Ged Carroll

Category: innovation | 革新 | 독창성 | 改変

Innovation, alongside disruption are two of the most overused words in business at the moment. Like obscenity, many people have their own idea of what innovation is.

Judy Estrin wrote one of the best books about the subject and describes it in terms of hard and soft innovation.

  • Hard innovation is companies like Intel or Qualcomm at the cutting edge of computer science, materials science and physics
  • Soft innovation would be companies like Facebook or Yahoo!. Companies that might create new software but didn’t really add to the corpus of innovation

Silicon Valley has moved from hard to soft innovation as it moved away from actually making things. Santa Clara country no longer deserves its Silicon Valley appellation any more than it deserved the previous ‘garden of delights’ as the apricot orchards turned into factories, office campus buildings and suburbs. It’s probably no coincidence that that expertise has moved east to Taiwan due to globalisation.

It can also be more process orientated shaking up an industry. Years ago I worked at an agency at the time of writing is now called WE Worldwide. At the time the client base was predominantly in business technology, consumer technology and pharmaceutical clients.

The company was looking to build a dedicated presence in consumer marketing. One of the business executives brings along a new business opportunity. The company made fancy crisps (chips in the American parlance). They did so using a virtual model. Having private label manufacturers make to the snacks to their recipe and specification. This went down badly with one of the agency’s founders saying ‘I don’t see what’s innovative about that’. She’d worked exclusively in the IT space and thought any software widget was an innovation. She couldn’t appreciate how this start-ups approach challenged the likes of P&G or Kraft Foods.

  • RISC V + other news

    RISC V

    There is heat starting to generate (finally) behind RISC V: Marvell founders back data centre RISC-V chiplet startup | EE News Europe  and Apple is doing their due diligence with a RISC V code port: Apple is Reportedly Designing Various Embedded Subsystems across all Operating Systems using RISC-V – Patently Apple  – is now exploring and developing various embedded subsystems across all Operating Systems using RISC V. The emerging Open Source RISC V architecture is now being used by companies like Nvidia, Google, Oculus, Qualcomm, Rambus and others for IoT devices to supercomputers, smartwatches and autonomous vehicles. Amazon and Alibaba are currently designing their own cloud and data center chips. This week Apple was shown to be recruiting RISC V “high-performance programmers. More specifically, Apple is currently seeking out experienced programmers with detailed knowledge of the RISC V instruction set architecture (ISA) and Arm’s Neon vector ISA for the Vector and Number Group (VaNG) of its core operating system group. Apple’s VaNG is responsible for the development and improvement of various embedded subsystems running on iOS, macOS, watchOS and tvOS. – Not surprising that Apple will be keeping its options open for porting across architectures including RISC V, like it did with Intel and ARM respectively. Apple has taken a similar approach for decades. Apple had the Rosetta Stone version of Intel instructions years before it moved the Mac to Intel. RISC V came out of a research requirement for an open-source computer system and was started in 2010. RISC V was originally thought of as a fun 3 month research project… RISC V designs and specifications were released under a BSD and Creative Commons licence. The foundation overseeing RISC V is based in Switzerland to get around US trade sanctions against potential adoptees like China (or North Korea)

    Business

    Corporate America fights uphill battle against anti-China push – POLITICO – there will come a point where this starts costing them sales in the home market and I see that day coming soon

    Australia’s education industry facing US$15 billion loss as frustrated, worried students ponder futures | South China Morning Post  – Australia’s international education sector was worth around A$40 billion (US$29 billion) in 2019 before the coronavirus pandemic. But students, the majority who come from China, are considering their options as Australia’s borders remained closed – on balance this could be good for Australia as it would also remove a lever of soft power that China has in Australia with subverted academia. This also makes you wonder about the craven nature of UK universities: Universities hire planes to fly in China students | News | The Sunday Times  – There are about 220,000 Chinese students studying in the UK. Across the Russell Group, one in every ten students is Chinese, and they provide nearly a fifth of all tuition fee income, worth an estimated £1.3 billion every year. In Glasgow, about a third of the university’s tuition income comes from Chinese students. At Liverpool University, one in five of its students in 2019 was Chinese — these 5,550 students were worth an estimated £90 million to the university. Experts warned that universities were at risk of overlooking the needs of British youngsters as they fretted over the potential loss of fee income from their overseas students, who pay up to £35,000 a year in fees, nearly four times the fees paid by their British counterparts

    China Evergrande bonds suspended as prices plunge | Reuters  – The Shanghai Stock Exchange said in a statement that it had temporarily suspended trading in China Evergrande Group’s 6.98% July 2022 corporate bond following “abnormal fluctuations.” The exchange had also suspended trading in the bond on Friday. Shanghai exchange data showed the bonds sliding more than 25% to a low of 40.18 yuan after the resumption of trade on Monday afternoon. The company’s 5.9% May 2023 Shenzhen-traded bond , which was also suspended, fell more than 35% after trading resumed – read with Soho China shares plunge 40% after Blackstone deal collapses | Financial Times  – this isn’t just about a property sector rout, but also about the founders wanting to be independent of China moving forwards

    Deutsche Telekom deepens bet on US market with SoftBank deal | Financial Times

    In the driver’s seat: China’s electric vehicle makers target Europe | Merics – Government subsidies for China-based manufacturers could distort global markets. That China has become the leading EV market is the result of substantial government support. But Chinese exports are also directly supported by central and local governments sponsorship of new production plants, R&D centers and overseas acquisitions

    China

    Zheng Yongnian on “the death of China Studies” – by Kevin Carrico – NSL can’t cancel me – well worth a read. Chinese warfare on the study of China abroad

    Chinese Power and the State-Owned Enterprise | International Organization | Cambridge Core – The results suggest that China uses FDI by prominent state-owned enterprises as an instrument to promote its foreign policy. – Which makes willing stooges like Vodafone look even worse

    BlackRock Raises $1 Billion for First Chinese Mutual Fund Run by Foreign Firm – WSJ

    Consumer behaviour

    Rejected internal applicants twice as likely to quit | Cornell Chronicle 

    Feeling the 2019 Hong Kong anti-ELAB movement: emotion and affect on the Lennon Walls: Chinese Journal of Communication: Vol 0, No 0 – The walls are able to marshal the resources of the minds and bodies of those who created and sustained them and give rise to political passions and movement actions.

