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Joined 10 months ago
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Cake day: April 17th, 2024

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  • I follow EV battery tech a little. You’re not wrong that there is a lot of “oh its just around the bend” in battery development and tech development in general. I blame marketing for 80% of that.

    But battery technology is changing drastically. The giant cell phone market is pushing battery tech relentlessly. Add in EV and grid storage demand growth and the potential for some companies to land on top of a money printing machine is definitely there.

    We’re in a golden age of battery research. Exciting for our future, but it will be a while before we consumers will have clear best options.




  • Tech/Wall St constantly needs something to hype in order to bring in “investor” money. The “new technology-> product development -> product -> IPO” pipeline is now “straight to pump-and-dump” (for example, see Crypto currency).

    The excitement of the previous hype train (self-driving cars) is no longer bringing in starry-eyed “investors” willing to quickly part ways with OPM. “AI” made a big splash and Tech/Wall St is going to milk it for all they can lest they fall into the same bad economy as that one company that didn’t jam the letters “AI” into their investor summary.

    Tech has laid off a lot of employees, which means they are aware there is nothing else exciting in the near horizon. They also know they have to flog “AI” like crazy before people figure out there’s no “there” there.

    That “investors” scattered like frightened birds at the mere mention of a cheaper version means that they also know this is a bubble. Everyone wants the quick money. More importantly they don’t want to be the suckers left holding the bag.





  • Ball says that the blame for all of this can’t be pinned to a single thing, like capitalism, mismanagement, Covid-19, or even interest rates. It also involves development costs, how studios are staffed, consumers’ spending habits, and game pricing. “This storm is so brutal,” he says, “because it is all of these things at once, and none have really alleviated since the layoffs began.”

    Huh. Baldur’s Gate 3 blew the doors off. They had the same Capitalism, Covid-19 and interest rates. They had the same development costs, consumer spending habits and reasonable game pricing. They had good management and no layoffs. All this success selling to a gaming segment that makes up a tiny sliver of the overall market. Maybe some of those game developer leaders should ask Sven how he did it. Or, you know, listen to him because he already told everyone how they did it. Or not.


  • Apple’s (and by extension every VR platform) big mistake is the lack of a Killer App for VR.

    If they didn’t have a compelling use case, them researching and building any VR device is a waste of time, money and effort. Walking out on-stage and saying, “Now you can see dinosaurs in VR” just isn’t a compelling use case, even if they weren’t expensive.

    To me, a decent intermediate step would have been, “Have and unlimited number of huge screens for less than the cost of one big, high-quality monitor.” would have been compelling if it were made small and light enough. Finding a way to continue using the current keyboard and mouse would have made it much more affordable and approachable.








  • My theory is: free publicity. Just like the fashion industry comes up with ridiculous clothes that no one would ever wear, attention whores will constantly do outrageous things so that people will talk about them. The number of electrons spilled over this stupid mouse port placement over the years is uncountable. But the repeated conversations keep Apple in the public consciousness as a fashionista.