Tag: Facebook

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Supplier Report: 12/27/2019


Photo by Abbie Bernet on Unsplash

One holiday down, one more to go.

Security was a big theme this week. Philadelphia-favorite Wawa discovered a security breach in their payment systems going back to last March. The breach was plugged on December 12th (better check your credit card statements).

Meanwhile Facebook has agreed (under duress) to stop using the phone number you give for Two Factor Authentication to mine for data and suggest friends.

And finally… Foxconn continues to be a disaster in Wisconsin. They still haven’t committed to what type of factory they are building and Wisconsin (rightfully) is starting to push back on their tax rebate commitments. Why has it taken this long?

Acquisitions/Investments

  • Google buys game developer Typhoon Studios

    Google has been pretty vocal about its internal development efforts, including Stadia Studios led by former EA exec Jade Raymond. In an interview with Gamesindustry.biz, the exec detailed that Google was hoping to build out multiple first-party studios to release content on the platform.

    “We have a plan that includes building out a few different first-party studios, and also building up the publishing org to ship exclusive content created by indie devs and other external partners,” Raymond told the publication.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/12/19/google-buys-game-developer-typhoon-studios/

Artificial Intelligence

  • Finland is making its online AI crash course free to the world

    There are already quite a few sites for people looking to learn the basics of AI, but Finland’s offering seems worth your time if you’re interested in such a thing. It’s nicely designed, offers short tests at the end of each section, and covers a range of topics from the philosophical implications of AI to technical subjects like Bayesian probability. It’s supposed to take about six weeks to finish, with each section taking between five and 10 hours.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/18/21027840/online-course-basics-of-ai-finland-free-elements

    Link to the course:
    https://www.elementsofai.com/

Security/Privacy

  • Wawa hit with massive data breach, potentially affecting more than 850 locations, CEO says

    In a letter to customers Friday, chief executive Chris Gheysens said the company discovered malware capable of exposing card numbers, expiration dates and cardholder names at “potentially all Wawa in-store payment terminals and fuel dispensers” since March 4. Debit card PINs, credit card security codes and driver’s license information for verifying age-restricted purchases were not affected, he said.

    Gheysens said the convenience store chain is unaware of any unauthorized card use as a result of the breach, which was contained Dec. 12, two days after it was discovered. Wawa declined to tell The Washington Post how many customers or transactions were affected.

    “I want to reassure anyone impacted they will not be responsible for fraudulent charges related to this incident,” Gheysens said in a news release. “To all our friends and neighbors, I apologize deeply for this incident.”

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/12/20/wawa-hit-with-massive-data-breach-potentially-affecting-all-locations-ceo-says/

  • Facebook will stop using 2FA tool to harvest phone numbers for friend suggestions

    Facebook says it will soon stop its practice of using phone numbers provided to the company as part of its two-factor authentication (2FA) security tool to power a friend suggestion feature, Reuters reported on Thursday. According to the report, Facebook was using phone numbers users gave it specifically to protect their accounts from unauthorized access to try and encourage them to add members of their address book to their friends list.

    The company says the change is part of its broader privacy overhaul in response to a $5 billion Federal Trade Commission settlement reached in July over Facebook’s privacy practices. As part of that settlement, Facebook was barred from using phone numbers gathered from 2FA requests for advertising. Today’s change is an extension of that. Although not explicitly demanded by the FTC, Facebook’s use of phone numbers has come under scrutiny by the company’s internal privacy review team, led by chief privacy officer Michel Protti.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/19/21030068/facebook-friend-suggestions-2fa-security-phone-number-privacy-violation-ftc

  • U.S. Navy bans TikTok from government-issued mobile devices

    A bulletin issued by the Navy on Tuesday showed up on a Facebook page serving military members, saying users of government issued mobile devices who had TikTok and did not remove the app would be blocked from the Navy Marine Corps Intranet.

    The Navy would not describe in detail what dangers the app presents, but Pentagon spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Uriah Orland said in a statement the order was part of an effort to “address existing and emerging threats”.

