Opening thoughts. This often keeps me up at night (among other things). Phantom charge. Vampire energy. Or standby power, you may recognise this more as that red light on the TV when it is switched off, but not completely powered off. Turns out, a significant amount of electricity is being wasted globally because we leave things plugged in and switched on — estimates suggest this accounts for as much as 10% of a household’s total energy use in some regions. It simply translates to billions of dollars in wasted energy and of course, a contributor to carbon emissions. Tata Power’s data, for instance, suggests an average Indian home could be wasting ₹1,500– ₹3,000 annually on standby energy alone. That simply means many billion units are being wasted. What can you do? Switch off devices completely. The good old switch next to the wall socket, should be your port of call. TVs, set-top boxes, ACs, the PlayStation, that air fryer, that robot vacuum cleaner, even the array of fast chargers adjacent to your bedside table. Don’t trickle waste electricity. Easy to miss, but costs and wastage totals up faster than you may imagine.

Last week on Wired Wisdom: Overbuying AI chips, Proton’s redoing VPN, and Microsoft’s Windows mess

ANALYSIS: INCORRIGIBLE ATTITUDE

Nothing emerging from the house of Meta surprises me anymore. Perhaps that is a factor of close to 20 years in this profession. User data collection without a beg your pardon, the Cambridge Analytica scandal of 2018, allegations of misinformation on the platform during the pandemic, perceived laxities in content moderation…the list is quite long. A new chapter, in Meta’s unfolding history, is never far from being written. The latest takes us to a set of leaked internal documents which suggest that Meta allowed scammers on their platforms (including Facebook and Instagram) to post ads, thereby earning billions of dollars, and even as scamming accounts accrued strikes, Meta took that as an opportunity to charge them even more to place ads. A sort of a surcharge, a penalty to ignore the crimes. In case you are wondering what these scam ads might pertain to, the canvas is broad. Everything from ads for selling banned medical products, to promoting dodgy business to illegal online casinos. In 2024, Meta was asked why they allowed drug dealers to post ads on Facebook and Instagram. That illustrates the scale of this problem.

Turns out, they knew 10% or around $16 billion of the total revenue in 2024, was accrued from scams being advertised. The documents clearly say, an estimated 15 billion “higher risk” scam advertisements are served to users every day. EVERY DAY. The scale is the problem. An even bigger one — a complete lack of intent to crack down on the same. In a conversation with HT, Amit Relan who is CEO and Co-founder of mFilterIt, a global ad fraud detection and prevention company points out “Scam ads have exposed a hard truth about the digital ad economy — scale has often been prioritised over safety.”

He takes a long term view, “Every fraudulent impression chips away at the trust that sustains this ecosystem. Platforms must take a more accountable stance, ensuring monetization and moderation go hand in hand, while brands need independent intelligence to safeguard their investments. As AI reshapes advertising, it’s time the industry treated trust as its most valuable currency.” A trail may not be as clear as a bell in Meta’s case, but it is hard to imagine a scenario where this ill-gotten revenue wasn’t channeled towards Meta’s desperate AI pursuits in recent months. It needed a win to prove a point, particularly after the metaverse bombed almost overnight. It’s not going well, is it?

EDITOR’S MARGIN: PHONES INDIANS ARE BUYING

Quite how did India’s smartphone market do in Q3 of this year? Hopes would have inevitably been high, considering this is the festive period where discretionary spends tend to pick some momentum. The CyberMedia Research (CMR) India Mobile Handset Market Review Report for Q3 2025 suggests a 7% year-on-year growth. There are two parallels that need to be looked at — actual market share data, and share by value.

In terms of the market share, Vivo maintains its place at the top of the ladder with an 18% chunk of the pie, up from 16% in the same period last year, and an overall 15% growth. Samsung remains in second with 15% share though CMR data suggests a negative 3% trend compared with Q3 in 2024. Oppo maintains the 15% share status quo, but shipment volume has grown 8%. The worry here is for Xiaomi, which had conceded a part of the 17% market share pie it had at the same time last year (now corners 13%) with a 18% decline in units to go with that. And also for OnePlus, not to be confused with Oppo’s numbers — despite slick flagships and the Nord series phones, it is still a 13% year-on-year decline with the OnePlus 13 series contributing 40% of the total shipments, the rest cornered by the Nord series.

The other side of the coin is about value, because selling the most phones doesn’t mean you also make the most money. Apple does that, with a 30% share in the quarter in terms of value of shipments — this would include some period of the iPhone 17 series as well as the iPhone Air being on sale. In that period, the report says “the iPhone 17 series contributed 8%”. Samsung follows with 22%, with a strong Galaxy S25 flagship portfolio and foldable line-up, and the next flagships perhaps not too far away.

CAR CORNER: DOING NOTHING = HYPERSERVICE?

Apparently, when an automotive company is proving to be absolutely incompetent at providing after-sales service (X is your periscope for the realms of complaints) and they tell customers they’ll simply send the repair parts which they can use to get the vehicle fixed at just any mechanic or service centre that catches their fancy, it is called “Hyperservice”. Ola Electric can spare me the startup bro and tech bro drama. This isn’t revolutionary, this isn’t scaling up, there’s nothing ‘open’ about shirking responsibility (and effort which also needs investment), and there is nothing hyper about this absurdity. No one’s falling for this anymore.

Ola Electric’s been a miserable failure at quality control with their electric scooters, issues ranging from spontaneously catching fire, fast battery drain as well as charging issues, software freeze and unprofessional service (when you were lucky to be somewhat welcomed into the service fold in the first place). You aren’t “opening parts to everyone” when you tell customers who paid a lot of money for your electric scooters to order parts off the app or website and get the fix done anywhere — it is a clear message that they’re on their own now. Shipping parts is just one thing. In fact, parts are one piece of the puzzle that customers would like completed in entirety. Poor service with automobile manufacturers is a regular thing, but at least you have a service centre to be at, and some sort of human being attached to the company, to have a conversation with. But never has it been laced with such a sense of entitlement and arrogance. The start-up culture?

Do check out my other newsletter, Neural Dispatch: Decoding Adobe Premiere for iPhone, defining real jobs, and cost of ‘free’ AI

SECOND THOUGHTS: CAMERA PREFERENCES

A few days ago, I saw an update from Moment, the Seattle based photography-focused company — their new Moment Pro Camera app is here for the new iPhones. The thing they’re pitching the most is Natural Processing, which they say preserves the natural grain in photos taken using an iPhone, and doesn’t add additional sharpness or clarity. Basically, there is no artificial intelligence (AI) boosting for photos, which phones of this era do quite extensively. This took me back to something I’d written this summer, what I’d termed as the philosophical war over the iPhone camera. At that time, the anchor was Adobe’s then new trial of the Project Indigo camera app.

There are two very distinct schools of thought that have crystallised — one set of users are okay with AI boosting the photos they take and have become used to the richer visual look, while the other don’t want AI to step in until they get to the editing table and would prefer a completely natural look. Which side of the debate are you on?