I remember the KV-40XBR700. Those suckers were heavy. I worked at Circuit City in 2003 delivering those behemoths to customers until I dropped two in a single day (the handholds on the side weren't very good) and got moved to the warehouse.
Been awhile since I've thought about FSR. Back in the day, I used to listen to WoW on repeat while putting far too many hours of my life into that game.
Yup. The company I started with last year had layoffs. I wasn't impacted, but I didn't like how they were done. So I applied at a few places and accepted an offer at a new company just last month. For context, my resume does not have FAANG on it.
The answer is probably related to why a paid premium tier negates the value of an ad-supported free tier. A person who can't (or won't) afford the paid tier is probably not going to pay an advertised product, and thus the consumers of the free tier are less interesting (e.g. valuable) to advertisers.
For value to exist in the free tier, it must reach the entire audience. Think about how radio or newspaper advertising worked. If one segment figures out how to avoid the advertisements, it reduces the value of the remaining audience more than proportionally.