Many of us have not read about China’s near-nationalization of payment and chat apps to fight the spread of COVID-19. Widely-reported but little noticed, China has required citizens to use software on the chat and payment apps WeChat and Alipay that dictates whether they should be quarantined or […]
There’s an old Yiddish saying, passed down to me from my grandparents, that is worth recalling in these uncertain and potentially infectious times: “When three people say you’re drunk, go lie down in the gutter.” So, when my brother the doctor (he’s the smart one) texted the family […]
I woke up this morning to a text from a close friend wondering how long it would take me to write about the fact that as of this writing, we still do not have results from the Iowa caucuses last night due to problems with its untried voting […]
Two weeks ago, VISA announced that signed an agreement to acquire Plaid, a fintech that allows consumers to connect their bank accounts to apps like Venmo to enable mobile payments, among other things. By all accounts, VISA paid a significant premium to buy Plaid, shelling out $5.3 billion, […]
When I see stories about continuing data spats between banks, fintechs and other players in the payments ecosystem, I tend to muse about how the more things change the more they stay the same. And so it is with this story about a bank, PNC, shutting off the […]
Pick your aphorism. Nature abhors a vacuum. Markets hate uncertainty. Fools rush in where angels fear to tread. Small is beautiful. Whichever one you choose, my prediction for 2020 is the same: we will see state legislatures acting to protect their citizens (and lure corporate taxpayers) by passing […]
There are so many intertwining threads in this story about this “re-educational” Chinese app, we could make some very high-quality bedsheets. The ineffectiveness of “consent”. Tech as a force-multiplier for the state. The opacity of the black boxes we increasingly rely on to run our lives. Big Brother, […]
Back in August, I wondered in this space whether the growing power of the surveillance state would return shame to our society and bring about “The New Puritanism.” China is betting heavily that it will. Some of you may have caught the recent “60 Minutes” segment with its […]
The sex police are out there on the streets Make sure the pass laws are not broken Undercover (of the Night), The Rolling Stones So, now we know that browsing porn in “incognito” mode doesn’t prevent those sites from leaking your dirty data courtesy of the friendly folks […]
How many times a month do you read about one more hack, or receive a letter from a company that has exposed your information to a threatening force? We understand that our offices, banks, stores and other data holders are constantly under attack from forces across the globe. […]
