They’re effectively undoing the merger that they did just a few years ago
The big difference is that the declining cable networks and more importantly also the debt is apparently in the Global Networks company. Tbh i am not sure if there would have been any other solution to get those away Warner/HBO this clean.
So after this brief merger they are already splitting again? But this time Discovery gets loaded up with the declining linear television parts and I assume also the huge pile of debt?
Obviously share ownership adjusted accordingly, but I guess there would have been no other way to transfer the debt and declining business parts directly to discovery or someone else. Because no one would take that deal even for free.
I might actually see this as a win for movie/television fans as I doubt there’d been a faster way for warner/HBO to become separated from the debt and cable stuff.
The re-rebranding back to HBOmax makes more sense now.
It’ll be interesting to see how this changes CEO pay. Does Zaslav take a pay cut since he now manages a much smaller company? I doubt it. I bet he gets another performance bonus and on the other side the former CFO now CEO of the new company will also be paid handsomely to handle the crappy parts. Leading to overall even more management salary.
I mean comparatively to HDDs.
Of course there are also challenges to making a high capacity SSD, but i don’t think they are using fundamentally new methods to achieve higher capacities. Yes they need to design better controllers and heat management becomes a larger factor, but the nand chips to my knowledge are still the same you’d see in smaller capacities. And the form factor has the space to accomodate them.
If HDDs could just continue to stack more of the same platters into a drive to increase capacity they’d have a much easier time to scale.
How about a 122.88tb SSD? Large SSDs are pretty common in the enterprise market and arguably much easier to manufacture since you only need to put a bunch of nand chips on a pcb.
Your claim that they would advertise it is speculation. What would be the purpose of that?
To advertise that they can? In return what would be the purpose to hide it?
They do seem to make their advancements at least somewhat public, e.g. with their recent progress with a EUV light source.
I am probably on the pessimistic side and you maybe on the optimistic, so the reality will likely end up being somewhere in between (but only time will tell).
China will do this because they have massive talent mass and ressources, and because they have to.
Well it also was developed in the west by a large amount of talent and resources and still took a lot of time. But you are absolutely right that their hand is being forced.
Restricting exports like this imo was a huge mistake, imo especially in regard to duv. In the end it might have achieved some damage in the short/medium term, but that wasn’t anything the us could capitalize on and it also directly hurt ASMLs profits (meaning less resources to advance). And regardless how the timeline ends up looking on the end (be it closer to your or my prediction), physics are the same everywhere so that can’t be restricted and they will eventually be able to figure it out.
GAA is the next evolution of transistor architecture from FinFET, but as far as I know has no direct link to smaller process nodes. In that (to my understanding) it doesn’t require small nodes and could be used just as easily in larger ones. It’s just that it is more difficult so until now there were other easier ways to make progress. However with new nodes getting more expensive and giving less scaling gaa and other things like backside power delivery are being pursued.
We will have to see if the process is actually good, but I have little doubt that China will become competitive in EUV within 5 years. But if they have it already next year, that will be very fast.
So not only do you expect China to have a working domestically produced EUV machine within 5 years, but a competitive one? Or possibly even next year?
Next year is just pure fantasy that I don’t think even the most optimistic would assume. If they were anywhere close to that we would already know. They’d have shown a working prototype by now.
Euv is crazy difficult and you not only the result of a single company ASML, but many highly specialized companies that are leaders in their respective fields and all over the world like e.g. Zeiss for for the lenses. So for China to replicate it domestically they’d need to copy the whole supply chain. Which is orders of magnitude more difficult than what they’ve done in other industries like electric vehicles or solar panels.
Imo if they have a working prototype of a complete EUV machine within this decade it would already be impressive. But that would still be far off from mass production or wherever the industry is by then (Intel is currently trialing high na EUV). Also for reference Wikipedia says ASML had their first prototype in 2006 and we know how long it took to being that to mass production. China as a second mover might have an edge that speed things up, but just knowing how it works in theory isn’t enough and there are o shortcuts.
But maybe they also pursue another technique such as nano imprint (like canon) to achieve smaller nodes. Maybe that would be easier to replicate without existing global supply chains.
Well there are claims that Huawei is aiming for 3nm with GAA with tape out next year See Here.
I think we shouldn’t forget that the nm numbers really are just that: Numbers. They don’t correspond to any specific measurements and can be chosen more or less arbitrarily. So 6nm for example might just be a slightly refined 7nm node.
Another thing is power efficiency and yields. If they get 4060 performance at terrible yields and with massive power draw then it is very different to getting there at similar parameters as Nvidia.
