Meta needed consumer product along with foundational model. Manus gives them consumer product now. Pure speculation - must be 5B+ acquisition given their revenue run rate.
Communication, Trade, Commerce, Navigation, Education/Learning, are timeless needs for 100s of years. We buy and sell products all the time. And if something that improves our day to day shopping experience then we are solving for one of the core needs for us as humans.
Just because something makes shopping easier (and does this, really?) doesn’t mean it’s a smart or meaningful use of brainpower. Not every small convenience is worth solving when bigger problems are out there.
I have worked on 3D shopping - this seems like a huge step up from the world of photogrammetry to NeRFs to veo. When it comes to shopping - the realism matteres the most. Its not just about 3D model but shadows of light, texture, how it looks in different settings (for e.g. if it's furniture item in a larger scene). That's where the rubber meets the road. Regardless, I'd be curious - how fast can we create 3D models from existing imagery/videos.
This is incredible. I wonder if there will be medicine that cures idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. New class of drugs like Ofev stop worsening of the IPF but doesn't cure it.
As someone who likes to pay for things I use, I'm in the target customer/user group here. Couple of questions -
1. Is it only for FB or across all Meta services (FB, IG, WhatsApp, Oculus etc.)
2. Are ads going to be shown to verified/premium subscribers?
2nd point is particularly important. Especially if key value prop is about security and privacy. Looks like ARPU for Meta is $40 annually. So financially they can afford not to show ads to verified subscribers (annual sub of $100+). However, for verified subscribers it's only about "blue badge" I doubt there will be huge uptick unless it has other "sweetners" like "no ads" like youtube premium.
Overall - this is a great move by Meta. As it gives them ability to diversify revenue streams from ads where they are dependent on 3rd party platform privacy policies. YouTube premium has shown that social platforms can thrive with freemium model and they have roughly 80M subs ($1B+ revenue). Meta is trying to replicate same success with their brands.
YouTube Premium has a clear value prop though w/no ads—I’m still not sure what I’m getting for Meta Verified… a blue check? Direct support if I (probably won’t) need it?
Twitter Blue now allows for longer tweets, and there is (or at least was) cachet around having a checkmark, so there is some cultural heritage there.
Blue checks on Instagram have some clout, but I’ve never heard of someone eager for verification on Facebook. Protecting against impersonation is something these platforms should be doing for free.
If this removed ads across the platforms then maybe there’d be value in this, but I really just don’t understand who this is for or why anyone would pay $100+/year.
Blade Runner is one of those movies that gets better every time you watch. First time I watched it, I was thoroughly bored. But over the years I seem to appreciate the deeper meaning under it. It tries to present some fundamental questions - "what separates humans from robot/AI?, Is it the act of humans giving birth to other humans or feelings or deeds?, Is robot/AI superior to human or vice a versa?"
For those who find this movie boring, I'd recommend reading the book - "Do Androids dream of electric sheep" and maybe then watch the movie.
I was born after it was released yet I find it's imagery unique even now. Every frame feels like an elaborate painting/artwork. I can imagine how innovative might've been when it was first released in early eighties.
The strongest point of the movie was really the question of what makes us human. Given that it's stated that Rachael was a replicant, there's the contrast of her character with that of Deckard, who we are led to believe is human.
Rachael, being a human creation, is made to embody what we think makes us unique and precious, the best version of ourselves we could think of. A worthy successor even.
The tension with Deckard is that you have to question if his, say, minimalist expression of those qualities disqualify him as human, even though we know well enough that he's perfectly within the range of human expression in reality, and you would only doubt his humanity in light of the existence of artificial humans who visibly display a greater, more intense range of the human experience than him. Not that they have a choice, either.
Of course then comes the filmmaker to state his intention with it, which takes away the mystique, but eh the artist having a more boring opinion on a work than the people who enjoy it is something that has been quipped about since antiquity.
That's really impossible to say until you better define the criteria for success. Most profitable? Most units sold? Greatest dominance in its category? Longest reign? Most cultural relevance?
I don't think iPhone will win any single one of them individually. Grouping together some or all of them...maybe, but probably still no. Heck it might not even the most successful mobile phone ever.
0 overdraft fees. Yay. More like it. It will force major banks to rethink their overdraft fees as a revenue center. As someone who was not so well financially just a decade ago, overdraft fees seemed like penalty for being poor. When you are living paycheck to paycheck, you never know when your account will get overdrawn. And most evil thing was - bank will deny the charge because you didn’t have enough funds but will still charge you for $34 fee.
