Ged Carroll

Category: legal | 合法的 | 법률학 | 法的

Legal is defined as everything connected with the system of law within a country or area. The definition Law is a system of rules created and enforced to regulate behaviour, usually it belongs to a country or an area.

Online and innovation have often evolved way in advance of laws and the legal system’s ability to cope.

The emphasis that different systems have produces a number of challenges. China’s systems are locked down under their view of cyber sovereignty to avoid a contagion of western ideas. Yet they and other authoritarian regimes treat the open western systems as a battle space to destabilise other countries and attack their critics.

The US system favours free speech over privacy, which directly clashes with European values. Much of these European values were shaped in the aftermath of having lived under Warsaw Pact era authoritarian regimes.

There is a clash of the ages undertaken over ethics and power and what’s legal. The law offers up more questions and ethical traps than answers. It’s into this legal morass that my posts tend to land, usually at the point of intersection between ethics, the law and technology.

When I started using the web I believed that it was a unique extra-legal space similar to what John Perry Barlow outlined at the start of the ‘web’ as we now know it.  The reality is that the net has already been staked out by businesses that look rather similar to the robber barons of the gilded age. Authoritarian regimes found it surprisingly easy to bend to their will and now sell their expertise around the world.

  • Glossier + more things

    Glossier

    What’s next for Glossier as founder Emily Weiss steps down after eight years | Vogue Business – Glossier is famous for popularising millennial pink in its stores, its zip-lock bubble pouch and for pioneering everyday beauty in an industry obsessed with perfection. However, signs of internal shifts began earlier this year when the beauty brand laid off nearly one-third of its staff, according to an internal email obtained by Modern Retail. It also enlisted the singer and Gen Z favourite Olivia Rodrigo to promote the brand in April, after years of relying on its own community. There have been other bumps in the road. Two years ago the sub-brand Glossier Play closed, and the brand was also called out by former store employees who made allegations about racist behaviour and a toxic work culture. Glossier publicly apologised. – for many marketers in the beauty and personal care space Glossier was the poster child of a ‘new way’ of brand building. It looks as if it wasn’t the new way at all and its had to pivot to more conventional means.

    To the curl of your lips In the center of eclipse

    Glossier is moving from scrappy start-up to a mainstream beauty brand. Will Weiss stepping back mean that Glossier will be up for sale?

    Consumer behaviour

    How Labour lost the Indian vote in the local elections – New Statesman – new Indian immigrants have more in common with Rishi Sunak than with the 1970s East Africans. Born to a wealthy, upper-caste Hindu family, this immigrant is likely to have attended one of India’s most prestigious private schools, aspiring to attend an Ivy League university. They were raised by domestic help who cooked and cleaned for them. Sunak embodies the Indian upper middle class. He understands the new wealthy India. Hell, he’s a card-carrying member of the new wealthy India: the Stanford educated son-in-law of one of the biggest Indian tech families, born to middle-class Indian doctors. This means that when Labour draws attention to Sunak’s elitist background, it makes him more appealing to both Indian demographics. He achieved the social mobility the 20th-century immigrants hoped for for their children, and he is a member of the family that encapsulates the new elite India

    Economics

    All the reasons why so many near-retirees are going back to work — Quartz – the pandemic may have been an even bigger setback to this age group than the current data suggests. There may be many older workers who want to return to work right now and are facing well-established obstacles, such as age discrimination, that make it much harder for an older employee to be rehired after leaving or losing a job, Davis suggests. Going back to work after retirement? It’s complicated. The data also don’t indicate how many of the people who went back to work would have preferred to retire, but couldn’t—a sign that the system could be failing them

