Ged Carroll

Category: france | 法國 | 프랑스 | フランス

Salut! – welcome to the France category of this blog. This is where I share anything that relates to the Republic of France, business issues relating to the France, the French people or culture.

France in some ways feels outside Europe. It has the biggest love of Japanese culture from all European countries. It has also cut a swathe in science fiction and graphic novels. France also does things differently like doing big infrastructure better than other European countries such as high speed rail or civilian nuclear power. Skills that the UK seems to have lost somewhere around the OPEC oil crisis of 1973.

On the flipside, there are aspects of France that define Europe, such as the George V Hotel or the country’s luxury powerhouses LVMH and Hermes.

Often posts that appear in this category will appear in other categories as well. So if Renault launched a new advertising campaign. And that I thought was particularly interesting or noteworthy, that might appear in branding as well as France.

So far, I haven’t had too much French related content here at the moment. That’s just the way things work out sometimes.

I don’t tend to comment on local politics because I don’t understand it that well, but I am interested when it intersects with business. An example of this would be legal issues affecting the media sector for instance.

If there are French related subjects that you think would fit with this blog, feel free to let me know by leaving a comment in the ‘Get in touch’ section of this blog here.

  • November 2023 newsletter – fourth time unlucky?

    November 2023 newsletter introduction

    You’re still reading? Great! Welcome to my November 2023 newsletter which marks my 4th issue.

    https://flic.kr/p/2pEXND8

    I am not excessively superstitious – but living in Hong Kong rubbed off a bit on me.

    https://flic.kr/p/dTfsCs

    I developed a love of milk tea, found the ‘hit women’ cathartic and am still leery of the number 4. 

    The number 4 is considered unlucky. In Hong Kong buildings, there is no fourth floor – in a similar way to their being no 13th floor in the UK high rise and office blocks. So I hope that this fourth issue doesn’t bring misfortune.

    The clocks have gone back and the sun rises reluctantly over the horizon every morning, disappearing earlier each afternoon, but that doesn’t mean that inspiration stops. And it will be Christmas before you know it.

    New reader?

    If is your first time reading, welcome to my November 2023 newsletter! You can find my regular writings here and more about me here. 

    Things I’ve written.

    • Dimensions of Luxury based on a mix of stuff that I have read from Sense Worldwide, Horizon Catalyst and books on luxury trends.
    • Every wondered why its dot com rather than full-stop com? So did I.
    • Analysis on IPSOS research on the value to brands of reputation.
    • MCN – multi-channel networks. A business type popular in China and Japan is taking a record label approach to a stable of influencers.
    • A little bit about the Whole Earth Catalogue and more things.
    • The Brand Vandals conversation – reflecting back on a conversation I had in 2012 with Wadds that became part his book Brand Vandals.
    Kruger National Park

    Books that I have read.

    • Material World: A Substantial Story of Our Past and Future by Ed Conway. Prior to working in advertising, I had a background in manufacturing and consider myself reasonably well read, but some of the material in Conway’s book was completely new to me. Its narrative approach reminds me of the vintage TV documentary series Connections presented by James Burke, that can be found on YouTube.
    • Beyond Disruption by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne. This book looked at non-disruptive innovation. This is diametrically opposed to the way innovation is discussed in Silicon Valley and the mainstream media. More on my view of it here.
    • The New Working Class by Claire Ainsley. In the advertising industry, we have an acute perception that we might not understand life outside the M25 as we think we do. I thankfully have friends and family in the North to keep me somewhat grounded from the metropolitan elite lifestyle that I lead. Until I read this book, I didn’t realise how grounded the advertising industry was compared to our counterparts in national politics. That this book had to be written is a damning indictment of how out of touch politicos actually are. 

    Things I have been inspired by.

    Project Gutenberg Open Audiobook project – Microsoft, and MIT have worked together to create thousands of free and open audiobooks using text-to-speech technology and Project Gutenberg’s open-access collection of e-books. Via Matt’s Webcurios newsletter.