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-tiktok-navy-idUSKBN1YO2HU

Software/SaaS

  • Facebook is building an operating system so it can ditch Android

    Facebook doesn’t want its hardware like Oculus or its augmented reality glasses to be at the mercy of Google because they rely on its Android operating system. That’s why Facebook has tasked Mark Lucovsky, a co-author of Microsoft’s Windows NT, with building the social network an operating system from scratch, according to The Information’s Alex Heath. To be clear, Facebook’s smartphone apps will remain available on Android.

    “We really want to make sure the next generation has space for us,” says Facebook’s VP of Hardware, Andrew ‘Boz’ Bosworth. “We don’t think we can trust the marketplace or competitors to ensure that’s the case. And so we’re gonna do it ourselves.”

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/12/19/facebook-operating-system/

Infrastructure/Hardware

  • IBM aims to replace lithium batteries with batteries made from seawater

    Traditional lithium-ion batteries need heavy metals such as cobalt, manganese, and nickel to be produced. These materials pose a sizeable risk to the environment as they need to be mined. Not only is the sourcing of these materials a danger to the environment, but they also pose risk to the workers mining them. Heavy metals such as these are also limited and with the rise of battery-powered devices, it may be soon that these materials eventually run out.

    It was due to all of these circumstances that IBM Research scientists looked for other alternatives to Lithium-ion batteries. They were soon able to create a battery that runs on three new completely different materials that can be extracted from seawater. As such, sourcing of these materials are less invasive and pose a much smaller risk to the destruction of the environment.

    This new battery uses a “cobalt and nickel-free cathode material, as well as a safe liquid electrolyte with a high flash point”. The combination of these two materials was found to reduce the battery’s flammability which is a present issue for lithium-ion batteries. It was also found to charge much faster than regular lithium-ion batteries with the ability to charge up to 80% in a mere 5 minutes. These two new benefits from IBM’s batteries could prove to be very significant in the creation of low cost, fast-charging, less flammable batteries for electric vehicles.

    https://geekspin.co/ibm-aims-to-replace-lithium-batteries-with-batteries-made-from-seawater/

Other

  • The Bezos ‘relentless’ strategy at Amazon has been on full display this week

    Amazon has been steadily building out its own delivery network as it seeks to wean itself off of third parties like FedEx, UPS or the U.S. Postal Service. Bloomberg reported Tuesday that Dave Clark, the Amazon executive in charge of logistics, decided to cut out FedEx Ground because it wasn’t performing up to Amazon’s standards. And even though the block on FedEx Ground is temporary during the holiday rush, the decision was made at the height of the shopping season.

    And it doesn’t hurt that Amazon was able to stick it to its future shipping and logistics competitor, showing FedEx it can swing the stock whenever it wants.

    You see? Relentless.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/17/jeff-bezos-relentless-strategy-at-amazon-on-full-display.html

  • Foxconn Plays Tax-Credit Poker With Wisconsin in Troubled Deal

    It doesn’t matter why Foxconn changed its mind. Neither does the disagreement over whether 10.5G is a requirement for the tax credits that helped lure the company to the state. The point is that Wisconsin officials clearly believed a 10.5G plant was coming, and Foxconn did nothing to set them straight.

    What’s important now is both sides’ willingness to patch things up. The documents reproduced by The Verge show that Wisconsin is trying as hard as possible to make it work by offering to let the Taiwanese company rewrite the contract. Foxconn has steadfastly refused, arguing that its new plans hew to the original deal. Some marriage counselling is sorely needed.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/foxconn-plays-tax-credit-poker-with-wisconsin-in-troubled-deal/2019/12/18/eaf516fe-2166-11ea-b034-de7dc2b5199b_story.html

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Supplier Report: 11/29/2019


Photo by freestocks.org on Unsplash

Black Friday is upon us and consumers are not the only ones out shopping. Several acquisitions were announced this month such as Google buying yet another cloud company and PayPal snapping up Honey.

But just like Thanksgiving, families come together to celebrate (SalesForce and AWS are forming a tighter partnership) and they also fight (Google vs. their own employees).

As we start to wrap up 2019 and start to look towards the future, will 2020 be a boom year or will we see cuts and decline (WeWork announced 2,400 job cuts)?

Acquisitions/Investments

  • Google buys a small cloud partner to make it easier for customers to use VMware on its cloud

    Google has bought yet another small business to build its cloud-computing unit: CloudSimple, whose software enables companies to run computing workloads that are based on VMware’s widely used server virtualization technology. Terms were not disclosed.

