Ged Carroll

Category: security | 保衛 | 정보 보안 | 情報セキュリティー

According to Wikipedia security can be defined:

Security is protection from, or resilience against, potential harm (or other unwanted coercive change) caused by others, by restraining the freedom of others to act. Beneficiaries (technically referents) of security may be of persons and social groups, objects and institutions, ecosystems or any other entity or phenomenon vulnerable to unwanted change. Security mostly refers to protection from hostile forces, but it has a wide range of other senses: for example, as the absence of harm (e.g. freedom from want); as the presence of an essential good (e.g. food security); as resilience against potential damage or harm (e.g. secure foundations); as secrecy (e.g. a secure telephone line); as containment (e.g. a secure room or cell); and as a state of mind (e.g. emotional security).

Back when I started writing this blog, hacking was something that was done against ‘the man’, usually as a political statement. Now breaches are part of organised crime’s day to day operations. The Chinese government so thoroughly hacked Nortel that all its intellectual property was stolen along with commercial secrets like bids and client lists. The result was the firm went bankrupt. Russian ransomware shuts down hospitals across Ireland. North Korean government sanctioned hackers robbed 50 million dollars from the central bank of Bangladesh and laundered it in association with Chinese organised crime.

Now it has spilled into the real world with Chinese covert actions, Russian contractors in the developing world and hybrid warfare being waged across central Europe and the middle east.

  • Counterinsurgency by David Kilcullen

    Counterinsurgency was one of several books that seemed interesting and that I bought during the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020 which I am slowly working my way through.

    Counterinsurgency by David Kilcullen

    David Kilcullen

    David Kilcullen is a former Australian military officer, who is an academic working at University of New South Wales, Canberra. Back in 2005 he advised the US government for a year while it dealt with insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has since been advising various companies about aspects of international studies.

    Counterinsurgency

    Counterinsurgency is a collection of his writings for military and academic journals. It covers everything from a tactical guide to officers dealing with local communities to the history of Indonesia post-independence and its efforts to combat East Timorese looking to become independent.

    Kilcullen’s Counterinsurgency interesting to read for several reasons:

    • Accessible writing: he writes really well making his subject areas very accessible to enquiring minds. For an academic, it was refreshingly jargon-free and articulated complex situations simply.
    • His how-to guides for US military officers serving in Afghanistan gave me an insight that I previously didn’t have from the media coverage.
    • As someone who had worked on Indonesian market campaigns for Indofoods and Qualcomm, knowing more about this complex country was rewarding. Kilcullen provides an accessible window into two points in the post-independence history of Indonesia.

    One of the key things that I took away from Counterinsurgency was the fragility of knowledge in organisations. Much of the work that Kilcullen is doing in the first part of the book was instilling hard-won knowledge that the world’s militaries had learned from TE Lawrence tormenting the Great Arab Revolt onwards including Vietnam, various American cold war campaigns, the British in Malaya and Northern Ireland.

    Militaries put a lot of effort into capturing the history of conflicts and spend a lot of time on lessons learned. This is far more effort than organisations generally put into place to learn from the likes of marketing campaigns, yet Kilcullen’s writing was valuable because that knowledge seemed to be slipping through the cracks of militaries.

    If you have an enquiring mind about world affairs and history, I can recommend Counterinsurgency as a good read. Other book reviews can be found here.

  • 2025 NSS (national security strategy)

    I read the 2025 US National Security Strategy (NSS) so you don’t have to when it came out at the end of November 2025. What’s interesting about these NSS documents is that they set a tone that will be difficult to turn around over the next five to ten years.

    2025-National-Security-Strategy

    I have taken the document at face value as it mirrors many of the talking points of US politicians. I have looked at the document through three lens:

    • Ireland
    • European Union
    • UK

    (I live in the UK, I am an Irish citizen and Ireland is part of the European Union).

    Some of its key European diagnostics are accurate (but could be also said of the US):

    • Declining birth rates
    • Uncontrolled migration (the authors consider African and muslim migrants to Europe particularly problematic)
    • Economic stagnation (the US is in a similar place outside of the top performers of the NASDAQ)
    • Deindustrialisation (again a problem that is repeated in the US)

    The recently released NSS from the Trump administration represents a an end to an American-led west. It replaces “collective security” with ‘transactional realism’ and targets the European Union’s current political trajectory as a ‘civilisational realignment’. By comparison Russia makes little to no appearance in the document and China is considered mostly in terms of economic power rivalry. 

