Category: ethics | 倫理 | 윤리학

Ethics: moral principles that govern a person’s behavior or the conducting of an activity. I went to school with people who ended up on the wrong side of the law. I knew more of them when I used to DJ which was my hobby since before I went to college.

I probably still have some post-it notes around the place that I used as bookmarks from when I used to work at a call centre but that was about the extent of my ethical transgressions.

My business experience meant that I dealt with a lot of unpleasant unprofessional clients, but didn’t necessarily see anything unethical in nature. When I started writing this blog I was thinking about culture rather than ethics and the most part still do.

But business and work changed. Ethics became more important:

  • When I started in social and digital campaigns I didn’t think about ethics as a standalone thing. It was just part of doing a good job. It went without saying.
  • I don’t think any of us back then would have foreseen slut shaming, trolling, online bullying, dark patterns and misinformation

Now things are different. The lack of ethics is impacting all parts of business life.

  • How ad tech data is used
  • How content is created
  • How services are designed
  • How products are made

I think that much of the problems with ethics is cultural and generational in nature. The current generation of entrepreneurs have perverted knowledge in the quest of growth hacking and continual improvement and change for its own sake. Its a sickness at the centre of technology

  • NCNRs + more stuff

    NCNRs

    Industry Structure: Fabs are in Favor – LTAs are the Tell – Fabricated Knowledge had this interesting article on the role of NCNRs – which means non cancelable, non refundable orders. Chip foundries have to spend an enormous amount of money to be at the cutting edge of manufacturing. They also need to retain staff who understand the best way to use this capital and the machines that it buys. So they spread the risk, which is where NCNRs come in. NCNRs provide the chip foundry with guaranteed revenue and remove the foundries dependence on all the other aspects of the customers supply chain. Don’t long term agreements do the same thing? Long term agreements do guarantee revenue over a set number of years, but it might not be delivered in an even manner, for instance Apple might half orders in one quarter and push back up again in the next. But if you combine NCNRs within an LTA you end up with an entirely predictable revenue stream. NCNRs mean that you capital expenditure becomes more predictable and your operating expenses have money to meet them. The foundry has worked to derisk this business by moving it on to the customer.

    Smart chips for space

    NCNRs works for the largest cutting edge foundries and their clients. But it could be also used to keep legacy foundries alive for the likes of car manufacturers.

    Economics

    Economists must get more in touch with our feelings | Financial TimesJon Clifton, the head of Gallup, which has been tracking wellbeing around the world for many years, notes a polarisation in people’s life-evaluations. Compared with 15 years ago (before the financial crisis, smartphones and Covid-19) twice as many people now say they have the best possible life they could imagine (10 out of 10); however, four times as many people now say they are living the worst life they can conceive (0 out of 10). About 7.5 per cent of people are now in psychological heaven, and about the same proportion are in psychological hell.

    Xi’s Great Leap Backward | Foreign PolicyAmid China’s worsening economic crisis, nearly one-fifth of those between the ages of 16 and 24 are now unemployed, with millions more underemployed. One survey found that of the 11 million Chinese students who graduated from college this summer, fewer than 15 percent had secured job offers by mid-April. Even as many U.S. and European workers are seeing their salaries surge, this year’s Chinese graduates can expect to earn 12 percent less than the class of 2021. Many will make less than truck drivers—if they are lucky enough to find a job at all – so much in this to unpack

    UK’s debt and welfare payments bill set to soar by more than £50bn | Financial Times

    Energy

    Germany Sees Tidal Shift in Sentiment Toward Atomic Energy – DER SPIEGEL 

    Ethics

    Why banning Huawei is proving easier said than done | Business | The Sunday TimesHuawei remains in the UK, with 1,000 or so staff working at offices including an HQ in Reading and a research and development centre in Cambridge, where it is investing £1 billion. It provides funding to universities and has a small stake in Oxford Sciences Innovation, which commercialises research from Oxford University. The BBC still shows Huawei adverts on its websites outside the UK, even though the company is alleged to have provided Chinese authorities with surveillance technology to target the Uighur population.

