Ged Carroll

Category: wireless | 無線 |무선 네트워크 | 無線

This blog came out of the crater of the dot com bust and wireless growth. Wi-Fi was transforming the way we used the internet at home. I used to have my Mac next to my router on top of a cupboard that contained the house fuse panel and the telephone line. Many people had an internet room and used a desktop computer like a Mac Mini or an all-in-one computer like an iMac. Often this would be in the ‘den’ or the ‘man cave’. Going on the internet to email, send instant messages or surf the internet was something you did with intent.

Wi-Fi arrived alongside broadband connections and the dot com boom. Wi-Fi capable computers came in at a relatively low price point with the first Apple iBook. I had the second generation design at the end of 2001 and using the internet changed. Free Wi-Fi became a way to attract people to use a coffee shop, as a freelancer it affected where I did meetings and how I worked.

I was travelling more for work at the time. While I preferred the reliability of an ethernet connection, Wi-Fi would meet my needs just as well. UMTS or 3G wireless data plans were still relatively expensive and slow. I would eventually send low resolution pictures to Flickr and even write a blog post or two. But most of the time I used it to clear my email box, or use Google Maps if I was desperate.

4G wireless services, started to make mobile data a bit more useful, even if the telephony wasn’t great

 

  • VR Headset + more things

    Apple’s first VR headset will reportedly be powerful and pricey – CNET – its a rumour so take with a pinch of salt, the approach outlined reminded me of being rather similar the way Oculus was in their early model VR headset devices. It is also interesting how they consider a VR headset as a stepping stone to AR glasses. Will Apple be enough to mainstream the VR headset? More related content here.

    Next drops bid to buy Topshop after Arcadia’s breakup | Philip Green | The Guardian – The Next consortium was pitted against Shein, a Chinese online fashion retailer and Authentic Brands, the US owner of the Barneys department store, which has been linked to a joint bid with JD Sports. The online retailers Asos and Boohoo are also thought to be involved in the mix. Shein tabled an offer worth in excess of £300m for Topshop and Topman, according to Sky News which first reported the development. It added that a separate process was being run for other Arcadia brands such as Burton and Dorothy Perkins

    ‎Finding Genius Podcast: Telehealth Technology Breaking the Barrier of Geography on Apple Podcasts – practitioner discussion on the realities of telehealth for diabetes and obesity management treatment

    Asians dump WhatsApp for Signal and Telegram on privacy concerns – Nikkei Asia 

    TSMC hikes capex to record $28bn as chip race heats up – Nikkei Asia 

    ‘Absolute carnage’: EU hauliers reject UK jobs over Brexit rules | Brexit | The Guardian – data showed that an increasing number of freight groups rejected contracts to move goods from France to Britain in the second week of January. Transporeon, a German software company that works with 100,000 logistics service providers, said freight forwarders had rejected jobs to move goods from Germany, Italy and Poland into Britain. In the second week of January the rejection rate for transport to the UK was up 168% on the third quarter of 2020 and had doubled in the first calendar week of the year

    Battle of the Robots Still Favors Japan and Europe—For Now – WSJ – Covid-19 has accelerated automation in factories, especially in manufacturing powerhouse China. Foreign companies have long dominated the market for industrial robots and automation tools there—but there are signs that dominance is fraying around the edges. As the factory for the world, China is unsurprisingly far and away the largest market for industrial robots. Before the pandemic, however, the U.S.-China trade war was slowing growth. New installations of industrial robots amounted to 140,500 in 2019, a 9% decline from the previous year, but still almost three times the number for second-place Japan, according to the International Federation of Robotics. Last year was likely much better: Credit Suisse estimates that China’s industrial-robotics market grew 9.5% in 2020.

