Soon after I started writing this blog, web services came up as a serious challenger to software. The thing that swung the tide in software’s favour was the rise of the mobile app ecosystems.
Originally mobile apps solved a gnarly problem for smartphone companies. Web services took time to download and were awkward compared to native software.
Now we tend to have a hybrid model where the web holds authentication functionality and the underlying database for many applications to work. If you pick up a Nokia N900 today, while you can appreciate its beautiful design, the device is little more than a glowing brick. Such is the current symbiosis between between software apps and the web services that support them.
That symbiosis is very important, while on the one hand it makes my Yahoo! Finance and Accuweather apps very useful, it also presents security risks. Some of the trouble that dating app Grindr had with regards security was down to the programmers building on third party APIs and not understanding every part of the functionality.
This means that sometimes things that I have categorised as online services might fall into software and vice versa. In that respect what I put in this category takes on a largely arbitrary view of what is software.
The second thing about software is the individual choices as a decision making user, say a lot about us. I love to use Newsblur as an RSS reader as it fits my personal workflow. I know a lot of other people who prefer other readers that do largely the same job in a different way.
On Monday afternoon, the buzz amongst my colleagues in New York was the Super Bowl from the night before. In particular the advertising and one advert by Coinbase sparked more discussions than others. The advert was divisive. Some people that there was something wrong with their smart TV which had triggered a dodgy screensaver. One person even first thought that the QRcode would take them through to a site that might explain whatever ransomware had hijacked their TV.
They scanned the QRcode but it didn’t work properly. The reasons for it not working were twofold:
The contrast in the QRcode background and foreground wasn’t large enough for certain colours and so wouldn’t scan
The coinbase website fell over. This would be spun as unprecedented demand, but the reality was poor execution
A game console style ROM screen revealed at the end that it was Coinbase. The management would likely pass the whole car crash off as growth hacking.
Growth hacking
Growth hacking as a term was attributed to a blog post by Sean Ellis back in 2010. But as a concept it goes back much further. A classic example of growth hacking could be considered to be FMCG staple of ‘buy one, get one free’ or BOGOF. The master of the growth hack was David Wallerstein came up with the idea of supersizing popcorn servings in the 1960s. Wallerstein came up with a behavioural change experiment as business idea based on the insight of that people might want to buy and eat more popcorn, but were simply ashamed of buying two bags at the cinema. Wallerstein was successful in his experiment. Wallerstein was appointed by Ray Kroc to the board of McDonalds in 1968 and then rolled out larger servings in McDonalds restaurants, if you’ve ever been asked if you want a ‘large meal’ with your burger Wallerstein was responsible. This created a whole range of products in restaurants and supermarkets called expandables, from large meals to multi-packs of products.
A more recent example would be the signature on hotmail.com emails that encouraged whoever received them to get their own email address at hotmail.com. This was effective back when most people had a work or college email address and wanted a home account for personal communications like finding a new job. Gmail took a slightly different approach with an invite scheme that saw early adopters clamouring like they were trying to get in the door of Studio 54 on a Saturday night.
The original idea of growth hacking is to try a small marketing tactic and refine it based on the feedback that you get. In reality that gets translated into poor thought out showy tactics focused on the short term. The reason for this is that test and learn is done over a short time period and doesn’t incorporate marketing science. The Coinbase advert was a classic example of this.
Buzz marketing
Growth hacking is influenced by a number of things. One of which was the concept of ‘scrappiness’ in start-up marketing.
Startup scrappiness
During the original dot com boom new online businesses wasted a fantastic amount of money on ineffective advertising. The most iconic example of this would be the pets.com sock pocket advert that featured in the 2000 version of the Super Bowl.
Courtesy of Yahoo! Inc. Co founder David Filo is hanging from the rear of the car.
You saw some businesses like Yahoo! try to do brand building advertising in a more cost effective way. This was known internally at Yahoo! as buzz marketing and in the US, it had its own team.
Examples of buzz marketing included wrapping employees cars that had been volunteered in the Yahoo! brand. This was listed in the employee handbook as a free ‘perk’ of working at Yahoo!. There were some conditions like you had to keep the wrap on for year and a good behaviour clause.
There were also some sponsorships like the ice machine at the San Jose Sharks stadium and some high traffic billboards. Yahoo! used to have a billboard alongside the 101 freeway going into San Francisco and another in Time Square, New York.
While the lesson of ‘go for business models that make financial sense’ seems to have been lost as we left the dot.com era further behind. The idea of ‘scrappiness’ stuck. It fitted with the wider concept of ‘struggle culture’ in entrepreneurship.
In technology, marketing = sales
On one level, the problem isn’t Coinbase but the technology sector. The truth is that for the most part technology companies don’t do good marketing. My hypotheses around the reasons for this are:
Technologists aren’t marketers. For the original technology firms, the products found their own market. Over time a salesforce was introduced and for complex products there might be pre-sales and post sales consultancy. They don’t really know much about marketing science. The sales funnel is the one ‘marketing model’ that managed to make it into Microsoft® PowerPoint® says a lot about the nature of this understanding.
