Possible Pro Display XDR-like Screen Real estate up to 32”
Well known and previously credible Apple leak-meister l0vetodream added credence to the wildly rumored concept that a high-end newly designed iMac will feature a “really big” screen, larger than the current max for iMac of 27 inches (5k).
With the iMac Pro already out of production and only the “standard” 21.5 inch and 27 inch models remaining an update, definitely this year, is an obvious prediction.
However, since the iMac Pro itself never had an option for a larger higher resolution screen, and in the mean time the $5 to $6 thousand 32 inch 6k Pro Display XDR setting the standard for ultra large high quality screen design it is also not unlikely that some of the technology of that product could trickle down into a high end iMac without adding the cost of such a colossus.
Above: 6k Pro Display XDR Credit: Apple
Further, there’s a slightly less credible but interesting rumor out regarding a new iPhone design based on the “cheese grater” style of the new Mac Pro and Pro Display. Though a bit mind-blowing to imagine, a matching set of gear with cheese grater styling for my iPhone 13 Pro, and a new high end iMac is a bizarre pleasant (but perhaps a bit macho) daydream.
It’s not likely that this new machine would surface as soon as WWDC 2021 but, it is not entirely off the table either (nothing is out of the question with Apple’s secrecy history)
Since the iMac outward design has not had a total makeover since 2012 (!) the possibility (probability?) of a new, higher end, iMac with new styling (perhaps with bezels and edge styling like the iPad pro of late), faster, upgraded performance (M2?) and a bigger and better screen than the current 27 inch model would be just fine, thank you.
Platform wars are heating up and influencers may be prime beneficiaries…
Something strange is happening in social media: influencers are getting paid, sometimes directly by platforms.
To clarify; there have always been ways for creators with a large following to monetize their stats. Mainly, however, until recently that mostly involved sponsorships and affiliate merchandise, and the like.
On top of the efforts required to create winning content, getting paid for it was an additional job and creators got little assistance from the greatest beneficiaries of the work: the host platforms themselves.
Suddenly, it seems, the value of creators in bringing and keeping traffic for the platforms is so high, as a war rages between platforms for that traffic, that some have gone as far as initiating new programs to pay influential content makers directly.
Naturally, YouTube has had a monetization program that requires elevated status to qualify for and then takes a more than 30% cut of the proceeds, but on the whole payment for creative content production has been minimal for all but the most massive stars in the social media firmament. Now, that appears to be changing, and fast.
Snap, a once hot destination, is trying to boost its attractiveness by paying out $1 million per day for popular posts. TikTok, the fastest growing platform recently, has also set up a fund to pay out to creators and says it will increase the fund to $1 billion.
All of this is not going unnoticed by the platforms with the most traffic, Facebook and its owned entity Instagram, and, in an unprecedented move, payments are beginning to flow on those platforms also. Twitter, Clubhouse and others have various plans in the works as well.
There’s a massive shift toward coveting creators as a result of competition for traffic and members
What this all boils down to is two things. There’s a war going on (in reality battles left and right in many areas of internet dominance) and the spoils are traffic growth, and that growth is only possible for the platforms if creators migrate in and stick around.
As long as Facebook, Instagram and Google’s YouTube were untouchable monopolies they did not need to admit that they needed the allegiance of creators and influencers.
As the only game in town, each in a different monopolized neighborhood, there was literally no where for the creators to run to. No more. Mainly TikTok and now upstarts like Clubhouse are changing the landscape and that is scary to the legacy platforms.
Anecdotal evidence points to the ability for talent to garner views and followers, via the algorithm settings that either promote or hide content from prospective consumers, as the prime mover, at least initially, for the creators to favor TikTok.
Stories abound of creators that, within days or weeks, were able to get millions of views due to the “democratic” openness of the TikTok system for featuring content based on less restrictive algorithms than the entrenched platforms.
The once invincible behemoths at Facebook and Google let greed get the best of them. It has been literally years since organic reach, the ability to get views and traffic just on the quality of the content, was possible on facebook and the price to reach an audience, with paid posts, just kept going higher and higher.
Now, due to this tectonic shift in power, from the platforms to the influencers and users, there is, unbelievably, a situation emerging where Facebook must appease the talent and creativity of the content creators if they want to remain relevant.
Pending antitrust actions and privacy issues are just adding to the shifting status and uncertain future of social media
In a sense, there was always a kind of unwritten rule of social media: the owners and creators of the platforms retained all the money and power with none of the liability or labor requirements.
That relationship, which is like slaves who built the great pyramids, but without the allowance for food or shelter, was doomed from the start as it is based on a lie.
Ultimately the platform has very little to offer, technological and software designs are easily replicated theses days, and these platforms are not in the business of generating any of content, yet they expect that content to be created for free by users.
This ridiculous valueless and vampiric scam has been lionized and worshiped as the ultimate internet success formula for more than a decade.
Facebook, and Mark Zuckerberg, have stood as the ultimate arbiters of how to become obscenely rich by enticing the world to work and create content for your platform for zero renumeration.
Once a company, coincidentally one that originated in China, came along and decided not to worship the Zuckerberg formula, but to undercut it by giving creators an ever-so-slightly less terrible deal, the spell was broken.
Next, it was only a matter of time before the war over the real value began: the content itself that users and particularly top creators on each platform provide.
Not to say that TikTok is heroic or intentionally upset the apple cart as a result of any foresight or altruism, this is just the inevitable outcome of a failed and corrupt system eventually becoming mature and collapsing (slowly) under its own stupidity.
For now, this slight reprieve from endless exploitation is an extremely hopeful sign. Let’s hope that creator payouts and the competition for content, real content that has value regardless of which platform hosts it, will continue to rise in stature.
Any creators or influencers out there who are listening, do what you do best which is create, and now add the option to sell your services to the highest bidder to your toolkit and keep your eyes and ears open for the next, even more accommodative platform to emerge from the muck. Then go there.
Possible WW3 over Digital Ads with Zuck & Google Vs MSFT & Apple
Sometimes, in order to tackle a complicated subject it is necessary, first, to take a step back. For example, before tech and the internet became the dominant economic force it is today there were hundreds, even thousands of companies that had important roles to play in the economy.
Not they other companies are unimportant today, but the sheer scale of trillion dollar (and growing) tech companies such as Google, Facebook who combined represent a near monopoly in digital advertising, and Apple and Microsoft, each also with strangleholds in some markets, but on the outside in the war over digital ad income.
This disparity and imbalance is so massive as to be nearly unprecedented in history. And, now, as the first blind hero worship phase has ended, we are entering a phase where the nearly ubiquitous influence and dominance over lives and fortunes are finally being questioned.
Next up: The war erupting as a result of the extreme correlation between the entrenched and overwhelming dominance of Facebook and Google in digital ads, the income source of media producers, and the near demise of that industry.
The situation has finally become so critical and lopsided that governments are finally stepping in to enforce changes that could never happen while one side, the “dominant digital platforms” holds all the cards and power.
One new axiom that has emerged with the rise of big tech monsters is that only a monster can hope to prevail in a war with another monster. Enter Kong vs Godzilla.
In this emerging world war it is more complicated still; on one side are the parallel duo of Facebook and Google, with similarities in the way they dominate digital advertising, but also in that they share a “surveillance” based business model using private user data to control markets and traffic.
On the other side are Apple, which has staked a claim to user privacy as a means to clearly differentiate a positive product and service based model, Microsoft, that appears to simply want to play the underdog as a search engine alternative to google and a “smaller” player in the digital ad space.
And then, in a corner of distinction above all others, lies the power of world governments.
World governments are playing a pivotal role as a kind of referee – finally stepping in, as the dangers and damage caused already by the duo of Facebook and Google, have awakened the possible regulatory, anti-trust actions that only they can enforce.
First was the rumble down under, now, on to Europe and North America
Even as a kind of truce has erupted in Australia, with the government making specific alterations to the News Media Bargaining Code that, apparently, appeased Facebook enough to withdraw its universal ban on hosting Australian news product.
According to AP News: Google and Facebook, take a combined 81% of online advertising in Australia and initially condemned the code as unworkable.
That has rapidly changed, and the stand-off has come to at least a temporary end.
Also likely, is that the massive demand for an app offering direct access to some of the exact stories that Facebook banned sent a strong enough message that competition for viewers is only one click away.
Motivating the two sides to come to terms and for Facebook to back down from its draconian stance vis-à-vis the new law.
Even as the Aussie skirmish fades a new front in Europe is emerging
Microsoft announced on February 22nd that is was joining a coalition of European Publishers to promote an “Aussie style” code for digital platforms to remunerate news content producers.
In addition to Microsoft, groups involved include the European Publishers Council (EPC), News Media Europe (NME), European Newspaper Publishers’ Association (ENPA), and European Magazine Media Association (EMMA).
Previously, Microsoft had already Earlier this month, Microsoft was lobbying in support of other countries following Australia’s lead in creating legislation mandating that news outlets to be paid for articles published on the platforms in the United States, Canada, the European Union, and other countries.
“We welcome Microsoft’s recognition of the value that our content brings to the core businesses of search engines and social networks because this is where Google and Facebook generate the vast majority of their revenues.
It is crucial that our regulators recognise this key point, and don’t get misled into thinking that side deals on the basis of a stand-alone product are the same thing, because they are not at all and undermine the neighbouring rights that we have been granted. All publishers should get an agreement – no one should be left out”.
-CHRISTIAN VAN THILLO, CHAIRMAN OF THE EUROPEAN PUBLISHERS COUNCIL
EPC, NME, ENPA, EMMA, and Microsoft call for arbitration to be implemented in European or national law that requires search engines and media platforms that aggregate news pay for content based on the Publisher‘s Right set out in Directive 2019/790.
Pandora’s Box is open and spilling all over the highway
Interestingly, Microsoft is, in a roundabout and equally self-severing way (according to critics) is now the second trillion dollar tech monster to take a direct stance against Facebook and Google and the monopoly strangle hold the enjoy over the financial life-blood of advertising that is essential for journalism and news production to survive, let alone flourish.
Critics will point out that Microsoft’s Bing search engine with a tiny market share compared to Google (in chart above the ridiculous 90% plus monopoly can be seen) has nothing to lose and everything to gain by supporting government efforts to even the playing field. And Apple? Facebook has already declared war and alleged all sorts of evil motivations for the privacy controls being built into its operating systems.
But that kind of talk is a bit late and weak now that the ultimate tech monster showdown has already begun. The first crack in a flawed and destructive business model, one shared to a great degree by both Facebook and Google has seen its first failure. Many more are yet to come.
And, last but not least, Microsoft and Apple are positioning themselves as the “good guys” and siding with governments and the News production organizations, partly, in order to be seen in a more positive light in case various anti-trust and regularity battles loom between either of them and the governments that are, currently, also investigating all of the giants.
By the way, seen any of Amazon’s recent “we are good guys, despite what you might have heard, seen or experienced” commercials? Small tip: if you have to spend millions on commercials trying to convince people you are not an evil greed-obsessed avaricious crap-ass company then you probably are exactly that.
The horses are out of the barn so grab your popcorn and get ready for this to get strange soon. After Europe Canada and then the US is coming into the ring.
If four years of the Former Guy taught us anything, it’s that we have no time left for evil, soulless greed run amok
– Opinion & Analysis –
Recent attempts by politicians, beholden to the fossil fuel industry in Texas, to use the collapse of the energy infrastructure during the recent weather disaster as an opportunity to bash and trash wind and solar energy is an example of an unfortunate, banal and still common form of pure evil.
The deeper connections, easily seen lurking just beneath the surface, are rich and multilayered.
If this extreme weather disaster is one of many that are linked to climate change, a manifestation of dangers that climate scientists have been warning of for decades, the irony goes beyond just sick.
Wind and solar energy exist as an early and tentative positive step toward somehow stopping, or at least slowing down, the negative man-made climate change repercussions before it is too late.
The real reasons behind the Texas power grid collapse are related to traditional fossil fuel based energy sources and bad management of the energy infrastructure that can be traced back to an arrogant belief that Texas is better off without connections to the national system.
The local political response to this eminently preventable catastrophe was to bash and trash and blame the very technology that, ultimately, is part of a tentative start to actually begin to solve the bigger problem of man-made climate change.
…the time is gone to accept “two sides” to an argument that, by postponing any real solutions, will kill us all.
Just as the history of the internal combustion engine and the fossil fuel and auto industry’s attempts to prolong its near monopoly, using disinformation and other tactics for over 50 years was evil, the anti-sustainable energy politics in Texas today is just a continuation of that effort.
