Ged Carroll

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  • Female voices impact + more news

    Pinay female voices power

    The Philippines’ secret weapon against Chinese incursions | The Economist – having women radio operators seem to be more successful and less likely to rise tensions, seems to be down to training and the nature of female voices. It reminded me of how early HCI experiments by DARPA found that jet fighter pilots responded best to ‘mature’ female voices on warning alerts. An interesting aside is that the radio altimeter on Airbus aircraft actually use an English mature male voice instead.

    Academic research gives us an idea of what kind of female voices are likely to be more effective. Maybe this authority is conveyed by the female radio operator training and the female voices selected by the Coastguard?

    Women with masculine voice are perceived to be more rational and persuasive than those with feminine voice. In addition, masculine voice is rated as more competent than feminine voice, regardless of the actual gender 

    It’s not What It Speaks, but It’s How It Speaks: A Study into Smartphone Voice-User Interfaces (VUI) by Jaeyeol Jeong & Dong-Hee Shin of Department of Interaction ScienceSungkyunkwan University, Seoul,Korea (2015)

    Other research suggested that a preference for female voices occurred over time, this might be due to technological change in voices. The heavily synthesised ‘Speak n Spell’ type voices were male, better technology allowed for great choices and detail in female voices to be conveyed.

    …the survey found that people preferred human-like, happy, empathetic voices with higher pitches. However, these preferences were not static; for instance, user preference for voice gender changed over time from masculine voices to more feminine ones. Based on these findings, the researchers were able to formulate a high-level framework to classify different types of interactions across various computer-based technologies

    The role of computer voice in the future of speech-based human-computer interaction – Tokyo Institute of Technology

    Other research that it is attitude rather than a female voice that matters. Which begs the question is it compliance to the radio operator training rather than a female voice that is more important in this context? Filipino culture has a certain amount of machismo and having female voices delivering the radio instructions might be a way around this dilemma.

    introvert participants rated the introvert computer voice as more attractive, credible, and informative, while the extrovert participants rated the extrovert voice more highly. Expanding on these findings, it was found that the personality conveyed by the voice was the dominant percept

    Voice as a design material : sociophonetic inspired design strategies in Human-Computer Interaction by Selina Sutton, Paul Foulkes and David Kirk of the University of York presented at CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Proceedings (CHI 2019). (PDF)

    The use of female voices in this way could be accused of playing to sexist tropes

    China

    Another day, another reminder of how Brand China has deteriorated – Fawning and complacent, the West has eased China’s path to power | The Sunday Times – while the statement is true, it also shows how much the tone has changed towards China amongst UK political elites

    China goes on the defensive as Covid vaccine diplomacy backfires | The Times – Beijing’s hopes of winning favour by helping the world’s poorer nations out of the pandemic have been hamstrung by questions over the efficacy of the jabs on offer

    Alleged assault on scientists overshadows China’s space race success | Financial Times – Police detained Zhang Tao, chair and party secretary at China Aerospace Investment Holdings, for his alleged attacks on Wu Meirong and Wang Jinnian last month, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported on Tuesday. Wang and Wu had refused to recommend Zhang for membership of the International Academy of Astronautics, a Stockholm-based group that recognises distinguished scientists

    For China’s Business Elites, Staying Out of Politics Is No Longer an Option – The New York Times – The Chinese internet immediately savaged Didi and Ms. Liu — and then Mr. Liu. A hashtag, #Didiapppulledfromappstores, which was started by the official People’s Daily, was viewed more than one billion times over a 24-hour period on the Chinese social media platform Weibo. Weibo users called Didi a “traitor” and a “walking dog of the United States.” They urged the government to also punish Mr. Liu for selling out national interests

    Underground front: the Chinese Communist Party in Hong Kong – Continuing to operate secretly in Hong Kong can only cause unnecessary discomfort. Hong Kong people already accept the CCP’s undoubted authority in leading the affairs of state. While the party appreciates that Hong Kong needs to function differently from the mainland, its basic instincts, which are Leninist in nature, make it difficult for the party apparatus not to over- extend its reach into the city’s public affairs. The sharpest point of departure between the party’s way and Hong Kong’s way arises from their different governing experience. (PDF)

