I have children in every phase of schooling in one of the top 10 largest school districts in the US. My kids essentially do zero homework. Almost straight A's. Even things like book reports and research papers all mostly done in class. Actual work at home amounts to maybe 30 minutes a week at most.

The big problem I see isn't the HW learning feedback cycle it's my daughter who is a freshman in college has no idea how to plan college hw and projects.

I have no love for Ticketmaster and 15% might be high, but I'm not sure how much lower it can actually go. Their end does cover credit card processing, the ticket delivery platform, the ticket checking platform, and certain other fees and expenses. They state that 2/3rds of their fees go to the venue and others. They also cover the gap between people getting their money and the net terms from the credit card company as well as any charge back and fraud coverage.

I know a household name tech reseller in the US that is now using AI to answer and propose solutions to RFPs and has a separate AI pricing system handling the quoting and terms. The sales reps and SEs are just shepherding the process right now. So far it's been contained to a small territory but according to them the results have been exceeding expectations.

Costco's prices were the second best, but not much better than the others. I was a long time buy used then drive it into the ground user but the repair costs and low dealer rates pushed me to switch to new and replace every 5ish years.

My experience with the car buying services is they're lower stress but you will pay more. When I bought my new car last November I checked out an online service, Costco, my credit union, and my companies friends and family discount at the dealer. I then went to two dealers websites and asked for their online price, both were thousands below the car buying service.

Whenever sales owns final pricing there is no way not to make the exchange adversarial and it cuts both ways. Most times customers and potential customer lie and tell half truths just as much as the sales people. Add on that you're competing against people who are at an unknown level of honesty making straight talk a liability and as much as everyone says they want a straight shooter and they're willing to pay more for the right solution, people more often then not got for lowest cost or whatever hits in the middle of the road.

That was one of my first two thoughts. How long did it take to get that out and where the heck did you store it. That's not an insignificant amount of capacity to acquire.

I saw it and was very much entertained. It remained true to the book but can also stand on it's own.

A lot of top tier artists do get a direct cut from the fees and high but not top tier artists often get payouts from the promoters cut of the fees. Artists below that are generally hosed.

I'm torn on this one. First, in general I take your stance on a lot of things regarding price. If it's not essential, and I use a broad brush to define essential, it's business and prices are prices. But, sometimes, there are exceptions and I think Ticketmaster is one of them and this is why. They didn't get here because they innovated or provided unique value they got here because they were playing exclusionary games targeting competitors and buying them out all while building extensive exclusive agreements that effectively lock out any real competition. Venues and artists have said we refuse this and we won't use it and Ticketmaster just crushes them. They can't use exclusive venues. Venues that do let them in will get banned from any future Ticketmaster event. And when Live nation and Ticketmaster merged they pretty much got between 70-95% control of every layer in the live entertainment stack. Multiple horizontal and a vertical monopoly.

Now, that being said. As much as the artists claim to hate Ticketmaster and they're as much of victim as anyone else Ticketmaster does provide bad guy as a service for them and that's where a good chunk of ticket fees go. The artists in order to give the appearance of fan friendly prices will take a chunk of the fees as a venue or event bonus. The artists get their fill but don't look bad and Ticketmaster takes a little something something extra for their trouble.

Isn't SAP the largest global supporter of SUSE? I think 90% of SAP workloads run on SUSE. Stateside I don't think I've ever seen SUSE used for anything but SAP.

I own the mid-range storage business at one of the big storage companies. The prices for media, flash and NLSAS, have been on a crazy run and I'm not sure when it's going to run out of steam. Last week I got notification from a vendor that there would be a 200%+ price increase effective immediately. They also said to expect 10-20% cost increases every month. Essentially putting us in a macro where we have more volatility monthly then we used to see annually. We've had to move to almost a market price model where prices are only valid 1-2 weeks. Last month I had to have a sit down with a very large customer and tell them the 8 figure price in an RFP, originally good for 60+ more days, needed a firm commitment within 24 hours or we would need to update it. In the worst of COVID supply chain and cost issues weren't as bad as they are now.

I personally struggle to see the value. I use some AI tools and it maybe saves me 2 hours a week, but, some many other people I work with are seeing 20-30% time savings. AI might be overinflated and needs to deflate a bit but I'm slowly moving to the this is the new normal stance.

I regards to AI impacting PC and phone. That's almost a given at this point. I would not be shocked if many second tier, in terms of volume not quality, laptop, phone, and tablet manufactures go bankrupt this year. I have one of the strongest buying powers in the industry and it's a massive struggle.

Consultants are being replaced by AI at a rapid rate. My organization leverages consultants for several things and they're all scared. We tried AI in researcher mode and it's not bad. I'll also add this about consultants they're better and more accurate than most people think. They're also no where as good as they think they are.

I've architected a lot of backend HW for Ed Tech companies but have never really been involved on the SW side, but I have seen the same story play out dozens of times in the past 20 years. Some SW comes out, learning assistance, management, or whatever and they make so much profit. But, they hit these walls either because they complement an existing system, run into another competitor, or just run out of mindshare. Then they either acquire or get acquired to fill the gap and load up heavily on debt. They have or are acquiring massive free cash flow which can easily finance the debt. They do the acquire be acquired thing a couple times then they hit a bump, then someone else steals the air out of the room, and instantly the free cashflow stops and the debt crushes them. Then some other company comes in doing the same thing, thinking they're the most innovative company around and it's really the Xth spin of the wheel and a matter of time before the acquire be acquired to bankruptcy cycle starts again.