The time is gone to accept “two sides” to an argument that has one side trying, by attempting to postpone any real solutions, to kill us all, in the name of short term greed.
Under unique circumstances lending legitimacy to evil is too costly to condone
Looking at “both sides” of an issue is a practice based on a theory that “reasonable people” can disagree on diametrically opposed views. This idea is often suspended, however, by unreasonable people for their own reasons. That is sometimes called “war”.
Reasonable people, people, for example that understand climate science and want to prevent the total destruction of the earth and the extinction of all inhabitants, are often reluctant to suspend this idea of “good people on both sides” by their very nature as caring individuals.
“Now we need to understand that the “silence of one good man” can spell disaster for all good people. Each of us who remained passive as our impending disaster continued might have been the one “good man” who didn’t act, didn’t speak out, didn’t resist…
Now is a time when huge changes are going to be forced by an external and highly powerful and dangerous threats to our survival. The changes that are needed involve radically new ways of thinking and acting across many spheres of activity.
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New technologies, such as the aforementioned wind turbines and solar collectors, new forms of transportation, new ways of looking at other causes of, and remedies to, the excessive expulsion of carbon into the atmosphere will be absolutely required.
The truth is that for these new ways of thinking and acting to take over in human commerce the old ways must be cancelled. With extreme prejudice.
The past and those that want to go back to it are a lost cause, unfortunately
Many many “rich” people will be unhappy about this. And they will have politicians in their pocket that will gladly spread lies and disinformation to try and sustain the sick, evil gravy-train of polluting, carbon spewing systems as long as possible.
Sick and evil, not because those ways of surviving for humanity, burning fossil fuels and using them for a million different things that were a benefit in the short term, but because the short term is over.
The various arguments that somehow it is a good idea not to change and for the changes to slow down and not step on any toes as they gradually become “viable” have zero validity as of today (really as of 25 years ago but that’s water under the bridge).
Eventually the climate itself will kill them for their mistakes. Unfortunately it will also kill the rest of us if we allow them to continue to postpone positive change with lies and disinformation.
– D.L.
There must be an understanding among “reasonable” people, people who want to be part of an urgent crusade to save the world, literally, that points of view and the people who espouse them represent evil, plain and simple.
They will scream that reasonable people are “femi-nazis and “eco-terrorists” and say and do whatever it takes to protect what’s left of a deadly status quo. But they are wrong.
Eventually the climate itself will kill them for their mistakes. Unfortunately it will also kill the rest of us if we allow them to continue to postpone positive change with lies and disinformation.
“Every one of these people is the banality of evil personified. Every one of them became what Arendt called a “leaf blowing in the whirlwind of time.” Now every one of them bears responsibility for what could lie ahead.”
This change in thinking about how to respond to this kind of evil will be a more important factor in the survival of humanity than all the technological advances combined.
“World War III is a guerrilla information war with no division between military and civilian participation.” – Marshall McLuhan (1970), Culture is Our Business, p. 66.
–Marshall McLuhan
“Info-wars” were predicted as the battlefield of WWIII by Marshall McLuhan in 1970 and now we are in it and there must be an understanding of what is at stake.
When disinformation is used as a perennial weapon against positive, necessary change it is necessary to do more than disagree. It is necessary to expose the lies and, more importantly, the obvious sick and criminal motives for the lies. Over and over as often as necessary.
Getting more buzz daily and sign-ups continue to accelerate
Clubhouse is a fast growing “new” social media sensation that is growing at an amazing rate. It is also constantly morphing in an endless kaleidoscopic experience that comes from an amazing new technology: the conference call.
Exploring the paradox that having no gifs, no photos, no memes, not even a string of text is now the most added social app with the biggest buzz is as good a starting point as any.
Imagine you are unable to text, unable to send or post a photo, unable to speak unless you are called up or invited to be on on stage, need to use your real name for sign-up and must adhere to the specified topics and protocols of each room.
Sounds restrictive right? But it is this very contrast with other forms of social media that seems, for many, liberating, even transcendent. Once you realize that you are in a room with, in some cases, 12 or so people on stage and thousands of people listening in the audience, its a bit like a panel discussion, but in a smaller rooms it’s like a small gang in Philly circled around an oil drum fire chatting (or conspiring as it were) while they rub their hands together to keep warm.
Next, imagine, in a few years, when apple’s “Animoji” capability is added, perhaps with a body, the ability to walk around with some scenic backgrounds and you have “Ready Player One” in real life.
Obviously gaming platforms approximate this but for non-gamers, as the tech sophistication advances, it becomes more viable and interesting. And it’s the enthusiasm from the public exploding for the speech only version of this that could be key in hastening the realization.
On the other hand, clubhouse users are raving about, while others are lamenting, the intense intimacy that comes with speaking to, or sometimes whispering in, each other’s ears. The ASMR version of a conference call. With an audience.
There are also music rooms and a music mode – a higher fidelity version of a room where singing playing instruments and more is possible. The idea is to eventually do concerts (possibly paid) and even live collaborations and more.
The phenomenal nature and accelerated adoption since the launch is is perhaps just as much a reaction to the chaos and collisions that are so ubiquitous on platforms like Twitter, Instagram and others, as it is a fascination with the “new-yet-old” options enabled by the Clubhouse technology.
Add to all the the perfect synchronicity of the first lockdown phase of the pandemic corresponding to the initial public launch in March, 2020 and you have a historic paradigm shift that may well carry forward for years or even decades. Adaptation to new ways of communicating as a necessity and a natural next step.
How to get your account set up and what’s what in the app
For a basic breakdown: the app is audio only. Once you are invited (or get on the waiting list and are let in by a sponsor) and ready to set up your account you will be prompted for the usual things, user name, real name, bio, phone number and so forth. You can also direct connect a live link Twitter and Instagram accounts, which is where the “DMs” have to happen since the app has no built in messaging.
Once is you will see there are “rooms” and “clubs”. Rooms are always available and can be joined or created by all members. If you join a “live” room you are, as default, put into the “audience” which has two sub-sections: the “followed by the speakers” section which gives you a kind of front row seat, and the “non-followed” regular audience. The audience members have no microphone button and cannot speak without it.
To become a speaker you can click on a “hand” symbol which activates “raise your hand” allowing any “moderator” (designated with a “green bean” asterisk icon) to invite you to the “stage”, which is where the speakers reside.
The moderators do have the power to interrupt a speaker or even kick a speaker back to the audience, thereby removing any speaking privileges.
The magic of the app is in this structure, clubhouse etiquette, and the ability to have multi-minds from all walks of life that, generally, choose a topic for the room and then, with the guidance of the moderators, get input from various speakers on stage.
“Clubs” are like permanent rooms that also have signed-up members (some have thousands or tens of thousands of them) and these often have scheduled sessions, weekly, daily or otherwise, in advance.
Above: Collage by Lynxotic, Original Photo by Rosie Kerr on Unsplash
Clubhouse: Social Audio App, currently iOS only and invitation required
Clubhouse is a fast growing “new” social media sensation that is growing at an amazing rate. It is also constantly morphing in an endless kaleidoscopic experience that comes from an amazing new technology: the conference call.
Exploring the paradox that having no gifs, no photos, no memes, not even a string of text is now the most added social app with the biggest buzz is as good a starting point as any.
Imagine you are unable to text, unable to send or post a photo, unable to speak unless you are called up or invited to be on on stage, need to use your real name for sign-up and must adhere to the specified topics and protocols of each room.
Sounds restrictive right? But it is this very contrast with other forms of social media that seems, for many, liberating, even transcendent. Once you realize that you are in a room with, in some cases, 12 or so people on stage and thousands of people listening in the audience, its a bit like a panel discussion, but in a smaller rooms it’s like a small gang in Philly circled around an oil drum fire chatting (or conspiring as it were) while they rub their hands together to keep warm.
Next, imagine, in a few years, when apple’s “Animoji” capability is added, perhaps with a body, the ability to walk around with some scenic backgrounds and you have “Ready Player One” in real life.
Obviously gaming platforms approximate this but for non-gamers, as the tech sophistication advances, it becomes more viable and interesting. And it’s the enthusiasm from the public exploding for the speech only version of this that could be key in hastening the realization.
On the other hand, clubhouse users are raving about, while others are lamenting, the intense intimacy that comes with speaking to, or sometimes whispering in, each other’s ears. The ASMR version of a conference call. With an audience.
There are also music rooms and a music mode – a higher fidelity version of a room where singing playing instruments and more is possible. The idea is to eventually do concerts (possibly paid) and even live collaborations and more.
The phenomenal nature and accelerated adoption since the launch is is perhaps just as much a reaction to the chaos and collisions that are so ubiquitous on platforms like Twitter, Instagram and others, as it is a fascination with the “new-yet-old” options enabled by the Clubhouse technology.
Add to all this the perfect synchronicity of the first lockdown phase of the pandemic corresponding to the initial public launch in March, 2020 and you have a historic paradigm shift that may well carry forward for years or even decades. Adaptation to new ways of communicating as a necessity and a natural next step.
How to get your account set up and what’s-what in the app
For a basic breakdown: the app is audio only. Once you are invited (or get on the waiting list and are let in by a sponsor) and ready to set up your account you will be prompted for the usual things, username, real name, bio, phone number and so forth. You can also direct-connect a live link for Twitter and Instagram accounts, which is where the “DMs” have to happen since the app has no built in messaging.
Once in, you will see there are “rooms” and “clubs”. Rooms are always available and can be joined or created by all members. If you join a “live” room you are, as default, put into the “audience” which has two sub-sections: the “followed by the speakers” section which gives you a kind of front row seat, and the “non-followed” regular audience. The audience members have no microphone button and cannot speak without it.
To become a speaker you can click on a “hand” symbol which activates “raise your hand” allowing any “moderator” (designated with a “green bean” asterisk icon) to invite you to the “stage”, which is where the speakers reside.
The moderators do have the power to interrupt a speaker or even kick a speaker back to the audience, thereby removing any speaking privileges.
The magic of the app is in this structure, clubhouse etiquette, and the ability to have multi-minds from all walks of life that, generally, choose a topic for the room and then, with the guidance of the moderators, get input from various speakers on stage.
“Clubs” are like permanent rooms that also have signed-up members (some have thousands or tens of thousands of them) and these often have scheduled sessions, weekly, daily or otherwise, in advance.
Search Interest in Clubhouse
According to data from Exploding Topics, searches for “clubhouse app” have increased by 99x over the last 6 months. And are up 3250% over the last 90 days.
The celebrity juice effect; enter Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Robinhood’s CEO, Zendaya and more
Rooms and clubs vary in content style, membership and atmosphere, almost in as many ways as can be imagined.
At the top of the list for the media buzz are the recent “spontaneous” appearances of huge names like Musk & Zuckerberg, Andrew Yang, Zendaya, Guy Kiyosaki and many more.
In these “hot” rooms, the audience is currently capped at five thousand, and in the big demand-surges they create “spillover” rooms which are listen-only and also cap out at five thousand each.
Needless to say, when word spreads that a huge celebrity, especially a tech luminary, is in the house the demand for the room skyrockets. This is also a kind of beta test for the servers and for the potential of the future changes expected for the app: paid content.
Various ideas have been floated, including “creator” payments, but it is unclear if there will be an admission fee for certain events-based or high-demand rooms, or if some other system will be used to compensate “star” moderators and content creators.
Since the experience shares some characteristics with podcasts, albeit live, and radio, the professional communities from those industries along with Vloggers, social media marketing pros, influencers, a lots and lots of people in finance, fin-tech and most of all Venture Capital, Angel Investors and Startup mentors are everywhere in the house.
Notable Clubhouse Users
Clubhouse has added a number of notable users over the last few months. Here’s a list of notable people that are currently on the platform:
According an article in Medium by Will Oremus as well as another By Casey Newton in The Verge, the initial population of invited members on the app were primarily from tech leaders, tech investors and venture capitalists. Due to this somewhat puzzling choice – as opposed to, for example, college students, there is a feeling that the Clubhouse is built to create a safe space for accomplished, established tech stars and personalities to be on stage as they might at SWSX or CES (more the former), without being heckled by journalists or the audience (which is by definition on mute).
There’s a somewhat conspicuous absence of political rooms or anything related to journalism or digital media, which according to the articles above is potentially by design. Even that has already started to change, however.
With a kind of trade-show, live podcast-feeling and endless variations in topics added to the almost overwhelming changes and expansion of speakers and audiences, any disappointing feelings you may have about using the app are likely to disappear once the next, totally different room or topic is encountered. Like the weather in Montana.
