Kudos for Lucire; global trade sans the US; and our ads go tracker-free

Nice to see Lucire can still pick up kudos with Feedspot putting it into their top 100 fashion magazines, ranking it at 21st. Not bad after 27 years, and going on 28, with a fraction of the budget of the multinationals. We’re two behind Women’s Wear Daily, and three ahead of British Vogue. We do […]

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Quick numbers on Teslas and trade

I had the strangest dream a few nights ago of piloting a Tesla Model 3, and finding it quite horrid. I’ve not driven one in real life, and I can’t see myself doing so, as it’s the sort of thing you can’t bring yourself to do for fear of being seen, embarrassed, in one. Or […]

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“AI”? Facebook’s bot city has already been around for a decade

I’m surprised that people are surprised that this is where Facebook is going. In the words of my friend Richard MacManus, in reference to this interview with Mark Zuckerberg in The Verge: ‘Mark Zuckerberg basically just confirmed that your feeds will soon be full of AI-generated content. Another reason the fediverse needs to exist: so […]

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Huawei without Google: isn’t that a good thing?

I see Google’s going to stop supporting Huawei as a developer. How is this a bad thing?    First, Huawei can still get the public parts of Android, since they’re open-source. Secondly, if they don’t get updates ahead of time, so what? When have western software companies rolled out bug-free updates? Based on my own […]

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We need to heed the warnings that Harry Leslie Smith gives

Not that Asian countries get this right all the time, but generally, when a 95-year-old speaks, we (as in many of us with Asian heritage, and by ‘Asian’ I mean a lot of cultures that make up the 3,700 million people on the continent) tend to listen and we revere their experience. And WWII veteran […]

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TPPA-11: same thing, different face

Neil Ballantyne/Wikimedia Commons How much has TPPA changed? Not a lot, according to this petition. The full content is below, and if you agree, click through to dontdoit.nz and add your signature. Point (e) is the one that most of us understand, and according to the petition, it’s still there.    While all trade agreements […]

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What a great opportunity for New Zealand that lies before us

Above: When I refer to Hillary in the below blog post, I mean the self-professed ‘ordinary chap’ on our $5 note.   As the results of the US presidential election came in, I didn’t sense a panic. I actually sensed a great opportunity for New Zealand.    I’ve been critical of the obsession many of […]

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When mistrust brings us together

I can be staunch on IP protection in a lot of cases—but in the case of Martin Shkreli of Turing Pharmaceuticals AG hiking the price of an Aids drug from $13·50 to $750 per pill, not so much (for obvious reasons). If you’re in pharmaceuticals, then there has to be some element of wanting to […]

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The political caricatures of old have taken human form, but they’re still nothing like us

That’s another British General Election done and dusted. I haven’t followed one this closely since the 1997 campaign, where I was backing John Major.    Shock, horror! Hang on, Jack. Haven’t the media all said you are a leftie? Didn’t you stand for a left-wing party?    Therein lies a fallacy about left- and right […]

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Cities are, or at least should be, driving globalization

  My friend and colleague William Shepherd directed me to a piece at Quartz by Michele Acuto and Parag Khanna, on how cities are driving globalization more than nations—a theme I touched upon on this blog in March 2010. As he said, I had called it three years ago, though admittedly Acuto and Khanna have […]

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