I worked at BlockBuster back when Netflix came out. It was legit a great contender, and an awesome service. BB had their own mail service, but it was just seen as a copycat. Also the franchise had a LOT of bad blood, and sometimes rightfully so. Depended on local management how much leeway you could have. The most lax stores that were lenient did the best.

The reason it worked was because physical media is protected by the first sale doctrine. So if you could buy a disc, it could be under one roof as rentable inventory.

Streaming and licenses is what fragmented everything and greed gave the appropriate incentive.

It also somewhat killed direct competition. When everything was physical on a shelf in front of you, all for the same price, you had direct comparison and competition. You could have any show or movie from any studio all side by side. That $2-5 could get you anything, across the board.

I saw this all coming from miles away. I don’t blame anyone, every step sounded like a great deal. I see a lot of the same things with Gamepass. It’s a great deal, and I don’t blame anyone for using it… But I don’t see it as being a long term net positive for the industry.

I really hate the term ‘freedom’ now. It’s thrown around so much and it means basically nothing anymore. “Join this! Now with 20% more freedom!”. Freedom to/from what? It’s never stated, it’s just a vibe.

Oh you want to talk directly to a person? You need to subscribe to 911+. For only $4.99 a month, you get the following perks…

Well, yeah- but what if they could sell the problem AND the solution?

Do I want my face in ads? No. Not at all.

Would I want this same tech used to character swap myself into movies, or just swap actors in whatever? …okay yeah that might be kinda fun novelty.

I’ve tried one that works surprisingly well. Each sentence had great pacing, cadence, and correct enunciation- even had tone right when someone was shouting or angry or sad.

I wouldn’t really recommend it, though. While I couldn’t pick any single thing out that was wrong, overall it just didn’t quite flow. It’s like watching someone try to act that is technically doing everything right, but it just isn’t good. It basically didn’t understand the greater context of the story and was saying lines.

It was uncanny valley, but exclusively with voice.

In person socialization? Is that like VR chat?

I think it’s a legal issue, honestly. When printers first came out there was a fear that people would just print money and other illegal things, so printer firmware had to print out security identifiers on everything in yellow ink so it can be traceable. That’s also why yellow ink always goes out first, and why it complains about yellow ink when trying to only print black and white.

If that’s law, then it could be illegal to use firmware that does not have these features, and anyone making fimware that ‘just prints’ may be held liable.

Thus is all just an educated guess though, but seems plausible.

This is a fantastic opportunity to allow parents to explain financial insolvency to their autistic child grieving the loss of their robot companion.

Yes, it absolutely will. That’s why I fragrance the pandas. Just a little here and there so that some Howard will need to sort through it. The lime really comes through clearly.

Not to mention the weight. Those premium vehicles with long range stats are very heavy. That’s what makes them so terrifying to me.

I have to do similar things when it comes to ‘raytracing’. It meant one thing, and then a company comes along and calls something sorta similar the same thing, then everyone has these ideas of what it should be vs. what it actually is doing. Then later, a better version comes out that nearly matches the original term, but there’s already a negative hype because it launched half baked and misnamed. Now they have to name the original thing something new new to market it because they destroyed the original name with a bad label and half baked product.