The Zombie App Apocalypse

"Talk is cheap. Show me the code."
- Linus Torvalds, 2000

"Code is cheap. Show me the users."
- Me, 2026

The Death of the Dev Moat

In 2023, if you had a bullshit idea (like a social media app for cats), you still had to find $50,000 or 6 months of your own life to build a prototype. 

That cost acted as a bullshit filter.

In 2026, that filter is gone. Code has become cheap, and the bullshit has become infinite. If you can’t find a single user before you hit 'Generate' you haven't built a tool; you've just automated the process of adding to the internet's infinite landfill.

We’ve been here before. In 2000, millions of bullshit apps came out of Microsoft Access and VB6. For the first time, a department manager could drag-and-drop a few components, click a wizard, and 'build' a billing system. It felt like magic, but it mostly resulted in a million fragile .MDB files on desktops and a nightmare to maintain. Today, we aren't dragging buttons; we're vibe-coding entire repos. The tech changed, but the delusion remains: just because you can build it doesn't mean you should.

Zombie Apps

With tools like Claude Code or DeepSeek-V4, a non-technical founder can go from napkin sketch to a hosted, functional web app in a single afternoon. Due to this, we're in a supply-side explosion of Zombie Apps - AI generated apps with no users - beautiful, functional, and completely hollow. Because the cost to maintain a web app with a negligible userbase is less than a cup of coffee per month, they can stay online forever, creating a graveyard of functional software that no one ever logs into.

We'll end up with a long tail of these apps that never get used. Think of it as the YouTube-ification of software. 90% of all uploaded videos on YouTube never break 1000 views, and 25% get exactly zero views. A vibe coded SaaS is the same... a perfectly rendered concert performed in an empty stadium. 

Building an app may be almost free, but getting someone to care about it has never been more expensive. The truth is that with a SaaS, the code has never been the most important part, it's always been "product/market fit", and the ability to grow an active community of users who need your product. There is still a massive market for a focused SaaS that solves a real problem, but in 2026 shipping it isn't the victory - growing a real user base is.

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The Trash-to-Cash pipeline: monetizing your garbage

Oshkosh and their AI driven garbage trucks

At CES 2026, Oshkosh Corporation took the stage not just as a vehicle manufacturer, but as a data powerhouse. Their flagship innovation for the "Neighborhood of the Future" is an AI-Powered Contamination Detection system integrated into their refuse and recycling fleets.

The stated goal is noble of course - "Landfill Diversion" - by using advanced cameras and on-the-edge AI processing, these trucks scan every piece of waste as it falls into the hopper. The system identifies contaminants (like a plastic bag in the paper bin or a greasy pizza box) and uses onboard GPS to map that issue back to your home address. The city then sends you a friendly, automated SMS educating you on your recycling sins. It’s efficient, it’s green, and it’s powered by the same tech used in autonomous combat vehicles.

Dystopian twist via a software upgrade

As every developer knows, hardware is just a shell for the software running on it. While the truck currently only looks for plastic bags, theoretically a software update could turn it into a collector of household product consumption data.

Imagine a local cash-strapped city council realizing that their recycling program is a cost center, but their waste data collection program is a cash goldmine. With one firmware push, the AI models are updated to recognize not just cardboard or plastic but specific brand logos, product SKUs, and consumption volumes. Your bin is no longer just a waste dump; it’s a physical record of your household's consumption patterns ... sitting on a public curb with zero legal expectation of privacy.

Monetizing the data

Once the AI is brand and product aware, it becomes a tool for monetization via these potential goldmines of garbage:

• Retail Data: Why spend millions on broadcast ads when you can buy a report from the local council showing exactly which households are throwing out competitor brand's packaging? A cereal company could target "Kellogg's households" with high-precision mailouts, product samples, or localized digital ads.

• Health Profiling: By detecting medicine bottles and food packaging, AI can build a neighborhood health profile. It'd be highly valuable to insurance actuaries and pharmaceutical giants, who would love to know the "wellness score" of a specific zip code.

• Health Insurance: The AI detects an above-average volume of beer cans at your address. Does your health insurance premium go up next year?

• The Green Tax: Left-leaning councils could move beyond flat waste fees to "Environmental Impact Taxes" based on the volume of non-sustainable brands or products detected in your garbage. Did you buy a pack of ribeye beef steaks this week, you carnivorous bastard? Then you'll need to pay $10 towards reversing the deforestation of the Amazon.

