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March 2020 Things of Interest

All Things Tech

Top Economists Study What Happens When You Stop Using Facebook, Cal Newport’s blog. See also More Evidence of Facebook’s Negative Impact.
Samsung’s Galaxy S20 Ultra Has a 100X Zoom Camera. So We Tested It With a Private Eye. Samsung’s new high-end flagship phone has a camera with unprecedented digital zoom…so is it crazy cool, super-creepy, or both? Wall Street Journal. Personally, I am waiting for the Note20!
YouTube will stream its annual pitch to advertisers instead of hosting an in-person event because of the Covid-19, Wall Street Journal. And YouTube limits video streaming to SD quality to compensate for surge in bandwidth usage, TechCrunch, WIRED. The EU warns of broadband strain as millions work from home.
Former Google engineer charged with trade-secret theft from Google’s self-driving car project, reached a deal with U.S. prosecutors in which he will plead guilty to one count and the remaining charges will be dropped. Wall Street Journal.
Google Pledges Over $800 Million to Combat Covid-19
This should have been a big year for smartphones. Now Samsung, Apple are at a crossroads, CNET.
China and Huawei propose reinvention of the internet, Financial Times.
And Huawei is straining relations between old allies, TechCrunch
Eric Schmidt on A Real Digital Infrastructure at Last: American innovation can bring us tools and solutions that will outlast today’s crisis, Wall Street Journal.
Defeating Tech Giants With Open Protocols, Interoperability, And Shared Stewardship, TechDirt.

Antitrust and Competition Law (and Consumer Protection)

Competition in Digital Technology Markets: Examining Self-Preferencing by Digital Platforms: hearing of the Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights, here.
Watch the recording of the Bruegel event (9 March 2020) on Global Competition and Digital Change: How Should We Update European Competition Policy? The event addressed the need for modernising European competition policy due to structural changes in the economy caused by shifting global economic landscapes on the one hand and ongoing digitisation of the economy on the other.
Margrethe Vestager talks about “technology with purpose” and about Keeping the EU competitive in a green and digital world.”
Trust and the competition delusion: A new frontier for political and economic reform, Nicholas Gruen, here

Big Data, Cybersecurity, Digital Strategy, and Privacy

Surveillance culture, Dawn.
T-Mobile Vows to Fight FCC Fines for Location Sharing. Regulator seeks more than $200 million from four carriers, alleging they failed to police third-party entities with access to users’ real-time locations, Wall Street Journal.
The EU’s New Trio of Digital Strategy Docs, CPO Magazine. (i) White Paper on Artificial Intelligence: a European approach to excellence and trust, (ii) a European strategy for data and (iii) Shaping Europe’s digital future. And Allai’s analysis on the white paper on artificial intelligence is here.
How Much Is Online Privacy Worth? According to New Study, not much. CPO Magazine. Also from CPO Magazine, AI Predicted to Take Over Privacy Tech, The Importance of a Mature Approach to Evolving Online Privacy, and Post-Brexit UK Google Users to Lose GDPR Protections.
U.S. lacks key abilities to avert cyberattacks, the Cyberspace Solarium Commission says. Its report calls for drastic overhaul of the federal government to address cyber threats. Wall Street Journal.
Australia to fine Facebook for data privacy issues, DATA/ECONOMY.
The data-driven organisation: a transformation in progress, DATA/ECONOMY.
Uber Sues Los Angeles Over Data-Sharing Rules, Wall Street Journal.
Covid-19 transforms peak internet usage into the new normal, CNET.
Brave has filed a formal GDPR complaint against Google for infringing the GDPR’s “purpose limitation” principle: “Personal data shall be collected for specified, explicit and legitimate purposes and not further processed in a manner that is incompatible with those purposes…” Enforcement would be tantamount to a functional separation of Google’s business.  And Brave has filed a submission with the UK Competition & Markets Authority that shows that failing to enforce the GDPR enables Google’s monopoly. Brave’s submission also shows gaps in the CMA’s interim report on “Online platforms and digital advertising,” here
European Data Portal, The Economic Impact of Open Data, here
IAPP, On balancing personal privacy with public interest, here.
“All Happy Families Are Alike: The EDPS’ Bridges Between Competition and Privacy,” SSRN
“The Myth of the Privacy Paradox,” SSRN
Case Studies on Principles for a Data Economy,  ALI-ELI Project, here [PDF].
GDPR is the reason why hacking victims are uncovering cyberattacks faster, ZDNet
Covington, The Brussels Effect— The EU’s Digital Strategy Goes Global, here
In Australia, consumer data rights rollout now a full-blown crisis. The Federal Government’s new standards around Data Sharing Rights (CDR) was created with little consultation from the fintech and data sectors with a problematic rollout now based mostly on advice provided by the big banks. New Economy
J. Prüfer, Competition Policy and Data Sharing on Data-driven Markets, here [PDF]

