GOPRO HERO 4K: fails http://fails

• In 2024 GoPro decided to release the hero 4K their cheapest ever action camera  at $199 literally half the price of the flagship hero  13 black.
• It was a nice id because most of gopro’s current users are enthusiasts willing to sync a lot of money into their extreme adventurous Hobbies so the GoPro 4K was the company’s way of pricing themselves to be affordable to the masses.
• You know the people who just want to go pro on a walk the problem though is to hit this $199 price they had to scale black key features and massively reduce the video and stabilization quality.
• nowadays, you don’t have to reduce that quality by very much until it is quite literally worse than the camera that everyone is already carrying around in their pocket.
• Forget the iPhone 16 Pro Max if we just take the iPhone 13 even with this the iPhone is still significantly better quality not to mention like 100 times easier because you’re not having to faff around with SD cards.
• And to top it off iPhone still has an action mode which turns out is actually better than the GoPro stabilization so thing is not useful for the people who wouldn’t normally be interested in action cameras and it’s not good enough for the people who already care about action cameras making it basically Dead on Arrival one out of 10 Tech fail.
• But, if you thought GoPro had cornered the market trying to please everyone and actually in the process pleasing no one then you might have forgotten about Sonic.

• SONIC MOVIE DESIGN: fails

• Since Sonic 3 has come out and we’re all used to how he looks now in the movies feels like a good time to remind everyone about that initial trailer.
• People were outraged that this is how their beloved childhood Hedgehog friend was being betrayed. 
• The reaction was so strong that paramount decided to make a massive publicly embarrassing U-turn announcing that they would redesign and reanimate Sonic from scratch which cost them an estimated $5 million and delayed the movie by full 3 months.
• If we were in the paramount boardroom at the time this was happening we’d been freaking out about the now soiled reputation of the company this is one of the rare tech fails in which the company saw what they did wrong they suppressed their ego they apologized  and they managed to still win from the situation by fixing it at their own cost .
• $5 million investment played a massive part in this movie to cross $149 million at the U.S.A. Canada box office completely flipping Paramount’s reputation.

 MOXIE THE ROBOT: fails

• Moxie the$800 emotional support A.I. robot for children the idea of Moxy is interesting at the very least.

• It was designed by a bunch of neuroscientists and Child Development Specialists to basically help parents to teach their kids social skills.
• So , kids would interact with it they specifically meant to form a close Bond of it and the thing was pretty advanced they used a proprietary mix of A.I. technologies including chat gpt  to regulate its facial expressions depending on the tone of the conversation and it could also store up to four profiles so that its interactions with different kids in the same household are all unique .
• Just about the worst thing that could possibly happen happened embodied the startup behind Moxy sent out an email announcing that the bot is shutting down leaving the parents with the job of gently explaining to their kids why their best friend disappeared.
• Because the company failed to secure additional funding this was the heartbreaking stuff to the kids who had to watch their friend die because it’s using cloud-based servers once the servers are shut down the robots can’t function.

• STEAM DECK: fails

• In 2015 there were two primary types of Gamers there were the PC gamers who got the highest end graphics as well as cheaper games with free online play.
• And them there were console gamers who had a lesser gaming experience due to lack of console power.

• THE STEAM MACHINE: fails

• The idea was to offer people the power of the PC with the convenience of the console so valve the company behind steam created a new controller with two clickable touchpads for Mouse like controls and they partnered with a bunch of PC vendors to offer buyers  a number of different spec options.

• So, each of these Steam Machines was like a normal PC but instead of running windows  because windows was designed for mouse and keyboard and even this day you can’t properly navigate with a controller and because the CEO of valve specifically hated the Windows 8 that was out at the time calling it a catastrophe for everyone in the PC space.
• These machines ran on the new self-developed linux-based Steam OS the problem was that the vast majority of games designed for Windows couldn’t actually run on these only about 20% of the library of games on Steam could actually run on the steam machines.
• Even the games that did run ran slower since they’d been primarily optimized for Windows first and to top the whole thing off in a cruel twist of fate Windows 10 dropped only a few months before the first steam machines actually started to shipping which fixed a lot of the issues that people having with Windows 8.

