Curated Commons // Edition 23
Thank you for subscribing and welcome to the Twenty Third edition of Curated Commons. Let’s dive right in.
End of Day One at Amazon?
Bezos is now moving out. And the reins go to the head of the division that brings in the most profit. Is it end of Day One at Amazon?
https://www.ft.com/content/2dd12d4b-cc03-45f8-bde0-a67699598164
Denmark is building an “Energy Island”
Denmark, which has already committed to a 7-% reduction in greenhouse gases by 203, is now taking more aggressive steps. It is proposing to build a giant island to provide enough energy for three million households at a cost of ~$34 Bn.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-55931873
Being a ‘disruptor’ is not easy
Good read on Robinhood and the mess it finds itself in. When you take a strictly tech-focused view into highly-regulated industries, you end up in such situations!
https://www.wsj.com/articles/robinhoods-reckoning-can-it-survive-the-gamestop-bubble-11612547759
Weaponizing contracts and manipulating tax loopholes
Excellent investigative read into America’s biggest tax evader, and the crooked ways in which he and his companies played around the rules!
https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2021/02/05/americas-most-manipulative-billionaire/
The rise of the discount retailer
It’s not all bloodbath in the retail industry. The FT has a good read on the rise of discount retailers, both in the US and in Europe.
By 2018, almost 90 per cent of Americans earning between $50,000 and $100,000 a year said they shopped at “dollar stores” or off-price retailers like TJ Maxx, according to a survey by the National Retail Foundation. In the UK, the proportion of consumers in the most affluent socio-economic bracket who would consider shopping at somewhere like B&M or Home Bargains has risen from about 22 per cent at the end of 2015 to about 30 per cent now, according to a survey by YouGov.
https://www.ft.com/content/554984ba-c010-4956-9125-6a7fc6806295
There’s no such thing as ‘anonymized data’
The NYT has a piece on how they’ve been given a data dump of smartphone location data and they are able to back-trace people fairly easily. This dataset was specific to the day there were riots at the Capitol, but not hard to imagine alternate use cases. Bottom-line: there’s a massive market for location data, and anytime a service provider says they are anonymizing your data, do understand that it means it can be de-anonymized further down the chain by the next entity they sell the data to.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/05/opinion/capitol-attack-cellphone-data.html
The future is amoozing
Or as someone said on Twitter, nice Camoouflage
Using deepfakes to track online child abuse
File this in our weird future! Committing crimes in pixels to prevent crimes in atoms.
Officials in Germany will soon be able to post fake, computer-generated pornographic images of children when pursuing criminals online.
https://www.dw.com/en/germany-online-child-abuse-investigators-to-get-more-powers/a-52037583
Our automated decision-making future
The folks over at Algorithm watch have a long & detailed report (from Q4 last year) on the state of automated decision making in Europe. With some wild examples - For eg: in Poland, a bank employee’s rewards are tied to how much they smile!
https://automatingsociety.algorithmwatch.org/
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Towards our privacy-less future
The Wired has a very good read on the rise of surveillance data fusion - when data from disparate devices and systems is all fused together to provide a God-view of sorts. As always, the purported benefit is better security and more competent law enforcement. Naive to believe it will be limited to that - https://www.wired.com/story/there-are-spying-eyes-everywhere-and-now-they-share-a-brain/
All your faces are fodder for deep learning algorithms. Worrying read on how researchers and companies alike have stopped asking for user consent. With very scary potential outcomes. - https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/02/05/1017388/ai-deep-learning-facial-recognition-data-history/
Does your spinach email you?
Scientists have turned spinach into biological sensors that email environmental alerts. Our future is amazing!
The Internet has a solution, and a market, for everyone and everything
The Home Run Marathon is attracting more participants than the Boston marathon. The best part - the marathon organizers will give you a printable bib and with it the chance to brag on social media. And you don’t need to run at all!
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/02/03/fake-marathon/
Companies, regulators, and fines
Amazon was caught taking away tips meant for their freelance drivers. It was only made to give back the amounts, with no fines. Petty change for them, but potentially significant for the drivers from whom it took it away. To add insult to injury, the settlement drove up Amazon’s value by over a billion dollars - https://onezero.medium.com/how-amazon-swindled-its-own-drivers-got-caught-and-ended-up-richer-e280e3269b13
McKinsey agreed to a $573 Mn settlement over allegations it helped drive aggressive marketing of opioids (the details are sordid). The company also fired two partners. It denies the allegations - https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/03/business/mckinsey-opioids-settlement.html
Viral != Truth, exhibit #2424940
In today’s edition of if something is viral and outrageous, it may not be true.
More good reads
It’s not just the small guys. This hedge fund made $700 Mn on GameStop - https://www.wsj.com/articles/this-hedge-fund-made-700-million-on-gamestop-11612390687
The chip shortage out of TSMC has badly hit auto makers. So much so that many are apparently strongly considering increasing inventory, or talking of local sourcing - https://www.ft.com/content/3ecd3ccd-18d1-45a0-afb6-84719bdadf52
Toxic masculinity, as a state-provided training program! “China promotes education drive to make boys more 'manly'" - https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-55926248
China hasn’t banned ClubHouse. Yet. And that is making it an oasis for free speech - https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Technology/Chinese-flock-to-freewheeling-US-chat-app-Clubhouse. It also means there’s a market for ClubHouse Invites!
This is the life of a blue whale over a week. Trying to avoid human traffic.
This hand-made umbrella apparently costs ~$1,300. Used by heads of states. There’s always a market! - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-03/reviewing-a-silk-canopy-brigg-umbrella-that-the-prince-of-wales-uses
The successor to the Hubble Space Telescope is ready. Well, almost. - https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/02/science/webb-telescope-women-astronomy.html
Very good long read on how Apple controls the future of the Internet - https://www.matthewball.vc/all/applemetaverse
Sure sign we are in 2021 - A DNA testing firm, 23andMe is going public via a SPAC backed by the Virgin Group - https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/04/dna-testing-firm-23andme-to-go-public-through-branson-backed-spac.html
Good deep-dive into the economics of the food delivery market - https://www.economist.com/1843/2021/01/26/gulp-the-secret-economics-of-food-delivery
‘Startups are the best means of transfer of wealth’ - exhibit A - https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/02/anonymous-fintech-startup-millions-raises-3-million-gives-away-cash-on-twitter/
“In 2020, the NPD Group recorded the best year of book sales since it began tracking comparable data in 2004. Sales of print books, which make up 80% of the market, were up 8.2% by volume over 2019, while sales of e-books were up 17%.“ -https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-therapeutic-value-of-reading-11612310400
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