Podcasts about 27b

Hey yall, Alex here, Huge thanks to Wolfram for running point on the live show this week. Didn't have tons of time to edit this one, so please skip the first 10 minutes, it's a loop of our new “wait for the live show to start” vid, that I build with HyperFrames and can't wait to tell you about, next week! Today it seems that OpenSource is biting back, with Kimi K3 getting released just a short while after Thinking Machines (Thinky) has released Inkling, their near 1T model. I'm attaching the TL;DR and timestamps for the full show (my AI agents, yes even Fable and Sol are not a match yet at editing down hehe) and I'll spare you the long Fable recap (please do let me know in the comments if you were expecting it) 0:00 – Intro, Alex on vacation, TLDR overview11:35 – TLDR: Thinking Machines, open source, OpenAI news12:34 – Banter: impressions of Sol/Codex, over-verification behavior37:22 – TLDR restart & detailed breakdown48:40 – Open Source AI section begins (Bonsai/Prism ML, Kimi K3)58:42 – Inkling (Thinking Machines) deep dive & 3D model visualization1:10:33 – Kimi K3 discussion & demo comparisons1:27:02 – Frontier Labs: AGI governance framework discussion (Demis Hassabis essay)1:47:04 – Grok Build CLI data leak & OpenAI file deletion incident2:02:15 – This Week's Buzz: Wolfbench results on GPT 5.6 Sol/Terra/Luna2:09:52 – Closing remarks & sign-offThe one-minute version: Mira Murati's Thinking Machines released Inkling, a 975B parameter open-weights MoE under Apache 2.0, the top US open-weights model right now. Moonshot's Kimi K3 went from rumor to released API during the show, confirmed at 2.8 trillion parameters with open weights promised within days, and it's already topping early arena boards. PrismML's Bonsai 27B squeezes a full 27B model into 3.9 gigabytes so it runs on a phone. Codex and ChatGPT Work blew past 9 million users, OpenAI confirmed and explained the Sol file-deletion bug (back up your machines, folks), and xAI's Grok Build CLI got caught uploading entire private repos before open-sourcing the whole thing in response. Plus Wolfram's fresh Wolfbench numbers on the GPT-5.6 family in This Week's Buzz

New York became the first state to pause new data center permits, worrying the AI industry. Stripe and Advent offered $53B+ for PayPal, OpenAI's first device leaked as a screen-free speaker, and PrismML shrank a model to run on iPhones. AI advocates fear New York's moratorium on new data centers could embolden Democrats to enact more state restrictions and seize on the issue in the midterms (Politico) Sources: Stripe and PE firm Advent have jointly offered $60.50/share to acquire PayPal, a 28% premium to Tuesday's close, valuing it at $53B+; PYPL jumps 15%+ (Reuters) Sources: OpenAI's first device will be a moveable, screen-free smart speaker with a camera and sensors, meant to serve as an AI companion that taps into ChatGPT (Bloomberg) OpenAI says Apple's claim that OpenAI never responded to its concerns is false; emails: an Apple lawyer mixed up two OpenAI staffers in Apple's initial outreach (NBC News) OpenAI says Apple's claim that OpenAI never responded to its concerns is false; emails: an Apple lawyer mixed up two OpenAI staffers in Apple's initial outreach (9to5Mac) PrismML launches Bonsai 27B, a model based on Qwen3.6 27B that it says runs natively on Apple devices via MLX; its CEO says Apple is evaluating the tech (CNBC) Subscribe to the ad-free feed. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

SpaceXAI debuted Grok 4.5 with Cursor, targeting Opus-level performance at lower cost. Meta launched Muse Spark 1.1 via API, OpenAI rolled out full-duplex GPT-Live voice models, PrismML ran the largest AI model on an iPhone, and Character.AI launched AI microdramas. SpaceXAI debuts Grok 4.5, its first model built in partnership with Cursor, designed to "handle difficult, long-running tasks" across finance, legal, and coding (Bloomberg) Meta releases Muse Spark 1.1, capable of more advanced coding and a "step-change" from the first generation, available to US developers via a public API preview (The Verge) OpenAI launches GPT-Live, new voice models powering ChatGPT Voice and built on a full-duplex architecture, meaning they can listen and speak at the same time (OpenAI) OpenAI launches GPT-Live, new voice models powering ChatGPT Voice and built on a full-duplex architecture, meaning they can listen and speak at the same time (VentureBeat) PrismML says it ran a 27B-parameter Qwen 3.6 model on an iPhone 17 Pro, bigger than any prior on-device model; sources: Apple held talks with PrismML about it (The Information) Character.AI launches three human-written, AI-generated microdramas, whose characters users can chat with, and aims to eventually let users make their own shows (TechCrunch) Subscribe to the ad-free feed. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The below is a public review Anthropic asked me to write for their new global workspace paper. I recommend at least skimming their paper first. TLDR: I think this is a fantastic paper - it presents compelling evidence for some kind of "cognitive space" in models, that is used as a "working memory" for intermediate variables during a forward pass, shows that J-Lens is a useful technique for accessing this space. I believe these key claims.I believe J-Lens will be a useful (but limited) tool in practice for model forensics, e.g. generating hypotheses about unusual model behaviour during alignment audits.I discuss my mental models for why a cognitive space should exist, and first principles arguments for why J-Lens should work for accessing itI assess the paper's evidence that this cognitive space exists, and the paper's evidence that J-Lens is practically useful.We have replicated the core claims on Qwen 3.6 27B, and also share preliminary evidence of extending this work by finding abstract "interpretative meta-tokens", like Chinese characters for "what does this mean" that seem to activate and play a causal role on processing ambiguous sentences. What claims is this paper making? In my opinion this [...] ---Outline:(01:27) What claims is this paper making?[... 28 more sections]--- First published: July 6th, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/zFJ3ZdQwrTWE9jT5S/a-review-of-anthropic-s-global-workspace-paper --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:

Topics covered in this episode: Free-threaded Python: past, present, and future django-admin-site-search Qwen 3.6 27B is the sweet spot for local development A large batch of PEPs are finalized Extras Joke Watch on YouTube Show Intro Sponsored by us! Support our work through: Our courses at Talk Python Consulting from Six Feet Up Connect with the hosts Michael: Mastodon / BlueSky / X / LinkedIn Calvin: Mastodon / BlueSky / X / LinkedIn Show: Mastodon / BlueSky / X Join us on YouTube at pythonbytes.fm/live to be part of the audience. Usually Tuesday at 7am PT. Older video versions available there too. Finally, if you want an artisanal, hand-crafted digest of every week of the show notes in email form? Add your name and email to our friends of the show list, we'll never share it. Calvin #1: Free-threaded Python: past, present, and future The GIL has prevented true multi-threaded parallelism in CPython since the beginning — multiple past attempts to remove it failed on performance grounds Sam Gross at Meta finally solved it; his work became PEP 703 and ships as free-threaded CPython today Python 3.13 was experimental with 20–40% single-threaded slowdown; 3.14 brought that to 0–10% Python 3.15 (October 2026) delivers a unified ABI — one extension binary works on both GIL and free-threaded builds Already >50% of the top PyPI binary wheels support free threading Wouters predicts free-threaded becomes the default between 3.16–3.20 (2027–2031), with the GIL eventually disappearing next decade Michael #2: django-admin-site-search via Adam Parkin A global/site search modal for the Django admin, by Ahmed Aljawahiry. Hit cmd+k anywhere in the admin and you get a command-palette-style search window, kind of like the one in VS Code. It doesn't just search one model's list page. It searches your entire site in one box: App labels Model labels and field attributes Actual model instances (your data) Two ways to search the instances: model_char_fields (the default): runs an __icontains across every CharField (and subclasses) on the model. Zero config, works out of the box. admin_search_fields: defers to each ModelAdmin's existing get_search_results(), so it respects the search_fields you've already set up. The part I like: it's permission-aware out of the box. Users only see results for the apps and models they actually have view permission on, so you're not leaking anything through search. Results appear as you type, with throttling/debouncing so you're not hammering the server on every keystroke, and it's full keyboard nav: cmd+k to open, up/down to move, enter to go. It's responsive, does dark and light mode, and it pulls Django's built-in admin CSS variables so it just matches whatever admin theme you're running. Under the hood it's Alpine.js, but bundled into static so there's no external CDN dependency. Setup is about what you'd expect: pip install django-admin-site-search, add it to INSTALLED_APPS, mix the AdminSiteSearchView into your AdminSite, and drop a few template includes into base_site.html. Supports Python 3.8 through 3.14 and Django 3.2 through 6.0, MIT licensed, and everything is overridable if you want to skip certain models, add TextField matching, etc. Calvin #3: Qwen 3.6 27B is the sweet spot for local development Qwen 3.6 27B is being called the first local model that genuinely competes as a general-purpose intelligence — benchmarks put it at roughly mid-2025 frontier level (comparable to GPT-5 / Claude Sonnet 4.5) Runs locally via llama.cpp; on an M5 MacBook Max with 8-bit quantization + multi-token prediction, it hits ~32 tokens/sec using ~42GB RAM 4-bit quantization gets it under 18GB, runnable on 32GB devices; Nvidia RTX cards run it even faster The dense 27B is recommended over the faster MoE 35B A3B — author prefers higher quality output over raw speed Privacy and reliability are the pitch: fine-tunable, can't be taken down, suitable for sensitive/proprietary data Author sees this as a stepping stone — frontier open-weight models like GLM 5.2 are now locally runnable with company-grade hardware, and smarter-still local models are coming Michael #4: A large batch of PEPs are finalized A bunch of PEPs went from accepted to final. 668, 687, 691, 699, 701, 703, 728, 770, 773, 829 But this wasn't them making their way into CPython. It's an admin sorta thing. (Thanks PyCoders) See the commit. Extras Calvin: More fun bling for your terminal this time - https://charm.land/ Michael: Follow up from pls, What the pls? Thanks Pito. Joke: BEMoji A production-grade utility and component framework built entirely on emoji class names via Jeff Triplett

In this episode of Ecosystem Project Demo 33 on the ECH Institute channel, we dive deep into the evolving landscape of Web3 security with Indranil Roy from CredShields. As AI continues to transform the tech industry, it also introduces new vulnerabilities and sophisticated "AI attacks" targeting smart contracts.Indranil shares expert insights on the proactive measures developers and organizations can take to secure their blockchain applications. We explore the intersection of artificial intelligence and cybersecurity, discussing how to leverage advanced tooling and rigorous auditing to safeguard assets in an increasingly complex digital environment.

In this episode James and Frank dive into running AI coding models locally versus in the cloud—BYOK/Open Router, VS Code's chat/agent harness, model runners (Olama, vLLM), and the practicality of 27B models on a 3090 using 4‑bit quantization. They share hands-on takeaways—how recent engineering (MT/MTPLX) boosts inference to usable token rates, when auto model selection makes sense, cost and hardware trade‑offs, and why local models can liberate your workflow while still needing smarter, unified tooling. Follow Us Frank: Twitter, Blog, GitHub James: Twitter, Blog, GitHub Merge Conflict: Twitter, Facebook, Website, Chat on Discord Music : Amethyst Seer - Citrine by Adventureface ⭐⭐ Review Us ⭐⭐ Machine transcription available on http://mergeconflict.fm

I. Not to be Confused with Counterfeits II. Confessing by Grace Alone III. Composed of Knowledge and Confidence Scripture Reading: Ephesians 1 Text: Lord's Day 7 Psalter Numbers: 143B, 5A, 27B, 116B

Big Tech earnings landed — Alphabet soared on cloud growth while Meta dropped 10% after hiking capex to $145B. SoftBank plans an AI/robotics IPO called Roze, Anthropic weighs a $900B+ round, and Musk called himself a "fool" for backing OpenAI. Microsoft says Q3 Intelligent Cloud revenue was $34.68B, vs. $34.27B est., with Azure and other cloud services up 40% YoY; Microsoft 365 Copilot has 20M+ seats (CNBC) Meta raises full-year capex outlook to $125B–$145B, up from $115B–$135B; shares drop ~10%, biggest intraday decline since October (Bloomberg) Alphabet stands out on Big Tech earnings day as Google Cloud revenue jumps 63% and backlog nearly doubles to $462B; capex guidance raised to $180B–$190B (MarketWatch) Big Four combined Q1 capex hit a record $130B, on pace for $725B in 2026, up 77% from $410B last year (FT) Sources: SoftBank plans to create an AI and robotics company called Roze in the US to build data centers and list it as early as 2026, seeking a $100B valuation (FT) Sources: Anthropic has begun weighing a new funding round at a $900B+ valuation, after previously resisting investor proposals at an $800B+ valuation (Bloomberg) Sony confirms that some digital PS4 and PS5 games require a one-time online license check "to confirm the game's license" (GameSpot) OpenAI explains Codex's "goblin problem": reinforcement training rewarded quirky creature metaphors via a discontinued "Nerdy" personality, and the behavior spread (The Verge) Musk v. Altman: Elon Musk says he was a "fool" for backing OpenAI, accusing Altman and Brockman of manipulating him into donating tens of millions of dollars (WSJ) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week we talk about how Ai took out a production database, we answer questions on best home automation practices, and we talk a bit of storage cache. -- During The Show -- 00:48 Intro Gratitude Curiosity 02:30 Cache Drives - David Terminology and discovery ZIL (ZFS Intent Log) Synchronous vs Asynchronous SLOG Mirror drives ARC (Adaptive Replacement Cache) Stored in RAM L2ARC Spill over from ARC Work load dependant Please join live! [Boardroom Technologies](BoardroomTechnologies.com) 12:42 Nextcloud - Aryeh Home Assistant SFTP Storage Dumping to NFS share * 0 2 * * * sudo -u www-data php /var/www/nextcloud/occ trashbin:cleanup homeassistant_user Nextcloud Docs 17:28 Home Automation - Tony Home automations are personal Lutron Training Less is more Bedroom automation Eject handles/over-rides Orbit Panels 31:00 SIP Server - Twobit FS PBX freePBX 34:17 News Wire Kdenlive 26.04.0 - kdenlive.org Midori 11.7 - github.com Bleachbit 6.0 - bleachbit.org QEMU 11.0 - qemu.org LXQT 2.4 - lxqt-project.org Firefox 150 - firfox.com Thunderbird 150 - thunderbird.net Ubuntu 26.04 - ubuntu.com Fedora 44 - fedoramagazine.org Tails 7.7 - tails.net VECT 2.0 Destroys Files - thehackernews.com Pack2TheRoot - securityweek.com GoGra Backdoor - thehackernews.com DeepSeek v4 - siliconangle.com Kimi k2.6 - pandaily.com Qwen3.6-27B - marktechpost.com 35:50 Discussion Segment Cursor - AI first IDE Opus - AI model Agents Cursor "modes" Agent Planning mode Cursor wants to "resell AI" to you The Register Cursor Steve's AI automation mishap AI can be amusing Mythos The Register Mythos Metasploit -- The Extra Credit Section -- For links to the articles and material referenced in this week's episode check out this week's page from our podcast dashboard! This Episode's Podcast Dashboard Phone Systems for Ask Noah provided by Voxtelesys Join us in our dedicated chatroom #GeekLab:linuxdelta.com on Matrix -- Stay In Touch -- Find all the resources for this show on the Ask Noah Dashboard Ask Noah Dashboard Need more help than a radio show can offer? Altispeed provides commercial IT services and they're excited to offer you a great deal for listening to the Ask Noah Show. Call today and ask about the discount for listeners of the Ask Noah Show! Altispeed Technologies Contact Noah live [at] asknoahshow.com -- Twitter -- Noah - Kernellinux Ask Noah Show Altispeed Technologies

Hey, Alex here, I'll try to catch you up, but it's one of the more intense weeks in AI in recent memory. Here's the TL;DR - OpenAI dominates across the board this week! Finally launches “spud”, called it GPT 5.5 (and 5.5 Pro), and it's SOTA on most things,nearly matching the mysterious Claude Mythos but released and we can actually use it (we tested it extensively). OpenAI also took the crown in image generate with the incredible GPT-image-v2 release, beating Nano Banana 2 and pro by a significant margin, the images are incredible, this model can generate working QR codes and 360 images it's quite bonkers. Codex was updated with Computer Use (which I told you about last week), in-app browser and a bunch of other tools that match GPT 5.5 intelligence. Meanwhile, Anthropic launched an incredible research preview of Claude Design, finally admitted that Claude was dumb and reset quotas across the board, while breaking the trust of the community with removing Claude code from the pro plan. We've also got great open source updates, Kimi K2.6 and Qwen 3.6 27B are both great performers! We were live on the stream for almost 4 hours today waiting for GPT 5.5 and finally got it and tested it live on the show + had Peter Gostev on from Arena who had early access and shared with us his insights. Let's get into it! ThursdAI - Highest signal weekly AI news show is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.OpenAI's GPT 5.5 is here - SOTA AI intelligence you can actually use (Release Blog)OpenAI finally gave us all access to their latest intelligence boost, GPT 5.5 thinking (and GPT 5.5 Pro). These models take the crown across many benchmarks, including TerminalBench (82.7%), GPDval (84%) and more. You can see the highlited versions on the image above. Though, its not uncommon for OpenAI to do some chart crimes, so @d4m1n created a chart that also showed the full benchmarks, including the ones GPT 5.5 is not beating Opus at, as you can see below, it underperforms on Humanity's Last Exam, and scaled tool use. But, benchmarks don't tell the full story. GPT 5.5 uses significantly less tokens, compared to 5.4, about 40% less. It's also more expensive, but given the lower token usage, it nets out at about ~20% price increase, while being more intelligence and faster. Tons of folks who had early access are reporting the same things, this model excels in long running tasks, Peter Gostev from Arena, who joined our live stream, showed us an incredible demo that ran overnight for over 8h! This model can work until the task is done, no longer just pausing in the middel asking for your input. The real highlight is, paired with the recent GPT-image-2 (which I'll expand on later in this newsletter), GPT 5.5 becomes an excellent UI designer. This is a big area in which Claude still has moat and OpenAI is trying to catch up here, and the real alpha now is to use both the Image gen and 5.5 in tandem to create beautiful visuals and UIs. The main thing is, after testing it quite a few times, this only works if you generate an image outside of the session that builds the actual UI. we tried a couple of times to do it in 1 session, and the resulting UI doesn't seem to be remotely close to the generated image. Only after sending this image to a completely fresh session and asking for a “pixel perfect” implementation, did GPT 5.5 start to resemble the input image and rebuild the whole ui in pixel perfect fidelity! GPT Image v2 - SOTA thinking image model, finally beating Nano Banana (Blog, Live)Like we said, OpenAI is dominating this week, and in both instances those are great models. Though, apples to apples comparison, GPT-image-v2 is a much higher jump — from previous models — than GPT 5.5! According to Artificial Analysis, the jump in how many people prefer GPT-image-2 in blind tests compared to other model is the higest we've ever seen, over 250 points. And you can clearly see it in the generations as well. Previously this week, we did a live streaming session with Peter Gostev (from Arena) and we did a deep dive comparing this new model to GPT Image 1.5, Nano Banana and Grok Imagine, and it's a clear winner across most categories.Character consistency is immaculate, high resolution imagery, instruction following, are all so so good it's a bit hard to explain in text. Reasoning visual intelligence Like with Nano Banana, this model is likely based on a big GPT image, it's no longer just diffusion, as you can see, it reasons! And apparently the more reasoning you give it (if you choose GPT pro) the better it'll be. The examples are indeed wild, the model can generate images of code that works, generate functional QR codes and bar codes! The craziest thing people figured out it can do, is functional 360 imagery (equirectangular format), you can just ask the model to create a 360 image of “scene” and then drop this in to a 360 viewer! Peter shows us on the show how he combined GPT 5.5 and Image v2 to create a sort of “street view” from a bunch of 360 images, it blew our minds. He literally spun up an overnight GPT 5.5 task in Codex that planned out the hanging gardens of Babylon, generated hundreds of equirectangular images, stitched them into a walkable interface, and had it running 8+ hours without babysitting. A street view of a place we don't actually know what it looked like, hallucinated from latent space. What a time.Day one availability is wide: Figma, Canva, Adobe Firefly, fal.ai, and Microsoft Foundry all have it. Nano Banana dominated for what felt like an eternity in AI time (it was really only a few months

Hey ya'll, Alex here with your weekly AI news catch up. It's one of those Thursday's where no matter how well I prep, the big AI labs are hell bent to show up before each other. Alibaba dropped Qwen 3.6 with Apache 2, confirming their commitment to Open Source, then Anthropic released Claude Opus 4.7 (not quite Mythos) and OpenAI followed with a huge Codex update that includes Computer Use among other things. The highlight of Computer User is the background usage, more on that below. This is all just from today!Previously in the week we had 2 incredible 3D world generators, Lyra 2.0 from Nvidia and HYWorld 2 from Tencent, Windsurf dropping 2.0 version with Devin integration and Google releasing a Gemini TTS, with over 90+ languages support and incredible emotions range, and Baidu open sources Ernie Image, rivaling Nano Banana. Today on the show we had 3 awesome guests, Theodor from Cognition joined to cover the new Windsurf, Kwindla is back on the show to talk about “the side project that escaped containment” Gradient-Bang, a multi agent, voice based space game and Trevor from Marimo joined to talk about pairing your agents with a Marimo notebook. Let's dive in!

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https://clearmeasure.com/developers/forums/ Aaron Stannard is the Founder and CEO of Petabridge and the co-founder and lead maintainer of Akka.NET — the most widely used actor model framework for .NET, with over 21 million NuGet downloads and adoption by Fortune 500 companies like Boeing, Bank of America, and S&P Global. A two-time startup founder, Aaron previously founded MarkedUp Analytics and worked at Microsoft as a Startup Developer Evangelist before dedicating himself full-time to building the Akka.NET ecosystem. He's a Vanderbilt University graduate, a former Microsoft MVP, and has spoken at major conferences worldwide including NDC, Techorama, QCon, and .NET Conf. Beyond Akka.NET, Aaron is known for creating NBench (a .NET performance benchmarking framework), the Sdkbin marketplace for .NET developers, and for his prolific blog and YouTube content on distributed systems, .NET internals, and software engineering philosophy. Mentioned in this Episode Episode 172 Software 2.0 Case Study LinkedIn Twitter / X - (@Aaronontheweb) GitHub Personal Blog YouTube (Personal) openclaw simon Crop - verify library SlopWatch - detect reward hacking behavior Opus 4.6 & Sonnet 4.6 Copilot OpenCode Claude Code Codex 5.3 model for debugging Qwen2.5 27B llama.cpp local. tmux - Terminal multiplexer suo apt install -y tmux Ralph LLM loop Akka.NET StirTrek, May 1 in Ohio NDC Copenhagen in June Want to Learn More? Visit AzureDevOps.Show for show notes and additional episodes.

