This is a reason why Nintendo won’t be getting rid of physical media anytime soon.
Physical media is still very important in Japan and Japan is still very important to Nintendo.
Nittobo is a Japanese glass fiber company with 2,745 employees. Nvidia, Apple, Google, Amazon, AMD, Microsoft, and Qualcomm have all sent executives to Japan to personally lobby for supply. T-glass forms the structural core of every AI chip substrate. Nittobo controls 90% of it. It sells for $80 to $100 per kilogram. Standard glass fiber is $3 to $5. The thermal expansion has to match silicon almost exactly or the substrate warps and the chip fails. Nvidia locked up supply through long-term binding contracts. New capacity won't arrive until 2027. The CEO told Nikkei he won't expand at the pace of the AI market. He doesn't need to.
Toto isn't even the most extreme example: Ajinomoto makes MSG. Their amino acid research produced the insulating substrate in virtually every high-end GPU. 95% global monopoly. In 2021 the chip shortage bottleneck wasn't silicon, it was Ajinomoto's film. Japan holds majority share in 14 critical semiconductor materials. The sintering process that creates a non-porous toilet is the same one that creates a contamination-free wafer chuck. The most critical layer of AI infrastructure is controlled by companies that make toilets, MSG, and window glass.
Walt was the dreamer, and Roy was the money man.
My favorite Walt story is from when they were building Disneyland. Walt wanted the spires of Sleeping Beauty Castle coated in real gold. Roy told him there was no way they could afford it. So Walt waited until Roy was in New York meeting with bankers, then had the spires coated—except for one, which was left scuffed to signify that Disneyland would never be finished.
Roy returned, saw what Walt had done, just smiled, shook his head, and said they’d find a way to pay for it. Roy knew his younger brother was always right, no matter the cost.
jakarta is such a failed city like how could a city just collapse every time it rains… traffic doesn’t work. floods everywhere. gojek prices sore up ga masuk akal
What do I mean when I say everything in Obsidian should feel instantaneous?
No more than 0.1 seconds.
The target was established in 1968 by Robert Miller and well described in 1993 by Jakob Nielsen here:
Literally killed an over one hundred year old legacy and all just for a little bit more profit…This is exactly what he was brought in to do, why he was always resented, and it’s effectively further pushed us closer towards the end of theatrical and physical media releases. Anyone celebrating this or saying, “it could’ve been worse” to justify it…I literally don’t know what kind of a future you see or value but it’s certainly not the one I do.
While CocaCola and other billion dollar companies are using AI for their holiday ads, Apple is sticking true to what made it successful in the first place.
They value human creativity and imperfection.