Month: August 2021
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Buy now, pay later + other news
Buy now, pay later Paidy considers listing as ‘buy now, pay later’ catches on in Japan | Financial Times – Japan is a microcosm of what’s happening in terms of buy now, pay later on the web. Japan is notable, because like Germany, historically it has been a heavy cash focused consumer payments market. Mobile payments…
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ESG in a nutshell
What is ESG? ESG can be considered to be a form of ethical investing. Ethical investing of one form or another has been around for a while. In the US by the middle of the last century union pension funds were looking to invest in areas like affordable housing. There used to be funds and…
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Afghanistan + other news
Afghanistan I couldn’t avoid doing a post on Afghanistan given what had been going on this week. The Afghanistan conflict posed a number of interesting questions about: The US Is Removing Records of Its War in Afghanistan From the Internet – Lives are on the line here, but helping them may mean destroying—even if temporarily—the…
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Nightmare of The Wolf + other things
Nightmare of The Wolf Netflix are doubling down on The Witcher franchise with their Witcher: Nightmare of The Wolf anime. The approach is very similar to the approach that Netflix took with Altered Carbon. Looking at how well that anime turned out, I have high hopes that Nightmare of the Wolf will live up to…
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False reviews + other news
False reviews Shenzhen to support Amazon merchants | Trivium China – 50,000 merchants were banned from Amazon for astroturfing false reviews. The ban was worth up to 100 billion yuan in sales to these merchants. Half of the merchants affected are based in Shenzhen. Now the Chinese government is looking at what it can do…
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The Coddling of the American Mind
The Coddling of the American Mind by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt. The book sprang out of an article that the authors wrote for The Atlantic – How Trigger Warnings Are Hurting Mental Health on Campus. Jonathan Haidt Haidt is a social psychologist by training and currently serves as professor of ethical leadership at New York University…
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Audi Skysphere & other things
Audi Skysphere Audi launched its latest concept car the Audi Skysphere. It’s electrically powered as you’d expect. Massive screens for displays and sustainable materials used in the interior. It has autonomous driving when its in a ‘grand touring’ mode. It allows for the owner to drive in a ‘sports car’ mode. All pretty normal stuff…
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Fear of finding out
Fear of finding out – an introduction Fear of finding out was how Paul Holmes characterised marketing as a discipline and its approach to return on investment. This was an article that was originally published in 2019, but was going around in circles that I keep an eye on online recently. The article characterised marketing…
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Photo hashing & other news
Apple photo hashing Report: Apple to announce client-side photo hashing system to detect child abuse images in user’s photos libraries – 9to5Mac – photo hashing its not foolproof. Once the proof of concept exists, Apple won’t be able to withstand the pressure authoritarian government could use it to track other materials. Tencent’s WeChat is already…