When Counterculture Goes Mainstream: A Dispatch from the 2021 Bitcoin Conference
How Bitcoin hard-core loyalists see the future of their project.
Read more...Category Archives: Technology and innovation
Understanding the Opioid Epidemic: When Innovation Fails, or Rather Works Too Well
The opioid crisis provides a deadly example of why innovation often is simply a new-fangled form of predation.
Read more...Trump Can’t Beat Facebook, Twitter and YouTube in Court – but the Fight Might Be Worth More Than a Win
Trump is back for another misguided, erm, quixotic fight. Could he still score points?
Read more...How Intel Financialized and Lost Leadership in Semiconductor Fabrication
Intel is the poster child of how stock buybacks come at the cost of technological innovation.
Read more...Yanis Varoufakis: Techno-Feudalism Is Taking Over
Varoufakis describes techno-feudalism and speculates on where it is going.
Read more...What’s the Carbon Footprint of a Wind Turbine?
Many studies have found that the wind turbine beats fossil fuels handsomely , at least in carbon costs. But is that the whole story?
Read more...The Data Privacy Paradox and Digital Demand
Data privacy worrywarts appear to be the most promiscuous. What gives?
Read more...Quick Comment on the Dismissal of Antitrust Suits Against Facebook
Facebook looks to have done well in having two high profile antitrust suits dismissed. But they should keep the campagne on ice.
Read more...Will Tether Bring All The Cryptocurrencies Way Down?
The more you look at the cryptocurrency Tether, the less there is to like.
Read more...Nassim Nicholas Taleb Shellacks Bitcoin and Cryptocurrencies
Nassim Nicholas Taleb explains why Bitcoin is not good for much except enriching early adopters and intermediaries.
Read more...How Energy Transition Models Go Wrong
Gail Tvergberg explains why oil prices are likely to remain be lower than full costs, and how that undermines the move to cleaner energy.
Read more...The 2021 Corporate Bamboozle On World Food Systems
Mega-corporations are set to win control of global governance of food and agriculture at the UN Food Systems Summit later this year.
Read more...Biden Taps Lina Khan to Chair the FTC
Hours after the Senate confirmed her nomination to the FTC, Biden tapped noted Big Tech critic Lina Khan to chair the agency.
Read more...SoftBank-Funded Silicon Valley Unicorn Katerra, Which Was to “Transform” the Construction Industry, Collapses
Katerra, one of the rare unicorns with a real or at least plausible business, fell to Covid. Lawsuits will fly.
Read more...When Is a Co-Op Not a Co-Op? When Vested Interests in California Want to Keep Platform Workers From Having Power
California Assembly Bill 1319 is a convoluted scheme to create so-called co-ops designed to keep gig workers disempowered.
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