Books

Facebook: The Inside Story, by Steven Levy. A journalist offers an inside look at Facebook’s rise, The Economist.
The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success by Ross Douthat, reviewed by Peter Thiel. First Things.
Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans, by Melanie Mitchell. Read an interesting review on Stephen Few’s blog.
Two books coming out this month that I’m looking forward to. Competition Overdose: How Free Market Mythology Transformed Us from Citizen Kings to Market Servants by Maurice Stucke and Ariel Ezrachi and Capital and Ideology by Thomas Piketty.

Companies

How Tesla Sets Itself Apart, Harvard Business Review.

Corporate Governance

Public Statement by Jay Clayton, Chairman, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, for FSOC Open Meeting, here.

e-Commerce

A court is about to decide who's responsible for what you buy on Amazon, CNN

Economics

Economic Report of the President, White House.
Europe considers trade-off between economic growth and public health, Financial Times.
Cheesecake Factory Tells Landlords Across the Country It Won’t Be Able to Pay Rent on April 1, Eater Los Angeles.
ODI, Sharing data to create value in the private sector, Google Docs link
It’s Now or Never for National Data Strategies, Project Syndicate

Education

Benjamin Franklin on the Balance Between Solitude and Company, Cal Newport.
1.5 billion children around globe affected by school closure. What countries are doing to keep kids learning during pandemic, Washington Post

Entertainment

Why Parasite’s success is forcing a reckoning in Japan’s film industry, Vox.
Westworld Season 3, out on 15 March, Explores a Brand-New World, ComingSoon.
What was the lyric in Men at Work’s Down Under (I love that song as I do most Australian music) about a vegemite sandwich? Tom Hank’s use of vegemite raises concern (in a nice way).
Life imitates art? Netflix 2018 series shows Covid-19 being used as a biochemical weapon.

Global

Why Afghanistan Became an Invisible War, New York Times. “Americans don’t want to fight in Afghanistan, they don’t want to die in Afghanistan and they don’t really want to hear about Afghanistan.”
A Global Outbreak Is Fuelling the Backlash to Globalisation. As the Covid-19 spreads around the world, companies are seeking alternatives to making goods in China, while right-wing political parties fulminate against open borders. New York Times. The Bank of England cut its benchmark interest rate in a surprise move aimed at cushioning the U.K. economy from the impact of the Covid-19. Airlines are trimming capacity and some executives are taking pay cuts, Wall Street Journal.
Mexican Women Are Shutting Down Their Country to Protest Violent Machismo Culture.
The Saudi–Russian oil feud keeps world prices extraordinarily low and President Vladimir Putin may not mind them (despite oil revenues making up 6.4% of Russian GDP, per the World Bank’s latest numbers, from 2017) “because he wants to break the U.S. shale industry. U.S. exports to Europe threaten Russia’s energy hold on Western Europe. He’s also sore at U.S. opposition to his Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline linking Siberia to Germany.” Wall Street Journal. Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Tanked Oil Markets. Here’s the Back Story on Wall Street Journal. Let Putin and MBS both lose! Wall Street Journal. Saudi Arabia fired another salvo in its war of words with rival crude heavyweight Russia on Wednesday, unveiling plans to boost its oil-production capacity to a record 13 million barrels a day.
We have only a decade to save Earth’s biodiversity and other interesting facts like we must reduce our red meat consumption by more than 50 per cent and double our intake of nuts, fruits, vegetables and legumes, South China Morning Post.

