I'm waiting to see how this all plays out before I make any judgments, and I'm curious how devices are going to identify and select the proper use for the same USB cable. For instance, I'm used to having USB for I/O and HDMI for one-way A/V. If I connect 2 devices that both previously had HDMI out ports AND HDMI in ports (for video capture) as well as USB ports for I/O, how will they know what I want them to do if there's a single port on both and I connect them together? Will they both think I want to open a file from the other device? Will they both try to cast video and audio to the other device or expect A/V back or are we relying on software to negotiate what gets cast to what?
Will there be separate USB C ports for each use, (A/V in, A/V out, Data I/O) and if so, how will I be able to tell them apart on an unfamiliar device?
It seems separate ports would be wise -- one for power, one for A/V import, another for A/V export.... possibly another for data as that can set a device into a different mode when plugged in. I dunno. *shrugs*
I'm glad that I might be able to cut down my cable collection, but I'm not sure yet how we're going to use the same shape port and same type cable for so many things -- especially combining typically one-directional A/V communications with standard bi-directional USB communications between devices.
Will there really, though? By then, just about every Windows OS except Windows 10 will be End of Life, and the majority of people browse the web with Chrome which has flash built-in. By then, I suspect Firefox will mostly be gone and most will be on either Chrome or Edge -- both with built-in flash... which they'll simply disable permanently. Neither Android nor iOS support flash directly, and most browsers already have warnings for it and have content disabled by default -- with plans to remove the functionality altogether probably before then.
It's the broken websites that I worry for -- like my stupid Charter Spectrum streaming TV website that requires both flash and silverlight of all things. But... they'll get the message rather quickly when it all stops working at once.
I just really don't see people going back to Internet Explorer compatibility mode to get flash to work properly... or switching to Pale Moon or some other browser that hasn't ditched flash before then.
Yes. Antibiotics often should be kept in the refrigerator to prolong their effectiveness. Same for any medication in liquid form.
The article is slim on details and admits many are "almost as effective" as when first made. Well... almost isn't necessarily good enough since medications depend on concentration. What exactly is "almost?" 85%? 90%? Taking the wrong dose thinking it's the full dose can make things worse -- especially for antibiotics or when figuring out drug interactions.
Lots of doctors stockpile old drugs (especially samples and returned pills) knowing they'll still work beyond their expiration date & give them to their poorer patients -- especially antivirals. The elderly often have stockpiles of their own from being given vague instructions like "take 1 to 3 per day as needed for up to x days/weeks until feeling better"
I imagine much of the waste is in the unused pills in elderly patients' medicine cabinets -- things never used and/or eventually discarded because there's no method to safely return and inspect surplus from patients to redistribute.
I think he's saying that their willingness to go into debt to produce quality content is an indicator that they're confident in the long term results, and that the more often you see this negative cash flow, the better of an indicator (to a degree) it is of their confidence in their growth and future prosperity.
To use your factory analogy, the more factories they build with money from debt, the greater the indicator of their confidence in future success... and while they're building out, they're gaining more customers which add to those cash flows in the future.
Still, it's a risk -- though he says their debt to market cap is really low, so it's not as big of a risk as one might think.
As an actual MBA, I can tell you that negative cash flows is one of many indicators we look at, but blips for expenditures on investments generally aren't a bad thing. However, I have seen more than one very prosperous company over-extend expansion and collapse from bankruptcy because of their high debt level and negative cash flows. I mean perfectly great (usually small, fast-growing) companies that built too many locations, hired too many people, produced too much product all on debt... and then couldn't make the payments on the debt in a timely manner -- even though they had customers lined up. If they'd deployed slower with less use of debt, they'd have prospered. That doesn't seem to be the case with Netflix. Netflix is expanding globally, producing quality content, and is taking advantage of their low debt ratio to take on more debt to expand faster than they could have otherwise.
It's the smart thing to do, and once their strategy is factored into the valuations of the company, the negative cash flows won't cause any issues with the stock price unless the debt ratio gets too high.
I'm still a bit surprised a big player like HBO, Comcast, or Amazon hasn't tried to snap up Netflix. I doubt any regulatory agency under this presidency would stop them. Comcast got most of Hulu, HBO made HBO Go (and contracts to work through Hulu), and Amazon is kind of sitting on its streaming service as a bundle for Amazon Prime. Sooner or later, Netflix will be a big enough competitor to become an issue, and if they can't strangle it by raising licensing terms through studios, they'll have to try to acquire it. My bet is if/when Netflix has its own Game of Thrones - level programming (beyond Orange is the New Black or House of Cards fame), HBO will make an offer Netflix can't refuse.
They're also useful for video encoding, animation, multimedia production, simulation, and AI.
Have you ever tried to transcode MPEG2 video to x.265 or VP9 on a desktop PC? 2 hrs of VHS-quality video can turn into 10 hours of transcoding easily on a 4core/8thread PC. Transcoding 1080p or 4K from MPEG2 or MPEG4 to HEVC can take even longer. Lots of art school students use animation on their home laptops, plenty of people work with video encoding and online streaming at home, too.
Gaming is mostly a GPU-bound task, but these also have a lot of PCIe lanes to help with that, and lots of games are being compiled for multi-cpu now.
That's great if you can do everything you need with what you have. I'd say that's the case for most people. I know some who do everything they need at home on their cell phones and/or tablets, but other people have different use-cases.
My cousin owns his own software company that largely creates middleware solutions, and while I'm not sure what he has at home, he always has his laptop with him so he can work anywhere in nearly any environment. In the car, at a hotel, in an airplane, in a hospital waiting room, a coffee shop, etc.... He can take calls, open a project on his laptop and edit code and issue patches. He's often travelling.