    OnlyFans Accused of Paying Bribes to Put Enemies on Terrorist Watchlist 

    Finance

    Economic misconceptions of the crypto world – by Noah Smith 

    India’s Fintech Success: UPI – by Jon Y 

    Catalyst Nodes Monitor – how many people are using Decentraland

    FMCG

    Exports of Korean Instant Noodles Hit Another Record – The Chosun Ilbo (English Edition)

    Health

    The Digitally-Savvy HCP | Indegene 

    Doctors are under more work pressure than during height of covid-19 pandemic in 2020 | The BMJ 

    Hong Kong

    Chinese secret police warned exiled Hong Kong businessman over parliament plan — Radio Free AsiaChina’s state security police threatened an overseas Hong Kong businessman who recently announced plans to set up a parliament-in-exile with repercussions for his family members who remain in the city, RFA has learned. Hong Kong’s national security police said last week they are investigating former pro-democracy lawmaker-elect Baggio Leung, overseas businessman Elmer Yuen and journalist Victor Ho for “subversion of state power” under a draconian national security law after they announced plans to set up the overseas parliament. “They warned me in advance [not to go ahead with the plan], but I ignored them,” Yuen told RFA in a recent interview, saying he had been contacted by state security police in Beijing, not the national security unit of Hong Kong’s police force. “They gave me a number of warnings, [including] saying I still have family members in Hong Kong,” he said, adding that there “no point” in worrying about it. Yuen’s comments came as his daughter-in-law Eunice Yeung, a New People’s Party member of the current Legislative Council (LegCo) whose members were all pre-approved by Beijing ahead of the last election, took out an advertisement in Hong Kong’s Oriental Daily News, publicly severing ties with her father-in-law – a couple of things. 1/ This will drive awareness and consideration of the parliament. 2/ It is very similar to the cutting ties done by Myanmar families of opposition members

    Hong Kong’s shortened covid quarantine won’t revive its economy — Quartzthe Hong Kong government this week finally shortened mandatory hotel quarantines for inbound travellers from three days to seven. But the city remains as cut-off from the world as ever. Tourists and business travellers are deterred by Hong Kong’s stringent, costly, and often unpredictable quarantine measures. As a result, Hong Kong’s economy has taken a hit, sliding into a recession last month following two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth. The outlook is clouded with uncertainty, as zero-covid policies locally and on mainland China continue to weigh on consumer demand and trade.

    Innovation

    Interesting view on DARPA’s Gambit project. It builds on scram jet technology to build a more efficient energy.

    Neuromorphic Chip Gets $1 Million in Pre-Orders – EETimes 

    Media

    MoFi sold high end vinyl pressings and claimed that they had a high-end analogue only chain from master tape to vinyl pressings. The reality is rather different. That doesn’t mean that the records are not great quality recordings, but they aren’t what they claim to be.

    TikTok employees complain of ‘kill list’ aimed at forcing out London staff | Financial Times – pretty standard wolf culture practice and then this at Google: Google issues threats to its employees – behave or get fired | Gizchina 

    Online

    Millennial Internet Tics Have Gone From Cool to Cringey – The AtlanticI’m still guilty of the “Millennial pause.” After hitting “Record,” I wait a split second before I start speaking, just to make sure that TikTok is actually recording. Last year, @nisipisa, a 28-year-old YouTuber and TikToker who lives in Boston, coined the term in a TikTok about how even Taylor Swift can’t avoid the cringey pause in her videos. “God! Will she ever stop being relatable,” @nisipisa, herself a Millennial, says. Gen Zers make up a larger portion of TikTok’s base, and have grown up filming themselves enough to trust that they’re recording correctly. Which is why, as short-form video comes to Instagram (Reels), YouTube (Shorts), and Snapchat (Spotlight), the Millennial pause is becoming easier to spot

