🦔Microsoft canceled its internal Claude Code licenses this week after token-based billing made the cost untenable, even for a company with effectively infinite cloud resources. Uber's CTO sent an internal memo warning the company burned through its entire 2026 AI budget in just four months. American AI software prices have jumped 20% to 37%, and GitHub (owned by Microsoft) is dropping flat-rate plans for usage-based billing across its products.
My Take
The AI subsidy era is ending in real time. The same company that put $13 billion into OpenAI and built the Azure infrastructure powering most of Anthropic's compute just looked at the bill from a competitor's coding tool and decided it was not worth paying. That is not a productivity failure on Anthropic's end. Token-based pricing is forcing every enterprise customer to confront the actual cost of running these models at scale, and the number turns out to be far higher than the flat-rate experiments suggested.
This ties directly to my Gemini Flash post yesterday. Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google all raised effective prices in the last six months. Enterprises that built workflows assuming AI costs would keep falling are now watching annual budgets evaporate in months. Two outcomes look likely from here. Either enterprises scale back AI usage to fit budgets, which slows the revenue ramp the labs need to justify their valuations ahead of IPOs, or the labs cut prices and absorb the losses, which makes the unit economics worse at exactly the wrong moment. Both paths land in the same place, the numbers stop working, and somebody has to take the writedown.
Hedgie🤗
👉What the Insta360 Mic Pro offers:
✅19.7 grams 🎙
✅ Customization via 6-Color E-Ink
✅ 10 hours of battery life
✅ 32 GB of storage (up to 45 hours of 32-bit Float)
✅ Cardioid/Figure-8/Omni
📡 Bluetooth 5.4 and 2Mbps
DJI Mic 2, you’ve got some serious competition. 😉🔥
🔥 $442K+ on Proxmark5 and still climbing!
Thank you!
We’re now 73% toward the $600k Transparent PCB Namecard stretch goal.
Only 27 days left at early-bird pricing.
This is the last chance to get the Iceman Edition this cheap.
https://t.co/4eSfDurSBk
#Proxmark5#RFID #Pentesting #HardwareHacking #DEFCON
👉Forget about those boring black boxes. The Insta360 Mic Pro is coming soon:
✅E-Ink
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Not a bad🫣
Oh this is clean. A searchable, filterable RFID attack reference.
HID Prox, MIFARE, EM4100, animal tags, organized by frequency AND tool (Proxmark, Flipper, Chameleon...). This is the cheat sheet that used to live in your notes app.
Bookmark it!
you'll thank yourself on your next physical engagement.
https://t.co/XJL1B5tbkR
SOMEONE BUILT A MAP THAT SHOWS EXACTLY WHERE EVERY POWER PLANT, TRANSMISSION LINE, SUBSTATION & DATA CENTER SITS ON THE US GRID
all on one interactive map. all free
you can see how the grid is laid out... where the datacenters cluster... which transmission corridors carry the load... where the high-capacity connection points are
https://t.co/bRWJj6OA5P
zoom into any region and the whole picture comes into focus why energy costs what it costs, why data centers go where they go, why some states are power exporters and others aren't
this is the kind of infrastructure visibility that used to require expensive industry reports
now it's one tab
🚨RESEARCHERS JUST MATHEMATICALLY PROVED THAT AI LAYOFFS WILL DESTROY THE ECONOMY.. AND EVERY CEO ALREADY KNOWS IT.. BUT NONE OF THEM CAN STOP..
Two researchers from UPenn and Boston University just published a paper called "The AI Layoff Trap"..
They proved something terrifying..
Every company replacing workers with AI is also firing its own customers.. Every laid-off employee is someone who used to spend money.. When enough people lose their jobs.. Nobody can afford to buy anything.. And the companies that fired everyone go bankrupt selling products to an economy with no purchasing power..
Every CEO can see this coming.. The math is obvious.. Fire workers.. Lose customers.. Lose revenue.. Collapse..
But here's the trap..
No company can afford to stop..
If you don't automate.. Your competitor will.. They cut costs.. Undercut your prices.. Steal your market share.. And you die anyway..
So every company automates.. Knowing it's collectively suicidal.. Because the alternative is dying alone while everyone else survives..
It's a Prisoner's Dilemma.. And the researchers proved it mathematically..
The numbers are already stacking up..
Block cut nearly half its 10,000 employees this year.. CEO Jack Dorsey said AI made those roles unnecessary and that "within the next year, the majority of companies will reach the same conclusion"..
Salesforce replaced 4,000 customer support agents with AI..
Goldman Sachs deployed an AI coder that lets one senior engineer do the work of a five-person team..
Over 100,000 tech workers were laid off in 2025 alone.. AI was cited as the primary driver in more than half the cases..
80% of US workers hold jobs with tasks susceptible to AI automation..
And here's what should scare policymakers..
The researchers tested every proposed solution..
Universal Basic Income.. Doesn't fix it.. It raises living standards but doesn't change a single company's incentive to automate..
Capital income taxes.. Don't fix it.. They change profit levels but not the per-task decision to replace a human..
Worker equity and profit sharing.. Narrows the gap but can't close it..
Collective bargaining.. Can't fix it.. Because automating is a dominant strategy.. No voluntary agreement between companies is self-enforcing..
Only one thing works.. A Pigouvian automation tax.. A per-task charge that forces every company to pay for the demand it destroys when it fires a worker..
The researchers call it a "Red Queen effect".. Better AI doesn't solve the problem.. It makes it worse.. Because every company sees a bigger market share gain from automating faster than rivals.. But at the end.. Everyone automates equally.. The gains cancel out.. And the only thing left is more destroyed demand..
The paper's conclusion is devastating..
This isn't a transfer from workers to company owners.. Both sides lose.. Workers lose their income.. Companies lose their customers.. It's a deadweight loss that harms everyone..
And no market force can break the cycle..
The AI layoff trap isn't a prediction.. It's already happening.. And the math says it won't stop on its own.
JUST IN - FBI director Kash Patel's personal email address hacked, says DOJ. This comes only a day after Iran-linked Handala hacking group claims it breached the FBI: "Soon you will realize that the FBI's security was nothing more than a joke."
The day before yesterday, the U.S. government registered https://t.co/UiMCGacSWr and https://t.co/y4r7o1t5qm.
When asked about it, White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly told DefenseScoop (h/t @BrandiVincent_) in an emailed statement to “Stay tuned!” with an alien emoji 👽.