Ged Carroll

Category: technology | 技術 | 기술 | テクノロジー

It’s hard to explain to someone who didn’t live through it how transformation technology has been. When I was a child a computer was something mysterious. My Dad has managed to work his way up from the shop floor of the shipyard where he worked and into the planning office.

One evening he broad home some computer paper. I was fascinated by the the way the paper hinged on perforations and had tear off side edges that allowed it to be pulled through the printer with plastic sprockets connecting through holes in the paper.

My Dad used to compile and print off work orders using an ICL mainframe computer that was timeshared by all the shipyards that were part of British Shipbuilders.

I used the paper for years for notes and my childhood drawings. It didn’t make me a computer whiz. I never had a computer when I was at school. My school didn’t have a computer lab. I got to use Windows machines a few times in a regional computer labs. I still use what I learned in Excel spreadsheets now.

My experience with computers started with work and eventually bought my own secondhand Mac. Cut and paste completely changed the way I wrote. I got to use internal email working for Corning and internet connectivity when I went to university. One of my friends had a CompuServe account and I was there when he first met his Mexican wife on an online chatroom, years before Tinder.

Leaving college I set up a Yahoo! email address. I only needed to check my email address once a week, which was fortunate as internet access was expensive. I used to go to Liverpool’s cyber cafe with a friend every Saturday and showed him how to use the internet. I would bring any messages that I needed to send pre-written on a floppy disk that also held my CV.

That is a world away from the technology we enjoy now, where we are enveloped by smartphones and constant connectivity. In some ways the rate of change feels as if it has slowed down compared to the last few decades.

  • Bongbong Marcos + more things

    Bongbong Marcos

    Bongbong Marcos aka Ferdinand Romualdez Marcos Jr is the son of former Filipino president Ferdinand Marcos. The Asia Society did a really good talk on the election which explains what got Bongbong Marcos elected as president of the Philippines. Yes there was a lot of misinformation and sketchy tactics by the Bongbong Marcos campaign, but there is more going on.

    Marcos Fiesta-20150912-090-IM0P1343

    Much of the issue seems to be that Marcos is viewed as standing against local Filipino dynasties that have most of the economic power in the country. I found this particularly interesting as Bongbong Marcos and his running mate Sara Duterte are both from dynasty families.

    Marcos’ mother Imelda had a dad who as a lawyer, an uncle who was a supreme court judge, a cousin who was in the lower house of parliament and her brother was a provincial governor. On his father’s side, Bongbong’s grandfather was a lawyer and politician, and the mother was a school teacher. While both of Bongbong’s parents had known poverty, they could rely on a strong powerful network of family ties to help get them good jobs. Ferdinand Marcos even managed to get away with murder in 1939.

    Bongbong Marcos is supposed to be stuffing people he can trust through blood ties into key government and political positions such as speaker of the house and ministerial roles.

    Opposition party strategy

    The Marcos campaign managed to play on nostalgia for older voters and addressed young voters through TikTok. The opposition party strategy failed in online marketing. Misinformation was an aggravating factor.

    Corrosion of liberal democracy

    The average Filipino voter doesn’t feel invested in democracy in the same way that the middle class would be. 7 out of 10 surveyed by Pew wouldn’t mind an authoritarian leader like Bongbong Marcos – so Marcos was pushing against an open door. The middle classes are looking for ‘order and discipline’ rather than dysfunction. They think that economic success and freedom are mutually exclusive. They look to the United Arab Emirates and Singapore as exemplars. There are similarities with middle income countries like Modi in India, Erdoğan in Turkey, Urban in Hungary and Bolsonaro in Brazil.

    From an economic perspective what does Bongbong Marcos mean? Noah Smith made their most optimistic take on the economics of the Philippines Can the Philippines sustain its growth? – by Noah Smith. An authoritarian Bongbong Marcos government might see the departure of foreign companies who have been responsible for powering the past two decades of economic growth in the Philippines. The only reason why you might not see a foreign multi-national company exit would be ‘de-Chinaisation’ of global supply chains.  