    While the US has declared victory in major conflicts via aggressive unilateralism, it now seeks to  dismantle “globalist” structures. For Ireland, the UK, and the EU, all are now facing challenges from the US as well as Russia, China and Iran.

    European impact

    The NSS outlines four pillars that directly impact transatlantic relationships:

    • The US views NATO as a burden-sharing network, not a permanent umbrella, and explicitly threatens to withhold support from “free-riders”.
    • “Reindustrialization” is the highest priority. The US will use tariffs to force supply chains home. it considers net zero efforts as an economic suicide act.
    • The US will bypass EU institutions to cultivate relationships with rightwing populist parties. It views Western Europe’s current migration and social policies as “civilizational erasure”.
    • A re-assertion of the Monroe Doctrine. The US claims total dominance over the Western Hemisphere and warns European powers against interfering there.

    Impact & Mitigation Strategies

    🇮🇪 For Ireland

    • The NSS explicitly mentions a “sentimental attachment” to Ireland. Dublin must ruthlessly exploit this cultural link to secure exemptions from new tariffs, bypassing Brussels where necessary.
    • Reframe Ireland not as an offshore tax hub, but as a ‘secure node’ in the American supply chain. Emphasise that Irish pharma is safer than Asian alternatives and relies on highly-skilled professionals.
    • Ireland’s military neutrality is a liability in this document. it isn’t in a defence agreement with the US and he country can’t meet the 5% spending target that the US expects of ‘allies’. Instead, it must heavily invest in cybersecurity and transatlantic cable protection, framing this as its contribution to “collective security” without violating neutrality.
    • Ireland needs to plan, which would take longer to execute; to have a version of Singapore’s poison pill or pufferfish defence strategy. But this would be adapted for Ireland’s own context and needs in order to maintain its neutrality and sovereignty. 

    🇬🇧 For the United Kingdom

    The US questions whether demographic changes in the UK will make it an ally in the future. However, the UK is better positioned than the EU to pivot.

    • The NSS seeks “fair, reciprocal trade deals”. The UK should prioritise a bilateral Free Trade Agreement, offering alignment on US export controls (especially regarding China) in exchange for market access.
    • The UK cannot afford 5% GDP on defence immediately, but it can get closer than the EU. An option would be to position itself as the “unsinkable aircraft carrier” and the primary partner for the US “Golden Dome” missile defence project, solidifying the special relationship through technology transfer rather than just troop numbers.
    • The US Administration hates “regulatory suffocation”. The UK can aggressively deregulate its financial and tech sectors to mirror the US model, making it the preferred “docking station” for US capital in Europe.
    • Longer term the UK needs to de-risk critical parts of its economy from the US, and work with other European nations to think about what it would do to have a successful a non-US NATO if the NSS document goes to its natural conclusion.

    🇪🇺 For the European Union

    The Threat: The document is openly hostile to the EU project, viewing it as a mechanism that “undermines political liberty”. It seeks to encourage internal dissent by supporting right wing populist “patriotic parties”. The 5% defense target is designed to break the current European social contract model.

    • The 5% demand is likely a negotiating tactic to force 3% or 3.5%. The EU must immediately announce a massive, coordinated purchase of American military hardware at least in the short term, (while investing in European, friend-shored (Australian, Canadian, Korean, Japanese, Singaporean and Turkish) substitutive systems in the longer term.) The short term move buys tactical goodwill and addresses the immediate capability gap.
    • The US priority is winning the economic war with China. The EU has some leverage if it aligns 100% with US export controls and sanctions on Beijing. Brussels must trade access to the Chinese market for security guarantees from Washington in the short term.
    • The NSS attacks Europe’s “radical gender ideology” and “Net Zero” focus. (The origins of these beliefs are actually American in nature, a nuance the NSS authors fail to appreciate). To maintain relations, the EU Commission may need to de-politicise trade talks in the short-term, with a view to de-risking in the longer term. The short term trade focus purely on transactional economics and dropping social/climate conditionality in dealings with the US.