Social status competition that carries over from other platforms is rampant but not all pervasive
At this point, many rooms and clubs are, not surprisingly about making money and / or how to achieve success online, on social media networks in particular. Aa a powerful educational tool, these rooms can seem like you are auditing a lecture or panel discussion at Harvard, or at least your local community college.
At the same time many on stage come across as having an eye on the prize of becoming, by early entry, a clubhouse star, just as everyone saw with TikTok and YouTube beforehand.
And that lust for acceptance and followers (there are no likes or heart emojis to gift) can create an odd mixture of profusely and oft professed love for prospective followers combined with a fear of possible encroachment by lower level competitors looking for status by getting more attention.
Fortunately, as more Rooms and Clubs proliferate, many topics and learning categories have various rooms to choose from, and the ones with the most professional and genuine moderation and room-vibes will likely be the most popular.
No one really knows how the evolution and expansion will manifest, but it will not be dull to watch it unfold, at least not for quite a while.
Politics, controversy and offbeat subject matter are only now beginning to proliferate…
An odd and strange exception to the dearth of political fireworks came in a club session recently that featured a very, very angry man railing against, surprise, the media (and its coverage of the US gov). I won’t mention any names as recording and perhaps quoting from rooms is verboten.
To paraphrase the gist of his wildly eloquent tirade, on a level one might expect from a highly educated technologist, he posited that “because he is very smart” “team fortify” (his coinage for the “blue team” that sounded like shorthand for Democrats and some part of the left) was going to destroy him “reputationally” [sic], “financially and potentially, physically” (meaning he expects to be killed for being too smart) and that his response to that is “Fuk You!”.
He repeated this several times in alternation with his ultra-educated machine-gun word-bullets aimed at an unseen enemy, all with an incredible furor and volume. He never elaborated, during the time I listened in, as to what hits his reputation or finances had taken and seemed to be physically quite alive.
He was surrounded on “stage” by some extremely impressive, talented and articulate people who also seemed somewhat baffled as to why the man was so incredibly upset. No one dared to contradict him or say much except to mirror his highly intelligent ramblings with supportive sounding intellectual elaboration on his larger point, which was something like “the bad guys are expecting to be considered good guys because that are better than the really bad guys.”
There were around 3000 in the silent audience (no clapping or sound of any kind allowed).
The experience of that club session was truly surreal and perhaps a preview of what may come when the android half of the world joins and the most “engaging” characters begin to make waves (and dollars) via this new medium.
Clubhouse (and similar voice and audio based social media networks or features) is here to stay and will only get more interesting
While there are many disappointing reactions that are natural to feel, like how quickly all the biographical pages of members suddenly look like the emoji-filled corollary on Twitter, the fascinating diversity of ideas options and uses far outweigh the negative aspects.
And, although, mirroring an Instagram norm, people religiously compete to see how few others they can follow while amassing thousands of followers themselves (in the belief that status comes from being so desirable that every one needs you but you don’t need anyone else), this may not remain, as Clubhouse, for the most part, does not have much in the way o bikini competitions or other glamor and status seeking options of that type.
For some, it might be just too intense to speak directly with people you’ve never met and perhaps never will, even as hundreds or thousands listen in.
If that’s the case, you can still just pop into a room or join a club on your favorite topic. Once there you can listen, learn and build the confidence to raise your hand and give your 2 cents, or even get invited to be onstage as a featured speaker.
Please tune in for more updates on new features and developments, as this article will be the first in a series on Clubhouse and the new social audio revolution..
Apple gets serious about exploitative surveillance business models, and it’s about time
Six months ago when we first published “Cracks in The Wall: Apple, Google, Amazon and Facebook Silently Declare Wars Against Each Other” we were worried. Although we firmly believed it was a just war, and that the time was at hand for the rotten underbelly of the internet and, more than anything else, for the business model of Facebook to be excoriated out in the open, using the term “war” in conjunction with Apple seemed over-the-top and even inflammatory.
We stuck with the title and now, looking back, it was accurate if not 100% polite. After new privacy features in iOS 14 and macOS Big Sur were made public, Facebook and Zuckerberg took it as an attack on its tracking-first-business model and fought back with some rhetoric about how Apple was going to harm small businesses.
The first feeble attempt at fighting back was a full page ad in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other outlets, where Facebook alleged: “these changes will be devastating to small businesses” with the supposition that small businesses depend on Facebook’s darling invention; tracking-based advertising, and need it to build their brands and to sell products.
Missing from this self-serving logic is the price of this form of targeting and data collection – in dollars, literally billions of them charged to those same small businesses, and in the cost to virtually all “users” who’s privacy is sacrificed with little to no consumer benefit and many, many potential detriments.
This is not just some sort of scrap between rival companies, it’s all our futures at stake
With the salvo of clear and decisive comments made by Tim Cook at the Computers, Privacy and Data Protection conference, and in interviews with various magazines, the righteous and timely battle against demonstribly evil internet business models is for real now, with the unnamed but obviously targeted Facebook at the top of the list.
The quote from Tim Cook in the title above exactly captured the current reality: the excellent documentary titled ‘The Social Dilemma’ did not go nearly far enough in exposing the danger of surveillance based business models that should not be allowed to exist
As if Facebook has ever been a friend to small business. The concept that has been clear for many years is that the surveillance capitalism, for the most part invented by Facebook, that Apple is now declaring war against, was always an obscene and disastrous one for every person on the planet, other than Mark Zuckerberg.
“If a business is built on misleading users, on data exploitation, on choices that are no choices at all, it does not deserve our praise. It deserves reform,”
Apple CEO, Tim Cook, speaking at the Computers, Privacy and Data Protection conference
However, with a vast power over almost all digital advertising (sharing, with Google, more than 70%) and no competition to speak of where anyone could go for “social media” access, 3-5 years ago it was hard to imagine how anything could slowdown, let alone stop, Facebook’s inexorable rise.
In what will be a huge theme for this decade, only giants can fight and hope to win against other giants.
Right now, as of Tim Cook’s declaration of war on the “data-industrial complex” and with numerous anti-trust and other legal actions against Facebook pending, it suddenly seems plausible that a real change, a much needed change, could finally come in the way that human beings communicate via that immense network of devices we call the internet.
“Technology does not need vast troves of personal data, stitched together across dozens of websites and apps, in order to succeed.”
— Tim Cook
In an exclusive interview with Michael Grothaus at Fast Company Cook stated: “In terms of privacy—I think it is one of the top issues of the century, we’ve got climate change—that is huge. We’ve got privacy—that is huge. . . . And they should be weighted like that and we should put our deep thinking into that and to decide how can we make these things better and how do we leave something for the next generation that is a lot better than the current situation.” (emphasis mine)
This statement, though perhaps hyperbolic to some, is at the heart of our coverage of Apple, Google, Facebook and “Big Tech” in general over the last few years. In fact, this idea can go further and deeper as… “privacy” is just the tip of the iceberg and the predatory infrastructure that the data-collection and exploitation business model enables is even more dangerous and is a threat to the entire economy.
Of the new “Big 5” (Apple, Musk, Facebook, Google, Amazon) only Apple and the affiliated Elon Musk enterprises actually have proprietary products or products and services that benefit humanity in a concrete way.
Elon Musk has sustainable energy and sustainable transportation as stated goals of Tesla, while SpaceX, has reaching Mars (to give earthlings a second planet available in case we screw this one up) and, now with Starlink, building a second broadband internet backbone in space.
Apple, while on the one hand being inadvertently responsible for both Google and Facebook in different ways (more on that soon in a subsequent post), is at the heart of the real reason why internet business models and structures are key to our survival and to humanity’s ability to survive and reverse global warming by evolving, enhanced communication.
Apple is no longer just an electronic device maker. Software, hardware, A.I., possibly an electric car, and services are all merging and reaching what we call “Apple Singularity”. Apple has the potential to trigger a monumental shift in the ways we communicate online – networked human communication – away from the trash-filled nightmare of the present day – where three obscenely massive companies: Facebook, Google and Amazon, have built business models that do not rest on innovative products or services but on predatory systems that enslave users, gouge small businesses and do very little in adding benefit to humanity as a whole.
“At a moment of rampant disinformation and conspiracy theories juiced by algorithms, we can no longer turn a blind eye to a theory of technology that says all engagement is good engagement — the longer the better — and all with the goal of collecting as much data as possible. It is long past time to stop pretending that this approach doesn’t come with a cost — of polarization, of lost trust and, yes, of violence”
Tim Cook
What the three massive deadbeats do is make a small handful of individuals and shareholders very rich. Fortunately, the issues with these business models are finally being questioned. But this is only the beginning.
The unthinkable is now at least possible to imagine: a world where Facebook does not have unlimited power to take, and profit from, our data
Once a real understanding of the degree of inferiority of these models, when measured by the costs vs. the benefit to humanity itself, becomes clearer, the government regulation and involuntary changes forced by the market will begin and quickly accelerate.
It is the combination of the lack of substance or concrete contribution by firms with a predatory business model casing the harm, in ways that are partially invisible, up until now, and make them so dangerous.
The danger is social, political, and in then end affects our economy and the lives of nearly every person who uses the services of those companies. Which is very nearly the entire population.
The economic damage that is being caused by the business models invented by these companies is, much like global warning, so massive that it threatens the entire planet, but the lack of attention we are giving it is based on ignorance of the magnitude of the danger.
Apple and Tim Cook’s perspective is extremely important and key to lighting a spark to ignite fires that will burn away that ignorance. The “big-tech” world that Apple, led by Steve Jobs, had a huge hand in creating, desperately needs a shake up and it needs to start now. This has nothing to do with a handful of huge companies fighting over control of the internet – it’s not about one winning, it’s about further damage being stopped, and a new, better internet being allowed to emerge.
Now, Tim Cook and Apple are beginning a long battle to make that happen on behalf of all of us.
Game changing ubiquitous broadband en route to you via laster links
At Lynxotic we have been following the development of the Starlink Satellite broadband with keen interest since 2019. In the early days it was all about the plans from various contending companies, though SpaceX was always far ahead in it’s technological system and, due to the spectacular success of SpaceX, as a launching and re-launching behemoth.
Now, with a launch schedule that is industry leading, by far, along with help from additional funding sources, and as the beta test phase continues, this is starting to look like a system that, even by 2022-2024 could impact the world in many of the extreme ways we have been anticipating.
Newest announcement marks more than a milestone, it’s a new game entirely
The first two Starlink satellites, Tintin A and Tintin B, were launched on February 22, 2018. At that time there were many companies with various technical solutions for the best way to create a satellite based broadband internet service.
Starlink at that time was planned to be a unique system using a large number of satellites (up to 42,000, potentially) and an even larger number of small base stations (up to over 1 million). Another system dubbed “LeoSat”, now defunct, had a more ambitious approach, in terms of the speed goals, which was to establish a commercial level “terrestrial backbone in space” using satellites directly connected to each other via lasers.
By putting a router on a satellite and having all the satellites interconnected in space with lasers rather than fiber, LeoSat would create a terrestrial backbone in space with all the features and benefits that traditional terrestrial backbones and networks have — but now with the benefits of space.
-Ronald van der Breggen, former Chief Commercial Officer at LeoSat
The project, which was the most technologically ambitious at the time, in ways that were nearly opposite from SpaceX’s Starlink, failed to hang on to its $2 billion investment commitments, and went under after only six months during the initial start up phase.
Both the technical proposal of using satellites directly connected to each other via laser in order to achieve speeds faster than current terrestrial backbone fiber bases systems, along with the commercial potential of servicing high end business customers, has now seemingly dove-tailed into a typical best-case-scenario for, who else but, you guessed it, Elon Musk and SpaceX.
The void left by LeoSat’s demise left a hole in the future of satellite broadband. And now, the question of who would fill the $2 billion concept-space left by LeoSat, appears to be nearly confirmed by Elon Musk.
Ultimately, the more pertinent question is: ‘Who is offering similar services and can benefit from LeoSat’s demise?”
By taking the key technology that is still at the forefront of satellite development in 2021, and fashioning a way to transition its use into his growing constellation that would eventually incorporate laser links between satellites, in addition to the ground stations, Starlink’s future has suddenly morphed into one with an entirely new scope and potential.
How, when and what will be possible if all continues apace
With a few tweets Elon Musk has caused a stir (surprise) and released enough news to paint a whole new picture of what the future of Starlink and world internet might look like in the coming years.
Over the projected time frame it will require to get to many thousands of satellites launched, even at the current pace of around 120 per month, the system would, conceivably, expand in coverage, speed and performance at a steady pace with 1500 satellites added yearly.
