This week on the GeekWire Podcast: Mark Zuckerberg’s 387-foot superyacht arrives in Seattle, cruising through the Ballard Locks and mooring on Lake Union just a short walk from Meta’s engineering center, just as it discloses nearly 1,400 layoffs in the Seattle area, about 20% of its local workforce. We try to wrap our heads around the spectacle, and the timing.
Meanwhile, robot pizza startup Picnic flames out and sells its assets to a mystery buyer. We trace the rise and fall of the Seattle company behind a machine that could help a single worker turn out up to 100 customized pizzas an hour. It’s the latest example of the challenges facing hardware startups, even as one enthusiastic customer is aiming to revive the idea nonetheless.
Corporate America confronts the rising cost of AI, with companies that once urged employees to experiment freely now watching their token bills double and triple. We consider the era of “free AI,” and what happens when the subsidies end and the real costs come due.
On a related note, we discuss the leaderboard-gaming practice known as “tokenmaxxing,” where employees spin up needless AI agents to boost their standings in internal rankings — a game that recently prompted Amazon to pull its internal Kiro leaderboard offline.
And finally, we return to the theme of billionaire yachts for our weekly trivia challenge, discussing Paul Allen’s Octopus, the wrecks it helped find, and how it stacks up against the other megayachts of the tech elite.
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