Money is a variable. Success is defined by the delta between intake and expenditure. Sometimes we go broke buying ram. Other times its unattainable because the prices driven up by AI .
I swear every time I turn around, Meta is doing something stupid because they think it will make them money. But this time they are taking an off the shelf tech and paywalling it. Passthrough or active audio.
Owners of Meta’s AI glasses have been told they must pay a monthly fee if they want full access to a feature that was previously free. Users will have to shell out $19.99 every month to use “Conversation Focus”, which uses the microphones on the glasses to make it easier to hear people you’re talking to, for more than three hours a month.
The fact they are attempting this is just a cash grab like charging monthly for heated power seats.
Meta says those who hit the “free monthly usage limit” will have to wait for their free hours to refresh each calendar month unless they subscribe.
As humans we are making steps back in technological advances, We are headed back to the days were we only make calls after 6pm to use “Free Minutes” and it’s fucking stupid. Meta is seeing how much they can deconstruct tech to see how many parts we will pay for and how many parts they can profit from.
Meta’s plans to test “premium” subscription experiments across Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp were first revealed in January. The firm later confirmed its tests would include trialling paid access to expanded AI features, including those on its smart glasses.
The fact that Meta has fired tens of thousands for their AI experiment and AI engagement features is a dumpster fire everyone saw coming. But on the meta glasses they have the chip built in to handle all of the audio, they just installed a meter on it so they could charge for it. Bose, Beats, Sony, Sennheiser and Apple all have the same damn thing, its called Transparency mode, Aware, active mode!
Meta is just trying to get your hard earned money for an already established technology. If Bose, Beats, Sony, Sennheiser and Apple Paywalled this tech, there would be digital lynch mobs. Even worse is…
The company says subscribers to its Meta One Premium tier will be able to use Conversation Focus for up to 15 hours each month.
What.. the.. fuck.. this is truly back to the old mobile days where you paid through the ass and waited for nighttime to make calls. 15 hours?? Good luck if you depend on these if you are deaf, or autistic. What fucking morons. The fact that this feature started as free than went to Fee could be seen as a violation of the ADA… This is a massive greed maneuver, first put the tech out .. Then pull it away. The people that need this tech will pay up in a moment.
It reminds me of netflix, When they first started they chirped up and down “no ads” , “no ads Ever!” than they started injecting small ads in the beginning of shows, Than the tile ads started, Then they jumped the shark with a paid NO AD tier and the price has been skyrocketing since.
Meta here is doing the same thing except with a piece of tech that lives on your body, and moreover they are messing with people who maybe for the first time in their lives have been able to go into a public environment with this. The neurodivergent folks need someone to speak up for them. The deaf should be enraged over this.
Meta’s Glasses have been problematic enough with people finding video of themselves online without their permission and worse.
Women have complained of being filmed without their knowledge or consent – with some only discovering they have been covertly filmed after seeing videos of themselves online.
The sad thing is META’s ai could be used for good and if a person has found their videos online they could make META AI delete the persons face as soon as its recorded using AI , but they won’t do that they would rather make money off engagement and keep doing stupid shit.
I think of it this way, If these glasses worked for an autistic child at school, than, you rip away a child’s focus after 3 hours meaning less than one day of school a month is covered. You have just destroyed that child. The glasses are noninvasive compared to earbuds… If you try to force someone who is neurodivergent to wear Earbuds, most neurodivergent kids will remove your finger before you shove something directly in their ear.
My final thoughts here is while META is using AI to do stupid things like making fake engagement should not be removing engagement from the disabled from the world at large. They should focus to make the world a better place and not use the SaaS to enshitify day to day living.
I wrote about a shoe company trying to jump in on the AI gold rush some time ago, Now they are trying the same trick again to secure more capitol because half of the time no one is paying attention.
Two months after its unexpected artificial intelligence rebrand, Allbirds is changing its name to Smartbird and appointing a new chief executive.
This is crazy for one. you are playing a shell game and hope no one notices. People on apps such as robinhood will notice this and not be told this is a company that changes it name more than Prince.
