this post was submitted on 31 May 2025
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Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.

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[–] nightsky@awful.systems 17 points 1 day ago (1 children)

160,000 organisations, sending 251 million messages! [...] A message costs one cent. [...] Microsoft is forecast to spend $80 billion on AI in 2025.

No problem. To break even, they can raise prices just a little bit, from one cent per message to, uuh, $318 per message. I don't think that such a tiny price bump is going to reduce usage or scare away any customers, so they can just do that.

[–] sturger@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

How can we sell such incredible, one-of-a-kind pieces of priceless art at such low, low prices? Easy! We sell in volume!

/s

[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 15 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Remember Stephen Elop of Nokia’s “burning platform” memo in 2011?

I was entering high school in 2011, so no.

Nokia adopted Windows Mobile as their phone operating system — which failed in the market. Nokia used to own the phone market.

The only real experience I have with Nokia is my dad's Nokia 3310 (which he exclusively uses as an alarm clock these days) and nonstop memes about the 3310's supposed indestructibility. Kinda wild to me that Nokia once ruled the entire goddamn phone market.

Nadella going AI is going to be Facebook going Metaverse at the best.

And at worst...well, by my guess, its gonna be "Microsoft accidentally brings forth the Year of the Linux Desktop"

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 14 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

Nokia had great hardware, but crappy software (and I say that as a heavy Series 60 user back in the day). In a parallel world, Windows Mobile could have ridden that hardware to a glorious future, but it was transparent that Elop's acquisition was just part of a Byzantine internal Microsoft play.

[–] Hotzilla@sopuli.xyz 2 points 38 minutes ago* (last edited 38 minutes ago)

Well, the annoying part is that the burning platform talked by Elop was Maemo/Meego, which was full Linux. Without Elop and Microsoft we would have pure Linux running on phones today. Now we are stuck between two closed source OS for phones.

It was running Qt, so basically any KDE app would be portable on it quite easily.

I was working with Maemo and Qt Symbian in Nokia while this happened, and it makes me sad.

[–] bitofhope@awful.systems 8 points 1 day ago

The Burning Platform debacle was huge where I live and I remember it quite well.

It seems that Microsoft was planning on coasting on brand recognition, while the public correctly noticed the lack of any real synergy between Windows Phone and Microsoft's desktop computer software. Nokia's hardware was indeed top notch, but WP lacked a killer app, or indeed most apps at all. It missed the train and developers ignored it in favor of iOS and Android.

I doubt MeeGo would have managed to recapture the dominance Nokia had on the pre-iPhone market, but at least nerds like me would have vastly preferred it.

[–] timewarp@lemmy.world 9 points 1 day ago

Never underestimate the ability of these companies ability to lobby government officials.