Rethinking Newspapers: The Dinobaby View
January 27, 2025
A blog post from an authentic dinobaby. He’s old; he’s in the sticks; and he is deeply skeptical.
I read “For Some Newspaper Workers, the New Year Began with Four Weeks of Unpaid Leave.” But the subtitle is the snappy statement:
The chain CNHI furloughed 46 staffers, or about 3% of its workforce. It’s likely a weather vane for industry trouble ahead.
The write up says, rather predictably, in my opinion:
the furloughs were precipitated by a very “soft fourth quarter,” usually the best of the year for newspapers, buoyed with ads for Christmas shopping.
No advertising and Amazon. A one-two punch.
The article concludes:
If you’re looking for a silver lining here, it may be that upstart investors continue to buy up newspapers as they come up for sale, still seeing a potential for profit in the business.
What a newspaper needs is a bit of innovation. Having worked at both newspaper publishing and a magazine publishing companies, I dipped into some of my old lectures about online. I floated these ideas at various times in company talks and in my public lectures, including the one I received from ASIS in the late 1980s. Here’s a selected list:
- People and companies pay for must-have information. Create must-have content in digital form and then sell access to that content.
- Newspapers are intelligence gathering outfits. Focus on intelligence and sell reports to outfits known to purchase these reports.
- Convert to a foundation and get in the grant and fund raising business.
- Online access won’t generate substantial revenue; therefore, use online to promote other information services.
- Each newspaper has a core competency. Convert that core competency into pay-to-attend conferences on specific subjects. Sell booth and exhibit space. Convert selling ads to selling a sponsored cocktail at the event.
- Move from advertising to digital coupons. These can be made available on a simple local-focus Web site. For people who want paper ads, sell a subscription to an envelope containing the coupons and possibly a small amount of information of interest to the area the newspaper serves.
Okay, how many of these ideas are in play today? Most of them, just not from newspaper outfits. That’s the problem. Innovation is tough to spark. Is it too late now? My research team has more ideas. Write benkent2020 at yahoo dot com.
Stephen E Arnold, January 27, 2024
How to Garner Attention from X.com: The Guardian Method Seems Infallible
January 24, 2025
Prepared by a still-alive dinobaby.
The Guardian has revealed its secret to getting social media attention from Twitter (now the X). “‘Just the Start’: X’s New AI Software Driving Online Racist Abuse, Experts Warn” makes the process dead simple. Here are the steps:
- Publish a diatribe about the power of social media in general with specific references to the Twitter machine
- Use name calling to add some clickable bound phrases; for example, “online racism”, “fake images”, and “naked hate”
- Use loaded words to describe images; for example, an athlete “who is black, picking cotton while another shows that same player eating a banana surrounded by monkeys in a forest.”
Bingo. Instantly clickable.
The write up explains:
Callum Hood, the head of research at the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), said X had become a platform that incentivised and rewarded spreading hate through revenue sharing, and AI imagery made that even easier. “The thing that X has done, to a degree that no other mainstream platform has done, is to offer cash incentives to accounts to do this, so accounts on X are very deliberately posting the most naked hate and disinformation possible.”
This is a recipe for attention and clicks. Will the Guardian be able to convert the magnetism of the method in cash money?
Stephen E Arnold, January 24, 2025
And the Video Game Struggler for 2024 Is… Video Games
January 24, 2025
Yep, 2024 sas the worst year for videogames since 1983.
Videogames are still a young medium, but they’re over fifty years old. The gaming industry has seen ups and downs with the first (and still legendary) being the 1983 crash. Arcade games were all the rage back then, but these days consoles and computers have the action. At least, they should.
Wired writes that “2024 Was The Year The Bottom Fell Out Of The Games Industry” due to multiple reasons. There was massive layoffs in 2023 with over 10,000 game developers losing their jobs. Some of this was attributed to AI slowly replacing developers. The gaming industry’s job loss in 2024 was forty percent higher than the prior year. Yikes!
DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) combined with woke mantra was also blamed for the failue of many games, including Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. The phrase “go woke, go broke” echoed throughout the industry as it is in Hollywood, Silicon Valley, and other fields. I noted:
“According to Matthew Ball, an adviser and producer in the games and TV space…says that the blame for all of this can’t be pinned to a single thing, like capitalism, mismanagement, Covid-19, or even interest rates. It also involves development costs, how studios are staffed, consumers’ spending habits, and game pricing. “This storm is so brutal,” he says, ‘because it is all of these things at once, and none have really alleviated since the layoffs began.’”
Many indie studios were shuttered and large tech leaders such as Microsoft and Sony shut down parts of their gaming division. Also a chain of events influenced by the hatred of DEI and its associated mindsets that is being called a second GamerGate.
The gaming industry will continue through the beginnings of 2025 with business as usual. The industry will bounce back, but it will be different than the past.
Whitney Grace, January 24, 2025
Microsoft and Its Me-Too Interface for Bing Search
January 22, 2025
Bing will never be Google, but Microsoft wants its search engine to dominate queries. Microsoft Bing has a small percentage of Internet searches and in a bid to gain more traction it has copied Google’s user interface (UI). Windows Latest spills the tea over the UI copying: “Microsoft Bing Is Trying To Spoof Google UI When People Search Google.com.”
Google’s UI is very distinctive with its minimalist approach. The only item on the Google UI is the query box and menus along the top and bottom of the page. Microsoft Edge is Google’s Web browser and it is programed to use Bing. In a sneaky (and genius) move, when Edge users type Google into the bing search box they are taken to UI that is strangely Google-esque. Microsoft is trying this new UI to lower the Bing bounce rate, users who leave.
Is it an effective tactic?
“But you might wonder how effective this idea would be. Well, if you’re a tech-savvy person, you’ll probably realize what’s going on, then scroll and open Google from the link. However, this move could keep people on Bing if they just want to use a search engine.Google is the number one search engine, and there’s a large number of users who are just looking for a search engine, but they think the search engine is Google. In their mind, the two are the same. That’s because Google has become a synonym for search engines, just like Chrome is for browsers.A lot of users don’t really care what search engine they’re using, so Microsoft’s new practice, which might appear stupid to some of you, is likely very effective.”
For unobservant users and/or those who don’t care, it will work. Microsoft is also tugging on heartstrings with another tactic:
“On top of it, there’s also an interesting message underneath the Google-like search box that says “every search brings you closer to a free donation. Choose from over 2 million nonprofits.” This might also convince some people to keep using Bing.”
What a generous and genius tactic interface innovation. We’re not sure this is the interface everyone sees, but we love the me too approach from user-centric big tech outfits.
Whitney Grace, January 22, 2025
Sonus, What Is That Painful Sound I Hear?
January 21, 2025
Sonos CEO Swap: Are Tech Products Only As Good As Their Apps?
Lawyers and accountants leading tech firms, please, take note: The apps customers use to manage your products actually matter. Engadget reports, “Sonos CEO Patrick Spence Falls on his Sword After Horrible App Launch.” Reporter Lawrence Bonk writes:
“Sonos CEO Patrick Spence is stepping down from the company after eight years on the job, according to reporting by Bloomberg. This follows last year’s disastrous app launch, in which a redesign was missing core features and was broken in nearly every major way. The company has tasked Tom Conrad to steer the ship as interim CEO. Conrad is a current member of the Sonos board, but was a co-founder of Pandora, VP at Snap and product chief at, wait for it, the short-lived video streaming platform Quibi. He also reportedly has a Sonos tattoo. The board has hired a firm to find a new long-term leader.”
Conrad told employees that “we” let people down with the terrible app. And no wonder. Bonk explains:
“The decision to swap leadership comes after months of turmoil at the company. It rolled out a mobile app back in May that was absolutely rife with bugs and missing key features like alarms and sleep timers. Some customers even complained that entire speaker systems would no longer work after updating to the new app. It was a whole thing.”
