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Javier E

Telecom's Big Players Hold Back the Future - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...yers-hold-back-the-future.html

oligopoly telecom industry economics competition

shared by Javier E on 20 May 13 - No Cached
  • If you were going to look for ground zero in the fight against a rapidly consolidating telecom and cable industry, you might end up on the fifth floor of the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York
  • Susan Crawford, a professor at the school, has written a book, “Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age,” that offers a calm but chilling state-of-play on the information age in the United States.
  • A violist who plays in string quartets when she is not hammering telecom companies, Ms. Crawford is precise in her arguments and far from frantic in making them. The captains of industry who kidnapped telecoms and cable are not monsters, she says, merely shrewd capitalists who used leverage to maximize returns, no different or worse than the railroad or electricity barons of times past. “They have acted in parallel to exclude competitors and used every lever they had to gain control over their markets. My whole book is essentially an argument to buy stock in cable companies,” she said with a laugh.
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  • “We are in this position as a country because we assumed that the magic of the marketplace would provide competition and provide world-class communications,” she said. “But history has demonstrated that left to their own devices, companies will gouge the rich, leave out the poor, cherry-pick markets and focus solely on their profits. It isn’t evil, it’s just the way things work.”
Emilio Ergueta

French Telecom Executive's Remarks on Israel Incite Furor - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ks-on-israel-incite-furor.html

french orange nytimes israel politics

shared by Emilio Ergueta on 04 Jun 15 - No Cached
  • A growing global pro-Palestinian movement to boycott Israel instantly created a national furor on Thursday after the top executive of Orange, a leading French telecommunications company, said he would withdraw from the Israeli market if he could.
  • Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on the French government to repudiate the “miserable statement.”
  • The Orange chief executive, Stéphane Richard, said on Wednesday that were it not for the potential legal and financial penalties, he would leave the Israeli market “tomorrow morning.”
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  • The movement has been increasingly in the spotlight since last week’s failed Palestinian bid to oust Israel from FIFA, soccer’s global governing body.
  • ritain’s National Union of Students voted on Tuesday to align itself with the goals of the boycott movement, following a series of similar symbolic moves on American campuses, although the umbrella organization of British universities said it was strongly opposed to any academic boycott of Israeli institutions.
  • Mr. Netanyahu lashed out against the boycott movement on Sunday, denying that it had anything to do with Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians and saying that it rather had to do with Israel’s very existence, likening it to age-old anti-Semitic “libels.
  • he Orange episode is “only the beginning,” he said, “the tip of the iceberg if these policies continue.”
  • Emilio Ergueta on 04 Jun 15
     
    Orange executive suggests that he wants to pull out of Israel. Article highlights the reactions.
Javier E

Tsunami of fake news hurts Latin America's effort to fight coronavirus | Coronavirus ou... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...-coronavirus-tsunami-fake-news

latin america pandemic fake news disinformation

shared by Javier E on 26 Jul 20 - No Cached
  • “Some clearly represent political or commercial agendas, others are just absurd,”
  • “The problem is these are spread around by well-intentioned people in family WhatsApp chats probably because they can create a sense of control over a situation which is out of control.”
  • Yasodora Córdova, a Brazilian expert in online misinformation, said the tight-knit social groups that define Latin American society were one reason the region was such a “fertile ground” for fake news.
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  • Disseminators of online disinformation had taken advantage of such pre-existing communities – such as church groups – and used them as a powerful mechanism through which to spread their lies.
  • “Videos that promote this kind of ‘cure’ get thousands of views and the people who make them earn a lot of money,” said Córdova who said such producers could easily earn up to 7,000 reais (£1,050) per month. “It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not – what matters is the number of views.”
  • Others used falsehoods for political purposes. Córdova said that some far-right politicians in Brazil were engaged in a permanent “race to remain relevant” using bombastic and bizarre “news” to stay in the public consciousness.
  • The misguided belief that 5G telecom towers spread the coronavirus via radio waves prompted villagers in Huancavelica in the Peruvian Andes to detain eight telecoms engineers for more than a day. Ginger consumption in Peru has rocketed and exports nearly tripled because of the belief it can treat or cure Covid-19. At least 10 cases of chlorine dioxide poisoning have been reported in Bolivia in recent days.
  • The justice system needs to find a way to hold people responsible for the content they share – so they feel less comfortable distributing and sharing this kind of news,” she said.
  • “This will only stop when there is a counter-attack, when the justice system understands they must hold these people to account” by forcing those who alleged, for example, that Covid-19 was a Chinese experiment to prove such claims in court.
criscimagnael

As a Crisis Hotline Grows, So Do Fears It Won't Be Ready - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...hotline-mental-health-988.html

shared by criscimagnael on 14 Mar 22 - No Cached
  • The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline — the number posted on student identification cards, atop Google search results and in warning labels on television shows — is about to get a major reboot, casting it as the 911 for mental health.
  • starting in July will have its own three-digit number, 988, and operators who will not only counsel callers but eventually be equipped to dispatch specially trained responders.
  • But there are growing concerns that the 24-hour hotline, already straining to meet demand, will not be able to deliver on the promises of the overhaul unless states supplement the federal money with significant funds for staffing, according to interviews and government reports.
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  • But after the number changes to 988 — a shift that involves upgrading telecom infrastructure and bringing more call centers online — use of the hotline is expected to grow exponentially over the next few years. (The current number is 800-273-8255.)
  • The only call center in South Carolina, for instance, until recently operated out of an old, dark basement, near a boiler room. The last remaining one in Louisiana has struggled to keep up with an influx of calls after another center closed and its replacement went offline during the pandemic. Minnesota and Wyoming have had periods with no centers at all. When local centers cannot pick up, calls are pushed to national backup centers, where counselors are less likely to be familiar with local resources and wait times can be too long for people in crisis.
  • As a teenager, she made dozens of late-night calls to the Lifeline. A volunteer named Chris, who worked the late shift, usually would pick up and talk her to safety. But during the last several years, she has found it increasingly difficult to reach a counselor. Several times, she said, she hung up and harmed herself.
  • A woman from Michigan, who said she waited twice for over an hour before hanging up, likened the experiences to calling airline customer service — except that she was seeking suggestions on “not killing myself.” A teenager from Mississippi recounted calling three times one night without getting through, and then overdosing.
  • For 988, such fees could also help pay for mobile response teams that can be dispatched to people in crisis, as well as for specialized triage centers — both significant, and costly, elements of what advocates see as a watershed opportunity to recast the delivery of mental health care.
  • “Our concern is very much about whether there will be someone to answer that call when someone is in crisis,” said Hannah Wesolowski, chief advocacy officer for the National Alliance on Mental Illness.
  • “There are thousands of users — many of whom may be in suicidal crisis — who seek assistance and are unable to get the lifesaving help they deserve,” the report said.
  • Paying for 988, and what comes with it, has emerged as a contentious issue for states. Some lawmakers are wary of adding what they see as a new tax. Others think 988 is redundant with other resources. And telecommunications lobbyists, while broadly supportive of 988, have pushed back on some proposed fees.
  • “It is just like the United States Congress, though, to send us something like this” — with instructions that “you are going to fund it,” he said.
  • “With all due respect, 988 is going to save the taxpayers a whole lot of money,” he said.
  • “The crisis centers are like, ‘You don’t get any of those other things if people aren’t here to answer the phone,’” said Ms. Battle, director of access at the Harris Center, which provides services for mental health issues and developmental disabilities.
  • One goal of 988 is to eventually answer 95 percent of all incoming calls within 20 seconds. The data analysis showed that only two states had Lifeline answer rates above 95 percent in the fourth quarter of last year. Thirty-three states had more than 15 percent of their calls abandoned.
  • “People call in their most dire state of need.”
  • West Virginia’s lone call center answering the Lifeline, First Choice Services, also answers more than 15 other numbers, including ones for gambling, tobacco and drug and alcohol addiction, most with volume rising during the pandemic.
  • “We have a very real fear that without funding our program in a substantial way,” she said, “our West Virginia callers will suddenly be facing what has been a problem nationally.”
Javier E