There's really no other solution for someone who lives on-the-go so much.
Another friend is a programmer working for a large software company. He works almost exclusively on his Apple laptop in either OS X or Linux. I'm not sure what he's working on these days, though. He used to mostly work with systems integration and web page back-end scripting, but he's proficient in many areas and languages. System speed and compile time aren't always as important as other factors -- especially if one has more than one machine to work with or more than one project to work on simultaneously... and since the changes go to a development server anyway, there's usually no rush if a project is planned properly.
As an update, I fixed my Netflix App issue. Uninstalled, Re-installed... then noticed the app would still open, but remain minimized. It was trying to display on a monitor that didn't exist. I told the computer to display to 1 monitor only... and that didn't work. Then, I reversed the monitor display settings (monitor 1, monitor 2 to monitor 2, monitor 1 instead) , and the app suddenly appeared where I could move it to where I needed it... then I swapped the monitors back.
So... the app is stupid assuming secondary monitors will always be there and no option to display on the only monitor existing on the PC. My guess is that it suffers from the same issues many of the Win10 apps have trouble with -- understanding that it's not running on a tablet and that monitor connections can change and other applications want to be displayed as well. *shrugs*
I'm very interested in H.265 video capabilities in machines. My old Nexus 7 2013 model doesn't handle HEVC well at all, but newer ARM chips have H.265 decoding built-in. Same for Intel and AMD chips -- I have an old dual-core laptop that struggles to play HEVC (nearly 100% CPU usage, but it pulls it off assuming no background processes trip it up), yet newer laptops can play HEVC without much CPU usage at all with the new instruction set for it.
I've been eyeing ARM - based boards like the raspberry, orange, and banana pi boards and other manufacturers waiting for the right price point and RAM, HDMI, HEVC, and Ethernet specs to make a decent streaming box.
I also find myself toying around with virtualization building potential web servers for a future business endeavor, and I agree multi-core and virtualization extensions are also things to look for in my next major pc purchase. Encryption as well -- especially for portable devices. Should they be stolen, I don't want anyone snooping around to get into my bank account or social media accounts... or tax documents, etc.
I think once we finally hit as small as we can go with silicon, we'll open a new age of computing as we try out different nanotech, different compounds to replace silicon, new paradigms of computing methods... but especially in creating new extensions for specific uses... like we have with MMX, SSE, and H.264 H.265, etc. The x86_64 architecture is so general-purpose that I'm sure we can do better -- especially in streamlining specific purpose instructions for encoding/decoding media -- perhaps even some specific circuits just for AI machine-learning algorithms in the near future.
I tend to agree that 720p is fine for most uses. I watch Netflix on a Linux machine in 720p, but it has a 24" monitor. For the size and the distance from the screen, I really can't tell if the stream is 720 or 1080p on the 24" screen. But, my TV is 60", and I can usually tell the difference between 1080p and 720p, though not always. I've heard of the speed modifiers before, and while that's very interesting, I don't find myself needing to speed through shows. I watch them for leisure and often pause them while I do other things.
I imagine my next upgrade will be to 4K or beyond, and assuming broadband speeds and compression allow streams of that quality when I purchase a new TV, I wouldn't want to be relegated to 720p -- the difference between 4K and 720 is quite noticeable.
Because I have a laptop with a really long HDMI cable connected to a 60" TV that I regularly use for gaming, multimedia streaming, and watching my cable TV streaming from without a cable box. (Spectrum TV's browser based streaming is actually a LOT better than their coax-based tv without a box, and it's faster switching channels and searching than the HDTV box) So, basically the laptop is already connected to the TV, so opening a browser to watch Netflix is trivial. I used to use the SmartTV's Netflix app, but I noticed the Edge browser's Netflix interface is easier to use, faster, and appears to be higher quality streaming.
I'm considering getting an Amazon Fire TV box or something similar... but, really I don't need to spend $40 to $100 for a device that doesn't do anything for me that my current setup doesn't.
Thanks for the tip... but, my issue is entirely different.
If I run the Netflix App at all (without even logging into the Netflix App), it will crash. Sometimes it will let me play one movie, then refuse to go back to the browse screen... and then freeze/lock up. I assume the app itself is corrupt and/or it's not playing well with video drivers.
It's the strangest thing as I have no issues with any other software on that laptop. I think I made some attempts at googling fixes for it, but didn't find anything helpful at the time... so, I just ignore the app and use Edge. I really don't care for Windows 10 apps anyway.
Fair point. I was limiting my focus to Windows, Linux, and Android as that's all that's in my household. I often forget there are Mac and iOS users out there. I don't know why that is since my cousins use Mac laptops exclusively.
I tend to agree... but, it's their official reason.
I don't think Netflix really cares about piracy -- they dominate the online streaming market & they're about to surpass any cable company in terms of subscriptions in the USA alone (assuming they haven't already). Why would they care if anyone pirates Orange is the New Black when almost everyone has a subscription and can watch it for free (with paid subscription) whenever they like anyway. Watching a pirate version just means you aren't using Netflix's bandwidth when you watch if you're already a subscriber. (and Netflix is now allowing downloaded content to various devices as they know this is true.)
They have to pay lip service to piracy prevention for content creators, though -- and I'm sure the content creators are also dictating what platforms they can do what on. Edge uses a different security model than other Windows browsers, so I'm sure that's the real difference... for now.
