An Oral History of “We Built This City,” the Worst Song of All Time

But over the years, as ’80s music began to sound dated and ludicrous—and no song sounds more ’80s than “We Built This City”—it developed a hideous reputation: the worst song of all time. Blender magazine first crowned it thus in 2004, and the label has stuck, thanks to a series of online polls, thickening into something close to empirical fact.

I was a musician in the eighties. It sounded dated and ludicrous in real time, IIRC. But the worst song of all time? The author has obviously overlooked Muskrat Love.

Also, I mean, really. This exists:

Five Learnings From 15 Years In Perception

Our goal was to analyze shopper behavior in grocery stores, and use that data to help stores and brands improve the customer experience and store profitability. But we had a challenge: how do you anonymously track hundreds of shoppers per day in a store? We thought we had the answer: active RFID tags on every shopping cart. We ponied up $25,000 to purchase a massive customized Oracle server and 50 active tags, and outfitted our first test store. The results came in, revealing fascinating insights around where shoppers spent time, and what opportunities existed to change the store to improve the experience.

Your data scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should. You’re creeps doing creepy things. And “learnings” is not a word, and never will be.

Just Eat Takeaway finally offloads Grubhub, sells to Wonder for $650M

Netherlands-based food delivery company Just Eat Takeaway.com said on Wednesday that it is selling its U.S. business Grubhub to New York-based Wonder Group in a deal valued at $650 million — a stark 91% less than the $7.3 billion Just Eat Takeaway paid for the company just four years ago.

I looked up Just Eat Takeaway. Their supervisory board has a rule: The Supervisory Board shall consist of seven or more members, of which at least three should be female. I’ve never seen “ovaries” listed on a job listing before. How’s it working out?

I tried every email marketing tool — here’s the best.

To find the right fit, I took a deep dive into the top 25 email marketing tools. Along the way, I battled unhelpful chatbots, squinted through pages of fine print, built a detailed comparison spreadsheet, and, naturally, sent real emails with each tool.

Yecchh. This guy certainly took one for the team while looking for a MailChimp replacement for annoying people via email.

How a 16th-Century Sailing Ship Works:

Probably comes under the heading: News you can’t use, but want anyway. Durn inneresting.

Despite its impressive output, generative AI doesn’t have a coherent understanding of the world

Large language models can do impressive things, like write poetry or generate viable computer programs, even though these models are trained to predict words that come next in a piece of text.

Such surprising capabilities can make it seem like the models are implicitly learning some general truths about the world.

But that isn’t necessarily the case, according to a new study. The researchers found that a popular type of generative AI model can provide turn-by-turn driving directions in New York City with near-perfect accuracy — without having formed an accurate internal map of the city.

File that, in your card file, under “Duh.” Generative AI reads the internet. No one on the internet has a coherent understanding of the world.

San Francisco tech company Forward, once worth $1B, abruptly shuts down

San Francisco’s Forward, a once high-flying startup that failed to popularize its tech-laden “AI doctor’s office,” is abruptly closing down. The homepage of the company’s website currently reads a shutdown notice. It says Forward is closing clinics, canceling patients’ scheduled visits and turning off its mobile app. The company wrote, “We know this news is abrupt,” and promised that its medical staff would be reachable by email until Dec. 13. Per Business Insider, Forward also shared the message with customers in a late-night email Tuesday.

Unshaven CEO in a sweatshirt should have been a dead giveaway.

Marine pilot loses command after ejecting from F-35B that kept flying

The investigation report, which the Marine Corps released Thursday, found Del Pizzo’s F-35B malfunctioned and its primary displays and communications cut out as Del Pizzo was attempting to land through rain at Joint Base Charleston, South Carolina. However, the report said its standby flight display and backup communication system “remained basically functional.”

No biggie. An F-35 only costs 110 million or so. That’s only about 172,000 toilet seats.

Why is my air fryer spying on me?

In the air fryer category, as well as knowing customers’ precise location, all three products wanted permission to record audio on the user’s phone, for no specified reason. The Xiaomi app linked to its air fryer connected to trackers from Facebook, Pangle (the ad network of TikTok for Business), and Chinese tech giant Tencent (depending on the location of the user). The Aigostar air fryer wanted to know gender and date of birth when setting up an owner account, again for no clear reason, but this was optional. The Aigostar and Xiaomi fryers both sent people’s personal data to servers in China, although this was flagged in the privacy notice.

The short answer to the question: Because you let it.

Spirit Airlines faces bankruptcy

In a shocking turn of events, Spirit Airlines is reportedly preparing to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. This news comes on the heels of the airline’s failed merger attempts with Frontier Airlines, which has left the company grappling with significant financial challenges.

What, exactly, is “shocking” about Spirit Airlines going bankrupt? From what I can gather, it was like flying Greyhound, only less elegant.

Please feel free to be shocked, or not shocked in the comments section, to taste.