    Ethics

    Microsoft Exec Accused of Watching VR Porn in Front of Employees | Futurism 

    Is British science aiding and abetting the Chinese human organ trade? – Last month, for example, a government bill was passed banning British citizens from travelling overseas to purchase an organ. Accompanying this awareness is a growing unease in western academia. Eminent medics are starting to look back uncomfortably on decades of “constructive engagement” with the Chinese medical establishment – those all-expenses-paid trips to lecture budding surgeons, and the profitable arrangements to train batches of them in the west. Meanwhile editors of academic journals are scouring their back issues for too-good-to-be-true studies on organ transplants, that may have arisen from experimentation on human guinea pigs in places such as Xinjiang. In October last year a world-renowned Australian transplant doctor, Professor Russell Strong, called on all Chinese surgeons to be banned from western hospitals to prevent them using the skills they pick up there in the organ harvesting market. Now, a leading human rights body has warned medical equipment manufacturers – among others – that they might be prosecuted if their kit is found to be used in the illegal Chinese trade. – this is going to expand areas of decoupling

    The Oppression of Uyghurs in China: VW Under Fire for Ongoing Operations in Xinjiang – DER SPIEGEL which was published in concert with this opinion piece Beijing’s Human Rights Violations: It’s Time for German Executives to Reexamine Their Ties to China – DER SPIEGEL 

    Uganda: DER SPIEGEL Reporting Leads Unilever to Stop Sexist Marketing Campaign – DER SPIEGEL

    Finance

    The war on ‘woke capitalism’ | Financial Times 

    FMCG

    Unilever’s Samir Singh: Sustainability shouldn’t burden consumers with guilt or expense | Campaign Asia – existential threats to the personal care business wouldn’t just come from being innovation laggards, but could also come from feisty D2C brands or strong local rivals eating into market share. Here, Singh is more concerned about one over the other. “Despite the noise, D2C brands have made no impact on market share charts in the personal care business,” he contends. “You will hear a lot about them for the first six months to a year, (then) they will peak and then in two or three years, they tend to disappear.” Instead, it is strong homegrown local brands that worry Singh more. He points out that across categories ranging from deodorants to skin care and across markets ranging from India to Indonesia, Unilever has felt local threats to its storied global brands. These brands have been able to compete on price, innovation, distribution and brand recall. “While we have been winning with our global names, these local brands have taken market share from us previously,” he admits. – this looks like headstone for the DTC CPG boom, other comments about sustainability are interesting as well

    ideas

    Putin Against History | Foreign Affairs 

    A Forecasting Model Used by the CIA Predicts a Surprising Turn in U.S.-China Relations – POLITICO – this seems to ignore political dogma and ego

    The delusion of a global democratic rebirth through war – Responsible Statecraft 

    Innovation

    Japanese AI device reads stories to your kid with your voice, even if you’ve never read them【Vid】 | SoraNews24 – what’s interesting is how the parent’s voice is replicated to create a ‘deep fake’ audio story track

    Japan

    Sony’s strategy stymied by shortages | Financial Times 

    Ideas to boost Japanese growth (Part 1) – by Noah Smith 

    Luxury

    Chanel profits skyrocket 171% on price hikes, Americas gains | Vogue Business – Chanel famously increased the prices of its iconic handbags last year (the small Classic Flap bag rose by an average 21 per cent in 2020 and a further 30 per cent in 2021, according to Jefferies analyst Flavio Cereda) and said a twice-year price adjustment is the norm for the brand. Price increases “depend on product categories and countries because it depends if the currency in one country has moved in a direction. There is not a single pricing decision which has been made in January. Usually, we revise, we adjust prices when we have to, twice a year.”

    Marketing

    Hot Wheels releases a remote-controlled wheelchair that flips & spins – is this a new form of brand purpose, or will Hot Wheels have its 21st century equivalent of the ‘Joey Deacon’ effect?

    Security

    These Chinese super drones are capable of tracking humans in swarms – Tech in Asia 

    EXCLUSIVE Russian hackers are linked to new Brexit leak website, Google says | Reuters – interesting that the attack was on ProtonMail based conversations

    China military must be able to destroy Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites if they threaten national security: scientists | South China Morning Post – usual destroy everything we don’t control mentality from China

    China’s Uyghurs: Hacked Data Shows Ethnic Abuse in Xinjiang Camps – Bloomberg – what’s interesting about this is that China beefed up encryption standards in 2018, which is apparently why there weren’t more recent records

