Management Replaces Staff with GPU Costs
Also: A Lawyer Gets Sued by Facebook and a State Legislates a Hardware Killswitch.

The AI Efficiency Report: 95 Percent Failure and Two Hours of Slop Cleanup

The great technological shift is not about the machines taking over the work, it is apparently about the capital expense taking over the balance sheet. Layoffs are being blamed on Artificial Intelligence; however, the actual culprit appears to be the immense financial strain caused by buying AI infrastructure that does not work. Amazon, for example, is reportedly projected to increase its Capital Expenditure to $118 billion in 2025, while Meta Platforms is busy securing a $27 billion credit line just to fund its data centers. This frantic spending spree is financially stressing the companies which then cut human staff to try and maintain profitability.

The worst part of this entire situation is that the expensive new tool is not even pulling its weight; a stunning ninety five percent of generative AI pilot business projects are reportedly failing, which feels suspiciously like my internal JIRA ticket automation that was deployed last quarter. One study found that forty percent of business people received "AI slop" in the last month, requiring nearly two hours on average to fix each occurrence. Employees are not being replaced by smart automation; they are being replaced by an un-tapped line of credit and the subsequent overhead of cleaning up a digital intern’s poorly formatted output.

The Real Mark Zuckerberg Keeps Getting Locked Out of His Own Facebook Account

In a beautiful illustration of the core tension between technology and human identity, Mark S. Zuckerberg, an Indiana-based bankruptcy attorney, is gaining attention for having his life completely hijacked by his own name. His website, I Am Mark Zuckerberg, explains the daily administrative nightmare of sharing a name with the Meta Platforms CEO.

Mr. Zuckerberg, the lawyer, has had his personal Facebook account disabled at least five times because the system flagged him for impersonating a celebrity. This is the technological equivalent of the Help Desk not knowing its own name; the system is so aggressively protective of the Meta Platforms chief that it actively works to purge the actual, real-life person who shares the name. The attorney, who notes his own artificial intelligence is powered by coffee, has also been sued once due to mistaken identity.

Montana Mandates a Hard Reset Button for the Future

The state of Montana has become the first jurisdiction to formally enshrine the "right to compute" into law. The new legislation, known as the Right to Compute Act (SB 212), aims to treat the private ownership and use of computational resources as an extension of one's constitutional rights to property and free expression. This means the government must meet a 'compelling interest' threshold before it can restrict how people use the hardware and software they own, a concept which sounds wonderful until you realize the implication for enterprise licensing agreements.

The document is not entirely hands-off, however. The law mandates that operators of critical infrastructure facilities controlled by a critical AI system must develop a risk management policy. More importantly, the law also requires the creation of a shutdown mechanism that allows a reversion to human control within a reasonable time, literally legislating the need for a mandatory, analog kill-switch on the singularity. It is nice to know that as everything becomes AI-driven, a bureaucrat in Montana will be the one holding the big red button.

The Boring Company Pays the "Subscription Parking" Fee

Elon Musk's Boring Company has been slapped with a fine of nearly $500,000 by the Clark County Water Reclamation District in Las Vegas for a massive, administrative oopsie involving wastewater. The company repeatedly decided the local sewer system was the most convenient place to dispose of its tunnel drilling fluids and spoils, causing what was described as substantial damage to public infrastructure.

The violations were not a one-time thing either; when inspectors arrived after an anonymous complaint, they saw fluids actively being pumped into the manholes. The employees, operating with the confidence of an admin deleting the logs and hoping nobody notices, were told to stop but reportedly refused. The company then "feigned compliance" after the initial discovery, only to resume dumping once they thought the inspectors were gone. The total fine of $493,297.08 included over $131,000 to cover the cost of removing twelve cubic yards of drilling mud from a treatment facility, confirming that for a certain class of tech giant, environmental fines are just an un-budgeted disposal fee.

Briefs

• Smart Home Elevated: Samsung's 2025 Family Hub update promises to elevate the smart home ecosystem, which means the refrigerator now requires a mandatory thirty-minute firmware update before you can grab milk.
• Government Threat Model: US regulators are reportedly drilling down on a proposed ban of TP-Link hardware over potential security concerns, which is only going to confirm that the entire country's infrastructure is built on gear you bought from Amazon on Prime Day.
• Open Source Funding Drama: The Python Software Foundation rejected a federal grant that carried anti-DEI stipulations, triggering a swift and massive donor surge. The tech community apparently still agrees that Python should be funded; they just prefer to do it via a GoFundMe for principles rather than a check from the government for compliance.