I'm a big fan of Tesla since the first time I've seen it during my trip to London. There were two model S standing next to each other. the car and the chassis. It's been said that the chassis (with the battery and motors) is enough for this car to ride turn and brake. That's when I fell in love with it.
I really have trouble cancelling something just because some guy is doing some things. There were gazillion of people working on it and I have feeling that I would cancel them too, but they are innocent really
Just because it was encrypted doesn’t mean google can’t run some processing. For example encrypted zip files still can show the file names. These file names could be specific or malware or a collection of matching file names.
Isn’t atmos not specifically multi channel as in traditional 5.1/ 7.1, but Atmos is positional sound that then generates the correct speaker positioning on the amplifier? For instance my home setup has support for 5.2.4 channels, two bass and 4 risen speakers. Additionally you can adapt the positioning of the rear speakers and the amp will adjust the audio to compensate.
So you could just export atmos to a 5.1 mix, but that is not a copy of atmos tracks.
Yes - Atmos has many "objects", which are effectively individual audio streams with positioning data (which can move around dynamically). The Atmos decoder then mixes these into channels for the specific speaker configuration dynamically.
I took it to mean: it's better to pay an EU salary than a Bay Area salary if the SWE is unenthusiastic / an average performer. i.e. "Both EU and Bay Area have SWE who will ship code. Only pay Bay Area salaries for those who go above and beyond shipping code"
I use plenty of paid software developed in the Bay Area that I wouldn't even use for free if I had a choice in the matter. The reason for a lot of successful software companies in the Bay Area has nothing to do with the people. It's disposable cash willing to throw money at an idea with a 1/500 chance of working out. As already seen, cash is running out for a lot of startups and they won't be getting another round of funding. That will lead to wages significantly dropping. We don't see the same in Europe where the wages were never hyperinflated. Wages continue to increase albeit at a slow pace.
To add to this, in Ireland the main retailer for toys was Smyth’s. They didn’t sell the original Xbox because they sold PlayStation and when Microsoft tried to get the Xbox 360 stocked by them, they initially refused saying when people want to buy a games console they come into the store and ask to buy a PlayStation or a games machine. Nobody was going in asking for Xbox. Microsoft had to do a massive deal with them to get shelf space and it was always in the corner away from the Sony and Nintendo stuff.
The consoles used to be sold at a loss, that was back a long time ago, Xbox 360, PS3 I believe were the last generation to be sold at a loss. The next gen Xbox at the time was sold for a 20% markup on cogs or there about at the time.
Games sold on the consoles have around a 15 usd flat royalty for big titles, not sure how that affected low cost games at the time. The 360 needed 5 games to brake even, but I believe they had an attach rate of around 3 at launch and that was unreal and unexpected at the time.
Unexpectedly low. Conventionally you're selling this product to Gamers™ who will have at least one annual franchise they buy, (e.g. a sports game) and then pick up a few titles at the start plus one or two big titles. So you hit your desired attach rate and then it's profit. But if people buy your console, plus one game, and then are happy, with that model you are screwed.
It's actually doubtful whether they were really selling at a loss per se even then, most likely the notional loss represented amortizable R&D. Which is a loss on your annual balance sheet but - if you understand your business, can finance the R&D cost affordably and have a steady nerve so as to stick with the plan - this can be profitable eventually. The era of straight up dumping (exporting products for less than their BOM price, which may be illegal in some international trade rules) was last century. In the Sega era it really was possible you'd spend $100 on the actual product, sell it for $80 and figure you'll make up for it on royalties.
No, a 3 attach rate was huge, I said in a previous reply other consoles at the time were around 1.25. Over the lifetime older consoles needed around 5 games per console to break even and Xbox 360 hit that super fast compared to the competition.
This needs to be noted that it’s average as in 5 games per unit sold. So two consoles and 10 games sold to one person. The attach rate is a term related to games sold with the console at time of console purchase.
360 for sure was selling for a loss on cogs, that was rectified with the Xbox one that I believe was 400 cogs for 500 retail. It frustrated a ton of folk because 360 was 300 retail, but this was a clear change to make the console profitable without sales since they were worried people were buying it as a media device, hence the media focus of the Xbox one.
Just to be clear they managed to reduce the cogs with the Xbox 360 small and sold them at a profit without license sales.
I've never seen this idea of attach rate as "related to games sold with the console at time of console purchase". I've seen people say attach rate is %of platform which took the game (so e.g. some First Party Nintendo titles score very highly because if you own a Nintendo Wii U, you are very likely to take the Wii-U specific franchise titles) and use tie rate for games per console unit. But never the description you've used.
In industry, attach rate (aka software tie ratio) is typically the number of titles purchased for the console over the lifetime of ownership, not just at purchase (though that number is tracked as well).
Ok, we used a different term and associated attach rate as with console purchase. Either way, just take what I said as games sold with console purchase.
Three was huge at the time. Before Xbox 360 the attach rate was estimated at 1.25 for previous consoles. Often due to low games at launch or including a game with the console.
