Microsoft increased office software cost.
Also eyes for crypto and potato-price collusion.

The New Assistant Does Not Know Who You Are

Microsoft recently performed what the industry calls a "re-platforming," which in this case meant they took the existing Microsoft 365 suite, added a large language model named Copilot, and then initiated a price increase of at least thirty percent with no prior warning to the customer base. The new service is not enjoying a seamless rollout; a central complaint is the inability for users with both a work and a personal account to use the Copilot features consistently, leading to frustrating and frequent error messages (The Microsoft 365 Copilot launch was a total disaster). This is the corporate equivalent of installing an automatic coffee machine that requires a separate login for every cup of coffee.

Adding to the general workplace malaise, many users who are now paying more are finding that Copilot features are not only inferior to other available services, but are also being forced upon them. The AI is often on by default in applications like Word, and while you can flip the virtual switch there, other critical tools such as Excel and PowerPoint reportedly do not yet have an easy user-facing opt-out mechanism (The Microsoft 365 Copilot launch disaster). Management insists this new assistant is designed to enhance productivity; it is currently only enhancing the collective office frustration over software that feels aggressively incomplete. Leaked adoption numbers also suggest that the tool is experiencing a commercial failure, with paying subscriber figures described as a disaster that undermines the company's AI narrative (Microsoft 365 Copilot Faces Commercial Failure Amid Low Adoption).

Algorithm-Enabled Collusion is Now 'Optimal Pricing'

The latest legal loophole for large corporations can be summed up simply: it is not a crime if you do it with an app (It's not a crime if we do it with an app). This brilliant legal theory suggests that classic, illegal price fixing is now perfectly fine, provided that the collusion is managed by a third-party software service. Large food cartels, humorously dubbed "Big Potato" in a report, are utilizing data brokers like Potatotrac to share commercially sensitive information; the broker then returns "optimal pricing" advice to all competitors simultaneously.

The result is that prices for common goods rise uniformly, far exceeding inflationary cost increases, and remain high long after the initial shock has passed. The key distinction, according to the legal department, is that no one sat around a table to conspire; an algorithm did the conspiring, and therefore the entire process is simply an advanced pricing strategy (What is the method of circumventing the law by manipulating market prices, which is supposed to be illegal, through an app). In short, all price-fixing is now a subscription service, and the entire food industry has successfully outsourced its antitrust exposure to a server farm in a cold climate.

HR Department Bans Biometric Sign-On Bonus

The Brazilian National Data Protection Authority, or ANPD, issued a preventive ban against the Sam Altman co-founded technology firm, Tools for Humanity, which runs the Worldcoin project (Brazil bans Sam Altman's tech firm Tools for Humanity from paying for iris scans). Tools for Humanity was offering its Worldcoin cryptocurrency tokens to citizens in exchange for submitting to an iris scan using their proprietary Orb device. The goal is to build a "Proof of Personhood" system, which is a very Silicon Valley term for a global biometric database.

The ANPD determined that offering a monetary incentive invalidates the "free and unequivocal consent" required for sensitive biometric data, especially when targeting vulnerable populations (Brazil bans TFH from offering compensation for biometric data). Essentially, a government decided that you cannot bribe people into a dystopian future. The company insists that no personal data is stored and the images are immediately deleted after the initial Proof of Personhood is generated; however, Brazil correctly pointed out that money complicates what should be a simple voluntary surrender of one's digital self.

Briefs

• Startup Attrition Report: A YC Graveyard index has logged 821 defunct Y Combinator startups. Statistically, this is about the same failure rate as a batch of new printers delivered to a call center.
• Inter-Office IT Feud: Technical experts continue to debate the hard numbers on Wayland versus X11 input latency. This is the Linux version of arguing over whether Outlook or Gmail is slowing down the team's ticket response time.
• Cosmic Waste Management: Astronomers officially "deleted" an asteroid from their system because it turned out to be Elon Musk's floating Tesla Roadster. This incident confirms that space debris is not only a terrestrial problem, but also a matter of existential absurdity.