LampBearer

pls try again tomorrow

[ABC News @ABC]

A group of orcas was captured on camera engaging in what scientists call "ram-to-fragment" behavior.

One whale holds a large sunfish and lets go just before another rams it at high speed, pulverizing the fish into thousands of pieces.

In a new study, scientists say the behavior could be a clever way to feed the young, a form of play, or a combination of both.

Read more: https://t.co/wEDtJZlvpt

[farbood @farbood]

I love when an AI screws up and says "that's on me"

Like, what's on you? The tokens? The gaslighting?

This is pure psych warfare. Admit mistake as only remuneration.

"that's on me...but the tokens are on you and I'll just hold on to the data. let me update that skill."

[Max Anderson @MaxAnderson]

As someone who has personally spent $500k / mo+ on Google Ads for years, I can tell you with certainty:

This revenue growth in Search is artificial & extremely unhealthy for Google’s business long term

Search volumes are declining as legacy search is being increasingly cannibalized by non-monetized LLM queries

Google’s response?

Manufacture revenue growth via short-sighted, highly extractive, customer-hostile tactics. I.e. charge advertisers more for lower quality clicks, including clicks they do not want and explicitly did not approve Google to charge them for

A few examples to illustrate:

For all of its history until recently, Google operated on a 2nd price auction model

I.e. if you bid $5 CPC and the next highest bidder bids $1 CPC, Google charged you $1.01 for the click (one penny more than the 2nd highest bidder) rather than the $5 you bid

This was a genius move by Google early on as it incentivizes advertisers to input their true maximum willingness to pay rather than trying to play the game of bidding low and constantly adjusting to try to stay just ahead of the next highest bidder while still not paying too much

However recently, Google silently deprecated the 2nd price auction and began charging advertisers as much as their bid and budget caps allow, regardless of what anyone else is bidding

It’s a short-sighted cash grab at the expense of the long term health of the advertiser ecosystem

Making thing worse, Google also recently nerfed keyword targeting precision

Google previously had precise keyword targeting settings that allowed advertisers pick individual search phrases to bid on, defined down to the character w/ exact match or phrase match targeting

This was one of the core features that made search advertising magic, enabling advertisers to run extremely precise campaigns based on exactly what their target customer typed

But now, even if you bid on a specific term or phrase using the strictest exact
-match targeting settings, Google will show your ad across 1000’s of unrelated keywords, labeling them as as “exact match (close variant)”

The definition of “close variant” means whatever they want it to and changes constantly. The result is advertisers get billed for clicks that are totally irrelevant to their business and that their targeting settings explicitly forbid Google from targeting. Google does it anyway and there’s no ability to turn this off

So now exact match is broad match, and broad match is just meaningless spam

This is all very bad for advertisers, but for Google, it allows them to show your ad and bill you for clicks across 1000x more searches that were previously going unmonetized (mainly because they’re garbage queries no one wants)

This is how you grow revenue atop declining search volumes

Lastly, and perhaps most egregiously, Google quietly stopped respecting budget caps by a factor of 2x. For example campaigns we’ve been running for years with $1000 daily budget caps suddenly began spending $2000+ per day

And the extra spend is entirely on the garbage keywords Google arbitrarily throws in as “exact match (close variants)” which have no value to our business, but can’t be turned off

Google offers no refunds nor any recourse for overspend or spend on keywords you explicitly did not target

These are not the actions of a healthy business. These are the actions of company whose core business is in decline but desperately needs to pump quarterly earnings so Wall Street will continue to fund insane capex while hopefully looking through their rapidly deteriorating negative free cash flow

Google operated a benevolent monopoly for the better part of 25 yrs

Meaning the value Google captured from Search was but a small fraction of the value it created, and that spread produced a potential energy that justified expectations of high earnings growth far, far into the future

This is now no longer the case

At the alter of AI capex, Google is sacrificing the golden goose

[LampBearer @ngweileen]

I’m certain that getting kicked out of their premises repeatedly is not going to increase Balaji’s credibility and prestige, so why would once be any different?

[wassieloyer @wassielawyer]

100% this tbh.

The concept of a network state wasn’t tested until Malaysia kicked them out.

Now Balaji has actually proven the thesis that you can build an internet society untethered to a physical location, with enough strength to negotiate alliances with nation states.

[LampBearer @ngweileen]

@ApurvaSanghi Ah, the Syedyssey will smash box office records for sure!