    Software

    Joint Venture Between High-Tech Rheinmetall AG and DEMALOG, Germany’s Biggest Biometrics Company – Soldier Systems Daily – The strategic objective is to integrate biometric technology, artificial intelligence software, and digitization solutions in three different areas: driver monitoring, security, and industry. For Rheinmetall, the joint venture marks an important step in the transformation to digitization technology and expanding into driver monitoring solutions. Furthermore, the new joint venture enhances the Düsseldorf-based technology group’s future-oriented diversification into biometrics applications geared to the security sector and industry. The move also adds to its existing digitization and software expertise. Importantly, the partnership reinforces Rheinmetall’s capabilities in five strategic technology clusters: automation, sensors, digitization, alternative mobility, and artificial intelligence

    Web of no web

    UAE Official Says Murder Should Be Illegal in the Metaverse – I wonder what the impact would be for games designers

    Gucci Town Lands on Roblox With Activities and Shopping Experiences – Robb Report 

    Opinion: The metaverse doesn’t look as disruptive as it should, it looks ordinary – here’s why | University College London

    Virtual clubbing points to future profits from the metaverse | FT – Hybe, the agency behind K-pop band BTS, was hit by a 98 per cent plunge in sales from its core live concert business in 2020 as tours were cancelled. But total annual revenues and operating profit still rose over a third, as it was quick to offer VR concerts and content. With such digital content repurposed at a fraction of the cost of live shows, operating margins rose to nearly a fifth higher than pre-pandemic levels. CJ ENM, which started using the latest VR and augmented reality technology for its virtual concerts in 2020, has also enjoyed a boost to content sales. These have since risen steadily, more than doubling in the latest quarter, as did operating profits from its music division. For Sony, sales from its music segment rose a fifth in the year to March

    Singapore metaverse firm bags $36.8m in Sequoia-led round 

    Making the metaverse – Smart2.0 – its odd, or disingenuous the way Meta is outlining an open metaverse rather than a walled garden, rather like a turkey voting for Christmas

  • Assembly process video + more stuff

    Porsche 911 GT3 assembly process video

    I am a sucker for a manufacturing assembly process video. Over time I have shared videos showcasing Nokia’s largely automated smartphone manufacturing lines that they had before the Microsoft disaster and old time metalworking archive footage as assembly process videos. So I had to share this timelapse assembly process video for the Porsche 911 GT3. This Porsche 911 GT3 I am reliably informed is the car that petrolheads most want to own out of the 911 range due to it being available with a manual gearbox. It is almost as fast as the top of the range 911 Turbo S, has worse fuel economy and emissions.

    Around the 23 second mark you can see the start of the chassis assembly using a manufacturing cell of four robotic assembly arms. Then an assembled floor pan is placed into a jig for welding to begin. The jig fits upside down to allow welding on both sides of the car. What’s less clear if these are seam or spot welds. In the assembly process video we can see the modular nature of the manufacturing line that would allow it to be restructured relatively easy to match different production requirements. The classic give away is modular protective partition walling around the robots.

    A good deal of the movement that the robot arms are doing is checking and measuring the existing parts before additional assembly happens. At 50 seconds in the assembly process video, the car starts to look like a Porsche as the floorpan and front chassis are connected to the roof and rear quarter chassis. You can see only spot welds happening at this stage. It was interesting to see the doors go on before painting. Just before the first minute in the assembly process video we start to see the first human welders doing hard to get joints on the interior front bulkheads and where the roof pillars join the body. The door set up is resolved before the front wings are fitted to the car.

    The whole front end of the chassis isn’t shown being attached to the car and suddenly appears as the front wings are fitted to the car. The assembly line seems to move from station-to-station every four minutes or so. We don’t see the chassis being galvanised, but we do see the chassis being dipped in primer paint as part to the assembly process video. Automated spray booths are no common in car manufacturing. It was interesting to see how important inspectors running their hands over the paint work were to the process. I presume if there was a problem the car would be taken off the line and paint problems fixed manually. The front of the the chassis is not painted beyond primer by the robots in the assembly process video, yet suddenly seems to be painted when we get to 2:16 in the assembly process video.

