• How Pepsi saved the Roomba, and how Lina Khan murdered it.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  I hadn't heard the Pepsi story before:

  The press drove this huge initial demand - 70,000 robots.  So next year we’re going to do four times that.  We made 300,000 robots.  We even made a television commercial, but we were a bunch of geek engineers, so it totally failed.  After Cyber Monday we were sitting with 250,000 robots in our warehouse like, "Oh my God, the world’s going to end."
  
  Then something good happened. The guy running our website said, "Why did sales quadruple yesterday?"  We hadn’t done anything.  What had happened was Pepsi had started running a TV ad with Dave Chappelle.  He walks into this beautiful home, picks up a potato chip, and a Roomba comes out.  He’s like, "A vacuum cleaner!"  He throws down the potato chip, the vacuum eats it, then chases him.  His pants are ripped off.  He stands up in boxers.  A beautiful woman appears, and he says, "Your vacuum cleaner ate my pants."  We sold 250,000 robots in two weeks and realized we knew nothing about marketing.

  And now for Lina Khan's FTC, the AntiPepsi:

  The amount of money and time spent was indescribable.  I would not be surprised if over 100,000 documents were created and delivered. iRobot invested a significant part of our discretionary earnings against fulfilling the requirements that went along with doing the transaction.  Amazon was forced to invest many, many, many times that.  There was a whole team, both internal and external employees and lawyers and economists working to try to, in as many different ways as possible - because it seemed like our message was falling on deaf ears - demonstrate that this acquisition was not going to create a monopolistic situation.

  It was never going to create a monopoly.  The FTC didn't care.  It wanted scalps.

  There was daily activity for 18 months associated with this.  Perhaps most telling, when I was testifying as part of being deposed, I had a chance to walk the halls of the FTC.  The examiners on their office doors had printouts of deals blocked, like trophies.

• Apple's always extortionate memory prices are about to escalate to excruciating when their memory purchase agreements start to expire - some of them as soon as January.  (WCCFTech)
  
  If Apple had any wits about them they'd write Nanya a blank cheque and tell them to go for it.  Or just buy them outright.
  
  
  
• IDC expects average PC prices to jump by up to 8% in 2026.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  If prices jump by 8% it will only be because specs have been sharply reduced.
  
  
  
• Speaking of specs being sharply reduced, is 8GB of VRAM enough going into 2024?  (WCCFTech)
  
  Probably.  If you have the 8GB 9600 XT, turn off ray tracing and you'll be good at 1080p and likely even at 1440p.
  
  
  

Roomba Interlude

Musical Interlude

Posted by: Frank at Monday, December 22 2025 10:58 PM (amxkj)

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