Indeed. And despite efforts to rekindle customer trust, the company is paying the price of its blunder. Its stock price has fallen about 13 percent, revenue tanked 16 percent in the fiscal fourth quarter, and it has laid off more than 100 workers since August. Chief Product Officer Patrick Spence is also leaving the firm. Will the CEO swap help Sonos recover? As he takes the helm, Conrad vows a return to basics. At the same time, he wants to expand Sonos’ products. Interesting combination. Meanwhile, the search continues for a more permanent replacement.
Cynthia Murrell, January 21, 2025
AWS and AI: Aw, Of Course
January 21, 2025
Mat Garman Interview Reveals AWS Perspective on AI
It should be no surprise that AWS is going all in on Artificial Intelligence. Will Amazon become an AI winner? Sure, if it keeps those managing the company’s third-party reseller program away from AWS. Nilay Patel, The Verge‘s Editor-in Chief, interviewed AWS head Matt Garmon. He explains “Why CEO Matt Garman Is Willing to Bet AWS on AI.” Patel writes:
“Matt has a really interesting perspective for that kind of conversation since he’s been at AWS for 20 years — he started at Amazon as an intern and was AWS’s original product manager. He’s now the third CEO in just five years, and I really wanted to understand his broad view of both AWS and where it sits inside an industry that he had a pivotal role in creating. … Matt’s perspective on AI as a technology and a business is refreshingly distinct from his peers, including those more incentivized to hype up the capabilities of AI models and chatbots. I really pushed Matt about Sam Altman’s claim that we’re close to AGI and on the precipice of machines that can do tasks any human could do. I also wanted to know when any of this is going to start returning — or even justifying — the tens of billions of dollars of investments going into it. His answers on both subjects were pretty candid, and it’s clear Matt and Amazon are far more focused on how AI technology turns into real products and services that customers want to use and less about what Matt calls ‘puffery in the press.'”
What a noble stance within a sea of AI hype. The interview touches on topics like AWS’ domination of streaming delivery, its partnerships with telco companies, and problems of scale as it continues to balloon. Garmon also compares the shift to AI to the shift from typewriters to computers. See the write-up for more of their conversation.
Cynthia Murrell, January 21, 2025
The AI Profit and Cost Race: Drivers, Get Your Checkbooks Out
January 15, 2025
A dinobaby-crafted post. I confess. I used smart software to create the heart wrenching scene of a farmer facing a tough 2025.
Microsoft appears ready to spend $80 billion “on AI-enabled data centers” by December 31, 2025. Half of the money will go to US facilities, and the other half, other nation states. I learned this information from a US cable news outfit’s article “Microsoft Expects to Spend $80 Billion on AI-Enabled Data Centers in Fiscal 2025.” Is Microsoft tossing out numbers as part of a marketing plan to trigger the lustrous Google, or is Microsoft making clear that it is going whole hog for smart software despite the worries of investors that an AI revenue drought persists? My thought is that Microsoft likes to destabilize the McKinsey-type thinking at Google, wait for the online advertising giant to deliver another fabulous Sundar & Prabhakar Comedy Tour, and then continue plodding forward.
The write up reports:
Several top-tier technology companies are rushing to spend billions on Nvidia graphics processing units for training and running AI models. The fast spread of OpenAI’s ChatGPT assistant, which launched in late 2022, kicked off the AI race for companies to deliver their own generative AI capabilities. Having invested more than $13 billion in OpenAI, Microsoft provides cloud infrastructure to the startup and has incorporated its models into Windows, Teams and other products.
Yep, Google-centric marketing.
Thanks, You.com. Good enough.
But if Microsoft does spend $80 billion, how will the company convert those costs into a profit geyser? That’s a good question. Microsoft appears to be cooperating with discounts for its mainstream consumer software. I saw advertisements offering Windows 11 Professional for $25. Other deep discounts can be found for Office 365, Visio, and even the bread-and-butter sales pitch PowerPoint application.
