Ged Carroll

Month: November 2022

  • The aesthete questions

    What is the aesthete?

    The Aesthete is found in the weekend edition of The Financial Times. It features in How To Spend It magazine supplement (recently rebranded HTSI). The Aesthete interview usually features some sort of taste maker or artist rather than the usual celebrity one would expect.

    Likely questions to be in the aesthete interview

    • Personal style signifier
    • Last thing you bought and owned
    • No party is complete without…
    • The best souvenir you’ve brought home
    • Your drink of choice
    • The best book that you’ve read in the past year?
    • The last music I downloaded
    • In my fridge you’ll always find
    • The thing I couldn’t do without
    • An indulgence I would never forgo?
    • Style icon?
    • Recent discovery?
    • Object I would never part with?
    • Favourite building?
    • Beauty toiletry stapes I’m never without?
    • Favourite apps?
    • Work of art that changed everything for me?
    • Best advice I ever received?
    • Source of inspiration?
    • Party playlist?

    What would my answers look like for The Aesthete?

    My personal style signifier?

    Function versus form has always been a big thing of mine. I like the G1 pilot jacket design and have worn one for over a decade. I love Carhartt workwear and technical clothing from Nike ACG, Arc’teryx and The North Face – particularly vintage TNF. I love alpine approach boots and have sets by Zamberlan and Dolomite.

    G1
    USWings.com

    The last thing I bought and loved?

    Prometheus Design Were Ti-Ring Strap – its a NATO style watch strap with titanium fittings. I had a watch which I loved but the strap was driving me mad and this cured my constant annoyance with it. They just work and their really well made

    tinato_gry_22mm_1m_grande
    Prometheus Design Werx

    No party is complete without?

    The right mix of people. The kind of people you can chat about the most drivel or profound thing ever (not mutually exclusive categories) until way past sunrise.

    The best souvenir I’ve brought home?

    Beyond the memories and experiences? Probably not a lot in recent years. I guess I would have to go back to my childhood. As a child I used to go into Salmons a shop in the local market town near the family farm where I spent a good deal of my childhood. It was staffed by Tony Salmon who had opened it in 1968. At the time it was predominantly sold knick-knacks, souvenirs and stationery products for school children. I bought some absolute dross in there and brought it back to England with me. One thing caught my imagination though. A book published by the Irish Government Department of Foreign Affairs called Facts About Ireland. It had the Tara brooch on the front cover and reading it gave me a better sense of myself and culture. It served as a primer for me then to go on and read Robert Kee’s Ireland A History.

    My drink of choice?

    It depends on the time of the day, but Hong Kong style milk tea needs a special shout out. alongside the Japanese take on it.

    The best book I’ve read in the past year?

    It’s a current affairs oriented book called The Dragons and The Snakes by David Kilcullen. You can read moe of my thoughts on it here. The damage that the Russian war in Ukraine has called to Russian armed forces mean that in the medium term, things are likely to slightly less dystopian than Kilcullen would have thought.

    The last music I downloaded

    New Rage Savage by Also Beauty:Beast.

    In my fridge you’ll always find

    Very little to be honest with you, but my freezer is stuffed.

    The thing I couldn’t do without

    I find myself increasingly reliant on my Mac. It helps me create things like this blog. It’s what I work from and it even keeps me in touch with friends around the world.

    An indulgence I would never forgo?

    Style icon?

    Probably Shawn Stüssy, Nigo, Minoru Onozato and his book My Rugged 211, James Lavelle or Hiroshi Fujiwara.

    Recent discovery?

    Perun who is providing some thoughtful analysis on the current war in Ukraine.

    Object I would never part with?

    At the moment it would likely be my work glasses that cut down a lot of glare from using a computer on constant video calls.

    Favourite building?

    Gosh this is so hard, I have chosen these buildings based on what they mean to me rather than the absolute quality of the design. It is likely to be a toss up between The Plaza Hotel – Seoul, Wah Luen Industrial Building – Hong Kong, Hysan Place – Hong Kong and Cityplaza – Hong Kong. My favourite UK buildings would be Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral, The Barbican and The Southbank Centre.

    Beauty / toiletry staples I’m never without?

    Colonia by Acqua di Parma.

    Favourite apps?

