China’s SMIC reports record $5.4B revenue in 2021, up 39% YoY, and $1.7B profit, up 138% YoY, as it looks to add more chip production capacity amid US sanctions (Arjun Kharpal/CNBC)

Arjun Kharpal / CNBC: China’s SMIC reports record $5.4B revenue in 2021, up 39% YoY, and $1.7B profit, up 138% YoY, as it looks to add more chip production capacity amid US sanctions  —  – China’s largest chipmaker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation reported record revenue and a surge in profit last year.

A profile of OpenSea, whose Web3 credentials have been called into question by crypto hardliners, as it tries to deal with security incidents and copycat NFTs (Gian M. Volpicelli/Wired UK)

Gian M. Volpicelli / Wired UK: A profile of OpenSea, whose Web3 credentials have been called into question by crypto hardliners, as it tries to deal with security incidents and copycat NFTs  —  Security issues and endless copycat listings are rife, but the platform’s attempt to stop them is angering everyone.  —  What is a […]

Booking.com will cut and outsource 2,700 call center jobs globally in the next few months, after Booking Holdings laid of ~25% of its workforce in 2020 and 2021 (Dennis Schaal/Skift)

Dennis Schaal / Skift: Booking.com will cut and outsource 2,700 call center jobs globally in the next few months, after Booking Holdings laid of ~25% of its workforce in 2020 and 2021  —  Skift Take  —  We could hear more about Booking Holdings’ rationale for eliminating a chunk of Booking.com’s customer service workforce …

Review of 80K+ donations to the Canadian “Freedom Convoy” reveal a Bangladeshi digital marketing firm helmed two of the biggest Facebook groups promoting events (Grid News)

Grid News: Review of 80K+ donations to the Canadian “Freedom Convoy” reveal a Bangladeshi digital marketing firm helmed two of the biggest Facebook groups promoting events  —  As American politicians call for stateside convoys, a Grid investigation finds signs that foreign actors, QAnon and hate pervade the movement’s support.

A profile of the couple accused of conspiring to launder around $5B in stolen bitcoin, pieced together from sources, filings, and a voluminous online record (Tim Marchman/VICE)

Tim Marchman / VICE: A profile of the couple accused of conspiring to launder around $5B in stolen bitcoin, pieced together from sources, filings, and a voluminous online record  —  Heather Morgan and Ilya Lichtenstein wanted to be famous.  Now, after being accused of laundering billions of dollars of crypto, they are.

Sources: Apollo Global is nearing a deal to acquire the point-of-sale terminal business of Paris-based payments company Worldline for close to $2.3B (Ben Dummett/Wall Street Journal)

Ben Dummett / Wall Street Journal: Sources: Apollo Global is nearing a deal to acquire the point-of-sale terminal business of Paris-based payments company Worldline for close to $2.3B  —  Pandemic has accelerated the adoption of digital payments over cash  —  Apollo Global Management Inc. is nearing a deal to acquire the point …

ClassPass makes health and fitness more accessible

Are you a Pilates person or a cycling person? Maybe you’re a HIIT person who’s convinced themselves they’re only interested in dance. Maybe you like to mix it up throughout the week. Maybe you simply don’t know yet. It’s hard to predict what kind of workout or wellness class will work best for you on […]

UK’s CMA accepts Google’s plan to phase out third-party cookies and replace them with Privacy Sandbox and will closely monitor the development of the product (Jon Porter/The Verge)

Jon Porter / The Verge: UK’s CMA accepts Google’s plan to phase out third-party cookies and replace them with Privacy Sandbox and will closely monitor the development of the product  —  The UK’s competition regulator will keep a ‘close eye’ on development  —  Google’s plan to phase out third-party cookies and replace …

Report: Amazon has received $4.7B in tax breaks globally over the past decade; $4.1B was from the US and weak disclosure laws could put the rest well over $600M (Lauren Kaori Gurley/VICE)

Lauren Kaori Gurley / VICE: Report: Amazon has received $4.7B in tax breaks globally over the past decade; $4.1B was from the US and weak disclosure laws could put the rest well over $600M  —  The report highlights how little is known about the cost of Amazon’s expansion to taxpayers around the planet.  —  Lauren […]

How researchers are using AI to analyze the undeciphered ancient script of the Indus Valley Civilization, and the challenges of deciphering long-lost languages (Alizeh Kohari/Rest of World)

Alizeh Kohari / Rest of World: How researchers are using AI to analyze the undeciphered ancient script of the Indus Valley Civilization, and the challenges of deciphering long-lost languages  —  Scholars have spent a century trying to decipher ancient Indus script.  Machine learning may finally help make sense of it all.

Social media

Digital Evolution Whether it’s family, friends or work colleagues, we all inevitably lose touch with our various networks – it could be argued this is a completely natural process, whereby over time we align ourselves with individuals we have more in common with, or perhaps who are more relevant given our current circumstances; either way, […]

Curated, Digital Content for Everyone

Curated Information Feeds For a good few years now, I’ve actively modified who I follow, and what updates I receive digitally through social and news media – with Facebook, this generally means choosing who I want to receive updates from, and in what order (or at all), which allows me to maintain ‘friendship’ with individuals […]

Reuters News & the Semantic Web

As time goes on, i’m becoming more and more confident of the potential of the semantic web – typically, I tend to be a ‘second mover’ when it comes to new technologies or trends, I’ll usually let someone else be the early adopter, or at least remain skeptical until a quorum has emerged. But with […]

Data Privacy Musings, February 2016

The global Data Privacy landscape is currently a fairly chaotic, uncertain place – certainly the Snowden revelations, along with Wikileaks and similar have sparked all sorts of questions around who has access to what; global surveillance, monitoring and encryption have been hot topics for Silicon Valley and global governmental leaders There is no ‘compromise’ in encryption […]

Identity Access Management on the Blockchain

I’ve been looking at Blockchain technology recently (with some level of confusion), in regard to it’s potential application to IAM, and more generally around the cryptocurrencies that have emerged following Bitcoins success – it still remains to be seen how the Bitcoin implementation will continue operating once all coins have been mined, as the model […]

Social Collaboration

Does your business have a social network? Is it an Enterprise social network? What collaboration tools do you have, are they the same as social tools? There are a number of different ways to describe social and collaborative tools, and they are often used interchangeably. This is fine in a general sense, as the two […]