Instagram and WhatsApp were far from bets. Both were growing exponentially. Both were serious threats to Facebook's money machine.

Facebook used their lucky cash cow money to eliminate the threat, by offering way more than any reasonable market value. Absolutely crazy money. An offer they couldn't resist, especially the investors.

No bet, just an ice cold rational calculation. Anyone wealthy and crazy enough could have done the same. No skills needed, no risks involved. It's like betting tomorrow will be another day.

You're not wrong, but also, it's a bit of hindsight bias: how many sure thing acquisitions whither?

They don’t need to be “sure things”, only threats. Once you buy the threat, whether it continues to thrive or withers is largely immaterial, the threat is gone.

To keep it more in line with other brands:

- Netflix Max: basic subscription with ads, no 4K

- Netflix Max Ultra: basic subscription with ads, but with 4K

- Netflix Pro Max: standard subscription without ads, no 4K

- Netflix Pro Max Ultra: standard subscription without ads, with 4K

You can add a Mobile VIP package for one extra viewer outside your house, but only for Pro plans.

Let's be honest, all the netflix plans will have ads just like they do now. They might not interrupt your show while you're in the middle of it, but you'll get ads no matter what. Ads as soon as the credits roll, a barrage of full screen ads if you pause a show for more than 10 seconds, full screen ads the moment you open the app, etc.

And for shows they produce, product placements galore. Like when characters suddenly started saying "just bing it!" to each other.

There's still the one layer that comes with Dolby Atmos and access to the WB back catalogue

Netflix Plus (Netflix+) which is a side subscription to all of that which lets you syncopate different playback screens to one account, or some other esoteric value add which muddies the waters

With zero market share for Google.

Living in AImaginationland must be nice. C’mon kids, let’s all sing the AImagination song: AImagination, AImagination, AIiiimagination, …

44% for OpenAI wouldn't mean 0% for Google, but considering that even Apple only has about 30% of the global smartphone marketshare, OpenAI getting there seems unlikely.

i don't know if it's where you got it, but that made my head go straight to Ocean from Wonder Showzen.

During an ongoing investigation into illegal Russian influence operations on X, Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) researchers discovered what seems to be a coordinated inauthentic behaviour (CIB) network distributing “Child Sexual Assault Materials” (CSAM). The network can be observed hijacking hashtags, publishing explicit CSAM videos, and redirecting users to a wide range of other platforms. Due to the operation flooding hashtags, researchers chose to name it “Operation X-ploitation.”

> A browser is not that special anymore and there are plenty of alternatives

All Chromium forks.

Browser engines are special. Firefox is the only non-WebKit derivative with relevant market-share currently.

They'd kill Mozilla for working on those instead of X.

"It was probably used in hunting, though it might have had cultural or artistic value, perhaps being used in some kind of ritual."

Ah, the good, old ritual explanation. Surprised that it’s still being used, instead of just saying "we don’t know".

In a lot of use cases you only need to change the host name. https://dns0.eu/ or dns0.eu is not that difficult to remember.

The ip addresses are indeed not memorable, but users who change the settings of their routers won’t have too much trouble copy and pasting an IP address once or twice. Save it in a password manager and you’re done.

Bureaucracy has nothing to do with it, it’s a matter of resources.

"forced"? Nothing but greed and a race to the bottom forced their hands.

Ya but I love it, and there are plenty of small farms that do it for a living.