Business

Inside the Shadowy, Lucrative Business of ‘Superfake’ Luxury Handbags. Luxury brands may be in for a rough time. Not only do younger consumers show willingness to pay for cheaper superfakes, but the risk of a recession is more likely.

Reflections on OpenAI. An interesting reflection on first-hand experience working at OpenAI. As someone who only works in the corporate world, it sounds very exciting to work at a place where best ideas and best codes win and at a place that grows as exponentially as OpenAI. The excessive use of Slack; though, sounds awful.

Fintechs blast JPMorgan over data fees. Banks have been great beneficiaries of the Trump administration. JPMorgan is rolling out this change under the assumption/belief that the Open Banking rule will be thrown out and deemed unlawful. Then, it can have at least 4 years to generate this additional stream of revenue, before a new administration arrives. As the biggest bank in the country, JPMorgan is in a prime position to dictate the cost for access to its customers’ data.

‘Lost their identity’: Why Target is struggling to win over shoppers and investors. In a world as hyper competitive as the retail one, a company must stand out and offer unique values. Target used to have its own cult, but recently lost it. And it’s a vicious cycle. Others have become more Target faster than Target has adapted. Can its problem be fixed? I think so, but chasing short-term profits to please Wall Street is not the answer. In fact, it will exarcerbate the issue.

America’s Protein Obsession Is Transforming the Dairy Industry. “Milk is not priced like other commodities. Most milk in the United States is sold to dairy co-ops. The minimum price that farmers receive is set by the federal government — a system set up in the 1930s to bolster milk producers — and changes monthly depending on the various market forces hitting all milk products (cheeses, butter, yogurt, whey, etc.). Even farmers, like the Meissners, who sell their milk directly to cheese producers get essentially the co-op price for their milk. Dairying is not much of a growth industry. While there have been some gains in production, when accounting for inflation, the price farmers receive for milk today is about the same as it was 25 years ago. One of the main reasons it has not actually dropped is whey.”

Other Stuff I Find Interesting

How the Deep Sea Cables That Power the World Are Made. What we humans are able to do is mind-blowing. I can’t imagine the difficulty of creating cables that can withstand enormous pressure deep under the ocean and actually putting those cables there.

China Is Putting Data Centers in the Ocean to Keep Them Cool. Some communities around the US already complained about data centers affecting the local water supply. It’s inevitable. These server racks need cooling. So it makes perfect sense to put them deep into the ocean. However, if we do that for many servers, soon the unintended consequences of warmer water will catch up to us. We have seen first-hand more and more disasters linked to global warming. Will any gains from AI be enough to justify the damages inflicted on our precious Earth and future generations?

The U.K. Closed a Tax Loophole for the Global Rich. Now They’re Fleeing. Governments have a tricky task of showing taxpayers that they don’t give special treatments to the rich and that everyone pays a fair share. The problem that the UK government encounters is that there is plenty of competition for wealthy people who can afford to relocate and still maintain business affairs in the UK. So either the country must have an irresistible pull that makes it worthwhile for rich people to stay or it has to get other tax havens to join the effort. I don’t see the latter happening.

Student loan bills could double for some borrowers as Biden-era relief expires. About 8 million borrowers will soon see a higher bill and many will sink into debt, leading to downstream consequences on the economy. On one hand, I feel bad that higher education is so expensive in this country. It’s possible to show skills and qualifications WITHOUT a degree, but it’s always harder. Plus, an educational setting is where you make future connections and learn to collaborate. On the other hand, we don’t seem to teach people enough about personal finance. Regardless of how much you want a degree, just like a house, ask yourself whether you can afford it.

Travelers to the U.S. must pay a new $250 ‘visa integrity fee’ — what to know. This new fee will deter potential immigrant students from studying in the US and contributing the economy. It will also deter visitors from spending money on travel in the US. For good measure, there are no details on the process which cause nothing, but uncertainty. And we all love uncertainty, don’t we? Whatever revenue we expect from this scheme, it’s likely going to be a drop in the bucket, compared to the deficit and the federal budget.

Axon’s Draft One is Designed to Defy Transparency. “Any new, untested, and problematic technology needs a robust process to evaluate its use by officers. In this case, one would expect police agencies to retain data that ensures officers are actually editing the AI-generated reports as required, or that officers can accurately answer if a judge demands to know whether, or which part of, reports used by the prosecution were written by AI. Draft One defies all these expectations, offering meager oversight features that deliberately conceal how it is used. So when a police report includes biased language, inaccuracies, misinterpretations, or even outright lies, the record won’t indicate whether the officer or the AI is to blame. That makes it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to assess how the system affects justice outcomes, because there is little non-anecdotal data from which to determine whether the technology is junk.“

Stats

“Nearly 27% of all homes sold in the first three months of the year were bought by investors”