Russia isn't Soviet anymore.

Has not been in a long time.

Agree.

No reason to lower prices when you can just pocket more profit.

Disagree. Headline doesn't stay "combined". That's the magic word that your brain stuck into the headline, for whatever reason.

I do agree it could be better worded, but most headlines fall into that category.

It's bundled because it is used to "sell" channels that would otherwise go unbought.

ESPN could easily stand alone. The stuff that it is bundled with would find it difficult to stand without the support of ESPN.

You were paying $180/month to watch tv?!?!

I don't. My working days are over.

That has its pros and cons. In my case, the cons are rather significant. I'd rather be working.

Yes, I was. Thanks for acknowledging your error.

You do raise an interesting point. Under my plan, the strings would be that you work on whatever was funded. A think a monthly report indicating what got done would be reasonable. That's about.

If you wanted to be more robust, maybe one string would be that a percentage of time would be spent on different project areas, such as bug fixes, new features, documentation or whatever. I can see that.

Other than that, not sure, I could see a temptation to want to direct the work (I.e work on what I tell you to work on). That would NOT be reasonable. The project needs to remain under the control of whomever, not Google.

I picked a random number. Pick a different one that you like better.

Maybe because you'd have to be high to believe all their bullshit.

Why? Nobody is forcing you to buy them.

Another AI product I don't want, don't need and didn't ask for.

The hits just keep coming!

Get as much memory as you can. I think memory is more important than the processor.

Did the processing recently. For only $7000 or so, you can max out the best laptop with 128GB of RAM and 8TB of storage. That's the way to fly!!

For us non-big-spenders, you can get something decent for under $3000.

Exactly.

It doesn't matter if I can get a 15 seat bus for the same price or less as an SUV that holds 5 people. I don't need room for 15.

Same thing when PC vs console. It doesn't matter that the PC can do all kinds of other shit, when I want is something to play games on.

That's especially true given that the PC introduces a whole suite of complications I don't want to deal with.

On that note, I'm in the market for a PS5, not a PC.

I'd like to see how exactly these are determined and calculated.

Google could create a new corporate policy to provide a minimum of $1M/year to any open source project it uses.

That would be real innovation.

The effect on Google's bottom line would be completely negligible, not even a rounding error on a rounding error.

If $1M is more than necessary, make it $100K, or whatever is appropriate, but substantial. Fund at least be definitely on every project it uses.

Invite its peers to do the same.