It's inconsequential for the most part. If it went to Apple instead it would be spread out to shareholders through dividend payments. Large developers that are publicly owned companies may do the same themselves. Either company may invest the that money in something else which pays it to some third party that now has it. This only changes who is doing the distribution and who might be on the receiving end of that. There can be further downstream effects from this which may be more or less beneficial than some alternatives, but these can't be accurately predicted with any degree of reliability.

If the desired goal of the legislation was to reduce prices for consumers then it failed to achieve that goal. Saying that it's still good anyway just for other reasons is only shifting the posts.

What on earth are you talking about?

This dude always posts strange screeds in fixed width font with unusual punctuation. For you own sanity, I recommend not trying to understand him.

If ffmpeg allows known and published vulnerabilities to languish, the risk here is that organizations that use their code will simply stop using it and will look for other solutions.

Orgs basically have a choice:

1. Suck it up and deal with the whims of people you are not paying a penny to
2. Cough up some cash and contribute
3. Develop their own completely in house/pay for a 3rd party one

2 is almost always way cheaper than 3. Option 4 of "whine incessantly that people you aren't paying aren't working for you fast enough" really needs to stop. I suspect a lot of companies would rather do 3 than 2, because they are not rational.

The VCs want out - many have already gotten out through equity offerings. The equity markets are now tapped out, because these companies are so far from profitability. So now they are tapping the debt markets.

The thing is: there is money to be made here. The current crop of AIs are truly revolutionary, and will only get better. But...profitability is not yet there, and likely won't be for some time. People are still betting that they can pick the winner. There are going to be a lot of tears.

Memory is absolutely more important. Upgrade the RAM at build-to-order time and the Mac will run well for 7 or 8 years until they stop upgrading macOS on that model.

You are assuming these cars are exportable. Things designed for the domestic market can have safety, IP infringement, and other problems if one tries to export them.

You will find these cars at Chinese run worksites around the globe. But that'll just be gov't policy, not some sort of actual demand at these sites.

No, the US does not have unmet demand. US production slowed due to low demand.

The main US market isn't fully convinced to go EV. The early adopter segment is happy, but that's a very different group of people than the main market. Totally different circumstances, different needs, different concerns, ...

Actually transitioning from the early adopter market to the main market is notoriously difficult. A well known and well discussed topic.

Assuming they are exportable. Things designed for the domestic market can have safety, IP infringement, and other problems if one tries to export them.

This 68K-based Mac user, PowerPC-based Mac user, and Intel-based Mac user was surprised too? :-)

The reference was to illustrate what some locals do with their cultural inheritance. That repatriation being a good thing depends entirely upon who you are repatriating to. After learning of those statues, would you be OK with repatriating non-Islamic cultural treasures to ISIS, Daesh, Taliban, etc?

Based on their history, Windows 12 will be decent*, but then they'll shit the bed again when they try to get everyone to upgrade to Windows 13. I don't know why they do it this way, but it's been a consistent trend for decades now.

* For a Microsoft product.

I don't think Sony is subsidizing the hardware. Both Sony's and Microsoft's consoles are basically PCs. You could put together one with similar performance for around the same price. Both are 8-core Zen 2 CPUs and RDNA2 graphics integrated on the chip with 16 GB of RAM shared between the CPU and GPU. Nothing particularly special and AMD sells APUs that are even beefier with more modern cores if you wanted an integrated solution. Unfortunately they're not selling them as a standalone product so you'd have to buy an entire system with one in it right now.

I don't think the PS5's design is particularly good. To me it's trying too hard and I'd have preferred something more basic. If you really like it you could just 3D print a shroud that looks like a PS5 and put it around a PC built with a microATX board.

Woke AI education is now a thing :o

Look, I am a firm believer that the UK's computer teaching has been crap and this is extra crap, but what the fuck. Woke? What the fuck are you even talking about.

Do you?

Why not buy a fair phone then which is thicker and has a removable battery.

What prevented any of those people from selling through competitors like iTunes, Amazon Music, Bandcamp, or any of the other numerous alternatives that sprang up since then? I think you're engaging in some historical revisionism as mp3.com wasn't sued until they started offering services to allow people to register a physical album and stream songs from it through their site. The problems with this and why the record labels were upset should be obvious.

It's rather dubious that any bands that weren't already making a good living from their music were finding that through mp3.com. I would need some concrete examples as even artists who are successful and sell a large number of albums make most of their money through touring. Even if record companies weren't taking the majority of that revenue, a band would need to sell at least 50,000 albums per year for the members to be able to live off of their music without needing an additional job. If they're charging less per album (as is common for independent acts), it's at least 100,000 per year. Most independent artists won't sell that many and even known artists with a huge fan base can struggle to sell more than a few hundred thousand albums.

What makes these (or most any) artists their money is touring and live concerts. Lesser known acts can open for a more established band/artist and get people to hear their music and even buy an album and merchandise is always a good moneymaker as a production costs of a $10 poster or a $20 shirt are low. Even artists who do sell millions of records will still make more money from touring. The revenue from a few years of large concerts can easily exceed that from a band's entire catalog of records sales.

Your screed against capitalism would be better directed at copyright law. Of course then you wouldn't have made this post in the first place. Presumably you can point to any number of successful examples of online music stores in socialist (outright or at least directionally adherent) countries where evil capitalism didn't cause these problems. Or perhaps you can't because they don't exist and as awful as record companies may be, property rights even for intangible goods like music, can make musicians wealthy even if it's not through record sales. The mere fact that copyright exists means that a musician that owns their music can get a sizable amount of money from a song being used in commercials or films. A lack of such rights just means that the most successful distribution model is the Pirate Bay. That's not necessarily bad for musicians as getting people to hear your music and pay for a live performance is financially beneficial, but we can argue over which makes the most money for them.