    Audi and BMW shut down car subscription programs | Engadget – When Mercedes-Benz shuttered Collection, however, it cited mediocre demand and complaints about the hassles of switching personal items between vehicles. While it wasn’t mentioned at the time, the COVID-19 pandemic hasn’t helped matters. People are commuting less if at all, and may be more interested in saving money than the flexibility of swapping cars.Subscription ervices like Volvo Care are still going, although it’s not certain how well they’re faring.There may be a slight revival. Automotive News claims Cadillac is testing a resurrected Book service with dealers, although it would arrive a year after the brand’s hoped-for early 2020 revival. However, the overall market appears to be contracting

    Majority of Europeans fear Biden unable to fix ‘broken’ US | World news | The Guardian – “Europeans like Biden, but they don’t think America will come back as a global leader,” said the thinktank’s director, Mark Leonard. “When George W Bush was president, they were divided about how America should use its power. With Biden entering the White House, they are divided about whether America has power at all.” The survey of 15,000 people in 11 European countries, conducted at the end of last year, found that the shift in European sentiment towards the US in the wake of the Trump presidency had led to a corresponding unwillingness to support Washington in potential international disputes

    Exclusive: City of London Corp boss says ‘not our place’ to criticise China : CityAM – Nathan Law, one of the leaders of the 2014 Umbrella Movement protests in the territory and now in exile in London, told City A.M.’s City View podcast yesterday that UK firms’ “compliance and collusion” with the Chinese Communist Party’s agenda threatened the West’s “democratic values”. The pointed criticism comes after firms including HSBC and Standard Chartered, headquartered in London but who see significant revenues in Asia, backed the imposition of a draconian National Security Law in Hong Kong

    Damaging brand image is rarely harmful because it matters so little – In the age of Trump, what people think of you is far less important than the more brutal objective of getting people to think about you. – Salience is so important

    Zoom spy claims a warning for multinationals in China | Financial Times – the point is that every MNC is compromised because of the pressure that China brings on employees in their country

    IWC’s Christopher Grainger-Herr: “We Are Currently Experiencing Extraordinary Times.” – part of the issue with IWC is pre-COVID product related including using movements that watch fans look down on

    China-US rivalry: how the Gulf War sparked Beijing’s military revolution | South China Morning Post 

  • Copycats + more things

    Copycats everywhere: Hong Kong designers of popular Covid-19 mask holders dismayed by flood of fakes | South China Morning Post – Chinese businesses don’t just rip off the west and other countries, but are copycats even of Hong Kong Chinese products as well. In this respect the copyrights resemble the early 19th century industrialist in the US who were inveterate copycats themselves. Charles Dickens saw is own books copied in the US without his permission and affected American writers who found their works published by copycats abroad.

    Fascinating reading that shows Trump’s appeal is broader and more complex than racism and bigotry – South Vietnam’s Flags at the Capitol Riot – Asia Sentinel – its presence signifies support of a group for Trump – in this case, support from a sizable number of Vietnamese Americans. Their biggest and most apparent reason is that Trump was the best-suited and toughest person to stand up against China, whose expansionist and imperial designs have harmed Vietnam in recent decades. In their view, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is bent on territorial and other forms of gains and control vis-à-vis a largely impotent Vietnamese government. Anti-Chinese and/or anti-CCP sentiments are hardly exclusive to first- and 1.5-generation Vietnamese Americans. These sentiments are shared among groups as different as Chinese dissidents and immigrants from the Philippines. Surveys have indicated that similar to Vietnamese Americans, a lot of Filipino immigrants have supported and voted for Trump. In fact, Trumpism has been stronger in Vietnam during the last few years than it is in the diaspora. Even though I haven’t seen surveys or studies about Vietnam, anecdotal evidence suggests that it has been overwhelming

    How Brexit killed London’s EU stock trading — Quartz – some think the EU is almost certain to target the UK’s euro-derivatives clearing business. Whereas stock trading of EU company shares is a minor prize, the multi-trillion-dollar swaps market is about much more than just bragging rights. Handling such a titanic amount of derivatives is lucrative and brings with it an ecosystem of skilled jobs and financial expertise

    Dior reunites with Shawn Stüssy for a Chinese New Year collection | Input – continued blending of streetwear and luxury

    One of the best histories that I have read of the streetwear label Stüssy. It only misses out Shawn Stüssy’s second life in streetwear with S/Double – Stüssy | The Journal | MR PORTER  – the rarely mentioned record of the International Stüssy tribe has a hiphop track on one side and reggae on the other. It is pressed in France and the hiphop sides definitely sounds like Ronin Records FORCE n KZee. Ronin Records was part owned by International Stüssy Tribe member Alex Turnbull. I hadn’t realised that this had been put together for the first IST meeting in Tokyo. Many streetwear brands that have come along later have been copycats of Shawn Stüssy’s collaging aesthetic, cultural sampling and even the business model. Look at the way Nigo built up a less formal tribe around A Bathing Ape from Pharrell Williams to James Lavelle. Or the way Supreme took Shawn Stüssy’s cultural sampling to a new level. Rather that reinterpreting it like Stüssy had done with the Chanel logo homage or the repeating logo (a la Gucci or MCM); Supreme copycats Louis Vuitton, then collaborates with them 17 years later.

