I think it's pretty safe to assume that these companies have non-trivial amounts of IT infrastructure (that needs maintenance, migrations, upgrades, etc...). Any such system that doesn't require knowledge transfer must satisfy at least one of the below:

1) You have an oracle stashed somewhere.
2) You have volumes of documentation.
3) Retaining key people that actually do know the system.
4) You don't ever plan on upgrading/migrating and are content with the current system for perpetuity (I'll even throw in that it's trivial to re-image a computer when its predecessor breaks down).

We know 1 doesn't exist, or at least, no offshore company has one that they can assign to Carnival.

2 requires a team of engineers that pore over those volumes of documentation, make sense of it all, not fuck up any future plans with their 0 experience of the Carnival systems, all the while sticking around long enough such that said team can maintain the system, return a profit for the IT company for real services rendered, and learn enough to plan out/implement whatever upgrades/roadmap they decide to do.

Good luck with 3. I rarely see management being able to retain the right talent, even when it's not pressured by offshoring schedule and with relevant leads still in place. That and human nature to retain your friends.

So that leaves us with what? 2. Which means Carnival will never improve, and for sure I won't want to go on their cruise now. Or maybe you can come up with 5/6/7 etc..., which I'm all ears.

I think you're assuming that management always know who's the best at what, and their offers reflect that. In reality, their accuracy is hit or miss. And given it's Carnival, I'd be much more willing to place my bets on "miss."

Really? Then by your logic, I'm guessing that Carnival doesn't really need him, or the whole IT department, to transfer his/their knowledge then. But since Carnival does, so I guess knowledge of existing infrastructure/software/practices/setup is pretty much a "specialized skill."

And Samsung/Apple doesn't? Don't delude yourself.

You only get charged when your ad gets placed. So if anything, it was too easy to place his ads. If Google had to collect money every time someone spends $1000, then they'd have to collect too often.

Sorry, but they're one of the first ones to release on 821. If you're going to lump 821 with 820, you may as well say Google is the last to release a phone on the 800s.

Like, the very people who buy Galaxy S7/iPhone 7 and make them successful phones? Yeah, those.

You make it sound sinister. Just buy the Chromecast 2 if you don't have the proper goods; it's still being sold.

And before you know it, you didn't gain any market traction because you can't drum up support for 5 houses/city, and you blew through $10B+ just having contractors "ready and waiting" in 100 cities. It's not zero cost to start the effort in a city, you know?

That was 32 years ago, man.

Because Apple's decision will ultimately greatly affect the diversity of headphones and their prices on the market. And now people have to buy two headphones...one for Apple's shit, and another for everything else. Not to mention all the additional e-waste from the forced upgrades (in addition to headphones, there are things like card readers, mics, etc...).

FB's employee count was 14495 on June 30, 2016 (on their website). This seems to say that FB has 15682 contributors. So either FB hired like 5k+ employees in the past 2 months (hey, they have sales, which I doubt contributes to software), or there is significant double/triple/quadruple counting (or maybe past employees, but I doubt their turnover is that huge). I doubt any of this is FB's fault (since I don't think FB cares about these numbers), but the original article is pretty bad at reporting (at best), or has a hidden agenda (at worst).

You stopped working on your pet project at home and moved on? Say it ain't so.

I hope you do know that the black plastic case is exactly why your phone hits thermal limits way faster than a metal case, and proceeds to clock the fuck down and tanks in performance. The only thing I'd agree to in your list is the audio jack, and I'll have to wait for the official announcement to know.

Snapdragon 800: 2.3GHz CPU and Adreno 330
Snapdragon 805: 2.7GHz CPU and Adreno 420
Snapdragon 808: A57 CPU and Adreno 418

These are quite different hardware architecture/designs. It's definitely not what you would call "marketing generations." And by no means is a krait CPU a "sibling" to a default A57 CPU, performance regression or not.