is better than I got as a full timer when I started. And MS is not laying people off. They have just stopped hiring new, and may not hire head count replacements unless there is a strong business case.

Many or if not all non-intern employees have long term investment in discounted company stock. We want to protect our value. Things take longer as we are swamped? OK. But I don't want stock options to be wiped out. I want to retire some day...

Well I had the fortune to use the Nokia Windows phone and let's say the phone was great. I really disliked the IPhone I had to use, was glad when I got an Android upgrade, but then had a chance to set up and use the Windows phone. Setup and UI wise it was FAR superior that the other two IMO. It felt intuitive to use. if they could bring that experience to Android I would be a happy camper.

Also the phone was a beast, it took a beating....

Well that there are many out there that have installed Windows 11 on their Surface Pro 3 which is 7 years old I would say not bad. Better than Android, my S9+ cannot be updated to latest Android so needs to be replaced (work requirements)

Basically Musk is a more hygienic version of Jobs? Maybe he would have been a good fit for Apple as a CEO then.

Canadian here. Do you have data showing the majority of users are from the US? If not then likewise I could claim Reddit and Facebook are US companies and therefore majority of their users are in the US.

Of the 4 laptops in this household only one has USB C, and even though it is less than 6 months old, bought they day they put it on the shelf, it only has one port and that is used for charging. Two have USB 3 and one is USB 2 only. My desktop only has USB 2. The only other items in our household with USB C are 2 of our phones. Even two of the newer phones don't have the USB C. None of my media players have it. Nor does my 3D printer.

By all means I prefer the USB C port but it is also more expensive to implement. I think it has 20+ connections in a smaller connector, more expensive to produce where USB is only 5 connections. Looking up break out boards for my Adafruit the USB C connectors start at twice the price as the older USB. $1.50 compared to $3.00+. And if I was to guess the chipsets to handle communication would probably be more expensive too.

So now if you want to sell a product at the lowest possible price point that will be usuable by the most amount of people, what do you choose? Not every computer with USB will be USB C compatible But every computer with USB C will be compatible with USB 3 and lower.

Set top boxes and such are marketed to the general public like those that bought DVD and VCRs that couldn't figure out how to fix the flash 12:00.... no way they would know what NFS, SMB/CIFS, DLNA, etc.is...

However I doubt the ROKU box guaranteed "for life" or even for region. For example I bought mine and it had a "Prime" button and it printed on the box... Prime was not available via ROKU in Canada... did the box support it? Yup, if I VPN it would work. Due to stupid rules it wasn't allowed in Canada for the longest time (on the ROKU).... contacted ROKU and they said it was out of their control it was Amazon that was region blocking. And I think ROKU has to walk a line here because it gets into regional copyright and broadcasting laws... so they leave it to the channel producers to figure out, so if people are streaming stuff on the ROKU in CountryX via Prime when Prime doesn't have the rights to stream that particular content in CountryX Prime that gets in trouble not ROKU.

You are right about the bad guy thing! I forgot about that. And i occasionally read the credits. In one movie one of the grips names was Justin Case. Gotta love the parents that had a sense of humour!

Who do you sue? ROKU? It wasn't their decision. They can't stop it. Google? Was it Google that promised lifetime support on ROKU?

However this means I will not be using google as all I have is a ROKU and Apple TV box.

Any time you clearly see a brand in a broadcast displayed like that it is paid for. Whether it is Apple, M$, Coke, Pepsi or a Keurig....

I have trees in my yard. Not just a few trees. A bunch of trees. Big ones. Every fall I fill 50+ yard bags of leaves. And when they are light and dry electric works for a bit. When they are wet and soggy electric doesn't cut it. I can't leave the leafs on my roof due to the type of roofing. And if electric doesn't work, and I can't sweep or brush them off that leaves a gas blower. I need to go up on my roof on a weekly basis in the fall and spring.

I have a love hate relationship with that gas blower but take away the gas blower then the option I have is to cut down my beautiful pain in the ass trees. I am pretty sure running my blower for 1 to 2 hours on the weekend for a few weekends in fall, and for 10 minutes once a week on my roof isn't really that bad.

Well I know many vegetarians that I am much healthier than. I mean overly overweight or looking chronically malnutritioned. etc. I am in better shape than most of my coworkers in my age group. I eat fish, chicken, and pork as main protiens. Lots of legumes, and as much as I love duck and beef I eat it at a reduced rate for health reasons.

But I focus more on protein and veggies, and less on starches (noodles, rice potato)

It is the magic smoke that makes all electronicals work... heck I wonder how computers and word processors handle grammar correction particularly English grammer so swell like?

Actually when I was on loan to a documentation team for a large software company in the early 2000's I used to use double spaces after a period and kept getting corrected. I learned double spaces on a type writer. What I learned was with type writers everything was mono-spaced and the double space after period was to help make reading text easier. With the onslaught of decent Word Processors and fonts especially with commercial type setting type software (which we were using) the single space after a period was made a little longer than the single space between words. Just enough for readability so you don't need to double space.

Don't worry they have hired the guy who used to be responsible for Facebook's security.