    China’s home appliance manufacturers left cursing export orders as costs rise, profits vanish amid yuan rally 

    China Technology – Big boots. – Radio Free Mobile – I think that regulatory interference at Alibaba may result in a fine or two but nothing that is going to fundamentally damage the company. Ant Group is another matter, and the mooted restructuring may substantially diminish the value of this company to both Jack Ma and Alibaba with the real value accruing to a new state-owned enterprise. 
    Hence, when looking at Alibaba, I am inclined to look at a scenario where the company pays a fine of $1-2bn but continues to operate as before and one where Ant Financial is worth $0 to Alibaba     – and this FT article adds weight to this viewpoint – Beijing orders Chinese media to censor coverage of Alibaba probe 

    OnlyFans Leaks: Leaked OnlyFans on NSFW ThotHub Target Sex Workers | Mel Magazine – guessing that this won’t end well for some of them

    BBC’s Everyman series was usually focused on religious and tangential products, so this episode was a bit more unusual when it looked at rave culture.

    Advertising & Marketing Trends that will dominate 2021 

    China tried to punish European states for Huawei bans by adding eleventh-hour rule to EU investment deal | South China Morning Post – interesting but unsurprising, also worthwhile considering in conjunction with China hits back at foreign sanctions on Chinese companies and individuals | South China Morning Post 

    Flipper Zero — Tamagochi for Hackers by Flipper Devices Inc. — Kickstarter – wireless signal and protocol sniffer hacking tool in a small easily carried gadget

    Age-positive image library launched to tackle negative stereotypes of later life | Centre for Ageing Better 

    Chinese investor buys controlling stake in AMI -Fashion Network – The strategic investment marks the latest Paris runway brand to have been acquired by a Chinese investor, following the acquisition of Lanvin by Fosun International in September 2005. Sequoia Capital China is a venture capital firm based in Beijing, which has taken stakes in over 600 companies since being founded – including JD.com, Alibaba, Meituan and Wanda Cinemas – though not in any noted fashion brand. I find it fascinating that Sandhill Road stalwart Sequoia Capital is moving investment from technology to a fashion play. Not only that, but that it has happened in its Chinese business that is focusing on the ‘new’ Silicon Valley companies in China

    Prospering in the pandemic: 2020’s top 100 companies | Financial Times 

    Putting the bed to bed // THE FUTON 

    Hong Kong Arrests Are Next Big Test Since National Security Law – Bloomberg – Hong Kong’s authorities insist they are acting to prevent chaos. Opposition figures wanted to plunge the city into an “abyss” and create “mutual destruction,” Secretary for Security John Lee told a briefing. While the process to force the chief executive’s resignation is set out in the Basic Law, Hong Kong’s de facto constitution, the national security law forbids “seriously interfering in, disrupting, or undermining the performance of duties and functions” of the government. Irrespective of this apparent contradiction, the root of Hong Kong’s political dysfunction lies in the government’s lack of democratic legitimacy. The opposition activists could not threaten such action if they did not have popular support; indeed, their program aimed to increase pressure for a more democratic system, as promised in the Basic Law – more explanation from the South China Morning Post’s Inkstone – The primary election that resulted in Hong Kong’s national security mass arrests – Inkstone 

    China’s Communist Party targets Chinese abroad to rally support | South China Morning Post – that would promote views of Chinese diaspora as fifth columnists. I don’t think that its a smart move, but instead a desperate move. Presumably Chinese political theorists think that multiculturalism will give them air cover for policy manipulation in other countries.

  • Living with the iPhone 12 Pro Max

    iPhone 12 Pro Max transition

    I moved to an Apple iPhone 12 Pro Max from an Apple iPhone 11 Pro Max. That’s an important  factor to bear in mind when one sees phone comparisons. Secondly, I don’t earn my living doing phone reviews, so my reactions are likely to be less dramatic than a professional phone reviewer. Instead, I am trying to reflect a view of what its like to live with the device. 

