3 minutes estimated reading time
What Does Knee Surgery Cost? Few Know, and That’s a Problem – WSJ – no idea of costs and processes – why things are done. The thing that concerns me more is that knee surgery (and other medical processes) need more sensitive work than what business transformation consultants brought to industry. Otherwise it will be kneecapping Belfast-style rather than knee surgery going on
Struggling Chinese firms offloading assets means property bargains galore for foreign investors | South China Morning Post – Under Chinese law, overseas investors cannot directly buy assets in China. They either have to buy a stake in a company involved in a project, or acquire debt portfolios, mostly from one of the four main managers of distressed assets – a quick change in Chinese law could leave these investors screwed, this looks like a trap to me
The psychology of popular media culture Twenge, Martin & Spitzberg – American Psychological Association – PDF white paper on trends in media use covering a 40 year period. More media related content here
China is clear leader in the 5G race – Deloitte | Telecoms.com – interesting, but what about Korea, Singapore etc? I suspect that this is very China vs. US focus
Botched CIA Communications System Helped Blow Cover of Chinese Agents – Foreign Policy – how the CIA will be able to build trust with agents in the future is going to be a challenge
Adversaries Could Have Fiddled With US Satellites: DoD IG « Breaking Defense – Defense industry news, analysis and commentary – If Chinese and Russian spies have been doing their jobs well, they might well have been able to compromise some of America’s most important satellites, including the missile launch detection birds known as SBIRS. A report out today from the Pentagon’s Inspector General says that Air Force Space Command’s failure to safeguard its supply chain means that “an adversary has opportunity to infiltrate the Air Force Space Command supply chain and sabotage, maliciously introduce an unwanted function, or otherwise compromise the design or integrity of the critical hardware, software, and firmware.”
Macau: the incredible poverty at the heart of world’s richest place | South China Morning Post – the Gini coefficient must be higher than Hong Kong or the US surely?
Exclusive: U.S. government seeks Facebook help to wiretap Messenger – sources | Reuters – The U.S. government is trying to force Facebook Inc to break the encryption in its popular Messenger app so law enforcement may listen to a suspect’s voice conversations in a criminal probe, three people briefed on the case said, resurrecting the issue of whether companies can be compelled to alter their products to enable surveillance – not terribly surprising. If they manage to achieve this could the method be applied to Signal? Also would there be a precedent to break Apple’s resolve?
How Björk robots influenced the way we think about the future. | Slate – continues a long patterN – Star Trek communicator and the cellphone, Minority Report and touch interfaces, Neuromancer’s influence on VR – there is a continual feedback loop. It is interesting how much recent sci-fi feels very much rooted in the present
There’s one thing that some virtual assistants can’t do – understand an Irish accent – Independent.ie – or a regional British accent for that matter
Robot to star in new Tony Kaye movie 2nd Born – CNET – looking forward to a new Tony Kaye film
Y Combinator to Set Up China Arm With Ex-Baidu Exec as CEO – Bloomberg – interesting move, I met Yu back at Yahoo! where I found him to be highly strung