Xbox 360 broke this at the time with a huge launch portfolio and a whole set of HD games, it was really exciting and beating PS3 to launch was a big bonus. Shame the Xbox One had disastrous leadership that turned the console into a media device and forgot that people bought it for games primarily. This is a whole different conversation though.
So entirely different experience for me. So 5 years ago I travel to California. Out of all the cars I picked a crappy GM car when there were better cars to pick from the rental lot, why, because I had my iPhone with navigation.
Every time I rented cars since I would always make sure it had apple CarPlay so I could drive any with a familiar experience.
Now today, my car has wireless CarPlay. My experience goes like this, I get in my car, turn it on, my head unit loads apple CarPlay instantly and I have Waze running which I like for speed camera notifications on new roads and my music and playlists instantly accessible.
It’s seamless, instant and I don’t touch my phone it stays in my pocket.
I would never consider a car with out either android auto or CarPlay. It’s mandatory for me and yes I miss out of heads up display of directions, but then I don’t have to pay an additional subscription to traffic info, or pay an update fee for new maps.
Same for me. I had gotten rentals with CarPlay before, and I considered it pretty neat but kind of a hassle to have to plug the phone in and find a good place to set it and get the wires situated. Now I own a car with wireless CarPlay and I just never take the phone out of my pocket and it automatically connects and continues the music where it left off and has my google maps ready to go. The car’s infotainment system is passable but not stellar for either maps or music, and I basically never even see it.
I won’t buy another car without wireless CarPlay. Or maybe android auto if it’s also good; I haven’t tried it in years. But I want nothing to do with a car manufacturer’s crappy outdated infotainment systems ever again.
Edit: one fundamental problem with what GM is attempting is that the software embedded in a car is on an extremely slow development cycle and is never upgraded in any significant way. If they want to impress me, they need to keep the CarPlay/Android connection technology and then sell me a super slick GM device that connects to that and is better than my phone. I would gladly buy that, and possibly even pay for some subscription services, but it has to be separate from the vehicle that realistically gets upgraded only when I replace my car every 10 years. A 10 year upgrade cycle for the type of software we are talking about is pathetic.
Depends on the car. For instance some BMWs will offer the hud now, but not all. And for the maps in the dials that’s only Apple Maps and no other nav software. So yeah it’s not perfect at all, but I’ll still take this over a cars standard navigation system
Isn’t the problem with this, that they work till they fail. You can run some software that can tell you how dead the drive is, but you can’t figure how likely it will die. Some drives I think have some stats you can access, but generally you can’t tell until it fails.
There used to be a great site before that was a data center publishing physical hdd stats, not looked for it for a long time, but I presume they would have ssd stats these days too.
I think you're right about working until they fail but I've only ever had anecdotal evidence to this effect.
I also reckon much of the problem comes from the fact that information about them is proprietary—simply manufacturerers just don't tell us much about them as to do so may reveal trade secrets. Several decades ago I was involved in work where we had to have as large storage as possible irrespective of cost, back then a 1GB SanDisk was worth somewhere between $1k and $2k (we replaced single-sep time lapse remote monitoring film cameras with TV and needed large storage).
We approached SanDisk (about the only manufacturer with such large drives at the time) and they were very reticent about telling us anything worthwhile—even though we were a large international organization and had clout. We needed to know the reliability so we had to investigate it ourselves, whilst we made some progress it was never fully satisfactory.
Anecdotal info we learned from various sources was that manufacturerers had ways of testing them by altering the threshold voltage—the point where the gate potential would switch from 0 to 1. At a critical point one could check how many gates failed to switch and this voltage altered over time/with use. Monitoring this could provide useful info such as knowing when to retire a device before it failed.
How accurate this info is I don't know but it seems to make sense. If true, we users should be demanding of manufacturerers utilities that are capable of doing such testing. Trouble is, manufacturerers continue to maintain this secrecy.
PS: several days ago I put a brand new SanDisk 128GB in one of my PVRs and it's really hot to touch even when it's on standby (not recording TV). This isn't the first time I've noticed how hot they get. This isn't the PVR's fault as I've several different brands and the thumb drive gets very hot in each one including my PC. One wonders what this elevated temperature does to the reliability/service life.
I remember seeing the COGS for Xbox One and it was the same as retail prices. There was no profit from COGS and then you have shipping and associated costs to get the consoles out. So there is an inherent loss. it’s likely too that advertising comes under this cost per unit too.
Xbox games take 10 to 15 USD per title sold, so there is a big push for games to sell. Xbox 360 had the highest at the time games sold at console sale it was like 2.5 or 3.5 games per console sold and I think that is likely still a record.
Consoles take time to make a profit, but subscription models with multiplayer really help. Honestly I think this is how it should remain, at least with lowering the cost of entry to home consoles vs desktop computers.
Tesla, well reputation is trash. Company success is questionable.
I’d rather by an EV from anyone right now than Tesla.