U.S. Internet Users Pay More for Slower Service - Bloomberg - 0 views

www.bloomberg.com/...y-more-for-slower-service.html

internet policy competition regulation telecom access

shared by Javier E on 01 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • The arrival of commercial Internet communications in the mid-1990s posed a threat to both the phone and cable companies; eventually, the FCC deregulated the entire sector, thinking that competition among various modalities of Internet access --cable, phone, wireless, satellite -- would protect Americans. And in 2002, when the five-year period of deregulation began, there was indeed rough parity in speed and price between the cable companies and telephone companies providing Internet access.
  • Soon, however, cable companies found a way to upgrade their networks to provide connections perhaps 100 times faster than what was possible over copper wires, and at much lower expense than the phone companies incurred replacing their phone lines. Goodbye, Copper The American copper wire telephone system is, in fact, becoming obsolete. The physical switches used in the network are reaching the end of their useful lives. But now that cable has won the battle for wired Internet service and consumers are moving to mobile phones for voice service, the telephone companies are looking to shed the obligation to maintain their networks at all.
  • Meanwhile, the U.S. is rapidly losing the global race for high-speed connectivity, as fewer than 8 percent of households have fiber service. And almost 30 percent of the country still isn’t connected to the Internet at all.
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  • Other countries have different goals. The South Korean government announced a plan to install 1 gigabit per second of symmetric fiber data access in every home by 2012. Hong Kong, Japan and the Netherlands are heading in the same direction. Australia plans to get 93 percent of homes and businesses connected to fiber. In the U.K., a 300 Mbps fiber-to-the-home service will be offered on a wholesale basis.
  • The first step is to decide what the goal of telecommunications policy should be. Network access providers -- and the FCC -- are stuck on the idea that not all Americans need high-speed Internet access. The FCC’s National Broadband Plan of March 2010 suggested that the minimum appropriate speed for every American household by 2020 should be 4 megabits per second for downloads and 1 Mbps for uploads. These speeds are enough, the FCC said, to reliably send and receive e-mail, download Web pages and use simple video conferencing.
  • In a sense, the FCC adopted the cable companies’ business plan as the country’s goal. The commission’s embrace of asymmetric access -- slower upload than download speeds -- also serves the carriers’ interests: Only symmetric connections would allow every American to do business from home rather than use the Internet simply for high-priced entertainmen
  • Think of it this way: With a dialup connection, backing up 5 gigabytes of data (now the standard free plan offered by many storage companies) would take 20 days. Over a standard (3G) wireless connection, it would take two and a half days. Over a 4G connection it would be more than seven hours, and over a cable DOCSIS 3.0 connection, an hour and a half. With a gigabit fiber-to-the-home connection, it can be done in less than a minute.
  • If the U.S. had a fully fiber-based network, Hollywood blockbusters could be downloaded in 12 seconds, video conferencing would become routine, and every household could see 3D and Super HD images. Americans could be connected instantly to their co-workers, their families, their teachers and their health-care monitors. To make this happen, though, the U.S. needs to move to a utility model, based on the assumption that all Americans require fiber-optic Internet access at reasonable prices. How much would it cost to bring fiber to the homes of all Americans? Corning Inc. (GLW), the American glass manufacturer, and others have estimated that it would take between $50 billion and $90 billion.
  • The Internet has taken the place of the telephone as the world’s basic, general-purpose, two-way communication medium. All Americans need high-speed access, just as they need clean water, clean air and electricity. But they have allowed a naive belief in the power and beneficence of the free market to cloud their vision. As things stand, the U.S. has the worst of both worlds: no competition and no regulation.
Javier E

World's eight richest people have same wealth as poorest 50% | Business | The Guardian - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...have-same-wealth-as-poorest-50

poverty wealth inequality development crisis globalization capitalism marx

shared by Javier E on 16 Jan 17 - No Cached
  • The world’s eight richest billionaires control the same wealth between them as the poorest half of the globe’s population
  • , Oxfam said it was “beyond grotesque” that a handful of rich men headed by the Microsoft founder Bill Gates are worth $426bn (£350bn), equivalent to the wealth of 3.6 billion people.
  • The development charity called for a new economic model to reverse an inequality trend that it said helped to explain Brexit and Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election.
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  • Oxfam blamed rising inequality on aggressive wage restraint, tax dodging and the squeezing of producers by companies, adding that businesses were too focused on delivering ever-higher returns to wealthy owners and top executives.
  • The World Economic Forum (WEF) said last week that rising inequality and social polarisation posed two of the biggest risks to the global economy in 2017 and could result in the rolling back of globalisation.
  • Oxfam said the world’s poorest 50% owned the same in assets as the $426bn owned by a group headed by Gates, Amancio Ortega, the founder of the Spanish fashion chain Zara, and Warren Buffett, the renowned investor and chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway.
  • The others are Carlos Slim Helú: the Mexican telecoms tycoon and owner of conglomerate Grupo Carso; Jeff Bezos: the founder of Amazon; Mark Zuckerberg: the founder of Facebook; Larry Ellison, chief executive of US tech firm Oracle; and Michael Bloomberg; a former mayor of New York and founder and owner of the Bloomberg news and financial information service.
  • “While one in nine people on the planet will go to bed hungry tonight, a small handful of billionaires have so much wealth they would need several lifetimes to spend it. The fact that a super-rich elite are able to prosper at the expense of the rest of us at home and overseas shows how warped our economy has become.”
  • Last year, Oxfam said the world’s 62 richest billionaires were as wealthy as half the world’s population. However, the number has dropped to eight in 2017 because new information shows that poverty in China and India is worse than previously thought
  • The body that organises the Davos event said rising inequality was not an “iron law of capitalism”, but a matter of making the right policy choices.
  • The WEF report found that 51% of the 103 countries for which data was available saw their inclusive development index scores decline over the past five years, “attesting to the legitimacy of public concern and the challenge facing policymakers regarding the difficulty of translating economic growth into broad social progress”.
  • the vast majority of people in the bottom half of the world’s population were facing a daily struggle to survive, with 70% of them living in low-income countries.
  • “From Brexit to the success of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, a worrying rise in racism and the widespread disillusionment with mainstream politics, there are increasing signs that more and more people in rich countries are no longer willing to tolerate the status quo,” the report said.
  • the WEF released its own inclusive growth and development report in which it said median income had fallen by an average of 2.4% between 2008 and 2013 across 26 advanced nations.
  • The Oxfam report added that since 2015 the richest 1% has owned more wealth than the rest of the planet. It said that over the next 20 years, 500 people will hand over $2.1tn to their heirs – a sum larger than the annual GDP of India, a country with 1.3 billion people. Between 1988 and 2011 the incomes of the poorest 10% increased by just $65, while the incomes of the richest 1% grew by $11,800 – 182 times as much.
  • Oxfam called for fundamental change to ensure that economies worked for everyone, not just “a privileged few”.
Javier E