Some banks offer overdraft protection but it’s not obvious in lot of banking websites/apps in my experience and has been recent development. Plus - lot of people don’t understand the concept of overdrafts. They assume bank will deny if your account doesn’t have enough funds.
I’m surprised congress didn’t take action on overdraft fees as it mostly affects middle class and poor people.
Overdrafts have been opt-in by regulation since 2010. What banks have done is try to trick people into opting into "overdraft protection," which is really just the old system that allows a customer's checking balance to drop below 0:
https://www.wellsfargo.com/credit-cards/features/overdraft-p... As long as a customer takes no action or just says "no," they won't be allowed overdraw their checking balance.
Yes, but if you do not opt into overdraft, you will still be charged a “non-sufficient funds” (NSF) fee when the bank declines your transaction. And the NSF fee is usually higher than the overdraft fee.
This doesn't make any sense and is just a money grab on the poor and desperate, because there is absolutely no technical reason why declining a checking or debit card transaction should cost $35+ to process.
Back in the day (when we had to go to school uphill both ways), I met a banker who told me, "whatever your bank is charging you for a bounced check, it isn't nearly enough". Then he described how the system worked: the actual physical check had to be sent back from your bank, to the Federal Reserve branch of the receiving bank, then to your branch of the Federal Reserve bank, and then to your bank. Not electronically: I'm describing the movement of the actual physical paper check. So, there was a real cost to everyone for a bounced check and of course the person who wrote the bad check should pay. That makes sense.
Of course, this makes no sense in a world of electronic transfers via ACH. The banks that are still charging $35 for a bounced transfer are engaging in something barely more legal than theft.
Let alone the cost changes for a bounce, a decline is very different from a bounce.
But also that bounced check was in a big stack and probably got 3 minutes of employee time spent on it across all those institutions combined. I bet that banker was describing some exceptionally double-dipped charges if they thought it wasn't high enough.
Super interesting to learn this. I find that people often assume the things that don't make sense in today's world simply never made sense but often that's not the case! You're right, overdraft fees DO make sense in the world of physical checks the system just hasn't caught up (intentionally or not). Thanks for sharing!
Depends on the bank, I would imagine. Anecdotally, I've never been charged a fee for having a transaction declined because of insufficient funds, nor has my wife, and collectively that's ~5 different banks.
You opt-out or opt-in when you set up the account or anytime afterwards. I know only because I just setup checking for my teenage son and it was something the agent asked during the process. I pushed back and declined even though they gave me the end of the world spiel.
> It will force major banks to rethink their overdraft fees as a revenue center.
I wish that were true. For significantly more than 10 years I have worked for a major bank that does not charge fees for overdrafts that pull from a loan or savings account. I still have seen few signs of the major banks deciding to follow our lead.
The tyranny of scale creates terrible incentives in banking. Someone whose average balance hovers around $100/month might well cost the bank more money than they can earn off the balance, while someone with $10,000 is basically free.
Normally in services you charge more from the people who are more able to pay, because they'll be willing to spend more money for the same service. Yet in financial services and banking, the more money you have to spend on the services results in the lower fees and costs across the board.
I think if there's something that needs to be systematically altered to close wealth gaps, that's a fine place to start.
I remember over a decade ago or so my bank offered this new overdraft "protection" where you could setup an amount of money to use from your saving account to make up the difference in the event of overdraft. One day I cut a check that was $5 over what was in my checking account and found out there was a $75 fee for overdraft. It was not at all obvious in their advertising that fees would still apply. Never made that mistake again.
I've always thought overdraft protection was disturbingly like "fire protection". As in, three dudes come to your door, and the skinny one says "Nice place ya got here, be a shame if it burned down" while one of the beefy ones fiddles with a Zippo lighter.
Yeah, this is huge in an age where a lot of people are dinged through recurring subscriptions. You could rack up 5 or 6 charges and not even realize it, at which point you're out hundreds of dollars in overdraft fees.
I always struggled with this concept, why not stop at 0 when the account is overstretched? Here in Europe, for most people I would say, it's quite rare that the account goes to 0, and if it does, the transactions simply don't go through (unless it's a credit card). Isn't that asking for borrowing money at no fee? Don't get me wrong, I absolutely despise predatory bank charges, but wonder if that's a bit much to ask a a consumer (i.e. no charge for borrowing money I don't have?). Or is this just about the penalty fee for going into overdraft, and not the actual fee for loaning of money?