As you can see here All… New.. Smartbird AI is trying to repeat the same gold strike they made in april. While it creates a pump and dump which it did. This is still a company that wants to go 100m in debt and try the capex game when right now do they even have a product. This company is operating on farts and butterflies right now.
Problems: the company at current has the most employees its ever had since its reformation.. 1… the CEO Nadia Carlsten. So by technicality they have the most filled seats in their employment and at the same time the least amount of employees they will ever have.
Former professional soccer player Tim Brown and renewable resources expert Joey Zwillinger founded Allbirds in 2015, seeking to build sustainable shoes from natural materials. The company launched its debut shoe a year later and quickly transformed into a household name.
The thing is allbirds had it right and so wrong at the same time and instead went on a miner 49’er adventure to find more money. There shoes were a hit , the problem was they did not innovate in the shoe market and just ran off there brand. They could of made new shoes and stretched there profit margins out for the long game but instead they chased the dragon. They wanted instant Gratification and it still shows they are at the same thing by chasing AI , having 0 product, In the end when the AI bubble eventually deflates they are going to have zero product and a shit ton of Nvidia product that has no use , because while AI is constantly upgrading old graphics cards do not. so whenever they enter the market they are essentially already obsolete by the time they become operational.
By the time that smartbird AI comes to realization , they have no idea of what AI Dumpster fire they are moving into. Plus given the market they are entering at a high premium due to Ram prices.
But I am willing to guess that SmartBirds AI is going to rename at least one more time while the company is dumped around and keeps raising Possible capital to make there AI gold rush maybe real.
Anyways, I spotted this while having my morning coffee and laughed at the absurdity of the birdity of the Bird bird bird is the word..
Shoes are an occasional topic here and I have had a few posts with shoes but this one has to be the strangest follow-up. I had Solomon X ULTRA PIONEER MID shoes and the insoles wore out fast which sucks but, as someone who doesn’t drive I expect these things. My normal go to shoes are Merrell or Salomon, Merrell are the go to war boots that survive just about everything, Solomon are the light weight shoes you do the million mile march in and they keep going.
But sometimes insoles do wear out , and they make life horrible. They are the inner base of the shoe that makes your day horrible or they make the many steps on your feet not feel like you are playing the drums with your feet. The insole was wandering around the shoe making pain in my feet. I deal with a lot of pain in my feet on the day to day as i am prone to muscle spasms .
Salomon – with their lightweight shoes, they somehow do cut the divide of weight and utility perfectly. They do not fall apart , they last for years. After buying these in early winter I wore these day to day as the traveling shoe. they manage to stay warm in winter and do not leak .. But I did notice the insole starting to shed its lining. A week ago went on a quest to replace the insole with preferably the insole that belongs with the shoes. Merrell does it I figured a higher end Mid would do the same.. No. I looked for an hour and kept falling back to the Carhartt Insite Technology Footbed CMI9000 Shoe Accessory. After Two days they shipped in and I was initially worried they would not fit.
They fit well into the shoe, they had a raised arch to comfort the arch, i put them on and thought this might cause pain and instead i decided to press on and see how it went. After a day the arch relaxed into the Mid , The insole more or less perfectly formed into place. while it adds a bit of weight the comfort level definitely went up.
Mentally… when you do something like this, it feels like using a Toyota part on a ford, Which to the average person would seem like a mortal sin. But the secret here is what the industry tries to make you not pay attention to, That parts can be used on other manufacturer parts within reason.
So when you do the math, I am taking an insole meant for people who do construction all day where weights and tolerances need to be at the top, than place it into a shoe that balances high impact and survivability . Conventionally i just took the best of both worlds where repeated day to day use has a base that is form fitting and comfortable to the point of repeated usage plays out to a higher degree.
While this only a week into this, One could hope this is a force multiplier and a message to a both companies. Carhartt makes boots to survive the Armageddon Salomon makes shoes to climb the armageddon, there is a convergence that both companies are missing here….
