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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 13th, 2023

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  • “Standing on the shoulders of giants” is a saying in science. We build on the work that came before.

    Same with Rockstar. Go back and play GTA III, Vice City, and San Andreas.

    You really feel how these were built on the same engine/platform and how each game kinda just feels like the game they made while making the other game. If you look at the timelines San Andreas came quickly after Vice City (by modern standards at least). Imagine if they didn’t upgrade and reuse assets? If everything was to be built from scratch.







  • Apple literally rolled out the feature 13 months ago with 24 months free use with the purchase of a compatible device.

    How can you claim any statistics on the topic?

    But yeah, I think the real interesting thing is what’s going to happen with the LEO constellations, but I also get why Apple isn’t keen on relying on a Musk-driven enterprise.

    All other LEO-constellations are probably a decade away from having enough coverage.

    I think Apple wants to get in the game now, and they have the money to spend on differentiating themselves.

    And for those who have stumbled into a situation where they needed it and been rescued it’s great, but on the other hand the majority of the planet is not served as of now.


  • Plenty of known loopholes for tax avoidance.

    Used to work for a company that made killer profit, but 85-90% of it was funneled to the parent company to pay for the leverage of the PE investors who bought the company for 10x their EBITDA. Say we made 100 million EBITDA, the official result was around 10-15 million, and was the basis for our taxation.

    All this money was paid as various fees and licenses and was calculated into the budget the year before. We had specific goals that we needed to hit and, and bonus payment was based on these goals. Our collective bonuses was a drop in the ocean compared to the result of the company.

    The parent company in Germany then had at least three levels of holding companies, all incorporated in Luxembourg, between them and the owners.

    Was a fun place to work when we got sold as suddenly there were som extra rounds of bonuses to go around as carrots for us to stay on during the sale, and even more stay-on bonuses for those who staid on after the sale.

    According to my boss at the time - the perk of being in a PE backed company.

    Wouldn’t be surprised if they’re up for sales again next year.


  • You should have been older in the glory days.

    GTA III, Vice City, San Andreas - in rapid succession.

    Followed by GTA IV

    Followed by Red Dead Redemption (which I only played after RDR2, because I assumed they’d make a PC-port)

    Followed by GTA V

    2001, 2002, 2004, 2008, 2010, 2013

    Then it took until 2018 to get RDR2, and at best we’re seeing GTA VI in 2024.

    And let us not forget that we had GTA and GTA2 back in the 90’s. 1997 and 1999.


  • Spacex has long published their price lists for launching with a single payload/client.

    Rideshare missions should then be more expensive than this cost divided by the number of slots/weight available as there are integration and other overhead costs to account for.

    If they’re lower than SpaceX are potentially dumping prices.

    However. If you have committed to flying anyway, and you want to sell the last slots, just like airlines do, it can make sense to lower the price for the remaining seats.

    All that said, it seems pretty obvious that most small launch companies will struggle to compete with SpaceX on price.

    Same way as it’s hard to establish boutique manufacturing that competes with mass manufacturing on price.

    My bet is that RocketLab will survive and most of the others will perish or be consolidated (and then possibly perish).