5,914 karma · joined January 10, 2011
I'd even take this a bit further, and say this is basically an argument that the engineering manager, engineering/dept VP, and CTO all need to be engineers or past-engineers themselves, so they actually do have enough competency to know what to reward.
The launch was rough, but it wasn't as rough as it seemed. (Reviews were mostly promising, and positive leaning -- check out something like Anandtech's review). The problem was trying to compete with Apple on both product and price -- which no one could do back at that time.
An HP TouchPad that had launched with no immediate margin, would have been able to get a foothold and slowly secure Palm a 2nd place position. (TouchPad's launched with a slightly-rushed slightly-buggy WebOS, but it wasn't unusable -- they worked pretty well, and they flew off the shelves the second they reduced the price)
A HP TouchPad that had to match an iPad for features, polish, and still command an iPad's premium pricing -- simply couldn't. But that's a really high bar no one could regularly do -- even today, you don't see strong/popular alternatives to the iPad, unless you move upmarket enough to get into the laptop market (like say, a Surface Pro).
The problem wasn't "the product shipped and wasn't perfect". The problem was, "we're trying to gain a foothold in this market, and we need more dedication and patience to nail it" -- and being in the market for less than two months wasn't ever going to be enough to do that.
Leadership needs to buy in on strategy, if you want it to execute well. If you agree to start a moonshot, and then panic and quit at the first hiccup, you'll never leave the ground.
Because consent matters.
Many things work this way, they're wonderful or useful or helpful when you request/consent to it, but are despicably evil when done against your will.
Works perfectly, despite being like 8 or 9 years old now. I've read dozens upon dozens of books on it, it still works like new, still syncs well, has multi-month-long battery life, is lightweight enough to keep in a bag at all times. Works perfectly with OverDrive for eLibrary stuff as well.
My only complaint is that it uses the old micro USB cables to charge (it's the only thing I use regularly that doesn't work with USB-C).
The new Kobo's look nice (and now support color, and bluetooth audio, and such). But I wouldn't actually use any of that, my old one still works just like new, and it feels silly to buy a whole new e-reader just for a minor USB-C charging convenience.
And Airports, and Parks, and Ampitheateaters, and Malls, and Theme Parks...
mmWave isn't a general solution, sure. But mmWave is great for anywhere crowded enough to benefit from a DAS setup, and there are a lot of DAS setups around.
It's usually good, but that's primarily because Verizon is going a good-ish job (in Michigan, at least) of deploying it densely in smaller neighborhood/urban cell sites (2x to 3x site density over traditional PCS-spaced cell towers). It's basically Verizon's version of what Clear was supposed to be doing with WiMax.
Notably, C-Band is not mmWave. mmWave bands start at like the 24.2ghz+, way way higher up the spectrum band.
If your phone reads "5G UW", there's like a 95% chance you aren't on mmWave, you are on n77 / C-Band / 'mid-band'.
It's a little bit more involved than that. Games don't have to cost much more to make, they just are due to declining quality of leadership and poor executive decisions. It's more like, "AAA studios are running their budgets up (arbitrarily, usually not driven by any customer request or engagement)" and "players are resistant to paying for that".
"Clair Obscur Expedition 33" literally just came out a few days ago. It's gorgeous high-fidelity AAA-like art, it's super well done, it's incredibly well received, and it's retailing at $50 ($60 for the 'Deluxe Edition') at launch (not including current steam sale). It's doing great, because they made a great product, kept to a reasonable budget, and sold it at a reasonable price. Oblivion also just got a remaster at the same pricing by Virtuos, and it's doing really well. Baldur's Gate 3 is also another example, amazing title, AAA quality graphical fidelity, $60 launch pricing (digitally on Steam & GOG, anyway).
Compare that to something like Ubisoft's "Star Wars Outlaws", which was $70 digital base ($130 Deluxe Edition) at launch. Yes, it's high-fidelity and AAA-like too, but it's very much not well done, it's not well received, and it's arbitrarily super expensive on top of all of that.
