Advocating for starting over is tough in a world that is holding on to a business culture that is bleeding out. I outline three things I think the small business world can do to catch the falling pieces of the American big business world.

#1 A skills marketplace that goes beyond a traditional resume.

#2 A way to let bottom-up decision making balance participation and trust.

#3 An accounting model that can track intangible assets to re-balance company value away from salary being a cost without financial benefit.

Article referenced in the podcast:

Why are Amazon, Intel, Microsoft and 17 others cutting 165,000 jobs now? A massive structural shift is hitting the U.S. corporate workforce in 2026

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/us/why-are-amazon-intel-microsoft-and-17-others-cutting-165000-jobs-now-a-massive-structural-shift-is-hitting-the-u-s-corporate-workforce-in-2026/articleshow/127160433.cms

Your host, Firecrow Silvernight: https://comparebasic.com/team/firecrow.html

Live you're values is better than lecturing your values. Lecture your values and walk away with nothing or live your values and have the satisfaction of incremental progress.

This episode focuses on the role of patience in knowledge transfer, and how that forms a background for composable software and usable user interfaces.

Book mentioned on the podcast: Atomic Habbits by James Clear https://jamesclear.com/atomic-habits

Your host, Firecrow Silvernight: https://comparebasic.com/team/firecrow.html

Seriously Human is the employment framework from Compare Basic. This podcast outlines the ideas of how a hybrid worker-collective corporation could be structured and run. And what project-management steps would need to happen for that to be the case.

I also outline a little bit about the business model in comparison to a restaurant. We have open source tools, restaurants use the same ingredients you can buy at the store, you pay both of us for out service.

Read more about Seriously Human at https://comparebasic.com/seriously_human.html

Correction: my update was inaccurate, I recorded early last week, but then skipped the Tuesday, so my predicted progress was a week late but still awesome.

Film referenced in the podcast: A New Economy, Written and directed by Trevor Meier, https://filmsfortheplanet.com/a-new-economy/

Your host, Firecrow Silvernight: https://comparebasic.com/team/firecrow.html

In a bit of a technical mood, I talk extensively in this episode about the cornerstone of the Caneka system I am building with Compare Basic. If your alergic to tech-jargon, best to skip to the next episode! I do explain in metaphorical terms some of the struggles that modeling the world using existing assumptions has created. As inspriation struck I recorded this podcast early: It's Mondays on Tuesday (on Friday!).

Your host, Firecrow Silvernight: https://comparebasic.com/team/firecrow.html

This week it's all about explaining how the business world has eroded from a lack of modern accounting practices.

But it's not all sad, there is a lot of hope from explaining how the physical world of manufacturing equipment was easier on business leader egos, but also shines a light into what could be the financial and decision making opportunity to repair a lot of the damage to the working world of today.

Your host, Firecrow Silvernight: https://comparebasic.com/team/firecrow.html

Let's stop ignoring things until they are complete, and take notice of the developmental phases of 0.1, 0.3 0.2 etc... I do a shallow dive into some examples of amazingly successful things (Dyson Vacumes, Godsmack the band) and the sad light their struggles cast on how developing value is recognized by the business community.

I go into a deep explanation of what Compare Basic is working on, through an explanation of our three phases: R&D, Products, Teams. And generally ramble about what incremental innovation could be in the American software industry for improvements in every day products.

Links from this episode:

The Story of Dyson: From Bag-less Idea to Global Brand

https://atouchofbusiness.com/companies/dyson-limited/

Godsmack: The Music Museum of New England

https://www.mmone.org/godsmack/

Better Offline - Ed Zitron (Episode: Part One NVIDIA Isn't Enron - So What Is It?)

https://www.betteroffline.com/

Your host, Firecrow Silvernight: https://comparebasic.com/team/firecrow.html

This week is burnout week, as I talk about the separation and boundaries of software and every day life. My hope that we will emerge from this winter in the software industry, with patterns and conventions that empower users rather than rely on extractive media remains strong.

Have a good holiday, and join me at https://comparebasic.com, I'd love to hear from you.

Your host, Firecrow Silvernight, founder Compare Basic, https://comparebasic.com/team/firecrow.html

For clarification, NaCl is used in libSodium, but not OpenSSL, the phraseology of the recording made that statement ambiguous. My intention was to clarify that Caneka can work with NaCl or OpenSSL not an indication that there is a relationship between those two entirely separate cryptography libraries.

Software mentioned on the podcast:

Caneka: https://caneka.org

NaCl Daniel J. Bernstein, Tanja Lange, and Peter Schwabe: https://nacl.cr.yp.to/

OpenSSL: https://openssl-library.org/

Your host, Firecrow Silvernight: https://comparebasic.com/team/firecrow.html

Innovation big and small. Matt Arnold of Spark Consulting Group joins your host Firecrow Silvernight on the podcast today as we discuss innovation and how large and small companies come to terms with fundamental themes in their business more effectively than conducting "innovation theater".

It was a lively conversation that touched on accounting methods and conversational strategy. The book Innovation Accounting by Dan Toma and Esther Gons was mentioned. And a shout out to Patriot Software for helping run payroll for Compare Basic. I mention briefly what the setup experience was, and even though it's small this is a big step for us.

Along the way we mention the "Adoption Papers" , which is my funny name for the Diffusion of Innovation page on Wikipedia.

Matt was one of the early crowd-funders for us and it's always great to catch up and hear stories and insights from him. His experience ranges from large name-brand insurance companies to small boutique startups. I thought it was a lively conversation and I hope you enjoy the podcast.

Links:

Spark Consulting: https://inspiredbyspark.com

Compare Basic: Compare Basic

Firecrow Silvernight: https://comparebasic.com/team/firecrow.html

Innovation Accounting (book): https://innovationaccountingbook.com/

Patriot Software: https://patriotsoftware.com

Adoption Papers (WikiPedia): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_innovations

A little trip down memory lane, and how software could bridge the best of the past and the future. The update this week is about stepping back, to supplement my income with a day-job, while I re-tool the system to break through the noise of convention. I talk a little bit about the resistance I've faced in the software industry around my conclusion that the existing tooling in software development is not sufficient. You Host Firecrow Silvernight from Compare Basic.

This podcast compares the reliability of classical data-science techniques (NGram, MapReduce, Co-ocurrenceMatrix) vs LLM based AI's. It's a shallow dive full of metaphors and humor, or at-least I laughed a lot while recording it.

Your host Firecrow Silvernight