So my not so closing thought here is, Sometimes instinct of doing something may not be enough but sometimes taking the gut feeling leap of “this might work” sometimes pays off in kind. So if you need extra miles and extra comfort this frankenshoe experiment shall continue…
Every now and then you need comfort in shoes, and being like me, I was feeling something in my shoes and the insoles were wearing out and a somewhat new pair of shoes. I do not tend to wear sneakers, due to no ankle support. I wear waterproof hikers year around just about because most time hikers support the arch and makes it easier to walk, as I do have disabilities.
But for the insole to self destruct in only less than 8 months of owning a shoe is pretty bad even though that The Solomon X ULTRA PIONEER MID is a Fantastic shoe. So looking around amazon I saw many insoles, most looking like pure foam and on stuff that is foam I need to use care in selecting a insert, because too much foam like sketchers is an easy path for me to fall on my face.
Given that Solomon does one bad thing here, They do not sell replacement Insoles for their shoes and that should be considered sin. Because a high end hiker that does not support their own brand force the user down the planned obsolescence route is ridiculous.
So I went with Carhartt Men’s Insite Footbed CMI9000 Insole, I figured the look the part. It took a day or two to get them and you know what.. they fucking fit. what surprised me is the amount of arch support. I know these are likely for carhartt boots but, I am willing to science it up for science.
So give or take this Franken-shoe or Dr Solomon and Mr Carthartt hide.. Test will be interesting.. Usually shoe companies do not play nice with each other. so given the fact that these solomon shoes that cost over 179$ and having a insole that died in months. Im willing to give the Carhartt insoles and chance and see what happens. who knows in a week I could be bitching my foot hurts. But you know what , if it works lets see..
So I was at the market, and I went to get some Propel packets. I noticed that the box has changed and that struck me as odd, and I looked at the packaging. They decided to shrink the package and make the product less useful.
The left package is the new package. The right is the package the old. Here’s the thing they are priced more expensive for less product.
oldnew
They jacked the price and made less product. they made it look like you were getting more in the individual packet by making them larger. But if you look at what they did they removed stabilizers so the shelf life is less . By Reducing it to 8 packets you lose 20% of the Product.
So thank you Gatorade for making me give you some haterade and making your product more shitty. Hype up on Vit b and enshitify the rest.
There have been so many articles today with coffee in mind. One was the Price of coffee is down. Jim Roemer a Meteorologist Is asking if coffee prices have bottomed
Have the Fundamentals Affecting Coffee Prices Bottomed for Now.
However, Brooke DiPalma Senior Reporter asks another question and it leaves the reader confused if you commonly look at news for coffee.
Coffee prices keep rising, and chains like Dutch Bros are swallowing most of the costs
Right now if you look at the spot commodity price there is a seperate story here. Jim Roemer, Likely sees that crops last year were affected by multiple things at once. Tariffs, Crop Failures , Weather issues. Jim is likely a better man to see this because his titles are vast. He Pluralist that can read both sides of the story. If you line up his skills Meteorologist, Commodity Trading Advisor, Principal, Best Weather Inc. & Climate Predict – Publisher, Weather Wealth Newsletter and Climatelligence. If he starts talking about markets I am likely to listen.
Now the fast food coffee prices are skyrocketed, Starbuck stopped selling coffee and is doing the $9 coffee “Experience” , the Coffee sellers of the drink are testing the markets of seeing how far they can press the price of the cup of coffee to the person. Its bullshit, I don’t want an experience, I want a coffee that’s it . No experience.
But these companies want a SAAS(shit as a service) , they want you to come in and “experience” a coffee rather than drink a coffee. Honestly, they are protecting their profits because prices have gone down, When the tariffs hit they burst priced the coffee and claimed tariffs, if anyone has done their homework tariffs are not an issue at this point. The coffee crops at this moment are 100% better than last years.
The thing is prices spike and than they feather fall downwards where the corp earns huge profits to the unknowing. The thing is … If even 5% of people even followed the commodity markets and mass messaged Starbucks and said “Hey . why are you charging so much for a coffee when the markets have gone down 25%” it would have CEOS and boards cringing in their seats on social media.
