Ged Carroll

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  • The Big Score by Michael Malone

    The author of The Big Score is a lifetime inhabitant of Silicon Valley, Michael Malone. Malone went to school with Steve Jobs and spent his entire working life as a journalist covering technology companies of the area. His own career sounds like a veritable history of technology sector business reporting. Malone had written and or edited for the San Jose Mercury News, Fast Company, Upside, Forbes (ASAP), The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Wired magazine. Now he co-hosts a weekly podcast on the goings on in Silicon Valley.

    DSC09137

    The book was originally published in 1985 and has been finished prior to the launch of the Apple Macintosh. At the the time of writing, Malone had been an early to mid-career journalist.

    Silicon Valley time capsule

    His book is time capsule of how Silicon Valley would have likely seen itself. The people portrayed in it lack the kind of artifice that pioneering PR people like Pam Edstrom would later drum into a young Bill Gates with media interview training and briefing books. Companies have since gone a step further and seldom engage with the media at all; instead putting out news by blog post or staged video production a la Apple under Steve Jobs and Tim Cook.

    Steve Jobs on Apple’s future back in 1997

    When we come to understand modern-day Silicon Valley five decades into the future, we won’t have the same level of intellectual honesty that we have in The Big Score because the artefacts and interviews will be so vanilla.

    The book had become a largely forgotten business history book. Michael Malone revisited much of the history of covered in the book with a slightly longer term perspective in his 2002 work The Valley of Hearts Delight, which covered the history of the area from the 1960s to the dot com era. While The Big Score might have been forgotten, it was resurrected when Stripe through its publishing arm put it out again in 2021. They did this because while the book was forgotten by the general public, it has been read in libraries by university students and in their own collections by people like me who followed the technology sector.

    https://flic.kr/p/8ZAdxQ

    Getting things wrong

    In the introduction to the book, late career Malone freely admits the three things that he got wrong in The Big Score:

    • The impact of the internet. While it didn’t reach public consciousness until I was in college; as a high schooler in 1969 Michael Malone had got a chance to try the ARPAnet during a class visit to Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center). Secondly, the San Jose Mercury News had been using email and bulletin boards as part of their business process and offering since the 1980s. Yet Malone’s past familiarity gave him little idea of what was likely to lie ahead. His elevated access as a journalist to the great and the good of the technology sector didn’t help either; in fact Bill Gates made a similar error to Malone in the first edition of his book The Road Ahead. Gates worked very quickly with the publishers to get out a second edition that corrected his mistake. But I think Malone’s inability to see and his intellectual honesty about that is instructive for all of us
    • While he had the chance to meet Doug Engelbart, Malone wrongly assumed that Engelbart was an eccentric inventor trying to get people to pay him his dues for technology that got bypassed. So, Engelbart doesn’t feature in The Big Score at all, despite The Mother of All Demos
    • Intel’s Andy Grove, who Malone now considers to be the most important business man in the history of Silicon Valley doesn’t get a prominent role in the book. That’s not so bad as Andy Grove managed to write a lot in his own right, notably Only The Paranoid Survive

    The Big Score on excess, greed and ethics

    Malone’s The Big Score like Robert X Cringely’s later work Accidental Empires wastes no time in showing Silicon Valley’s underbelly. At the time of writing there was a large amount of industrial espionage happening between hardware companies, many start-ups were being developed by greedy experienced executives and top performing workers were burning out by trying to keep up self medicating with drugs and stimulants and alcohol to take the edge off. Something you still see today with engineers using Adderall to help them focus.

    In this respect The Big Score is very different from other works that cover this era such as Chip War, Fire In The Valley and Where Wizards Stay Up Late.

    The Big Score by Michael Malone tells the tale of Silicon Valley before the Apple Macintosh and the large media companies of Yahoo!, Excite, Alphabet or Meta et al.

    While the counterculture did play a substantial role in the PC revolution, much of early Silicon Valley was about trying to accumulate wealth and while the successful are lionised for a while; most people did middling to ok at best. There was a work culture of hard working and hard drinking which meant that marriages didn’t last. The first barrier that Silicon Valley broke through was one of class, if you were bright and successful enough, class didn’t matter.

    Robert X. Cringely in his later book Accidental Empires talked about how Bob Noyce (a key player at Shockley Labs, Fairchild Semiconductor and Intel) was rejected from joining a local country club despite his business success. Class still existed, but not within these companies to the same extent. Michael Malone in The Big Score conveys how the culture clash over class between its workers and those who funded it, ripped apart Silicon Valley and created an explosion of semiconductor companies that dominated from the late 1960s to the mid-1980s and beyond.

    While Silicon Valley provided a greater egalitarian opportunity for the corporate man who worked there, women are seldom mentioned.

    (Aside: At the start of my career in agency life I had LSI Logic as a client. LSI Logic was founded by Wilf Corrigan a veteran of Fairchild Semiconductor. Even then at the height of the dot com bubble; ‘real men’ were engineers or salesmen and women worked as secretaries or in public relations. As the company had grown their female corporate marketing manager had been pushed out of the headquarters and to the far flung European office, which was the smallest part of the business were she could do the least damage. I still remember how awkward it was to see her treated with distain by her main colleagues. She had many faults, but the treatment lacked decorum and discretion. This kind of culture is fostered from the top of an organisation down. Despite all this she had still been granted shares in the business and a good deal of share options meaning she could be comfortably well off and fund various American christian endeavours.

    I even got to meet Corrigan, the son of a Liverpool docker came across as a Silicon Valley analogue of Michael Gambon’s character in The Layer Cake – rich but not sophisticated. Someone who mistook his mix of hard work and good fortune as a divine right.)

    While much is said about the egalitarian nature of David Packard, William Hewlett and Bob Noyce, they still had the social conservatism of Leave It To Beaver. Malone eulogised Hewlett and Packard in his later award winning business history Bill and Dave. The Big Score portrays them with a clearer eye. But Bill and Dave came out later on when Silicon Valley was starting to lose its moral compass. H-P under Carly Fiorina had ruptured the H-P way and was an indicator of what was to come – so Malone recast them as mythical heroes.