    Summary

    The 2025 NSS is a US roadmap for a post-European world.

    • Don’t appeal to “shared values” or “international law.” The NSS explicitly rejects “idealistic” foreign policy.
    • Offer concrete, transactional benefits: secure supply chains, purchase orders for US weapons, and alignment against China.
    • Move towards a European and friend-shored defence procurement and sustainment over the longer term, as the US may no longer be the arsenal of democracy in the future, if you take the NSS at face value. 
    • Plan to replace specialist US systems over time as access and replenishment may diminish and have processes to takeover NATO governance in the absence of American leadership.

    You can find the US National Security Strategy here.

  • Mico + more things

    Mico – A vibrant new way to talk with Copilot | Product Hunt – Strategy wise I have mixed feelings about it. People are already anthropomorphising LLMs and the full impact of that is still yet to be understood – I don’t think its universally good. However, we’ve already got there with Mico as a character. I imagine that fluent objects like Mico does make services stickier.

    In this respect Mico looks like the kind of moral trap Meta, Bytedance have fallen into on their social media platforms.

    Then there is the Clippy trauma now encapsulated as a drop of fleum – but that’s age bracketed so likely means nothing to younger cohorts.

    On the other hand from a marketing effectiveness perspective, if Microsoft use Mico in brand advertising it might work well as a fluent object and boost their brand building performance. Reminded me a lot of British Gas’ Willo the Wisp character.

    Business

    The Pulse: Amazon layoffs – AI or economy to blame? – The Pragmatic Engineer

    China

    A Proud Superpower Answers to No One – by Ryan Fedasiuk – interesting mix of inward-looking and hubris.

    The Loop: How American Profits Built Chinese Power

    Consumer behaviour

    Everyone is totally just winging it, all the time | Psychology | The Guardian

    The Lonely New Vices of American Life – The Atlantic – Booze is down and weed is up, and that’s doing something to Americans as a nation.

    Culture

    Keep the Faith: Inside the modern northern soul revival | Farout magazine – I remember going to Northern Soul nights at the 100 Club on Oxford Street several years ago. Like house, it never disappeared it just went underground.

    Finance

    Sam Altman says OpenAI is not ‘trying to become too big to fail’ | FT and Sam Altman’s pants are totally on fire – by Gary Marcus

    FMCG

    Huggies maker Kimberly-Clark to buy Tylenol maker Kenvue for $40 billion | Axios

    Gadgets

    Moflin | CASIO – an LLM-powered answer to the Furby of the dot com era

    Hong Kong

    Hong Kong’s slumping commercial property market lures savvy tycoon-linked buyer | South China Morning Post – Savvy investors, including a buyer of a floor at Opus in Mid-Levels who is connected to the family of a Cambodian Chinese tycoon, are pouncing on Hong Kong’s slumping commercial property market to snap up bargains.

    The 12th floor of 18 On Lan Street, a Ginza-style commercial building in Central, was handed over to Surplus Inc for HK$34 million (US$4.4 million) on Friday, according to Land Registry records. That represented a 65 per cent loss for the previous owner, Zhou Shubo, who bought the floor for HK$96 million in 2013.

    Kanika Sam Ang was a director at Surplus, according to Companies Registry data. Sam Ang has been associated with the family of tycoon Tony Tandijono, who owns Cambodia-based President Airlines, Phnom Penh casino Holiday Palace and a travel agency in Hong Kong.

    Ideas

    Dubai Chocolate Gives the UAE a Taste of Genuine Soft Power | TIME

    The Prophet of the Stateless Age: What Ian Angell Saw Coming

    Innovation

    New drivetrain technology for off-road vehicles moves safely in difficult terrain | TechXplore

    Sweden, Ukraine to develop new weapons together | Spacewar

    Japan

    Japan Public Markets Under Attack – by Jesper Koll

    Sony launches cheaper Japan-only PlayStation 5 console

    Luxury

    Inside Burberry’s lost year — and the battle to bring back its magic | Dark Luxury

    Materials

    Good vibrations: Ceramic material harvests electricity from waste energy | TechXplore

    Media

    Major Porn Studios Join Forces to Establish Industry ‘Code of Conduct’ | 404 Media – Adult Studio Alliance is founded by major porn companies including Aylo, Dorcel, ERIKALUST, Gamma Entertainment, Mile High Media and Ricky’s Room, and establishes a code of conduct for studios.