To which end even the home coffee has come up in price but not nearly as bad as the “cup”.. at $18 dollars a container its gross, The prices have stayed up since the tariffs hit and has not gone down by much more than a few cents. It’s all bullshit and another SAAS to force the consumer base to follow and eat the prices. I do understand the swing in contract prices and often they are delayed but, even this far along the prices should have dropped. I am not going to drop 10$ for 2 coffees when I can just brew a whole pot at home.
National Gas Tax suspension to fuck you over later, they are looking to suspend the tax.The current tas is at 18.4 cents a gallon. Notice the wording suspend. Not stop, likely they are going to not collect it and than raise it to 36.8 cents to make it back . Basically they are just giving you a defered loan.
President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans are proposing suspending the federal gas tax amid soaring prices at the pump caused by the war with Iran. The gas tax is currently 18 cents per gallon, and gas prices in the U.S. are about $4.50 per gallon on average. Voters are souring on Trump’s economy ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, and high gas prices are only adding to consumer discontent.
This is a deferment of 112.4 million a day!
Trump said in the Oval Office on Monday that he would “reduce” the tax, shortly after saying in an interview with CBS News that he wants to pause the tax “for a period of time.” “I think it’s a great idea,” he said in the CBS interview. “Yup, we’re going to take off the gas tax for a period of time, and when gas goes down, we’ll let it phase back in.”
Sure, the Administration will defer it till the next election and blame the democrats when a billion dollar bill is due back at the pump. People have no idea how much this would affect the national infrastructure system, all of the bridges, other things that would fall into disrepair due to federal funding being frozen due to this.
Trump cannot declare a gas tax holiday alone, since Congress has sole authority over taxation. But several Republican lawmakers on Monday floated suspending the gas tax, which clocks in at 18.4 cents per gallon, the same amount it’s been since 1993.
This is unlikely to pass, but this gas lay-away plan will hit the pumps when you least expect it.
Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., on Monday said he would immediately introduce a bill to suspend the federal gas tax in a post to X. And Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., said she would be “introducing a bill in the House to suspend the federal gas tax in light of Trump’s recent remarks.” “American families need this relief on gas prices. My office will be working directly with President Trump to ensure we deliver this win for the American people,” she said in a social media post.
This is not relief, this is Gas HELOC plan. It will come back with interest later, because the 112.4M a day gains no interest, It is just a payment plan that is put back on the national debt. The other thing is if you look at the highway Adminstration, the infrastructure money will run out just before the election and who over gets the handoff on “The roads are falling apart” will be the media screaming for months.
Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla “American families need this relief on gas prices. My office will be working directly with President Trump to ensure we deliver this win for the American people,” she said in a social media post.
This is not relief. its like a fart with the gas prices.. By holding the fart you save current environment because it seems not to stink, but it when comes to release and if you try to force it (collect the federal gas tax deferment) it gonna stink like when you are sick and can’t hold it anymore, and you try to let a little out and you shit yourself..
Gas prices in the U.S. currently sit at about $4.52 per gallon, according to AAA’s national average, approaching the highest recorded average price of $5.02 in June 2022. Slashing the federal gas tax would bring that down to roughly $4.34 per gallon.
This is just is a credit card at the pump, you save 18 cents at the pump and by the time the next time it comes to collect the taxes you’ll have to pay 36 cents because of interest.
In the end with a 14 gallon tank you save $2.58 and you can maybe afford cheap gas station coffee, that you have to pay back later. It’s a sham if they defer costs.
While the bill has not been filed yet. this is my thought on a gas tax moratorium to delay or defer gas taxes, in the end it will effect more than saving on your gas.
Attributions from:
CNBC: Trump, congressional Republicans float suspending federal gas tax amid Iran war
Is $9 for a Starbucks coffee a “premium experience?” The company’s CEO has defended it as such
$9 coffee?! NINE FUCKING DOLLAR COFFEE?! Moreover the Premium Experience? I want a coffee not a fucking show. I walk in to dunkin donuts and I walk out with a coffee in less than 3 to 5 minutes. Starbucks, You walk in to music that is almost too loud, 12 influencers mobbing the cake pops, A line 10 deep, 6 people waiting for a coffee, A dog and Usually a layout that makes you wonder who got drunk with the floor plans.