    Silicon Valley soap opera

    Malone’s description in The Big Score of the break away of talent from Shockley Labs and Fairchild Semiconductor is accurate. But the story itself is engaging in the same way that the family drama of the soap operas that my Mam used to follow.

    Stripe Press

    Stripe Press have given The Big Score a much needed needed design refresh. They typography makes it easy to read and the book is immensely well read. The hardback cover, binding and paper are high quality for a book of this nature. It is the kind of book that will be an heirloom that can be handed on down to the next generation. If not for the value, for the historical knowledge. Beyond the self penned introduction at the front, the contents of the book itself were left alone.

    Recommendation?

    If you are student of Silicon Valley history or have read Malone’s other books The Big Score is a great complementary read. The republishing of the book by Stripe Press is timely given the fads of the metaverse and NFTs that have swept through the technology sector recently.

    However if you wanted one book to start you off on your Silicon Valley journey, I wouldn’t recommend it. I would suggest that you read the following books before getting to The Big Score. Its not because these books are better, but that they provide a better initial entry point into the world of Silicon Valley and its history. Malone’s book was written relatively early one and other books can provide a better basic knowledge framework because of The Big Score‘s age:

    • Accidental Empires by Robert X Cringely was something so different to what I’d been used to. I’d worked in industry, but hadn’t experienced anything like this. There are similarly great books to read like Fire In The Valley and Where Wizards Stay Up Late – but they aren’t as entertaining to read as Accidental Empires and pull their punches in order to be seen as ‘serious’ business books
    • Architects Of The Web by Robert H. Reid. He wrote up the profiles of many of the pioneer web companies including Netscape, Real Networks, Marimba, Yahoo! and Silicon Graphics. It’s helpful to revisit the future the way it was envisaged during the late 1990s and see how the future has changed. 
    • Bill and Dave by Michael Malone tells the story of Silicon Valley pioneers Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard. Nowadays people think of them as just a brand of laptops or printers. But Hewlett Packard was much more. They pioneered the Silicon Valley start-up, their successor businesses Agilient, HPE and HP. Bill and Dave’s biggest impact was in Silicon Valley culture and lore. They built the company in a garage and started the egalitarian culture with The HP Way.
    • Chip War by Chris Miller. Miller is a think tank wonk and history professor who tells the story of the semiconductor industry specifically through its relationship with the military industrial complex and its relationship with national security. Chip War deservedly was recommended as one of the FT’s business book’s of the year 2022.
    • Dogfight by Fred Vogelstein. Fred Vogelstein is an experienced journalist who most notably covered the technology sector for Wired magazine. If your familiarity with the tech industry starts with Google and Apple. Dogfight is a great entry point.
    • The New, New Thing by Michael Lewis. Pretty much every book that Lewis writes will compare unfavourably to his first book Liar’s Poker, but that book doesn’t mean that The New, New Thing shouldn’t be read. The book profiles Jim Clark, who founded Netscape and Silicon Graphics and aimed at the time to turn the healthcare industry with a new project. Lewis is capturing Clark when he is past his prime from a creative point of view. What Lewis does capture is the optimism and hubris in Silicon Valley that it can change anything.
    • What The Dormouse Said by John Markoff. John Markoff is one of the titans of reporting on the business of technology alongside Steve Lohr and Walt Mossberg. In this book Markoff draws a line between the counterculture of the 1960s and the personal computing revolution through to Web 2.0

    More on The Big Score here.

  • State capitalism & more things

    State capitalism

    State capitalism has been created in various forms in China since opening up. Some of the new forms have aspects that impacts the relative attractiveness of doing business in or with Chinese companies.

    Opening up

    Historically since opening up China has been a mixed market model. There were small private businesses including many farmers. There was the state owned enterprises, a direct descendent of Mao’s work units and businesses that the government wanted to keep a strategic hold on.

    rissani
    Taken at an exhibition that was part of the Shenzhen Biennial, when I was there back in 2010

    Grey zone and hybrid companies

    Grey zone companies

    A classic example of a grey zone company would be Huawei. In their 2019 paper Who Owns Huawei, Balding & Clarke make a convincing argument that Huawei is a state controlled company, if not state owned in the conventional sense. This view is supported by:

    • The state hacking of Nortel which Huawei disproportionately benefited from in their subsequent telecoms carrier contracts and 5G technology
    • State bank vendor financing on behalf of Huawei at negative interest rates that telecoms providers like BT and Vodafone were given
    • The ‘princess’ Meng Wanzhou case in Canada

    Zichen Wang translated a Chinese academic paper that pointed out an alternative view. Yes the ownership structure was a shit show, was pretty much the one point of agreement between the two papers.

    But that much of this was down to domestic practice influenced by classic state capitalism and modern business law that China brought in and still doesn’t square up with what was happening on the ground in terms of business laws.

    You can make up your own mind if this is an element of state capitalism.

    Hybrid companies

    An example of this would be the Stellantis | Guangzhou Auto Company joint venture that made Jeep branded SUVs for China. These joint ventures were basically the way the Chinese government coerced technology transfer from western firms to local firms. The Stellantis JV has gone into bankruptcy and GAC seems to have its own range of capable SUVs based on Stellantis expertise gained over the years.

    Huawei’s joint venture with 3Com allowed the telecoms giant to build a large enterprise networking business to compete with the likes of Cisco Systems. At the time that China first rolled out its Golden Shield internet censorship platform, it relied on Cisco technology, and China would want to remedy this under its state capitalism system. Huawei now supports internet censorship around the world. This form of state capitalism has been common in a number of developing countries over the years, but China was particularly successful in using it in a coercive manner to enhance state capitalism rather than just driving economic growth.

