Washington Post (January 19)
“The S&P 500 hit an all-time closing high Friday.” Up over 1% from Thursday, the index closed at 4,839.81, “surpassing the previous closing record set in January of 2022.” Support stems from confidence in an economy that has averted a recession, apparently achieving an elusive soft-landing. Analysts also “point to an AI-driven frenzy on Wall Street that rivals the dot-com boom of the late ’90s, when investors sought to capitalize on the transformative gains brought by the early internet.”
Tags: AI, Analysts, Boom, Capitalize, Dot-com, Economy, Frenzy, Gains, High, Internet, Investors, Recession, Record Confidence, Rivals, S&P 500, Soft landing, Transformative, Wall Street
Institutional Investor (April 6)
“Venture capital activity has all but dried up for the hedge funds (and/or their VC arms) that used to be among the most active in the private market for tech, internet, and new economy companies.”
Tags: Active, Dried up, Hedge funds, Internet, New economy, Private market, Tech, Venture-capital
Washington Post (October 9)
“Quantum research still has plenty of obstacles to overcome before it reaches widespread use. But banks, health-care companies and others are starting to run experiments on the quantum internet. Some industries are also tinkering with early-stage quantum computers to see whether they might eventually crack problems that current computers can’t, such as discovering new pharmaceuticals to treat intractable disease.”
Tags: Banks, Companies, Computers, Early-stage, Health care, Industries, Internet, Obstacles, Overcome, Quantum, Research, Tinkering
Reuters (June 9)
“Like the banking system, the internet looks simple from the outside but is really an elaborate patchwork. Tuesday’s outage involving Fastly (FSLY.N), a so-called content delivery network, is a reminder for people with their lives in the cloud that pieces of the puzzle can fail. And unlike with banks, there’s little government oversight and no backstop, so it’s good for users to be reminded that instant online gratification is not guaranteed.”
Tags: Banking system, Cloud, Content delivery, Elaborate, Fastly, Government, Internet, Network, Outage, Oversight, Patchwork, Simple
WARC (March 4)
“Ultimately, the cookie was one of the aspects of the internet (and, by extension, digital advertising) that gave it a bad name. But at least they were everyone’s problem/opportunity – what comes next could lead to a vast concentration of power.” One proposal, federated learning of cohorts (FLoC), is facing growing skepticism.
Tags: Concentration, Cookie, Digital advertising, FLoC, Internet, Opportunity, Power, Problem, Skepticism
Washington Post (August 21)
“In the past century, since the passage of the 19th Amendment gave women the right to vote, Americans developed nuclear bombs, traveled to space and invented the Internet. But the country has not come even close to achieving equal representation for women and men in politics.”
Tags: 19th Amendment, Century, Equal representation, Internet, Nuclear bombs, Passage, Politics, Space, U.S., Vote, Women
New York Times (May 30)
“E-commerce has been embraced for all manner of goods and services — books, travel, groceries, electronics — but auto sales have resisted the trend.” Consumers do frequently conduct research over the internet, but ultimately “have gone to dealers for most transactions. With the coronavirus and stay-at-home orders, that is changing.”
Tags: Auto sales, Books, Consumers, Dealers, E-commerce, Electronics, Goods, Groceries, Internet, Research, Services, Travel
Washington Post (December 23)
“India’s protests should be regarded as a moment of truth for Modi…. Rather than respond with force and epithets, as he has so far, Mr. Modi would do well to abandon this misguided project of Hindu nationalism…. Mr. Modi’s methods of trying to silence the protests by closing streets and Internet connections will serve only to undermine India’s democracy.”
Tags: Democracy, Force, Hindu, Internet, Misguided, Modi, Nationalism, Protests, Silence, Truth, Undermine
Website Magazine (September 14)
“By and large, the Web is now a gigantic global software platform. And by extension, modern Web design is no longer Web design; it’s product design.”
Tags: Global, Internet, Platform, Product design, Software, Web design
Institutional Investor (March 21)
“The Internet and all its mixed blessings are currently in full flower with the Internet of Things (IoT).” Connected things are forecast to grow by 30% this year and by 2020, there will probably be over 20 billion things connected to the Internet. “The pressing question: Is the IoT floor too far along for security to be, as technologists like to say, baked in?” To hackers, the IoT represents the ultimate honeypot” and already a significant share of botnet attacks are taking place not on PCs, but from connected things. “Welcome to the insecurity of things.”
