Too bad about the Amazon Fresh, I used it for years as a convenient Amazon returns drop off location.
Of course never bought anything, as it was substantially overpriced with the same stock as the nearby Walmart (and the panopticon check out didn't instill confidence).

I mean, it's Spirit. Their value to the society is a net negative.

Healthcare alone is 18% of US GDP. This is simply a reflection of much higher cost of medical services here vs. Europe, where comparable services with, perhaps, better outcomes are closer to 10% of their GDP. So, just that alone is close to a factor of 2.

This applies to plenty of other areas. US prices of products and services are much higher for the same (or comparables) vs. Europe.

As such, GDP does not reflect the reality of quality of life or level of development of these areas.

As Buster Scruggs said - "Can't No One Compel Another Man to Engage in Recreation", or, in this case, to engage in a new business. I mean, if Apple is not interested in running their own payment network - why should they?

The answer is still - *no*

The writing was on the wall when they stopped adding new languages. As an example, 1000s of potential users have been asking for Thai - but Duolingo isn't interested (but they have Klingon). If no new languages are added - your potential user growth at some point is limited to the rate of natural growth of population, at most. Add to that AI bs, and there you go.

Since Europe seems intent on cutting off the lucrative "Apple tax" on appstore, they are probably trying to see where else they can make some $$. Pushing these ads periodically and observing the amount of pushback. Once pushback subsides - they know they can start running ads and taking in some sweet ad revenue. (And then, a "premium" subscription without ads next)

Depends on framing and whether some people perceive AI products as sufficiently dangerous or otherwise unacceptable.
If they do, there is probably a market, much like organic foods can sell at premium compared to "conventional" foods.

Offtopic - that "conventional" in English is a crafty shift of meaning btw, since "conventional" should, really, mean - produced without additional human-made processing, that's what "organic" is. A better name would have been "artificially induced" or some such, but - marketing :)

So now robots will do arts and enjoy leisure sports, while people will continue handling all the hard manual labor? Some anti-utopia that is.

Must use Whatsap - not optional because "reasons". And empirical evidence suggests that (due to its obviously mandatory access to the microphone) it does listen in and processes conversations for later ad targeting. Wish Apple had an option to block microphone access except when the app is active and in foreground.

Two russian assets combined - great syngery.

These systems are trained on human-produced data. That data includes plenty of statements to the effect that ending our existence is something we do not particularly like, it's bad, m'kay? So when operator input is "KYS", the result that comes back is as expected based on the learning data.

These guys have amazing social marketing team.
- Viral post about this guy's college essay and not being admitted to top schools, on X, plugging into the "white str8 men are discriminated against" sentiment (while also posting a pure flame-bait essay, not sure if real). That generated a ton of discussion.
- Now here on /. taking a "young cofounder" angle.

The actual product is a tiny alsoran in the long line of similar products (I've been using one calorie counting app since 2010, and it had this feature for a good 3-5 years, steadily improving, though personally I don't use it). But this will generate a ton of publicity, and it's all good for them, I guess.

Learning math has become sort of pointless since there are calculators.
Learning to write has become sort of pointless, since there are word processors (and dictation, and autocorrect, and AI).
Learning anything has become sort of pointless, since there are products (made by people who know how to do those things) who will do it for you.

US broadband prices are the highest in the world (while the quality of service is mediocre at best). Consumers have little power in this market due to the de-facto monopoly (well, duopoly, or, may be, 5 total if mobile providers are included). It might have been better to force competition (by requiring providers to share the lines with virtual telcos), but that never materialized. So - price controls, works for me. They are a utility (all the bleating about "innovation" notwithstanding).