This is the same playbook Bending Spoons used for Meetup.com, where they jacked up prices so high after acquiring it that it's no longer a viable platform for consumers
Marketing stunt. If they actually cared about this as an experiment, they wouldn't have broadcasted this so early, because now that the public knows that the store is designed and run by AI, many people aren't going to support it (i.e. many people who would have shopped there now won't).
Also don't do it in San Francisco, I think it's an artificial easier market. The type of store wouldn't work in Bumsville Idaho.
Maybe that's for later, if this works out, but I'd love to see the AI attempt to run a moderately successful business in a borderline dysfunctional town in the Midwest. If you don't technically need to pay "the CEO" a salary, could you run e.g. a grocery store in a dying town. One this would really test the AI on creativity, and it would perhaps tell us if these towns are just doomed.
San Francisco is one of the most brutally hard places to run a business, as evidenced by how competitive the landscape is.
What would have been actually interesting about this publicity stunt is if it demonstrated if/how AI could have dealt with some of the SF specific, non-sexy parts of running a business. Filing the relevant permits, co-ordinating inspections, negotiating with landlords, interfacing with locals at planning meetings.
Those are things SF business owners report as empirically unpleasant parts of running a business and a sufficient financial drag that they meaningfully affect business success. But my feeling is they had humans clear the way of all these thorny issues ahead of time so the AI could focus on the "sexy stuff".
>> If you don't technically need to pay "the CEO" a salary, could you run e.g. a grocery store in a dying town
You probably couldn't. I have seen a lot of small town stores that are run and operated by a single person. If somebody could run a business like that for a decent wage, they would be.
Adding AI to the mix on a high level position (for a single employee, who is the actual owner!) wouldn't help, it's just token burning.
AI can find a sale on bananas, but a person at the counter can take feedback from the actual customers, and stock based in that.
In my opinion, if you agree to a deal and then decide not to fulfill your end of the deal, that is immoral. Like if you agree to pay me to make you a sandwich and then you take the sandwich but leave without paying, that is immoral.
If you are in a casual agreement with a friend and don't keep up your end then it's immoral.
If you have a contract that specifies expectations and consequences, then it's just a business deal.
The (predatory) school loan business works from contracts and they are obligated to keep up their side only as much as you are yours.
The real immorality is not accepting the consequences embedded in the contract to which you both agree to, it is that the United States has such a business in the first place.
Well actually second place I guess. When the student loan business started it was not predatory. But it got horribly abused, by the borrowers who would declare bankruptcy gaming that system, schools who raised rates because they knew loans were available, and the lenders who astroTurfed children into believing that it was a good bargain to exchange $200,000 at high interest for a Art History degree
That is how bad countries are made. Good countries are made by people thinking that its also wrong to steal from the government.
For example you should never ever vote on politicians that waste tax money. Some countries do that, but USA is not one of them since Americans thinks its moral to steal from the government so they don't blink an eye over every president using millions on his own or his wifes personal projects. "I'd also do that if I was the president" is how that gets perpetuated, you have to stop voting for any such candidate and only vote for those that promises to put an end to it. That would mean voting third party, but...
At a friend's party recently, I met someone who told me that they had worked in data for Meta's glasses division and warned me never to get Meta glasses for this very reason—that the workers can see everything. They told me of a comical case where a guy pulled down his pants to look at his penis, asked "Meta, what is this?", and the AI responded that it was a thumb. XD
For a fair comparison, you need to compare audio of David as a broadcaster rather than being interviewed: https://youtu.be/W-uGqHXoSRw?t=5 . As someone who has listened to Greene's voice on NPR a lot over the years, I hear the similarity.
Rollerblade technology has come a long way since then! Modern skates are much more comfortable and often use bigger wheels that make it easier to roll over rougher terrain and go fast. I get around Chicago almost exclusively through a combination of inline skates & trains (it's easy to wear skates on the trains here).
Although developers may be hesitant to embrace this out of fear of Google eventually killing it off, an upshot is that if you develop an XR app with Unity (and its XR Interaction Toolkit library), it ends up being quite portable across different XR devices / operating systems (e.g. Meta Quest, Pico VR, HTC Vive).
