Hanjin Shipping
Hanjin Shipping collapse may be the beginning of the end for profitable global trade | South China Morning Post – As capacity growth has continued at around 6 per cent a year, with the global container fleet four times larger today than it was in 2000, so it is estimated that we today have a 30 per cent surplus capacity on the world’s main shipping routes. The combination of extra capacity and stagnant cargo growth has led to a ruthless price war that has meant wonderfully cheap freight rates for exporters, but has stripped the shipping lines of all profit. – Hanjin Shipping is a South Korean integrated logistics and container transport company. Prior to liquidation, Hanjin Shipping was South Korea’s largest container line and one of the world’s top ten container carriers in terms of capacity. Hanjin Shipping transported approximately 3.7 million TEU containers a year. This service consisted of 24 container ships. Hanjin Shipping’s downfall was caused in part by overcapacity in the container ship industry.
Business
Are The Saudis About To Reveal The Best Kept Secret In Oil? | Zero Hedge – the reserve number could affect the way the world views and prices oil when disclosed
Ctrip to buy UK’s Skyscanner for US$1.74b | Shanghai Daily – big move for Ctrip
China
China’s airports to ‘scrap boarding pass on domestic flights as early as next year’ | South China Morning Post – interesting, I wonder how this will affect foreigners on domestic flights?
Economics
With TPP Dead, China Officially Launches Its Own Pacific Free-Trade Deal | Zero Hedge – it will be interesting to see how the US reacts
Mainland money distorting Hong Kong land prices, tycoon warns | FT.com – I would have said that has been the case since the handover, its also distorting land prices and property prices
Autumn Statement shows cost of casual work ‘gig economy’ – BBC News – The UK’s “gig economy”, powered by self-employment and casual work, is starting to hit government revenues. Wednesday’s Autumn Statement for the first time showed how it is cutting into the government tax take. The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) estimates that in 2020/21 it will cost the Treasury £3.5bn. Wild West Workplace – self employment in Britain’s gig economy by Frank Field and Andrew Forsey – (PDF) the case study on couriers is particularly insightful and gives you an idea of how screwed it all is
WSJ City – UK Faces Lost Decade of Real Wage Growth – “One cannot stress enough how dreadful that is. We have certainly not seen a period remotely like it in the last 70 years.”
EU ministers to discuss plan to charge Britons to visit Europe after Brexit | The Guardian – hahahahaha
Innovation
China first to record 1m patent filings in a year | FT – interesting debate over what this means. Is it really innovation or driven by state targets. In some areas such as telecommunications there is a definite patent land grab and research being done for competitive advantage
Luxury
Nordstrom Rack Pulls Hoodie with Images of Nanjing Massacre from Online Store – its like a bad Zoolander plot device made real
Media
疯狂希莉娅-电影-腾讯视频 (Mad Shelia) – a Chinese homage to Mad Max Thunder Road. Awkward product placements for apps and the fact that Thunder Road wasn’t allowed in China make this low budget work more divisive. Admittedly critics ignore the efforts by the likes of The Asylum in the US who are famous for their mock buster films
Metrics FYI | Facebook Newsroom – Facebook is fixing bugs in measuring organic reach, more here
Online
The GeoCities Cage at Exodus Communications – amazing pictures – the cloud today wouldn’t look that different
Telegram launches Telegraph, a long-form publishing platform | VentureBeat – new paste bin type blogging platform, though many have considered it as a challenge to Medium / new blogging platform
Forbes: How Jared Kushner Won Trump The White House – it is interesting how the Democrats ‘unlearned’ lessons of the Obama campaign
What the Hell Just Happened? – Medium – “I think that social media has more power than the money they spent, and I think maybe to a certain extent, I proved that.”
Here’s How Facebook Actually Won Trump the Presidency | WIRED – according to President-elect Donald Trump’s digital director Brad Parscale, the social media giant was massively influential—not because it was tipping the scales with fake news, but because it helped generate the bulk of the campaign’s $250 million in online fundraising.
Mark Zuckerberg – I want to share some thoughts on Facebook and the election – post is on Facebook
Security
Three Mobile cyber hack: six million customers’ private information at risk after employee login used to access database – it begs the question what is safe?
DPC steps up Yahoo! hack investigation | RTE – bad news for Yahoo! from an EU perspective
Secret Backdoor in Some U.S. Phones Sent Data to China, Analysts Say – NYTimes.com – Adups provides software to two of the largest cellphone manufacturers in the world, ZTE and Huawei
The software was written at the request of an unidentified Chinese manufacturer that wanted the ability to store call logs, text messages and other data, according to the Adups document. Adups said the Chinese company used the data for customer support
Technology
Apple dumps wireless router development, will exit the market – ExtremeTech – this is a shame as I have found Apple Routers exceptionally easy to set up and very reliable. Apple is being ruined by the tyranny of large numbers and design obsessions in many of the wrong places
IBM new server produced by Wistron, adopted by Tencent | DigiTimes – interesting that it looks so different to servers from the likes of Facebook or Google and much more like an enterprise data centre
MacBook Pro with Touch Bar review roundup – Business Insider – its a bit meh basically
Web of no web
Infineon places its bets on compound semiconductors, lidar, radar | Electronics EETimes – interesting that LIDAR is right up there
A Brief History of GPS—from James Bond to Pokémon Go | Mother Jones – interesting article with some great links
Wireless
Apple Takes Record Profit Share with iPhone in Q3, Says Strategy Analytics – Tech Trader Daily – which shows how commoditised the smartphone market has become, especially when you think that Apple itself has declining margins on the iPhone 7
Strategy Analytics: Apple Captures Record 91 Percent Share of Global Smartphone Profits in Q3 2016 – which gives you an idea of how thin the margins are. BBK – owners of Vivo and OPPO are killing Huawei by comparison. This implies that Huawei’s premium range isn’t doing as well as its budget Honor range when one takes into account the cost of preparing for production (tooling etc) as well as bill of materials
Key takeaways from the American Academy of Pediatrics tablet and smartphone guidelines for children – iMedicalApps – little evidence of benefit, some evidence of harm – wow