    ReelShort and More: The Microdrama TV Series Gold Rush Is Here | Hollywood Reporter – following the Chinese media industry

    Online

    Gen Z Men So Scared of Getting Filmed They’ve Stopped Dating | Rolling Stone – It ends up fueling mistrust in many young men and can turn interactions into battlegrounds where boys feel they must protect their egos. Over time, empathy can go away and suspicion takes its place. Instead of feeling comfortable being genuine, sometimes they second-guess every word or message, wondering how it might be judged, shared, or mocked. But then it takes a turn and that’s why young men may retreat into online spaces that confirm the suspicions they have and help to reinforce negative stereotypes about girls. This causes a Cold War among genders where each side is suspicious of each other and doesn’t have empathy. In these divided spaces, interactions become games of defensive accusation and people grow untrustworthy of one another. – Failing is part of success and of life

    Perplexity strikes multi-year licensing deal with Getty Images  | TechCrunch

    Ritson: Despite Snoop and Katy, Menulog’s collapse was inevitable – Mumbrella

    Security

    Theft Bisect – via Matt Muir ‘This exists because, seemingly, the Met Police are too dumb to make this themselves’ – you can read an explanation as to the ‘why’ and the ‘how’ behind its existence here, but generally this is just a smart idea, simply-executed.‘

    Iridium develops compact chip for robust global GPS protection | Space Daily

    CCP Wartime Decisionmaking | ChinaTalk

    Australian spy chief accuses China of IP theft and meddling; experts say remarks reflect certain Australian officials’ attempt to mislead public – Global Times – An Australian spy chief on Tuesday accused Chinese security services of large scale IP theft and political meddling and said China failed to understand how their Western counterparts operate. The remarks came on the heels of comments by Australia’s Defense Minister Richard Marles, who hyped up China’s “military build-up.”

    Chinese experts criticised the series of statements, saying they reflect some Australia politicians’ anxiety and bias toward China’s technological and military progress. Moreover, they said the spy chief’s remarks reveal an arrogance rooted in the belief that Western political system is superior – Global Times is a Chinese government published newspaper.

    Software

    ChatEurope – slow and would have been ok a few years ago

    Nvidia faces Washington heat over alleged Huawei ties | DigiTimes – US lawmakers are ramping up scrutiny of China’s AI and semiconductor sectors, tightening oversight from corporate ties to capital flows to reinforce Washington’s edge in the global AI competition.

    Mozilla announces an AI ‘window’ for Firefox | The Verge

    $) Kimi Kimi on the Wall – by Kevin Xu – Interconnected

    Taiwan

    Mainland Chinese police offer cash rewards for tips on Taiwan’s ‘terrible’ influencers | South China Morning Post – trying to influence Taiwan influencer discussions

    Technology

    Microsoft CEO says the company doesn’t have enough electricity to install all the AI GPUs in its inventory – ‘you may actually have a bunch of chips sitting in inventory that I can’t plug in’ | Tom’s Hardware and Investors need to look beyond the ‘bragawatts’ in AI infrastructure boom | FT

    Why Value Outlasts Valuation – On my Om

    Web-of-no-web

    Waymo In The Fast Lane | The future party – Waymo now allowed on select freeways in the US

  • Toyota FJ Land Cruiser + more stuff

    Toyota FJ Land Cruiser

    Toyota announced its new Toyota FJ Land Cruiser model. The Toyota FJ Land Cruiser is a smaller five-seater vehicle. It is a direct replacement for the FJ Cruiser which was sold in many markets outside the UK and European Union. Like its predecessor the Toyota FJ Land Cruiser shares underpinnings with its larger 7-seater cousin the 250 series. It features a shorter wheelbase. Toyota has put a lot of effort into thinking about how it can make the Toyota FJ Land Cruiser more extensible in capabilities and more modular.

    fj landcruiser

    Modularity comes in compatibility with MOLLE military storage connectivity that has made its way into the civilian world. While Alpine packs are about sleek design with few snags, MOLLE allows fastenings, pouches and equipment to be suspended inside and outside bags. Toyota has now extended this to the inside of the Toyota FJ Land Cruiser’s rear door.