    • Newsblur
    • FT
    • Yahoo Finance
    • Apple’s Podcasts app
    • Apple’s Mail app
    • Apple Books

    Work of art that changed everything for me?

    Best advice I ever received?

    It would be two pieces of advice I got at the oil refinery I worked in briefly before college:

    Life occasionally kicks you in the balls to let you know you’re still alive

    From a lab tech called Tony when redundancies came down the pipe. A short but excellent summary of stoicism

    Work the problem. If you can’t deal with it as is, chunk it down until you have things you can deal with

    From the head engineer at the refinery Les, who was a no nonsense kind of guy.

    Source of inspiration?

    Reading. Blogs and books play a big part in this. I am also inspired by everyday life and consumer behaviour in East Asia; Hong Kong and Japan. Numerous people have inspired me though my career and still do. Finally my parents who have been long tolerant of the different directions I have taken over the years.

    Party playlist?

    It depends on the party, but I would trusty standbys would be my record collection from the late lamented Chicago label Guidance Records, New York’s Shelter Records, Irma Records, Yoruba Records, modern labels Razor n’ Tape, Sound signature, Sacred Rhythm Music, pretty much most things remixed by The Reflex, Dimitri from Paris, Danny Krivit or Joe Claussell.

  • Boa + more stuff

    Boa server hack

    Hackers breach energy orgs via bugs in discontinued web server – state-backed Chinese hacking groups (including one traced as RedEcho) targeted multiple Indian electrical grid operators, compromising an Indian national emergency response system and the subsidiary of a multinational logistics company. The attackers gained access to the internal networks of the hacked entities via Internet-exposed cameras on their networks as command-and-control servers. – The software being hacked is the Boa web server. Boa was originally written by university student Paul Phillips. Phillips became CTO of Go2Net.

    One Nation Under CCTV

    Go2Net ran several websites including 100Hot – a website ranking service; payment processing service Authorize.Net, metasearch engine Dogpile, Haggle Online who provided online auction and PlaySite who ran multiplayer games.Prior to being acquired by InfoSpace Go2Net touted their technology behind these sites and selling services to customers.

    Boa’s afterlife on IoT systems

    So having a CTO who had written a small footprint web server like Boa made a lot of sense. At some point, Phillips stopped working on Boa. Instead maintenance was handed over Larry Doolittle and Jon Nelson who maintained the code for three years or so. Since then, Boa has not been maintained. Its small size made it very popular with Internet of Things products including CCTV systems. Which is the reason why Boa server software has been repeatedly hacked.

    China

    Carmakers try to frustrate US push to cut China from EV supply chain | Financial Times – the US government’s biggest challenge is quisling companies wedded to shareholder value above all else

    Consumer behaviour

    Gen Z networking | Wunderman Thompson Intelligence

    How you treat the ‘non-elite’ is key to beating populism | Financial Times – Middle-status people, social scientists have shown, are more conservative and cautious than the poor (who can afford to take risks because they have so little to lose) and elites (whose privilege allows them to bounce back from failures). They show more respect for authority for a simple reason: being “disruptive” may be highly valued among Silicon Valley elites but, in blue- or pink-collar jobs, it merely gets you fired

    Ethics

    Kanye West Used Porn, Bullying, ‘Mind Games’ to Control Staff – Rolling Stone – West looked down at his foot, stared up at the woman, and told her, “I want you to make me a shoe I can fuck.” Adidas representatives — including a vice president involved in the apparel giant’s billion-dollar licensing partnership with West’s influential brand — did not confront West about his alleged remark, the two attendees claim. The woman took a leave of absence before moving to a job elsewhere at Adidas (in an email, she declined to comment and requested that her name be withheld from this article.) Former Yeezy and Adidas employees, however, point to the alleged incident as one of many experiences — over the course of a decade — in which, they say, West used intimidation tactics with the staff of his fashion empire that were provocative, frequently sexualized, and often directed toward women. – what were Adidas doing and why the sudden change of conscience now, when all this was going on for the best part of a decade?

    Hong Kong

    6 former senior staff of Hong Kong’s Apple Daily plead guilty to collusion charge in national security case – Hong Kong Free Press HKFP – basically they held an editorial meeting

    Innovation

    The airport of the future is the airport of today — and that’s not good. – Papers, Please! 

