Humans are being degraded to the status of objects of an algorithm-based evaluation to be sold on the market. This exploitative form of “hypercapitalism” must quickly be reversed.
Tag: apple
SPOTLIGHT: CAMERON & CORBYN, STANDARD & POOR’S What a difference a week makes. Britain’s two leading political figures, Prime Minister David Cameron and opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn appeared to be cementing their power in their respective parties last week. But Thursday’s verdict to leave the European Union spurred Cameron’s decision to resign. And now […]
ABDESLAM EXTRADITED TO FRANCE Salah Abdeslam, the only surviving member of the terrorist group that carried out the Paris attacks last November in which 130 people were killed, was extradited this morning from Belgium to France. He will be tried by French courts for participation in terrorist murder and the activities of a terrorist organization, […]
ROBERTSDALE — There are few clues that this is the home town of Apple chief executive Tim Cook, the place where he said his “most improbable journey” began and where he forged the beliefs that today put him at the center of a national debate over privacy. His name is not noted on the town’s welcome signs along the main drag, Route 59. There’s nothing in the local chamber’s brochures, and the local paper rarely has anything about him. His old high school keeps a glass case celebrating former NFL running back Joe Childress, Class of 1952, but not the […]
Restaurant, cell phone and clothes: People usually buy what others appear to want, so companies use the illusion of low supply to create new demand. But there are paradoxes to human instincts and desires.
IT’S CRUZ IN IOWA, CLINTON BY A HAIR In a humiliating upset for Donald Trump, evangelical Tea Party hero Sen. Ted Cruz won Iowa’s all-important GOP caucus with 28% of the vote last night, to Trump’s 24%. On the Democratic side, major media outlets are still characterizing the Hillary Clinton/Bernie Sanders matchup a “virtual tie.” […]
A look inside Huawei’s HQ in Shenzen, the Silicon Valley of China, where plans are being laid to overtake Apple and Samsung.
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On This Day – November 18
-Analysis- MUNICH — As the Volkswagen scandal continues to unfold, you can either look behind or look ahead. How has this historic German auto giant with 12 brands and 600,000 employees worldwide found itself spiraling downward in a bottomless pit since revelations that it manipulated emission measurements from its diesel models? How was it possible […]
-OpEd- 

How important is intellectual property in the digital age? Not very, if the business strategies of industry luminaries like PayPal’s Elon Musk and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg are any indication. Musk, the multi-talented entrepreneur behind PayPal, and more recently Tesla cars and SpaceX, has made it clear he considers Tesla’s impressive lead in battery and […]
Remember Gattaca? The superb film describes the contrasting fates of two brothers, one of whom was genetically optimized at birth. A few years later, in another movie, The Island, a community of prisoners discovers one day they are nothing but clones of super-privileged people and that their sole purpose is to provide fresh organs as […]
In our always plugged-in era of uber immediacy, some of us are willing and eager to wait ages to buy the latest smartphone or eat a certain hamburger from a truck.
GOP, WHITE HOUSE CLASH ON IRANRepublican senators appear determined to derail a possible deal with Iran on the country’s nuclear program, and their decision to send a letter signed by 47 senators to Tehran has worsened tensions between the GOP and the White House, The Washington Post reports. In the letter, the senators tell Iranian […]
UKRAINE TRUCE STILL SHAKYAn already shaky ceasefire in eastern Ukraine is threatening to collapse further after a blast killed two people yesterday at a march commemorating the first anniversary of former president Viktor Yanukovych’s ousting. Ukrainian authorities said they arrested four people who had been armed and trained in Russia, Reuters reports. Pro-Russian rebels and […]
SOME AREAS IGNORE UKRAINE CEASEFIREThe ceasefire in eastern Ukraine was still broadly observed this morning, but sporadic fighting persisted in some areas, especially in the city of Debaltseve, which is encircled by pro-Russian rebels, the BBC reports. A Ukraine army official said five troops had been killed and 22 wounded since the ceasefire went into […]
And it will happen sooner than you think…
He’s coined everything from the PowerBook to Blackberry to your kitchen mop. There’s a method to his magic.
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The Blurry Future Of Google Glass
Though Google’s new technology was once hailed as revolutionary, product disappointment has set in and technology watchers are predicting that Google Glass is doomed.
Looking at the business fundamentals, there are both very good and very bad signs for Microsoft’s new CEO Satya Nadella. Is there a (positive) lesson in IBM’s evolution?
MUNICH — Tobias Fröhlich no longer wears a suit and tie to work. The former BMW salesman dons a white polo shirt and blue trousers for his job at a new branch of the Munich firm where he greets customers with a smile, iPad in hand. Fröhlich is a “product genius” and as such is […]
Follow the money, which travels beyond borders more than ever before. But a new paradigm should be about more than just cracking down on evaders.
Tim Cook and the Apple team remind us that a wearable time piece is much more than a style statement. But 500 years on, watches still represent a singular mix of status, obligation…and death.