• ELON MUSK GAMER DEBACLE: fails

• Remember that time when Elon Musk claimed to be one of the world’s top 20 Diablo 4 players on Joe Rogan’s podcast .
• When people checked he actually surprisingly was on the leaderboard.
• On 7th January, 2025 Elon streamed himself playing Path of Exile 2 which is another hacken slash RPG game that’s pretty Diablo like and you’d expect from gamer deity Elon Musk his character was insanely maxed out he literally  had gear better than streamers whose entire job was to play this game all day.
• Just a few days earlier he tweeted boasting how his hardcore character had made it to number 59 in the world.
• Elon confuses item level with required level causing him to lament his unbelievably busted top Tier gear is only level 62. On the stream he only plays maps from a folder clearly titled elon’s Maps which can only mean one of two things that he has paid someone to play this account for him and they’re the ones who’ve set aside some easy maps for him to play on stream  so that he doesn’t get annihilated while bragging to the world about how he wishes he could make the game harder.
• Or Elon just actually decided to actually name his map folder after himself so internet pretty quickly figured it out and Elon admitted in DMS too that he had been having someone else boost his account and he did also confirmed that he was the one playing on those streams.

• OVERWATCH: fails

• Overwatch was such a fun hero shooter it was so instantly accessible every character was unique and interesting and the world they live in was so engaging that even people who never picked up a shooter before were playing this game.
• The hype everytime they teased the release of the character doomfist  way they embedded the lawsuit of his character within the core gameplay and this level of emotion is why the one thing that entire fan base was clamoring for was just  a campaign mode.
• So, imagine the hype level when the trailer for overwatch 2 dropped at BlizzCon 2019 a brand new game with a campaign story mode being one of the main focuses and then when it came to release in 2022 Blizzard announced that they’d also be shutting down the original Over Watch a couple of days before number two dropped.
• On launch the game was hit with a Dos attack  on launch basically an overload on the servers for which the company was totally unprepared for so for the vast majority of players the game was literally unplayable.

• SPOTIFY CAR THING: fails

• Whack one of these in your car specifically a car that doesn’t already have Bluetooth or an entertainment display  and this gives you the full access to Spotify that can be controlled with both touch and voice commands.
• It launched it was$89.99 and you had to have a Spotify Premium subscription to buy one the interface was trash and kind of laggy for a lot of people voice commands work well.
• More fundamentally it turns out that the car thing didn’t play music on its own this is just a controller for the Spotify app that you already have on your phone which can already be controlled by your voice.
• This is potentially may be useful for are people driving older cheaper cars that don’t have an inbuilt way to play music from your phone those the people that are going to want to play $90 plus a subscription to add a completely unnecessary extra step into their music listening process.
• Spotify slashed the price to$49.99 and then they again slashed it to $30 just a few weeks later they really were out here just digging deeper and deeper into their own grave.

• SONOS DEBACLE: fails

• The Sonos app redesign in May 2024 was the exact opposite and it was a lot worse the company completely overhauled their Android IOS app and the idea was to swap out the tabbed navigation system to a customized home screen layout basically to put everything at your fingertips speeding up your use of the interface.
• You’ve ever had the pleasure of using the Sonos  app  before sounded like a much needed thing and well it did make the app faster but people very quickly at launch realized that while they could get to lot of their stuff more readily some of most fundamental features like the sleep timer alarms editing the music queue or you know for many people actually being able to find their speakers not small things are easily missed were just gone.
• This is isn’t just the speaker company who launched the app the app is the company. Sonos speakers are nothing without it so naturally Reddit had an absolute field deal with this people who built their entire homes using Sonos Tech were fuming there was a mass call for people to boycott the brand and abandon them for Alternatives.
• Revenue shot down 8% year-over-year in Q4 earnings which Sonos themselves attributed to the app roll out $4 million was apparently just spent on app recovery Investments they had to delay their next two Hardware launches just to get this thing under control.
• In totality The company took a $500 million to hit their valuation.

FITBIT FEEL THE BURN: fails

• Fitbit has been making fitness tracking watches for a quite a while now but they only made their first proper Smartwatch in 2017 the Fitbit ionic with its own operating system and app platform and 1.7 million were sold worldwide.
• It was obviously still a Fitbit Fitness Tracker. From 2018 to 2020 The Firm received numerous reports of the ionic watches over heating while in use while they were on people’s wrists.
• It was burning people’s skin  off second and even third degree burn in some cases third degree burns are serious business often needing surgical treatment.
• So what did the Fitbit do, they issued a firmware update to potentially reduce the strain on the battery just in case that they helped with any temperature escalations.
•  The list of victims kept growing it took until March 2022 so 4 years after the report started and 115 victims later before Fitbit actually  issued the recall.
• They were initially meant to and as a result Fitbit has recently been very deservedly fined the grand sum of $12.25 million as a civil penalty.

• BUMBLE: fails

• You must heard of Bumble the dating app where women have to message first. It was found that in 2014 by a lady called Whitney Wolf herd after she quit Tinder and the idea was Bumble represented a safer more chill option for women who now have more agency and less likely to just immediately have their DMS flooded and the concept massively took off.
• Now, under the leadership of Lidiane Jones in April they went through a redesign which added a feature that allowed men to message first.
• Bumble had to publicly apologize and the worst part of this is that the knock on confidence from these blunders has led to bumble’s share price dropping by nearly half since the CEO change.
• For a company this massive this is the biggest dropping value around $700 million just evaporated.

