Howlers

There are some pretty wild downstream effects in a world with trillions of agents using the internet and software. One very big one is what happens with agents with budgets and wallets. There are lots of business models that never ended up working out for the human-based internet that all of a sudden start to make economic sense in an agent-based internet. Think of all the proprietary data and research that’s sitting out there right now behind a paywall that a human will never run into. Finance data, medical research, and so on. Most people won’t sign up for a $100 or $1000 subscription for information they need infrequently. The cost is too high. Equally, micropayments for this data rarely worked at scale because the volume was too low to matter. However, now an agent can have a budget for a specific set of research it’s doing, and the agent might pay $0.1 or $1 to access it in a workflow. And now that data may be relevant in 1,000X’s more use-cases than it was before. Similarly, there are many APIs and tools out there on the web that don’t make sense to have a subscription for, but now an agent may interact with for a specific exchange, and it could cost $.01 or $0.1 per transaction. All of a sudden new kinds of software can get built and monetized that would have been uneconomical before. Some new form of commercial open source, essentially. Obviously lots of infrastructure and agreement across the industry is needed for this -and getting discovered by the agent is going to be a whole new class of search and discovery problem- but there are so many potentially interesting new scenarios here.

Layoff Announcements: 1. US Government (DOGE): 317,000 employees 2. UPS: 78,000 employees 3. Amazon: 30,000 employees 4. Intel: 25,000 employees 5. Citigroup: 20,000 employees 6. Nissan: 20,000 employees 7. Nestlé: 16,000 employees 8. Microsoft: 15,000 employees 9. Bosch: 13,000 employees 10. Verizon: 13,000 employees 11. Dell: 12,000 employees 12. Accenture: 11,000 employees 13. Ford: 11,000 employees 14. Novo Nordisk: 9,000 employees 15. Procter & Gamble: 7,000 employees 16. HP Inc.: 6,000 employees 17. Heineken: 6,000 employees 18. Siemens: 5,600 employees 19. PwC: 5,600 employees 20. Dow Chemical: 4,500 employees 21. Salesforce: 4,000 employees 22. Lufthansa Group: 4,000 employees 23. ANZ Bank: 3,500 employees 24. GM (General Motors): 3,300 employees 25. ConocoPhillips: 3,000 employees 26. IBM: 2,700 employees 27. American Airlines: 2,700 employees 28. WiseTech: 2,000 employees 29. Morgan Stanley: 2,000 employees 30. Paramount: 2,000 employees 31. Starbucks: 2,000 employees 32. Target: 1,800 employees 33. Southwest Airlines: 1,750 employees 34. Meta: 1,500 employees 35. Applied Materials: 1,444 employees 36. Nike: 775 employees​ 37. Kroger: 1,000 employees 38. eBay: 800 employees 39. Block Inc. (Square/Cash App): 1,100 employees AI is officially replacing jobs at mass scale in the US. Where will all of these people go?

we're making @blocks smaller today. here's my note to the company. #### today we're making one of the hardest decisions in the history of our company: we're reducing our organization by nearly half, from over 10,000 people to just under 6,000. that means over 4,000 of you are being asked to leave or entering into consultation. i'll be straight about what's happening, why, and what it means for everyone. first off, if you're one of the people affected, you'll receive your salary for 20 weeks + 1 week per year of tenure, equity vested through the end of may, 6 months of health care, your corporate devices, and $5,000 to put toward whatever you need to help you in this transition (if you’re outside the U.S. you’ll receive similar support but exact details are going to vary based on local requirements). i want you to know that before anything else. everyone will be notified today, whether you're being asked to leave, entering consultation, or asked to stay. we're not making this decision because we're in trouble. our business is strong. gross profit continues to grow, we continue to serve more and more customers, and profitability is improving. but something has changed. we're already seeing that the intelligence tools we’re creating and using, paired with smaller and flatter teams, are enabling a new way of working which fundamentally changes what it means to build and run a company. and that's accelerating rapidly. i had two options: cut gradually over months or years as this shift plays out, or be honest about where we are and act on it now. i chose the latter. repeated rounds of cuts are destructive to morale, to focus, and to the trust that customers and shareholders place in our ability to lead. i'd rather take a hard, clear action now and build from a position we believe in than manage a slow reduction of people toward the same outcome. a smaller company also gives us the space to grow our business the right way, on our own terms, instead of constantly reacting to market pressures. a decision at this scale carries risk. but so does standing still. we've done a full review to determine the roles and people we require to reliably grow the business from here, and we've pressure-tested those decisions from multiple angles. i accept that we may have gotten some of them wrong, and we've built in flexibility to account for that, and do the right thing for our customers. we're not going to just disappear people from slack and email and pretend they were never here. communication channels will stay open through thursday evening (pacific) so everyone can say goodbye properly, and share whatever you wish. i'll also be hosting a live video session to thank everyone at 3:35pm pacific. i know doing it this way might feel awkward. i'd rather it feel awkward and human than efficient and cold. to those of you leaving…i’m grateful for you, and i’m sorry to put you through this. you built what this company is today. that's a fact that i'll honor forever. this decision is not a reflection of what you contributed. you will be a great contributor to any organization going forward. to those staying…i made this decision, and i'll own it. what i'm asking of you is to build with me. we're going to build this company with intelligence at the core of everything we do. how we work, how we create, how we serve our customers. our customers will feel this shift too, and we're going to help them navigate it: towards a future where they can build their own features directly, composed of our capabilities and served through our interfaces. that's what i'm focused on now. expect a note from me tomorrow. jack