Games don't just "cost more to make" automatically, it's mostly not based on inflation or underlying costs. AAA studios are increasingly more mismanaged (or just demanding higher margins) than they did before, and that mismanagement is impacting their cost structures. Instead of fixing those mistakes, companies are expecting players to just forever eat those additional costs.
If the game is really, really good, they might get away with it. (Nintendo, probably). If their games aren't that good, players are going to walk (Ubisoft).
It's not "the market is saturated". It's not "the market is overcrowded". It's "the market is competitive and expects quality", you can't just shove a half-baked only-ok game at high pricing, and expect it to be a success.
They aren't though. In America, "Paying living wages" always means "pay way more", because America underpays labour and overcharges for literally everything (products, services, basic cost of living -- every product on American soil has a insane profit margin on it)
In China, "Paying living wages" doesn't necessarily mean "pay labor more", because they have stronger control over pricing and margins, so it often actually means "make orgs charge way less".
You end up with Chinese folks living in a major city in China, with a 2bed apartment that costs $200USD/month, and a meal out cost $2USD/each, cars that start at like $6k, and they get paid $5USD/hr, but they feel like they're living well, despite only making around $640USD/month, because they can save 10% of their income each month, and have like 40% of their income as discretionary spending, and still get to own their apartment.
But in the US, a 2bed apartment in a big city like that costs at least $2,000/month or more, a meal out there costs at least $20/each, and a basic starter car starts at like $26k, so you can pay someone in a ostensibly-"high labor cost" job of $20/hr, and they feel like their constantly underwater, and have zero chance of ever owning a home, because they only have like 20% of their income as discretionary spending, and they can't save anything at all. (and that's before we even mention differences like how you don't have to worry about being hit with a crazy bill for an ER visit or an Ambulance in China, but Americans have to worry about that 24/7/365).
(It's the same reason many American's dream of getting a job in Europe and leaving the US, because despite making less money-on-paper, you get to generate more real wealth and do so with less life risk and life stress)
The Factories and the labor pool and the infrastructure being absent in the US is hard to solve for, of course -- but it isn't even the hardest part of any of this. The American view of capitalism would have to be completely rewritten to be more diverse, more equitable, and more inclusive to Americans who do actual labor, before Americans could be anywhere close to competitive with most of these Chinese industries.
They "manage stock on demand" in that they count SKUs sold and replenish as needed / as they have availability, sure. And they probably do a inventory / count day once in a while, to account for loss(shrink). But that's about it.
They might occasionally get to pick from a few custom options from the internal catalog, but they likely aren't doing any kind of active stock management, and store staff (even store managers) likely have close-to-zero direct influence over what is carried.
(superfan checking in) -- I still believe the definitive release is the original `realMyst (2000)` (Sunsoft). https://archive.guildofarchivists.org/wiki/RealMyst . If you only ever play one version, that's the one to play. GOG maintains a beautiful version of this (that works well even on modern Windows), but Cyan de-listed it from GOG a while back, so you can't technically buy fresh copies anymore.
Don't mistake this for "Real Myst: Masterpiece Edition", which is (sorry Cyan), not very good. They imported the old assets into Unity for the re-release, and then did some random texture/asset swaps, the lighting and mood didn't survive the import and is all randomly weird -- strongly recommend ignoring this one.
The original release is good if you want the original experience - https://www.gog.com/en/game/myst_masterpiece_edition
And the new Myst (2021/VR, Unreal Engine) release is wonderful and beautiful, but is more of a re-make to modern gaming sensibilities.
But Warner Brothers itself wanted a big tentpole release, and insisted Matrix be it. (Even though it wouldn't really fit that mold)
The Matrix 4 itself, even mentions how the demands on the release were ridiculous and wouldn't work (it's not 1999 anymore, you can't just re-do 1999 and expect it to work).
The Matrix 4 film itself is really good (IMHO), as a huge fan of the original stories and lore, it moves the universe forward in a way that feels authentic to the original trilogy, it reunites old characters, makes charming and thoughtful new ones, and it remains authentic and true to the original romance underpinning the whole thing. The lack of Hugo Weaving/Laurence Fishburne, and a little bit of dated action fights is the only real bummer I can think of.