    Business

    BMW and Audi suspend shipments by train to China | Financial Times – that takes out the belt out of the belt and road initiative

    China

    ARM China staff post open letter pledging loyalty to … eeNews Analog – “The ARM Technology team will adhere to the leadership of Allen Wu, unswervingly follow the path of independent and self-improvement development, and work together to build ARM Technology into a great Chinese technology company!” – if this isn’t a warning for investors in China I don’t know what is – Arm China’s renegade chief makes his last stand | Financial Times 

    China’s secret property empire | The Spectator 

    China’s exporters battered by lockdowns and global inflation | Financial Times 

    China Orders Government, State Firms to Replace Foreign Computers – Bloomberg 

    COSCO: China’s shipping giant expands its global influence – Nikkei Asia – interesting that COSCO is the one shipper still going to Russia

    Siemens to discontinue business in Russia – eeNews Europe – Siemens stopped all new business with and international deliveries to Russia and Belarus. The comprehensive international sanctions and the current and potential countermeasures are affecting the company’s business activities in Russia – especially its railway service and maintenance business. For companies that are mainly active in B2B business, the decision to completely exit a region is more difficult to make than for companies that sell consumer goods. The reason: contracts for the maintenance of industrial plants and trains are concluded for many years, sometimes decades – this is an opportunity for Chinese railway businesses

    Firms as Revenue Safety Nets: Political Connections and Returns to the Chinese State | The China Quarterly | Cambridge Core – restructured state-owned enterprises (SOEs) with political connections pay more tax than their assessed amount, independent of profits, in exchange for more preferential access to key inputs and policy opportunities controlled by the state. Examining taxes rather than profits also offers a new interpretation for why China continues to favour its remaining SOEs even when they are less profitable – it also explains why apparently inefficient SOEs get so many bank loans from state owned banks

    Consumer behaviour

    Older workers in higher-paid industries are joining the Great Resignation – Vox – I’d like to see more data on this. Is it a choice for them and will it be changed by higher inflation?

    Does Aging Make You More Susceptible to Fake News? | Technology Networks – this fit in with findings by Kings College London on the resisting as a younger fake-news believing set of people

    People trust AI fake faces more than real ones, research suggests 

    Why Is Y2K Style Still Happening?! An Analysis of a Wild Trend | High Snobriety 

    California’s demography is at odds with the old California Dream | The Economist – The population fell to 39.2m in the year to January 2022, 400,000 lower than in 2020 (see chart). In 1990, the number of Californians had been rising by a robust 2.5% a year. The biggest contribution to the decline came from migration. In 2021, the net change (people moving out of state minus those moving in) was twice as large as the number of covid deaths and four times the population’s natural change (the excess of deaths over births). Big cities have been hit hardest; the population of Los Angeles County has fallen for the past four years. Even if these declines were no worse than average—and national demographic trends are slowing, too—they might seem worse in a state where, as its governor once said, “the future happens here first”. In fact California’s demography is worse than average. The state’s total fertility rate (tfr, an estimate of the number of children women will bear over their lifetimes) fell from 2.2 in 2006 to 1.5 in 2020, more than in America as a whole, where the fall was from 2.1 to 1.6.

    Culture

    How Graffiti Became Gentrified | The New Republic 

    Economics

    How China-backed projects made Sri Lanka’s economic meltdown worse | South China Morning Post 

    Energy

    VW sells out of electric cars in Europe and US | Financial Times 

    Buffett-backed BYD’s shares drop after launch of pollution probe | Financial Times – is it BYD or is it something else?

    Finance

    Beijing orders ‘stress test’ as fears of Russia-style sanctions mount | China | The Guardian 

    Hong Kong

    Will Hong Kong reopen for business under new leader Lee? Yahoo! News – not open for business basically

    Arrest of Cardinal Zen send chills through Hong Kong’s Catholic church | Financial Times – a diocesan administrator tendered their resignation over a posting on the “Catholic Way” Facebook page on April 27. The post, which was quickly deleted, summarised a television interview in which a local priest accused China of attempting to control religion in Hong Kong. The diocese said the administrator had resigned of their own accord. The police investigation of the 612 Humanitarian Relief Fund, of which Zen was a trustee and which supported pro-democracy protesters, could also have implications for Hong Kong’s legal system. Police said on Thursday that they had complained to the Bar Association and Law Society about alleged misconduct by unnamed lawyers who took on the fund’s cases

    Hongkongers in Britain | 英國港僑協會 – great resource for Hong Kongers moving to the UK