[Roland Gunn 🇺🇸 @RolandGunnTN]

Re: Choosing Texas
A local friend who worked for Spotify told me that their internal numbers had always shown Country as the most popular genre in U.S. by a significant margin but this data wasn’t advertised bc of the politics

[Aaron Teng 安伦 🐧 @AaronTeng]

You already use Malaysian products every day
You just don't know they're ours

Check a coin's price? That's @coingecko, the world's largest independent crypto data site

Confirm an @ethereum transaction? That's @etherscan.
Both built by Malaysians. Both still run out of KL. Not SF. Not Singapore

And the list is longer than you think:
→ @tn_pendle started @pendle_fi, one of the biggest protocols in DeFi
→ @sssionggg co-founded @JupiterExchange, the largest dex on @solana
→ @virtuals_io, a breakout AI-agent project this cycle, Malaysian too
→ @CarsomeMy, Malaysia's first tech unicorn, out of KL
→ @piktochart, millions of users worldwide, out of Penang

Most of the world has no idea

So why do we stay underrated?

Because we don't talk about it. We build the thing, then go quiet and start the next one. No launch thread, no victory lap, no "humbled and grateful to announce." Great instinct for building. Terrible one for getting noticed

And the one everyone knows?

@InsideGrab started in KL too, then moved to Singapore to scale

That's the pattern that should bother us. We keep producing world-class founders and keep exporting the scale

But crypto changed the math

Your market is global from day one now, not capped at 33 million. CoinGecko and Etherscan proved you can build a category from KL and never leave

So consider this me being loud about it, for once

Make Malaysia great 🇲🇾

Who's a Malaysian founder the world should know?
Tag them 👇

[LampBearer @ngweileen]

@DrewPavlou I understand your confusion since Australian law requires you to be fat and gay. If your CCP handler lets you, maybe you can visit some day

[chuck murphy, nitwit @Fozzybear_Lives]

I’m not a geopolitical expert, but I have concerns about how China’s economy will impact the world in the near future. And I don’t mean that China’s economic might will overcome everyone.

I am worried about it imploding.

[Bill Hunt @BillHuntBits]

The scary thing here is that IMAX can't build any more new projectors. (They apparently don't have a complete set of the engineering blueprints, most of the engineers who designed them have retired or passed away, and the parts supply chains have long since dried up.) So the goal for the foreseeable future is to upgrade and keep all the existing projectors running for as long as they can.

[LampBearer @ngweileen]

Hey I’ve seen this movie

[ɖʀʊӄքǟ ӄʊռʟɛʏ 🇧🇹🇹🇩 @kunley_drukpa]

Andy Burnham running the ‘Anglo-Peronism’ playbook as expected

[cold 🥑 @coldhealing]

Protein psychosis

[LampBearer @ngweileen]

@arcticinstincts A skit of Rishi Sunak and Sadiq Khan out-izzating each other by metaphorically wrapping themselves in the Union Jack would be peak

[LampBearer @ngweileen]

Balaji has given some interviews where he talks up the Indian diaspora, saying they should promote and protect each other as the Jewish diaspora does.
That also informs his thinking about his Network State.
If Balaji gets his way, our sovereignty is eroded. He helps his ppl in his closed community.
For that reason we ought to be more discerning.

[LampBearer @ngweileen]

Singaporeans really haven’t updated their mental model of Malaysia and it shows. The successful prosecution of Najib changed the national psyche. The club of countries that have done this is minuscule.

Ditch the boomer stereotypes guys!

[LampBearer @ngweileen]

Malaysia’s PM taught at Georgetown, recently signed a rare earths deal with the US. You would think that M’sia is a pro-US bulwark. But would be wrong.

Largely a function of CNN and other legacy media

[Crémieux @cremieuxrecueil]

Many of our allies have inaccurate views on China and America's respect for personal freedoms.

Only countries like Japan and Israel seem to be correct, whereas the citizens of countries like Bangladesh and Malaysia are highly delusional.

[LampBearer @ngweileen]

@cremieuxrecueil In truth your average Malaysian is just a CNN enjoyer

[LampBearer @ngweileen]

Could very well apply to one of these August gents too.

[Mark W. @DurhamWASP]

“For David Cameron to have been at the peak of political power for 6 years without a single arresting thought or amusing anecdote & without displaying any interest in, let alone knowledge of, history, philosophy or higher culture, is an achievement of a kind”

Theodore Dalrymple

[LampBearer @ngweileen]

@0x49fa98 What did you think Snapchat filters were for