February 2020 Things of Interest

All Things Tech

IKEA’s Meatball Supply Chain Goes Digital, Wall Street Journal. IKEA wants to bring the supply-chain precision behind its flat-pack furniture business to the way it manages meatballs and lingonberry jam.

How to take control of all those notifications and still stay in the loop, New York Times, here.

Why the coronavirus outbreak may hasten the demise of the smartphone as we know it. It’s about the supply chain. South China Morning Post, here. Apple also sounds a similar warning in the New York Times, as it cuts sales estimates.

Maybe Information Actually Doesn’t Want to Be Free. The story of Jessica Lessin and The Information, New York Times, here.

About time! Facebook starts fact-checking partnership with Reuters, Express Tribune.

The US is not very good at convincing Europe to ditch Huawei, as Germany plans to follow Britain in letting the Chinese company develop the next generation network, New York Times.

And Bezos takes on Trump over the $10 billion, 10-year, cloud-computing project for the Defence Department called the Joint Enterprise Defence Infrastructure (JEDI) project, New York Times.

More consumers are now viewing cell phones as a luxury item as the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip launches in partnership with American fashion designer Thom Browne, Wall Street Journal.

MIT explains 5G.

Europe, “Overrun by Foreign Tech Giants,” wants homegrown tech companies rather than continue to rely on FAANGs, New York Times.

Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, talks about Shaping Europe’s Digital Future, Competition Policy International.

EU Unveils Plans To Regulate AI & Big Tech, Competition Policy International. Also, Big Tech to Face More Requirements in Europe on Data Sharing, AI. The Legislation will place more obligations on online platforms and firms developing machine-learning-enabled technologies, WALL STREET JOURNAL.

Calls To Break Up Big Tech Gain Traction In US Presidential Race, Competition Policy International.

Amazon’s popular Ring security cameras have gaping security holes. New York Times.

MacAfee found that the Tesla can be fooled with simple tape, Technology Review. To be fair, even a human could fooled by this test.

Google’s been firing people! New York Times.

Lawrence Tesler, a pioneering computer scientist who helped make it easier for users to interact with computers, helping to develop today’s style of computer interaction based on a graphical desktop metaphor and a mouse, died recently aged 74. New York Times.

Marietje Schaake writing in the Financial Times, says “Instead of playing government, big tech leaders should take responsibility for their own territories.”

Blockchain and the future of digital assets, European Union Blockchain Observatory & Forum, here (PDF). 

Public consultation on the Draft Issues Paper of the World Intellectual Property Organization on Intellectual Property Policy and Artificial Intelligence, see the comments (so far) here.

Apps that encourage you to talk to strangers, Wall Street Journal.

Google Plots Course to Overtake Cloud Rivals. Job cuts are part of yearlong push to shake up unit and focus on delivering growth to Alphabet, Wall Street Journal.

WIRED’s guide to the Internet of Things.

Big Tech Acquisitions Competition & Innovation Effects and EU Merger Control, paper by Bourreau and de Streel.

‘No tax on digital giants like Google, Amazon by end of 2020 would mean chaos,’ Express Tribune.

Interesting to see that teens are deleting Instagrams almost as fast as they post them. Could this be a techlash against social media? Wall Street Journal.

What AI still cannot do, MIT Technology Review.

Tech Platforms Aren’t Bound by First Amendment. Appeals Court rules that privately operated internet platforms are free to censor content they don’t like. Wall Street Journal.

How Delivery Apps Eat Up Your Budget. Some restaurants hike the prices of food ordered for delivery. And most of the popular apps charge a delivery fee and cram tax and extra service costs into a single line on the bill, making it difficult to notice the inflated costs. New York Times.

Antitrust and Competition Law (and Consumer Protection)

The FTC Demands Info On Past Deals From Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google & Microsoft, according to the Wall Street Journal. US orders Google, Facebook and others to reveal details of years of acquisitions, The Guardian. Apple buys a company every few weeks, says CEO Tim Cook, CNBC. The aggressive acquisition style highlights Apple’s massive purchasing power with $225.4 billion in cash on hand, according to its latest earnings report. Many of these acquisitions come below the reporting threshold of US$ 94 million and have escaped scrutiny by the FTC. Also under review is Google’s acquisition of Waze in 2013 (See also Competition Policy International). Facebook quietly acquired another UK AI startup and almost no one noticed, TechCrunch.

The scrutiny of tech companies by both the FTC and the DOJ’s Antitrust Division is resulting in friction.

And the EU has decided to review smaller transactions as well, Competition Policy International.

Google vs EU: A decade-long saga goes to court, Express Tribune. After thee days of testimony, Google leaves court bruised, not broken, Competition Policy International.

Noah Phillips, Commissioner FTC, asks Should We Block This Merger? Some Thoughts on Converging Antitrust and Privacy, here.

Matt Stoller on how CVS became a health care tyrant, here. Also, read his points on national champions, here.

