PhD CPA Assistant Professor at @TCU. Argues with people who agree with me. Official Matt. All views are my own. (He/Him) @ menzer on the other one
Joined July 2010
- Tweets24.7K
- Following850
- Followers1.1K
- Likes12.5K
Pinned Tweet
Just putting this here for future reference anytime someone says: "but I have never been audited on it"
#taxtwitter
AICPA SSTS 2.1.8(a)
"gross margins are above 80%"
Non-gapp numbers tell a story, but GAAP comes for us all eventually
I feel like class actions should really be seen as classical pigouvian taxes, where the societal benefit can come primarily from imposing the cost, regardless of what is done with the money.
🚨🎮 UBISOFT'S $2 MILLION SETTLEMENT. GAMERS CLAIMED JUST $38,633!
Gamers, this is interesting. Very interesting. 🤔
Remember The Crew? The racing game Ubisoft shut down in 2024, leaving people who purchased it unable to play?
Um, that decision led to a class-action lawsuit, and now we're getting a closer look at the numbers.
According to an October 16 court filing, Ubisoft established a $2 million settlement fund for affected consumers.
Now things get interesting.
Approximately 1.8 MILLION people were included in the settlement class. Yet only 2,951 valid claims were submitted, totaling $38,633 in cash and Ubisoft store credit.
Meanwhile, the attorneys are requesting $800,000 in fees, plus litigation expenses.
Before you start sharpening your pitchforks, the attorney fees would be paid separately by Ubisoft, not deducted from the $2 million consumer fund. And the court hasn't approved them yet.
But seriously..
$2 MILLION AVAILABLE. $38,633 CLAIMED.
That's less than 2% of the available funds.
This part bothers me.
The lawsuit wasn't simply about getting a few bucks back. It challenged what consumers were led to believe they were purchasing in the first place.
Ubisoft shut down the servers. The game became unplayable. And the people who purchased it were left with a product they could no longer use.
The proposed settlement offers qualifying claimants $7 in cash or $15 in Ubisoft store credit.
One question.
HOW DOES THAT BRING THE GAME BACK?
It doesn't.
And that's the bigger problem with digital ownership. We keep having the same discussions about compensation AFTER access disappears, rather than protecting consumers BEFORE it happens.
To be fair, Ubisoft denies wrongdoing, and the settlement still requires final court approval. The hearing is scheduled for November 13.
All this deserves a much larger conversation.
When you purchase a game, should a publisher have the ability to make that game permanently unplayable simply because maintaining its servers is no longer part of the business plan?
And if that happens, is a few dollars really a fair remedy?
I'm curious what you think. This isn't only about Ubisoft anymore. It's about the future of the games we're all paying for.
Official settlement information and court documents:
crewgamesettlement.com/
🤓 Never underestimate the power of nerds.
If you like my content, follow me. Game On.
#Ubisoft #TheCrew #DigitalOwnership #ConsumerRights #GamePreservation #GamingNews #EthicaGaming
Anyone saying billionaires shouldn't exist should be forced to use Oprah, Beyonce, and Taylor Swift as their first examples.
If it is really true that no one can legitimately make a billion, then surely they are just as exploitative?
How would people feel if the CBO scored (unchallenged) Trumps tariffs as raising no revenue under the theory that they were unconstitutional?
Or scoring a Dem repeal of the same tariffs as costing $0 because they are illegal
Tyler Menzer retweeted
Interesting setup! In my opinion, questions of diversity, gameability, and algorithmic monoculture remain, even if AI reviewing is getting better. Our ICML paper might be of interest: xitter.cf/joabaum/status/2050278…
Can you boost your AI review scores by asking an LLM to rewrite your paper?
Yes! We call it paper laundering
Our @icmlconf spotlight paper argues current AI reviewers aren't ready to automate peer review, and outlines what a science of peer review automation should look like🧵👇
ALT First page of the ICML 2026 spotlight paper "Stop Automating Peer Review Without Rigorous Evaluation" by Joachim Baumann, Jiaxin Pei, Sanmi Koyejo, and Dirk Hovy (Stanford University and Bocconi University). The abstract argues that today's AI systems should not be used to produce paper reviews, grounded in two empirical findings: a "hivemind effect" where AI reviewers show excessive agreement and reduce perspective diversity, and "paper laundering," where prompting an LLM to rewrite a paper trivially increases AI reviewer scores through stylistic changes rather than scientific improvements. The paper calls for a science of peer review automation rather than wholesale deployment of general-purpose LLMs.
