News You Can Use: 12/30/2019


Photo by Kate Stone Matheson on Unsplash

  • Google Culture War Escalates as Era of Transparency Wanes

    The extent of Google’s employee rebellion is hard to measure—the company has tried to portray it as the work of a handful of malcontents from the company’s junior ranks. Nor are the company’s message boards unilaterally supportive of revolt. “We want to focus on our jobs when we come into the workplace rather than deal with a new cycle of outrage every few days or vote on petitions for or against Google’s latest project,” wrote one employee on an internal message board viewed by Bloomberg News.

    Still, the company seems stuck in a cycle of escalation. Walker’s internal critics say his Nov. 14 email is part of a broader erosion of one of Google’s most distinctive traits—its extreme internal transparency. The fight also illustrates the lack of trust between Google’s leadership and some of its employees, according to interviews with over a dozen current and former employees, as well as internal messages shared with Bloomberg News on the condition it not publish the names of employees who participated.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-13/google-culture-war-escalates-as-era-of-transparency-wanes

  • Is Facebook dead to Gen Z?

    Edison Research’s Infinite Dial study from early 2019 showed that 62% of U.S. 12–34 year-olds are Facebook users, down from 67% in 2018 and 79% in 2017. This decrease is particularly notable as 35–54 and 55+ age group usage has been constant or even increased.

    There are many theories behind Facebook’s fall from grace among millennials and Gen Zers — an influx of older users that change the dynamics of the platform, competition from more mobile and visual-friendly platforms like Instagram and Snapchat, and the company’s privacy scandals are just a few.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/12/12/is-facebook-dead-to-gen-z/

  • You’re Being Watched Right Now
  • She Argued Facebook Is a Monopoly. To Her Surprise, People Listened.

    Ms. Srinivasan spent a few months in cafes around her Connecticut home reading economic history, and mulling over her own misgivings about the evolution of the digital advertising market. One mystery nagged at her, she said: How could a company with Facebook Inc. FB -1.34% ’s checkered privacy record have obtained so much of its users’ personal data?

    Her conclusion was that rather than raising prices like an old-school monopolist, Facebook harmed consumers by charging them ever-increasing amounts of personal data to use its platform. Eventually she emailed an unsolicited article to the Berkeley Business Law Journal, which published it this year under the title, “The Antitrust Case Against Facebook.”

    Her argument has had unexpected resonance. In the past year Ms. Srinivasan has presented at the American Antitrust Institute’s annual conference and appeared at a private gathering of state attorneys general investigating Facebook. Now based in northern California, she is presenting her work at an international antitrust conference in Brussels this week.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/yale-law-grads-hipster-antitrust-argument-against-facebook-findsmainstream-support-11575987274

  • Business Class Flying Is Under Attack

    One aim of the Green Deal is to make the price of transport “reflect the impact it has on the environment.” Accordingly, Europe will review aviation’s tax exemptions — kerosene isn’t taxed — and consider cutting the free allowances allocated to airlines under Europe’s emissions trading system.

    The airlines think they’re being unfairly maligned. They contribute about 2% of global emissions, a fraction of what cars and trucks produce. But unlike road transport, the aviation industry doesn’t have a convincing plan to decarbonize. Europe’s airlines are spending 170 billion euros ($189 billion) on new fuel-efficient aircraft, but these will still spew out carbon. Synthetic fuels are expensive and battery limitations mean emission-free commercial flights are years away.

    Aviation is typical of the trade-offs we’ll have to make to get to net-zero emissions. So far we’ve only done the easy stuff that doesn’t force people to give up much or pay more for cheap products and services. The airlines are lobbying for better air traffic management in Europe’s crowded skies, which would cut the amount of fuel used. But there’s only a certain amount of carbon we can keep emitting before things go from bad to catastrophic.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/business-class-flying-is-under-attack/2019/12/13/c563ae08-1d80-11ea-977a-15a6710ed6da_story.html

News You Can Use: 7/17/2019


Photo by Vincent van Zalinge on Unsplash

  • How U.S. Tech Giants Are Helping to Build China’s Surveillance State

    The OpenPower Foundation — a nonprofit led by Google and IBM executives with the aim of trying to “drive innovation” — has set up a collaboration between IBM, Chinese company Semptian, and U.S. chip manufacturer Xilinx. Together, they have worked to advance a breed of microprocessors that enable computers to analyze vast amounts of data more efficiently.