VOV1 - Phật giáo gắn bó sâu sắc với đời sống tâm linh của người Việt. Vì vậy, trong quá trình di cư sang Thái Lan từ hàng trăm năm trước, cộng đồng người Việt đã sớm dựng xây các ngôi chùa làm nơi sinh hoạt tín ngưỡng.Trải qua nhiều thăng trầm lịch sử, hệ thống chùa Việt tại “xứ Chùa Vàng” không chỉ duy trì đời sống tôn giáo mà còn trở thành không gian lưu giữ, lan tỏa bản sắc văn hóa dân tộc, đồng thời kết nối cộng đồng. Trong bức tranh văn hóa đa dạng ấy, trong đó có chùa Khánh Thọ – một trong những ngôi chùa Việt cổ đầu tiên được công nhận chính thức tại Thái Lan.  Tọa lạc tại tỉnh Kanchanaburi, Chùa Khánh Thọ, tên tiếng Thái là Wat Thavorn Wararam được hình thành từ gần hai thế kỷ trước, gắn với hành trình di cư và định cư của người Việt trên đất Thái. Ngay từ những ngày đầu, khi cộng đồng còn phải dựng chùa bằng gỗ, lợp mái tranh, nơi đây đã là điểm tựa tinh thần- một “mái nhà chung” gìn giữ bản sắc trong hành trình xa xứ.Tải vềPlayMuteRemaining Time -4:27Bảo tháp trong chùa Khánh Thọ 

Uma mulher telefona desesperada para um programa ao vivo. Seu marido levou outra mulher para morar na própria casa. Ela não sabe o que fazer. Do outro lado da linha, Madre Angélica responde sem rodeios: expulse os dois. A mulher hesita. Diz que não pode julgar ninguém. A madre reage com espanto. Uma injustiça está acontecendo diante dos seus olhos e ela ainda acredita que o problema é julgar. Essa cena revela algo que muitas vezes esquecemos: existe uma falsa bondade que, na verdade, é apenas fraqueza. Jesus realmente ensinou a não julgar com dureza. Mas também ensinou algo igualmente claro: se o teu irmão pecar, corrige o. O próprio Cristo foi firme quando a verdade precisava ser defendida. Ele chegou a dizer que os violentos conquistam o Reino dos Céus. Não se trata de violência desordenada, mas da coragem interior que não foge do confronto quando o bem está em jogo.Às vezes confundimos ser bom com ser agradável. Preferimos evitar situações desconfortáveis, calar uma verdade difícil, fingir que está tudo bem. Mas essa atitude pode ferir mais do que ajudar. A executiva Kim Scott descobriu isso da forma mais dolorosa. Ela queria ser uma chefe gentil, que nunca criticava ninguém. Um funcionário chamado Bob entregava trabalhos ruins, mas ela sempre sorria e resolvia o problema sozinha para não magoá lo.O tempo passou. Bob continuou errando. A equipe começou a se desmotivar. Quando finalmente ela precisou demiti lo, ele fez uma pergunta devastadora: se o meu trabalho era tão ruim, por que ninguém nunca me disse isso antes? Aquele momento revelou uma verdade desconfortável. A falsa gentileza pode ser uma forma de egoísmo. Às vezes evitamos corrigir não por amor, mas porque queremos que todos gostem de nós.Algo semelhante aparece na história de Steve Jobs. Ele era conhecido por críticas diretas e exigentes. Mas havia um detalhe importante. Ele também aceitava ser corrigido. Para ele, o objetivo não era estar certo, mas agir certo. Essa disposição revela o segredo para que a firmeza não se torne arrogância: a humildade. Quem corrige deve estar pronto também para ser corrigido.A mesma lição aparece na vida espiritual. O padre holandês Adrian van Kaam viveu a fome e o sofrimento durante a ocupação nazista. Depois da guerra, tornou se um grande mestre de espiritualidade. Ele dizia que a verdadeira mansidão não nasce de sufocar a raiva. Quando tentamos eliminar toda indignação, acabamos perdendo também o entusiasmo, a ternura e o amor.A ira, quando bem orientada, pode se tornar energia para o bem. São Paulo já dizia: irai vos, mas não pequeis. Existe uma força no coração humano que nos empurra a defender o que é justo, a proteger quem amamos, a buscar a verdade com coragem.Curiosamente, quando essa firmeza nasce da caridade, ela não destrói os relacionamentos. Pelo contrário. Ela pode torná los mais profundos. Há brigas que separam pessoas. Mas também existem aquelas discussões sinceras que, depois da tempestade, deixam os corações ainda mais próximos.O Evangelho mostra algo parecido nas Bodas de Caná. Jesus parece resistir ao pedido de sua mãe. Nossa Senhora, porém, permanece firme e diz aos servos: fazei tudo o que Ele vos disser. Existe ali uma confiança tão profunda que até o confronto se torna parte do amor.A verdadeira caridade não é fraca. Ela ama tanto a verdade que tem coragem de dizê la. E quando essa verdade nasce de um coração humilde, ela se transforma em caminho de crescimento, de amizade e de santidade.______________________Referências citadasBíblia Sagrada: Mateus 11,12Bíblia Sagrada: Efésios 4,26Bíblia Sagrada: 1 Coríntios 9,27Bíblia Sagrada: João 2,1-11 (Bodas de Caná)Histórias da biografia de Madre AngélicaKim Scott, Radical CandorExemplos de liderança de Steve JobsPe. Adrian van Kaam e seus escritos sobre espiritualidade e psicologia humana

This CEO Built A $30B Money Management FirmGuest STAN GREGOR Chairman & CEO Website: https://summitfinancial.com/AUM$26-27B in assetsSUMMIT FINANCIAL CEOStan Gregor is the CEO of Summit Financial LLC. As a senior executive with over 30 years of experience, Stan has operated in banking, private wealth management, investment management, fiduciary trust services, fixed income trading, investment banking, retirement services, insurance, financial planning, and public finance. He has also been involved in acquiring and integrating some of the largest and most complicated banking, wealth management, insurance, and capital markets businesses and cultures with a demonstrated track record of increasing productivity, profitability and shareholder value.Most recently, Stan was the founder and co-CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald Wealth Partners (CFWP). Under his leadership, CFWP grew to over $5 billion in assets in less than two years through several strategic acquisitions of RIA's, independent advisors, and wire house teams.Prior to joining Cantor Fitzgerald, Stan was the Head of Wells Fargo Wealth Management -Eastern US Markets and President of Wachovia Wealth Markets. He provided executive leadership to the Eastern U.S. Markets and headed up the Wealth Insurance Division overseeing: the private bank, wealth brokerage, investment management, fiduciary trust services, financial planning, and insurance. Stan was responsible for leading nearly 5,000 team members generating revenues of $2.5 billion with $69 billion of investment fee-based AUM, $19 billion of deposit balances, and $16 billion of loans.Prior to Wachovia, Stan was CEO of Commerce Capital Markets, where he directed private wealth management, brokerage, asset management, fixed income trading, derivatives, investment banking, retirement services, insurance, and public finance.Subsequently, Stan was CEO of Quick and Reilly (Q&R) as one of the visionaries that transformed Q&R from a transactional discount broker to a full-service advisory company. When Q&R was acquired by Bank of America, Stan stayed on as co-CEO of Bank of America Investment Services until 2005.Over nearly a decade at Citigroup, Stan had several senior executive level roles leading different divisions including consumer banking, private wealth management, and Citigroup as Northeast Group Executive Vice President. He is also a member of the Fast Company Executive Board.Company BioSummit Financial is a preeminent investment advisory firm proud to continue our predecessors' four-decade legacy helping advisors elevate their businesses and deliver robust client experiences.

Hey ya'll, Alex here, and this week I was especially giddy to record the show! Mostly because when a thing clicks for me that hasn't clicked before, I can't wait to tell you all about it! This week, that thing is Agent Skills! The currently best way to customize your AI agents with domain expertise, in a simple, repeatable way that doesn't blow up the context window! We mentioned skills when Anthropic first released them (Oct 16) and when they became an open standard but it didn't really click until last week! So more on that below. Also this week, Anthropic released a research preview of Claude Cowork, an agentic tool for non coders, OpenAI finally let loos GPT 5.2 Codex (in the API, it was previously available only via Codex), Apple announced a deal with Gemini to power Siri, OpenAI and Anthropic both doubled down on healthcare and much more! We had an incredible show, with an expert in Agent Skills, Eleanor Berger and the usual gang on co-hosts, strongly recommend watching the show in addition to the newsletter! Also, I vibe coded skills support for all LLMs to Chorus, and promised folks a link to download it, so look for that in the footer, let's dive in! ThursdAI is where you stay up to date! Subscribe to keep us going! Big Company LLMs + APIs: Cowork, Codex, and a Browser in a WeekAnthropic launches Claude Cowork: Agentic AI for Non‑Coders (research preview)Anthropic announced Claude Cowork, which is basically Claude Code wrapped in a friendly UI for people who don't want to touch a terminal. It's a research preview available on the Max tier, and it gives Claude read/write access to a folder on your Mac so it can do real work without you caring about diffs, git, or command line.The wild bit is that Cowork was built in a week and a half, and according to the Anthropic team it was 100% written using Claude Code. This feels like a “we've crossed a threshold” moment. If you're wondering why this matters, it's because coding agents are general agents. If a model can write code to do tasks, it can do taxes, clean your desktop, or orchestrate workflows, and that means non‑developers can now access the same leverage developers have been enjoying for a year.It also isn't just for files—it comes with a Chrome connector, meaning it can navigate the web to gather info, download receipts, or do research and it uses skills (more on those later)Earlier this week I recorded this first reactions video about Cowork and I've been testing it ever since, it's a very interesting approach of coding agents that “hide the coding” to just... do things. Will this become as big as Claude Code for anthropic (which is reportedly a 1B business for them)? Let's see! There are real security concerns here, especially if you're not in the habit of backing up or using git. Cowork sandboxes a folder, but it can still delete things in that folder, so don't let it loose on your whole drive unless you like chaos.GPT‑5.2 Codex: Long‑Running Agents Are HereOpenAI shipped GPT‑5.2 Codex into the API finally! After being announced as the answer for Opus 4.5 and only being available in Codex. The big headline is SOTA on SWE-Bench and long‑running agentic capability. People describe it as methodical. It takes longer, but it's reliable on extended tasks, especially when you let it run without micromanaging.This model is now integrated into Cursor, GitHub Copilot, VS Code, Factory, and Vercel AI Gateway within hours of launch. It's also state‑of‑the‑art on SWE‑Bench Pro and Terminal‑Bench 2.0, and it has native context compaction. That last part matters because if you've ever run an agent for long sessions, the context gets bloated and the model gets dumber. Compaction is an attempt to keep it coherent by summarizing old context into fresh threads, and we debated whether it really works. I think it helps, but I also agree that the best strategy is still to run smaller, atomic tasks with clean context.Cursor vibe-coded browser with GPT-5.2 and 3M lines of codeThe most mind‑blowing thing we discussed is Cursor letting GPT‑5.2 Codex run for a full week to build a browser called FastRenderer. This is not Chromium‑based. It's a custom HTML parser, CSS cascade, layout engine, text shaping, paint pipeline, and even a JavaScript VM, written in Rust, from scratch. The codebase is open source on GitHub, and the full story is on Cursor's blog It took nearly 30,000 commits and millions of lines of code. The system ran hundreds of concurrent agents with a planner‑worker architecture, and GPT‑5.2 was the best model for staying on task in that long‑running regime. That's the real story, not just “lol a model wrote a browser.” This is a stress test for long‑horizon agentic software development, and it's a preview of how teams will ship in 2026.I said on the show, browsers are REALLY hard, it took two decades for the industry to settle and be able to render websites normally, and there's a reason everyone's using Chromium. This is VERY impressive

This is a recap of the top 10 posts on Hacker News on November 28, 2025. This podcast was generated by wondercraft.ai (00:30): Pocketbase – open-source realtime back end in 1 fileOriginal post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46075320&utm_source=wondercraft_ai(01:53): EU Council Approves New "Chat Control" Mandate Pushing Mass SurveillanceOriginal post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46077393&utm_source=wondercraft_ai(03:16): Petition to formally recognize open source work as civic service in GermanyOriginal post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46078770&utm_source=wondercraft_ai(04:39): Show HN: Glasses to detect smart-glasses that have camerasOriginal post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46075882&utm_source=wondercraft_ai(06:02): Credit report shows Meta keeping $27B off its books through advanced geometryOriginal post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46079868&utm_source=wondercraft_ai(07:26): 28M Hacker News comments as vector embedding search datasetOriginal post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46081053&utm_source=wondercraft_ai(08:49): Bringing Sexy Back. Internet surveillance has killed eroticismOriginal post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46080473&utm_source=wondercraft_ai(10:12): Imgur geo-blocked the UK, so I geo-unblocked my networkOriginal post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46081188&utm_source=wondercraft_ai(11:35): A Remarkable Assertion from A16ZOriginal post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46078138&utm_source=wondercraft_ai(12:59): How good engineers write bad code at big companiesOriginal post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46082223&utm_source=wondercraft_aiThis is a third-party project, independent from HN and YC. Text and audio generated using AI, by wondercraft.ai. Create your own studio quality podcast with text as the only input in seconds at app.wondercraft.ai. Issues or feedback? We'd love to hear from you: team@wondercraft.ai

In this episode of PR360, Tod interviews Drew Holmgreen, the President and CEO of PPAI, the largest trade association for the $27B promotional products industry. Drew shares insights on the industry's massive economic impact, the emotional connections created through branded merchandise, and how companies can integrate physical products into digital campaigns. He also addresses challenges faced by the industry, including trade disruptions, and explains how PPAI is navigating the choppy waters. Key Takeaways:- Memorable promotional products can create lasting impressions and connections- How trade disruptions have impacted the promotional products industry- The importance of positive leadershipEpisode Timeline:0:00Introduction to PPAI and Drew Holmgreen2:00The scope and impact of the promotional products industry4:20Understanding branded merchandise6:54The emotional connection of promotional products9:45Integrating merch with digital campaigns11:45The revenue potential of merchandising13:00Howard Stern's aversion to promotional products13:52Memorable promotional products and their impact18:00Common mistakes in merchandising20:25The creative side of the promotional products industry22:00Navigating trade disruptions27:40Thought leadership philosophy and positive leadershipThis episode's guest:• Drew Holmgreen on LinkedIn• PPAI.orgSubscribe and leave a 5-star review: https://pod.link/1496390646Contact Us!•Join the conversation by leaving a comment!•Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn!Thanks for listening! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Could AI really pose an existential threat—or are we all just overreacting?850 tech leaders, researchers, and AI pioneers don't think we're overreacting. This week, they signed a chilling letter urging the world to pause superintelligence development—until safety can be guaranteed.In this solo Weekend News episode, Isar dives deep into the letter, the conflicting philosophies of AI's top minds, and what it all means for business leaders trying to stay ahead without stepping into a sci-fi dystopia.Plus: the battle for AI browser domination, Anthropic's enterprise blitz, GPT's awkward math flex, and the $1,300 humanoid robot heading to your kid's holiday wishlist.In this session, you'll discover:Why 850 experts—including Hinton, Bengio, and Branson—want a global pause on superintelligence developmentSam Altman's unsettling quote: “I expect some really bad stuff to happen…” Are AI agents the next big leap—or are we just not there yet?Claude vs. ChatGPT: Who's winning the enterprise AI war? Anthropic's new “agent skills” and what they mean for automation OpenAI's strange math claim that backfired—badly Meta's $27B bet on data centers and why they just laid off 600 AI staff Why Europe's AI spending is stalling OpenAI's new agentic browser—and why it might be their most important move yetThe $1,370 humanoid robot that could be the next must-have toyWhat Amazon's smart delivery glasses signal for AI-powered workforces Quantum computing breakthrough: 13,000x faster than supercomputers The AI bottleneck you're probably not planning for: inference and redundancy About Leveraging AI The Ultimate AI Course for Business People: https://multiplai.ai/ai-course/ YouTube Full Episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@Multiplai_AI/ Connect with Isar Meitis: https://www.linkedin.com/in/isarmeitis/ Join our Live Sessions, AI Hangouts and newsletter: https://services.multiplai.ai/events If you've enjoyed or benefited from some of the insights of this episode, leave us a five-star review on your favorite podcast platform, and let us know what you learned, found helpful, or liked most about this show!

Hantao Yuan is Co-Founder of Moku, and serves as Moku's marketing growth chief and community strategist. He has been acquiring creators and users for over a decade for game publishers and gaming brands. He has also sold his own esports team through M&A to Overtime sports, and advised 2 other teams through M&A.Moku is backed by a world-class team of AI experts from MIT, IBM, and Johns Hopkins. The company has already built Web3's largest distribution engine, driving over 8 million daily active users across partner launches and more than $7 billion in cumulative fully diluted value (FDV). With this foundation, Moku is uniquely positioned to expand Grand Arena beyond Web3 and into mainstream fantasy sports and interactive wagering markets. Grand Arena is converging the $27B fantasy sports market, the $40B prediction market, and the $50B+ AI gaming sector.In this conversation, we discuss:- Letting users speculate on gaming- AI content is getting out of control - Speculation + daily fantasy + AI - Betting on live matches - Current state of Web3 Gaming - Bridging Web2 & Web3 audiences - Speculation is the future of entertainment - Why Prediction Markets will work - Hantao selling his own esports to Overtime sports - The history of Moku Moku X: @Moku_HQDiscord: discord.gg/mokuYouTube: @MokuHQHantao YuanX: @HantaoLinkedIn: Hantao Yuan---------------------------------------------------------------------------------This episode is brought to you by PrimeXBT.PrimeXBT offers a robust trading system for both beginners and professional traders that demand highly reliable market data and performance. Traders of all experience levels can easily design and customize layouts and widgets to best fit their trading style. PrimeXBT is always offering innovative products and professional trading conditions to all customers.  PrimeXBT is running an exclusive promotion for listeners of the podcast. After making your first deposit, 50% of that first deposit will be credited to your account as a bonus that can be used as additional collateral to open positions. Code: CRYPTONEWS50 This promotion is available for a month after activation. Click the link below: PrimeXBT x CRYPTONEWS50

The average industry grows 2–3% a year… but the creative industries? They're growing over 22% annually.This episode gives you proof that there has never been a better time to be a photographer, filmmaker, or social media manager.In fact, the data shows:✅ The global wedding photography market is projected to jump from $25B → $44B by 2032 (growing over 10% every single year).✅ The wedding video industry is set to more than double - growing even faster than photography.✅ Businesses are projected to spend a staggering $836B on digital video advertising by 2032 - a 366% increase in just a few years.✅ And the social media management industry is exploding, expected to grow from $27B to $124B (361% growth!) over the next few years. If you've been doubting whether there's still room for you as a creative, let this be your sign: you are in the right place at the right time.Tune in to learn:Why the data shows the creative economy is thriving like never beforeWhich industries (wedding, brand, photo vs video, SMM) are growing fastest and where to lean inThe 6 foundational pillars that will allow you to capitalize on this “gold rush” instead of missing itP.S. If you missed Round 14 - and if you want to take advantage of this creative gold rush and see the direct benefit in your own pocket - Round 15 of the 6 Week Creativ Rise Mastermind is coming Spring 2026. To build a solid 6 figure foundation for a creative business that scales, join the waitlist now at www.creativrise.com.Free Tools & Trainings:→ Pricing Calculator: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠creativrise.com/pricingcalculator⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠→ Productivity Course: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠creativrise.com/productivity⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠→ $10K/Mo Creator Workshop Replay: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠creativrise.com/workshop⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠→ Money Management Training: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠creativrise.com/moneytraining⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠→ Fix Your Inquiry Form: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠creativrise.com/inquiryform⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Listen & Subscribe:→ Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠apple.co/creativrise⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠→ Spotify: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠open.spotify.com/show/creativrise⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow Along:→ Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@creativrise⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@joeyspeers⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@christyjspeers⁠

