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March 2022 - Things of Interest

 


Tech giants are the new nation states, and they're starting to act like it. Within three hours, Microsoft threw itself into the middle of a ground war in Europe — from 5,500 miles away. The threat centre, north of Seattle, had been on high alert, and it quickly picked apart the malware, named it 'FoxBlade' and notified Ukraine's top cyberdefense authority. Within three hours, Microsoft's virus detection systems had been updated to block the code, which erases — 'wipes' — data on computers in a network

Google employees say its return-to-office plan is unfair. The company enforces remote work policies for some, but not others

Notion wants to tackle the enterprise without losing its cool factor

Loom, the asynchronous video-recording app, blew up during the pandemic as an easy way to express yourself without having to set up a Zoom. It’s catching on: Dropbox is getting into the space; Slack has its own take; so does Cisco

Blockchain is a terrible idea for elections but could improve government purchasing, says the Government Accountability Office

Hackers steal $625 million from Ronin Network in largest ever crypto theft. Funny thig is that nobody noticed the theft for six days. For other such occurrences, check out the worldwide cryptocurrency heists tracker (updated daily)

Biden signs order on cryptocurrency as its use explodes

What happens when an AI knows how you feel? Going from only delivering our messages to writing them for us, understanding our emotions

Google to acquire cybersecurity firm Mandiant for $5.4 billion. If approved by regulators, it will be Google’s second-largest acquisition ever after its $12.5 billion Motorola Mobility deal in 2012 (which it sold to Lenovo for $2.9 billion two years later)

Google is changing up the look of Gmail—and you can customise it too

Remember LimeWire? The once-popular peer-to-peer file sharing platform, shut down in 2010 for facilitating music piracy, will relaunch as an NFT marketplace (More) | What are NFTs or nonfungible tokens? And Instagram Is getting NFTs but what the hell does that mean?

Uber adds fuel surcharge, citing high gas prices. It said the fees will go to drivers, who are responsible for paying for gas they use

Facebook advertisers can pursue class action over ad rates

For the third time ever, the Federal Trade Commission ordered a company to destroy an algorithm it created. In a 4 March complaint, the FTC ordered WW (formerly known as Weight Watchers) to delete the algorithms or AI models it created based on personal information collected from children via its healthy eating app, Kurbo. the US does not have comprehensive federal privacy laws, and who knows if it ever will

Biden administration boosts support for antitrust efforts and U.S. antitrust chiefs pledge crackdown on gatekeeper tech giants. DOJ’s Kanter and FTC’s Khan promise stricter deal reviews

Conservative-leaning tech groups are planning a “Day of Action” in early April to push back on antitrust proposals in Congress. Led by NetChoice, the self-described “most aggressive trade association” in tech, the plans include lawmaker meetings and “educational engagements online” on bills such as the American Innovation and Choice Online Act

Washington D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine announced a lawsuit against Grubhub for “misleading District residents and taking advantage of local restaurants to boost its own profits”

Inside the push to study sex in space. NASA is weirdly prudish when it comes to doin’ it in the final frontier. These researchers want to change that.

Neil Diamond sells song rights to Universal Music. The deal follows similar library deals with superstar artists including Sting, Bruce Springsteen, and Bob Dylan

What a shock! Taylor Hawkins, Foo Fighters Drummer, dies age 50. "His musical spirit and infectious laughter will live on with us forever," read a message posted to the band's social media accounts. The Foo Fighters cancelled their remaining tour dates

Netflix will prompt subscribers to pay for users outside their households in new test to address unauthorised password sharing

What six Batmobile stunts looked like behind the scenes

Saturday Night Live on Amazon Go. It’s hilarious

Amy Zegart on her new book, Spies, Lies, and Algorithms: The History and Future of American Intelligence. Open-source intelligence means spying isn’t just for governments anymore—anyone with an online connection can gather troves of information

Laurie Segall has covered tech's most influential figures before they were titans. Her book, Special Characters: My Adventures with Tech's Titans and Misfits, is essentially a backstage pass to the humans before they were the figures you read about today. It's also the story of woman coming into her own in the boy's club of Silicon Valley.

