Chasing the Book Devourers

Amazon have been caught scanning and destroying a large shipment of rare books so they can train their AI models. 

In an investigation by 404 Media, a US bookseller suspected that an order they received for 1,000 books on Biblio, a marketplace where buyers can remain anonymous, was for an AI company. 

So to get to the bottom of the mystery, they agreed to place an Apple AirTag between the pages of one of the volumes. The tracking device traveled across multiple US states, eventually terminating at a high-security Amazon facility in Las Vegas, Nevada. 

Inside this warehouse, a specialized unit code-named VGT3 systematically processes incoming books by slicing off their bindings, scanning the pages for digital intake, and destroying the physical originals. 

This aggressive scanning pipeline highlights the extreme lengths to which tech companies will go to secure high-quality training datasets, particularly pre-2022 literature that is completely free of AI-generated content. 

While independent booksellers watch their inventories get shredded, legal and ethical questions are mounting over the practice of turning physical, copy-protected books into digital training data before disposing of the evidence. 

Amazon defended the operation in a brief statement, claiming they purchase books through commercial channels to improve their products and services, but the revelation has ignited intense debate over the systematic destruction of physical human knowledge to fuel artificial systems.

Despite Amazon clearly trying to keep this practice under wraps, the logo for the part of the warehouse the book scanners work in, called VGT3, is so on the nose that it borders on farce: a T-Rex holding a book in its hand that it’s about to eat – which, we have to say, kind of looks AI-generated. 

Futurism's Frank Landymore reported on August 17, 2026 that the public only became aware of this AI industry practice in a lawsuit against Anthropic, which revealed that the Claude chatbot maker was using industrial equipment to cut the pages out of millions of books and scan them, before they were disposed of. 

More alarming was the upshot of that lawsuit, Bartz vs. Anthropic when Judge William Alsup in the US District Court for the Northern District of California ruled on June 23, 2025 that this specific one-for-one digital conversion of legally purchased print books for internal AI training was "spectacularly transformative" and constituted fair use, as the digital copies were not shared or sold outside the company. 

Since then, book sellers have often suspected that their wares are being used, and then destroyed, to train AI models. In previous 404 reporting, one said that some of the giveaways were the size of the orders, the seemingly random selection of books, and that the books all had ISBNs. But they couldn’t prove this hunch because the orders are anonymous. 

As 404 notes, that the workers at the Amazon site are apparently scanning the ISBNs of all the books they process gives credence to a spooky theory by booksellers: that AI companies are trying to scan every printed book in the world by going through a list of all their serial numbers.

The bookseller 404 worked with sold books that are rare, meaning that there are few copies left in circulation. That can be for a myriad of reasons – they’re not necessarily first editions of old classics – but they’re still valuable. 

“There are different types of value”, the bookseller told 404. “There’s monetary value, obviously, but there are a lot of other types of value. There’s historical value, intellectual value, sentimental value. All sorts of things, and all of those the AI companies don’t care about. They just want the content as a bunch of words strung together”.

The Flagship America Can't Have

It’s been quite a while since Huawei were driven out of most global markets by losing out on Google’s services and apps, with market share plummeting in numerous regions as a result. 

However, as the company continue to innovate and dominate sales back home in China, it turns out that Americans wish they could still purchase and use Huawei phones as well. 

Despite a strict US government ban preventing their devices from being sold through official channels, Huawei recently emerged as the top choice for American tech enthusiasts. In a major industry poll conducted by the mobile technology publication ⁠PhoneArena, asking which Chinese smartphone brand consumers would most like to see properly enter the United States with full carrier support, Huawei led the vote with nearly 31 percent of the total selection. 

This strong showing highlights a deep, ongoing demand among premium Android users for the brand's hardware innovation, even as the broader landscape of international smartphone options shrinks. 

This suggests that Americans not only still miss the company but would be willing to give up Google’s services and accept Huawei’s HarmonyOS as well. Huawei have been pushing out some crazy powerful devices with very unique designs and gimmicks, and you want to get your hands on them. 

Getting a Chinese smartphone in the US is a gargantuan hassle, and no channels exist to purchase one like you would a Samsung, Google Pixel, or Apple phone. Most people who do use Chinese phones in the US get an unlocked model and have to use workarounds to have an almost normal experience. 

But from the said reader poll, we now know how much Americans want access to other Chinese brands after Huawei. In second place is Oppo, with a little over 23 percent of respondents wishing that it would be sold stateside. 

Xiaomi followed with 22 percent of the votes, as the company have been pumping out some excellent smartphones in the last few years with spectacular specs and great ideas like a second display on the rear. 

Meanwhile, a little under 12 percent want Vivo to take on Samsung, Google, and Apple in the US. iQOO got over seven percent of the votes and Realme came last with a little under five percent of you wanting it to operate normally in the States. 

Malaysian women's doubles pair Pearly Tan-Thinaah Muralitharan secured their first semi-final appearance since the All England in March with a hard-earned victory at the Taipei Open yesterday. 

The world No. 5 had to work hard for their 21-14, 21-17 win over Taiwan's world No. 39 Lin Chih Chun-Yang Chu Yun in the quarter-finals.

The important thing is they won! 💪💪💪

But young women's doubles pair Low Zi Yu-Noraqilah Maisarah Ramdan's brave run came to an end. The world No. 67 suffered a 21-11, 20-22, 22-24 heartbreak to Thailand's world No. 36 Hathaithip Mijad-Napapakorn Tungkasatan after a titanic battle. 😞😞😞

Big Tech's High-stakes AI Gamble

Skyrocketing AI infrastructure outlays have raised investor concerns over future returns and the potential for a bubble. 