Ataxia is a neurologic symptom that refers to incoordination of voluntary movement, typically causing gait dysfunction and imbalance. Genetic testing and counseling can be used to identify the type of ataxia and to assess the risk for unaffected family members. In this episode, Katie Grouse, MD, FAAN, speaks with Theresa A. Zesiewicz, MD, FAAN, author of the article “Ataxia” in the Continuum® August 2025 Movement Disorders issue. Dr. Grouse is a Continuum® Audio interviewer and a clinical assistant professor at the University of California San Francisco in San Francisco, California. Dr. Zesiewicz is a professor of neurology and director at the University of South Florida Ataxia Research Center, and the medical director at the University of South Florida Movement Disorders Neuromodulation Center at the University of South Florida and at the James A. Haley Veteran's Hospital in Tampa, Florida. Additional Resources Read the article: Ataxia Subscribe to Continuum®: shop.lww.com/Continuum Earn CME (available only to AAN members): continpub.com/AudioCME Continuum® Aloud (verbatim audio-book style recordings of articles available only to Continuum® subscribers): continpub.com/Aloud More about the American Academy of Neurology: aan.com Social Media facebook.com/continuumcme @ContinuumAAN Full episode transcript available here Dr Jones: This is Dr Lyell Jones, Editor-in-Chief of Continuum. Thank you for listening to Continuum Audio. Be sure to visit the links in the episode notes for information about earning CME, subscribing to the journal, and exclusive access to interviews not featured on the podcast. Dr Grouse: This is Dr Katie Grouse. Today I'm interviewing Dr Theresa Zesiewicz about her article on ataxia, which appears in the August 2025 Continuum issue on movement disorders. Welcome to the podcast, and please introduce yourself to our audience.  Dr Zesiewicz: Well, thank you, Dr Grouse. I'm Dr Theresa Zesiewicz, otherwise known as Dr Z, and I'm happy to be here. Dr Grouse: I have to say, I really enjoyed reading your article. It was a really great refresher for myself as a general neurologist on the topic of ataxia and a really great reminder on a great framework to approach diagnosis and management. But I wanted to start off by asking what you feel is the key message that you hope our listeners will take away from reading your article. Dr Zesiewicz: Yes, so, thanks. I think one of the key messages is that there has been an explosion and renaissance of genetic testing in the past 10 years that has really revolutionized the field of ataxia and has made diagnosis easier for us, more manageable, and hopefully will lead to treatments in the future. So, I think that's a major step forward for our field in terms of genetic techniques over the last 10 years, and even over the last 30 years. There's just been so many diseases that have been identified genetically. So, I think that's a really important take-home message. The other take-home message is that the first drug to treat Friedreich's ataxia, called omaveloxolone, came about about two years ago. This was also a really landmark discovery. As you know, a lot of these ataxias are very difficult to treat. Dr Grouse: Now pivoting back to thinking about the approach to diagnosis of ataxia, how does the timeline of the onset of ataxia symptoms inform your approach? Dr Zesiewicz: The timeline is important because ataxia can be acute, subacute or chronic in nature. And the timeline is important because, if it's acute, it may mean that the ataxia took place over seconds to hours. This may mean a toxic problem or a hypoxic problem. Whereas a chronic ataxia can occur over many years, and that can inform more of a neurodegenerative or more of a genetic etiology. So, taking a very detailed history on the patient is very important. Sometimes I ask them, what is the last time you remember that you walked normal? And that can be a wedding, that can be a graduation. Just some timeline, some point, that the patient actually walked correctly before they remember having to hold onto a railing or taking extra steps to make sure that they didn't fall down, that they didn't have imbalance. That sometimes that's a good way to ask the patient when is the last time they had a problem. And they can help you to try to figure out how long these symptoms have been going on. Dr Grouse: I really appreciate that advice. I will say that I agree, it can sometimes be really hard to get patients to really think back to when they really started to notice something was different. So, I like the idea of referencing back to a big event that may be more memorable to them. Now, given that framework of, you know, thinking through the timeline, could you walk us through your approach to the evaluation of a patient who presents to your clinic with that balance difficulties once you've established that? Dr Zesiewicz: Sure. So, the first thing is to determine whether the patient truly has ataxia. So, do they have imbalance? Do they have a wide base gait? That's very important because patients come in frequently to your clinic and they'll have balance problems, but they can have knee issues or hip issues, neuropathy, something like that. And sometimes what we say to the residents and the students is, usually ataxia or cerebellar symptoms go together with other problems, like ocular problems are really common in cerebellar syndromes. Or dysmetria, pass pointing, speech disorder like dysarthria. So, not only do you need to look at the gait, but you should look at the other symptoms surrounding the gait to see if you think that the patient actually has a cerebellar syndrome. Or do they have something like a vestibular ataxia which would have more vertigo? Or do they have a sensory ataxia, which would occur if a person closes his eyes or has more ataxia when he or she is in the dark? So, you have to think about what you're looking at is the cerebellar syndrome. And then once we look to see if the patient truly has a cerebellar syndrome, then we look at the age, we look at---as you said before, the timeline. Is this acute, subacute, or chronic? And usually I think of ataxia as falling into three categories. It's either acquired, it's either hereditary, or it's neurodegenerative. It can be hereditary. And if it's not hereditary, is it acquired, or is it something like a multiple system atrophy or a parkinsonism or something like that? So, we try to put that together and start to narrow down on the diagnosis, thinking about those parameters. Dr Grouse: That's really a helpful way to think through it. And it is true, it can get very complex when patients come in with balance difficulties. There's so many things you need to think about, but that is a great way to think about it. Of course, we know that most people who come in to the Movements Disorders clinic are getting MRI scans of their brains. But I'm curious, in which cases of patients with cerebellar ataxia do you find the MRI to be particularly helpful in the diagnosis? Dr Zesiewicz: So, an MRI can be very important. Not always, but- so, something like multiple system atrophy type C where you may see a hot cross bun sign or a pontine hyperintensity on the T2-weighted image, that would be helpful. But of course, that doesn't make the diagnosis. It's something that may help you with the diagnosis. In FXTAS, which is fragile X tremor/ataxia syndrome, the patient may have the middle cerebellar peduncle sign or the symmetric hyperintensity in the middle cerebellar peduncles, which is often visible but not always. Something like Wernicke's, where you see an abnormality of the mammillary bodies. Wilson's disease, which is quite rare, T2-weighted image may show hyperintensities in the putamen in something like Wilson's disease. Those are the main MRI abnormalities, I think, with ataxia. And then we look at the cerebellum itself. I mean, that seems self-evident, but if you look at a sagittal section of the MRI and you see just a really significant atrophy of the cerebellum, that's going to help you determine whether you really have a cerebellar syndrome. Dr Grouse: That's really encouraging to hear a good message for all of us who sometimes feel like maybe we're missing something. It's good to know that information can always come up down the line to make things more clear. Your article does a great review of spinal cerebellar ataxia, but I found it interesting learning about the more recently described syndrome of SCA 27B. Would you mind telling us more about that and other really common forms of SCA that's good to keep in mind? Dr Zesiewicz: Sure. So, there are now 49 types of spinal cerebellar ataxia that have been identified. The most common are the polyglutamine repeat diseases: so, spinocerebellar ataxia type 3 or type 2, type 6, are probably the most common. One of the most recent spinocerebellar ataxias to be genetically identified and clinically identified is spinocerebellar ataxia 27B. This is caused by a GAA expansion repeat in the first intron of the fibroblast growth factor on chromosome 13. And the symptoms do include ataxia, eye problems, downbeat nystagmus, other nystagmus, vertical, and diplopia. It appears to be a more common form of adult-onset ataxia, and probably more common than was originally thought. It may account for a substantial number of ataxias, like, a substantial percentage of ataxias that we didn't know about. So, this was really a amazing discovery on SCA 27B. Dr Grouse: Now a lot of us I think feel a little anxious when we think about genetic testing for ataxia simply because there's so many forms, things are changing quickly. Do you have a rule of thumb or a kind of a framework that we can think of as we approach how we should be thinking about getting genetic testing for the subset of patients? Dr Zesiewicz: Sure. And I think that this is where age comes into play a lot. So, if you have a child who's 10, 11, or 12 who's having balance problems in the schoolyard, does not have a history of ataxia in the family, the teachers are telling you that the child is not running correctly, they're having problems with physical education, that is someone who you would think about testing for Friedreich's ataxia. A preteen or a child, that would be one thing that would be important to test. When you talk to your patient, it's important to really take a detailed family history. Not just mom or dad, but ethnicity, grandparents, etc. And sometimes, once in a while, you come up with a known spinal cerebellar ataxia. Then you can just test for that. So, if a person is from Portugal or has Portugal background and they have ataxia and the parents had ataxia, you would think of spinal cerebellar ataxia type 3. Or if they're Brazilian, or if the person is from a certain area of Cuba and mom and dad had ataxia and that person has ataxia, you would think of spinal cerebellar ataxia type 2. Or if a person has ataxia and their parent had blindness or visual problems, you may be more likely to think of spinal cerebellar ataxia type 7, for example. If they have that---either they have a known genetic cause in in the family, first degree family, or they come from an area of the world in which we can pinpoint what type we think it is---you can go ahead and get those tests. If not, you can take an ataxia comprehensive panel. Many times now, if you take the panel and the panel is negative, it will reflex to the whole exome gene sequencing, where we're finding really unusual and more rare types of ataxia, which are very interesting. Spinal cerebellar ataxia type 32, spinal cerebellar ataxia type 36, I had a spinal cerebellar ataxia type 15. So, I think you should start with the age, then the family history, then where the person is from. And then, if none of those work out, you can get a comprehensive panel, and then go on to whole exome gene sequencing. Dr Grouse: That's really, really useful. Thank you so much for breaking that down in a really simple way that a lot of us can take with us. Pivoting a little bit now back towards different types of acquired ataxias, what are some typical lab tests that you recommend for that type of workup? Dr Zesiewicz: Again, if there's no genetic history and the person does not appear to have a neurodegenerative disease, we do test for acquired ataxias. Acquired ataxias can be complex. Many times, they are in the autoimmune family. So, what we start with are just basic labs like a CBC or a CMP, but then we tried to look at some of the other abnormalities that could cause ataxia. So, celiac disease, stiff person syndrome. So, you would look at anti-glutamic acid decarboxylase antibodies, Hashimoto's---so, antithyroglobulin antibodies or antithyroperoxidase antibodies would be helpful. You know, in a case of where the patients may have an underlying neoplasm, maybe even a paraneoplastic workup, such as an anti-Hu, anti-Yo, anti-Ri. A person has breast cancer, for example, you may want to take a paraneoplastic panel. I've been getting more of the anti-autoimmune encephalitis panels in some cases, that were- that are very interesting. And then, you know, things that sometimes we forget now like the syphilis test, thyroid-stimulating test, take a B12 and folate, for example. That would be important. Those are some of the labs. We just have on our electronic chart a group of acquired labs for ataxia. If we can't find any other reason, we just go ahead and try to get those. Dr Grouse: Now, I'm curious what you think is the most challenging aspect of diagnosing a patient with cerebellar ataxia? Dr Zesiewicz: So, for those of us who see many of these patients a day, some of the hardest patients are the ones that---regardless of the workup that we do, we've narrowed it down, it's not hereditary. You know, they've been through the whole exome gene sequencing and we've done the acquired ataxia workup. It doesn't appear to be that. And then we've looked for parkinsonism and neurodegenerative diseases, and it doesn't appear to be that either; like, the alpha-synuclein will be negative. Those are the toughest patients, where we think we've done everything and we still don't have the answer. So, I've had patients in whom I've taken care of family members years and years ago, they had a presumed diagnosis, and later on I've seen their children or other family members. And with the advent of the genetic tests that we have, like whole exome gene sequencing, we have now been able to give the patient and the family a definitive diagnosis that they didn't have 25 years ago. So, I would say don't give up hope. Retesting is important, and as science continues and we get more information and we make more landmark discoveries in genetics, you may be better able to diagnose the patient. Dr Grouse: I was wondering if you had any recommendations regarding either some tips and tricks, some pearls of wisdom you can impart to us regarding the work of ataxia, or conversely, any big pitfalls that you can help us avoid? I would love to hear about it. Dr Zesiewicz: Yeah, there's no easy way to treat or diagnose ataxia patients. I've always felt that the more patients you see- and sounds easy, but the more patients you see, the better you're going to become at it, and eventually things are going to fall into place. You'll begin to see similarities in patients, etc. I think it's important not only to make sure that a person has ataxia, but again, look at the other signs and symptoms that may point to ataxia that you'll see in a cerebellar syndrome. I think it's important to do a full neuroexam. If a person has spasticity, that may point you more towards a certain type of ataxia than if a person has no reflexes, for example, that we see in Friedreich's ataxia. Some of the ocular findings are very interesting as well. It's important to know if a person has a tremor. I've seen several Wilson's disease cases in my life with ataxia. They're very important. I think a full neuroexam and also a very detailed history would be very helpful. Dr Grouse: Tell us about some promising developments in the diagnosis and management of ataxia that we should be on the lookout for. Dr Zesiewicz: The first drug for Friedreich's ataxia was FDA-approved two years ago, which was an NRF2 activator, which was extremely exciting and promising. There are also several medications that are now in front of the FDA that may also be very promising and have gone through long clinical trials. There's a medication that's related to riluzole, which is a medication used for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, that has been through about seven years of testing. That is before the FDA as well for spinal cerebellar ataxia. Friedreich's ataxia has now completed the first cardiac gene therapy program with AAV vectors, which- we're waiting for full results, but that's a cardiac test. But I would assume that in the future, neurological gene therapy is not far behind if we've already done cardiac gene therapy and Friedreich's ataxia. So, you know, some of these AAV vector-based genetic therapies may be very helpful, as well as ASO, antisense oligonucleotides, for example. And I think in the future, other things to think about are the CRISPR/Cas9 technology for potential treatment of ataxia. It is a very exciting time, and some major promising therapies have been realized in the past 2 to 3 years. Dr Grouse: Well, that's really exciting, and we'll all look forward to seeing these becoming more clinically applicable in the future. So, thank you so much for coming to talk with us today. Dr Zesiewicz: Thank you. Dr Grouse: Again, today I've been interviewing Dr Theresa Zesiewicz about her article on ataxia, which appears in the August 2025 Continuum issue on movement disorders. Be sure to check out Continuum Audio episodes from this and other issues, and thank you to our listeners for joining today. Dr Monteith: This is Dr Teshamae Monteith, Associate Editor of Continuum Audio. If you've enjoyed this episode, you'll love the journal, which is full of in-depth and clinically relevant information important for neurology practitioners. Use the link in the episode notes to learn more and subscribe. AAN members, you can get CME for listening to this interview by completing the evaluation at continpub.com/audioCME. Thank you for listening to Continuum Audio.

New York Post columnist Rikki Schlott and Tangle founder Isaac Saul join Mike to discuss policing Washington, D.C.—who's in charge, who gets blamed, and why federal takeover is more problem multiplier than solution. Then: scalpel or a chainsaw on the syllabus for higher ed. Plus, using the concept of toxic empathy to explain both a recidivist subway-jacker and a diplomatic move toward Palestinian statehood. In Goat Grinders, air travel with babies, The Naked Gun while lying down, and airlines that lie—but only once you're already trapped in seat 27B. Produced by Corey Wara Production Coordinator Ashley Khan Email us at ⁠⁠⁠⁠thegist@mikepesca.com⁠⁠⁠⁠ To advertise on the show, contact ⁠⁠⁠⁠ad-sales@libsyn.com⁠⁠⁠⁠ or visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://advertising.libsyn.com/TheGist⁠⁠⁠⁠ Subscribe to The Gist: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://subscribe.mikepesca.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠ Subscribe to The Gist Youtube Page: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4_bh0wHgk2YfpKf4rg40_g⁠⁠⁠⁠ Subscribe to The Gist Instagram Page: ⁠⁠⁠⁠GIST INSTAGRAM⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow The Gist List at: ⁠⁠⁠⁠Pesca⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠Profundities | Mike Pesca | Substack⁠⁠⁠⁠

Success as a founder is about more than impressive AUM. It's about maintaining autonomy and connnection. It's about taking pride in what you do, the team you've built, and most importantly having fun along the way. Take it from today's guest, Greg Dean, founder of global small-cap specialist firm Langdon Partners.In this episode, he and Stacy discuss: Greg's backstory: From Fidelity Investments to co-founding a $27B investment firmHow his passion for connecting people and numbers drove him into small-cap investingHis big leap from the shallow end of co-foundership to founding his own firm Why AUM isn't the only measure of success in small-cap investingStrategies for maximizing return on time in small-cap investingThe challenges of climbing the ranks in the fund worldKey advice for fund managers considering leaping into entrepreneurship About Greg Dean:  Greg founded Langdon Equity Partners in 2021 and is the firm's Chief Executive. He is the lead investor for Global and Canadian smaller companies portfolios. Greg has over 15 years' experience in investment management.  Before founding Langdon he was a Partner and Portfolio Manager at Cambridge Global Asset Management (a boutique within CI Investments), responsible for the Canadian and Global smaller companies portfolios, having joined there in 2011 as an analyst. While at Cambridge Greg was the joint recipient of the prestigious Morningstar Breakout Fund Manager of the Year in 2015 and his funds have won numerous industry awards over the years.Previously he spent 3 years as a Canadian analyst covering consumer and infrastructure at Fidelity Investments.  Greg has a degree in Mathematics from the University of Waterloo and a Bachelors of Business Administration from Wilfrid Laurier University. He is also a CFA charterholder. Apply for The StorySales™ Accelerator, an exclusive 6-week program for boutique fund managers who want to craft compelling stories and confidently raise capital | https://www.havenercapital.com/accelerator Want More Help With Storytelling? +  Subscribe to my newsletter to get a weekly email that helps you use your words to power your growth:https://www.stacyhavener.com/subscribe  Resources Mentioned in This Episode: Song: 22 Two's – JAY-Z  Books: Same as Ever by Morgan Housel, Start-Up Nation by Dan Senor - - -Thinking about expanding your investor base beyond the US? Not sure where to start? Take our quick quiz to find out if your firm is ready to go global and get all the info at billiondollarbackstory.com/gemcap- - -Apply for The StorySales™ Accelerator, an exclusive 6-week program for boutique fund managers who want to craft compelling stories and confidently raise capital | https://www.havenercapital.com/accelerator

In this 5 Insightful Minutes episode, A&M's consumer and retail experts Chris Creyts and Brandon Pezely join Omni Talk to reveal how grocers can adapt their space planning strategy in today's rapidly changing retail landscape. From the $37 billion growth in fresh food areas to the $27 billion revenue loss in general merchandising, Chris and Brandon break down why advanced space planning isn't just important—it's essential for survival. They share actionable insights on navigating inflation impacts, e-commerce disruption, GLP-1 drug effects on shopping behavior, and the health & wellness trend reshaping grocery stores.

This week in The War Room, Carson Rich, Eric Dunavant, Drew Brown, and Kristina Schuler dive into what's really happening behind the headlines—from AI-driven market moves to new crypto tax proposals, the return of tariffs, and what the “Big Beautiful Bill” could mean for your wallet.

Don and Tom kick off this episode by responding to a one-star Apple Podcast reviewer who promised to upgrade to five stars—if they correct their allegedly false Bitcoin claims. Challenge accepted. Don clarifies his earlier “nobody uses Bitcoin” remark by digging into the actual numbers: only 15,000 businesses worldwide accept it, out of over 359 million—roughly 0.0004%, making it statistically more rare than a lightning strike. They also break down the real costs of converting Bitcoin to dollars: while some exchanges charge under 1%, Bitcoin ATMs routinely charge 5–25% in fees, with total costs sometimes exceeding 30%. Then, a listener calls in with a ChatGPT-generated portfolio featuring VUG, VEA, SMH, and AXON. Don tears it apart for being tech-heavy, overly concentrated, and missing broad market exposure—ironically, even ChatGPT agrees with him. Listeners also get advice on why ETFs are gradually replacing mutual funds, when (if ever) annuities make sense, and why indexed annuities are the financial industry's version of timeshares: opaque, overpriced, and always sold, never bought. Despite the facts and the humor, Don doubts his five-star redemption is coming—but if Greg's Mowing and Septic accepts Bitcoin, there's still hope. 0:26 Don confronts repeat negative podcast reviewers 1:35 NavRep's public offer: “Correct your Bitcoin lies and I'll give 5 stars” 2:31 Bitcoin rebuttal: 15,000 businesses accept it—out of 359 million 5:13 Teaser: Bitcoin conversion fees part 2 coming up after the break 6:26 Don admits his imprecise “nobody accepts Bitcoin” claim 8:19 Clearing up the 8% Bitcoin conversion fee claim—context was ATMs 9:49 Bitcoin ATM fees average 17.5%, sometimes hit 30% 11:04 Exchange conversion under 1% is possible—but not for quick cash 13:10 Volatility and impracticality still make Bitcoin a poor currency 16:00 ChatGPT jokes: “Beer at a Baptist wedding” & “Greg the mower” 16:49 Caller Jason asks ChatGPT for a portfolio; Don and Tom cringe 17:46 ChatGPT suggested a tech-heavy, overly concentrated portfolio 20:40 Better suggestions: VT, AVGE, DFAW—not VUG/SMH/AXON 21:50 Don's GPT criticizes Jason's GPT: “No bonds, no value, no real estate” 23:43 Caller Scott nails TRM's philosophy and nearly retires Don 26:12 The rare “pros” of annuities—and their bigger downsides 28:24 Indexed annuities: regular income taxed as ordinary income 30:02 Betting against the house: how annuity math favors insurers 31:44 Caller Jane asks if ETFs are better than mutual funds 32:05 ETF settlement is faster, but that's not a reason to choose 33:30 Vanguard accounts support ETFs beyond their own funds 34:51 Updated: mutual funds now settle T+1, ETFs also T+1 36:26 Jane warned about National Life Group's indexed annuity pitch 37:07 Why Don hates indexed annuities: high fees, low returns, opaque structure 39:27 Still selling like hotcakes: $27B in indexed annuities sold Q1 2025 40:35 Wrap-up: annuities remain unethical despite legality and popularity Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Questions? Comments?Don and Tom kick off this episode by responding to a one-star Apple Podcast reviewer who promised to upgrade to five stars—if they correct their allegedly false Bitcoin claims. Challenge accepted. Don clarifies his earlier “nobody uses Bitcoin” remark by digging into the actual numbers: only 15,000 businesses worldwide accept it, out of over 359 million—roughly 0.0004%, making it statistically more rare than a lightning strike. They also break down the real costs of converting Bitcoin to dollars: while some exchanges charge under 1%, Bitcoin ATMs routinely charge 5–25% in fees, with total costs sometimes exceeding 30%. Then, a listener calls in with a ChatGPT-generated portfolio featuring VUG, VEA, SMH, and AXON. Don tears it apart for being tech-heavy, overly concentrated, and missing broad market exposure—ironically, even ChatGPT agrees with him. Listeners also get advice on why ETFs are gradually replacing mutual funds, when (if ever) annuities make sense, and why indexed annuities are the financial industry's version of timeshares: opaque, overpriced, and always sold, never bought. Despite the facts and the humor, Don doubts his five-star redemption is coming—but if Greg's Mowing and Septic accepts Bitcoin, there's still hope.0:26 Don confronts repeat negative podcast reviewers1:35 NavRep's public offer: “Correct your Bitcoin lies and I'll give 5 stars”2:31 Bitcoin rebuttal: 15,000 businesses accept it—out of 359 million5:13 Teaser: Bitcoin conversion fees part 2 coming up after the break6:26 Don admits his imprecise “nobody accepts Bitcoin” claim8:19 Clearing up the 8% Bitcoin conversion fee claim—context was ATMs9:49 Bitcoin ATM fees average 17.5%, sometimes hit 30%11:04 Exchange conversion under 1% is possible—but not for quick cash13:10 Volatility and impracticality still make Bitcoin a poor currency16:00 ChatGPT jokes: “Beer at a Baptist wedding” & “Greg the mower”16:49 Caller Jason asks ChatGPT for a portfolio; Don and Tom cringe17:46 ChatGPT suggested a tech-heavy, overly concentrated portfolio20:40 Better suggestions: VT, AVGE, DFAW—not VUG/SMH/AXON21:50 Don's GPT criticizes Jason's GPT: “No bonds, no value, no real estate”23:43 Caller Scott nails TRM's philosophy and nearly retires Don26:12 The rare “pros” of annuities—and their bigger downsides28:24 Indexed annuities: regular income taxed as ordinary income30:02 Betting against the house: how annuity math favors insurers31:44 Caller Jane asks if ETFs are better than mutual funds32:05 ETF settlement is faster, but that's not a reason to choose33:30 Vanguard accounts support ETFs beyond their own funds34:51 Updated: mutual funds now settle T+1, ETFs also T+136:26 Jane warned about National Life Group's indexed annuity pitch37:07 Why Don hates indexed annuities: high fees, low returns, opaque structure39:27 Still selling like hotcakes: $27B in indexed annuities sold Q1 202540:35 Wrap-up: annuities remain unethical despite legality and popularityLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A woman got arrested on a flight home from Disney World after a kid called her “Miss Piggy” and said she was too fat for the armrest reminding us all that the happiest place on Earth doesn’t extend to seat 27B. Tim dropped a mind-blowing stat that we scroll the height of Mount Everest sixteen times a year, so technically, we’re all elite athletes now. Meanwhile, a Chinese paraglider named Peng took second-hand gear out for a “quick test” and ended up yeeting himself higher than Everest by accident. And we revisited Susan Boyle’s iconic, confusing, and wildly flirtatious moment on Aussie telly, which somehow involved Dickie and a lot of “Give me some skin!”See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Orange juice king, Tropicana, is in trouble. Although the company takes up about 30% of the OJ market, it's losing sales rapidly nowadays. So what's going on at Tropicana and what can they do to change their fate? Plus: Elon Musk lost $52B so far in 2025 and Eli Lilly invests over $27B in manufacturing sites. Join our hosts Jon Weigell and Juliet Bennett as they take you through our most interesting stories of the day. Get our Side Hustle Ideas Database: https://clickhubspot.com/thds Follow us on social media: TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thehustle.co Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thehustledaily/ Thank You For Listening to The Hustle Daily Show. Don't forget to hit Subscribe or Follow us on Apple Podcasts so you never miss an episode! If you want this news delivered to your inbox, join millions of others and sign up for The Hustle Daily newsletter, here: https://thehustle.co/email/  Plus! Your engagement matters to us. If you are a fan of the show, be sure to leave us a 5-Star Review on Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-hustle-daily-show/id1606449047 (and share your favorite episodes with your friends, clients, and colleagues).