What's the matter with Dem? Thomas Frank talks Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and everythin... - 0 views

www.salon.com/..._everything_in_between_partner

Democratic party obama clinton meritocracy working class

shared by Javier E on 03 Apr 16 - No Cached
  • The Democrats are a class party; it’s just that the class in question is not the one we think it is. It’s not working people, you know, middle class. It’s the professional class. It’s people with advanced degrees. They use that phrase themselves, all the time: the professional class.
  • What is the professional class?The advanced degrees is an important part of it. Having a college education is obviously essential to it. These are careers based on educational achievement. There’s the sort of core professions going back to the 19th century like doctors, lawyers, architects, engineers, but nowadays there’s many, many, many more and it’s a part of the population that’s expanded. It’s a much larger group of people now than it was 50 or 60 years ago thanks to the post-industrial economy. You know math Ph.Ds that would write calculations on Wall Street for derivative securities or like biochemists who work in pharmaceutical companies. There’s hundreds of these occupations now, thousands of them. It’s a much larger part of the population now than it used to be. But it still tends to be very prosperous people
  • there’s basically two hierarchies in America. One is the hierarchy of money and big business and that’s really where the Republicans are at: the one percent, the Koch brothers, that sort of thing.
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  • The hierarchy of status is a different one. The professionals are the apex of that hierarchy.
  • these two hierarchies live side by side. They share a lot of the same assumptions about the world and a lot of the same attitudes, but they also differ in important ways. So I’m not one of these people who says the Democrats and the Republicans are the same. I don’t think they are. But there are sometimes similarities between these two groups.
  • professionals tend to be very liberal on essentially any issue other than workplaces issues. So on every matter of cultural issues, culture war issues, all the things that have been so prominent in the past, they can be very liberal.
  • On economic questions, however, they tend not to be. (dishes clattering) They tend to be much more conservative. And their attitudes towards working-class people in general and organized labor specifically is very contemptuous.
  • if you look just back to the Bill Clinton administration: In policy after policy after policy, he was choosing between groups of Americans, and he was always choosing the interests of professionals over the interests of average people. You take something like NAFTA, which was a straight class issue, right down the middle, where working people are on one side of the divide and professionals are on another. And they’re not just on either side of the divide: Working people are saying, “This is a betrayal. You’re going to ruin us.” And professional people are saying, “What are you talking about? This is a no-brainer. This is what you learn on the first day of economics class.” And hilariously, the working people turned out to be right about that. The people flaunting their college degrees turned out to be wrong.
  • Every policy decision he made was like this. The crime bill of 1994, which was this sort of extraordinary crackdown on all sorts of different kinds of people. And at the same time he’s deregulating Wall Street.
  • Or deregulating telecoms. Or capital gains tax cuts. It’s always choosing one group over another.
  • If you go down the list of leading Democrats, leading Democratic politicians, what you find is that they’re all plucked from obscurity by fancy universities. This is their life story. Bill Clinton was from a town in Arkansas, goes to Georgetown, becomes a Rhodes Scholar, goes to Yale Law School — the doors of the world open up for him because of college.
  • beginning in the 1960s, Americans decided that the right way to pursue opportunities was through the university. It’s more modern than you think. I was reading a book about social class from right after World War II. And the author was describing this transition, this divide between people who came up through their work, who learned on the job and were promoted, versus people who went to universities. And this was in the ’40s. But by the time Bill Clinton was coming up in the ’60s, university was essential
  • just look at his cabinet choices, which are all from a very concentrated very narrow sector of the American elite. It’s always Ivy League institutions.
  • The tuition price spiral is one of the great landmark institutions of our country in the last couple of decades.
  • You’re teaching a course that meets three times a week and you’re getting $1,500 for an entire semester. That was a shocking lesson but at the same time that was happening to us, the price of college was going up and up and up, because increasingly the world or increasingly the American public understands and believes that you have to have a college degree to get ahead in life. So they are charging what the markets can bear
  • look, I’m in favor of education. I think people should be educated, should go to college. I think it’s insane that it costs as much as it does. And I think that the country is increasingly agreeing with me
  • The student debt crisis? This is unbearable. We have put an entire generation of young people — basically they come out of college with the equivalent of a mortgage and very little to show for it. It’s unbelievable that we’ve done this. My dad went to college basically for free. It wasn’t even that expensive when I went, in the early 1980s. This is unbelieveable what we’re doing to young people now and it can’t go on
  • You seem to be suggesting, the way you talk about the Democrats, that somehow this is elitist and to pursue an education puts you out of touch with real people.I don’t think so. Especially since we’re rapidly becoming a country where — what is the percentage of people who have a college degree now? It’s pretty high. It’s a lot higher than it was when I was young.
  • One of the chronic failings of meritocracy is orthodoxy. You get people who don’t listen to voices outside their discipline. Economists are the most flagrant example of this. The economics profession, which treats other ways of understanding the world with utter contempt. And in fact they treat a lot of their fellow economists with utter contempt.
  • there’s no solidarity in a meritocracy. The guys at the top of the profession have very little sympathy for the people at the bottom. When one of their colleagues gets fired, they don’t go out on strike
  • There’s no solidarity in this group, but there is this amazing deference between the people at the top. And that’s what you see with Obama. He’s choosing those guys.
  • you start to wonder, maybe expertise is a problem.But I don’t think so. I think it’s a number of things.
  • The first is orthodoxy which I mentioned
  • The second is that a lot of the professions have been corrupted. This is a very interesting part of the book, which I don’t explore at length. I wish I had explored it more. The professions across the board have been corrupted — accounting, real estate appraisers, you just go down the list
  • the third thing is this. You go back and look at when government by expert has worked, because it has worked. It worked in the Roosevelt administration, very famously. They called it the Brains Trust. These guys were excellent.
  • These were not the cream of the intellectual crop. Now he did have some Harvard- and Yale-certified brains but even these were guys who were sort of in protest. Galbraith: This is a man who spent his entire career at war with economic orthodoxy. I mean, I love that guy. You go right on down the list. Its amazing the people he chose. They weren’t all from this one part of American life.
  • Is there a hero in your book?I don’t think there is.
  • The overarching question of our time is inequality, as [Obama] himself has said. And it was in Bill Clinton’s time too.Well you look back over his record and he’s done a better job than most people have done. He’s no George W. Bush. He hasn’t screwed up like that guy did. There have been no major scandals. He got us out of the Iraq war. He got us some form of national health insurance. Those are pretty positive things. But you have to put them in the context of the times, weigh them against what was possible at the time. And compared to what was possible, I think, no. It’s a disappointment.
  • when Clinton ran in ’92, they were arguing about inequality then as well. And it’s definitely the question of our time. The way that issue manifested was Wall Street in ’08 and ’09. He could have taken much more drastic steps. He could have unwound bailouts, broken up the banks, fired some of those guys. They bailed out banks in the Roosevelt years too and they broke up banks all the time. They put banks out of business. They fired executives, all that sort of thing. It is all possible, there is precedent and he did none of it
  • What else? You know a better solution for health care. Instead he has this deal where insurance companies are basically bullet-proof forever. Big Pharma. Same thing: When they write these trade deals, Big Pharma is always protected in them. They talk about free trade. Protectionism is supposed to be a bad word. Big Pharma is always protected when they write these trade deals.
  • You talk about “a way of life from which politicians have withdrawn their blessing.” What is that way of life?You mean manufacturing?You tell me. A sort of blue-collar way of life. It’s the America that I remember from 20, 30, 40 years ago. An America where ordinary people without college degrees were able to have a middle class standard of living. Which was — this is hard for people to believe today — that was common when I was young
  • Today that’s disappeared. It’s disappearing or it has disappeared. And we’ve managed to convince ourselves that the reason it’s disappeared is because — on strictly meritocratic grounds, using the logic of professionalism — that people who didn’t go to college don’t have any right to a middle-class standard of living. They aren’t educated enough. You have to be educated if you want a middle-class standard of living.
  • here have been so many different mechanisms brought into play in order to take their power away. One is the decline of organized labor. It’s very hard to form a union in America. If you try to form a union in the workplace, you’ll just get fired. This is well known. Another, NAFTA. All the free trade treaties we’ve entered upon have been designed to give management the upper hand over their workers. They can threaten to move the plant. That used to happen of course before NAFTA but now it happens more often.
  • Basically everything we’ve done has been designed to increase the power of management over labor in a broad sociological sense.
  • And then you think about our solutions for these things. Our solutions for these things always have something to do with education. Democrats look at the problems I am describing and for every economic problem, they see an educational solution
  • The problem is not that we aren’t smart enough; the problem is that we don’t have any power
  • Why do you think that is?I go back to the same explanation which is that Obama and company, like Clinton and company, are in thrall to a world view that privileges the interest of this one class over everybody else. And Silicon Valley is today when you talk about the creative class or whatever label you want to apply to this favored group, Silicon Valley is the arch-representative.
  • So do you think it’s just a matter of being enthralled or is it a matter of money? Jobs? Oh the revolving door! Yes. The revolving door, I mean these things are all mixed together.
  • When you talk about social class, yes, you are talking about money. You are talking about the jobs that these people do and the jobs that they get after they’re done working for government. Or before they begin working for government. So the revolving door — many people have remarked upon the revolving door between the Obama administration and Wall Street.
  • Now it’s between the administration and Silicon Valley. There’s people coming in from Google. People going out to work at Uber.
  • the productivity advances that it has made possible are extraordinary. What I’m skeptical of is when we say, oh, there’s a classic example when Jeff Bezos says, ‘Amazon is not happening to book-selling. The future is happening to book-selling.’ You know when people cast innovation — the interests of my company — as, that’s the future. That’s just God. The invisible hand is doing that. It just is not so.
  • Every economic arrangement is a political decision. It’s not done by God. It’s not done by the invisible hand — I mean sometimes it is, but it’s not the future doing it. It’s in the power of our elected leaders to set up the economic arrangements that we live in. And to just cast it off and say, oh that’s just technology or the future is to just blow off the entire question of how we should arrange this economy that we’re stumbling into.
  • I may end up voting for Hillary this fall. If she’s the candidate and Trump is the Republican. You bet I’m voting for her. There’s no doubt in my mind. Unless something were to change really really really dramatically.
  • Bernie Sanders because he has raised the issues that I think are really critical. He’s a voice of discontent which we really need in the Democratic party. I’m so tired of this smug professional class satisfaction. I’ve just had enough of it. He’s talking about what happens to the millennials. That’s really important. He’s talking about the out-of-control price of college. He’s even talking about monopoly and anti-trust. He’s talking about health care. As far as I’m concerned, he’s hitting all the right notes. Now, Hillary, she’s not so bad, right? I mean she’s saying the same things. Usually after a short delay. But he’s also talking about trade. That’s critical. He’s really raising all of the issues, or most of the issues that I think really need to be raised.
  • My main critique is that she, like other professional class liberals who are so enthralled with meritocracy, that she can’t see this broader critique of all our economic arrangements that I’ve been describing to you. For her, every problem is a problem of the meritocracy: It’s how do we get talented people into the top ranking positions where they deserve to be
  • People who are talented should be able to rise to the top. I agree on all that stuff. However that’s not the problem right now. The problems are much more systemic, much deeper, much bigger. The whole thing needs to be called into question. So I think sometimes watching Hillary’s speeches that she just doesn’t get that
Javier E