    Ideas

    Talking about white privilege online can backfire – Futurity – The relationship between question language and the content of the responses was mediated by their support or opposition to renaming buildings. This suggests that, rather than causing people to think differently about the world, the term white privilege causes an emotional reaction which then affects their response, Quarles says. Inclusive ways of speaking about race online, such as the term “racial inequality,” are more likely to create a sense of shared purpose, he says. Policymakers who want to promote racial equity should consider how their language can either unite people or alienate potential allies, he says. – but this doesn’t understand that white privilege as a term comes from left-wing thinking and isn’t designed for dialogue. The emotional reaction is elicited by design as part of the narrative of ideological struggle. Either the party is worn down to the ideology or they are part of the enemy, which is then followed to its conclusion in Stalinism

    Innovation

    AMD to roll out 5nm processors as early as September 

    State of Venture Q1’22 Report – CB Insights Research – unsurprisingly, higher interest rates have a negative effect on VC funding of businesses and a slight decline in the number of new unicorns being minted

    Recovery for Bosch as it warns of slowdown – eeNews Europe – It’s worth taking a closer look at how the war affects climate action. My assessment is nuanced: in the short term, the acute conflict will slow progress in reducing carbon emissions, but in the long term, it will accelerate the technological transformation in Europe – Bosch also particularly keen on green hydrogen

    Could digital printing ease supply chain disruptions? | Vogue Business 

    IBM aims for 4000 qubit quantum computer – eeNews Europe 

    EETimes – A Post-Moore’s Law World 

    EETimes – As Classic Moore’s Law Dims, Heterogeneous Integration Steps Into the Limelight 

    Japan

    Japan passes law aimed at China guarding economic security, technology, supply chains | South China Morning Post 

    The pervasive succession crisis threatening Japan’s economy | Financial Times 

    Korea

    ‘Fashion has no age’: the stylish senior citizens of Seoul | South Korea | The Guardian 

    Luxury

    Lex in depth: why the luxury market needs to hedge against China | Financial Times – Customers at the exclusive Shinsegae department store in the Gangnam district of Seoul prefer to display their wealth discreetly. But their high spending was exposed to the wider world when it revealed annual sales had topped $2bn in 2021 — the highest turnover for a single store in the world. It outpaced even Harrods in London, which before the coronavirus pandemic had long held the world’s top spot

    Materials

    Why Is Plastic Bad for the Environment? This New Material Will Explain | Architectural Digest 

    Media

    Sony rejects China’s censorship request in ‘Spiderman’ | New York Post 

    Online

    Inside TikTok’s Explosive Growth – by Alex Kantrowitz 

    Security

    Quantum computers: Encryption technique could stop scammers from faking their location | New Scientist 

    Because of Ukraine, America’s arsenal of democracy is depleting | The Economist – challenges in supply chain and manufacturing

    ICE ‘now operates as a domestic surveillance agency,’ think tank says | Engadget 

    EU plans to require backdoor to encrypted messages for child protection | AppleInsider – “When executing the detection order, providers should take all available safeguard measures to ensure that the technologies employed by them cannot be used by them or their employees for purposes other than compliance with this Regulation,” says the proposal, “nor by third parties, and thus to avoid undermining the security and confidentiality of the communications of users.” – congratulations EU you’ve just empowered authoritarian regimes and risked the lives of millions elsewhere

    Technology

    RISC-V chip designed with open source tools – eeNews Europe – ARM should be worried

    Web of no web

    Apple WebXR: Web-based AR doesn’t work on iPhones – Protocol 

    Wireless

    Wi-Fi 7 home mesh routers aim to hit 33Gbps | Ars Technica 

  • Assembly process video + more stuff

    Porsche 911 GT3 assembly process video

    I am a sucker for a manufacturing assembly process video. Over time I have shared videos showcasing Nokia’s largely automated smartphone manufacturing lines that they had before the Microsoft disaster and old time metalworking archive footage as assembly process videos. So I had to share this timelapse assembly process video for the Porsche 911 GT3. This Porsche 911 GT3 I am reliably informed is the car that petrolheads most want to own out of the 911 range due to it being available with a manual gearbox. It is almost as fast as the top of the range 911 Turbo S, has worse fuel economy and emissions.

    Around the 23 second mark you can see the start of the chassis assembly using a manufacturing cell of four robotic assembly arms. Then an assembled floor pan is placed into a jig for welding to begin. The jig fits upside down to allow welding on both sides of the car. What’s less clear if these are seam or spot welds. In the assembly process video we can see the modular nature of the manufacturing line that would allow it to be restructured relatively easy to match different production requirements. The classic give away is modular protective partition walling around the robots.

