I’d agree, though I wonder how much of this is how appealing consumers find the competition? None of them seem to be making major inroads at the moment. The biggest competition is also raising prices, nullifying the competitive penalty Netflix would face from that move.

Do you have data on that? A modern nuclear power plant is going to be in the 500-1000+ MW range. I have a hard time imagining that even operating at half capacity that they do not offset the carbon used for concrete within a relatively short order. But if that is in fact the case I’d love to see data saying so, so that I can correct my thinking.

I think the point here is that this feature would presumably allow you to just download the map at will. Regardless of what it thinks about reception at either end of your destination.

Aviation is one of the smallest contributions to greenhouse gas emissions as-is: in 2016 it was 1.9% of global emissions.

The danger the rich pose to the planet isn’t being first in line for the second generation of supersonic transoceanic flights.

The danger the rich pose to the planet is them keeping coal and natural gas plants open longer because they personally profit from it. It’s them keeping their taxes low, reducing our ability to fund renewable energy. It’s them fighting tooth and nail against any new energy efficiency regulation (remember the incandescent lightbulb ban fight?) because it “hurts profits.” It’s them fighting against public transportation.

This? This isn’t even in the top 50 of their ills against the climate. The hate for the rich is well placed. Applying that hate to basic science is dangerously misplaced. The rich love when people push-back on funding science efforts.

Faster transportation is quality of life too. Just like cars were, or railroads before them. Yeah, this one is currently worthless for anyone that isn’t rich. But if it proves successful it will become useful for more of us. Like you say, there’s also just the material and other sciences being done to make it possible that will filter out elsewhere. So much of early space exploration was Cold War dick waving, and now think about how much we rely on satellites. I couldn’t navigate anywhere without GPS, personally…

People here take their hate of the rich (which is well placed) and aim it at all the wrong things. Don’t like the rich? Tax 'em more. That’s what I want. Higher income taxes and even a wealth tax on the top. And way more meaningful inheritance taxes. Instead they’re bitching about investments in science.

Technology filters down. Once upon a time only the rich could afford corrective lenses, but that wasn’t a waste of resources. How many of non-wealthy people will read this comment and wear glasses or contacts? I do. BEVs were limited to the wealthy at first too, and now are solidly affordable to much of the middle class: dependent more on their access to charging and their driving requirements than on their budget. The first residential fridges cost more than a brand new Model T when they came out: the inflation adjusted 1922 price was ~$13,000 today. Was inventing fridges worthless?

It’s NASA developing new technologies. New stuff starts off more expensive, which means it will start off limited to the wealthy. If you don’t want any new tech to come out that starts with rich people being the primary users, then you should go find your local luddite club to join.

I’m not convinced. I’m also in the habit of not saying “never” all that often, so I won’t do so here.

That caveat out of the way, I feel this is just non-expert observations of superficial similarities. People that follow this stuff need things to speculate about, to get excited or despondent (or, paradoxically, both) over.

Unless I’m missing something, Apple’s largest acquisition to date was $3b for Beats. That was a purchase that played directly into their core business market: consumer electronics. It tied directly into their history and consumer strength with music and audio. If the purchase went through and ended up being a bad decision, it posed no meaningful danger to Apple’s brand or business.

Disney has none of that. They also have a market cap of ~$160b. Apple would need to pay a large premium to do an acquisition. This would cost them well over $200b, maybe even encroaching on $250b. That’s a high single digit percentage of Apple’s total value, not quite making it to 10%. The risk and the expense would be enormous for them. Not even touching on the unavoidable legal hurdles that they would have to clear, which adds more expense. And to tie it all together, Disney has no serious integration with Apple’s core businesses. Disney is a video, toy, and theme park company, with 50% more employees than Apple.

Not going to say never, but this just doesn’t add up as anything that makes any sense.