The Jig Is Up: Time to Get Past Facebook and Invent a New Future - Alexis Madrigal - Te... - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...256046

technology startups future innovation

shared by Javier E on 20 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • have we run out of things to say and write that actually are about technology and the companies behind them? Or do we feel compelled to fill the white space between what matters? Sort of like talk radio?
  • There have been three big innovation narratives in the last few years that complicate, but don't invalidate, my thesis. The first -- The Rise of the Cloud -- was essentially a rebranding of having data on the Internet, which is, well ... what the Internet has always been about. Though I think it has made the lives of some IT managers easier and I do like Rdio. The second, Big Data, has lots of potential applications. But, as Tim Berners-Lee noted today, the people benefiting from more sophisticated machine learning techniques are the people buying consumer data, not the consumers themselves. How many Big Data startups might help people see their lives in different ways? Perhaps the personal genomics companies, but so far, they've kept their efforts focused quite narrowly. And third, we have the daily deal phenomenon. Groupon and its 600 clones may or may not be good companies, but they are barely technology companies. Really, they look like retail sales operations with tons of sales people and marketing expenses.
  • we've reached a point in this technology cycle where the old thing has run its course. I think the hardware, cellular bandwidth, and the business model of this tottering tower of technology are pushing companies to play on one small corner of a huge field.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • We've maxed out our hardware. No one even tries to buy the fastest computer anymore because we don't give them any tasks (except video editing, I suppose) that require that level of horsepower
  • more than the bandwidth or the stagnant hardware, I think the blame should fall squarely on the shoulders of the business model. The dominant idea has been to gather users and get them to pour their friends, photos, writing, information, clicks, and locations into your app. Then you sell them stuff (Amazon.com, One King's Lane) or you take that data and sell it in one way or another to someone who will sell them stuff (everyone). I return to Jeff Hammerbacher's awesome line about developers these days: "The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads." 
  • On the mobile side, we're working with almost the exact same toolset that we had on the 2007 iPhone, i.e. audio inputs, audio outputs, a camera, a GPS, an accelerometer, Bluetooth, and a touchscreen. That's the palette that everyone has been working with -- and I hate to say it, but we're at the end of the line.
  • despite the efforts of telecom carriers, cellular bandwidth remains limited, especially in the hotbeds of innovation that need it most
  • Some of it, sure, is that we're dumping the computation on the servers on the Internet. But the other part is that we mostly do a lot of the things that we used to do years ago -- stare at web pages, write documents, upload photos -- just at higher resolutions.
  • The thing about the advertising model is that it gets people thinking small, lean.
Javier E