    Consumer behaviour

    Japanese fax fans rally to defence of much-maligned machine | Japan | The Guardian – Members of the resistance said there were concerns over the security of sensitive information and “anxiety over the communication environment” if, as the government had requested, they switched exclusively to email. Japanese ministries and agencies use faxes when handling highly confidential information, including court procedures and police work, and the Hokkaido Shimbun said there were fears that exclusively online communication would result in security lapses

    Patriotism Abroad: Overseas Chinese Students’ Encounters With Criticisms of China – Henry Chiu Hail, 2015 – research on international education suggests that host country students’ lack of interest in talking to international students is a major cause of international student segregation. Some Chinese international students, however, complain that although host students want to talk with them about China, they often exhibit misinformed, prejudiced and offensive views of Chinese current events. This has occasionally led to tensions between Chinese international students and host communities. Drawing on interviews and open-ended surveys of Chinese students at an American university, this study shows a variety of positive and negative cross-national interactions and uses social identity theory to explain why tensions may arise. Negative reactions to hearing criticism of one’s home country are often motivated by concerns for status, loyalty, harmony, or utilitarian politics. However, fostering a common group identity and the perception of mutual benevolence among students from different countries can promote positive cross-national interaction. Furthermore, international students may learn more about democracy and human rights through observing the host society rather than directly discussing these topics with host country members – basically the delta between western perceptions of China, versus domestic Chinese propaganda is going to drive that wedge deeper. Universities have Chinese students purely for the money as there is minimal wider benefit to their domestic student body. Which begs wider questions about the purpose and morality of many western third level education institutions

    Culture

    Trese: the true crime and folklore behind Netflix’s… – The Face – it reminded me of the animated Blade series and Ghost in The Shell. The Philippines could be an anime powerhouse

    Finance

    China’s Big Tech Crackdown Puts Dozens of U.S. IPOs at Risk – Bloomberg – “The Chinese government could have stopped the IPOs from happening, like how they did with Ant,” said Sharif Farha, a Dubai-based portfolio manager at Safehouse Global Consumer Fund. “Instead, they allowed global investors to take pain, and consequently have broken trust with a lot of foreign investors. While we did not participate in any of these listings, we would imagine that several funds would consider exiting.” – it makes the Goldman Sachs ICBC deal look even more sketchy

    China Mulls Closing Loophole Tech Giants Use for U.S. IPOs – Bloomberg – on one hand I get it. Mainland Chinese are creating bubbles in areas like property and have poor returns because they don’t have stocks or ETFs that they can invest in. On the other hand this burns early stage foreign investors to the ground as they can no longer exit their money from China.

    Tell me lies, tell me sweet little VIEs | Financial Times – not terribly surprising. VIEs are the vehicle that Chinese companies use to go public abroad

    Chinese companies listing in the U.S. like DiDi face audit concerns – Protocol – basically you don’t know what you’re buying

    UK advertising watchdog to crack down on misleading crypto marketing | Financial Times

    Hong Kong

    Vitasoy faces boycott in mainland China following stabbing in HK | PR | Campaign Asia – Following the incident, an undated internal memo was circulated among Vitasoy employees expressing condolences to Leung’s family. A translated version of the memo, which leaked onto Chinese social media, mentions that “human resources has contacted [Leung’s] family and will follow up and provide assistance when needed.” The internal memo proved controversial, as Chinese social media users accused the brand of condoning violence and defending anti-China sentiments. – the red guard are already here. This wasn’t an endorsement of his act, but sympathy with the loss and grief that his parents must be feeling as they try and make sense of his actions.

    Crypto Keepers’ NFT-Backed Drama Series Hatched by AMM Global – Variety – the production company spun out of Hong Kong’s Asia Television – a former free to air TV station. Meanwhile in the UK, I heard that a production company is looking for people how have lost the password to their cryptocurrency wallet.

    Ideas

    If you hate the culture wars, blame liberals – Kevin Drum ….Over the last four years, white liberals have become a larger and larger share of the Democratic Party….And since white voters are sorting on ideology more than nonwhite voters, we’ve ended up in a situation where white liberals are more left wing than Black and Hispanic Democrats on pretty much every issue: taxes, health care, policing, and even on racial issues or various measures of “racial resentment.” So as white liberals increasingly define the party’s image and messaging, that’s going to turn off nonwhite conservative Democrats and push them against us. 

