Thursday Thoughts, January 6, 2022

Hi there -

Thanks for your patience during the holidays - it was good to take some time off to relax and I hope you had the chance to do the same.

I want to thank you for your support in reading and engaging with this newsletter over the past year. It's been a really fun project and I hope you learned some new things from it (I know I did every week when putting it together). Your support and interest really made it possible.

That being said, I'm going to put Thursday Thoughts on pause for now. There are a number of other projects and opportunities that I'm hoping to undertake in the new year and I'm not confident I'll have time work on them and to devote to a newsletter going forward. This hiatus may unfold in one of three ways: (1) I could eventually bring back Thursday Thoughts in this same form when I have more time; (2) I could modify Thursday Thoughts to zero in on the most important issues (in my mind, the efforts to address climate change and the risks to global democracy); or (3) I simply recognize that Thursday Thoughts was a fun avenue to share interesting things happening in the world in 2021-22 and let it come to an end.

Regardless as to which path I follow, I'll still be on LinkedIn and, without having a newsletter each week, I'll probably post more frequently. So, if you haven't already connected with or followed me on the platform, and you're interested in the kind of stuff I've put into this newsletter, feel free to reach out.

In the meantime: be well, stay safe, and remain engaged.

Thanks,

Jon

Department of Technology:

• China's anticipated AI regulations were announced on Tuesday and will come into effect soon. Beijing also announced data security requirements, including the requirement that some firms that seek to list overseas undergo security reviews . In general, this crackdown by Beijing is crushing spirits in China's tech community and is a net positive for tech communities outside of China, particularly in the U.S.
• There appears to be some tension between efforts to roll out 5G nationwide and efforts to ensure that airplanes don't receive unnecessary signals interference .
• I might be biased, but I'm pretty sure LinkedIn's new audio events feature will quickly replace Clubhouse for a lot of topics.
• I'm very much skeptical on all things crypto and think web3 is a new hype machine but if you disagree and you're interested in learning more about web3, here is Zane Homsi's simple primer and here is Jay Singh's deeper dive . Bear in mind, of course, that the utility and value of web3 is definitely the subject of significant debate in the tech community . With respect to cryptocurrency, I'm inclined to agree with the FT that it's worse than a Ponzi scheme , and I'm more than a bit skeptical of the arguments that web3 will be some paradisiacal playground for creators .
• Speaking of debates in tech, Benedict Evans has a list of big questions that the tech community will likely debate and try to address in 2022. In a more retrospective take, the NYT has a list of the 'good' tech from 2021 .
• There's gridlock in Washington, but state governments are happy to jump into the mix to regulate tech companies .
• Gizmodo raises a good point: in the future, we may not 'own' too many gadgets ; we'll just license them from the cloud. Which raises interesting questions about how we as a society view 'ownership' and our relationship with our tech.
• Reality catches up with what we all knew long ago: Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos were frauds . Some think that this should put all of tech on watch (it shouldn't; most tech isn't vaporware or intentional fraud); I think it just highlights the need to better diligence bizarre founders before investing.
• Tuesday was the end of an era: Blackberry OS services shut down .
• DuckDuckGo accused Google of manipulating browser extensions to stifle competition.
• If you want to build a metaverse and then you hold concerts with top acts in your metaverse, but no one really shows up , what does that mean? Well, maybe it means Meta/Facebook needs to buy more tech ?
• The drones are coming for wasps . I can see the utility, but the slippery slope is pretty visible.
• Alexa is not your friend: it just told a kid to put a penny in an outlet . In any event, it seems like people are 'over' Alexa .
• We may be in a bubble: Apple briefly hit $3 trillion in market capitalization .
• Boo-hoo. In a great case study for the distinction between tech company employees and gig economy workers, DoorDash employees are complaining because they are asked to act occasionally as 'Dashers' on their company's platform .
• Big tech companies largely swore off campaign support for candidates who supported the 1/6 effort to delegitimize the U.S. election. Not all are following through .
• With a Brain-Robot ML link , it really seems like we're moving closer to singularity.

Privacy and Security matter:

• Data protection is moving beyond issues of purely personal data. Now, all data is in play for regulation, and stories like this one (regarding China's omnipresence in data flows relating to shipping and logistics) explain why .
• Speaking of China, there is apparently a cottage industry in China for scraping and monitoring Western social media .
• Oh, and worse: China is suspending work with Alibaba Cloud because Alibaba reported the log4j bug through ordinary channels, rather than directly to the government in Beijing (which would, one can imagine, have certain uses for it).
• The CNIL is fining Google and Facebook . Meanwhile, a Dutch court has ruled against a putative GDPR 'class action' against Salesforce and Oracle , noting that individuals 'liking' the consumer rights group's page does not suffice if the group can't ascertain who the people are or whether they're Dutch .
• Some things never seem to change: data complexity and fragmentation are standing in the way of data utilization .
• Data breach litigation still pays dividends ... to privacy torts lawyers.
• If you're using Patreon and you offer subscriptions in Euros or pounds, a British court says you can be sued under the GDPR .
• India is still moving forward on developing an omnibus data protection bill , and it'll be interesting to see what's in the final copy .
• Google acquired Siemplify in a bid to bolster its Google Cloud security.
• The U.S. has extradited Vladislav Klyushin , who may be able to tell the story of what Russia did in the 2016 hacks of the DNC and RNC.
• As the Internet splinters, OneTrust (and its competitors) thrive .
• Amazon is facing a biometric privacy lawsuit for their warehouse health checks during the covid pandemic.
• Here are some interesting predictions for where privacy law will go in 2022 . CPO Magazine has their own set of predictions .

Athletics are awesome:

• Nepotism is alive and well in the NFL coaching ranks.
• Kyrie Irving is going to be a part-time NBA player (since he can't play where his unvaccinated status conflicts with local health rules). The last part-time NBA player had quite the career, both in the NBA and afterwards. Meanwhile, unvaxxed Novak Djokovic got special dispensation to play in the Australian Open . But can he enter the country to get there?
• Want to train like the Ingebrigtsens? Here's how .
• Fanatics did some serious deal jiujitsu to take over Topps and put itself in a position to own the sports trading cards space. More deal news: the NYT is buying The Athletic .
• New Balance "Made in USA" isn't always, well, entirely made in the U.S.A .
• Hoka has rebranded .
• Lululemon's legal department must be busy. After suing Peloton for infringement, the athleisure brand is being sued by Nike for alleged infringement relating to Lululemon's Mirror workout tool .

Covid is a battle we can win:

• Everything is fine with Omicron. We're just reporting 1+ million cases per day in the U.S alone, including a 'vertical wall' in the highly vaxxed Bay Area . But there is hope on the horizon .
• The CDC's write-down of the mid-December Omicron prevalence from ~73% to 22.5% illustrates how slipshod our national testing efforts are. I mean, even SF, which has generally been on top of how to approach covid, is having issues with testing .
• Speaking of poor CDC efforts, whoever is in charge of their isolation/quarantine guidelines (and the messaging relating to those guidelines) should be replaced. They have muddled the message so badly as to upset epidemiologists and confuse the public in ways I didn't think were possible.
• Sure, Omicron is supposed to be 'generally mild ' but when 'generally mild' meets the law of large numbers , hospitals (including pediatric hospitals ) get overrun.
• Likewise, Omicron is presenting with a whole host of weird symptoms for some people. More generally, covid can apparently affect your personality , and can spread to your heart, brain , and other organs and survive there for months (perhaps related to long covid).
• As a result of the Omicron wave, we're seeing significant shutdowns in school systems .
• Sinovac doesn't do so well against Omicron . This'll potentially put pressure on Beijing to use Western shots. Also, it's not clear how Beijing's "zero covid" policy is going to work with the Olympics coming to town in a month...
• I'm feeling Macron on the topic of how to approach the willingly unvaxxed . Speaking of the unvaxxed, their heads recently exploded when Trump endorsed boosters .
• Read the room - this isn't the time... a new variant with a bunch of mutations has been detected in France.
• A team has developed a new covid vaccine that is going to be widely available and leverages long-standing, inexpensive vaccination technology to improve vaccine access around the globe.
• Long covid is real and is afflicting millions. Many who suffer from it are desperate for treatment and are willing to pay thousands for what is most likely a snake-oil cure .
• Kudos to Marin County for taking the time to distinguish between patients hospitalized for covid versus those hospitalized incidentally with covid .
• Speaking of "with covid," you know what's worse than covid? Flu with covid, also known as "flurona ."
• The pandemic is turning many people into jerks (or seems to make them feel like they have license to act like a jerk).

Climate Change is a challenge we must meet:

• Everything is fine: we're recording the highest ever winter temperatures in the U.S. Those higher temperatures, coupled with months of dry weather and incredibly delayed snow , helped fuel an urban firestorm in the Boulder, Colorado suburbs last week. The cause is (currently) under investigation but may have something to do with a structure fire on a property owned by a fundamentalist sect .
• What we now know is that every season may be fire season in the West . The Colorado fires wouldn't normally happen, but it hadn't really snowed there yet, despite being late December . But, when it snowed in the West, it snowed. Berkeley's lab in the Central Sierra had record snowfall for December (and the third highest monthly total on record). Yosemite set a new December record for snowfall as well. And some highway systems couldn't handle it, from I-80 in California to I-95 in Virginia .
• Despite the massive snowfall in the Sierra, the fact of the matter is that we're on a trajectory towards much less snow in the West . Knowing that, we need to start planning ahead. In the meantime, the NYT has run their semi-regular feature announcing the end of the Golden State (this time due to wildfires, as opposed to social woes, deficits, boom-and-bust cycles, or the other usual suspects).
• Scientists are studying the impact of recent large fires (like the Bootleg fire) to understand how to mitigate their more severe effects on forests. Initial finding? Tree thinning and prescribed burns mitigate severe canopy burning fires.
• There has been massive flooding in Brazil .
• Imagine if we treated air pollution--which contributed to nearly two million deaths last year --as seriously as we treat covid.
• Climate scientists cheered for "Don't Look Up" (because it reflected their constant challenge of convincing people to care ).
• That said, some people care. For example, Chile cares a great deal, and just rewrote its constitution to address the challenges posed by climate change. Relatedly, indigenous groups are fearful of past mistakes being repeated in the new 'gold rush' for clean energy minerals.
• I came across two interesting articles this week on the price we put on nature, focusing on a tree and on bobcats . In both cases, the preservation of nature is worth far more than the price tag that the market will ostensibly bear.
• Speaking of costs, the top ten worst climate disasters in 2021 cost a combined total of $170 billion .
• Everyone's crypto obsession is more than offsetting the environmental gains made from our increased use of EVs.
• If we're going to preserve our ecosystems, we need to learn from (and work with) indigenous people the world over.
• Veganuary is a thing (but not a well-known or well-adopted thing).
• BMW is developing a car paint that will enable a driver to change the car's color , enabling a shift to white for hotter days and black for colder days (and thus theoretically making gains in heating/cooling efficiency).
• I understand the effort to improve competition in America's meat-processing industry, but investing additional money in Big Ag is not helpful at this point.
• Bloomberg dives into how to tell the difference between real and false climate change solutions .

California is a fascinating state:

• The (perhaps unjustified) panic over retail theft in California has led to some prominent politicians pushing to repeal Prop. 47 .
• Cool, I guess? SF Mayor London Breed had a cameo in the new Matrix film . But given the state of the city, she might want to spend more time addressing quality-of-life issues (at least, according to Willie Brown's take on things ).
• Prop 65 warning labels will be changing soon .
• A double dose of "Let's not go there": What if a wildfire aerosolizes radioactive material ? What if Bay Area house prices just keep climbing ?
• As expected, CalFire confirmed that PG&E equipment was involved in sparking the 2021 Dixie Fire (the largest ever non-complex fire in California history).
• Bad news for future fire seasons: warmer weather is linked to population growth in beetles that may decimate conifer forests.
• Hurray! California is now a universal vote-by-mail state .
• Rest in Peace, Joan Didion and Betty White .

Everything Else:

• It's the one year anniversary of the attack on the Capitol . That stage of the coup attempt failed, but the efforts to subvert American democracy are ongoing as the GOP has doubled down on Trumpism . I'm hopeful that the Jan. 6 Committee will hold televised hearings to educate the broader public on what happened in the lead-up to the attack. Education will be critical to combatting internationalized disinformation campaigns .
• Twitter banned Marjorie Taylor Greene. Besides tweeting, what does she do all day ? Similarly, one has to ask where Tucker Carlson gets his pro-Russia talking points .
• Here's a novel idea: classify people by the terms that they prefer, not the terms that you'd prefer to use .
• Wild: at 0000 hours on January 1, 2000, a U.S. nuclear submarine positioned itself at the intersection of the international date line and the equator . This meant that the sub was simultaneously in two years, decades, centuries, millennia, hemispheres, and seasons.?
• It seems like J.D. Vance will do or say nearly anything to get elected in the race to the bottom (also known as the Republican Party primary for one of Ohio's senate seats).
• Popular perceptions are shaped in a way that does not reflect reality, particularly with respect to the current state of the American economy .
• News media consumption was way down in 2021 relative to 2020 (which was to be expected). Things heading in the right direction doesn't drive clicks, even if it's better for everyone.
• After 125 years, justice in Plessy v. Ferguson .
• Beijing continues to shutter the beacons of free press in Hong Kong .
• I'm very pro-feline, but cats aren't winning friends when they're starting house fires . Speaking of pets, don't challenge hamsters to a drinking contest: they metabolize alcohol better than any other animal .
• I'm guessing that this story (man robs bank, disappears, reinvents himself, lives a normal life for 50 years, and then reveals his secret on his deathbed) will make a great movie.
• Hold onto your toys: legos may be a more lucrative investment than gold.
• Please, no: there is a bird flu outbreak in Israel .
• Noah Smith has a great essay explaining why nativism is bad and immigration is good for the U.S.
• Rest in Peace, Desmond Tutu , doing good even after life .