Barons of Broadband - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ugman-barons-of-broadband.html

monopoly antitrust economics

shared by Javier E on 18 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • There used to be a bipartisan consensus in favor of tough antitrust enforcement. During the Reagan years, however, antitrust policy went into eclipse, and ever since measures of monopoly power, like the extent to which sales in any given industry are concentrated in the hands of a few big companies, have been rising fast.
  • , it became common to assert that the world had changed in ways that made all those old-fashioned concerns about monopoly irrelevant. Aren’t we living in an era of global competition? Doesn’t the creative destruction of new technology constantly tear down old industry giants and create new ones?
  • The truth, however, is that many goods and especially services aren’t subject to international competition: New Jersey families can’t subscribe to Korean broadband.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • creative destruction has been oversold: Microsoft may be an empire in decline, but it’s still enormously profitable thanks to the monopoly position it established decades ago.
  • there’s good reason to believe that monopoly is itself a barrier to innovation. Ms. Crawford argues persuasively that the unchecked power of telecom giants has removed incentives for progress: why upgrade your network or provide better services when your customers have nowhere to go?
Javier E

The Influence of Fiorina at Lucent, in Hindsight - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...na-at-lucent-in-hindsight.html

election 2016 GOP candidate

shared by Javier E on 22 Sep 15 - No Cached
  • her celebrated tenure at Lucent has been clouded by what happened two years after she left in 1999. The once-highflying business worth more than $250 billion at its peak nearly collapsed in the face of an accounting scandal and the telecommunications bust. The company laid off 50,000 employees in 2001 alone. Today the company, after merging with Alcatel of France, is worth only about $10 billion.
  • Lucent, like some its rivals, artificially burnished its financial performance through vendor financing — lending money to customers so they could buy its products. In 2004, the company settled charges brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission that accused it of perpetrating a $1.1 billion accounting fraud.
  • “It’s unlikely she would have been considered for the HP job once it became clear that Lucent’s success had more to do with loose credit terms and creative accounting than any reinvention of the company as the Second Coming of Cisco,”
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Scott Woolley of Fortune magazine wrote a deeply reported story in 2010 during Ms. Fiorina’s unsuccessful Senate campaign in California that detailed a questionable deal she championed. Mr. Woolley focused on a vendor-financed transaction with a small company, PathNet, a sale that was valued at as much as $2.1 billion, though PathNet had only $1.6 million in annual revenue. It later filed for bankruptcy.
  • While Mrs. Fiorina wasn’t responsible for the accounting fraud — she was never accused of being involved in any financial shenanigans — she did work with, and helped support, some of the employees who came under legal scrutiny for acts that took place after she left. One of those executives was Nina Aversano, a senior executive at Lucent who played a role in the company’s aggressive sales and accounting tactics. Mrs. Fiorina, somewhat famously inside of Lucent, literally kissed the feet of Ms. Aversano on stage in front of hundreds of employees after a particularly good quarter.
  • Ms. Endlich Heffernan’s book connects Mrs. Fiorina to two other failures while she was at Lucent. In one, Mrs. Fiorina was assigned to run Lucent’s consumer products business. Perhaps that division was always destined for failure — it included Lucent’s handset business just as the world was pivoting to mobile communications. But Mrs. Fiorina orchestrated a joint venture with the Dutch electronics giant Philips Electronics that turned out to be a mess, one that she later told The Wall Street Journal was the biggest mistake of her career.
  • Then there was Lucent’s 1999 acquisition of Ascend Communications for more than $22 billion. That deal may go down in history as one of the worst. Again, however, Mrs. Fiorina wasn’t in charge at Lucent. Was she consulted on the transaction? Yes. But she didn’t try to object to it.
  • Donald Trump was right when he said during the debate last week: “You know, if you look at what happened at Lucent under her tenure, it was not a good picture.”
sgardner35

French Firm Latest Target of Palestinian-Led Movement to Boycott Israel - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ovement-to-boycott-israel.html

shared by sgardner35 on 05 Jun 15 - No Cached
  • While many Israelis were enraged by comments from the chief executive of the French telecommunications company Orange, who told journalists in Egypt that he would like to cut ties to an Israeli cellphone service provider that operates in the occupied West Bank, pro-Palestinian activists working to isolate Israel argued that the statement was insufficient.
  • As a result, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his allies have accused B.D.S. activists in Europe and the United States of attempting to “delegitimize” Israel and suggested that the movement is a cover for anti-Semitism.
  • Remi Kanazi, a Palestinian-American poet and activist, who is a strong supporter of B.D.S., said hundreds of artists and others had canceled appearances in Israel or had declined invitations to go in recent years. Many did so in response to B.D.S. requests, he said, reflecting what he called a broadening appeal of the campaign.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • “It’s not simply that the cultural boycott is growing but people are more publicly supportive of it,” he said.
  • While Orange does not directly operate in Israel or the West Bank, an Israeli company, Partner Communications, operates a cellphone service with the brand name Orange Israel under a licensing agreement, so the activists argue that the French company profits from the occupation.
  • Images of Israeli soldiers clustered around Orange trucks near the front line during the fighting last year in Gaza, where they could reportedly charge their phones and get extra batteries, were shared on social networks last week by B.D.S. activists in Egypt.
qkirkpatrick

Israel PM Netanyahu attacks Orange boss for pulling deal - BBC News - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...world-middle-east-33013390

israel palestine history crisis culture

shared by qkirkpatrick on 05 Jun 15 - No Cached
  • Israel's Prime Minister has attacked the boss of the French telecom giant Orange for looking to pull out of a deal with an Israeli partner.
  • Partner controls close to 28% of Israel's mobile market and while Orange has a licensing deal with Partner, allowing it to use the Orange brand name, it does not have a controlling stake in the company.
  • On 6 May, the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), a Paris-based NGO, said: "Partner is building infrastructure on confiscated Palestinian land and offers services to settlers and the Israeli army."
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Jewish settlements on occupied territory are considered illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this. Neither Israel nor Partner commented on the FIDH report.
  • At a conference in Cairo on Wednesday, Mr Richard said: "I am ready to abandon this [partnership] tomorrow morning but the point is that I want to secure the legal risk for the company.
  • "We want to be one of the trustful partners of all Arab countries."
  • "Simultaneously, I call on our friends to say in a clear and loud voice that they object to any kind of boycott against the Jewish state."
  • qkirkpatrick on 05 Jun 15
     
