My end of week morning train WFH reads:
• A Change by Apple Is Tormenting Internet Companies, Especially Meta Meta’s stock prices plunged after the company reported that Apple’s privacy features would cost it billions this year. It’s not the only tech giant to take a hit. (New York Times) see also Facebook and Google’s Ad Addiction Can’t Last Forever Facebook’s first-ever drop in users is an ominous sign for a business that relies almost entirely on ads. Google’s ad revenue is down to 81% of the company’s total — 10 years ago it was up around 97%, like Facebook’s today. (Bloomberg)
• The Rise of the $2.5 Billion Ugly-Shoe Empire: From shearling Uggs to Hoka dad sneakers and rainbow Tevas, Deckers Outdoor Corp. keeps selling us the most hideous uglycore footwear. (Businessweek)
• California has an answer for worker abuse in the fast-food industry The so-called Fast Recovery Act (the full name is the Fast Food Accountability and Standards Recovery Act) would create a fast-food industry council with the power to set statewide standards for wages, working hours, sick leave, training and working conditions applicable to the more than 550,000 fast-food workers in the state, the largest such workforce in the country. (Los Angeles Times)
• Reasons to Abandon Spotify That Have Nothing to Do with Joe Rogan The Swedish streaming service has fostered a music-distribution model that is singularly hostile to the interests of working musicians. It pays out, on average, an estimated four-tenths of a cent per stream, meaning that a thousand streams nets around four dollars. That arrangement has reaped huge profits for major labels and for superstars while decimating smaller-scale musical incomes—as perfect an embodiment of the winner-takes-all neoliberal economy as has yet been devised. (NewYorker)
• The Big Plans That Built New York City: The ideas promoted by the tri-state Regional Plan Association, which turns 100 this year, read like an anthology of what U.S. urban planning got right — and wrong (Bloomberg)
• What happened to the drone war? The Biden administration says it’s fighting terrorism with fewer “boots on the ground”; why is it also using fewer drones in the air? (Grid)
• Inside Trickbot, Russia’s Notorious Ransomware Gang: Internal messages shed new light on the operators of one of the world’s biggest botnets. (Wired)
• American democracy is under threat. But what is that threat, exactly? Is it election theft, minority rule, voter suppression, or all of the above? (Vox)
• Polar bears move into abandoned Arctic weather station – photo essay Photographer Dmitry Kokh discovered polar bears living in an abandoned weather station in Kolyuchin, in the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug of the Russian Federation, while on a trip to Wrangel Island, a Unesco-recognised nature reserve that serves as a refuge to the animals. (The Guardian)
• Four Charts That Reveal Tom Brady’s Greatness Tom Brady has retired from football after a 22-year career of consistent success and unmatched achievement. But his stature as the N.F.L.’s greatest quarterback may be best understood by seeing his achievements stacked up against more than 300 other N.F.L. quarterbacks in four measures of cumulative statistics: playoff victories, career passing touchdowns, career passing yards and Pro Bowl selections. (Upshot)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Rebecca Patterson, Director of Investment Research at Bridgewater Associates, the world’s largest hedge fund, where she is also a member of the firm’s investment committee. Previously, she was Chief Investment Officer at Bessemer Trust, managing $85 billion of client assets.
A Record 50% of U.S. Small Businesses Raised Wages in January to Lure Workers
Source: Bloomberg
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