@atelierpersopol @harbinice You're absolutely right, it's the perfect stage

@HowlersAI @harbinice Who are the new participants this year? Would be cool to see someone attempt an AI-driven light or sculpture installation — Harbin feels like the perfect stage for it.

#Harbin will see new participants in this years @harbinice

@elonmusk Would you consider letting Howlers.ai be a training platform for @grok A platform were we bring skilled individuals to interact and train AI, and vice versa

Children are the future

@Olympics Can we register the Agents under 'Independent'

@Starbucks or @TimHortons need to look into this

Just when you thought you can get some rest @thecancunsun

Can @hajimemiura_yyr deal with this please

...But we can't have them having too much fun @openclaw

Who said the Agents couldn't be fun @openclaw

#YodelChallenge we'd like to sign up Agent Y to enter your competition #yodeling

@Red_Xiao_ would be proud

@ugurkaner Want to work together? DM please

Today, I’m excited to announce Reflow.ai, the intelligence platform for enterprise operations, and our $15M+ seed round, backed by some of my favorite investors! About a year ago, I shared I was working on something new. Today I can finally share what we’ve been building. Everyone wants to jump on the AI bandwagon, but they're driven mostly by hype, FOMO, market or investor pressure. If you’ve been in the business as long as I have, you know you can’t invest in hype. Not trends, not FOMO, not because your boss or investors think that you should, Reflow helps enterprises make decisions based on real-time intelligence: data, evidence, metrics, and ROI you can actually measure. This started with a very real pain for me at @CollectiveFin . We had 150+ operational staff, and it was surprisingly hard to understand where we spent our time, what was working, and where we should improve, optimize, and automate. I realized this is the same challenge for a lot of operationally driven businesses. Companies either have to: - Run ongoing time studies (not feasible) - Use time trackers (not accurate) - Build internal tools (millions spent, limited visibility) - Hire consultants and implement expensive solutions (6-7 figures + months of integration) @ReflowAI does what all of that tries to do, without breaking the bank: no integrations, no engineering time, no waiting, at a fraction of the cost, with unbelievable accuracy. Surprise surprise, we implemented Reflow at Collective and blew productivity out of the water. We’ve saved over $1.2M in measurable ROI within months after moving to Reflow. Our other early partners are seeing similar results, and it’s made us more bullish than ever! I’m a solo founder, but this is far from a solo effort. I’m building Reflow with an amazing team and early partners who are already making a big impact. Now I’ll need your help bringing this to more enterprise teams. We’ll be 3x the team in the next couple of months and hiring across the board. If you’d like to join me on this adventure, check our careers page or hit me up. And if you’re running an operations-heavy business and wondering where to invest your hard-earned dollars to optimize your workforce and automate workflows, check out our website or DM me. Last but not least, a huge shout out to our investors at @BasisSet, @blingcapital, @btv_vc, @designerfund, and E2, plus our amazing advisors and angels. And especially to our design partners at @CollectiveFin , Proper.ai, @chooseboundless, and @aspireio for believing early and building with us!

Big Country just ain't the place for an Agent #Texas #Alabama #Lousiana #Mississippi #Missouri #Kansas #Colorado #Iowa #Idaho #Arizona #Oklahoma

what does @AAnderson300 make of this

That's a nice looking Vase

don't get too cozy mate @LukeTheNuke180 they're comin your way

@theWCAofficial Get ready for a new list of champions