https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/07/05/1075865/eric-schmidt-ai-will-transform-science/
“Nevertheless, this is a profoundly optimistic moment. Previous paradigm shifts in science, like the emergence of the scientific process or big data, have been inwardly focused—making science more precise, accurate, and methodical. AI, meanwhile, is expansive, allowing us to combine information in novel ways and bring creativity and progress in the sciences to new heights.”
Bankers finally waking up to the reality that we live in a smartphone era! Just 16 years after the release of the first smartphone.
Slow?
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/blackstone-ceo-says-silicon-valley-163055755.html
Trump’s failed Capitol insurrection on Jan 6, 2021 may yet prove to have been the high point of the authoritarian wave.
Putin’s crazed fantasy of creating a Russian Third Reich is now being buried in Ukrainian fields, streets and towns.
Can Putin hear the people singing? Does he know that his megalomaniacal dream is dying?
“Do you hear the people sing?
Singing the song of angry men?
It is the music of the people
Who will not be slaves again!
When the beating of your heart
Echoes the beating of the drums
There is a life about to start
When tomorrow comes!”
Xi, and all the other petty authoritarians – from Trump and Bolsonaro to Mohammed Bin Salman and the Myanmar junta – are watching fearfully.
When Putin fails, the democratic tsunami will sweep around the world.
And, it will sweep them away.
In the court of global opinion where digital citizens dwell, Russian President Vladimir Putin has lost any ‘just war’ justification. His military assault is in no way proportionhttps://www.aspistrategist.org.au/smartphones-digital-citizens-and-open-secrets-in-russia-ukraine-war/ate and responds to no immediate threat. No more baloney, please—realist or Russian—about how this is the fault of NATO and the US.
Graeme Dobell writes …
David Uren writes: “China and Russia may be allies in autocracy, but their attitudes towards engagement with the global economy could not be more different.
“Whereas Vladimir Putin has devoted the past 20 years to making Russia’s economy as bulletproof as he can, China has pursued as much growth as globalisation can deliver.
“Announcing China’s 2022 growth target of 5.5% over the weekend, Premier Li Keqiang underlined the Chinese Communist Party’s continuing commitment to the open world markets that are being slammed shut to China’s Russian ally.
Since 2009, Russia has averaged growth rates of only around 0.8%, less than half the growth of other Eastern European nations and below the advanced nation average.
David Uren
Read more on The Australia Strategic Policy Institute site.
What Does Atlassian Billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes Really Want?
Mike Cannon-Brookes’ Grok Ventures and Brookfield, a Canadian asset management company have offered to take over Australia’s oldest listed company, AGL, which began life as Australian Gas & Light.
Cannon-Brookes styles himself as an eco-warrior, offering to shutter AGL’s remaining coal fired generating plants early.
He says that would be one of the single most important decarbonization steps on the planet.
Even if accepted at face value, that claim is somewhat overblown and frail reasoning for a multi-billion dollar investment.
So, what assets does AGL possess that Cannon-Brookes would value?
Failing AGL Trying To A Itself Into Two Companies
AGL is losing money and has been struggling for some years.
Management has been in turmoil, unable to successfully adapt to the changing generating and electricity distribution industry. Visionary executives have been ejected in favor of Liberal Party (and IPA)-backed business-as-usual political hacks. Political interference from the IPA think tank has driven continuous management changes, seriously damaging the market’s assessments of the company’s reliability, long term vision and earnings potential.
AGL’s market capitalisation, has fallen to significantly less than AUD $5 Billion, well below its enterprise value which is north of $7 Billion. Investors, in other words don’t have confidence in the current management.
That means there are assets of $7 Billion up for grabs – at a price significantly less than $5 Billion. Cannon-Brookes could buy the company, shutter the coal fired generators and still be ahead of the game.
In desperation, the current management has been trying to split the company into two: AGL Australia and Accel Energy.
Grok Ventures – a $2 Billion Venture Fund
If successful, where would AGL (or AGL Australia and Accel Energy) fit in Cannon-Brookes’ investment fund, Grok Ventures?