    ….If Democrats elevate issues or theories that a large minority of nonwhite voters reject, it’s going to be hard to keep those margins….Black conservatives and Hispanic conservatives don’t actually buy into a lot of these intellectual theories of racism. They often have a very different conception of how to help the Black or Hispanic community than liberals do – well worth a more in-depth read

    Culture Wars are Long Wars – The Scholar’s Stage – Democrats under 40 take socialism very seriously. The Great Recession was their formative event; the old orthodoxy did not seem equal to the fear and heartache it caused. Thus, gradually, the younger cohorts have been won over to the socialist cause.5 All that keeps the socialists at bay is the power of their elders. That power cannot last. At some point in the next decade the transition point will arrive. Gradually will become suddenly, and America’s most popular party will be openly run by socialists – I don’t agree with a lot of the post, but it provides an interesting prespective

    Bristol Unpacked on whether white working class people are shut out of the equality debate, with Hartcliffe’s award winning filmmaker Paul Holbrook – The Bristol Cable – far too short a discussion session as podcast, it felt like they were just scratching the surface with this recording

    Erik Prince Had Pitched $10 Billion Private Army in Ukraine: Time – everything he does seems like it’s taken from the plot from William Gibson’s sprawl trilogy

    Innovation

    Institute for New Economic Thinking | How Intel finkncialised and lost its leadership in semiconductor technology – The root of Intel’s failure in organizational integration lies in the financialized character of a third social condition of innovative enterprise, strategic control. Accepting stock yield as the measure of enterprise performance, in recent years Intel’s senior executives who exercise strategic control have lacked both the incentive and, increasingly we would argue, the ability, to implement innovative investment strategies through organizational integration. 

    Executive stock-based pay, in the form of stock options and stock awards, has created incentives for Intel’s CEOs to do large-scale buybacks to give manipulative boosts to the company’s stock price. Table 3 documents the total compensation, including realized gains from stock options and stock awards, of Intel’s CEOs over the past three decades

    Ireland

    Irish Times under fire for page of China propaganda | Ireland | The Sunday Times – The newspaper, whose rate card sets a full-page colour ad at €34,000, ran the paid-for-content on page five of its news section under an “advertisement” heading last Thursday. The accompanying article by He Xiangdong, the Chinese ambassador, claimed the CCP enjoyed “solid” support from its people, and highlighted China’s vastly improved standards of living in recent decades – propaganda from draconian empires doesn’t go down that well in Ireland

    Luxury

    Supreme Italia Founders Sentences to Jail in Court | High Snobriety – this has been running for a long time. The key challenge was that they were headquartered in the UK. They could have got around this by being headquartered in a market that allows first registration as legitimacy for brands. More related content here.

    Philippines

    Duterte’s Pivot to China Yet to Deliver Promised Billions in Infrastructure – Bloomberg – from a Chinese communist perspective, why should they? They aren’t that good at being good to their word. Secondly, they are likely to view the Duterte regime as a vassal state and are getting everything they want out of the Philippines anyway

    Security

    Update Regarding VSA Security Incident | Kaseya – over 1,500 companies affected

    Code in huge ransomware attack written to avoid computers that use Russian, says new report – which begs the following questions / hypotheses? Are they in cahoots with Russian government? Was it that they didn’t want their own lives disrupted? Or are they petrified of the Russian security services coming after them, but relatively sanguine about foreign security services and law enforcement

    Technology

    The AI Wolf that Refuses to Play the Game Goes Viral – Google Docs – surely an issue of game design in terms of the way behaviours were rewarded and penalised rather than machine learning?

    The Tech Cold War’s ‘Most Complicated Machine’ That’s Out of China’s Reach – The New York Times – a great profile of ASML

    Musk has ‘mesmerised’ UK over electric power, says JCB chair | Financial Times – there’s a lot not to like about Lord Anthony Bamford, but I agree with him on this. Companies like BMW managed to extend this to cars. Bamford should be pitching this where there are hydrogen power plans like ireland

  • Life Bread & other things this week

    Life Bread homage by craft beer brand

    Life Bread is a brand icon. For Hong Kongers the blue or red checked wrappers mean western style bread. Life Bread is as Hong Kong as the Lion Rock – a granite peak that overlooks the city. Life Bread became an emotive icon used in the 2019 Hong Kong protests as an celebration of Hong Kong identity. It has even been celebrated in art. So when a local craft brewer FoamBeerBrewery was launching a bread based IPA it made sense that it would go with packaging that linked back to the Hong Konger lingua franca for bread.

