Most consumer packaged foods and beverages operate this way. The level of concentration of manufacturing and packaging is depending on the product ingredients and market demand.

Soda is easier to ship at the syrup stage. Make a big concentrated sticky goo and send it to bottlers located in a strong market who dilute it down into consumer products and package for final distribution which tends to be local. So you end up with a few HQ syrup makers and a bunch of bottlers

Ice cream typically doesn’t work this way because dairy isn’t stable over long times and requires refrigeration at a certain point. So a company like B&Js works to convert that milk quickly into dairy products that are more stable, like ice cream. But that requires a closer manufacturer and packaging network.

So you don’t typically see “local” ice cream brands with non-local packaging but B&Js is a global product hence the additional locations. The product just ended back up in VT because global trade is super complex and it genuinely may have been cheaper to produce that pint in the Netherlands and ship it to the US than to produce it in the US.

>And if it’s not ready for prime time . .don’t release it

Good thing they didn’t and this has been an open waitlist beta so that the developers can gather real world experience and update the product accordingly.

You can’t ever anticipate all the ways that users will use your product and design a fail-proof piece of software. That’s why products go through many stages of testing and release with wider and more public audiences each iteration.

I’m not. Technology doesn’t advance in straightforward ways. Discoveries are often arising out of work completely unrelated to the original set out goal.

When we sent humans to the moon, we invented a whole lot of technology from the resulting lessons that had absolutely nothing to do with space. I don’t see why there wouldn’t be potential for technological advancements to come out of this metaverse initiative that ultimately have nothing to do with Meta’s virtual world.

Eh, don’t discount the hidden technological advancements that come along with the dumb consumer results like avatar legs.

The advancements in our understanding of mathematics/physics and it’s application in coding could have profound impacts in other aspects of the world.