Naturally more launches could speed this up, and it will be an ongoing experiment to determine what kind of coverage and performance are possible as the constellation takes shape with milestones in the build-out during the ongoing process.
One impediment to a rapid race, to the loftiest end goal of worldwide coverage at 10Gbps, is cost. Currently the cost of the laser upgrade is prohibitive.
“Bringing down the cost of the space lasers and producing a lot of them fast is a really hard problem that the team is still working on.”
Having an orbiting 10Gbps terrestrial backbone in space with worldwide access would be a “Ludicrous Mode” for the internet
Really, that’s a huge understatement. The system would be a continuous boon, not only to the current uses for connected human communication, but for uses as yet impossible or barely possible with current systems.
And, oh yes, not only would the speed and connectivity be of a different order of magnitude but it would enable de-centralization of connected humans (WFH, anyone?) on a scale barely imaginable today.
Oddly, this could be a “just-in-time” invention (similar to Musk’s “Plan B” to use a Mars exodus as a final escape from a dying planet) that could enable a transition to rural and sparsely inhabited areas if, or when, global warming puts highly populated coastlines under water all around the world.
The vast problems facing humanity, medical, economic, even political and scientific, could all benefit from more connected communication among the minds that are already working hard to find solutions.
Indeed, it is somehow fitting that Musk, and not a rapacious-greed-monster like Amazon, could add, via SpaceX yet another world-saving tool into his kit. Tesla is already a sustainable energy conglomerate thinly disguised as a S3XY car company, and in a slightly more round-about way, SpaceX is, in essence, the back-up plan in case becoming an interplanetary species is no longer optional after the ravages of the climate crisis.
Now, with Starlink looking like a compatible engine for the acceleration of positive change, via networked communication and education, which is desperately needed as a resource to help drive the first two endeavors, a world reducing trifecta seems possible.
Whatever one may think of Elon Musk’s charismatically quirky personality and twitter feed, right now his enterprises are light years ahead and the reason, beyond once in a century genius, is the right mission and motivation: saving us all from ourselves.
Some key stats:
Current “better than nothing” beta speeds for testing volunteers: 100 to 150 megabits per second.
The long term goal, once the laser link system is fully implemented is to enable speeds of up to 10Gbps (!) Speed estimated are believed to factor in the speed of light being around 50 percent faster through a vacuum (space) than through glass (fiber)
Number of satellites launched to date : 1,023 out of an eventual 42,000 applied for
Coverage: Initially cities and especially rural areas in North America and branching out to worldwide access once the size of the constellation increases enough. Continuous software and hardware updates are planned with a planned life expectancy for each satellite of up to four years, allowing for newer, improved models to replace the retired units.
Once all various components are in place there is a plan to achieve a resilient network utilizing “multiple routing options to every Starlink and Gateway.”
Altitude: low-earth-orbit: SpaceX has applied with the FCC for permission first-generation satellites in orbits from 540 to 570 kilometers (336 to 354 miles), in addition to the originally approved range of 1,100 to 1,325 kilometers (684 to 823 miles). This has annoyed possible competitors (mainly Jeff Bezos’ “Project Kuiper”)
“Since being granted its own ‘license,’ Amazon has engaged in continuous campaign to undermine authorizations from competitors,” SpaceX noted in a statement
If you want to participate in the “Better Than Nothing Beta”, register on the Starlink website to register for the public beta. Please bear in mind that the program is currently limited to users in select regions in the northern US. The price for the Beta service is $99 a month plus a $499 one-time fee for the equipment.
The story that won’t stop and the very fine people on all sides
No heroes, plenty of villains and lots and lots of nonsense and stupidity. But before getting into the nuts and bolts of this tragic “new” phenomena, take a second and think about all those media stories, in nearly every online media outlet, even hitting local news.
Each “take” on the story has a different slant and spin and almost none go into the boring and complex technical details of stock trading schemes. Most, it appears, are cheering on, implicitly, the “main street” buyers in an imaginary “war” on Wall Street.
[Disclaimer: Nothing in this article should be construed as legal or financial advice.]
That will get you more clicks.
A few will point out that GameStop, the company that is, which has no real prospect to rise from its comatose state into a Tesla-like world beater, regardless of how high the stock climbs for a few weeks or so.
And they will, rightly, warn that in this game, the “innocent” main street “investor” will lose in the end. Those are the boring stories. Not as many clicks for them.
The longer more accurate story of what is going on touches on the Great Depression, the Dot-com bubble, the financial crisis of 2008 and an understanding of stock trading that goes beyond the patience threshold of the general public and the media, even beyond most so-called Wall Street Insiders.
History does exist, even if it happened before your uncle was born
Up until 1934 many things were legal and rampant that today, technically, are not allowed. Insider Trading is the most obvious and best defined, look up Martha Stewart and jail time if you want to know more about that.
Collusion in the market is another less well known practice, also known as “pump & dump” that has as many variations as Ponzi schemes and, though illegal, will never be stamped out. The technical terms for Colluding in relation to stock trading are “securities fraud” or “market manipulation.”
Not to get technical but here’s an partial excerpt of the legal specifics:
15 U.S. Code § 78i – Manipulation of security prices
(a) – (2 To effect, alone or with 1 or more other persons, a series of transactions in any security registered on a national securities exchange, any security not so registered, or in connection with any security-based swap or security-based swap agreement with respect to such security creating actual or apparent active trading in such security, or raising or depressing the price of such security, for the purpose of inducing the purchase or sale of such security by others.
Enter Reddit’s r/wallstreetbets forum. Not saying that there is anything illegal about “loving” a company as a group and choosing to “support” it by buying its shares.
Even if the motivation (false and imagined) is to “hurt” the short sellers in some kind of Robin Hood attack, that’s probably not something the SEC would care about. Short selling professionals can take care of themselves.
Enter another part of history: the allegedly overvalued company effect
Attacking short sellers has become a kind of sport, particularly when it’s about an emotional connection that was partly responsible for a company’s shares being “overvalued” by traditional metrics in the first place. Once “overvalued” therefore, a target to be sold short by traders and hedge funds that believe in quaint things like profit to earnings ratios and the like.
While company’s share prices being “overvalued” is based on opinion and often wrong, there have been recent cases, since the NASDAQ bubble burst in 2000, that have added a somewhat new, larger, twist on the typical understanding of these types of situations.
Bubble is as bubble does
To take the biggest example, there is Amazon (AMZN) which would take a thousand page book to accurately and fully elaborate on, but for the sake of brevity a couple of points could be made.
It is well known that Amazon posted substantial losses for many years while the stock price generally continued to rise. This was attributed to shareholders’ willingness to forgo proof of financial success within the company and persisted in buying & holding in the hope that share prices would continue to rise and that the company eventually would show profits and more success.
All of that seemed to happen, in the case of Amazon, when viewed casually, and now there is a sense, among some, that overvaluation, in “outlier” cases, is no longer a valid reason to sell (or short) a stock. Everybody’s happy right?
The uses of inflated value is a sticky-wicket if you are the loser
Not everybody. Naturally there are many “bad” short sellers who likely lost by shorting Amazon during it’s unrelenting rise since 2000. They are unlikely happy.
But also, and here’s the rub, there were whole industries crushed by the power that came with that “over-valued” stock price that seems, from looking at reams of data, to have been used to finance the selling of goods at substantial losses for “as long as it takes” to damage competitors.
Ultimately, for Amazon, creating a possibly dangerous monopoly (or monopsony, as it were) position with the potential for further damage to not just competition, and the overall marketplace, but to society as a whole.
Tesla is a whole other story, but a completely unique one
However, the situation is clearly not black and white. An alternate opinion could be held regarding the similar, yet very different, situation at Tesla (TSLA). Short interest throughout the rise? Absolutely. Overvaluation by traditional metrics, yup.
But in this case there is both a technological argument to be made, as well as a geopolitical / moral one, that the company’s wider mission: “Tesla’s mission is to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy” is a more than validjustification for wanting to support the company, in any way possible, including through the purchase of it’s purportedly overvalued shares.
That kind of goodwill is the x-factor that is now being twisted into a justification for pumping GameStop (GME) into the stratosphere, beyond the kind of overvaluations that either Amazon or Tesla ever enjoyed (and that’s saying a lot!) while downplaying the “dump” part of the “pump & dump” scenario.
Of course here’s the tragic part; the dump phase always comes, and in reality, is the whole point. Next… ooopsy, while writing this the dump started with GME in the form of a drop from around $500 per share to $226.
For a sub-$20 stock, of course, that’s still extremely high and there will no doubt be gyrations in both directions before the final drop back to obscurity.
Twas ever thus, but still not nice
But the tragedy is in the idea, bandied about in the media and amplified in social media infinitely, that there are “Robin Hood” actors in this game (not the company but the dude in the forest in the movie).
In the end there may be a few that knew all along that “dump” was an integral and necessary part of pump & dump and I am sure there will be plenty of celebration of their “genius” exploits.
But the focus from any of us in the media should be at the tragedy of those that got lost in the hype and stupidity and chose to offer themselves up to the gods of GameStop, the market and Reddit’s r/wallstreetbets as cannon fodder:
”I was in my early teens during the ’08 crisis. I vividly remember the enormous repercussions that the reckless actions by those on Wall Street had in my personal life, and the lives of those close to me. I was fortunate – my parents were prudent and a little paranoid, and they had some food storage saved up. When that crisis hit our family, we were able to keep our little house, but we lived off of pancake mix, and powdered milk, and beans and rice for a year. Ever since then, my parents have kept a food storage, and they keep it updated and fresh.”
”I bought shares a few days ago. I dumped my savings into GME, paid my rent for this month with my credit card, and dumped my rent money into more GME (which for the people here at WSB, I would not recommend). And I’m holding. This is personal for me, and millions of others.”
”You can drop the price of GME after hours $120, I’m not going anywhere. You can pay for thousands of reddit bots, I’m holding. You can get every mainstream media outlet to demonize us, I don’t care. I’m making this as painful as I can for you”.
The wheels are already spinning towards new challenges brought on by Trump’s actions
With so many challenges facing the US and, in many ways the entire world, even as the bizarre political drama recedes, it may be hard to find even a moment of neutral footing before the next crisis phase begins.
In fact it is in the most “positive” areas, endlessly touted as a triumph, where the first fireworks could be set off. Although many believe that the stock market is in a bubble phase, as extreme if not more extreme than either the “dot-com crash” of 2000 or the real estate collapse on 2008, this is truly the first time a bubble was inflated during a time when a triple threat – political, medical and climate emergencies, was in various phases of unfolding at the same time.
But it’s the forth “leg”, the lone bright spot as it has seems, that could carry a very big danger. With the pandemic still not showing any signs of abating, although there are vaccines being distributed, and the political madness of 2020 looking to begin to fade (at least partially), it is the possibility that the stock market bubble finding it’s “pin” that could trigger the next challenge to Biden and the country as a whole.
Perhaps the various stimulus funds being planned for dissemination can postpone any reckoning for at least a few months, but if that is not the case the situation could become extremely dangerous very quickly.
How the current stock market climate compares to 1999 and 2007
Looking back at the history of both of those bubble-crash cycles there are some notable differences. But there are far more similarities. All the various sentiment metrics and herding behaviors are present in forms, just as extreme, potentially more so.
The actual peak may be in the future, as SPAC entities are joining with traditional VCs to ride the avalanche of FED funds flooding into the money supply.
As was the case in 1999 there’s a momentum – a reflexivity as George Soros termed it, that begins as a smooth wave and eventually a tsunami of self-perpetuating belief in the absurd.
That moment could already have come and gone, it’s only in retrospect that the over-heated irrational exuberance becomes obvious to all. Perhaps the folly of WeWork will be the pastor child, or perhaps something that is just now happening.
Once the tsunami hits the shore, however, it will make landfall on an already devastated geography. After four years of corruption and devastating lock-downs (underplayed just enough to extend the misery) and so many challenges and messes to clean up, there will be a shock to the financial system that is unlike anything seen in 2000 and 2008.
A trillion plus dollar bail out after several (three?) have already been set in motion for other rescues and attempts to reinvigorate the economy, will be a hard and dangerous method to use, although it “worked” in the first two bubble-crash scenarios.
The big picture may look endless grim but the hope is in the change
Without a doubt the one thing that would like arise from such a nightmare scenario, similarly to the pandemic and the climate crisis, is that deep and irreversible change on a massive scale will be needed to begin a new phase of recovery.