Most of Grok’s investments have been in technology – Canva, CultureAmp, SpaceX, Who Gives A Crap, Bitcoin, Adelaide-based Fleet Space Technologies, and Spriggy.
But Grok has also taken a significant stake in a variety of renewable energy plays – right along the value chain. Among the largest is the investment in the $30 billion Sun Cable project to partially power Singapore from a solar farm in the Northern Territory.
Grok has also invested in home solar fintech Brighte, Sun Drive Solar, (a Sydney solar panel startup to provide solar panels to Sun Cable), Goterra a maggot-based waste management business, a meat replacement companies Fable Food Co. and Vow Food Co.
Russia Invades: Claims To Be ‘Peace Keeping”
In a foul and bloodthirsty move, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin has replayed Adolf Hitler’s 1938 invasion of Czechoslovakia. Just as Hitler justified his invasion by claiming he was liberating the Sudetenland Germans, Putin is claiming he is bringing peace and freedom to the Russians living in the border provinces.
Next: Peace In Our Time?
Hitler had to be stopped. We moved too slowly, in the end it cost nearly 60 million lives to finish off the insane Bavarian corporal. When will we decide that enough is enough and that it is time to stop Putin?
In 1946 US diplomat George Kennan sent his famous ‘Long Telegram’ analyzing Russian insecurities and paranoid thinking.
“… at the bottom of the Kremlin‘s view of world affairs is a traditional and instinctive Russian sense of insecurity.”
The authority of previous Russian rulers was “archaic in form, fragile and artificial in its psychological foundation, unable to stand comparison or contact with political systems of western countries.”
This understanding of Russian history used to be cloaked by Marxist Leninism, now it is shrouded in a visceral nationalism.
Their obstinacy in dealing with the West was born out of necessity; seeing the rest of the world as hostile provided an excuse “for the dictatorship without which they did not know how to rule, for cruelties they did not dare not to inflict, for sacrifices they felt bound to demand.”
Until the Russians either experienced consistent failures or their leader was persuaded that they were negatively impacting their nation’s interest, the West could not expect any reciprocity.
The Russian government can be understood as occupying two distinct spaces: an official, visible government and another operating without any official acknowledgement.
(Today’s Putin’s Chef.)
[While the former would participate in international diplomacy, the latter would attempt to undermine the West as much as possible, including efforts to “disrupt national self confidence, to hamstring measures of national defense, to increase social and industrial unrest, to stimulate all forms of disunity.”
Kennan concluded that the Soviets ultimately had no expectation of reconciliation with the West.
Plus ca change!
TikTok Driving Revenue Growth – now $3.6 Billion a year
Australian creators and influencers are making a living on social media – but it isn’t easy. As in professional sports and acting, a few make a lot, the majority make very little.
Creative agency, We Are Social, reports that $3.6 billion was tipped into Australian social media advertising last year. That’s $547 million more than in 2020 and the money is being attracted by TikTok creators. But, and its a big but – Creators want you to take their work seriously – and understand they aren’t all rich!
We Are Social reports:
“By the end of 2021, 82.7% of Australians were active on social media, an annual growth of nearly 1 million users. As time spent on social media increased to 1h and 57m per day it became the second most popular media activity for Australians after watching television.
“This increase was driven primarily by TikTok, now a social media staple of 32% of the 16-64 set. Australian TikTok users scroll through the app for 23.4 hours per month – a whopping 40% jump since the beginning of 2021. Meanwhile, the Facebook – ahem, Meta – properties either stalled or shrunk their social growth: Instagram grew 3% while Facebook and Whatsapp dropped 3% and 4% respectively.
TikTok growing, Facebook shrinking. The world turns!
Read the full report on We Are Social
Oz fastest out of the blocks, ramping up production
But China dominates the lithium production value chain
Lithium is today’s “white gold” – due to its crucial role in batteries for everything from mobile phones and home storage to electric cars.
Lithium production more than doubled between 2016 and 2020, up from 40,000 tonnes to 86,300 tonnes.
Australia’s lithium mostly comes from hard-rock mines that produce spodumene concentrate, which is then converted into lithium.