To a technologist, every problem looks like a technology challenge. So the answer for great marketing is either in kludges aka hacks, like the Coinbase advert, or algorithmic in nature. And those algorithms are usually based on a poor understanding of marketing featured in the point above
Technologists think short term. Brands are transitory if you are looking to be bought out, or are built ‘organically’ in the hands of the victors (Oracle, Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta, Apple, Amazon, Tencent or Alibaba). So building a brand is an alien concept. Why build a brand in a world when you believe in disrupt, or be disrupted? Contrast that with the FMCG world where brands have considerably longer lives. The Nestlé Kit Kat chocolate bar is 86 years old at the time of writing. Procter & Gamble’s Bold washing powder (laundry detergent) is a spritely 57 years old. Baileys Irish Cream liqueur is 48 years old, as is the Mobil 1 range of synthetic engine oils, oil filters, chassis grease, transmission fluids, and gear lubricants. If we think of technology brands with that kind of longevity its likely to be the incumbent telecoms companies, Fujitsu, Hitach and IBM. At the younger end would be the likes of Verbatim, AMD, Intel, Oracle, Western Digital, Microsoft, Apple, Acer and Atari.
Disrupt or be disrupted creates delusion. If you believe in the disrupt or be disrupted manifest destiny of technology you probably believe that your ability to market is better than established brands that are actually marketing organisations
I would guess that Coinbase marketers would tick at least some of these hypotheses. It probably doesn’t help that organisations who should know better are starting to buy into this ‘disrupt or be disrupted’ model.
Cost of reach
So, if you’re a technology company like Coinbase, who believes in disruption and ‘knows’ how to market better than marketers? The simple answer is that while digital has managed to get marketers to use its platforms, it has failed to offer the most competitive cost per reach. To achieve the same goals Coinbase would have had to spend an order of magnitude more on YouTube than TV to reach an equivalent audience.
Brand building
Finally the reason why the advert contrasted so sharply with the other content that ran during the Super Bowl was because everyone else focused on brand building rather than on brand activation. The reason why they are going for brand building is that the work will keep paying dividends for years. This is something that digital transformation doesn’t reflect well through its algorithms. The Coinbase approach was the equivalent of a TV ad that said click here.
Warning: Stamps that say ‘1st’ or ‘2nd’ class are going to become unusable from 31 January 2023 – each stamp will have a proprietary QRcode type glyph. The stamp’s glyph will be linked to a digital twin. This isn’t to be used for tracking the letters and the packages that they are affixed to; but purely as a security measure on the stamps. How much effort is this going to take and is it really going to be cheaper than conventional printing technologies to limit stamp fraud? How much of a black economy is there in stamps anyway? While the Royal Mail promises innovative services enabled by the stamps, it isn’t clear what they will be at the moment. Looking at Amazon, the ‘barcode stamps’ as the Royal Mail call them don’t seem to be widely available yet. The Royal Mail has announced but not launched a scheme to swap out your existing stamps for the new design.
China
What is most interesting about Eileen Gu isn’t that she switched countries but the narrative of western decline that China is wrapping around this: Cold warrior: why Eileen Gu ditched Team USA to ski for China | The Economist and Winter Olympics: Eileen Gu and the Chimerican Dream – The Olympic freestyle skier has stirred controversy for representing China. She is the product of a vanishing shared space between the Chinese and American elite. As for Gu’s Mum’s background, it would be an ideal model if a screen writers was adapting The Americans as Chinese sleeper agents instead
Wang Huning’s career reveals much about political change in China | The Economist – As its chief of ideology and propaganda, he is in charge of crafting a very different message: that China practises true democracy, that America’s is a sham and that American power is fading. For a party locked in an escalating ideological war with America, this line is unsurprising. Mr Wang’s role in the struggle is more so. His early writing did not suggest narrow-minded nationalism. He saw weaknesses in America’s system, but did not exaggerate them. He saw problems, too, in China’s. Even more remarkably, he has been crafting the party’s message under three successive leaders.
What’s interesting about the future of the ideas that aren’t hinged in culture, is how similar they relate to 10 year predictions back in the late 1990s and early 2000s – Internet in 2035 | Pew Research Center
The Plausibly Deniable DataBase (PDDB) « bunnie’s blog – Most security schemes facilitatethe coercive processes of an attacker because they disclose metadata about the secret data, such as the name and size of encrypted files. This allows specific and enforceable demands to be made: “Give us the passwords for these three encrypted files with names A, B and C, or else…”. In other words, security often focuses on protecting the confidentiality of data, but lacks deniability.
A scheme with deniability would make even the existence of secret files difficult to prove. This makes it difficult for an attacker to formulate a coherent demand: “There’s no evidence of undisclosed data. Should we even bother to make threats?” A lack of evidence makes it more difficult to make specific and enforceable demands.