    Company pulls deal with Partner Communications after finding out they build infrastructure on confiscated Palestinian land
Javier E

Emerging markets: The dodgiest duo in the suspect six | The Economist - 0 views

www.economist.com/...-russia-look-particularly-weak

brazil crisis economics economic

shared by Javier E on 07 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • Brazil and Russia, by contrast, are in really bad shape. The largest emerging economies after China, together they have the heft of Germany.
  • In both countries the currency is sliding. The real hit new lows in November after data revealed the budget deficit reached a record in September.
  • But Brazil and Russia’s problems have domestic roots too. Since the 1990s Brazil has tended to aim for a primary surplus (before interest payments) of close to 3% of GDP—enough to begin reducing its debts. But Dilma Rousseff, the newly re-elected president, has played havoc with Brazil’s public finances. In 2014 spending has expanded at twice the rate of revenues despite one-off gains from the sale of Libra, an oilfield, and the 4G telecoms spectrum. Brazil’s debt-to-GDP ratio is rising fast.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Some of their pain comes from abroad. Brazil’s main trading partners are slowing (China), stagnant (the euro area) or tanking (Argentina). Not only are export volumes down; the prices of things Brazil sells—iron ore, petroleum, sugar and soyabeans—are dropping as global demand falters.
  • Both face stagflation: bubbly prices coupled with growth rates likely to be below 1% this year.
  • There could be worse to come. The drop in commodity prices looks set to last. Meanwhile, in order to crimp inflation and stem the slide in their currencies the central banks in both countries raised their rates last month: they stand at 11.25% in Brazil and 9.5% in Russia. At the same time, worried finance ministries are keen to bolster their books. In Brazil, fuel-tax hikes are being mooted, and tax breaks on car purchases may be scrapped.
  • This frugality will hurt. Banks could prove vulnerable as public-sector spending cuts hit incomes and high interest rates make loans hard to service.
  • Even optimists think the pair will be lucky to grow in 2015. Pessimists see tumbling currencies, bond-market routs and even bank runs.
Javier E

British Prime Minister Suggests Banning Some Online Messaging Apps - NYTimes.com - 0 views

bits.blogs.nytimes.com/...ing-some-online-messaging-apps

cybersecurity terrorism data mining government

shared by Javier E on 15 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • “Are we going to allow a means of communications which it simply isn’t possible to read?” Mr. Cameron said at an event on Monday, in reference to services like WhatsApp, Snapchat and other encrypted online applications. “My answer to that question is: ‘No, we must not.’ ”
  • Mr. Cameron said his first duty was to protect the country against terrorist attacks.
  • “The attacks in Paris demonstrated the scale of the threat that we face and the need to have robust powers through our intelligence and security agencies in order to keep our people safe,”
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Mr. Cameron’s comments are part of a growing debate in Europe and the United States over whether Internet companies and telecom providers must cooperate fully with intelligence agencies, who have seen an increased use of social media by groups like the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL.
  • After the Paris attacks, European leaders, for example, called on Internet service providers to report potentially harmful online material aimed at inciting hatred or terror.
sgardner35

Facebook Meets Skepticism in Bid to Expand Internet in India - NYTimes.com - 0 views

mobile.nytimes.com/...-expand-internet-in-india.html

facebook india

shared by sgardner35 on 26 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • are deliberately stripped down to minimize data usage and the cost to the phone company
  • Mr. Zuckerberg declined several requests to discuss Internet.org. But he remains passionate about his crusade. “Internet access needs to be treated as an important enabler of human rights and human potential,” he told the United Nations last month.
  • Last month, he hosted a live-streamed chat with India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, from Facebook’s Silicon Valley headquarters. And this week, Mr. Zuckerberg will be in New Delhi, where he will take questions from some of Facebook’s 130 milli
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Phone-card sellers also tend to push whatever makes them the most money. Mr. Khan noted that another carrier had recently awarded him his choice of a Hero motorcycle or 45,000 rupees — nearly $700 — for signing up 1,000 customers. Reliance offered nothing similar.
  • “This is a program that is working to bring people online, and working incredibly well.” Mr. Daniels said. “Connectivity is something that improves people’s lives. It’s an enabler for people to be able to help themselves find jobs, help themselves improve their health situation, improve their education for themselves and their children.”
  • The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India is still mulling potential regulations. In a recent interview, however, the agency’s chairman, Ram Sewak Sharma, was skeptical of Internet.org. “Maybe they have wonderful objectives, but the way it is being implemented, that’s not really appropriate,” he said.
runlai_jiang

Softbank plans $18bn share sale of its mobile business - BBC News - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...business-42685276

shared by runlai_jiang on 15 Jan 18 - No Cached
  • Softbank plans $18bn share sale of its mobile business
  • Japanese giant Softbank is planning to list its mobile phone business in Tokyo and overseas, according to the Nikkei newspaper. The listing on the Tokyo Stock Exchange and possibly in London aims to raise 2 trillion yen ($18bn; £13.1bn).Softbank confirmed in a statement that the share sale is an option but no decision has yet been made.
  • SoftBank would use the proceeds to invest in growth, such as buying into foreign information-technology companies, the Nikkei said.The Japanese telecommunications giant is one of the world's biggest technology companies and is run by its founder, Japanese entrepreneur Masayoshi Son.It has previously acquired Vodafone's Japanese operations and the US telecoms company Sprint.In 2016, Softbank bought UK technology firm ARM Holdings for $24bn ($32bn).
Javier E

Xi Jinping Is Undoing China's Economic Miracle - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...617552

