

Also worth addressing that people are using large language models exactly because the ad driven web was enshitified enough that people clambered for this new option.
There will be at least one LLM that’s good for web searching and doesn’t give in to advertising, and in the meantime, we’ll just need to keep jumping ship whenever one becomes awful, as we did with the old web.
Microsoft has absolutely been preparing for the end of traditional consoles more or less since the flop of the Xbox One. Their entire push a few years back to make “Everything Xbox” was a bit mistimed and disloyal to their console war cultists but they’re right that it’s the natural end point.
I think we’ll probably see streaming games from their servers reoccur in popularity pretty soon, as much as I’m not a fan of it, because it’s the total end point for non tech savvy consumers, they just pay a subscription, get a controller which can connect to the TV or phone and download an app, no hardware required. Meanwhile every consumer who is resisting the death of tech literacy (everyone else), is going in this direction. The physical console will reduce in popularity year by year as it fills a niche that nobody needs anymore.
That being said, the popularity of the switch and steam deck interests me, because it’s a third direction away from traditional consoles that I’d not have predicted.