    Japan

    Metabolism and the capsule building were a uniquely Japanese phenomenon. Its a much more expansive vision of manufactured housing than post war pre-fab housing in the west.

    The weak yen is an opportunity – by Noah Smith – Noahpinion 

    Korea

    Amazing retail and exhibition space in Korea’s second city, Busan: HYUNDAI MOTORSTUDIO BUSAN

    Luxury

    Rolex Is Reportedly Building a New $1 Billion Factory – Robb Report – it sounds like a large amount of money. However tooling on a car production line would be 150+ million pounds alone. Rolex makes everything on site, rather than relying on a range of supplier partners. 1 Billion dollars almost sounds cheap.

    Media

    Zuckerberg says WhatsApp business chat will drive sales sooner than metaverse | Reuters 

    ‘We’re mandating its use’: Estée Lauder turns to TikTok marketing after reach on Instagram stalls – Digiday – When Estée Lauder’s reach on Instagram started to slow across EMEA, its marketers turned to TikTok.  Obviously, there’s more to it. The early success of the brand’s global TikTok account, for one. But the crux of the brand’s decision to be on TikTok came down to Instagram. Estée Lauder’s marketers realized that no matter how big they tried to go in terms of reaching more people on the Meta-owned social network, they were stuck talking to a limited part of its desired audience, said Lubna Mohsin, the social media and content manager for Estée Lauder. Moreover, it was the same core people in the same cohort who were being reached over and again

    The tragic romance of China and Hollywood – The China Project – “Beijing offered up access to its market in exchange for a decade-long tutorial from Hollywood on how to replicate its filmmaking process.” Now that China has caught up (somewhat), there’s less incentive to collaborate. Beijing-based director Daniel Zhao agrees, with a caveat. “The overarching policy of the central government now is to build a self-reliant ecosystem (自循环 zìxúnhuán), but I do see gaps where China still needs to import international technology and personnel,” Zhao told The China Project. He has worked in China’s film industry for over a decade, including a stint with Fenton’s company DMG. China’s film industry has made great strides, thanks in part to its Hollywood’s partnerships. It is now home to some of the largest production sites in the world. China is rapidly developing new virtual production capabilities and improving its 3-D animation quality. In recent years, China has demonstrated that it can pioneer fresh aesthetics and produce domestic successes without Hollywood’s guidance.

    Amazon plans to invest $1B a year in movies for theaters – BNN Bloomberg 

    Online

    How retailers are reshaping the advertising industry | Financial Times – shopper marketing for e-tailing. Interesting how this budget would likely have been previously spent on paid placement in Google Shopping etc. and yet now in the shift to mobile Google (and other search engines) are now losing out on the opportunity for product search. Part of this is them re-optimising around local search like where’s the nearest coffee shop with free wifi and CBD infused kombucha? Meanwhile online retail destinations like eBay and Amazon became product search engines

    Evernote’s Next Move: Joining the Bending Spoons Suite of Apps | Evernote Blog – that looks like a sad end for an interesting app

    Which 3rd-Party Traffic Estimate Best Matches Google Analytics? – SparkToro – TL;DR none of them provide great results but SEMRush seems to do the best on balance. All of them have massive variances

    What about the layoffs at Meta and Twitter? Elon is crazy! WTF??? | I, Cringely – I first arrived in Silicon Valley in 1977 — 45 years ago. I was 24 years old and had accepted a Stanford fellowship paying $2,575 for the academic year. My on-campus apartment rent was $175 per month and a year later I’d buy my first Palo Alto house for $57,000 (sold 21 years later for $990,000). It was an exciting time to be living and working in Silicon Valley. And it still is. We’re right now in a period of economic confusion and reflection when many of the loudest voices have little to no sense of history. Well my old brain is crammed with history and I’m here to tell you that the current situation — despite the news coverage — is no big deal. This, too, shall pass – vintage Bob Cringely

    Technology

    Google’s Open Source Hardware Dreams – by Jon Y 

    Web of no web

    Defence industry catches up with the civil aviation world’s use of augmented reality to aid in aircraft maintenance and repair.