Edge is the only browser that Netflix supports for 1080p (and even 4K streaming with certain processors). All other browsers are stuck at 720p or less for Netflix. It's an artificial limitation created by Netflix for piracy protection, but until I set up another device (perhaps an Amazon Fire TV) that can do as well or better for Netflix, I'll stick with Edge. Netflix's Windows 10 app will also allow 1080p, but the interface is a bit wonky, and for some reason, it doesn't work well on my laptop (though it works perfectly well for another laptop I have, and I have no idea why.) The app will just up and crash.... but, Edge works just fine.
Sure, I could use a different browser and watch Netflix in 720p, but why when Edge can do better?
My 1080p smart TV has its own Netflix app, but I believe it's also limited to 720p (it's pretty old for a 1080p TV)... maybe if/when I get a 4K TV I'll just use the app that comes with it instead.
Intel already showed its hand with the i9 series they shoved out the door as a knee-jerk reaction to AMD. It's a mess.
They've basically taken existing Xeon cores and prepped them for consumer use -- but with crazy options for the sockets for the new pin counts needed -- making motherboard manufacturers have to deal with different CPUs all for the same slot type, but some have different feature sets meaning it's hard to make a mobo that works with all of the chips that fit that slot type.
Most of the i9 series is vaporware -- sure, they have the specs laid out, but they only have a butchered Xeon to fit the new slot type to test with so far.
AMD is ready to roll out and has chips available today for Ryzen and soon Epyc. Meanwhile, Intel likely will take a year or more to offer i9s. Sure, Intel will eventually switch production lines and tailor the chips better and come out on top eventually... but, they were caught with their pants down on this.
Intel's solution is basically to offer the Xeons as consumer-level products with more cores and a different pin count (but without ECC ram compatibility) to match the higher level Ryzen offerings... and now they'll have to do even better to match the Epyc offerings at the server-level. Most likely, it'll take them 2 years to repackage the Xeons to take advantage of as many PCIe lanes as they'll likely have to change the slot type again and work with mobo makers to get the right thermal envelope down for the new slot type on their boards. The PCIe lanes are the key difference as AMD is betting a lot of AI and graphics rendering is done on GPUs... and their Epyc chips will let companies connect a lot more GPUs and other peripherals at high speed by PCIe to the multi-core CPU. Intel..... doesn't currently have anything like that -- and it will take them time just to re-purpose a current chip to support that, much less roll it out in large production.
Banking on HBO not sticking with Oliver long enough to see it through?!?!? Why on earth would anyone think that? Last Week Tonight is a multiple Primetime Emmy Award winning show. It's only been out for 2 seasons and has already won dozens of awards and has beaten many of HBO's other current events talk-shows like Bill Maher in the ratings.
Assuming that John Oliver keeps his game up, I expect he'll be a staple just like Jon Stewart was for The Daily Show for at least 5-10 years.... unless HBO is foolish enough to lose him to an even better show.
Oliver did his skit knowing this person was going to sue -- because he's a litigious person. HBO likely was well informed in advance this was going to happen. Oliver wasn't just aware of this fact, but told the audience about it... and Oliver isn't stupid enough to open himself up to any serious litigation in such a format when he knows to expect a lawsuit.
The guy has no case. He's a public figure and Oliver is a comedian. The stakes in these cases means he'd have to prove Oliver knowingly lied or knowingly strongly implied something that he knew was false without any hint of humor with intent to defame. Yeah... good luck with that.
We're talking about comedians that get away with saying things like "Trump really wants to bang his daughter" and don't get sued by Trump... because even Trump's lawyers aren't stupid enough to try to win such a case.
Agreed. This is not an intelligent weed-picker. It doesn't even pick weeds, it merely cuts them and hopes they don't grow back taller than its threshold to detect them as a weed before the next cutting, and even then... it prays that the weed will simply die from lack of energy because its leaves and stalk keep getting snipped.
It also has no concept of where it's going -- relying on a simple logic of move until you hit something tall enough to register as a plant or wall, then turn and move some more. The wheels are tiny and designed for dirt (though they are 4-wheel drive!). They don't look like they'd handle mounded rows well or even a mulched garden. They might even get confused with simple pine straw.
$250 estimated for a solar-powered robot weed-eater that can only handle 100 sq ft and probably won't get the job done on its own. Hmm... I'll pass, thanks.
All of that is true, but given that 64 bit x86 compatible processors have been out for over a decade (about 14 years) and that most 32-bit installs of Win10 can't properly use 4 GB of RAM when the smallest RAM stick sizes that are economical are at least 4GB, there's not much use in Microsoft supporting them. Very few systems that could have upgraded from Win7 32-bit to Win10 32-bit aren't capable of also running Win10 64-bit. Anything pre-Win7 would have required a full wipe and install to Win10... which costs time and money that could have gone into a cheap system instead. Most 16-bit programs could have been run in an emulator on Win10 unless there is specific hardware involved that needs certain drivers.
64-bit processors and >4GB RAM is everywhere. I have a 10 year old Core 2 Duo machine w/ 4GB that runs Win10 64-bit just fine. There's really no excuse for MS to bother to support 15 to 20 year old business systems for the rare few that can't work on Win10 64.
My only thoughts are that there are some Win7 atom tablets and such that were 32 bit, and MS decided they'd rather support Win10 than Win7 on them and they'll end of life them at some later date when it becomes more of a hassle to support 32 bit versions of all their apps than it's worth to them. I don't think this is about legacy business PCs so much as it is holding on to their increasingly diminishing market share of tablets, mini-laptops and other portable devices that use stripped down, power-saving 32-bit chips.