    IPSOS research video seminar on Unlocking The Value of Reputation. This is the closest I have seen to making the case for earned media activities. The full whitepaper is available here. Thanks to Stuart Bruce for the link!

    My friend Ian recommended the Honest Broker newsletter to me and I have found it to be a great read alongside my long time subscription to Bill Bishop’s Sinocism.

    DDB Remedy’s meta analysis of marketing science work and academic scientific research on how emotion work for effective campaigns. How The Unexpected and Emotion Work to Influence Behaviour Change – focuses on how surprise when paired with emotion led creative had an increased impact. It all makes sense when you think about the power of salience and distinctiveness in communications; but it’s great to see that someone has drawn the multi-disciplinary research together in a cogent argument.

    SEMRush have published a report for 2024 trends in social media platforms: The Vision in a Social Era that is worth downloading and pillaging for ideas that can be sold into clients.

    I don’t know if inspired was the right term to use but I noticed 2023 Girlguiding Girl’s Attitudes survey thanks to a former colleague of mine from the start of my agency career. This is a survey that the Girlguiding movement has run over 15 years. Having freelanced on Dove’s ‘Real Beauty‘ campaign back in the day, this one statistic stood out to me.

    IMG_20230910_121647

    If I were the Dove UK brand director at Unilever, this chart would be pinned to my wall or have it as my laptop wallpaper. You can read the full survey here.

    It isn’t just a UK problem as this article on American teens gives more food for thought: What It’s Like to Be a 13-Year-Old Girl Today – The New York Times. It will be interesting to see if the Nike x Dove Body Confidence initiative makes a difference.

    DeBeers is returning to its ‘A Diamond Is Forever’ campaign. The print campaign image is beautiful with a great use of negative space. DeBeers is spending 20 million dollars on media in the US in China. In the US, I think this makes total sense.

    https://flic.kr/p/2p2MyjH
    DeBeers

    I don’t know how well it will work in China? There isn’t the mental model built up in west over decades around the campaign theme. While the wealthy in China realise that diamonds are recognised as a store of wealth – the guo chao mindset may see gold (and possibly jade) jewellery favoured by at least some younger consumers.

    This has been exacerbated by a decline in the number of marriages by just under 11% and a trend to prefer gold has an 18% reduction in diamonds sold in China over the past 12 months. In the meantime the sale of gold has risen by 12%. 

    I look forward to seeing how the campaign goes.

    According to Numerator, online retail platforms will be the big winners from Christmas shopping. The news for the food and beverage services sector isn’t so great.

    https://youtu.be/ZRARNen92og?si=Z0Eqx2WBFxp_2Bn-

    Finally ‘Knowledge is Power with Kidney Disease took me back to 1988. Rob Base has remade It Takes Two for Bohringer Ingelheim in the US to highlight the linkage between kidney disease and type two diabetes. The message is poignant as Base’s creative partner DJ EZ Rock died in 2014 and suffered from diabetes. 

    Producer DJ EZ Rock was responsible for the hype backing track based around Lynn Collins ‘Think (about it)’ and backing vocals from Rhonda Parris. (Parris has a short-lived recording career, releasing just one solo single No, No Love – a bit of a proto-House banger heavily influenced by freestyle if you like that kind of thing). Those that knew also had the Derek B remix of It Takes Two, with a heavy kick drum underpinning from a Roland TR-808 drum machine. 

    Things I have watched. 

    It’s cold and dark and I make no apology for my films being unapologetically escapist and and entertaining to try and counterweight the drab conditions. I do have some standards through and got material for this November 2023 newsletter.