    Smartphones overall

    You would have to look pretty hard to find a dreadful premium or mid-range smartphone nowadays. Some of the lower end Motorolas are sluggish performers, have the build quality of an early Samsung Galaxy and a mic that cuts in and out. But for the average iPhone user, a phone that is five years old is still a cracking phone, that could go another few years with a replacement battery. 

    The cameras are more than adequate for snapshots or document scanning, but no amount of software will make up for the quality of the lens in a smartphone versus a semi-professional photographers camera. And for most people, that’s enough. Performance has reduced to incremental improvements in real world performance. And in this respect smartphones mirror personal computers; as the huge perceived performance gains of the early computers flattened out. 

    I no longer need a Mophie Juice Pack case to make the iPhone last through a work day like I did with the iPhone 3GS. Although for long trips away from my desk, I still a power pack and a cable in my bag. This is as much about having the reassurance of knowing that I can run down my battery with lots of Maps usage if I have to, rather than a real need. Increased battery life is partly a function of screen size. The larger the screen, the larger the battery. Device screen sizes have grown over the years. Secondly, chip design and system software have focused on power consumption as part of a decade plus long focus on computing power per watt. 

    I still miss the keyboard and form-factor of my old Nokia E90; despite its flaky Symbian software. But I no longer miss its superior battery life, or the ability to remove the battery and replace it with fully charged spare. 

    Out of the box

    All of the iPhone 12 models come in smaller packaging than previous devices. The primary reason for this is Apple no longer supplies a USB charger. The excuse that Apple provided was that it was environmentally friendly. The problem with this is there are some awfully unsafe USB chargers available online as an alternative. The second thing that was missing from the box was a set of Apple wired earbuds. Again this was put down to being environmentally friendly by Apple. Though you could also come to two less flattering conclusions:

    • Apple is converting an insignificant amount of Android users, but only converting existing Apple iPhone customers. So headphones with a Lightning connector wasn’t needed and Apple could save on costs
    • It was a cynical ploy by Apple to drive AirPod wireless headphone sales even higher

    I can understand why Chinese netizens considered both moves to Apple shortchanging customers. I agree with them.

    China

    It is also interesting to note that all the main live-streaming platforms in China simultaneously decided to cancel live-streaming of the iPhone 12 series launch.

    Of course the Chinese government / Communist Party of China had nothing to do in coordinating this – honest….

    Handset design

    When you take the iPhone 12 Pro Max handset out of the box, you immediately notice its size and weight.  It has steep stainless steel sides like an iPhone 4 on steroids. 

    Apple iPhone 12 Pro Max
    iPhone 12 Pro Max view from the back of the phone

    Usually the heft of a premium phone feels reassuring. But at first, holding the phone was a dissonant experience. There were a few reasons for this:

    The change in design language from smooth round edges on handsets from the iPhone 6 onwards, to a flat edge of the iPhone 4 and 5.

    It was the first time that an iPhone model has become thicker than the previous generation of iPhone.

    The change in design with its thicker flat sides has little difference in putting on a protective case, but removing the case is noticeably harder.

    After three days or so usage, the iPhone 12 felt perfectly normal as I got used to it.

    Camera

    As I said at the outset to this post, this like other modern premium smartphones, are good at taking snapshots. The main difference between my iPhone 11 Max Pro and iPhone 12 Max Pro was a slight increase in optical magnification. The rest of the mild photographic improvements were available in the iOS 14 software for both new and older iPhones.

    Networking

    The big selling point for Apple on the iPhone 12 Pro Max is its ability use 5G networks. The problem is that for consumers 5G doesn’t have a compelling killer application at the moment.

    In that respect, it reminds me a lot of my time working with Cap Gemini as a client when video calling and Quibi like sports and entertainment clips were thought to be the killer app for 3G.

    The reality is that it took wi-fi and 4G made video to make calls work, even then the product isn’t perfect. Shorter sellable video content is still looking for a market. 5G does have industrial niche market opportunities.  Secondly, 5G network rollout means that there will be probably three generations of future iPhones before the 5G wireless function becomes useful. I still live in a neighbourhood in central London where I often lose 4G coverage. 5G will require many more cell sites to provide the same level of coverage. 