The number of distributions isn't the issue as they're all the same OS with minor tweaks or a different display environment and packaging system. Once you factor in the size of the community and the level of support for a distro, they all whittle down to basically debian/ubuntu - based, red-hat based, SUSE-based, or ARCH-based. Most will choose Ubuntu or Fedora/Red Hat. SUSE is still a close third, and Arch is more for those that like to fiddle with everything under the hood.
I advise Ubuntu, though I prefer a Cinnamon desktop (which is the DE that ships with Linux Mint, a derivative of Ubuntu.)
I've tried all the major flavors of Linux... Arch was somewhat lacking in repositories, SUSE was really nice as was Fedora.... but nothing beat Ubuntu in terms of community support -- not just from Canonical, but from linux users and programmers in general -- especially when it came to package management as Ubuntu is debian based, so download.deb files or add PPAs that are compatible. Linux Mint was nice, but it was (and still is) slower to release newer software for the sake of stability (and having fewer people to help maintain the package than Ubuntu has).
Don't let the distros bother you. Everyone and their mother can create their own distro with a simple fork of the code and a repository. If a distro doesn't have great support and maintainers, it may as well not exist, though... and Ubuntu is imho, hands down the best... just pick your favorite interface and run with it. Many prefer Gnome, some like KDE or Mate -- I stick w/ Cinnamon. It's just the GUI interface, though... everything under the hood is pretty much the same.
I don't disagree that the time frame is impractical, but the logic is sound. I'd say 10 to 15 years would be a more realistic time frame.
Remember that in 2007, the first iPhone was released & now, pretty much everyone is on some sort of multi-touch smartphone. It revolutionized the cell phone industry in only a few short years, and 10 years later, very few people have the old style flip phones or Nokias.
The key for the change will be infrastructure drying up. Gas stations don't make much money off of gas -- and instead on their convenience items with high mark-ups... especially cigarettes, sodas, snacks, and lottery tickets. If enough people switch to electric vehicles, gas stations will lose regular business & have to change their business models or close. Stations near interstates may switch to electric charging only. Many city gas stations might close because the electric cars wouldn't drive far enough to need a recharge while in town, and the city taxes for the lot wouldn't make the stations a good use of the land -- they might convert to fast food restaurants instead. (We already see this happening in big cities anyway -- mostly b/c of high rent and/or taxes or from offers to sell to more profitable industries). Once gas stations become scarce, people will worry about the range of their gas vehicles and finding stations to fuel up like we do now for electric vehicles. Mechanics will start to go out of business as fewer people need oil changes, tune-ups, and part replacements.
As an American, it seems far fetched, but in Europe, the electric car industry is well on its way to replacing fossil fuel burners. The UK is Tesla's biggest market & Norway isn't far behind. All major car manufacturers are developing electric vehicles & some nations have plans already to phase out oil burning cars entirely within only a few years.
Once the cost per unit gets low enough for the average new car consumer (like with the Tesla Model 3), and the total cost of ownership makes economic sense (many say it already is), then you reach a tipping point for conversion. 8 years is a long time in the tech industry, but not very long compared to the average life of a vehicle, so I'm inclined to think 10 to 15 years is a more reasonable number. The average person buys a new car every 2-5 years (I know... it's insane!) But, most will buy a new car within 10 to 15 years, so I think that's how long the switch will take as it'll be a very obvious choice.
As for big rigs, all manner of land based vehicles can easily be switched to electric. Electric vehicles are capable of much higher torque. They just need an adequate transmission in some cases where direct drive doesn't cut it. Planes will likely keep on using jet fuel for the foreseeable future, but land based travel will definitely go electric sooner or later. There's a great case for a domino effect that will throw oil based vehicles into a death spiral and push electric into the limelight within at least the next few decades if not sooner.
If movies were $5 like they were when I was younger, I'd probably go see more movies. Many people probably would. There'd be less risk involved in paying to see a movie you don't like, and it'd also be a decent value for being entertained for a couple hours on a weekend.
There's a point in risk vs reward that's a proper sweet spot, and unfortunately theaters and studios are missing that mark where I live. Movie ticket prices are adjusted for local costs of living, but only slightly. There's a big difference between Southern California's $100K / year lower-middle-class salary and South Carolina's $30K/year lower-middle-class salary... yet the ticket prices here aren't less than 1/3 of what they are in So Cal. Realistically, they should be 1/4 to 1/5 of So Cal pricing because disposable income is a different number than total income. Taking into account expenses and taxes, people here just aren't interested in throwing away money on a movie when they could instead order a nice dinner for the same price and watch something on Netflix or Amazon for which they're already paying less than a single movie ticket price per month.
The older I get, and the more crap like this that comes up, the closer I get to agreeing with RMS... especially with the windows 10 shenanigans. I've already got a tweaked Ubuntu Linux PC w/ Cinnamon DE that I'm getting accustomed to using for everything but games (Win10 for that, for now)... still... Until gnome/kde/cinnamon all have wayland and vulkan working properly, I'm not going to use Linux as my main machine.
One thing to remember, though is even open source software can be nefarious... and even great open source software can be compiled with trojans and put into what you thought were safe repositories.
The only true way to be safe is to read, understand, and compile all the software you use yourself... which is unrealistic. Any alternative to that, and you're trusting someone. Some for-profit closed-source software corporations can be just as trustworthy as non-profit open-source organizations.... but not many.
Because most people in OSS work for places like Red Hat which focus primarily on servers and thin clients. So much work put into databases, security, and websites, yet so little work put into user-experience, consistent GUI, APIs for GUI users, and desktop users in general.