    • Zerozerozero – follows a single drug deal between the Mexican cartel and the ’Ndrangheta. However things don’t go according to plan, so as the conspiracy unfolds we get a walk through the international drug trafficking trade across Latin America, Africa and Europe. This was done as a limited series, but I watched it as a boxset. It is directed by Stefano Sollima who did the Sicario films and Subarra.
    • Novembre – A French fictional dramatisation of the government response to coordinated terrorist attacks in Paris at Stade de France and the Bataclan concert venue through to the Saint Dennis raid that resulted in the death of police dog Diesel, which trended on social media with the #jesuisdiesel hashtag. Jean Dujardin shows the range of his ability as an actor from the comedy of his OSS117 film series, to the deadly seriousness of this film.
    • Diva – I originally watched Diva as part of the Moviedrome series of curated films introduced by Alex Cox. At the time Cox personally disliked the film due to it being ‘a film of style’ rather than narrative. I loved it and revisited it on Blu-Ray. It was sharper and I got to appreciate the Vladimir Cosma soundtrack with its mix of opera, classical music and avant-garde compositions.
    Alex Cox’s introduction to Diva for the much missed Moviedrome film seasons that used to run on BBC 2.
    • The Continental – Amazon Prime Video has some great tentpole content and The Continental adds to this. It’s a prequel of sorts to the John Wick universe and starts with a beautifully made feature length pilot. The action would find it hard to live up to the John Wick films, but the impeccable soundtrack manages to surpass them. The alternative past New York of the film has similar vibes to shows like Pennyworth and Gotham. 

    Useful tools

    Better Miro, Mural or Figjam alternative

    I have started using Milanote as an alternative to Miro for personal projects. Like Miro it has a mix of templates to get you started. There is an iPhone app and a native Mac app, so you don’t have to rely on running resource hungry pages in your internet browser of choice. It might even replace Omnigraffle in my personal software stack for some of the tasks that I do.

    https://flic.kr/p/2p4WvRm

    The sales pitch.

    It was great to collaborate this month with my Hong Kong and Shanghai-based friends at Craft Associates on a prospective exciting new project. Now taking bookings for strategic engagements or discussions on permanent roles. Contact me here.

    The End.

    Ok this is the end of my November 2023 newsletter, I hope to see you all back here again in a month. Be excellent to each other. Let me know what you think or if you have any recommendations to be featured in forthcoming issues. 

  • Dimensions of luxury

    Dimensions of luxury as a post came together thinking about fictional influence account Gstaad Guy, Horizon Catalyst’s New Codes of Luxury report and Sense Worldwide’s Future of Luxury report.

    https://flic.kr/p/31RT6g

    Dimensions of luxury breaks down into three areas which Catalyst calls:

    • Traditional luxury
    • Contemporary luxury
    • Personal luxury

    Nowadays, most luxury brands won’t fit neatly into these classifications. For instance the Swiss watch brand Blancpain would be considered to be traditional luxury, but the Swatch x Blancpain collaboration which borrows the design language of the 50 Fathoms dive watch is very much contemporary luxury. Part of this has been driven by many brands being part of large combines:

    • LVMH – depending when you look at the stock price, Europe’s largest company by value run by Bernard Arnault. Related to L Catterton private equity fund which has been financed deals such as Birkenstocks.
    • Kering – LVMH’s rival best known for Gucci. It is currently run by François-Henri Pinault
    • Richemont – Swiss listed group focused more on jewellery and watches than rivals. It has a range of brands including Dunhill, Montblanc and Panerai.
    • Swatch Group – which owns most of Switzerland’s premier watch brands
    • Fosun – China-based multi-sector conglomerate which owns a hodge podge of western heritage and luxury brands including Ahava, Folli Follie, Lanvin, Sergio Rossi, Silver Cross prams and St John knitwear.

    Notable independents include The Rolex Trust and Hermés.

    Traditional luxury

    Unsurprisingly this is the kind of luxury that most people would think of. Timeless style, heirloom designs and peerless quality are likely to be the kind of language that springs to mind. When the luxury industry talks about sustainability and the circular economy, the lives of these traditional luxury products come into focus, since they are often passed down. The influencer behind Gstaad Guy in an interview with the FT talks about his favourite item of clothing being a Loro Piana vest that was his Grandad’s.