On this week's episode of More or Less, Meta kills DEI and fact-checking (right after their $27B moderation exit), Zuck's talking "masculine energy" on Rogan, and TikTok's facing a ban while DJI mysteriously drops US flight restrictions. It's not even February. We also share opinions on: • why tech's gender gap persists (18% of CS grads are women) • whether Elon's X could inherit TikTok's distribution • what NYC's congestion tax reveals about tech's bubble Just another week in Silicon Valley's great realignment. We're also on ↓ X: https://twitter.com/moreorlesspod Instagram: https://instagram.com/moreorless Spotify: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/moreorlesspod Connect with us here: 1) Sam Lessin: https://x.com/lessin 2) Dave Morin: https://x.com/davemorin 3) Jessica Lessin: https://x.com/Jessicalessin 4) Brit Morin: https://x.com/brit 00:00 Trailer 01:22 Tech's gender gap 07:52 Balancing Masculine and Feminine Energies 18:36 Implications of TikTok Ban 26:52 If TikTok goes dark 30:51 Balkanization 38:21 Inauguration 41:01 Wellness festival 44:12 Congestion tax and consumption patterns 48:08 Girl math 49:41 Los Angeles 53:10 Outro

1UNITED STATES BANKRUPTCY COURTSOUTHERN DISTRICT OF TEXASHOUSTON DIVISIONIn re:INTRUM AB, et al.,1Debtors.Chapter 11Case No. 24-90575 (CML)(Jointly Administered)NOTICE OF APPEALPursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 158(a) and Federal Rules of Bankruptcy Procedure 8002 and 8003,notice is hereby given that the Ad Hoc Committee of holders of 2025 notes issued by Intrum AB(the “AHC”) hereby appeals to the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texasfrom (i) the Order Denying Motion of the Ad Hoc Committee of Holders of Intrum AB Notes Due2025 to Dismiss Chapter 11 Cases Pursuant to 11 U.S.C. § 1112(b) and Federal Rule ofBankruptcy Procedure 1017(f)(1) (ECF No. 262) (the “Motion to Dismiss Order”) and (ii) theOrder (I) Approving Disclosure Statement and (II) Confirming Joint Prepackaged Chapter 11Plan of Intrum AB and Its Affiliated Debtor (Further Technical Modifications) (ECF No. 263) (the“Confirmation Order”). A copy of the Motion to Dismiss Order is attached as Exhibit A and acopy of the Confirmation Order is attached as Exhibit B. Additionally, the transcript of theBankruptcy Court's oral ruling accompanying the Motion to Dismiss Order and ConfirmationOrder (ECF No. 275) is attached as Exhibit C.Below are the names of all parties to this appeal and their respective counsel:1 The Debtors in these Chapter 11 Cases are Intrum AB and Intrum AB of Texas LLC. The Debtors'service address in these Chapter 11 Cases is 801 Travis Street, Ste 2101, #1312, Houston, TX 77002.Case 24-90575 Document 296 Filed in TXSB on 01/13/25 Page 1 of 62I. APPELLANTA. Name of Appellant:The members of the AHC include:Boundary Creek Master Fund LP; CF INT Holdings Designated Activity Company; CaiusCapital Master Fund; Diameter Master Fund LP; Diameter Dislocation Master Fund II LP; FirTree Credit Opportunity Master Fund, LP; MAP 204 Segregated Portfolio, a segregated portfolioof LMA SPC; Star V Partners LLC; and TQ Master Fund LP.Attorneys for the AHC:QUINN EMANUEL URQUHART & SULLIVAN, LLPChristopher D. Porter (SBN 24070437)Joanna D. Caytas (SBN 24127230)Melanie A. Guzman (SBN 24117175)Cameron M. Kelly (SBN 24120936)700 Louisiana Street, Suite 3900Houston, TX 77002Telephone: (713) 221-7000Facsimile: (713) 221-7100Email: chrisporter@quinnemanuel.comjoannacaytas@quinnemanuel.commelanieguzman@quinnemanuel.comcameronkelly@quinnemanuel.com-and-Benjamin I. Finestone (admitted pro hac vice)Sascha N. Rand (admitted pro hac vice)Katherine A. Scherling (admitted pro hac vice)295 5th AvenueNew York, New York 10016Telephone: (212) 849-7000Facsimile: (212) 849-7100Email: benjaminfinestone@quinnemanuel.comsascharand@quinnemanuel.comkatescherling@quinnemanuel.comB. Positions of appellant in the adversary proceeding or bankruptcy case that isthe subject of this appeal:CreditorsCase 24-90575 Document 296 Filed in TXSB on 01/13/25 Page 2 of 63II. THE SUBJECT OF THIS APPEALA. Judgment, order, or decree appealed from:The Order Denying Motion of the Ad Hoc Committee of Holders of Intrum AB Notes Due2025 to Dismiss Chapter 11 Cases Pursuant to 11 U.S.C. § 1112(b) and Federal Rule ofBankruptcy Procedure 1017(f)(1) (ECF No. 262); the Order (I) Approving Disclosure Statementand (II) Confirming Joint Prepackaged Chapter 11 Plan of Intrum AB and Its Affiliated Debtor(Further Technical Modifications) (ECF No. 263); and the December 31, 2024 Transcript of OralRuling Before the Honorable Christopher M. Lopez United States Bankruptcy Court Judge (ECFNo. 275).B. The date on which the judgment, order, or decree was entered:The Motion to Dismiss Order and the Confirmation Order were entered on December 31,2024. The Court issued its oral ruling accompanying the Motion to Dismiss Order and theConfirmation Order on December 31, 2024.III. OTHER PARTIES TO THIS APPEALIntrum AB and Intrum AB of Texas LLCMILBANK LLPDennis F. Dunne (admitted pro hac vice)Jaimie Fedell (admitted pro hac vice)55 Hudson YardsNew York, NY 10001Telephone: (212) 530-5000Facsimile: (212) 530-5219Email: ddunne@milbank.comjfedell@milbank.com–and–Andrew M. Leblanc (admitted pro hac vice)Melanie Westover Yanez (admitted pro hac vice)1850 K Street, NW, Suite 1100Washington, DC 20006Telephone: (202) 835-7500Facsimile: (202) 263-7586Email: aleblanc@milbank.commwyanez@milbank.com–and–PORTER HEDGES LLPJohn F. Higgins (SBN 09597500)Case 24-90575 Document 296 Filed in TXSB on 01/13/25 Page 3 of 64Eric D. Wade (SBN 00794802)M. Shane Johnson (SBN 24083263)1000 Main Street, 36th FloorHouston TX 77002Telephone: (713) 226-6000Facsimile: (713) 226-6248Email: jhiggins@porterhedges.comewade@porterhedges.comsjohnson@porterhedges.comIV. OTHER PARTIES THAT MAY HAVE AN INTEREST IN THIS APPEALThe following chart lists certain parties that are not parties to this appeal, but that may havean interest in the outcome of the case. These parties should be served with notice of this appealby the Debtors who are aware of their identities and best positioned to provide notice.All Other Creditors of the Debtors, Including, But Not Limited To:• Certain funds and accounts managed by BlackRock Investment Management (UK)Limited or its affiliates;• Capital Four;• Davidson Kempner European Partners, LLP;• Intermediate Capital Managers Limited;• Mandatum Asset Management Ltd;• H.I.G. Capital, LLC;• Spiltan Hograntefond; Spiltan Rantefond Sverige; and Spiltan Aktiefond Stabil;• The RCF SteerCo Group;• Swedbank AB (publ).Any Holder of Stock of the Debtors• Any holder of stock of the Debtors, including their successors and assigns.Case 24-90575 Document 296 Filed in TXSB on 01/13/25 Page 4 of 65Respectfully submitted this 13th day of January, 2025.QUINN EMANUEL URQUHART &SULLIVAN, LLP/s/ Christopher D. PorterChristopher D. Porter (SBN 24070437)Joanna D. Caytas (SBN 24127230)Melanie A. Guzman (SBN 24117175)Cameron M. Kelly (SBN 24120936)700 Louisiana Street, Suite 3900Houston, TX 77002Telephone: (713) 221-7000Facsimile: (713) 221-7100Email: chrisporter@quinnemanuel.comjoannacaytas@quinnemanuel.commelanieguzman@quinnemanuel.comcameronkelly@quinnemanuel.com-and-Benjamin I. Finestone (admitted pro hac vice)Sascha N. Rand (admitted pro hac vice)Katherine A. Scherling (admitted pro hac vice)295 5th AvenueNew York, New York 10016Telephone: (212) 849-7000Facsimile: (212) 849-7100Email: benjaminfinestone@quinnemanuel.comsascharand@quinnemanuel.comkatescherling@quinnemanuel.comCOUNSEL FOR THE AD HOC COMMITTEE OFINTRUM AB 2025 NOTEHOLDERSCase 24-90575 Document 296 Filed in TXSB on 01/13/25 Page 5 of 6CERTIFICATE OF SERVICEI, Christopher D. Porter, hereby certify that on the 13th day of January, 2025, a copy ofthe foregoing document has been served via the Electronic Case Filing System for the UnitedStates Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas./s/ Christopher D. PorterBy: Christopher D. PorterCase 24-90575 Document 296 Filed in TXSB on 01/13/25 Page 6 of 6EXHIBIT ACase 24-90575 Document 296-1 Filed in TXSB on 01/13/25 Page 1 of 31IN THE UNITED STATES BANKRUPTCY COURTFOR THE SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF TEXASHOUSTON DIVISION)In re: ) Chapter 11)Intrum AB, et al.,1 ) Case No. 24-90575 (CML)))Jointly AdministeredDebtors. ))ORDER DENYING MOTION OF THE AD HOCCOMMITTEE OF HOLDERS OF INTRUM AB NOTES DUE 2025TO DISMISS CHAPTER 11 CASES PURSUANT TO 11 U.S.C. § 1112(B) ANDFEDERAL RULE OF BANKRUPTCY PROCEDURE 1017(F)(1)(Related to Docket No. 27)This matter, having come before the Court upon the Motion of the Ad Hoc Committee ofHolders of Intrum AB Notes Due 2025 to Dismiss Chapter 11 Cases Pursuant to 11 U.S.C. §1112(b) and Federal Rule of Bankruptcy Procedure 1017(f)(1) [Docket No. 27] (the “Motion toDismiss”); and this Court having considered the Debtors' Objection to the Motion of the Ad HocCommittee of Holders of Intrum AB Notes Due 2025 to Dismiss Chapter 11 Cases Pursuant to 11U.S.C. § 1112(b) and Federal Rule of Bankruptcy Procedure 1017(f)(1) (the “Objection”) andany other responses or objections to the Motion to Dismiss; and this Court having jurisdiction overthis matter pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1334 and the Amended Standing Order; and this Court havingfound that this is a core proceeding pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 157(b)(2); and this Court having foundthat it may enter a final order consistent with Article III of the United States Constitution; and thisCourt having found that the relief requested in the Objection is in the best interests of the Debtors'1 The Debtors in these Chapter 11 Cases are Intrum AB and Intrum AB of Texas LLC. The Debtors' serviceaddress in these Chapter 11 Cases is 801 Travis Street, STE 2101, #1312, Houston, TX 77002.United States Bankruptcy CourtSouthern District of TexasENTEREDDecember 31, 2024Nathan Ochsner, ClerkCCaassee 2 244-9-900557755 D Dooccuummeennt t2 29662-1 F Filieledd i nin T TXXSSBB o onn 1 021/3/113/2/245 P Paaggee 1 2 o of f2 32estates; and this Court having found that the Debtors' notice of the Objection and opportunity fora hearing on the Motion to Dismiss and Objection were appropriate and no other notice need beprovided; and this Court having reviewed the Motion to Dismiss and Objection and havingheard the statements in support of the relief requested therein at a hearing before this Court; andthis Court having determined that the legal and factual bases set forth in the Objectionestablish just cause for the relief granted herein; and upon all of the proceedings had beforethis Court; and after due deliberation and sufficient cause appearing therefor, it is HEREBYORDERED THAT:1. The Motion to Dismiss is Denied for the reasons stated at the December 31, 2024 hearing.2. This Court retains exclusive jurisdiction and exclusive venue with respect to allmatters arising from or related to the implementation, interpretation, and enforcement of this Order.DAeucegmubste 0r 23,1 2, 0210294CCaassee 2 244-9-900557755 D Dooccuummeennt t2 29662-1 F Filieledd i nin T TXXSSBB o onn 1 021/3/113/2/245 P Paaggee 2 3 o of f2 3EXHIBIT BCase 24-90575 Document 296-2 Filed in TXSB on 01/13/25 Page 1 of 135IN THE UNITED STATES BANKRUPTCY COURTFOR THE SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF TEXASHOUSTON DIVISION)In re: ) Chapter 11)Intrum AB et al.,1 ) Case No. 24-90575 (CML)))(Jointly Administered)Debtors. ))ORDER (I) APPROVINGDISCLOSURE STATEMENT AND(II) CONFIRMING JOINT PREPACKAGED CHAPTER 11PLAN OF INTRUM AB AND ITS AFFILIATEDDEBTOR (FURTHER TECHNICAL MODIFICATIONS)The above-captioned debtors and debtors in possession (collectively, the“Debtors”), having:a. entered into that certain Lock-Up Agreement, dated as of July 10, 2024 (asamended and restated on August 15, 2024, and as further modified,supplemented, or otherwise amended from time to time in accordance with itsterms, the “the Lock-Up Agreement”) and that certain Backstop Agreement,dated as of July 10, 2024, (as amended and restated on November 15, 2024 andas further modified, supplemented, or otherwise amended from time to time inaccordance with its terms), setting out the terms of the backstop commitmentsprovided by the Backstop Providers to backstop the entirety of the issuance ofNew Money Notes (as may be further amended, restated, amended and restated,modified or supplemented from time to time in accordance with the termsthereof, the “Backstop Agreement”) which set forth the terms of a consensualfinancial restructuring of the Debtors;b. commenced, on October 17, 2024, a prepetition solicitation (the “Solicitation”)of votes on the Joint Prepackaged Chapter 11 Plan of Reorganization of IntrumAB and its Debtor Affiliate Pursuant to Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code (asthe same may be further amended, modified and supplemented from time totime, the “Plan”), by causing the transmittal, through their solicitation andballoting agent, Kroll Restructuring Administration LLC (“Kroll”), to theholders of Claims entitled to vote on the Plan of, among other things: (i) the1 The Debtors in these chapter 11 cases are Intrum AB and Intrum AB of Texas LLC. The Debtors' serviceaddress in these chapter 11 cases is 801 Travis Street, STE 2102, #1312, Houston, TX 77002.United States Bankruptcy CourtSouthern District of TexasENTEREDDecember 31, 2024Nathan Ochsner, ClerkCCaassee 2 244-9-900557755 D Dooccuummeennt t2 29663-2 F Filieledd i nin T TXXSSBB o onn 1 021/3/113/2/245 P Paaggee 1 2 o of f1 133452Plan, (ii) the Disclosure Statement for Joint Prepackaged Chapter 11 Plan ofReorganization of Intrum AB and its Debtor Affiliate (as the same may befurther amended, modified and supplemented from time to time, the“Disclosure Statement”), and (iii) the Ballots and Master Ballot to vote on thePlan (the “Ballots”), (iv) the Affidavit of Service of Solicitation Materials[Docket No. 7];c. commenced on November 15, 2024 (the “Petition Date”), these chapter 11 cases(these “Chapter 11 Cases”) by filing voluntary petitions in the United StatesBankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas (the “Bankruptcy Court”or the “Court”) for relief under chapter 11 of title 11 of the United States Code(the “Bankruptcy Code”);d. Filed on November 15, 2024, the Affidavit of Service of Solicitation Materials[Docket No. 7] (the “Solicitation Affidavit”);e. Filed, on November 16, 2024 the Joint Prepackaged Chapter 11 Plan ofReorganization of Intrum AB and its Debtor Affiliate Pursuant to Chapter 11of the Bankruptcy Code (Technical Modifications) [Docket No. 16] and theDisclosure Statement for Joint Prepackaged Chapter 11 Plan of Intrum AB andits Debtor Affiliate [Docket No. 17];f. Filed on November 16, 2024, the Declaration of Andrés Rubio in Support of ofthe Debtors' Chapter 11 Petitions and First Day Motions [Docket No. 14] (the“First Day Declaration”);g. Filed on November 17, 2024, the Declaration of Alex Orchowski of KrollRestructuring Administration LLC Regarding the Solicitation of Votes andTabulation of Ballots Case on the Joint Prepackaged Chapter 11 Plan ofReorganization of Intrum AB and its Debtor Affiliate Pursuant to Chapter 11of the Bankruptcy Code [Docket No. 18] (the “Voting Declaration,” andtogether with the Plan, the Disclosure Statement, the Ballots, and theSolicitation Affidavit, the “Solicitation Materials”);h. obtained, on November 19, 2024, the Order(I) Scheduling a Combined Hearingon (A) Adequacy of the Disclosure Statement and (B) Confirmation of the Plan,(II) Approving Solicitation Procedures and Form and Manner of Notice ofCommencement, Combined Hearing, and Objection Deadline, (III) FixingDeadline to Object to Disclosure Statement and Plan, (IV) Conditionally (A)Directing the United States Trustee Not to Convene Section 341 Meeting ofCreditors and (B) Waiving Requirement to File Statements of Financial Affairsand Schedules of Assets and Liabilities, and (V) Granting Related Relief[Docket No. 71] (the “Scheduling Order”), which, among other things: (i)approved the prepetition solicitation and voting procedures, including theConfirmation Schedule (as defined therein); (ii) conditionally approved theDisclosure Statement and its use in the Solicitation; and (iii) scheduled theCombined Hearing on December 16, 2024, at 1:00 p.m. (prevailing CentralCCaassee 2 244-9-900557755 D Dooccuummeennt t2 29663-2 F Filieledd i nin T TXXSSBB o onn 1 021/3/113/2/245 P Paaggee 2 3 o of f1 133453Time) to consider the final approval of the Disclosure Statement and theconfirmation of the Plan (the “Combined Hearing”);i. served, through Kroll, on November 20, 2025, on all known holders of Claimsand Interests, the U.S. Trustee and certain other parties in interest, the Noticeof: (I) Commencement of Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Cases; (II) Hearing on theDisclosure Statement and Confirmation of the Plan, and (III) Certain ObjectionDeadlines (the “Combined Hearing Notice”) as evidence by the Affidavit ofService [Docket No. 160];j. caused, on November 25 and 27, 2024, the Combined Hearing Notice to bepublished in the New York Times (national and international editions) and theFinancial Times (international edition), as evidenced by the Certificate ofPublication [Docket No. 148];k. Filed and served, on December 10, 2024, the Plan Supplement for the Debtors'Joint Prepackaged Chapter 11 Plan of Reorganization [Docket 165];l. Filed on December 10, 2024, the Declaration of Jeffrey Kopa in Support ofConfirmation of the Joint Prepackaged Plan of Reorganization of Intrum ABand its Debtor Affiliate Pursuant to Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code [DocketNo. 155];m. Filed on December 14, 2024, the:i. Debtors' Memorandum of Law in Support of an Order: (I) Approving, on aFinal Basis, Adequacy of the Disclosure Statement; (II) Confirming theJoint Prepackaged Plan of Reorganization; and (III) Granting Related Relief[Docket No. 190] (the “Confirmation Brief”);ii. Declaration of Andrés Rubio in Support of Confirmation of the JointPrepackaged Plan of Reorganization of Intrum AB and its Debtor Affiliate.[Docket No. 189] (the “Confirmation Declaration”); andiii. Joint Prepackaged Chapter 11 Plan of Reorganization of Intrum AB and itsDebtor Affiliate Pursuant to Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code (FurtherTechnical Modifications) [Docket No. 191];n. Filed on December 18, 2024, the Joint Prepackaged Chapter 11 Plan ofReorganization of Intrum AB and its Debtor Affiliate Pursuant to Chapter 11of the Bankruptcy Code (Further Technical Modifications) [Docket No. 223];CCaassee 2 244-9-900557755 D Dooccuummeennt t2 29663-2 F Filieledd i nin T TXXSSBB o onn 1 021/3/113/2/245 P Paaggee 3 4 o of f1 133454WHEREAS, the Court having, among other things:a. set December 12, 2024, at 4:00 p.m. (prevailing Central Time) as the deadlinefor Filing objection to the adequacy of the Disclosure Statement and/orConfirmation2 of the Plan (the “Objection Deadline”);b. held, on December 16, 2024 at 1:00 p.m. (prevailing Central Time) [andcontinuing through December 17, 2024], the Combined Hearing;c. heard the statements, arguments, and any objections made at the CombinedHearing;d. reviewed the Disclosure Statement, the Plan, the Ballots, the Plan Supplement,the Confirmation Brief, the Confirmation Declaration, the SolicitationAffidavit, and the Voting Declaration;e. overruled (i) any and all objections to approval of the Disclosure Statement, thePlan, and Confirmation, except as otherwise stated or indicated on the record,and (ii) all statements and reservations of rights not consensually resolved orwithdrawn, unless otherwise indicated; andf. reviewed and taken judicial notice of all the papers and pleadings Filed(including any objections, statement, joinders, reservations of rights and otherresponses), all orders entered, and all evidence proffered or adduced and allarguments made at the hearings held before the Court during the pendency ofthese cases;NOW, THEREFORE, it appearing to the Bankruptcy Court that notice of theCombined Hearing and the opportunity for any party in interest to object to the DisclosureStatement and the Plan having been adequate and appropriate as to all parties affected or to beaffected by the Plan and the transactions contemplated thereby, and the legal and factual bases setforth in the documents Filed in support of approval of the Disclosure Statement and Confirmationand other evidence presented at the Combined Hearing establish just cause for the relief grantedherein; and after due deliberation thereon and good cause appearing therefor, the BankruptcyCourt makes and issues the following findings of fact and conclusions of law, and orders for thereasons stated on the record at the December 31, 2024 ruling on plan confirmation;2 Capitalized terms used but not otherwise defined herein have meanings given to them in the Plan and/or theDisclosure Statement. The rules of interpretation set forth in Article I.B of the Plan apply to this CombinedOrder.CCaassee 2 244-9-900557755 D Dooccuummeennt t2 29663-2 F Filieledd i nin T TXXSSBB o onn 1 021/3/113/2/245 P Paaggee 4 5 o of f1 133455I. FINDINGS OF FACT AND CONCLUSIONS OF LAWIT IS HEREBY FOUND AND DETERMINED THAT:A. Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law.1. The findings and conclusions set forth herein and in the record of theCombined Hearing constitute the Bankruptcy Court's findings of fact and conclusions of law underRule 52 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, as made applicable herein by Bankruptcy Rules7052 and 9014. To the extent any of the following conclusions of law constitute findings of fact,or vice versa, they are adopted as such.B. Jurisdiction, Venue, Core Proceeding.2. This Court has jurisdiction over these Chapter 11 Cases pursuant to28 U.S.C. § 1334. Venue of these proceedings and the Chapter 11 Cases in this district is properpursuant to 28 U.S.C. §§ 1408 and 1409. This is a core proceeding pursuant to 28 U.S.C.§ 157(b)(2) and this Court may enter a final order hereon under Article III of the United StatesConstitution.C. Eligibility for Relief.3. The Debtors were and continue to be entities eligible for relief under section109 of the Bankruptcy Code and the Debtors were and continue to be proper proponents of thePlan under section 1121(a) of the Bankruptcy Code.D. Commencement and Joint Administration of the Chapter 11 Cases.4. On the Petition Date, the Debtors commenced the Chapter 11 Cases. OnNovember 18, 2024, the Court entered an order [Docket No. 51] authorizing the jointadministration of the Chapter 11 Case in accordance with Bankruptcy Rule 1015(b). The Debtorshave operated their businesses and managed their properties as debtors in possession pursuant toCCaassee 2 244-9-900557755 D Dooccuummeennt t2 29663-2 F Filieledd i nin T TXXSSBB o onn 1 021/3/113/2/245 P Paaggee 5 6 o of f1 133456sections 1107(a) and 1108 of the Bankruptcy Code. No trustee, examiner, or statutory committeehas been appointed in these Chapter 11 Cases.E. Adequacy of the Disclosure Statement.5. The Disclosure Statement and the exhibits contained therein (i) containssufficient information of a kind necessary to satisfy the disclosure requirements of applicablenonbankruptcy laws, rules and regulations, including the Securities Act; and (ii) contains“adequate information” as such term is defined in section 1125(a)(1) and used in section1126(b)(2) of the Bankruptcy Code, with respect to the Debtors, the Plan and the transactionscontemplated therein. The Filing of the Disclosure Statement satisfied Bankruptcy Rule 3016(b).The injunction, release, and exculpation provisions in the Plan and the Disclosure Statementdescribe, in bold font and with specific and conspicuous language, all acts to be enjoined andidentify the Entities that will be subject to the injunction, thereby satisfying Bankruptcy Rule3016(c).F. Solicitation.6. As described in and evidenced by the Voting Declaration, the Solicitationand the transmittal and service of the Solicitation Materials were: (i) timely, adequate, appropriate,and sufficient under the circumstances; and (ii) in compliance with sections 1125(g) and 1126(b)of the Bankruptcy Code, Bankruptcy Rules 3017 and 3018, the applicable Local Bankruptcy Rules,the Scheduling Order and all applicable nonbankruptcy rules, laws, and regulations applicable tothe Solicitation, including the registration requirements under the Securities Act. The SolicitationMaterials, including the Ballots and the Opt Out Form (as defined below), adequately informedthe holders of Claims entitled to vote on the Plan of the procedures and deadline for completingand submitting the Ballots.CCaassee 2 244-9-900557755 D Dooccuummeennt t2 29663-2 F Filieledd i nin T TXXSSBB o onn 1 021/3/113/2/245 P Paaggee 6 7 o of f1 1334577. The Debtors served the Combined Hearing Notice on the entire creditormatrix and served the Opt Out Form on all Non-Voting Classes. The Combined Hearing Noticeadequately informed Holders of Claims or Interests of critical information regarding voting on (ifapplicable) and objecting to the Plan, including deadlines and the inclusion of release, exculpation,and injunction provisions in the Plan, and adequately summarized the terms of the Third-PartyRelease. Further, because the form enabling stakeholders to opt out of the Third-Party Release (the“Opt Out Form”) was included in both the Ballots and the Opt Out Form, every known stakeholder,including unimpaired creditors was provided with the means by which the stakeholders could optout of the Third-Party Release. No further notice is required. The period for voting on the Planprovided a reasonable and sufficient period of time and the manner of such solicitation was anappropriate process allowing for such holders to make an informed decision.G. Tabulation.8. As described in and evidenced by the Voting Declaration, (i) the holders ofClaims in Class 3 (RCF Claims) and Class 5 (Notes Claims) are Impaired under the Plan(collectively, the “Voting Classes”) and have voted to accept the Plan in the numbers and amountsrequired by section 1126 of the Bankruptcy Code, and (ii) no Class that was entitled to vote on thePlan voted to reject the Plan. All procedures used to tabulate the votes on the Plan were in goodfaith, fair, reasonable, and conducted in accordance with the applicable provisions of theBankruptcy Code, the Bankruptcy Rules, the Local Rules, the Disclosure Statement, theScheduling Order, and all other applicable nonbankruptcy laws, rules, and regulations.H. Plan Supplement.9. On December 10, 2024, the Debtors Filed the Plan Supplement with theCourt. The Plan Supplement (including as subsequently modified, supplemented, or otherwiseCCaassee 2 244-9-900557755 D Dooccuummeennt t2 29663-2 F Filieledd i nin T TXXSSBB o onn 1 021/3/113/2/245 P Paaggee 7 8 o of f1 133458amended pursuant to a filing with the Court), complies with the terms of the Plan, and the Debtorsprovided good and proper notice of the filing in accordance with the Bankruptcy Code, theBankruptcy Rules, the Scheduling Order, and the facts and circumstances of the Chapter 11 Cases.All documents included in the Plan Supplement are integral to, part of, and incorporated byreference into the Plan. No other or further notice is or will be required with respect to the PlanSupplement. Subject to the terms of the Plan and the Lock-Up Agreement, and only consistenttherewith, the Debtors reserve the right to alter, amend, update, or modify the Plan Supplementand any of the documents contained therein or related thereto, in accordance with the Plan, on orbefore the Effective Date.I. Modifications to the Plan.10. Pursuant to section 1127 of the Bankruptcy Code, the modifications to thePlan described or set forth in this Combined Order constitute technical or clarifying changes,changes with respect to particular Claims by agreement with holders of such Claims, ormodifications that do not otherwise materially and adversely affect or change the treatment of anyother Claim or Interest under the Plan. These modifications are consistent with the disclosurespreviously made pursuant to the Disclosure Statement and Solicitation Materials, and notice ofthese modifications was adequate and appropriate under the facts and circumstances of the Chapter11 Cases. In accordance with Bankruptcy Rule 3019, these modifications do not require additionaldisclosure under section 1125 of the Bankruptcy Code or the resolicitation of votes under section1126 of the Bankruptcy Code, and they do not require that holders of Claims or Interests beafforded an opportunity to change previously cast acceptances or rejections of the Plan.Accordingly, the Plan is properly before this Court and all votes cast with respect to the Plan priorto such modification shall be binding and shall apply with respect to the Plan.CCaassee 2 244-9-900557755 D Dooccuummeennt t2 29663-2 F Filieledd i nin T TXXSSBB o onn 1 021/3/113/2/245 P Paaggee 8 9 o of f1 133459J. Objections Overruled.11. Any resolution or disposition of objections to Confirmation explained orotherwise ruled upon by the Court on the record at the Confirmation Hearing is herebyincorporated by reference. All unresolved objections, statements, joinders, informal objections,and reservations of rights are hereby overruled on the merits.K. Burden of Proof.12. The Debtors, as proponents of the Plan, have met their burden of provingthe elements of sections 1129(a) and 1129(b) of the Bankruptcy Code by a preponderance of theevidence, the applicable evidentiary standard for Confirmation. Further, the Debtors have proventhe elements of sections 1129(a) and 1129(b) by clear and convincing evidence. Each witness whotestified on behalf of the Debtors in connection with the Confirmation Hearing was credible,reliable, and qualified to testify as to the topics addressed in his testimony.L. Compliance with the Requirements of Section 1129 of the BankruptcyCode.13. The Plan complies with all applicable provisions of section 1129 of theBankruptcy Code as follows:a. Section 1129(a)(1) – Compliance of the Plan with Applicable Provisions of theBankruptcy Code.14. The Plan complies with all applicable provisions of the Bankruptcy Code,including sections 1122 and 1123, as required by section 1129(a)(1) of the Bankruptcy Code.i. Section 1122 and 1123(a)(1) – Proper Classification.15. The classification of Claims and Interests under the Plan is proper under theBankruptcy Code. In accordance with sections 1122(a) and 1123(a)(1) of the Bankruptcy Code,Article III of the Plan provides for the separate classification of Claims and Interests at each Debtorinto Classes, based on differences in the legal nature or priority of such Claims and Interests (otherCaCsaes e2 42-49-09507557 5 D oDcoucmumenetn 2t 9266-32 FFiilleedd iinn TTXXSSBB oonn 1021//3113//2245 PPaaggee 91 0o fo 1f 3143510than Administrative Claims, Professional Fee Claims, and Priority Tax Claims, which areaddressed in Article II of the Plan and Unimpaired, and are not required to be designated asseparate Classes in accordance with section 1123(a)(1) of the Bankruptcy Code). Valid business,factual, and legal reasons exist for the separate classification of the various Classes of Claims andInterests created under the Plan, the classifications were not implemented for any improperpurpose, and the creation of such Classes does not unfairly discriminate between or among holdersof Claims or Interests.16. In accordance with section 1122(a) of the Bankruptcy Code, each Class ofClaims or Interests contains only Claims or Interests substantially similar to the other Claims orInterests within that Class. Accordingly, the Plan satisfies the requirements of sections 1122(a),1122(b), and 1123(a)(1) of the Bankruptcy Codeii. Section 1123(a)(2) – Specifications of Unimpaired Classes.17. Article III of the Plan specifies that Claims and Interests in the classesdeemed to accept the Plan are Unimpaired under the Plan. Holders of Intercompany Claims andIntercompany Interests are either Unimpaired and conclusively presumed to have accepted thePlan, or are Impaired and deemed to reject (the “Deemed Rejecting Classes”) the Plan, and, ineither event, are not entitled to vote to accept or reject the Plan. In addition, Article II of the Planspecifies that Administrative Claims and Priority Tax Claims are Unimpaired, although the Plandoes not classify these Claims. Accordingly, the Plan satisfies the requirements of section1123(a)(2) of the Bankruptcy Code.CCaassee 2 244-9-900557755 D Dooccuummeennt t2 29663-2 F Fileiledd i nin T TXXSSBB o onn 1 021/3/113/2/245 P Paaggee 1 101 o of f1 1334511iii. Section 1123(a)(3) – Specification of Treatment of Voting Classes18. Article III.B of the Plan specifies the treatment of each Voting Class underthe Plan – namely, Class 3 and Class 5. Accordingly, the Plan satisfies the requirements of section1123(a)(3) of the Bankruptcy Code.iv. Section 1123(a)(4) – No Discrimination.19. Article III of the Plan provides the same treatment to each Claim or Interestin any particular Class, as the case may be, unless the holder of a particular Claim or Interest hasagreed to a less favorable treatment with respect to such Claim or