    A good deal of the movement that the robot arms are doing is checking and measuring the existing parts before additional assembly happens. At 50 seconds in the assembly process video, the car starts to look like a Porsche as the floorpan and front chassis are connected to the roof and rear quarter chassis. You can see only spot welds happening at this stage. It was interesting to see the doors go on before painting. Just before the first minute in the assembly process video we start to see the first human welders doing hard to get joints on the interior front bulkheads and where the roof pillars join the body. The door set up is resolved before the front wings are fitted to the car.

    The whole front end of the chassis isn’t shown being attached to the car and suddenly appears as the front wings are fitted to the car. The assembly line seems to move from station-to-station every four minutes or so. We don’t see the chassis being galvanised, but we do see the chassis being dipped in primer paint as part to the assembly process video. Automated spray booths are no common in car manufacturing. It was interesting to see how important inspectors running their hands over the paint work were to the process. I presume if there was a problem the car would be taken off the line and paint problems fixed manually. The front of the the chassis is not painted beyond primer by the robots in the assembly process video, yet suddenly seems to be painted when we get to 2:16 in the assembly process video.

    The engine, transmission drive train and suspension come on a jig and are mounted to the chassis in one operation. The assembly process video shows the wheels being put on manually. I suspect this is about industrial safety, not mixing up human and robot workstations. The doors are re-hung on the car during final assembly.

    Air Max Day

    Digital outdoor advertising that wraps itself around the corner of a building lends itself to fantastic 3D ad campaigns. The build of these boards seem to be in Asia. I know of ones in Malaysia, Japan, Korea and China. This advert for Nike Japan on Air Max day makes really good use of the format.

    A word of thanks

    Cathay Pacific has seen its brand battered by the Hong Kong government, so it did a nice bit of content showcasing the important work that its staff have been doing during the COVID-19 crisis in Hong Kong. I suspect that this is aimed at both internal as well as external audiences.

    Yuen Long

    To an external observer, one would believe that the triads only really exist in movies now rather than on the street in Hong Kong. Up until the 1970s criminality and corruption were a part of daily life. The Peter Godber scandal forced the British government to act, cleaning up the government and business and then launching anti-triad operations with the OCT department of what was then the Royal Hong Kong Police.

    By the 1990s and 1990s Hong Kong was less corrupt but criminals were connected with business life such as the Carrian Group financial scandal which saw a visiting Malaysian bank auditor killed and buried in a banana tree field and lawyer John Wimbush who apparently committed suicide by tying himself to the grate at the bottom of a full swimming pool.

    Criminals like Big Spender were robbing jewellery stores with AK assault rifles and you saw scenes like something out of the movie Heat playing out on Hong Kong streets. Kidnappings by the likes of Big Spender encouraged Hong Kong oligarchs to get closer to the Chinese government and invest in the pre-WTO China.

    In recent years Hong Kong criminals tended to only appear at times convenient to the government to intimidate and assault critics. This was escalated in 2019, when they came out in force in Yuen Long to beat commuters returning from college, work and democracy protests. This became known as the 721 incident.

    Its interesting to see Vice News covering this story three years later, I guess later is better than never.

    Rumination

    I am a bit late with this due to the Moviedrome taking so long to put together. Producer and analogue synth maker put together this 60 minute piece of music that reminded me a bit of Autechre and Phillip Glass.

    60 minutes of Ambient Drone at 60 BPM with all oscillators tuned to multiples of 60Hz. 

    This piece was recorded to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the National Autistic Society in the UK and World Autism Acceptance Week 2022. 

    Bandcamp page

    Find out more here.

    Heinz Australia

    Amazing animated video telling of the love for Heinz Baked Beans. Animation is ideal for FMCG brands like Heinz because if a different voiceover it can transcend cultures. This is something that we looked to do when I was involved with the plant based relaunch of Flora margarine prior to its sale by Unilever.

    Windows 95 launch

    I watched this and was reminded of my old employers Waggener Edstrom, whose claim to fame was orchestrating this launch, but this was way before my time with them. This was way before my time. At the time Jay Leno was a big time TV host rather than that car guy. The internet wasn’t really on Microsoft’s radar either, though you could get Internet Explorer 1 with a ‘Plus’ pack of more powerful multimedia features. This was peak Microsoft. What people tend to remember less was that Windows 95 was less stable than what had gone before until at least the first service pack launched a year later. We are starting to see echoes of this old Microsoft coming back with the bundling of Microsoft Teams with Office 365 to combat Slack and bundling of security products.