Just as there’s a “bottoming out” that has to happen when a person finally confronts addictions and other self-destructive behaviors, humankind as a whole will be forced to make severe and lasting changes in order to overcome what will seem like an escalation of woe, at precisely the moment that a happy, sunny return to “normal” is anticipated
While all of this sounds dire, there are few today, who are paying attention, who would not say that massive change is needed. In politics, in business, in the economy, in healthcare and, of yes, in our response to existence level threats such as the climate crisis, we need, more than anything else to change.
Perhaps a downturn in a fantasy filled stock market bubble is just the pin prick that we need to wash away the negative trends of the past and begin from a new perspective that recognizes just how different our organizing principals need to be, as a species, in order to not only survive, but to do so in abundance.
Using a location that conjures a war reference about remembering a slaughter is already a veiled message to extremists
Faced with a world without his Twitter account Trump appears to be reaching out to symbolism and and tacit messaging to continue to try and build anger and foment a civil war.
Texas officials were quoted as saying that they oppose Trump’s visit outright, citing the possibility that he would be citing more violence and that maskless fans could create a coronavirus surge, as has happened in relation to other Trump events.
By choosing Alamo, TX, “coincidentally”, for some kind of news conference, vaguely related to his unfinished and disastrous border wall, he is likely sending a message to the most violent and most extreme of his “army” of followers across the nation.
The Battle of the Alamo, which took place at the Alamo Mission (no where near Alamo, TX), a former Spanish religious outpost which had been converted to a makeshift fort, is a historic symbol of Texans’ resistance and their struggle for independence. The battle cry of “remember the Alamo” first became popular during the Mexican-American War of 1846-1848.
There is no sign that Trump is trying to reduce the potential for violence, more likely it’s the opposite
Further, they say that they will never stop or give up “because this is like 1776”. Apparently, Trump would like to add “Remember the Alamo” to this brain-worm controlled thought process. Interestingly, since Trump began his run for president stating that “Mexicans are Rapists”, using a symbol from the Mexican-American War of 1846-1848 has a kind of dual purpose – Mexicans are the enemy in his book, apparently, and so is the U.S. government.
Buried somehow in these references is the idea that somehow the “Patriots” in his “army” were “oppressed” by the U.S. Government (which he is the current “leader” of) and Mexico (by the racist belief that people are a threat simply due to their race & heritage) and they must therefore fight back and get revenge.
This kind of convoluted circular logic is typical of the propaganda that has, amazingly, led to thousands of radicalized Trump followers looking for blood and wishing for a second civil war. Since this brainwashing is not a simple thing to reverse, once various “Big Lies” are accepted as truth, the situation has the potential to get much worse before it gets better.
“Remember the Alamo” is literally a battle cry that means it is time to fight back. Trump is not likely staging his circus at that location by chance. Should the press and the 84+ million Americans that do not want Trump as a dictator stand up to this insanity? Should the press take off the kid gloves and clearly state what this subterfuge os clearly all about?
Following leaks and rumors, a more definitive statement from Hyundai
In December 2020, a Reuters story cited sources with knowledge of the project to confirm the existence of the long rumored “Project Titan” otherwise known as the “Apple Car”. Now, based on a statement from a Hyundai spokesperson, “AppleCar” is moving forward in the form of discussions with potential manufacturing partners.
Hyundai also confirmed to CNBC that discussions with Apple has begun, but added the caveat that they “understand that Apple is in discussion with a variety of global automakers, including Hyundai Motor. As the discussion is at its early stage, nothing has been decided.”
This hesitation could stem from the possibility that the initial statement may have been interpreted as hinting that an agreement could be imminent, sending Hyundai’s stock 23% higher. The surge in the price followed a report by the Korea Economic Daily which had implied that Apple suggested the tie-up and Hyundai Motor was reviewing terms.
Apple doing what Apple does
Even after the Reuters report in December, many were still skeptical, and today the time frames being discussed are very conservative mentioned a 7 year time horizon, even while the Reuters report mentioned at least the possibility, however remote, that 2024 could see an actual release onto the consumer market.
It is historically established that Apple often enters established markets for specific products and, in may cases, makes a ultra high quality, uniquely “Apple” version. EVs are now firmly established as the future of individual sustainable transport, but with Tesla having set the quality and popularity bar as high as it has, Apple will have a challenge ahead of it to produce a likely self-driving fully realized electric vehicle to match the state of the art in 2024 and beyond.
At CES 2020 Hyundai unveiled new technologies they already have in development, such as EVs, driverless and even flying cars.
The fact that Tesla founder Elon Musk is now the richest man in the world, after removing that title from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, is not a factor in the “race” to build the best software and hardware for the future of EVs, but is an added dramatic fact that serves as a backdrop to the intrigue.
And hey, wow, imaging having a variety of non-polluting, sustainable energy vehicles to choose from by the worlds top manufacturers and with Apple and Tesla battling it out at the high end to provide the best and most desirable.
Bezos knocked from #1 slot that he has held since 2017
According to Bloomberg, Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX just passed up Jeff Bezos as the world’s richest person. While this, in and of itself is a fact that many will likely fetishize, the real story here is why and how.
There could not, IMHO, be two people more diametrically opposed in terms of motivation, inspiration and method. Both obscenely rich now? Of course. In each case because of stock holdings in companies they founded? Right again.
After that it is all a study in contrasts and contradictions. For example, as recently as Christmas eve 20o8 Elon Musk was nearly bankrupt and was on the verge of losing both SpaceX and Tesla. Later as recently as 2019, Tesla was in a deep financial hole.
Was this a case of bad management? Apparently not. What it was related to was the prime difference between Bezos and Musk. Musk has always only had one mission. Was it having the world’s most dominant eCommerce company? (or any other kind). One that would destroy entire business categories and be called the “grim reaper” due to it’s destruction of markets and competitors?
No – Musk has always wanted to save the world from itself. Tesla’s stated official mission is:
Tesla’s mission is to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy. … Teslabelieves the faster the world stops relying on fossil fuels and moves towards a zero-emission future, the better.
Tesla / Elon Musk
Perhaps the cynical would say this is just some kind of veil hiding a capitalist and monopolist hunger a la Bezos. But they’d be wrong. Musk has openly stated that he is willing to share various proprietary technical information with his competitors if it would help the world’s transition to sustainable energy succeed faster. Would Bezos give away Amazon’s secrets. Take a guess.
Another interesting tidbit – Both SpaceX and Tesla have publicly disavowed all copyright claims to their photos, videos or other marketing assets. They also do zero paid advertising. This is brilliant and has made them money in the end, but more importantly it is additional proof that it is the success of the mission, a mission that ultimately benefits all humanity more than any singe individual, that is paramount in his thinking.
Though Musk may not realize it, he and Steve Jobs are kindred spirits
The only other highly successful tech visionary that had this kind of focus on the real success, which can by definition only ever be success for all, if Steve Jobs. With so much misinformation and focus on meaningless stats, like whose stock is worth the most paper dollars (printed at will by the Fed) at any given moment, it is often misunderstood that the mission and the sincerity and effectiveness of the mission that will always matter in the end.
Probably the greatest gift Bezos ever has or ever will give to humanity was via his divorce. Any other “charitable” act he will ever commit will be, first and foremost, have the goal of improving his image and stroking his massive ego.
Therein lies the difference.
Early Thursday Tesla shares (TSLA) rose by 6%, and further lifting the CEO’s stock holdings and options by $10 billion, resulting in the net worth of approximately $191 billion.
Musk edged past the Amazon founder who is currently has the net worth of around $187 billion.
Musk, who pinned the following past tweet from 2018 explained his intentions and how he will use money from his success, “You should ask why I would want money. The reason is not what you think. Very little time for recreation. Don’t have vacation homes or yachts or anything like that.”
About half my money is intended to help problems on Earth & half to help establish a self-sustaining city on Mars to ensure continuation of life (of all species) in case Earth gets hit by a meteor like the dinosaurs or WW3 happens & we destroy ourselves
Apple had a big year – but how big will first become apparent in 2021…
By now, it is not unexpected for the latest iteration of the iPhone, iPhone 12 in this case, to do well and even best the competition across the board in any given year. While it is nearly an automatic ritual that doubt will be cast, and the demise or at least diminution of the iPhone and Apple are predicted, nearly every year the opposite in the case.
This year was different. There was plenty of doubt – but the surprise announcement of the M series of chips for mac and the even more surprising benchmarks and performance improvements pretty much obliterated the doubters.
Not only that, but a layer beneath that headline news was a secondary layer of innovation and areas where long planned improvements came to fruition.
The first steps into a massive multi-year system software transition, one that will eventually merge the mobile operating systems of the iPhone, iPad, Apple watch, etc with the mac, moved seemingly ahead of schedule, with the huge improvements in iOS 14 and macOS Big Sur.
And all the various services such as Apple TV+ and many other offerings made huge strides as well.
As a matter of fact, a list of all the upgrades, added features and new services and products would be so long and varied that the transcription is beyond the reach of a simple article such as this one.
However, that alone is not where some of the biggest changes and most surprising evolutions have occurred. The real “action” so to speak is in the integration and unexpected by-products of the merging and deepening of all the new features and settings.
Take for example the macs that feature the M1 chip. It is not the chip itself, not even the new operating system that has the most impact on the performance or usability of the machines.
It is the integrated functionality of the various elements of the chips – Apple M1, the first ARM-based system on a chip – composed of several different components including the CPU, GPU, unified memory architecture (RAM), Neural Engine, Secure Enclave, SSD controller, image signal processor, encode/decode engines, Thunderbolt controller with USB 4 support, all of which are made more powerful by the continuously upgraded software system.
This – a kind of invisible interactive and synergistic ecosystem – not only has at it’s heart the “whole widget” philosophy legacy of Steve Jobs, but also a new and insanely futuristic definition of “whole” which now includes these proprietary Apple chips (CPU, GPU, NE), plus A.I. / machine learning and system core operating as one continuously evolving and reinforcing “unit”.
The future is already here, we just don’t see it like fish, maybe, never heard of a thing called water…
This new concept of the constantly increasing potential advancement in efficiency and power is not only the new standard basis for what constitutes computing technology at Apple, but will emerge as the ultimate re-definition of what “power” in computing means at all.
Similar to the internet – where the evolution and development is at stone age levels compared to where it will (and must) eventually reach in decades and even centuries, computing (or “personal” computing as it was dubbed in the last century) is also in very early and very primitive stages of evolution and this next step represents an early beginning, not a destination or accomplishment of a goal.
Even Apple has stated that the initial transition of a unified operating system shared by mobile and desktop / laptop devices, iOS / macOS, will be years still in development and implementation.
Meaning, in 2024 we may see the first real life trails and dissemination of a new kind of computing system, and, more importantly, computer assisted communicating, made possible by the complete integration of these hardware, software and A.I. advances.
Just in time, because the threats of global warming, pandemics, political upheaval and economic disaster need, more than anything, enhanced learning and communication that can be aided, we must fervently hope, by improved digital tools. A better bicycle, so to speak.
Fortunately, Apple has our back on this. And in 2021 more, much more will be revealed, if 2020 was any hint, of an exciting future not just for technology, but for the creative uses of it for the betterment of humankind.
January 6th will be remembered, but not for what Trump’s devotees are threatening
Since the end of the Bush years and Obama’s rise there has been a simple yet devastating truth haunting the Republican Party. The demographic realities do not support a continuation of the racist stance that was the bedrock of the party’s appeal for more than half a century. The Southern Strategy does not work when the non-white majority is growing daily.
Instead of shifting gradually, for example during the eight years of Obama, a bolt from the blue sent the party back to the stone age with a fluke, a mistake of history, called Donald Trump. A “Rhino” who was able to say anyone who disagreed with his disgusting extreme racist politics was the real “Republican in name only”.
That has led to the current “civil war” within the Republican Party. In essence it is the suicide party of Trump, rather dead than rainbow, vs. the “democratic” Republicans, those that believe that the US Constitution and the rule of law should be upheld, even if it means that people of color have a demographic advantage and must be included in government going forward.
Groups like the Lincoln Project and RVAT (Republican Voters against Trump) helped to defeat him and represent a more “sane” idea of what they believe the Republican should be about in the future. In reality, the fanatical backing that a reality show demagogue has managed to assemble is both too large and too sick to change anytime soon, particularly not if that change involves disavowing racism as a core belief.
While talking about his former Party, Schmidt touches on the larger issues for the rest of America
Therefore, as Steve Schmidt, a GOP strategist who co-founded the Lincoln Project, said is a series of tweets this weekend, the coming ‘civil war’, oddly scheduled for January 6th and being announced by many wackos, from “Proud Boys” to Republican senators and congressmen, is not one of a country divided, but the death throes of the Republican Party itself:
“The die is cast for the Republican Party. It will be destroyed on January 6th”
Referring to the suicidal nature of this hopeless attempt to declare a “real” civil war, one where Trump’s 70 million-plus base literally take up arms against the rest of the country including the government, military and law enforcement infrastructure.