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I'm waiting to see how this all plays out before I make any judgments, and I'm curious how devices are going to identify and select the proper use for the same USB cable. For instance, I'm used to having USB for I/O and HDMI for one-way A/V. If I connect 2 devices that both previously had HDMI out ports AND HDMI in ports (for video capture) as well as USB ports for I/O, how will they know what I want them to do if there's a single port on both and I connect them together? Will they both think I want to open a file from the other device? Will they both try to cast video and audio to the other device or expect A/V back or are we relying on software to negotiate what gets cast to what?
Will there be separate USB C ports for each use, (A/V in, A/V out, Data I/O) and if so, how will I be able to tell them apart on an unfamiliar device?
It seems separate ports would be wise -- one for power, one for A/V import, another for A/V export.... possibly another for data as that can set a device into a different mode when plugged in. I dunno. *shrugs*
I'm glad that I might be able to cut down my cable collection, but I'm not sure yet how we're going to use the same shape port and same type cable for so many things -- especially combining typically one-directional A/V communications with standard bi-directional USB communications between devices.
Will there really, though? By then, just about every Windows OS except Windows 10 will be End of Life, and the majority of people browse the web with Chrome which has flash built-in. By then, I suspect Firefox will mostly be gone and most will be on either Chrome or Edge -- both with built-in flash... which they'll simply disable permanently. Neither Android nor iOS support flash directly, and most browsers already have warnings for it and have content disabled by default -- with plans to remove the functionality altogether probably before then.
It's the broken websites that I worry for -- like my stupid Charter Spectrum streaming TV website that requires both flash and silverlight of all things. But... they'll get the message rather quickly when it all stops working at once.
I just really don't see people going back to Internet Explorer compatibility mode to get flash to work properly... or switching to Pale Moon or some other browser that hasn't ditched flash before then.
Yes. Antibiotics often should be kept in the refrigerator to prolong their effectiveness. Same for any medication in liquid form.
The article is slim on details and admits many are "almost as effective" as when first made. Well... almost isn't necessarily good enough since medications depend on concentration. What exactly is "almost?" 85%? 90%? Taking the wrong dose thinking it's the full dose can make things worse -- especially for antibiotics or when figuring out drug interactions.
Lots of doctors stockpile old drugs (especially samples and returned pills) knowing they'll still work beyond their expiration date & give them to their poorer patients -- especially antivirals. The elderly often have stockpiles of their own from being given vague instructions like "take 1 to 3 per day as needed for up to x days/weeks until feeling better"
I imagine much of the waste is in the unused pills in elderly patients' medicine cabinets -- things never used and/or eventually discarded because there's no method to safely return and inspect surplus from patients to redistribute.
I think he's saying that their willingness to go into debt to produce quality content is an indicator that they're confident in the long term results, and that the more often you see this negative cash flow, the better of an indicator (to a degree) it is of their confidence in their growth and future prosperity.
To use your factory analogy, the more factories they build with money from debt, the greater the indicator of their confidence in future success... and while they're building out, they're gaining more customers which add to those cash flows in the future.
Still, it's a risk -- though he says their debt to market cap is really low, so it's not as big of a risk as one might think.
As an actual MBA, I can tell you that negative cash flows is one of many indicators we look at, but blips for expenditures on investments generally aren't a bad thing. However, I have seen more than one very prosperous company over-extend expansion and collapse from bankruptcy because of their high debt level and negative cash flows. I mean perfectly great (usually small, fast-growing) companies that built too many locations, hired too many people, produced too much product all on debt... and then couldn't make the payments on the debt in a timely manner -- even though they had customers lined up. If they'd deployed slower with less use of debt, they'd have prospered. That doesn't seem to be the case with Netflix. Netflix is expanding globally, producing quality content, and is taking advantage of their low debt ratio to take on more debt to expand faster than they could have otherwise.
It's the smart thing to do, and once their strategy is factored into the valuations of the company, the negative cash flows won't cause any issues with the stock price unless the debt ratio gets too high.
I'm still a bit surprised a big player like HBO, Comcast, or Amazon hasn't tried to snap up Netflix. I doubt any regulatory agency under this presidency would stop them. Comcast got most of Hulu, HBO made HBO Go (and contracts to work through Hulu), and Amazon is kind of sitting on its streaming service as a bundle for Amazon Prime. Sooner or later, Netflix will be a big enough competitor to become an issue, and if they can't strangle it by raising licensing terms through studios, they'll have to try to acquire it. My bet is if/when Netflix has its own Game of Thrones - level programming (beyond Orange is the New Black or House of Cards fame), HBO will make an offer Netflix can't refuse.
They're also useful for video encoding, animation, multimedia production, simulation, and AI.
Have you ever tried to transcode MPEG2 video to x.265 or VP9 on a desktop PC? 2 hrs of VHS-quality video can turn into 10 hours of transcoding easily on a 4core/8thread PC. Transcoding 1080p or 4K from MPEG2 or MPEG4 to HEVC can take even longer. Lots of art school students use animation on their home laptops, plenty of people work with video encoding and online streaming at home, too.
Gaming is mostly a GPU-bound task, but these also have a lot of PCIe lanes to help with that, and lots of games are being compiled for multi-cpu now.
That's great if you can do everything you need with what you have. I'd say that's the case for most people. I know some who do everything they need at home on their cell phones and/or tablets, but other people have different use-cases.
My cousin owns his own software company that largely creates middleware solutions, and while I'm not sure what he has at home, he always has his laptop with him so he can work anywhere in nearly any environment. In the car, at a hotel, in an airplane, in a hospital waiting room, a coffee shop, etc.... He can take calls, open a project on his laptop and edit code and issue patches. He's often travelling.
There's really no other solution for someone who lives on-the-go so much.
