An interesting and well-written piece that shows why broadcast TV cannot become mobile TV, and broadcast shopping like QVC isn't mobile shopping like TikTok.
This reminds me of the truism that no railroad company became an airline, even though they were already rich and in the transportation business.
> the truism that no railroad company became an airline
I don't know if that's a truism. A railroad company could have tried merging with an airline. That they didn't doesn't make it obvious that it wouldn't have worked. (Air-rail alliances started becoming a thing twenty years ago [1].)
LLMs are being used in all those apps but it's inside the codebase where you're not going to see it. They either use AI-assisted development or they have app features that call an LLM from the inside.
None of those are "ChatGPT apps" which is just a poor and early UI layer over regular chat. No one wanted to use those or make them for other people.
> No one wanted to use those or make them for other people.
but why not?
personally i find it much easier to track my food, workouts, daily diaries etc. in ChatGPT/Claude as I already use them for everything else. no need for a standalone app when the app could simply plugin into ChatGPT.
wondering if it's a UX problem or a more fundamental one like platform risks
It not really even an app. It's just a thread. You'd be better off with something like Cursor where you are reading and writing files on your own drive.
He gave several real examples. The idea is that you have to audit your own agent file and other harness settings. He can't provide an example from your file and one from his doesn't help make the point any better.
Whose pricing is above API rates? Not Cursor. It's 100% at each model provider's published API rate. With a bigger sub, you get it cheaper than that.
Cursor makes a ton of money because the product is great. It's easily the most sophisticated harness out there, and it isn't an IDE anymore. It's an agent dashboard since version 3.
Suffice it to say it's not all idiot money being thrown at them by users.
It's not an expansion. The first line says they sold the shoe business which will continue under someone else. The company is changing names and its line of business.
That doesn't cause it to make any more sense. The leadership tab still shows the CEO is the same guy from the past 5 years, previously the President of Mountain Hardware and before that a VP at North Face, with a degree in Forestry Science.
What on earth qualifies this guy or this company to build out GPU as a service infrastructure?
The CTO is at least, as should be expected of any CTO, an actual engineer with a technical background, but he's been working in engineering leadership for Allbirds for the past 9 years, and as far as I'm aware, at no point in that duration did they own or operate data centers.
Skills can't seriously be that fungible that a complete lack of any domain-relevant experience means nothing. I have no idea how reputable "Chardan" is as an investment bank, but how on earth did they sell this to investors and who did they sell to? What on earth is a "convertible financing facility?" If I web search that, every result is a press release about Allbirds. Did this bank invent some new form of finance that only Allbirds has ever used?
You’re assuming this is a good faith effort to rebuild the company.
I have no proof of this, but if I were a gambling man, I’d bet this is a pump and dump opportunity for insiders who are stuck with large volumes of stock that has bottomed to almost nothing since the IPO.
FYI "convertible" instruments aren't new, I suspect its just unusual phrasing that's tripping up your search. "Convertible bonds" or "convertible securities"
are more common terms IME. Either way it's typically a bond/security that can be held _or_ converted at a preset strike price. Eg a convertible bond has a slightly discounted coupon (interest) for the holder. The bond can be converted to a fixed number of shares (equity), effectively at at a pre defined price/share. If the per-share price appreciates the bond holder can convert at capture the vallue above their strike price. If the associated equity falls (or doesnt appreciate) the bond holder 1) holds to maturity 2) is senior to equity holders for recovery.
In short, the allbirds financiers are taking a slightly reduced interest payment in exchange for the option to capture stock price appreciation if the gamble finds a greater fool.
Sure. Several times I turned on a light in a room with a person alone or a person with a dog and got a red box and kicked out. I think it happens around the 3rd frame. Ping me if you want more help testing. I have the same issues with my apps!
This reminds me of the truism that no railroad company became an airline, even though they were already rich and in the transportation business.
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