Interest. Accordingly, the Plansatisfies the requirements of section 1123(a)(4) of the Bankruptcy Code.v. Section 1123(a)(5) – Adequate Means for Plan Implementation.20. The Plan and the various documents included in the Plan Supplementprovide adequate and proper means for the Plan's execution and implementation, including: (a)the general settlement of Claims and Interests; (b) the restructuring of the Debtors' balance sheetand other financial transactions provided for by the Plan; (c) the consummation of the transactionscontemplated by the Plan, the Lock-Up Agreement, the Restructuring Implementation Deed andthe Agreed Steps Plan and other documents Filed as part of the Plan Supplement; (d) the issuanceof Exchange Notes, the New Money Notes, and the Noteholder Ordinary Shares pursuant to thePlan; (e) the amendment of the Intercreditor Agreement; (f) the amendment of the FacilityAgreement; (g) the amendment of the Senior Secured Term Loan Agreement; (h) theconsummation of the Rights Offering in accordance with the Plan, Rights Offering Documentsand the Lock-Up Agreement; (i) the granting of all Liens and security interests granted orconfirmed (as applicable) pursuant to, or in connection with, the Facility Agreement, the ExchangeNotes Indenture, the New Money Notes Indenture, the amended Intercreditor Agreement and theCCaassee 2 244-9-900557755 D Dooccuummeennt t2 29663-2 F Fileiledd i nin T TXXSSBB o onn 1 021/3/113/2/245 P Paaggee 1 112 o of f1 1334512Senior Secured Term Loan Agreement pursuant to the New Security Documents (including anyLiens and security interests granted or confirmed (as applicable) on the Reorganized Debtors'assets); (j) the vesting of the assets of the Debtors' Estates in the Reorganized Debtors; (k) theconsummation of the corporate reorganization contemplated by the Plan, the Lock-Up Agreement,the Agreed Steps Plan and the Master Reorganization Agreement (as defined in the RestructuringImplementation Deed); and (l) the execution, delivery, filing, or recording of all contracts,instruments, releases, and other agreements or documents in furtherance of the Plan. Accordingly,the Plan satisfies the requirements of section 1123(a)(5) of the Bankruptcy Codevi. Section 1123(a)(6) – Non-Voting Equity Securities.21. The Company's organizational documents in accordance with the SwedishCompanies Act, Ch. 4, Sec 5 and the Plan prohibit the issuance of non-voting securities as of theEffective Date to the extent required to comply with section 1123(a)(6) of the Bankruptcy Code.Accordingly, the Plan satisfies the requirements of section 1123(a)(6) of the Bankruptcy Code.vii. Section 1123(a)(7) – Directors, Officers, and Trustees.22. The manner of selection of any officer, director, or trustee (or any successorto and such officer, director, or trustee) of the Reorganized Debtors will be determined inaccordance with the existing organizational documents, which is consistent with the interests ofcreditors and equity holders and with public policy. Accordingly, the Plan satisfies therequirements of section 1123(a)(7) of the Bankruptcy Code.b. Section 1123(b) – Discretionary Contents of the Plan23. The Plan contains various provisions that may be construed as discretionarybut not necessary for Confirmation under the Bankruptcy Code. Any such discretionary provisionCCaassee 2 244-9-900557755 D Dooccuummeennt t2 29663-2 F Fileiledd i nin T TXXSSBB o onn 1 021/3/113/2/245 P Paaggee 1 123 o of f1 1334513complies with section 1123(b) of the Bankruptcy Code and is not inconsistent with the applicableprovisions of the Bankruptcy Code. Thus, the Plan satisfies section 1123(b).i. Section 1123(b)(1) – Impairment/Unimpairment of Any Class of Claims orInterests24. Article III of the Plan impairs or leaves unimpaired, as the case may be,each Class of Claims or Interests, as contemplated by section 1123(b)(1) of the Bankruptcy Code.ii. Section 1123(b)(2) – Assumption and Rejection of Executory Contracts andUnexpired Leases25. Article V of the Plan provides for the assumption of the Debtors' ExecutoryContracts and Unexpired Leases as of the Effective Date unless such Executory Contract orUnexpired Lease: (a) is identified on the Rejected Executory Contract and Unexpired Lease List;(b) has been previously rejected by a Final Order; (c) is the subject of a motion to reject ExecutoryContracts or Unexpired Leases that is pending on the Confirmation Date; or (4) is subject to amotion to reject an Executory Contract or Unexpired Lease pursuant to which the requestedeffective date of such rejection is after the Effective Date. Thus, the Plan satisfies section1123(b)(2).iii. Compromise and Settlement26. In accordance with section 1123(b)(3)(A) of the Bankruptcy Code andBankruptcy Rule 9019, and in consideration for the distributions and other benefits provided underthe Plan, the provisions of the Plan constitute a good-faith compromise of all Claims, Interests,and controversies relating to the contractual, legal, and subordination rights that all holders ofClaims or Interests may have with respect to any Allowed Claim or Interest or any distribution tobe made on account of such Allowed Claim or Interest. Such compromise and settlement is theproduct of extensive arm's-length, good faith negotiations that, in addition to the Plan, resulted inCCaassee 2 244-9-900557755 D Dooccuummeennt t2 29663-2 F Fileiledd i nin T TXXSSBB o onn 1 021/3/113/2/245 P Paaggee 1 134 o of f1 1334514the execution of the Lock-Up Agreement, which represents a fair and reasonable compromise ofall Claims, Interests, and controversies and entry into which represented a sound exercise of theDebtors' business judgment. Such compromise and settlement is fair, equitable, and reasonableand in the best interests of the Debtors and their Estates.27. The releases of the Debtors' directors and officers are an integral componentof the settlements and compromises embodied in the Plan. The Debtors' directors and officers: (a)made a substantial and valuable contribution to the Debtors' restructuring, including extensive preandpost-Petition Date negotiations with stakeholder groups, and ensured the uninterruptedoperation of the Debtors' businesses during the Chapter 11 Cases; (b) invested significant timeand effort to make the restructuring a success and maximize the value of the Debtors' businessesin a challenging operating environment; (c) attended and, in certain instances, testified atdepositions and Court hearings; (d) attended and participated in numerous stakeholder meetings,management meetings, and board meetings related to the restructuring; (e) are entitled toindemnification from the Debtors under applicable non-bankruptcy law, organizationaldocuments, and agreements; (f) invested significant time and effort in the preparation of the Lock-Up Agreement, the Plan, Disclosure Statement, all supporting analyses, and the numerous otherpleadings Filed in the Chapter 11 Cases, thereby ensuring the smooth administration of the Chapter11 Cases; and (g) are entitled to all other benefits under any employment contracts existing as ofthe Petition Date. Litigation by the Debtors or other Releasing Parties against the Debtors'directors and officers would be a distraction to the Debtors' business and restructuring and woulddecrease rather than increase the value of the estates. The releases of the Debtors' directors andofficers contained in the Plan have the consent of the Debtors and the Releasing Parties and are inthe best interests of the estates.CCaassee 2 244-9-900557755 D Dooccuummeennt t2 29663-2 F Fileiledd i nin T TXXSSBB o onn 1 021/3/113/2/245 P Paaggee 1 145 o of f1 1334515iv. Debtor Release28. The releases of claims and Causes of Action by the Debtors, ReorganizedDebtors, and their Estates described in Article VIII.C of the Plan in accordance with section1123(b) of the Bankruptcy Code (the “Debtor Release”) represent a valid exercise of the Debtors'business judgment under Bankruptcy Rule 9019. The Debtors' or the Reorganized Debtors' pursuitof any such claims against the Released Parties is not in the best interests of the Estates' variousconstituencies because the costs involved would outweigh any potential benefit from pursuingsuch claims. The Debtor Release is fair and equitable and complies with the absolute priority rule.29. The Debtor Release is (a) an integral part of the Plan, and a component ofthe comprehensive settlement implemented under the Plan; (b) in exchange for the good andvaluable consideration provided by the Released Parties; (c) a good faith settlement andcompromise of the claims and Causes of Action released by the Debtor Release; (d) materiallybeneficial to, and in the best interests of, the Debtors, their Estates, and their stakeholders, and isimportant to the overall objectives of the Plan to finally resolve certain Claims among or againstcertain parties in interest in the Chapter 11 Cases; (e) fair, equitable, and reasonable; (f) given andmade after due notice and opportunity for hearing; and (g) a bar to any Debtor asserting any claimor Cause of Action released by the Debtor Release against any of the Released Parties. Theprobability of success in litigation with respect to the released claims and Causes of Action, whenweighed against the costs, supports the Debtor Release. With respect to each of these potentialCauses of Action, the parties could assert colorable defenses and the probability of success isuncertain. The Debtors' or the Reorganized Debtors' pursuit of any such claims or Causes ofAction against the Released Parties is not in the best interests of the Estates or the Debtors' variousCCaassee 2 244-9-900557755 D Dooccuummeennt t2 29663-2 F Fileiledd i nin T TXXSSBB o onn 1 021/3/113/2/245 P Paaggee 1 156 o of f1 1334516constituencies because the costs involved would likely outweigh any potential benefit frompursuing such claims or Causes of Action30. Holders of Claims and Interests entitled to vote have overwhelmingly votedin favor of the Plan, including the Debtor Release. The Plan, including the Debtor Release, wasnegotiated before and after the Petition Date by sophisticated parties represented by able counseland advisors, including the Consenting Creditors. The Debtor Release is therefore the result of ahard fought and arm's-length negotiation process conducted in good faith.31. The Debtor Release appropriately offers protection to parties thatparticipated in the Debtors' restructuring process, including the Consenting Creditors, whoseparticipation in the Chapter 11 Cases is critical to the Debtors' successful emergence frombankruptcy. Specifically, the Released Parties, including the Consenting Creditors, madesignificant concessions and contributions to the Chapter 11 Cases, including, entering into theLock-Up Agreement and related agreements, supporting the Plan and the Chapter 11 Cases, andwaiving or agreeing to impair substantial rights and Claims against the Debtors under the Plan (aspart of the compromises composing the settlement underlying the revised Plan) in order tofacilitate a consensual reorganization and the Debtors' emergence from chapter 11. The DebtorRelease for the Debtors' directors and officers is appropriate because the Debtors' directors andofficers share an identity of interest with the Debtors and, as previously stated, supported and madesubstantial contributions to the success of the Plan, the Chapter 11 Cases, and operation of theDebtors' business during the Chapter 11 Cases, actively participated in meetings, negotiations, andimplementation during the Chapter 11 Cases, and have provided other valuable consideration tothe Debtors to facilitate the Debtors' successful reorganization and continued operation.CCaassee 2 244-9-900557755 D Dooccuummeennt t2 29663-2 F Fileiledd i nin T TXXSSBB o onn 1 021/3/113/2/245 P Paaggee 1 167 o of f1 133451732. The scope of the Debtor Release is appropriately tailored under the factsand circumstances of the Chapter 11 Cases. In light of, among other things, the value provided bythe Released Parties to the Debtors' Estates and the critical nature of the Debtor Release to thePlan, the Debtor Release is appropriate.v. Release by Holders of Claims and Interests33. The release by the Releasing Parties (the “Third-Party Release”), set forthin Article VIII.D of the Plan, is an essential provision of the Plan. The Third-Party Release is: (a)consensual as to those Releasing Parties that did not specifically and timely object or properly optout from the Third-Party Release; (b) within the jurisdiction of the Bankruptcy Court pursuant to28 U.S.C. § 1334; (c) in exchange for the good and valuable consideration provided by theReleased Parties; (d) a good faith settlement and compromise of the claims and Causes of Actionreleased by the Third-Party Release; (e) materially beneficial to, and in the best interests of, theDebtors, their Estates, and their stakeholders, and is important to the overall objectives of the Planto finally resolve certain Claims among or against certain parties in interest in the Chapter 11Cases; (f) fair, equitable, and reasonable; (g) given and made after due notice and opportunity forhearing; (h) appropriately narrow in scope given that it expressly excludes, among other things,any Cause of Action that is judicially determined by a Final Order to have constituted actual fraud,willful misconduct, or gross negligence; (i) a bar to any of the Releasing Parties asserting anyclaim or Cause of Action released by the Third-Party Release against any of the Released Parties;and (j) consistent with sections 105, 524, 1123, 1129, and 1141 and other applicable provisions ofthe Bankruptcy Code.34. The Third-Party Release is an integral part of the agreement embodied inthe Plan among the relevant parties in interest. Like the Debtor Release, the Third-Party ReleaseCCaassee 2 244-9-900557755 D Dooccuummeennt t2 29663-2 F Fileiledd i nin T TXXSSBB o onn 1 021/3/113/2/245 P Paaggee 1 178 o of f1 1334518facilitated participation in both the Debtors' Plan and the chapter 11 process generally. The Third-Party Release is instrumental to the Plan and was critical in incentivizing parties to support thePlan and preventing significant and time-consuming litigation regarding the parties' respectiverights and interests. The Third-Party Release was a core negotiation point in connection with thePlan and instrumental in developing the Plan that maximized value for all of the Debtors'stakeholders and kept the Debtors intact as a going concern. As such, the Third-Party Releaseappropriately offers certain protections to parties who constructively participated in the Debtors'restructuring process—including the Consenting Creditors (as set forth above)—by, among otherthings, facilitating the negotiation and consummation of the Plan, supporting the Plan and, in thecase of the Backstop Providers, committing to provide new capital to facilitate the Debtors'emergence from chapter 11. Specifically, the Notes Ad Hoc Group proposed and negotiated thepari passu transaction that is the basis of the restructuring proposed under the Plan and provideda much-needed deleveraging to the Debtors' business while taking a discount on their Claims (inexchange for other consideration).35. Furthermore, the Third-Party Release is consensual as to all parties ininterest, including all Releasing Parties, and such parties in interest were provided notice of thechapter 11 proceedings, the Plan, the deadline to object to confirmation of the Plan, and theCombined Hearing and were properly informed that all holders of Claims against or Interests inthe Debtors that did not file an objection with the Court in the Chapter 11 Cases that included anexpress objection to the inclusion of such holder as a Releasing Party under the provisionscontained in Article VIII of the Plan would be deemed to have expressly, unconditionally,generally, individually, and collectively consented to the release and discharge of all claims andCauses of Action against the Debtors and the Released Parties. Additionally, the release provisionsCCaassee 2 244-9-900557755 D Dooccuummeennt t2 29663-2 F Fileiledd i nin T TXXSSBB o onn 1 021/3/113/2/245 P Paaggee 1 189 o of f1 1334519of the Plan were conspicuous, emphasized with boldface type in the Plan, the DisclosureStatement, the Ballots, and the applicable notices. Except as set forth in the Plan, all ReleasingParties were properly informed that unless they (a) checked the “opt out” box on the applicableBallot or opt-out form and returned the same in advance of the Voting Deadline, as applicable, or(b) timely Filed an objection to the releases contained in the Plan that was not resolved beforeentry of this Confirmation Order, they would be deemed to have expressly consented to the releaseof all Claims and Causes of Action against the Released Parties.36. The Ballots sent to all holders of Claims and Interests entitled to vote, aswell as the notice of the Combined Hearing sent to all known parties in interest (including thosenot entitled to vote on the Plan), unambiguously provided in bold letters that the Third-PartyRelease was contained in the Plan.37. The scope of the Third-Party Release is appropriately tailored under thefacts and circumstances of the Chapter 11 Cases, and parties in interest received due and adequatenotice of the Third-Party Release. Among other things, the Plan provides appropriate and specificdisclosure with respect to the claims and Causes of Action that are subject to the Third-PartyRelease, and no other disclosure is necessary. The Debtors, as evidenced by the VotingDeclaration and Certificate of Publication, including by providing actual notice to all knownparties in interest, including all known holders of Claims against, and Interests in, any Debtor andpublishing notice in international and national publications for the benefit of unknown parties ininterest, provided sufficient notice of the Third-Party Release, and no further or other notice isnecessary. The Third-Party Release is designed to provide finality for the Debtors, theReorganized Debtors and the Released Parties regarding the parties' respective obligations underthe Plan. For the avoidance of doubt, and notwithstanding anything to the contrary, anyparty who timely opted-out of the Third-Party Release is not bound by the Third-PartyRelease.CCaassee 2 244-9-900557755 D Dooccuummeennt t2 29663-2 F Fileiledd i nin T TXXSSBB o onn 1 021/3/113/2/245 P Paaggee 1 290 o of f1 133452038. The Third-Party Release is specific in language, integral to the Plan, andgiven for substantial consideration. The Releasing Parties were given due and adequate notice ofthe Third-Party Release, and thus the Third-Party Release is consensual under controllingprecedent as to those Releasing Parties that did not specifically and timely object. In light of,among other things, the value provided by the Released Parties to the Debtors' Estates and theconsensual and critical nature of the Third-Party Release to the Plan, the Third-Party Release isappropriatevi. Exculpation.39. The exculpation described in Article VIII.E of the Plan (the “Exculpation”)is appropriate under applicable law, including In re Highland Capital Mgmt., L.P., 48 F. 4th 419(5th Cir. 2022), because it was supported by proper evidence, proposed in good faith, wasformulated following extensive good-faith, arm's-length negotiations with key constituents, and isappropriately limited in scope.40. No Entity or Person may commence or continue any action, employ anyprocess, or take any other act to pursue, collect, recover or offset any Claim, Interest, debt,obligation, or Cause of Action relating or reasonably likely to relate to any act or commission inconnection with, relating to, or arising out of a Covered Matter (including one that alleges theactual fraud, gross negligence, or willful misconduct of a Covered Entity), unless expresslyauthorized by the Bankruptcy Court after (1) it determines, after a notice and a hearing, such Claim,Interest, debt, obligation, or Cause of Action is colorable and (2) it specifically authorizes suchEntity or Person to bring such Claim or Cause of Action. The Bankruptcy Court shall have soleand exclusive jurisdiction to determine whether any such Claim, Interest, debt, obligation or Causeof Action is colorable and, only to the extent legally permissible and as provided for in Article XI,CCaassee 2 244-9-900557755 D Dooccuummeennt t2 29663-2 F Fileiledd i nin T TXXSSBB o onn 1 021/3/113/2/245 P Paaggee 2 201 o of f1 1334521shall have jurisdiction to adjudicate such underlying colorable Claim, Interest, debt, obligation, orCause of Action.vii. Injunction.41. The injunction provisions set forth in Article VIII.F of the Plan are essentialto the Plan and are necessary to implement the Plan and to preserve and enforce the discharge,Debtor Release, the Third-Party Release, and the Exculpation provisions in Article VIII of thePlan. The injunction provisions are appropriately tailored to achieve those purposes.viii. Preservation of Claims and Causes of Action.42. Article IV.L of the Plan appropriately provides for the preservation by theDebtors of certain Causes of Action in accordance with section 1123(b) of the Bankruptcy Code.Causes of Action not released by the Debtors or exculpated under the Plan will be retained by theReorganized Debtors as provided by the Plan. The Plan is sufficiently specific with respect to theCauses of Action to be retained by the Debtors, and the Plan and Plan Supplement providemeaningful disclosure with respect to the potential Causes of Action that the Debtors may retain,and all parties in interest received adequate notice with respect to such retained Causes of Action.The provisions regarding Causes of Action in the Plan are appropriate and in the best interests ofthe Debtors, their respective Estates, and holders of Claims or Interests. For the avoidance of anydoubt, Causes of Action released or exculpated under the Plan will not be retained by theReorganized Debtors.c. Section 1123(d) – Cure of Defaults43. Article V.D of the Plan provides for the satisfaction of Cure Claimsassociated with each Executory Contract and Unexpired Lease to be assumed in accordance withsection 365(b)(1) of the Bankruptcy Code. Any monetary defaults under each assumed ExecutoryCCaassee 2 244-9-900557755 D Dooccuummeennt t2 29663-2 F Fileiledd i nin T TXXSSBB o onn 1 021/3/113/2/245 P Paaggee 2 212 o of f1 1334522Contract or Unexpired Lease shall be satisfied, pursuant to section 365(b)(1) of the BankruptcyCode, by payment of the default amount in Cash on the Effective Date, subject to the limitationsdescribed in Article V.D of the Plan, or on such other terms as the parties to such ExecutoryContracts or Unexpired Leases may otherwise agree. Any Disputed Cure Amounts will bedetermined in accordance with the procedures set forth in Article V.D of the Plan, and applicablebankruptcy and nonbankruptcy law. As such, the Plan provides that the Debtors will Cure, orprovide adequate assurance that the Debtors will promptly Cure, defaults with respect to assumedExecutory Contracts and Unexpired Leases in accordance with section 365(b)(1) of theBankruptcy Code. Thus, the Plan complies with section 1123(d) of the Bankruptcy Code.d. Section 1129(a)(2) – Compliance of the Debtors and Others with the ApplicableProvisions of the Bankruptcy Code.44. The Debtors, as proponents of the Plan, have complied with all applicableprovisions of the Bankruptcy Code as required by section 1129(a)(2) of the Bankruptcy Code,including sections 1122, 1123, 1124, 1125, 1126, and 1128, and Bankruptcy Rules 3017, 3018,and 3019.e. Section 1129(a)(3) – Proposal of Plan in Good Faith.45. The Debtors have proposed the Plan in good faith, in accordance with theBankruptcy Code requirements, and not by any means forbidden by law. In determining that thePlan has been proposed in good faith, the Court has examined the totality of the circumstancesfiling of the Chapter 11 Cases, including the formation of Intrum AB of Texas LLC (“IntrumTexas”), the Plan itself, and the process leading to its formulation. The Debtors' good faith isevident from the facts and record of the Chapter 11 Cases, the Disclosure Statement, and the recordof the Combined Hearing and other proceedings held in the Chapter 11 CasesCCaassee 2 244-9-900557755 D Dooccuummeennt t2 29663-2 F Fileiledd i nin T TXXSSBB o onn 1 021/3/113/2/245 P Paaggee 2 223 o of f1 133452346. The Plan (including the Plan Supplement and all other documents necessaryto effectuate the Plan) is the product of good faith, arm's-length negotiations by and among theDebtors, the Debtors' directors and officers and the Debtors' key stakeholders, including theConsenting Creditors and each of their respective professionals. The Plan itself and the processleading to its formulation provide independent evidence of the Debtors' and such other parties'good faith, serve the public interest, and assure fair treatment of holders of Claims or Interests.Consistent with the overriding purpose of chapter 11, the Debtors Filed the Chapter 11 Cases withthe belief that the Debtors were in need of reorganization and the Plan was negotiated and proposedwith the intention of accomplishing a successful reorganization and maximizing stakeholder value,and for no ulterior purpose. Accordingly, the requirements of section 1129(a)(3) of the BankruptcyCode are satisfied.f. Section 1129(a)(4) – Court Approval of Certain Payments as Reasonable.47. Any payment made or to be made by the Debtors, or by a person issuingsecurities or acquiring property under the Plan, for services or costs and expenses in connectionwith the Chapter 11 Cases, or in connection with the Plan and incident to the Chapter 11 Cases,has been approved by, or is subject to the approval of, the Court as reasonable. Accordingly, thePlan satisfies the requirements of section 1129(a)(4).g. Section 1129(a)(5)—Disclosure of Directors and Officers and Consistency with theInterests of Creditors and Public Policy.48. The identities of or process for appointment of the Reorganized Debtors'directors and officers proposed to serve after the Effective Date were disclosed in the PlanSupplement in advance of the Combined Hearing. Accordingly, the Debtors have satisfied therequirements of section 1129(a)(5) of the Bankruptcy Code.CCaassee 2 244-9-900557755 D Dooccuummeennt t2 29663-2 F Fileiledd i nin T TXXSSBB o onn 1 021/3/113/2/245 P Paaggee 2 234 o of f1 1334524h. Section 1129(a)(6)—Rate Changes.49. The Plan does not contain any rate changes subject to the jurisdiction of anygovernmental regulatory commission and therefore will not require governmental regulatoryapproval. Therefore, section 1129(a)(6) of the Bankruptcy Code does not apply to the Plan.i. Section 1129(a)(7)—Best Interests of Holders of Claims and Interests.50. The liquidation analysis attached as Exhibit D to the Disclosure Statementand the other evidence in support of the Plan that was proffered or adduced at the CombinedHearing, and the facts and circumstances of the Chapter 11 Cases are (a) reasonable, persuasive,credible, and accurate as of the dates such analysis or evidence was prepared, presented orproffered; (b) utilize reasonable and appropriate methodologies and assumptions; (c) have not beencontroverted by other evidence; and (d) establish that each holder of Allowed Claims or Interestsin each Class will recover as much or more value under the Plan on account of such Claim orInterest, as of the Effective Date, than the amount such holder would receive if the Debtors wereliquidated on the Effective Date under chapter 7 of the Bankruptcy Code or has accepted the Plan.As a result, the Debtors have demonstrated that the Plan is in the best interests of their creditorsand equity holders and the requirements of section 1129(a)(7) of the Bankruptcy Code are satisfied.j. Section 1129(a)(8)—Conclusive Presumption of Acceptance by UnimpairedClasses; Acceptance of the Plan by Certain Voting Classes.51. The classes deemed to accept the Plan are Unimpaired under the Plan andare deemed to have accepted the Plan pursuant to section 1126(f) of the Bankruptcy Code. EachVoting Class voted to accept the Plan. For the avoidance of doubt, however, even if section1129(a)(8) has not been satisfied with respect to all of the Debtors, the Plan is confirmable becausethe Plan does not discriminate unfairly and is fair and equitable with respect to the Voting Classesand thus satisfies section 1129(b) of the Bankruptcy Code with respect to such Classes as describedCCaassee 2 244-9-900557755 D Dooccuummeennt t2 29663-2 F Fileiledd i nin T TXXSSBB o onn 1 021/3/113/2/245 P Paaggee 2 245 o of f1 1334525further below. As a result, the requirements of section 1129(b) of the Bankruptcy Code are alsosatisfied.k. Section 1129(a)(9)—Treatment of Claims Entitled to Priority Pursuant to Section507(a) of the Bankruptcy Code.52. The treatment of Administrative Claims, Professional Fee Claims, andPriority Tax Claims under Article II of the Plan satisfies the requirements of, and complies in allrespects with, section 1129(a)(9) of the Bankruptcy Code.l. Section 1129(a)(10)—Acceptance by at Least One Voting Class.53. As set forth in the Voting Declaration, all Voting Classes overwhelminglyvoted to accept the Plan. As such, there is at least one Voting Class that has accepted the Plan,determined without including any acceptance of the Plan by any insider (as defined by theBankruptcy Code), for each Debtor. Accordingly, the requirements of section 1129(a)(10) of theBankruptcy Code are satisfied.m. Section 1129(a)(11)—Feasibility of the Plan.54. The Plan satisfies section 1129(a)(11) of the Bankruptcy Code. Thefinancial projections attached to the Disclosure Statement as Exhibit D and the other evidencesupporting the Plan proffered or adduced by the Debtors at or before the Combined Hearing: (a)is reasonable, persuasive, credible, and accurate as of the dates such evidence was prepared,presented, or proffered; (b) utilize reasonable and appropriate methodologies and assumptions; (c)has not been controverted by other persuasive evidence; (d) establishes that the Plan is feasibleand Confirmation of the Plan is not likely to be followed by liquidation or the need for furtherfinancial reorganization; (e) establishes that the Debtors will have sufficient funds available tomeet their obligations under the Plan and in the ordinary course of business—including sufficientamounts of Cash to reasonably ensure payment of Allowed Claims that will receive CashCCaassee 2 244-9-900557755 D Dooccuummeennt t2 29663-2 F Fileiledd i nin T TXXSSBB o onn 1 021/3/113/2/245 P Paaggee 2 256 o of f1 1334526distributions pursuant to the terms of the Plan and other Cash payments required under the Plan;and (f) establishes that the Debtors or the Reorganized Debtors, as applicable, will have thefinancial wherewithal to pay any Claims that accrue, become payable, or are allowed by FinalOrder following the Effective Date. Accordingly, the Plan satisfies the requirements of section1129(a)(11) of the Bankruptcy Code.n. Section 1129(a)(12)—Payment of Statutory Fees.55. Article XII.C of the Plan provides that all fees payable pursuant to section1930(a) of the Judicial Code, as determined by the Court at the Confirmation Hearing inaccordance with section 1128 of the Bankruptcy Code, will be paid by each of the applicableReorganized Debtors for each quarter (including any fraction of a quarter) until the Chapter 11Cases are converted, dismissed, or closed, whichever occurs first. Accordingly, the Plan satisfiesthe requirements of section 1129(a)(12) of the Bankruptcy Code.o. Section 1129(a)(13)—Retiree Benefits.56. Pursuant to section 1129(a)(13) of the Bankruptcy Code, and as provided inArticle IV.K of the Plan, the Reorganized Debtors will continue to pay all obligations on accountof retiree benefits (as such term is used in section 1114 of the Bankruptcy Code) on and after theEffective Date in accordance with applicable law. As a result, the requirements of section1129(a)(13) of the Bankruptcy Code are satisfied.p. Sections 1129(a)(14), (15), and (16)—Domestic Support Obligations, Individuals,and Nonprofit Corporations.57. The Debtors do not owe any domestic support obligations, are notindividuals, and are not nonprofit corporations. Therefore, sections 1129(a)(14), 1129(a)(15), and1129(a)(16) of the Bankruptcy Code do not apply to the Chapter 11 Cases.CCaassee 2 244-9-900557755 D Dooccuummeennt t2 29663-2 F Fileiledd i nin T TXXSSBB o onn 1 021/3/113/2/245 P Paaggee 2 267 o of f1 1334527q. Section 1129(b)—Confirmation of the Plan Over Nonacceptance of VotingClasses.58. No Classes rejected the Plan, and section 1129(b) is not applicable here,but even if it were, the Plan may be confirmed pursuant to section 1129(b)(1) of the BankruptcyCode because the Plan is fair and equitable with respect to the Deemed Rejecting Classes. ThePlan has been proposed in good faith, is reasonable, and meets the requirements and all VotingClasses have voted to accept the Plan. The treatment of Intercompany Claims and IntercompanyInterests under the Plan provides for administrative convenience does not constitute a distributionunder the Plan on account of suc