    Shenzhen-based Semptian is using the devices to enhance the capabilities of internet surveillance and censorship technology it provides to human rights-abusing security agencies in China, according to sources and documents. A company employee said that its technology is being used to covertly monitor the internet activity of 200 million people.

    https://theintercept.com/2019/07/11/china-surveillance-google-ibm-semptian/

  • These Tech Companies Are Giving Millions To Politicians Who Vote Against LGBTQ People

    The group, Zero for Zeros, analyzed the contribution data between 2010 and 2019 of the top-scoring companies on the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index. It found 49 corporate PACs that gave a combined $5,837,331 to members of Congress who had received ratings of zero on the HRC’s legislative scorecard. These elected officials include Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, who introduced legislation in 2018 that would make it legal for businesses and nonprofits to discriminate against same-sex couples, unmarried couples, and single parents.

    Companies like Google, through their corporate PACs, gave a combined $178,500 to politicians who scored zeros on the HRC legislative scorecard. Google, which has faced scrutiny for refusing to crack down on anti-LGBTQ speech, donated $10,000 to Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee. In 2014, Lee said that the progressive agenda “rejects the enviable right to life according to one’s religious convictions, and is utterly blind to the moral and economic consequences of our nation’s growing marriage crisis.”

    https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/leticiamiranda/these-tech-companies-are-giving-millions-to-politicians-who

  • Why aren’t Millennials buying homes?
  • The 3 Essential Negotiation Tactics According to Researchers

    The guilt and petty politics of socials debt can be a nightmare. But when it comes to negotiations, reciprocity can be used to give yourself some serious leverage, especially if you’re smart about it. Marketing and persuasion expert Robert Cialidini found that waiters offering their patrons an after dinner mint increased tips by 3%. For wait staff who added, “for you nice people, here’s an extra mint,” tips jumped by a whopping 23%.

    This isn’t just for beguiling the other side, but for guilting them as well. Katherine Shonk, editor of Harvard Business School’s Negotiation blog, asserts that you should be specific about the things you’re giving up. Why? Well, in spite of people’s instinct to be even, you can’t always count the opposing side recognizing when you’re making a compromise or how important of a point you’re folding on. Getting a fair deal means making people understand exactly what you’re exchanging. As strong as reciprocity is, to really make it work for you, you need to make the exchange felt for it to have any effect.

    https://www.primermagazine.com/2019/earn/negotiation-tactics

  • Workers waste half their time as they struggle with data

    Organizations are suffering from inefficiencies and ineffectiveness as they turn to data as the lifeblood of their digital transformation — and the workforce is struggling.

    About 54M data workers around the world face challenges associated with the complexity, diversity and scale of their company’s data. These data workers represent a quarter of knowledge workers around the world.

    Four out of five (80%) of organizations take advantage of data across multiple organizational processes, but despite increases in innovation, workers waste 44% of their time each week due to unsuccessful activities because of lack of collaboration, existence of knowledge gaps and resistance to change.

    https://www.zdnet.com/article/workers-waste-half-their-time-as-they-struggle-with-data/

News You Can Use: 2/13/2019

  • Your Company Wants to Know if You’ve Lost Weight

    Disney , Whole Foods and dozens of other companies have introduced programs to reward employees for meeting certain criteria on health indicators such as weight-to-height ratio and blood pressure. Some incentivize workers to hit a target number of step counts and eat well: One wellness provider, Vitality, works with 31,000 grocery stores to analyze participants’ food choices and award points for healthy purchases, which can be redeemed for prizes.
    ~~
    In addition to tests measuring indicators like blood pressure, wellness programs often involve taking detailed online health assessments that can include questions on alcohol consumption and pregnancy plans. Many programs employ wearable devices that track step counts, sleep and heart rates. Some privacy experts fear that by opting in, individuals may put their data at risk. Wellness programs that are run as part of group health plans are covered by HIPAA, the nation’s main health-privacy law. However, many others aren’t, leaving protection for employee data more porous, said Joy Pritts, who served as chief privacy officer at the Department of Health and Human Services until 2014.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/does-your-company-need-to-know-your-body-mass-index-11549902536?ns=prod/accounts-wsj

  • How to Get Better at Small Talk

    As Quartz mentioned, there’s the “triangulation” approach to small talk (named by Kio Stark, author of When Strangers Meet). This method involves three points: you, your partner, and the observable thing in front of you—in other words, your common ground.

    It’s simple. Find the thing that ties you together and bond over it, even if it’s right in front of your eyes. The weather’s terrible! I can’t wait for lunch! Not again, Trump!

    https://lifehacker.com/how-to-make-better-small-talk-1832124157

  • Returning to the town that Walmart left behind
  • We Need a Radical New Way to Understand Screen Use

    The cruel irony, from a social scientist’s perspective, is that much of the data we seek (more, in fact, than has existed at any point in history) already exists on the servers of Facebook, Google, and several more of the most powerful companies on earth. Those corporations are the gatekeepers that hold researchers back from asking more urgent and incisive questions. For example: When college freshmen with depressive symptoms open YouTube, what do they watch? For how long? What does YouTube recommend them when they’re done, and what do they watch next?