Tweaking Google is one thing. Dealing with cost competition is another.
I noted that the South China Morning Post’s article “Alibaba Ties Up with Lee Kai-fu’s Unicorn As China’s AI Sector Consolidates.” Tucked into that rah rah write up was this statement:
The cooperation between two of China’s top AI players comes as price wars continue in the domestic market, forcing companies to further slash prices or seek partnerships with former foes. Alibaba Cloud said on Tuesday it would reduce the fees for using its visual reasoning AI model by up to 85 per cent, the third time it had marked down the prices of its AI services in the past year. That came after TikTok parent ByteDance last month cut the price of its visual model to 0.003 yuan (US$0.0004) per thousand token uses, about 85 per cent lower than the industry average.
The message is clear. The same tactic that China’s electric vehicle manufacturers are using will be applied to smart software. The idea is that people will buy good enough products and services if the price is attractive. Bean counters intuitively know that a competitor that reduces prices and delivers an acceptable product can gain market share. The companies unable to compete on price face rising costs and may be forced to cut their prices, thus risking financial collapse.
For a multi-national company, the cost of Chinese smart software may be sufficiently good to attract business. Some companies which operate under US sanctions and controls of one type or another may be faced with losing some significant markets. Examples include Brazil, India, Middle Eastern nations, and others. That means that a price war can poke holes in the financial predictions which outfits like Microsoft are basing some business decisions.
What’s interesting is that this smart software tactic apparently operating in China fits in with other efforts to undermine some US methods of dominating the world’s financial system. I have no illusions about the maturity of the AI software. I am, however, realistic about the impact of spending significant sums with the fervent belief that a golden goose will land on the front lawn of Microsoft’s headquarters. I am okay with talking about AI in order to wind up Google. I am a bit skeptical about hosing $80 billion into data centers. These puppies gobble up power, which is going to get expensive quickly if demand continues to blast past the power generation industry’s projections. An economic downturn in 2025 will not help ameliorate the situation. Toss in regional wars and social turmoil and what does one get?
Risk. Welcome to 2025.
Stephen E Arnold, January 15, 2025
AI Search Engine from Alibaba Grows Apace
January 15, 2025
Prepared by a still-alive dinobaby.
The Deepseek red herring has been dragged across the path of US AI innovators. A flurry of technology services wrote about Deepseek’s ability to give US smart software companies a bit of an open source challenge. The hook, however, was not just the efficacy of the approach. The killer message was, “Better, faster, and cheaper.” Yep, cheaper, the concept which raises questions about certain US outfits burning cash in units of a one billion dollars with every clock tick.
A number of friendly and lovable deer are eating the plants in Uncle Sam’s garden. How many of these are living in the woods looking for a market to consume? Thanks OpenAI, good enough.
Now Alibaba is coming for AI search. The Chinese company crows on PR Newswire, "Alibaba’s Accio AI Search Engine Hits 500,000 SME User Milestone." Sounds like a great solution for US businesses doing work for the government. The press release reveals:
"Alibaba International proudly announces that its artificial intelligence (AI)-powered business-to-business (B2B) search engine for product sourcing, Accio, has reached a significant milestone since its launch in November 2024, currently boasting over 500,000 small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) users. … During the peak global e-commerce sales seasons in November and December, more than 50,000 SMEs worldwide have actively used Accio to source inspirations for Black Friday and Christmas inventory stocking. User feedback shows that the search engine helped them achieve this efficiently. Accio now holds a net promoter score (NPS) exceeding 50[1], indicating a high level of customer satisfaction. On December 13, 2024, the dynamic search engine was also named ‘Product of the Day’ on Product Hunt, a site that curates new products in tech, further cementing its status as an indispensable tool for SME buyers worldwide."