    The deal follows the buys of data integration company Alooma, storage company Elastifile and cloud migration company Velostrata. Kurian’s biggest deal to date has been the $2.6 billion acquisition of privately held data analytics company Looker, which, like CloudSimple, had been a partner prior to the deal. The Looker deal hasn’t closed yet, however, and the U.S. Justice Department’s antitrust division moved to seek information from the two companies as part of a review, Bloomberg reported last month.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/18/google-buys-cloudsimple-which-helps-run-vmware-workloads.html

  • PayPal to acquire shopping and rewards platform Honey for $4B

    PayPal announced today it has agreed to acquire Honey Science Corporation, the makers of a deal-finding browser add-on and mobile application, for $4 billion, mostly cash. The acquisition, which is PayPal’s largest to date, will give the payments giant a foothold earlier in the customer’s shopping journey. Instead of only competing on the checkout page against credit cards or Apple Pay, for example, PayPal will leap ahead to become a part of the deal discovery process, as well.

    Currently, Honey’s 17 million monthly active users take advantage of its suite of money-saving tools to track prices, get alerts, make lists, browse offers and participate in an Ebates-like rewards program called Honey Gold. Its users tend to be younger, millennial shoppers, both male and female.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/11/20/paypal-to-acquire-shopping-and-rewards-platform-honey-for-4-billion/

  • HP Rejects Xerox Offer but Remains Open to a Deal

    HP Inc. rejected a $33 billion takeover offer from Xerox Holdings Corp. as too low, but the PC and printer maker made clear it is interested in discussing a deal to combine with its smaller rival.

    Xerox’s unsolicited offer of $22 a share significantly undervalues the company, HP’s board said in a public letter to Xerox Chief Executive John Visentin on Sunday. It also voiced concern about the debt a transaction would put on the combined company and said it needs more information about Xerox’s business, known as due diligence.

    Still, HP said it recognizes the benefits of consolidation and is “open to exploring a potential combination with Xerox.”

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/hp-rejects-xerox-offer-but-remains-open-to-a-deal-11574027722

  • Celonis, a leader in big data process mining for enterprises, nabs $290M on a $2.5B valuation

    Celonis was founded in 2011 in Munich — an industrial and economic center in Germany that you could say is a veritable Petri dish when it comes to large business in need of digital transformation — and has been cash-flow positive from the start. In fact, Celonis waited until it was nearly six years old to take its first outside funding (prior to this Series C it had picked up less than $80 million, see here and here).

    The size and timing of this latest equity injection is due to seizing the moment, and tapping networks of people to do so. It has already been growing at a triple-digit rate, with customers like Siemens, Cisco, L’Oréal, Deutsche Telekom and Vodafone among them.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/11/21/celonis-a-leader-in-big-data-process-mining-for-enterprises-nabs-290m-on-a-2-5b-valuation/

  • Report: Charles Schwab in talks to buy TD Ameritrade

    Brokerage firm Charles Schwab is in talks to buy rival TD Ameritrade, reports CNBC. The organization cites a source who said the deal could be announced today. The two brokerage firms are the largest publicly traded houses, with Charles Schwab having a market cap of $57.5 billion and TD Ameritrade at $22.4 billion.

    The retail brokerage industry has gone through upheaval in recent months as all of the major brokers have moved, or are moving, to commission-free trades in order to lure customers. CNBC says Charles Schwab was the first to do so, followed by TD Ameritrade.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/90434433/report-charles-schwab-in-talks-to-buy-td-ameritrade

Cloud

Security/Privacy

  • Facebook and Google’s pervasive surveillance poses an unprecedented danger to human rights

    “The internet is vital for people to enjoy many of their rights, yet billions of people have no meaningful choice but to access this public space on terms dictated by Facebook and Google,” said Kumi Naidoo.

    “To make it worse this isn’t the internet people signed up for when these platforms started out. Google and Facebook chipped away at our privacy over time. We are now trapped. Either we must submit to this pervasive surveillance machinery – where our data is easily weaponized to manipulate and influence us – or forego the benefits of the digital world. This can never be a legitimate choice. We must reclaim this essential public square, so we can participate without having our rights abused.”