    Rise of the hybrid firm – Gavekal Research – Today, 48% of onshore listed companies, representing 67% of market capitalization, have a mixed bag of major shareholders from the private and state sectors. While many of those companies are still clearly controlled by either state or private shareholders, a large and significant group of firms occupies an intermediate position that is harder to characterize. – on China’s state capitalism system

    How China’s communist officials became venture capitalists – Times of India – The US and other Western governments have long been wary of the economic power of China’s “state capitalism,” fueled by giant state-owned companies and an industrial policy driven by subsidies and government mandates. But policymakers need to pay more attention to what’s really propelling China’s growth: private firms with minority government-­linked investments. “The distinction between state-owned and private has been important for policymakers outside China and for analyzing the Chinese economy,” says Meg Rithmire, a professor at Harvard Business School who specializes in comparative political development in Asia and China. “That boundary is eroding.” – see also Chinese banks vendor financing deals which is the real reason behind Huawei’s growth (alongside stealing IP and other proprietary elements: Nortel cough, cough)

    Influenced firms

    Influenced firms are a particularly pernicious part of the Chinese state capitalism system. The Chinese economy has always relied on relationships and even patronage of government power brokers similar to Malaysia, Thailand and Korea. But the state has looked to move personal bonds to state bonds. Much of this comes from National Intelligence Law 2017; that puts demands on Chinese citizens, Chinese companies and anyone connected to China.

    Like the more widely reported Cybersecurity Law (which went into effect on June 1) and a raft of other recent statutes, the Intelligence Law places ill-defined and open-ended new security obligations and risks not only on U.S. and other foreign citizens doing business or studying in China, but in particular on their Chinese partners and co-workers.

    Of special concern are signs that the Intelligence Law’s drafters are trying to shift the balance of these legal obligations from intelligence “defense” to “offense”—that is, by creating affirmative legal responsibilities for Chinese and, in some cases, foreign citizens, companies, or organizations operating in China to provide access, cooperation, or support for Beijing’s intelligence-gathering activities.

    The new law is the latest in an interrelated package of national security, cyberspace, and law enforcement legislation drafted under Xi Jinping. These laws and regulations are aimed at strengthening the legal basis for China’s security activities and requiring Chinese and foreign citizens, enterprises, and organizations to cooperate with them. They include the laws on Counterespionage (2014), National Security (2015), Counterterrorism (2015), Cybersecurity (2016), and Foreign NGO Management (2016), as well as the Ninth Amendment to the PRC Criminal Law (2015), the Management Methods for Lawyers and Law Firms (both 2016), and the pending draft Encryption Law and draft Standardization Law.

    Tanner, M.S. Beijing’s New National Intelligence Law: From Defense to Offense (July 20, 2017). United States: Lawfare.

    China’s companies rewrite rules to declare Communist Party ties – Nikkei Asia – the latest party congress has heralded a new chapter in state capitalism with all of China’s companies rewriting rules to declare Communist Party ties, rather than shareholder responsibility.

    Business

    The cost of doing business amidst the culture wars is an entirely new question of risk | CityAM 

    China

    For Young Chinese, Even State Sector Jobs Are No Longer a Safe Bet – the public sector hasn’t lived up to its reputation of being a safe haven. Nearly three years into the pandemic, many of China’s local governments are facing eye-watering fiscal deficits and implementing austerity measures. And those cuts are hitting civil servants hard. Wang had originally expected to earn at least 250,000 yuan ($34,600) per year at his new job. In reality, he estimates he’s being paid just 160,000 yuan. His basic salary has been cut by 30%; his social insurance payments haven’t risen as promised; part of his annual bonus has never been paid. Instead, Wang finds himself forced to work regular unpaid overtime shifts, helping to implement the town’s virus-control policies, and trying to cut back spending at home. His plans to trade in his boring SUV have been put on hold indefinitely.

    Chinese ‘police stations’ in Canada under investigation | Hong Kong Free Press – there is a definite turning point around the illegal Chinese police operations against its diaspora. I expect United Front activities to be the next point of focus and you could see triad organisations treated less like organised crime and more like the paramiilitary or terrorist arm of the United Front

    China wants homegrown logistics firms to take on FedEx, UPS | Quartz 

    The World According to Xi Jinping: What China’s Ideologue in Chief Really Believes | Foreign Affairs best read in comparison with this: There is no hope the Communist Party can reform — Q&A with Frank Dikötter – The China Project. The FT’s take: Maximum Xi | Financial Times  

    Design

    Chip Shortage Forces Toyota to Issue Metal Keys for Japan Cars | Jalopnik and New York state passes ‘Right to repair’ bill for electronic devices – Telecompaper – both could see a move for more repairable less software cloud dependent products

    Why isn’t the internet more fun and weird? – I was rereading this and it seems more powerful today than it was when I read it back in 2019

    Economics

    How the U.K. Became One of the Poorest Countries in Western Europe – The Atlantic – “Between 2003 and 2018, the number of automatic-roller car washes (that is, robots washing your car) declined by 50 percent, while the number of hand car washes (that is, men with buckets) increased by 50 percent,” the economist commentator Duncan Weldon told me in an interview for my podcast, Plain English. “It’s more like the people are taking the robots’ jobs.” That might sound like a quirky example, because the British economy is obviously more complex than blokes rubbing cars with soap. But it’s an illustrative case. According to the International Federation of Robotics, the U.K. manufacturing industry has less technological automation than just about any other similarly rich country. With barely 100 installed robots per 10,000 manufacturing workers in 2020, its average robot density was below that of Slovenia and Slovakia. One analysis of the U.K.’s infamous “productivity puzzle” concluded that outside of London and finance, almost every British sector has lower productivity than its Western European peers. Read alongside – What British politics looks like to the rest of the world – The Face TL;DR a joke that makes their country look good by comparison.