Implications of Brexit on the competition law landscape: Key takeaways from the CMA’s ‘Guidance on the functions of the CMA under the Withdrawal Agreement,’ Orrick Antitrust Watch, here.

Herbert Hovenkamp on The Looming Crisis in Antitrust Economics, SSRN, here.

Recent reports on regulating big tech are now in one convenient location on the ProMarket site, here.

U.S. ends antitrust probe of 4 automakers over California emissions deal. Ford, Honda, Volkswagen, and BMW weren't found to have violated any laws, AutoBlog, here.

The Financial Conduct Authority, the U.K.’s top financial regulator, says it’s stepping up its supervision of digital payments firms, Wall Street Journal.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) forced by court to ask the public (again) if they think tearing up net neutrality was a really good idea or not, The Register.

Google Resists Demands From States in Digital-Ad Probe, WALL STREET JOURNAL. “Google is resisting efforts to surrender emails, text messages and other documents sought by state investigators probing possible anticompetitive practices, according to records and interviews.”

Are US Industries Becoming More Concentrated? SSRN.

The European Data Protection Board comments on Google’s proposed acquisition of Fitbit.

Australian competition and consumer agency, the ACCC, to examine anti-competitive behaviour by Google and Facebook, The Guardian.

Key Elements and Functions of a New Digital Regulatory Agency, Public Knowledge. See also The Right Way to Regulate Digital Platforms, here.

The FTC challenges Schick’s deal to acquire Harry’s Razors. Harry’s was formed as an upstart company in 2013 as a subscription mail order razor service where users receive products monthly by mail. Harry’s manufactures wet shave system razors and currently sells them online and in stores under the Harry’s and Flamingo brands. The FTC says that the proposed merger would “neutralize one of the most successful challenger brands ever built” and would remove “the independent competitor that disrupted Edgewell and P&G’s longstanding and stable duopoly.”

Unions are asking the FTC to see if Amazon distorts the economy, New York Times. See also Jay Carney talk about “Why Bernie Sanders Praised Amazon,” New York Times.

Margrethe Vestager, EU Antitrust Chief, Defends Countries’ Digital Tax Measures, Bloomberg. The fight to tax the digital economy isn’t going away, and companies should prepare for the EU to adopt its own rules if OECD talks fail, said Vestager.

Big Data, Cybersecurity, and Privacy

Life imitates art. Minority Report was a 2002 movie and 2015 miniseries, but it seems like that real life has caught up. Across the United States and Europe, software is making probation decisions and predicting whether teens will commit crime. An Algorithm That Grants Freedom, or Takes It Away, New York Times, here.

More apps that can access your Facebook and Google accounts, BGR, here. See also, Anubis Targets More than 250 Android Applications, Cofense, here.

Clearview AI: The Secretive Company That Might End Privacy as We Know It, New York Times, here.

As WhatsApp Tops 2 Billion Users, Its Boss Vows to Defend Encryption. Users demand end-to-end encryption, and that private communication shouldn’t go away in a modern society, says CEO, Wall Street Journal, The News.

CCPA and GDPR: The Data Centre Pitfalls of the ‘Right to be Forgotten.’ Compliance with the new privacy rules doesn’t always fall on data centre managers, but when it does, it's more difficult than it may sound. Data Centre Knowledge.

There are four useful suggestions on the Mozilla blog on what you can do to protect your personal data.

Zuckerberg Pitches How Facebook Should Be Regulated Over Content, Wall Street Journal, urges tighter online regulation (Competition Policy International). Treat us like something between a telco and a newspaper, he says, Dawn.

The economics of Business-to-Government data sharing, Joint Research Centre (JRC), the European Commission’s science and knowledge service, PDF

European Commission’s publishes its data strategy on 19 February 2020. MyData Global offers its comments, here.

Google's decision to shift control of UK user data to the US looks like a calculated political bet that Brexit will be a privacy disaster, Business Insider.

Facebook Dating launch blocked in Europe after it fails to show privacy workings, TechCrunch.

Computers, Privacy, and Data Protection Conference (CPDP) 2020, Between Truth and Power: The Legal Constructions of Informational Capitalism, YouTube.

Guy Aridor, The Economic Consequences of Data Privacy Regulation: Empirical Evidence from GDPR, SSRN.

Protecting privacy in an AI-driven world, Brookings.

The apps that protect you from your apps, The Guardian.

Designing Data Trusts, Stiftung Neue Verantwortung, here (PDF).

New Mexico Sues Google Over Children’s Data Privacy, Wall Street Journal. State alleges tech company’s education platform improperly gathers students’ personal data, tracks their online behavior.

Mobile carriers didn’t safeguard customer location data, says the FCC. Wall Street Journal.

Email scammers are getting better, says the FBI. Wall Street Journal.

Books

Despite his talk on delegation, debate, and discussion in his book, Principles: Life and Work , Ray Dalio is very much behind the driving wheel at Bridgewater, Wall Street Journal, here. I guess it’s hard to let go.