    The focus on extensible features within the vehicle shows how some markets (notably America) have a large after market industry providing additional features for vehicles with aspirations to do overloading. Toyota is an active participant in the SEMA show in the US. This is where fans and the vehicle modifying industry get together to be inspired, do deals and gain intelligence on vehicles so that they can design new after market parts. Toyota brings concept builds, as well as allowing after market manufacturers to measure and 3D scan new vehicles.

    The move to extensible design, shows that Toyota is interested in providing more of that capability through its own business. Third-party parts, in particular lift kits can affect handling and wheel bearings. Designing its own aftermarket parts and applying extensible thinking in the vehicle design philosophy allows Toyota to:

    • Meet consumer needs.
    • Ensure the vehicles meet the factory’s quality and reliability standards.
    • Offer incremental additional revenue.

    While a Toyota FJ Land Cruiser as ‘mum truck’ won’t need a water fording kit. An overlanding enthusiast like Chloe Kuo would put it to good use and influence more potential buyers in the process.

    Like the FJ Cruiser before it we are unlikely to see the Toyota FJ Land Cruiser in UK Toyota dealerships due to the UK government’s focus on forcing UK consumers away from internal combustion vehicles. Instead they are likely to come in small numbers as JDM (Japanese domestic market) pre-owned vehicles.

    Toyota recognises that net zero is more complex than importing Chinese electric vehicles. Considerations also need to be given to vehicle use case, the whole life carbon footprint of the car and sustainability. But that doesn’t make simple solutions for policy makers.

    Toyota will have four Land Cruiser models that it will be selling around the world:

    • J70 series – sold to the UN, various militaries, Japan, Australia and in the global south. Doesn’t pass current European vehicle laws as it’s designed for resilience, robustness, repairability and sustainment in the most hostile environments.
    • J300 series – the flagship of the line-up. Sold in the US as the Lexus LX, this combines the comfort of a top of the range Range Rover with the capability of the 70 series in an off-road environment. As a Land Cruiser it is available in Australia, Japan, the Gulf States, South Africa and various countries in South East Asia from Sri Lanka to the Philippines.
    • J250 series – the most widespread of the Land Cruiser range in terms of sales footprint. It is sold in Japan, Europe, North and South America, Australia, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, China, Vietnam, Brunei and the Gulf States. In Europe it’s known as the Land Cruiser. It’s sold in other markets as the Toyota Prado, the Toyota Land Cruiser 250 in Japan, the Toyota Land Cruiser Prado in Australia and in North America as the Lexus GX and Toyota Land Cruiser. It is smaller and utilitarian than the J300, but not quite as robust or spartan as the J70 series.
    • FJ Land Cruiser – the Toyota FJ Land Cruiser is likely to be sold in North America and Japan, mirroring the markets where the FJ Cruiser was originally sold.

    China

    A Proud Superpower Answers to No One – by Ryan Fedasiuk – an odd blend of policy isolation and hubris. Read with China Doubles Down – by Stephen Roach – Conflict

    Economics

    How the UK Lost Its Shipbuilding Industry – by Brian Potter – The UK ultimately proved unable to respond to competitors who entered the market with new, large shipyards which employed novel methods of shipbuilding developed by the US during WWII. British industry in general failed to invest adequately to keep ahead of competitors. The UK fell from producing 57% of world tonnage in 1947 to just 17% a decade later. By the 1970s their output was below 5% of world total, and by the 1990s it was less than 1%. In 2023, the UK produced no commercial ships at all. – Part of this was also down to policy decisions. The Thatcher administration deliberately designated yards as military-only to drive them to the wall and smash the trade unions.

    Energy

    Honeywell unveils new technology to decarbonise heavy industries | FT – no reason why it couldn’t work for aviation and vehicle fuel as well in principle aside from scale.

