All Things Tech
America’s Top Foundations Bankroll Attack on Big Tech.
Major non-profits and other organisations have pledged millions of dollars
toward groups trying to build a modern trust-busting movement. New
York Times
How Tech’s Lobbyists Are Using the Pandemic to Make Gains.
Silicon Valley hasn’t suffered from the same financial devastation as other
industries. Tech companies still have an agenda to push. New
York Times
EU Tech Policy Brief: March 2020 Recap, Centre
for Democracy and Technology
The Artificial Intelligence Index, Wall
Street Journal. the annual Artificial Intelligence Index
was created under the auspices of Stanford University’s Human-Centre AI Institute.
Facebook adds a Quiet Mode to mute push notifications and
reduce screen time, PocketNow
And WhatsApp Battles Coronavirus Misinformation, Wall
Street Journal
Coronavirus Fears Have Amplified a Baseless But Dangerous
5G Conspiracy Theory, Time
Facebook scales back the Libra crypto-currency
project, New
York Times
Facebook and Google face an ad slump but
they’re still expected to better than others, New
York Times
India’s Reliance Industries and Facebook weigh
creating a super-app, similar to WeChat, one that is that is not just a
communication platform but one where users would also be able to buy groceries
through Reliance Retail stores, or shop at ajio.com, or make payments using
JioMoney. Economic
Times
Coronavirus Forces Tech Start-up Founders to Grow Up Fast.
The drive to go-big-or-go-home has been replaced by a desperate effort to
conserve cash just to survive, Wall
Street Journal
The Bank of England’s discussion on digital currency, YouTube
A basis for a fair data economy standard, Sitra
See also, the most important trends of the 2020s, here
Sundar Pichai on the Role Big Tech Companies Should
Play in the Coronavirus Crisis, Time
Microsoft throws weight behind open data movement. Tech
group wants to prevent concentration of digital power in US, China and Silicon
Valley, Financial
Times
All Things Big Data, Cybersecurity, Digital Strategy, and Privacy
"Zoombombing" by hackers or uninvited guests who
harass Zoom video conferences with hate speech or pornography, brings
focus on data privacy and protection measures taken by the company, Axios. Some Zoom safety and privacy tips from Mozilla.
Also, ‘Zoombombing’ Becomes a Dangerous Organised Effort, New
York Times. Elizabeth Warren writes
[pdf] to Zoom CEO, demands info on
children’s privacy policies, The
Verge. Zoom Is Easy. That’s Why It’s Dangerous. The best
technology is simple to use. There’s a dark side to that. New
York Times. And there is something called Zoom fatigue.
And here are 10 alternatives to Zoom, Time.
A guide to modern manners in the age of Zoom, Financial
Times
Half a Million Zoom Accounts Compromised by Credential
Stuffing, Sold on Dark Web, says CPO
Magazine. Credential stuffing, using username and password combinations
that were obtained in past breaches of other companies, is the main reason.
The FTC offers 10 privacy tips for businesses using
video conferencing, here
Most Americans don't want app makers or the government to
scrape their data to combat the coronavirus pandemic, a new
survey finds, in the face of public- and private-sector efforts to do just
that.
See what various
companies know about you!
Facebook to allow users to access data generated
from their off-platform engagement with it, Axios.
But Privacy group says Facebook isn't sharing all off-platform data with
users, Axios
Google releases location data of 131 countries to
show if coronavirus lockdowns are working, Express
Tribune
Google’s Meet teleconferencing
service now adding about 3 million users per day, up from two million
per day earlier this month, The
Verge (lots of data being collected!)
Google is updating the Drive and Docs share window
to make it less confusing. The update will also come to Google Sheets, The
Verge
Google Searches Can Help Us Find Emerging Covid-19
Outbreaks, says
Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, the author of “Everybody
Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really
Are.”
Foursquare Merges With Factual, Another
Location-Data Provider. The all-stock deal is aimed at sharpening Foursquare’s
location-data offerings, from audience-targeting and ad measurement to app
developer tools. Wall
Street Journal
Can Our Phones Stop a Pandemic? Some countries are using
location data from smartphones to fight the pandemic. New
York Times
And on phones, Apple and Google partner on
COVID-19 contact tracing technology, Apple
NewsRoom
The European Commission issues guidance on Apps
supporting the fight against COVID 19 pandemic in relation to data protection,
[pdf].