He explained that Starbucks is doing “really well” with Gen-Z and millennial consumers, and that the K-shaped economy — which refers to the growing disparity between high-income and low-income Americans — is not impacting Starbucks’ business, where the “average spend” is just under $10.
My guy I want my coffee flavored coffee, in a cup , not be given a sonnet , a poem or any other shit. The fact that Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol thinks getting a coffee is an experience. Starbucks trying to sell coffee as an admission fee is the same shit as software as a service. if a person drinks 1 coffee a day from starbucks 5 days a week. You are spending more than 2,349 dollars in a year.. for the same amount you can buy a BLACK&DECKER CAFÉCRAFT 12-Cup Coffee Maker for 30$ and 178 Cans of Maxwell House Smooth Bold Dark Roast Ground Coffee, 26.7 oz Canister for 13$ a Can.. 601 pots of a coffee if my math is right. Meaning A pot of coffee every day of the week and leaving enough room for Almost 2 pots every 3rd day.
The thing is , Brian Niccol Is not throwing this out for the Adults, he is throwing it out there for the “Influencers” and “Starbucks kids” He knows they will make a run on this because its a “premium coffee experience” because once the blind huddled masses hear about an EXPERIENCE.. they will run for it like the glass bear mugs that nearly get people killed at christmas.
“And then in other cases, people believe, ‘Well, this is a really affordable premium experience,’ because they’re saying like, ‘Well, it’s less than $10 and I get a really premium experience,’” he continued.
You want a premium experience? Stop drinking starbucks coffee for 24 days and Buy Dunkin instead, than with the leftover pay up front for 1 year of netflix up front. This is targeted at tiktok viral trends and sephora kids.
Niccol was named CEO of Starbucks in September 2024 and has since focused on improving the customer experience, including by installing better seating and creating a smoother pick-up process, according to The WSJ.
They forgot literally the stealing kids money for Niccol, The man should be renamed to Niccoltine, he just wants trend addicts to flood his store.
As for me, I’ll be having my own premium experience making my own coffee and using my own flavorings for 1/10th the price of the starbucks “Experience”.
It would seem my want of a good Non-AI coffeepot has been reinforced yet again. The IoT coffeepot has been caught spying.
A cluster of seemingly unrelated incidents ranging from exposed enterprise AI tools to a breached coffee machine has revealed the daunting reality that modern cyber risk is no longer confined to servers, endpoints or even employees. It now increasingly spans ecosystems, vendors and even the delivery mechanisms for the very tools designed to drive organizational productivity.
The problem with AI is it is veiled in a ton of secrecy that is no good for anyone. Because once the bad agents start figuring it out. We are in deep trouble. The convenience of the AI coffee pot might be nice but it comes with a ton of drawbacks most people don’t account for .
A digital forensics investigator, identified only as TR, was called in when a client suspected a rival had infiltrated their systems after a data breach. Instead of finding malicious software, TR discovered that an internet-enabled espresso machine, equipped with a default password, an outdated operating system, and no firewall, was the source of the leak. Threat actors exploited this device, which was connected to the client’s secure network, to exfiltrate sensitive data. The machine was sending packets internationally every time someone brewed a cup, bypassing all the client’s advanced security measures.
This does present the facts of IoT machines need just as much vetting as computers on a network, if your IT guy doesn’t find every IoT devices on the network he is creating a leak, and the corporate moto of just buy the cheapest thing is normally a recipe for disaster.
Firstly, Keep all of your IoT shit on its own network, If you have a store named BOBcorp, Put all IoT devices on BioT29384 network that is isolated from the main network. Second, You want a network monitor IoT devices are chatty in nature but if your network traffic jumps sniff it out and make sure its sanitized. IoT companies should give a master list of where their devices connect to. That way if your AI coffeepot is connecting to Nigeria you know something is wrong. Either that give google, Apple, Amazon, and other Hub Devices a choice to go through a master server on the devices Hub of choice, That way if all of the corps go through the hub device the IT staff have an easy way to poke at what the IoT stuff is doing.