china autarky state intervention Xi economics

shared by Javier E on 12 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • China’s economic “miracle” wasn’t that miraculous. The country’s high-octane ascent over the past 40 years is, in reality, a triumph of basic economic principles: As the state gave way to the market, private enterprise and trade flourished, growth quickened, and incomes soared.
  • China’s leader is rejecting decades of tried-and-true policy by reasserting the power of the Communist Party within the economy and redirecting Chinese business inward.
  • In a document issued in September, the Communist Party said it aimed to “guide” private companies to “explore the establishment of a modern enterprise system with Chinese characteristics.” The “opinion” of the party is that its cadres ought to have more influence over the management decisions of private firms, to ensure that they adhere firmly to the correct, state-determined line.
  • ...15 more annotations...
  • Since the days of Deng, the mantra of Beijing’s top policy makers had been “reform and opening up,” which stressed integration with the global economy. Xi, however, wants to limit that integration, or at least engage with the wider world on different terms
  • Perhaps he thinks that a heftier role for the state could help firm his hold over party and government. “He wanted more control, and he thought having a big state sector was an element of achieving that,” Lardy explained.
  • Deng Xiaoping, one of Xi’s predecessors, who launched China’s now-famous pro-market reforms in the late 1970s, understood that the country was destitute because it was strangled by the Communist state and cut off from the world. Deng and his successors steadily lifted controls on private investment, trade, and foreign business. Unfettered by overbearing state planners, China’s entrepreneurial energies, mixed with imported capital and technology, unleashed an explosion of growth and wealth.
  • In other words, China will stay open for business—if that business helps protect its own interests.
  • “He is feeling under siege,” James McGregor, the chairman of the China arm of the consulting firm APCO Worldwide, told me. Chinese officials “are eliminating all vulnerabilities to the outside world, or reducing them as much as they can.”
  • an economist at the research firm Capital Economics, dubbed the self-sufficiency drive a “lose-lose” for China’s economy, because it diverts resources from more productive purposes and forces firms to choose suppliers for political, not economic, reasons
  • Xi wishes to reduce China’s reliance on other countries, especially potential adversaries such as the United States. From Beijing’s perspective, the Trump administration’s restrictions on technology sales to the telecom giant Huawei Technologies and other Chinese outfits exposed the dangers of counting on untrustworthy foreigners, and Xi intends to ensure that China’s advance can’t be upset by politicians in Washington or elsewhere.
  • To protect national security, China needs “independent, controllable, safe, and reliable” supply chains, Xi said in an April speech, with “at least one alternative source for key products and supply channels, to create a necessary industrial backup system.” Localizing technology has been a long-standing Chinese ambition, but China watchers think Xi has thrown that plan into hyperdrive
  • All of this adds up to a grand experiment in the kind of state-directed development unseen since the days of Mao Zedong.
  • Classically trained economists frown upon Xi’s program. He’s ticking just about every box of what not to do to propel incomes and innovation
  • et we shouldn’t immediately dismiss his plans as doomed to fail. As a gargantuan market of 1.4 billion people, China can develop local companies of size and scope without bothering much with the outside world. (Ma’s Ant is a prime example.) If the program works, economists may have to rewrite their textbooks.
  • et the undertaking is fraught with risks. By favoring the state sector, Xi is funneling valuable money and talent to notoriously bloated and inefficient government enterprises instead of far more nimble and creative private firms
  • This dovetails nicely with another of Xi’s goals, self-sufficiency. China, he believes, should produce homemade substitutes to key products now bought from overseas—especially microchips and other critical technologie
  • learly, Xi is preparing for protracted conflict between the world’s two largest economies by attempting to fireproof China from measures President-elect Joe Biden might use against him. Yet in doing so
  • if Xi succeeds in replacing more of what China purchases from the world, he will also undermine the economic rationale for continued engagement with a brutal authoritarian regime. Xi thinks he is shielding China against isolation. He could instead be causing it.
anniina03

The Rohingya Know International Law's Failures Better Than Anyone - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...600169

culture crisis politics

shared by anniina03 on 22 Oct 19 - No Cached
  • And on the second anniversary of the genocide, it fell upon Ullah to tell his fellow Rohingya that they were fast running out of options.
  • he spoke into a microphone, telling the assembled spectators that they had two choices: to resign themselves to life here—by some measures the world’s densest refugee camp—and rely on global compassion that was eroding, or demand that their rights be upheld in Myanmar (by a government whose army has sought to slaughter them) and then return home.
  • These are now the only real possibilities on offer for the Rohingya, a community that is, by and large, on its own, with dwindling numbers of supporters on the international stage
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • In the reams that have been written about the plight of the Rohingya, chronic and utter disenfranchisement is the most consistent thread. The origins of their bottom-tier status are colonial, but were codified in 1982 when the Burmese government passed a law that restricted their movement and access to education, and allowed for arbitrary confiscation of property.
  • With repatriation stalled, Bangladesh is now exploring relocation. The country has thus far been patient and welcoming, but its willingness to host such a large refugee population is wearing thin.
  • The atrocities continue to this day, deepening the humanitarian catastrophe in the province of Rakhine. (Myanmar has repeatedly denied carrying out any ethnic cleansing or genocide.)
  • Myanmar government signed a memorandum of understanding with two UN agencies as a first step toward the Rohingya’s repatriation, they were not consulted. So when 3,450 Rohingya families were offered voluntary return to Rakhine, not a single one took up the offer.
  • Wave after wave of extreme violence against them culminated in August 2017 with a crackdown that forcibly displaced nearly a million people. At least 9,000 members of their community died in just the first month of the onslaught
  • the storm surge during the monsoon often triggers landslides, and the mud, water, and sewage from makeshift toilets in the camps combine to form a deadly cocktail of infectious and waterborne diseases.
  • Staying here in the camps carries its own risks. Children have had no access to formal education, creating what UNICEF has called a “lost generation,” while human traffickers prey on young girls and boys.
  • Yet somehow, when faced with repatriation to Rakhine or relocation to Bhasan Char, the squalid camps appear the safest option.
  • For one thing, donor support is in doubt. Bangladesh, itself a poor nation, is struggling to cope with the economic and environmental impact of hosting so many refugees.
  • At the same time, the conditions in the camps are worsening. Bangladesh directed local telecom operators at the beginning of September to shut down networks in the camps
  • Last week, the government took the clampdown a step further, announcing that refugees were now expected to stop using Bangladeshi cellphone SIM cards or face potential fines and jail time. Rohingya families rely on internet connectivity to stay in touch with loved ones still in Rakhine
  • On September 7, a parliamentary committee on defense recommended that a barbed-wire fence be built around the camps, restricting the free movement that refugees are afforded under international law. The decision has essentially created an open-air prison.
  • This relative unwillingness to criticize either the Myanmar or Bangladesh government—seen by UN agencies as necessary to preserve relationships with the two countries so that they continue to allow them to carry out relief work—has rankled Rohingya leaders such as Ullah, who argue that the language of international politics and humanitarianism is instead being used to mask inaction.
  • official UN Security Council designation of genocide is critical to activating the 1948 Genocide Convention, allowing perpetrators to be punished and peacekeeping forces to be deployed.
  • China and Russia, veto-wielding members of the body, are likely to block any action against Myanmar
  • Two years ago, when foreigners rushed in with aid, the Rohingya expected their plight to improve. They thought they would get a seat at the negotiating tables where their fates are being sealed, so that the human rights enshrined in international law might be extended to them.Instead, Ullah and his fellow Rohingya here are reduced to holding out hope that their children will receive a better education, to at least offer the prospect that their community’s lot will improve in the future.
mimiterranova

Photos: The Non-Pandemic World Events That Helped Shape 2020 : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...ed-shape-2020-around-the-world

photos events 2020 world

shared by mimiterranova on 04 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • A massive computer breach allowed hackers to spend months exploring numerous U.S. government networks and private companies' systems around the world. Industry experts say a country mounted the complex hack — and government officials say Russia is responsible.
  • Russia's foreign intelligence service, the SVR, is believed to have carried out the hack, according to cybersecurity experts who cite the extremely sophisticated nature of the attack. Russia has denied involvement.
  • President Trump has been silent about the hack and his administration has not attributed blame.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • The victims include government, consulting, technology, telecom and other entities in North America, Europe, Asia and the Middle East, according to the security firm FireEye, which helped raise the alarm about the breach.
  • After studying the malware, FireEye said it believes the breaches were carefully targeted: "These compromises are not self-propagating; each of the attacks require meticulous planning and manual interaction."
  • Hackers exploited the way software companies distribute updates, adding malware to the legitimate package. Security analysts said the malicious code gave hackers a "backdoor" — a foothold in their targets' computer networks — which they then used to gain elevated credentials. SolarWinds traced the "supply chain" attack to updates for its Orion network products between March and June.
  • FireEye is calling the "Trojanized" SolarWinds software Sunburst. It named another piece of malware – which it said had never been seen before — TEARDROP.
  • olarWinds said it is cooperating with the FBI, the U.S. intelligence community and other investigating agencies to learn more about the malware and its effects. The company and security firms also said any affected agencies or customers should update to the latest software to lessen their exposure to the vulnerability. Microsoft has now taken control of the domain name that hackers used to communicate with systems that were compromised by the Orion update, according to security expert Brian Krebs. That access can help reveal the scope of the hack, he said.
  • For the U.S. government, Mandia says, there are bigger questions to be addressed — including a doctrine on what the U.S. expects nations' rules of engagement to be, and what the response will be to those who violate that doctrine.
Javier E