    Cellphone reception seems to be better; I don’t know if this is down to the handset or my carrier building out their infrastructure further during the lockdown.

    My house has never had great cellphone reception during my time living here. It backs on to a railway line with overhead electrification and only had windows the side facing away from the railway. Yet I am now seeing two bars of signal in parts of the house where I previously would only have had Wi-Fi or a single bar of 3G. 

    Conclusion

    Unsurprisingly, the iPhone 12 Pro Max is an accomplished handset. It offers good battery life, responsive performance, a great screen, a good camera and is well made. But there is insufficient reason to upgrade if you have an iPhone made in the last three years. You already have a good well made phone. It has a good camera and will run the latest version of iOS.

    If your battery no longer holds the charge, the way it once did, Apple offers a service to replace the battery at a very reasonable cost.

    More design related posts here.

    More information and selected reviews

    iPhone 12 launching without earbuds or wall chargers is compared to eating without chopsticks in China | South China Morning Post 

    Shenzhen/Huawei: the other Bay Area | Financial Times – The impression of military manoeuvres by alternative means was reinforced by Tencent, another Shenzhen resident. It was among big Chinese social and video platforms including iQiyi and Weibo, that simultaneously cancelled the livecast of Apple’s iPhone 12 launch

    Kibbles & Bytes #1122: Apple Releases Four iPhone 12 Models and the HomePod mini – Don nails the assessment of 5G in the latest edition of his newsletter.

    Daring Fireball: The iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro – interesting thoughts on the iPhone 12s. What Gruber doesn’t touch on is the radio improvements, particularly in 4G

  • Private sector control + more things

    China’s Xi Ramps Up Control of Private Sector. ‘We Have No Choice but to Follow the Party.’ – WSJ – In some cases, it is taking charge entirely of companies it regards as undisciplined, absorbing them into state-owned enterprises. – Push driven by a concern over the private sector business owners being unpredictable and not trusted. They think a centrally planned complex economy is the way forward; with the private sector playing a subservient role at best. This view has been strengthened by the state engineered swift recovery from COVID-19. I presume that they consider that China’s place in global supply chains, big data and machine learning will solve a lot of the problems that bedevilled previous centralised economic planning systems like what happened in the Soviet Union. More economics related content here.

    Party Committees See Rising Prevalence in Private Sector | Marco Polo – China clamping down on private sector

    Google AMP gets a shock to its system as advisor quits, lawsuit claims foul play • The Register 

    Quick Thoughts on the Russia Hack – Lawfare  – interesting post on the SolarWind hack based attacks

    North American Semiconductor Equipment Industry Posts November 2020 Billings – Semiconductor Digest – this looks good in terms of world economic growth

    China-Europe Trade Forum Canceled After China Sought to Bar Critics – WSJ – Officials familiar with the exchange say the two people Beijing wanted to exclude from this year’s virtual event were Reinhard Bütikofer, the European Parliament’s chairman of the EU-China caucus who has publicly criticized Beijing over Hong Kong and its treatment of the Uighur minority; and Mikko Huotari, the head of Merics, a German think tank critical of the Chinese Communist Party. – China is depriving itself of unvarnished information about how it is viewed. A recipe for miscalculation in policymaking. Mainland Chinese contacts fail to understand why they don’t seem to have friendly relations with other nations anymore, despite Chinese achievements

    Huawei, 5G, and the Man Who Conquered Noise | WIRED – Steven Levy explains Erdal Arikan’s breakthrough in information theory well. What’s interesting is how the west has abandoned long term research projects. Arikan took 20 years for his breakthrough. In an American university you wouldn’t get, or maintain tenure doing that

    ‘Made in Hong Kong’ prestige provides springboard for retailers Watsons, Sa Sa to find success in Greater Bay Area | South China Morning Post – ‘Made in Hong Kong’ prestige provides springboard for retailers Watsons, Sa Sa to find success in Greater Bay Area. Well-known Hong Kong retailers are aggressively expanding in the bay area, where the prestige of their brands makes them a hit with mainland consumers. The city’s retail sector has been devastated by the coronavirus keeping deep-pocketed mainland tourists away – if true, I don’t seeing it being a defensible differentiation in the medium to long term

    MindGeek: the secretive owner of Pornhub and RedTube | Financial Times – Porn pioneered elements of the global online advertising industry such as targeted advertising, pay-per-click and email marketing and is today a substantial part of the internet economy