    Reverse Image Search – Find Similar Images | Duplichecker.com – a metasearch engine like Dogpile, but for reverse image searching

    China regulator says Alibaba, Tencent have submitted app algorithm details | Reuters 

    Retailing

    Back to the trend line? — Benedict Evans – the post-COVID impact on e-tailing

    Japan’s online shoppers call time on spending spree | Financial Times 

    Security

    China National Intelligence Law – article seven makes for particularly grim reading if you are engaged in the Chinese market, have Chinese employees or use Chinese products

    Interesting dig into the US aid being sent to the Ukraine and what it implies about strategy.

    Taiwan

    2022 TSMC Update – by Jon Y – The Asianometry Newsletter – really interesting update on TSMC

    China fears losing international support for its claims on Taiwan: analysts — Radio Free Asia 

    Telecoms

    Google tries shaming Apple into adopting RCS with #getthemessage campaign – The Verge – of course they won’t talk about how Google abandoned RSS and XMPP

  • The Line

    The Line or Neom

    The Line or Neom is a building project in Saudi Arabia. It is a 110 mile or 170 kilometre long building. It will be 200 metres wide and 500 metres or 1,600 feet tall. Inside the structure will be a city to house 9 million people, amenities like school and leisure, their work and public transportation.

    The Line - Saudi Arabia
    NEOM advert in the FT

    The Line will be run on renewable energy and involve some sort of smart grid to optimise the living experience. They’ve apparently already started the earth works on construction and expect to have it completed by 2030.

    Dystopian

    The Line has been criticised in western media as dystopian. The mind immediately turns to science fiction visions like Judge Dredd’s Mega City One or William Gibson‘s cityscapes in his sprawl trilogy books: Neuromancer, Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive. They would likely consider ‘ideal’ to look more like the Bosco Verticale in Milan, or the STH BNK in Melbourne, Australia, both of which look very nice. However, isn’t necessarily a panacea as one forestry expert noted.

    I think it’s very important that trees are given space,” Cecil Konijnendijk, from the University of British Columbia’s Faculty of Forestry, told CNBC.

    “We know that soil — what we call soil volume — is really important, so the trees have to have space underground, maybe even more so than over ground,” he added.

    “And then of course trees will have to have time to develop, so you won’t have instant trees. You’ll have to take the time to make sure they grow up and then they provide the benefits that we want to get from them.”

    Cecil Konijnendijk, from the University of British Columbia’s Faculty of Forestry on CNBC

    And it wasn’t just the media who were critical, there were people who spoke out on social media or wrote to the FT like Mark Hudson of Blandford Forum, Dorset.

    While the developers claim that it has green credentials and is a harbinger of a low carbon future, there are concerns about its effect on local fauna, flora and migrating birds.

    Retrofuturism

    Moonwalk 1
    Moonwalk 1 Artist: Andy Warhol, 1987 Media: Silkscreen on paper Description: The famous image of astronaut Buzz Aldrin standing on the Moon has become an icon of popular culture. It became material for Warhol’s silkscreen series of nationally known images printed on vibrant, retro, poster colors. Image Credit: Andy Warhol for the NASA Art Program

    When I saw the adverts for The Line, I was reminded of two things. NASA’s Art Program and the visual futurism of Syd Mead.

    Syd Mead Poster
    A poster apparently designed by Syd Mead for the 1983 World Sports Fair in Japan

    Syd Mead created designs and conceptual art for clients including Ford Motor Company and Philips Electronics.

    In the 1970s and 1980s, Mead and his company provided architectural renderings, both interior and exterior, for clients including Intercontinental Hotels, 3D International, Harwood Taylor & Associates, Don Ghia, Gresham & Smith and Philip Koether Architects.

    As the 1980s came around Mead developed working relationships a number of Japanese corporations including Sony, Minolta, Dentsu, Dyflex, Tiger Corporation, Seibu, Mitsukoshi, Bandai, NHK and Honda.