Tyler Menzer retweeted
When I talk about cheap travel, people really don't understand the middle class just didn't travel back in the day (or maybe their "travel" would be to a town or parkland or highway rest area two hours down the road by car)
I usually use airfares but let's use TRAIN fare in 1950
Tyler Menzer retweeted
My view on the California wealth tax proposal is probably more nuanced than some of my followers may want it to be.
Prop 40, as designed, has both strong pros and strong cons.
My main complaint is that the scientific debate around it has been polluted by political prejudices.
🧵
Absolutely thrilled for Axiom to finally tell us which utility function is the correct specification!
Tyler Menzer retweeted
I have been critical of some of the estimates, but the tax will absolutely collect less than expected, simply because the law appears like it will undervalue many private firms
Under the formula in the law, I would guess anthropic would be valued at ~$0
xitter.cf/JeffLHoopes/status/211…
The academic revenue estimates are literally just the Forbes numbers * .9 * .05. The wealth is just what Forbes says it is.
I think the GAAP point one is important--we have thousands of papers about how a GAAP number can be manipulated: taxpolicynetwork.org/when-we…
Some of discussion around this news is weird. Meta and Zuckerburg are not really distinct units. Zuck has majority voting control!
This wasn't Meta doing a sober NPV of Zuck being in CA, it was Zuck saying he wanted to stay and pulling the money out of his company to do it
The 50% legal problems haircut here is even worse that I thought. We should not apply a corporate accounting standard ad hoc to revenue estimates of bills, there is no reason for it. Imagine if CBO just halved the estimates of any bill because there could be legal challenges
Tyler Menzer retweeted
People letting AI write for them of course produce more writing, let's say it's 2x.
If we should pay the same attention to AI writing as to human writing (as these AI writers advise us to), then we would give twice as much of our attention to AI writers. Or 10x in some cases. No wonder they advise this!
But this is self-evidently wrong. An AI-writer's 10th idea is unlikely to be as good as a non-AI writer's next idea. In fact, it seems to be exactly the opposite — the more people write with AI, the worse each marginal piece of writing.
The question then is: what discount rate should we assign to work that is written with a big dose of AI? It's clearly greater than zero. My experience suggests it is much greater than zero, and often close to 1, i.e. completely discounted.
But it's person-dependent too. There probably are a handful of people who are so creative and interesting and bad at writing that I really do want to see 10x volume from them via AI. But so far, the most common use of AI writing is to hide lazy working/thinking, and hence I want to read much less in equilibrium from these writers, not more. Of course, not all AI writers are in this category.
Our main constraint is attention. The volume of text will raise dramatically, so inevitably we will use filters to direct that attention. Maybe it will change, but right now AI-typical writing is a strong signal that something is worth a lot less of your attention.
I, for one, am eagerly awaiting the vibrant discussions of § 382 in a few years
In theory this will even out with higher tax payments in later years--or at least, if they keep spending like crazy, the low tax payments will match low profits.
But really, as the AI buildout continues, the tax picture is going to get weirder.
nytimes.com/2026/10/17/busin…
For the Far-R, the default goal is for the govt not to do things. When the Tea party torpedos a bill, its a win-win. They either get what they want or they kill legislation.
The Far-L has always failed at this sort of hostage politics because they actually want things to change
James Carville says he'd rather have Republicans keep control of the House than Democrats winning the chamber by 5 seats.
"I would rather the Republicans keep the House by five than the Democrats win by five, because if that happens, they’re hostage to the DSA. Like, Hakeem cannot move. There’s no place for him to go."
Just got an email from Experian that said I might want to lower my credit utilization...by opening new cards...
(btw, I pay off my CC in full every month)
I am by no means anti-AI, but maybe, just maybe, if @IndependentInst's article tagline is "fixing the map", they shouldn't use an AI map that completely redraws the US Mexico border and adds a new state...