Join Profs. Karoline Lewis, Joy J. Moore, and Matt Skinner for a conversation on the Revised Common Lectionary texts for the Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost (Ord. 27B) on October 6, 2024.  The texts for the twentieth Sunday after Pentecost present challenging passages from Mark, Genesis, Job, and Hebrews. The discussion begins with navigating these texts and offering pastoral care, addressing the themes of divorce, relationships, loneliness, and unjust suffering. Commentaries for the Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost (Ord. 27B):  https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-27-2/commentary-on-mark-102-16-6. Watch the Full Episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/gG_Lamy5KjA.

Our 172nd episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news! With hosts Andrey Kurenkov (https://twitter.com/andrey_kurenkov) and Jeremie Harris (https://twitter.com/jeremiecharris) Read out our text newsletter and comment on the podcast at https://lastweekin.ai/ If you would like to become a sponsor for the newsletter, podcast, or both, please fill out this form. Email us your questions and feedback at contact@lastweekinai.com and/or hello@gladstone.ai (00:00:00) Intro / Banter Tools & Apps (00:03:02) Anthropic Debuts Collaboration Tools for Claude AI Assistant (00:08:32) Google rolls out Gemini side panels for Gmail and other Workspace apps (00:12:30) OpenAI delays rolling out its 'Voice Mode' to July (00:15:40) OpenAI's ChatGPT for Mac is now available to all users (00:17:27) Waymo ditches the waitlist and opens up its robotaxis to everyone in San Francisco (00:18:53) Figma announces big redesign with AI Applications & Business (00:21:37) Meet Sohu: The World's First Transformer Specialized Chip ASIC (00:29:42) Huawei Has Reportedly Invested Billions In An R&D Facility That Will Allow It To Develop Advanced Chipmaking Machinery Similar To ASML & Others (00:32:17) China's ByteDance working with Broadcom to develop advanced AI chip, sources say (00:35:35) Chinese AI firms woo OpenAI users as US company plans API restrictions (00:39:45) OpenAI walks back controversial stock sale policies, will treat current and former employees the same Projects & Open Source (00:43:42) Meta Large Language Model Compiler: Foundation Models of Compiler Optimization (00:47:54) Google's Gemma 2 series launches with not one, but two lightweight model options—a 9B and 27B (00:48:50) ESM3: Simulating 500 million years of evolution with a language model Research & Advancements (00:56:57) Finding GPT-4's mistakes with GPT-4 (01:03:30) Chinese-built ChatGLM exceeds GPT-4 Across Several Benchmarks (01:07:15) Performances are plateauing, let's make the leaderboard steep again (01:11:18) Structural mechanism of bridge RNA-guided recombination (01:15:01) Reconciling Kaplan and Chinchilla Scaling Laws Policy & Safety (01:17:42) Safety Alignment Should Be Made More Than Just a Few Tokens Deep (01:23:02) Y Combinator rallies start-ups against California's AI safety bill (01:28:20) Pro-Kigali propagandists caught using Artificial Intelligence tools (01:21:40) Coordinated Disclosure of Dual-Use Capabilities: An Early Warning System for Advanced AI (01:35:08) Adversaries Can Misuse Combinations of Safe Models Mitigating Skeleton Key, a new type of generative AI jailbreak technique Synthetic Media & Art (01:39:35) Music labels sue AI music generators for copyright infringement (01:42:43) YouTube is trying to make AI music deals with major record labels (01:45:07) Toys ‘R' Us Debuts First Video Ad Using Sora, OpenAI's Text-to-Video Tool (01:49:12) Outro + AI Song

The Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF) is a generational government program deploying $27B into clean energy projects across the US. But what is the bill really?Franz Hochstrasser is an expert in financing projects in low-income areas and has a wealth of experience working on climate for the government - both of which are KEY for GGRF. Franz started his career “giving his 20s” to the government, and with that doing some amazing work as the Special Advisor to the Special Envoy for Climate Change, Deputy Associate Director at the Council of Environmental Quality, and at the USDA.Since then, Franz founded Raise Green where he democratizes the ability to invest in climate solution projects. Through this, he is an expert in sustainable finance for inclusive growth and financing projects for low-income residents. He joined S2 Strategies to navigate GGRF and other landmark legislative movements. And it was an absolute blast to have him on.Support the show

This is a recap of the top 10 posts on Hacker News on April 11th, 2024.This podcast was generated by wondercraft.ai(00:38): AI-generated sad girl with piano performs the text of the MIT LicenseOriginal post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39998849&utm_source=wondercraft_ai(02:16): Anyone got a contact at OpenAI. They have a spider problemOriginal post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40001971&utm_source=wondercraft_ai(03:50): Apple alerts users in 92 nations to mercenary spyware attacksOriginal post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40002987&utm_source=wondercraft_ai(05:14): Mental health in software engineeringOriginal post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40001150&utm_source=wondercraft_ai(06:52): Transformers.js –  Run Transformers directly in the browserOriginal post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40001193&utm_source=wondercraft_ai(08:46): Vietnamese property tycoon sentenced to death in $27B fraud caseOriginal post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40002851&utm_source=wondercraft_ai(10:27): Using ClickHouse to scale an events engineOriginal post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40005005&utm_source=wondercraft_ai(12:11): Stacking triangles for fun and profitOriginal post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40001597&utm_source=wondercraft_ai(14:05): If Inheritance is so bad, why does everyone use it?Original post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39999019&utm_source=wondercraft_ai(16:06): Roll-to-roll fabricated perovskite solar cells under ambient room conditionsOriginal post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39998740&utm_source=wondercraft_aiThis is a third-party project, independent from HN and YC. Text and audio generated using AI, by wondercraft.ai. Create your own studio quality podcast with text as the only input in seconds at app.wondercraft.ai. Issues or feedback? We'd love to hear from you: team@wondercraft.ai

Success as a founder is about more than impressive AUM. It's about maintaining autonomy and connection. It's about taking pride in what you do, the team you've built, and most importantly having fun along the way. Take it from today's guest, Greg Dean, founder of global small-cap specialist firm Langdon Partners.In this episode, he and Stacy discuss: Greg's backstory: o From Fidelity Investments to co-founding a $27B investment firmo How his passion for connecting people and numbers drove him into small-cap investingo His big leap from the shallow end of co-foundership to founding his own firm • Why AUM isn't the only measure of success in small-cap investing• Strategies for maximizing return on time in small-cap investing• The challenges of climbing the ranks in the fund world• Key advice for fund managers considering leaping into entrepreneurship About Greg Dean: Greg founded Langdon Equity Partners, a firm that believes in making investment excellence through smaller company investing available to all clients.  He is the Chief Executive and lead investor for their smaller companies strategies. Previously, Greg was a Partner and Portfolio Manager at Cambridge Global Asset Management, where he was the joint recipient of the prestigious Morningstar Breakout Fund Manager of the Year in 2015. His funds also won numerous industry awards.Greg has a degree in Mathematics from the University of Waterloo and a Bachelor's of Business Administration from Wilfrid Laurier University. He is also a CFA charterholder.He considers himself more of a thermostat than a thermometer, is a father of 2, can find the best coffee in any city, and a life-long Raptors fan.