    Effect of Financial Incentives and Environmental Strategies on Weight Loss in the Healthy Weigh Study: A Randomized Clinical Trial | Lifestyle Behaviors | JAMA Network – comparative ineffectiveness of a couple of nudge strategies for treating obesity

    A Generation of American Men Give Up on College: ‘I Just Feel Lost’ – WSJ – At the close of the 2020-21 academic year, women made up 59.5% of college students, an all-time high, and men 40.5%, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of enrollment data from the National Student Clearinghouse, a nonprofit research group. U.S. colleges and universities had 1.5 million fewer students compared with five years ago, and men accounted for 71% of the decline, the Journal analysis found. – this looks like a political and demographic time bomb waiting to go off. Think about the potential wasted at a time when the US needs more engineers, technologists and innovators of both genders. The deficit of hope scares the crap out of me and should scare you

    Culture

    Taste of the East: How The British Fell In Love With Chinese Cuisine | Newham Chinese Association – Until the 1940s, the majority of customers in the restaurants were not English but Chinese immigrants. In the aftermath of World War II Chinese food began to grow in popularity. British servicemen returned from various parts of the Empire and the Far East with a willingness to try different foods and cuisine and a new enthusiasm for Chinese food and restaurants. This in turn saw the rise of the restaurant trade in Soho. Chinese people entered the catering trade because of the downturn in shipping and the closing of laundries, traditional areas of employment. In the 1950s and early 1960s there was an influx of Chinese from Hong Kong who provided the necessary workforce. The restaurants served Cantonese food because of Britain’s old colonial links to Hong Kong

    Design

    Modern Woods: A Herman Miller Story | YLighting Ideas 

    Hong Kong mulls regulating ‘flight deck’ mobile phones on vehicle dashboards – Hong Kong Free Press HKFP – iconic interior feature on Hong Kong taxis

    Economics

    Tech Crackdown Is a Cloud Over China Economy, Ex-WTO Chief Says – Bloomberg

    Is China uninvestable? | Financial Times  – The problem the party has to solve is almost the opposite: investment is so high that much of the capital is malinvested. As a result, debt is growing faster than gross domestic product. The irrelevance of foreign investors to China key problems doesn’t mean Chinese stocks might not go up, “but you have to get both the valuations and the politics right, and that’s just really hard” – soft innovation and rent seeking investments versus the hard innovation desired – Cathie Wood’s Ark cuts China positions ‘dramatically’ | Financial Times – I think strategic alignment wit CPC agenda is a greater predictor than how much of a sycophant the company has been, which is what Ms Woods relying on

    Interview: Larry Summers, economist – by Noah Smith – Noahpinion – interesting interview on economics

    China offers $31m in emergency aid to Afghanistan – BBC News – aid in kind rather than cash to maximise leverage over the Taliban, its a smart play

    Chinese Industrial Policy: How A City Turned Itself Into a VC Fund – by Jordan Schneider – ChinaTalk – interesting to read this. New Structural Economics seems to be very similar to the processes outlined by Joe Studwell in How Asia Works. I was surprised to see that they weren’t trying to learning from Japanese agricultural policies given the mountainous land similarities and instead focused on US agricultural poliicies which have less clear cut lessons for China

    Ethics

    Facebook Says Its Rules Apply to All. Company Documents Reveal a Secret Elite That’s Exempt. – WSJ

    Finance

    Investment banks accelerate efforts to automate junior ‘grunt work’ | Financial Times – how much ‘skills’ and ‘learning’ will be lost through this process?

    FMCG

    Subscriptions: recurring revenue model best suited to expensive items | Financial Times – not terribly surprising, I know that Unilever and Chlorox leant into this hard

    ‘Unprecedented influence’: Hong Kong prisons chief accuses inmates held for national security, protest offences of stirring rebellion behind bars | South China Morning Post – Hong Kong inmates held for offences related to the national security law and the 2019 protests are exercising “unprecedented influence” in the city’s prisons, leading to round-the-clock monitoring usually reserved for high-profile criminals such as triad leaders – it is probably down to chocolate and candy scandals that threatened Hong Kong and China’s national security. Apparently the Hong Kong government felt threatened by excessive amounts of gummy bears and M&Ms among prisoners

    Germany

    Opinion: Germany must call off Angela Merkel′s Chinese love affair | Business | Deutsche Welle – interesting that this ran in Deutsche Welle before Chancellor Merkel’s last call with Xi Jingping

    Hong Kong

    American lawyer imprisoned in Hong Kong speaks out about his treatment – The Washington Post – Sam Bickett’s case is instructive

    How to

    Nilesh Ashra on his digital toolbox, worthwhile digging into via Iain Tait

    Innovation

    JCB heir Jo Bamford launches hydrogen fund | Financial Times – they’ve done some really interesting work around hydrogen powered internal combustion engines in a way that contrasts with Hyundai’s hydrogen fuel cell approach

    Technique bonds copper foil and PTFE for better 5G 

    UK orders national security review of graphene firm’s takeover by Chinese scientist | Competition and Markets Authority | The Guardian 

    Chinese air force may have cracked how to land a hypersonic drone | South China Morning Post

    Superior MEMS sensors from cavity silicon-on-insulator wafers | EE News 

    Robotics pioneer Yoky Matsuoka’s Panasonic venture debuts personal assistant service in Seattle – GeekWire – what’s interesting about this is that its a concierge service a la Amex Black Card and similar. The tech is on the back end supporting the human operator. I presume that this is also going to build massive data sets on human problem solving

    Ireland

    Galway in line for Intel megafab | EE News Europe – A former military firing range in Oranmore near Galway in the west of Ireland is the Industrial Development Agency’s “preferred site” for an Intel chip foundry that would employ 10,000 people, according to reports. This is more than twice the 4,900 people Intel employs at its established facility in Leixlip, Ireland on the outskirts of Dublin. Pat Gelsinger, Intel CEO, visited Leixlip last week and met with Ireland’s prime minister, Taoiseach Michael Martin. The site in Galway is a 216-hectare rifle range, owned by the Irish Department of Defence. The project would involve the building of eight factory modules on the campus, the reports said

    Korea

    South Korea shatters national debt taboo to tackle inequality | Financial Times – really interesting article

    South Koreans sour on China ahead of Wang Yi visit – Nikkei Asia – Survey results released in June by Sisain, a current affairs magazine, and pollster Hankook Research indicate a souring of South Korean public opinion toward China, particularly among the young. Only 26% of respondents had warm feelings toward China, compared with 57% who felt warmly toward the U.S. Even Japan, South Korea’s traditional rival, came out ahead of China with 28%. “Dislike of China is arguably emerging as the spirit of our times,” Sisain wrote in an accompanying article. “The question ‘what kind of country is China to us?’ is changing to ‘why and how much do we dislike China?”