    Is Alexa working? — Benedict Evans and Amazon Is Gutting Its Voice Assistant Alexa | Business Insider – Alexa skills from Uber, Disney and Dominos Pizza failed to get engagement. Developer community was declining as well. I know that they focused on hospitality and healthcare like care homes later on

    Ways to think about a metaverse — Benedict Evans 

  • Michelin Snow Sock + more things

    Michelin Snow Sock

    The Michelin Snow Sock or to give it its proper name SOS GRIP(R) Evolution does a similar job to studded tyres or snow chains (often called RUD Chains after the German company RUD Ketten – a famous manufacturer of snow chains).

    snow sock

    The Michelin Snow Sock looks much easier to store and fit than snow chains and is likely to be less damaging to road surfaces. This new Michelin Snow Sock seems to rely on the black bands across the face of the tyre.

    A key difference is that snow chains can also be used in really muddy conditions and can be used to protect the tyres in hard surfaces such as quarries and mines – although this is usually the domain of a specialist product. You can’t doe these things with the Michelin Snow Sock.

    Inspecting a car before purchase

    Interesting tips on inspecting a car that you are interested in buying. Its interesting how democratised specialist tools have become.

    Twitter

    Professor Scott Galloway talks to Christiane Amanpour about the current economy and the rollercoaster moves at Twitter. My favourite quote from this, describing the recession as a ‘Patagonia vest’ recession affecting knowledge workers the most so far.

    Junya Watanabe Menswear Fall/Winter 2022

    I am about 10 months late to this, but Junya Watanabe did a menswear collaboration with Jay Kaye from Jamiroquai mirroring his mid-to-late 1990s style. Its a mix of indigenous wear that was popular from gap year students (or people who wanted that boho look), rave culture and Goa trance, sports wear and technical outdoor clothing.

    Here is the mini video look book that Junya Watanable made for the menswear collection.

    Here is the original video for Virtual Insanity

    Behind the scenes on how the Virtual Insanity video was made. How the effect was achieved was quite surprising.

    Shakatak

    I didn’t realise how popular jazz fusion group Shakatak was in Japan. To me there where pre-house UK dance music. I found this Japanese festival performance by them.

    The Tokyo Crossover Festival was was originally organised by the Kyoto Jazz Massive member Shuya Okino.

    It was April 2002. I was invited to the Future Jazz Festival held at Zagreb, Croatia. The well select lineup for this 3-days event was Victor Davies, Jessica Lauren, Rainer Truby, Azymuth, Zero dB and many more. The huge success all owed to Eddy & Duss and their incredible local support attracted 1500 enthusiastic people each day! Frankly, and forgive my ignorance, I was quite shocked. This was Zagreb, Croatia. The media that I was exposed to depict the negative image of an on-going civil war for all what I remember. Needless to say, I was inspired and at the same time wondered why Japan never had such festivals. Sure we have money-flowing mainstream Rock Festivals and Techno Festivals but nothing such as Deep House or Future Jazz festivals – which is surprising especially when Japan holds the biggest market share for such music. What is more depressing is that the “traditional” Jazz summer festival seems to be loosing its energy every year… I waited. I thought someone would eventually do the future-jazz festival here in Japan. There were few attempts but did not leave strong impact. Waited few more years…and thought it was time for me to take some action. I called it “Tokyo Crossover Jazz Festival”! This is the first year and I am treating it as an introduction or presentation for the successful year to come. Therefore, it will not be a gigantic outside “typical” festival but the main purpose for this first festival is to cause Crossover Jazz awareness and for artists who have same music vision to gather together. Of course, I am aiming for the fan-pleasing exciting showcases. We have a good “crossover” jazz scene in Japan and I want the fans, all over the world, to know. In the future, the festival will feature artists from Jazz, Techno, Hip- Hop, House and the music will cross all over – the ideal festival that I keep visioning and working hard for! At the end though, all I want for everyone and myself is to…have a good time!

    Shuya Okino (Kyoto Jazz Massive)

    Internet explained in five levels of difficulty

    I showed this to my Dad and he loved it. So I thought I would share it here too.

  • Fred Brooks

    Last week Fred Brooks died. Brooks was famous in technology circles who designed the IBM OS/360 operating software for the IBM System 360 series of mainframe computers. Some 50 years later, the computers that perform the equivalent tasks to the mainframe still ensure that they can run OS/360 application compatible code.

