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February 2022 - Things of Interest

 


Big Tech increases funding to US foreign policy think tanks. Tech giants battle US moves toward stricter regulation using anti-China lobbying

Facebook suffers $230bn wipeout in biggest one-day US stock plunge. Zuckerberg’s personal wealth tumbles by $30bn-plus

Meta rivalry with Apple inflamed as Facebook parent company share price plummets. Zuckerberg blames ‘headwinds’ from Apple’s new iOS and changes in privacy for the record drop in value

Kenneth Rogoff on The Fed's Wary Embrace of Digital Dollars

Alfa Romeo thinks attaching NFTs to cars can improve resale value. Is this just buzzword marketing or a beneficial use of blockchain?

Visions of the Internet in 2035

Charlie Warzel’s interesting piece, Beware the FOMO Bullies of Technology, asks are we living through a replay of the ’90s, when most people just didn’t get “this internet thing”?

Deal on EU tech rules possible by June, key lawmaker says

AMD's $35 billion deal to acquire Xilinx was essential for its survival

5 alternatives to Office 365 that you’ve never considered

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang on Nvidia’s post-Arm strategy, Omniverse, and self-driving cars

How big technology systems are slowing innovation. The great IT revolution is no longer promoting economic dynamism. It’s preventing it

China is about to regulate AI—and the world is watching. Sweeping rules will cover algorithms that set prices, control search results, recommend videos, and filter content.

Will Congress’ app competition bill really change the game?

Facebook-owner Meta says it will pay new $2 million UK fine imposed by the CMA

The Justice Department wants to depose some of Apple's top executives as it prepares for a trial to determine if Alphabet's Google broke antitrust law in how it runs its search business and…

Google's advertising tech targeted in European publishers' complaint

worrying new CMA research reveals that 7 out of 10 people have experienced potential rip-offs online

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) received 56,000 reports about romance scams in 2021 from victims who were conned out of nearly $550 million.     That’s more than double the 25,000 complaints and $200 million lost to romance scams in 2019 — a growth that was probably spurred by the increasing isolation of the pandemic and a shift to looking for connections online

 

Joe “just conversations” Rogan defends misinformation like a classic grifter. Money, misinformation, & snake oil: he has a lot in common with Gwyneth Paltrow

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds will connect to a famous wrathful villain. Prequel series on Paramount+ will also feature a return to episodic storytelling

A new book, Stolen Focus, has examined how the rise of digital media close has caused us to become caught up in our own lives and stuck in an endless cycle of distraction. It is more of a hypothesis about how we got here rather than recommending how to get away from it. The big takeaway is that the business model of tech is more problematic than the tech itself

The most iconic Super Bowl commercials of all time

Cass Sunstein on Beatlemania. Why did the Beatles become a worldwide sensation?

The BBC: A People’s History by David Hendy review – the BBC from the bottom up à A lovingly told story of the people who built a broadcasting giant now in peril

Sledgehammer: How Breaking With the Past Brought Peace to the Middle East. David Friedman, the former US ambassador to Israel, has written a predictably unsubtle memoir

Arooj Aftab in concert – a mesmerising ambient jazz threesome

[PODCAST] The Complete Guide to Absolutely Everything

U.S. senators say CIA data collection has been hidden from public, lawmakers

Meta may be forced to shutter Facebook, Instagram in EU. Stringent data privacy rules under GDPR have the company in a tight spot

Texas sues Meta for allegedly collecting the ‘most intimate data’ of users

Online activists are doxxing Ottawa’s anti-vax protesters. Experts warn this is blurring the line between activism and vigilantism

European data authorities launch a joint investigation on the public sector’s use of cloud

Google will stop cross-app tracking on Android phones. The change could present another challenge for platforms that lean on app-tracking for their ads business

Facebook scammers and fake cryptocurrency. Facebook ads have popped up to advertise non-existent Amazon, Tesla, and even Facebook cryptocurrencies

The Biden administration’s cyber czar, Chris Inglis, is pushing a swing-for-the-fences effort to transform the Internet from an unruly Wild West to a peaceful land of law and order. Dubbed “a new social contract” for cybersecurity, the details show it's the most expansive argument [paywall] yet from the administration for why the nation must completely revamp how it manages cybersecurity

Europe proposes rules for fair access to connected device data under the Data Act, a key deliverable under Europe’s strategy for data.

After the Great Resignation, tech firms are getting desperate. Faced with a shortage of qualified workers and fierce competition, companies are offering candidates money to interview and plush perks if they stay.

The road to the Great Resignation was paved well before COVID, and corporate America needs to own it

Belgian workers can request a four-day workweek. Employees would have to work longer hours within the four days, but without a loss of salary

This is what the 4-day workweek means for equal rights, productivity and climate change

A softer economics. Financial markets are entangled and uncertain. When will economists let go of physics envy to embrace the quantum revolution?

As economies have heated up, consumer inflation has soared, reaching 7.1 percent in the US in December. Producer price inflation has also risen sharply, particularly in the eurozone. The UK is straining under inflationary pressure but so are emerging economies

Explaining inflation so you can understand. Also, an economist explains what is inflation, and whether we should worry.

The rise of evidence-based policymaking?