    US government and Westinghouse strike $80bn nuclear reactor deal | FT

    Porsche hits reverse on EV push as new CEO shifts back to petrol | FT

    Finance

    Barclays buys Best Egg in $800mn bet on US loan securitisation | FT – is this sub-prime? Read also HSBC warns on wider risks from private credit blow-ups | FT

    Hong Kong

    Memory Exiled | History Workshop – a bit tiresome, don’t get me wrong I am happy to throw brickbats at the UK Government as a citizen of a decolonised country but this is distorted. – The UK government releases papers after 20 years, but some are kept under wraps for longer for national security or other reasons. Sensitive materials (in Hong Kong’s case, perhaps to do with the handover) don’t account for more than a tiny percentage of the content and are redacted. One possible reason the Hong Kong files are still not released is simply that there are huge amounts of them, and they are mostly on microfiche, which is a pain to digitise – not because of a desire to ‘control history’.

    Breaking | Beijing vows to support Hong Kong in better integrating into national development | South China Morning Post – reads like extending Bay Area narrative and weakening Hong Kong‘s distinctiveness?

    Innovation

    The Loop: How American Profits Built Chinese Power

    Luxury

    Kim Jones joins Bosideng to lead its new high-end urban line | Vogue Business – Bosideng are a huge maker of down jackets, it will be interesting where they go with Kim Jones.

    Marketing

    What’s gone wrong at WPP? The crown slips at world’s biggest advertising group | WPP | The Guardian – “Middle-aged traditional creatives, the ones that have built a career doing traditional TV ads and posters who you’d have thought would be the most at threat of extinction, are moving very fast, teaching themselves how to master…generative AI to survive.”

    Forgive the rant, but this quote from an article about WPP’s decline–and the attitude behind it–drives me absolutely crazy. Let’s do the math.

    If you’re a 40-year-old creative, you were 19 when Facebook launched.You turned 21 when Twitter debuted.You were 22 when Apple introduced the iPhone, and 25 when Instagram came out.
    So you’ve literally spent your entire career in advertising creating work for the digital/social/smartphone media ecosystem. 
    And that means you’ve produced way more digital-first and social campaigns than TV spots, let alone posters. (Also: I would love to meet the creative who “built a career” making posters.)

    And creatives older than 40? They’ve successfully navigated the decline of broadcast and mass media, the introduction of smartphones, the broad shift to targeting, the endless parade of social channels and new technologies that Will Change Everything–arguably the greatest two decades of disruption the advertising industry has ever faced.

    And the creatives who are over 60? They’re the generation that *invented* digital advertising. – I thought that this comment from LinkedIn was the most insightful assessment of the article

    Security

    Russia at war — ebook by Royal Danish Defence College – great articles including one by Anders Puck-Nielsen.

    NATO Baltic Sea mission has ‘deterred’ undersea sabotage: commanders | Spacewar

    Dentsu warns staff of data breach after Merkle hit by cyber ‘security incident’ | Campaign

    Software

    Apple employees have ‘concerns’ over Siri performance in early iOS 26.4 builds: report – 9to5Mac

    Major NHS AI trial delivers unprecedented time and cost savings – GOV.UK – Microsoft 365 Copilot trial demonstrates monthly time savings of potentially 400,000 hours for NHS staff.

    Technology

    China calls for ‘extraordinary measures’ to achieve chip breakthroughs | FT and The Dark Horse of China’s AI Silicon: Cambricon After the Nvidia Ban | Voice of Context

    Qualcomm shares jump as it launches new AI chip to rival Nvidia | FT and Nvidia to invest $1bn into Nokia as chip giant extends deal spree | FT – I keep thinking back to Cisco circa 1999 and its never-ending stream of stock-based acquisitions based on the irrational exuberance of of an elevated share price.

    Amazon Plans to Replace More Than Half a Million Jobs With Robots – The New York Times – Amazon is working hard on automating more warehouse tasks with robots, targeting 600k jobs and 30 cents cost saving per item shipped. Versus Alibaba reality circa late 2017.

    Wireless

    Iridium develops compact chip for robust global GPS protection | Space Daily

  • Tahoe + more things

    Tahoe

    Another year, another macOS. Tahoe is sensibly unambitious but it has raised some ire amongst Mac users. You can tell how unambitious Tahoe was, when CNET had to do an article showing you how common app icons have changed because you otherwise probably didn’t notice. I know I didn’t.

    Tahoe is neither here nor there as a release for me. I haven’t found features that are ‘can’t live without”. The app interface changes feel different for the sake of being different, but I quickly got used to them.