    Researchers would give almost anything to make these observations, because it would allow them to begin untangling the web of causes and correlations that bind our thoughts, behaviors, and development to our increasingly connected ways of being in the world.

    https://www.wired.com/story/we-need-a-radical-new-way-to-understand-screen-use/

  • I Studied Buttons for 7 Years and Learned These 5 Lessons About How and Why People Push Them

    Yet in many contexts, both past and present, buttons are anything but easy. Have you ever stood in an elevator pushing the close-door button over and over, hoping and wondering if the door will ever shut? The same quandary presents itself at every crosswalk button. Programming a so-called “universal remote” is often an exercise in extreme frustration. Now think about the intensely complex dashboards used by pilots or DJs.

    For more than a century, people have been complaining that buttons aren’t easy: Like any technology, most buttons require training to understand how and when to use them.W

    https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/pand5v/power-button-politics-of-pushing-buttons

Photo by Thomas Le on Unsplash

News You Can Use: 7/4/2018

The Source: 4th of July Edition: Joey Lombardi

  • Trump’s FCC Will Soon Vote to Axe Decades-Old Anti-Media Monopoly Rule

    Traditionally these rules have broad, bipartisan support because they protect giant broadcasters from crushing smaller, regional competitors with an actual vested interest in the communities they serve. But much like the FCC’s attack on net neutrality, the Trump FCC has ignored nuance and the public interest in its quest to help giant corporations grow even larger.

    For example, weeks before Sinclair even announced its merger, the FCC restored an outdated and unnecessary bit of 1980’s regulation known as the UHF Loophole, specifically to allow Sinclair to falsely under-state the company’s real reach. That move is currently facing a legal challenge by consumer groups, and the FCC is rushing to beat that court ruling to the punch.

    Also:

    Wood and other consumer advocates have been quick to point out the irony of Pai’s office, which routinely laments “outdated and unnecessary regulation,” re-imposing some outdated and unnecessary regulation simply to help Sinclair grow larger.

    https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/d3kjna/trump-fcc-will-soon-vote-to-axe-decades-old-anti-media-monopoly-rule

  • Ford’s plan to turn Detroit’s oldest neighborhood into an electric, AV hub

    Ford, which is celebrating its 115th anniversary this week, announced plans to house 2,500 Ford employees, most from its emerging mobility team, in its new Corktown campus by 2022. The new campus will have space to a accommodate 2,500 additional employees of partners and other businesses. The remaining 300,000 square feet will serve as a mix of community and retail space and residential housing.

    The Corktown campus is where Ford will develop autonomous and electric vehicle businesses, as well as what CEO Jim Hackett describes as a new transportation operating system designed to make moving from Point A to Point B easier and accessible. The idea is for this transportation operating system to tie all forms of mobility together, including smart, connected vehicles, roads, parking and public transit.

    https://www.engadget.com/2018/06/19/adobe-project-rush-video-editing-across-devices/

  • How to stop politics from controlling your emotions
  • The Future of Digital Marketing in a Data-Privacy World

    That isn’t all. The rules for “third party” data also are getting more complicated. Many marketers don’t collect customer data themselves, so they use the information from other vendors, to help them target ads. Now they must make sure those vendors are in compliance with GDPR standards. Obviously, keeping an eye on all those third parties means a lot of effort and expense, so some marketers have said they would just use fewer vendors instead.

    The problems of keeping track of customer data were highlighted in Facebook ’s Cambridge Analytica data leak, in which an outsider shared the social network’s user records with other firms. After an outcry over the leak, in March Facebook took steps that it said would “help improve people’s privacy.” Among them: ending a program that let brokers target specific groups of Facebook users on behalf of their advertiser clients.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-future-of-digital-marketing-in-a-data-privacy-world-1529341496?ns=prod/accounts-wsj

  • Pills By Amazon: The Retail Giant Just Bought The Online Pharmacy PillPack

    “PillPack’s visionary team has a combination of deep pharmacy experience and a focus on technology,” Jeff Wilke, Amazon CEO Worldwide Consumer, said in a statement. “PillPack is meaningfully improving its customers’ lives, and we want to help them continue making it easy for people to save time, simplify their lives, and feel healthier.”

    https://www.buzzfeed.com/leticiamiranda/amazon-pillpack-online-pharmacy?utm_term=.vgNy8LdLx#.ngYkWzJzL

