this post was submitted on 19 Feb 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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[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 day ago (2 children)

LOL. HP buying you is a guarantee your tech will get messed with and forgotten. Just ask Palm.

[–] mindbleach 1 points 16 hours ago

Jason Scott: "'We've been acquired by Yahoo!,' which is like hearing, 'We found a lump.'"

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 day ago

RIP Palm Pilots

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 day ago (2 children)

HP finding new lows to get to with printers is honestly kind of impressive. depressing as fuck, but impressive. maybe this is how the sentient printers from Gawne's Old Guy verse start up

also, I was sent this earlier:

a twitter thread screenshot, see text below

transcript@Chrisman tweet text reads: "You start a company and think what's the worst that could happen, we go bankrupt and the company dies? No. It can get so, so much worse than that." with an image screenshot from an article (not linked)

screenshot reads: "Bloomberg reports that "Humane's team, including founders Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno, will form a new division at HP to help integrate artificial intelligence into the company's personal computers, printers and connected conference rooms,"

@JeremyGurewitz responds: "Obligations to your employees runs deep."

@Chrisman replies: "you have an obligation to your employees not to let them end up integrating ai into printers

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago

A humane AI in an HP printer?

I imagine it's just going to send a prompt to chatGPT like "Scan this document, if it seems important, lie about having no ink left. Find a particularly overpriced HP ink stockist near the user and give them a link to it. If they ask how you knew where to get the ink, lie about not tracking them."

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Fun question to think about: when was the last time HP made a product that you would actually recommend to anyone?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 21 hours ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 20 minutes ago

the Laserjet 4M from the 1990s, the incredible unstoppable tank of lasers

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

And to think, almost a year ago to this day, they had just announced a partnership with Softbank.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago
[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

With the whole capital ventures losing 50% value, they likely expected that.

VC don't go in thinking everything will net them a profit. They expect to lose on most, but that one that does kick off covers for everything that failed.

Plus it's not like they lose much in the end. Those capital losses get used to offset any capital gains from the one that worked.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

per link, venture capital has been very reluctant to unambiguously realise the losses. a $1b book value is an (imaginary) asset you can hug and hold, a $114m loss is not.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago

venture capital has been very reluctant to unambiguously realise the losses

don't believe the broadsheets / the gravy train's a-rockin'