Of course: Google is a for-profit organization, not a charity. They will do whatever it takes within the law to maximize their profit, and whatever they can get away without the law as long as they do not get caught, or as long as the cost of getting caught is not as high as the profit obtained. They do that all the time: when, say, the EU imposes a tens of millions of euros fine on Google, Google just pays up as part of the cost of inherent to maximizing their profit - such fines are to Google what a few dollars would be to most of us.

With 2026 technology space remains a hazardous, expensive, risky proposition. Which implies that space tourism will remain a very small niche for a long time. Hotels in orbit? Not any time soon.

The same as all other for-profit organizations. The assumption is that providing excellent products/service will do it, but the truth is that companies in general have many avenues to maximize shareholder returns that do not involve providing excellent products/service. In fact, once a company acquires a dominance in their space equivalent to MS's in the desktop, providing excellent products/service essentially becomes a liability: something that puts a dent on their profits.

I violently agree. The concept of a flying car that most of us have is along the lines of what is depicted in Blade Runner, Back to the Future, or The Fifth Element. These contraptions that people are trying to push are just oversized drones, or little helicopters.

They have yet to put anybody in LEO. I don't see BO getting the capability to reach the Moon any time soon.

It's actually morons, not children. Sometimes one can't help but wonder whether those responsible for the design and implementation of the end user-facing web sites GUIs are selected on the basis of their inveterate stupidity and ignorance. Well, they seem to be code monkeys all right.

Modern software often shows a penchant for making decisions and coming up with suggestions purportedly for own good. Rather than just doing what we tell it to do and stay out of sight until commanded again to do something. Yes, I hate this with passion.

The thing is, MS has determined, rightly or wrongly, that doing all those things would not be good for their bottom line. What may, or may not, be meaningful to MS's customers is irrelevant.

Don't be silly: it would be very similar to a fly impinging on an incoming locomotive.

It is not even remotely worth that amount of money. Samsung is all but guaranteeing that these devices will remain in a very small niche for the foreseeable future: a foldable phone is nice, but not almost $3K nice. Not by a long shot.

I didn't know about many of those sites. Thanks, Streisand.

Not only CEOs - most managers are easily replaceable.

Executives are, by and large, replaceable by AI already. In truth, most of them were superfluous in the first place.

For unless the natives can be persuaded to have more children immigration will be essential - at least until such time that AI can manage that.

More to the point, they want to make sure that they are richer than the rich guy next door. In essence, it is a matter of being able to show everybody that they can piss farther than that other rich guy. That's right: human being really are that stupid.