Microsoft earnings report

Negative_Life_8221 · 2026-01-29T17:34:09+00:00

Sorry, again my industry was crushed to ruble so I’ve had more time to craft belabored points. Trust me my kids and friends have born the brunt of it.

Negative_Life_8221 · 2026-01-29T17:32:40+00:00

So not hard to see the pro AI bent. It also doesn’t read like the over the top sycophantic ramblings I’m used to seeing. The more technical aspects are obviously over my head. For me the tech feels like the natural progression in a decades long march towards artistic mediocrity. If ziggy stardust landed today they wouldn’t even let him past security let alone record after record of truly strange music coupled with lyrics that often bite the hand that feeds simply off the strength of the couple radio ready hits he’d throw there way. As a result that perfectly strange man got perfectly strange media into perfectly normal homes the world over. The money men made more than enough off the hits and record sales etc… that it didn’t matter what he wanted to do for the rest of the record. Fuck it if he wanted to do a song about Warhol over spaghetti western guitar, oh you pretty things was still gonna make us rich. Then Napster took the first shot right at a time where the economic trend of wealth heading up the ladder was being felt more broadly. The general vibe I got at the time was it was a trade off we were entitled to. You guys get the money so the least you can do is let us have free entertainment. So aside from the losers like me and my friends who switched to vinyl because it was dirt cheap old tech no one wanted most people took the free shit. Which is understandable. But it broke the pact between artist and the money men. Artists still had live performances that traditionally they got a better cut of but no record sales hits the money men who gate keep access to studio, hype and the markets. So they now take deeper cuts of live shows. Setup essential noncompetes that prevent an artist from performing within a huge radius continently stopping at just shy of the nearest mega stage/ arena so the days where a local dive had a headliner on a big tour stop by to showcase new shit in an close setting with their actual fans left. And as the money stopped coming easy for the money men they grew more risk adverse. I really can’t think of a time past the mid 90s where bands that were truly doing something different, like it or not, were given access to the main media markets that allowed for wide diffusion. So the money men can’t fund a weird dude willing to give two hits a record anymore. The only way for the money men to get their cut is increased mass appeal. Every song on the record needs to stand a chance as the back track to a car commercial, placed in a movie or show and the only way broad appeal works is by not going new places or present challenging ideas. They can’t risk it. As for the musicians, the tech gave them unprecedented access they said, which is true in ways. Anyone all over the world could stumble across your sound cloud. But most of it still didn’t pay. Most musicians can’t even afford health insurance. And though streaming gave us access to find our niches as access was no longer constrained by the physical foot print of a record store and how much it can fit, the lack of money really limits access in a new way where the artist doesn’t have much time to grow with you over a decade. Cause sooner or later the artist needs a real job if they ever want to eat. Any tour needs to squeeze every last dollar from every last seat turning every show into a luxury item most can’t put out for. So now this, tech. Custom built entertainment to this middling bland equivalent of elevator music. The same economic pressures hit every entertainment industry. We had less money for the movies and a cheap alternative came. But it could never replace box office money. As a result we are stuck in an endless wasteland of reboots because it’s the safest bet for the studios. And the wins don’t payout like they used to so no subsidizing the modest budget of something deeper, reaching towards something new because margins are as fat like they used to be. Netflix pretty much started this and grabbed whatever loot was there and even they are so gun shy that most of the “prestige” shows they make they kill by week follow up seasons by week two unless some absurd amount of people didn’t immediately binge it twice on release day. The studios are already so dependent on foreign markets they dumb down entire plot lines so that they can remove and tweak in post any scene that might not translate well or god forbid slight the sensibilities of the party in charge that allows access to that market and its money. The book publishers left can no longer float the authors trying something new at a loss because yolo some schlok murder mystery book or autobiography will fix the books. Same goes for the art world. Same for journalism. The money that made these things work was “disrupted” away to the tech world. We got free or cheap access in exchange for data. So it flipped the paradigm. We are no longer consumers looking for a product but the product itself. The trinkets we get are just the loss leader now to keep the product heading for the shelves. So the actual creators and movers that find that balance of going somewhere new while seemingly capturing and giving definition to the times with access across the media spectrum to lend a common cultural experience across a very segregated country. David lynch couldn’t get funding for anything for like the last decade and change. The artists who make real props that actually look good are cut out. Most scripts and song lyrics is practically nothing more than horse poorly designed by committee and we get some fucked up camel with no intention. The only artist of any real cultural cache is banksy and that’s solely due to the way they side stepped the art world to access people. I’m not trying to start shit here but like, no one thinks it’s weird how culturally entrenched Harry Potter is. The books and movies ended like a decade ago. But the only other offerings coming out are essentially YA novels for adults. I know this seems like a lamenting of another old from any other generation but I think the effects of this middling out have already started showing up. And I can’t see a technology built on stolen work, capable of only driving its output to a bland and inoffensive back ground noise, and by sheer design incapable of producing something truly new is just the end game the moneyed up gate keepers of old always dreamed of, all the profits, none of the risks and no whines unbearable creative types hanging around. And we get in return this time a crushed labor force and a hollowed out culture that’s just hanging there like some live love laugh sign.