You used to be automatically opted into overdraft. Also, you could still get hit with an overdraft fee even if they rejected the charge. Banks also used to structure transactions to force overdrafts if they could. It was really bad.
In France many banks propose an overdraft service which is limited ( as an example, for a student with no banking history to 200 euros), and is basically a mini free loan. There are rules like you can't stay on overdraft more than X days ( iirc the only one I've seen is 30 days), in which case you pay a fee.
Being able to go below 0 is not tied to having a credit card. Nearly all debit cards issued in Europe can do this to. The only ones that don’t are things like Electron (systematic authorization), but they don’t play well with “fast” systems like motorway tollgates
So what happens here in the UK with my visa debit card, is that if I somehow go below 0 using it(very difficult, but it has happened before) then my bank sends me a text saying "hey, you have gone into unarranged overdraft, please pay in some money before tomorrow 3pm or we'll charge you a fee".
But of course, that implies that the bank isn't greedy.
> you never know when your account will get overdrawn
How? It’s not that hard to keep track of money in vs money out. I bet most of it is people that don’t understand it takes time for a cheque to clear or people that know an auto payment will overdraw their account but can’t do anything about it (ie: no money).
Overdraft fees should be illegal, especially for electronic transactions that get rejected.
maybe you have never lived through a period of sustained financial stress.
Yes, people in that situation understand that it takes a few days for a check to clear. One of those checks is your paycheck, which you need to clear to cover your other costs. The other is the check you wrote to the grocery store so you could eat, or your rent check. Which clears first? Did you time it right? What if your paycheck was delayed by a day?
Money in vs money out is very hard to keep track of when you don't have a buffer and you are always balancing empty.
I want to make an analogy to a seemingly simple buy known hard computer science problem, like resolving bugs caused by race conditions. Stuff which is simple if you can assume a single processing thread can become a nightmare when this assumption does not hold.
Banks used to structure these charges to create overdrafts whenever possible. They made it very difficult for you to see what your actual usable balance is.
They also used to be allowed to simply reject the transaction if you didn't have the money and still charge a $36 fee. It was insanity.
If your checking balance never reaches close to zero, you wouldn't notice this. I was a teenager in 2010 and definitely got hit with a bunch of overdraft fees. Banks know these fees are bullshit (even now, with increased regulation), that's why they're so quick to waive them at first.
In 2006 PayPal tried to deduct ~$500 dozens of times in a 48 hour period due to what was obviously a software bug. This resulted in me being overdrawn by around $900. No matter who I spoke to on the phone with Bank of America, nor which branch manager I met with in person, nobody could do anything to help me.
The most I accomplished was having a branch manager agree to waive 1 overdraft fee since I had never overdrafted my account before.
PayPal was even less helpful.
If I enable overdraft protection with my current bank (Wells Fargo) then they will charge me something like $17 to transfer money from my savings account to cover a charge that my primary account wouldn't have enough funds to cover.
This was a good reminder that I need to switch banks. Maybe I can find a good Credit Union in my area.
Anecdata:
I overdrafted a few months in to having my credit union account. The bank manager literally called me on the phone that day and asked if I could come in and cover the charges. I couldn't because I was too far away or out of town or something. Manager asked if I could come in the next day, to which I said yes, and did, and received no overdraft fees.
Another credit union (which I have since left) in my area was a total nightmare to do business with. 6-10 transactions were met with shocking resistance and frustration. Check reviews for your propsective bank if possible.
> This was a good reminder that I need to switch banks.
When you do, try your best to do what I've done ever since my mortgage processor screwed up and double charged me: never use anyone else's online services; do all the banking that's possible from your bank's online bill pay. At least that way the people who are pushing money out of your account via automation report up through the same people who manage the rest of your account ;)
Also, credit unions seem to be happy to let you maintain an account with a balance but no fee in a way that banks aren't. As a result, I have my main checking account that I use for everything, and a second account at a completely unrelated institution where I keep 30 days worth of cash. I spent $10 for che(que|ck)s and an hour of time getting it set up, which was well worth buying me a month of insulation against any number of risks.
