Category: Business

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The Destinations for Russian Petroleum Exports

The data in the Energy Information Agency report linked below is somewhat dated, but it is hard to imagine that the values have changed very significantly over the past 5 years, unless US dependence on Russian oil was deliberately expanded between 2016 and 2021. Based on the graph below, the United States derived a scant 50,000 barrels per day of its oil supply from Russia. It is clear that China, Netherlands and Germany are most dependent on Russian oil, with China receiving nearly 1 million barrels per day from Russia. The exploitation of this oil dependence by Russia for the purpose of destroying Ukraine is nauseating, and it is additionally dispiriting to learn that banning Russia’s oil supply from America is unlikely to affect Russia’s revenues in any truly meaningful way. It is positively feasible, however, for the US to wipe out Russian oil from its supply, but it remains an open question whether, in addition to the crushing sanctions, this act will act as the straw that breaks the camel’s back.

The destinations for Russian oil as of 2016, according to US Energy Information Agency

The data are unequivocal. The US can reject Russian oil.

Source: Russia exports most of its crude oil production, mainly to Europe – Today in Energy – U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)

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The Price of Privacy

An inkling into the profits that “social” media companies that collect and sell our data was gained from the most recent regulatory filings by Facebook/Meta and SnapChat. Both companies placed a fairly specific dollar value on the revenues they lost ever since Apple made it nearly impossible for these companies to track customers across apps on iPhones and iPads. If $10 billion per quarter is any indication, then perhaps these companies should be paying their users $100 each every quarter for the privilege of tracking them.

The second half of 2021 has not been kind to tech giants that rely on ad targeting thanks to Apple’s App Tracking Transparency policy.

Source: Apple’s Privacy Policy Cost Snap, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube an Estimated $9.85 Billion in Revenue

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How Facebook and Google Fund Global Misinformation: the “Free” Internet is Much too Expensive

The advertising scheme that fuels the profits of the “free” internet giants like Google and Facebook is now used by terrorists to fund their activities.

In thrillers like The Odessa File by Frederick Forsyth, the books of John Le Carre, and numerous movies like The French Connection, one learns of the ways in which rogue groups (terrorists, especially) would raise funds: they would rob banks. burglarize rich people, hijack cash transfer trucks, etc. The article below from the MIT Technology Review details how fringe and rogue groups dedicated to disinformation use the Google and Facebook advertising systems to generate revenue for their activities, and this article from the Associated Press details how the same fringe groups–white supremacists in particular–are using cryptocurrencies (1) to receive funds anonymously from people who do not wish it be known that they are racist and (2) to avoid paying financial judgments rendered against them in civil trials. As Shoshana Zuboff has reminded us over and over, regulation is designed to eliminate businesses that threaten the marketplace and erode trust in capitalism. The “free internet” meets both of these criteria, and it must be regulated.

Source: How Facebook and Google fund global misinformation

The tech giants are paying millions of dollars to the operators of clickbait pages, bankrolling the deterioration of information ecosystems around the world.

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Apple to Governments: Choose Markets over Repression

Apple accused NSO Group, the Israeli surveillance company, of “flagrant” violations of its software, as well as federal and state laws.

Source: Apple Sues Israeli Spyware Maker, Seeking to Block Its Access to iPhones

This is a fascinating case. Will courts allow Apple to stop a surveillance tool that governments clearly love? Will the US government come out in favor of Apple or NSO group?

Without a doubt, NSO group needs to be wiped out of existence because it clearly empowers monsters and dictators against civil rights activists, journalists and citizens outside of their countries’ jurisdictions. The NSO group is indisputably allowing repressive regimes to consolidate their power and even to manipulate international trade. As such, the company must be wiped out of existence, and the Israeli government must be held to account for supporting and protecting the NSO group.

It is a forgone conclusion that Apple will sue the Israeli government, too, once the Israeli government’s role is made clear during discovery. Of course, Apple will have a huge bargaining chip. Apple’s main chip design center is in Hertzliya, Israel. So, the Israeli government must weigh the small revenues and huge influence that NSO Group brings in against the blockbuster investment that Apple is making in the Israeli tech sector and Israel’s economy.

It’s a no brainer. The clear choice is to kill NSO and allow companies and marketplaces to function without illegal influence, but governments tend to act stupidly in such situations. Let’s hope that the US and Israeli governments don’t act like morons.

NSO group HQ in Israel

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No Better Time than Now to Revisit the No Asshole Rule

It has been about 15 years since Robert Sutton, currently at Stanford, published his seminal work on workplace behavior, The No Asshole Rule, detailing how assholes cost companies huge sums of money and make detrimental contributions to the bottom line. He has since followed it up with The Asshole Survival Guide and Good Boss, Bad Boss because, apparently, assholes are exceptionally tenacious at keeping their positions.

