Ged Carroll

Category: online | 線上 | 온라인으로 | オンライン

The online field has been one of the mainstays since I started writing online in 2003. My act of writing online was partly to understand online as a medium.

Online has changed in nature. It was first a destination and plane of travel. Early netizens saw it as virgin frontier territory, rather like the early American pioneers viewed the open vistas of the western United States. Or later travellers moving west into the newly developing cities and towns from San Francisco to Los Angeles.

America might now be fenced in and the land claimed, but there was a new boundless electronic frontier out there. As the frontier grew more people dialled up to log into it. Then there was the metaphor of web surfing. Surfing the internet as a phrase was popularised by computer programmer Mark McCahill. He saw it as a clear analogue to ‘channel surfing’ changing from station to station on a television set because nothing grabs your attention.

Web surfing tapped into the line of travel and 1990s cool. Surfing like all extreme sport at the time was cool. And the internet grabbed your attention.

Broadband access, wi-fi and mobile data changed the nature of things. It altered what was consumed and where it was consumed. The sitting room TV was connected to the internet to receive content from download and streaming services. Online radio, podcasts and playlists supplanted the transistor radio in the kitchen.

Multi-screening became a thing, tweeting along real time opinions to reality TV and live current affairs programmes. Online became a wrapper that at its worst envelopes us in a media miasma of shrill voices, vacuous content and disinformation.

  • Battle for open platforms + more stuff

    Epic’s battle for open platforms ignores consoles’ massive closed market | Ars Technica – and the majority of games played on Fortnite are played on consoles. Epic’s battle for open platforms rings hollow. More gaming posts here. More on other (more legitimate) battles for open platforms here. Epic’s battle for open platforms is about extra revenue not consumer benefit. They’ve deliberately picked a fight for some reason that won’t become apparent yet. One also has to view Epic’s battle for open platforms through its Chinese ownership as well

    Why marketers should embrace Share of Search as a metric | WARC – “The SoS calculation itself is simple. Calculate a rolling 12-month average of the various brands to be analysed, including your own. Total this. Divide each individual brand’s 12-month rolling average by the total and turn into a %. This is Share of Search, using Google Trends data.” More here in an interview for Contagious by Les Binet. Why share of search is a vital marketing metric | Contagious – The internet has made it almost impossible to accurately measure brands’ share of voice and the world seems perfectly content with that trade-off, so marketers have been forced to look for a replacement metric fit for the digital age. Share of search, it seems, might just fill the void…. Binet however is tentative on the tantalising prospect that share of search can give marketers an almost immediate insight into how a brand-building ad will perform over the long term. ‘Kind of,’ he says, when asked if share of search could show brands the value of emotional advertising in days instead of years. ‘You can to some extent use it to get a prediction of the long-term effects in the short term,’ he says, ‘but it may not work in every category. It tends to work best in categories with considered purchases.’ What most excites Binet about his research, though, is that when he looked at the effects of advertising on share of search he saw – consistently across all categories – that around 40% of the impact was felt in the short term (the first month) and around 60% of the uplift was delivered over the long term (the following two years). ‘That 60/40 ratio is one I’ve seen before,’ he jokes, alluding to his earlier work with Peter Field, The Long and the Short of It, which established a 60/40 rule for brands looking to divvy up their marketing spend between long term brand building ads and short term activations. ‘So the share of search analysis provides a further piece of independent, empirical evidence for the hypothesis we have about how advertising works.

    Brand is a strategy | WARC – Gartner recently announced that, partially at least, in response to the pandemic and its associated uncertainties, CMOs now rank ‘brand strategy’ as their top priority. As with any survey, we should consider the research skeptically — but since CMOs largely direct how they spend their budgets, it’s worth the industry that serves them considering what they might be looking for assistance with.  The survey was interesting beyond the headlines. Last year the same group considered analytics their most vital marketing capability, which highlights both the increased scrutiny that marketing faces to be accountable and the endless pendulum that swings in the industry, between brand and performance. And they are going into prioritisation of brand just at the time when the board will squeeze them on performance

    Google ends direct cooperation with Hong Kong on data requests over national security law – The Washington Post – Google is blocked in mainland China, but accessible in Hong Kong. By refusing to review Hong Kong government requests for data through its normal process, Google seems to be acknowledging the broad reach the law gave China into Hong Kong. – Contrasts with the kind of dance that HSBC and Swire seem to be doing