[PAPER] Chalamet Coughs, Dune Wins: Predicting Best Picture Winners Using Coughs and Sneezes

Rick Astley celebrates his 1987 debut album with reissue

Supreme Court to hear lawsuit alleging Andy Warhol infringed on a photographer's copyright in using her photo of the musician Prince as basis for a Warhol art piece

The vehicles of James Bond

The UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office has released resources to help children understand the basics of online privacy and protecting personal data, here

Lapsus$ is relatively new but has become one of the most talked about and feared hacker cyber-crime gangs, after successfully breaching major firms like Microsoft and then bragging about it online. Its leader – a 16-year-old from Oxford - just got arrested in London.

Amazon's entrepreneur dream is closer to a nightmare for many who started small businesses with it thinking they could make it big. Now they’re battling to keep going and afraid to quit

European authorities announced they had agreed to new rules for Big Tech competition under the DMA. Final passage is still required, but that’s basically a formality.

The DMA will focus on digital gatekeeper platforms worth over about $83 billion (75 billion euros) in areas such as messaging, social networking, browsers, and mobile operating systems. Tech giants Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, and Facebook parent Meta, as well as Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba and the travel platform Booking, will all be subject to the rules. Messaging services must also meet interoperability requirements, meaning apps such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, or iMessage will have to open themselves up to smaller messaging platforms.

And if they don’t comply? Regulators can impose hefty fines of up to 10 percent of a company’s global annual revenue, or 20 percent for repeat offenders

Many of those would of course be U.S. companies such as Amazon, Apple, Google, and Meta — which will now be subject to penalties as high as 20% of global turnover for repeat offenses unless they fundamentally remake how they operate in Europe, if not across the world

How quickly your password will be hacked…

How to make sure your phone isn’t keeping recordings of everything you say. Amazon's Alexa, Apple's Siri and Google's Assistant may be saving your every word. Here's how to delete that personal data

The best way to lead in uncertain times may be to throw out the playbook. Instead of following a rigid blueprint, executives must help organisations sense and respond to unpredictable market conditions

PwC’s Global Crisis Survey 2021 examines the worldwide business community’s response to unprecedented social, economic, and geopolitical disruption and…

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

The bullies are back! The pandemic has encouraged some bad behaviours that leaders need to look out for in the new hybrid world of work

The great resignation is taking root around the world

Majority of workers who quit a job in 2021 cited low pay, no opportunities for advancement, and feeling disrespected, said a PEW research report. Other reasons people gave for quitting are because they can, because they’re upset, and because they’re exhausted, according to McKinsey

The curiosity effect. How curiosity, creativity and childlike thinking help one CEO build a thriving culture at her start-up

As people return to offices, employers are under pressure to make office visits worth it and offer an “outstanding experience”

Gary Hamel’s Leading from the Heart with Angela Ahrendts and Why Good Jobs Matter with Zeynep Ton

The price of a tall Starbucks latte at Starbucks around the world

Burnt-out ship carrying 4,000 VW Group vehicles sinks in rough seas. Felicity Ace sank 220 miles off the coast of Portugal’s Azores Islands carrying $400 million of cargo

These 10 colleges have produced the most CEOs. If you want to be the big boss, it doesn’t hurt to go to Harvard, École Centrale Paris, or the University of Pennsylvania

Airbus flies first A380 powered by sustainable fuel. Increasing the use of sustainable aviation fuel is key to achieving the industry’s target of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050

And Air New Zealand started selling tickets for the first nonstop flight between Auckland and JFK. The flight from NZ NYC takes more than 16 hours, but because of science, you’ll technically land a mere 15 minutes after you take off

Why trustworthy and accurate ESG reporting matters now

Elon Musk hit the dance floor as his company held the grand opening of its first European manufacturing hub near Berlin, Germany, after months of delays. The plan is to produce 500,000 vehicles each year, which is more than the 450k battery-electric cars that rival Volkswagen sold in 2021. Tesla’s next “gigafactory” in Austin, TX, is slated to open in April.