Thus, assuming the ultimate goal of security is to protect the safety of users as human beings, and not just their files, enhanced security should come hand-in-hand with enhanced plausible deniability (PD). PD armsusers with a set of tools they can use to navigate the social landscape of security, by making it difficult to enumerate all the secrets potentially contained within a device, even with deep forensic analysis
Korea Herald – After being called feminists, these women faced online harassment – One in 2 men in their 20s in South Korea tends to be anti-feminist, according to a 2018 study released by the Korean Women’s Development Institute, a government think tank. In the same survey, only 1 in 4 young men saw women as “weaker than men” or needing protection. But such strong antagonism against feminism has puzzled many looking from the outside at a country that has the highest gender wage gap among OECD countries. Women also feel less safe than men in the country, according to a 2021 report from the Gender Equality Ministry. Only 21.6 percent of women said they felt safe from crime, as opposed to 32.1 percent of men.
On Meta’s ‘regulatory headwinds’ and adtech’s privacy reckoning | TechCrunch – “The investigation shows that gambling platforms do not operate in a silo. Rather, gambling platforms operate in conjunction with a wider network of third parties. The investigation shows that even limited browsing of 37 visits to gambling websites led to 2,154 data transmissions to 83 domains controlled by 44 different companies that range from well-known platforms like Facebook and Google to lesser known surveillance technology companies like Signal and Iovation, enabling these actors to embed imperceptible monitoring software during a user’s browsing experience. The investigation further shows that a number of these third-party companies receive behavioural data from gambling platforms in realtime, including information on how often individuals gambled, how much they were spending, and their value to the company if they returned to gambling after lapsing.”
Professional specific support – Self-Care Catalyst – is aimed at stressed and burnt out nurse practitioners in the US. I heard about it from my US colleagues and imagine that we will see similar businesses soon
Handspring was a key part of my first agency job. It was the dot com era, Jeff Hawkins, Donna Dubinsky, and Ed Colligan had founded Palm Inc. and left after it was sold to 3Com. They then went on to make modular PDAs with the Handspring Visor – which tapped into the clear plastic designs pioneered by Apple’s iMac. And then they built the PDA with smartphone capability called Treo. 3Com had made a Palm device in 1999 that used the Mobitex mobile data network, which was more analogous to a two way pager with a limited walled garden of content a la vintage AOL. Palm’s version of the Palm PDA has a common connector that could be used to connect external peripherals, such as the OmniSky sled which converted your PDA into an internet connected smartphone.
But it was Handspring who had the ‘heat’ and the wherewithal to provide a neat connectivity slot for its peripherals to sit in, providing a neater experience. Springboard is a documentary about Handspring
Of course, the outcome of PDA based smartphones isn’t all sweetness and light as Scott Galloway shows with our modern mobile device usage.
Myst
Ars Technical are doing some great oral histories of games creation. This one on Myst is very close to my heart. What’s particularly interesting is how the game was developed at a moment in time with the transition to CD ROM media. This resulted in a huge leap forward in what the technology was capable of doing, comparable to the early web in terms of creative disruption. It also made me really, really miss HyperCard.
Jimmy Wang Yu
Taiwanese martial artist, actor and gangster Jimmy Wang Yu carved the way for Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee in Hong Kong cinema. This documentary on him is first rate.
Windows
Interesting CNBC documentary on the hegemonic position of Microsoft Windows in personal computers.
Audi S1 Hoonitron and vehicles of Cyberpunk 2077
Ken Block’s collaboration with Audi has produced some interesting material. Growing up in the 1980s, group B rallying held a fascination for me, so that’s what got me interested in the Block / Audi collaboration at first. But what’s interesting about Block’s prototype electric Audi Quattro S1 is the speed at which Audi is able to put together a prototype working car with modern technologies. All of which implies ever more opportunities for automotive customisation for customers and the potential for additive manufacturing at the luxury end of the market. Hoonitron does sound like a late 1970s Taiwanese or Korean copy of a Sony television set.
While we’re on about car design, there is also this great video on the vehicles in Cyberpunk 2077. 14 out of 10 for pure style.
Tudor Pelagos FXD
Tudor have been on point in their marketing. Their new version of the Pelagos has some lovely design cues, even if its modern day association with the French navy is marketing fluff. PELAGOS FXD – more from the Tudor press room.
Fake socialite
A graduation project by an art student from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing did an experiment that has sparked a debate about class, inequality and the massive wealth gap in modern China. In the video you see her attempt to live 21 days for free in Beijing. She disguised herself as a socialite and slept in the halls of extravagant hotels and enjoyed free food and drinks. What surprised me is that the work hasn’t been suppressed and that she hadn’t been arrested. It also shows how Xi Jingping’s concept of common prosperity is designed to tap into a deep tension in society at the moment.
Paper and glue
MSNBC put together an amazing documentary on French street artist JR who does giant photo collages as street art. Here’s the trailer.
https://youtu.be/7NmxynGAmrM
Hong Kong Christmas
Hong Kong’s relationship with Christmas is a complicated one. A substantial minority of Hong Kongers are practicing Christians. Until the opening up of China in the late 1970s, Hong Kong was a substantial supplier of toys, Christmas decorations and lights. And then there is the multinational community living alongside Hong Kongers, which brings the western commercialism of Christmas. For many Christmas is a ‘pre-lunar new year celebration, both are big on the colour red and the decorations for one used to bleed into the other in public spaces. So I thought the joy of this Christmas street market might appeal to readers here.
