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Dude, Caselabs is clearly not a huge operation. They're not stockpiling a lot of aluminium just like how our subsidiary isn't stockpiling a lot of steel either. We're not BHP who can eat huge losses because of their diversified product portfolio and immense cash flow. The folks over at the USA are eating a 40% increase in steel costs, that increase isn't trivial no matter how much some people in this thread want to suggest eating 40% increase in material costs are a normal thing to be able to adjust to. Its just fortunate that our subsidiary can get clients to eat the costs because everyone supplying liquid tanks are dealing with the same price increases and there's a lot of profit margin in the design and consulting side. Unfortunately, this is not the same for businesses that deal in consumer goods and consumables who are really struggling right now. Some try and tough it out, some close down and some just move operations overseas like Harley Davidson. The actual increases in price and shortages were definitely unexpected. This isn't a case of BHP being good at divining commodity prices, something they'd probably be good at since they're miners who deal in commodities, this is a case of a government actually enacting on self destructive tariffs and US metal suppliers taking advantage of the situation to increase costs/strangle supply if recent rumors of price fixing are to be believed. It doesn't help that only the largest companies are getting tariff exceptions. There's no disputing that their business model didn't make sense in this era of manufacturing where the majority of case manufacturers either operate on low margins/high volume or outsource their infrastructure/supply costs to Lian Li in the case of boutique mini-ITX case manufacturers. But to argue that the tariffs and sanctions had little impact on their demise is laughable in my opinion, every US manufacturer that sells consumable goods is struggling right now especially when larger companies are able to get tariff exceptions from the Whitehouse.

I can't speak for the supplier but the US Midwest Aluminium premiums have doubled since Jan 2018. These spikes were fueled by the tariff announcement as well as the sanctions on Rusal, the second largest aluminium producer by output. There's also accusations of price fixing and other factors like crony capitalism but those things are mere accusations and not things that have actually happened. Caselabs doesn't deal in raw aluminium so those numbers aren't entirely useful anyway, they buy sheets of a specific aluminium alloy from their supplier then CNC cut and bend them to specification. Taf the Ghost's accusation that their large product portfolio helped killed them is not one I can agree with. The smaller parts like hard drive cages were mostly universal and the larger parts like the chassis were generally made to order. I don't have insider knowledge of how Caselabs work but they don't look like the sort of company that stockpiles sheets of aluminium alloy, which would make them especially vulnerable to aluminium price fluctuations. If I were to guess, the biggest problem with their operation would be the type of aluminium alloy used - I don't know the alloy but it felt excessively good for a computer chassis and several grades better than Lian Li - and their location. Computer chassis manufacturing is low margin manufacturing, being based in California and not the South would be a problem if you wanted to maintain good profit margins. The company I work at has a subsidiary in the USA that manufacturers custom liquid containment devices and they have struggled to get the exact grade of steel needed right now because the tariffs and sanctions are causing supply chains to freak out with the panic buying, possible price fixing and people not knowing what to do. Smaller companies don't have the buying power of larger companies so they often get steel that isn't to specification (which gets sent back a lot of the time) or they just can't get the amount they require which pushes back orders (and cash flow). Steel costs have gone up by some 40% for the subsidiary, which often can be pushed onto the client due to the nature of the product. That's not quite their 80% but they previously complained about being unable to obtain the exact grade of aluminium they required so I'm not at all suspicious when they cite material costs nailing the coffin completely shut.

Its not the best idea but Apple didn't just use glass for the heck of it. The remote itself houses a trackpad, which everyone these days covers with glass because it feels and wears better than the plastic or metal we used to get on laptops of old. I guess the moral of the story is that you have to be careful with your remote now, just like how people had to start being careful with dropping and scratching their all-glass front smartphones after they replaced the plastic screens found on old feature phones.

Two things: 1. Ransomware hits the business sector hard because they always masquerade as legitimate business dealings. For instance, ransomware is often sent to you as a PDF resume sent to you by a (fake) student looking for work experience. Large businesses with a decent IT department should not have a problem with ransomware because their IT departments are very proactive with implementing group policies/sandboxes/other measures that eliminates this sort of amateur stuff from being an issue. Ransomware is probably a more legitimate problem for small businesses where opening a PDF resume sent by a student looking for work is a very common thing. Not only that, most people would feel confident opening the file if it was verified as clean by whatever AV software they use. They also don't really have a proper IT department (for obvious reasons) as a safeguard for a moment of poor judgement. I'd argue the real solution to ransomware is to implement the required Software Restriction Policies in Windows to prevent arbitrary code from running from the %AppData% and %Temp% directories. Doing this also has the nice benefit of stopping other internet nasties from being a huge pest. 2. Historically, companies that have poor performing consoles consolidate all their console figures into a single figure to obfuscate poor performance. Sony did this last generation by reporting shipped (not sold to consumer) figures for their Playstation Family (i.e. PS2 + PS3 combined for Home Console figures and PSP + PS Vita combined for Portable Console figures). Microsoft actually did the same thing this generation by merging all Xbox 360 and Xbox One figures together. As you've noted, Microsoft has gone one step further by scrapping hardware shipment figures in favour of Xbox Live figures, which include both Xbox Live Silver (free accounts) and Gold (paid subscriptions) figures. But I'd argue that doing this is almost certainly obfuscation as the Xbox One is legitimately getting destroyed outside of the United States and United Kingdom (and maybe Canada and a handful of other countries like Brazil). This graph should give you a rough idea of how poorly the Xbox One is doing worldwide compared to its current generation competitors...there is every reason to obfuscate your hardware shipped figures when your worldwide sales are just not good.