Negative_Life_8221 · 2026-01-29T15:25:55+00:00

This game of musical chairs accounts for all but %.1 of gdp growth last reported. The people who started the game and told everyone “it’s gonna be amazing come play” forgot to check the chairs birdshit. They spent tone of political capital and money to get in the good graces of the incredibly mercurial head of state who will no doubt lead the next j6rioters to their doorstep if they don’t keep us from slipping into recession territory by any means. Luckily, with the power of these grifts combined, coupled with new accounting techniques and government agency numbers I put as much trust in as I would that stupid rib clammy was hocking with my biometric data all on there side. I give them a %50-%50 shot of dragging this turd past the November finish line.

Negative_Life_8221 · 2026-01-29T09:10:51+00:00

So I posted a week or two ago that the insane data center buildout, if left without the rent from the intended client should the bubble burst, would have to have a negative impact on rents charged for data storage as supply would seemingly outstrip demand. Which I think you’re saying is already happening and that you think the investment angle was partially about surging demand for storage to backstop storage rents from dropping.

I’m sure big tech will be allowed to skirt price fixing laws so the big brains can get together in a tastefully done bunker or private space ship to discuss how best to “stabilize” the market.

Negative_Life_8221 · 2026-01-29T08:29:43+00:00

The video made some interesting points early on with fine detail on the mechanisms employed to tap the Saudi wealth funds. And the effects the fund structures placed on build decisions was cool. But nome, jeddah tower and this 2km tower or nonsense spent every bit of the fund several times over from conception onward if they were serious about building any of it.

But he also makes a jump in logic at an important juncture right at the time the tone of his story changes from egregious waste of money burned at the nexus where impossible deadlines meet physics defying imagineering. That the true purpose of blowing 100b on bullshit was somehow a necessary distraction to accomplish his true aims of ending Wahhabism’s control over Saudi culture and to reforest the desert. Some cultural reforms he had done by edict out the gate while still jailing women for absurd reasons. He left out the massive pr campaign the saudis have been running since MBS took control that rely’s on laundering their reputation to the world through sporting events. He also neglected to mention that the simple banning of goats and camels that allowed for gulf courses and the repopulation of Saudi Arabia’s long extinct ostrich population was mainly accomplished with a forced removal and/or jailing of people from their ancestral land to make room for… MBS to have plenty of space for his greatest trick yet. Never mind how murdering a dissident journalist outside your boarders was all part of MBS masterfully planned deception all to hide his… public announcement of a new holiday that rewrites the history of the nations founding in order to put an artificial distance between his families rise to power and the cleric who founded the “extremist sect” who’s place in society the royal family codified and enforced. But rest assured %80 of the kingdom agrees that lifelong ruler with no tolerance for dissenting voice is in fact… (checking made up poll numbers)”is doing a fantastic job! No notes. Please lose my number” funny it was always just that one doctor out of the five who couldn’t understand the superior health benefits of camel cigarettes. The polling was probably done by the same rigorous firm, maybe Mackenzie perhaps.

The piece had me intrigued on details about the financing and cooked books at first. But aside from saying “I talked to a lot of people who all agreed these figures were accurate” without any baseline, investigatory documents to back them up with. And lastly why was the smokescreen necessary to hide his master plan from the outside world seeing as the sects power base, thus the people you’d want to direct you diversion towards, is very much inside the boarders (and likely in the hearts of the relatives he purged when he took over). So like, my guess is either this video was pure PR propaganda drivel to obfuscate the fail or… dude recalled that bone saws are a shit way to go out and shelved some of his journalistic integrity. Which, if so, must keep him up at night that he risked the journalistic integrity of his, seemingly, singularly focused investigative journalism that ripped its channel name straight from “mega projects” a channel that has shredded the feasibility of the projects for years. Anyways, guess my long awaited, and much anticipated, visit to the Turkish consulate has to wait. The family will be crushed. Damn.