Well, good for them. And, presumably, for China ‘s information gathering program. Founded in 1999, Alibaba Group is based in Hangzhou, Zhejiang. One can ask many questions about Alibaba, including ones related to the company’s interaction with Chinese government officials. When a couple of deer are eating one’s garden vegetables, a good question to ask is, “How many of these adorable creatures live in the woods?” One does not have to be Natty Bumpo to know that the answer is, “There are more where those came from.”
Cynthia Murrell, January 15, 2025
Agentic Workflows and the Dust Up Between Microsoft and Salesforce
January 14, 2025
Prepared by a still-alive dinobaby.
The Register, a UK online publication, does a good job of presenting newsworthy events with a touch of humor. Today I spotted a new type of information in the form of an explainer plus management analysis. Plus the lingo and organization suggest a human did all or most of the work required to crank out a very good article called “In AI Agent Push, Microsoft Re-Orgs to Create CoreAI – Platform and Tools Team.”
I want to highlight the explainer part of the article. The focus is on the notion of agentic; specifically:
agentic applications with memory, entitlements, and action space that will inherit powerful model capabilities. And we will adapt these capabilities for enhanced performance and safety across roles, business processes, and industry domains. Further, how we build, deploy, and maintain code for these AI applications is also fundamentally changing and becoming agentic.
These words are attributed to Microsoft’s top dog Satya Nadella, but they sound as if one of the highly paid wordsmiths laboring for the capable Softies. Nevertheless, the idea is important. In order to achieve the agentic pinnacle, Microsoft has to reorganize. Whoever can figure out how to make agentic applications work across different vendors’ solutions will be able to make money. That’s the basic idea: Smart software is going to create a new big thing for enterprise software and probably some consumers.
The write up explains:
It’s arguably just plain old software talking to plain old software, which would be nothing new. The new angle here, though, is that it’s driven mainly by, shall we say, imaginative neural networks and models making decisions, rather than algorithms following entirely deterministic routes. Which is still software working with software. Nadella thinks building artificially intelligent agentic apps and workflows needs “a new AI-first app stack — one with new UI/UX patterns, runtimes to build with agents, orchestrate multiple agents, and a reimagined management and observability layer.”
To win the land in this new territory, Microsoft must have a Core AI team. Google and Salesforce presumably have this type of set up. Microsoft has to step up its AI efforts. The Register points out:
Nadella noted that “our internal organizational boundaries are meaningless to both our customers and to our competitors”. That’s an odd observation given Microsoft published his letter, which concludes with this observation: “Our success in this next phase will be determined by having the best AI platform, tools, and infrastructure. We have a lot of work to do and a tremendous opportunity ahead, and together, I’m looking forward to building what comes next.”
Here’s what I found interesting:
- Agentic is the next big thing in smart software. Essentially smart software that does one thing is useful. Orchestrating agents to do a complex process is the future. The software decides. Everything works well — at least, that’s the assumption.
- Microsoft, like Google, is now in a Code Yellow or Code Red mode. The company feels the heat from Salesforce. My hunch is that Microsoft knows that add ins like Ghostwriter for Microsoft Office is more useful than Microsoft’s own Copilot for many users. If the same boiled fish appears on the enterprise menu, Microsoft is in a world of hurt from Salesforce and probably a lot of other outfits.
- The re-org parallels the disorder that surfaced at Google when it fixed up its smart software operation or tried to deal with the clash of the wizards in that estimable company. Pushing boxes around on an organization chart is honorable work, but that management method may not deliver the agentic integration some people want.
The conclusion I drew from The Register’s article is that the big AI push and the big players’ need to pop up a conceptual level in smart software is perceived as urgent. Costs? No problem. Hallucination? No problem. Hardware availability? No problem. Software? No problem. A re-organization is obvious and easy. No problem.
Stephen E Arnold, January 14, 2025
Apple and Some Withering Fruit: Is the Orchard on Fire?
January 14, 2025
A dinobaby-crafted post. I confess. I used smart software to create the heart wrenching scene of a farmer facing a tough 2025.