Is there an end in sight to supply chain disruption? | Financial Times -There are major barriers to ending supply chain disruption by decoupling from China. Japan is trying to reduce supply chain disruption by replicating Chinese factories in other countries like Thailand and Indonesia. Here are some of things stopping multinational corporations from making that happen. In order to end supply chain disruption, I would imagine that a higher degree of automation is key, which will require corresponding improvements in automation technology. This doesn’t just mean software but also in mechanical engineering. The main issue for fine motor control in robots is the design and price of harmonic drives. This doesn’t operate on a Moore’s Law speed and scale of innovation. Increased automation also likely means major changes in approach to product design. Back in the golden era of consumer electronics just prior to the consumer adoption of the internet, circuit boards were less dense because they were designed for automated ‘pick-and-place’ machines. Nokia had a similar approach to its phones prior to the pivot to Windows and Qualcomm chips. The reason why Apple needs iPhones made in China is because a lot of the final assembly is closer to the work of a watchmaker servicing a mechanical watch than you would credit. So lots of cheap, (younger, smaller, delicate, usually female) hands are required. Our financial system’s obsessive, narrow focus on shareholder value will curtail these movements. Look at how Apple crows about how green they are and yet makes the virtually unrecyclable Air Pods by the million. Until that changes and the computers are assembled from modular boards, closer to their home market the supply chain won’t change despite the political, economic, national security and moral imperatives otherwise. Which is why Apple amongst others point out that they have an inability to move production out of China. This will get even harder as China moves up the semiconductor value chain. Once they are building memory modules and modern silicon fab processes, its game over for manufacturing elsewhere in the electronics sector. China is also the sole provider for many of the ingredients in multi-vitamins and pharmaceutical products. They process and mine just under 90 percent of the world’s rare earth metals – key for a large swathe of technologies from magnets to chips and batteries. They have a similar position in solar cell polysilicon and lithium ion battery ingredients.
JAXPORT promises less supply disruption
So ending supply chain disruption would mean replicating whole ingredient manufacturing chains and industry knowhow that multinationals had migrated to China decades ago. All of these actions to reduce supply chain disruption may not be received very well by China itself. China has bought key infrastructure around the world: power generation, ports, water supply, rail networks and more. All of which means that they get a greater say in how the world’s supply chain works. Xi Jingping has been straight forward in saying that he wants the world to rely on China more, and China to rely on the rest of the world less. Decoupling from Chinese supply chain disruption has taken on even more importance with the rise of Chinese secondary sanctions. More on nearshoring to avoid Chinese supply chain disruptions here: China’s economic woes: An opportunity for U.S. manufacturing?
China
Scientists believed Covid leaked from Wuhan lab – but feared debate could hurt ‘international harmony’ – An email from Dr Ron Fouchier to Sir Jeremy said: “Further debate about such accusations would unnecessarily distract top researchers from their active duties and do unnecessary harm to science in general and science in China in particular.” Dr Collins, former director of the NIH, replied to Sir Jeremy stating: “I share your view that a swift convening of experts in a confidence-inspiring framework is needed or the voices of conspiracy will quickly dominate, doing great potential harm to science and international harmony.” Institutions which held the emails have repeatedly resisted efforts to publish their content. The University of Edinburgh recently turned down an Freedom of Information request from The Telegraph asking to see Prof Rambaut’s replies, claiming “disclosure would be likely to endanger the physical or mental health and safety of individuals”. – this is going to turn into a dumpster fire
Dutch university gives up Chinese funding due to impartiality concerns | Netherlands | The Guardian – Amsterdam’s Vrije Universiteit (VU), the fourth largest university in the Netherlands, has said it will accept no further money from the Southwest University of Political Science and Law in Chongqing and repay sums it recently received. The announcement came after an investigation by the Dutch public broadcaster NOS last week revealed VU’s Cross Cultural Human Rights Center (CCHRC) had received between €250,000 (£210,000) and €300,000 annually from Southwest over the past few years. According to NOS, the CCHRC used Southwest’s money to fund a regular newsletter, organise seminars and maintain its website – which has published several posts rejecting western criticism of China’s human rights policy
Why is it still considered OK to be ageist? | Financial Times – A study by academics at Yale found that people with a negative approach to ageing deal with it worse mentally and physically and die seven and a half years younger. To put this in context, mild obesity shortens life by three years, extreme obesity by 10. Hardly surprisingly, this has prompted a great deal of fuss at government level. Policymakers and health professionals obsess over obesity. But what about the damage done by poor attitudes to ageing? Until I read about the survey I had no idea it was even a thing: the fact that ageism can actually kill you is a well-kept secret. It is also a costly one. According to the WHO report, the resulting ill health places an additional annual burden on the US healthcare of $63bn. I realise that health policymakers have been busy since the report came out last March, but still there hasn’t been a peep out of them
I love this 60 Minutes Australia film about an Australian inventor
Equations built giants like Google. Who’ll find the next billion-dollar bit of maths? | David Sumpter | The Guardian – The PageRank story is neither the first nor the most recent example of a little-known piece of mathematics transforming tech. In 2015, three engineers used the idea of gradient descent, dating back to the French mathematician Augustin-Louis Cauchy in the mid-19th century, to increase the time viewers spent watching YouTube by 2,000%. Their equation transformed the service from a place we went to for a few funny clips to a major consumer of our viewing time.