    In terms of quality it still feels a bit ‘beta’-ish but I hope that the bugs get ironed out over time.

    • The pop-up window to select my accent over the ‘o’ in my given name gets blanked out for some reason.
    • When performing certain actions, the browser chrome all turns white.

    Otherwise things have been fine so far. My anti-virus of choice launched an update soon after Tahoe came out. As has my VPN client and numerous utilities and apps that I use for work, or just keeping my Mac tuned up.

    I have a Brother mono laser printer to connect up, (as my long-suffering HP unit finally gave up the ghost after a decade of service,) which might be a bit of a trial if Reddit is anything to judge by.

    Last Week on My Mac: Tahoe’s elephant – The Eclectic Light Company – this critique points out the kind of issues with Tahoe that implies it isn’t the Macintosh operating system of Steve Jobs with its historic focus on art principles and typography right from the beginning.

    China

    From ‘guochao’ to ‘zìxìn’: China’s new era of cultural confidence | Jing Daily

    Why anti-involution feels anti-Chinese? | Following the Yuan

    Dutch seizure of chipmaker followed US ultimatum over Chinese chief | FT – the judgement paints a bit more of a nuanced picture with two independent actions. It also explicitly states that the government order is not final yet (and at that point would still be open to appeals). The actual matter involved is a (significant) breach of fiduciary duty by Zhang Xuezheng and the holding company (Yuching). Cited issues were:

    • Placing of orders to another Wingtech subsidiary in China (that is in financial trouble) far exceeding demand (such that the expectation is that a significant share of the stock would need to be scrapped as it would not be able to be used in time)
    • Replacing 3 people with banking authority (including the CFO) with 3 other people, without financial background, one not an employee of Nexperia at all. All in the context where urgent US sanctions mean that independence from China is important for continued operations of the company. The court called this “Voor een onderneming van de orde van grootte van Nexperia grenst een dergelijke handelswijze aan roekeloosheid” (“For a company in the order of size of Nexerperia these actions border on being reckless”).
    • For the replacement no motivation was provided, prompting the chief financial officer and the chief legal officer from their own fiduciary duties as directors to object (and also to ask the court to investigate/intervene)
    • Stated intent to dismiss existing directors (without motivation) or asking for mandatory consultation from the workers council.

    As to the decisions:

    • Suspension of Xuezheng as director/CEO
    • Temporary appointment of a new non-executive director (with power to make final decisions)
    • Place all (except 1) share under management/safekeeping with a lawyer
    • This all motivated by (very) signifcant breach of the fiduciary duty, not based upon an Dutch government action. The application of the Entity list on Nexperia as subsidiary was a significant contextual driver though (as in the duty to minimize corporate risks).

    Consumer behaviour

    Piper Sandler Completes 50th Semi-Annual Teen Survey | Piper Sandler – teen spending down 6 percent compared to last year. Another point was that Dr Pepper was their favourite drink ahead of Coca-Cola, which makes this activist investor’s interest even more salient: tarboard builds stake in Keurig Dr Pepper after unpopular Peet’s deal | FT

    Economics

    UK risks higher inflation becoming entrenched, IMF warns | FT

    Health

    Mirador fundraising raises hopes of revival in US biotech market | FT

    Ideas

    Everything Is Television – Derek Thompson

    Japan

    Anime activism – Matt Alt’s Pure Invention – I didn’t realise that in 1978 the president Marcos of the Philippines had banned a whole genre of anime (giant robots or mecha) due to the influence of Voltes V on Filipino student activists.

    Marketing

    Post | LinkedIn – The Future of Brand Building Begins Where Commerce Meets Creativity. – or P&G applying the radio soap opera format to the 21st century

    Stopping agency burnout: the fight against ‘insidious’ work cultures and ‘inaccurate’ timesheets – Campaign found a long-hours culture continues to exist in adland, with pitching, client demands and poor role-modelling by managers part of the equation. 

    In the current climate of staff cuts, lingering threats of AI replacing the workforce and agencies dealing with economic constraints, late working – and the chance of burnout – continues to be a risk.