This Reddit survey, by way of Gizmodo, reminds us that the no asshole rule must be extended to all personal relationships because being a rude asshole has gained substantial cachet and purchase globally and in American society, in particular, since 2015 for reasons that are obvious to you if you’re not a member of the offending crew.

Please, distribute this widely so that–perhaps, just perhaps–rude people may find the awareness, mindfulness and motivation to exercise tact.

We can dream, no?

Whatever your age, gender, or background, you’ve probably talked like a jerk at least once in your life.

Source: 13 Things Only Assholes Say, According to Reddit

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Cryptocurrencies Must Be Regulated

The greatest vehicle for wreaking havoc is money without provenance. Therefore, terrorists rob banks, drug cartels go to exceptional ends to launder their moniesand billionaires use offshore accounts and onshore vehicles to hide the money trail in order to avoid taxes. Cryptocurrencies are clearly the new vehicle of choice for criminals to obscure their financial. The Associated Press story linked below reveals the horrifying means by which white supremacists are using cryptocurrencies to raise funds and to evade the law. Clearly, the criminal web site the Silk Road, which used cryptocurrencies to mask the identities of the criminals it supported, was not an anomaly but a harbinger of the criminality that is supported by cryptocurrencies.

Cryptocurrencies are legal tender only to criminals. They are exotic commodities to the rest of us. By investing in them, we are supporting an exorbitantly energetically wasteful commodity that supports the vilest criminals. This is almost as bad as investing in Facebook.

BRUSSELS (AP) — The Daily Stormer website advocates for the purity of the white race, posts hate-filled, conspiratorial screeds against Blacks, Jews and women and has helped inspire at least three racially motivated murders.

Source: Far-right cryptocurrency follows ideology across borders

 

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The FAANG Wars Escalate

The war between Apple and Microsoft on one side, and Amazon, Facebook and Google on the other officially started in September of last year, and they just escalated with Apple’s release of iOS 14.5. Apple’s declaration that it will end app tracking–the practice of allowing the developer of one mobile phone application to be able to use your mobile device to track your activity in other applications you use on the mobile phone and to correlate your activity with your browsing habits on your computer and phone–is a major pillar of the business model of companies like Facebook and Google who collect this information in order to target ads at you specifically.

The practice goes much further, however. Both companies build “psychographical” profiles of users with such tracking information and use these models to control what each user sees. App tracking is thus one of the many elements of control through which Google and Facebook control the total user experience: they tailor the content they place before you in order to elicit the emotional response that will trigger you to click the ads they have included in the content they place before you. This is why, for example, Google is estimated to collect 20 times as much data as Apple does. It sounds sinister, and it is. (In the case of Amazon, this information is used to display search results that will maximize Amazon’s profit on the sale, not the value for the customer.)

Continue reading “The FAANG Wars Escalate”
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Applying a Band-Aid to a Mortal Wound

Source: WhatsApp imposes even stricter limits on message forwarding

The speed with which social media have been hijacked by malicious forces to achieve ghastly ends is disconcerting. WhatsApp alone has been used to instigate lynchings in India and possibly a genocide in Burma. It is a sign of Facebook’s profound cowardice that it is acting only when a pandemic that affects the entire world–especially Facebook’s country of incorporation, the United States–is in full effect. Even so, the measures they are taking are much too paltry compared to the challenge to be of any use or effect. The quote below from WhatsApp constitutes the epitome of cynicism, the apogee of hypocrisy: after destroying truth, aiding the incitement of genocide and empowering propaganda machines, FaceBook is making a trivial gesture that effects little change beyond the actor making the statement below.

Caveat emptor! If you are getting your news from WhatsApp or Facebook, you are likely an ignoramus.

“We believe it’s important to slow the spread of these messages down to keep WhatsApp a place for personal conversation,” the company added.

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Universal Healthcare is Risk Reduction

www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-03-10/germany-and-coronavirus

As the asinine, primordial debate about whether universal healthcare is “socialism” or “capitalism” continues in the United States, it is important to emphasize the fact that it reduces risk to the economy and to the live of people who create the economy. Let’s be as cynical as we can possible get. If the only purpose people serve is to be participants in the marketplace, then health care reduces the risks that contagion like COVID-19 poses to the marketplace, to the economy. Germany seems to get it. Will the US?

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FAANG Go to War

Apple was the instigator, and the fire has been fueled by two explosive books about Facebook’s abhorrent behavior–‘Zucked by Roger McNamee–and about the exploitative nature of the free internet in general–Ten Arguments for Deleting your Social Media Accounts Right Now by Jaron Lanier. The battle lines have been drawn, and Apple and Microsoft are unofficially allied against Google, Facebook, especially, and, to a lesser extent, Amazon. Let’s examine this battle two ways: idealistically and cynically.

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