    This extraction and analysis of people’s personal data on such an unprecedented scale is incompatible with every element of the right to privacy, including the freedom from intrusion into our private lives, the right to control information about ourselves, and the right to a space in which we can freely express our identities.

    https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2019/11/google-facebook-surveillance-privacy/

Infrastructure/Hardware

  • HPE Dumps Recent Acquisitions Into Its Container Platform

    The turnkey platform taps into HPE’s acquisition of artificial intelligence (AI) and big data software vendor BlueData last year and MapR in August.

    BlueData makes a software platform that uses Docker containers to make it easier for companies to deploy large-scale machine learning and big data analytics environments. MapR, which HPE “rescued” from the brink of collapse, provides enterprise-grade file system and cloud-native storage services.

    HPE’s Container Platform uses BlueData software as the control plane for container management and the MapR distributed file system and object store for persistent data with containers. It then uses Kubernetes for container orchestration. This package supports the containerization of cloud-native, microservices-architected applications and on-premises applications with persistent data.

    https://www.sdxcentral.com/articles/news/hpe-dumps-recent-acquisitions-into-its-container-platform/2019/11/

Other

  • Google Workers Protest Company’s ‘Brute Force Intimidation’

    Roughly 200 workers gathered about 11 a.m. local time Friday outside a Google office overlooking San Francisco bay.

    “Over the past two years, many of my coworkers have asked the company to take meaningful action to curtail sexual harassment and systemic racism, improve the working conditions of temps, vendors and contractors, and divest from harmful tech,” said Zora Tung, a Google software engineer. “Instead of listening to us, the company has chosen to silence us.”

    The Google workers who protested also said the company had unjustly put Laurence Berland and Rebecca Rivers on indefinite administrative leave without warning. They demanded that Google bring the employees back to work immediately.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-11-22/google-workers-protest-company-s-brute-force-intimidation

  • WeWork lays off 2,400 employees

    In a statement, a WeWork spokesperson said the cuts were being made as part of the company’s efforts to “create a more efficient organization” and refocus on the core office-sharing business. The job reductions represent 19% of WeWork’s total workforce, which amounted to 12,500 employees as of June 30, according to an SEC filing.

    “The process began weeks ago in regions around the world and continued this week in the U.S.,” the spokesperson said. “This workforce reduction affects approximately 2,400 employees globally, who will receive severance, continued benefits, and other forms of assistance to aid in their career transition. These are incredibly talented professionals and we are grateful for the important roles they have played in building WeWork over the last decade.”

    https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/21/wework-lays-off-2400-employees.html

  • When John Legere Leaves, Say Goodbye to the Old T-Mobile

    Make no mistake, the CEO transition will usher in a new T-Mobile. That’s not because the visions of the two men are so different — they aren’t, and Legere has been grooming Sievert, 50, for quite some time. But T-Mobile is no longer the industry upstart, and Legere’s departure suggests that he feels his work there is almost done. The last step is to complete the acquisition of Sprint Corp., which is being held up by a group of state attorneys general rightly concerned about the potential harm the transaction may cause consumers.

    Legere, 61, made clear that he isn’t retiring — nor is he turning his “Slow Cooker Sunday” Facebook Live series into a full-time gig. While he said the rumors of him joining WeWork aren’t true, he has fielded a “tremendous amount” of interest from companies seeking the expertise he’s demonstrated at turning around a troubled business and generating broad enthusiasm for a brand. “I’ve got 30 or 40 years and five or six good acts left in me,” Legere, the class clown of corporate events, said on Monday’s call.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/when-john-legere-leaves-say-goodbye-to-the-old-t-mobile/2019/11/18/a1a595ea-0a33-11ea-8054-289aef6e38a3_story.html

  • Amazon Is America’s CEO Factory

    There’s one element some ex-Amazonians are leaving behind: the harsher parts of Amazon’s culture, such as hiring practices that favor skills over collegiality.

    Amazon is known for disregarding social cohesion in interviewing candidates, former employees said, elevating other traits over an ability to work well with colleagues. Mr. Gordon of Latchel originally embraced that tenet.

    “We approached hiring this way and it was a big, big mistake,” he said. He had to fire one employee he had hired who was capable but couldn’t get along with the team. “We need social cohesion and to like each other because we have to put in lots of additional hours and time because it’s a startup,” Mr. Gordon said.