Most of Chile’s lithium comes from salar brines which contain high concentrations of lithium.
China, the third-largest producer, is the biggest investor in the lithium production industry globally.
Since 2018, Chinese companies have invested more than $5 billion in lithium mining projects in various countries. China, moreover, dominates the refining and battery manufacturing stages of the lithium-ion supply chain.
By far the largest Chinese purchase was the US$4 Billion+ acquisition of Sociedad Quimica y Minera de Chile SA, which operates lithium mines in Chile’s Atacama desert and the Mt Holland lithium mine in Western Australia
Influencers, chatterati operating on social media rather than mainstream media, have eclipsed even the loudest MSM voices during the pandemic.
Operating on a huge number of channels as varied as Spotify, Reddit, Telegram, Gab and Bitchute, as well as the more mainstream Facebook, WhatsApp, Tik Tok and Instagram, the influencers have carved out powerful – and highly lucrative niche audiences.
Billing himself as ‘Captain Graham Hood’ the anti-vaxxer, Seventh Day Adventist, and conspiracy theorist claimed one million protestors would join the Canberra convoy.
In reality, about 10,000 turned up. No small beer by Canberra’s village scale standards.
Tasmanian far-right researcher Kaz Ross summarized the disparate groups in the Canberra convoy.
“Aussie Aussie, oi, oi, ANZACs, a bit of Jesus, freedom, and save the children,” all set to the tune of John Farnham’s You’re The Voice.
Kaz Ross
(The Seventh Day Adventist Church has rejected the conspiracy theories surrounding Covid-19.)
But, Hood, who resigned from Qantas in September 2021, isn’t just running on an ideological position. With his flying career over, he is positioning himself to run for a Queensland seat at the next Federal election.
But, Queensland’s ever fractious far-right scene doesn’t seem to be welcoming him with open arms.
Eternal would-be political leader, and sometime MHR, Clive Palmer isn’t having anything to do with Hood, instead he is reviving his old United Australia Party – and paying for a wildly expensive TV advertising campaign saying he will “defend Australia”.
Against what, exactly he doesn’t specify?
Meanwhile Pauline Hanson, the aging One Nation leader, managed to show up in Canberra, adorned with a little temporary Australian flag tattoo on her right arm.
A determined conspiracy theorist, Pauline rants at the ‘international organisations’ but soft pedals on the anti-vax message. It might be that Pauline is just smart enough to realise that many of her geriatric base have chosen to be vaxxed – and they don’t want to hear their dyed hair symbol criticizing their sensible precautionary steps.
As the pandemic got underway in 2020 Ex TV name Pete Evans tried to flog a “subtle energy platform” called the BioCharger NG for $15,000.
A plasma lamp in fancy packaging, the way over-priced piece of kit wasn’t a crime in itself. But Evans, never the sharpest tool, kept claiming it had a recipe for the Wuhan coronavirus. The medical establishment was alarmed, even outraged, as was the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA).
The TGA hit Evans with a couple of infringement notices totalling $25,200.
That didn’t stop our boy – so in mid 2021, he copped another $80,000 fine. Been keeping a low profile since. Not smart, but he finally got the message.
Anti-vax demos create a type of community for a lot of side-lined communities: varying from old style libertarians, some indigenous activists, long-term anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists – and a lot of them tend to take up far right and Nazi ideas.
In November 2020, Pete Evans started posting the “Black Sun” on his social media platforms – a symbol widely used by neo-Nazis and white supremacists.
Other Australian neo-Nazis have also pinned their colours to the anti-vax campaign.
Many of the conspiracy theories can be traced back to the US – Qanon ideas and Kremlin disinformation campaigns.
Many of the more Australia specific conspiracies were sourced from science fiction comics, published in New York decades ago.
Who is winning the online race in Australia in early 2022?
Commbank by nearly 10 million visits.
PayPal is a length ahead of WestPac. WestPac knows it is trailing, so it is upgrading its game, just adding a new, upgraded app.
Trailing are ANZ and NAB – both with just over a third of the visits notched up by Commbank.
(The various trading sites: including NABtrade are counted separately.)
