This was so random. There are only two reasons for shutdowns in fintech. 1 - you run out of money. 2. some sort of regulatory/underwriting/compliance issues. I hope its former.
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]
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