Apple is a technology giant, a star in the universe of bytes. At the starter’s gun for 2025, Apple may have some work to do. For example, I read “Apple’s China Troubles Mount as Foreign Phone Sales Sink for 4th Month.” (For now, this is a trust outfit story, but a few months down the road the information may originate from the “real” news powerhouse Gannet. Imagine that.) The “trusted” outfit Reuters stated:
Apple, the dominant foreign smartphone maker in China, faces a slowing economy and competition from domestic rivals, such as Huawei…. Apple briefly fell out of China’s top five smartphone vendors in the second quarter of 2024 before recovering in the third quarter. The U.S. company’s smartphone sales in China still slipped 0.3% during the third quarter from a year earlier, while Huawei’s sales rose 42%, according to research firm IDC.
I think this means that Apple is losing share in what may have been a very juicy market. Can it get this fertile revenue field producing in-demand Fuji Apples to market? With a new US administration coming down the information highway, it is possible that the iPhone’s pop up fruit stand could be blown off the side of the main road.
An apple farmer grasps the problem fruit blight poses. Thanks, You.com you produced okay fruit blight when ChatGPT told me that an orchard with fruit blight was against is guidelines. Helpful, right?
Another issue Apple faces in a different orchard regards privacy. “Apple to Pay $95 Million to Settle Siri Privacy Lawsuit” reports:
Apple agreed to pay $95 million in cash to settle a proposed class action lawsuit claiming that its voice-activated Siri assistant violated users’ privacy…. Mobile device owners complained that Apple routinely recorded their private conversations after they activated Siri unintentionally, and disclosed these conversations to third parties such as advertisers.
Yeah, what about those privacy protections? What about those endless “Log in to your Facetime” when our devices don’t use Facetime. Hey, that is just Apple being so darned concerned about privacy. Will Apple pay or will it appeal? I won’t trouble you with my answer. Legal eagles love these fertile fields.
I don’t want to overlook the Apple AI. Yahoo recycled a story from Digital Intelligence called “The Good and Bad of Apple Intelligence after Using It on My iPhone for Months.” The Yahoo version of the story said:
I was excited to check out more Apple Intelligence features when I got the iOS 18.2 update on my iPhone 16 Pro. But aside from what I’ve already mentioned, the rest isn’t as exciting. I already hate AI art in general, so I wasn’t too thrilled about Image Playground. However, since it’s a new feature, I had to try it at least once. I tried to get Apple Intelligence to generate an AI image of me, in various scenarios, to perhaps share on social media. But every result I got did not look good to me, and I felt it had no actual resemblance to my image. It kept giving me odd-looking teeth in my smiles, hair that looked nothing like what I had, and other imperfections. I wasn’t expecting a perfect picture, but I was hoping I would get something that would be decent enough to share online — dozens of tries, and I wasn’t happy with any of them. I suppose my appearance doesn’t work with Apple’s AI art style? Whatever the reason is, my experience with it hasn’t been positive.
Yep, bad teeth. Perhaps the person has eaten too many apples?
Looking at these three allegedly accurate news stories what do I hypothesize about Apple in 2025:
- Apple will become increasingly desperate to generate revenue. Let’s face it the multi-thousand dollar Vision Pro headset and virtual Apple TV may fill the Chinese iPhone sales hole.
- Apple simply does what it wants to do with regard to privacy. From automatic iPhone reboots to smarmy talk about accidentally sucking down user data, the company cannot be trusted in 2025 in my opinion.
- Apple’s innovation is stalled. One of my colleagues told me Apple rolled out two dozen “new” products in 2025. I must confess that I cannot name one of them. The fruitarian seemed to be able to get my attention with “one more thing.” Today’s Apple has some discoloration.
Net net: The orchard needs a more skilled agrarian, fertilizer, and some luck with the business climate. Failing that, another bad crop may be ahead.
Stephen E Arnold, January 14, 2025
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