The problem is that the film is only good, and not mind-crushingly great. And what everyone seemed to want out of this, was a guaranteed 300+ mil smash hit at box.
If they had released it to theaters, I don't think it would have made that. But it 'only' cost $190 million to make (Matrix 2 was 265m in 2024 dollars), and I think Matrix 4 would have done at least $200 mil total at box, if it had a theatrical release (for comparison, The Marvels is another 'good-but-not-great' SciFi action film, and grossed $206 million at box).
Only because the service is disrupting the business model for those wages.
It worked well(ish) in 2019, it failed by 2022. It's not some kind of mystery around wages or inflation, the introduction of these services (and their popularity and growth, due to COVID closing in-person restaurants for a while) is the thing that killed the economics around delivery, for much of the US.
It is exactly that! Food delivery is an excellent example of 'things just got worse'.
In 2019, 'delivery' was a specialty a restaurant would have to focus on to offer. Pizza places (Papa Johns, Pizza Hut, etc) and other specific delivery-focused restaurants (such as Panera Bread, Jimmy Johns, or your local Chinese restaurant) would have actual W2 employees who did delivery driving, as part of their job. The restaurant would want deliveries to go well (for both the customer, as well as the driver), so would make sure their own staff had reasonable access to food, some light training, and would ensure they could deliver it somewhat well. (They would reject orders too far away, they wouldn't serve food that wouldn't survive a delivery trip well, etc)
In post-COVID 2025, "every" restaurant offers delivery, but almost no restaurant still employs their own delivery drivers (locally, Jimmy Johns might be the only one left). Everyone else just outsourced to DoorDash. DoorDash drivers are employees who are 'legally-not-employees' (1099 employees), so they no longer have any direct access to the restaurants, and they can't train well for any specific service, because they might have to visit any-of-50 restaurants on any given day, all of which have entirely different procedures (even if they are the same brand or chain). Restaurants have zero incentive to ensure deliveries go well (the drivers aren't their employees, so they no longer care about turnover, and customers have to use DoorDash or Uber Eats or equivalent, because almost every restaurant uses it, so there's no downside to a DoorDash delivery going bad).
Prices to consumers are double-to-higher than what they were in 2019, depending on the restaurant. Wages are down, employment security is entirely eliminated. Quality and service have tanked.
Presumably, investors make slightly more money off of all of this?
If you are doing normal developer things, the MacBook Air is 100% fine. I use mine daily (M3 Air 13in, 24GB RAM), it handles Rails + Postgres, it handles JS (Next.js + React), it handles Flutter (for desktop and mobile), it handles IntelliJ and RubyMine and DataGrip, it handles Android Studio and Xcode for iOS apps -- including Android/iPhone software emulators. I can load up large Docker projects with 12+ containers, totally fine. I occasionally play with LM Studio, no issues.
Under all of the above, no throttling, no heat issues, works fine on laps, etc. Half the time, it's barely warm to the touch.
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The only time it gets hot for me, is running the CPU + GPU max'd out hard, for long periods of time. If I try to run FF14 or Warframe via Crossover/Codeweavers for an hour or two, for example, it gets warm and throttles a bit. (Still works, no crashes, no issues, but it does get warm and throttle).
99%+ of developers are fine with a MacBook Air.
Except they are. The US Federal Government is actively erasing this group of people from all official web presence. It's literally why this Chrome extension exists at all.
It doesn't really change their argument, but to be fair, Netflix has some of the lowest picture quality of any major streaming service on the market, their version of "high-end 4K" is so heavily compressed, it routinely looks worse than a 15 year old 1080p Blu-Ray.
"High-end" 4K video (assuming HEVC) should really be targeting 30 Mb/s average, with peaks up to 50 Mb/s. Not "15 Mb/s".
This may be true globally, but isn't necessarily reflective of actual market share for the markets targeted.