Health and Nutrition

Bloom by Emily Johnstone is a “Touching Animated Short Film about Depression and What It Takes to Recover the Light of Being,” Brain Pickings.
IMF announces $50 billion programme to fight the Covid-19 outbreak. Airlines facing immense pressure because of Covid-19 as their crisis management strategies don’t work in this context. Finnair is cancelling flights to mainland China, South Korea, and Milan because of the Covid-19 outbreak and will start talks with unions soon about temporary staff layoffs. Saudi Arabia expanded a rare freeze on pilgrimages to the Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medina by foreigners to also include Saudi citizens and residents.
The next dominoes in the Covid-19 economy. The Covid-19 could tip the US into recession, and it’s even less prepared than in 2008. Dangerous delays: The US has still only tested fewer than 5,000 people. New York State is paying inmates less than $1 per hour to make its official hand sanitizer. And Harvard and MIT tell students not return after spring break.
The whole of Italy is in lockdown to try to contain the spread of Covid-19. Italy has suspended all sports until at least 3 April 2020, Italian obituary pages show the rising dead from Covid-19.
Covid-19 might travel further and stay in the air for longer than official advice suggests, says South China Morning Post
How tech workers are preparing to quarantine themselves.
Facebook banned medical face mask listings, but they’re still on the site.
Covid-19 exposes how unprepared we are for pandemics.
Apple says it’s fine to clean your iPhone with disinfectant wipes à CNBC  
People in France contradicted official advice against large gatherings to amass the largest ever group of people dressed as smurfs for some reason. 
Singers around the world are inventing catchy tunes to sing as you wash your hands.
Tom Hanks says he has Covid-19. The actor said he and his wife, Rita Wilson, had tested positive while in Australia, where he was set to begin production on a film. New York Times, Wall Street Journal. They’re home safe and sound.
Will Covid-19 Lead to More Cyber Attacks?, Harvard Business Review. And WHO says a more than two-fold increase in Covid-19 cyberattacks on its website have increased, Dawn.
The search for a vaccine has become a matter of national pride, New York Times.
98.6 degrees Fahrenheit isn’t the average normal temperature anymore. It’s too high. Wall Street Journal
The Math Behind Social Distancing, Visual Capitalist

Life Hacks

Negotiation expert Chris Voss (@VossNegotiation), former lead international kidnapping negotiator for the FBI and author of the excellent book, Never Split the Difference, offers some hands-on negotiation training. Farnam Street.
Prisoner’s Dilemma: What Game Are you Playing? Farnam Street.

Management and Leadership

Building a Data-Driven Culture from the Ground Up, Harvard Business Review.
Jack Welch’s Approach to Leadership, Harvard Business Review. His choice of successor was considered one of his bad decisions. And Walter Robb, GE Executive Who Recruited Jack Welch and was later was chosen by Mr. Welch to revive GE’s medical-equipment business, dies of Covid-19 at 91.
Leaders should not shy away from their dark side, INSEAD.

Music

David Byrne’s Covid-19 Op-Ed, “We’re All in the Same Leaky Boat,” Rolling Stone.
Placido Domingo is under treatment for Covid-19.

Pakistan

Ten Questions, Dr Farrukh Saleem, The News
Food supply, Dr Farrukh Saleem, The News
Gallup says 62% Pakistanis feel country not heading in right direction, The News.
A digital dark age for Pakistan? Dawn.

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