By having a master hub list of devices if a device starts misbehaving or an attack vector is found. They can deauth the device. It stops companies from just vomiting out “smart” everything devices, That way if they lose there auth they will act fast to restore the trust in the devices.
Another thought here is with security layers is, that most IoT have BLE enabled by default, After pairing there should be a dipswitch to turn off the BLE until its needed for repairing to the network. BLE is notorious for sniffing what is around it .
FirstNet Trusted™ Could really do something to come out on top here. Because of corporate laziness of “just buy the cheapest thing” leads to the problem in the first place. since they are part of AT&T and there network knowhow.
Even passed that Cellphones on the corp networks need to be on their own network, Workers who place IoT or cellphones on the larger corp networks need to be taken off and the employee trained for network safety, it would create a top down security that would even extend to the workers home after. Rather than finding out too late that there beloved AI coffeepot has been stealing secrets for Months.
In the end, You are better off with a Coffeepot with a switch , and if you need it smart. Add a smart plug to it and than you can control it from afar without having so much bloatware you never know what it is connecting to.
Today will be interesting, we will learn how much large corps are going to play the shell game with earnings.
Amazon (AMZN) will report its first quarter earnings alongside rivals Google (GOOG, GOOGL), Meta (META), and Microsoft (MSFT) on Wednesday, with investors looking for more signs that the company’s massive artificial intelligence spending is paying off.
My personal feeling.. No. However this does not stop them from playing the shell game of hiding costs and contracts that have not been put to action yet. These companies account for 650 billion of cape ex spending.
The problem here is the market is betting the farm on a large loss leader. Big Tech knows this and they are trying to engineer there way through this problem by throwing more money and more power at it . AI as it stands right now is about as efficient as a 16 cylinder engine with only one sparkplug working. The problem is with AI being a subsidized land grab at the moment the scale is not fit for its current market. With A Slop being the top thing with AI right now and your average query to AI wasting enough power to light a lightbulb for months. In part why the Sam Altmans and the Bill Gates of the world looking for nuclear power plants to offset these cost to the of thousands of GWh of power.
Right now with power costs soaring, the cost per query is not sustainable, When your average British person can warm there tea 50 times over for a slop query. The problem here is the rate of return on LLM’s is degrading, as LLM’s are looking for more training data they are getting flooded with the very slop they are creating, The people now jailbreaking and hijacking AI’s to act like spongebob squarepants the sexy pirate is filling AI’s systems with irrelevant data to the point its becoming its own fever dream. So the 650B investment is poisoning the future well of returns.
For the quarter, Amazon is expected to report earnings per share (EPS) of $1.62 on revenue of $177.2 billion, according to Bloomberg analyst consensus estimates. The company saw earnings per share of $1.59 and revenue of $155.6 billion in Q1 last year.
Sure a revenue of 177.2 billion. but they are spending like they have a blank check. Eventually when that check clears will Amazon have enough in the bank to cover the check. When Returns on AI is only 15b the rate of return is much slower than the spending. They are building out now and hoping that the machine will have a return later or get bailed out in the end. We’ve heard this all before “too big to fail”. To any person that knows what that line means they just clenched their anus.
But in the end these calls will be interesting, If the earnings call shows a positive it shows that these companies are playing the shell game. Amazon is only getting 15b return per quarterly run shows that the math is flawed. To get that expensive back that will take 3.33 years, if Amazon stops investing today.
And the final flaw is , What if some other game changer comes out of a garage that has a home grown AI out of there garage that makes all these data centers look like nothing more than space heaters for towns. Deepseek has constantly outdone large llms for less than 5% of the money and that’s a secret that the hyperscalers hope you don’t see.
Post mortem: It would appear that all of the companies are posting strong numbers. How long this will last is the greatest question. Further is the biggest question. Metas numbers was the 8k layoff and 6k closed positions a part of there jump?
Every company beat there expectations, what does that mean to the little guy. Absolutely nothing. no lowered prices, it just means some CEO was able to light there cigar with a 100$ bill today.
