So, because blackbox AI wasn't sloppy and incompetent enough, we now have AI middle managers.

Remember Murphy's law of delegation: "Teamwork is essential; it allows you to blame someone else when things go wrong."

Ads make sense for $20/mo services that might be able to make $10 in ad revenue and can sell the service for $12/mo if you choose ad supported.

But AI companies are currently burning $10 for every $1 in revenue. At some point those $60 services need to become $600/mo and the $200 services need to convince you to pay $2,000/mo. Something thatâ(TM)s likely doable when they actually can replace half a $15,000/mo developer.

But when youâ(TM)re paying $2,000/mo for the service, whoâ(TM)s going to tolerate a $1,992/mo service that spams you with ads?

Itâ(TM)s the same reason Jeep may desperately sell in dash ads but Rolls Royce and Bentley know it would tank their sales far more than any revenue theyâ(TM)d gain.

Why has no one considered that the VCs, who got rich funding companies that spam us endlessly, may be inconvenienced by the solutions we use to deal with the problem they created?!

Wonâ(TM)t anyone think of the billionaires?!

Reddit is upset that Anthropic is taking a dubious approach to Redditâ(TM)s usersâ(TM) consent - when thatâ(TM)s Redditâ(TM)s job.

A site thatâ(TM)s switched its terms to grant itself the right to sell its usersâ(TM) content, blocked accounts for trying to delete their content⦠is upset that someone else is acting similarly dubiously.

By all means, Reddit, call it for what it is: You have something you think is valuable, others think is valuable, and you want to force them to pay you for it, not take it for free.

But donâ(TM)t pretend itâ(TM)s about user consent. Youâ(TM)re in NO way doing this to protect your users from exploitation, you just want to be sure youâ(TM)re the ones profiting from it.

A data point, in isolation, can be used to read in any explanation you like.

Elsewhere, itâ(TM)s widely reported that Steam survey numbers are swinging wildly across the board as Steam has recently had an explosion of growth in the Chinese gaming community, who tend to agree to participate in the survey more than Western users, in order to get greater representation.

The average CPU has decreased, the average GPU has decreased, and also Linuxâ(TM)s market share has decreased.

But what the survey doesnâ(TM)t say is whether the U.S. or EU markets have actually changed at all. Or whether the large Chinese market has simply moved the global average points hard.

Meanwhile, those who donâ(TM)t account for that are making pronouncements about how Linux is used much less for gaming⦠while numbers of players, numbers of installed games, have all likely remained very much the same.

In other news from the Department of Understanding Humans (DUH), flailing your arms madly while jumping burns more calories than standing still.

Great, now rats will be spending all day on Instagram instead of doing important lab work.

Motorcycles are awesome. Theyâ(TM)re also pretty deadly. For all those reasons, most governments require you to reach a certain age, undergo training, pass a test to prove you know how to ride safely, carry a license they can revoke if youâ(TM)re a tool, get insurance to cover your own injuries and harm to others, and - other than in FREEDOM! states - wear a helmet and possibly other armor.

E-bikes are lousy motorcycles. While they are annoyingly slow compared to even 125cc motorcycles, they still go more than fast enough for head injuries to be fatal, roadrash to suck hard, and eejits to ride in regular traffic as if they can keep up.

So, carrying the same dangers, what are the safety requirements?

â¦

Yeah, that would be the complete list.

Letâ(TM)s give them to twelve year olds, whoâ(TM)ll refuse to wear helmets as theyâ(TM)re uncool, whoâ(TM)ve never seen a driverâ(TM)s handbook let alone read one or taken any kind of test. Insurance? Nah, donâ(TM)t need that, Americaâ(TM)s got awesome universal healthcare and if they slam into someoneâ(TM)s parked car because a kid has no idea how to handle it, just sucks to be the car owner. License plate for accountability? Nope. If a cop does pull the rider over for being utterly dangerous, thereâ(TM)s no license to take away, no insurance premiums to go up, no accountability whatsoever.

What could go wrong?!

"Automated captions are not available on YouTube Kids, the version of the service aimed at children. But many families use the standard version of YouTube"

Or maybe two sentences:

"one video host asked viewers to send in not 'craft ideas' but 'crap ideas'."

And I guess this "study" was one of them. Maybe also "study" some Quentin Tarantino films and conclude that children are being "exposed to a lot of violence" because, although those films aren't aimed at children, some films are, and some parents might have one of his lying around the house.

Great, even bacteria are getting obese, now.

Simply replacing "website" with "web page" would cover it.

Itâ(TM)s not that we pay badly. We pay really well. Itâ(TM)s just that this is a new era where making 10 widgets an hour, forty hours a week, which used to make a living wage, just wonâ(TM)t cut it anymore. Modern thinkers understand they have just have to be making fifty widgets an hour for 80 hours to make money in this modern world!

So five times the productivity for twice the hours isnâ(TM)t just you slashing payments to a tenth and people having to deliver ten times as much, itâ(TM)s just that theyâ(TM)re not thinking in modern enough terms?

Exactly!

Wink has been essentially bankrupt for years. They got bought out by Willwhateverâ(TM)s company but heâ(TM)s apparently not been paying staff and closed his office after a deal in Dubai stalled last year. Turns out having a couple of hit songs doesnâ(TM)t make you a tech visionary and brilliant businessman any more than Bill Gates buying a ukulele makes him a hit musician.

Lawyers are generally only interested in class action suits where they can win something. Taking 100% of the zero assets Wink likely has is still zero.

Wink Hub 2 added local processing. It made a lot of things a lot faster with no internet round trip as well as more fault tolerant.

Shame theyâ(TM)re bricking the system if you donâ(TM)t pay monthly for the service they told you you were paying for by buying the hardware.

More like their AI has attained clickbait levels of intelligence.