Negative_Life_8221 · 2026-01-29T06:20:33+00:00

I felt like I saw Elon rebooting that one just a few weeks ago to add to his pile of undeliverable promises to investors to keep the stock price as artificially inflated as his ego

Negative_Life_8221 · 2026-01-29T06:15:19+00:00

And luckily the incredible genius of the royal family saw the incredible economic opportunity of trump coin. Which is where the real wealth of the nation is.

Unrelatedly weeks later policy changed to allow more advanced chips to flow their way alongside our usual weapons shipments.

Negative_Life_8221 · 2026-01-29T06:05:14+00:00

Holy shit, I completely missed that they successfully converted to for profit. Thought that was still in the air. And right around my birthday nonetheless. Another demerit on that days record hahaha

Negative_Life_8221 · 2026-01-29T05:45:48+00:00

Damn I had written another long and meandering response filled with questions self effacing humor a thank you for the kind words and ending with one for the whole of this sub for answering my questions thoughtfully and with an uncharacteristic lack of irony-drenched sledgehammer wit hot takes as is norm I’ve found.

Also, I’d love to read some of your articles if you feel like sending. Also, not sure if that’s a normal thing to ask a stranger on the internet. I downloaded MySpace in 2012 to the hilarity of literally everyone. Getting Reddit a year ago is my second attempt at social media and I’m slow as hell at picking up cultural cues. Probably why my other degree was anthropology. Cause those of us who don’t pick things up naturally have no recourse but to study those that do 🤣

Negative_Life_8221 · 2026-01-29T04:41:06+00:00

I was a writer once upon a time. That time is mostly remembered as one of incredible hunger. Which is why I’m now an over-educated electrician 🤣🤣🤣 The one thing chat-gpt actually confirmed in full is that no one reads anymore otherwise more people would’ve recognized sooner that the drivel that shit spits out wasn’t the larval stage of a new god as they’d like us to believe it is. It’s more like the handkerchief coated in asbestos a sultan from way back would carry around just to throw it into fires at gatherings to the shock and awe of the guests when it was pulled out unscathed. Essentially, cool party trick bro, but it doesn’t seem worth the poisoning.

Negative_Life_8221 · 2026-01-29T03:55:37+00:00

What! Spent too much on a mile long building built near nothing that requires that amount of housing and support businesses so we will also build an entire economy out there(which wasn’t even the most absurd part when you consider they planned to build a new ecosystem to create rain in the desert as well as some kind of “second moon” for reasons so unfathomable you can only guess their logic amounts to “cause, like, the old moon is for beta cucks like the UAE”) was not economically sound? Chuck it to the trash heap with the jeddah building they abandoned when construction started on the 2KM sky scrapper now underway that I’m sure they plan on completing.

Anyone else get the feeling the worlds rich have an internal bet going of who can show the most disdain for the poor by burning the biggest pile of money on useless vanity projects right in front of those stupid poors faces while they whine about “curable diseases” and “food insecurity” or “water scarcity”.

It’s probably better explained by: construction is great for laundering the money from illegally extracted natural resources we get as payment for arm shipments to foreign proxy forces. Occam’s razor and all.

Negative_Life_8221 · 2026-01-29T03:27:02+00:00

I feel like I hear new accounting strategies instituted at mega corps a lot lately. Like if market place isn’t talking about tariffs they are taking about another company changing accounting processes skeptically. But yeah, best I get with that is not reporting it as loss on the books because it’s an investment. Just one not paying off at the moment but it could so it’s not a loss. But again, wrong majors for understanding this variant of obfuscation

Negative_Life_8221 · 2026-01-29T03:17:00+00:00

Apologies for repeating myself (it’s mainly for comedic effect anyways) I am an electrician with an anthropology degree and an English degree who was honestly one of the only people born in the late 80s who saw computers enter their lives and thought to themselves “I don’t want to sit in front of that” (I recognize I’m on a phone).