If China does end up cracking EUV by themselves it would indeed be massive. It’s arguably one of the most complex things mankind has ever done. But there are so many factors to get right that tbh I don’t see it happening any time soon.
Do you even have to pay hosting costs, if you put a game on steam or does valve not distribute your game for free?
If I’d have to guess the bigger issues with a game like this would be licensing or that delisting allows some form of tax advantageous asset depreciation.
When watching the machete order, did you skip episode 1 like suggested here? Because if yes, then watching it this way and then adding the sequels seems like a contradiction to me. Episode 1 may be a failure in execution, but the core concept imo is solid. Can’t say the same about the sequels, even if they look prettier (to the point of doing stupid scenes just for the visuals).
They overinvested funds into stuff they didn’t need (disney buying lucasarts and such)
I do agree that they overspend on a lot of things, but in my book buying Lucas Arts for $4b was a steal. I think they mostly got it for so cheap because George Lucas wanted to be done with it. Even with the way misshandeld it (bar some highlights like Andor), this was most certainly a good investment.
I mean the sequels were bad and yet those alone made more than $4b at the boxoffice (yes I know that isn’t profit, but just to give some perspective). And star wars is also a powerhouse in terms of merchandise sales, think of the amount of baby Yoda toys being sold.
But an awesome tech demo.
There’s currently a Kickstarter going on for a watch that aims to be modular and repairable. It’s called UNA Watch.
Look interesting, but imo with these things it’s a bit of a chicken and egg problem, where the upgradeability/repairability only has value, if it is actually provided in the future (and economically viable). Something that can only be proven in time, but requires people to trust it before.
I’m not in the market for a new watch right now, since I just repaired the screen on my Garmin, but am keeping an eye on it, since sadly Garmin seems to have entered the early stages of enshittification.
Agreed. The prequels have flawed execution, but imo a good base. It’s the reverse with the sequels that are mostly style over substance, chasing some pretty shots regardless whether it makes for a good movie. And I take the former over the latter any day. Especially if we remember that Lucas asked other directors to make them.
They also often want growth beyond what the original market niche supports.
I find it’s at least theoretically in the right spot for mass adoption. Something like a valve index or bigscreen vr paired with a strong gaming PC would of course offer a much better experience. But thats just not realistic for the masses.
Also Apple failed with their expensive premium device (although I guess it was always kind of a dev device sold to the masses).
It’s certainly debatable, but at least for the price it offers a lot imo.
The quest exclusives are of course frustrating, but it makes a lot of sense from a business perspective, considering Meta is trying to position themselves as the VR platform (similar to say android with smartphones).
If you don’t mind Meta/Facebook, then the oculus quest headsets are also very affordable hardware and deliver a good experience. I think the issue lies with content.
Smartphones or handhelds like the steam deck with flat screens could use plenty of already existing content made for screens. With VR you want different content that is made specifically for it. There is a decent amount of games (but still much fewer than for other devices), but honestly not that much more.
Additionally it also can only really be used at home, where most already have other devices.
It’s a chicken and egg problem. But imo if there were more genuine unique productivity tasks and experiences available through VR, we would see more adoption.
Tell that to everyone playing games like path of exile (which i admittedly have also played too much of in the past).
Watched Gattaca (1997) the other day and really enjoyed it. Sci-fi movie that imo aged quite well and i somehow hadn’t seen until now.
I definitely agree that this is a big problem happening way too often, but not sure if it is the case here.
First of all we need to remember that the majority of debt came from AT&T splitting off Warner and saddling it with billions of debt (this is where i see the root for many of the problems), not from the Discovery side at their merger or the split now. Secondly as i understand it the linerar networks are obviously the declining assets, but still the ones with more profit/revenue.
That makes it a judgment call whether one believes that those will be able to pay off this debt, before they become irrelevant. This might indeed involve cost cutting measures and negative effects, but who would invest in this business today? So long as there are no public bailouts involved i’d be fine with letting the debt holders judge by themselfes if they are fine with this (i assume they had a say in allowing this?). I guess this might be sad for CNN and some of the sports programs, but i feel like most people here won’t care too much what happens with the likes of TCL or HGTV.
The part we probably care more about (Warner/HBO) is the one getting the clean slate. Whether they try to make it work as a studio with streaming service on its own or try to sell it to someone else we will see. So presumably not a situation like JoAnn fabrics or Toys’R’Us where a liked company was saddled with debt and bled dry.