If the ads actually were worth two cents the record labels might be happy. Spotify is currently playing less than one tenth of a cent for song plays by free users, and the amount they pay is 70% of their total ad revenue. They pay about 10 times as much for plays by paying users (the number fluctuates between half a cent and a cent per play, because revenue and the number of plays changes from month to month) which is 70% of their subscription revenue.

Spotify really wants everybody to subscribe, and the labels would also like that. But they're not willing to compromise the free tier too much because they see it as a necessary promotional tool for the paid service. Spotify has been hard-line about not restricting any songs to be only available to paid subscribers, because they believe that would quickly lead to the free service offering only music that nobody wants to hear, and then it would be impossible to get people in the door. (Paid service also gets you ad-free listening, higher quality streams, and the ability to download songs to your mobile device for offline listening. In some countries the free tier has a limit on the number of hours you can listen; they currently enforce no limit in the US.)

The basic problem with the free tier is that advertisers won't pay enough for those listeners to make the model work well. That may change over time if online radio advertising can prove its value, or it may never change. If it does not, I think the eventual endpoint is that services like the free Spotify tier will go away. But I also think the company is right about the current need for it to grow the streaming market, and the record labels just have to deal with the loss of revenue in the short term. That will be a challenge for them, because long term thinking is not a priority in most board rooms.

Still a little while to go, however. Anybody buying that card is going to have at LEAST 16GB on the motherboard, more likely 32GB or more.

Amusing. But Microsoft never had a monopoly on keyboards (or pretty much any other computer hardware) and they don't really have a monopoly position in operating systems any more. Office, on the other hand, is still going strong.

Yes, you can plug in a mouse. It has two standard USB 3.0 ports as well as the two Type C ports. And it supports Bluetooth.

They did keep the 32GB storage in the $999 model. It's the $1299 upsell model that has 64GB, and also 16GB RAM and an i7.

Nobody seems to be mentioning it, but the Pixel does have an SD slot. So if you really need more storage you could pop in a card. A 256GB card is under $100 now so it's not that big an expense, and storage on the card is fast enough for things like storing a few high definition movies to watch on a long plane trip.

I bought an Atom based Windows tablet. To run Windows. I wanted a cheap portable Windows device to run some ham radio applications as part of my portable station, and it fills the bill nicely. But I didn't go in with any plans to use it for Linux, nor have I tried it so far.

You are correct, though, if one wants to use it to run any OS other than Windows. Investigate the particular device first.

Calling the Pixel "weak-ass" is unfair. The specs are good for an ultraportable laptop, which is what the Pixel is. It can't match the computing power of a 17" behemoth but it also doesn't weigh 8 pounds.

The decision to use USB C is fine. But the system should have had three ports, not one. Having only one kills too many use cases.

Another problem with having only one USB port: performance will be seriously compromised if you have a mix of high and low speed devices connected. Sure, they want you to go with Bluetooth for the mouse and keyboard if you are connecting those... but what if you have a USB mouse that you really love? Or you hook up something like a UPC scanner? (Many of those now use USB and act just like a keyboard, typing things to the computer when you scan a bar code.) Or a desktop label printer? What's going to happen is that the performance of your fast USB devices is going to be utter crap because you can't move them to another port that has only fast devices on it, as you would do on any sensibly designed computer.

Except that wearables that light up tend to be worn in dark places, so a solar cell won't work. I don't see the nanogenerator fabric being practical for mainstream clothing in the near term but it will be great for costume wearables.

Not entirely true. Ubuntu releases a new hardware support package for the most recent LTS release at about the same time as they release a new version of the distro; that's a backport of the kernel used by the new version. In the case of 12.04 they basically FORCED people to install the new kernel after the release of 14.04; they are no longer doing security updates for the old one. There are also sometimes X server updates for LTS systems that have a GUI installed; there is one for 12.04 that uses the X server from 14.04 and is similarly mandatory.

So... you will be able to have new versions of Chrome and Chromium on 14.04... IF you install the hardware update. You won't be able to have them on 12.04 because the 14.04 hardware support is the last version that release will get. Nor can you have them on 10.04, which is near end of life and scheduled to go out of support next month.

There is Devuan, a fork of Debian without systemd. No release yet, but they hope to have one ready by the time jessie is released so a modern alternative will be available. https://devuan.org/

On a Windows tablet with an HDMI port, it's just like a desktop or laptop Windows system with a second display connected. You can use it as a second display to extend your display area, in which case it gets its own resolution and rotation settings. Or you can mirror the primary display; then both displays have to use the same settings.

The Windows tablets already have HDMI out and USB host ports. The only remaining steps: shrink one down to phone size and add calling capability. These new chips should make it feasible. I hope they go with a separate HDMI port rather than rolling it all up into MHL, because you may also want to connect USB devices when you are using the tablet to run desktop applications. (Using a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse decreases the need.)

A phone won't have the handy full size USB port that my WinBook tablet has (not enough room) but the Micro USB port on the WinBook is also a host port, you just need a cable adapter. The WinBook also has a Micro USB port. Interestingly, the Micro port, despite the form factor, is not a USB On-The-Go port, it only acts as a host. You can't connect the WinBook to your PC via USB to sync. But it's full Windows, so it's easy to move files via WiFi.

Windows 8 doesn't quite have the UI down; it's not quite satisfying as either a desktop OS or a tablet OS. But Windows 10 is moving in the right direction and should get it sorted out. Basically you want a touch-centric phone/tablet UI on those devices with secondary capability to run desktop applications, while on the PC you want a keyboard-and-mouse-centric desktop UI with secondary capability to run phone/tablet apps. The default behavior of Windows 10 is to give you the right interface by default on PCs and pure tablets, and to automatically switch the UI on two-in-ones depending on whether the keyboard is attached.

Exactly right. When you are as big as Apple, you can easily afford to hedge your bets and you would be stupid not to. Switching to Atom is a low probability event in my opinion, but if there is even a 1% chance that it would make sense, paying those developers is cheap insurance.