    What we think of as ‘traditional’ luxury brands came out of businesses with heritage that are known for their quality

    • Loro Piana and Zegna were both high end fabric manufacturers before becoming ‘luxury brands’
    • Rolex made high quality reliable tool watches, as did Omega and Panerai.
    • Louis Vuitton made high quality robust trunks for travellers.
    • Zero Halliburton and Rimowa made cases that were ideal for air travel and protecting sensitive instruments and camera equipment. The Halliburton in Zero Halliburton actually refers to Halliburton Company who are famous for providing oilfield services.

    Contemporary luxury

    Contemporary luxury is where the greatest controversies of luxury tend to lie. Horizon Catalyst tend to tie up premium brands like AirBnB and Apple together with the luxury sector. It includes values like innovation and sustainability. But it doesn’t discuss what Dana Thomas calls the massification of luxury, with traditional European brands being more often being ‘Made In China’. This has driven a drive for brands to try and ‘shortcut’ their way to success. Luxury brands have adopted the techniques of streetwear brands were scarcity and limited drops fuel the ‘hype’. What Sense Worldwide called ‘Supremification’. Chanel is opening special UHNWI only boutiques. And ‘Made In China’ allowed China to develop its own ateliers.

    Personal luxury

    Catalyst defines personal luxury as subjective in nature, individual to each person and having a deeper connection with personal values. It could be items that might be considered treats like having their groceries delivered. Their discussion of everyday luxury would be familiar to marketers in terms of the ‘Lipstick effect’ familiar from Juliet Schor’s work during recessions. But it’s interesting that luxury is being defined by consumers and followed by brands. The classic example of this would be brands from Nike to LVMH getting on board with NFTs, following consumers and creators.

    Further information

    Best of Tatler Hong Kong: The price of viral fashion | Tatler Asia 

    Luxury Brands | Cultural Shifts | Horizon Catalyst 

    Future of Luxury | Sense Worldwide

    Deluxe: How Luxury Lost its Lustre by Dana Thomas

    Louis Vuitton, Supreme: streetwear & luxury brands | renaissance chambara

    Gstaad Guy, the man who turned a lifestyle parody into a luxury brand | FT How To Spend It magazine

    Something New For The 1%: Private Chanel Stores | Highsnobriety

    The Overspent American by Juliet Schor

  • Deluxe – how luxury lost it’s lustre

    I had this copy of Deluxe on my shelf for a while and finally managed got round to reading it. Deluxe – how luxury lost its lustre was written by Dana Thomas. Dana knows the subject that she’s talking about.

    Rosia

    Dana Thomas

    Dana Thomas is a Paris-based journalist who covered the fashion industry. Thomas started her journalistic career writing for the ‘style’ section of The Washington Post. For a decade and a half Thomas was a cultural and fashion correspondent for Newsweek in Paris. She has contributed to The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar and Architectural Digest. Deluxe is one of three books that she has written, the other is Fashionopolis, which focuses on the fast fashion industry and Gods and Kings covered the career of fashion designers Alexander McQueen and John Galliano.

    Deluxe – How Luxury Lost its Lustre

    In the introduction starts with a scatter gun approach. She bemoans Gucci and Burberry factory seconds on sale in China, revealing the global supply chain used by luxury brands now. She also criticises that luxury goods are used as currency by some sex workers from compensated dating to ‘returning gifts’ and pocketing the difference minus a restocking fee.

    I get the sense that Thomas would like to see these companies remain small ‘secrets’ only known by a cosmopolitan cognoscenti, obviously including herself. What my younger peers would call ‘gatekeeping’ in a derogatory way.

    Parasite singles

    Most of Thomas’ ire focuses on Louis Vuitton early on. She describes Bernard Arnaud in unflattering terms and makes the globalisation of the brand sound like a mix of a happy accident and opportunity. Along the way she critiques the weakness of Japanese society’s love for luxury goods down to subtle social signalling and ‘parasite singles’ – young women living at home with their parents who spend their disposable income on luxury goods.