  • Chicano culture + more stuff

    Chicano culture

    Japan has had a small but vibrant Chicano culture scene for years. The Japanese have had a community on the west coast of the US for over a century and a love of the detailed sub-cultures of the US. Japan also influences cultures and consumers in Taiwan, Thailand, Hong Kong and even China. Add to that, the fact that Chicano culture is portrayed in shows that are streaming internationally like Mayans MC.

    In the west, this would be called cultural appropriation; but I don’t think that really captures what’s going on here.

    It is interesting that it is happening now, while Thailand is ruled by a military government; there is a sub-culture flourishing that probably looks rebellious and anti-authoritarian is very interesting.

    Korea

    Vice News did an episode on the families behind chaebols – Korean business empires called South Korea’s Untouchable Families. None of the content will be of any surprise to anyone who has read this blog or has an appreciation of modern Korean culture. The tale of how the chaebols where largely creations of the Korean government and in time managed to capture the country after the 1997 financial crisis is largely a matter of public record. The extra-legal nature of chaebols are the stuff of Korean dramas.

    The ‘chaebol negotiation rule’ of a three year sentence commuted to five years probation is also well known.

    What I found curious is how much emphasis they have put on Samsung, who have the most international reach and advertising spend. The Samsung semiconductor experience with workers suffering from cancer mirrors the experience of workers in fabrication facilities when they were based in Silicon Valley. So the risks involved in the chemicals and the need for protection would have been well known.

    Asianometry has also recently published a video on the Chaebols that takes a slightly different take on the rise of the companies, linking their rise with weak and financially challenged political parties.

    Japan – Tokyo Girl’s Collection

    I have written about Tokyo Girl’s Collection in the past. It is interesting to see that it was extended into the metaverse this year. The formula is still largely the same:

    • A large live event with entertainment
    • Models and dokusha-models. (These are chosen among actual readers of the magazines as “representatives”.  They are more attractive than average readers but not pretty enough to be actual models).
    • Online shopping and m-commerce of looks that the audience wouldn’t be able to buy locally if they live outside Tokyo

    Hong Kong deindustrialisation

    By the time I got to Hong Kong, the city’s industrial base had migrated north to the mainland. But I did get to see the massive packaging and printing factory that had been converted to the home furnishing shopping centre now called Horizon Plaza in Ap Lei Chau. As a child many of my clothes and toys had ‘Made in Hong Kong’ written on them.

    I got to see the massive buildings that used to have clothing factories in Fo Tan and the Sui Fai Factory Estate – a multi-storey building full of light industrial units. De-manufacturing encouraged the rent-seeking oligarchs that dominate Hong Kong today, for instance Li Ka shing started off manufacturing plastic flowers and other light industrial processes, but pivoted to rent seeking businesses property, telecoms and retailing.

  • LIHKG forum + more news

    LIHKG forum

    LIHKG forum became famous beyond Hong Kong when it was at the centre of the leaderless protest movement during the 2019 Hong Kong protests. Hong Kong’s local internet has a history of Reddit like forums since the late 1990s.

    HKGolden

    Prior to 2016, there was the HKGolden Forum named after the Golden Computer shopping centre in Sham Shui Po. Golden Computer shopping centre considered one of the cheapest places in Hong Kong to purchase a computer. Products on sale range from complete PC systems, smartphones and peripherals. Unlike purely consumer-oriented IT shopping centres, Golden features several stores specialising in professional grade networking equipment as well.

    The HKGolden forum fell out of a site put up in the late 1990s by stall owners at the Golden Computer centre to show people what were the typical prices for computer parts. The HKGolden Forum served as a creator and distributor of memetic ideas in Hong Kong including new slang terms of the local Cantonese vernacular and promoting discussions of societal topics.

    LIHKG

    LIHKG forum seemed rise in prominence once it was launched in 2016, quickly eclipsing HKGolden. It is restricted to contributors having an email address from a Hong Kong ISP (like Netvigator) or a local higher education institution. The LIHKG forum pig icon became a familiar motif on 2019 Hong Kong protest posters and artwork.

    Since the national security law in Hong Kong it has has been a source of some anti-vaccination / public health programme discussions. Today the LIHKG forum app has been taken down from the Android and iOS app store.

    Most Hong Kong political discussions have already moved on to various Telegram channels.

