Blog  ⌇ What was I thinking…?

(Un)read in the ledger: Monday 20–Sunday 26 May 2024

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My weekly reading list

Apple and Google’s app stores are under fire from multiple sides, pay-what-you-can ticketing under the microscope and I learnt something new about cork.


⟨  Okay, this Reading list is a little late. Sorry! I was on a plane on Sunday coming back from Lisbon.⟩

Read

What I’ve been reading the week:

Cork is the new plastic. Logitech’s material of the future is actually very old

Why did Logitech experimenting with cork for new products catch my eye?

As companies seek to reduce the use of virgin plastic in their manufacturing we’ve seen a range of products come out using recycled plastic and other alternative materials. This is not particularly new or exciting, but this article about Logitech’s experimentation with cork did catch my eye. And the reason is very context specific. As readers may know, I was in Lisbon last week and something I learnt while I was there was that Portugal produces half of the world’s cork supply ⟨  Who knew?! I certainly didn’t!⟩ So this random fact was why I didn’t just scroll past this article. Having seen the slew of tourist products made from cork lining the shelves of every souvenir shop in Lisbon, I have a new-found appreciation for the versatility of cork so naturally I was fascinated to see it used for Logitech keyboards, mice and headsets!

Co.Design, Fast Company

Do ‘pay what you can’ schemes boost ticket sales?

Paywall content

Can pay-what-you-can ticketing work for the performing arts?

This article by Jo Pickup doesn’t really add much to the discourse around ticketing models in the performing arts, but it does reference some research in the United States which suggests that pay-what-you-can models can work for performing arts performances at a low price point. Whether that rings true in Australia is hard to say, but I do agree there is room for a lot more innovation in ticketing in the arts in Australia.

ArtsHub

‘No country in the world has solved this problem’: can Australia make age verification work for social media?

Advice to government questions the effectiveness of social media bans.

There’s a lot of discussion going on about banning social media and other online content for under-16s but it seems advice to the government has questioned the effectiveness of similar schemes internationally. The advice (which was obtained under an FOI request) states that “no countries have implemented an age verification mandate without issue.” The workability of age assurance technologies, privacy concerns if sensitive documents are used to verify age and the potential to exclude young people from the positive benefits of social media were raised, as is the potential for circumvention of age verification such as by using a VPN.

The Guardian

Judge orders Google to calculate the costs of Epic’s biggest Play Store demand

Google and Apple’s app stores are increasingly under fire for being monopolies

The dominance of the App Store and Play Store are under fire on multiple fronts. In the US the Epic v Google is coming towards a close while the UK has extended regulator powers to enforce rules against tech companies. After their win at trial Fortnite-maker Epic Games await Judge James Donato’s decision on what remedies should be awarded. Epic has asked for a bunch of things, including allowing third-party app stores on Play Store and giving access to Play Store’s catalogue of apps. While this is a big ask, it seems Donato is at least considering it; he’s ordered Google to calculate the costs of complying.

The Verge

UK law will let regulators fine Big Tech without court approval

Soon regulators in the UK may be able to go after Big Tech without going to court

‘Across the pond’ the UK has joined Europe in extending regulator’s powers to promote competition in digital markets without having to go to court. So called companies with strategic market status (SMS) – companies that have “substantial and entrenched market power” and “a position of strategic significance” – can be fine up to 10 percent of the total value of their global revenue for violating the new rules.

The Verge

More to read

Of course, there’s lots of other stuff I have been reading that doesn’t make it into the weekly round up. If the long list is too much, I also group links into collections:

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Disclosure

AI use

This blog post was drafted using Google Docs. No part of the text of this blog post was generated using AI. The original text was not modified or improved using AI. No text suggested by AI was incorporated. If spelling or grammar corrections were suggested by AI they were accepted or rejected based on my discretion (however, sometimes spelling, grammar and corrections of typos may have occurred automatically in Google Docs).

The banner image (i.e. the first image at the top of the blog post) was generated by AI using Text to Vector Graphic (Beta) in Adobe Illustrator.


Credits

Image: A pile of books with orange, yellow and purple covers. An adaptation of an image generated by Elliott Bledsoe using Text to Vector Graphic (Beta) in Adobe Illustrator. Prompt: ‘pile of books uneven hand-drawn’.


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Unless otherwise stated or indicated, you can reuse this blog post – (Un)read in the ledger: Monday 20–Sunday 26 May 2024 – under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC BY 4.0). Please attribute Elliott Bledsoe. View the full copyright licensing information for clarification.

Whether AI-generated outputs are protected by copyright remains contested. To the extend that copyright exists, if at all, in the banner image I generated using AI for this blog post (i.e. the first image at the top of the blog post), I also license it for reuse under the terms of the Creative Commons licence (CC BY 4.0).



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