Another friend is a programmer working for a large software company. He works almost exclusively on his Apple laptop in either OS X or Linux. I'm not sure what he's working on these days, though. He used to mostly work with systems integration and web page back-end scripting, but he's proficient in many areas and languages. System speed and compile time aren't always as important as other factors -- especially if one has more than one machine to work with or more than one project to work on simultaneously... and since the changes go to a development server anyway, there's usually no rush if a project is planned properly.
As an update, I fixed my Netflix App issue. Uninstalled, Re-installed... then noticed the app would still open, but remain minimized. It was trying to display on a monitor that didn't exist. I told the computer to display to 1 monitor only... and that didn't work. Then, I reversed the monitor display settings (monitor 1, monitor 2 to monitor 2, monitor 1 instead) , and the app suddenly appeared where I could move it to where I needed it... then I swapped the monitors back.
So... the app is stupid assuming secondary monitors will always be there and no option to display on the only monitor existing on the PC. My guess is that it suffers from the same issues many of the Win10 apps have trouble with -- understanding that it's not running on a tablet and that monitor connections can change and other applications want to be displayed as well. *shrugs*
I'm very interested in H.265 video capabilities in machines. My old Nexus 7 2013 model doesn't handle HEVC well at all, but newer ARM chips have H.265 decoding built-in. Same for Intel and AMD chips -- I have an old dual-core laptop that struggles to play HEVC (nearly 100% CPU usage, but it pulls it off assuming no background processes trip it up), yet newer laptops can play HEVC without much CPU usage at all with the new instruction set for it.
I've been eyeing ARM - based boards like the raspberry, orange, and banana pi boards and other manufacturers waiting for the right price point and RAM, HDMI, HEVC, and Ethernet specs to make a decent streaming box.
I also find myself toying around with virtualization building potential web servers for a future business endeavor, and I agree multi-core and virtualization extensions are also things to look for in my next major pc purchase. Encryption as well -- especially for portable devices. Should they be stolen, I don't want anyone snooping around to get into my bank account or social media accounts... or tax documents, etc.
I think once we finally hit as small as we can go with silicon, we'll open a new age of computing as we try out different nanotech, different compounds to replace silicon, new paradigms of computing methods... but especially in creating new extensions for specific uses... like we have with MMX, SSE, and H.264 H.265, etc. The x86_64 architecture is so general-purpose that I'm sure we can do better -- especially in streamlining specific purpose instructions for encoding/decoding media -- perhaps even some specific circuits just for AI machine-learning algorithms in the near future.
I tend to agree that 720p is fine for most uses. I watch Netflix on a Linux machine in 720p, but it has a 24" monitor. For the size and the distance from the screen, I really can't tell if the stream is 720 or 1080p on the 24" screen. But, my TV is 60", and I can usually tell the difference between 1080p and 720p, though not always. I've heard of the speed modifiers before, and while that's very interesting, I don't find myself needing to speed through shows. I watch them for leisure and often pause them while I do other things.
I imagine my next upgrade will be to 4K or beyond, and assuming broadband speeds and compression allow streams of that quality when I purchase a new TV, I wouldn't want to be relegated to 720p -- the difference between 4K and 720 is quite noticeable.
Because I have a laptop with a really long HDMI cable connected to a 60" TV that I regularly use for gaming, multimedia streaming, and watching my cable TV streaming from without a cable box. (Spectrum TV's browser based streaming is actually a LOT better than their coax-based tv without a box, and it's faster switching channels and searching than the HDTV box) So, basically the laptop is already connected to the TV, so opening a browser to watch Netflix is trivial. I used to use the SmartTV's Netflix app, but I noticed the Edge browser's Netflix interface is easier to use, faster, and appears to be higher quality streaming.
I'm considering getting an Amazon Fire TV box or something similar... but, really I don't need to spend $40 to $100 for a device that doesn't do anything for me that my current setup doesn't.
I do this too for Firefox and Chrome. Sometimes it's just easier to use separate browsers than to switch users.
This is kind of why I like having multiple browsers anyway -- backups should one fail and for different uses.
Thanks for the tip... but, my issue is entirely different.
If I run the Netflix App at all (without even logging into the Netflix App), it will crash. Sometimes it will let me play one movie, then refuse to go back to the browse screen... and then freeze/lock up. I assume the app itself is corrupt and/or it's not playing well with video drivers.
It's the strangest thing as I have no issues with any other software on that laptop. I think I made some attempts at googling fixes for it, but didn't find anything helpful at the time... so, I just ignore the app and use Edge. I really don't care for Windows 10 apps anyway.
Fair point. I was limiting my focus to Windows, Linux, and Android as that's all that's in my household. I often forget there are Mac and iOS users out there. I don't know why that is since my cousins use Mac laptops exclusively.
I tend to agree... but, it's their official reason.
I don't think Netflix really cares about piracy -- they dominate the online streaming market & they're about to surpass any cable company in terms of subscriptions in the USA alone (assuming they haven't already). Why would they care if anyone pirates Orange is the New Black when almost everyone has a subscription and can watch it for free (with paid subscription) whenever they like anyway. Watching a pirate version just means you aren't using Netflix's bandwidth when you watch if you're already a subscriber. (and Netflix is now allowing downloaded content to various devices as they know this is true.)
They have to pay lip service to piracy prevention for content creators, though -- and I'm sure the content creators are also dictating what platforms they can do what on. Edge uses a different security model than other Windows browsers, so I'm sure that's the real difference... for now.