    Economy improves in Q3 but faces mounting risks | Merics on China but the numbers in Europe, in particular Spain and Germany are bad: Eurozone manufacturing output falls at sharpest pace since initial COVID- 19 wave as demand for goods plummets | S&P Global 

    Semiconductor market continues to fall … | EETimes – guess that the economy isn’t going to pick up for a while. You can measure industrial activity and likely predicted consumer demand by following the trends in the semiconductor market. More structural pain due as well – We must prepare for the reality of the Chip Wars | Financial Times 

    Energy

    Japan cannot survive without Russian oil, warns trading house chief | Financial Times – Some analysts have expressed concern about Itochu’s heavy exposure to China through its 10 per cent stake in Citic, but Okafuji stressed that its risks were lower since its investment was in a government-owned company. “Currently, what they are doing in China is to move private assets from private companies to government-owned companies to reduce the gap between the rich and poor,” he said. “Our objective is to contribute to providing a prosperous lifestyle to the Chinese people, so I think the Chinese government welcomes that.” – I expect that the Chinese government and CITIC will tear the face off Itochu

    Finance

    Paul Graham’s Legacy | I, Cringely – god save us from blockchain garbage

    Germany

    Concerns mount over German Chancellor Scholz’s upcoming trip to China | Axios – it looks like there is a battle royale brewing between the German public and their large corporates. Add to this: Ports in a storm: Chinese investments in Europe spark fear of malign influence | South China Morning Post  and Watching China in Europe with Noah Barkin – 55 percent of Germans believe he (Scholz) is out of his depth), deepens divisions in his government, and undermines its quest for a common European policy toward Beijing, a goal that was spelled out in black and white in the three-party coalition agreement. More worryingly, it shows that Scholz and his advisers still have a steep learning curve on China. Germany’s sway with Beijing depends on a united front in Berlin, in Europe, and across the G7. Scholz has managed to torpedo them all in the span of a few weeks. To be clear, the problem is not that Scholz is meeting with Xi. The party congress showed that Xi may be the only member of China’s leadership who is worth talking to these days. And it is normal for Scholz, who has been chancellor for nearly a year but unable to meet with Xi in person because of China’s restrictive COVID-19 rules, to want to sit down for a face-to-face with the country’s newly anointed leader for life. But the when, where, and how of this first meeting are important. And Scholz has whiffed on all three. The situation is reminiscent of his predecessor Angela Merkel’s decision, two years ago, to hurry through the EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI) weeks before Joe Biden entered the White House. Like Merkel, Scholz is gifting Xi a geopolitical victory without much in return. And he is voluntarily sacrificing whatever leverage his government might have had with China. He may not realize that but members of his own government—some of whom have been working diligently for months on a new, tougher China strategy—are furious. “As long as the German chancellor doesn’t buy into his own government’s China strategy, then it is worthless,” one German official fumed. “The Chinese can see the divide in Berlin and Europe, and believe me, they will find a way to exploit it. It is absolutely fatal. And what is so stunning is that Scholz has done all of this of his own free will.”

    Hong Kong

    America’s Biggest Financial Firms Are Still Collaborating with the Sanctioned Hong Kong Government – After an increasing number of critics began to pile on, including the co-chairs of the Congressional Executive Commission on China Representative Jim McGovern and Senator Jeff Merkeley, a coalition of 20 U.S.-based Hong Kong activist groups, and the Wall Street Journal editorial board, Citibank’s Jane Fraser claimed that she had tested positive for Covid-19 and will pull out of the summit. The rest of these executives have only a couple of days to come down with similar illnesses or unexpected family commitments, but I’m not holding my breath and Hong Kong Summit Surrounded by Drama Before It Even Begins – Bloomberg – Top executives pull out after getting Covid; storm approaches. Event aimed at showing city is back in business after pandemic

    National security: Ex-leader of Hong Kong Tiananmen vigil group demands prosecution disclose more info – Hong Kong Free Press HKFP and High-profile national security trial of Hong Kong democrats to begin after Lunar New Year, court reveals – Hong Kong Free Press HKFP 

    BN(O) Hongkongers and Britain’s Chinese proficiency deficit — AgoraHK 

    Ideas

    Are Technologies Inevitable? – by Matt Clancy also worthwhile reading Kevin Kelly’s What Technology Wants

    Japan

    Kiko Mizuhara finds Heaven in Tokyo – The Face 

    Marketing

    9 in 10 marketers spend time in making global marketing locally relevant: report | Advertising | Campaign Asia – Marketers say local requirements are kept in mind by headquarters when making decisions, however, the majority (82%) feel they spend too much time educating HQ on Singaporean nuances and needs. 47% of marketing decision-makers in Singapore say that senior leadership in regional or global offices are misaligned with local marketing teams, there is a lack of local understanding of effective channels, and in some cases, there’s an assumption that a global approach will work across countries. Over a third (36%) of marketers believe in localising content for maximum ROI, however, the local tone, diversity and humour in campaigns is often not well understood by global offices teams. 

    Media

    Hong Kong editors used Stand News to praise criminals and promote illegal ideologies, says prosecutor at sedition trial | South China Morning Post – which gives you an idea of how far Hong Kong has changed after the National Security Law

    Online

    Inside the world of Wikipedia’s deaditors – The Face 

    Naspers Denies Report It’s Selling Its Tencent Stake to Citic – Caixin Global 

    Retailing

    11.11 shopping festival turns to long-term, sustainable growth | Marketing | Campaign Asia – Amid competition and economic uncertainty, more brand participants in China’s preeminent e-commerce festival in China may be seeking deeper customer engagement beyond driving up GMV with discounts. – Some thoughts: Chinese consumers are changing

    • Growth is changing towards disproportionately benefiting domestic brands and is very much in line with Xi Jinping’s vision
    • Economic growth is happening at the slowest pace in decades affecting consumer confidence and future consumer spend

    The macro-environment is changing too:

    • Economic growth is no longer a Chinese government priority
    • Chinese personal data laws are not marketer friendly

    Security

    US to deploy B-52 bombers to Australia as tensions with China mount | Financial Times 

    ‘We do rely on China — but so does every university’ | Scotland | The Times – admission by Edinburgh university principal

    Cybersecurity

    China to kick off ‘World Internet Conference’ next week with Beijing set to promote its vision of internet governance | South China Morning Post – The annual internet event will see participation from Huawei, Alibaba, Kaspersky and Infosys. Participation by western firms has diminished in recent years amid strict Covid-19 measures and Beijing’s crackdown on Big Tech