If your startup is selling to people in say, United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia or New Zealand, then Mac marketshare is 20% to 30% of all computer usage (depending on which nation, how you count, and whose measurements you use, etc).
AT&T won't even build fiber home internet to urban/suburban residents that have existing fiber-to-the-node (original U-Verse) service -- places less than a mile away from functional residential AT&T fiber drop already (DSLAM).
They're still happy to charge me the $100/month for that ~60mbps VDSL copper service though. (even though, if anything happens to that line, they're refusing to repair/replace it)
It's ridiculous.
At least in the midwest, we have had a record-high number of kids for the last 10 years or so (so many more kids that new schools keep being built to try to keep up with it because each new year the number of enrolled kindergarteners is higher than prior, daycare facilities have a minimum 1 year waiting list and many are closer to 2 years, summer camps sell out entirely in minutes, etc)
I think people hear "low fertility rate" and just assume this means "adults aren't becoming parents" or "not enough kids being born".
But if you spend 5 minutes on the ground, it becomes immediately apparent that we have the opposite problem -- there's so many more kids being born and raised than before, and most of our municipal/regional support systems for parents and children have not yet expanded to accommodate the slow-surge in births.
Traditionally for these "Live Service"-type games, they announce cutting support for a console, but let you carry your purchases in that specific game (subscription, add-on items, etc), forward to the same game on the next gen of that console.
For example, how Final Fantasy 14 ended PS3 support - https://www.gamedeveloper.com/game-platforms/-i-final-fantas... and how Grand Theft Auto 5 ended PS3 support - https://www.ign.com/articles/gta-online-support-ending-xbox-...
It's not a guarantee, but I'd expect something similar for Fortnite.
That logic works fine for a single author. Totally agree.
But it breaks down when a team of 200 people create a work, and 199 of them want to release it, but the last 1 person does not (which is the case most often seen today)
Otherwise, we'll still see companies make stuff and kill it and sit on it for decades. (Often binning fully-finished releases without ever letting it be sold ever -- see Discovery and Disney's recent releases)
Preservation should start the minute access is threatened, not some decades later when it's likely too late.
In Michigan, you are absolutely allowed to do your own build on your own land. It just has to pass code inspection, and it has to pass at every stage. (i.e., they want to inspect structural/electrical/plumbing/hvac/etc, before you put drywall up, to ensure things are actually OK underneath, and then inspect it again after drywall is applied).
Getting utilities can be hard and expensive if you are building off-grid. But there are so many vacant lots that already have power+water+gas at the street, that you don't really have to do that unless you really want to live in a specific off-grid location. (Suburbs and some townships make a lot of their money from this, so they usually want you building near their pre-existing utilities and hooking up to it)
Sewage tends to be the hardest part -- some places have "most" utilities, but not waste & water. And people assume they can just put in a leech field "septic tank", but since most of the state is already swampland, you have to be careful of how and where you put that, so you don't poison the water. (They will make you get a land survey to prove your location is safe to leech from, and they will inspect your install, and yes people complain all the time about it, but when they didn't do this, people did poison the water all the time, and then accidentally drank their own waste water and make themselves sick, or accidentally poisoned their neighbors water and made those folks sick, etc).
People complain about the licensing and permitting and inspections, but honestly, it's all been extremely fair and pretty quick and cheap. If you aren't passing your inspections here, you're likely doing something grossly negligent (or are about to do something grossly negligent).
for Cars and SUVs:
- A Chevy Equinox starts at $28k MSRP.
- A Toyota RAV4 starts at $29k MSRP.
- A Toyota Prius (PHEV) starts at $33k MSRP.
but for minivans:
- A Honda Odyssey (gas only) starts at $42k MSRP.
- A Chrysler Pacifica (PHEV) starts at $51k MSRP.
Minivans are actually really popular for families in the midwest, for folks who can afford it. If you can't, the option becomes "Get a Minivan, or get an SUV and save $15,000 USD", which obviously skews a lot of families towards the SUV.
So shoving two or three kids in the back of a cheap SUV is pretty normal, event though it's less convenient in a lot of other ways.