You must not be familiar with the banks' previous tendency to rig the game and make sure the charges all hit your account and in the most profitable sequence before the deposit was applied?[0]
I maybe in the minority in this comments section but I genuinely enjoy working from office. I enjoy the social aspects. And commute never bothered me, albeit max commute for me was 45 mins (in the bay area). The only downside that I always felt was parking situation. Lot of my friends feel the same about office work.
I believe going forward there will be companies (and employees) in 2 camps -- remote first and hybrid/full in-office. And both types of companies will thrive. There are some people who enjoy going to office. And there are some people who enjoy working from home. And these people self select themselves for their respective jobs. And that choice is a good thing
> I maybe in the minority in this comments section but I genuinely enjoy working from office.
In my experience, plenty of people enjoy working from the office. Many of us enjoy a mix of in-office and WFH.
The comments sections on these articles tend to receive a lot of projection from people who simply hate their jobs and view WFH as a partial antidote to that.
That, and a lot of comments from people who have absurdly long commute times. In the past I've had good success with mixed WFH/in-office schedules and very flexible schedules to allow people to reduce their overall commute burden. For those who can't or won't relocate closer to the office, full remote companies are always an option. For everyone else, I suspect we'll see a trend toward returning to office for the sheer efficiency and communication improvements.
> The comments sections on these articles tend to receive a lot of projection from people who simply hate their jobs and view WFH as a partial antidote to that.
I resent the implication that I like WFH because I hate my job. I love my job, I'm good at it and I'm a bit of a workaholic by most standards (but wouldn't if I didn't genuinely love it). However, over my career, I found that I'm much more productive when working from home and this is not only for solo work but also for team work.
I believe that remote work works better for a certain type of people, I am good at making friends both in and out of work but I find too many extended social interactions from being in the same place to be draining and that they sap my productivity so I'm pretty much the text book definition of an introvert. That doesn't stop me as a manager from doing one on ones, interacting with my employees and calling or using slack but it does mean that sometimes when I have work where I need to concentrate, it's helpful to be at home. I have noticed in the past though that it takes a certain type of person to work well from home especially for long periods of time.
For context, I work in a remote first company, we were remote before the pandemic and before that I worked as a consultant so I've been remote for the last 10 years.
If a person says "a lot of people like X because they hate Y" they are not saying that if someone likes X it implies Y. When I catch myself inverting conditional probabilities into a frame that makes me feel attacked it usually means that I've got some other thing going on that has nothing to do with what the person said.
You are right, if one reads it very charitably but in my experience "a lot of people like X because they hate Y" is very often used as a writing device to make a point and denigrate X. In this case, no, it doesn't say that all people who work from home hate their jobs but it says that the probably of people working from home hating their jobs is higher without proof to further their argument. I've seen a lot of that on both sides of the fence in the WFH.
So, when Wework's CEO says that people who work from home are the least engaged, when I read in this thread that people who don't want to work from home must not like their family (paraphrasing), I take it to mean for what it is, an insult in order to push one's favoured view and I dislike this.
> The comments sections on these articles tend to receive a lot of projection from people who simply hate their jobs and view WFH as a partial antidote to that.
I would actually argue that this is backwards; I really like what I do for work, but I've found that the worst part of my job is dealing with office politics, constantly being interrupted, and (like you said) the commute/time commitment associated with being in the office.
At this point, it's an affront to be told that I can no longer do laundry during the day, finish chores in 10 minute periods between work, or spend the day with my family and/or in my private office in pajamas. Especially when it's just because a C-level somewhere in the branches of my company is feeling lonely and/or bored.
To say my love for remote work is a reflection of my job satisfaction is outright unfair; Life is simply better when I'm not subjected daily to the dreadful routine of going into the office.
That's a pretty unfair characterization of people who prefer to work remotely.
However, your last point about letting remote employees stay remote and letting people who prefer office-work to come into the office, I optimistically agree with. It works when everyone knows how to work with remote employees, and that the option is exactly that: an option. This last year and a half I hope has been helpful in getting everyone up to speed on that. It requires a cultural dedication, and assuming people have learned something from this remote experience, they'll carry that knowledge and flexibility with them going forward.
Mixed WFH/office should be 100% voluntary or it isn't truly mixed.
If I can't decide, with zero notice to my employer, to spend a month living and working on the other side of the country, it's not mixed. Anything that requires I live in driving distance of my company's office is not mixed.
Mixed means the office is there if anyone wants to come in and work from the office, but if someone wants to spend every month living in a different state (or even a different country, but I understand there are tax issues with that) they can do that too.