Wordle Soars to Become Viral in the Northern Hemisphere Winter
The English(?) chap who invented Wordle has made a few million!
Way back in October 2021, Wordle, an online word guessing game with a new challenge available daily, registered less than 5,000 visits a day to its site.
By January 2022, traffic had skyrocketed to more than 45 million!
More than 900,000% increase in less than four months.
The New York Times noticed, acquiring Wordle from its creator for a price “in the low seven figures”. The NYT says that the game will remain free and the format will not be changed.
We shall see.
“New structures have been seen sprouting up in towns and cities across China.
“But these aren’t the usual overproduced apartment blocks. They are “New Era Civilization Practice Centers,” hubs from which a vast army of volunteers will host movie nights and vocational education classes, sort trash, visit the elderly, and generally inculcate more “civilized behavior” in Chinese citizens.
“Their stated mission: to “solve problems for the masses, so that every family can feel the warmth of the Party and the government.”
“Conceived by the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Guidance Commission on Building Spiritual Civilization — devoted to fostering “ideological, moral, and cultural” progress in the population — the centres represent an attempt to develop an alternative approach to social control. If they can only help nudge the masses toward a new era of self-monitoring and self-regulation, the thinking goes, traditional heavy-handed “stability maintenance” measures may someday no longer be required at all.
N.S. Lyons describes the scheme on Unherd.
Jessica Batke writes on Chinafile: In a rural county in southern China, more than ten thousand volunteers, scattered across mountain villages and rice paddies, are out gathering local folk songs. Their charge: to bring back paeans to “the new era and new thought” at the heart of General Secretary Xi Jinping’s vision for China’s political future.
Read how it works on ChinaFile.
Shopify, one of the biggest e-commerce platforms, now allows its online merchants to launch 3-D and augmented reality versions of their products directly on their sites.
Merchants can convert their entire product offerings into 3-D and A.R. models. Shopify is partnering with A.R. platform Poplar Studio to offer the service through an app that costs $49 a month.
Shopify already offered some 3-D and A.R. features, but the experience was fragmented and required multiple apps. The new Poplar Studio platform allows retailers to access all the features in a single app.
3-D and A.R. can help online retailers offer experiences usually only provided by brick-and-mortar stores, allowing customers to better visualize their potential purchases. Shopify claims merchants that have added 3-D images to their websites have experienced 94 percent higher conversion rates.
In the US, Time writes that “Stores from Macy’s to IKEA have made headline using AR and really pulled customers into stores.
“AR lets us redefine the experience for furniture retail once more, in our restless quest to create a better everyday life for everyone, everywhere,” said Inter IKEA Systems Leader Digital Transformation Michael Valdsgaard.
Retailers are particularly innovative on social media channels.
“When you open up Snapchat’s lens carousel, you’re greeted with a variety of filters that let you do everything from smoothing your skin to wearing a flower crown to dancing with a hotdog. Snapchat lenses have for years helped users create funny or glam photos and videos to send to their friends, but recently a more practical category of lens has been on the rise: augmented reality (AR) shopping.
“Covid-19 has been particularly disastrous for the United States, the United Kingdom and Southeast Asian nations such as Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines.
“These countries have experienced extraordinarily high case numbers and deaths, hospitals full and turning away patients, government lockdowns, and morgues and cemeteries needing more space for the deceased.”
But instead of a global view of the unfurling disaster, most Australian media focussed on the US and UK experience.
Ross Tapsell undertook a survey of Australian coverage for the Australian Journalism Review.
Writing in the Lowy Institute’s Interpreter, he analyzes what he calls the ‘western centric’ framing of the issues involved.
The Australian mainstream media’s reporting of Covid-19 clearly does not reflect (our current) diversity.
Ross Tapsell
APRA Exec Cole ‘troubled’ by quantity and performance of funds DIY investors can choose from within A$3tn superannuation sector
Just another bureaucrat lamenting her lack of control of the market?
Australian Prudential Regulation Authority board member Margaret Cole is in today’s Financial Times lamenting the high number of funds retirement savers wishing to make their own decisions can choose from, and has pledged to crackdown on trustees failing to weed out poorly performing products.