    Legal

    China Unveils New Rules Targeting Anticompetitive Practices by Internet Companies – WSJ

    Was the ‘surveillance state’ a price worth paying? – The Law and Policy Blog and How the War on Terror Supercharged State Power – worthwhile reading both together

    Luxury

    The four fashion personas of China’s Gen Z | Vogue Business – Despite the youthfulness of Gen Z consumers, their understanding of fashion and luxury culture is as mature as older generations. – there is so much in the way that they picked their sample which makes this research something to be approached with caution. Shanghai is not representative of high growth lower tier markets.  Gen Z believes that to qualify as true luxury, a brand needs more than high price points, heritage and craftsmanship. It must also convey an elevated sense of aesthetics, with unique qualities and character. – and this has been an issue that luxury brands have been struggling with. Male Gen Z shoppers are outspending women by 20 per cent on fashion and luxury goods. Not every Gen Z consumer in China is obsessed with celebrities and influencers. – this surprised me as many men are having to save up to impress their girl and get the requisite items needed for a partner to say that they would marry you. The men surveyed are likely to be princelings. Interestingly, many Gen Z are critical of them and the culture that surrounds them. – this mirrors the wider Chinese government criticism of culture. More sophisticated marketing campaigns may, therefore, work effectively with Gen Z shoppers. For example, they appreciate exhibitions that mix brand stories with art and culture. They also like brands with creative crossover collaborations. Finally, they appreciate word-of-mouth recommendations from friends and families. Among those celebrities who do impress Gen Z, the key names include Yibo Wang, Mi Yang, Wen Liu and Yangqianxi Yi (also known as Jackson Yee). Key opinion leaders (KOLs) include Mia Kong and Fil Xiaobai.

    Opinion: Finally, a Chinese car brand to take seriously in Europe | Autocar – interesting that Autocar thinks electrification will disrupt the premium car sector

    Chinese star calls time on Swiss watch brand after CEO says Taiwan is a ‘country’ | South China Morning Post – Audemars Piguet CEO referred to Taiwan as ‘a very tech-oriented country’ in a video conversation months ago. Actor-singer Lu Han and team had wanted the watchmaker to apologise on global platforms in Chinese and English – effeminate looking showbiz star tries to save career and look masculine by leaning into Chinese nationalism

    Foreign brands criticised in China for misleading shoppers | Reuters – move after Canada Goose might be due to it being from Canada or a prelude to an attack on the luxury sector

    Chinese debts unravel historic fashion stores | Business | The Times – Troubles in China are putting some of the oldest names in British fashion in a precarious position, with Aquascutum quietly pulling out of the UK entirely and Gieves & Hawkes battling a winding-up order. The trenchcoat maker and the tailor are owned by Shandong Ruyi, which has come under increasing pressure over its bloated $4 billion debts after an acquisition spree intended to turn it into China’s answer to LVMH, the French luxury goods conglomerate

    Marketing

    Rewarding loyalty helps brands make gains in Hong Kong’s top local brands ranking | Country Rankings | Campaign Asia – I find this fascinating as it is at odds with marketing science findings from the likes of the Ehrensberg-Bass Institute

    The Paradox Of Buying Influence. “You keep using that word. I do not… | by Faris | Medium

    Media

    China Bans ‘Cissy Idols’ and ‘Effeminate Men’ in Entertainment Sector – Variety – Chinese government’s crackdown on the tech and entertainment sectors has now turned to “sissy idols,” “effeminate men” and all things “overly entertaining.”

    Hong Kong media group Next Digital says it aims to wind down, board quits | Reuters – the Hong Kong government has never indicated which articles published by Apple Daily allegedly violated the national security law, and the uncertainty created a climate of fear, resulting in many resignations including those responsible for the regulatory compliance duties of the publicly traded company. “We observe that the events affecting the company and its people following the invocation of the National Security Law occurred despite there having been no trials and no convictions,” it said. “Under this new law, a company can be forced into liquidation without the involvement of the courts.” “As Apple Daily often observed, Hong Kong people have a collective memory of what life was like elsewhere when freedom of speech was denied: No other rights are safe” – the Hong Kong government response to this was Kafta-esque

    China uses anti-fraud app to track access to overseas financial news sites | Financial Times – The app was launched in March by the public security ministry’s National Anti-Fraud Center and blocks suspicious phone calls and reports malware. Police said it was needed to combat a surge in fraud, often perpetrated by overseas operations managed by Chinese and Taiwanese nationals. The ministry recommended that the app was downloaded but numerous local government agencies made it mandatory for their employees and individuals with whom they work, such as students and tenants. One Shanghai-based user told the Financial Times he was contacted by police after accessing a US financial news service. He was also asked whether he had contacts abroad and regularly visited overseas websites. The user, who asked not to be identified, said police seemed genuinely concerned about foreign scams. “But the questions they raised about whether I have contacted foreigners made me feel like they don’t want me accessing foreign websites,” he added. “I deleted the app after the meeting.” A second user in eastern Shandong province said police called him on four consecutive days after the app showed he had visited what it labelled “highly dangerous” overseas information providers, including Bloomberg – if I was Bloomberg or the FT Chinese service I would be concerned

    Online

    Why Instagram’s creatives are angry about its move to video | Instagram | The Guardian

    Some of the most iconic 9/11 news coverage is lost. Blame Adobe Flash – CNN

    Former UK hedge fund partner plots return of Trump-era social network Parler | Financial Times

    Retailing

    Typical CVS Shopper Is Urban Gen Xer, Earns High Income – In addition to OTC pain medication and cough remedies, the typical retail shopper often prefers to buy candies, chocolates, and bottled water. Their favorite sweets brands at CVS are M&M’s and Reese’s, and they also buy a lot of Hallmark cards. Just 1.6% of a CVS shopper’s total dollars are spent at CVS, compared with 6.8% of their spending on Amazon. At other retailers, the CVS shopper buys more fresh garlic, hand sanitizer, bar soap, and non-dairy milk alternatives than the national average shopper. They’re also big fans of fast-food chicken nuggets