    Technology

    Apple’s Online Store and Information Systems Chiefs Are Leaving (AAPL) – Bloomberg
    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-10-31/apple-s-online-store-and-information-sy…

    – The departures mean Apple is losing at least three vice presidents — the highest manager level below Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook’s executive team — in recent weeks. Evans Hankey, Apple’s vice president in charge of industrial design, is also leaving the company, Bloomberg News reported earlier this month. Chief Privacy Officer Jane Horvath has departed Apple in recent weeks as well, taking a position at a law firm

    Vietnam

    Xi Jinping Rolls Out the Red Carpet for Vietnam’s Communist Party Chief – The Diplomat – The elaborate ceremonials of Nguyen Phu Trong’s state visit are a reminder of the alternating attraction and resistance that underpin Sino-Vietnamese relations

    Web of no web

    Metaverse could open new kinds of cybercrime, Interpol warns, with scams operating differently in virtual reality | South China Morning Post 

    Wireless

    Trio conduct 6G reconfigurable intelligent surfaces trials … – Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces can be programmed to modulate the phase of electromagnetic waves and reflect signals into blind spots, enhancing coverage and improving user experience. The low cost, low energy consumption and easy deployment, of RIS have attracted broad interest in 6G research and made it a popular candidate technology. The technical trial mainly evaluated the deployment effects and performance of sub6 GHz RIS and mmWave RIS in different indoor and outdoor scenarios. The tests modelled deployment conditions with and without RIS, different incidence and reflection angles, different deployment distances, etc. Recorded performance index parameters included RSRP, throughput and others. The trial participants worked together to carry out several RIS test projects yielding hard data that makes a strong argument in favor of continued RIS technology development.

  • Naked power politics + more things

    Naked power politics is a challenge to the post cold war consensus. Russia’s invasion in Ukraine, like Ethiopia’s invasion of Tigray are two examples of naked power politics in action. Russia’s naked power politics approach isn’t new and was something that the Financial Times and others had been talking about for at least a decade and certainly since the invasion of Crimea.

    In the case of Russia, uniting the west and drawing both Finland and Sweden into NATO shows that naked power politics can be counter-productive. Ethiopia seems to have fought itself to a stalemate after invading Tigray and then getting beaten back to Addis Ababa. Only close air support using drone from gulf states helped stave off a military collapse.

    But naked power politics is also playing out in the uneven relationship between China and the European Union; despite the EU’s market power.

    Even more so we can see naked power politics in China’s approach to Australia through trade.

    https://flic.kr/p/9MCT4T

    China

    Alibaba’s vice president of technology says trip to US was just to see doctor – Global Times – apparently some people are comparing his leaving to the US as being like the plot of the film Argo. He is responsible for the machine learning technology Alibaba has provided to support Uighur surveillance in China

    Electric car start-up Faraday Future clips wings of founder Jia Yueting following fraud allegation probe | South China Morning Post – Jia Yueting will, however, continue to serve as Faraday Future’s ‘chief product and user ecosystem officer’, filing shows/ Faraday Future launched an internal probe last year after a short-selling research firm claimed the start-up misrepresented the number of pre-orders for its FF 91 luxury SUV following its merger with a SPAC – I am not terribly surprised it echoes the kind of overreach that happened with businesses like LeEco and Luckin Coffee

    Consumer behaviour

    Is Marcus Rashford working class? The answer depends on your age – New Statesman – “Younger people appear to identify membership of the upper class with power and social impact,” he said. “This reflects the social media which prioritises celebrity coverage by attention capital, rather than accent, schooling or parental occupation.” The findings also suggest that “class hierarchy is perceived by young people in the present tense, ie, the media and social media time that people have now: the more media time, the higher the class position,” Rojek added. “The historical relationship of class to ancestry may be waning. A ‘now perspective’, based in power, social impact and online recognisability, seems to be growing in importance.” This trend has been a long time in the making, he observed. “For many years, it has been evident to me that for most of my students ‘social media’ is ‘society’, ie, a source of belonging, community, identity and aspiration.” – this might be age related rather than cohort related

    Design

    From the archives: Newspaper ads from the 80s | From the Archives | richmond.com – the collection of two-colour adverts is tremendous. My personal favourite is the original Back To The Future cinema ad

    Staybl makes it easier for people with hand tremors to browse the web – fantastic bit of accessible design

    Economics

    Defense spending, again – by Noah Smith – Noahpinion 

    Energy

    After Ola, now 20 Jitendra EVs catch fire in India — Quartz India – this is important because India has one of the fastest growing energy markets in the world and likely to overtake China due to its younger population

    Panasonic bets on bigger electric vehicle battery to wean itself off Tesla | Financial Times

    Ethics

    Supply Chains Tainted by Forced Labor in China, Panel Told – The New York Times – or where are Tim Cook’s principles and fine talk about brand purpose…

    When Saying Gay Isn’t Good Enough | Adweek – The Walt Disney Company has been singled out by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for its opposition to Florida’s House Bill 1557, the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill. Recently signed into law, the measure prohibits discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity from kindergarten through third grade. The governor has vowed to revisit—and possibly rescind—Disney’s privileges and autonomy in the state. But even LGBTQ allies and activists haven’t been happy with how the entertainment giant has handled anti-LGBTQ legislation in Florida. – which brings the question of what is the role of brands in societal norming?

    Umpires, Not Kings | No Mercy / No Malice – Scott Galloway on the need for market regulation

    Gadgets

    Amazon’s Astro Robot Moved Into My House. It Was Crazy, Creepy and Fun. 

