I don't mean this as an easy dunk, I really want to know if anyone can think of any counterpoints. I mean they have to exist right?

It really seems to me that Meta, and by extension Zuck, are the worst tech company and CEO of all time, propped up by a money machine they arguably fell into by accident.

But think about it, their only successes since Facebook itself, are just having cash first and buying their competitors.

Otherwise:
- their mobile efforts were basically a failure, but they bought Instagram
- their "pivot to video" was a money losing joke
- within that, remember when they wanted to be Twitch? That was a thing for a while.
- their messaging never really succeeded despite basically starting with the market cornered, but they bought WhatsApp
- where's Farmville today? they were supposed to become an app platform. That was a thing.
- they were going to be the world's ISP for a while, seriously, does anyone even remember that? Starlink broke them.
- and of course, The Metaverse is arguably the single biggest failure any big tech company has ever done

So seriously, am I missing any? Like Google is similar, but they birthed Chrome, gmail, Android, there are big wins among their failures. Meta . . . only misses.

Even if there are AI winners, it's just really difficult to imagine Zuck ultimately doing anything other than taking billions from his ad business and setting them on fire. But maybe the next $100 billion they burn will pay off, it kind of feels like they have to succeed eventually.

From what I understand, they were judging when Musk knew what he knew.

For fraud, for malpractice, for many similar things the statute of limitations is worded as something like "when the damaged person knew, or reasonably should have known."

This is pretty common with medical malpractice. You may not learn your doctor screwed up for years, but the statute is generally just one year.

So the jury had to decide at what point Musk reasonably should have known it was time to sue, a judge can't just decide.

It's not that it isn't true and it's nice he used Claude to do it . . . but . . . best I can tell this is just a total non-story.

All he really did, was find a backup of a file with the passphrase he knew. Then despite knowing the passphrase, he couldn't get it to open with some software he tried. And it looks like Claude didn't "find a bug" in that software, it just showed him how to use it. He was entering the passphrase in the wrong format. And like users will do with all software for all time, he called that a bug, and someone else repeated it.

It is good he used Claude to do this but it . . . didn't really do anything. I mean the article compares it to researchers spending months cracking a key. It's not even sort of the same thing.

"Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it."

But now it's not a matter of being not smart enough, it's about just leaving yourself the exhausting, miserable work that never should have existed in the first place.

They are (replacing?) Chromebooks. Just one example, the next time my seventy-three-year-old mother destroys her Chromebook, she'll probably wind up getting a Googlebook.

And she'll be utterly baffled and probably angry thinking she "got hacked" every time she accidentally shakes the mouse.

Lots of people buy tech like this. They just need a cheap laptop. They're just using what they're school/job provides. Lots of people who use Chromebooks didn't buy them at all.

"Googlebooks will have a Magic Pointer feature that offers contextual suggestions whenever you shake your cursor and point it at something on the screen. "

Seriously, that sounds awful right? In no way is shaking better than clicking, people will do it accidentally all the time to activate AI they likely don't even want.

It could be a three finger press, or clicking both buttons, or a right button double click. Literally anything would be better than that . . . right? It sounds like a joke or an ill conceived movie computer.

Yes, over the last month it ticked up from 3.6% to 3.8%. It peaked at SEVEN percent at one point in 12 months. The trend is unquestionably, wildly down.

Those are both the lowest readings in 12 months. It's been hovering near 5% all year. It's been consistently over the national average.

It's not under the average, very solidly trending down all year. But the headline is a .2% increase and noise about AI.

I think it actually makes perfect sense.

The whole thing hinges on taking money from Musk claiming to do one thing, and then doing another.

The point is that he was never operating like a nonprofit, but took lots of money to do so. It does sound like a series of wins there, yeah.

Let's dial it back a little and RTFA.

You can certainly have the position that Scientology just sucks and gets what they deserve, but that's not what you actually said. What you said is just sort of silly and shows you didn't read anything but the headline.

It doesn't appear to be a church, just a building owned by a church. Scientology definitely does operate lots of buildings that are basically open to the public every day, but they certainly aren't obligated to make every building like that 24/7.

These people weren't just milling about looking to be invited in, or to film for some kind of investigative purpose, they fought with guards at a secured entrance.

If they want to claim it's some noble protest, they can nobly deal with the legal consequences. They were definitely trespassing and will likely be charged with battery too.

. . . and they should be.

No one said anything about a big deal, small deal, or anything else. What they said, was entirely unambiguous, they said:

"If an attacker gets this far, you have already messed up."

Which regardless of any big deals, is simply wrong. It is a shallow misunderstanding of what security looks like in the real world.

I mean big deal, small deal, etc, they are not at all saying the same thing as you are saying. They just aren't. Words have meaning.

I hate how this reasoning persists. It is just so disconnected from the real world.

So should large organizations just not bother with least privilege and normal users? Everyone might as well be root, if one with bad intentions gets access to a system, well they should be assumed to just be root anyways?

I mean, in a company with even 100 people, if one of their accounts gets compromised, or one of them goes rogue, "you have already messed up" really isn't the point. I used to run a data ingest system where we gave limited shell accounts to somewhere around 1,000 clients, plenty of similar but much larger systems are out there. No one *at my company* had messed up in any way if one of those accounts went rogue. Tons of systems like that exist, it's not some edge case.

They made every employee vibe code, and OK it made a chess app.

IN SIX MONTHS?!?!? And they still emphasize it was just a prototype?

That's the impressive AI fast timeline?

Oh my, no one has ever taught Chess before. What an efficient, innovative thing that could never have happened except in this wonderful future.

Just WTF.

While everyone works in the Metaverse.

It's really absurd how worthless Zuck and Meta as a company are compared to how much money they make.

I feel like we're at that point around 2010, where Internet Explorer was still dominant, but cracks were appearing. IE was invincible . . . right until it wasn't. If Microsoft doesn't play their cards just right, it won't happen overnight, but the same thing is going to happen. Ten years from now will look unrecognizable.

Windows is in trouble, and they know it. Conservatively the Linux market share has more than doubled globally in just a few years and will likely do it again over the next few. It's not new like Chrome was, but from their point of view, I don't think it matters. It's growth is new, and it's the same.

I would bet virtually anything, behind closed doors, this is exactly how Microsoft execs that have been there for 20+ years are discussing this. They are scared for Windows in a way that has never happened before. And it must be extra dissonant for them, because frankly, Microsoft would be relatively fine even if Windows somehow completely died at this point, but it's also their most important brand, and still a money machine.

It's not really clear to me. This was the thing they broadly referred to as "the Metaverse" . . . right?

Like the demo of avatars finally having legs, that's the thing being shut down and nothing is really replacing it except a mobile app that makes it not even really be that thing anymore or am I misunderstanding?

I caught in the article that they say they are "doubling down" and such, but I don't think it really said what "the Metaverse" is anymore . . . it's nothing right?

It'd be hilarious but it's basically just what I expect at this point.