    Foam Brewery Bread IPA
    FoamBeerBrewery Bread IPA packaging evoking the wrappers of Garden Bakery Life Bread – a local hero brand for Hong Kong

    FoamBeerBrewery Bread IPA is available from local high-end supermarket citysuper.

    Everybody’s business

    I came across this cold war era animated film that explains capitalism and extols its virtues. Nowadays there isn’t the same efforts to promote capitalism in the face of millennial socialism. As these things go, it’s not a bad explainer for economics neophytes.

    Immersive billboards

    A number of Asian cities have fitted high definition digital billboards that go around the corner of a building. The latest one overlooks Tokyo’s Shibuya crossing.

    The content has varied by market, including a golden bull to celebrate lunar new year in Kuala Lumpur. The Tokyo board taps into the Japanese love of cats. Here’s what the animation looks like. It appears sporadically to encourage bystanders to keep watching the adverts that stream on the billboard.

    There is a live stream of the billboard available.

    https://youtu.be/HX9pROOvTzA

    Brand China

    The communist party of China had its 100 year anniversary celebration to focus on past accomplishments and project its current strength. TL;DR China wants to smash your head into a wall of steel that has been made by 1.4 billion or so Chinese people.

    Meanwhile Pew Research was looking at ‘Brand China’

    While Xi Jingping might not care, it makes trade harder to do with more developed economy.

    The one segment where China does seem to have unwavering support is from the progressive left, particularly in American politics. This advocacy seems to be based more on their wishful thinking than any messages delivered by China as Noah Smith discusses in their newsletter.

  • The rise & fall of American growth

    The rise and fall of American growth

    It has been five years since The rise and fall of American growth was written by Robert J Gordon. When it was first published it was a New York Times bestseller and won awards from the FT and McKinsey. I felt that it was particularly interesting to go back and visit now, given current economic circumstances and the view that its data provides on the techno-optimism versus techno-pessimism that is currently raging on.

    The Rise and Fall of American Growth

    Understanding the author’s perspective

    Robert J Gordon developed his career as an economist in a crucible. He started his career during a time of battle between Keynesian and the monetarist supporting economists. Keynesian ideas had reached their peak in the 1950s. It was challenged by economists such as Milton Friedman and George Stigler. Both of whom were from the Chicago School. The Chicago School was the University of Chicago. It became a centre for economic conservativism. The Chicago School At his time, drew on the likes of Hayek for its ideas.

    Gordon became a ‘New Keynesian’. They assume that there is imperfect competition in price and wage setting to help explain why prices and wages can become “sticky”. They do not adjust instantaneously to changes in economic conditions. Wage and price stickiness, and the other market failures present in their models, imply that the economy may fail to achieve full employment. They argue that macroeconomic stabilisation by the government and the central bank leads to a more efficient macroeconomic outcome than a laissez faire policy would.

    American growth and techno-optimism

    The techno-optimism viewpoint is that continuing technology innovation is going to bring about a new golden age. There are essays trading perspectives on this back-and-forth.

    Gordon’s research suggests that the kind of growth suggested by techno-optimists as an outcome is usually because of very special circumstances.

    When he looked at American growth through the 19th century; growth had occurred in short spurts and much of it wasn’t driven by technology, but was multiple factors coming together. He further posits that those factors that drove American growth are unlikely to be repeated in the future.

    The last spurt of this growth was during the irrational exuberance of the dot com era.

    As you’d expect from an economist, Gordon pulls together to support his ideas very carefully and it is based on empirical analysis. IT has driven little economic growth, which makes one wonder about the benefits of digital transformation as touted by management consultancies.

    Gordon’s work is also an argument against globalisation, at least for the American economy. It brings into question the American dream.

    Finally, with technology unlikely to drive the kind of stellar growth promised, it brings into question the massive premium set on growth stocks over the long term and venture capital investments in the technology sector and the current Silicon Valley model.