    China

    Is China Uninvestable? Complaints from Foreigners Won’t Sway Xi Jinping – Bloomberg and Is China uninvestable, redux | Financial Times – this is going to make it harder for China’s friends on Wall Street

    China has a fateful choice to make – by Noah Smith – An angry, chauvinistic nationalism has become a deeply rooted force in China’s society. Even as China’s government has wavered on whether to support Putin, there has been a massive outpouring of support for the invasion on Chinese social media. Of course that nationalistic sentiment isn’t unanimous, and it’s hard to tell what percent holds it, but for now they seem to have the upper hand. In fact, at this point it’s not clear that China’s top leadership could stop the nationalist tide even if they wanted to; like the generals of Imperial Japan, they could end up getting pushed into aggressive action by a populace that had no idea of the risks. – interesting that we’re starting to see this kind of rhetoric beyond reactionary elements

    Volkswagen and China: the risks of relying on authoritarian states | Financial Times – I think China is going to have problems from a business point of view, when even its most ardent fans are getting pressure from their China association

    China takes wait-and-see stance on Pakistan’s political turmoil – Nikkei Asia 

    On China’s Internet, Rare Flash of Anger at Beijing’s Position on Ukraine 

    China Inc unconvinced Xi Jinping’s regulatory storm is over | Financial Times

    Ukraine gives Europe a key swing vote in the US-China rivalry | Financial Times and Lithuania wants EU to cancel summit with China – media – LRT 

    Chinese market rally disguises concerns over deglobalisation | Financial Times 

    Consumer behaviour

    Can the State Make you More Religious? Evidence from Turkish Experience – Çokgezen – – Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion – Wiley Online Library – apparently not, but that doesn’t mean that we won’t see more religiosity amongst young people as they become adults

    Culture

    Why We Use “lol” So Much 

    Park Island. (For Peter Moss, May 2018) | by Aidyn F | Medium – my friend Aidyn’s poetry. We were introduced by a former colleague of mine from Yahoo! who had worked in Hong Kong as a TV presenter before the handover. Aidyn introduced me to the Foreign Correspondents Club and gave me a different perspective on Hong Kong

    Design

    Inside Vitsoe, the British company with a very long shelf life | Financial Times

    Ethics

    It’s not Cancel Culture, it’s Cancel Technology 

    Finance

    The Western elite is preventing us from going after the assets of Russia’s hyper-rich | Thomas Piketty | The Guardian 

    CVC plans Amsterdam listing in blow to London market | Financial Times 

    FMCG

    Big Tobacco’s future in Russia goes up in smoke | Financial Times – a classic case of consumer globalisation: they made sophisticated products, marketed them expertly and raised quality standards. It would be fine apart from one problem: the product was cigarettes and the World Health Organization estimates that more than 19m Russian smokers will die prematurely. Hence the global pivot that companies have been trying to make towards vaping and heat-treated tobacco devices, including Philip Morris’s IQOS and BAT’s Glo. Russia has been vital to the “smoke-free future” that Philip Morris now promises and one executive last year hailed its “truly very spectacular progress” there. It is not clear how much safer heat-treating tobacco is to produce a nicotine vapour rather than smoking it in cigarettes. One analysis concluded that users of the devices inhale “substantially fewer” toxicants, but the results were mixed and most studies are done by tobacco companies. Nor is the purpose of heat-treated tobacco devices obvious. Philip Morris says that 72 per cent of IQOS users switched entirely from cigarettes in 2020, but it leaves many who carry on using both. There is an echo of the past transition from Belomorkanals to Marlboro Golds: better, but not good

    Gadgets

    Sound On Sound Issues (Active) – Amazing archive of the early issues from Sound on Sound magazine including amazing Japanese synthesisers like the Roland D-50

    Does Apple (AAPL) Sell a Wireless Router? What Happened to the Apple AirPort? – Bloomberg – agree with Mark Gurman’s assertion

    Why is Apple’s Studio Display basically a giant iPad? | The Next Web

    Hong Kong

    Singapore’s expat numbers lowest since 2010 suggesting no boost from Hong Kong’s exodus | South China Morning Post – so where are they going then or is this part of a retrenchment of staff from Asia? Hong Kong expats drive unprecedented demand for Singapore school places | Financial Times – this article is odd, given that Singapore apparently has had historically low migration to the city

