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A yearly fee for use of news media content by tech companies from the  government of prime minister Albanese in Australia would generate 503 million British pounds for local news media companies. This includes media companies News Australia, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, the Guardian Australia, and the Sydney Morning Herald.

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Quentin Hardy of the NYT provides this exceptional account of life in the Mid-Market area of San Francisco, close to the Financial District and a few blocks from the offices of Twitter, and of Spotify, Zendesk and other startup companies. Moving just a few blocks from the tech startups offices can take you into a different world with dilapidated housing, drug dealers, and housing for homeless people. Expensive resaurants and markets rub shoulders with poorer shops.

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The choice of new Federal Trade commission chairperson shows that president Biden is making a complete break from the Obama era White House and the favor Tech in Silicon Valley had under Obama, says this report in the WSJ. Antitrust probes by Justice Department and FTC are expected to limit power of tech companies. Ms. Lina Khan is new head of the FTC. Biden says "its just wrong" that Amazon pays little in federal taxes. This report says Mr. Obama feted Silicon Valley at a White House festival called "South by South Lawn."  And that 80% of the 334 people registered to lobby for Apple, Amazon, Google last year previously worked on Capitol Hill or the White House. 

Mr. Biden's Families plan and Jill Biden's commitment to education are more in line with the heritage of FDR and Harry Truman, even Eisenhower, presidents who fought on behalf of the working men and women of America.

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Tech jobs are opening up for blue collar workers without a college degree as companies loosen requirements, in  the effort to find new workers.

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Softbank the epitome or synonym of waste on a huge scale of capital allocation for the last 2 decades in massively distorted capital markets when healthcare, childcare, manufacturing technologies and infrastructure is suffering from lack of funding, is hit with a loss of $23 billion for the second quarter which was one and half times the loss of the first quarter. As the WSJ reports Softbank and Masayoshi Sen was delirious in his own words during the tech booms of the last 20 years and its founder talked about bigger and bigger capital allocation even as productivity of capital declined rapidly. This happened astonishingly with little restraint in capital markets shown by participants even as healthcare in the ten years before the pandemic was not adequately funded, and education, infrastructure, manufacturing technologies were neglected which would have provided better returns on capital and served the interests of the American people and the world in a way that would have been said was well done had this been done. This went on astonishingly right into the pandemic period. Investments of about $50 billion were made in tech startup companies in 2021.  ...

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This expert who reviews the Internet for the NYT says that he is comfortable with many of the tools that existed back in 2009, Recent tech advances have costs in privacy, excessive advertising, lack of calm moments to reflect, constant buzz that disturbs more than it helps quiet thinking, and losses in productivity for small gains in bits and pieces here and there. Not much in the App world that he finds extraordinarily useful considering all the costs that are not tallied up because they affect our lives taking away a lot without one noticing.

It takes a lot of wisdom and individualism to take only what helps one and put away the rest of what is sent our way by so called Tech. Not foregetting that before the word Tech was coined the world had already invented the computer, jet planes, and the silicon chip, and put men on the moon. Hype. Surely.

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For decades without the leadership needed and the collaboration of the entire tech sector and health systems the goal of getting a patients record on the computer or on a phone app anywhere in the US across all health systems was out of America's grasp. This was happening even in countries such as Indonesia and India which were vastly improving health outcomes through their apps of patient health records available across the entire country. The US finally is making that effort which should help not only treat patients but give patients better control of their food, alternative ideas on what to eat and for exercise, other ways to improve their health. CMS Medical Records Interoperability Framework brings together 21 networks to align to it, 60 companies to work collaboratively, and 30 companies to try and improve patient health outcomes and their health in general. Australia, Indonesia and countries in Europe have done this, says Health Secretary Robert Kennedy. It is time the US did so also. ...

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The mysterious activities and losses of a South Korean/Japanese venture capital company Softbank which has been part of the massive misallocation of capital away from infrastructure and health care services during the decades before the pandemic. It has emerged recently as the mystery investor in options on tech shares that led to shares losses of 7 billion pounds for Softbank.

It lost half of its value in an earlier dotcom crash. A few investments in China during the early period of its development based on gut feel of the founder, including Alibaba an e-commerce company based on Amazon's success in the U.S. and other investments in China, is the basis of its business model. This model puts huge amounts of U.S. and foreign capital with estimated pool of capital at $100 billion into ventures that set the wrong priorities for investment- leading to misallocation of capital at this time of the pandemic. 

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Technology is reshaping the world of oil by 2018. The U.S. Permian Basin stretching from West Texas to New Mexico now produces more oil than the UAE and is likely to soon surpass Iran- production is at 3.1 million barrels a a day. There are as many rigs as in 2011 yet the production has tripled because of the use of high tech rigs that can move quickly to new locations over wide areas and with tech that can see hundreds of feet into the rock. By 2019 the U.S. will surpass Russia as the world's largest producer of oil. The drop in oil prices to about $40 a barrel in recent years is a result of Saudi efforts to block shale oil development by lowering prices. This has not worked. Initially some high cost producers exited the industry and the shale industry suffered. Over time the new technologies spurred by lower oil prices have led to the anticipated drop in cost. Shale oil can now be produced by core producers at $40 a barrel and still be profitable according to this WSJ report. All Middle Eastern countries cannot meet budget needs at $40 a barrel. In 2018 oil prices increased back up to $77 a barrel. In the next wave of declining prices the shale industry is better positioned than the OPEC countries.   ...