    Strategist’s Digest: the gulf between corporate values and company culture | Contagious – Over 80% of large companies publish on their websites the values they profess to live by, according to research. Integrity was the most often listed value, claimed by 65% of all companies. Collaboration came second, with 53%, and customer focus was third at 48%. But do these values make a difference to the companies’ culture and how they behave? The researchers used Glassdoor reviews, posted by employees, to find out. After analysing 1.2 million reviews for more than 500 large companies, they found no significant correlation. In some cases there was even a negative relationship between core values and the company culture as reported by employees. And more at the Sloane Review – | When It Comes to Culture, Does Your Company Walk the Talk? | Sloane Review 

    Jimmy Lai/Hong Kong: buy orders on democracy | Financial Times – Next Digital is a benchmark for resistance to Chinese authoritarianism in other ways. Views on its digital platform double when there are protests, to an average of 80m a day. Next Digital has survived constant mainland pressure, including the withdrawal of its underwriter just before its listing and advertising boycotts by Chinese companies. The shares trade at a just over 0.3 times book value. Investors with ethical policies may have awkward questions for HSBC and Standard Chartered. These UK-listed banks have expressed support for the law under which Mr Lai was detained. The arrest of a chief executive warns foreign multinationals to locate elsewhere.

    How Car Companies Engineer the Sounds of Their Doors to Imply Safety – engineering to design every aspect of the experience

    Anti-mask group in Tokyo slammed for “cluster festival” | SoraNews24 -Japan News – thankfully only a fringe behaviour but interesting that it gloms on to similar patterns as UK protestors, such as concerns about 5G

    Sweatpants Forever: How the Fashion Industry Collapsed – The New York Times – For years, Sternberg had been saying that the fashion industry was a giant bubble heading toward collapse. Now the pandemic was just speeding up the inevitable. In fact, it had already begun. An incredible surplus of clothing was presently sitting in warehouses and in stores, some of which might never reopen. “That whole channel is dead,” Sternberg said. “And there’s no sign of when it’s turning on again.” – well worth reading particular the section about novelties. Novelties is when fashion houses put on additional zips or features just to get into department stores

    Movable wealth｜Ngan Shun-kau – Chinese UHNW (ultra high net worth) individuals (100 of them or so) have 78 trillion yuan offshores in Switzerland

    Why share of search is a vital marketing metric | Contagious – share of voice for the digital era

  • Memes as protest tactics + more

    Why Protest Tactics Spread Like Memes – The New York Times – often, she noted, the images’ similarity was unwitting. In their spread, their simultaneity and their indirect influence on each other, the protest videos had all the characteristics of memes, those units of culture and behavior that spread rapidly online. The same cultural transfer that gives us uncanny cake-slicing memes and viral challenges also advances the language of protest. “We live in this world of attention dynamics so it makes sense that tactics start to converge,” Ms. Mina said. She called the images’ tendency to build on each other “memetic piggybacking,” and noted that everyday items that are subverted into objects of protest are “inherently charismatic.” – protest groups tactics as memes. Memes are a transmissible idea; whether its knowledge, humour or even cat gifs. Memes are something learnable and easily repeatable. The Hunger Games three finger salute or the LIHKG are deliberately chosen memes. Reciting lines from films or TV programmes like The Office are memes. Similarly protest slogans like “Liberate Hong Kong, Revolution Of Our Time’, ‘Five Demands, Not One Less’ (FDNOL) are memes. Other memes evolve due to pragmatism, such as the use of umbrellas during the 2014 protests. More meme related content here.

    Hong Kong Protests 2019
    Hong Kong Protests 2019 by Jonathan van Smit

    German oil refinery to build 30 MW hydrogen electrolysis plant – Reuters – great news. I think hydrogen fuel cells should be a more important part of the energy mix

    Apple Faces $1.4 Billion Lawsuit by Chinese AI Firm in Siri Patent Fight – WSJ – Conflicts over intellectual property, technology and trade are driving bilateral relations between the U.S. and China to their lowest point in decades. Last Friday, President Trump threatened to ban Chinese short-video app TikTok on national-security grounds. U.S. officials have been involved in talks over a potential sale of TikTok’s American business to Microsoft Corp.