    Shenzhen overtakes New York as home for billionaires – Nikkei Asia 

    MTR sees Covid tester in action | The Standard – LIHKG forum users shared candid photos of Hong Kong people testing themselves for COVID in public including on the MTR and while out having a meal

    Ireland

    Land values up by a third in 2 years – Farmers Journal 

    Luxury

    Phillips to Dedicate Entire Auction to the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak – Robb Report

    How Putin’s Oligarchs Bought London | ArticleDate 

    Wash | No Mercy / No Malice 

    Why the Chechen Warlord Wears Designer Boots | GQ – As Russia invades Ukraine, murderous Chechen leader and Putin ally Ramzan Kadyrov is using designer pieces to demonstrate his power. I don’t think Prada really wants Ramzan Kadyrov as a brand ambassador

    Materials

    Trafigura and Blackstone discussed investment of up to $3bn | Financial Times 

    Nickel Trading to Resume in London After Historic Squeeze – Caixin Global 

    Australia’s rare earths projects get US$360 million funding boost to counter China dominance | South China Morning Post more on rare earth metals here

    Online

    Google to terminate Universal Analytics on 01 July 2023 | Fresh Egg 

    Vimeo is telling creators to suddenly pay thousands of dollars — or leave the platform – The Verge

    Meta sued by Australian regulator for allegedly ‘misleading’ crypto ads | Financial Times 

    The internet forgot about Clubhouse. Anti-war Russians didn’t. 

    Google’s John Mueller: “It’s Impossible To Crawl The Whole Web” | Search Engine Journal – Google never crawled all the web anyway

    Retailing

    Judge denies Amazon’s motion to dismiss antitrust case – Protocol – may face a case over fair pricing

    Security

    Yoon’s pledge to boost THAAD missile system risks China reprisal – Nikkei Asia 

    300,000 Volunteer “Hackers” Are Attacking Russian Computer Systems | Futurism

    Dissidents targeted on behalf of China’s secret police, US prosecutors allege | Financial Times

    Safe as houses: the KGB proof mansion | The Sunday Times 

    The cyber warfare predicted in Ukraine may be yet to come | Financial Times

    Here’s why Putin won’t use nukes in Ukraine — Pass it on. | I, Cringely 

    Behold, a password phishing site that can trick even savvy users | Ars Technica 

    Technology

    China takes a key step toward chip self-sufficiency | Financial Times – Luxshare are moving into chip packaging and Apple is a key enabler

    The vibe shift in Silicon Valley – by Casey Newton 

    Web of no web

    Japanese start-up wants to cause real-life pain in the metaverse | Financial Times 

    Wireless

    Bill Gates leads $84M funding round for Kymeta – GeekWire 

  • The Mattei Affair + more stuff

    The Mattei Affair

    The story of Eni

    I went down a rabbit hole when investigating a post that I have in draft at the moment and discovered The Mattei Affair. I got to find out more about Eni – one of Europe’s oil supermajors. Even though I had worked in the oil industry at the start of my carrier I didn’t have a good understanding of the story of Enrico Mattei. Despite the great work done in documenting the industry though Daniel Yergin‘s book The Prize published in 1990. Yergin’s book was recognised as the defacto history of the industry back when I worked in the oil industry.

    Francesco Rosi

    Who would have thought that a film maker would have been able to make a film about a prosaic story like the life of an oil industry executive? Francesco Rosi managed to create something special with The Mattei Affair. Enrico Mattei was an extraordinary oil industry executive who helped Italy recover economically from the post-war period until his death in 1962 in a mysterious private plane crash. Rosi has a very distinctive story style mixing documentary footage with docu-drama, often performed by non-professional actors. In this respect The Mattei Affair mirrors Rosi’s 1961 film of Sicilian bandit Salvatore Giuliano.

    The story line covers different aspects of Mattei’s career and then loops back to the aftermath of the plane crash providing an innovative form of non-linear storytelling.

    Rose’s film production became part of the story itself. A journalist that Rosi had used to research The Mattei Affair himself disappeared which added to the mystery surrounding Enrico Mattei and the film. Rose’s search for the missing investigative journalist became part of the film itself.

    So The Mattei Affair is a remarkable film for all sorts of reasons.

    Mauro De Mauro

    Mauro De Mauro was the journalist that Rosi had hired to dig into The Mattei Affair and try to find out what had happened. At the time De Mauro worked for L’Ora newspaper based in Palermo, Sicily. He disappeared in September 1970 and his body was never found.

