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January 2022 - Things of Interest

 Wishing everyone a wonderful 2022



Here’s a reading list of emerging tech predictions for this year by Morning Brew, that has compiled a reading list of the smartest year-ahead documents.

2022 will be the ‘do or die’ moment for Congress to take action against Big Tech

European Parliament gives initial approval to rules that would change big tech data collection, advertising. The sweeping legislation will likely be subject to months of debate before a final vote. US pushes to change EU’s digital gatekeeper rules as Washington worries that the Digital Markets Act could target American firms

Xi Jinping’s crackdown on Chinese tech firms will continue. By rewriting the rules, the president is resetting an entire industry. Also, China vows ‘no mercy’ in battle against corruption, big tech. Alibaba shares plummet, dragging down stocks in Hong Kong

From lane nannies to voice controls, 2021 was the year for annoying auto tech

Microsoft to buy US gaming giant Activision-Blizzard for $69bn. The deal marks Microsoft’s biggest purchase in company history, dwarfing its $26.2 billion acquisition of LinkedIn. Microsoft’s largest-ever takeover will make it the world’s third largest gaming company by revenue after Sony and Tencent, according to a company statement. Why Microsoft is splashing $69bn on video games The tech giant’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard is its biggest-ever deal

Sony announced buying Bungie for $3.6 billion, the news coming just weeks after Microsoft announced plans to acquire Activision Blizzard

UK launches crackdown on ‘misleading’ cryptocurrency ads. In the US, NYC Mayor Eric Adams will get his first paycheck in crypto, part of a bigger push to make New York City into a crypto hub.

How improvements to AT&T and Verizon’s 5G networks sparked a war with the aviation sector. US and international airlines warn of 'calamity' if 5G deployed near airports

It’s time for Big Tech to play fair on IP and Meta joins the Crypto Open Patent Alliance as its largest patent holder. The tech giant has committed to COPA, an organization created by Jack Dorsey’s Block in 2020

Why it’s so hard to regulate algorithms. Governments increasingly use algorithms to do everything but attempts to regulate them have been unsuccessful

Why anti-Muslim apps keep reappearing on GitHub and India’s tech sector has a caste problem and in the UK, PM orders Cabinet Office to investigate 'Muslimness' claim of Nusrat Ghani

India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party has been using a secret app called Tek Fog to amplify right-wing propaganda across trending topics, influence public opinion, and attack critics. After a whistleblower came forward in 2020, The Wire spent two years investigating the app. The two-part report is here and here

Intel reveals plans for massive new Ohio factory to address the chip shortage Stateside

An inside look at how one person can control a swarm of 130 robots. Virtual reality and artificial intelligence helped with the daunting task

The 4 pillars of successful digital transformations

Waymo sues California DMV to keep autonomous vehicle crash data secret, arguing that sharing such data with the public would amount to giving up trade secrets

Top 9 free AI tools that make your life easier

WhatsApp conquered the world. 2 billion users later, it has its sights set on a new market – it's coming for the US

Mariana Mazzucato , Ilan Strauss on why Big Tech Must Stop Hiding

'Enforcers are not gonna back down': Lina Khan talks rewriting the rules of antitrust. The FTC chair outlined her vision for the future of antitrust enforcement in her first televised interview since taking the job

Competition in the digital economy. The related World Bank report is here

We can have a better Internet if we allow competition to flourish

Paul Krugman on why are progressives hating on antitrust?

The antitrust case against Facebook draws blood. The latest ruling by a federal judge is a milestone for the effort to regulate Big Tech

The new Antitrust Bill contains a hate and disinformation loophole and Apple and Google split with start-ups over antitrust bill

Tim Cook, Ted Cruz, and the strange politics of tech antitrust. Democrats and Republicans have found the tech reform debate scrambles traditional party politics — and the Apple CEO and Texas senator have found themselves chatting

The Centre for Data Innovation hosted a panel discussion discussing the impact of counterfeit goods on the U.S. market. Panellists from government and industry discussed how counterfeiting is a growing problem and offered a look at what government and e-commerce platforms believe are the ways forward

Spotify top music streaming service and with 15%, Apple's streaming service takes second place in the rankings, reveals report

Scientists, Doctors call on Spotify to implement misinformation policy over claims on Joe Rogan Show

But following the Joe Rogan backlash by artists and others, Spotify published its “long-standing” platform rules as its stock price took a nosedive and artists including Neil Young and Joni Mitchell vowed to pull their music from the platform. See also Spotify is more than just a bystander to Joe Rogan’s misinformation

Tencent is scanning kids' faces to stop them using older relatives' gaming accounts to get around China's gaming restrictions

Apple warns U.S. Senators tech antitrust bill would harm iPhone privacy

Europe’s move against Google Analytics is just the beginning. Austria’s data regulator has found that the use of Google Analytics is a breach of GDPR. In the absence of a new EU-US data deal, other countries may follow.

