Those tech media monopolies
A broad slowdown in global advertising spending driven by inflation fears was expected to be the main driver of shrinking sales and profits at social media companies, especially Meta’s Facebook and...
View ArticleWell, sorta and maybe
Almost 50 tankers full of liquified natural gas (LNG) are waiting for winter off the coast of Europe, after a sharp fall in prices made it less profitable to dock and sell their cargo. …. If LNG...
View ArticleFool
The boss of Heathrow has accused airlines of keeping fares artificially high this summer to boost profits, as a long-running war of words between the airport and airlines continues. John Holland-Kaye...
View ArticleLet’s tax wealth!
Let’s tax the unrealised gains of those billionaires as stocks only ever rise in value, right? Amazon shares collapsed by 18pc on Thursday night, wiping $202bn (£175bn) off its valuation in one of the...
View ArticleTrump’s just such a terrible negotiator, right?
Boeing lost $766 million during the third quarter of this year on the project to build two planes that will serve as the next Air Force One, the company said in its latest earnings report. The figure...
View ArticleSnigger
Elon Musk could avoid giving a payout of up to $90m (£78m) to sacked senior Twitter executives after dismissing them “for cause”, it has been reported. The new owner of the social media giant sacked...
View ArticleRoyal Mail’s screwed
Daniel Kretinsky, dubbed the “Czech sphinx” for his inscrutable approach to investing, will be free to increase his Royal Mail stake to more than 25pc after Grant Shapps, the new Business Secretary,...
View ArticleBusiness idea
Proper, real, Roman sorbets. Collect the snow from unadulterated glaciers, Alp-tops and the like. Make sorbet. There are, I insist, people out there stupid enough to pay the costs, with a decent profit...
View ArticleFair enough
A Twitter employee who’s 8 months pregnant says she was locked out of her company laptop the night before mass layoffs were due to be announced Seems sensible. She’s going to be a little busy the next...
View ArticleNot really, no
On a visit last week to the windswept site of Britishvolt’s future “gigafactory” in Northumberland, executive chairman Peter Rolton was defiant: “I don’t want to sell this site and I don’t want to give...
View ArticleThis is problematic
But here’s the thing: the industry is now addicted to a technology that has major technical and societal downsides. CO2 emissions from training large machine-learning systems are huge, for example....
View ArticleSnigger
Twitter could not be reached for comment, as its communications department has only one employee as of Thursday.
View ArticleMusk, Twitter and payments
The building of a payments network isn’t, in fact, all that tough. It’s been done several times in the past 30 years after all. The thing that’s needed is the network of people willing to use it. Just...
View ArticleSnigger
Tesco is renaming the “Reduced to Clear” section of their supermarkets to make it more appealing to customers, as a growing number of shoppers look to discounted produce to cut costs. If more people...
View ArticleThe Peter Principle
Now, we don’t know the reasons here at all. And yet: Former Walt Disney Co Chief Executive Bob Iger is returning to the media company as CEO less than a year after he retired, a surprise appointment...
View ArticlePaying real tax on real incomes
That D idea that folk should pay income tax on unrealised capital gains. Elon Musk’s wealth has fallen $100.5 billion so far in 2022, per Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Hell of a refund there.
View ArticleWhat in biggery does this mean?
Boohoo claims the productivity output of its employees averages £83,700, up 13 per cent from the previous year, but pickers are paid just £11 an hour. Productivity output is value add or something?
View ArticleHas a certain ring to it
Antonio García Martínez, a former Facebook product manager turned tech commentator, sums up the movement as “a revolt by entrepreneurial capital against the professional-managerial class regime that...
View ArticleTalk about not getting the point
Followers of Elon Musk’s Twitter account will know that the world’s richest man is partial to attention-grabbing statements. Even so, it was notable when he told Twitter staff this month that...
View ArticleOh Aye?
The petrol forecourts business owned by the billionaire Issa brothers has been accused of profiteering after gross fuel profits rose by 20 per cent to $1.7 billion. Gross profit is revenues minus cost...
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