salient

$50 Android smartphones are coming this year. They've actually existed for quite some time, but this year they will be more "mainstream", and you'll see a lot more models (in poor countries). The combination of the Cortex A7 CPU plus KitKat which is optimized for low-end will ensure they work pretty well, too, relative to other phones in that range with much fewer features and less functionality.

So I doubt Microsoft will have any chance at that market either. Android pours 1.5 million new units into the market every day, or about 500 million per year, and that's before these mainstream "good enough" $50 smartphones arrive, which I think will help Android double its unit grow rate within 12-18 months. Everything else will get drowned out.

It's amazing how many "full operating systems" want to support something as weak as Raspberry Pi, and how many things can be done with it. I can't wait for Raspberry Pi to come to a more powerful architecture like ARMv8 (at relatively the same price-point) and see what comes out of that.

Yet another reason for why electric cars have so much potential in the long run compared to gasoline-powered cars, and that's besides the fact that batteries themselves can double the storage capacity every 10 years or so, and therefore the range (or same range for lower price), or that electric cars can be charged for free with energy from solar panels.

This should hit home with those that read the Innovator's Dilemma and Innovator's Solution. IBM sold their PC business years ago to Lenovo because of "low margins", and they moved "up-market" to the server market. But now the PC guys are eating into their profits in the server market, too, and once again IBM is forced to sell this business due to "low margins".

It's interesting that while it's "low margins" for IBM because IBM has higher cost structures, Lenovo thinks it's actually a very profitable business:

“Lenovo has been trying to break into servers for a while as a new growth engine,” Moel said. “It could be good for Lenovo based on the right price.”

This is why Intel will never be safe in the server market, either, if ARM chip makers eat up the PC market (and they will do that), while also dominating the mobile market.

I get 1 Gbps for less than $20 where I live (Europe), and unlimited bandwidth, but I'm not bothering with the extra speed yet because I'm going to need a good 802.11ac router and an SSD-enabled laptop to take full advantage of it.

So I'll wait a year longer or so until 1+ Gbps Wi-Fi arrives in laptops and also in routers (second wave of 802.11ac routers will do that, first wave isn't quite there yet). By then SSD prices should be a little lower, too.

They wouldn't be doing this if they didn't think more people are interested in Windows 7 than Windows 8. That would be a pretty silly reason to "get their name in the news", otherwise.

Looks cool, but I don't think it should be using MtGox values as the default.

I don't think that's been their motto since Otellini took over. Look where they are now in the mobile market. Otellini put the profitability of their Core chips above improving Atom in the first few years, even when it came to netbook performance, which was already terrible. Combined with the fact that they forced OEMs to not buy AMD alternatives during the same time, Otellini just didn't think it's necessary to improve the performance of Atom too much.

They only started caring about power consumption when it was already obvious to everyone that ARM is going to pose a threat to them eventually. I think if everyone sees something that's by definition not "paranoia". To be paranoid, you have to see and believe something before others see it.

I agree it's very obnoxious, and it's actually why I stopped watching Parks & Rec.

They did with SOPA. Because there were millions of them. But how do millions of phones calls get sent? By having each and everyone of us calling.

I'm pretty sure EFF, DemandProgress and the like are doing exactly that.

Or are you saying they should form a Super PAC? But in that case, it won't exactly be "traditional lobbying", would it? It would be just paying politicians to do what they're asking them. I don't know whether that would be good or bad given the current corrupt lobbying system that the government has gotten accustomed to, but at least we should call it what it is before we dive in.

I hope you guys won't stop at pushing just for the USA Freedom Act, which sounds pretty decent, but not like it's going far enough. To me Rush Holt's Surveillance State Repeal Act sounded close to ideal, but he's going to need some co-sponsors for it.

Ron Wyden, Mark Udall and Rand Paul's bill also I think sounded better than the USA Freedom Act. I always forget its name because they chose a pretty bad and long one ("intelligence oversight something"). So I hope you keep working on passing those (or others like it), too, and don't stop at the USA Freedom Act (or try getting some amendments to that pushed, too).