    The engine, transmission drive train and suspension come on a jig and are mounted to the chassis in one operation. The assembly process video shows the wheels being put on manually. I suspect this is about industrial safety, not mixing up human and robot workstations. The doors are re-hung on the car during final assembly.

    Air Max Day

    Digital outdoor advertising that wraps itself around the corner of a building lends itself to fantastic 3D ad campaigns. The build of these boards seem to be in Asia. I know of ones in Malaysia, Japan, Korea and China. This advert for Nike Japan on Air Max day makes really good use of the format.

    A word of thanks

    Cathay Pacific has seen its brand battered by the Hong Kong government, so it did a nice bit of content showcasing the important work that its staff have been doing during the COVID-19 crisis in Hong Kong. I suspect that this is aimed at both internal as well as external audiences.

    Yuen Long

    To an external observer, one would believe that the triads only really exist in movies now rather than on the street in Hong Kong. Up until the 1970s criminality and corruption were a part of daily life. The Peter Godber scandal forced the British government to act, cleaning up the government and business and then launching anti-triad operations with the OCT department of what was then the Royal Hong Kong Police.

    By the 1990s and 1990s Hong Kong was less corrupt but criminals were connected with business life such as the Carrian Group financial scandal which saw a visiting Malaysian bank auditor killed and buried in a banana tree field and lawyer John Wimbush who apparently committed suicide by tying himself to the grate at the bottom of a full swimming pool.

    Criminals like Big Spender were robbing jewellery stores with AK assault rifles and you saw scenes like something out of the movie Heat playing out on Hong Kong streets. Kidnappings by the likes of Big Spender encouraged Hong Kong oligarchs to get closer to the Chinese government and invest in the pre-WTO China.

    In recent years Hong Kong criminals tended to only appear at times convenient to the government to intimidate and assault critics. This was escalated in 2019, when they came out in force in Yuen Long to beat commuters returning from college, work and democracy protests. This became known as the 721 incident.

    Its interesting to see Vice News covering this story three years later, I guess later is better than never.

    Rumination

    I am a bit late with this due to the Moviedrome taking so long to put together. Producer and analogue synth maker put together this 60 minute piece of music that reminded me a bit of Autechre and Phillip Glass.

    60 minutes of Ambient Drone at 60 BPM with all oscillators tuned to multiples of 60Hz. 

    This piece was recorded to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the National Autistic Society in the UK and World Autism Acceptance Week 2022. 

    Bandcamp page

    Find out more here.

    Heinz Australia

    Amazing animated video telling of the love for Heinz Baked Beans. Animation is ideal for FMCG brands like Heinz because if a different voiceover it can transcend cultures. This is something that we looked to do when I was involved with the plant based relaunch of Flora margarine prior to its sale by Unilever.

    Windows 95 launch

    I watched this and was reminded of my old employers Waggener Edstrom, whose claim to fame was orchestrating this launch, but this was way before my time with them. This was way before my time. At the time Jay Leno was a big time TV host rather than that car guy. The internet wasn’t really on Microsoft’s radar either, though you could get Internet Explorer 1 with a ‘Plus’ pack of more powerful multimedia features. This was peak Microsoft. What people tend to remember less was that Windows 95 was less stable than what had gone before until at least the first service pack launched a year later. We are starting to see echoes of this old Microsoft coming back with the bundling of Microsoft Teams with Office 365 to combat Slack and bundling of security products.

