After Math: You get what you pay for

It's been yet another sterling week for late-stage capitalism. Amazon is doing its best to ensure you never leave your house again, ASUS debuted a 20-core bitcoin miner, and Uganda is now charging its citizens to gossip online. But the kids are alright, they're bailing on Facebook in droves. Numbers, because you can't measure your self-worth without knowing your net market value.

$5: Amazon is giving its Prime members a bit of a discount on its monthly unlimited grocery delivery service, Amazon Pantry, dropping the price by two bucks a month. Of course that only applies to orders over $40 and assumes you haven't broken one of the monopoly's unwritten rules, in which case you're going to be stuck on super secret double probation and forced to schlep yourself to the corner store like a regular person. Oh the humanity.

$250 million: That's how much Google will be getting from the DoD to develop the AI which will power the military's next generation of semi-autonomous civilian-murdering machines. Looks like the company got rid of its whole "do no evil" ethos just in time.

Group of attractive teenage students sitting on stone steps in front of university holding tablet, laptop and smart phones, reading or watching something.

20 percent: Just a few years ago, Pew Research found that 71 percent of teens used Facebook. That figure dropped to just 51 percent during a survey held in March of this year while use of YouTube, Snapchat and Instagram have steadily risen. Take that, Zuckerberg.

20 GPUs: ASUS just debuted a cryptocurrency-mining motherboard that can support nearly two dozen GPUs. Or, you know, you could just get a real job instead of speculating on digital monetary futures.

A road sign, along Interstate Highway 5 near San Ysidro, California, warns motorists to watch out for migrant workers crossing the highway. According to the US Border Patrol, 1,954 people died crossing the U.S.-Mexico border illegally between the years 1998-2004. The United States office of Homeland Security has plans to expand border security between the two countries in an attempt to stem the tide of illegal immigrants entering the USA from Mexico. (Photo by Christopher Morris/Corbis via Getty Images)

$11.6 billion: That's how much America's undocumented immigrants contributed to the US economy in 2015. But yes, let's deport them all. That makes total sense.

800,000: More than three quarters of a million people currently pay Hulu a monthly subscription fee to watch select broadcast television stations with the commercials left in, unless they pay even more. What a racket.

Sankt-Petersburg, Russia, November 13, 2017: Smartphone with icons of social media on screen on green wooden table. Smartphone life style smartphone. Starting social media application whatsapp, viber, facebook, instagram, twitter, pinterest. Photo taken in Business center November 13 2017

200 Shillings: When it comes to social media, Uganda is not playing around. The African nation recently passed a "social media tax" for any citizen who wants to log on to the likes of Whatsapp, Facebook or Twitter. And like the best of legislative solutions to societal issues, there's still no word on how the government will even monitor, much less collect, that tax.



via Engadget RSS Feed https://ift.tt/2kLKloE
RSS Feed

If New feed item from http://www.engadget.com/rss-full.xml, then send me

IFTTT

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Evernote cuts staff as user growth stalls

Image
Note-taking app Evernote has fallen on hard times of late, culminating in its latest spate of job cuts impacting 15 percent of its workforce (54 employees). CEO Chris O' Neil -- an ex-Googler who took the reins in 2015 -- announced the firings at an all-hands meeting earlier today, reports TechCrunch . In a message on the Evernote blog , O' Neill admitted he'd set "incredibly aggressive goals" for the company in 2018. He continued: "Going forward, we are streamlining certain functions, like sales, so we can continue to speed up and scale others, like product development and engineering." The layoffs follow an exec exodus just weeks ago and the company's recent brand refresh (complete with a refined logo and wordmark). But critics are more concerned about its product, especially the free tier, which they claim lacks the perks to...
Read more

The best air conditioner

Image
By Liam McCabe This post was done in partnership with Wirecutter . When readers choose to buy Wirecutter's independently chosen editorial picks, it may earn affiliate commissions that support its work. Read the full article here . After six summers of researching, testing, and recommending window air conditioners, we've learned that quiet and affordable ACs make most people the happiest—and we think the LG LW8016ER will fit the bill in most rooms. This 8,000 Btu unit cools as efficiently and effectively as any model with an equal Btu rating, and runs at a lower volume and deeper pitch than others at this price. Little extra features like a fresh-air vent, two-axis fan blades, and a removable drain plug help set it apart, too. The LG LW8016ER is a top choice for an office or den, and some people will find it quiet enough for a bedroom, too. If our main pic...
Read more

We won't see a 'universal' vape oil cartridge anytime soon

Image
Pre-loaded cartridges of cannabis concentrate are currently among the most popular means of consumption, and for good reason. They're discreet to use and easy to handle, a far cry from the dark days of 2016 when we had to dribble hash oil or load wax into narrow-mouthed vape pens by hand. But, frustratingly, an ever increasing number of oil cartridge manufacturers employ one-off design standards so that their products won't work with those of their competitors, thereby locking customers into proprietary ecosystems. We've already seen this with nicotine vaporizers -- which has a seen a massive rise in "pod systems" in the last few years, each outfitted with a unique canister and battery built to be incompatible with those of their competition. Is it too late for the burgeoning cannabis industry to set a universal standard for their product designs? ...
Read more