    Mead cemented his place on popular culture with his work on

    Mead’s world, was the world that my generation were promised but was never delivered. Instead we got social media. (If you want to see more of Mead’s work I suggest Sentury and Sentury II.)

    The Line
    NEOM advert in the FT

    NASA has an art program that is still running, all be it in a diminished form today. During the 1970s NASA Art Program artists and researchers at the NASA Ames Research Center explored what a future space colony might look like.

    Toroidal Colony
    Toroidal Colony – Cutaway view, exposing the interior. Art work: Rick Guidice. NASA Ames Research Center
    Torus Interior
    Torus Interior. Interior view. Art work: Don Davis. NASA Ames Research Center

    That feeling of retrofuturism might not be accidental. An architect writing in the FT commented on the similarity between The Line and a concept proposed (as more a provocation or thought experiment) by a group of Italian artists called Superstudio who proposed a white gridded wall across the Arizona desert in the late 1960s called Il Monumento Continuo or Continuous Monument in English.

    The case for a city like The Line

    Firstly, Saudi Arabia has to do something, doing nothing isn’t an option.

    At the moment, the population is growing at about 1.65% a year and the average age of the population is just below 30 years old. By comparison the population in the UK is 43. Energy consumption tripled from 1981 to 2010 and if things carry on like this the country will soon move from being the worlds largest energy exporter, to a net importer.

    The Saudis only have so much time to do something before the favourable petro-economy conditions turn against them.

    The demand for oil won’t dry up completely, but the economics change when oil becomes about supplying legacy transport in the developing world, which will likely go on for a long while, together with a small amount of vintage vehicles run by enthusiasts.

    To give you an idea of how long this can be. Leaded petrol started its phase out in cars back in 1975, in the US, and only stopped being sold in 2021. Leaded fuel is still used for some aviation power plants.

    Then there will also be a continued need for chemical feedstocks for the likes of the pharmaceuticals sector and manufacturing. At the moment Saudi Arabia’s GDP is just under 600 billion pounds a year, but that doesn’t mean that it will stay at this level for long, or by how much it will decline.

    Then there is the challenge of making Arabian peninsula liveable during climate change. They’ve seen the Arab spring in Egypt and Tunisia, or the Syrian civil war and they don’t want it to happen in Saudi Arabia.

    Concentrated populations in cities are better for the environment than having them spread out homesteading or living in suburbia. Less environmental impact delivering services. All of which Stewart Brand puts the case for; far more elegantly than I could in his Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto.

    Where does my own opinion lie on The Line?

    I can understand why the Saudis have gone there. They have sound pragmatic reasons for doing something.

    I also feel nostalgic about the childhood future I dreamed of seeing when I looked at Syd Mead and the NASA space colony art work in children’s science books and a sense of a bright future lost.

    But I don’t know how much of it will actually work.

    • Will the Saudis be able to find design fixes for migrating birds or animals in the same way that roads have developed overpasses or underpasses in the west?
    • Will the smart city systems work?
    • What about the renewable energy capacity?
    • Will there be an economy inside The Line? What will it look like?
    • What kind of society will be constructed inside The Line?
    • Will The Line be able to cope with an extreme weather event like a sandstorm, or the flash floods from rare rainstorms that occasionally happen even in the desert?
    • How will the infrastructure be repaired or upgraded once its all built?
    • Will the Saudis be able to afford completing The Line, or will they run out of money? The 2008 financial crisis crushed development in Dubai the following year and the aftershocks are still being felt through stretching out debt deadlines. Dubai property developers like Limitless went through successive rounds of financial restructuring. The Line is a project on a far grander scale.
  • Gentler place to work + more stuff

    Gentler place to work

    Saying out loud the quiet bit about work-life balance; tectonic plates of streaming move againI’ve found myself thinking about one panel in particular – the participants in the session on advice for aspiring leaders went beyond the usual platitudes, and shared a couple of uncomfortable truths about an industry which is trying to rebrand itself as a gentler place to work. – I think that we’ll see more of this move away from a gentler place to work as companies look to cut staff. I entered the workforce in the middle of recession before I went to college, this was the time of micro serfs and mcjobs. The idea of a gentler place to work seemed to be a transient one to me – one that would come and go with economic growth. Zero hour contracts really grew during and after the 2008 financial crisis, which is as far away from a gentler place to work as you can get.

