Jason Calacanis explaining why UPS drivers don’t deserve $170,000 per year.
It’s kind of funny how the entire streaming industry is just a Netflix copycat club. Disney+ now plans to crack down on password sharing after it rolls out ad supported tiers since that worked out well for Netflix.
Enshitification comes to the streaming TV.
https://www.thewrap.com/disney-plus-password-sharing-crackdown-2024/
There are two competing trends making online experiences worse. The first is enshitification, where services that used to give users a ton of value take that value back so they can monetize after eliminating competition(e.g. see ad overload on YouTube or Google).
The second is AI content mills which exist because media companies have no leverage to raise prices so they just produce cheaper and shittier content with AI generated content being the cheapest and shittiest.
Some people are skeptical of Meta’s commitment to the Fediverse. The proof will be in the pudding and I expect to see more steps both big and small in getting Threads to be well behaved participant in the Fediverse.
https://www.threads.net/@mosseri/post/Cvu2fDiLZve/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
In hindsight, it’s incredible that this open letter from Slack to Microsoft was an identical “pride comes before a fall” moment as its inspiration, Apple’s open letter to IBM on entering the PC market.
Good morning to my Gen X family.
US courts love Apple. Fortnite’s maker sued Apple over its requirement to take a 30% cut of in-app purchases and lost on every count except the point that Apple can’t ban developers from telling users IAPs are cheaper on the website due to Apple’s cut.
Apple is appealing that they should be able to ban this speech. The Supreme Court seems to agree since Apple can keep banning this speech until the appeal process is over.
Tim Cook can’t be stopped. 😎
If you join a company to change the culture, there are only two outcomes if you are NOT joining as the CEO.
1. The company changes you more than you change it.
2. You become frustrated by how difficult it is to change the culture and quit.
It’s usually a combination of both.
This is the same rocket scientist and labor expert that convinced Elon to fire 80% of Twitter’s employees.
A lot of the problems in America’s labor markets are caused by out of touch millionaires like this who get frothing mad that people who do the actual value creation in our economy want to earn living wage.
One thing I’ve found surprising is that looking at raw data, we should be in the midst of an affordability crisis yet there’s little unrest about it.
Only 8% of new vehicles being under $30K or the gap between household income and home prices being almost 2x higher now than during the housing bubble both seem like scary stats.
Yet, consumers and the economy keep chugging along with nary a hiccup. How sustainable is this?
Penn acquired Barstool sports for $551 million but it was such a pain in the ass to run that they sold it back to Dave Portnoy for $0 and two guarantees
- 50% of the proceeds if he ever sells the company
- Barstool can’t get into the sports betting business
Imagine being so annoying to work with a company writes down half a billion dollars not to have to work with you again. 😂
At Disney Land and the only apparel brand that’s as big as Disney & Marvel for park visitors is Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour merch.
Verizon is shutting down the Zoom competitor it purchased for $400 million in 2020. This isn’t even the most ignominious failed tech purchase by Verizon, that’s their Yahoo acquisition.
Cellular carriers are great proofs of the saying that culture eats strategy for business. Verizon and AT&T keep wanting to be tech & content players but keep botching acquisitions. They should embrace being sellers of dumb pipes who grow their business by adding random fees to phone bills https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/8/23825112/verizon-bluejeans-shutting-down-sunset
Imagine an alternate universe where the Avengers chapter of the MCU ended with No Way Home as an epilogue to Endgame and the MCU started telling X-men stories instead. 🤔
The #blessed really takes this terrible LinkedIn post over the top 😬
YouTube will no longer show recommendations if you disable watch history.
This both makes the connection clearer that the recommendations are based on what you’ve previously watched and not some “nefarious algorithm” and continues big tech’s march to please the EU’s anti-algorithm demands.
https://techcrunch.com/2023/08/08/youtube-update-homepage-watch-history/
That the visual effects workers at Marvel are overworked became a meme especially after seeing the quality of the work on Thor: Love & Thunder and She-Hulk: Attorney at Law.
It’s been too much work at what is clearly a breakneck pace. So it’s no surprise and somewhat gratifying to see that Marvel’s VFX workers are beginning to unionize.
https://www.vulture.com/2023/08/vfx-workers-vote-to-unionize-at-marvel-for-the-first-time.html
In a fascinating example of unintended consequences, scientists now believe that the heat waves this summer have been caused by rules put in place in 2020 to reduce air pollution from cargo ships.
Sulphur particles contained in ships’ exhaust fumes have been counteracting some of the warming coming from greenhouse gases. But lowering the sulphur content of marine fuel has weakened the masking effect, effectively giving a boost to warming.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-how-low-sulphur-shipping-rules-are-affecting-global-warming/
It’s wild how having lots of MCU content went from a positive to a negative of Disney plus.
Google is getting sued for $5 billion because incognito mode in Chrome doesn’t prevent you from being tracked online.
Of course, this isn’t what the feature is designed to do. Incognito mode was popularized by Firefox in the mid-2000s. It’s purpose was hiding your browsing history from other users of a shared computer which is why it was colloquially called porn mode.
The combination of branding and rise of mobile usage meant the original purpose has been lost to time