Alternately, I would accept something like the way oil rigs work, where instead of "you work X days a week at the office", it's "you work X months of the year at the office". I might be able to tolerate working from the office 3 months out of every year in the office if I can spend the other 9 months as a digital nomad.
(one thing this pandemic made me want to do is to not take travel for granted... I want to see, if not the world, at least the rest of this country before I die, and I'll be damned if my employer gets in the way of that)
If you have a job where you have to deal with physical things (servers, printers, etc) then you have to be in the office at least some of the time. Somebody working on software may never need to be in the office. The person who works in software may be able to voluntarily choose to work from home or in the office but the other person may not be able to choose. This is still a mixed office in my view.
I bet there's also more than a few people who work at places where work surges up to or beyond a full day but other days there's not much to do. If they're not empowered to actually treat their salaried job as a salaried job working from home is a great way to side step that issue.
People who love to work in the office often lack social skills to find friends outside of work and it is their substitute.
What I mean that everyone is different.
45 minutes means an hour and a half of your life every day that you don't get paid for and have to just throw away. (not only that but spending it doing one of the more dangerous things you can do in the US: driving.)
That combined with the ridiculous housing costs in the bay area makes me wonder why anyone (especially more numerate people) would tolerate not working remotely.
> makes me wonder why anyone (especially more numerate people) would tolerate not working remotely
Honest question: are there a substantial number of remote companies paying bay area FAANG salaries? You put in any decent time at these places and your total comp is at least $300-500k/yr.
You'd have to move somewhere really cheap for the math to work out in favor of that remote gig if you're leaving $100-300k on the table. Being in a place without state income tax moves the needle quite a bit, but you're still likely to come out behind.
Can you get a nice house in a good neighborhood near the office on $300k/year in the Bay Area these days? A lot of people in the Bay Area make a lot less.
There are just so many markets in the US where you’ll find a much nicer house in a better neighborhood for a fraction of the cost. If you already own a house in the Bay Area, you’re set. But otherwise, the paycheck begins to look a bit like an illusion.
My question was about FAANG-level salaries specifically though. You're probably not going to be able to buy a house near the office on that salary, no. But renting is still a viable option.
To provide an anecdote: my wife and I moved to the Bay Area from Kansas City and housing as a portion of after-tax income increased from 16% to 24% renting a smaller single-family house with the same bedroom count (significantly smaller yard though), but my income is over 3x higher out here. I might not be building equity by owning a home, but I have invested most of the additional income and am way ahead of my salaried homeowning friends in the midwest on net worth. Plus we get to spend most of our weekends in the mountains.
tl;dr: It really depends on your income, lifestyle, and priorities whether it adds up in the end.
I’m mid-career, work at FANG, and that is close to my salary. Perhaps my situation isn’t the norm because I moved into FANG from a very specialized job and got downleveled. But the point is that even within FANG, not everyone is pulling in $400k+.
The 3x income seems meaningless if I’m reading correctly. You ended up with 2x for a smaller house and yard, which to be fair is a reasonable tradeoff.
> That combined with the ridiculous housing costs in the bay area makes me wonder why anyone (especially more numerate people) would tolerate not working remotely.
Maybe some people genuinely like living in the bay area. It is a beautiful place.
> 45 minutes means an hour and a half of your life every day that you don't get paid for and have to just throw away. (not only that but spending it doing one of the more dangerous things you can do in the US: driving.)
I've never found commuting to be "thrown away", but I've never commuted by car. I can read, listen to a podcast, or just people watch on the train. Or when biking/walking to work, I get some exercise. Seems to me the problem isn't commuting, but car commuting.
I used to enjoy a mix of going to the office and working from home. It doesn't have to be one or the other. It's nice to feel respected and trusted to make the decision myself, and if someone asked me to be somewhere I usually woukd; but being forced just doesn't work (for me).
> I maybe in the minority in this comments section but I genuinely enjoy working from office.
I'm going to respond tongue-in-cheek: I also like working from office -- when it's empty or barely occupied, and I can control my whole environment and decide myself when to interrupt my work.
Getting away from a tight apartment, disturbing the routine a bit is nice.
There is always some selection bias in this regard when reading the hacker news comments. If you spend time talking to people online, you’re probably a lot less interested in the social aspect of work.
It seems M&A door is wide open for 2026.