    (The reality is that could be young people with a job in Spain or Italy either as east Asians and Southern Europeans tend to only move out of home to marry or to follow work or education.)

    Japanese tourists took their luxury shopping abroad, taking advantage of duty-free shopping. It’s no coincidence that LVMH owns DFS (Duty Free Shopping) outlets across America and the Pacific rim. Some of the lessons that DFS and LVMH learned selling to Japanese luxury buyers, such last late closing, you can still see in showrooms across the Asia Pacific region.

    Jumping from Japanese duty free shoppers in Hawaii, Thomas moves on to the connection between a generation of Italian designers and Hollywood. Richard Gere’s star power was as much down to his styling making him look the part by Giorgio Armani as it was to his considerable acting prowess.

    From Hollywood, the book delves into the perfume operations of the design houses. It highlights how perfume formulation moved from being an in-house activity for design houses to being outsourced to a few specialists companies who work with a ‘creative brief’.

    Quality issues

    The area where I can agree most with Thomas is around the decline in quality of luxury goods. Deluxe approaches this from the different tactics that luxury companies have used to conceal their use of Chinese factories. However as Apple has shown, made in China doesn’t necessarily mean cheap or poorly made. Indeed, a decade and a half after Deluxe was written, we’re seeing local luxury brands displacing international luxury brands in the Chinese market for several reasons, usually explained using the term ‘guo chao‘.

    Thomas estimates that there at least four factories in China who manufacture most of the luxury industry’s handbags and leather goods – alongside private label brands for department stores and supermarkets. I was surprised that even back in 2004, manufacturing in China only saved 30 percent of the bill of materials.

    The book goes on to cover the cost cutting that has gone into luxury products, from clothes with cheap stitching, skipped tailoring such as no lining in jackets and dresses. Thomas highlights that these changes happened to allow luxury to go mass market. Luxury then followed customers out of the office or the salon into all aspects of their life including sportswear and ‘streetwear’. What my friend Jeremy calls the ‘Supremification’ of luxury.

    The reliance on the mass market bought about two challenges in Thomas’ eyes:

    • Counterfeit products that are almost indistinguishable from the real thing by experts
    • Rockier finances for the large luxury corporates who are no longer sheltered from economic cycles by the continued spending of ultra high net worth individuals.

    The future

    Thomas left us with two parts to what we saw the future of luxury looking like:

    • The continued pursuit of emerging markets with India replacing China due to demographics.
    • The new luxury of industry specialists spinning off and creating new houses, because they were jaded with the existing business practices and structures. The book highlights Tom Ford; who recently gave up his label and sold it on in November 2022 to cosmetics business Estée Lauder and fellow fashion house Ermenegildo Zegna.

    In summary

    Dana Thomas’ Deluxe is a book of its time in the early to mid 2000s. Thomas clearly has some bias’ due to history with some of the protagonists, which is worthwhile bearing in mind. The historical part of the book is useful; but the luxury industry has moved on and in some ways the problems are now much worse. With those provisos in mind, I can recommend the book as a background read on the luxury sector.

    More book reviews here.

  • August 2023 newsletter – the pioneer edition

    August 2023 newsletter

    The August 2023 newsletter was inspired by LinkedIn’s in-built newsletter function. It’s almost the bank holiday so I thought I would spend some time to try out the newsletter function in LinkedIn.

    Strategic outcomes

    If you’re reading this, you’re a pioneer! If this goes well I will put one out each month. You can find my regular writings here and more about me here. 

    Things I’ve written.

    Books that I have read.

    • Chip War by Chris Miller. You can read my full review here. 

    Things I have been inspired by.

    Design render
    • How left wing politics inspired Prada’s clothing designs. 
    • Encouraging empathy for people with dementia in Japan with the restaurant of mistaken orders (scoll to the end here to find out more).

    Things I have watched. 