Friday, January 9, 2015 PARIS TERROR SUSPECTS TAKE HOSTAGESPolice have located Said and Chérif Kouachi, the two French brothers suspected of killing 12 people at the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo Wednesday. A major police operation is underway after the pair took at least one hostage at a printing company in Dammartin-en Goële, a […]
Jeanne was looking for work when she came across a telemarketer offer for an Apple contractor in Barcelona. She took the job without hesitating. A few months later, she is a broken woman: constant surveillance, timed breaks, aggressive customers … The pressure is constant. BARCELONA — My story begins several months ago. I wanted a […]
From Twitter to Dropbox to Airbnb, where office life is the good life.
Wednesday, November 26, 2014 FERGUSON PROTESTS SPREAD ACROSS U.S. Protests against a Missouri grand jury’s decision not to indict police officer Darren Wilson for the killing of teenager Michael Brown spread to more than 170 American cities, from New York to Los Angeles, CNN reports. In Ferguson, St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar said […]
Thursday, October 23, 2014 CANADA “NOT INTIMIDATED” Details of the suspected Ottawa gunman who killed Canadian soldier Nathan Cirillo in Ottawa yesterday are starting to emerge. The Globe And Mail describes 32-year-old Michael Zehaf-Bibeau as “a man who had had a religious awakening and seemed to have become mentally unstable.” The Toronto Star portrays him […]
-OpEd- BEIJING — Apple released the iPhone 5c and 5s in Beijing last week, marking the first time ever that Apple has chosen the world’s biggest market for a launch. The company seems to hope that the two new smartphones will help the brand here, where it hovers alternately between fifth and sixth place in […]
Tuesday, September 9, 2014 MH17 PRELIMINARY REPORT Dutch experts this morning published their preliminary report into the causes of the July 17 crash of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in eastern Ukraine. The report stopped short of saying whether a missile had hit the aircraft, explaining instead that it broke in mid-air after being hit by […]
BLOOMBERG, REUTERS Worldcrunch BEIJING – China’s top search engine Baidu is planning to buy the app store 91 Wireless for $1.9 billion in order to gain a bigger share in the very competitive mobile sector, Reuters reports. After the acquisition, Baidu will hold 57.4% of the shares of one of China’s earliest app stores, taking […]
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Is Apple Still A Luxury Brand?
PARIS – So Yves Saint Laurent“s CEO has been named vice president at Apple. We don’t know much yet about what Paul Deneve’s role will be beyond the company’s mention of “special projects” and his reporting to Apple chief Tim Cook, but let’s try to analyze the move from the perspective of luxury strategy. We […]
Tuesday, June 24, 2014 ISIS CLAIMS CAPTURE OF IRAQ OIL REFINERY Jihadist group ISIS has claimed to have taken control of Iraq’s biggest oil refinery in Baiji, after it offered hundreds of Iraqi soldiers safe passage if they laid down their weapons, Al Jazeera reports. But Iraq’s foreign minister rejected the claims, and New York […]
CHINA TIMES, ECONOMIC DAILY (Taiwan); XINHUA (China) WUHAN – In a booming economy, even the dead can help you turn a profit. Friday was Tomb Sweeping Day, or the Qingming Festiva, in China. Set officially as a national holiday on April 4 or 5, this has traditionally been a family day on which people pay […]
LES ECHOS (France), EU OBSERVER (Belgium), BOSTON CONSULTING GROUP (USA), WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM, DATA PROTECTION IN EUROPE Worldcrunch BRUSSELS – This week, more than 90 leading academics across Europe launched a petition to support the European Commission’s draft data protection regulation, reports the EU Observer. The online petition, entitled Data Protection in Europe, says “huge […]
PARIS – Kevin Kelly is a stimulating iconoclast. How many books are bought but not read? Probably many more than we think. Hence the idea of paying readers who read a book from the beginning to the end. Kevin Kelly thought about patenting his idea, but, since ideas don’t necessarily make a project, he decided […]
MUNICH – To many, “i” was just a letter of the alphabet – until it was used by a then unknown computer company to skyrocket to the global position Apple holds today. And now BMW is hoping to go far on “i” too, investing billions in the i3 electric car due to come onto the […]
At the end of this year, when Apple’s cheap iPhone comes out, it is going to be amusing to listen to all the Apple fans who consoled themselves about Apple’s loss of market share by dismissing competitors’ phones as “cheap plastic crap.” Because the new cheap iPhone is supposed to have a cheap plastic back. […]
CHINA TIMES (Taiwan), XINHUA (China) Worldcrunch XIAMEN – Recently, a 17 year-old boy from the Chinese northeastern city of Changchun, in Jilin Province, secretly sold the four tires of his parents’ sports car to buy an iPhone 5. He sold the tires for about a sixth of their real value. His mother had previously refused […]
THE AUSTRALIAN FINANCIAL REVIEW, AAP, THE AUSTRALIAN (Australia) Worldcrunch Turn right, then after 200 meters, you have reached your destination. NOT. A glitch in Apple’s new iPhone mapping system is putting lives at risk by sending motorists into isolated parkland, the Australian news agency AAP reports. Over the past month, police officers in Mildura, a […]
THE KOREA HERALD (South Korea), THE FINANCIAL TIMES (UK) Worldcrunch Samsung Electronics confirmed Tuesday that it has filed papers with a U.S. court that accuse Apple’s iPhone 5 of infringing its patents. The South Korean electronics giant alleges that the new iPhone 5, launched September 21, infringes eight of its patents, including its wireless data […]