GPD and Stanford Global Digital Policy Incubator publish
report on National AI Strategies and human rights, Global Partners Digital,
here
When Google and Apple get privacy right, is
there still something wrong? As the tech giants develop privacy-friendly
technologies to help tackle the COVID-19 pandemic, we need to focus on the
bigger picture of what’s at stake, Tamar Sharon, Medium
Piyush Gupta says collective action trumps privacy
rights in a pandemic, Financial
Times
Jeffrey Prince and Scott Wallsten, How
Much is Privacy Worth Around the World and Across Platforms?. Available at
SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3528386
Tomasz Mucha and Timo Seppala, Artificial
Intelligence Platforms – A New Research Agenda for Digital Platform Economy.
ETLA Working Papers No 76, available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3532937
“Big Data” as an antitrust issue, podcast from the
ABA Spring Meeting 2020, here
Report of the International Developments and Comments Task
Force on Common Issues Relating to the Digital Economy and Competition, here
The FTC will be holding a Workshop on Data
Portability on 22 September 2020, details here
Antitrust and Competition Law (and Consumer Protection)
Antitrust’s Implementation Blind Side: Challenges to
Major Expansion of U.S. Competition Policy, Alison Jones (King's
College London – The Dickson Poon School of Law) and William Kovacic (George
Washington University - Law School; King's College London – The Dickson Poon
School of Law), 11 February 2020, SSRN.
Matt Stoller on how a merger led to a ventilator
shortage in the United States, ProMarket
Five myths about antitrust law, Washington
Post
Alexander Krzepicki,
Joshua D Wright, and John M Yun, The Impulse to Condemn the Strange: Assessing Big
Data in Antitrust (11 March 2020), SSRN
She Wants to Break Up Big Everything. Trustbusting
advocates like Sarah Miller, who
target corporate power, have finally found themselves at the centre of the
political conversation. New
York Times
Three Ways Antitrust Enforcement Has Changed Under
Coronavirus, and One Way it Has Not, JD
Supra
Prioritising Digital Platforms for Antitrust Review, Centre
for Democracy and Technology
The Google-Fitbit deal is no easy going with
the US DOJ, ChannelNews
Australia
The pandemic pause: competition policy under lockdown, Frontier
Economics
FTC Commissioner Christine Wilson talks about Global
Innovation, Local Regulation: Navigating Competition Rules in the Digital
Economy
Andrew Smith, Director, FTC Bureau of Consumer
Protection, talks about Using Artificial Intelligence and Algorithms, here
The American Antitrust Institute releases the State
of Antitrust Enforcement and Competition Policy in the U.S., here
[pdf]
The EU starts a competition probe on Facebook’s
online services, Financial
Times
Consumer Reports writes to the House Judiciary
Antitrust Subcommittee about online platforms investigation, here
[pdf]
Books
Disunited
Nations: The Scramble for Power in an Ungoverned World by Peter Zeihan.
The
Storm Before the Calm: America's Discord, the Coming Crisis of the 2020s,
and the Triumph Beyond by George Friedman
You're
Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters by Kate Murphy
Successful
Aging: A Neuroscientist Explores the Power and Potential of Our Lives by Daniel
J. Levitin
Sandworm:
A New Era of Cyberwar and the Hunt for the Kremlin's Most Dangerous Hackers by Andy
Greenberg
Companies
How venture capital became the most dangerous thing to
happen to now-troubled direct-to-customers (DTCs)
like Outdoor Voices, Harry’s, and Casper, Medium,
and why so many brands on Instagram look the same. It’s because of a single
design studio responsible for branding a slew of mega-successful start-ups like
Casper and Allbirds, Fast
Company
Corporate Governance
Corporate Governance During Covid-19: Five Things Better
Boards Are Doing Now, Chartered
Management Institute
Corporate governance should not die from Covid-19, Responsible
Investor
How Business Should Change After the Coronavirus Crisis, New
York Times
The COVID-19 Crisis and Corporate Governance. Some articles on the European Corporate
Governance Institute’s website
e-Commerce
Getting platform regulation right, European
Digital Rights [EDRi]
Etsy’s shares crash in March and then recover on the sales
of one item…masks! Financial
Times
Economics
Coronavirus: Will intellectual property be a hurdle in
India's fight against COVID-19? Business
Today
Carmakers face more than $100bn hit to revenues. New
calculation highlights scale of losses should plants remain closed until end of
April, Financial
Times
Emerging-Market Economies Brace for Coronavirus Hit: average
economic output across developing nations is expected to shrink for the first
time in decades, Financial
Times
China Records First Ever Contraction in Quarterly GDP on
Coronavirus. GDP contraction of 6.8% foreshadows pain likely to be reported
world-wide, Wall
Street Journal
Straggling in a good economy, and now struggling in a crisis.