    Gen Z: the rising power in Chinese market and their 7 digital lifestyles – ChoZan – not the greatest guide to life stage trends in China

  • Hydrogen fuel cells + more news

    Hydrogen fuel cells

    Hyundai and Ineos team up to develop hydrogen future | CAR Magazine  BMW details fuel cell plans | EE News – I think that this move to hydrogen fuel cells makes more sense than lithium ion batteries. Hydrogen fuel cells are well understood, having been used by NASA during the Apollo space mission, the main challenge as been the cost of the cell. Hydrogen fuel cells don’t induce range anxiety and don’t have the environmental problems that you get recycling lithium ion batteries.

    Panasonic finally looks at European battery gigafactory – but this is happening with hydrogen fuel cells being in a more effective decision. Elon Musk is down on hydrogen fuel cells, but ignores the issues with lithium ion batteries compared to hydrogen fuel cells. Lithium ion batteries have their own dangers. Hydrogen fuel cells don’t have the same recycling issues that spent lithium ion batteries have. Given the strategic hold over lithium mining by China; hydrogen fuel cells offer a better option to reduce dependence. The hydrogen lobby does a better job to combat the Tesla showmanship.

    China

    EU braces for battle despite new faces in White House | Financial Times – “ There will be a number of easy wins and enhanced co-operation on climate, the pandemic and remedying some of the offences of the past four years,” said Kristine Berzina, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. “But there are real dangers that disagreements on issues like data privacy and digital taxation will make it more difficult to get agreements on other issues that are very important for both the US and Europe — particularly China

    Germany frets over its corporate dependency on China | Financial Times – Robust Chinese demand has helped Germany’s auto manufacturers and their suppliers to offset weaker European and US markets still afflicted by the pandemic. But it has also revived concerns that German industry is too dependent on China. And it has raised questions about whether Berlin will be willing to respond to growing pressure in the EU for a stronger line towards Beijing and to embrace a new transatlantic partnership on China under a Biden administration. – you can see this in the split between Merkel and her party over China engagement – Daimler, which has two large Chinese shareholders, sells nearly 30 per cent of its Mercedes cars in China. It accounts for about 11 per cent of group revenues. For several companies in the Dax 30 index, China represents at least a fifth of sales including BMW, chipmaker Infineon and plastics manufacturer Covestro. Likewise, Volkswagen is estimated to generate a similar proportion of its sales in the country last year, selling nearly 40 per cent of its vehicles there. All of this leaves you vulnerable to the Australian situation: China sends a message with Australian crackdown | Financial Times – The message is clear. If your media is overly critical, if your think-tanks produce negative reports, if your MPs persist in criticism, if you probe Communist party influence in your community and politics and if you don’t allow Chinese state and private companies into your market, and so on, you will be vulnerable to Beijing’s retribution as well

    Red Convergence | China Media Project – media policy in China – with implications domestically and internationally. It outlines how the Chinese Communist Party intends to leverage transformations in global communication, both at home and abroad (though the latter is more implied), to sustain the regime and increase its influence internationally.

    Lessons from China’s decision to halt Ant Group’s giant IPO | Financial Times – interesting points from WeBank about a sweet spot from Rmb 8,000 – 200,000 were debtors do not have an incentive to run away or speculate. SMEs are focused on having a good credit record

    Q&A: Gareth Richardson – Western Brands No Longer Have an Easy Ride in Asia | Branding in Asia Magazine – In China, there’s no access to Google and Facebook but consumers are immersed in WeChat. This is a playground where western brands have no inherent advantage. In fact, many Chinese consumers don’t know or much care about where the brand originated (save for a few specific categories such as Infant Milk Powder). In western culture individuals are heroes and this is reflected in the approach to brand storytelling. However, in Asia, the culture is more collectivist and storytelling celebrates multiple heroes. Asian brands should celebrate their cultural values. Examples include brands built on traditional values of Asian hospitality, such as Mandarin Oriental. There’s a paradox though. Asian culture is collectivist and yet Asian businesses are very hierarchical. There’s often a significant power gap between the C-suite and the frontline staff. This makes branding more challenging to implement even when its value is properly understood by the leadership – this also happens within agencies. True story: I was asked to go and present to the Chinese subsidiary of a US multinational. The global digital lead had gone in there previously with the global client ambassador and made a mess that couldn’t be cleared up. Firstly, they hadn’t recognised the great firewall. Twitter doesn’t matter in China. Secondly, they thought that democratic political campaigning experience was an example of great marketing. At the time, the person who was the global data lead had also worked on the first Obama presidential campaign. All of them had come from a political background and were clueless about brand marketing. Finally, they’d unintentionally priced a measurement solution ludicrously low. It was a shit show. We had lost the client already, but the client lead had held out hope that hanging on in there churning out a monthly report with no actionable insight would somehow provide a way back in. But at least I got to Guangzhou for the first time.