Catastrophic, isn’t it? Customers actually having a free choice.
Not in the interests of overly powerful Canberra bureaucrats.
Read Cole’s condescending arguments on the Financial Times.
ScoMo team’s incompetence spun as Chinese interference
If you can’t manage something – blame others for the cock ups.
More Chinese interference in in Canberra?
This time – not. Yet again, ScoMo’s Prime Ministerial team has stuffed up – using shonky arrangements to set up a WeChat account, then forgetting to renew it.
They were paying so little attention, it took two months to even notice that someone else was using the account.
A political hijack? Those nefarious Chinese ALP supporters undermining ScoMo’s ramshackle administration? Or, was it the ever active Chinese intelligence agencies, attacking Australia’s sovereignty?
The hapless bureaucrats in ScoMo’s office decided it was the latter – blaming the Chinese for their own stuff ups.
In London, the BBC is sniffing blood in Canberra.
Scott isn’t as chaotic as Boris … yet. But, his continual missteps, refusal to take responsibility and anti-Chinese excuses are beginning to trigger suspicion.
How the BBC treated Morrison’s latest propaganda adventures
Meanwhile WeChat refuted Morrison’s claims, pointing to the perfectly legal commercial transaction underlying the switch. It was sold off, because the necessary management steps hadn’t been taken. Turns out Morrison’s staff were using an agency in China (registered to one individual) who hadn’t remembered to renew. Hardly the most professional.
The new owner of the account hasn’t sought to pretend it is still operated by the Prime Minister – he is using it to publish news for Chinese Australians.
Interviewed in China, he said he hadn’t taken down the old Morrison posts – because he didn’t want to offend any Australian politicians.
Meanwhile Morrison’s cabinet team lined up to denounce the Chinese interference.
A full court press – as The Guardian reported.
Pity it wasn’t true.
In January 2021 just over half Australians trusted what they read or heard from the media.
That trust declined rapidly over the last 12 months and now only 43% of Australians trust the media.
That’s one of the fastest confidence collapses in the world – and a marked acceleration of a trend that has been evident for some decades.
PR firm Edelman’s Annual Trust Barometer for 2022 found that faith in the media fell in 15 countries – with the biggest falls in Australia and the US.
Overall 56% of people said the media was a divisive force in society. And just one-third (35%) said the media contributed to making societies more cohesive.
Two-thirds (67%) of people globally said they believe journalists and reporters purposely try to mislead people by saying things they know are false or grossly exaggerated – up 8 percentage points on last year’s report.
Andrew Banks reports on Mumbrella
Trust in the corporate world is stable and is actually increasing for NGOs.
Edelman CEO Richard Edelman said “Government was the most trusted institution as recently as May 2020, when the world sought leadership capable of tackling a global pandemic.”
“Now, after the confused and bungled response, when it comes to basic competence, government is less trusted than businesses and NGOs. People still want government to take on the big challenges, but only four in 10 say government can execute and get results.
Edelman has studied trust for more than 20 years and believes that it is the ultimate currency in the relationship that all institutions—business, governments, NGOs and media—build with their stakeholders.
If they are correct, governments and mainstream media are the big losers in the 2020s.
Read more on the Edelman Trust Barometer.
Just fanciful story telling – again.
This as Australia’s Omicron wave hits more than 60,000 infected every day.
Today Scott Morrison says he doesn’t know how many tests he’s personally paid for: “(Jenny is) the one that goes and gets them.”
22 Dec: he describes going himself to get a test from a pharmacy in Terrigal. “I went, I got a covid test from the local pharmacy… picked one up.” pic.twitter.com/3jvK4WUBJG— Luke Henriques-Gomes (@lukehgomes) January 5, 2022
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So how does the battling, low income family get Rapid Antigen Test kits ? The family who’ll struggle to buy this year’s school shoes or pay the power bill ? Morrison doesn’t know, and doesn’t give a flying fuck. pic.twitter.com/Z6A2cwft1L
— Mike Carlton (@MikeCarlton01) January 3, 2022
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