Hostage As A Service
overall 6.6drawn in v5 · Balloons look again
The roadmap writes itself, and it has a ransom note font.
Post on X Images to share — wide and tall
Google Tells Schools: Turn Off AI, We'll Turn Off Search Too
Google announced a new admin setting letting schools disable Gemini and other AI features in Workspace for Education, but the toggle also switches off Google Search entirely for those accounts — there's no way to keep Search while opting out of AI. Ars Technica and The Verge both confirmed the same all-or-nothing bundling after districts had asked simply to limit AI exposure for students.
Sources: TechCrunch · The Verge · Ars Technica
- X algorithm factor 7
- The zoom-in structure (wide to extreme close) visually telegraphs a founder losing himself in his own scheme, which reads well cold and the 'unsubscribe cancels email' line is the kind of SaaS-cynicism line tech Twitter loves to quote-tweet with their own horror story.
- Conceptual accuracy 6
- Panel 1 nails the actual story, but the punchline pivots to a generic unsubscribe/email dark-pattern joke rather than extending the Search/AI bundling logic specifically, so it drifts from 'this story' into 'SaaS lock-in in general.'
- Humor dry 7 · nerdy 6 · zinger 7 · pithy 8
- The escalation from gleeful opt-out stat to a deadpan hypothetical ransom feature is a clean, pithy dry-humor beat with a genuinely quotable kicker, though the nerdy specificity to Google's actual toggle mechanics gets traded for a broader SaaS jab.
- Visual clarity 6
- The progressive zoom on the founder as the exec vanishes is a nice visual shorthand for monologue/tunnel vision, but panel 1's balloon placement makes it briefly ambiguous whether the raised-arms figure or the neutral one is actually the exec delivering the setup line.