Murata’s Thailand move heralds Japan tech shift from China | Financial Times – “The most populous country today may be China, but in 2030 that will be India, and further down the road it will be Africa,” Nakajima said. “Will those economies be aligned with China or the US? We don’t know. We should be able to respond to both scenarios.”
Legal
Hong Kong: how colonial-era laws are being used to shut down independent journalism – police recently told reporters that opinion articles aren’t the only ones that can be regarded as seditious. Media interviews with exiled activists and features on clashes between protesters and riot police can also be considered seditious if the content is deemed by the government to be “fake news” or inciting hatred towards the government and endangering national security
Hong Kong independence activist Edward Leung released from jail, told to stay silent — Radio Free Asia – Hong Kong barrister and former lawmaker Siu Tsz-man said supervision orders are sometimes issued to released prisoners involved in violent crimes, including murder and manslaughter, and require the former prisoner to maintain contact with supervision officers and remain at a stable residence. But Siu said the order to stay away from the spotlight was unprecedented. “I have never heard of this happening before,” Siu said. “My staff have never heard of a supervision order under which the person isn’t allowed to give interviews to the media.” Siu declined to comment on whether the order was appropriate without knowing the details of the case. “The point of a supervision order isn’t to confine someone at a certain location and not let them leave,” he said. Some drew parallels between Leung’s release and the continuing controls on released political prisoners in mainland China – similar in nature to an ASBO but inherently political in nature
Virginia burglaries work of ‘crime tourists,’ authorities say – The Washington Post – Authorities call them “crime tourists.” Law enforcement experts say cells of professional South American burglars, particularly from Colombia and Chile, are entering the country illegally or exploiting a visa waiver program meant to expedite tourism from dozens of trusted foreign countries. Once here, they travel from state to state carrying out scores of burglaries, jewelry heists and other crimes, pilfering tens or hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of goods each year, the FBI estimates. Experts said the groups often operate with impunity because they have found a kind of criminal sweet spot. Bail for nonviolent property offenses is often low, so an arrested burglar often quickly gets bond and skips town for the next job, experts said. The crimes often don’t meet the threshold for the involvement of federal authorities. And they attract less attention at a time when U.S. authorities are contending with a rise in homicides. Dan Heath, a supervisory special agent with the FBI’s criminal investigations division, said “South American theft groups,” as the agency calls them, are a growing problem across the United States — and in countries including India, Britain and Australia, where they often employ similar tactics. “They represent an enormous threat right now in our country,” Heath said. “They are tending to thread the needle in avoiding both state and federal prosecution.”
VW fired senior employee after they raised cyber security concerns | Financial Times – A senior Volkswagen employee was dismissed weeks after raising the alarm about alleged cyber security vulnerabilities at the carmakers’ payments arm, which is soon to be majority-owned by JPMorgan. The manager alerted bosses in September 2021 to concerns that VW’s system in the region was “open to fraud” following an attempted cyber attack, and maintained that $2.6m sitting in the company’s accounts could be stolen, according to documents seen by the Financial Times. The staff member, who also told superiors that VW could face regulatory action if the vulnerabilities were not addressed, was then fired in October. – not terribly surprising
Software
After ruining Android messaging, Google says iMessage is too powerful | Ars Technica – “Google clearly views iMessage’s popularity as a problem, and the company is hoping this public-shaming campaign will get Apple to change its mind on RCS,” writes Amadeo in closing. “But Google giving other companies advice on a messaging strategy is a laughable idea since Google probably has the least credibility of any tech company when it comes to messaging services. If the company really wants to do something about iMessage, it should try competing with it.” – if this wasn’t an admission of failure by Google I don’t know what is. Google has a history of failed or closed communication services Google Talk (GTalk) (which was retired when Google decided to move away from an open messaging standard , Google Hangouts (which was spun out of Google+ messaging functionality), Google Allo and Google Wave
Christine Lee and Foreign Interference: what the UK can learn from Taiwan | China Dialogues – As part of the transition from authoritarianism to democracy, Taiwan retooled its political commissar system (zheng wei 政委) – formerly responsible for policing political loyalty toward the regime – into an institution that safeguards democracy by working to identify Chinese influence at all levels of Taiwanese politics and society. Political commissars (PCs) not only receive extensive military training but also develop a deep understanding of the Chinese Communist Party’s political warfare tactics. Most major government departments and private sector organisations in Taiwan will have PCs operating within their ranks, monitoring and reporting evidence of foreign interference. As many democracies facing Chinese influence and interference do not have such well-established systems in place, Taiwan’s zheng wei system may provide a starting point for how anti-foreign influence institutions can work effectively within democratic societies
Technology
EETimes – Arm Predicts Stagnation if Nvidia Deal Fails – without investment from Nvidia, Arm would be seriously disadvantaged in its bid to grow in data center markets and compete against Intel Corp. and x86 incumbents. The filing also explains why an Arm stock offering is a non-starter while noting that Arm faces stiff competition from emerging RISC-V competitors – interesting that they don’t mention ARM China crisis at all. Nvidia have now walked away from it and Softbank is supposed to be preparing a public offering for ARM
The Japan – Soul Train connection can consider to have started with The Three Degrees who seemed to do consistently more successfully in Japan than the US. The Three Degrees The Sound of Philadelphia is better known to people over 40 as the theme tune of the Soul Train TV programme. The popularity of The Three Degrees was such that there was some Japan only releases like Midnight Train.