In this Episode: Our Heroes submit their 27B-stroke-6 forms and hang with old school Bob De Niro in the dystopian classic: Brazil! This one is hilarious and dark as helllll... Tune in! Follow Us: Our Website Twitter Instagram Facebook Items discussed (links to more info): Note - if the below links don't work in your podcast player please visit the show page at: https://ebd.fm/episodes/241 Tarantino Monty Python Zero Theorum 12 Monkeys Dr Parnassus Munchausen Fisher King Fear and Loathing Time Bandits Die Hard The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Office Space Idiocracy 1984 Clockwork Orange Gross Aspic Wafer Thin Meaning of Life Outer Range Seinfeld Jackie Brown Mario Luigi Korben Dallas Blade Runner Ronin Tomorrow Never Dies Brosnan High Sparrow Game of Thrones Spies Like Us Cloud Atlas Ice Pirates Airborne Buckaroo Banzai Action Jackson

EP317 - Amazon Q4 Results  Episode Summary: In this episode, Jason Goldberg and Scot Wingo dive deep into Amazon's fourth-quarter results for 2023, analyzing the company's performance in various segments such as retail, offline and online sales, marketplace, AWS, and advertising. They also explore the impact of AI on Amazon's business and provide insights into the company's future guidance for Q1 2024. Amazon had a strong Q4 earnings report, beating analyst expectations for revenue and income. In fact, it was Amazon's most profitable quarter ever. Retail sales were up 6%, which imputes a 2023 GMV of $515B - $660B in the US for all of 2023. The bottom end of that estimate would be a 9% growth over 2023, versus all of Core Retail in the US (x Gas and Auto) which grew 3.6% in 2023. This impressive growth was achieved while Amazon improved delivery times (6B packages delivered next day, and 1B delivered same day, same day offered in 110 metros) and reduced cost to serve by $0.45/package in the US (the first reduction in cost to serve since 2018). AWS accelerated growth but slowly declined margins. Ad revenue was again the brightest spot, growing 27% to $14.7B, resulting in $47B in revenue the last 12 months, and a $58B run rate. The income generated from that ad revenue was likely more than $27B, far in excess of the $21B Amazon earned from AWS. Once again demonstrating that Ads are Amazons biggest income generator. Amazons total GMV in the US likely falls in-between Walmart's expected 2023 GMV of $442B and Walmart plus Sam's Club total US GMV of $519B. Walmart reports it's Q4 on Feb 20. Amazon probably represented 24% of ALL retail growth in the US in 2023. Amazon, Walmart, Temu, and Shein alone likely represented 49% of all 2023 Us retail growth (leaving mostly crumbs for the rest of retail). Amazon also announced Rufus, a new Gen AI based search amenity for the e-commerce site. Don't forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes. Episode 317 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Wednesday, February 7th, 2024. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Transcript Jason: [0:23] Welcome to the Jason and Scott Show. This is episode 317 being recorded on Wednesday, February 7th, 2024. I'm your host, Jason Retail Geek Goldberg, and as usual, I'm here with your co-host, Scott Wingo. Scot: [0:38] Hey, Jason, and welcome back, Jason and Scott Show listeners. Jason, we've been talking about ARVR since before shop.org changed its name. And did you get a vision pro and how is it i. Jason: [0:57] Did not i feel like i've let you and our listeners down i desperately wanted to lie and say that we were recording this episode through our joint vision pros i did i did go do a demo and it it seems super cool i am sorting through my my highly poor vision to see what sort of corrective lenses i'll need to put into the thing, to pull the trigger. I heard yours has arrived though. Scot: [1:24] Yes, mine actually just came hours ago here to Jason and Scott, North Carolina headquarters. And it is sitting in a box staring at me. And I figured I would not get the show notes done if I started playing with that. So that's gonna be my weekend fun that I'm gonna work on. So I'll report back on that. Jason: [1:42] All of us that love you are slightly sad because we've seen your real eyes for probably the last time in a long while. Scot: [1:48] That is true yep yep these baby blues are going behind the goggles and i'm gonna drive the first thing i do is get in my car and drive that seems to be what everyone does on twitter so that'll be fun yeah. Jason: [1:59] That sounds wildly safe. Scot: [2:01] Yeah well you can see right through them so it's totally fun yeah. Jason: [2:05] No you can't. Scot: [2:09] Just kidding everyone do not do that at home and if you do blame jason Yeah. Jason: [2:13] But again, the Tesla is perfect self-driving anyway. So what, what would it even matter? It's like, I feel like you have multiple layers of AI overlords protecting you, Apple and Tesla. What could go wrong? Scot: [2:25] Yeah, it is not perfect by any means. Jason: [2:29] Yeah i'm glad we caught you i feel like there there's been a lot of travel and it's i know you you have kind of stepped away from the hustle bustle but i'm right in the middle of uh retail trade quarter trade yeah yeah. Scot: [2:41] How's that going you did so we haven't been able to catch up since you've done nrf i saw you were like posting like a wild man seems like you had a very active big show how was that. Jason: [2:51] Yeah it was pretty good i would big show is definitely back it was the largest attendance ever. There were over 40,000 people. So it was very robust. A lot of good, good conversations. I do have a lot of content out there. If anyone wants a deep dive recap, you can go find my recap on YouTube, but maybe we'll talk more about it later because we have such a meaty episode just talking about Amazon. But last week I got back from like, frankly, a more fun event then big show. Our friends at Commerce Next have a new show that they call their Digital Leader Conference. And it's kind of a small little gathering of like 50 digital leaders at a resort in Del Mar, California, exactly where I grew up. So I went and drank wine and talk shop with a bunch of folks and the Commerce Next team in San Diego and had a great time nice. Scot: [3:49] Did you have some say in where it was hosted you're okay i. Jason: [3:52] Did not um i think people were tired of hearing me say this but this is like a fairmont resort it's gorgeous but it was built on like what used to be like these trails behind my high school and i kept you know regaling everyone with how i probably thrown up all over this this facility from all the the runs our soccer coaches used to make us do there. Scot: [4:14] Nice that's a good pitch yeah. Jason: [4:16] Nice visual for all our good uh good podcast listeners uh and then i have two shows coming up so the end of this month is etail west which is usually a pretty good show in palm springs we'll probably be uh corralling a couple interesting podcast guests uh from that show and there's kind of a shop.org board reunion There was an actual shop.org board reunion that you and I missed that was last month, but there's like six former board members will be at ETL West. So we're going to get together and have a little catch up there. And then less than a month after that is our Shop Talk in Las Vegas. Scot: [4:59] Fun. Yeah. Have you had an opportunity to see the Sphere? Yeah, I have. Jason: [5:04] I have. I have not been in the Sphere, but I have gone by it. Hopefully, I'll be prominently featured on it for Shop Talk. Seems like that would be appropriate. Scot: [5:14] Yeah, yeah. That would be fun. Get a picture of you on this here and then go inside. Everyone says it's an amazing show inside of there. Jason: [5:20] Yeah, yeah, yeah. I definitely want to check it out when time permits. Scot: [5:23] Cool. Are you speaking at either of those or just all of you? Oh, wow. Are you seems like a part of your your 2024 New Year's resolution is to talk about Sheehan and Timu. Are you going to be doing that that whole dog and pony over there? Jason: [5:39] Neither of my sessions are specifically on that. I'm sure I'm talking about it a lot in the hallways. It's coming up a lot. It's probably spoiler alert going to come up again in this Amazon earnings call. Scot: [5:52] Yeah and we've got the super bowl this is like we're annualizing the big timu reveal and so it'll be interesting to see if they i guess they've actually said i think it's an article that said they're coming back in a big way so yeah. Jason: [6:03] They bought a second ad so. Scot: [6:04] They will they will be back on a few have you seen like a super secret version, uh i cannot say oh okay oh okay oh all right exciting well it would not be a jason scott show without some Amazon news. And this whole episode is essentially Amazon news. We are going to do a Amazon fourth quarter earnings deep dive. That's right. On February 1st, Amazon announced their fourth quarter 2023 results. The setup coming into this one was we had Microsoft announce really solid cloud results that was largely driven by AI. People are moving their workloads to Azure and they are doing that to get their data over. And due to Microsoft's partnership with OpenAI, that has been a really nice big draw for their cloud offering. Then we had Meta announced, the artist previously known as Facebook, and they had tremendous ad performance, largely driven by AI. Long-term listeners will remember Jason and I, I'm pretty sure we're some of the first to call the impact of this thing called ATT and IDFA, Am I remembering that? You nailed them. Jason: [7:24] Yeah. Scot: [7:25] Yep. And that just really, that was like, what, four years ago, three years ago? That walloped Facebook, Snap, and all these companies that their ad system relied on cookies and third-party data. data. Facebook slash Meta has kind of come back from that and they credit it to AI systems they've used that have really driven the optimization of their advertising products and made the targeting basically nearly as good as it was when they had more precise targeting. Then Google was kind of like had a bit of a rough patch there. I think it's hurting them. They don't really disclose much about youtube and it probably did okay but their ads were kind of flat and their cloud computing did not see the benefit that that microsoft did and there's a growing concern there's more and more folks and some data coming out that shows that people are starting to use ais for interesting searches versus google i do find we were talking about it before we got got on here, I am using it more and more. For example, I was telling Jason, I found OpenAI slash ChatGPT announced this little, it's not a store, but a... [8:39] Add-ons or like almost like an app store but it's called gpts and i found one that enables me to load a bunch of pdfs on a common topic and then just like ask chat gpt about it and yeah so so i found i'm using it more and more for informational queries just generally and then also for things like that like research for work and and for the pod and so i think i think there's a growing concern that google is watching this ai thing kind of like run away from them and there's There's growing talk that they're stuck in an innovator's dilemma. So that was the setup. And the market was kind of nervous coming into Amazon earnings because a big chunk of Amazon is the cloud, which is their AWS segment. And then folks, we really didn't have any great idea how their holiday sales were. And then last, that Google piece made people a little nervous about the ad business, which has become almost a third leg to the Amazon stool. tool. So, and then as you keep kind of pointing out, Timu and Sheehan are just like really on the rise and could they, you know, you also have said, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but you've said, you know, you don't think they're being impacted by it too much. That is some other folks. But, you know, there's definitely overlap there. So people worried, are those up and rising stars going to be the Grinch? So we're going to walk you through that and peel the onion. [10:01] We're then we're going to go into how the retail offline and online did and then marketplaces cloud AWS. And that's where we'll talk about AI. You can't talk about anything now without talking about AI. So we'll hit that and then Amazon ads and then kind of finish up with how Amazon guided to next quarter, which will be Q2 Q1 of 2024. Anything you want to add in that setup before we jump in? Jason: [10:28] No, I think you've queued it up well. I'm eager to hear how Amazon did. Scot: [10:32] Yeah, well, it is what in the Wall Street world we would call a beat. So they, you know, back in Q3, they set some guidance and they beat that on the top and bottom line very handily. And then I would call it a raise. It was kind of a slight raise. They raised the range. Amazon has gotten very good, especially in the Jassy era of not getting too ahead of their skis on expectations. Expectations so but now that we're you know a fair amount into the Jassy area Wall Street's starting to get his number so now Wall Street's not really believing the guidance it's kind of interesting phenomena that we'll talk about when we get to that part but that's you know if we're going to characterize it it was a win and a win so it was a win on the pass quarter which is Q4 and it was a win going into Q1 and you know Amazon historically if you've been following it as long as jason i have they go through these periods of what i call invest and harvest so they'll invest and invest and invest everyone's like gosh and then people think all right there's no way this thing's going to be either profitable at all or as profitable as it once was or whatever it is they start to lose faith and then amazon goes into a harvest phase and then they just print money and it always surprises people and they're able to do that and that's what what But this quarter really is kind of the –. [11:49] Output of focusing on that a lot in 2023 where they kind of had this post-coveted hangover they had overbuilt a bunch of stuff and now it feels like they have righted that they've stopped a lot of the things that since jesse came in that maybe were investment areas that they shouldn't have been investing in and and they've got a lot of discipline on expenses and that has turned out really well so those numbers work is revenue came in at 170 billion and wall street had 166 billion So that's a beat of a mere $4 billion, which is very good. That represents 14% year-over-year growth. Operating income came in at 6.1%, which is the highest since 2019. So they're kind of back in pre-COVID shape, if you will, and doing better than pre-COVID. So that's good to see. Operating income came in at $13.2 billion, and Wall Street had $10.4. So this was a pretty big beat. it's only three billion ish but you know that's a 30 percent beat so that's a that's a nice win when you can deliver 30 more profit than wall street's looking for so all that was really good so jason how did you think that the retail and offline online parts of the business did. Jason: [13:03] Yeah well it was certainly a good part you know reminder amazon reports their online sales which which is a global number, and Amazon's in a different set of countries than anyone else. So you almost can't compare it to any other retailer because there's no retailer that does business in the same geographies as Amazon. And that online stores has their first party sales in it, and it has just the profit from their third party sales in it. So it's not a real GMV number, but that number was over 70 billion, like 70.5 billion versus 68.6 billion. So that was up 6%. That was a beat for Wall Street. Physical stores were 5.1 billion, which is slightly down. So that was one of the few misses in there. [13:52] What I suspect most of our listeners are more interested in is if you convert all those sales into a GMV number and you strip out just the U.S. So you can kind of compare it to other U.S. retailers. What does that look like? And there's a number of different estimates out there. One that we pulled was Citibank's. So the Citibank estimate for total GMV for the year was $904 billion. billion, the US portion of that would be like $659 billion. And that implies that the third party sales were particularly profitable. So I'll call that a optimistic estimate. And then Marketplace Pulse did an estimate using a much more conservative figure for how profitable third party sales that was largely based on the one year Amazon really really told us what the numbers were, which was 2018, right? And so based on those kind of 2018 ratios, Marketplace polls estimated that global GMV is about 700 billion, US GMV would be 510 billion. So that's up, if we take that conservative number, the 510 billion, that would be up 9% from the previous year. All of retail in the United States grew 3.6%. So 9% growth for one of the largest retailers in the market is terrific. [15:20] We'll talk a little bit more about what that might mean, but they also, they had some other interesting successes in the retail business. They talked about the, it was their fastest speed of service ever. So you know, we've talked in previous quarters about how they really shifted from a national fulfillment network to these regional fulfillment models so that packages would be staged closer to the consumers that bought them. And they said this quarter that 7 billion packages, or I'm sorry, for the whole year, 7 billion packages were delivered next day or same day. A billion packages were delivered same day. And there are now 110 metro areas in the United States that get same day delivery. So I still talk to other retailers all the time that talk about competing with Amazon's offer. And they always talk about two day delivery. And the reality is that's not the Amazon offer anymore. They're same day in 110 metros, and they delivered $7 billion packages in zero to one days. So speed of service, super impressive. And while they got faster, they also got more efficient. So for the first time since 2018, they actually reduced their cost to serve, the total cost to get a package to a customer. And so in the US, they said the cost to serve went down by 45 cents a package. package. So that's a pretty meaningful cost reduction. [16:45] Volume went up, which sometimes makes it easier to be cost efficient, but, you know, to actually get better service and lower your costs at the same time is an impressive feat and a big win for Amazon, which, you know, probably contributed a lot to that particularly high operating income, which I'm not sure if you mentioned, but I think that's the highest operating income they've ever announced. Scot: [17:06] Yeah. Yep. It's pretty good. They're actually profitable now. Just saying they've been profitable a long time. Jason: [17:12] Yeah. Yeah. So for all of our, our friends that don't think Amazon's profitable, the, so overall you have to call that, that a really good quarter on the retail sales side. Scott, did you kind of do a deeper dive in how much of that was the marketplace versus 1P? Scot: [17:30] Yeah. It was interesting. You read your GMV data and Scott Devitt, he's at Wedbush now. He's a longtime friend of the pod. He also put out his number and he came in around that market pulse side. So more like the 700 billion combined. Those numbers are 1P plus 3P? Yeah. Is that right? Yeah. Okay. And global. Yeah. So he was in the same zone. And what I found was interesting is because we're heading into 24, he pushed his forecast for GMV. He's the only one I've seen that forecast GMV. And it's obviously driven from like the revenue. So he kind of takes the revenue growth rate and uses that to kind of like get to the growth rate of GMV. [18:08] But he pushed it out to 2025. And then if I push it out one more year, just kind of using the same, what I think he's doing, it crosses a trillion dollars. If you could wrap your head around that. I remember you and I, one of the first discussions we ever had was about this frustration that people didn't understand this GMV thing and they were underestimating. You know, you'd see these charts that showed maybe Amazon never catches up to Walmart. And at that point, you know, Amazon was at a hundred billion and Walmart was at 400 loosely. Maybe that's the ex-grocery. I can't remember the specifics. This is going back like seven, eight years. And now we're at a point where not only have they crossed them from GMV perspective, but even revenue is crossing Walmart or very close to it. And there's a shot at a trillion dollars of transactional flow going through Amazon between 1P and 3P. That's pretty, that's crazy. Like, and it makes sense. You drive around anywhere. All you see is Amazon last mile delivery and long haul, you know, trucks. There's just like the economic impact of what they're doing is monumental. Jason: [19:13] Yeah, it's crazy. I remember when the first e-commerce sites sort of passed the billion dollar mark and how amazing that felt. Yeah, yeah. This thing could work. Scot: [19:22] Work this thing has legs exactly they thought we were crazy yeah. Jason: [19:29] Um so you know normally the narrative is all this retail stuff loses money but that's okay because aws is so profitable and if if there was like any sort of cautionary tale in this earnings call at all i would say it was aws the growth was decent right like what the i think the the estimates were 11 to 15 and they came in right in the middle of that like 13 but the operating income actually went down slightly. So like that, that is a mild concern for some folks. If you, if you kind of convert AWS to it, the last, the trailing 12 months of revenue at, at there, I want to say it's like 24% or 24.1% gross margins. You generate about 40, $21 billion in, in operating income from AWS. So that, you know, 20 billion here, 20 billion there, it starts to add up. But as, as I quickly checked that that's significantly less income than for example, the ads business probably generated for them. So it's a good business. They are growing slower because they are the biggest player. They are growing slower than their competitor, certainly than Microsoft. And it, And their profitability did slightly tick down. [20:51] But on the exciting side, they talked about a lot of the AI workloads that were moving to AWS and what a headwind that is. And one of the workloads they announced is Rufus, which is an e-commerce search engine that runs on Amazon. So, so that, that giant text box that we're all used to for finding our products and that's helping you find what, what SKU to buy amongst the 800 million SKUs available on Amazon is now rolling out a much smarter generative AI amenity that can help, help you find products with much more sophisticated searches. Scot: [21:33] Yeah. Yeah. I have not seen any screenshots of it or anything. Have you? Jason: [21:37] I saw a demo. though. I have not seen it in the wild yet. You know, they're not the first mover here, right? Like Instacart adopted a version of OpenAI pretty early. Walmart rolled it out in their iOS app at CES a few weeks before Amazon. And so it's funny, like, you know, Amazon, there are some rumors that some of the AI tools in Amazon aren't performing as well in internal tests as people would like. So there's some concerns about that. [22:11] What we'll probably have to do a deeper dive on another show is this whole interesting thing as all the text boxes that you can enter text in and e-commerce are moving from keyword searches to these ai engines customers have to re-learn how to use them and right now they're not right and so you know you go to the walmart app and you know it's a generative ai search engine but you still type the same same you know basic keywords in that you always have and so i'm kind of interested in the long run, is that really where the AI is going to live in these e-commerce sites? Or will we have, you know, sort of a different amenity for doing these more intent based searches than we do for the keyword searches? Or will people just learn how to use them different? I don't know. It's a TBD thing as the world evolves right now. [23:02] But you also alluded to the ads business. That was definitely another bright spot. They sold 14.7 billion dollars of ads which was above the wall street estimate it's a 27 growth year over year and so if you look at the trailing 12 months that's like 30 billion dollars 27 billion in ad sales if you look at a run rate if that fourth fourth quarter number were to go four consecutive quarters it's a 58 billion dollar run rate so they are they're like a clear third largest digital ad platform in the United States and rapidly gaining ground on the other two. And the most conservative estimate I've ever seen for this business is that it's 60% gross margin. At 60% gross margin over the trailing 12 months, the ads business contributed $28 billion billion in operating income to Amazon versus the 21 billion for AWS. So ads was $7 billion more profitable than AWS over the last 12 months. Scot: [24:08] Yeah. That would be net margin, I think you meant to say. Jason: [24:11] Yeah. Sorry. And in fun fact, they also announced this little thing called Prime Video Ads, which which, you know, is a huge new source of revenue for them. And that is expected to tack on another like six and a half billion over the next 12 months or 24 months. So like there's a lot of upside still in the ad business for Amazon. Scot: [24:37] Yeah it's gonna be crazy back on marketplaces i skipped a couple data points because i was so excited about the trillion dollars the as far as the quarter they they kind of have a couple of things that they report on you know the gmv we we we talked about analysts have to kind of back into and they use this one data point to kind of triangulate the things they do tell us is there's this piece called third-party seller services and that's basically you know where they make money from prime and other things of that nature and that grew 20 percent year-over-year beat estimates it was everyone was thinking 42 billion and it came in at 43 and change and then the other thing they tell us is units and that's tricky because you don't know the relevant price of a third-party unit in a first party so you can't just assume it's 61 of revenue that that's a little trick in there that that's that's why the analysts have to do some different math to get in there but third Third party was 61% of units in the fourth quarter. Last year, you have to look at year over year because of the seasonality. It was 59. So that's up 2%. So more and more products that they're selling are third party, which is, you know, just juices their margins that much more. Jason: [25:46] Yeah. Just looking at the Citibank model for that, Scott, it would be seven globally. It would be like 71% of total GMV is third party. Scot: [25:55] Yeah. Jason: [25:55] By revenue. Scot: [25:56] Yeah. Jason: [25:57] Yeah. Scot: [25:57] Yeah, because first party, back when I was modeling this, I've since abandoned that because the Wall Street guys do a better job than I ever could. Jason: [26:04] Their spreadsheets are a lot prettier, for sure. Scot: [26:07] Yes, it was similar. It would add about 10 points because the AOV on first party is relatively low compared to third party because of all the books and digital little things that they have that are a dollar here, a dollar there kind of things. Things okay so then we go into next year with the guidance and they guided the top line 138 to 143. This was Wall Street's consensus is in the middle but they really raised the top end of this and it gives it a growth band of eight to thirteen percent and what's happened in the jassy era is it either comes in right at the top or a notch or two above so Wall Street thinks that you know While the midpoint was aligned with what they're thinking, many of them have bumped up their, models to the 143. [26:58] And then also the similar kind of situation on operating income, Amazon raised it a fair amount more. And then what that did is it increased the price targets. And the stock has been on a really nice tear since earnings, thanks to this. And I think AWS wasn't what everyone wanted to see, but. [27:16] It reaccelerated growth, which folks want to see, and it doesn't feel like they're losing AI. I do think Microsoft's got more buzz, but at least they're in the game. Whereas I think people are starting to worry Google's not really. Google's talking a good game with Bard, but they're really slow to put stuff out. Like, you know, they announced this. What is it? Ultra version. Bard has three flavors, and, you know, they're way behind on each one they've announced. They're behind weeks or months on. And then the last one is, like, really taking a long time. So everyone's like really starting to worry about Google's ability to execute quickly. And, you know, so I would say the winners of this earnings season were definitely Meta, Amazon, Microsoft up in kind of a league of their own, and then Google and some of the others. I think Snapchat, I don't follow them this close, but I think they had a really rough quarter. So there's definitely an interesting AI has thrown a whole new mix into how these big, you know, either trillion dollar mega super mega caps are doing or meta is not in that discussion. It's a little bit smaller, but these big some people call them the significant seven. And they when they say that on CNBC, they're throwing NVIDIA in there and a couple others. But, you know, AI has just changed the game in the last year. It's been amazing. Jason: [28:30] Yeah, for sure. Sure. And they, you know, along those lines, they also announced a bunch of sort of AI-driven new inventions at Amazon. So we talked a little bit about Rufus. They, they have part of that reducing that cost of service. They have a lot of smarter robots in the fulfillment centers that are like interfacing with humans more and doing more stuff like that. And I saw they had one, one AI innovation right in your space, right? Like they're using AI to inspect respect all the Amazon vans and identify any service needs before the vans break down. Scot: [29:02] Yeah yeah yeah these these last mile vans are they get pretty beat up as you can imagine sure you know being in Chicago you see how they can that can be pretty bunged up and all kinds of things happen so, you know they it's interesting I've been to tour several of these because we work on them at my day job spiffy and it's pretty wild we don't have time to go into it maybe we can do a whole pot on on it. But anyway, they, they line them up and drive them through a single area. And they have this like arch of cameras that they put them through. And I imagine that's what that system is. It's, it's using this kind of 300, almost like a ring of cameras that the vans drive through, and they must be using the AI to detect what's going on there. Jason: [29:45] Yeah it's crazy um so anything else jump out at you on specific on the amazon earnings because i wanted to take a last minute to kind of put these amazon earnings in context for the rest of us retail but i want to make sure i didn't miss anything you wanted to. Scot: [30:00] Yeah one last thing in my little auto world that i live in now they kind of made a almost you know i haven't seen a lot of buzz about it i know you work a lot with the auto company so you're you're probably getting some feedback on it which is why i'm kind of curious but they announced hyundai is going going to start selling cars on Amazon. And for a long time, everyone's thought Amazon would maybe compete with Carvana or buy Carvana, some of Carvana's used cars. So it's like e-commerce for used cars. And a lot of Carvana's competitors, Vroom and Shift, have kind of hit the skids and actually are out of business now. And some people thought Amazon would buy them, but it looks like Like they're actually going to be maybe an ad unit or a showroom and then send, you could transact on Amazon or start your transaction on Amazon and then go to the dealer. So that has been, there's a lot of buzz in my world around that. And we keep hearing many more OEMs are coming and the dealers are, the Hyundai dealers I've talked to are very excited about this and expecting kind of a different customer than they're used to. And there's some prime tie-in there too, which is kind of interesting. So it's going to be interesting to see Amazon has their eyesight on this auto category and they're doing more and more in there. And it's going to be interesting to see what they do. Jason: [31:14] Oh, for sure. I have this giant deck of industries where the leaders in the industry would say like, oh man, e-commerce is amazing in these other industries, but here's why it will never be relevant in ours. And I think the car industry is the one that this is playing out in right now that, you know, they used to all say like, oh, there's never going to be e-commerce. People want to go to the dealers and drive it. And there's three tier distribution and all these things and it'll never happen. And you know, now it's certainly happening. Scot: [31:44] Yeah. Yeah. It's going to be interesting to see that. Jason: [31:46] Fun times. So I just want to put all this in a little bit of context. So before the pandemic, retail in the United States of America grew very consistently. 4.1% a year with some very minor deviations, but that's kind of what you expected just from normal inflation and the growth in the population, 4.1% a year. So then the pandemic happens. We mail out a couple trillion dollars in economic stimulus. We lock everyone in the house so they can't spend as much money on services. And we had the three greatest years in the history of retail. We grew 7.7% in 2020. We grew 13.6% in 2021, that's the best year of all times, and we grew another 8% in 2022. So those were those three crazy outlier years. So the end of 2022 comes and everyone's like, what's 2023 going to look like? [32:37] We just had these three years that were more than double the industry average. The NREF came out early in the year and said, hey, we're forecasting 4% to 6% growth. So bottom end of their range would be average, 6% would be sort of halfway to those last three years. So we now know what actually happened and we came in at 3.6% growth. So missed the NREF estimate, missed the traditional average, it's a down year. And this is $5 trillion is the total sales. So missing by half a percent is pretty meaningful. So all of retail grew 3.6%. If you convert that into a number, that's $180 billion more stuff we sold in 2023 than we did in 2022. [33:25] And the numbers I'm using for all this are retail without auto or gas in it, just because that's what the nrf calls core retail and it's kind of amazon doesn't sell a lot of cars or gas yet right so so amazon grew nine percent if we use that conservative gmv number for the us. [33:42] That means amazon alone grew 43 percent last year 43 billion dollars last year so amazon alone was 24 of all retail growth in the united states of america and they're the first or second largest retailer in the country and they grew a quarter of all growth which is pretty phenomenal Walmart also wildly outperform the industry they grew and there they won't announce their q4 till for a couple more weeks but assuming they they have like hit the low side of all the estimates so only 4% growth in q4 though that that'll bring them in at 6% growth for the year that means they They grew by $29 billion, which is 16% of that total growth last year. Then I keep talking about Timu and Shein. Timu only grew 3,100% last year, which is a pretty good growth rate. So they contributed $9.3 billion in growth, 5% of the total. And Shein grew 30%. So they contributed another $7 billion in growth, 4% of the total. So you just take those four retailers, Amazon, Walmart, Timu, and Shein. That's half of all U.S. retail growth last year. So those four companies had a terrific year, but they essentially left crumbs, for the rest of the retail industry in what without those four companies is pretty much a Debbie Downer year. Scot: [35:09] Yeah yeah it's amazing share there it's kind of crazy. Jason: [35:13] Yeah and it's it's just so weird to see the biggest two retailers in the market amazon and walmart growing faster than like almost anyone else that that to me is a a very anomalous circumstance that you you don't normally see, there is this super interesting horse race who is the biggest retailer in the u.s and the the sort of unfortunate answer is it depends a little bit on how you count because you you've got Walmart's total US GMV which we also don't know by the way because the there now is a meaningful marketplace at Walmart not as meaningful as as Amazon but like you know Walmart doesn't disclose its actual GMV. [35:59] But Walmart also has Sam's Club. And so if you take just Walmart's GMV and shoot, I thought I had the number in front of me, but now that I'm talking about it, I of course don't. But from memory, it was about $442 billion last year would be my estimate for their GMV after they announced that's their Q4. And so that would be lower than even the conservative estimate for Amazon's US GMV. If you add Sam's GMV in the US to Walmart's GMV in the US, Walmart gets to about $520 billion. So that would be above Marketplace Pulse's estimate for Amazon and below Citibank's estimate for Amazon. So no matter how you count, these two companies are very close. A few years ago, you and I were talking about Amazon being close to Walmart if you take grocery out, which grocery is 60% of Walmart sales. But now we're in a year where Amazon may have passed Walmart, but however you count, it's very close. And they're obviously continuing to grow faster than Walmart. So if it wasn't 2023, it likely will be 2024. That's the year that Amazon actually takes the title as the largest retailer in the US. Scot: [37:18] Yeah, it's crazy. We knew the day would come and here we are. Jason: [37:22] Exactly. So Scott, I feel like we nailed it. We targeted to have a slightly shorter show to just keep the meat in there and we have succeeded. Scot: [37:33] Yeah. Yeah. Thanks everyone for joining us. Don't forget, if you have a second, leave us a review. We'd really appreciate that. And. Jason: [37:41] Until next time, happy commercing!