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Service oriented tech companies or even software companies selling it as a service with monthly checks from customers like Saleforce, are doing much better than vendors of tech equicpment, hardware or software. WIth credit so tight, and banks unwilling to lend making capital investments is so very difficult whereas sending out amonthly check for a service, which is an operating expense, is considered quite doable. One startup selling networking gear even got a request for no-interest financing from a potential customer, which it finds itself in no position to undertake.

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The EU plans to make 40% of its Green Tech within the EU by 2030. Strategic manufacturing plants will now take 9-12 months to get a permit instead of upto 7 years of waiting. This will speed up the manufacturing and also sourcing of materials for renewable energy within the EU. This means fewer imports from China.

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Binyamin Applebaum of NYT looks at the situation today when tech companies pretend or act like they can perform the role of government. The pandemic has shown the need for a strong government role on many issues facing America and the world such as healthcare and healthcare infrastructure. This has exposed the dangers of the government not being strong enough and having a clear idea and vision for the interests of the public in health, education and infrastructure. A culture change is underway after decades of misallocation of resources and neglect of the public interest, neglect of essential investment in workers, students, and families.

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The internet and tech startup scene in Japan as engineers from Toshiba, Panasonic, Sony and other companies start innovative tech companies.

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The new retail store experience at tech and electronics stores, including new stores of AT&T and Verizon Wireless.

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PM Modi says in Mann Ki Baat monthly radio program that Unified Payments Interface UPI has recorded 3.5 billion digital transactions in the month of August. Digital payments of 2 trillion rupees is happening using UPI on average. In this way it is transforming India. "Through this the economy of the country is acquiring cleanliness and transparency, and we all kn ow that the importance of fin-tech is increasing a lot," said Modi

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The story of a Russian startup company MeshNetics, that had a research project called Golden Box with a team of software programmers. It succumbed to the global financial crisis as it hit Russia and with it dreams of a new wireless technology that would help utilities keep track of energy conservation and other uses. No new investors could be found and the Russian investors cut the funding. Even western investors could not make the investments. Programmers like Bagrak, 27, from Berkeley, California, who worked at Google on an internship and came back to Russia to build its high tech sector. Luzhetsky, 26, from Obninsk, a city built by the Soviets for nuclear and military scientists, which fell into decay and poverty in the post soviet period, this was his first programming job after being educated in the Soviet Union. Mr Grinkug, 57, from a generation of the Soviet period that considered science a religion, he headed the 12 programmer team working on the Golden Box project. The project three ers in the making was expected to release in early 2010. Suvorov who headed MesNetics, who saw his work as part of the move by President Medvedev who came into power in the spring of 2008 to take Russia away from dependence on oil, with investment of $5 billion in a state corporation for nanotechnology. Anatoly Karachinsky, President of the Russian internet technology company IBS Group, who spun off MeshNetics using the brightest talent from his software development team and financed it with his venture fund Oradell Capital. First the optimism in the face of difficulty in the fall of 2008, as the global crisis began to hit Russia, then in October the message to Suvorov that he had to look for a new investor. Then the cuts, first 10% of jobs gone, nine days late a dozen more fired, then the shutdown phase. One person fired after coffee with Suvurov, as things moved quickly. Alexei Rybakov, director of the division that makes the ZigBit, calls 50 investors aday, makiung every kind of pitch, practical, global, patriotic. Grinkug packs up his things, 40 years of codes fit into a few CD's , a few programmers are retained if things change, but for Grinkug the Golden Project he says, will probably die in his head. Its mind boggling how mistakes and unethical behaviour in the banking systems in the west can wash ashore in emerging countries like Russia, and wash away what little stability to build anew life has been achieved in a few years after the 1998 collapse of the ruble and the Russian economy. Its also a contrast between the dreams, hopes and aspirations and the innocence of ordinary young Russian tech engineers and the swings of reality that surround them, of poverty and collapse in early post soviet Russia, then optimism , and now a new kind of reality trying to salvage what has been achieved, and the difficulties in forging a new future that goes beyond 120 million people collecting around a oil wellhead....

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Anti-trust challenges to the Apple-Google duopoly in the U.S. and Europe. For years the regulatory process did not work as intended to maintain competition and open markets. In 2020 after years of neglect of proper regulatory functioning, fines of up to 10% of revenues are put in legislation for online harm or anti-competitive behaviour. Regulators oce seen as captive to special interests, moved cautiously in the beginning, and are now following public opinion. The bill in Europe could take years before it is passed in the cumbersome lengthy legislative processes of the European Union. Legal processes could take years. During and after the pandemic a complete reassessment of priorities as a society both in the U.S., Europe and other nations needs to happen before capital investment can be directed into infrastructure, health and education, as tech has reached a point of diminishing returns. With a redirection of capital to vital needs of society and the national will to maintain open competitive markets that goes with a change in popular perceptions of what is good and important much progress can be made. ...

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This WSJ story looks at how the heist of crown jewels from the Louvre museum was carried out in October 2025, and how arrests were made very soon afterwards as the thieves left behind the truck with crane and other clues.