If what you were suggesting were true we'd all be wearing sackcloth and bemoaning the complete lack of sanitation. If the big tech companies stop innovating they'll be replaced by something else that does, just like human civilizations largely managed to advance even though Rome declined and eventually fell.

I have no loyalty to the current tech companies beyond their ability to produce products or services I want. The industry is already full of corpses from past decades that failed to innovate. Given long enough any of the current leaders will only be a footnote in the larger history themselves.

All of the people who were replaced by AI technically have a zero day work week now. AI has clearly exceeded expectations! Quick, pour even more money into the pit and don't ask whether or not it's actually effective.

I'm reminded of an old saying: "The market can afford to remain irrational longer than you can afford to remain solvent."

He's not even correct. The U.S. is more urbanized than it's ever been and the old farts were more likely to grow up in new suburbs or small towns that sprung up all over during the post-war baby boom. He's been watching some idiot urbanism channel on YouTube and regurgitating the taking points with as much thought as they were formed with. If prior generations of kids had the internet they would have spend more time socializing that way. More kids were outside in the past because their parents kicked them out of the house and told them to go play. If parents today would do the same there would be no need for these sorts of laws, because the kids would go outside and play if they didn't have Xbox, Facebook, or whatever else they're spending their time on these days.

Ha ha! Yeah, right.

China won't invade Taiwan because even if Taiwan can't win in a direct confederation if they possess or could possess the capability to take out the Three Gorges Dam, it would devastate China due to the flooding. The U.S. has had a lot of chip manufacturing historically and with Intel becoming less prominent, there's room for TSMC to step in. Since the chips get sent to other countries after being made in the U.S. or Taiwan for further packaging I'm not sure to what extent if any tariffs come into play, but the U.S. is generally a good place to put any kind of capital intensive industry. With all of the demand from AI companies for various kinds of silicon, now is a good time to invest in expanding capacity.

I wonder if it's the memory costs that did them in. They tended to make devices for the higher end of the market and putting 16 GB in a phone is going to be incredibly expensive for a company that can't manufacture their own memory chips or drive enough volume to get discounts on purchases or preferred treatment from memory manufacturers.

I'm not an Android user, but the OnePlus 15 that they released last year was a good device that was well regarded. I know a lot of other posters here have had good things to say about them over the years as well. Hopefully they're able to rebound from this and can continue offering great products.

The people who used to work there will work for whatever company purchases their production facilities or other infrastructure. Unless there's any overall decrease in market demand for what this company produced, others cannot magically increase their own production to satisfy it. Instead they can buy the existing manufacturing capacity and hire the labor who knows how to operate it. Some positions may become redundant, but the ones directly tied to making the products won't.

It's also funny how you grumble about thin margins in one breath, but then complain about rich companies with too much money in the next. If you want to have companies that can maintain operations for extended periods without going under than they need to have more assets. Complaining about tech companies with too much money that they cannot spend it using it to buy back stock is equally idiotic. That's literally them spending the money to reward investors. The alternative would be paying out dividends that do the same thing. For someone with so little understanding of how any of this works, you sure have a lot options. Perhaps you should buy some stock in those companies and bring it up during an investor meeting.

Mandate teenagers go outside and interact with their peers. While I'm sure that this idea might at first horrify some of you, there's nothing that says they can't go play D&D together or any number of nerdy things that everyone here did before the internet existed. Social media should have an age restriction at least as great as alcohol and tobacco, if not higher.

There were always people seeking attention, but before social media they would just wind up waiting tables in LA before realizing that fame was out of their grasp. The downside of the internet democratizing this process is that social media platforms don't even require the freaks to at least join a circus first. Potentially having the entire world as an audience was always going to draw out the narcissists and attention seekers.

No one is going to pay for social media either and there are very few examples (the only one I can think of offhand is Something Awful that charged for profile pictures) where any company has been able to monetize in any way other than ads. People are so used to free that even $5 per year seems like an outrageous sum to many even if they use the platform for several hours per day.

That's not so different than meatspace. The biggest difference is that when you're at a bar instead of on Facebook, etc. you can tell the person you're talking too is a drunk crank and not to take it too seriously. People don't seem to be adapted to treating things they read online with an appropriate amount of skepticism when they're divorced from the person saying them. I feel a little bit for the people who get caught up in this as the social media platforms have designed themselves around exploiting their user's dopamine receptors in as many ways as they can figure out. But like anything else that can be mildly addictive, there's still a fair degree of choice to remain there.

If the bar had bots to keep the drunk cranks occupied instead of bothering other people I probably wouldn't complain. Some people just want someone to talk at even when they don't have anything to say.

This at least about relevant companies/people in the tech industry even if it's the equivalent of celebrity drama. The story is here to farm engagement and ad impressions because AI is one of those topics that people have strong opinions on anyway and roping in the CEO/founders who many people have even stronger opinions about ensures maximum engagement.

If their AIs were worth a shit they could get it to do all of the hating for them. If I were a billionaire I wouldn't waste my time with slap fights on social media.

Why shouldn't they sell to whoever is willing to pay them the most? At best a few honest people get some cheap RAM and a bunch of scalpers make a tidy profit selling the RAM they bought to the data centers. At least if the manufacturers are the ones making the additional money they can invest back into production capacity. The same cannot be said when it's the scalpers who are soaking up the excess money being left on the table.

Same as anyone else, hire a lawyer and sue for unlicensed use of your likeness. Of course the AI isn't going to reproduce you exactly. You and thousands of other people get run through a blender and something that might look a bit like you gets spit out. Even if you had the money to sue, you probably wouldn't succeed anymore than you would suing a company that used a sibling's likeness even though it does look a bit like you.

Just fight fire with fire and use the AI to make someone who vaguely resembles Zuck for advertisements about incontinence. Until your problems and issues become his problems and issues he's not going to care.