How South Korea Successfully Managed Coronavirus - WSJ - 0 views

www.wsj.com/...ow-to-manage-covid-11601044329

korea pandemic response

shared by Javier E on 26 Sep 20 - No Cached
  • South Korea appears to have cracked the code for managing the coronavirus. Its solution is straightforward, flexible and relatively easy to replicate.
  • The country has averaged about 77 new daily cases since early April and recently suppressed a spike in infections. Adjusting for population, that would be the equivalent of about 480 cases a day in the U.S., where new daily cases have averaged about 38,000 over the same period.
  • South Korea halted virus transmission better than any other wealthy country during the pandemic’s early months. It was about twice as effective as the U.S. and U.K. at preventing infected individuals from spreading the disease to other
  • ...40 more annotations...
  • South Korea’s economy is expected to decline by just 0.8% this year, the best among the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s forecasts for member nations.
  • When the supply of face masks ran short early on in the crisis, the government seized production.
  • The nation fast-tracked approval of domestic testing kits as soon as cases began hitting
  • It tapped into its relative wealth and hyperconnectivity, blasting text alerts to citizens if infections occurred in their area
  • The key to South Korea’s success came from blending technology and testing like no other country, centralized control and communication—and a constant fear of failure.
  • Some parts of its playbook wouldn’t work in most Western societies—and received backlash in South Korea as well
  • Nearly everyone in the country wears masks.
  • Every confirmed patient, even those with no or mild symptoms, gets isolated at hospitals or converted dormitories run by the government. Treatment is free.
  • As a result, South Korea never had to mandate a lockdown, so restaurants and business were able to stay open, cushioning the blow to the economy.
  • “No country has adapted to living with, and containing, the virus like South Korea,”
  • “You don’t need or want to eradicate the virus. But you modify your behavior and get on with life.”
  • It detected the country’s first case 10 days later using a test that screened for all known coronavirus strains—the same tactic practiced during the December simulation.
  • Health officials have unfettered access to individuals’ private mobile data, and early on used government websites to share the whereabouts of confirmed patients, plucked from smartphone GPS history
  • The government now offers anonymous testing and leaves out identifying information and specific names of places visited in contact-tracing disclosures.
  • After a major cluster linked to a megachurch in the city of Daegu emerged on Feb. 18, the government made a flurry of moves
  • Cases peaked in 11 days.
  • The day after cases reached a five-month high of 441 on Aug. 27, South Korea’s top public-health official gave a grim forecast: “We could see 800 to 2,000 infections next week
  • South Koreans took the advice and adjusted. Population mobility, as measured by local telecom operators, soon fell by one-quarter. Most schools closed and diners had to leave restaurants by 9 p.m. Aug. 27 turned out to be the peak.
  • At twice-a-day briefings, health officials express worry when they can only trace the origins of three-quarters of confirmed cases.
  • In total, South Korea, with a population of 52 million, has reported 23,455 cases and 395 deaths.
  • One reason South Korea was prepared: It learned painful lessons in 2015 from an outbreak of Middle East respiratory syndrome
  • “The only way to make the government prepared is to actually have an outbreak,”
  • After MERS, the government started twice-a-year training sessions simulating a rapid spread of viral disease
  • “Oddly enough, last December’s ‘war game’ was a novel coronavirus,”
  • After two weeks of aggressive social distancing, South Koreans could again head back to schools, gyms and sports stadiums.
  • One firm, Kogene Biotech Co., demonstrated a successful test and got the regulatory green light within four days. A second manufacturer would be added by Feb. 12. The tests all used the same methodology and could be sent to any of the country’s roughly 120 laboratories that promised turnaround times of between six to 24 hours.
  • Cases, which had been slowly rising, suddenly doubled in a day, to over 100. Experts predicted it would soon surge to levels seen nowhere else but China.
  • That triggered a Feb. 20 late-night message in a group chat with eight South Korean infectious-disease experts: “We need to quickly devise a way to conduct mass testing,”
  • an answer: drive-through clinics.
  • Dr. Kim sent a PowerPoint presentation to the group within hours, at 3:53 a.m., outlining how tests would take just 10 minutes and saved much-needed protective gear since outdoor workers didn’t have to change gowns after each patient
  • Two days later, cars rumbled through the country’s first drive-through clinic. Testing capacity multiplied 100 times, giving South Korea a critical early edge.
  • As South Korea’s coronavirus problems mounted, Mr. Moon intentionally kept his profile low. “His stance is that it’s more objective for an expert to hold the briefings, and that is the way to gain the trust of the people,”
  • Even with the swift response, a lack of hospital beds became a major issue. In just 11 days, South Korea’s case count had gone from 31 to 3,150. Thousands were waiting to be hospitalized. A handful died while waiting.
  • South Korea’s infectious-disease experts had a proposal. Confirmed patients should be divided into four categories, based on the risk profile and severity of symptoms, with only the most serious cases hospitalized. Those with mild or no symptoms should be isolated at makeshift treatment facilities.
  • Dr. Peck set up a meeting with senior officials from the Samsung conglomerate, asking that an empty facility near Daegu be lent to the South Korean government. By first having a company volunteer a venue, Dr. Peck recalled thinking, it would pressure South Korea’s health ministry to act.
  • About 80% of South Korea’s coronavirus patients have been hospitalized in the community treatment centers. Those who are asymptomatic or have mild symptoms are still sent there.
  • That changed in August. Unlike February’s outbreak, the new wave of infections fanned out across South Korea to all 15 of the country’s major cities and provinces. The country’s national testing capacity had by then expanded to 50,000 a day with test results notified within 24 hours, up from 20,000 in February
  • The U.S. conducted about 900,000 tests a day over the past week through Thursday, according to data from the Covid Tracking Project. But South Korea performs six times as many tests per confirmed Covid-19 case than the U.S. doe
  • South Korea’s three-tier system created in June for social distancing went off script. With health experts split on whether to adopt the maximum levels last month, a government advisory committee landed at a “level 2.5” social-distancing for the Seoul area that closed schools and banned church services and gatherings of more than 10 people.
  • On Tuesday, South Korea reported its lowest one-day infections in over a month, with just 61 cases.
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