The implication that the threatened war would never take hold, that the armed forces and the entire infrastructure of the country is not ready to commit treason in order to save a crying baby who lost an election, is an unspoken phrase underscoring the prediction of what will actually take place:
That date “will commence a political civil war inside the GOP,” he continued.
He also admits that the Trump led “autocratic” leaning Republicans outnumber the p”pro-democracy” wing of the party and, therefore, the party as a whole will collapse.
“The autocratic side will roll over the pro-democracy remnant of the GOP like the Wehrmacht did the Belgian Army in 1940. The ’22 GOP primary season will be a blood letting. The 6th will be a loyalty test. The purge will follow.”
The implication of his words are that the party will be split with the Trump faction to remain, weaker yet held together by zealous insanity, while any sane former Republicans will be “purged” and will have to go it alone:
“Fascism has indeed come to America and as was once predicted it is wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross. This movement must be defeated. It cannot be appeased, accommodated or negotiated with. It must be recognized for what it is and we must all recognize the new age of American politics it has wrought,” he wrote.
The future will eventually reflect current reality; ethnic diversity can not be wished away by racism
What is missing from the post is an answer to the question of what this new fascist Republican party will do with a small minority and a leader who will likely be in exile or jail. Perhaps “Trump the Martyr” will cast a long powerful shadow over American politics for years. More likely he will be immortalized in the dustbin of history.
His most rabid and crazed followers may commit illegal acts, for which they will pay with incarceration or fate, but more than a few impotent and isolated incidents are highly unlikely. Like Trump himself, it will be the incompetence and stupidity, along with the corruption and evil, that will be remembered from his rise, and derided and, rightly, mocked in his fall.
A “big” day is brewing ahead of the January 6th official electoral vote count, but don’t expect a revolution
Trump tweeted an invitation to his followers to come to Washington D.C. on January 6th for a “wild time”. There are many tweets and a social media barrage to make this into a public spectacle, ardently in the hope that a large turn-out will somehow have an effect on the official counting of the electoral votes. It won’t.
In typical Trump style, the plausibly-deniable-adjective “wild” is meant to imply, depending on which way you spin it, to be harmlessly “high-energy” or a kind of veiled threat of violence by the militant fringes of the far-right.
Many are on edge ahead of this attempt to turn the 6th into something dangerous sounding – and it is right to remain vigilant with all the bizarre twists that have already happened.
Now, on top of all the other chaotic factors, the confusion around two major funding packages that are near finalization, could complicate matters.
As we have stated before, in previous articles, whatever “malarky”, to use Joe Biden’s go to phrase, Trump and his wacko band of followers are planning they will fail and fail miserably.
The telegraphed, scheduled-coup attempt has awoken counter-measures, you can be certain
The massive failures can be easily predicted for one simple reason: everything beyond a “peaceful” and benign protest is against the law and we still have laws and a constitution. For each illegal act the response by the “state” will be 100 times larger and more consequential. And, of course, it won’t take more than a tiny response by law enforcement to quell this fake unrest.
”The massive failures can be easily predicted for one simple reason: everything beyond a “peaceful” and benign protest is against the law and we still have laws and a constitution.”
— D.L.
Trump will whine and bellow that it is not the sate, but rather the “deep-state” that is against him, as it has been (in his mind) all along. He will try to turn himself into some bizarre kind of martyr- hero who is at the same time also a carnival-barker clown.
In his mind, just as with the original run for the presidency, it’s a no lose situation. Either he somehow manages to succeed beyond all reason, or he can continue to monetize the chaos and his position as King of Fools, a world where his marks are, at the same time, his most ardent followers.
There will be no need for him to end up like Mussolini, or to be taken seriously with his tin-pot army. It’s highly likely now, actually, that the military, FBI, CIA and all the rest of the national security apparatus is receiving two messages, related to this publicly telegraphed “coup” attempt.
Be on heightened alert for any activities inspired by Trump’s, basically ridiculous, stunt, and at the same time, do not say or do anything to draw attention to its existence.
Even if there are small disruptions and illegal acts by his most crazed “supporters” these will be small, not-coordinated and local. Washington D.C. will be, as we have seen in Portland and elsewhere, a lot of pick-up trucks with waving flags and people wearing silly red hats.
There is no reason not to be on guard, considering the statements and thinly veiled threats that have been made by so many
This is not to say don’t remain alert. It is truly sad that this kind of behavior is being drummed up by Tump and the least informed and most gullible amongst the population. At the extreme edge, of course, organizations such as Qanon and Proud Boys are very deranged and should not be excused or tolerated in any way.
But the veiled threats that some kind of uprising to bring down democracy and execute a coup by a deluded minority is about to take place , both in the general population and among lawmakers, is just wishful thinking by a deranged man that still, technically, remains president for a few more weeks.
More likely, we will all be witness to Trump’s greatest day of failure in his entire life. Bigger than his 6 chapter 11 bankruptcies, bigger than his many humiliating business and personal defeats, this will be the day that every hope he has to milk some kind of benefit out of losing the 2020 election will die.
And, afterwards, starting on January 7th, 2021 he will have to decide wether he should flee the country and go into exile, or stay and try to avoid the arrests, convictions and incarcerations that are likely in his near future.
The battle is getting very public and will get louder and nastier
The full page newspaper ads taken out by Facebook, where they proclaim themselves the champion of small business and attack Apple directly are interesting and curious on many levels.
It will take a series of articles to attempt to untangle the confusions and endless, often intentionally fostered, misconceptions that will most certainly arise in this battle of titans.
At the heart of the matter is, however, the largest misconception humanly possible, the idea that these monstrously huge companies, and how they operate, are anything at all related to “normal”.
The fact that all of us have seen the role of the internet in general increase over the last 20+ years, and have therefore had to deal with, and in some cases, go through and cooperate with these behemoths, may be the status quo that has developed, particularly in the last decade, but it is without precedent on many levels.
The size, power and influence is beyond comprehension and this clouds every issue
Before even beginning to contrast one giant against another one must first confront the very existence of entities of this magnitude. It’s fair to say that never in history has such a tiny group of companies, and by extension, individual humans, controlled so much of the economy and so much of that impacts the society and our experiences.
This chart is not current. If it were the disparity would be far larger and even more astounding:
This information, for a human, is so out of whack that you would have to stare at this chart for days before it could even sink in. And, as it it only a chart of size, built on company market capitalization, the power and influence, which represents and ever larger disparity, is not represented.
The dominance overall is so extreme as to be humanly incomprehensible. And by all measures the disparity between the big tech firms and “everybody else” grows literally by the second.
If you are afraid of A.I., you’re too late, the world is already controlled by computers and software via these companies
Facebook is probably the best example to illustrate the problem of market power and dominance on a level that is so far beyond traditional methods of measurement that even government antitrust investigations are barely able to begin to access the potential violations.
“The questions below might seem odd, or even absurd. But what is really absurd is that they are, for the most part, never asked. “
The questions below might seem odd, or even absurd. But what is really absurd is that they are, for the most part, never asked. Since the iPhone and later Samsung / Android revolutionized information and photo sharing, it has been accepted as a simple reality that Facebook controls nearly all the “social networking” that is done with that data. Why?
What is Facebook? Most would say they are a “social media company” but that can mean anything you want it to mean. They claim they are in the business of “connecting people” yet they derive massive wealth and profit from advertising, and “monetizing” their network, the largest network of “social users”, by far.
And if they are interested in connecting people, then what do those people own of the network that they themselves comprise? That would be nothing.
What say do they have in how they are used to “monetize” the network that they literally “are”? None.
What trust do they have to surrender to the company, which includes Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and more (all controlled 100% by a guy named Zuckerberg)? 100%
“What ‘say’ do they have in how they are used to “monetize” the network that they literally ‘are’? None.”
— D.L.
Who authorized Facebook (or Google) to amass vast databanks of private personal information from a huge chunk of the world’s population, and use that data to amass fortunes of unheard of size using secret proprietary algorithms that they have zero requirement to disclose? Well, technically, users, inadvertently and without understanding, did. Otherwise: No-one.
Well, technically all of this was “allowed” via Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, passed in 1996, and states that an “interactive computer service” can’t be treated as the publisher or speaker of third-party content. This, effectively, protects websites and “platforms” such as Facebook, from lawsuits in the case that a “user” posts something illegal. There are exceptions, for example, for copyright violations, sex work-related material, and violations of federal criminal law.
This fact does not remove responsibility for building a system that gives massive financial benefit to Facebook, Google, etc and very little, in reality, by way of return or influence to the “user”.
It’s as if a man figured out a way to use mental-telepathy to rob banks and could never be caught or prosecuted due to the fact that no one had ever robbed a bank that way before. And then he claimed that he should be allowed to continue doing it forever, with impunity.
What would Facebook and Zuckerberg have if the billions of “users” stopped using its network? Nothing.
How little sense this makes just goes on and on. There could be 100s of pages of similar questions and answers and the end result would be a slightly better understanding of the absurdity of the very existence of such a “service” or company or whatever this is.
Why absurd? In a nutshell, Facebook controls private networks that exist “inside” a more public network called, for lack of a better term, “the internet”. And, because of what could be termed a mistake of history they represent a dominant, near monopoly, in the “space” which in this case is currently called “social networks”.
The dominance and the definition of monopoly can be argued endlessly (and likely will be in the coming antitrust cases) but, in the end, the numbers don’t lie. Only one person benefits, in direct payments of trillions of dollars, from a near monopoly in social networks. The billions of people, the very people who are the network, do not.
A bleak analysis, perhaps, but is there any light at the end of this tunnel?
The current increase in antitrust cases, both in the US and Europe, is a canary-in the-coal-mine moment and the wars over all the arising issues has begun and will go on for years.
The fact that Facebook is heavily advertising that they are the “good guy” while Amazon and Google do the same, is both ridiculous and sad, since “good guys” don’t have to buy ads to draw attention to that fact.
And the fact that these companies have already started, both in word and deed, to attack each other directly, is an indication of just how serious and all pervasive these mega-wars will be. This is just the beginning.
While none of the companies depicted on the chart above can be said to be without blame for the world of injustice and malfunction that is the internet, and by extension, our world, there is one company that stands apart from the others in so many ways and for so many reasons that they, amazingly, represent some hope within the madness.
And, not coincidently, they are the one that is already being attacked, in print and software, as the wars begin: Apple.
How Apple actually represents hope to clean up the tech universe that, arguably, they are most responsible for having created, is likely a hard sell with those that want to lump all these huge companies together. Because, after all, they are all huge.
However, nothing could be further from the truth. More on this and other burning questions in our next episode, so stay tuned.
The opinions expressed “pro” or “con” regarding big tech abuses of power are both overlooking far more serious issues that lie beneath
After years of public and insider opinion gradually shifting from a state of wonder, awe and hero worship of tech giants and their founders and CEOs, toward a more skeptical stance, and now, finally, government action begins; the fundamental issues that lie beneath are still barely mentioned, let alone widely understood.
In a filing at the U.S. District Court in Washington D.C., on December 9th, 2020, the Federal Trade Commission, together with 46 states, plus the District of Columbia and Guam, alleged that Facebook employed anticompetitive tactics, allowing it to bully and bury its rivals. In a strongly worded brief it recommends that the massive company be broken up, specifically by divesting itself of Instagram and WhatsApp.
While past antitrust cases were complex and difficult to understand fully, particularly for the general public, from the little known A & P case in the 30s and 40s to Standard Oil and Ma Bell / AT&T, in each case there were complex issues to address.
However, one simple thing tied them together that could be understood by virtually anyone: businesses that have a win-at-all-costs approach to business tactics and then achieve monopoly power almost always use that power to fulfill ambitions based on self-perpetuating greed at the expense of society as a whole.
Many, from all walks of life, particularly in the U.S., worship the ethos of “winner take all” and even if they are at the lowest levels of the economic ladder still cheer on the most ruthless and morally bankrupt “winners” as heroes, using a bizarre logic, that somehow they might one day see themselves in the winners circle.
This perspective is similar to societies where dictators, such as Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines, or emperors are worshiped fervently by the very people that are most exploited and downtrodden under their regimes. Perhaps this is a hardwired genetic human trait, impossible to alter.