The Eyes of History contests are held annually to select the best in visual journalism across still, video, and multimedia disciplines

Visualising the global landfill crisis

How technology — and the pandemic — transformed tipping in the USA

A royal tour of the Caribbean by Prince William and Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge, was designed to persuade Belize, Jamaica and the Bahamas to keep Queen Elizabeth II as head of state — but seems to be having the opposite effect, as Britain’s role in the slave trade comes under increasing scrutiny

'Falcons only' at this high-end Qatari clinic

One year after the Ever Given container ship ran aground in the Suez Canal, her sister vessel, the Ever Forward, is repeating the feat - in the US state of Maryland

US says Myanmar repression of Muslim Rohingya is genocide

Inside the BBC staff exodus: women of colour are ‘exhausted’ from fighting a broken system

The real reason the Dutch are so unbelievably rude

Boeing 737 crashes vertically into mountain in China with 132 on board. Doesn’t alleviate my increasing fear of flying

Browse this interactive electricity map that shows electricity’s climate impact in various countries.

Muscle strengthening lowers risk of death from all causes, study shows. Half an hour a week of activities such as gardening, sit-ups or yoga could help reduce the risk of dying from any cause by a fifth

Brain regions related to smell show decline following mild COVID-19

Music is just as powerful at improving mental health as exercise

How natural “short sleepers” thrive on 4 hours of sleep per night

Why do we die without sleep?

Nostalgia can reduce perception of pain, study shows

Here’s how an algorithm guides a medical decision. Sepsis Watch helps flag a potentially deadly reaction to infection

The Covid-19 vaccine market is getting crowded — as demand begins to wane

A lot of codes of conduct, community guidelines, and company values statements ask people to “assume good intent” when in conflict with other members. But good intent undermines diversity and inclusion

Storm-battered shipwreck from 1891 discovered in Lake Superior: "Still beautiful after 130 years." This reminded me of Gordon Lightfoot’s haunting song, the Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald (amazing lyrics). And on the theme of shipwrecks, here’s the stunning survival story of Ernest Shackleton and his Endurance (which sank in 1915) crew

Help make the world kinder. Learn something new about a co-worker, write a positive comment on a website, or have a judgment-free day

Why conversations go wrong. Our conversational styles can cause unintended conflicts, and what we can do to communicate more effectively with the people in our lives

Looking for a way to improve your writing skills? Check out YouWrite, the perfect place to get feedback and advice from professionals!

An academic shares eight tips for historical writing, but the advice applies to anyone trying to become a better writer.

People are actually cheating on Wordle

An audio-visual experience of the Apollo 11 lunar landing

Ice cream machine hackers sue McDonald's for $900 million. Kytch alleges that the Golden Arches crushed its business—and left soft serve customers out in the cold

Why it’s almost impossible to lose anything in Japan

Trump is suing Hillary Clinton for trying to ‘destroy his life’ with Russia collusion accusations. The former president is still extremely obsessed with efforts to uncover his campaign’s relationship with the foreign power ahead of the 2016 election

The inventor of GIFs, who came up with the idea when he was an employee at CompuServe in 1987 trying to figure out how to compress images, has died. Stephen Wilhite was 74; he’d had a stroke and then contracted COVID

Gabriel Boric: From student protest leader to Chile's youngest president at 36 years

Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov has announced he will auction off his Nobel Peace Prize medal to raise money for Ukrainian refugees.

Google: how we’re supporting the 2022 U.S. midterm elections

TikTok is taking aim at YouTube with longer 10-minute video uploads and…

White House briefed TikTok influencers on Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The administration is trying to fight misinformation and steer the discussion

Watchdog group publishes Encyclopaedia of all the nasty things big tech has done. The Tech Oversight Project's site features dozens of pages on everything from tech anti-competitive practices to spreading anti-vaccine misinformation

Six years after it dropped a chronological feed, Instagram introduced two new modes that allow users to view a time-oriented feed in addition to the algorithmically sorted feed. Instagram said users can now toggle between “Following” mode, which only shows posts from accounts they follow in reverse chronological order, and “Favourites” mode, a secret feed of up to 50 accounts users can select manually. You can switch these views by clicking the drop-down caret next to the Instagram logo.

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