I had something similar happen when I was much younger.
When I was in the relationship, the girl manipulated all of our friends into believing I was cheating on her, giving them sob stories, and telling them about evidence she found that did not exist.
They had no reason to doubt her so they all invited her to move out from our place and in with them, I had no idea any of this was going on and when we were all together everything seemed normal.
One guy in that group of friends stood up for me and said she was full of shit but no one listened to that dude…until her lies came crashing down because I found out she was cheating on me. She left the state within a week and that friend group sat me down and told me about everything she had said and done.
My guess is your ex is similar. She’s probably been playing your friends for a long time and they have no reason to doubt her.
As a nerdy consumer, I wouldn’t count Intel out. I remember when their Pentium 4’s ran hot and AMD started eating their lunch, then they launched the Core line up and were back on top. They get lazy when they’re not challenged.
That being said, historically, they haven’t done very well pivoting from their main business. Their GPU line up seems kind of ok but them trying to make mobile chips went nowhere.
Companies seem to have realized there’s real benefit to using ARM processors in laptops for the performance and battery life which is a direct threat to intel’s business.
So it’s intel’s ability to create when pressure is applied vs their inability to create products outside of their comfort zone.
I don’t count them out but it’s a steep climb.
I’ve got my eye on their stock just in case this looks like it might turn into something like Apple in the 90s.