In the case of tech giants of the internet era, beginning with Microsoft and its antitrust case, a similar dynamic is no less present, and, no different from the steps that dictators take to encourage obedience and worship from their subjects. In this case it’s massive amounts of money and power used for required self-serving PR and the brutal economic repression of any dissenting voices.
Try to find a book on Amazon’s Jeff Bezos that is not a hero-worship nonsense-title purporting to offer you a way to become a “business genius” like him. You will find a few exceptions, of course, these purporting to offer “hard-hitting” investigative journalism and a sober look at the “real facts”.
These will be watered down, meekly subservient, weak and impotent tombs barely scratching the surface of any negative perspectives on the real problems Amazon and its founder have created, not only for millions of people around the world but for society as a whole.
Even among those that are the most incisive and have a real desire to “dig-deep” and reach the roots of the real problems, there is often still the a priori assumption that somehow, the 26 year evolution of business models that could “succeed” in internet and software based business are to be measured on a scale that presumes that the business models themselves are basically valid, simply because they were able to survive and create massive, nearly immeasurable, wealth for a tiny handful of individuals. .
Taking into account the pervasive pro-big-business bias, it is a miracle in a sense, that the public opinion has shifted so far, to the point where antitrust actions can be seen as valid, by enough of the public at large, that these giant monopolistic tech companies are called into question at all.
The miracle, if we call it that, is only a reflection of just how purely evil and out of control the situation has become, and how many people have been harmed, and in how many different ways this harm has occurred.
From teen suicides to thousands of bankrupt and struggling small businesses to privacy rights trampled in the dirt, the list of abuses and harm, if it were ever brought to light, could fill a thousand page treatise and would read like a recounting of the atrocities of war.
And then there’s the fact that the war is fought with computer code and over territory that has no physical address
Much as collateralized debt obligations and other arcane “synthetic” financial products nearly collapsed the entire world economy in 2008, partially due to the intentional complexity, which served only to hide the stupidity, complex computer algorithms are now at the heart of an ever larger and even more dangerous economic debacle that continues to unfold.
And much of the lack of any pushback against this is the simple ability to hide behind the complex computer methods and concepts that have allowed tech giants to build an even bigger and more dangerous kind of monopolistic behavior than even the so called “Robber Barons” of the Gilded Age.
Even those, in government or in the press, who are pushing back are doing so with, apparently, little understanding of the real dangers that are buried in the code and in the tricks used by very sophisticated, technologically educated people in control of these trillion dollar behemoths.
For example, Facebook is already claiming that the government should not be able to question the acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp because they already approved the mergers at the time they happened.
In his excellent article published on medium.com , Will Oremus points out:
But I looked up the FTC’s public statements following those reviews, and it states explicitly that the matter should not be considered permanently settled.
“This action is not to be construed as a determination that a violation may not have occurred,” the FTC’s closing letter said. It added, “The Commission reserves the right to take such further action as the public interest may require.” Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Also in that article, titled; ‘Competition Is for Losers’: How Peter Thiel Helped Facebook Embrace Monopoly the idea succinctly embodied in the title which refers to a Wall Street Journal piece on Thiel’s book “Zero to One” which he describes as having been “embraced as a business bible in Silicon Valley and beyond” and quotes from including this characterization:
(Thiel) made the case for monopoly as the ultimate goal of capitalism. Indeed, “monopoly is the condition of every successful business,” he asserted. With it, you’re free to set your own prices, think long-term, innovate, and pursue goals other than mere survival. Without it, you’re replaceable, and your profits will eventually converge on zero.
And this provides the context within which the current struggle unfolds. To understand the real dangers of the total domination of the internet, which has become the vital lifeline of our economy and social existence, by a handful of trillion dollar companies, that not only embrace limitless greed and dictatorial status within their industry, but see it as the divine right that they hold, and believe they are entitled to aspire toward without interference.
And in another context such behavior would be known as immoral, destructive to society and social justice, and if the laws are adequate to apply; criminal.
And there’s the rub. The antitrust statutes, possibly already inadequate to take on this new kind of robber, have also been weakened since the 80s. Add to that how the pre-existing biases are heavily slanted toward minimizing any accountability for such behavior and is follows that any real reform must rise from the public at large.
The birth of the internet was anything but immaculate
The tragi-comic farce of the story, when seen through the lens of internet history, is how Facebook, Google and Amazon all followed the same absurd arc.
From “underdogs” with massive losses and no income to ridiculously “valuable” “FANG” members championed from the rooftops as heroic winners of darwinian battles to build out the internet for profit. And, finally, after decades of unfettered expansion, being seen more and more for what they are: profit-seeking scams using each a different method to restrain competition and destroy the most valuable asset humanity has ever built: the internet itself.
The complexity of the scams is still the most useful cloak for them to hide behind, each with a different insanely complicated way to force what is a public asset, the internet, into a tool for private greed, at the expense of any real innovation. And the victims are not the competitor firms that they might have destroyed (or bought), but rather the entire population of any territory that they control, with North America being the center of the empire.
The question asked for example of Google or Facebook should not be, “do they provide any services from the public can benefit, in exchange for their obscenely privileged monopoly control over “search” and “social networking”, respectively. The question should be “are they the best possible solution, from the perspective of what is in the best interest of society, for those extremely important functions in our new digital world.
It is not enough to say that “consumers have chosen” each as their go-to tool. If any company or group of companies could do a better job of enabling humanity to communicate, interact and become educated via the internet, why should those other solutions be buried forever under a mountain of greed and self-interest?
This is the infinitely elusive point: No different than Bernie Madoff, the damage they have wrought, by destroying what could have been, will only be understood once they are either gone or forced to cease what they depend on for domination, which would lead to their ultimate demise over time, just as Peter Thiel himself stated:
Without (a monoply), you’re replaceable, and your profits will eventually converge on zero.
Or as Jeff Bezos explained, in what his become his predatory raison d’être: The competition is always one-click-away. This makes every other online seller, in his view, an enemy that must be destroyed at all costs, no matter how small, no matter how weak.
In this sick paranoid view of the world it is truly an all or nothing struggle for survival, with death of all competitors, literally and figuratively, the only acceptable outcome.
With this mindset at the heart of these companies, and with the government and most of the press taking a milk-toast submissive approach (in contrast) the struggle to rein in these monstrous, utterly corrupt empires, will take years if not decades.
However, 2020 will always be seen as the beginning of the end the the gruesome mistake of history that these companies represent.
Companies that achieved dominance and monopoly control of a system meant for public benefit, through the most destructive methods they were able to devise, and then redoubled efforts infinitely to expand using those same destructive and corrupt methods.
In the end there is only one power large enough to intervene, as already at their current size, and while, like a virus, they double in power and economic domination almost annually, and that is the power of the billions that use their platforms everyday. Change will arise when they have damaged themselves by damaging the very societies they prey on, and once damaged, those societies will have no choice but to shed them like the murderous parasites that they are.
That will not happen anytime soon. The general view of these companies, is still very mild and forgiving. And it’s important to note that each case is different and this article applies only to Facebook, Google and Amazon.
Just as most have either forgiven or forgotten the massive bailouts that criminal companies were gifted during the 2008 financial crisis, the perception that these massive tech companies are at worst mildly anti-competitive and at best harmless and just practicing good, successful capitalism, will not be changed overnight.
It can only come after much more pain at the hands of this corrupt system that currently controls the internet, and therefore, our digital lives.
An eco-system about to emerge at a level beyond what any other company can match
The ultimate superiority of the “whole widget” concept at Apple: making not only the computer or device, the system software, add on software, and now, with the M1 chip, even the most important components that power the “widget” is something we’ve been writing about for years.
With the release of the first macs powered by M1 chips, it was surprising, even to adherents inside our building, just how dramatic that superiority is turning out to be, and how quickly it has been confirmed in real-world tests.
The focus has, rightly, so far been on benchmarks and tests using various software in typical real world situations. The consensus on the results has been in general; “astounding” or “amazing” or “shockingly good”, nearly unanimously.
Why this has far more to do with the overarching “whole-widget” ecosystem than the traditional stand-alone cpu / gpu / architecture, however, seems, at least partially, lost in the brouhaha.
The layers of “synergistic” (not a word used by Apple) interaction and integration between the cpu, gpu, machine learning, code within the system, and, initially, the apple applications that are either free or standard paid software such as Final Cut ProX or Logic Pro X are where the real magic happens. Other developers such as Adobe, are going to have M1 optimized versions out soon, as well.
While the long vaunted Moore’s law at a virtual standstill for nearly a decade, the timing couldn’t be better for Apple’s revolutionary “revenge of the turtle” strategy – where a long term end-game they have been working on the probably at least a decade comes to fruition – big time.
Looking ahead, even more exciting possibilities are beginning to emerge
All this leads to today’s headline, courtesy of Bloomberg. I can summarize but let’s quote directly the introductory paragraphs:
“Apple Inc. is planning a series of new Mac processors for introduction as early as 2021 that are aimed at outperforming Intel Corp.’s fastest.
If they live up to expectations, they will significantly outpace the performance of the latest machines running Intel chips, according to people familiar with the matter who asked not to be named because the plans aren’t yet public.
For higher-end desktop computers, planned for later in 2021 and a new half-sized Mac Pro planned to launch by 2022, Apple is testing a chip design with as many as 32 high-performance cores.
With today’s Intel systems, Apple’s highest-end laptops offer a maximum of eight cores, a high-end iMac Pro is available with as many as 18 and the priciest Mac Pro desktop features as much as a 28-core system.”
-Bloomberg
Buckle up, Sunshine, the worm has turned and soon there’ll be no looking back
The bottom line here is: If you think the M1 MacBook air is faster, take a seat cause “you ain’t seen nuthin’ yet”. But this emphasis on the chip itself and various stats, such as, the number of cores, etc. belies just how backward the entire industry is, and how ground breaking the total concept is that Apple has planned to roll-out over, roughly, the next two years.
In short, just as the entire world was changed forever once the iPhone took hold between 2007-2012, something similar will happen between now and 2024, but on a much larger scale.
The most radical reality of this, that is in many ways so hard to comprehend, let alone explain, is that this is a “virtuous battle” that is being fought on so many different fronts simultaneously, that the actual outcome, should the potential be realized in full by 2022, goes far beyond what can be imagined today with regard to what a “computer” or “mobile device” is.
In short, just as the entire world was changed forever once the iPhone took hold between 2007-2012, something similar will happen between now and 2024, but on a much larger scale.
The unification of the various system softwares, between iPhones, iPads, Macs, as well as peripheral devices such as Apple Watch, Apple TV and even the HomePod mini, will be combined with increasingly powerful “A” and “M” chips and that combination will be even more improved by integrated machine learning upgrades and applications that are specifically coded to maximize the benefits of the entire inter-dependent system, meaning the systems within each device and the larger ecosystem of devices, machines and software.
This is not Apples to Oranges, this is Horses to “beam me up Scotty” in magnitude. Don’t believe it? Check back in 2022 and we’ll talk…
As the title indicates, the original review finds the documentary important and more than worth viewing, even to the extent that it should be considered as something that’s important beyond the entertainment value. And while nothing in that article needs, from our perspective, to be altered and still stands, there is an omission that has grown in importance over the intervening weeks and months.
The omission was not only in the review, and virtually every other review we’ve seen, but also is a glaring one in the film itself. As a matter of fact that omission is so large and so glaring that it warrants a deeper look. Hence the title of this piece: The Social Dilemma 2.0: Follow the Money Edition.
Why “Follow the Money”? Because the film, in its admittedly excellent execution, chose to follow a personal, social and psychological thread in its storytelling arc, and, out of necessity, since the subject matter is so huge and complex, took the comments from the “insider experts” who comprised the on-camera interview segments, and featured mainly those that reinforced the personal, family and social perspective.
Indeed, the film included a fictional family, presumably meant to show how, mainly social media platforms such as facebook, were negatively affecting individuals and society as a whole, through fake news and internet-addictions fostered by the software and algorithm designs.
And this “slant” was carried almost to the point, by the very end of the show, of connecting the software based social media designs and corporate behavior of Facebook and others, to the larger growing malaise in society and the world at large.
Unfortunately, by using the fictional family, trying to show how both young and old are impacted, the scope, depth and severity of the underlying problem was, in essence, minimized.
Based on online public comments people seemed to take away that the idea that the film was accusing social media and facebook in particular of, was of causing people to become addicted to social media, for greed and profit, and that this was pretty much the center of the problem.
Google, Amazon and others were only mentioned in passing and the greed and economic problems associated with big tech was touched on and passed over in order to make the case, inadvertently, but nevertheless, that this was an individual, social and personal problem, and one that could be blamed on social media technology.