    Security

    Normal-looking USB cable logs everything you do and can be radioed from more than 1 mile away | Boing Boing 

    U.S. to Include Korea in ‘Five Eyes’ Spying Pact – The Chosun Ilbo (English Edition): Daily News from Korea – World 

    Chinese hackers behind July 2021 SolarWinds zero-day attacks – The Record by Recorded Future

    Malware found preinstalled in classic push-button phones sold in Russia – The Record by Recorded Future 

    Billions of devices impacted by new BrakTooth Bluetooth vulnerabilities – The Record by Recorded Future

    Pro-China misinformation operation attempting to exploit US Covid divisions, report says – CNNPolitics – worth while reading Reuters take as well – Pro-China social media campaign hits new countries, blames U.S. for COVID | Reuters  – synopsis from the China Research Group: According to research published on Wednesday by Mandiant and Alphabet’s Google unit, thousands of accounts across dozens of social-media platforms—including Facebook, YouTube and Twitter —and online forums have urged Asian-Americans into the streets to protest against racial injustice in the US. The network of fake social media accounts is “almost certainly supported by a government sponsor, either directly through a government agency or a third-party contractor”.

    China Is OK With Interfering in Guinea’s Internal Affairs – the inconsistency it demonstrates—nonintervention but only when it works for China—risks undermining the validity of China’s promises to potential partners, among whom only the “irredeemably corrupt or terminally naive” take Beijing’s “win-win” rhetoric seriously. Indeed, Beijing’s mercurial wielding of noninterference risks further exposing the ugly underbelly of China’s fiercely realpolitik foreign policy. China’s pitch to leaders the world over is straightforward: Beijing offers vast sums of development funds (and political support) and expects certain goods—natural resources, ports, military bases, and international political support—in return. Many developing world leaders sign up for this bargain not out of authoritarian solidarity but for Chinese money; it solves problems, and there is no obvious Western alternative. Where poverty and underdevelopment are the most pressing issues, leaders will not say “no.” But with Chinese money, leaders often lean more autocratic – coup messed with China’s access to bauxite (which it doesn’t want to buy from Australia) and its ability to make aluminium which is a strategically important metal

    Hackers leak passwords for 500,000 Fortinet VPN accounts | Bleeping Computer 

    Japan is belatedly recognising the risks of cyber war | Financial Times 

    Indonesian intelligence agency compromised in suspected Chinese hack – The Record by Recorded Future – and this is what China does to its ‘friends’ in ASEAN….

    Web of no web

    Avatar overload: my trip through the Burning Man metaverse | Financial Times 

    Wireless

    Why 5G may be taking longer than we thought – Arup – roll-out of 5G networks commenced in earnest in 2019, and is now well underway in many countries, this is largely being driven by the commercial mobile network operators. This has led to a focus on serving major cities and towns, where the service is deemed to be commercially viable and attractive to do so. In addition, much of the focus of these deployments has been on delivering enhanced mobile broadband use cases for public consumers (such as high definition video streaming, VR/AR and gaming). The focus isn’t initially on delivering the lower latency and higher network reliability that would be needed for industrial automation and autonomous vehicles

    Starlink is a global ISP built at ZERO COST to SpaceX, enabling NASA’s Artemis launch | I, Cringely

  • Afghanistan + other news

    Afghanistan

    I couldn’t avoid doing a post on Afghanistan given what had been going on this week. The Afghanistan conflict posed a number of interesting questions about:

    • What privacy and security means for the people left behind in Afghanistan in the digital age
    • Why strategy is seldom a teacher and several countries have made the same mistake in Afghanistan – (Britain did so twice!)
    • The failure of intelligence in Afghanistan reminded me of the failure of intelligence agencies to realise that the fall of the Berlin Wall would happen. There was also a failure to underhand who the players were and their motivations in Afghanistan
    • What will Afghanistan mean for Pakistan moving forwards? Once out, the west has the perfect opportunity to shun Pakistan; which will leave the country vulnerable to Chinese predatory practices

    The US Is Removing Records of Its War in Afghanistan From the Internet – Lives are on the line here, but helping them may mean destroying—even if temporarily—the memory of the war and all that happened. It’s a horrible problem to face. One potential solution would be for the U.S. and its allies to take as many Afghan refugees as want to flee the country. – it assumes that the Taliban and supporters like the Pakistani ISI intelligence agency haven’t been caching this material themselves over the years. Things got rolled up so fast, they probably have hold of records from Afghanistan government payroll ledgers to intelligence reports

    1999 Afghanistan
    1999 Afghanistan map, courtesy of the CIA

    Germany Flew 65,000 Beer Cans Out of Afghanistan, but Just 7 People on an Evacuation Flight – “​​There was transport capacity for alcohol, but not for the local staff in Afghanistan,” read a piece in Germany’s Bild newspaper, referring to the fact that the German military had earlier flown home 65,000 cans of beer and 340 bottles of wine before it withdrew from its bases in Mazar-e Sharif and Kabul at the end of June. – surely they could have blown up the alcohol and put people on the flights? – this is the kind of thing that fuels future grudges that morph into terrorist attacks. But it also shows the colossal failure in intelligence in a microcosm

    How Social Media Helped ‘Taliban 2.0’ Take Control of Afghanistan | Vice – The modern, tech-literate Afghanistan Taliban aren’t the same as they were 20 years ago. Now they’re using technology to control the narrative and assert dominance.