    Google to invest $450M in smart home security solutions provider ADT | TechCrunch – tech eats the old economy due to obscenely high share prices

    7-Eleven owner is buying Marathon Petroleum’s Speedway gas stations for $21 billion – CNN – it’s a good deal for Marathon; but looks expensive for Seven and I (7-Eleven’s owner). 7-Eleven would need to get $175,000 net profit a year out of each gas station to make it worthwhile at the current purchase price

    Op-Ed: Never Trust Mark Zuckerberg Again- PingWest – a few things in this. 1/ Facebook probably didn’t get anything out of its reprochment with China. Yes China could stop advertising on Facebook, but A/ Chinese state owned companies not advertising on Facebook would be immaterial and probably benefit Facebook politically B/ Chinese private sector companies don’t have a lot of choice, so China would see a good deal of SME job destruction. 2/ The US government have more leverage. In this respect its like the embarrassing HSBC kowtowing in reverse. The Chinese author now realises how lame it looks when you’re on the other side of it

    Pompeo the Maoist – SettimanaNews – Borrowing from the logic used by Mao Zedong in his On Contradiction, Pompeo tried to prove that CCP didn’t represent the Chinese people, and that actually the party is the enemy of the Chinese people. This point is fundamental because, as Mao put it, the crucial political element is to know who is with us and who is the enemy, and the party should always represent the people. Pompeo stated: “We must start by changing how our people and our partners perceive the Chinese Communist Party. We have to tell the truth.” What is the truth, according to the US secretary of state? It is that: “We know … that doing business with a CCP-backed company is not the same as doing business with, say, a Canadian company. They don’t answer to independent boards, and many of them are state-sponsored and so have no need to pursue profits… We know too that if our companies invest in China, they may wittingly or unwittingly support the Communist Party’s gross human rights violations… We know too too that not all Chinese students and employees are just normal students and workers that are coming here to make a little bit of money and to garner themselves some knowledge. Too many of them come here to steal our intellectual property and to take this back to their country.” Therefore, he argues that the US should de facto work as a new revolutionary party: “We must also engage and empower the Chinese people—a dynamic, freedom-loving people who are completely distinct from the Chinese Communist Party.”

    Breaking Off TikTok Will Be Hard to Do — The Information – basically China still has control despite the window dressing. Given the structural, development, infrastructure and control aspects on this; how can Microsoft negotiate and engineer a clean break in the limited time that they have for TikTok versus Douyin? Some interesting analysis at the FT: The challenges Microsoft faces in buying TikTok’s US arm

    ARM China Asks Beijing to Intervene in Row With U.K. Parent – Caixin Global – It is interesting that the ARM CEO thinks he has the political juice to go against Hopu and its head Fang Fenglei. Is there more than meets the eye going on here? More from Sina.com’s tech channel (via Google Translate): Sina.com Technology Channel ARM China debacle – the intention of Hopu Investment , which represents 36% of the investors of the central state-owned enterprise financial institution in the joint venture, to join hands with foreign shareholders this time? Hopu and Arm recently appointed Hopu Investment’s Teck Sien Lau (Singaporean) as Chairman of Amou China, and Arm President Graham Budd (British) as Vice Chairman. In addition, Arm and Hopu previously appointed two co-CEOs (one Singaporean and one Chinese) on the disputed board of directors, and the board dispute is currently being resolved in legal proceedings. It seems that Hopu hopes to help Arm replace the existing management team and actually control the operation of the joint venture company through this operation. However, under the premise that HOPU violated the Chinese party’s agreement to act in concert and joined hands with Arm, such an organizational structure obviously did not represent China’s national interests. In addition, can they lead the technical team to realize the original intention of the joint venture company and truly realize the vision of autonomous and controllable core technology that China needs? More on ARM here.