    IBM Mainframe

    The reason for this was that Fred Brooks did his job really well for mission critical business processes.

    OS/360

    OS/360 was remarkable. At the time IBM was the leading edge in computers. The 360 system was a major leap forward. It was able to support a wide array of applications, and it was one of the first operating systems to require direct-access storage devices – like a modern computer.

    The first release of OS/360 had about a million lines of code, much larger than any previous IBM operating system, and eventually grew to over 10 million lines of code. By comparison the latest version of macOS contains about 85 million lines of code and Google’s technology stack contains about 2 billion lines. But the IBM team that Fred Brooks worked with were doing this about 60 years ago, with all the limitations that that would have entailed.

    OS/360 is now in the public domain and its code is often poured over by computer science students looking to learn lessons from the past. That alone would have made Fred Brooks achievement live on today.

    Mythical Man-Month

    The journey to build OS/360 was to turn out as important as the software itself. Fred Brooks wrote a book based on his experiences and what he had witnessed during the development process. This was encapsulated in a book called The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering. You might not have heard of the book, but Fred Brooks offered insight for anyone managing complex projects. If you’ve experienced Agile and Scrum methodologies in work, you’ve experienced ideas that try and address the challenge that Brooks realised. Large programming projects suffer management problems different from small ones due to the division of labor; that the conceptual integrity of the product is therefore critical; and that it is difficult but possible to achieve this unity.

    The ideas within the Mythical Man-Month go beyond software engineering. We use his thinking in most of the advertising agencies that I have worked in.

    Polaris

    You can see Fred Brooks Mythical Man-Month principle turn up in all kinds of unusual places. My Dad worked on the UK’s Polaris ‘Resolution class’ submarine programme through the 1960s. Advertisements went into the newspapers of Ireland and former Commonwealth countries looking for time-served skilled tradesmen. My Dad worked alongside other Irishmen, people from Hong Kong and at least one Sikh man.

    The shipyard was paid by the Royal Navy on a cost plus basis, which meant that the yard was incentivised to have as many people working on the ship as possible, working as much overtime as they liked. The result meant that in a cramped space, there was a lot of people sitting around as they couldn’t physically work alongside other tradesmen.

    Which is why some authors have alleged that workers described these submarines as ‘gravy boats’; my Dad hadn’t hear of this term but doesn’t mean that some didn’t use it.

    With regards the conceptual integrity of the product; in a time before CAD systems, errors worked their way into working drawings over time.

    Obituary

    Fred Brooks obituary on Dave Farber’s Interesting People mailing list

    Frederick Brooks, the famed computer architect who discovered the software tar pit and designed OS/360, died Thursday. He also debunked the concept of the Mythical Man-Month in his book, writing: “Adding manpower to software project that is behind schedule delays it even longer.”

    A true icon, who won the Turing Award in 2000, Brooks was one of the great thinkers in computing. Industry tributes are pouring in the celebration of his contribution and life. 

    Further reading: His interview with Grady Booch for Computer History Museum [PDF].

    Original Interesting People list post (probably by David Farber)

  • OOPS + more things

    OOPS

    OOPS is Meta’s online operations support system. OOPS provides access to user accounts like a sys admin on a company IT network. If you’re a Meta employee, friends or family you can get hold of a concierge service to solve account related problems. It isn’t available to outsiders.

    Facebook Sign - Menlo Park

    It seems that OOPS has been used to reassign or disable accounts for profit and access wasn’t as controlled as it should be.

    The Meta OOPS scandal made me wonder if OnlyFans performer Kitty Lixo had actually been gaslit about her account by Meta employees, rather than being helped out in return for sex. Lixo has gone from having an Instagram account with 199,000 followers to two smaller accounts with under 20,000 followers combined at the time of writing.

    “We met up and I f**ked a couple of them and I was able to get my account back two-three times,” Kitty Lixo said, recommending others with locked accounts to continue reaching out to the platform for eventual ban reversal.