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/amazon-is-americas-ceo-factory/ar-BBX3hhE?li=BBnb7Kz

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News You Can Use: 11/13/2019


Photo by Elijah O’Donnell on Unsplash

  • Facebook launches ‘news tab’ section with USA TODAY and other publishers: What to expect

    At a launch event Friday in New York, CEO Mark Zuckerberg suggested that while starting small, Facebook News could reach 20 to 30 million people in a “few years.”

    During the initial phase, Facebook plans to showcase original reporting from local properties in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth, Philadelphia, Houston, Washington, Miami, Atlanta and Boston.

    “The fact that local news is part of this big Facebook rollout goes to the fact of how important trust is, and that local news is where that’s at,” says Steve Chung, chief digital officer for Fox Television Stations.

    https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2019/10/25/facebook-launches-news-tab-usa-today-wsj-latimes-buzzfeed/2449387001/

  • Mark Zuckerberg makes the case for Facebook News

    Zuckerberg was also asked about how Facebook will deal with accuracy and quality, particularly given the recent controversy over its unwillingness to fact check political ads.

    He sidestepped the political ads question, arguing that it’s unrelated to the day’s topics, then said, “This is a different kind of thing.” In other words, he argued that the company has much more leeway here to determine what is and isn’t included — both by requiring any participating publishers to abide by Facebook’s publisher guidelines, and by hiring a team of journalists to curate the headlines that show up in the Top Stories section.

    “People have a different expectation in a space dedicated to high-quality news than they do in a space where the goal is to make sure everyone can have a voice and can share their opinion,” he said.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/25/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-news/

  • Facebook launches dedicated news tab in U.S.
  • Facebook News launches with Breitbart as a source

    On Friday, Bernstein tweeted, “One way to think about Facebook naming Breitbart a ‘trusted news source’: my investigation two years ago contained revelations so damning Breitbart funder Robert Mercer stepped down as CEO of his hedge fund. But it’s good enough for Zuck & co.”

    The New York Times’ Charlie Warzel wrote in a tweet that Breitbart “being in Facebook’s trusted partners is clarifying.” Why? Well, he pointed out “it’s the same principle as dinner” with people like Fox host Tucker Carlson. Which is to say, “FB’s perspective seems to be that if you achieve a certain [amount] of scale and influence, the company will engage earnestly with you.” Warzel said “it’s an outdated idea of media power.”

    At Friday’s Paley Center event, the New York Times’ Marc Tracy asked Zuckerberg about the decision to include Breitbart. Zuckerberg said he believes “you want to have content that represents different perspectives.”

    https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/26/media/facebook-news-breitbart/index.html

  • Why the Facebook News tab shouldn’t be trusted

    But what’s not central to Facebook’s survival will never be central to its strategy. News is not going to pay the bills, and it probably won’t cause a major change in its hallowed growth rate. Remember that Twitter, which hinges much more on news, is 1/23rd of Facebook’s market cap.

    So hopefully at this point we’ve established that Facebook is not an ally of news publishers.

    At best it’s a fickle fair-weather friend. And even paying out millions of dollars, which can sound like a lot in journalism land, is a tiny fraction of the $22 billion in profit it earned in 2018.

    Whatever Facebook offers publishers is conditional. It’s unlikely to pay subsidies forever if the News tab doesn’t become sustainable. For newsrooms, changing game plans or reallocating resources means putting faith in Facebook it hasn’t earned.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/24/facebooks-news-not-yours/

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News You Can Use: 10/30/2019


Photo by Mihai Surdu on Unsplash

  • Why you should ditch team building activities and just let people get to work

    Forget the rock-climbing excursions; instead, give team members meaty tasks to accomplish together (and I’m talking about real work, not fake tasks here). The most effective way to strengthen team bonds is by having people work together and accomplish results as a group. Winning the three-legged race may be exhilarating (or embarrassing for those who don’t love the cheesy), but overcoming a work challenge or solving a thorny problem is a much more effective way to get your team closer together.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/90408773/4-things-you-should-do-instead-of-team-building-activities

  • The Phone Call Isn’t Dead, It’s Evolving

    Talking was the most popular way to communicate via cellphone in the fall of 2012, with 94% of survey respondents having done so in the prior week, according to consumer-research firm MRI-Simmons. By the spring of 2019, talking had fallen to least popular, behind texting, emailing, posting to social media and using chat apps, with just 45% reporting doing it in the prior week. In other words, less than half had used their phone for an actual phone call.

