Good question. A story is considered Underreported in the US when it meets all of these criteria:

Category = politics, law & justice, society, climate & environment or health Public interest = News is mostly of public interest (Public interest > 0.5) Geographic relevance = US (directly affecting US institutions, policy, the economy, security, or population, or primarily driven by US actors)

The coverage has:

No more than 1 article from a US outlet No more than 3 articles from US outlets and wire services combined At least 2 different non-US regional outlets More than half of all articles are from non-US regional outlets

That's kinda the point: The vast majority have no intense use for LLMs that would justify them paying a monthly subscription. But if they don't subscribe, it's not sustainable!

Open AI is fudging its wording by saying more than "9 million paying business users rely on ChatGPT for work, and startups, enterprises, and governments" -- IE they're blending together paying consumers with businesses. Also not setting a time frame, so no idea how many of them are recurring users.

Other source is questionable since (for starters) it relies on sampling and mentions a 10% inaccuracy (!) rate.

The 2-3% number is from two banks, based on direct payment card data.

These are numbers that even skeptics are not skeptical of. Worth toning down your skepticism. It’s a bit nutty to dismiss a neutral poll as well as disclosed numbers by the companies - two different sources for two different companies. At some point it must start dawning on you

https://www.wheresyoured.at/openai-projects-chatgpt-plus-sub...

OK well Zitron is citing The Information which is generally solid, but you're kinda burying the lede. According to this, it's 9 million subscribers because...

"OpenAI projects an 80% decline... from 44 million in 2025 to 9 million in 2026" [!!!]

Surely there's reason to be skeptical when OpenAI's own internal projection indicates a massive, massive loss in subscribers?

I'm still inclined to believe OpenAI's projection was too optimistic. The bank report says that average subscriptions only last 7 months, so that would also help explain the rapid churn.

BTW, the number of global WoW subscribers is currently about... 9 million.

> OpenAI projects an 80% decline... from 44 million in 2025 to 9 million in 2026

I'm curious to know why you think OpenAI is predicting that their subscribers would decline. Why would the company be so bearish about their own financials?

This is an internal leak The Information reported, as I understand it.

Compare and contrast Sam Altman externally saying the most ridiculous bullshit.

Sure but why would you miss this part from the same leak?

> OpenAI at the start of this year forecast that consumer subscribers to ChatGPT Go … would surge about 36 times to 112 million this year

You cannot fudge your books. At the end of the day we will see if the AI cult is caught swimming naked.

I was there when pets.com happened.

True, but personal use tracks direct consumer adoption, whereas sustained enterprise use is still very much in the air. (See "tokenmaxxing".)

1) This could not have been farthest from truth

2) WoW will never be billed via a corporate card.

This outcome was totally foreseeable but somehow Zuck and Boz blew billions anyway.

> totally foreseeable

Om was a mentor to me at GigaOM and while writing my first book, teaching me throughout how to understand the tech industry and cut through the bullshit and noise. But more than all that, Om was a very warm, lovely, generous guy.

He knew the business of tech, he was successful at the business of tech, so when he criticized tech, his punches were solid, precisely targeted, and unignorable. The first day I met him, he told me: "I know where all the bodies in Silicon Valley are buried," as he once told me. And he really did.

Tech journalism today is sorely missing fiery thoughtful voices like his.

RE Your predecessor

No one knows who he was, or what he was doing.

But his legacy remains hewn in the HR dock of Stonehenge.

Some say he was let go after a design error lead to some dwarves kicking over the first stonehenge.

Kinda cool! What's the max concurrency?

Should scale pretty well to hundreds, only key state changes and clothes/messages/etc changes are synced when they happen, it uses dead-reckoning, client authoritative and it's pretty accurate/fast.

Ah cool. So you replace NPCs with real players as they come in, or add them into the mix?

Add them. The graphics support many more. That's why it's low poly. Of course if it gets popular I will start reducing the NPC count. Now they're there otherwise there's no "rave party" feeling.

The Internet is not really "divided" BTW, roughly 99% of Hawai'i locals who know about this seem super pissed off. If you're gonna slopify Hawaiian music at the airport, why not just slopify the entire Hawai'i experience?

Yep. It's wild how most reporters just copy/paste these claims without even asking for references.

Like few of them looked at Meta's own stock earnings reports -- which they CAN'T bullshit about, or they might go to prison -- where it was clear that the Quest was hardly selling.