    Gordon’s current research is focused on looking at European and American growth so it will be interesting to see commonalities and differences. I expect to see a spurt of growth from second generation mobile devices that freed up small businesses by providing an instantaneous connection with the customer. Rather than relying on an answer machines or a member of their family as receptionist.

    The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living since the Civil War: 70 (The Princeton Economic History of the Western World, 70)

    More book reviews can be found here.

    More information

    Robert Gordon’s academic papers here.

    Answering the Techno-Pessimists (complete) – Noahpinion 

    Interview: Patrick Collison, co-founder and CEO of Stripe – Noahpinion

  • Handset industry of South Korea + more

    South Korea’s handset industry

    South Korea’s handset industry is leading indicator of supply chain shift – Samsung has chosen to place two thirds of its global production capacity at 360 million phones near Hanoi, Vietnam and one third in Noida, India. At the same time, a group of American brands led by Apple have asked their Taiwan-based OEMs to set up production facilities in India. Taiwan’s three largest manufacturers Wistron, Pegatron and Foxconn all have production lines up and running in India. Before this, Taiwan-based notebook computer manufacturers had already moved their production to major ASEAN countries. It is a definite trend that manufacturers are relocating part of their production out of China into ASEAN countries and South Asia – Apple can learn a lot from South Korea’s handset industry. Apple’s approach to its supply chain compared to the handset industry looks risky. It is betting on Chinese behaviour that seems to run counter to Xi Jingping-era China. More on handset industry related content here.

    China

    Ketamine and the Return of the Party-State | Palladium Magazine – as China gets richer and its factional lines get drawn across social battles instead of economic ones, we can expect rhetoric about moral regeneration to become more potent. The party’s turn towards encouraging family and child-rearing might well be the first sign of things to come. When all your political capital has been invested in the narrative of national rejuvenation, there’s no easy way out when the low-hanging fruits of the market start to run low

    Former Chinese Party Insider Calls U.S. Hopes of Engagement ‘Naive’ – WSJ – “Wishful thinking about ‘engagement’ must be replaced by hardheaded defensive measures to protect the United States from the CCP’s aggression—while bringing offensive pressures to bear on it, as the Chinese Communist Party is much more fragile than Americans assume,” Ms. Cai wrote. Her 28-page paper is slated for publication this week by the Hoover Institution, a conservative-leaning think tank at Stanford University. A growing roster of Western politicians and analysts has concluded that U.S. diplomacy with China hasn’t paid dividends. But such views are rarely expressed publicly by sources as highly placed as Ms. Cai was just a short time ago. – Pretty reasonable assessment with plenty of empirical evidence to support it

    Fawning and complacent, the West has eased China’s path to power | The Sunday Times – while the statement is true, it also shows how much the tone has changed towards China

    Finance

    Brazil and China in talks to strengthen science and technology ties | ZDNet – China calls for financing to bring plans to reality…..

    France

    France probes fashion retailers for concealing ‘crimes against humanity’ in Xinjiang | Reuters – source told Reuters Uniqlo France, a unit of Japan’s Fast Retailing, Zara owner Inditex, France’s SMCP and Skechers were the subject of the investigation

    Hong Kong

    How Beijing humbled Britain’s mighty HSBC | Reuters – The decision by Baowu to blackball HSBC is part of a clampdown on the global London-based bank by many of China’s gargantuan state-owned enterprises – a campaign described to Reuters in interviews with HSBC bankers, and employees at state companies who have first-hand knowledge of their operations. Controlled by China’s ruling Communist Party, these companies manage the nation’s largest industrial projects and are responsible for $9.8 trillion of revenue annually. The reason for the pullback by state firms isn’t HSBC’s financial soundness, which isn’t in question, but rather Chinese politics. People inside the state enterprises and HSBC say Beijing has grown disenchanted with the bank over sensitive domestic and international legal and political issues, from China’s crackdown in Hong Kong to the U.S. indictment of an executive at Chinese national tech champion Huawei Technologies – this makes HSBC’s pivot to China look foolish

    ‘Unstoppable storm’: rights take back seat under Hong Kong security law | Yahoo! News – from the journalist’s Twitter thread when she shared the article and additional material that didn’t make the cut: “Judges hope to be given more trust and discretion. Prosecution wants more power. What can defense do? …I’m not as naive to believe they won’t come after lawyers. Losing license is the minimum charge.”