Marco Iansiti and Karim Lakhani, Competing in the Age of AI: Strategy and Leadership When Algorithms and Networks Run the World, Harvard. Review by the New York Times, here, and the article in the Harvard Business Review, here.

The antitrust/competition law books you should have read in 2019, according to CoRe (Official Blog of the European Competition and Regulatory Law Review), part 1, part 2.

Fiber by Susan Crawford. Joshua Edmonds says “If you are wanting a great read that provides incredible insight on the current state of affairs regarding America's shortsighted relationship with the Internet, I strongly recommend checking this out.”

Machiavelli: The Art of Teaching People What to Fear asks just how Machiavellian was Machiavelli? New York Times.

Corporate Governance

Leading Boards Rethinking Strategy and Enabling Innovation, Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance, here.

Having a healthy relationship with the Board is important for founders, Inc.

Shareholders can help fix the disparity between executive pay and the rest of the company, Wall Street Journal.

Corporate boards are too toothless to do their jobs. Warren Buffett says board members are simply not businesspeople who will stand up to CEOs and women having a voice in the boardroom continues to be a “work in progress.” Quartz.

e-Commerce

Amazon challenges India’s antitrust case in court, Reuters, Bloomberg, Yahoo! Finance. The case is on hold for the time being (Competition Policy International).

Also, Amazon, With Little Fanfare, Emerges as an Advertising Giant, Wall Street Journal. “It handles nearly half of all online sales in the U.S., giving it a popular platform and a wealth of consumer data. Now it’s on track to become the next juggernaut of online advertising, and its rise threatens to upend Silicon Valley’s ad titans and change the way business is done on Madison Avenue.”

Economics

McKinsey Global Institute’s report on The social contract in the 21^st century, February 2020, here. Key finding: “Holding all else constant, consumers across ten countries in our sample on average would have to work an additional four weeks a year to consume the same amount of housing, healthcare, and education that they did two decades ago.”

Education

Disrupting education, according to MIT. In today’s tight labour market, there are about 7 million open jobs for which companies are struggling to find qualified candidates because applicants routinely lack the digital and soft skills required to succeed. The figures must be worse for developing countries!

Entertainment

10 hottest movies everyone is streaming right now, BGR.

Global

What a great idea! Mumbai Police Play a Trick on Honking Drivers, New York Times, here.

Optimistic, Collaborative, Persistent: The Secret to Unlocking the World’s Potential in an Age of Anxiety, Boston Consulting Group.

The Coronavirus makes people isolate China, Wall Street Journal. Coronavirus death toll surges past 2,000 in China, The News.

Jeff Bezos commits US$ 10 billion! for climate change! New York Times, The News.

The Trump Brand Is Struggling as India’s Economy Sags, New York Times.

Health and Nutrition

Is Coffee Good for You? Yes! But it depends on the kind of coffee and the quantity. New York Times.

How Google Got Its Employees to Eat Their Vegetables, OneZero.

Life Hacks

50 Cognitive Biases in the Modern World, Visual Capitalist, here.

10 Behaviours People Find Condescending, Entrepreneur.

Cultivating Relationships Helps You (and Your Company) Thrive, Entrepreneur. And three ways how networking can be made more meaningful, Inc.

Speaking of relationships closer to home, teenagers and parents still have trouble communicating, New York Times. Parents are not giving teenager what they want: a sounding board.

Management and Leadership

The Art of Asking Good Questions with The Language Compass, Strategyzer, here. Download the PDF sheet here.

The average age of CEOs has increased says Business Insider along with some other interesting facts, here.

Lessons from a successful start-up: My Employees Helped Me Build a Billion-Dollar Tech Company, Entrepreneur, here.

Book on Knowledge Solutions: Tools, Methods, and Approaches to Drive Organizational Performance, here

Strategy at the Speed of Digital, McKinsey.

Using political intrigues and smear tactics to rise to the top of SoftBank, Wall Street Journal. This could be a good case study for a Robert Greene book like The Laws of Human Nature.

Music

The electric bass: Gibson and Fender, two industry titans, went head-to-head in search of the ultimate electric bass. Guitar World.

Ivan Kral, Rocker With Patti Smith and Others, Is Dead at 71, New York Times.

I don’t know many Pat Metheny tracks, except for his work with David Bowie on This is Not America and the beautiful Last Train Home. Lyle Mays was a key member of the band. RIP! New York Times.

Huey Lewis looks back at The Power of Love, from the Back to the Future soundtrack, Wall Street Journal.

10 recommended albums if you want to get into jazz music.

Pakistan

Mafias, Dr Farrukh Saleem, The News.

State of the economy, Dr Farrukh Saleem, The News.

The Kejriwal Model, Dr Farrukh Saleem, The News.

Digital economy: the way out, Taha Najeeb, The News, here.

Government to regulate social media, Dawn, The News. The subsequent public outcry has caused a rethink, rightfully so. Express Tribune, Dawn. And Dawn also has a piece on Social Media Rules: Winners and Losers. See also, IT ministry forms panel to review social media rules, Dawn, and the article, Surveillance Culture.