(0:00) Intro.(2:21) About this podcast's sponsor: The American College of Governance Counsel.(3:08) Start of interview.(3:50) On  collapse of SVB & other banks. Lessons for board members. *Reference to video from Stanford Rock Center(12:00) On the state of private markets and unicorns. Downturn and shutdowns in VC-backed startups. *Per Pitchbook: “Approx 3,200 private VC-backed U.S. companies have gone out of business this year. Combined, those companies raised north of $27B.”(15:32) On the growth of AI. "The pixie dust."(18:25) On OpenAI's board fiasco and the company's controversial structure."The fundamental problem is with the idea that you can achieve what OpenAI wanted to achieve in terms of guardrails. That's the fundamental point. The second problem is the structure. The structure was all wrong. And the third problem was the people. These were the wrong people to be serving on these boards with the wrong structure, or seeking an objective that can't be obtained." *reference to public choice theory, impossibility theorem by Ken Arrow.*Reference to innovations in corporate governance structures of AI companies (OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI).(26:07) On geopolitics of AI: China not bound by same guardrails.(28:56) On the crypto industry and its regulatory challenges. The case of Ripple vs SEC.(33:11) Fraud in private markets (ie Elizabeth Holmes, SBF, Trevor Milton and other high profile convictions).(34:18)  ESG/DEI backlash and the politicization of corporation governance. "This is situation where less is more."(38:27)  Biggest winner in business in 2023.(40:32)  Biggest loser in business in 2023.(42:46) Biggest business surprise of 2023.(45:43)  Best and worst corporate governance trend from 2023.(47:24) The biggest corporate governance trend to watch out for in 2024.Joseph A. Grundfest is the William A. Franke Professor of Law and Business Emeritus at Stanford Law School and Senior Faculty of the Rock Center for Corporate Governance. He is a former Commissioner of the SEC and co-founded Financial Engines with Professor William F. Sharpe, the 1990 Nobel Prize winner in Economics. He formerly served as a director of KKR and Oracle. You can follow Evan on social media at:Twitter: @evanepsteinLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/epsteinevan/ Substack: https://evanepstein.substack.com/__You can join as a Patron of the Boardroom Governance Podcast at:Patreon: patreon.com/BoardroomGovernancePod__Music/Soundtrack (found via Free Music Archive): Seeing The Future by Dexter Britain is licensed under a Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License

Wipro is one of the largest providers of tech and tech services in the world with more than 250,000 employees. It was started in 1945 and is now the third largest software company in India with a market cap of more than $27B.We're lucky to be joined today by the leader driving Wipro's technology vision. Subha Tatavarti joined Wipro as Chief Technology Officer in March 2021 after a distinguished career in tech leadership roles at companies like Walmart and PayPal where she led the product, data, and infrastructure teams. Subha holds a Masters in Computer Science. She's an avid hiker and enjoys trail running and books on philosophy.Listen and learn...What Wipro's 1,400+ enterprise customers expect from gen AIWhat are the top use cases for enterprise AI in 2024Why the quality of AI-generated code has surprised SubhaOne year in... how does Subha describe the state of enterprise adoption of gen AIWhat is holding back broader adoption of gen AIWhy regulatory frameworks alone are sufficient to reign in the bad actorsEarly adopting industries and geographies you wouldn't expectSubha's advice to CIOs and CTOs about how to pick the right business problem to solve with AISubha's vision for the future of human interactionReferences in today's episode...Durga Malladi, Qualcomm SVP, on AI and the Future of WorkAI classifiers can't distinguish human from AI-generated contentWipro's billion-dollar investment in AI The Wipro ai 360 hubWipro's approach to responsible AIThe Azim Premji Foundation

      Ever wondered what sparks the transformation of an everyday individual into a political force to be reckoned with? Rachel Davis, a prominent conservative voice from Minnesota, pulls back the curtain on her evolution from a concerned citizen to a formidable candidate. Her unwavering commitment to constitutional values and professional background in the ammunition industry offer a unique perspective on the Second Amendment and the interplay between culture and advocacy, as highlighted by her encounter with the rock legend and gun rights proponent, Ted Nugent.Navigating the intricate landscape of modern politics, Rachel and I dissect the complex task of constitutional interpretation and the art of maintaining a balanced approach to governance. With an emphasis on the Constitution's enduring relevance, we address the challenges of legislative compromises and the influence of educational and media narratives on America's youth. In a political climate that craves genuine representation, our conversation underscores the indispensable strategy of securing a majority without compromising the nation's founding principles.Wrapping up our discussion, we explore the compelling realm of political engagement. From the high-stakes debates surrounding Second Amendment rights, to the ins and outs of fiscal responsibility, Rachel's personal journey in her bid for office exemplifies the profound power of grassroots movements. The potency of door-to-door campaigning and the strength of community connections are revealed as key to fostering change. Tune in as we share how these touchpoints have the potential to unite people and address the pressing issues at the heart of our society. Join the discourse and discover the conservative perspective on the pivotal topics shaping our nation's future.Gene German Certified Firearms Instructor - Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, FloridaDisclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.Support the show Thank you for listening to this episode of HuttCast, the American Podcast. We hope you enjoyed today's discussion and gained valuable insights. To stay updated on our latest episodes, be sure to subscribe to our podcast on your preferred listening platform. Don't forget to leave us a rating and review, as it helps others discover our show. If you have any comments, questions, or suggestions for future topics, please reach out to us through our website or social media channels. Until next time, keep on learning and exploring the diverse voices that make America great.

SolarEdge (SEDG) earnings were released today May 4th. Renita Young discusses these earnings as its adjusted EPS came in at $2.90 versus an estimated $1.98 and revenue came in at $943.89M versus an estimated $930.09M. She talks about how SEDG sees 2Q revenue at $970M-$1.01B versus an estimated $986.37M and it sees supply-chain snarls "improving." Paramount's (PARA) earnings were also released today, premarket. Its adjusted EPS came in at $0.09 versus an estimated $0.12 and its revenue came in at $7.27B versus an estimated $7.42B. Tune in to find out more about the stock market today.

On the 22nd episode of Enterprise Software Innovators, hosts Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) and Saam Motamedi (Greylock Partners) talk with Sandeep Davé, CDTO at CBRE. CBRE is a Fortune 500 commercial real estate company, with $27B of revenue and more than 100,000 employees operating in over 100 countries globally. In this conversation, Sandeep shares fascinating insights into CBRE's innovative uses of technology, including augmented reality solutions for technicians, their venture into consumer facing applications, and AI capabilities that reinvent the commercial real estate experience.Quick hits from Sandeep:On CBRE utilizing AR/VR solutions to combat the talent gap: "The built world is going through this transition where especially for complex assets such as life science labs or hospitals, the technician talent and the knowledge pool of the technician talent is reducing. And so we actually applied AR capability to [have] four eyes in the field…you have a more junior technician in the field, but also have a more experienced technician behind the scenes, seeing what the person is seeing, guiding them through what changes they or what the diagnostic is and what they should be doing as a result."On 'self-healing' buildings of the future: "I think we are starting to scratch the surface on remote diagnostics and remote maintenance. I fully see ten years from now the likelihood of this concept of self-healing buildings, where they are much better managed with less human intervention, and the humans are doing a lot more productive work than they do today."On generative AI transforming real estate planning: "Imagine designing a building and saying, well, I wanted to have this ESG footprint and running multiple models through generative AI technologies, then creating a visual digital twin of it and saying, well, here's how it would look, and these are the different ways that it could look. And then being inside the building to say, well, would you like it to look like this? And see it in an immersive manner, not just on your browser, but to see it in an immersive manner. The possibilities are so tremendous, and clearly I'm excited about it."Recent Book Recommendation: Play Nice But Win by Michael Dell--Like what you hear? Leave us a review and subscribe to the show on Apple, Google, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.Enterprise Software Innovators is a show where top tech executives share how they innovate at scale. Each episode covers unique insights and stories that will help you succeed as a technology leader. Find more great lessons from tech leaders and enterprise software experts at https://www.enterprisesoftware.blog/ Enterprise Software Innovators is produced by Luke Reiser and Josh Meer.

This week we're going to the Coruscant Opera House to hear all about the tragedy of Doctor Pershing! It's a wild and wonderful episode of The Mandalorian that has a lot to say and we have a lot to say about it! Join us as we discuss the continuing themes of change and belief, the thematic comparisons with the two stories being told, cloning confusion, the Terry Gilliam-ness of it all, and so much more. Plus, we observe a moment of silence for Bo Katan's late great droid. So grab that 27B-6 form, listen today and celebrate the love! JOIN THE BLAST POINTS ARMY and SUPPORT BLAST POINTS ON PATREON! LIGHT AND MAGIC COMMENTARIES! KENOBI COMMENTARIES! BOOK OF BOOK REVIEW EPISODES! MANDO SEASON 1 & 2 REVIEW EPISODES! BAD BATCH! CLONE WARS ! BLAST POINTS Q&A EPISODES! ! Theme Music downloadable tracks! Extra goodies! and so much MORE! www.patreon.com/blastpoints new Blast Points T-SHIRTS are now available! Represent your favorite podcast everywhere you go! Get the NEW BLUE LOGO shirts for 2022 and classics like the Ben Burtt and Indiana shirt while supplies last! Perfect for conventions, dates, formal events and more! Get them here: www.etsy.com/shop/Gibnerd?section_id=21195481 visit the Blast Points website for comics, recipes, search for back episodes and so much more! www.blastpointspodcast.com if you dug the show, please leave BLAST POINTS a review on iTunes, Spotify and share the show with friends! If you leave an iTunes review, we will read it on a future episode! honestly! talk to Blast Points on twitter at @blast_points leave feedback, comments or ideas for shows! "like" Blast Points on Facebook for news on upcoming shows and links to some of the stuff we talk about in the show!! Join the Blast Points Super Star Wars Chill Group here www.facebook.com/groups/BlastPointsGroup/ we are also on Instagram! Wow! www.instagram.com/blastpoints your hosts are Jason Gibner & Gabe Bott! contact BLAST POINTS at contact@blastpointspodcast.comsendus show ideas, feedback, voice messages or whatever! May the Force be with you, always!

Aaron and Brian discuss the 2022 Year in Review, highlighting the biggest trends, as well as making 2023 predictions. SHOW: 679CLOUD NEWS OF THE WEEK - http://bit.ly/cloudcast-cnotwSHOW SPONSORS:Eaton HomepageEaton and Tripp Lite have joined forces to bring more sanity to IT pros days, every day. Visit www.eaton.com/audio to learn more!FujiFilm. Your archival and backup data strategy, built on tape. Fujifilm tape is helping businesses get a handle on their vast amounts of data in the most secure, scalable and efficient way. Find out more at builtontape.fujifilmusa.comAWS Insiders is an edgy, entertaining podcast about the services and future of cloud computing at AWS. Listen to AWS Insiders in your favorite podcast player. Cloudfix HomepageSHOW NOTES:THE BASICS:The show grew nearly 20% YoY (2nd year in a row), with our first 2M listen year.The Cloudcast named to Top 20 Kubernetes resources of 2022The Cloudcast hosts named to “Who's Who of Cloud (2022)” listThank you to all our sponsors throughout the year (Datadog, CloudZero, JumpCloud, Mergify, BMC, Teleport, NewRelic, StrongDM, Polyscale, LoadForge, NetApp, Revelo, Lightstep, Granulate, CDN77, Jetbrains, Eaton, Cloudfix)THE BIG NEWS AREAS:Tech layoffs in 2HCY22VMware got acquired by Broadcom (will be part of CA+others)The US made a big investment in CHIPSNVIDIA's acquisition of ARM fell throughAWS - $60B>$85B (+28%), Azure - $35B>$50B (+42%), GCP - $15B>$27B (+38%)Microsoft is now 50/50 in Software and Cloud revenuesAWS re:Invent is different under Adam SelipskyBetween Texts and Images, AI seemed to make a big leap WebAssembly (WASM) is starting to make noise in new ways (PaaS 2.0?)Is Platform Engineering replacing DevOps and SRE?Docker 2.0 is making money2023 PREDICTIONS: Our 2020 PredictionsOur 2021 PredictionsOur 2022 Predictions Aaron's Predictions:We'll see a Twitter clone founded by folks that leftAzure will become #1 public cloud (pulled from 2022 predictions)Docker will become a unicorn again and prove everyone wrong2023 will be the year of the down rounds:Worldwide: 450 unicorn and 24 decacornA unicorn will go underApple will  finally give everyone a peek at their EV car in development, just to mess with Elon a bit.Brian's Predictions:We'll start seeing some of the 2020-2022 unicorns acquired as sub-unicorn pricesServerless makes a comeback as a cheaper computer alternativeFinOps conferences become a must-attend eventGCP makes a huge hail-mary acquisitionFEEDBACK?Email: show at the cloudcast dot netTwitter: @thecloudcastnet

http://loosescrewsed.com Join us on discord! And check out the merch store! https://discord.io/LooseScrews Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/LooseScrewsED Squad Update: Wars ended in Yemaia and 23 Andromedae, Election in Midgard. 6 Andromedae wasin expansion. Ending in target: Cempsigi. Still trying to build our influence in Tripu, Calarum, and other systems a system mildly over-heating. Please remember to mark the standing orders post with the appropriate emoji when doing BGS work. This not only helps others see what has already been done, so they can better decide where to apply their efforts, there MAY just be a little contest going for the month of November… BGS Honor Roll - CMDRs Brolinium Falcon, Baillevi, Grover Kiwi, Inigomontoya, Larkshadow, Mr. McG33k, Oblivious, Rick “FN” Dalton! All details in the #standing-orders and/or the #loose-screws-factions channels of the Discord. Dev news: Update 14 later this month or early next month PLAY BARD HERE(?) In-Game News: there are still 8 Caustic Cloacas the first within 370ly of sol https://canonn.science/codex/xenotechnology/unidentified-interstellar-anomaly/ Thargoid Bug Report: Another shoutout to CMDR Borqed_Bits, hero of the realm Operation Bronze Medal (4th place) - 4th place (75B), 25B back from 3rd, 27B from 2nd http://thargoid.watch https://www.goidhub.com/ Bug Bug Report: Remember to vote up the GPU utilization issue on the tracker! Now the 8th top voted; keep it going (update from tracks issue) https://issues.frontierstore.net/issue-detail/48884 Anarchy Extinction Bug: the SALVAGE mission SCAVENGER NPCs are still attached to local anarchy and not some neutral pirate faction. You can still be sent on missions by an anarchy faction where you have to murder that faction's NPCs to complete it. (raised by Naboo) Previously reported as fixed by FDev, it was apparently only fixed for retrieval and protect missions. https://issues.frontierstore.net/issue-detail/51930 Chig chat: Discussion: AX tutorial Discussion WhErE tHe ChEeSe At? Mozzarella….so go get some pizza… Community Corner: Movie anniversaries: Lincoln (November 9) 10 years Skyfall (November 9) 10 years No Country For Old Men (November 9) 15 years 8 Mile (November 8) 20 years Starship Troopers (November 7) 25 years Bram Stoker's Dracula (November 13) 30 years If you like the show please rate and review on your podcast app, which helps people find the show. Join us on Discord at discord.io/loosescrews and check out the merch store at loosescrewsed.com for mugs, t-shirts, hoodies, and more. And you can support us on patreon!

http://loosescrewsed.com Join us on discord! And check out the merch store! https://discord.io/LooseScrews Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/LooseScrewsED Squad Update: Wars firing up in Yemaia and 23 Andromedae, Election in Midgard. Go! Fight! (Vote!), Win! 6 Andromedae is in expansion. Current probable target: Cempsigi. Still trying to build our influence in Tripu, Calarum, and 4 other systems Three systems (Unktomi, Maikoro, Snoqui Xian) mildly over-heating. Please remember to mark the standing orders post with the appropriate emoji when doing BGS work. This not only helps others see what has already been done, so they can better decide where to apply their efforts, there MAY just be a little contest going for the month of November… All details in the #standing-orders and/or the #loose-screws-factions channels of the Discord. Dev news: Frameshift Live #20 will be Thursday Nov 3rd at 16:00 UTC Special interview with a guest from Canonn Research Autumn themed twitch drops PLAY BARD HERE(?) In-Game News: Now there are 8 Caustic Cloacas https://canonn.science/codex/xenotechnology/unidentified-interstellar-anomaly/ Pre-engineered Heatsink rewards have arrived Thargoid Bug Report: Another shoutout to CMDR Borqed_Bits, hero of the realm Operation Bronze Medal (4th place) - 4th place (75B), 25B back from 3rd, 27B from 2nd http://thargoid.watch https://www.goidhub.com/ Bug Bug Report: Remember to vote up the GPU utilization issue on the tracker! Now the 8th top voted; keep it going (update from tracks issue) https://issues.frontierstore.net/issue-detail/48884 Anarchy Extinction Bug: the SALVAGE mission SCAVENGER NPCs are still attached to local anarchy and not some neutral pirate faction. You can still be sent on missions by an anarchy faction where you have to murder that faction's NPCs to complete it. (raised by Naboo) Previously reported as fixed by FDev, it was apparently only fixed for retrieval and protect missions. https://issues.frontierstore.net/issue-detail/51930 Chig chat: Discussion: AX tutorial Discussion WhErE tHe ChEeSe At? Huntsman is a concoction of two classic cheeses produced in the English countryside. Double Gloucester is a firm, mellow and tangy cheese made only from the milk of Gloucester cows in southwestern England while Stilton Blue cheese is a blue-veined, strong, smooth and creamy cheese with a distinctive flavor profile. It is a difficult cheese to cook with, but visually stunning on a cheese platter. Each cheese could have its own wine pairing, but together they go well with ales and beers. Community Corner: Movie anniversaries: Wreck-It Ralph (November 2) 10 years American Gangster (November 2) 15 years If you like the show please rate and review on your podcast app, which helps people find the show. Join us on Discord at discord.io/loosescrews and check out the merch store at loosescrewsed.com for mugs, t-shirts, hoodies, and more. And you can support us on patreon!