    How to Keep Your Skin Healthy While Wearing a Mask | Vogue Hong Kong 

    Facebook Employee Leaks Show Betrayal By Company Leadership – “hurting people at scale” is a brutal header on the article

    Upfield targets block butters with vegan Flora Plant range | News | The Grocer – repackaging to remove the negative connotations of margarine by creating ‘vegan butter’ in salted and unsalted variants. *Disclosure, I worked with Mullen Lowe and Phd to develop ‘Family Brands’ global digital strategy, prior to Flora et al being sold off to Upfield. My work covered Blue Band, Bonella, Country Crock, Doriana, Dorina, Flora, Imperial, La Perfecta, Maizena, Milda, Mirasol, Planta, Planta Fin, Primavera, Rama, Sana, Stork, Tulipan, and Vitam

    Tymbals : Bytedance and the hypergrowth delusion – Nigel Scott explaining the importance of context when there is yet another hyperbolic growth story in the tech sector

    Slack Files EU Competition Complaint Against Microsoft | The Official Slack Blog – feels a bit Netscape all over again

    Influencer Marketing Panel – some useful primers here from the CIPR, in particular about UK regulations

    Imint is the Swedish firm that gives Chinese smartphones an edge in video production | TechCrunch – The hyper-competitive nature of Chinese phone makers means they are easily sold on new technology that can help them stand out. The flipside is the intensity that comes with competition. The Chinese tech industry is both well-respected — and notorious — for its fast pace. Slow movers can be crushed in a matter of a few months. “In some aspects, it’s very U.S.-like. It’s very straight to the point and very opportunistic,” Lifvendahl reflected on his experience with Chinese clients. “You can get an offer even in the first or second meeting, like, ‘Okay, this is interesting, if you can show that this works in our next product launch, which is due in three months. Would you set up a contract now?’” “That’s a good side,” he continued. “The drawback for a Swedish company is the demand they have on suppliers. They want us to go on-site and offer support, and that’s hard for a small Swedish company. So we need to be really efficient, making good tools and have good support systems.” – Ok a few things. 1/ The hyper competition is a very Chinese phenomenon. Like when in someplace like the UK Chinese restaurant opens in a neighbourhood, another will move in next door. In China, you end up with clusters of barber shops, tea shops and restaurants right next to each other in; actively competing. It’s about rapid small iterative steps of innovation, or what Huawei used call ‘customer focus’. It’s not paradigm shifting stuff. 2/ Its interesting that Imint have taken the German middelstadt model to software. Historically, German companies have managed to focus on a niche and do it really well. There is a long-term focus, continuity, independence, flexibility innovation and customer focus. They are nimble by nature and design with lean hierarchies and a family-like corporate structure.

    Google in Talks to Take Over More Search Tasks on Samsung Phones – Bloomberg – Samsung would be giving up more user experience control and by implication, becoming more commoditised. To be fair a lot of Android skins and bundled apps haven’t been great. What happens with Google’s Pixel brand devices?

    Aaron Toponce : The Physics of Brute Force – Why you should use encryption and why Moore’s Law’s limitations and physics indicate an optimal key size when using it against non-quantum computing.

    Europe and AI: Leading, Lagging Behind, or Carving Its Own Way? – Carnegie Endowment for International Peace – Europe, meanwhile, despite having certain advantages such as a strong industrial base and leading AI research and talent, is punching far below its weight. This state of affairs is especially due to the fragmentation of the EU’s digital market, difficulties in attracting human capital and external investment, and the lack of commercial competitiveness. Fortunately, in recent years, European leaders have recognized the importance of not lagging behind on AI and have sought to raise their ambitions. Leaders such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron have stressed the need for Europe to become a leading global player on AI, and the new European Commission has made AI a top priority for the next five years. By declaring AI a major strategic priority, several member states and EU institutions are taking steps to advance the continent’s ambitions for AI leadership

    COVID-19 and biopharma in China | McKinsey – fascinating read. In particular the growth of health insurance. Up to now, one of the reasons why Chinese consumption is so low the high amount of savings to cover health costs. (Yes, I know property and parent care are also huge areas for savings). But that is why Chinese people are generally lower in credit use in aggregate and have a large amount of savings. Private health insurance could have a huge impact on future consumption patterns and act as an economic driver

    Dundrum Town Centre introduces a ‘Crowd Checker’ | RTE – interesting piece of service design to support opening up of retail. Dundrum shopping centre would be the Irish equivalent of Westfield in London. It is Ireland’s largest shopping centre. RTÉ has a broadcast studio there to capture the opinion of the average Irish person as needed.

  • Internet Myths

    There are myths that we tell each other about the internet. These internet myths aren’t helpful. They can adversely affect our planning and our online experiences.

    Masks & Puppets Bali
    Laurent Houmeau – mask, Bali

    So onward to the internet myths:

    What’s online, stays online forever…. – Tell that to the archiveteam.org who were frustrated in their efforts to save Yahoo! Groups for posterity by Verizon. This obstructive unhelpful behaviour is entirely in keeping with Verizon’s core values.

