Ask Paul: December 23 (Premium)

Happy Friday, and Happy Holidays! Thank you to everyone for the kind words about the site makeover, especially. It’s a wonderful update. Obviously, we still have some work to do, and we still have our normal work to do. And that brings us to …
Streaming sports
sabertooth920 asks:

Do you see any legitimate way that Google will not bleed money on the NFL Sunday Ticket?

It’s fascinating to me that streaming service owners---Amazon, Apple, Google, etc.---are falling over each other to become the exclusive home of whatever sport on whatever night(s). It’s possible this is good money---Google/YouTube would know better than any of us---but the dollar amounts that it will pay to the NFL are eye-bleeding: $2 billion per season for the next seven years. (And Apple walked away from this particular deal.) It looks like DirecTV was paying $1.5 billion per season over the past eight years, by way of comparison, and that the NFL wanted $2.5 billion.

But I feel like Google knew what the line was for where this will and will not make sense based on ad revenues, (real and potential) subscriber numbers, and historical viewer numbers. And it looks like current customers, of which there are 2 million, pay $300 to $400 per season for this service. But yeah. It’s a bet, for sure.

The big issue I have here is that, as an erstwhile sports fan, figuring out where each game will be broadcast was already complicated enough when it was just cable TV, but with streamers in the picture---Amazon on Thursdays (for 11 years, no less), YouTube on Sunday Ticket---it’s only going to get more complicated. (Apple also has MLB baseball and US soccer deals.) Back in the day, you just had to worry about two things: a cable TV subscription and the local blackout rules. Now you have to find, and pay for, different services. This isn’t great.
Windows 11, unsupported hardware, and you
Lewk asks:

I built my own PC in 2016 using a sixth-generation Intel CPU. Last year I used an ISO image to install Windows 11 due to Microsoft's strict hardware requirements. Windows 11 has received all the security and cumulative updates without issue (and even performs better than Windows 10 did). However, I haven't received 22H2. There are no prompts or messages, no banner in Windows Update or any indication that 22H2 exists. While I intend on doing a clean install again anyway, I find it strange that no Microsoft Watchers are reporting on this.

My guess is that it’s because so few people did this (comparatively) and that almost literally all of them are technical people who can make that upgrade happen manually. They did, after all, figure out the workaround. I tested this mostly for the book, on three different PCs. I’m not sure I would have otherwise.

Microsoft did say that 22H2 is only available for PC's that meet the hardware requirements, but it makes no sense that it isn't made available to those already on Windows 11 21H2.

The big point here involv...