    Shrinking teams can potentially lead to more demands being placed on remaining employees. WPP and Interpublic each cut thousands of staff from their global workforces in the first half of 2025, on top of headcount reductions in 2024. Last year, the collective global headcount across the “big six” holding companies declined by 1.6%, the first fall since the post-pandemic rebuild. 

    WPP boosts AI marketing with $400mn Google deal | FT – I would be concerned if they weren’t using video generators like Veo and Google Gemini – which does make me wonder what Mark Read was up to?

    On the importance of good strategic writing in using AI: AI interfaces and the role of good writing | by Nick DiLallo | Oct, 2025 | UX Collective

    Media

    Apple sued over use of copyrighted books to train Apple Intelligence | Yahoo! News

    Google designated with “strategic market status” by UK Competition and Markets Authority – The Media Leader

    Exclusive | Advertisers Push Big Tech to Adopt Standards for Transparency in Ad Sales – WSJ

    How We Automated Content Marketing to Acquire Users at Scale | Spotify Engineering – Insightful blog post from Spotify’s ML team: they implemented their own pre-ranking algorithm to select the best ad variants to deploy to their advertising channels in their user acquisition campaigns. 

    Spotify’s marketing team developed a creative production pipeline that could generate and deploy ad creatives to marketing channels based on listening habits in a geographic region. The problem they encountered was that they were generating creatives from a high-cardinality dataset, and the number of variations they were uploading to their channels was overwhelming those channels’ ability to optimize ads effectively. 

    Spotify’s solution was to build a pre-ranking algorithm using XGBoost that would determine which creatives to upload to the channels. Their ML pre-ranking model outperformed a simple heuristic model, with 4%-14% lower CPRs and 11%-12% higher CTRs. The ML model utilized a rich set of features to predict sub_percentage (the percentage of contributed subscriptions from the artist) and relative_cps_ratio (the share of the artist’s cost per subscription in the marketing campaign) for premium subscriptions, whereas the heuristic model used three fixed features. The model is retrained daily based on a defined lookback window.

    Moreover, although this was deployed before ATT, the team found that ATT didn’t impact its performance, as training relied on aggregated data.

    This obviously remains a relevant issue as advertisers scale the volume of their creative production through generative tools. While this pre-dates Meta’s Andromeda initiative for pre-ranking, it’s still likely relevant for most other channels (and, depending on the volume of creative uploaded, Meta).

    Perplexity Pauses New Advertising Deals to Reassess Ambitions | AdWeek – brands are rethinking how to spend their budgets. Chan said many advertisers are moving away from performance-focused, traditional search and towards top-of-funnel brand awareness—an area Perplexity may pursue down the line.

    Online

    US Amazon Prime Membership Finally Hits 200 Million | CIRP – Amazon Prime finally hit the 200-million-member mark in the US, after several quarters of slow, but steady growth toward that milestone.

    Note: CIRP estimates the number of individual Amazon shoppers who use Amazon Prime. That includes multiple family members for many subscribers, so this estimate is higher than the number of US households that pay for an Amazon Prime membership.

    Amazon knows the difference between Prime shoppers and paid Prime member households, so as US Prime membership approaches its limit, there may be a growing focus on bringing those numbers closer together. Amazon does not want to reduce the number of Amazon Prime membership users, but it certainly would not mind having more paid memberships associated with them. We expect Amazon to continue its efforts to attract members by emphasizing the benefits of Prime, rather than policing shopping and limiting Prime membership sharing.

    CIRP estimates 200 million US Amazon customers had a Prime membership as of the September 2025 quarter. That is an increase of about 6% from 189 million US Amazon Prime members in the September 2024 quarter and up very slightly from our 198 million member estimate last quarter.

    Retailing

    Why Did Walmart Just Buy a Shopping Mall? – The New York Times – reminds me of the local mini-shops that used to be inside Kwik Saves in many towns

    Technology

    China’s ‘Darwin Monkey’ is the world’s largest brain-inspired supercomputer | Live Science

    I had been having lunch in the Google canteen with colleagues, and then came back to my desk, checked an email newsletter and this arrived: Smartphone-powered AI predicts avocado ripeness | Newsroom | Oregon State University

    Web of no web

    Palmer Luckey’s Anduril launches EagleEye military helmet with help from buddy Zuck | The Verge

    Amazon launches Echo devices designed for Alexa+ | Amazon