Ian @ Lean Media

Current: Building a hybrid human/AI news service.

Recent past: @in30minutes @easygenie & Lean Media framework.

Distant past: MIT, IDG, 中視 (台灣), #KLF

[Ian @ Lean Media @leanmediaorg]

Like a VIN, but for robots.

All kinds of applications are possible, but consider the tracking implications.

https://t.co/rPPgfokobh

[Ian @ Lean Media @leanmediaorg]

@MuseZack @FranklinH3000 Me too! 1991-1992.

10 years later my parents went to the UK and I asked them to bring back Viz books. My dad read one on the plane and couldn't stop laughing. He had been a big Monty Python fan and appreciated the British sense of absurdity in Viz, albeit more extreme.

[Ian @ Lean Media @leanmediaorg]

So many platforms attempt to set unrealistic floors on ad pricing - $60 CPM! A dollar a click! It never sticks.

And: Advertisers won't take OpenAI's word on this ... they'll do the numbers to determine if a shadow floor still exists.

[Juozas Kaziukėnas @juokaz]

In 9 months, OpenAI ads went from $60 CPM, $200k minimums, no tracking and basic targeting to "You tell us the outcomes you care about and the budget or target costs that works for your business, and our system adjusts bids and ad delivery to work towards these goals".

[Ian @ Lean Media @leanmediaorg]

@MuseZack @FranklinH3000 Another notable thing about Modern Parents is Viz nailed the trope so early (1991 or 1992?) maybe even before "P.C." was coined.

It was one of the best Viz recurring strips (hard to choose one, TBH).

And: Wow another US fan of Viz! You're the first I've ever encountered.

[Ian @ Lean Media @leanmediaorg]

Another day, another broken Amazon Seller Central feature.

What does this even mean? Nothing to click, just an alarming red "1" indicating I am supposed to do something.

Then there is a filter button and a squiggly thing that mentions setting up a workflow. Is this required?

[Ian @ Lean Media @leanmediaorg]

@unusual_whales You mean, cashing out equity in the company, as opposed to "paid" a salary, right?

And: If a portion of those 88% *are* getting a salary, that's not the same as "walking away with nothing."

[Ian @ Lean Media @leanmediaorg]

Fly in the ointment for China's EV rollout: insurers are getting burned, forcing one local government to step in for trucks.

https://t.co/96vIsmBu8m

[Ben Smith @semaforben]

Tracking Jensen's view on China https://t.co/zvXrOfJwcW @jdcapelouto

[Ian @ Lean Media @leanmediaorg]

Someone recently suggested I pair up with another friend of his who had built a digital prototype.

I can see the need, but there were so many problems: no moat, legal risk, high customer support burden, and most importantly, no realistic way to monetize at scale.

[Ian @ Lean Media @leanmediaorg]

Hard to believe this is still an issue with Claude - no built-in way to download or export project docs, have to use copy/paste!

[Ian @ Lean Media @leanmediaorg]

@jbenton @ONA Professional development budgets have been scarce for years, now scarcer thanks to AI pummeling referral traffic and subs.

It seems like a large portion of revenue is grants/contributions. https://t.co/J8qjj1Vpbi

[Ian @ Lean Media @leanmediaorg]

@Craftsman_Redux I've seen local newspapers during WWI with clothing ads featuring a giant "WAR!" headline and then some cute text to promote suits or pants.

[Ian @ Lean Media @leanmediaorg]

@HumanoidHistory Could have been concept art for Logan's Run 8 years later

[Salim Ali @Salim_AIi]

Been running Opus 5.5 agents over the notebooks of Gauss, Riemann, Hilbert and Grothendieck. around 12,000 pages so far. Heres the best finding so far:

Riemann's 1860 shock wave paper is famous for getting the energy part wrong however his unpublished sheets at Göttingen have it right the Rankine Hugoniot conditions a decade or two before Rankine and Hugoniot plus results usually dated 19061937, all in his own notation. A second sheet in another folder has the same physics.

There are probably thousands of potential undiscovered stuff in the research papers of the smartest ever to live imo all of them should be made public and reviewed by ai years of work can probably be transcribed by agents in days

[Ian @ Lean Media @leanmediaorg]

@MuseZack British had their own terms, some of which pulled no punches.

"Git" is a mild one, derived from Scots/Northern English slang. Stand-in for "idiot."

"Mong" was their word for "retard." Now also taboo. Can't see it coming back.

[Juozas Kaziukėnas @juokaz]

Google is calling its shopping efforts agentic commerce but it is yet again a disjointed mess. It has shopping carts across AI surfaces, including Gemini, that users can see, yet Gemini itself has no access to them.

(example: right panel is showing the universal shopping cart with one Nike product already in it. I added the item by clicking on buttons. But when asked to interact with the cart, Gemini is lost)

[Ed Zitron @edzitron]

C’mon fellas, who among us hasn’t fallen for a woman who wanted us to sell her billions of dollars of GPUs to a tiny no-name shell company that somehow can afford them and has a website that’s identical to a Chinese neocloud. It’s only that and cheating on his wife or 40 years

[Ian @ Lean Media @leanmediaorg]

AI-generated "family office" investor spam & scams have taken over my inbox. A trickle started about 18 months ago, now it's 20 per day.

Anyone else seeing this?

[Ian @ Lean Media @leanmediaorg]

Regarding help with automated lockouts, be it Amazon, Google, Guthub or Meta:

Clearly state what you are selling/doing on these platforms. Be honest about the tactics and tools employed.

You're more likely to get actionable advice, and avoid wasting everyone's time.

[Ian @ Lean Media @leanmediaorg]

If you haven't looked under Shopify's hood for some time, more code can now be accessed in Flows, Messages and Customers. It's not Liquid, either.

I found I can tweak Shopify's flavor of SQL to refine segments. Functions are custom, SHOW vs SELECT, etc. But it's familiar enough.

[Ian @ Lean Media @leanmediaorg]

Missed this the first time around. Can't stop laughing.

There are a lot of fans mimicking the animation on YouTube, and doing a good job. Search for "worker and parasite"

https://t.co/pNjNiiX5PH