    Or the 700,000 Tumblr blogs containing over 800 terabytes of that were deleted from the web. Machine learning software designated any image that contained round shapes or beige for deletion. This was part of a Verizon effort to purge adult content from Tumblr.

    Finally, keen students of digital media services like Amazon Prime, Apple iTunes, Apple Music, Spotify etc will know how content appears and disappears in their digital libraries. A case in point would be my collection of James A. Michener books that I bought on Apple Books and then disappeared less than a fortnight later. No refund, and no mindless reading material to keep me occupied on a long haul flight.

    Everything is online…. – no it isn’t. There are large rafts of content that aren’t digital let alone online. Google and IBM have worked on large scale digitalisation projects. But there is content that never made the jump from analogue to digital. Master tapes decaying in record company vaults. If you go through Discogs like I do on a regular basis, you can see a huge body of recording that have never made it online via legal, or illegal means.

    You can find anything you want online…. – I remember the first time I found a web ring. These were connected ‘walkthroughs of pages by different authors all linked together in a giant ring. They catering to people who liked different subject areas. Education had double the amount of subject area webbings compared to sports. Cats hadn’t conquered the web yet: there were just 17 rings for animals and pets.

    And you got an arcane level of detail in discussions about the subject area. Over time, the web became too vast for ‘surfers’ and search engines came to past. Prior to the rise of the modern social web, I saw estimates that Google only indexes 15% of the available web. So 85% of content that hasn’t disappeared isn’t searchable.

    Secondly, a lot of content is being created on platforms like Instagram; where search is essentially broken in nature. There is a similar curation of search in TikTok where the focus is on the ‘now’.

    Then there is the concept of link rot. Where deleted content or broken links caused by SEO (search optimisation), or technology platform transition mean that content disappears. The phenomenon has been studied since at least the mid-1990s and Library studies academics have put serious efforts into documenting it. They set out measure how ‘unstable‘ in nature the worldwide web is as a research resource. The quote below by Sarah Rhodes of the Georgetown University Law Center sums up the problem quite elegantly:

    In the context of web archiving and digital preservation, one often hears that the average life span of a web page is forty-four days. This statistic has been repeated among those in the digital preservation community for years, but it never seems to be accompanied by a citation. In a 2002 article by Peter Lyman, a footnote briefly explains why the source of this figure is so elusive: “These data sources were originally published on the Web, but are no longer available, illustrating the prob- lem of Web archiving.” Ironically, the very source of a statistic often used to sup- port the cause of web preservation has itself become a victim of “link rot.”

    Breaking Down Link Rot: The Chesapeake Project Legal Information Archive’s Examination of URL Stability by Sarah Rhodes, Georgetown University Law Center (2010)

    More online related posts here.

  • China remote network access + more

    Morgan Stanley blocks remote network access for China interns | Financial Times – Another large US bank said its systems in China were exposed to frequent cyber attacks that were of “infinitely greater” magnitude than many other countries. – not terribly surprised that remote network access is a threat vector in China. More China-related posts here. It will be interesting to see if remote network access brings out more

    The Key to Winning Boomers Is To Be Turn-key | MediaVillage – basically like many cohorts, with a trusted brand convenience wins out

    Energy Department announces plan to build a quantum Internet – The Washington Post – Quantum only works point to point. This seems to be building Qubit computer capacity by copying supercomputing from the what I can see? From Long-distance Entanglement to Building a Nationwide Quantum Internet: Report of the DOE Quantum Internet Blueprint Workshop (Technical Report) | OSTI.GOV 

    Bingewatch Britain? Viewers more likely to finish a TV series if it’s released all at once | YouGov – reading this reminded me of Marshall Cavendish part-work books and their completion rates

    Do Chinese millennials want diversity in fashion ads? | Advertising | Campaign Asia – Fashion’s culture wars are dividing Chinese millennials. In June, a series of fashion and beauty moves, including a Calvin Klein pride campaign featuring the black trans model Jari Jones and the decision by some top beauty groups to take their skin-whitening products off the market in China, polarized opinions across the country’s social media landscape. While the mainstream overwhelmingly saw these radical changes as a byproduct of the West’s excessive political correctness, the fashion-forward crowd recognized these debates as the start of a much-needed change in their country.