Photo by Bonnie Kittle on Unsplash

News You Can Use: 1/20/2016

sn_beachdawn_Gerrit Vermeulen

  • Why the customer is not always right

    There are two fatal flaws in this model, both having to do with managing expectations.  First, clients need to understand that they are unlikely to get every deliverable without some compromise – particularly in custom software, where nobody knows exactly what’s involved until the project is more than half done.  Second, the project lead on the consultant side must actively manage expectations during every client meeting.  If the project lead on the client side is weak – technically or politically – s/he will not successfully propagate the realities of prioritization and negotiation to executives in the client organization.  This means the project is in trouble before it starts … and, worse, the trouble can be totally invisible to the client until it’s way too late.

    http://www.cio.com/article/3020698/it-industry/why-customer-is-not-always-right.html#tk.rss_all

  • Can blockchains drive supply chain transparency in 2016?
    Background:

    In short, a blockchain provides a shared database that is both transparent and tamper-proof. Specifically, it is a public ledger of all Bitcoin transactions that have ever been executed and has complete information about addresses and balances right from the genesis block to the most recently completed block.

    How it relates to Supply Chain:

    Baker said: “We have three levels that we are thinking about. The first is the business level: so who is this company? What do they do? Do they pay tax? Then the product level, which is around supply chain mapping. The blockchain component is more item level tracking, so is this particular item what it says it is? Is it really organic? Has it really been made by this company, in this place? So it’s a bit of a hybrid.”

    http://www.supplychaindigital.com/procurement/4205/Can-blockchains-drive-supply-chain-transparency-in-2016

  • Despite Social Media’s Popularity, Most Americans Don’t Want to Give Up Private Data

    Of the six outlined scenarios, respondents were uncomfortable with the privacy tradeoffs required to access free social media. In that scenario, Pew outlined a social-media site — a clear Facebook stand in — which gives users free access in exchange for the ability to sell them ads using their personal data. Only a third of respondents thought this tradeoff was “acceptable,” 15 percent said it depended on the situation, and 51 percent found the tradeoff “unacceptable.”

    http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/269581

  • 5 Healthcare Supply Chain Trends to Watch in 2016

    1. Operational Experimentation: Now that most hospitals have identified the supply chain as an area not only for cost savings, but also as a resource for significantly improving patient outcomes, 2016 will mark the start of major operational experimentation. Backed by sophisticated, enabling supply chain technology, hospitals will embrace process and product flexibility to find the right formula for both patient- and business-focused success.

    http://hitconsultant.net/2016/01/14/healthcare-supply-chain-trends-to-watch-in-2016/

  • You Might Be Getting the Basics Right, but That’s Not Enough

    Similarly, it’s not enough to do a proper, verbal, invitation over the phone, give the supplier a chance to include references, case studies, and suggest alternative proposals, if you know that one of the critical requirements of the bid or organizational preference (or prejudice) would preclude the supplier from getting the award. It’s not professional to invite the supplier unless you believe the supplier has an honest chance.

    http://sourcinginnovation.com/wordpress/2016/01/14/you-might-be-getting-the-basics-right-but-thats-not-enough/

  • Shakeup at Citrix continues: CloudStack products sold off

    When Citrix announced in November that it would spin off its popular GoToMeeting and affiliated products into an independent publicly traded company, some questioned if other parts of the company may be destined for change as well.

    Today, Citrix announced it has sold its two cloud infrastructure management products: CloudPlatform and CloudPortal Business Manager, both of which are based on open source CloudStack.

    Citrix is selling the cloud products to Accelerite, which is owned by Persistent Systems. Accelerite focuses on cloud backup and recovery as a service. Persistent has a broader portfolio of cloud and other IT consulting products and services.

    http://www.cio.com/article/3020666/cloud-computing/shakeup-at-citrix-continues-cloudstack-products-sold-off.html#tk.rss_all

  • 3 open source tools for supply chain management

    The last tool in our supply chain management roundup is Odoo, which you might recognize from our previous top ERP projects article. In fact, a full ERP may be good fit for you, depending on your needs. Odoo’s supply chain management tools mostly revolve around inventory and purchase management, and connectivity with e-commerce and point of sale, but it can also connect to other tools like frePPLe for open source production planning.

    Odoo is available both as a software as a service solution, as well as an open source community edition. The open source edition is released under an LGPL version 3, and the source is available on GitHub. Odoo is primarily written in Python.

    https://opensource.com/business/16/1/open-source-tools-supply-chain-management

  • “Never Touch Things Twice”
    This is lovely in thought, impossible in the real world.  Additionally as someone who writes, you have to walk away and come back to things.

    Never touch things twice. That’s it. Never put anything in a holding pattern, because touching things twice is a huge time-waster. Don’t save an email or a phone call to deal with later. As soon as something gets your attention you should act on it, delegate it, or delete it.

    http://lifehacker.com/never-touch-things-twice-1752117533

 

Photo: Gerrit Vermeulen