kirklennon

1. Most Americans already knew he was a criminal and either strongly opposed him or strongly supported him, in part on that basis. There are a lot of other people who usually or often vote Republican, but also just don’t always vote. Those people aren’t going to be enthusiastic about showing up to vote for a felon. I think we’re looking at extremely low turnout among non-MAGA Republicans. Optimistically, this scenario can also lead to a blue wave as those same people skip down-ballot races as well.
2. First-time offenders get lighter sentences. He’s going to be convicted in multiple upcoming trials, and in all of them he’s now going to enter the sentencing phase as a felon. We can look forward to extended prison sentences in Georgia and the federal cases.

It’s up to the judge and can range from no prison to four years. A nonviolent first-time offense usually means a lighter sentence, but the judge can also factor in the complete lack of contrition and the numerous egregious gag order violations. These make prison significantly more likely than it otherwise would be.

A fine of less than $1 million is absolutely not what anyone except Google is asking for.

The DOJ can really only ask for treble damages. If Google paid ~$3 million, that’s realistically as good as the DOJ was going to get. It sounds like the initial estimates were just way off. Nobody should be shocked that the inept antitrust division screwed up again. They’re going after big, buzz-worthy names without the facts or law to actually back it up.

The headline is strange. The DOJ sued for money and Google just straight up gave them the money they could have won upfront. That’s not a “pay off”; it’s literally what they asked for. It’s a win for the DOJ. Google’s argument against a jury trial also seems on solid ground. The right to a trial by jury is meant as a protection for Americans; the government itself doesn’t have the right to demand a jury. If the defendant thinks the legal issues in the case are too arcane and a judge is more likely to get it right (and get it right faster, which is cheaper), that’s their prerogative.

Apple made no announcement or advertisement of any sort. Government patent examiners, after careful review, determined this is a novel invention or improvement. It’s not possible for your comment to be any more literally wrong than it is.

They’ve used the same segments for a long time and presumably maintain them for consistency, so I think it really just tells us that they used to sell very little there. India, in particular, has been a large growth market for Apple in the past couple of years, but is still just thrown in with “Europe.”

The EU is only one chunk of Apple’s “Europe” segment, which is defined as “European countries, as well as India, the Middle East and Africa.”

Seems like you’re Canadian. America doesn’t have limits on tap to pay.

“The industry is at a pivotal point - new technologies like Gen AI are rapidly shifting how we shop and manage our finances,” said Jack Forestell, Chief Product and Strategy Officer, Visa.

This is so cringey. I get that investors are randomly throwing cash at companies that talk up “generative AI,” but it has nothing to do with anything they announced. Is it impossible to just be content with ridiculously sophisticated algorithms? Did someone hold a gun up to these people and demand they spit out some drivel that uses the buzzwords du jour?

Also, the headline feature was solved a decade ago when Apple Pay was released (and no, not by the janky predecessors of Apple Pay but specifically with the launch of Apple Pay, which everything was then changed to replicate). One device that can hold an entire wallet of cards and I can choose what to use right when I pay? Wow! So new.

A long exposure allows more of the light to be captured but that’s not the reason for the color discrepancy. They really are as colorful as they appear in photos but human night vision is primarily black and white. We just don’t see a lot of color unless it’s sufficiently bright and since auroras are still quite dim in absolute terms, our eyes aren’t capable of recognizing the full intensity of the color.

The “bento box” graphic during the presentation yesterday said AV1. From the press release:

The Media Engine of M4 is the most advanced to come to iPad. In addition to supporting the most popular video codecs, like H.264, HEVC, and ProRes, it brings hardware acceleration for AV1 to iPad for the first time. This provides more power-efficient playback of high-resolution video experiences from streaming services.

The main reason sales fell this year compared to the year-ago quarter is because the quarter before that Apple wasn’t able to keep up with iPhone 14 demand leading to shortages and depleted channel inventory. The following quarter they were able to meet demand and replenish the sales channel leading a boosted year-ago quarter that was $5 billion bigger than it really should have been. Apple didn’t have the same production shortages for the 15 launch. It makes this quarter they just reported look like a big decline but that’s not really the whole story.

I think it’s a privately-owned, profit-focused endeavor that is nevertheless beholden to the Chinese government and which the government wants to take as much advantage of as possible. Deep down, I’m certain that their sole goal is to make as much money for themselves as they possibly can. If they also need to exfiltrate some data and send it to the CCP, that’s just a necessary business expense.

This means absolutely nothing. How much of their advertising revenue comes from the US.

To quote the article again, “The U.S. accounted for about 25% of TikTok overall revenues last year, said a separate source with direct knowledge.” Honestly, I think that makes the case for shutting it down even stronger. TikTok isn’t in some growth-at-all-costs phase in the US. It’s likely near its peak potential userbase. If they haven’t been able to make it profitable by now, that doesn’t bode well for it ever becoming significantly profitable. Absent the legal issues, they think it’s still worth at least trying, but as it stands, it’s just a lot of money in and, just as quickly, out, with nothing to show for it at the end of the day.

TikTok’s daily active users in the U.S. is also just about 5% of ByteDance’s DAUs worldwide, said one of the sources.

So much drama in the US over this but it’s apparently merely a money-losing afterthought for its owner.

You ignore that it’s physically impossible to put a flagship performance in an under 5 inch format.

Not even slightly.

The battery alone scales with size. The camera is a physically space occupying bunch of glass and sensors, that even the ultra size phones have to put them in awkward bulges outside the phone main body to deliver the kind of qualety demanded by users.

The obvious solution is to make the body of the phone very slightly thicker. Thinness is more important in a bigger phone to shave off some of the overall bulk and make it easier to hold but when the area of the phone is smaller, you can easily make it thicker, with the added advantage of making the camera bulge less ridiculous. I’m reluctant to even call it a tradeoff because you’re not really giving anything up. This would have been a legitimately comparable phone, but they never made it so there’s no direct sales comparison in the market. There is no hard data, only inferences.

The smaller phones were not comparable models. They were a lower-tier product with fewer features. This contrasts with the regular and Plus/Max versions where it’s very much positioned as the same phone in two sizes.

That’s not true. Apple sold a mini version for several generations and consistently the mini was always the worst performing version sales wise.

The “mini” lineup was never truly comparable to the flagship product. The specific deficiencies varied with the year but they were all missing an entire camera, and cameras are one of the single most important features of an iPhone.

The mini phones were significantly and arbitrarily gimped to mark them as a distinctly (and quite visibly) lower tier phone.

No, that’s precisely my point: they don’t because no major phone manufacturer has simultaneously sold both a large and compact flagship. And when there are legitimately comparable models in different sizes, the smaller size fairly reliably sells better.

No one big releases a small phone because no one buys them.

Except we don’t have any good data to say why. Do people buy a bigger flagship over a smaller model that has older technology? Yes, but the only thing we can say with confidence from that is that people want the latest technology. The closest comparison we can make is Apple’s Max/Plus and non-Max/Plus versions, which offer essentially the same model in two sizes. The smaller size consistently sells better. It’s also cheaper. Does it sell better because it’s smaller or because it’s cheaper? Probably both, actually. But as long as nobody offers a small flagship (since Apple stopped making them entirely and switched to larger flagships), nobody can say for sure how well they’d sell.