Money.

Now that USB-C is the required cable, people can go out and buy any cheap cable they want. The law turned a proprietary cash cow into a low return commodity item.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say Netflix and other platforms probably picked up these shows/movies because they were cheap and wouldn’t need to pay out residuals if they became hits.

Kinda sucks they don’t get paid but honestly no one makes it out big on their first run. You use your new leverage to negotiate better the second time around, after you’re proven your worth.

A few exceptions to this, but more than likely the streaming platforms would have never picked up these shows were it not for the very beneficial terms.

While a sanity check on the absolute value is good I would argue that the most impactful data presented here is the rate at which debt is growing.

Yes, debt was paid off during COVID but now that the free money has dried up people are racking up debt much quicker than before. So while the current value might be in line with previous trends the rate at which debt is accumulating is what is alarming.

It’s unlikely for that trend to slow or stop unless real wages increase, prices fall, or demand drops. We’re seeing some of that but apparently not enough.

When we couldn’t share a family password anymore we just didn’t sign up for our own account. Easy as that. Been watching a ton more Hulu as a result. Netflix isn’t worth more than a one-month sub/year.

This is going to have an interesting effect on the labor market. With people being ‘locked-in’ it will ultimately reduce worker mobility. Combine with the emphasis on ‘back to the office’, this will reduce the labor pool available to employers.

The good news is that new build costs are coming down and builders are starting to ramp up again.

As more people join one will get selected. There was r/cars and r/autos for a long time. R/cars won out in the end.

They’re blinded by dollar signs that won’t come to fruition. Complete brain dead move on their part.

New ways of cooling data servers and batteries for EVs. Rather than typical air or water/glycol cooling we’re immersing the components in a dielectric fluid. It’s an interesting space as both the hardware and fluids are being developed simultaneously. The company I work for is developing the fluid.

About 90% of the fluids out there are just oils taken directly from a refinery and repackaged under different names with a ton of marketing. Yet, end consumers don’t really understand the technical details of the the fluids so they tend to fall for whoever has nice marketing. We’re out to change that and show that the chemistry we add improves the performance and durability of the fluid. So half the job is engineering and the other half is educating customers.

Played a lot this week. For those on the fence this game feels amazing. Terrific gun play and movement. This is a real ‘back-to-basics’ battlefield-like shooter. I highly recommend jumping in on it.

So all the OEMs in China signed a pledge to maintain ‘normal’ pricing. They’re openly colluding to fix car prices when they were dropping quickly as a result of supply and demand renormalizing.

A lot of the NOVEC line is/was manufactured in Belgium. That plant was shut down for several months because high levels of PFAS was found in the surrounding area.

They cleaned it up and restarted the plant, only to announce they’re exiting the business by 2025.

I agree that the regulatory issue was their main motivator for shutting down PFAS manufacturing. Their plants (like Belgium) probably require significant maintenance and improvements, meaning millions in CAPEX. Money they probably don’t want to spend on products that will be globally banned within the decade.

3M announced they were exiting this space, rightfully so and probably a decade late. But I’ve heard rumblings in the industry that the US Govt might require them to continue to produce these awful materials as they are used in defense-related applications. Hope that’s not the case and we can shutdown all other producers (Chemours/DuPont etc) as well.

The only thing I’m critical of here is how does this pull back in VC funding/company valuations compare to other industries? VCs have pulled back in general as money is now very expensive as a result of high interest rates.

Legit the first thing I noticed. It’s actually not that hard to find the community you’re looking for.

Sorry, I should have been more clear. I meant the movie Avengers: Endgame.

Lol, hell no. Especially when the movie will be streaming in 3 months time. Haven’t been to a theater since Endgame.

Same here. So far so good.

Not as much activity as Reddit obviously, but I’m embracing it by seeking out the more active communities. I definitely fell into a rut on Reddit by only sticking to a handful of subs. This transition is forcing me to develop new interests, it’s great!