  • SORM + more things

    When Nokia Pulled Out of Russia, a Vast Surveillance System Remained – The New York Times – Nokia said this month that it would stop its sales in Russia and denounced the invasion of Ukraine. But the Finnish company didn’t mention what it was leaving behind: equipment and software connecting the government’s most powerful tool for digital surveillance to the nation’s largest telecommunications network. The tool was used to track supporters of the Russian opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny. Investigators said it had intercepted the phone calls of a Kremlin foe who was later assassinated. Called the System for Operative Investigative Activities, or SORM, it is also most likely being employed at this moment as President Vladimir V. Putin culls and silences antiwar voices inside Russia. For more than five years, Nokia provided equipment and services to link SORM to Russia’s largest telecom service provider, MTS, according to company documents obtained by The New York Times. While Nokia does not make the tech that intercepts communications, the documents lay out how it worked with state-linked Russian companies to plan, streamline and troubleshoot the SORM system’s connection to the MTS network. Russia’s main intelligence service, the F.S.B., uses SORM to listen in on phone conversations, intercept emails and text messages, and track other internet communications. The documents, spanning 2008 to 2017, show in previously unreported detail that Nokia knew it was enabling a Russian surveillance system. The work was essential for Nokia to do business in Russia, where it had become a top supplier of equipment and services to various telecommunications customers to help their networks function. The business yielded hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue, even as Mr. Putin became more belligerent abroad and more controlling at home. – SORM has been around in one form or another for almost three decades. It mirrors the surveillance system used by Sweden and GCHQ in the UK. The latest version of SORM is SORM-3 that uses deep packet inspection infrastructure. SORM seems to be based on a mix of Russian made infrastructure and equipment by the likes of Israeli vendor Cellebrite.

    Business

    Big Four under growing pressure as Chinese developers delay audits | Financial Times 

    China

    Enemies of My Enemy – Foreign Affairs – fear of China is forming blocks by default

    Investor Redemptions from China Funds Hit Pandemic High | Institutional Investor

    Analysis: How Ukraine has been Nazifized in Chinese Information Space? | Doublethink Lab | Doublethink Lab

    Trial of Australian Journalist in China on States-Secrets Charges Ends Without Verdict – WSJ – Cheng Lei’s detention in August 2020 coincided with a sharp downturn in diplomatic relations between Beijing and Canberra – this is likely to be better for Australia’s incumbent prime minister Scott Morrison as is shows progressive realism doesn’t work. That’s not so good for Chinese interests in Australia

    Consumer behaviour

    We surveyed the UK’s young people on the impact of two… – The Face 

    Does Social Media Make Teens Unhappy? It May Depend on Their Age. – The New York Times

    “It’s pretty much a constant”: Women are more unhappy than men around the world

    Economics

    The Supply Chain Crisis Is About to Get a Lot Worse | WIRED

    Gender pay gap narrows as younger women now earn more than men in 22 major cities – The Washington Post – this might be also down to a decrease of men in higher education as well

    Ethics

    Hong Kong’s reality reveals the poverty of “progressive realism” 

    Finance

    Australian casino inquiry puts spotlight on Chinese money laundering | Financial Times

    Gadgets

    Not an April Fool: Dyson announces apocalyptic filter-headphone combo | Ars Technica – if you told me that this was bought in the SEG Plaza in Shenzhen and was a fake Dyson product I would believe you. I don’t know why Dyson went there. Usually its product development is well-gated which is why its electric Range Rover analogue got shelved prior to going into production

    Hong Kong

    A word of thanks to all of our people | Cathay 

    Foreign Secretary supports the withdrawal of serving UK judges from the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal – GOV.UK 

    The Times view on Hong Kong’s highest court: Denial of Justice | Comment | The Times – the bigger problem for China and Hong Kong isn’t the effect on the legal system but on western leaders now realising engagement is futile

    Used Car Prices: Tesla, Porsche Go for Bargains in Hong Kong as Expats Leave – Bloomberg – but there is a topsy turvy aspect to the cost of owning a car. The single biggest cost will be parking

    Innovation

    War got weird – by Noah Smith – Noahpinion 

    Legal

    StockX strikes back at Nike in NFT lawsuit | Reuters 

    Marketing

    Asian Influencers Might Outpace Their Western Counterparts, India and China Expected to Dominate / Digital Information World 

    Materials

    Australian refinery close to producing country’s first lithium hydroxide for batteries | Financial Times

    Online

    China Plans New Restrictions in Its Booming Live-Streaming Sector – WSJ 

    Security

    Three ways the European Union might ruin WhatsApp | Platformer

    Russian tech giant Yandex’s data harvesting raises security concerns | Financial Times

    US-China Tech Race: Spies and Lies (Part One) | Financial Times

    Abu Dhabi state funds were used to buy Israeli spyware group NSO | Financial Times 

    Taiwan

    Taiwan’s love motels are safe spaces for couples — Quartz India – Marco Hsiao, a private investigator, has frequented hundreds of love motels in an attempt to provide evidence of adultery for divorce cases—80% of his cases pertain to cheating spouses. He said the rooms are also used for drug deals, interviewing new workers entering the sex industry, and money-laundering meetings.

