Hard Pass

cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1131961/former-microsoft-vp-says-microsoft-missed-the-ai-wave-like-the-internet-and-mobile-as-co

Context

He was replying to a tweet with the text:

In the past 6 weeks we have seen a rather strong shift for both Xbox and Windows implementing requested features after years of ignoring them.

This is great but…what changed for both of this massive orgs to suddenly start listening?

Let's see...

1. You make Bing your biggest bet with AI. Not a single percentage point of user share goes up from that investment
2. You bet on Copilot with AI. Not even 3% of paying users use it, even when the distribution is massive, and it's pre-deployed right in their faces
3. Then you hire the wrong people and assign them to jobs they are obviously not qualified to do. It gets worse.
4. Your OEMs invest on NPUs to then find out that nobody cares because not a single valuable use case was built for those in Windows/Office.
5. Your GitHub, which should be thriving in the age of AI, drops below 90% SLA
6. Your COGS go up significantly
7. Your shares drop significantly
8. The only thing you can brag about looks like an utilities company, not a software company
9. Shareholders start asking the hard questions

There's a point where you start getting fun phone calls and an increasing number of voices start asking you to maybe listen to customers.

I say that as a very positive thing (I know I don't sound like that, I'm grumpy by nature, can't help it). This is actually positive: If you don't push for change, change pushes you.

Hit Factory Reset might be what Microsoft actually needed, since Hit Refresh wasn't enough. Even if it comes with a ton of disruptions.

Source: Mat Velloso on X/Twitter.

Mat Velloso who was most recently the Vice President of Product for the Developer Platform at Meta’s Superintelligence Labs. He also led AI developer products at Google DeepMind (including the Gemini API and Google AI Studio). But before his stints at Google and Meta, Velloso spent over 12 years at Microsoft, where he served as a Partner Director managing AI innovation in Windows and, interestingly, spent four years as the Technical Advisor to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.

Related news: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/5/18/israeli-forces-intercept-gaza-bound-aid-flotilla

cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/shit/p/1131888/the-owner-of-my-airbnb-has-a-dog-named-kevin-his-human-sounding-name-terrified-me-at-fir

::: spoiler Photo SVG code

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Too spicy?

I have a debilitating fear of needles and had to have my partner do it for me but I did it!

Unrelated picture of Ripley using his only brain cell

Here's a behind the scenes

From the creator:

The models powering generative AI platforms have been trained on the work of countless artists, generally without consent or compensation. This questionable provenance aside; it is arguable the most successful use cases for these systems are misinformation, manipulation, defamation, theft, and fraud. There is also an environmental impact to expending massive amounts of computational power on something of such dubious value. As these ethical, economic, social, and ecological issues are fundamental to the technology – I will always reject their use in my work.

cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1131742/linkedin-user-hides-ai-prompt-injection-in-bio-to-force-recruitment-spam-to-be-sent-in-o

I put a prompt injection into my LinkedIn bio and recruiters are messaging me in Old English and calling me Lord.

cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1130290/roblox-must-face-iowa-consumer-fraud-claims

Full Ruling.

On May 13, 2026, the Iowa District Court for Polk County issued a ruling allowing Iowa's consumer fraud lawsuit against Roblox Corporation to move forward.

The Court denied Roblox’s attempt to dismiss the core of Iowa's lawsuit and determined that the suit may move forward with its deception claims and certain unfair practice claims. The claims maintain that Roblox purposefully misled parents by misrepresenting both the quantity and the quality of its safety tools.

The Court's decision allows the following arguments made by the Attorney General’s Office to continue:

• Roblox falsely promised a "safety review of every uploaded image, audio, and video file" to create a false sense of security;
• Roblox intentionally misrepresented the amount of violent and sexual content on its platform to secure lower age ratings on various app stores;
• Roblox uses unfair practices, including the default allowance of adult-child communications and the misleading implementation of in-game currency;
• Roblox lacks sufficient parental controls and fails to warn users about potential harm.

Importantly, the Court rejected Roblox's attempt to evade the Iowa Consumer Fraud Act by arguing its platform is not "merchandise" simply because it is free to play. Noting that Roblox profits by selling user data and in-game currency, the Court ruled that exempting companies like Roblox under their “free” argument would “create a large loophole.”

I made a post on hierarchy a month ago but I have some more specific questions now.

I've been hit with the claim that mass production industries that are needed today would not be possible without a hierarchy. That due to regional limitations and the logistics of smartphone manufacturing, technology cannot be produced on the needed scale without a hierarchy of managers.

This is quoted in PCB fabrication, as well as other areas such as medicine and other mass produced goods.

It is also said that managers are needed for efficiency, though I don't understand that.

Because the anarchist movement, abolishing hierarchy, "runs counter" to the "global direction of humanity and progress", it is acclaimed to being "doomed to failure" and "idealist".

What would be the anarchist response to this? Would appreciate detailed responses and/or resources.

I want to improve my anarchist understanding

The president wants $1 billion from struggling taxpayers to dance in a golden dancehall.

Stop calling it a ballroom, it's just a dancehall.