    China

    Take down Pelosi’s plane’: Chinese react online to Taiwan visit | Financial Times 

    Displaced Syrians voice anger as bombed-out town doubles as film set | Financial Times – film being produced by Jackie Chan as demand in China for conflict porn grows alongside nationalistic fervour

    Consumer behaviour

    Children between the ages of 10-12 are spending the most on video games, survey reveals / Digital Information World 

    ‘I am borrowing to live’: pawnbrokers enjoy golden era as UK hits hard times | UK cost of living crisis | The Guardian 

    Economics

    How rising tensions across the Taiwan Strait could threaten global trade | Financial Times 

    Ideas

    Primary care physicians need 26.7 hours in the day – Futurity 

    Why Is the Web So Monotonous? Google. :: Reasonably PolymorphicThe primary purpose of the web today is “engagement,” which is Silicon Valley jargon for “how many ads can we push through someone’s optical nerve?” Under the purview of engagement, it makes sense to publish webpages on every topic imaginable, regardless of whether or not you know what you’re talking about. In fact, engagement goes up if you don’t know what you’re talking about; your poor reader might mistakenly believe that they’ll find the answer they’re looking for elsewhere on your site. That’s twice the advertising revenue, baby! But the spirit of the early web isn’t gone: the bookmarks I’ve kept these long decades mostly still work, and many of them still receive new content. There’s still weird, amateur, passion-project stuff out there. It’s just hard to find. Which brings us to our main topic: search. – It is more than search, there is also motivation and consumer behaviour change in the old web versus the new one – The Founder of GeoCities on What Killed the ‘Old’ Internet | Gizmodo 

    Innovation

    How the American semiconductor industry claimed back technological and market leadership from the Japanese

    Microrobots in swarms for medical embolization — Nano Magazine

    Turning fish waste into quality carbon-based nanomaterial — Nano Magazine

    Ireland

    Lidl Ireland removes mandatory retirement age of 65 | RTE 

    Legal

    EU starts competition investigation into Google Play store terms – report – Telecompaper 

    Luxury

    Telfar gets Beyoncé boost, but so does Hermès despite Birkin snub | Vogue Business – rappers don’t drive luxury sales, middle class Asians do

    Media

    Visa and Mastercard cut ties with ad arm of Pornhub owner MindGeek | Financial Times 

    Retailing

    Ocado, the online supermarket – is this a legitimate content partnership with Disney? Something feels a bit off about the Ocado | Disney inspired meals. The ‘inspired by Disney’ tagline and the Lion King themed ‘green grub pasta’ feels weird.

    Ocado, the online supermarket

    Security

    Missfresh hit by lawsuits from investors and employees | Financial Times 

    Starlink’s Space Speed-Up: A Battle for Internet Leadership – EETimes 

    Government concerns over China-owned CCTV company embedded in UK – Channel 4 NewsThere are more than a million of Hikvision’s cameras installed across the UK – monitoring every aspect of our lives. But Channel 4 News has learned that there are growing concerns within the government about the Chinese state-owned tech company.

    Next Generation Post-Quantum Encryption May Not Be As Secure As Many Tech Experts Had Hoped / Digital Information World 

    China’s war games spur Taiwanese business to rally to island’s defence | Financial Times 

    Web of no web

    Air Force Pilots to Fight AI-Based Enemies Using AR Helmets 

    Apple’s Next-Gen CarPlay Is Scaring the Car Industry. Here’s Why. – Robb Report UK 

    Some interesting business takes on the commercial decline of ‘metaverse‘ platforms:

  • Food film trilogy + more stuff

    Food film trilogy

    PES are a stop motion animation house, whom I was introduced to by Guy, one of the creative directors that I work with. Film food trilogy is one set of films that they did a number of years ago, over a seven year period.