• Fast Food Giants: Mapping market share hotspots by suburb... "We only have a 20% market share in this zip code; let’s put a new billboard up."

Your bin is the new privacy battleground

AI powered garbage truck technology means that the contents of your bin are eventually going to be opened up to the local council. 

The next time you hear a garbage truck cruising by at 6:00 AM, don't get annoyed by the noise; think about the sensors scanning your bad habits, one pizza box at a time... ;-)

References
The 2025 Deepnest Report: What Waste Data Revealed About Recyclability
Turning Trash into Transparency: Nawa's AI-Driven Vision for Global Recycling
Robotic Collection and AI-Powered Contamination Detection Spotlighted at CES 2026
Dallas to install AI cameras on garbage trucks

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United Airlines Chatbot Fail

AI Agents hooked up directly to the customer over SMS text messaging are a disaster waiting to happen. 

A chatbot bug had real world consequences for a United Airlines customer last week - their booking got cancelled by mistake.

The United Airlines AI Agent gets it wrong over text message

The chatbot presented two options:

A) Yes, cancel & get a refund
B) No, not ready to cancel

Pretty simple you'd think, but when the customer replied B, it completely lost the context of the command and went ahead with A, the opposite option.

So the lesson here is don't trust a chatbot to know what its doing at all, and for anything important, just use the company's app or website directly. If its a complex issue, call them up and talk to an actual employee... it will probably save your time in the end.


The simple text based interface was used for many years before windows & mouse interfaces became dominant during the 1990s. Unfortunately some AI agents aren't capable of getting a basic text interface like this correct yet.

An old school text based menu interface

References:
https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedairlines/comments/1qrrvfd/am_i_stupid_for_did_i_just_get_screwed_by_the_ai/
https://www.slalom.com/au/en/customer-stories/united-airlines-gen-ai
https://www.cio.com/article/3969476/united-airlines-ai-strategy-the-airline-that-makes-decisions-fastest-wins.html

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The iPhone Triple Zero Meltdown

The iPhone Triple Zero Meltdown is a textbook example of a safety regression, where a software patch meant to fix a critical vulnerability ends up creating a larger disaster.

The incident sent shockwaves through the Australian telecommunications industry and resulted in tens of thousands of people not being able to call Triple Zero / 000 (the Aussie equivalent of US 911 or UK 999).

1. The Goal: fix camping on

Following an Optus network outage in late 2025, Aussie regulators discovered that older 4G phones had a lethal flaw: if their primary network (e.g. Telstra) went down, the phones couldn't always "camp on" to a backup alternative network (like Optus) to dial emergency services.

To address the problem, Apple proactively released an emergency patch (iOS 16.7.13) specifically to fix the emergency service failover logic on older devices (like the iPhone 8/8+ and iPhone X). That iOS update was released on Australia Day - Monday, January 26th, 2026.

2. The Result: bricked phones

On January 28th, 2026, the Telstra customers who had installed the iOS 16.7.13 patch woke up to find their iPhones had no connectivity.

• The Bug: The update contained a flawed Carrier Settings profile that effectively mangled the handshake between the iPhone and Telstra’s towers.

• The Irony: The software designed to ensure emergency calls always worked ended up preventing the phone from connecting to the network at all. Users couldn't call / text, or use data - and most importantly - couldn't reach the emergency number, 000.
  
  

3. The Recovery: the carrier fix

Apple and Telstra pushed out a hastily prepared "Carrier Settings Update" within 24 hours of the issue happening.

• The Fix: Users were told to connect to Wi-Fi and navigate to Settings > General > About. A prompt would appear asking them to "Update to Telstra 54.1".

• The Reality: For many regional Australians without a home Wi-Fi network, their only lifeline (their phone) was dead, and they had no way to download the fix that would bring it back to life. So they had to drive to the nearest public library or McDonald’s to get the patch, and restore their phone.

References:

• https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-01-28/telstra-warns-older-iphones-may-be-unable-to-connect-to-network/106280356
• https://www.reddit.com/r/australia/comments/1qp23gf/any_older_iphone_users_8_x_etc_do_not_install_the/
• https://www.telstra.com.au/exchange/iphone-calling-issue--what-you-need-to-know

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