    Ranger Wing to be sent to Kabul to aid in evacuation of Irish citizens | Irish Times – if you want to understand what a mess Afghanistan is, look at Ireland. Ireland hasn’t been involved in Afghanistan and has had to send a special forces team in to try and get three dozen Irish citizens out of the country

    SIGAR | Lessons Learned. The Ides of August – a couple of good post-mortem reads on Afghanistan. A few things struck me. Mission creep had been baked in, although much of that was down to the allies partnering with the Northern Alliance and liberal values. The dual nature of Pakistan, which I suspect Pakistan will get punished for in the longer term. The lack of intelligence on the main players involved such as former president of Afghanistan Hamid Karzai

    Beauty

    Skincare Preferences by Generation | NPD Group – Despite the generational differences in skincare preferences, there are also commonalities. At the end of the day, it seems we’re not so different, after all. Whether they are more like my mother or my cousin, we see from consumers across-the-board that they are open to trying new things, are looking for clean ingredients, and simply want skincare that produces results from a brand they can trust. Regardless of the trends driving the category, the demand for efficacy and transparency is here to stay

    Business

    Wolfsburg, we have a problem: How Volkswagen stalled in China | Reuters – Last month, though, he said Volkswagen had fixed the problems revealed by the test, that the ructions of the episode had subsided and the carmaker’s Chinese business was recovering. “We have once again clearly one of the safest cars on the market in this segment,” Woellenstein told reporters in July. “We will once again take up the old leadership of the Passat.”But there is quite some ground to regain in the large family car segment. A total of 47,480 Passats were sold in the first six months of this year in China, some way behind the 91,110 Toyota Camrys (7203.T) and 89,157 Honda Accords (7267.T), according to LMC. The figures from the same period of 2019, before the pandemic struck, show how steeply the Volkswagen model has fallen away of late: 91,400 Passats were sold versus 111,968 Accords and 85,396 Camrys. – I am surprised by this, given Volkswagen’s obsession with common platforms

    Xi Jinping Millionaire Relations Reveal Fortunes of Elite – Bloomberg 

    Tata’s rise mirrors the sweep of India’s history | Financial Times – Tata is no longer at India’s entrepreneurial vanguard. The likes of Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries and Gautam Adani’s eponymous group, with their investments in telecoms and renewable energy, hold stronger claim to be the “nation builders” of today. These tycoons represent a different way of doing business, one that has prompted much consternation. They lack Tata’s ambivalence about the state, aligning themselves unabashedly with Narendra Modi, and share few of the conservative Tatas’ qualms about “wealth creation for its own sake”.

    Consumer behaviour

    Parents in China are giving their children growth hormones to make them taller | South China Morning Post 

    Biden is sandbagging on immigration – by Noah Smith – Noahpinion – the new American support for throwing open the country’s gates is more broad than it is deep. There’s a real desire to cleanse the stain of Trump’s human rights abuses and flirtation with white-nationalism — to at least be able to say that America is still the Nation of Immigrants, that we still have compassion for the people of the poor countries of the world. But beyond that idealistic impulse, I’m not so sure that most liberals have a strong, enduring commitment to welcoming in as many refugees, asylum-seekers, and economic migrants as possible. 

    One reason is that the Democratic party is increasingly the party of the educated, and to most educated Americans, people like refugees and asylum seekers live in a different world. There’s little natural class solidarity or empathy there. And when it comes to skilled immigrants — the people waiting desperately for that backlog of 100,000 green cards to be processed — well, to most educated Americans, that’s the competition. Both for themselves and for their kids in schools.

    Coronavirus: Singaporeans eye savings with bulk-shopping groups on WhatsApp, Telegram | South China Morning Post – interesting how these groups were informally formed

    Economics

    Beijing’s American Hustle | Foreign Affairs – U.S. institutions, especially in finance and technology, cling to self-destructive habits acquired through decades of “engagement,” an approach to China that led Washington to prioritize economic cooperation and trade above all else. 

    If U.S. policymakers and legislators find the will, however, there is a way to pull Wall Street and Silicon Valley back onside, convert the United States’ vulnerabilities into strengths, and mitigate the harmful effects of Beijing’s political warfare. That must begin with bolder steps to stem the flow of U.S. capital into China’s so-called military-civil fusion enterprises and to frustrate Beijing’s aspiration for leadership in, and even monopoly control of, high-tech industries—starting with semiconductor manufacturing

    Why has the gig economy been a disappointment? – by Noah Smith – Noahpinion – it seems likely that Uber and Lyft will survive, but not at the scale investors hoped — instead, they’ll mostly be boutique services for the well-heeled. And I expect they’ll probably take a hit to their valuations.

    Ethics

    Engrave Danger: An Analysis of Apple Engraving Censorship across Six Regions – The Citizen Lab

    Apple exports PRC censorship to Hong Kong and Taiwan – Protocol — The people, power and politics of tech – Liu believes what he calls the “lameness” of Apple’s China filter list suggests Apple might have its own in-house censorship team, because “if it were a Chinese company to provide censorship to Apple, they would’ve done a far better job.”

    China’s Hong Kong Crackdown Sweeps Away Unions, Activist Groups – Bloomberg 

    How Chinese pressure on covid origins probe shocked WHO — and led Tedros to push back – The Washington Post – When a WHO scientist on a coronavirus origins probe announced in February that the idea that the virus leaked from a lab was “extremely unlikely” and unworthy of further investigation, senior WHO staff in Geneva were shocked. “We fell off our chairs,” one member told the authors. The team in Wuhan appeared to have given in to Chinese pressure to dismiss the idea without a real investigation. Later, when the WHO-China team released a report that again dismissed that scenario, Tedros pushed back, saying that the research was not “extensive enough” and that there had not been “timely and comprehensive data-sharing.” Since then, relations between the WHO and China have nosedived. Chinese officials said in July that they would not accept any further investigation into the origin of the coronavirus in China and accused the United States of pressuring scientists. The WHO last week released a statement that resisted the idea that “the origins study has been politicized, or that WHO has acted due to political pressure.”

    China, the WHO and the power grab that fuelled a pandemic | News | The Sunday Times – In 2017 Chan crowned her final year in office by welcoming Xi to Geneva. While he was there, she signed an agreement that committed the WHO to working alongside China on health as part of the country’s Belt and Road initiative. It was the first time any UN agency had signed up to the initiative, which seeks to extend Chinese influence and trade in more than 70 developing countries by financing infrastructure projects. The initiative is highly controversial because its critics argue that China uses it to shackle countries, particularly in Africa, to “unsustainable debt” as a way of gaining access to the continent’s raw materials and buying political favours. “I think health is too special to get into the really seedy politics that Belt and Road is part of, and I wouldn’t want the WHO to be associated with it,” Gostin argues. “The cost in terms of human rights and debt, and other adverse events for Africa, was a bridge too far.”

    Hong Kong’s Leader Killed Her City – The Atlantic – Regina Ip, a pro-Beijing lawmaker and member of Lam’s cabinet, told me that simply having the laws on the books would provide a “deterrent effect” to protesters, and that the fears of journalists and activists over the curtailing of freedoms were not “completely misguided.”