    Duterte’s troll armies drown out Covid-19 dissent in the Philippines | Coda Story – interesting analysis of social media in the Philippines

    Home Shoppers are Trending Toward Buying Sight-Unseen, Selling Virtually – Zillow Research – digital acceleration

    The Ultimate White Fragility | The New Republic – so much to unpack in this

    The FBI Is Secretly Using A $2 Billion Travel Company As A Global Surveillance Tool | Forbes – I would have been surprised if they weren’t doing this with SABRE

    Korean Air Seeks to Convert Passenger Jets to Cargo Planes | Chosun.com – surprised that British Airways didn’t do this with their Boeing 747s, rather than retiring them

    On the Twitter Hack – Schneier on Security – Whether the hackers had access to Twitter direct messages is not known. These DMs are not end-to-end encrypted, meaning that they are unencrypted inside Twitter’s network and could have been available to the hackers. Those messages — between world leaders, industry CEOs, reporters and their sources, heath organizations — are much more valuable than bitcoin. (If I were a national-intelligence agency, I might even use a bitcoin scam to mask my real intelligence-gathering purpose.) Back in 2018, Twitter said it was exploring encrypting those messages, but it hasn’t yet.

    Ad Aged: More on the dismal science and the dismal state of Holding Company advertising. – interesting allegations of collusion

    Enter the parents | Film | The Guardian – no one suspected that he would turn out to have two brothers still alive and living impoverished, anonymous lives in mainland China. Nor did they have any inkling that Jackie’s mother had once been a legendary gambler in the Shanghai underworld or that his father had been a Nationalist spy and gangland boss. These are among the more startling revelations that Cheung uncovers. “The fact that his mother was an opium smuggler, a gambler and a big sister in the underworld was a big shock to Jackie and also to us,” she admits. “Everybody in Hong Kong knew that his mother was like a common housewife, very kind, very gentle.”

    China has big ideas for the internet. Too bad no one else likes them – CNET – New IP would shift control of the internet, both its development and its operation, to countries and the centralized telecommunications powers that governments often run. It would make it easier to crack down on dissidents. Technology in New IP to protect against abuse also would impair privacy and free speech. And New IP would make it harder to try new network ideas and to add new network infrastructure without securing government permission

    Japan’s karaoke bars offer ‘mask effect’ feature to amplify singing while wearing face mask – the intersection of changing consumer behaviour and product design with extra amplification to pick up on voices covered by face masks

    Creator of Douyin / TikTok: How We Created A Product with A Billion Views A Day in 18 Months: Part I – Pandaily – China style growth hacking profiled

    Singapore
    Fabio Achilli – Singapore

    Disneyland with the Death Penalty | WIRED – William Gibson nails Singapore. And its still true almost 30 years later

  • Victor Mallet + more things

    New York Times Will Move Part of Hong Kong Office to Seoul – The New York Times – a sweeping national security law passed by China in June — aimed at stymieing opposition and pro-democracy forces in Hong Kong — has unsettled news organizations and created uncertainty about the city’s prospects as a hub for journalism in Asia. Some Times employees in Hong Kong have faced challenges securing work permits, hurdles that are commonplace in China but were rarely an issue in the former colony. – The visa comments are interesting as we’ve previously only seen this with the FTjournalist Victor Mallet. In August 2018, Andy Chan (then of the Hong Kong National Party) gave a talk at the Hong Kong Foreign Correspondents Club (FCC) and Victor Mallet was the chairperson for the event. Chan went on to be arrested numerous times. Victor Mallet had his work visa renewal rejected on October 2, 2018 – one day before his old visa ran out. Victor Mallet is a watershed moment for China and Hong Kong. Victor Mallet is the mainlandisation of Hong Kong.