    Web of no web

    In Busan, A Smart City Built on Data Takes Shape  – The New York Times 

    Wireless

    Starlink helps Ukraine’s elite drone unit target and destroy Russian tanks | Ars Technica

    Goldie: “The ’90s had everything!” – The Face – his comments on smartphones are on the money

  • Hino trucks + more news

    Hino trucks

    Hino Motors is a car and truck manufacturer best known for its iconic Hino trucks. It started its convoluted origin story spinning out of manufacturing company owned by Tokyo Gas.

    Hino 1973

    Before there was Hino trucks, there were a small amount of half tracks and armoured personnel carriers made for the Imperial Japanese Army. After the war Hino got into the truck business and for a brief while also made cars. The pretty Hino Contessa coupé showed potential, but becoming part of the Toyota group saw Hino focus on commercial vehicles under its own name.

    Hino, Green

    Hino trucks with their winged logo marked my childhood in Ireland. Hino trucks pulled palleted loads on taunt liner trailers, shipping containers and flat bed trailers of hay. The supermarket delivery wagons, the bakers lorry, skip deliveries, ready mix and the dairy picking up milk from my Uncle’s farm were all using Hino trucks. The distinctive unblinking three green lights on the roof of oncoming Hino trucks stood out of the total darkness of rural Irish roads.

    hino sh28

    I had Robert ‘Pino’ Harris to thank for making Ireland the Hino trucks capital of Europe at the time. And his Hino trucks success story is one of a singular focus on relationships and customer service.

    So it saddened me to read about Hino trucks emissions scandal relating to their diesel engines. Toyota/Hino: truck unit not strong enough to overcome emissions data scandal  | Financial Times

    China

    Adidas ousts China chief as sales suffer after consumer boycott over Xinjiang | Financial Times – Allison Malmsten, sportswear analyst at China-focused consultancy Daxue Consulting, said that since the boycott, Nike and Adidas have ceded their top position on ecommerce apps such as Alibaba’s Tmall. In their place, local online retailers have promoted Li-Ning and Anta, making the “competition a lot stiffer”.Jonathan Cummings, Asia-Pacific president of brand consultancy Landor and Fitch, said that after years of market dominance, Adidas and Nike were being challenged by “cheaper domestic brands that have become stronger”.Adidas generated nearly a quarter of its sales in the Greater China region in the first half of last year, the bulk of which came from mainland China. – it will be interesting to see where adidas will try to go in China and whether they feel it is worth riling western customers to arrest their decline in China

    The rising costs of China’s friendship with Russia | Financial Times – When the Russian invasion of Ukraine started two weeks ago, Jane Yan, a senior executive at a machine parts maker in eastern China, says she was not too worried about the impact. After all, buyers in Russia and Ukraine accounted for less than 5 per cent of the company’s overseas sales last year. But as the full ferocity of the Russian onslaught started to become apparent, the outlook shifted dramatically. Important clients in countries such as Poland and Germany cancelled orders with the Zhejiang-based company. “A Munich-based client said ‘it feels terribly wrong to send money to a country that is tolerating war in Ukraine — sorry’,” said Yan, who asked that her employer not be identified. She added that inquiries from European buyers have also fallen sharply since the conflict started. “I hope the war ends as soon as possible.” – I wonder how prevalent this consumer boycott actually is of Chinese products?

    Culture

    Why disco will never truly die — Quartz – interesting, but full of American privilege, but no love for producers like Giorgio Moroder, Luxxury, Dimitri from Paris, Late Night Tuff Guy or The Reflex

    Ideas

    How factory robots lead to human deaths – Futurity – “For decades, manufacturers in the United States have turned to automation to remain competitive in a global marketplace, but this technological innovation has reduced the number of quality jobs available to adults without a college degree—a group that has faced increased mortality in recent years,” says lead author Rourke O’Brien, assistant professor of sociology at Yale University. 