    Apple reaches an agreement with a Korean company for a periscope telephoto lens – Gizchina.com

    Ideas

    When Extreme Necessity is the Mother of Invention | What’s New Under The Sun 

    The Return of Conquest? Why the Future of Global Order Hinges on Ukraine interesting when paired with China views Russian invasion as a ‘strategic utility’, says ex-Australia PM | Financial Times

    Innovation

    Taiwan makes big push on pipeline of electronic experts | Financial Times

    Xi Focus: Xi orders building world-leading spacecraft launch site-Xinhua – “Xi noted that Wenchang is the launch site of China’s new-generation high thrust carrier rockets and the bridgehead of the country’s deep space exploration. The launch site should continue to eye the frontier of global space development and the major strategic needs of China’s space industry, and comprehensively improve its modern space launch capabilities, said Xi. China is scheduled to complete the construction of its space station this year. Tianzhou-4 and Tianzhou-5 cargo crafts, as well as Wentian and Mengtian lab modules will be launched from Wenchang. Xi said the launch site should make meticulous efforts to ensure the missions’ full success.”

    Intel Announces its 18A Node is Ahead of Schedule – ExtremeTech 

    TSMC announces launch dates for 3nm and 2nm chips 

    Japan

    Old Enough: Netflix show sparks global debate on parenting and child safety | Sora News – its interesting because it shows how much of a high trust society Japan is versus the rest of the world and how far we have moved away from the ‘latch key‘ generations in the west that allowed women to go out to work. Although my Mum was a homemaker, I was still expected to look after myself if she had to go out or was visiting a friend. As an only child I was very comfortable in this trust being put in me. It was also the same for many of my school friends. The show is unbelievably cute. Read the explanation of Japanese culture on children before watching the hyper judgemental TV segment below.

    Korea

    S.Korea to Launch Homegrown Spy Satellites | Chosen Ilbo – I am surprised that this hadn’t happened earlier

    Luxury

    The Death of Streetwear Culture is a Class Issue | High Sobriety – in its ‘80s and ‘90s heyday, by and large streetwear culture was driven by the kids from low-income neighborhoods in major American cities. The very term “streetwear” bears that notion—it’s a style born in the streets, in schoolyards, on handball and basketball courts, and on brownstone stoops. More often than not, streetwear heroes—athletes and rappers—came from the working class

    Breitlingselect – Test your new watch | Breitling GB – leasing comes to watches. While this was on the UK site, the prices were in US dollars. How long before we get into sub-prime luxury

    Who Are Korea’s 1%? – The Chosun Ilbo (English Edition): Daily News from Korea – National/Politics > National – most of the wealth is from property

    Media

    Warner Bros. censors gay dialogue in Harry Potter movie for China release – CNN – the irony of this is that the Chinese internet is filled with homoerotic and even a lot of graphic homosexual content based around fan fiction from Sherlock to Harry Potter and even adaptions of Chinese literary classics where sword play takes on a vastly different meaning

    TikTok and Douyin’s Ad Revenues Will Cross $30 Billion This Year, Reach 5% of Total Digital Ad Market Share / Digital Information World 

    Marketing

    In honor of Ramadan, meals appear on Tesco billboards after sunset – To mark the month of Ramadan — when Muslims refrain from eating and drinking between dawn and dusk — British supermarket Tesco turned to dynamic billboards. During the day, screens show four hands and a large number of empty plates and platters. Once the sun sets, food appears on the plates, just as Muslims start breaking their fast with an iftar meal. – nice bit of work by BBH that takes advantage of dynamic digital out of home advertising technology

    Materials

    The great medicines migration: how China controls key drug supplies | Financial Times – huge strategic dependency that needs to be addressed

    Its basically a glass vase with a handle – Coperni’s Viral Glass Swipe Bag Will Be Available For Purchase

    Online

    TikTok under US government investigation on child sexual abuse material | Financial Times

    BeReal Isn’t Real and Makes Everyone Look Extremely Boring | Motherboard – BeReal seems to show the ennui of real life. Its also a social app made in Europe that actually has some traction. Axios has some good data on it here: Meet BeReal, Gen Z’s new favorite app 

    Retailing

    REWE’s unmanned mini-marts bring daily groceries to rural Germany – German retail giant REWE is launching a new concept: nahkauf BOX. Operating under REWE’s nahkauf brand of neighborhood stores, nahkauf BOX is an unmanned, standalone convenience store that’s open 24/7. – this is similar to China’s automated convenience stores, but interesting that its aimed at rural villages lacking stores. I could see this shaking up rural Ireland as well

    Security

    Pentagon to meet top arms makers to discuss stepping up aid to Ukraine | Financial Times – fascinating detail from this. Ukraine has already had four years production worth of Javelin missiles or about a third of the US stocks. They had sent a quarter of their stock of Stinger missiles or about five years worth of production. The challenge will be scaling component manufacture, supply chain and system assembly

    Russia’s Sandworm Hackers Attempted a Third Blackout in Ukraine | WIRED

    Russia is jamming GPS satellite signals in Ukraine, US Space Force says | Space

    Spy games: expulsion of diplomats shines light on Russian espionage | The Guardian

    American company under investigation for transferring tech to Huawei – Synopsys was supporting Huawei’s efforts in chip design through its EDA software

    Software

    Abridged: Keep product deep-dive – by Lillian Li

    With Nintendo closing 3DS and Wii U digital stores, where does that leave video game preservation? | GamesRadar+ – having used Nokia N900 devices after the Ovi store went down I can understand how limiting that this will be

    Thailand

    Un-pea-dictable: Veggie-based snack ad has multiple plot twists | Advertising | Campaign Asia – the different plot lines remind me a lot of the Tide Super Bowl ads from a number of years ago

    Web of no web

    Meta to let Horizon Worlds creators sell virtual items – The Verge – Horizon Worlds will take a 25 percent cut of any sale after app store fees – and there is the kicker Apple calls out Meta for hypocrisy over 47.5% cut of digital sales – 9to5Mac

    The Electronic Sheep Company was one of the startups that came and went during the last ‘metaverse boom’ or what was then called ‘virtual worlds’ back in the mid-2000s and early 2010s epitomised by Second Life.

    https://youtu.be/Yx-OU4sy09w

  • Tom Ford + more news

    Tom Ford

    The panellists look back to Tom Ford, in particular his notorious, provocative advertising campaigns during his tenure as creative director of Gucci, while wondering whether his present day collections have the same impact. The glamour of the Tom Ford tenures at YSL and Gucci including the old collections is also dissected. The analysis of the Tom Ford legacy is timely as Gucci has looked to relaunch some of his old signature pieces.

