^{CHITTER CHATTER}

The Hot New Commodity That Both AI and Criminals Want

Britain’s plans for its “largest AI supercomputer” have hit a minor technical snag: there isn’t enough power to run it. The UK government-backed Loughton AI datacentre was meant to start operating in 2027. However, earlier this year, the proposed site was still being used as a scaffolding yard. The planned facility could require up to 90MW, roughly the electricity consumption of 315,000 homes. The AI revolution may be moving at machine speed, but the electricity grid isn’t. Elsewhere, criminals are now stealing electricity to mine crypto. Forget gold and rhodium. The really precious commodity is a functioning power grid. Are data centre operators and governments paying attention? Now let me check my latest electricity bill; it seems a bit high.

Bungled New Payroll System Causes Industrial Action

There’s a universal truth: employees get angry when you mess up their pay. Case in point: “Sydney Water is facing industrial action over the rollout of a new payroll system …” As reported in this ABC News article, “a new payroll system implemented in July has regularly paid employees below their entitlements and often late...” This is very bad PR for the people behind Dayforce HR, with the article calling it a “bungled new payroll system”, while comments from the Australian Services Union (ASU) secretary, Angus McFarland, up the ante: “Failure to provide regular and reliable pay is causing severe stress to our members." I guess Dayforce won’t be contacting Sydney Water to participate in a Customer Success Story any time soon. If they did, the heading would be: “How We Managed to F-Up Payroll for a Major Government Client.”

Mere Potential Gets You $4B Valuation in Four Months

Launching Ricursive in late 2025, the co-founders Anna Goldie and Azalia Mirhoseini raised $335 million at a $4 billion valuation within four months, including a $300 million Series A. Designing a chip can take two to three years. Ricursive wants to reduce that to weeks. “The startup is developing AI that can design chips, learn from the process, and improve the next design — potentially accelerating development of the hardware that powers increasingly capable AI.” It’s about automating more of the complex chip-design process. “Goldie and Mirhoseini believe they can open the door to new chip architecture and ultimately more capable and efficient AI. The two founders have excellent pedigrees, including early roles at Anthropic and senior staff research scientist roles at Google DeepMind, but note the wording: ‘want’, ‘believe ’, and ‘potentially’. Time will tell if the investment and a $4 billion valuation are real or a house built on sand.

Tech Fails

Miro Was Worth $17.5 Billion. Until It Wasn’t.

This isn’t a fail in the traditional sense, but a reminder that company valuations often bear little resemblance to true worth. In 2021, Miro was valued at $17.5 billion, fuelled by pandemic growth and SaaS mania. This month, Bending Spoons agreed to buy it for $1.36 billion in cash, with an equity value of about $1.79 billion, roughly 90% lower. Yet Miro isn’t a wreck. It reportedly has around $600 million in annual recurring revenue, more than 4 million paying users, 100 million users overall, and is profitable. So perhaps that $17.5 billion figure was less valuation, more PR. Miro’s real worth eventually collided with what someone was actually prepared to pay.

Weird Tech

Robots Kill Bed Bugs & Other Nasties

If we aren’t inundated with enough gadgets and robots to make our lives easier, we now have a tiny robot vacuum for one’s bed, wherever that may be. “Designed to clean your bedding and mattress,  the vac moves slowly and steadily across a mattress, sucking up dust, mites, hair and whatever else lurks.” (One can only imagine). “It can clean a king-size in about 20 minutes and has an easy-to-empty debris canister. Special sensors keep it from tumbling off the bed.” I, for one, would love to pack this miniature robot in my suitcase to use on hotel mattresses. Check out this invention and other weird tech stuff here.

^SUBTEXT

Tech Waffle Torture

The Waffle: "People are complex. HR software doesn’t have to be.” Home page of the Dayforce Website

Translation:
“People are complex. Our HR software is too dumb to cope.”

A highly contagious condition in which founders, investors and PR firms collectively become overexcited by phrases such as “we believe”, “we expect”, “we’re building” and “the market could be worth…” Symptoms include frothing at the mouth during funding rounds, confusing ambition with traction, and assigning billion-dollar valuations to companies whose main product is a PowerPoint deck. The condition is particularly acute during periods of technological mania, when nobody wants to be the investor who missed the next big thing. Treatment arrives years later, when someone tries to buy the company with real money. At that point, patients often experience a sudden and painful return to arithmetic.

Liquidation Preference: The contractual right that lets certain investors get paid before everyone else when a startup is sold or wound up. It’s like boarding a lifeboat according to your funding round.

^{THE SHALLOW END}

Rich Tech Guy Buys Cheap T-Shirt. The Internet Reacts

Meta Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang caused a fashion stir at Meta Connect 2026 with a camo T-shirt, matching Crocs and black trousers. Because he’s rich, people assumed the fairly ordinary-looking outfit must be expensive. One person even speculated the shirt was Hermès, a suggestion Wang jokingly called “slanderous”. Turns out he’s a thrift shopper. The shirt cost $30 from a Santa Cruz store and the Crocs about $60. If only I could be that thrifty, considering I earn considerably less than Alexandr Wang. Then again, the Crocs (which I detest and find ugly) are probably the giveaway. This is a man who genuinely doesn’t care about fashion or looking trendy and ends up looking cool anyway, because he’s being himself. I like that.

Dear Dr Comms

I work for an HR tech company. We badly botched a software implementation; our name is now mud, customers are leaving, and prospects think buying our software will take them back to the Dark Ages. Management would like Comms to “rebuild trust”. Preferably immediately. What do I do? Yours, Reputationally Redundant

Dear Redundant
Let’s ask some professionals who know what to do when something valuable has been badly mishandled.

📦 Furniture Removalist
“First, stop pretending nothing got broken. Admit the damage, explain how you’re fixing it, and don’t slap FRAGILE on the box after you’ve already thrown it down the stairs.”

🚲 Bicycle Repair Shop Owner
“If the chain keeps falling off, polishing the frame won’t help. Fix the gears, test the brakes, take it around the block, then tell people it’s safe to ride again.”

🚜 Farm Hand
“When you’re standing in manure, don’t hold a meeting about the smell. Get a shovel. Fix the software, help the customers you hurt, then start talking.”

When all you do all day is clean people’s butts and help them burp, you gotta come up with a fancy title and JD.

^{BIN THIS…}

It’s done to death. Bury it with a hatchet.

AI startup Inbotiq says its mission is to:

“Reimagine business. Redefine efficiency. Reinvent success.”

Its AI agents also promise “intelligent collaboration”, “compounding leverage” and “measurable outcomes across business functions”.

For a new AI-type tech startup, they sure sound like an old-school tech company from the 1980s-1990s era.

Just tell me what the thing actually does and how it’s going to make my life better, save my company money or help it make more money.

Is that too much to ask?

Know someone who lives for this kind of nonsense? Forward this email to them and help me spread the dysfunction.

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