Yeah but you're a greybeard Slashdotter, hardly a representation of a normal person ;-)

Also clearly a lie, we've heard that GenZ doesn't spit out kids, so grand parents can't possibly exist before their midlife crisis.

I doubt it was RAM prices. Oppo the parent company still makes phones and OnePlus will still be available in some of the world's biggest markets.

The brand just had virtually zero market presence.

It could. The problem is that you're using present performance in a rapidly changing industry to predict the future. It could burst, but it also could improve (to be clear I don't think it will and I really hope the bubble pops) but I'm sceptical of making any predictions of the current day cost/benefit of AI in a field that as recently as last year still couldn't count the fingers on hands.

We haven't come close to seeing the true cost of AI settle at a stable market rate. Neither have we settled on AI capabilities. I suspect a reasonable future is one where the costs come down, the datacentres stop getting billed out, and people stop chasing that magical 1000 gazillion parameter model and instead delivery specific purpose AI tools to customers at a reasonable cost.

That will likely still cause a significant amount of job reduction, but then every technology or rather every tool advancement in history of our race always has. The question is, will we use the new efficiency to invest in growth (creating more jobs as it always has in the past) or will we stagnate.

It's in the country's best interest for governments to pick corporate winners and losers while raising costs to consumers?

Why should either evil prevail? Nether company should be able to do this purchase. In fact all mergers and acquisitions of companies of this size should be blocked period.

You're asking the wrong question. The question is, just because you don't like it, does it mean it is worth purposefully destroying?

That's what is happening here. If you don't like cable and blockbuster movies, don't pay for them. If enough people agree with you it'll fizz out by itself due to basic economics. However your dislike doesn't mean we should allow mega monopolies to form. That kind of action is worth preventing even for things not worth preserving.

I'm not sure that the cyber attack here killed the company or simply put it out of its misery. It didn't sound like it was in a healthy operating state.

This one wasn't killed by Google as much as it was killed by users. Google Desktop Search suffered from the same problem that Windows Search does. It didn't index the desktop perfectly, it often nonsensically preferenced web content, and it was quite hap-hazard in how it returned searches depending on the tool used (e.g. it worked only for some email services.

Users who wanted a real proper functioning desktop search switched to Everything. Users who wanted a web search just reached for the search bar in the taskbar, or more likely the Google search bar in the browser window which was already open somewhere.

Google didn't "kill" it's desktop search. They simply turned off its life support.

You know that's a lie because apparently grandma is using a computer. I've yet to meet one of those.

You'd think that, but we've heard this same line from Microsoft basically every other year since Vista was launched, and back then SteamOS didn't exist and Linux invoked an imager of badly dressed Johnny Lee Miller hacking the Gibson.

No. It's been enshittified. If they rolled it back to how it worked in Windows 7 it would be a huge boost, especially in the start menu where I'm not interested in "searching everything" and more interested in searching for only things I'd normally expect in the start menu (settings, apps, and recent files).

Leaving Musk as-side, unless you are billed for exporting to the grid, and you can't turn off your panels, solar is financially viable. It's just a question of payback period. With life expectancy of solar panels way beyond 30 years solar is also viable in places where electricity is cheap and the sun barely shines. At 9c/kWh your payback period is something around 6 years after which you're making profit (or at least avoiding cost).

In the Netherlands payback period is currently 13 years and still everyone is putting solar on their roof because they are capable of looking financially beyond their upcoming monthly paycheck.

Well so what I said was true then, despite my usual issue of getting east and west confused. X-D

We're on Slashdot. It's not your job to dumb down something technical.

Who said hop on there? Virtually all event management platforms require no user registration. Communication can be handled via email, snail mail, calendar invites, WhatsApp, etc. If you need users "on your platform" then its a really shitty platform for event management. The only person who needs to concern themselves with using a proper event management platform is the person who hosts the event. That holds true if you invite 10 people to a BBQ or host a conert with 50,000 tickets.

Ahhhh now we're talking. You're not managing your events. Facebook is managing your events for you. For the record having used Facebook in the past for this, that is insanely inconsistent. Better option would be to group message everyone details to your event. Facebook is more interested in feeding your friends AI slop pictures than your event.