The Afro Rake discotheque opened in 1974 and a visit to the club convinced TBS to broadcast episodes of Soul Train on a Sunday night, forging a true Japan – Soul Train connection.
In 1980, Yellow Magic Orchestra played Soul Train cementing the Japan – Soul Train connection with a cover version of disco song Tighten Up. YMO also told the viewers of the Japan – Soul Train connection and its large regular audience on TBS.
The Japan – Soul Train connection trickled down into 1970s Japanese club culture like the Afro Rake night club. The Japan – Soul Train connection was made through articles and photographs of the show. This and artists like The Three Degrees built the Japan – Soul Train connection. It was ironic that the Afro Rake made the Japan – Soul Train connection for TBS.
China sportswear: Fujian Tigers earn their stripes in Nike fight | Financial Times – what’s really interesting is the collapse in share of New Balance (down to poor execution over the past five years) and adidas in China. Li Ning have had a boom and a bust and risen again. Anta have acquired brands like Arc’teryx, Suunto, Salomon and Wilson. Salomon and Arc’teryx are particularly interesting because of their use by western special forces units
Consumer behaviour
The ‘Boomer remover’: Intergenerational discounting, the coronavirus and climate change – Rebecca Elliott, 2021 – the emergence of the ‘Boomer remover’ as coherent with a longer history of fascination with the Baby Boomers, a generation that has ‘been watched, commented upon, and invested with hope and despond in equal measure’ (Bristow, 2019, p. 92). This fascination has taken a more negative turn towards ‘Boomer blaming’ in the last 15 years. The Boomers have themselves become social problems, ‘folklore demons’ who, for their sheer number, are feared for the unprecedented burdens they may place on welfare states: a ‘Boomergeddon’ created by a ‘tidal wave of retirements’, combined with longer lifespans (Bristow, 2019, p. 92; Bristow, 2016; Somers, 2017; Walker, 1990, 1996). Fears about the impacts of an ageing population have then been moralized, turned into a critique of the attitudes and behaviours of this particular generation, namely, their perceived individualism run amok and selfish, hedonistic, reckless actions that have ‘robbed’ their children of a prosperous future (Bristow, 2016; White, 2013). The Boomers are maligned for the kind of people they are believed to be, today serving as the ‘archetypal ‘villain’ in the narrative of generational conflict’ (Bristow, 2021, p. 768). Younger generations are then made out to be the true adults in the room, who have to take responsibility for the messes their elders have made (expressed also by some on Twitter, like the user above who suggested young people might ‘show ’em how it’s done’). In this case, broadly available tropes about the Boomers’ perceived sins and deficiencies get attached to ‘older generations’ generally, in a context in which the cohort most at risk of dying from the virus actually seems to be those over the age of 80 – the so-called ‘silent generation’ rather than the Boomers
Biden’s trade policy is crafted with political rewards in mind | Financial Times – “worker centred” is like the “hard-working families” long invoked in both US and UK politics: you cannot oppose a trade policy supporting workers any more than you can be biased towards feckless loners. But helping all workers equally is not what it means in practice. Nearly 10 months in to the administration, this worker-centred policy shows a disturbing focus on old-style manufacturing-centred protectionism — and not even all manufacturing, just the politically rewarding parts. Although it is also proposing to extend trade-distorting support to new sectors like electric vehicles, the Biden administration has continued the historic US obsession with steel
U.S. Housing as a Global Safe Asset: Evidence from China Shocks by William Barcelona, Nathan Converse, Anna Wong :: SSRN – This paper demonstrates that the measured stock of China’s holding of U.S. assets could be much higher than indicated by the U.S. net international investment position data due to unrecorded historical Chinese inflows into an increasingly popular global safe haven asset: U.S. residential real estate. We first use aggregate capital flows data to show that the increase in unrecorded capital inflows in the U.S. balance of payment accounts over the past decade is mainly linked to inflows from China into U.S. housing markets. Then, using a unique web traffic dataset that provides a direct measure of Chinese demand for U.S. housing at the zip code level, we estimate via a difference-in-difference matching framework that house prices in major U.S. cities that are highly exposed to demand from China have on average grown 7 percentage points faster than similar neighborhoods with low exposure over the period 2010-2016. These average excess price growth gaps co-move closely with macro-level measures of U.S. capital inflows from China, and tend to widen following periods of economic stress in China, suggesting that Chinese households view U.S. housing as a safe haven asset. – capital flight
Will Germany Depart from the Merkel Model on China? Beijing Will Have a Say. – The Diplomat – the appointment of Greens co-leader and former chancellor candidate Annalena Baerbock as foreign minister has made such a break a real possibility. As an outspoken critic of China’s human rights practices and overseas economic coercion, Baerbock will advocate for a comprehensive China strategy that is more European, normative, and “rigor[ous].” She will be reinforced by FDP leader Christian Lindner, who joins the coalition government as finance minister, seen as the most powerful office next to chancellor. Lindner found himself on Beijing’s bad list in 2019 when he visited democratic opposition representatives in Hong Kong en route to the mainland
