imcqueen

OP here. I'm exploring a new web standard called procurement.txt (robots.txt for agent commerce). It supports everything from simple setups ("email @store.example”) to sophisticated automation standards (UCP, ACP). The pattern would be to check /procurement.txt on any commercial domain and then act accordingly.

I think the internet will adjust to accommodate agents, just like it did for mobile. Agents are the fastest growing website user segment today (like mobile used to be). Others are trying similar things for content (llms.txt).

This should work for any transaction type, but I had long-tail B2B procurement in mind since it's the least supported today by current attempts. Agents will handle discovery and evaluation in the future (at a minimum).

I have found scraping the web to be slow and expensive, and many B2B websites are unusable. Merchants should be properly incentivized if agents adopt the standard.

Early version of the spec is live. I'm seeing ~90% reduction in token usage, but there are likely gaps I've overlooked. Open to collaborators and feedback.

I know it's been tried many times unsuccessfully, but with the benefit of hindsight now would you have preferred to pay a nominal annual fee for the handful of currently free services that you really like?

I realize we're likely too far gone now, but it's fundamentally an issue that we aren't paying for these ad-supported services, so the companies gravitate toward serving the interests of the entities that are paying them.

That's not a justification or reflection of my opinion about privacy and ethics around the use of data, just a thought around removing the problem from the equation all together.

I guess my real question is, if you remove the profit seeking component of the data discussion does the bad behavior completely go away? Definitely interested in other opinions.

Totally agree with this.

A couple of other things I’ve found help me in case they help you:

- public speaking is a skill, not a talent. You can learn to be good at it with practice.

- if you are the type of person that gets nervous, you may never completely cure that, but you will learn to get through it. Many good public speakers still feel a little anxiety before speaking.

- if you have a bad presentation, don’t stress too much. The key is to not let too much time go by after a bad performance, get back out there.

I personally dread public speaking, but I have to do it regularly enough that I continuously have to work at it. I like to memorize the first few lines of any talk. Once I get a few sentences in everything falls into place. I just need to get through the first 90 seconds before my nerves pass. And it only improved through live action.

For anyone that doesn't want to invest 40 minutes in this:

New Sensor Technology

The Connector Force - mobile network

The 2nd Software Revolution - big data, AI, machine learning

Feedback

Synthetic Biology

The Second Industrial Revolution - 3d printing

Nanotechnology

Robotics

Ultra Urbanization

Emergence of the Global Middle Class

You're probably correct here. The part people find a little unsavory is not that it's somehow eroding the middle class. It's the idea that HFT can act as an unnecessary intermediary, essentially taxing a transaction that otherwise didn't need to be disrupted and at scale the amount extracted becomes material.

Imagine your neighbor owned a Ferrari and you told him one day you were going to buy a gallon of milk at the store. "On sale for $3.99!" you say to him. Now imagine he sped past you on your way to the store and when you arrived there he had bought all the milk at $3.99 and was selling it in the parking lot for $4.01.

You wouldn't necessarily be ruined financially paying $4.01 instead of $3.99. The cost is negligible. But you would probably think he was kind of a jerk.

I've discussed this topic with people in the past and I've heard one option is to find a family owned business that does not have a clear successor. In that scenario you can sometimes find a healthy, well-run business that is owned by people who need an exit strategy and are open to selling so they can retire.

Is this maybe a "sell high" scenario for twitter? Sounds like the article is suggesting that, while demand is still strong, the supply of available office space is rising.

Perhaps their thinking is to get the asset under lease while the price is still at it's current rate and then spend on expansion later if it's necessary (at theoretically lower prices based on the supply trend?).

They're definitely doing the math, but to an objective outsider the numbers won't add up. We are all likely underestimating how hard it is to innovate inside a company the size of Walmart.

For what it's worth, Jet is based in Hoboken, NJ.

I have a theory about this, it happened to us when we bought some childrens books on Jet. They came in the mail from Barnes and Noble with a packing slip that had a price higher than we paid included with it.

It doesn't explain the Amazon example you mentioned, but I was under the impression they have special affiliate arrangements with 3rd party retailers and that they were somehow being allowed to invest their affiliate commissions into the consumer (which is typically not allowed).

So if they're making 15% affiliate commissions from B&N they're able to drop the consumer price 10%. They've been focused on scale more than margin since day 1, so it would make sense that they would just operate on something razor thin and continue to drive home that they have unbeatable prices.

For the 3rd party retailers it's a way to compete with AMZN on price without actually having to drop their prices and I can see how that would be attractive to a retailer that's losing market share.

No basis for this, just one man's theory.

The paid membership component makes that tough to compare, but I've also heard they take good care of employees