    Luxury

    Streetwear Has a Homophobia Problem | Highsnobiety – where to start with this? I think that some of the homophobia is down to in-out group dynamics. Gays have been in the streetwear industry for a long time. Bomber jackets as a streetwear item came from creatives like Judy Blame and the Buffalo Collective

    Media

    America’s New Post-Literate Epistemology | Palladium Magazine – McLuhan believed that the West was due for a period of “re-tribalization,” but by “tribal” he meant much more than the commonly understood definition. Yes, there would be polarization: people would by and large become less civil, less rational, touchier, and more defensive about the smallest things. This much, we already know and see every day. But McLuhan went even further in his use of the term, arguing that electronic media—more so than any political ideology—shifts the sensorial basis of Western society away from the visual, the literate, and the abstract and toward the oral, the tactile, and the tribal. In other words, he saw re-tribalization as a process that will eventually return modern man to the mental and epistemic world of his pre-literate tribal ancestors: the “global village.” Over the long run, this can be quite benign, even sublime: in 1969, McLuhan imagined its endpoint as a society of “mythic integration” where “magic will live again.” Speaking in lofty millenarian terms, he predicted technology would merge humanity “into an inclusive consciousness…a new interpretation of the mystical body of Christ…the ultimate extension of man.”

    ‘Crypto Keepers’ NFT-Backed Drama Series Hatched by AMM Global – Variety – the production company spun out of Hong Kong’s Asia Television – a former free to air TV station

    Facebook, Twitter, Google Threaten to Quit Hong Kong Over Proposed Data Laws – WSJ – the problem is that the online platforms don’t put teeth behind it. Like taking unilateral action against Chinese advertisers and Chinese media. Lets assume that Facebook, Twitter and Google would have to leave Chinese territories. They can then squeeze China two ways:

    1. China’s small factories rely increasingly on direct to consumer sales through Facebook and Instagram advertising. As does product aggregators like Wish.com and Shein. Squeezing them out of advertising would send 10,000s of Chinese employees out of work
    2. Shutting out China’s SOEs (Air China etc) and Chinese media accounts would severely cripple China’s external united work front efforts to influence the global market

    Vietnam

    Vietnam to phase out 2G, 3G serivces starting 2022 – Vietnam’s Ministry of Information and Communication (MIC) has decided to start phasing out 2G and 3G technologies within the country in 2022 in a bid to encourage people to use smartphones and promote digital society.

  • White Motorcycle & other things this week

    White Motorcycle Concepts WMC250EV

    I have watched this video by White Motorcycle Concepts a few times and still don’t quite get it. White Motorcycle have hollowed out the centre of their motorcycle, to allow air flow through the middle of the bike rather than cutting the air cleanly. The little that I have seen make it hard to discern the effect of Bernoulli’s principle on the shape of the White Motorcycle.

    Tenacious D channel the Beatles

    Tenacious D are better known for their homage pieces to metal bands. For a charity single donating to Doctors Without Borders – they try and channel The Beatles. Its hard as The Beatles had so many sounds that they changed abruptly and crashed into each other.

    I think they did pretty well.

    Stories, players and games

    Nigel Scott has put together an interesting set of ideas on business and marketing. There’s some bits I’d disagree with (are Google, Facebook et al really changing the game, or just costing marketers more?). Really worthwhile going through it all here.

    Akira behind the scenes

    This brief look behind the scenes looks like an excerpt from a longer programme. But it gives an idea into the work which went into making the animated film Akira. The precision and level of detail is mind boggling.

    Gimme 5 mixes

    Gimme 5, the label of long time streetwear distributor Michael Kopelman have a library of good mixes up on Soundcloud and I have been listening to their back catalogue. They’re worthwhile listening to for their eclectic mix of material.

    #MyAppleDaily art project

    Chinese artist Badiucao is publishing a blank template of the paper’s front page for each day that the Apple Daily isn’t published. The idea is to encourage people to publish their own front page instead.

    More from Badiucao here.

    my apple daily introduction