    “Our analysis shows that automation exacts a toll on the health of individuals both directly—by reducing employment, wages, and access to healthcare—as well as indirectly, by reducing the economic vitality of the broader community.” 

    Since 1980, mortality rates in the United States have diverged from those in other high-income countries. Today, Americans on average die three years sooner than their counterparts in other wealthy nations. 

    EACH NEW ROBOT PER 1,000 WORKERS LED TO ABOUT 8 ADDITIONAL DEATHS PER 100,000 MALES AGED 45 TO 54 AND NEARLY 4 ADDITIONAL DEATHS PER 100,000 FEMALES IN THE SAME AGE GROUP. 
    Automation is a major source of the decline of US manufacturing jobs along with other factors, including competition with manufacturers in countries with lower labor costs, such as China and Mexico.     

    Previous research has shown that the adoption of industrial robots caused the loss of an estimated 420,000 to 750,000 jobs during the 1990s and 2000s, the majority of which were in manufacturing.

    Korea

    The legal battle threatening Samsung’s dynasty | Financial Times

    Nearly 40% of Manufacturers on Brink of Insolvency – The Chosun Ilbo (English Edition) – this is small and medium sized businesses. This is worse than the 2008 financial crisis

    Legal

    Letters: No need for a WeChat ban | Australian Financial Review – not sure if Tencent would play along

    Marketing

    “Wank pods” to become a new work perk for Stripchat employees | Stripcat – cheap PR stunt

    What Is Message Testing, and Why Does It Matter?  | GLG 

    Materials

    Boeing suspends buying titanium from Russia | RTÉ News 

    Retailing

    Uniqlo to Keep Stores in Russia Open As Zara, H&M Pull Out 

    Security

    Another Chinese Hacking Tool Discovered By Symantec | Gizchina – interesting that it was aimed at high-level, non western government agencies. What is the equivalent that they are using in the west then? How about U.S. State Governments Hit in Chinese Hacking Spree – WSJ 

    Supply chain giant Expeditors is still recovering from cyberattack, expects ‘material adverse impact’ – GeekWire 

    Software

    Russian Cybersecurity Giant Kaspersky Tries to Maintain Neutrality During Ukraine War

    RuTracker.org, once the largest resource website in Russia, has recently been unblocked, after Microsoft, Adobe, game developers, etc. announced that they are banned from selling products in Russia – yqqlm – Gamingsym – BitTorrent to be main source of software and entertainment for Russians, opportunity for western governments to spread malware

    Technology

    It’s Not ‘Too Late’ for Intel to Beat the Apple M1 – ExtremeTech – so two questions come out of this.

    1. Can Intel out-design Apple in terms of chips? I think that is certainly possible, possibly even extremely likely
    2. Can Intel compete with Apple on process? Possibly soon, if they managed to partner with Samsung or TSMC. Certainly in the longer term if Intel’s process engineers get their mojo back, or they continue to partner with TSMC or Samsung

    Apple goes chiplet for 114bn transistor M1 Ultra – eeNews Europe 

    Telecoms

    Huawei UK’s British board members resign over Russia-Ukraine stance | Reuters 

    Web of no web

    Roundtable: A Brutally Honest Conversation on the Metaverse – Web 2.0 Is about the individual/the corporation, and Web 3.0 is about the collectivist statement, or the community / collectivist environment, in some ways. – interesting that there is a whole piece missing about web 1.0 being about personal and organisation publishing and communications. Web 2.0 being a web of data and creativity

  • 3G graduation + more stuff

    3G graduation film

    3G graduation sees DoCoMo celebrating 3G wireless services and how they fitted into consumers lives. While DoCoMo has its service running for another couple of years, rival Au has shut down its 3G network this year. The ‘Graduation’ in 3G graduation is used in a similar way to how US technology companies use ‘sunset’ as a euphemism for shutting down a service.