Xi fails to signal support for a second term for Hong Kong’s Carrie Lam | Financial Times – interesting earlier in the year the political insiders I knew of thought that Lam was going to run for a second time, when I thought that it might the be the security chap who had recently been moved to be her deputy. After this visit, CY Leung might throw his hat in the ring
Ideas
Maersk is no longer just a shipping company — Quartz – Maersk owns more container ships than anyone on earth, but it would be a mistake to think of the company as just a cargo shipping line. It’s also an airline, a trucking company, a port terminal operator, and a freight forwarder. Maersk has gobbled up a piece of virtually every stage of the global supply chain as part of its ambition to become a one-stop shop for logistics.
Yesterday (Dec. 16), Maersk struck a deal that offers a glimpse at the future of its business—and the future of global shipping. Starting next year, Maersk will effectively run the logistics operations of Unilever, one of the world’s largest consumer goods companies. Maersk announced in a press release that it “will be providing operational management of international ocean and air transport” for Unilever from 2022 to 2026.
Normally, Unilever uses its own in-house software, dubbed the “International Control Tower Solution,” to manage its own supply chains. But as of 2022, Unilever will hand off the run of its supply chain software to Maersk. “It’s a strong indicator that Maersk’s expertise extends well beyond sailing ships,” said Eytan Buchman, CMO at the cargo booking platform Freightos, who has written about Maersks’ acquisitions and expansion. “Combined with their other assets and what they’ve been building towards, it’s not a stretch to assume that this is another rung in the ladder towards full end-to-end global supply chain ownership.”
How many people in Japan have actually worn a couple’s outfit? | SoraNews24 -Japan News – less than 20 percent of married couples have tried going on a date in a couple’s outfit. But that doesn’t mean that people don’t want to try it! The survey, which was conducted between November 18 and November 26 of this year, asked 800 married people–400 women and 400 men—about their experiences with couple’s outfits. When asked whether they’d ever gone on a date with their spouse in matching outfits, only 18.1 percent said yes. – I thought it was more of a drama trope rather than a trend
Risks to China’s Growth in Luxury Retail | Luxury Daily – China accounts for 35 percent of all luxury sales across the globe. By 2025, those sales could shoot up to 50 percent of all luxury retail revenue, according to Bain Analytics. Luxury sector concerned by China’s GDPR type laws, regulations on biometrics and common propserity
Zegna shares surge in New York after SPAC deal | Vogue Business – The company has struggled during the pandemic, with core revenue falling 23 per cent last year. This year, sales are expected to stay behind pre-pandemic levels at €1.2 billion – positioned very much as a COVID issue but also seems to be down to the wider move of luxury and streetwear going closer
China’s Big New Idea – The Atlantic – “common prosperity,” has been adopted by journalists, scholars, and corporate executives in China with a fervor only a dictator can ignite. State newspapers are routinely plastered with commentary on the topic. On November 11, a shopping holiday known as “Singles Day,” the usual conspicuous excess took a back seat to the common-prosperity spirit. The e-commerce company Alibaba, the holiday’s primary purveyor, focused its marketing on eco-friendly initiatives and charitable programs instead of sales figures. Its management, eager to get into Xi’s good graces, had already pledged billions of dollars in charitable donations to support the leader’s cause, rather than its own shareholders.Until now, common prosperity has mostly been a concept for domestic consumption in China, but it might soon be heading overseas. The idea could become a central node in the ever-expanding lexicon of language Xi is trying to use to increase Beijing’s influence in international affairs and reshape the world order to favor China’s authoritarian interests – I think its more memetic in nature than an ‘idea’ per se, something that could mean whatever people want it to mean in their head
Guidance for preventing, detecting, and hunting for CVE-2021-44228 Log4j 2 exploitation – Microsoft Security Blog – observed the CVE-2021-44228 vulnerability being used by multiple tracked nation-state activity groups originating from China, Iran, North Korea, and Turkey. This activity ranges from experimentation during development, integration of the vulnerability to in-the-wild payload deployment, and exploitation against targets to achieve the actor’s objectives. For example, MSTIC has observed PHOSPHORUS, an Iranian actor that has been deploying ransomware, acquiring and making modifications of the Log4j exploit. We assess that PHOSPHORUS has operationalized these modifications. In addition, HAFNIUM, a threat actor group operating out of China, has been observed utilizing the vulnerability to attack virtualization infrastructure to extend their typical targeting. In these attacks, HAFNIUM-associated systems were observed using a DNS service typically associated with testing activity to fingerprint systems