    • Three Body Problem. Chinese adaption by Tencent Video and made available for FREE on their YouTube channel. Don’t worry it has English subtitles. This is based on the blockbuster novel The Three Body Problem by Chinese science fiction author du jour Cixin Liu. The three books in the series are all fantastic and there is soon to be a Netflix adaption as well. 
    • The Peripheral on Amazon Prime Video. An ambitious adaption of William Gibson’s novel of the same name. Amazon Studios recently cancelled the next season of this drama, which is a real shame as its one of the stand out series amongst the content on Prime Video. 
    • Un Flic and Le Samourai – the magical formula of French new wave director Jean-Pierre Melville and actor Alain Delon created some iconic crime films that inspired directors in Hollywood, Hong Kong and Japan.  

    The sales pitch.

    Available for strategic engagements in the autumn. Contact me here.

    The End.

    Congratulations, you’re reached the end of the August 2023 newsletter. Until next month: be excellent to each other. Let me know what you think or if you have any recommendations to be featured in forthcoming issues. 

  • Decivilisation + more things

    Decivilisation

    President Macron

    The Threat of Decivilisation | Quillette – President Macron when having a Chatham House type discussion with sociology experts used the phrase processus de décivilisation – as a descriptor for the widespread civil and political unrest that has rocked France.

    https://flic.kr/p/2omjVCX
    Rishi Sunak and Emmanuel Macron

    On the face of it, decivilisation is an appropriate term if Macron believed that there was something rotten at the centre of French society. But the phrase decivilisation is problematic and Macron has been capitalised by French on the political left.

    Renaud Camus

    The crux of the left’s criticism is a work by the author Renaud Camus. Camus became famous writing a book called Tricks about a series of up to 45 stories (depending which edition you read) about one-night stands he had travelling around the world as a gay man in the late 1970s. Decades later Camus became more famous for his contributions to ideas of the far right, notably the great replacement concept in reaction to increased immigration in France from former French colonies. While these works were published in French they were summarised for English readers in his book You Will Not Replace Us!

    In his works he describes the gradual takeover of France as decivilisation.

    The left

    The left drew a line between Camus work and Macron’s phrase and assumed that it was a way to build a bridge to the resurgent far right in France.

    The reality is more complex. The degree of change in French society has driven backlashes in French society, in a similar way that Brexit and small boat immigration did in the UK. The problem for the left is that these reactionaries would have been natural constituents of the left. The left, like in many countries, instead has pivoted to degree educated urban dwellers, abandoning the workers to the far right.

    Is French society really breaking down?

    It’s hard to tell whether ‘decivilisation’ is really happening. Civil disturbances tend to happen during times of economic unrest and in the past has been a reset. There is a body of opinion who believe that social media has its thumb on the scales, driving things harder and faster without a countervailing force to help balance things out over time, like happened in previous decades.

    Beauty

    Shiseido will ‘turn away’ from heavy promotions in China to achieve sustainable sales growth | Cosmetics Design Asia – heavy promotion during China’s shopping festivals just cheapens the brands and educates Chinese consumers to wait until 11.11 and similar

    China

    Most mainland Chinese flying overseas via Hong Kong as talks on adding flights between country and US drag, global airline body says | South China Morning Post 

    China’s New ‘Anti-Espionage Law’ Raises Complex Compliance Issues for Multinational Corporations – Publications | Morgan Lewis – handy paper that you can download

    Microsoft to move top AI experts from China to new lab in Canada | Financial Times – I think there is a question of whether these researchers will be able to leave China or even stay with Microsoft…

    Economics

    Europe’s new success stories are built on high luxury, not high tech | Financial Times

    Greggs and Pret index reveals England’s true north-south divide, say scientists | North-south divide | The Guardian

    Energy

    Japan Recommits to the Hydrogen Society – Akihabara News

    Ethics

    I love electric vehicles – and was an early adopter. But increasingly I feel duped | Rowan Atkinson | The Guardian 