    In sectors outside technology like the 3G graduation film, the term graduation is signify an artist leaving an idol group. Japanese Idol groups like AKB48 and Morning Musume mirror the interchangeable team nature of Puerto Rican boy bandma Menudo. Like Japanese idol groups, Menudo appeared in adverts for big brands like Pepsi and McDonalds across Latin and South America (including Portuguese speaking Brazil). They even appeared in a Pepsi ad that ran in the Philippines. They also did two TV specials. Japanese idol groups contain pop stars with the following characteristics:

    a type of entertainer marketed for image, attractiveness, and personality in Japanese pop culture. Idols are primarily singers with training in acting, dancing, and modeling. Idols are commercialized through merchandise and endorsements by talent agencies, while maintaining a parasocial relationship with a financially loyal consumer fan base.

    Wikipedia: Japanese idol

    When members leave the group due to contract violations, ageing out, or wanting to build a career of their own, they ‘graduate’. Like the 3G graduation film idols share an association with school imagery.

    https://youtu.be/dKxjw3YntBk

    Kit-Kat anime advert

    Nestlé Kit-Kats are popular in Japan. They are especially popular during exam time. The reason for this is that the Japanese pronunciation of KitKat, “Kitto Katto,” sounds similar to the phrase “Kitto katsu,” which means “I believe you will win/you can do it.” The homophone nature of Kitto Katto meant that Kit-Kats became a good luck charm, with people having them or giving them as gifts for big days such as school entrance exams or even job interviews.

    This explains why this anime advert directed by Naoko Yamada is around the theme of “Kikkake wa Kit Kat de,” or “Kit-Kat Creates the Chance,” and has a school related setting.

    This is apparently the first of what promises to be a series of adverts being done by Yamada for Kit-Kat.

    Modern car mechanical design

    For someone who hasn’t bought a car in 25 years, hearing about how unreliable BMWS and Mercedes cars have become is a bit of a shock. I have driven hire cars and am aware that cars are now heavily reliant on computers. What I hadn’t realised was how cheap mechanical parts had become under the hood. The reason why they had been engineered down to a price, was to allow for the price of all the new electronics that make up the car driving experience now.

    I started my work life off in a corporate research lab were we were developing a way of making a plastic manifold cover for a small Ford of Europe engine. This engine was destined for the Ford Fiesta and the first Ka if we had managed to get everything to work. The idea was that the engine would be a sealed unit. When it needed to be replaced it would undergo a factory recondition, or would be recycled. This was about reducing environmental impact, without impacting profits. But looking at some of the parts going into these cars now, I am shocked.

    More in this video here.

    Amazon luxury watch copies

    Amazon is a den of iniquity in terms of shoddy products and fakes. German watch YouTuber shows the variety of watches that steal the design language of watches from the likes of:

    • Nomos
    • TAG Heuer
    • Breitling
    • Rolex
    • Audemars Piguet
    • Patek Philippe

    All of these come in at about $100 price. It is interesting how the Chinese factories turning these watches out have managed to get their way around the brand police. Finally, I am surprised to see Chinese manufacturers relying on a cheap, but reliable Seiko movement for the most part. Which is probably down to the weird deficiencies in Chinese engineering that means that you don’t see Chinese made rollerball pen refills.

    The amazing design of the jerry can

    Great video by a Scottish YouTuber who covers why the jerry can was such a clever product design and the history of the fuel container. I did not realise that they were tested in the Spanish civil war. More here.

    NFTs and Ralph Bakshi’s animated adaptation of The Lord of The Rings

    The problems with NFTs. NFTs sprung out of the move to decentralised finance or cryptocurrency. NFT are smart contract linked artefacts. These were seen as a panacea for creatives to make money during COVID. This video is an interesting discussion on NFTs, and uses the analogy of investors buying real estate that drove the 2008 mortgage crisis. The crypto-economy has many of the same drivers.

    The guy who made this video also did a really good exhaustive history of Ralph Bakshi‘s The Lord of The Rings film that preceded Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy by a couple of decades, and the BBC’s radio adaptation by a few years. I am a fan of all three, but am in no doubt that Peter Jackson’s film in some places is a shot-for-shot copy of Bakshi’s film and borrows dialogue from both Bakshi and the BBC.