look at this absolute bullshit:

lets check in with meta and see how things are shaping up in the metaverse...



​





..... goddamned.

i mean, vr porno tho

carmack, whom is paid by facebook as a consultant, just laid out a pretty bleak picture where no matter what facebook trots out, no one is going to spend $1500 on a headset to experience it, which is a pretty big deal when you consider how long it might take for them to come up with a headset thats affordable.

https://futurism.com/the-byte/facebo...verse-terrible

VR porn is great but there is a huge problem with it and VR in general. VR requires that you completely immerse yourself. No watching TV in background, no carrying on other conversations, no eating, no opening up a second monitor. Hell I hit my cat playing pingpong and now he is terrified of me putting on the headset. But at least he won;t rub up against me as I'm watching VR porn. But who the hell is going to risk watching VR porn when your significant other can walk in or god forbid child? I'm waiting for a deluge of videos over the next few years of guys getting caught watching VR porn. Unless you live alone you are playing russian roulette.

also i think i should make a burner youtube account, because youtube on the tv is starting to suggest vr japanese poledancing vids and my ladyfriend is getting suspicious

so some very weird news on the meta front...


quick recap; meta went on a poaching spree for AI talent. the comp packages were surreal, at least in the one-liner posts about them.

but the details that started leaking out about them painted a very different story; basically the majority of those millions and millions of dollars were equity with a vesting schedule. the actual base salaries were something like 600k - 1.2m, around there. which is a lot of money but a far cry from the 9 figure salaries that they were leaking to the press.

anyway something interesting just happened. meta is now firing a bunch of them. they announced a hiring freeze for all AI shit a few days ago. then they announced that they were turning down some legacy AI teams. and whats been revealed today is that its NOT just old fringe AI teams getting the axe, they are also letting a lot of the people they threw those insane packages at go.

so yeah they signed up for like 100m, 99m of which was unvested equity, and weeks later they got fired and they probably pocketed like 300k total.

or 150k after taxes.

and now they are unemployed.

and very, very, very possibly signed non-competes meaning they cant even take their old jobs or look for new ones.

i dont have details yet but thats how this is shaping up; its very possible zuck just killed the entire silicon valley AI market for years.

imagine how hard china is laughing right now...

quick reminder that meta's great and noble vision was to build superintelligence and this is where are today:







midjourney is not even a top resource for image work. so not only can does meta lack the talent and resources to train a simple image model but they lack the finances to partner with an established top ten image gen org.

​

https://www.theinformation.com/artic...ai-models-apps


META superintelligence labs leaders have discussed using Google or OpenAI models to power AI features across its apps

Facebook had to distance themselves from the name, because it was on its way to getting myspaced. The decline isn't that fast, but its going to keep declining. Fairly sure it has more users literally dying, than getting new users. And the part that made them most money has been hit the hardest. People just don't use that much time on the platform anymore.

When the name isn't tied to the company you can dodge a lot of bad press.

The whole Meta shuffle was kinda half assed smoke and mirrors job, but I'm guessing they just picked a bandwagon to write a narrative that was good enough. It's better to take a few small hits that correct themselves in a few months, than to risk a legit death spiral of the stock. There's also a minor possibility of major government interruption and/or anyone to start caring how they make their money.

How advertising works is indirect enough that "free" services don't even have to hide it. Selling data people seem to dislike more even if it costs them less. It's weird to me how little people care about economic manipulation.

i will never get tired of people convincing zuck to waste more billions.