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The tech scene for Berlin internet startups and the focus on execution.

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HP splits in two in October 2014 separating the PC and printer business from its tech services and corporate hardware operations. The will create two companies with the idea that the 2 businesses are better managed separately.

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The use of apps and tech based solutions have been largely ineffective in doing effective contact tracing and testing to isolate people with coronavirus. Epidemiologists question its effectiveness when it does not lead to people isolating themselves to prevent spread.  A major problem is lack of confidence in the tech based solutions. 27 states in the U.S. have no apps or are not developing one.  Apps do not use the entire set of tech resources available because of dilution from concerns about privacy. Another major problem is that there is no national approach. California, Washington and Oregon have a pilot program on the Google-Apple system, Delaware and Pennsylvania launched an app in September from Irish developer NearForm. New York and New Jersey started with a NearForm app in October. States using apps are doing this without much conviction that this is a tool that will work to do effective contact tracing and testing to isolate infected persons. For this reason one sees pilots and launches this late in the coronavirus pandemic. Early efforts stumbled.  The UK and French apps also proved ineffective. Germany opted for low tech solution that proved surprisingly effective in the first wave of the coronavirus. Germany relied on teams from state employees which used a national database, personal computers and phones to call individuals who needed to be isolated and tracked. Asian countries have less concern for privacy leading to apps being more effective. Even here low tech solutions with national database and teams of people with personal computers and phones calling and making personal contact including visiting homes has worked better than apps. Human relations skills to reassure people affected by coronavirus, legwork to contact personally at homes and check up, and persuasion to have people isolate have been more effective than app based impersonal tech solutions. ...

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Contact tracing apps in the U.S. Britain and France have failed. Contact tracing app in Germany was downloaded 12 million times in the first week. Yet much of the contact tracing in Germany and cluster isolation has been achieved using low tech methods- using a computer with database, and teams of people in district offices all over Germany calling people.

The NHS App in Britain failed to get the cooperation of Apple. In the U.S. Google and Apple planned to have a contact tracing app ready but failed to come up with one. Tech has failed to come up with solutions during coronavirus and low tech solutions have worked well as in Germany and in places such as Kerala, India, when implemented quickly with very little delay.

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There is more ot it than just the monopolies crushing new competition and small firms in their space. The gatekeeper role for information that Google and other tech monopolies have is a danger for democracy in a way that the Rockefeller's monopoly of the oil business by Standard Oil never was at the turn of the previous century. TR took up the role of government ensuring that fair competition exists by breaking up the monopolies in the oil business at that time. Today this is left to the courts and they take far too long and come up with decisions that do not address the main probem points brought up by the US Justice Department. Judge Mehta after 5 years did little to address the problems of tech monopolies and it is now left to other remedies and other leadership to come up with ways to break up these monopolies.

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HTC, a Taiwanese company makes a version of the I-phone called the Touch that sold 3 million units in 11 months. It new version coming out later this year should also be a big seller as its lighter sleeker and more powerful. It runs on Microsoft software. HTC is also participating in Google's intiative to produce a new cellphone this year using Google software is expected in the second half of this year. Both phones will make it easy to surf the internet and check email.

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Internet company valuations and IPO's in mid- 2012 reach the frenzied levels before the the tech bubble burst in 2000-2001.

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Jobs in the fracking industry replaced the old steel industry that went into decline in Pennsylvania. The county in the area around Pittsburgh depends on jobs in fracking in the oil and gas industry, and in Pittsburgh itself by contrast jobs have shifted to high tech. The fracking industry has emerged as an alternative for jobs after its rapid growth and the U.S. emergence as an exporter of oil and gas for many who do not have the backgrounds suited for high tech jobs.

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There is strong support in the US congress for overhaul of Section 230 that gives legal immunity to "tech" companies for third party content hosted on their sites. The case now goes to the US Supreme Court.

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The beginning of returning privacy and freedom from being tracked and information stored by Tech companies in the US and other countries. The first such settlement to destroy such data, is the first step to correct what went wrong.

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Issues relaed to tech startups driving up rents in residential neighborhoods of San Francisco, London, Berlin, Stockholm, and other cities.

