...and thanks for all the fish.

That's been their whole business plan since day 1.

is that facebook, google, etc.... all the monopoly players keep buying their potential competition before they get too big.

Consolidation has played a large part in this since it's a guaranteed payout rather than having to gamble with trying to defeat the dominate powers.

A lot of the recent AI purchases are this pattern. In the early 2000s or in dotcom days they might have IPOed.

Spot. On. See especially Special Purpose Vehicles.
https://www.economist.com/busi...

I just have one word for you: BIT. COIN.

People are literally making money by selling the solutions to complex math problems. It's amazing. Those times tables I did in 2nd grade would be worth a fortune now.

Also, everything is a bubble if you wait long enough. It's just nicer when we don't have to experience the ebb of a bubble within our lifespans.

Most of the restaurants I go to don't even serve alcohol. Of course, I live in Utah, which is at the very bottom of the alcohol consumption per capita chart. Here restaurants all have normal fountain drinks, water, and then a wide array of specialty drinks, many of which are just normal sodas with some stuff added in.

Being a restaurant owner is hard. The margins on most food is slim. The margins on drinks (alcoholic or not), on the other hand, are ridiculous. There's a reason why sit down restaurants start you with something to drink, and why fast food places bundle sodas. To a very real extent these businesses make their money upselling you from drinking plain water.

and the boys were already ten and eleven years old when I entered their life

I hope you got a good relationship with them! My son can't even talk yet. So, right now, he's just this cute thing that runs around and causes trou^H^H^H^Hgood things to happen.

Let's replicate that in the US. Many school districts already ban smartphone usage during school hours, with very positive results.

Professor Capelli has also helpfully provided a new foreword to his remote work guidebook, "The Future of the Office," demonstrating why he is still right about remote work being the future whilst arguing we should go back to the office in his new-new book about how remote work is not the future.
https://www.pennpress.org/9781...

Well, some of that is for classes for people who can't see that default 3-pixel wide scrollbar on Windows 11 in high contrast dark mode. :-)

Fair. Just making fun of Windows 11.

Yeah, you're blessed to have one of each. Until they start conspiring against you, which you KNOW is going to happen.
ha!

Hopefully we'll raise them better than that. And let them see us honoring our parents.

You charge to "upgrade" to Windows 11? How evil are you? :P

For all my pro-life ramblings, we were granted only one child.

Precious. I feel bad you couldn't have more though. G-d has been very generous to us.

Keeping up with two toddlers after age 50 can't be easy.

And yet i wouldn't trade it for anything! Thank G-d, we have a lot of help. Especially, when some neighboring girls come by to take our son for a walk. G-d bless them all.

offering a $5 prize for alzheimer's treatments. Come on man, this is one of the most pressing issues of our time and Gates is throwing us his change he lost in the couch.

The amount of money he has made even saying the name of this prize is probably equivalent. Dude makes more money in one night of his sleep than most people will see in their lifetimes.

Precisely. This is going to be used against the owners of the hardware, not for them. I suspect that these containers are very secure. It's just too bad that my phone is the one device that I own where I do not have root access. This security is not going to be used to protect my data from Google, but to protect Google's data from me.

Hooray!

Why capitalism only for companies? Why can't we all set a price we are willing to sell electricity for on the open market? I thought in CA we were deregulated?

As a Solar only owner in CA I've seen the economics of solar change over time and it's only worse for the people who actually own the infrastructure. I'm glad I have solar still but economically it was and still is a gamble since we have very little control over how much we pay for electricity if we go over our (variable) production. It never made sense to actually over produce as the rates you get back were always small.