Edge is the only browser that Netflix supports for 1080p (and even 4K streaming with certain processors). All other browsers are stuck at 720p or less for Netflix. It's an artificial limitation created by Netflix for piracy protection, but until I set up another device (perhaps an Amazon Fire TV) that can do as well or better for Netflix, I'll stick with Edge. Netflix's Windows 10 app will also allow 1080p, but the interface is a bit wonky, and for some reason, it doesn't work well on my laptop (though it works perfectly well for another laptop I have, and I have no idea why.) The app will just up and crash.... but, Edge works just fine.
Sure, I could use a different browser and watch Netflix in 720p, but why when Edge can do better?
My 1080p smart TV has its own Netflix app, but I believe it's also limited to 720p (it's pretty old for a 1080p TV)... maybe if/when I get a 4K TV I'll just use the app that comes with it instead.
Don't know where you got that impression.
Intel already showed its hand with the i9 series they shoved out the door as a knee-jerk reaction to AMD. It's a mess.
They've basically taken existing Xeon cores and prepped them for consumer use -- but with crazy options for the sockets for the new pin counts needed -- making motherboard manufacturers have to deal with different CPUs all for the same slot type, but some have different feature sets meaning it's hard to make a mobo that works with all of the chips that fit that slot type.
Most of the i9 series is vaporware -- sure, they have the specs laid out, but they only have a butchered Xeon to fit the new slot type to test with so far.
AMD is ready to roll out and has chips available today for Ryzen and soon Epyc. Meanwhile, Intel likely will take a year or more to offer i9s. Sure, Intel will eventually switch production lines and tailor the chips better and come out on top eventually... but, they were caught with their pants down on this.
Intel's solution is basically to offer the Xeons as consumer-level products with more cores and a different pin count (but without ECC ram compatibility) to match the higher level Ryzen offerings... and now they'll have to do even better to match the Epyc offerings at the server-level. Most likely, it'll take them 2 years to repackage the Xeons to take advantage of as many PCIe lanes as they'll likely have to change the slot type again and work with mobo makers to get the right thermal envelope down for the new slot type on their boards. The PCIe lanes are the key difference as AMD is betting a lot of AI and graphics rendering is done on GPUs... and their Epyc chips will let companies connect a lot more GPUs and other peripherals at high speed by PCIe to the multi-core CPU. Intel..... doesn't currently have anything like that -- and it will take them time just to re-purpose a current chip to support that, much less roll it out in large production.
Banking on HBO not sticking with Oliver long enough to see it through?!?!? Why on earth would anyone think that? Last Week Tonight is a multiple Primetime Emmy Award winning show. It's only been out for 2 seasons and has already won dozens of awards and has beaten many of HBO's other current events talk-shows like Bill Maher in the ratings.
Assuming that John Oliver keeps his game up, I expect he'll be a staple just like Jon Stewart was for The Daily Show for at least 5-10 years.... unless HBO is foolish enough to lose him to an even better show.
Oliver did his skit knowing this person was going to sue -- because he's a litigious person. HBO likely was well informed in advance this was going to happen. Oliver wasn't just aware of this fact, but told the audience about it... and Oliver isn't stupid enough to open himself up to any serious litigation in such a format when he knows to expect a lawsuit.
The guy has no case. He's a public figure and Oliver is a comedian. The stakes in these cases means he'd have to prove Oliver knowingly lied or knowingly strongly implied something that he knew was false without any hint of humor with intent to defame. Yeah... good luck with that.
We're talking about comedians that get away with saying things like "Trump really wants to bang his daughter" and don't get sued by Trump... because even Trump's lawyers aren't stupid enough to try to win such a case.
Agreed. This is not an intelligent weed-picker. It doesn't even pick weeds, it merely cuts them and hopes they don't grow back taller than its threshold to detect them as a weed before the next cutting, and even then... it prays that the weed will simply die from lack of energy because its leaves and stalk keep getting snipped.
It also has no concept of where it's going -- relying on a simple logic of move until you hit something tall enough to register as a plant or wall, then turn and move some more. The wheels are tiny and designed for dirt (though they are 4-wheel drive!). They don't look like they'd handle mounded rows well or even a mulched garden. They might even get confused with simple pine straw.
$250 estimated for a solar-powered robot weed-eater that can only handle 100 sq ft and probably won't get the job done on its own. Hmm... I'll pass, thanks.
All of that is true, but given that 64 bit x86 compatible processors have been out for over a decade (about 14 years) and that most 32-bit installs of Win10 can't properly use 4 GB of RAM when the smallest RAM stick sizes that are economical are at least 4GB, there's not much use in Microsoft supporting them. Very few systems that could have upgraded from Win7 32-bit to Win10 32-bit aren't capable of also running Win10 64-bit. Anything pre-Win7 would have required a full wipe and install to Win10... which costs time and money that could have gone into a cheap system instead. Most 16-bit programs could have been run in an emulator on Win10 unless there is specific hardware involved that needs certain drivers.
64-bit processors and >4GB RAM is everywhere. I have a 10 year old Core 2 Duo machine w/ 4GB that runs Win10 64-bit just fine. There's really no excuse for MS to bother to support 15 to 20 year old business systems for the rare few that can't work on Win10 64.
My only thoughts are that there are some Win7 atom tablets and such that were 32 bit, and MS decided they'd rather support Win10 than Win7 on them and they'll end of life them at some later date when it becomes more of a hassle to support 32 bit versions of all their apps than it's worth to them. I don't think this is about legacy business PCs so much as it is holding on to their increasingly diminishing market share of tablets, mini-laptops and other portable devices that use stripped down, power-saving 32-bit chips.