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This podcast in the WSJ takes up a Chinese startup Luckin Coffee that had major investors in the U.S. and China, including big banks in the U.S. and Europe.  The idea is simple- sell coffee in China to aspirational coffee drinkers following western lifestyles using mobile app. It is the story of huge investments and losses, and collapse of a NASDAQ listed company with what the WSJ investigation calls fabricated sales. Why are infrastructure and health, education products starved of capital left high and dry, while billions are poured into such investments with huge losses. All you need is this article in the WSJ of Sept 16, 2015, shown in today's articles. Showing forecasts of rapid growth of coffee consumption for an aspirational western lifestyle consumer in China, and a small mobile app investment to attract investors in a startup -if you refashion the coffee retail outlets as a tech company by selling coffee for delivery/takeout by mobile app. Luckin Coffee in China shown in the podcast in today's articles did this and attracted billions of dollars in investment from investors, including large banks and financial companies in Europe, U.S. and China, only to collapse in 2 years with losses and investigations in China and the U.S. Luckin Coffee soared after its NASDAQ stock exchange listing in 2018 only 1 year after its founding. WSJ calls it "brazen" the effort to add tech hype to a coffee company and have it listed on NASDAQ in just over a year, only to see its sales and value collapse just as quickly. $400 million in convertible bonds losing 90% of their value, the stock losing most of its value and NASDAQ delisting the stock after $311 million in fabricated sales were found as reported in the South China Morning Post. For U.S. investors the problem is that Chinese companies can list on the NASDAQ or other stock exchanges in the U.S., but U.S. investors cannot look at financial records of companies in China. Yet there are basic questions- why is it a tech company? Why are investors like big banks and other large financial investors pushing so much money into such places when there is so much that needs to be done in health and infrastructure investment, and real tech investment? 5G or 6G? Health systems? Ocean Grounds has a coffee store in Shanghai, Pacific Store has coffee retail outlets in China, and Starbucks is still in the business with retail outlets - remember none of these companies are tech companies. In 2017 Luckin Coffee started by making it look techy with a mobile app and refashioned itself as a tech company.  What is so big about a mobile app as there are hundreds of millions of apps. The rest came from making it look like Starbucks, right down to baristas, fancy coffee machines, and opening stores near Starbucks, according to the Podcast in the WSJ.The difference between Starbucks and Luckin Coffee - the price Luckin Coffee would sell for about $2 compared to about $4 for a Starbucks latte. Yet do this by pricing at closer to Starbucks and issuing promotions discounts constantly on the mobile app, that would bring the price to about $2. That is all it takes to make a tech company nowadays. No scientific research, no science and technology, no technical experience, nothing of the kind that led to the invention of the computer chip or the vaccines that are now being developed, or research activity of any sort. Banks, financial companies are willing to channel huge amounts of money into these places and lose it, as they did in We Work, and are doing at companies such as ride sharing app companies, as well as other app companies without any core technological component or value added such as infrastructure or health products. Only it is not the bank's money but the people's money and savings that are deposited at banks and channeled into investments. At the same time as investments in much needed infrastructure and health, education, services that really matter to us as a society, are neglected and starved of capital.     ...

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This report about 996, referring to nine am to nine pm 6 workdays a week, shows it is becoming highly unpopular among tech workers in China, as tech companies slash jobs and workers work longer hours. A campaign on GitHub a code sharing platform is called 996/ICU speaks of such gruelling hours as the way to end up in the ICU. It got 250,000 positive user comments.

This type of work at tech companies is leading to fatigue, chronic illness, stress and lack of any free time to think or even exercize, leading to health problems. Yet some company CEO's push 996 against the mounting evidence that this is not the best for employees and can lead to por producivity. Recent studies about the cities such as Mumbai, India, or Tokyo, Japan, show productivity is a fraction of the productivity in many European countries working normal hours. Mumbai vs. Dublin for example. Dublin has a lot higher productivity.

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Average US bills for electricity have gone up by over 10% in about 15 states with some rate hikes over 20%, reports the Washington Post. In New Jersey 21%, Virginai 15%. Higher prices in Utah where renewable energy projects cancellation have drawn criticism from Republican governor Spencer Cox. Higher rates also in Indiana, Ohio and Louisiana. Data centers put up by tech companies are taking up huge amounts of energy pushing up rates. Voters believe these tech companies are not paying their "fair share." There is also no clear idea on whether clean energy is pushing up prices of electricity or whether the cancellation of clean energy projects including the ones that make sense  are pushing up electricity prices, with voters going both ways in their perceptions. With a rapidly shrinking gap between India+ Japan and China, the US can finally put to rest the burdens of conflict such as the 1930's Japanese invasion of China, the war after pearl Harbor in the Pacific, the Korean conflict, and the Vietnam conflict in which America and its people shouldered huge burdens. ...

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China's Delete America campaign as China seeks to direct business to its Chinese tech companies in an effort for self-reliance, is leading to decline in revenues for American companies. IBM revenues are down 20% this year. IBM will close its China R&D operations and some of the 1000 of these employees may be hired by Chinese tech companies. IBM will increase R&D operations in India. A gradual shift is taking place towards India, the only advanced large industrial base country in Asia with potential for growth.

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Ford Motor hopes to create a new image for the company with its new high tech, energy friendly headquarters building and interconnected buildings in Dearborn, Michigan.

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Children in the US should not be directed to educational content developed by tech companies using writers in Kenya and Philippines who lack the education to do this. A data labeler that hires people in Philippines and Kenya at $8 an hour, hundreds of thousands of low cost contractors, to create content. Some of the content is of such low quality that it had to be redone by Scale employees, says this story in WSJ. It started out providing this to self driving technologies companies needing data labeling, and now does this for AI.  Samples of questions for content are - explain a moon landing to a 6 year old, says the WSJ. Serious questions about quality of content going to AI and the willingness of Tech companies including Google and Apple to not make this a priority.  Education requires a different approach for quality of content and the tech monopolies are not the ones who should be in this role to build the educational content that a team of scientists and faculty envisioned in cultural literacy for the US under ED Hirsch since the 1970's. More than at other times in US history this is important to preserve the Nation the founders envisoned. ...