Can someone explain to me why the backlog would happen? Why they didn't have systems to protect from such a basic DOS attack?

Notice how on TikTok, even accounts you follow sometimes will show up with the + sign, begging you to click Follow eventhough you are already following them. This isn't a bug, rather, it's dark UX tricks to keep you trained on clicking the follow button.

On Meta (be it Facebook or Instagram), you only need to be sympathetic to what people in Gaza are experiencing to begin to see the censorship. It's blatantly obvious.

Coming back to TikTok, similar to Meta, they have crafted an incredible algorithm that will keep you glued to your phone. We have no idea if they have adjusted the levers to increase dissent in young people in the West. Just because they are saying they haven't, or we have not been able to prove that they haven't, doesn't mean they won't. I can tell you with a guarantee that if Instagram or YouTube were allowed to operate in China, they would certainly use these levers to increase dissent against the CCP. We already have an example of what these companies are doing to censor certain content and boost others in places like India and Pakistan.

In general, all of these social media companies are this generations cigarette companies. We need heavy regulation from congress. We need to take tech's lobbyist money and not do their bidding.

We need to shutdown lunatics like Andreessen Horowitz and more.

Ex. Music. Bread and butter for Alexa. Conversion opportunity to Amazon Music. Conversion opportunity for podcasts, news, so much... Try asking Alexa to play new music, something different, slow jazz, I didn't like that song, play something like blah, etc... Most of these queries do not work. It's such a POS.

Ex. Proactive notifications. Alexa routinely informs me that diapers or something else from my routine purchases is likely running out and I should refill them. I've used this feature 100s of times in the 7+ years I've owned Alexa. I'm sure the LTV I've given Amazon is hell a lot more than most Alexa users. That being said, I can get so many more recommendations than just the 1-2 things in my routine purchase history.

I could go on and on. Ultimately, like many products by large companies, Amazon had a product that received early success because of novelties like hands-free music, alarms, timers - but never found more utility beyond that. Instead of doubling down on discovery, they worked on scaling out the platform and opening it up to 3P developers. The platform they exposed was limited in frustrating ways, and ultimately did not help them discover any hidden gem skills.

IMO the smart home virtual assistant is ripe for easy disruption. Throw out Amazon's model and use ChatGPT / Anthropic instead. Keep the 3P plugins. This fusion would be a sufficiently better product than what's in the market today.

While I'm annoyed about the money, I have an improved quality of life in Toronto. My wife and I were raising kids alone in Seattle whereas we have a village here to co-parent with. I also found much more cultural identity and roots here in Toronto compared to Seattle. I also prefer the climate and politics of Toronto more than PNW. I certainly miss the hikes, but we make that up with non-stop beach trips.

If I can achieve the same financial security here in Toronto that I had in Seattle, I would never move. Unfortunately, this has been difficult to achieve, but I'm confident I can get there.

I learned that at most trades companies, there are folks with over 20 years of experience and then newbies. No one in between. Every economic cycle, the folks with 5-10 years of experience get laid off. Apprentice are rarely trained by the old dog and put out in the field with minimal experience.

Perhaps this is a Toronto, Ontario problem. Ontario is going through a major economic cycle that has almost everyone feeling quite hard times. Or perhaps this is just the negativity that is Reddit. There is also the BS that income waged workers pay double, if not more, taxes that businesses or self employed workers.

AI is here to help us work smarter. Hopefully this creates time to work on more interesting & impactful problems thereby improving productivity. The worst case scenario is if people just end up working more on meaningless tasks.

Remember the "let me google it for you" meme? Not very different if all the manager has to do is ask Duet AI to pull together this report instead of asking you.

I'm digressing. This use case really triggers me.

"Imagine you’re a financial analyst and you get an email at 5 PM from your boss asking for a presentation on Q3 performance by 8 AM tomorrow — we’ve all been there"

1. We haven't all been there. This is not a common use case at all. 2. This is toxic AF. We shouldn't normalize this behavior. Someone does this with me, I will politely tell them to F off instead of relying on Duet AI to have it done before dinner. 3. There's no way Duet AI can handle all the heavy lifting for such a major document without human intervention. Whereas the use case of getting a meeting summary does not need as much human intervention. It's interesting they start with this case.

There are a lot of promises here as well that require a lot more infra than just switching on Duet AI: "And because sometimes it’s hard for remote participants to see everyone in the conference room, or their colleagues appear far away and out of focus, we’re rolling out dynamic tiles and face detection that give attendees in a meeting room their own video tile with their name"

You need people to opt-in to facial reco. You need potentially multiple camera angles, or minimally high quality cameras that allow to to perform the crop and optical zoom into people's faces. You need in-room attendees to sign off on the digital zoom into their faces. People don't switch on their cameras at home because of this, yet in the room they will be ok? Not so sure about that.

All in all. Great feature availability. But it needs a balance of realism and how this will all come together.

There's a huge difference between TikTok's FYP and Following Page and Friends page. While content is all user generated, I expect something different from each of these three modes.