And because they knew the product was going to die anyway. Open source alternatives have caught up and there's nothing to keep customers from switching.

This isn't a justification, but it's an explanation. If they thought VMWare would be a long-term cash cow, they would keep it going. They know that won't happen, so they've opted to squeeze as much cash from it as possible, as quickly as possible. They recognize that will accelerate its demise, but apparently believe it will make them more money, since they won't have to invest anything in maintaining or marketing it.

I'm surprised they aren't more worried about legal action, though. It seems like it would be safer to continue complying with the contracts, perhaps with far inferior (and far cheaper) support quality until those ended. As for the perpetual licenses, it would seem safest to just shrug and say "Yeah, you can keep using it, and we'll keep giving you every update we release", while cutting the engineering team down to nothing. The aggressive approach they're taking seems likely to net them some ugly fines after some uglier legal fees.

...Like their opinion is supposed to control our democracy?

Rather than guillotining anyone, the solution ought to be regulating the growth-rate of data centers so that they don't eat the economy. There's no reason to allow them to grow "as fast as possible" when it's not even clear how useful they'll be long-term. Unregulated capitalism leads to violent boom/bust cycles which cause economic pain.

Every computer manufacturer would love to have margins like Apples', and would raise their prices in a heartbeat to get them, if they could. You can call that corporate greed if you want, but it's also standard capitalism.

The more pertinent question to ask is: why is Apple able to command a premium, without losing sales, while other computer manufacturers cannot do the same?

The standard Slashdot answer will be "because Mac purchasers are idiots", but I don't think that is the reason. I think it's because Apple is able to sufficiently differentiate its products from those of its competition, such that customers don't make their purchasing decisions based on a dollars-per-megabyte analysis. If Macs were sold with Windows and featured a consumer-gaming video card (like most every other PC in the world), it would be different, but Apple is the only (legal) source for a MacOS-running computer, and its one of the few providers of a unified-memory architecture for local AI execution. Until it gets some direct competitors, that gives it the ability to name its price.

The funny thing was that I knew him for like six months online before I realized he was fully paralyzed. He's been covered in the Finnish press a number of times. Amazing guy. Up until recently he was living in a house he built himself before ALS struck, but the medical service decided he was too far away and he had to move closer. You lose a lot of control over your life with ALS.

He wrote a book about nuclear safety engineering recently, which is a fascinating read, and which I strongly recommend.

Not remotely. US hospitals are required by federal law to provide emergency care, regardless of ability to pay.

Because AI companies in theory could replace all workers, in which case some kind of socialism becomes necessary.

AI isn't capable of replacing all workers currently, but Bernie Sanders isn't a computer scientist.

It's an approach that makes sense if you believe that AI will replace labor (in which case we'll need something like basic income).

I wish AI would replace labor, that would make the world a better place. But the reality is the technology isn't there yet.

It's absolutely not even the thousandth time a researcher has submitted an invalid report, then whined about not getting paid for it.

This is correct. Mod parent up.

But it's not a vuln. So it would be worth nothing.

For a report that isn't a vulnerability? Well, it would have cost them $50k, and they'd have gotten nothing for that money -- other than to encourage researchers to submit invalid reports.

Pay the bounty.

The two other possible outcomes are Nightmare Eclipse (she's really on a roll!) or 0day sales on DNM's.

It doesn't even matter whether a decision to fix is made.

Gosh, you'd think $GOOG was broke.

Smartphones have matured enough there is very little incentive to upgrade.

64 camera lenses oughtta be enough for anyone!
  - Phone J. Gates

> And no the bubble isn't going to pop.

It's smells more bubblier over time. Sales of AI services are not self-supporting the hardware and infrastructure needed. AI usage numbers are based on the heavily discounted services supported by investors and market-share fights. These subsidies cannot last forever. Users will be more judicious with AI use when they have to pay real prices, and the market will realize it over-built.

Investors are pricing in big breakthroughs, and if these don't arrive, the existing stacks are financially hosed.