With Apple blurring the lines between the Mac operating system and iOS, this was probably inevitable, but Google is now teasing bringing Android to PCs. Androidpolice.com reports that Google is working on a Snapdragon powered Android desktop. With a lot of folks not thrilled with Windows 11, and the prospect of Windows 12 becoming subscription like Office 360, an Android desktop might be a great alternative for folks who don’t like Apple and the Mac, and aren’t technically inclined enough to run Linux. There is also a rumor that Valve is working on bringing out a version of  the Steam gaming system as a PC alternative. Google’s Android, however, would be familiar with many millions more people than the others, and could be a serious contender for taking desktop and laptop PC business from Microsoft. 

Instagram has hit a huge milestone. According to engadget.com, Mark Zuckerberg has posted on Threads that the platform has passed up 3 billion monthly users. That’s up a billion since 2022. Facebook hit 2 billion daily in 2023, WhatsApp got to 2 billion in 2020. With the world population at about 8.3 billion, Instagram is reaching over a third of the people on the planet every month!

In perhaps one of the great examples of poor timing we’ve seen in a while, Disney…following the mess with the Jimmy Kimmel suspension, is raising prices on Disney+ and Hulu. TechCrunch.com notes that the Disney+ stand alone plan with ads will be bumped up $2 to $11.99 a month, while the ad free Premium plan is boosted $3 to $18.99 a month. The Premium annual plan goes up $30 to $189.99 a year. For Hulu, the standalone plan goes from $9.99 a month to $11.99 with ads. The ad free Hulu stays at $18.99 a month. ESPN Select goes from $11.99 to $12.99. What about bundles? Disney+ and Hulu with ads goes up $2 to $12.99, and Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN Select with ads increases by $3 to $18.99 a month. This may put off a lot of the people who cancelled Disney+ and Hulu protesting about Kimmel…kind of tough to sign back up and get a substantial price bump. That mouse sure wants a lot of cheese!

The AI boom may hit a wall, in a report from Bain. Fortune.com reports that AI won’t be able to generate enough revenue to sustain the computing power it needs to build. Citing the Bain report, “Two trillion dollars in annual revenue is what’s needed to fund computing power needed to meet anticipated AI demand by 2030. However, even with AI-related savings, the world is still $800 billion short to keep pace with demand.” Fortune also notes “It may not be an exaggeration to write that NVIDIA – the key supplier of capital goods for the AI investment cycle – is currently carrying the weight of US economic growth. The bad news is that in order for the tech cycle to continue contributing to GDP growth, capital investment needs to remain parabolic. This is highly unlikely.” The “growth is not coming from AI itself but from building the factories to generate AI capacity.” Not mentioned is the amount of electricity needed to power all those server farms. Microsoft is even having the Three Mile Island nuclear plant restarted to run servers. They will use an amount of power that could run 900,000 homes!

I’m Clark Reid and you’re ‘Technified’ for now.