You're complaining about HP Inc's business practices. Hewlett Packard Enterprise and HP Inc. parted ways 11 years ago. (Hint: the latter's name is a pun on "ink").

There is no way the whole payment is taxable. Only certain *profits* are taxed, not all cash flow, and corporations have accountants who make sure any such profits are minimal.

Let's do the math:

($Fox + $Payment) + ($Roku - $Payment) = $Fox + $Roku

That's a zero-sum transaction. No $400M savings there.

Building a reliable long-range monoplane in 1927 was a milestone. Flying it solo from New York to Paris was a publicity stunt.

Which of these two actions do people remember and celebrate today?

What an utterly naive interpretation of world history you have. I can assure you, if you'd been a Jew being rounded up for extermination in WW2 you'd have a different opinion. Likewise, if you were Chinese or Korean being subjugated by Imperial Japan, you'd have a different perspective. There is such a thing as a "just war" even though you somehow ignore the concept. It's usually when your opponent starts the war and is hell bent on eradicating you and your way of life.

Alas, you sit there in perfect safety and comfort, passing judgement on those who sacrificed fa more than you can ever imagine so you could impugn their sacrifices.

Banned for who? And who's going to enforce this ban?

You have to remember any treaty (a) must have signatories that agree to follow it and (b) there must be a method of enforcement. If you lack either of these two conditions, the treaty has no effect.

Not sure how you think you could pull that off, but whatever.

Again...exactly how do you plan to accomplish this? It's not like Iran hasn't been firing missiles at our carriers this whole time. Yeah, it's a halfhearted effort by the Iranians, but what exactly do you think would happen to Iran if you managed to even damage one of our carriers, much less sink one? I can describe it thusly: the American gloves would come off. Iran would be plastered into oblivion via conventional bombardment, and there's very little Iran could do to stop it. Sure, we'd take losses, but the Iranian regime would cease to exist in totality. America has had this option available to it since day one. We haven't exercised it. Not because we couldn't do it but because we chose not to. Do not mistake restraint for a lack of capability.

I think that these are all just adult album alternative format stations that keep playing that one Wilco record.

If AI services are becoming too expensive in the current environment, we can look to nature for help. There is a an abundant species of large mammals in the ape family that can be trained to do this kind of work as well.

The days of unlimited funding are over.

Let's recap. First, VC and mega-tech corporate coffers were the sources of unlimited funding. Compute was bought and essentially offered free or nearly free to even the most voracious users to juice usage stats and hopefully disrupt that too-long-entrenched habit people have of, let me check my notes, "using their brain to think." And to do 30% of the job of a person at 5% of the cost, sure, why not! Four to six months ago, those funds started drying up.

Fortunately, there was circular AI "investments" and "deals" between Nvidia, OpenAI, Microsoft, etc, which of course wasn't funding at all, just moving money between multinationals/hyperscalers to double- or triple-count the value of the money as it changed hands and maintain the air of inevitability by sheer scale of AI investment. Sure, it wasn't real value, but it was good enough to (maybe, if SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic move quickly) give runway for a few IPOs, and heck, when we're only burning through a few billion dollars a month, what's the harm in placing a bet to own the all future labor value?

But now? It looks the CEOs, boards, and shareholders remember they like their present-day selves more than their future-selves (future me? That guy is basically a stranger!), who are really the beneficiaries of these costly bets. So, with no other funding sources, AI companies have no choice but to charge users for compute directly. So now AI can do 30% of the job of a person at 10,000% of the cost.

I think we all see where this is going.

Apparently, the elite also own all the newline characters.

Pica FTW!

As a matter of fact, yes. Specifically, to the Greenland region.

Although a golden bridge of grossly outsized proportions and festooned with tacky ornamentation would be much preferred.

Apparently, its current purpose is a demo for their "Copilot" AI technology.

With all of GitHub's great new AI features, it writes all your code for you! It doesn't matter whether the site is up at any given moment; just download your newly completed app at some point then the site is online. You're free to kick back, relax and scroll your social feeds because you don't actually have to do anything anymore. This is truly a golden era!

This is why NASA always packs a tin of Bondo with the mission supplies.