I haven't upgraded to iOS 26 because of Liquid Glass, mostly because I've read that it causes performance degradation on older devices (I use an iPhone 13 Mini because I have zero interest in using a larger phone). So, it looks like I'll be using iOS 18 for the foreseeable future.
I made the mistake of upgrading (13 Mini) and it is very clear that the new UI was not tested at all on smaller screens. The rounded buttons take up so much extra margin that actual usable space is greatly diminished.
Same here - on a 12 Mini. My wife and my mother have the same phone, and I have recommended that they hold back on upgrading.
I really hope Apple will address this in a dot-upgrade later this year, but I am afraid that the market share of the 12 and 13 models are too low for them to justify this.
I have the standard iPhone 13 (not mini) and the battery longevity is probably the best of any phone I've ever owned. At over 3.5 years old it still reports 89% battery health and lasts much longer than I need. Previous iPhones I owned were all pretty much on their last legs by that age.
I haven't upgraded it to iOS 26 / Liquid Glass, though, and given what I'm seeing/hearing, I don't plan to.
I just replaced it before the 26 upgrade. It was at 76% by then. With the new battery, I haven’t faced any issues. It lasts a whole day easily, unless I do things like tethering etc.
I regret upgrading my 13 Mini so much. Performance is terrible and it's chugging power.
Yesterday, for the first time since I bought the phone, it died on me before 18:00 with regular usage. I used to charge everyday when I go to bed with around 15-25% left, now I can't even finish the work day.
I have an iphone 13 pro max. On many screens, the UI now stutters when it was smooth before. I have a very strong dislike for the new transparency changes. It absolutely makes things harder to read. And it comes at a cost of making the UI stutter. For example I just scrolled down the notifications, they are all a little harder to read because the the phone is trying to show the background through the notification area?
On iPhone 12 mini, the battery life is incredibly worse. I was charging once a day, 30 → 70% usually, and now I’m charging all the time I have a chance. I’m not very active user, but each session of screen time reduces the battery significantly. Before that I felt that despite the small battery, the device works forever. Now, I’m back into my iPhone 4S times, when I upgraded to iOS 7.
For what it’s worth, I upgraded to 26 on a 3rd gen SE and perf is totally fine. I do hate most of the UI changes though. I really hope they do a dot release that lets me turn off the “safari viewport is big but we draw crap on top of it” stuff. I keep cursing at the title bar and url bar obscuring important things.
I actually feel a warm computer now, something that I have never experienced in five years of having this M1 MacBook.
This takes amazing hardware and degrades it to Windows laptop slop.
In the Jobs days, at least one VP head would roll for this, and Apple would be far better off for it. I don't think Tim Cook is strong enough for that though.
I just think that Apple should go down to biannual phone updates and major OS versions. I really don’t understand the urgency behind forcing this kind of velocity for such a mature system. It seems perpetually rushed.
This removes drop shadows on Chromium / Electron, and removes an autofill overlay that people reported heavy battery use on. I took this from somewhere on the internet.
It was running well on my 13 pro as in there was no lag on anything, but I can’t speak for battery life. It was bad before and it was still bad after, but maybe it got worse?
iOS .0 releases tend to be this way, even on brand new devices. I noticed some big perf improvements on the 26.0.1 release. If I were you I'd wait til 26.1 or 26.2 and reassess then. It still may not be optimal for a mini tho for non-perf reasons, as iOS26 assumes a larger average device size.
It's functionally tolerable when you disable transparency and increase contrast in accessibility settings.
Of course it makes everything look dull and primitive. Crammed and misaligned controls are even more obvious when elements have borders. You still have unhelpful animations.
As humble as Michigan City is, it's also a popular vacation destination for Hoosiers seeking an inexpensive summer getaway. I grew up in Indiana and have many fond memories of going to Michigan City in the summer: swimming at the beach, walking to the lighthouse and zoo, and looking at Chicago's skyline from across the lake. As a kid, I thought the power plant tower was cool, too.