Arguments and rebuttals arose over the finer points of addictive behavior in general and how social media or internet addiction was just one of many human foibles, and how no hard proof could be compiled to link facebook or any other online platform indisputably to any particular individuals behavior, blah, blah, blah.
All of this became an easy, knee-jerk way to dismiss, out of hand, all the deep and serious problems that were hinted at in the groundbreaking documentary and thereby stop, effectively, any possibility for the film to become a general wake-up call to all who want to isolate and identify the massive, expanding and world destroying effect these monolithic tech behemoths are having on life on this planet.
Which is what the film aspired to and had to potential to be a beginning of.
In our original review we made an attempt to shift some of the focus, away from the more narrow one of looking at individual personal problems and affronts that are being perpetrated, bad as that is, toward a more global and economically based set of concerns.
To that end we cherry picked quotes from the on-camera interviews in the film in order to point out that there was a larger, even more dangerous set of issues at stake that were only hinted at in the film. (We have reprinted a few of them interspersed below)
“Companies like Google and Facebook are some of the wealthiest and most successful of all time. They have relatively few employees. They just have this giant computer that rakes in money, right? Now, what are they being paid for? That’s a really important question.”
-Jaron Lanier, founding father of virtual reality, computer scientist
This quote is and inquiry into the deeper issue; one that is car larger than the question of whatever dangers there may be for individuals who may experience negative symptoms of “internet and social-media addiction”.
Focusing on the personal problems of users of social media in this context is like looking at a planet whose economic system is based on brutal exploitive human slavery and wanting to discuss the food, or living conditions or wardrobe choices offered to the 7 billion slaves.
“This is a new kind of marketplace now. It’s a marketplace that never existed before. And it’s a marketplace that trades exclusively in “human futures”. Just like there are markets that trade in pork belly futures or oil futures. We now have markets that trade in human futures at scale. And those markets have produced the trillions of dollars that have made the internet companies the richest companies in the history of humanity”
-Shoshanna Zuboff PhD., Harvard Business School Professor, emeritus and author of “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism”
Like tobacco companies in the US 50 or more years ago the tech giants need helpless, addicted, impoverished victims to hold up their empire. And, just in the same way, the cost of using the “product” of big tech is pain, suffering and eventually death. And ultimately, just like with Big Tobacco , when the customer base “wakes up” all the empires will collapse, seemingly in a heartbeat.
In the meantime, unfortunately, misdirecting the scope and center of the problem is helping to maintain the empires and poses no threat to them, managing only to confuse and obfuscate the size and severity of the real problem that has emerged.
Above: Photo / Netflix
The real problem with having four companies control a massive percentage of the economy with virtually unlimited profit margins and almost no employees
As the quote above states. These “internet” firms are raking in trillions of dollars in a business model that is based on various forms of exploitation and virtual human trafficking.
This is where we diverge from, and must go far deeper into the problems, than the documentary was able to go.
Firstly, it was left unclear who exactly the firms are that are being singled out in the film. By calling the film “The Social Dilemma” which echos “The Social Network” film based on the origin story of Zuckerberg and Facebook, there’s an implication that Facebook is the “main” problem.
Naturally this choice was logical given that ex-Facebook and ex-Google heavyweights were represented in the interviews. However this is a huge, misleading and erroneous perspective.
Of the huge tech monopolistic-monoliths Amazon, Facebook, Google and Microsoft are the most dangerous. (Apple, in an exception, however, for example, as it designs and builds actual physical products, although it is often unfairly combined with the other 4).
For the sake of simplicity, Microsoft, appearing, deceptively, like harmless-looking old grandfather by comparison, would be a complicated choice to tie into any exposé, therefore was never mentioned. (that we are aware of).
As a matter of fact, Amazon could have had a whole separate yet equally disturbing documentary assigned to its “alleged” crimes and misdemeanors, but ex-Amazon employees would be unlikely to come forward, potentially due to fear of retribution and possible bodily harm.
Thus, one is left with Facebook & Google and then Google becomes partially let off the hook, in the documentary, by focus on “social media”.
The Real Crimes are Economic and based on Inherently Evil Business Models that can not be Removed without causing the Giants Themselves to Collapse
And that’s why they can not be “reformed”. Like a somnambulistic slave population from some kind of dystopian sci-fi fantasy, within a short span of around twenty-five years of internet life, we have seen the emergence of an entirely new and, unfortunately ugly, economic system.
This new system created Jeff Bezos’ obscene, circa 200 billion fortune, as well as the behavioral diseases explored covered extensively in “The Social Dilemma”. The system has also created the sick twisted saga of WeWork and the exploitative business models of companies like Uber and Grub-hub and the like, thereby creating the “gig economy”.
The pandemic that began in 2020 has massively accelerated this highly problematic “new economic order” until Amazon is closing in on being the largest single employer in the USA. (currently #2 with over 750,000).
Why is that not something to applaud? Doesn’t that make them “ok” while Facebook is the real villain?
To the contrary, it can be argued that Amazon’s business model is even more destructive than Facebooks, with it’s vast system of not only exploiting workers but maintaining a serfdom of suppliers and small business “marketplace partners” who are eaten-up and spat-out with a viciousness no historical dictator could ever hope to match.
It is an historical fact that all of the (non-amazon) retail trade is seen by Amazon as an enemy to be eliminated, and that their explicit goal is to destroy the possibility of any economic transaction taking place, in countries where they operate, without Amazon earning a cut – a kind of Amazon-tax on all transactions. “Your margin is my opportunity” as Bezos famously cackled.
This mirrors, in products and computer services, the model of Facebook and Google have in online traffic and ad income, whose goals are to control and take a massive profit from at least 99% of all “digital” advertising revenues. These already represent the majority of all advertising and are growing in total amount and percentage every year.
“In 2019, digital will account for 50.1% of total media ad spending worldwide thanks to strong growth from major digital ad sellers like Google, Facebook, Alibaba and Amazon.” (emphasis mine)
The turning point we have reached, in other words, is one where the sheer size, power and dominance of these firms threatens to overwhelm our entire economy (what’s left of it after the pandemic).
And further, to succeed in controlling it, so totally, as to raise the likelihood that their cancerous behaviors and business models will ultimately cripple and kill the economy itself. Just in time for Global Warming to hit home.
The reason for such pessimism (shared incidentally by those insiders interviewed in “The Social Dilemma”)? Isn’t this all just “good ol’ capitalism”? Isn’t complaining about it just the “whining of losers”?
The problem lies in the self-destructive and totally out of control algorithmic dictatorship systems that these “genius” firms have built.
Take Amazon, again, for example. It’s power and dominance is based on bilking it’s marketplace parters (which have, during the life of the company, contributed the lion’s share of the revenue and an even larger percentage of the profits), and then using those funds to sell it’s own products at a large loss (an illegal activity, rarely prosecuted in the US, known as the loss-leader strategy), in order to harm and, if they succeed, destroy all external competitors (try selling products at less than cost at a massive scale with no source of funds to pay for the disparity).
This neat “fly-wheel”, which is the real one, not the one Bezos has bragged about for decades, is supplemented by enticing Chinese producers to further destroy the domestic market for any US competitors, and, voilà! this wonderful project is actually subsidized by the USPS.
When this monstrosity of a “turbo-charged-Ponzi Scheme” manages to starve its “partners” (millions of small business marketplace sellers) and enemies (everyone else) literally to death, customers will also die (financially).
That is if the government doesn’t intervene first.
The fear of government intervention at Facebook, Google and Amazon is palpable. The lost cases and launched actions are mounting month by month and year by year.
The worst case scenario is only possible if the connection is somehow kept “secret” long enough to deflect blame onto the government, addicted and victimized individuals and / or anyone one else they can attack.
Just like the whistle blower in “The Insider” who was threatened and forced to live in fear until Big Tobacco was finally held to account, we are all hostages of the largest most virulent form of anti-competitive-monopolistic behavior in history. And it is time to wake up.
Forget your internet addiction and all the smoke screens blocking the truth from being seen. The internet, and the communication and economic lifeline that it has become for all of us, is too important to be controlled by 3 or 4 obscenely massive companies.
The longer it takes to dismantle the current malfunctioning system and build a new one, the more we will all suffer and contribute to future suffering, at a scale that is impossible to imagine.
There is a bright spot in all of this! The corner has been turned on people taking notice that there is a problem with the way things are, regarding monopolistic control of the internet realm.
Companies that create build and actually provide and sell physical products, such as Apple and Tesla (and others) are, while far from perfect, not part of the gang that grows almost limitlessly based on exploitation. They do depend on prosperity to survive, since they research and design and innovate cutting edge technologically advanced products (expen$ive), that need to be bought by someone, at the end of the day.
That is why I believe that they, and others like them, will, more and more, become part of the solution, rather than trying to compete directly by being even more exploitative and evil than the others.
Next up: “The Social Dilemma 3.0” will be about business models that need to emerge if we are going to survive and prosper. Thanks for reading and stay tuned.
Retired Lt. General Michael Flynn, former national security advisor and newly pardoned admitted liar to the FBI, retweeted a petition by an organization that calls it self WTPC:
“WTPC Calls for President to Invoke Limited Martial Law to Hold New Election and Protect our Vote” and goes on to urge: “temporarily suspend[ing] the Constitution and civilian control of these federal elections.”
The idea is to call in the military to force a new election and, not surprisingly they have already decided who should win:
“Without a fair vote, we fear, with good reason, the threat of a shooting civil war is imminent,”
Imploring unknown armies that are non-existent to rise up and start a “shooting civil war” if Trump is not “installed” as president.
Flynn, known for admitting to lying to the FBI and chanting “Lock her up” at rallies with Trump, is not far off from this kind of treason-talk in the first place, but the timing and his military background makes it more alarming and disgusting.
Fortunately both Republicans and notable military voices have spoken out against this overt endorsement of the lunatic fringe.
“Flynn’s anti-election propaganda is an essential precursor to violent terrorist attacks on legitimate electoral outcomes, when the bombs go off, the blood is on Mike Flynn’s hands.”
—Paul Yingling, a retired Army colonel, quoted in The Daily Beast
“This ad, though protected by the First Amendment, is utterly irresponsible, ahistorical and without precedent or legal rationale,”
This ad, though protected by the First Amendment, is utterly irresponsible, ahistorical and without precedent or legal rationale. https://t.co/P40lfPD7v7
More perfectly normal behavior: Former Trump lawyer amplifying a call for the suspension of the Constitution and the effective imposition of martial law. https://t.co/T3IBmgmp2Ppic.twitter.com/F7QxScLmFI
Attorney Sidney Powell, who was Flynn’s lawyer in his criminal prosecution, is openly advocating a coup, retweeting tweets from individuals that are calling for Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act, suspend the election and establish “military tribunals.” Powell had previously represented Trump directly in court until she was fired after a particularly disastrous press conference went off the rails.
Joseph diGenova — who is a former US attorney for the District of Columbia also an attorney for Trump, while he was appearing on the The Howie Carr Show, called for former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, Chris Krebs, should be drawn and quartered. Taken out at dawn and shot.”
In you are not a medieval history fan, being “drawn and quartered” was a grisly practice commonly consisting of:
First he was drawn, that is, tied to a horse and dragged to the gallows. The remainder of the punishment might include hanging (usually not to the death), usually live disemboweling, burning of the entrails, beheading, and quartering. Also referred to as “disruption” dismemberment could be brought about by chaining four horses to the condemned’s arms and legs, thus making them pull him apart.
Clearly this “lighthearted” “joke” was neither light or funny in any way, shape or form. In a statement released by the Tump campaign, after the furor erupted over his irresponsible, reckless remarks, diGenova stated:
”For anyone listening to the Howie Carr Show, it was obvious that my remarks were sarcastic and made in jest. I, of course, wish Mr. Krebs no harm. This was hyperbole in a political discourse.”
This kind of disingenuous mea culpa is a standard Trump strategy, countless times in the last four years an outrageous, obviously serious and deeply held, Trump statement is followed (generally in 24-36 hours) with a denial that it was “just a joke”, that he was “obviously being sarcastic” and that somehow, the listeners are at fault for not realizing that he should not be held responsible for his comments.
Similar to his now infamous “Stand back and stand by”, code words during the presidential debates that were, unequivocally, understood by the “Proud Boys” as a call to arms, this kind of weak denial without taking any responsibility is unacceptable.
Accordingly, Democrats in congress referred the conduct by diGenova to the DC Bar’s Office of Disciplinary Counsel and recommended them to open an investigation into the matter.
