it still sounds like R&D cuts or price hikes are on the way

I mean, why not both? ;)

Kind of. VMWare was bought by EMC back in 2004. EMC was acquired by Dell. Dell now sells VMWare to Broadcom. Not really consolidation, maybe more a spin-off this time 'round? I read this somewhere once: “Enterprise: A collective noun for a group of companies that spend lots of money on each other”.

Is it just Starlink satellites going through this?

Upspin is an interesting project made, partly, in response to how modern web apps handle your data. It’s a way to get a named file interface to stuff that doesn’t expose files and directories (folders).

Exactly. Myspace Tom was and always will be my friend.

… social media eventually leads to us seeing what most of society is really like… boring, bigoted and stupid.

Reminds me a little bit of Tragedy of the commons.

Which issue are they trying to solve?

Right? Stuff from the “old days” is still popular and usable. We can still email people, create private groups on WhatsApp/Signal/whatever to avoid algorithms, and subscribe to blogs by RSS (or email newsletter if unsupported, usually). In fact, it’s never been easier.

1. many people have handheld computers in their pocket at all times
2. Signal et al. are free and the apps are great. Remember paying per message?
3. Mobile data plans are getting cheaper
4. Many independent email providers with very high reliability

Just delete Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, whatever and move on.