The coronavirus pandemic has shown how close to the edge many Americans were
living, with pay and benefits eroding even as corporate profits surged. New
York Times
The Bank for International Settlements and the World
Bank’s report on Payment Aspects of Financial Inclusion in the Fintech Era
is here [pdf]
Oil Prices Won't Be Negative Forever. But the Oil Industry
Will Never Be the Same, Time
Statement from Assistant Attorney General Makan
Delrahim on the 20th Anniversary of World Intellectual Property
Day, here
Education
Teacher in a Strange Land: If Technology Can’t Save Us,
What Will?, Nancy Flanagan, National Education
Policy Centre
Entertainment
Whatever happened to the golden age of television? Netflix
and Disney are spending billions on new shows, but is it any good? Financial
Times
HBO's gripping Bad Education tells the story of a truly
epic scam, Time
Global
After the Coronavirus Passes, Your World Will Not Go Back
To Normal. Before the pandemic began, the systems that govern our world were
brittle. Today, they are broken. When we emerge, the world will be different,
and so will we. Ryan Broderick, Buzzfeed
24 Hours in a Pandemic Nation, MSN
How to Thrive in Online Life: A video game pro tells us to
embrace the mess of our pandemic lives. New
York Times
Why a Pandemic Is Bringing Out Our Best Online, New
York Times
The History of the World, in One Video, Visual
Capitalist
Apollo 13 à11-17 April 1970. 50 years
after Apollo 13, we can now see the moon as the astronauts did, Space.com
A Post-COVID-19 Digital Bretton Woods, Project
Syndicate
The European Data Protection Supervisor calls for a
pan-European approach against the pandemic, YouTube
Health and Nutrition
Anthony Fauci,
Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is the
most popular man when it comes to COVID 19, Axios
Stretching the International Order to Its Breaking Point.
The greatest error that geopolitical analysts can make may be believing that
the crisis will be over in three to four months. The
Atlantic
Why is Germany’s coronavirus death rate low? New
York Times
Kara Swisher on
Fox’s Fake News Contagion. The network spent too long spraying its viewers with
false information about the coronavirus pandemic. New
York Times. Sean Hannity, “a windbag of rage,” got upset about that, Daily
Beast
Trump’s chloroquine hype is a misinformation problem
bigger than social media, The
Verge
Life Hacks
David Brooks, The Age of Coddling Is Over. Learning
what hardship has to teach us, New
York Times
David Brooks, Who Is Driving Inequality? You Are, New
York Times
Microsoft Word now flags double spaces as errors, ending
the great space debate. One-spacers take the victory in an end of an era, The
Verge
Management and Leadership
The art of war, dogfighting and business management: how
military thinking can help business, Medium
Music
Duran Duran’s John Taylor tested positive for
Coronavirus and recovered. The bassist described the virus as akin to a "turbo-charged
flu." Consequence
of Sound
5 April 1980 was R.E.M.’s first concert – 40 years ago. I
was a fan of R.E.M. until 1996 and then I wasn’t. R.E.M.’s 10 greatest
concerts and every R.E.M. album
from worst to best.
Roger Waters talks to Rolling Stone, here
The Rolling Stones drop
quarantine anthem ‘Living in a Ghost Town,’ Express
Tribune
My friend from High School, James Nevius, put
together a list of his favourite songs
between 1980 and 1988, here
Miley Cyrus Covers Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were
Here” on Saturday Night
Live
Pakistan
Coronavirus to cost Pakistan economy over $15bn, MENAFN
Pakistan’s Imran Khan side-lined by military during
coronavirus outbreak. Prime minister’s halting approach has left gap for army
to step in and orchestrate policy, Financial
Times
PM-appointed body calls for cut in policy rate, oil prices,
Dawn
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