    The debate doesn’t touch on Tom Ford and his impact on culture beyond luxury such film making. The outtake for me is that Tom Ford may have a longer and more relevant career than Karl Lagerfeld.

    Business

    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

    Macau casino stocks shed $16bn as government seeks greater oversight | Financial Times – the Chinese territory opened a 45-day public consultation on revising its gaming law, which is expected to step up scrutiny of operators in the world’s biggest gambling hub. Casino groups’ 20-year concessions to operate in Macau are set to expire next year. The authorities’ move to tighten control of casinos is also proceeding as Beijing embarks on a broad campaign to reshape the country’s business, political and cultural landscape in a bid to stamp out inequality and promote “cultural prosperity”. Chinese regulators have imposed stringent conditions on the country’s biggest companies in the tech, online education and video gaming sectors, and authorities have targeted social behaviours perceived as harmful

    EXCLUSIVE Didi co-founder Liu told associates she plans to leave – sources | Reuters – Reuters claims that Jean Liu ‘told some associates that she expected the government to eventually take control of Didi and appoint new management, said the two sources.’ – its a shame Liu seemed to be one of a new breed of execs in China

    A decade of the Tim Cook machine — Benedict Evans – it will carry on making a certain kind of product for a certain kind of customer. That’s been the plan ever since the original Macintosh, and in some ways all that’s changed is how many more of those customers there are. The original Mac sold a few hundred thousand units in 1984, but Apple now sells half a million iPhones every day. Apple and the market grew into each other

    In Depth: How Evergrande Hid Its Debt – Caixin Global – A source familiar with the capital market in Hong Kong said that Evergrande had raised a lot of money overseas at interest rates higher than 15%, which one source found to be perplexingly high. “How could Evergrande make a profit borrowing at such high interest rates?” the source asked. – I don’t think Lehman Brothers is the right analogue, but maybe Enron or MCI Worldcom are?

    Consumer behaviour

    Why Is America So Bad at Keeping People Alive? – The Atlantic 

    China cold war nothing to do with us, say European Union voters | The Times – heads in the sand

    Kids who grew up with search engines could change STEM education forever – The Verge – It’s possible that the analogy multiple professors pointed to — filing cabinets — is no longer useful since many students Drossman’s age spent their high school years storing documents in the likes of OneDrive and Dropbox rather than in physical spaces. It could also have to do with the other software they’re accustomed to — dominant smartphone apps like Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube all involve pulling content from a vast online sea rather than locating it within a nested hierarchy. “When I want to scroll over to Snapchat, Twitter, they’re not in any particular order, but I know exactly where they are,” says Vogel, who is a devoted iPhone user. Some of it boils down to muscle memory.  But it may also be that in an age where every conceivable user interface includes a search function, young people have never needed folders or directories for the tasks they do. The first internet search engines were used around 1990, but features like Windows Search and Spotlight on macOS are both products of the early 2000s. Most of 2017’s college freshmen were born in the very late ‘90s. They were in elementary school when the iPhone debuted; they’re around the same age as Google. While many of today’s professors grew up without search functions on their phones and computers, today’s students increasingly don’t remember a world without them

    Finance

    Financial blogger crackdown leaves China investors scrabbling for data | Financial Times – it gives you an idea how opaque things already were that these blogs were a source of information to institutional users on management changes, regulatory investigations and arrests – key sources of information for institutions buying debt issues

    Germany

    Germans Demanding New China Policy. Will the Next Chancellor Deliver? | National Review – no matter who wins, German public opinion, pressure from the United States, and the strong possibility of having to partner with the Green Party in a coalition government make it likely the victor will be pushed in a more hawkish direction. The same hardening found among the German public is also happening in Parliament and the foreign ministry. Conservatives in the United States rightfully lament how bureaucracies often influence policy outcomes against the wishes of the principals leading them, not the other way around. When it comes to the future of Germany’s China policy, those bureaucratic exertions might not be such a bad thing

    Most Germans believe their ‘golden age’ is over, poll finds – “These findings suggest that, while Angela Merkel has cemented Germany’s position as a great European power, the cornerstones of her legacy – neutrality and consensus building – will not be enough to defend the unity of the EU, and its place in the world, in the years to come.” Germans will head to the polls on September 26 to elect a new parliament and choose a successor to Mrs Merkel, who has served as chancellor since 2005. Her own party, the Christian Democratic Union, is lagging its coalition partner, the centre-left Social Democrat Party, in polls. Mrs Merkel’s SPD finance minister, Olaf Scholz, is likely to become the next chancellor.  

    More related content here.

    Innovation

    British Airways operates passenger flight using recycled cooking oil | The Guardian – biodiesel makes a lot of sense for jet turbines because of energy density

    Mossad Used Remote-Controlled Machine Gun to Kill Iran Nuke Expert: NYT 

    Japan

    Japan urges Europe to speak out against China’s military expansion | Japan | The Guardian

    Legal

    Hong Kong Police Arrest Three Student Activists For ‘Inciting Subversion’ – Police say snacks and personal items stored for donation to prisoners are intended to incite ‘hatred’ of the government.

    Foreign Office ‘warned UK-based Hong Kong critics about extradition risk abroad’ | Hong Kong | The Guardian – Hong Kong government figures list 19 extradition agreements with other nations including India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, South Africa and Portugal. In response to the law, several countries including the UK, Australia, Germany, France and the US, tore up their Hong Kong agreements. Chinese authorities record at least 59 extradition agreements, including with countries across Asia and Europe, although not all are ratified. Several countries including France and Australia have indicated they will not ratify their agreements

    Luxury

    Explained: The Chinese take on DIY luxury | Vogue Business

    Marketing

    How China’s ‘996’ culture is changing | Advertising | Campaign Asia – brands should be “non-judgmental and show empathy and kindness towards the young generations.” By doing so, they can keep momentum going even after “lying flat” no longer trends. “If brands can even help young people to achieve their personal goals, that would help build the loyalty of the younger consumers in the long term,” she advised. brands should be “non-judgmental and show empathy and kindness towards the young generations.” By doing so, they can keep momentum going even after “lying flat” no longer trends. “If brands can even help young people to achieve their personal goals, that would help build the loyalty of the younger consumers in the long term,” she advised.