    Consumer behaviour

    Right-wing populism with Chinese characteristics? Identity, otherness and global imaginaries in debating world politics online – Chenchen Zhang, 2020 – The past few years have seen an emerging discourse on Chinese social media that combines the claims, vocabulary and style of right-wing populisms in Europe and North America with previous forms of nationalism and racism in Chinese cyberspace. In other words, it provokes a similar hostility towards immigrants, Muslims, feminism, the so-called ‘liberal elites’ and progressive values in general. This article examines how, in debating global political events such as the European refugee crisis and the American presidential election, well-educated and well-informed Chinese Internet users appropriate the rhetoric of ‘Western-style’ right-wing populism to paradoxically criticise Western hegemony and discursively construct China’s ethno-racial and political identities. Through qualitative analysis of 1038 postings retrieved from a popular social media website, this research shows that by criticising Western ‘liberal elites’, the discourse constructs China’s ethno-racial identity against the ‘inferior’ non-Western other, exemplified by non-white immigrants and Muslims, with racial nationalism on the one hand; and formulates China’s political identity against the ‘declining’ Western other with realist authoritarianism on the other. The popular narratives of global order protest against Western hegemony while reinforcing a state-centric and hierarchical imaginary of global racial and civilisational order. We conclude by suggesting that the discourse embodies the logics of anti-Western Eurocentrism and anti-hegemonic hegemonies. – This is interesting especially when the Communist Party of China is adopting a more Han nationalist stance (and in some respects reaching back into historic integration of Mongol and Manchu rulers). Secondly, Communist Party academics and legal academics from Beijing University have been drawing heavily on the work of Carl Schmitt. As have far right organisations and Russian nationalists. Schmitt was Nazi Germany’s leading legal theorist. He was known to be hostile to parliamentary democracy and supported the power of an authoritarian leader to decide the law. Schmitt’s rejection of attempts to take politics out of the operation of the law or economic policy implementation – have appeals to diverse audiences.

    Design

    Top 3 reasons why Nokia N97 failed: The “iPhone killer” that actually killed Nokia – Gizchina.com – Nokia N97 has a slide-out design with a three-line QWERTY keyboard displayed below the display. That was an advantage at the time, but it was just another manifestation of Nokia’s outdated ideas. With the improvement of input methods, touch screen keyboards have become more accurate and soon eclipsed physical keyboards. – the keyboard was very poor compared to the Nokia E90 Communicator that I used to use. I also remember that the address book feature used to crash the phone if you loaded more than 999 contacts into it. Even their ‘E’ series business handsets like my E90 Communicator and the later E71 devices. I moved to the iPhone because I wanted an address book that worked. If the iPhone ever came in a Nokia Communicator type format, I would be ecstatic. More gadget related content here.

    Ideas

    I have been watching more David Hoffman films recently, looking back to the past to try and understand the present. What becomes apparent was that there was a schism of values in the late 1960s America. What’s less apparent was how, or even if; that schism was eventually healed.

    Online

    China tightens grip on booming livestreaming sector | Financial Times – this needs to be viewed in the wider aspect of reining in internet companies

    Style

    Good Collaborations Are Art, Great Ones Are Kitsch | Highsnobiety – “You know it’s art when the check clears,” said Andy Warhol. With Roy Lichtenstein and Robert Indiana, Warhol made his way into museums by turning the mundane world into works of art by enriching it with pop references, connotations and associations. Warhol’s art is commercial and his commercials are art (a Warhol ad launched Absolut vodka in 1986)

    Technology

    A little automation goes a long way in distracting drivers | INPUT – technology creating more problems than it solves in the car driving experience.