How to boost curiosity in your company — and why it matters. Curiosity and creativity spur innovation. To build these skills companywide, emphasise questions over answers and create space for exploration

From jargon to emoji, the evolution of workplace communication styles. A survey of 2,000 remote and hybrid workers found a preference for more informal and emotive communication

An expert explains why oil prices matter to the global economy

The US Senate just revived its most divisive Section 230 bill

Amazon hikes Prime membership fees in U.S. as wages, costs rise. Nonetheless, it announced gains of more than $14bn last holiday season in its latest earnings report

American companies that failed in China

Reliable checks on companies' sustainability credentials will take years to develop, auditors say, meaning investors pouring trillions of dollars into green funds need to be careful

Hue, a non-profit organisation focused on uplifting diverse talent in the workplace, released its annual “A State of Inequity” report on Thursday. The report examines the experiences of employees of colour at work and their perspectives on equity at their respective organisations

Four top EV charging companies on their plans to win federal funds after the Biden admin recently gave guidance on how states should distribute $5 billion of the infrastructure bill funds

Pepsi releases new nitrogen-infused Cola that's “softer than a soft drink.” Apparently, carbon dioxide has larger bubbles and can impart a slightly acrid taste whereas nitrogen's smaller bubbles are less explosive on the palate

A visual guide to 5 types of climate indexes

And on climate, thousands of planes are flying empty, and no one can stop them. A pre-pandemic policy on airport usage is pressuring airlines to keep “ghost flights” in the air, flights without any passengers. Airlines do it so they can maintain coveted landing slots at airports. Rules that were relaxed during the early days of the pandemic are starting to be enforced again, but critics say it is time for the practice to stop (or at least be curtailed) because of costs and the emissions caused by the ghost flights - the climate impact is massive. Lufthansa recently voiced its concerns by disclosing it had flown a whopping 21,000 ghost flights last winter

Stillwater, Oklahoma, and Oklahoma State University are paying American Airlines $4 million to continue flying to the city and thousands watch livestream of scary Heathrow plane landings in storm Eunice

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report: climate change is about to get so much worse. It is likely going to make the world sicker, hungrier, poorer, gloomier and way more dangerous in the next 18 years with an “unavoidable” increase in risks

Tintin’s world adventure: comic strip hero joins the Smurfs on new Belgian passport. Designs for official documents celebrate the country’s heritage – and are hard to forge

An interview with Angela Huyue Zhang, who assesses the regulatory headwinds faced by Chinese tech firms, exposes the folly of America’s China policy, and more

Yuval Noah Harari on why Vladimir Putin has already lost this war

Preparing for the first winter without Russian gas. The European Union can manage without Russian gas next winter, but must be united in taking difficult decisions, accepting that in many cases it won’t have enough time for perfect solutions.

The bran bubble burst. Remember all those commercials for cereal and other food products that trumpeted the benefits of bran. Where did they all go?

Is Wordle good for your brain?

How your brain responds to singing. Some neurons in your brain respond to singing but not other music

Burnout and how to avoid it

Just  15 crops account for 90% of the world’s energy intake, hence the need to expand our crop menu

Microsoft’s take on task management is available for a test run

Wordle’s success is based on learning from the past…and Wordle’s buyout by New York Times draws backlash from fans

This drone flies using Leonardo da Vinci's 530-year-old helicopter design. Leonardo's aerial screws actually can work when built with modern materials

Ginger v Grammarly: Which grammar checker is better in (2022)?

Microsoft Word: When you divide your document into sections to change page layout attributes, you need to give some thought to what Word will do if you later delete some of those sections. Here's the info you need to make an intelligent decision about deleting sections

What’s going on? US road deaths reach ‘crisis’ levels. An estimated 31,720 people died in motor vehicle traffic crashes from January through September 2021, an increase of about 12%

Visualising Valentine’s Day candy preferences

How to get better at making every type of decision. Here’s what to do if you regularly wish you could hire someone to make all your choices for you

As if supply chains weren’t strained enough…a burning cargo ship full of Porsches and VWs is adrift in the mid-Atlantic

Your personality, explained by your annoying household habits

What makes writing more readable? Looking at how to make writing easier to read

George Takei got reparations. He says they 'strengthen the integrity of America'

Shaquille O'Neal bought a family of 11 a new 15-passenger mini-van, a new truck, and dinner, saying “every day I leave the house I gotta bless somebody.”

The world of fashion has become swept up in what's being called TikTok couture, using the popular social media platform to set and/or take part in the latest microtrends and ultra-fast-fashion

Mark Zuckerberg and team consider shutting down Facebook and Instagram in Europe if Meta cannot process Europeans’ data on US servers, says a source. Meta denies such a move but Policymakers should take Facebook’s warning about leaving Europe more seriously

What Nick Clegg’s promotion means for Meta, Mark Zuckerberg, and Sheryl Sandberg

‘Don’t be Google’: The rise of privacy focused start-ups. Google dominates the analytics market with 57% of all websites using its service, according to survey group W3Techs

22.02.2022: social media gets excited over palindrome ‘Twosday.’ Unusual calendar date reads the same forwards or backwards and is rumoured to bring good luck

4 things you need to know about the metaverse this week and Meta is building an AI Babelfish to translate every language as part of the company’s push to use AI for the creation of the metaverse

YouTube blocks RT and other Russian channels from generating ad revenue. The move follows similar ones from Meta and Twitter.

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