    Why is advertising still ignoring people in their 50s and 60s? | Campaign – TL;DR lazy generational thinking and ageism

    Finance

    Why Hong Kong’s crypto crown is slipping | Financial Times 

    Facebook (FB) Offers Loans as Tiny as $6,720 to Businesses in India – Bloomberg

    China’s Hong Kong Crackdown: Billions in Retirement Money Blocked for UK Emigres – Bloomberg – Chinese authorities consider the BN(O) policy as a “means to destabilize Hong Kong,” said Joseph Cheng, a retired political science professor who left Hong Kong shortly after the security law was imposed. “These people are seen as traitors and fugitives.”

    Luxury

    How the daigou can help new brands | Vogue Business – The classic image of the daigou is of an entrepreneurial and well-connected individual who buys global luxury brands on behalf of Chinese clients abroad, where prices are lower and hard-to-find products are more accessible. But the new model daigou is also working closer to home, and mixing emerging Chinese designers with foreign brands. The motivation for the evolution of the daigou’s role comes from a wave of young Gen Z Chinese consumers who are seeking more interesting and affordable fashion and don’t care as much about the name on the label. This is good news for new brands in China – and elsewhere. In a fiercely competitive market, any well-designed brand has the potential to catch consumers’ eyes. What’s needed in the early days of a new brand’s development is an effective sales channel. – Building a similar relationship with daigou, that brands currently have with fashion stylists

    Marketing

    Insight & Strategy: #LikeAGirl | Contagious – on brands taking a leadership position – a great example by Always

    Media

    [Report] Bad News, By Joseph Bernstein | Harper’s Magazine – In the beginning, there were ABC, NBC, and CBS, and they were good. Midcentury American man could come home after eight hours of work and turn on his television and know where he stood in relation to his wife, and his children, and his neighbors, and his town, and his country, and his world. And that was good. Or he could open the local paper in the morning in the ritual fashion, taking his civic communion with his coffee, and know that identical scenes were unfolding in households across the country. Over frequencies our American never tuned in to, red-baiting, ultra-right-wing radio preachers hyperventilated to millions. In magazines and books he didn’t read, elites fretted at great length about the dislocating effects of television. And for people who didn’t look like him, the media had hardly anything to say at all – give this a read

    Inside the Hong Kong Newsroom at the Edge of Autocracy – The Atlantic – SCMP bias on protests

    Security

    COVID slows Apple and Google production shift away from China – Nikkei Asia – AirPods — both entry-level and high-end models — were among the earliest products that Apple began making in significant amounts in Vietnam, having moved production there around two years ago during the height of U.S.-China trade tensions. Apple’s plan to bring some MacBook and iPad production to Vietnam has also been put on hold due to a lack of engineering resources, an incomplete notebook computer supply chain and the dynamic COVID situation, one of the people said. Production of smart doorbells, security cameras and smart speakers for Amazon, which recently moved to Vietnam, has also faced delays since May as assembly lines in the northern part of the country coped with a surge in local cases and tougher COVID prevention measures

    Apple’s NeuralHash Algorithm Has Been Reverse-Engineered – Schneier on Security

    Opinion | We built a system like Apple’s to flag child sexual abuse material — and concluded the tech was dangerous – The Washington Post – Our research project began two years ago, as an experimental system to identify CSAM in end-to-end-encrypted online services. As security researchers, we know the value of end-to-end encryption, which protects data from third-party access. But we’re also horrified that CSAM is proliferating on encrypted platforms. And we worry online services are reluctant to use encryption without additional tools to combat CSAM. We sought to explore a possible middle ground, where online services could identify harmful content while otherwise preserving end-to-end encryption. The concept was straightforward: If someone shared material that matched a database of known harmful content, the service would be alerted. If a person shared innocent content, the service would learn nothing. People couldn’t read the database or learn whether content matched, since that information could reveal law enforcement methods and help criminals evade detection. Knowledgeable observers argued a system like ours was far from feasible. After many false starts, we built a working prototype. But we encountered a glaring problem. 

    Our system could be easily repurposed for surveillance and censorship. The design wasn’t restricted to a specific category of content; a service could simply swap in any content-matching database, and the person using that service would be none the wiser. 
    A foreign government could, for example, compel a service to out people sharing disfavored political speech. That’s no hypothetical: WeChat, the popular Chinese messaging app, already uses content matching to identify dissident material. India enacted rules this year that could require pre-screening content critical of government policy. Russia recently fined Google, Facebook and Twitter for not removing pro-democracy protest materials. 
    We spotted other shortcomings. The content-matching process could have false positives, and malicious users could game the system to subject innocent users to scrutiny.     – Emphasis in bold is mine

    Technology

    Laptops Shortage Is Easing as Pandemic Demand Wanes – Bloomberg – The waning demand for PCs will likely last for at least several more quarters. Memory prices are dropping precipitously on fears the chip cycle is over. But it’s good news for anyone looking to buy a laptop, printer, webcam or router. Expect them to be much easier to find in stores this fall. – I am hoping that the price of SSDs will fall again

    Robinhood Q2 earnings: Crypto makes up 52% of company’s revenue — Quartz – would I be right in thinking that there is more derivatives and CFDs of crypto being sold then than there is crypto and could be vulnerable to a market squeeze?

    Intel with an old take on big.little for Alder Lake | EE News Europe – Intel’s next-generation desktop chip, code-named Alder Lake, is the company’s first hybrid architecture to integrate two core types – the Performance-core and Efficient-core. This is similar to ARM’s big.little approach which used a small core optimised for low power consumption with lower performance alongside a larger, higher performance core. Both cores could run the same code depending on the context, avoiding the problems of having a scheduler to allocate tasks to multiple cores. This has traditionally been a limiting factor for the system-level performance of multicore chip designs

    IBM shows first dedicated AI inference chip | EE News Europe – interesting that they fabbed it using Samsung’s 7nm process. It has 22 billion transistors. Indicates a move away from GPUs to put machine learning back on the CPU

    Wireless

    Epic’s Fortnite lawsuit has become a nightmare for Google – Protocol – Google ‘estimated in 2019 that it risked losing as much as $6 billion per year if app makers and app store operators banded together with Epic and began creating alternative distribution channels. So instead of offering a superior product, the company muscled its way to a market position now being viewed by U.S. regulators as potentially anticompetitive’ – this might feed into a wider FTC case later on given the focus on revenue. More related content here.