    12 things I learned by switching from the 13-inch MacBook Pro to the 12.9-inch iPad Pro | Macworld – I really wanted it to work. A couple of weeks ago I closed my MacBook on a Friday afternoon with no plans to open it for a week. I wasn’t going on vacation—rather, I was testing the theory that the iPad could actually be “a computer….”Sadly, it didn’t work out. I spent more time fighting my iPad than loving it, and when push came to shove, it was just too difficult to get things done as quickly and efficiently as I do on my Mac. Some of it is muscle memory, of course, but there are still fundamental issues with the iPad that prevent it from being the work-first device Apple wants it to be. So I’m giving it up – not terribly surprised as they’re very different use cases

    Why older people really avoid technology.| Slate – According to the Pew Research Center, 73 percent of people over 65 in the U.S. use the internet, up from 14 percent in 2000. The older the person, the less likely she is to embrace the internet, social media, or smartphones, but those who have adopted these technologies use them a lot and learn new skills to do so. Seniors are the fastest growing online demographic, though some remain holdouts. In many of those cases, the real barrier to entry isn’t technological—it’s personal – more on old people’s of technology

    driven by experimentation, NIKE ISPA is a bold approach to functional design – nice profile of Nike’s ISPA team who have taken up where Nike Considered left off

    China will punish Britain for defying its will. We need allies to hold the line | The Guardian – whilst the historical facts in the op-ed are all true, what’s more interesting is the media tone against all aspects of UK society against China now. This indicates a failure in Chinese elite-focused influence campaigns in the UK to deliver soft power. What is more concerning is the lessons that China might take away from these defeats, will they double down on ‘victimhood’ and aggression, or will they try and broaden their ‘base’ of appeal

    Signal’s New PIN Feature Worries Cybersecurity Experts – VICE – move away from telephone numbers. Its a tough call as there are no easy decisions to make when telephone numbers can be a security vector

    Musique Strategies – oblique and practical strategies for music – what happens when music production meats Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies

    Engineers of the Soul: Ideology in Xi Jinping’s China by John Garnaut – Sinocism – what business leaders should read before entering China. Understanding Chinese Communist Party neo-Stalinist thought is essential

    In Australia, concerns mount that China could use TikTok to spy on users | South China Morning Post – the bigger threat would be an influence operation

    Understanding CCP Resilience: Surveying Chinese Public Opinion Through Time | Ash Center – since the start of the survey in 2003, Chinese citizen satisfaction with government has increased virtually across the board. From the impact of broad national policies to the conduct of local town officials, Chinese citizens rate the government as more capable and effective than ever before. Interestingly, more marginalized groups in poorer, inland regions are actually comparatively more likely to report increases in satisfaction. Second, the attitudes of Chinese citizens appear to respond (both positively and negatively) to real changes in their material well-being, which suggests that support could be undermined by the twin challenges of declining economic growth and a deteriorating natural environment. – Fascinating and mostly reassuring reading for the Chinese Communist Party

    Hong Kong’s Richest Li Ka-shing Loses Friends in China, the West – Bloomberg – this is an interesting squeeze for ‘Superman’ Li Ka-shing

    Daring Fireball: AirPods Versus AirPods Pro – this comment about relatively small amounts of ‘feel’ demonstrates how artefacts count

    This smart face mask can translate your conversations into nine languages | Dazed – 208K doesn’t sound a lot of dev costs

    Why Consulum Isn’t Flinching About Promoting Hong Kong – good piece of analysis by Arun on Hong Kong’s selection of Consulum. Most of the budget is going into baseline mapping and research. That might come in haney for communications, or targeting extra-territorial prosecutions under the nascent National Security Law…

    Is good trade with China more important than keeping Huawei out of the 5G network? | YouGov – whilst Huawei targeted the elites; they should have gone to the court of public opinion. It also indicates a likely soft power problem for China

    Is Drop Retail the Next Step in the Digital Transformation of Beauty Brands? | Luxury Society – luxury stealing from streetwear’s playbook

    Vast majority of US research institute disclosure violations related to China | South China Morning Post – High profile cases include the June indictment of Charles Lieber, a former chair at Harvard University’s chemistry and chemical biology department who gave false statements regarding his involvement with the Thousand Talents programme to bring leading researchers to China. In May, Li Xiao-jiang, a former Emory University professor and participant in Thousand Talents, pled guilty to filing a false tax return that did not report foreign income from working overseas at Chinese universities. The Van Andel Research Institute in Michigan agreed last December to pay US$5.5 million to the US Department of Justice over allegations of not disclosing Chinese grants for two of its researchers. – The problem seems to be vain greedy senior academics who think they’re above it all

    Qatar Airways Issues Passenger PPE Kits With Face Shields | Travel Codex – amazing bit of service design by Qatar Airways

    一齊走！We leave together! Explaining some common protest phrases – interesting insights into Hong Kong culture