
I haveb’t looked into this particular group, but usually it’s patents. Someone owns a patent for the tech required to implement the standard, and they “license” it out to anyone who wants to implement that standard. Obviously, they won’t agree to terms that hurt their ability to collect rent on their patent. Qualcomm is famously guilty of this in the modem space.
Does that seem stupid, to adopt an industry standard that requires patented technology to implement? That’s because it is, and were we a sane society we would invalidate any patents that become an industry standard, but we’re a bunch of idiots with a billionaire cuck fetish.

Damn those headphones you have are from the pre-enshitiffication era. Cherish them!
The headphones work without the app fortunately, but you need it to control EQ settings, isolation settings, and install firmware updates. They’re kinda like the shitty software that PC gaming peripherals ship to control LED colors or whatever.

I’m using “Bose QuietComfort Ultra Headphones” manufactured in 2024, according to the app. I can’t find any model number, but I just looked up the order in my email and it turns out I’ve actually only had it for a little over a year, and the price was a ridiculous $380. Luckily, I only ended up paying around $200 because I had reward points with the vendor, but I would definitely not recommend these to anyone at $400. At $200? Maybe, but I wouldn’t buy it again at that lower price.
My ears fit in the cups, but they still get tired sometimes after wearing them the entire day. Idk what to tell you, I guess my ears are too big and brush up against the inside of the cups? It’s not a real issue for me, and doesn’t happen often, which is why I didn’t even mention comfort as being a problem.
Do you really not experience any of the software issues I mentioned? The Bose app even says I’m on the latest firmware version.

I love boats. I don’t own one unfortunately, but I’ve never had a bad time on a boat, they’re awesome and fun even if you’re not going out fishing.
I’ve never been on a super yacht before, but I imagine it’d be like a cruise ship without other guests, just your family/friends and employees. I think I’d rather take a cheap cruise tbh.

I actually have been using those Bose QC over the ear ones for a few years now (and I already had to replace the pads once), and they’re not great. IIRC I paid like $300, and they’re definitely not worth that much. I’m not that picky about sound quality, but the UX is terrible. Powering it on is a crap shoot. Sometimes you press the button, and 5 seconds later it plays a sound to indicate it turned on. Sometimes it takes 10 seconds, sometimes more. Sometimes it doesn’t even turn on, and you just sit there doing nothing waiting to see if it decided to turn on this time, or if you have to hold the button for ~30 seconds to get it unstuck. Sometimes that sound that plays when powering on even gets interrupted by the bluetooth connection notice. Sometimes, it gets stuck in a loop switching between sound isolation modes, just endlessly saying “Aware. Immersion. Quiet.” until you intervene.
It’s also hard to simply wear them around your neck when your ears get tired and you just want to use them as tiny speakers. This is for two reasons. First, the placement of the physical buttons on the side of the cups means that they will accidentally get pressed when the cups collide (which will happen when you wear them around your neck). Second, they will constantly pause whenever they get close to your chin, as they’ll think you took them off your head. That part is overly sensitive, and they were too cheap/lazy to add a simple sensor to detect the rotation of the cups to know when they’re not being used over-ear.
And finally, the battery life is not good enough to last an entire work day, so you’ll have to connect them to power… except, for some reason, connecting a usb cable to charge causes it to shutdown immediately. You can use them while charging, but you have to power them back on/reconnect them after connecting the cable, which means you have to play the annoying waiting/guessing game again with the power button!
I have other complaints, but whatever. When they’re working, they’re fine, but I’m probably done with Bose. These little issues on such an expensive product left a bad taste in my mouth. I don’t know how Sony’s over the ear headphones compare, but the in-ear ones I have are amazing simply because they work as intended 99% of the time without any of this kind of bullshit.

This is actually kind of interesting. This gamble is very likely to fail, EA could finally die, and its valuable IP sold off to companies that would actually make better use of them.
The only wrinkle in this is that Trump’s son in law owns EA now, so if it does end up failing, they’ll probably find a way to get US tax payers to bail them out.
Don’t worry about the story. They’re all pretty much disconnected, and it’s better to think of them as standalone stories with a shared (but ultimately inconsequential) universe.
If you haven’t played the RE 2 remake, start there. It’s IMO the best resident evil game of all time. I have a ton of nostalgia for OG RE1, but this remake is spectacular.
I beat both 7 and 8 but forgot the story, so there ya go. IIRC, 8 is a sequel to 7, with the same main character, so it might be smart to play 7 first. Both are great, but it’ll take a bit to get settled in with the first person view.