Microsoft could be making a killing on ex-VMware customers if they would just improve their management tools on Hyper-V. That keeps a lot of enterprise customers away. MS's management software for VM's is barebones compared to what VMware offers. But Broadcom seems determined to dare their customers to leave. They're pretty arrogant because they're confident most of their customers will pay the bigger bill instead of jumping to a far-less feature-rich solution.

I can only speak from my viewpoint in Eugene, Oregon area, but two of the three you name are each the third most expensive in their respective areas.

Half the stores in the area were closed in the Kroger/Albersons/Safeway merger. There is now no competition between them in any neighborhood. You get one or the other.

ATT owns all communication infrastructure in Oregon (going back to the Ma Bell break-up and the acquisition of some Internet backbone), they license to Verizon, who sell licenses to anyone else. T-Mobile has a nice pre-pay plan, but their regular service wasn't cheaper, you just got a better free phone.

There is one tower where I live, it belongs to Verizon. There is one cable company (under many names, but all are equal to Comcast, who leases hanging wire space from ATT, or WiFi/Satellite from Verizon) and it's not cheap.

And before someone tries to blame the big corps here, Oregon as a State issues all these exclusive licenses, and is 95 percent Democrat and has been since 1982.

Mergers are never for the consumer.

Unless they own stock.

It's a bit of both. They really think AI will eat those jobs, and they're almost certainly right. It's just a matter of getting the timeline, and better to be early than late on big defining trends.

The glorified scripting that we're calling AI, along with other automation and robotics, is going to end entire categories of jobs, with nothing visibly in sight to replace them. Unless you can get governments to mandate make-work positions, there's really no way to stop the waves of layoffs that are coming.

With the exception of Fox and the WSJ (and maybe Rogan), that list has nowhere near the reach or audience numbers as even the worst rated MS-Now program. For every thing you list there, there's at least one and usually more left-wing equivalents. And all of that is beside the point, because...

Uh, who is doing that? The whole point of the parent post was his assertion that conservatives are buying "all the media". It's a horseshit assertion, just like "Republicans claim they have no media presence".

Holy shit, you're either delusional or that's the most Stalinesque piece of spin I've seen in years. In what alternate fuckin' reality do you live in where Republicans have dominated the Big 3, NPR, Newspapers, wire services, etc etc etc?

What? Please give me an example of "all the news media". Even if Paramount would get WB and properties, and even if you count CBS as "Pro-Trump" now... which is laughable on its face... ABC, NBC, PBS, MS-Now, The New York Times, and the vast majority of city newspapers and wire services are in no way, shape or form owned by, or friendly to, conservatives. Add to that the considerable influence of magazines... Politico, etc... and any notion that "conservatives are buying up all the news" is farcical.

If there were anyone left in the FCC after getting DOGE'd, you might have a point. But I think that at this point, I could fire up a transmitter on LAX approach frequency and play "Baby Shark" on repeat, and be about 99% sure there'd be no enforcement.

You heard it here first. Microsoft will sell Xbox/Microsoft Gaming to Valve and divest itself of all gaming interests to focus on AI. This will also be the deathnell for Windows after the continued failures of Windows 11 and whatever 12 will be. The trojan Horse of Proton will lift Linux to the forfront of desktop acceptance.

Film at 11!

There are already first-level companies that no longer require a degree for entry-level positions... Google among them. This is only going to accelerate. There will be more things like 3rd party certification programs that to some extent replace traditional degrees. Colleges can either adapt to this change, or be wiped out by it.

You get two stories a week because the current model of education we have is broken beyond repair, and to some extent, obsolete, and needs to be rebuilt from the ground up. You don't need to go away to a campus at a debt of six figures (or a cost of six figures to taxpayers) to get an education anymore. If anything, the Internet has revolutionized and democratized education to an extent undreamed of in human history. From the freely available works of the greatest minds in history to real time or recorded remote instruction, people now have everything they need for a first class education at their fingertips. It's all about personal motivation at this point. The resources are there, often at little or no cost. How hard is one willing to work to get the education? That's what it comes down to now.

The old model is going to have to either adapt to this reality, or die out and be replaced. I think some of both will happen. You already have 100+ colleges a year closing in the United States. That will only accelerate with AI now in the mix.

right, they modded me troll decade and a half ago here when I said the nations will fall apart, governments will fail, libertarian ideas will take hold. They are modding me troll today, yet it is exactly what is happening. It is possible that people are actually afraid that my comments will cause ot to jappen somehow should more people read them. My comments are not the reason anything happens, that is magical thinking by the fearful moderators. My comments are a prediction and the reality is moving in the direction of my prediction.

see, here nobody accepts my belief system, they have moded both of my comments as "troll", yet I never troll here, I always say what I mean when it comes to tech, politics and economics. To mode my comments as "troll" means to declare that I do not believe and practice what I say or maybe that I am trying to start some sort of a riot. The former assumes that I am not serious, the latter assumes that everyone reading these comments camnot engage in civilized discourse, it is disgusting really, that people deny others their intentions or agency.

any amount of government, all of it makes me sick to my stomach, that is all I have to say on the topic.

Correct, government shouldn't be running services, this is up to the private individuals to satisfy needs at an agreed price. Years ago here I said that at some point in the 21st century we will see collapse of the government structures, we are observing it now. The next logical step is to have all services, no matter what they are to be done privately if needed. This is what I am rooting for, I am hoping to see it in this life time.

fuck ruzzia, fuck all ruzzians and triple fuck everyone doing business with the. Hopefully their scourge of s country collapses and breaks into small pieces and everyone there gets ass cancer of the 5th degree and dies a horrible death.

Commercialization is 5-10 years away?