• THREADS APP: fails

• This app was exactly the right thing at exactly the right time it launched in July 2023 as a direct competitor to the text based social media Twitter at the exact same point where people’s enthusiasm in Twitter was at its lowest.
• Threads is basically designed to be opposite of the things mentioned above meaning by to capitalize on this downward spiral sentiments that lots of people have towards Twitter meta has made sure that they have launched with zero ads that they’re not even thinking about monetization  until the app reaches a billion users that is two times what Twitter is they’ve made sure that everyone needs to have an Instagram account before they can register.
• It has done a lot to reduce the level of Bot activity meaning by you can see as many posts as you want per day plus it’s linked to your Instagram account you don’t pay for verification it carries over from your Instagram to your threads account for free instantly and the best part of it is that so do your followers.
• Threads is not any type of gift to mankind it’s missing features it’s missing a lot of key features that you really need for an app like this like trending topics for example.
• The thing That actually makes X (Twitter) different to other platforms is that it’s news first you go on there as well as to argue with people over the Internet to learn about what’s happening with the world and what people think about it?
• There is also a Data Problem if you are aware of it then you must have noticed that this app is not available in the (EU) European Union because the EU has very strict data sharing policies that this does not yet comply with.
• Besides, the app itself is kind of nice it’s exactly what you would expect it to be it’s like X.
• There is zero doubt that the designers studied Twitter and consciously made this like it with some design elements of Instagram.
• Thread is already what people call a string of messages so it’s fitting.
• It’s simple you’ve got your news feed which is a combination  of both people you follow and those you don’t you can search for new people to follow here.
• You can write a thread it’s easy on the eyes it seems to run well be smooth and pretty bug free it’s in offensive which actually you can say for Twitter right now.

• BOWERY VERTICAL FARM: fails

• Company said that their indoor vertical Farms were over a 100 times more productive than traditional Farmland per square foot because they could stack layers and layers of crops on top of each other.
• Also, they would use 95% less water due to their smart farming system literally powered by their own operating system BoweryOS which used A.I. to offer individualized attention for all the thousands of crops in each Farm facility.
• The idea was just that this was such a controlled and such an optimized environment that not a thing was going to waste  their products were insanely expensive like bow spring makes cost $16 at Whole Foods compared to the own brand at $6.
• But, they were advertised as pesticide free absurdly flavorful and people were clearly buying into it this became an enormous company valued at $2.3 billion at its peak.
• A lot of bowry’s success was down to their closed loop irrigation system meaning that the water in the facility was continually recycled and reused which also allow them to score big in the kosher Foods Market as it kept out insects  which would break kosher standards.
• However, that closed loop system ended up becoming the very reason for their downpour because when the Farms were hit by a Plant eating pathogen in 2023 it spread like wildfire.
• Every plant was so closed together and while all of them using the same water is great when that water’s clean  it also means that the moment one plant becomes contaminated it’s going to pass to every plant.

  

 HONEY: fails

This company sponsored practically every big youtuber. It’s a browser extension that advertise itself as giving you practically free money because it would search the web for coupon codes when you’re checking out in an online store  and apply the best one that it can find.

• Especially since even when it doesn’t find a code  you already know that that’s the cheapest that you can get. 
• With a premise like that honey was obviously a success. It was acquired by PayPal in 2020 for $4 billion.
• Everything crashing down in December 24 when Youtuber Mega lag made an expose video about them alleging that honey steals money from people.
• A lot of content creators rely on revenue from  affiliate links and the majority of these links work by giving a small cut from the total value of a  sale to the site that got the last click.
  • It led to that sale what honey was doing for example if you clicked on your favorite creators affiliate link to support them and then you used honey at checkout to get the latest coupon.
  • And that coupon was swapping out that creator’s affiliate link for their own honey affiliate link thus stealing the Creator’s cut of the end sale amount so they’ve literally been paying all of these influencers to promote them while taking money out of their back pockets.
  • They’ve also been lying to consumers meal lag found that in many cases honey would provide inferior codes when better ones were available online.
  • Honey has lost all credibility and the chance to work with many YouTubers like we’re not going near it ever again.
  • Youtube’s favorite snappily dressed lawyer legal eagle has fired a class action lawsuit against honey.
  • READ MORE…https://shankycurrentevents.info/facebook-marketplace/
  • fails: YOUTUBE…https://www.youtube.com/