January 2022 non-fiction and business bestsellers

Coming this May: A new big tech book is written by Wall Street Journal reporter Tripp Mickle. It’s called “After Steve: How Apple Became a Trillion-Dollar Company and Lost Its Soul,” and it’s about Tim Cook, Jony Ive and how the company changed after Jobs’ death

Amy Klobuchar’s Antitrust: Taking on Monopoly Power from the Gilded Age to the Digital Age is out this month

McKinsey on building 21st century companies in Asia

Why did the Gilded Age end? Robber barons amassed vast fortunes during the age that began at the start of the Civil War—and ended with a crash

PwC’s 25th Annual Global CEO Survey: Reimagining the outcomes that matter. As environmental, financial and societal pressures converge, today’s leaders must solve a new equation

How real-life simulations can solve your strategy execution problem

And what separates the best CEOs from the rest? “A huge part of the CEO role now is external. Setting your strategy, running your organisation, and delivering for shareholders is only half the job.” —Senior partner Carolyn Dewar, co-author of forthcoming McKinsey book CEO Excellence

Business continues to be the most trusted institution globally, according to the latest Edelman Trust Barometer. That trust comes with demands – consumers, employees and investors expect businesses to demonstrate values and take social stances – and it's also conflicted, as 52% said capitalism is harmful

Toxic culture is driving the great resignation. Employees are leaving because they feel ignored. The employee engagement strategy you need during the Great Resignation. Research using employee data reveals the top five predictors of attrition and four actions managers can take in the short term to reduce attrition.

U.S. companies are pillaging Latin America’s tech talent. Some exasperated founders are recruiting developers who can’t speak English to block talent poachers

Raghuram G. Rajan on The End of Free-Lunch Economics

How to keep learning as a leader

[PAPER] Competitiveness and Employability explores the impact on perceived and actual employability when job candidates signal different personal tastes for competitions.

Indian states are competing over Tesla production and Toyota’s unorthodox supply-chain model helped it top General Motors in U.S. car sales

China plans charging infrastructure for 20 million EVs. All new residential complexes will be required to build EV charging stations

The global race for battery production is underway. Battery insiders broke down the current state of the industry in a comprehensive new report

Electric cars won’t fix South Asia’s pollution problems. EV policies in India, Pakistan, Nepal, and Bangladesh focus on financial gains and ignore glaring mass transit and environmental needs

Government pauses plans to rewrite UK copyright laws after authors protest. Intellectual property rule changes were mooted in the wake of Brexit but have been shelved after warnings about how this could hit writers’ incomes

Women who drive for Uber and Lyft are being left to fend for themselves. Two dozen women drivers speak out about their experiences with sexual assault and harassment

The Systemic Framework on Innovation Capacity enables governments and civil servants to have their very own reality check and ask themselves critical questions: what’s our capacity to innovate? Where are the strengths and weaknesses in our government system? And how do we strengthen our capacity to innovate for better outcomes to complex challenges?

For two years, Singapore has tried to manage COVID. With Omicron, it’s starting to give up control

Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) by has been the world’s most widely-used metric for scoring corruption. This infographic uses the 2021 CPI to visualize corruption in countries around the world, and the biggest 10-year changes. This year’s CPI reveals that corruption levels are at a worldwide standstill

An infographic on The World Leaders In Positions of Power (1970-Today)

New Bill would make Lunar New Year a federal holiday in the US. The measure introduced by Rep. Grace Meng and 44 co-sponsors would make Lunar New Year the 12th federal public holiday

Economic diplomacy takes on a new meaning. Rwanda makes efforts to capture Chinese online consumers

As more Vietnamese get online, social media is the new battlefront for the regime and their Force 47, a 10,000-person military unit, works to quell online dissent in the country.

How to avoid burnout

Peloton’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad year…ss demand for the trendy bikes tumbles, Peloton is reportedly cutting up to 41% of sales and marketing staff and reviewing its financials with McKinsey

The science behind why doughnuts are so hard to resist

How to get work done—from anywhere. These tips and gear will help you maximize productivity from a backpack, airplane, or hotel

Your attention didn’t collapse. It was stolen. Social media and many other facets of modern life are destroying our ability to concentrate. We need to reclaim our minds while we still can

The New York Times buys Wordle

Here’s why misinformation is a smaller problem than you think and some tips on how you can help someone you think has been duped by misinformation (if you really want to try)

One way to listen better is to practice reflective listening - a focused, engaged way to hear what the other person is saying and indicate that you understand their points, says Robert Whipple. More necessary when the other person is emotional or highly worked up

Theranos Founder Elizabeth Holmes is convicted on 4 counts. A jury acquits the former CEO of the failed blood-testing start-up on four other charges, and deadlocks on three

Read Sue Gray’s report into Downing Street parties, where people liked to drink…a lot. The report said the parties were “difficult to justify” and that the office failed to meet the standards "expected of those working at the heart of Government."

Teenager seeks $50k from Elon Musk to delete Twitter bot tracking private jet. In DM exchange Tesla boss offers $5,000 for takedown but 19-year-old replies: ‘Any chance to up that to $50K?’ He says he’s put a lot of work in the app

An open letter to YouTube’s CEO from the world’s fact-checkers: YouTube is allowing its platform to be weaponised by unscrupulous actors to manipulate and exploit others, and to organise and fundraise themselves

František Vrabel on How Facebook became the opium of the masses

TikTok isn’t silly. It’s serious. It is disrupting America’s social-media landscape

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