Notices by Dare Obasanjo (carnage4life@mas.to), page 12

Whenever I see a headline like this I now assume they’ll have layoffs in a few months because not enough people quit.

The Tesla Model Y is the world’s best selling vehicle of 2023.

Despite this $TSLA is down -25% so far this year. The company projected 50% sales growth but grew “only” 38% and profits are down 40% year over year.

The expectations are simply too high.

https://www.motor1.com/news/706258/tesla-model-y-worlds-top-selling-vehicle-2023/

With the EU blocking Amazon’s acquisition of Roomba, its CEO is stepping down and the company is laying off 31% of employees (350 people).

Regulators blocking startup/company exits via acquisition is going to make startup funding even harder.

https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/29/24034201/amazon-irobot-acquisition-over-antitrust-regulator-scrutiny

Study of codebases over a 4 year period show Github Copilot lowers the quality of code over time by increasing the likelihood of bugs being introduced and copy & pasted code.

This is a healthy counterpoint to studies that show improved productivity.

Fast. Cheap. Good. Pick Two.

https://visualstudiomagazine.com/articles/2024/01/25/copilot-research.aspx

The primary lesson we learned from the past few years of crypto and blockchain advocacy is that a lot of people we thought were smart were just lucky.

Doing two rounds of layoffs within 3 months with each round impacting 20% of your company each time is nuts.

Softbank investing in your company turns out to have been like Light writing down your company's name in Death Note.

https://www.theinformation.com/articles/flexport-to-lay-off-nearly-20-of-staff-in-latest-cuts

People used to call Microsoft the Evil Empire and they never did anything like charging $0.50 per install per year.

You don't know how good you have it until it's gone. 😂😂😂

"A completely new 0.50 cent Euro fee per download, every year, in perpetuity, to Apple for just allowing developers to exist on iOS – This is extortion, plain and simple." - Spotify press release

https://newsroom.spotify.com/2024-01-26/apples-proposed-changes-reject-the-goals-of-the-dma/

Apple waiting to collect their money from developers who thought they could avoid paying the App Store fee just because laws say they should allow side loading and buying IAPs outside the App Store.

I laughed out loud. I thought charging a 27% cut if apps link to their website to purchase IAPs after losing the antitrust lawsuit with Epic was bold.

Responding to the EU DMA law requiring sideloading be allowed by still mandating a fee and App Review is epic.

I bow down🙇🏾♂️

We have a problem that high quality news is now behind paywalls while fake news and misinformation is free.

The new version of this problem is 88% of top US news sites block AI crawlers like ChatGPT but Breitbart does not.

Cue moral panic in a few months
https://www.wired.com/story/most-news-sites-block-ai-bots-right-wing-media-welcomes-them/

Been thinking about how attention is zero sum for a while. All of our available free time has now been captured by phones. So the only growth in gaming, movies, social media, etc comes at the expense of someone else.

More Fortnite time is less TikTok & Netflix time.

If you’re a startup or an investor, generative AI is attractive because it’s a new set of opportunities to apply technology and increase value.

It looks like $TSLA will open -20% from the start of the year after profits down -23% and revenue +3% year over year. Given inflation, that’s technically a revenue decline.

It took aggressive price cuts to get these results which means demand given competition from Chinese EV makers like BYD is becoming an issue.

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2024/01/tesla-publishes-its-financial-results-for-2023-profit-margin-shrinks/

Netflix has previously mentioned they make more money from their discounted ads tier than from their cheapest no-ads tier. So it’s no surprise that their $12 ads free tier is going away. The cheapest ads free tier is now $15.49.

Enshitification continues as the tide turns from user growth to revenue growth in the streaming industry.
https://gizmodo.com/netflix-ending-cheapest-ad-free-plan-earnings-1851192219

The New York Times with a classic example of lies, damn lies and statistics showing a downward trend line for a stat that went from 30% to 38%. 😂

As a Google user it feels like terrible timing to be cutting costs by getting rid of the people who give feedback on whether search results are good or not.

It’s giving eating their seed corn.

The FTC has banned TurboTax from advertising services as “free” unless they are free for all users without restrictions.

TurboTax was fond of advertising free tax preparation only for you to use the service and get told you didn’t qualify. This bit me as well.

I hope the upcoming free tax filing solution from the IRS kills their product. 😡

https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/22/business/ftc-turbotax-free-services/index.html

With Apple’s move to charge a 27% cut and show a scary warning dialog if apps offer IAPs on their website to avoid Apple’s 30% cut, the mask is off.

It’s now very clear to the media and regulators that Apple is a rent seeker in the classic sense.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/01/18/apple-watch-ban-app-store/

I wonder how long it will take companies to figure out that if you just put a thin front end on ChatGPT as your customer service bot then you’ll have a bad time as frustrated customers jailbreak into being a regular ChatGPT prompt? 🤦🏾♂️

https://time.com/6564726/ai-chatbot-dpd-curses-criticizes-company/

Half of inflation is from companies not lowering prices after supply chain issues ended post-COVID.

The lack of competition among grocery chains and diaper brands listed in the article is due to consolidation. When there are only 2 or 3 players in a market, it’s in their best interest not to compete on price.

Yet the FTC goes after big tech instead of the companies making the average American’s bills high. This is why people complain about the economy under Biden.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/jan/19/us-inflation-caused-by-corporate-profits