  • Nightmare of The Wolf + other things

    Nightmare of The Wolf

    Netflix are doubling down on The Witcher franchise with their Witcher: Nightmare of The Wolf anime. The approach is very similar to the approach that Netflix took with Altered Carbon. Looking at how well that anime turned out, I have high hopes that Nightmare of the Wolf will live up to the trailer that Netflix has dropped.

    The Witcher: Nightmare of The Wolf

    OpenAI Codex demo

    OpenAI demo-ed the use of AI to code from normal human language a web interface design. It’s a smaller move forward than you would think it is, but it has programmers worried. Secondly, its hard enough to work out what something does if it is coded by a human who doesn’t document as it goes. A machine learning based coder represents an even greater level of opaqueness, which poses challenges for when code would need to be updated. You can learn more about OpenAI Codex here.

    Mercedes Benz 300SL

    The 1950s saw Germany rebuilding after the war and its companies coming back after the war. Before the space race, there was the jet age and there was motor racing. Mercedes Benz looked to make a statement about its position in the motor industry and the way to do that was through motor racing. Stirling Moss driving a Mercedes 300SLR put the company back on the map. Two years later Mercedes released a two door version of Moss’ car to the public called the 300SL. It was light, expensive, exciting and had jet age vibes with its aerodynamic styling and gull wing doors. Something that still looked futuristic almost 30 years later on the DeLorean.

    But the 300SL could also kill the unwary driver due to its rear swing axles. The car could go into sudden oversteer mid-corner if you stabbed the brakes or take the foot off the throttle in the bend. I know this, not because I had driven one, but because I was an avid reader of Car magazine from the mid 1980s to the mid 1990s.

    Car magazine was in a golden age, when motor journalism was as much literature as product information. Journalists wrote up to the intellect that they wanted their readers to have rather than writing to a lowest common denominator. Something that I have tried to do with this blog over time, but not nearly as well. Back to the killer handling: and the expensive coupe.

    Mercedes replaced the gull wing coupe with a roadster body shape and took the opportunity to change the handling.

    Tyler Hoover of Hoovies Garage had a chance to drive one of the roaders.

    Tyler Cowen interview

    I have been following Tyler Cowen’s economics blog Marginal Revolution for years and posted links to it here. Ashish Kulkarni interviewed Cowen about some of his blog posts, the philosophy of economics and the challenges facing universities and their students. Cowen’s day job is a professor at George Mason University in Washington DC.

  • False reviews + other news

    False reviews

    Amazon Prime
    Fake reviews on products including Amazon Prime items (image via quote catalog

    Shenzhen to support Amazon merchants | Trivium China – 50,000 merchants were banned from Amazon for astroturfing false reviews. The ban was worth up to 100 billion yuan in sales to these merchants. Half of the merchants affected are based in Shenzhen. Now the Chinese government is looking at what it can do to help the merchants practicing false reviews. Yet it wouldn’t tolerate false reviews if it was exposed in in the domestic market. One of the options being looked at is a platform to rival Amazon Marketplace, that would allow fake reviews

    Business

    Private school owners forced to hand institutions over to Chinese state | Financial Times – investors need to view this in the context of other things going on

    Beauty

    UK could allow animal tests for cosmetic ingredients for first time since 1998 | Animal experimentation | The Guardian 

    Social media & covert sales behind Kenya’s skin lightening growth — Quartz Africa – It’s not bleaching, it’s brightening. I personally like using serums because they ‘brighten’ your complexion.

    Consumer behaviour

    Study: Companies Aren’t Living Up To Chinese Consumers’ Expectations – Three in four (75%) informed Chinese consumers (defined as consumers interested or involved in one of 20 industries studied in the research) said CEOs should speak up on issues that “may not have a significant impact on the business but have a significant impact on society,” with particular focus on diversity and diverse representation within a workforce and its leadership. Yet just 35% of respondents in China feel companies in China can do more to make the workplace better. Similarly, 80% agree that CEOs should have a voice on the environmental policy debate, and three quarters (75%) say business leaders should have a role shaping health policy, the research found. Respondents ranked value and innovation as the top two drivers of brand perceptions in China. Only 35% of companies, however, are meeting expectations in those areas – the key term is ‘informed consumers’, I am sure that the Chinese government might not view things in quite the same way

    How China’s Elderly Built an Internet of Their Own – their network topography is different, the internet augments life for them. Younger people build their life online

    China considers legal changes to curb noise pollution from the country’s notorious dancing grannies | South China Morning Post 

    Culture

    How Chinese factory-workers express their views on life | The Economist

    Design

    The lost tablet and the secret documents | BBC – really nice bit of design on this investigation by the BBC Arabic Service

    UK to launch EV charger design as ‘iconic’ as a telephone box | EE News – so much to unpack here. If you have to call it iconic it probably isn’t

    Economics

    Why software hasn’t done more to improve productivity – Marginal REVOLUTION – well worth a read

    Ethics

    China’s Data Ambitions: Strategy, Emerging Technologies, and Implications for Democracies – The National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR) – TL;DR its really, really bad

    Ideas

    A dog’s inner life: what a robot pet taught me about consciousness | Consciousness | The Guardian – surely the golden rule would apply to way we interact with things like the Aibo. I found story of the couple who abused the Amazon Echo?

    Japan

    Rice, rice baby: Japanese parents send relatives rice to hug in lieu of newborns | Japan | The Guardian – really nice way of getting over the tactile nature of a newborn when the parents can’t visit relatives due to COVID. Also you have the life giving nature of rice in Japanese culture as well

    Legal

    The Hong Kong National Security Law: The Shifted Grundnorm of Hong Kong’s Legal Order and Its Implications by Han Zhu :: SSRN – the application of mainland laws in Hong Kong, the interpretation of the NSL, cross-border criminal jurisdiction, national security institutional infrastructure, and the legal language. To some extent, the enactment of the NSL is like a silent constitutional reform that has reshaped, and will continue to reshape, a wide range of aspects of Hong Kong law as well as the Basic Law. Due to the dualistic nature of the NSL as a national law which applies to both the mainland and Hong Kong, it has also expanded and deepened the interaction and conflict between legal systems in the two regions, highlighting the inherent tension of maintaining the unity of a heterogeneous legal order under one country, two systems

    Marketing

    What happens when brands stop advertising? | Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science

    Influencers want to be paid more than ever. Blame the pandemic | Marketing | Campaign Asia – no one is asking the question in this article, are influencers overpriced, or even worth it compared to other “Industry can also factor in, with some influencer niches starting at a higher price point than others,” says Heather Rottner, director of social media at Coyne PR. For instance, she says the firm generally sees higher rates in high-end fashion and beauty, food and DIY. While there is no shortage of influencers looking for brand partnerships in these categories, “many influencers pride themselves on being selective and authentic which means they don’t jump on every partnership offer they receive or use just any product.”

