> If I recall correctly there is a parasitic wasp that parasitizes a parasitic wasp that parasitizes a parasitic wasp that parasitizes some kind of caterpillar.
"Yo Dawg, we heard you like parasites, so we put a parasite INSIDE your parasite INSIDE ..."
I'm "All Linux, all the time" at home, develop in it, help out with the Kernel a little bit, only use Windows at home in a VM, etc.
I'd just started working for a client that is fully entrenched in Windows, but we're doing bare-metal and Linux-y work. When I'd discovered I couldn't use Linux as my daily driver due to security/policy(/tooling) reasons, one of my co-workers told me about Git Bash, and it's worked out so well that ... <looks left, looks right> ... when we were given the opportunity to use Linux but VM Windows, I kept the Windows machine.
GitBash has made Windows painless for my work's use-case. I should probably throw a few $$ at them ....
I have it available, but GitBash seems to work better with my workflow. BTW, when I checked to see how to donate, apparently my client pays for it; I thought it was OOS.
This may be a case of "there's a business there, but it's not this business". You can always take a sensible business and turn it into selling $1 for $0.75 and go deeper and deeper into debt while buying market share, while at the same time making it impossible for anyone else who wants to actually make money to compete.
(I have no idea how to turn this into any sort of law but companies really shouldn't be allowed to just dive into debt, conquer a market via selling dollar bills for 75 cents, then collapse into a puff of compounded interest and massive losses and destroy the entire segment they are in as they collapse. I suppose just not having interest rates at effectively 0 will likely do the trick eventually.)
The problem solves itself until venture capital arrives and decides that pouring $2 billion into a market that doesn’t make economic sense is the sane thing to do just in case one day it becomes a $200 billion market.
It doesn't need to be a law, if the government steps out of the way the natural laws will shut the business down. But if the government bails them out then I guess we don't believe in natural laws.
Terrible internet? You watch a movie once a month max or less? You find it less confusing the the stream service mess where movies are constantly moving around and the interface changes all the time so you can never find what you were looking for once you do finally learn it?
For one, Redbox has (or had) coupons and codes and stuff like that all the time where you can get free/reduced nights. They used to be one of the T-Mobile Tuesdays offers quite often, for example.
For another, it used to be the case that Redbox would have things well before you could stream them, or when they could only be streamed expensively. Various waves of the distributors making it more annoying for Redbox to buy the discs, pushing things to their own streaming services very early, and just generally the downturn of physical video media all blunted those positives though.
I used to use it semi-regularly for Blu-rays even not that long ago, but the kiosks around me have started to go away and the available selection and timing of releases is way worse than it used to be.
They really just have everything working against them: the ongoing huge shift to streaming, the pandemic and strikes putting holes in the release calendar, Marvel and DC both stumbling, interest rates...
That's presumptive on having Internet at all, but even so people make poor economic decisions all the time. Think of title loan and paycheck loan places, grocery shopping at the dollar store. You get the idea. And the fact that at times movies can be released to dvd before they're released to streaming. For that matter even if it's available to stream it may not be available to stream on your service. Does you no good that Suits is currently on Netflix if you're a Hulu subscriber.
If Bob watches one movie a month, you won’t have a good business. If there are thousands of Bobs in one area, you can do just fine.
Meanwhile no streaming service will ever get Bob to sign up.
As an silly example: no one rents carpet cleaners every weekend, you can still rent carpet cleaning machines. There is enough demand in aggregate for it to be viable.
That "if" is doing a ton of work there, and even if we grant it, you've got physical costs that scale with the number of locations, which doesn't apply to streaming.
True. But it’s not like Redbox is launching the kiosks today, that’s already sunk cost because they’ve made them all. Sure they need repair and stuff but they’re basically vending machines so I’m guessing there’s somewhat sturdy. And loading new movies in/taking old ones out could be done by the employees of the stores they are located in as part of the placement agreement.
Could you start a Redbox from scratch? I kind of doubt it. I think the costs would overwhelm you. But that’s not the position they’re in.
I’m not saying you’re going to become a fortune 500 company on the business model. But I think there’s enough for a real business to survive there, depending on the areas where you place the kiosks.
However Redbox has history and the agreements may not be as favorable to them as they would need to keep operating, or they may have a lot more debt than necessary.
There are a lot of Bobs out there though. It’s not a big theoretical.
The only part that doesn't hold up for me is the typical 90s-sitcom nervous-giggly writing about anything sex-related. The ensemble cast is pure gold, especially Phil and Stephen Root. I still find myself thinking about the cane and quitting-smoking episodes.
The Buttafuoco bit from the second episode. And the episode where Phil is stalked. And the malt liquor bit. And the bit after the jumper with him and Dave Folly lying on the floor.
He was consistently the best part of everything he was in. Even in pretty crap-tastic films like Jingle All the Way, he was still somewhat entertaining.
I remember him being in a very mediocre shooter on the psx called Blasto. The game play was fairly meh. But the one liners were a lot of fun. I bought the game specifically because he was in it.
I have a couple of these, one's in my laptop case, the other off a charger I carry everywhere. No less durable than a regular cable for a couple of years so far.
> The ideal of browsing your RSS feed in the morning cup of coffee in hand just like your father read the morning paper and then got on with his day is mostly just a fantasy.
+1 with the others, that's exactly how I do it. Plus with the news sources I use (Reuters, BBC, HN, Slashdot, etc.) the headline is usually enough to give me the gist of it, so I don't even expand ~95% of the actual content
"Yo Dawg, we heard you like parasites, so we put a parasite INSIDE your parasite INSIDE ..."
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