Huawei documents show Chinese tech giant’s involvement in surveillance programs – The Washington Post – These marketing presentations, posted to a public-facing Huawei website before the company removed them late last year, show Huawei pitching how its technologies can help government authorities identify individuals by voice, monitor political individuals of interest, manage ideological reeducation and labor schedules for prisoners, and help retailers track shoppers using facial recognition. “Huawei has no knowledge of the projects mentioned in the Washington Post report,” the company said in a statement, after The Post shared some of the slides with Huawei representatives to seek comment. “Like all other major service providers, Huawei provides cloud platform services that comply with common industry standards.” The divergence between Huawei’s public disavowals that it doesn’t know how its technology is used by customers, and the detailed accounts of surveillance operations on slides carrying the company’s watermark, taps into long-standing concerns about lack of transparency at the world’s largest vendor of telecommunications gear – I can’t say I am surprised
Chinese Spies Accused of Using Huawei in Secret Australian Telecom Hack – Bloomberg – a key piece of evidence underpinning the U.S. efforts — a previously unreported breach that occurred halfway around the world nearly a decade ago. In 2012, Australian intelligence officials informed their U.S. counterparts that they had detected a sophisticated intrusion into the country’s telecommunications systems. It began, they said, with a software update from Huawei that was loaded with malicious code. The breach and subsequent intelligence sharing was confirmed by nearly two dozen former national security officials who received briefings about the matter from Australian and U.S. agencies from 2012 to 2019. The incident substantiated suspicions in both countries that China used Huawei equipment as a conduit for espionage, and it has remained a core part of a case they’ve built against the Chinese company, even as the breach’s existence has never been made public – so I was working on Huawei when Australia banned them from their national broadband initiative in 2013. My boss who was an ex-government guy had gone back to Australia to lobby for Huawei and three days later the guillotine dropped. This disclosure explains the why. China views Australia as its own personal colony. Am I surprised that the Chinese have a tailored access programme? No, but it shouldn’t be made any easier for them
Merck to invest NT$17 billion in Taiwan over next 5-7 years | DigiTimes – to set up production capacity for semiconductor and display materials and enhance R&D capability in Taiwan over the next 5-7 years, according to Merck Group Taiwan managing director John Lee. The investment is the largest as compared with the investment projects Merck has historically undertaken in Taiwan, Lee said. The investment is part of Level Up, Merck’s global investment plan with a total budget of over EUR3 billion (US$3.4 billion) and investment projects varying among different countries, Lee noted.
Taiwan opposition clings on for political relevance as voters shun Beijing | Financial Times – an overwhelming majority of Taiwanese reject unification with China, and over the past decade, the KMT’s support has gone into a tailspin. According to the Election Study Center at National Chengchi University, the proportion of voters identifying with the KMT has dropped to 18.7 per cent, compared with 31.4 per cent for the ruling Democratic Progressive party. – Not entirely surprising given the example that Beijing has provided with Hong Kong
A celebrity divorce spotlights declining China-Taiwan relations — Quartz – The controversies around the former couple, whose ups and downs are often compared in China to the US reality show Keeping Up With The Kardashians, paint a picture of the increasingly confrontational attitude in China towards Taiwan. For decades, citizens from both sides of the straits have sidestepped the tricky political relations of the Communist-ruled People’s Republic of China, and the democratically governed Republic of China (as Taiwan is formally called), to forge personal and professional ties. Taiwanese businesses have been integral to China’s economic advance, and music stars and actors from Taiwan have long found audiences in the mainland. That coexistence often relied on people on both sides dancing around what it means to be Taiwanese. “But as Chinese ultra-nationalism boils over under Xi [Jinping], there is no longer space for ambiguity between nationality and cultural identity,” said Joshua Yang, a doctoral student who tweets about Taiwanese identity and relations with the PRC. As opportunities for Taiwanese and Chinese residents to connect directly through study, work, or jobs shrink, it could harden attitudes in the mainland even further
Do the costs of the cloud outweigh the benefits? | The Economist – few aspects of modern life have made geeks drool more than the cloud, the cumulus of data centres dominated by three American tech giants, Amazon, Microsoft and Google, as well as Alibaba in China. In America some liken their position of impregnability to that of Detroit’s three big carmakers, Ford, General Motors and Chrysler, a century ago. During the covid-19 pandemic they have helped transform people’s lives, supporting online medical appointments, Zoom meetings and Netflix binges. They attract the brightest engineering talent. Amazon Web Services (aws), the biggest, is now part of business folklore. So it is bordering on heresy to argue, as executives at Andreessen Horowitz, a venture-capital firm, have done recently, that the cloud threatens to become a weight around the necks of big companies.
