"Even as industry sales were slow in 2023, membership in the American Booksellers Assn. continued its years-long revival. It now stands at 2,433, more than 200 over the previous year and nearly double since 2016. About 190 additional stores are in the process of opening over the next two years, according to the ABA."
My experience has been that VCs are pattern-matchers, who spent the last 15 years finding founders and #business models which subverted any inefficient, good-faith system, abstracted away inefficiencies with code, and relied on the repeated use of the #software to generate some free #cashflow, which was the justification for the book value, that would be used to offload the speculative asset to public #markets, or subsequent #investors.
What is the point of auditors when, according to the Audit Reform Lab (based at U Sheffield) the Big Four only managed to spot problems prior to one in four major corporate collapses/bankruptcies since 2010.
(If the choice was will/won't collapse random conclusions might indicate a 50% success rate, so 25% in spotting the difference between success or failure really is pretty poor; yes I know I'm simplifying).
The only solace for the Big Four is other auditors were even worse
How to Foster Local Food Businesses? Create a Stir
This Kamloops non-profit is feeding the dreams of local chefs passionate about community food systems.
'Amid growing food insecurity in Canada, and the pervasive threat of supply chain disruptions due to the likes of global pandemics and climate change, the Stir is helping create a more vibrant local food economy and a greater sense of food sovereignty. '
With more & more companies desperately trying to get aboard the #AI hype train, I have a plea:
For the love of grapefruit, someone understand that we're going to need AI-less solutions VERY soon, when the whole charade collapses because it's actually worse than useless.
Whichever #services have avoided tying their fate to the hype will be SO SUCCESSFUL soon, when everybody's going to need a place to get away from those who did.
“Lenin is supposed to have said that when it came time to hang them, the ‘capitalists will sell us the rope.’ These capitalists are deluding themselves if they imagine that another Trump term in office will be good for them. Yes, Trump is a ‘businessman,’ but more in the style of Tony Soprano than Andrew Carnegie.”
Google showed off new business AI solutions while promoting their water cooled data centers. Now we find out Microsoft is not only failing to meet their carbon emissions goal, their emissions are actually UP 30%.
I just don't see how this era of cloud AI is going to be a sustainable business model...
Google I/O wrapped up, and I have a LOT of thoughts. Shot a quick reaction video on the keynote here https://somegadgetguy.com/b/455
Some really interesting AI tools are coming, but will Gemini search continue hurting website traffic?
Watching #GoogleIO and there are some cool demonstrations of data center cloud computing, but there's also this fog of dystopia surrounding these demos.
The announcements for search are horrifying. Google is full mask off.
Phrases like "search for something, and we'll collect all this data for you" basically equates to:
"We sucked up ALL the data from people who really did the work, and we're going to give you the results of their hard work, but we wont take you to the site that generated the data. You can stay on the search page, and the site's traffic will plummet."
“No other American megabillionaire businessperson has so publicly fostered ideological relationships with world leaders to advance personal politics and businesses.”
The @nytimes looks into Elon Musk’s use of X to build influence with nationalist and right-wing politicians, publicly backing their views, aggressively confronting their enemies, and even personally intervening in X’s content policies in ways that appear to aid them — and all to the benefit of his other businesses. Here’s more.