    Media

    An interview with Bella Poarch on her move from TikTok to… – The Face – social is an on ramp, not a replacement for the media industry

    Retailing

    FamilyMart preps 1,000 unmanned stores in Japan by 2024 – Nikkei Asia – this makes a lot of sense. A lack of young people to be part time staff, a high trust society and a clear use case from automated stores that were trialled in China by Mukbang

    Pandemic Shoppers Are a Nightmare to Service Workers – The Atlantic 

    Security

    Lithuania says throw away Chinese phones due to censorship concerns | Reuters – The National Cyber Centre’s report also said the Xiaomi phone was sending encrypted phone usage data to a server in Singapore. A security flaw was also found in the P40 5G phone by China’s Huawei (HWT.UL) but none was found in the phone of another Chinese maker, OnePlus, it said. – given the closeness of Russia and China, at least some of the concern will about their mutual help of each other in the cybersecurity realm

    Taiwan

    On TECRO’s proposed name change: China, Taiwan, and the ruse of pragmatic moderation – by Kevin Carrico – NSL can’t cancel me 

    Technology

    Report: Fake chips flood in to exploit supply shortage – Oki Engineering has opened a chip verification service. And after opening the service in June, Oki had received 150 inquiries by August. After studying about 70 cases it found problematic chips in about 30 percent of them. With constrained supplies customers are prepared to buy from “unconventional sources,” the report said. Industrial and medical equipment manufacturers are amongst those to have subscribed to Oki’s chip verification service

  • Chinese institutions & more news

    Chinese institutions

    CSIS has a great talk that looks at the resilience of Chinese institutions. The CSIS is a US think tank better known as the Center for Strategic & International Studies. They held a talking on Rethinking Chinese Politics – in terms of having a better understanding of the dynamics and the resilience of the Chinese institutions involved. The recentralisation of power under Xi Jingping was seen to subvert Chinese institutions, but Jiang Zemin’s actions had a similar role in previous years.

    Interesting discussion on the resilience of Chinese institutions

    Consumer behaviour

    China’s Generation N: the young nationalists who have Beijing’s back | South China Morning Post – Nationalism has been on the rise, encouraged by the Communist Party and put to effective use by President Xi Jinping. Younger generations’ perceptions and expectations of their country differ from those of the past, offering the government support but also challenges – basically China might get screwed over by its own rhetoric and propaganda to its people. However it poses problems for western businesses that rely on the Chinese market

    State Media Calls on Hong Kong to Compensate For Tide of Emigration — Radio Free Asia – “There is a high proportion of professionals — 12 percent — among those emigrating,” the article said. “The Hong Kong government should pay close attention to the increase in the number of professionals emigrating, and set out a long-term response strategy,” it said. The article appeared particularly concerned over the loss of medical professionals from Hong Kong, suggesting the government focus on recruiting healthcare workers from mainland China and overseas. The exodus looks set to hit the healthcare sector hard, with the Hospital Authority (HA) reporting the loss of 4.6 percent of doctors and 6.5 percent of nurses in public hospitals – there is a similar impact in third level teaching as well

    Economics

    George Soros: Investors in Xi’s China face a rude awakening | Financial Times – George Soros on Xi Jingping. There isn’t anything in Soros argument that Xi Jingping doesn’t admit himself in this op-ed in Quishi – the CPC’s political theory journal Understanding the New Development Stage, Applying the New Development Philosophy, and Creating a New Development Dynamic

    Chinese media back diatribe calling for crackdown to be expanded | Financial Times – “The capital market will no longer become a paradise for capitalists to get rich overnight . . . the cultural market will no longer be a paradise for sissy stars and news and public opinion will no longer be in a position worshipping western culture,” – pretty much on point for Chinese state belief. There has been concerns that K-pop idol culture with its androgynous dressing stars would be ruining Chinese macho culture. This also fits into the dialogue about left behind women considered responsible for the decline in birth rate

    China to Cleanse Online Content That ‘Bad-Mouths’ Its Economy – Bloomberg 

    Finance

    Affirm soars 47% after partnering with Amazon to bring buy now, pay later service to the online retail giant | Markets Insider 

    Hong Kong

    SenseTime heads for IPO on Hong Kong exchange | Financial Times – SenseTime said it was subject to “complex and evolving” laws around data protection, including new draft regulations for cyber security reviews in China. “We cannot predict the impact of the draft measures, if any, at this stage,”

    Singapore

    PM Lee acknowledges work pass holders bringing in social practices and class distinctions that cause frictions – The Online Citizen Asia – Indian caste system exported

    Technology

    ARM China Seizes IP, Relaunches as an ‘Independent’ Company – ExtremeTech – It is not clear how much pressure was put on SoftBank to form the merger, but this looks like one of the most blatant examples of IP theft that we’ve seen. The Chinese arm of a company has gone rogue and refused to obey the ruling of its own board. The head of that company is essentially treating it as a personal fiefdom, and Chinese authorities do not appear to have taken meaningful action to reign in Mr. Wu. While ARM China does not currently have access to the ARMv9 instruction set or any additional ARM IP, it appears that the company will attempt to use previously transferred assets to bootstrap its own transformation into an “independent” company – yes, sounds about right. China waging war by other means, also splitting fits into China’s desire to self-reliant

    Apple CEO Tim Cook Expected To Retire After Completing One Last Product Category / Digital Information World – Tim Cook noted that, when asked, he would probably not be around for Apple in approximately the next ten years. And just like that, one of the most influential men in the world steps down, leaving an unpredictable future in his stead. However, 10 years is a long time, and Tim Cook seems to have an idea as far as establishing a legacy goes. – the hubris of John Sculley and the Newton comes to mind….

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