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Month: December 2023

23 Memorable People and Peccadillos of Tech in ’23 – Part Two

23 Memorable People and Peccadillos of Tech in ’23 – Part Two

Photo by alexandru vicol on Unsplash

As we were saying last week, with the year drawing to a close, here are our final dozen picks for the people and peccadillos in a very odd year.

While not everything mentioned in these points might not necessarily have started this year, it was a year when they’ve certainly been ramped up and time to take a closer look. In no particular order:

Climate change. Fact: the climate has been changing since long before mankind came along and started exploiting fossil fuels, but never underestimate hubris. Or (dare we say it?) possible manipulation. Read More...

The 23 Memorable People & ‘Peccadillos’ of ’23 – Part One

The 23 Memorable People & ‘Peccadillos’ of ’23 – Part One

Image by Rosy / Bad Homburg / Germany from Pixabay

Remember all the dumb things you did when you were 23 and thought you knew everything? No, the year wasn’t all bad. Then again, when you were 23, you had your moments, too…

We’ve made our list and checked it twice, so without further ado, the people and peccadillos of the year that’s coming to an end, but the real question is, in many cases, when – and where – does it stop?

  1. Sam Bankman-Fried. He held our attention for quite a spell, as tales of his exploits were revealed: defrauding investors left and right and spending money like it grew on trees. Which it did for him: shake the tree and there were even more funds in the FTX coffers. The one-time crypto king believed that his true strength was in his hair and that those carefully unkempt locks made all the difference in his meteoric rise. Maybe they did for a spell, but speaking of locks, fraud is fraud and the former wunderkind is heading to prison for an even longer spell.
  2. The new cryminal class. SBF tops long list of crypto hot shots facing legal reckoning. “His case was far from the first — or last — time that crypto founders and executives found themselves in legal hot water related to their digital-asset activities,” the Toronto Sun pointed out. There was also Terraform Labs co-founder Do Kwon; Alex Mashinsky, the former chief executive of Celsius Network; Su Zhu, co-founder of the bankrupt Three Arrows Capital hedge fund and Thomas Smith, Kyle Nagy, and Braden Karony — the people behind the crypto token SafeMoon, who were accused by federal prosecutors of using millions in investors’ funds to buy luxury homes and McClaren sports cars. When you can live that large is so short an amount of time, chances are there’s a small cell in your future.

Biometrics collection is certainly growing. Read More...

The Current Climate and Other Changes

The Current Climate and Other Changes

We sometimes like to look at various parts of tech and do the math. We know that climate change and reducing the carbon footprint is a high priority for the planet, because Al Gore warned us in 2009 that “the North Pole will be ice-free in the summer by 2013 because of man-made global warming.” According to life-long politician/non-scientist Gore, carbon emissions are the culprit and note to self: that didn’t happen. Which may have contributed to the president of Cop28, Sultan Al Jaber’s, claim that “there is “no science” indicating that a phase-out of fossil fuels is needed to restrict global heating to 1.5C,” as The Guardian reported.

There isn’t even a consensus among scientists that carbon emissions/fossil fuels are a problem (Putting the ‘con’ in consensus; Not only is there no 97 per cent consensus among climate scientists, many misunderstand core issues).

If the billionaires who flew to the Cop28 are so concerned about carbon emissions and the seas rising, why did they all fly to the summit on private jets and own beachfront properties? In fact, “Jeff Bezos’ Superyacht Generates 447 Times the Yearly Carbon Emissions of Average US Household,” said Gulf Insider. And “the Tennessee Center for Policy Research charged (in 2007, just after he won the Oscar for An Inconvenient Truth, his documentary about the coming climate ‘disaster’) that the gas and electric bills for the former vice president’s 20-room home and pool house devoured nearly 221,000 kilowatt-hours in 2006, more than 20 times the national average of 10,656 kilowatt-hours,” ABC News reported. Read More...

Venture Winter & Other Storm Warnings

Venture Winter & Other Storm Warnings

Image by Stefan Keller from Pixabay

It’s that time of year. Holiday season and no matter how many tree lightings there are to see or gift lists to address, before we break out the eggnog, time for a reality check.

We know that ‘get funded’ is on every founder’s holiday wish list. It’s not impossible, but having worked in retail advertising, we will tell you that the holiday catalogs are compiled and put to bed in August.

Which is when you should have started, if you wanted to at least have had a shot at Santa checking that one off his list. Read More...