    Media

    ‘Spreading like a virus’: inside the EU’s struggle to debunk Covid lies | World news | The Guardian – Until the pandemic, there was no monitoring of fake stories originating from within EU countries or linked to countries other than Russia. While China Global Television Network (CGTN), an English-language cable news channel controlled by the Chinese Communist party, is considering a Brussels expansion StratCom until recently had just two people working on Chinese disinformation. Several former EU analysts said multiple state-backed disinformation campaigns, not just Russian, had taken advantage of Covid and Richter believed the EU’s limited focus on Russia “affected the legitimacy of the project.”

    Security

    The threat of a “cyber Pearl Harbor” is a red herring — Quartz – the damage of cyberattacks comes from a series of piecemeal hacks that are often hidden from public view and don’t always lead to immediate, tangible harm. The actual threat looks less like a barrage of bombs and more like a spy slipping a gloved hand into a filing cabinet or a mobster strolling into a shop to collect a “protection” payment

    In first massive cyberattack, China targets Israel – Tech News – Haaretz.com – not surprising given the amount of valuable IP that israel has

    Who is being monitored? Tutanota – interesting data points, I would imagine that other western countries would have a similar split in use of monitoring

    Huawei Accused in Suit of Installing Data ‘Back Door’ in Pakistan Project – WSJ – Another day, another dodgy security story involving Huawei – BES, says in a lawsuit filed Wednesday in California district court that Huawei required it to set up a system in China that gives Huawei access to sensitive information about citizens and government officials from a safe-cities surveillance project in Pakistan’s second-largest city of Lahore. Muhammad Kamran Khan, chief operating officer of the Punjab Safe Cities Authority, which oversees the Lahore project, said the authority has begun looking into BES’s allegations.

    Technology

    Discovery of carbon-based strongest and hardest amorphous material | National Science Review | Oxford Academic – it looks as if they were looking for semiconductor substrate materials

    Open sourcing a more precise time appliance – Facebook Engineering – interesting, previously businesses would have relied on time services like Datum Corporation (now Microchip Technology Inc.) network time appliances

    Imec Spinoff Wants to Turn Every Phone into a Spectrometer – EE Times Europe

    Microbatteries can be energy density | EENews 

    Roll-to-roll printing for flexible silicon electronics | EE News 

    Driverless minibus service rolls out in Hamburg traffic | EE News 

    Web of no web

    Using Reebok’s AR tool, basketball courts can be mapped out anywhere 

    Niantic CEO: The metaverse could be a ‘dystopian nightmare’ 

  • Audi Skysphere & other things

    Audi Skysphere

    Audi launched its latest concept car the Audi Skysphere. It’s electrically powered as you’d expect. Massive screens for displays and sustainable materials used in the interior. It has autonomous driving when its in a ‘grand touring’ mode. It allows for the owner to drive in a ‘sports car’ mode. All pretty normal stuff so far.

    But sports car mode means that the vehicle length shrinks. That’s right the Audi Skysphere changes shape rather than just changing functions up via electronics.

    In terms of styling, Audi calls calls jazz age Horsh tourers the influence for the Audi Skysphere. Audi is descended from Auto Union AG. Auto Union AG was formed in 1932, with the merger of Horch, DKW, Wanderer and the original Audi Automobilwerke. That’s why the Audi logo has four circles and why Horsh is the influence.

    Its long, wide and low bonnet brings to mind the Dodge Viper. The sides reminded me of Ford’s ‘Edge’ design language, if it was done by Zaha Hadid Architects. Lots of the details such as the lights use a mass of small triangles, reminding me of Hadid’s Zaragoza Bridge Pavilion. It also serves a reminder that computerised shapes are usually made up of lots of small polygons. Triangles must be a thing in car design at the moment, not only does the Audi Skysphere feature them, but so does the new Hyundai Santa Cruz throughout its design.

    Audi talks about the Audi Skysphere in terms of progressive luxury, which seems to be about experience and not making a huge environmental impact. They talk about vegan leather (that could be anything from fungi derived proteins to a PVC style plastic) and microfibre (finely spun and woven (usually) polyester / nylon fibre mix).

    The problems are likely to be in the system that the car would go into.

    • How is insurance handled for an autonomous vehicle?
    • Who is the insured party? Vehicle manufacturers would like for it to be the owner who might be responsible for any autonomous vehicle decisions. Putting software product liability out of their hands and on the buyer.
    • Who would be the defendant in the case of someone being run over?
    • How would vehicle inspection tests like Germany’s TUV or the UK’s MOT handle a collapsable chassis?

    I am a bit disappointed to see that Audi isn’t thinking seriously about a post Lithium world sodium ion batteries or hydrogen powered vehicles

    Los Angeles Olympics 1984

    The Los Angeles Olympics was the last olympic event that made a profit. This was down to the city being able to use existing venues for all the competitions and a less onerous demand on resources than games ran since then.

    Los Angeles didn’t have the reputation for design that Munich or the 1964 games in Tokyo had. So this video by the Olympics gave me new insight into the experience. I remembered the logo and the mascot, but since I watched only a small amount of the LA Games. This was because I was working on the family farm at the time. The bits that I did see were on an old black and white TV, so I missed a lot of the design details shared.

    Home-made silicon foundry

    I’d not heard of Sam Zeloof before. Over the past few years he has managed to fabricate integrated circuits ‘chips’ in his own home. Admittedly when we say home, we are talking about a big American multi-car garage. The results is impressive. One obvious thing to point out is that he is not putting in dust suppression techniques like you would see in a commercial fab.

    Solid Logic Technology

    IBM came up with an interesting ceramic hybrid technology that powered the Apollo missions and IBM’s System 360 computers. They were engineered for a robustness that even silicon micro-processors couldn’t match.