The number of distributions isn't the issue as they're all the same OS with minor tweaks or a different display environment and packaging system. Once you factor in the size of the community and the level of support for a distro, they all whittle down to basically debian/ubuntu - based, red-hat based, SUSE-based, or ARCH-based. Most will choose Ubuntu or Fedora/Red Hat. SUSE is still a close third, and Arch is more for those that like to fiddle with everything under the hood.
I advise Ubuntu, though I prefer a Cinnamon desktop (which is the DE that ships with Linux Mint, a derivative of Ubuntu.)
I've tried all the major flavors of Linux... Arch was somewhat lacking in repositories, SUSE was really nice as was Fedora.... but nothing beat Ubuntu in terms of community support -- not just from Canonical, but from linux users and programmers in general -- especially when it came to package management as Ubuntu is debian based, so download .deb files or add PPAs that are compatible. Linux Mint was nice, but it was (and still is) slower to release newer software for the sake of stability (and having fewer people to help maintain the package than Ubuntu has).
Don't let the distros bother you. Everyone and their mother can create their own distro with a simple fork of the code and a repository. If a distro doesn't have great support and maintainers, it may as well not exist, though... and Ubuntu is imho, hands down the best... just pick your favorite interface and run with it. Many prefer Gnome, some like KDE or Mate -- I stick w/ Cinnamon. It's just the GUI interface, though... everything under the hood is pretty much the same.
I don't disagree that the time frame is impractical, but the logic is sound. I'd say 10 to 15 years would be a more realistic time frame.
Remember that in 2007, the first iPhone was released & now, pretty much everyone is on some sort of multi-touch smartphone. It revolutionized the cell phone industry in only a few short years, and 10 years later, very few people have the old style flip phones or Nokias.
The key for the change will be infrastructure drying up. Gas stations don't make much money off of gas -- and instead on their convenience items with high mark-ups... especially cigarettes, sodas, snacks, and lottery tickets. If enough people switch to electric vehicles, gas stations will lose regular business & have to change their business models or close. Stations near interstates may switch to electric charging only. Many city gas stations might close because the electric cars wouldn't drive far enough to need a recharge while in town, and the city taxes for the lot wouldn't make the stations a good use of the land -- they might convert to fast food restaurants instead. (We already see this happening in big cities anyway -- mostly b/c of high rent and/or taxes or from offers to sell to more profitable industries). Once gas stations become scarce, people will worry about the range of their gas vehicles and finding stations to fuel up like we do now for electric vehicles. Mechanics will start to go out of business as fewer people need oil changes, tune-ups, and part replacements.
As an American, it seems far fetched, but in Europe, the electric car industry is well on its way to replacing fossil fuel burners. The UK is Tesla's biggest market & Norway isn't far behind. All major car manufacturers are developing electric vehicles & some nations have plans already to phase out oil burning cars entirely within only a few years.
Once the cost per unit gets low enough for the average new car consumer (like with the Tesla Model 3), and the total cost of ownership makes economic sense (many say it already is), then you reach a tipping point for conversion. 8 years is a long time in the tech industry, but not very long compared to the average life of a vehicle, so I'm inclined to think 10 to 15 years is a more reasonable number. The average person buys a new car every 2-5 years (I know... it's insane!) But, most will buy a new car within 10 to 15 years, so I think that's how long the switch will take as it'll be a very obvious choice.
As for big rigs, all manner of land based vehicles can easily be switched to electric. Electric vehicles are capable of much higher torque. They just need an adequate transmission in some cases where direct drive doesn't cut it. Planes will likely keep on using jet fuel for the foreseeable future, but land based travel will definitely go electric sooner or later. There's a great case for a domino effect that will throw oil based vehicles into a death spiral and push electric into the limelight within at least the next few decades if not sooner.
If movies were $5 like they were when I was younger, I'd probably go see more movies. Many people probably would. There'd be less risk involved in paying to see a movie you don't like, and it'd also be a decent value for being entertained for a couple hours on a weekend.
There's a point in risk vs reward that's a proper sweet spot, and unfortunately theaters and studios are missing that mark where I live. Movie ticket prices are adjusted for local costs of living, but only slightly. There's a big difference between Southern California's $100K / year lower-middle-class salary and South Carolina's $30K/year lower-middle-class salary... yet the ticket prices here aren't less than 1/3 of what they are in So Cal. Realistically, they should be 1/4 to 1/5 of So Cal pricing because disposable income is a different number than total income. Taking into account expenses and taxes, people here just aren't interested in throwing away money on a movie when they could instead order a nice dinner for the same price and watch something on Netflix or Amazon for which they're already paying less than a single movie ticket price per month.
At least there is a plan in the works to make a film that will be between Prometheus and Covenant to fill that gap.
Who knows if we'll ever see that film, though.
The older I get, and the more crap like this that comes up, the closer I get to agreeing with RMS... especially with the windows 10 shenanigans. I've already got a tweaked Ubuntu Linux PC w/ Cinnamon DE that I'm getting accustomed to using for everything but games (Win10 for that, for now)... still... Until gnome/kde/cinnamon all have wayland and vulkan working properly, I'm not going to use Linux as my main machine.
One thing to remember, though is even open source software can be nefarious... and even great open source software can be compiled with trojans and put into what you thought were safe repositories.
The only true way to be safe is to read, understand, and compile all the software you use yourself... which is unrealistic. Any alternative to that, and you're trusting someone. Some for-profit closed-source software corporations can be just as trustworthy as non-profit open-source organizations.... but not many.
Because most people in OSS work for places like Red Hat which focus primarily on servers and thin clients. So much work put into databases, security, and websites, yet so little work put into user-experience, consistent GUI, APIs for GUI users, and desktop users in general.