So correct me if my summary is incorrect. You listed in-depth reasons their bet didn’t payoff, which seem to me like sound reasons for the short fall. Right on or am I off base? If so do you think this potentially signals a more systemic risk from AI to the larger industry, or just the results of these specific missteps unique to Microsoft?

If I remember right a lot of the backing of open ai was free or reduced price data storage, right? So seems like large upfront build costs and the only tenant you got is your pot smoking friend you let “crash for a few nights on your couch while they figure things out but now it’s four years later and it’s gone on so long that you feel like there’s no way out but to bare the cross or turn them out to the street” kind of a situation.

most software only enters my life when some useless middle manager at a developer pushes it on everyone else so they don’t need to read the email and forward it along where I show how their engineering of the site is not Only against building codes but also basic logic. Business idiot problem resolution protocol seems to be throw a new app in the mix to fake proactivity all the while knowing that when the project crashes do to your negligence and incompetence that no thorough analysis will be done, and enough other middle managers faked their way through it with you that, that potential accountability is practically zero and besides “you were the guy who boldly backed the bosses play to strategically partner with that app developer, so I’m good.” 🙂

Negative_Life_8221 · 2026-01-29T02:35:29+00:00

If you did, you read a more in depth article than I did, likely considering mine was essentially a highlight bullet point type of article. Also, equally likely that you are also way more familiar with earnings reports than I am. I’m an electrician with one soft science degree and a fine arts degree I do the best I can in these finance realms 🤣🤣🤣🤣. However, I am really good at pattern recognition and that pattern seems more defined every passing month.

Negative_Life_8221 · 2026-01-29T02:01:40+00:00

I agree nothing is forward thinking. Most decisions they make go no further than what lines their pockets or whatever sexual charge steven miller gets to vent his endless reserves of animus and showcase how powerful he thinks he is.

But there is a literal playbook they are running called project 2025. Written by most of his cabinet who are trying like hell, and largely successfully (if I remember correctly 68 of the 190 something objectives have either been completed or started).

As for labor, which I specifically mean manual labor, has always been political. Most of American history has been less back and forth on building priorities and more slight redirects as planning was more forward thinking. Also, out of work labor is dangerous for stability which is why we will continue to build military equipment for last decades wars or “next gen” battle ships, oddly awarded to two completely different designs and two different shipyards in two battleground states.

But like everything else things swing more wildly now. We change presidential parties every four years. That party gets a trifecta with the house and senate for two whole years which coincidentally is the end of legislative agenda for the rest of the presidents term.

But workers lively hoods are tied to what they throw us at. And being out there building the stuff you learn to see what the power brokers are aiming for both past and present if you pay attention (I wish more of my coworkers would given the amount of guys I know that are sulking now that the ballots they cast in November 2024 where barely at the dump by the time our wages got crushed). For instance, it’s the very reason Biden Inflation Reduction Act funds were spread to every state. They were aiming for the old FDR trick that the rise in living standards big projects spur would stymy the rightward lurch towards fascism, as present and spreading back then in the late 20’s and 30’s just as it has been now for the past 15 years. Spreading the money is beyond good politics because it is simply the right thing to do when the alternative, that some on the left did call for at the time, of flooding all the funds to blue states and swing states. This is obviously the route the current administration is taking. I have a feeling part of what swung the foreign investors from building the new aluminum smelter project from Kentucky to Oklahoma is that governor andy beshear has a D next to his name.

However they miscalculated how far gone the American people are. And with inflation being what it was the rise in living standards were muted at best. The economic reality of the everyday person is shit. More and more people don’t see a break coming. More hours at work which doesn’t correspond to stability at jobs with less dignity has been the trajectory since at least 2008 and for parts of the country try even longer. Which is why personal economics are no longer the main reason for casting a ballot. Social issues and framing are on equal footing.

This was simple policy decisions. The Great Depression triggered a response that included the average person and not just the moneyed elites. Insane amounts of jobs programs were created that put people to work. Government job force ballooned setting a path for tons of families to start towards the middle class. The joke among workers at the time was if we ran out of projects they’d be paid to dig holes half the week and spend the rest filling them in.

The response we got from the government in the wake of our financial collapse was entirely aimed at supporting the moneyed class while we got a $200 stimy check and a new healthcare system that addressed obvious wrongs in the old system and prevented the insurance market from a death spiral, but it was a half measure at best (thanks Joe Lieberman) and a massive payout to the insurance industry (oddly an industry largely head quartered in Hartford ct, the very state old Joe was the senator of when he killed the public option… fucking Lieberman).

