Microsoft Has Stopped Manufacturing The Kinect
This is a shame.  I mean, yeah, it was a pretty awkward gaming accessory, but outside the context of gaming people were doing some pretty fun things with it.  A powerful sensor at a ridiculously cheap cost that you could use to create amazing things, provided of course your imagination wasn't weighed down by the latest dumb tech trend.  That last statement is just as true now as it was when the Kinect originally came out.<p>Gives me some strange feels about the current state of the tech economy.  The Kinect is being retired at the same time Amazon and Google are caught up in a dumb contest to see who can produce the best hockey-puck-sized speaker that can add items to your shopping list.  As overwhelmingly large as tech giants like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Apple are, they seem mostly resigned to following trends, as opposed to creating new ones.<p>Don't forget, smartwatches originated from a highly successful Kickstarter campaign.  Same can be said for VR.  Bitcoin, and blockchain by extension, originated from a white paper published by someone who's still to this day a complete mystery.<p>Tech giants are very much capable of generating cash, but are damned by their inability to create gold.