    Hard to find

    De Mauro wasn’t the only hard to find aspect of The Mattei Affair. For a film that won the grand prize at the Cannes Film Festival it had been very hard to find, even in the world of YouTube. It had a limited screening in the US with just one screen showing the film in New York back in 1973. It doesn’t appear at film festivals as a retrospective.

    The BBC apparently tried to licence it for broadcast in the mid-1990s and failed. Bootleg DVDs of the film occasionally surface, but its never been licensed and released on Blu-Ray or DVD, which is very strange indeed, given the remarkable nature of the film and story behind it.

    The New York Times review of the film published on May 21, 1973 described the film as an ‘immensely honorable but unsuccessful film’, rather like the reviewer was trying to bury a film that they themselves were intrigued by and had enjoyed watching.

    I found the film to be intriguing, enjoyable and beautifully shot. I was haunted by the story that I had seen on screen and am puzzled by the film’s lack of wider distribution – given the significant nature of the film in its own right.

    Subaru Impreza 22B

    Nothing brings home the inflationary world of cars at the moment like this review of the Subaru Impreza 22B STi. This was the first Impreza model to do well in rallying after the legacy, though much of this was down to the disqualification of Toyota’s Celica GT-4 cars that had been previously all-conquering. These cars were sold in Japan and made it outside on the grey market import scene over time, there were less than 500 of this particular model made. One of these Subaru cars with just the delivery mileage had been put in storage for over 20 years and sold for £295,000 in 2020.

    This Subaru isn’t a bonkers road going version of the Ford RS200 or an Audi Sport Quattro of the mid-1980s. This nicely kept, but worn in version of the Impreza 22B STi is still worth more than £200,000. By comparison you can buy a 1987 vintage Toyota Celica GT-4 from Japan (so it will have been well looked after in comparison to the UK, with just 77,000 kilometres on the clock) for about 4.2 million yen or £26,000 plus import costs. You can find even better bargains if you are prepared to have up to 100,000km on the clock.

    For that you are getting a similarly fast Japanese piece of Group A homologation rally history in a smaller package and prettier looking. And its a Toyota, which means the kind of reliability that Mercedes used to be famous for. And with the extra money you can buy yourself a 1980s vintage Porsche 911 SC or even an early 1990s Porsche 911 Carrera 4 coupé.

    Open AI takes on e-sports

    Open AI built a machine to do for e-sports for DeepMind did for Go. The Open AI team focused on Dota 2. More from a talk by the Computer History Museum here.

    All of this is very impressive, but we are still a good distance from having a ‘general purpose AI’ that works across multiple disciplines. Once the system is trained on a particular model, it can’t then learn new skills or areas of expertise and apply the knowledge across areas. The models used in Open AI are deep reinforcement learning (or Deep RL in programmer lingo), all of which goes back to the neural network academic work done from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s. It was first applied to a backgammon game.

    Interest in it amongst technologists is due to one book first written in 1998: Reinforcement Learning: An introduction. The point being is that ‘AI’ champions like Google and others, haven’t moved the science of artificial intelligence on any further, but are throwing more processing power at it instead.

    Your Hit Parade

    I came across this 1955 TV show that was syndicated around NBC TV and radio affiliate stations as black and white film. It was interesting to see the way primary programme sponsor Lucky Strike was integrated into the show. Secondary sponsor ‘Pin Curls’ got a very brief mention at the beginning of the show, in a ‘blink and you’d miss it’ kind of placement.

    “readings of radio requests, sheet music sales, dance hall favorites and jukebox tabulations”

    Your Hit Parade chart methodology

    The use of the word tabulate to indicate how the hit parade chart was compiled, implying mechanical computing in the background. I don’t know whether a juke box could of determined the number of plays of each record at the time. Dance hall favourites sounds particularly nebulous. Finally radio plays wasn’t included in the chart mechanism, instead there was the vague ‘reading out of radio requests’.

    By 1949, we know that there were steps taken to try and stamp out paid placement aka Payola, but music publishers didn’t engage with this process in a positive manner. When it eventually became a scandal the big music companies tried to tie payola to rock and roll music. Independent record companies or music publishers frequently used payola to promote rock and roll on American radio. The reason for these payments was to get around DJs own biases regarding ‘black sounding music’. Payola got put under a spotlight after a congressional investigation in 1958 and 59 that killed DJ Alan Freed’s career and saw Dick Clark transition to television.