    OnlyFans Star Says She Slept With Meta Employees to Get Instagram Unbanned by Nick Mordowanec (May 20, 2022) Newsweek

    China

    Morgan Stanley on how the 20th Party Congress was likely to affect the economy China Outlook: Thoughts on the Market | Morgan Stanley and more here from SOAS: Xi’s vision for China after the 20th Congress – SOAS China Institute 

    Chinese owner of British Steel breaks investment promise | Daily Telegraph 

    Newport Wafer Fab: Anger in Beijing as UK forces Chinese tech firm to sell controlling stake | Business News | Sky News 

    China’s Birth Rate Fell to Another Record Low in 2021, Gov’t Confirms despite measures taken by the government to increase the birth rate

    Ethics

    Offered without comment: Keurig Dr Pepper In Midst Of PR Agency Review – one-year payment terms leave agencies unimpressed.

    Finance

    Binance was soliciting SG users without license, MAS says | Techinasia 

    Germany

    Mercedes - an electric car company

    VW and Mercedes’ electric-car ambitions run into trouble forcing the German firms to re-evaluate strategies | South China Morning Post – New VW CEO Oliver Blume is re-evaluating the strategies set out by former CEO Herbert Diess after a number of setbacks. Mercedes’ struggles with its top-of-the-line EV model in China could set back plans to go all-electric in key markets by 2030 – the Chinese electric market could be the graveyard of the German car industry

    Hong Kong

    ‘Here to stay’: Colchester’s Hongkongers on making new lives in the UK | UK news | The Guardian 

    Ideas

    Subscription Pricing Coming to Features Your Car Already Has – a $25-per-month charge for advanced cruise control or $10 to access heated seats? What if those charges continued long after your car was paid off?  …As vehicles become increasingly connected to the internet, car companies aim to rake in billions by having customers pay monthly or annual subscriptions to access certain features. Not content with the relatively low-margin business of building and selling cars, automakers are eager to pull down Silicon Valley-style profits. For automakers, the advantage of this model is clear. …Not only do they get a stream of recurring revenue for years after an initial purchase, they can hope to maintain a longer-term relationship with the customer and build brand loyalty, said Kristin Kolodge, vice president and head of auto benchmarking and mobility development at J.D. Power. – I suspect that this will only work if every car was on a lease agreement and if that’s the case then there are lots of negative impact from old cars that need to be written off that outweigh this business model. Secondly, there is an expectation that all of the vehicle will conform to Moore’s Law.

    Innovation

    Leading scientist calls on China to share gene data 

    Real time tool detects deep fake videos in milliseconds … 

    What about the layoffs at Meta and Twitter? Elon is crazy! WTF??? | I, Cringely – I first arrived in Silicon Valley in 1977 — 45 years ago. I was 24 years old and had accepted a Stanford fellowship paying $2,575 for the academic year. My on-campus apartment rent was $175 per month and a year later I’d buy my first Palo Alto house for $57,000 (sold 21 years later for $990,000). It was an exciting time to be living and working in Silicon Valley. And it still is. We’re right now in a period of economic confusion and reflection when many of the loudest voices have little to no sense of history. Well my old brain is crammed with history and I’m here to tell you that the current situation — despite the news coverage — is no big deal. This, too, shall pass – vintage Bob Cringely

    Japan

    Sony-Honda venture plans to tap entertainment prowess for its electric cars | Financial Times 

    Korea

    The Seoul Retail Edition – by Guest Contributor 

    Media

    Disney: return of the Jedi brings new hope — temporarily | Financial Times

    How Did AT&T’s $100 Billion Time Warner Deal Go So Wrong? – The New York Times 

    Online

    Meet Unstable Diffusion, the group trying to monetize AI porn generators | TechCrunch 

    11 (and counting) things journalism loses if Elon Musk destroys Twitter | Nieman Journalism Lab 

    Software

    SwiftKey is unexpectedly back on iOS – The Verge 

    Technology

    Qualcomm steps up Oryon battle with ARM | EE TImes 

    Telecoms

    Meta implements new timing protocol in its data centers – SiliconANGLE 

    Tools

    Kiwix on the App Store – this is available on Mac and iOS app stories. It allows you to view an offline version of Wikipedia, Project Gutenberg and Khan Academy modules. Ideal for when you’re unplugged.

    Where to find Apple’s official 872-page iPhone user manual you never knew existed | BGR