    Multiple people I interviewed said when the phone rings unexpectedly, they assume someone has died. But some app developers and investors think voice communication over the phone isn’t the problem, just the act of making a phone call itself. Between the rise of smart speakers and Apple’s wireless AirPod earbuds, and the ubiquity of group messaging and video chat, they’re betting now might be the time for voice to make a comeback.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-phone-call-isnt-dead-its-evolving-11571457605

  • What causes an economic recession?
  • Zuckerberg defends Facebook as bastion of ‘free expression’ in speech

    Zuckerberg defended the company’s decision to allow misinformation in political advertising on the platform, despite high-profile pushback against the policy.

    “Given the sensitivity around political ads, I’ve considered whether we should stop allowing them altogether,” Zuckerberg said. “But political ads are an important part of voice – especially for local candidates, up-and-coming challengers and advocacy groups that may not get much media attention otherwise. Banning political ads favors incumbents and whoever the media covers.”

    And he also seemed to brazenly rewrite the site’s beginnings, which were reportedly as a “hot or not” game for Harvard students to play, as a platform to share perspectives after the beginning of the Iraq war.

    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/oct/17/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-free-expression-speech

  • Debt-ridden GE abruptly freezes pensions on 20,000 employees

    The company announced today that it was going to pre-fund about $4-5 billion of estimated minimum ERISA funding requirements for 2021 and 2022 and offer a limited time lump-sum payment option to approximately 100,000 eligible former employees who have not started getting their monthly pension payments yet.

    According to GE, these moves will cut its pension deficit by about $5-$8 billion and its industrial net debt by approximately $4-$6 billion.

    Wall Street seemed to like the decision. GE’s stock was $8.63, up 6 cents or 0.70%, in pre-market trading.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/90414035/debt-ridden-ge-abruptly-freezes-20000-employee-pensions

Posted on

News You Can Use: 10/23/2019


Photo by sebastiaan stam on Unsplash

  • Warren Dares Facebook With Intentionally False Political Ad

    The Democratic presidential candidate bought a political ad on the social network this past week that purposefully includes false claims about Facebook’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, and President Trump to goad the social network to remove misinformation in political ads ahead of the 2020 presidential election.

    The ad, placed widely on Facebook beginning on Thursday, starts with Ms. Warren announcing “Breaking news.” The ad then goes on to say that Facebook and Mr. Zuckerberg are backing the re-election of Trump. Neither Mr. Zuckerberg nor the Silicon Valley company has announced their support of a candidate.

    “You’re probably shocked, and you might be thinking, ‘how could this possibly be true?’ Well, it’s not,” Ms. Warren said in the ad.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/12/technology/elizabeth-warren-facebook-ad.html

  • Trump’s old lawyers really, really love Comic Sans

    As absurd as it sounds to use such an intentionally juvenile font in relation to PRESIDENTIAL IMPEACHMENT PROCEEDINGS, Trump’s former lawyers have a peculiar habit of using Comic Sans at the worst possible times—which, to be fair, is basically all the time for Trump.

    John Dowd also chose the goofy font in 2018 while representing Trump in a letter to Robert Mueller.

    And it’s not just Dowd! Back in 2017, Trump attorney Ty Cobb used Comic Sans to make a statement after Trump’s security adviser Michael Flynn pled guilty to lying to the FBI regarding conversations with Russia. (Oh right, remember that?? Ukraine is only the 58,923rd scandal Trump has faced in office.)

    https://www.fastcompany.com/90414127/trumps-old-lawyers-really-really-love-comic-sans

  • Sink or swim: How to survive waves of change in a fast-paced industry
  • No-deal Brexit data – should firms worry?

    Right now data can flow freely across the EU as long as companies conform to its tough new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

    And as the GDPR is being incorporated wholesale into UK law, there should be no real change after Brexit – as long as we leave with a deal.

    But if there is no deal, we will be treated as an external country, needing what is called an adequacy ruling showing our data protection standards are up to scratch – and the European Commission has indicated that this would not happen in a hurry.

    https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-49980327