    The film food trilogy starts with Western Spaghetti

    The second film Fresh Guacamole was short listed for an Oscar nomination.

    The final one in the food film trilogy is Submarine Sandwich.

    Doraemon and Toyota collaboration for advertisement

    The premise in these Toyota films is that it is 30 years later and the human characters have grown up, but have still stayed in the respective relative status to each other. The giant is still a bully for instance and Nobita is still a dweeb.

    https://youtu.be/OfnUNmjHzoQ

    Big Data China: AI – Surveillance symbiosis

    Interesting discussion on the use of big data and machine learning in China. The programmable world with Chinese authoritarian characteristics. Some interesting insights in this stream. The event covers:

    how China‘s large-scale investments in surveillance technology is both enhancing the state‘s capacity to repress dissent and providing commercial advantage to Chinese AI companies operating in the facial recognition and surveillance space.

    CSIS

    It is worthwhile looking at the materials that the CSIS is doing in association with Stanford University on Big Data China.

    How LVMH took over Asia

    Asianometry looks how Louis Vuitton grew so big in Asia. Japan and Hong Kong took over luxury sales increased in the 1970s due to a massive increase in disposable income. Its interesting that much of it was driven initially by Japanese department stores in the 1960s and Ferragamo was one of the first western luxury brands that they stocked. Louis Vuitton opened their first store in Japan in the Ginza district in the 1970s, they had somehow managed to leap the chasm that stymied other rivals who were traditional medium-sized enterprises like Louis Vuitton at the time. Well worth a look at this video.

  • Guyana + more stuff

    Chinese business corruption in Guyana

    For a while Vice News was the hotness in news reporting, now they seem to have got their mojo back with a report on Chinese business people taking advantage of corruption at the highest level in Guyana. British Hong Konger Isobel Yeung did an amazing report on how Chinese business, especially state owned enterprises, had supercharged corruption in Guyana.

    Hyundai N Vision 74

    Korean car manufacturer has been following the path taken by the likes of Toyota to expand from being a manufacturer of value, but low margin cars. This involved making a luxury division – Genesis is a clear Lexus analogue but with Korean characteristics. N is their version of what used to be Toyota’s TRD or Gazoo Racing as it is now.

    Hyundai N Vision 74

    The N Vision 74 shows a reignition of Hyundai’s interest in hydrogen fuel cells for passenger cars, Hyundai had paused hydrogen fuel cell development for passenger cars in 2021. Presumably the higher energy density of fuel cells together with the skyrocketing price of lithium and cobalt has caused to them to resurrect the programme? The design is a homage to Italdesign’s Hyundai Pony Coupe concept from 1974. The same year Italdesign had also designed the first Volkswagen Scirocco and the Alfa Romeo GTV. Many commentators have compared it to the later DeLorean DMC 12. The DMC 12 was also designed by Italdesign in 1981.

    Hyundai N Vision 74

    There is a good deal of 1970s and 1980s track car vibes in there as well including a louvred back window and muscular arches. The wheels seem to use vintage Speedline influenced guards that would funnel air into the brake discs but keep rocks, sand and snow ingress to a minimum.

    Japanese itchiness

    Japanese skincare brand Muhi is a line of products that deal with itchy or irritated skin from the likes of allergies or insect bites. They have launched a campaign that deals with the subject of crotch itch including an e-sports tournament and a branded series of anime. The e-sport tournament is a clever way of getting attention for the series of crotch related games that they have on the Muhi website.

    Perun

    Perun has done some of the better analysis for armchair warriors following the Ukraine war. The analysis is thoughtful and doesn’t have an inherent bias. He had used to run a mediocre gaming channel, but analysis seems to be his strength.