Fred’s Views - Issue 17
Fred’s Views
Issue 17
A weekly summary of what I’ve found interesting at the intersection of economics, finance and technology.
Headlines
A security researcher has released a new jailbreak method for all iOS devices running on A5 to A11 chipsets, that cannot be fixed by a software update; in other words, the phones are permanently vulnerable. The good news is that physical access to the device is necessary, and encrypted data cannot be read. Still, probably a decent reason to update to a newer (unaffected) model.
Tech unicorn DoorDash was hacked and leaked some 5 million customer records. As is now customary, the breach happened back in May, but was only announced now, because ¯\(ツ)/¯. Read (Techcrunch)
Elizabeth Warren wants to reinstate the Office of Technology Assessment, which used to be a unit of the US Congress advising representatives on technology. This seems very sensible in light of the huge regulatory changes technology requires. Looking back, abolishing it in the 1990’s was probably not the best idea… Read (The Verge)
The collapse of WeWork is breathtaking, but a key takeaway here is that regulation did its job, rather than the “public markets”. Public offerings of shares in the US are regulated by the Securities Act of 1933, passed in the wake of the great crash of 1929, and almost 90 years later it did exactly what it was designed to do. Read (FT Alphaville)
The narrative is definitely turning: “Nearly two-thirds of Americans would support breaking up tech firms by undoing recent mergers, such as Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram, if it means ensuring more competition in the future.” Read (Vox)
The European Court of Justice ruled that Google only has to enforce the “right to forget” within the EU, meaning that the related data can be available elsewhere. Two things that immediately come to mind is, first, whether this does not undermine the rule to begin with, since data in any country is accessible from anywhere. Second, might this lead to “data havens”, a bit like tax havens, and what would the regulatory response to that be? Read (BBC)
Context
By now, two things are clear about surveillance capitalism. First, escaping it would require someone to live like a hermit cut off from society, therefore being subjected to surveillance is inevitable. Second, regulation may help, but it will take time to enact, and meanwhile companies are conducting a “land grab” of sorts without any control or reason. Sounds bleak, but there are still ways to resist, or at least hide, for example by relying on obfuscation. I love the “native” aspect of this, where people who haven’t known anything else than a Facebook-like environment are subverting the original intent (see also “rinsta” and “finsta” accounts.) More importantly, it illustrates that people value privacy and do not want to live like an open book. Read (MIT Technology Review)
Amazon’s “home-security camera” Ring, which in effect enables real-time, continuous and pervasive surveillance of public spaces, comes out looking like a particularly dystopian product in this article. Of course the company doesn’t seem concerned about the issues raised in the article at all, on the contrary. Read (Wired)
Despite many project launches and lavish press releases, real value-adding applications for the blockchain have not yet been identified and people are losing interest. Read (FT)
Password managers are a critical tool for secure computing, and Wired has a useful round-up of their favourites. Even more useful is a short overview of best practice, such as using the Diceware method to generate strong passwords. Read (Wired)
That’s it for this week’s edition. As always, thanks for reading and please forward this to anyone who you think might be interested, it would be much appreciated.