Seconded: I had a blast reading this article. And I'd also be very curious for stats about power profile instead of raw speed (I'd expect them to be more or less correlated, but that might be a flawed assumption)
It does - though it gets fully attributed to its Global Illumination rendering. Which is odd since every renderer and his dog supports GI these days, many of them have for years already. I wonder what's new or different about Hyperion's GI?
This gets at a distinction I think matters: landlords vs individual owners. Landlords using AirBnB strikes me as against the ideal of AirBnB and I am not happy that they allow this. In fact when I try to locate an AirBnB spot, I always try to single out the ones that aren't from landlords but from actual individual owners (not always obvious).
It's not so much 'not missing the human element' as it is 'finding your mojo'. It's the first part of that whole keynote in which Google actually was itself instead of trying to mimic Apple's keynote style and approach. Immediately felt better (and more convincing, too)
I believe Steve Song's wonderful Village Telco project is about doing just that -- creating a low-cost wifi mesh to share connections. It certainly deserves a mention here!
If you don't think it's different, wait for publishers to pull albums from Spotify. This happens all the time. poof gone. Does this happen to your CDs?
The ads are obtrusive because streaming the better part of the earth's digital music collection to your doorstep at speeds that make iTunes seem like a turtle costs money. That bit may have evaded you.
Refuting your (IMO somewhat unfounded) statement on who in the US are going to love it, I'm a heavy music consumer (both in breadth and depth), and Spotify works especially well for me. In a purchase-song model, I'd be out many, many times as much per month than I am now (which also forms the disclaimer for this reply: I've been a premium subscriber for ages).
"...seem to assume..." is an assumption in itself. You're describing people that don't believe others can get ideas. That's not describing idea guys -- that's describing asshats. If you can't tell asshats from good idea guys, you've got a problem.