    Finance

    Has China become too cosy with private equity? | Financial Times

    Japan Rail Companies Limit Train Passes Due to Chip Shortage – these stored value cards also allow consumers to buy things in combinis as well as travel. They are similar to Hong Kong’s Octopus cards. What’s happening to the chips through? Japanese YouTubers have published advisory videos around the debacle for tourists to Japan. It seems to be a drive towards registration as much as anything else

    Hong Kong

    Hong Kong to review car plate searches after journalist wins final appeal against conviction over accessing info for doc. – interesting that Ms Choy won her case

    ‘Phenomenon’ behind organ donor withdrawals similar to 2019 ‘black riots,’ says Hong Kong’s John Lee

    The rise of Hong Kongers moving abroad: Diaspora, part 2: And shalt be dispersed | Brian Kern 

    Luxury

    From Hèrmes To Bored Ape Yacht Club: The Problem With Protecting Brand IPs In Web3 | Jing Daily – a digital cesspit

    Cigars are still a thing. This looks like a feature length video produced in conjunction between the YouTuber and a cigar manufacturer.

    Marketing

    Multi-factored reasons in nature why campaigns seem to be working less well. We know that as campaigns have become more digital, campaigns have been less effective and marketers being less confident in their campaigns. Interesting the way brand building on digital is danced around. The channels often dont work and measures are BS only a technologist would love.

    Materials

    Rich Rare Earth Elements Deposit Found in Americas | EPS News 

    Media

    Unretiring. (original post) | by John Battelle | May, 2023 | Medium – John Battelle between projects and not willing to engage with VC funding again

    Online

    Are we approaching the age of digital disengagement? MIDIA Research 

    NetEase’s expansion to the West is in full swing | MIDIA Research – avoiding the uncertain home regulatory environment

    Children’s Media Lives – Ofcom 

    Communist party accessed Hong Kong protesters’ TikTok data, former executive says | TikTok | The Guardian 

    After Nissan, Singapore Airlines is the latest brand to take its influence from a popular YouTube channel’s content: The Sound of Singapore Airlines – Beats to relax to – YouTube – Singapore Airlines does its own version of Lo-Fi Girl

    Retailing

    SHEIN Has Bootlegged the Air Jordan 11 | Lifestyle Asia 

    ChatGPT is used in China for Amazon listings, flirting – Rest of World

    Security

    Suspicious Activity: What Are German Fighter Pilots Doing in China? – DER SPIEGEL

    Jamming JDAM: The Threat to US Munitions from Russian Electronic Warfare | Royal United Services Institute 

    Cybersecurity at Risk in Automotive Industry – EE Times – worthwhile reading in the context of the Hyundai | Kia case brought by New York: New York sues Hyundai and Kia over ‘explosion’ of car thefts | Financial Times

    British Airways, Boots and BBC among companies hit by cyber security attack | Financial Times

    University of Manchester suffered a cyber attack | Security Affairs 

    China is building the most powerful warship radar on record: scientists | South China Morning Post – based on technology from a UK semiconductor company a Chinese state owned enterprise bought when it went into administration in 2008

    How hacking could affect food security and jailbreaking agricultural machinery.

    Software

    INFER Public | The Pub Blog – INFER forecasters: Don’t expect GPT-5 anytime soon probably not: Will OpenAI Ever launch GPT-5? Sam Altman Has The Answer / Digital Information World

    The Illusion of China’s AI Prowess | Foreign Affairs and The bearable mediocrity of Baidu’s ChatGPT competitor Ernie Bot | MIT Technology Review

    Sci-fi writer Ted Chiang: ‘The machines we have now are not conscious’ | Financial Times

    Technology

    Marvell Launches Interconnects on TSMC’s 3-nm Process – EE Times 

    Global Rise in Industrial Robot Density: China Surpasses the US – China Internet Watch – interesting. One has to keep an eye out on where the data is from and the tension between current high Chinese young adult and graduate unemployment, aging population and innovation. Finally not all robots are created equal

    Telecoms

    A global satellite blackout is a real threat — can hackers help? | Financial Times

    Web of no web

    Partnership Takes Wi-Fi HaLow to the Next Level – EE Times