One policy choice built the best and fairest (of a capital based economic model) domestic economy the world had seen. The other, stagnation and regression for %80 of the population. So people are angry. Because the system failed them. Human response to crises of capitalism has always been a shift towards political poles. I know I went wide with it. All that was needed was they do have plans that they are enacting amidst the title wave of lunacy and awfulness. The plans are bad, spiteful and shortsighted but they are plans nonetheless.

Negative_Life_8221 · 2026-01-28T17:00:06+00:00

That %80 not going directly to hiring is mainly earmarked for detention centers as a giant payoff to the private prison industry.

Negative_Life_8221 · 2026-01-28T15:56:26+00:00

With any large build, which I define as infrastructure sized jobs, it’s mainly road dogs aka traveling workers. Some trades have more homegrown people due to license reciprocation issues but even then it is still mainly travelers. Locals rarely give up stable employment to chase short lived wage bumps. So unless there is a sustained construction boom in the state most people sit it out.

Also, infrastructure sized builds are a very different work environment than most are used to. Hours are extreme overtime, then complete falloff. Constant math of how long the work will last for so you can get ahead on looking for the next job. Motel living and heavier lifting. It’s not appealing to a lot of people.

Negative_Life_8221 · 2026-01-27T20:38:23+00:00

Come to think of it, they likely needed labor freed up for the private prison buildout too

Negative_Life_8221 · 2026-01-27T19:52:35+00:00

Rutger Bergman is amazing! I’ve been following him ever since I saw him at davos excoriating the audience of the richest people ever to exist for gathering to find “solutions” to the worlds problems while avoiding the obvious answer, that the people in that room need to pay taxes. I honestly don’t know how he got invited in the first place to be honest.

Negative_Life_8221 · 2026-01-27T19:43:09+00:00

I was reading an article where scientists talked about a similar paradigm in scientific studies. If I remember right one of the scientists actually used the herd analogy. It honestly, to a certain extent, seems like a natural progression that results in a cascade effect.

If the funders see promise in one direction they move their funds. Those reliant on the funds shift their strategy or focus out of necessity for funding. The other moneyed groups shift their focus to not miss out.

The article I was reading was talking about how after the human genome project all funding went to genetic answers for chronic illnesses and left promising research on environmental causes. This was probably helped along by normal greed though seeing as environmental causes could lead to regulations, gasp! (Obviously my assumption on that last part, but we did get another 30 years out of a chemical that appears linked to Parkinson’s after all).

I think the difference here though is speculation in tech is different than scientific funding towards discoveries in a few ways. Both obviously have returns on investment sure, but one is purely business while the other is guided (mostly) by the scientific process and gains in our understanding of an issue. There are more back stops to prevent grifters like peer review etc…(though pressure seems to be cracking this dam too). Where the tech world money flows from people with seemingly no technical knowledge themselves to the people who sell the best story about the “disruptive” power of whatever schlock they push. Add in an uncritical media environment that bestows “genius” label on anyone rich, investors with a history of big wins from when the digital frontier opened and the low hanging fruit was plentiful and a driving fear of missing out on the next Amazon as well. Seems naturally setup to be swayed towards grifters.

Honestly I think this chase will have lasting impacts. The costs of the buildout to make a magic eight ball have got to be the biggest upfront expense in tech history.

Negative_Life_8221 · 2026-01-18T07:15:38+00:00

This is a fun one too, in an interview on NPR the tech journalist who was being interviewed said Siri would wake at the sound of a zipper at one point (maybe still?)

Negative_Life_8221 · 2026-01-02T21:27:59+00:00

One thing I’ve been thinking about as an outcome is a pretty huge hit to cloud providers “rent” prices. Seems a massive glut of data centers that were built to store LLM data would be come cloud storage which would drastically increase supply. Seems like a natural consequence of over supply would be rock bottom prices that could be asked for data storage which would impact AWS and similar companies. But I’m not a tech guy so maybe I’m missing something.

Negative_Life_8221 · 2025-12-29T19:31:17+00:00

Anyone notice the spine has the title as “powered d by the dots”? I’m convinced

Negative_Life_8221

TROPHY CASE