Already, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Meta announced plans to spend a combined $660 billion on artificial intelligence in 2026. 

Certainly, the spending is humongous, even as tech companies are racing to get a lucrative piece of the proverbial pie. 

But there are concerns with overhyped valuations and uncertain profitability. A case in point is OpenAI having secured computing agreements with Nvidia, AMD, and Oracle worth over $1 trillion. And Nvidia alone completed more than 100 AI-related venture deals in 2024. 

Analysts warn that much of the investment flows within a small group of closely linked companies, are creating what they describe as circular financing that inflates market values beyond the industry’s actual profits. 

According to a recent PwC survey, most CEOs say their companies have not yet seen financial returns from AI, with only 12% reporting both higher revenue and lower costs. 

Still, this won't discourage Big Tech from spending big (except it is said, Apple, which so far, are keeping AI infrastructure spending low). 

At the same time, in the back of their minds, they are painfully aware that they'll get punished when investors begin worrying they might not see returns that justify hundreds of billions in spending. 

A Big Tech’s high-stakes gamble on a fickle future.

Manchester City scored twice at Anfield to earn a 2-1 Premier League victory over Liverpool on Sunday.

It was Dominik Szoboszlai who sent Reds into the lead in the 73rd minute with a glorious free-kick goal which clipped the woodwork before nestling in the back of the net. 

But Citizens levelled ten minutes afterward and then scored again from the spot (90+3) to wrap up the game. 

Thus, Man City keep their title race alive as they close the gap on leaders Arsenal to six points. And Liverpool remain sixth, five points off the top four.

Google’s Sergey Brin Admits He’s Hiring Workers Without Degrees

Whether it’s Nike’s Phil Knight, LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman, or Google’s Sergey Brin, many of the world’s most influential business founders can trace part of their success back to Stanford University. Nestled in the foothills of Silicon Valley, the school has long functioned as a launchpad for tech’s elite. 

But the rise of artificial intelligence is challenging long-held assumptions about the value of higher education. As tech reshapes entry-level work and companies rethink traditional hiring pipelines, the payoff of a four-year degree – especially from elite institutions – is increasingly up for debate. 

Still, Brin (right) doesn’t regret his own academic path. Speaking to Stanford engineering students last month, he said his decision to study computer science was not driven by a fixation on credentials. 

“I chose computer science because I had a passion for it”, he said. “It was kind of a no-brainer for me. I guess you could say I was also lucky because I was also in such a transformative field”. 

Even in an era when AI can write code, Brin cautioned students against chasing – or abandoning – fields of study based solely on automation fears. 

“I wouldn’t go off and switch to comparative literature because you think the AI is good at coding”, he said. “The AI is probably even better at comparative literature, just to be perfectly honest anyway”. 

Brin met Google cofounder Larry Page in 1994 during his second year of graduate studies at Stanford. Together they developed PageRank, an algorithm they later renamed Google and would become a company in 1998. 

Google’s hiring practices today reflect how dramatically the industry has shifted. The tech giant is now embracing workers without college degrees. 

“In as much as we’ve hired a lot of academic stars, we’ve hired tons of people who don’t have bachelor’s degrees”, Brin said. “They just figure things out on their own in some weird corner”. 

Between 2017 and 2022, the share of job postings at Google requiring a degree dropped from 93% to 77%, according to analysis from the Burning Glass Institute. And Google aren't alone: companies including Microsoft, Apple, and Cisco have reduced degree requirements in recent years, signaling a broader industry shift toward skills-based hiring. 

That’s forcing a broader reckoning over what a degree actually signals and whether it’s still a reliable proxy for talent.

“I don’t think necessarily because you go to an Ivy League school or have great grades it means you’re going to be a great worker or great person”, said JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon in 2024. For many roles, skills matter far more than credentials, he added: “If you look at skills of people, it is amazing how skilled people are in something, but it didn’t show up in their resume”.

Palantir CEO Alex Karp has made a similar case, despite holding three degrees (including a JD from Stanford). He’s been outspoken about the pressure young people face to pursue elite credentials – and dismissive of how much they matter once on the job. 

“If you did not go to school, or you went to a school that’s not that great, or you went to Harvard or Princeton or Yale, once you come to Palantir, you’re a Palantirian. No one cares about the other stuff”, Karp said during an earnings call last year. 

That mindset is spreading beyond Silicon Valley and Wall Street, according to Great Place to Work’s CEO Michael Bush. 

“Almost everyone is realizing that they’re missing out on great talent by having a degree requirement”, Bush told Fortune. “That snowball is just growing”. 

For Brin, the implications ultimately go beyond hiring. With credentials losing their gatekeeping power, he said universities themselves may need to evolve: “I just would rethink what it means to have a university”.

Apple Siri Deal Drives Google Past Historic Trillion-dollar Milestone

On Monday, Apple announced a huge new deal with Google – the AI version of Siri will be powered by Google Gemini. 

Not long after, Google achieved something very few other Big Tech companies have. Specifically, Google's parent company Alphabet became just the fourth company to hit a $4 trillion stock market valuation, following Nvidia, Apple, and Microsoft, per CNBC. 

The other three companies all reached that threshold less than a year ago, so this is a recent phenomenon in the stock market. 

It should be noted that Apple and Microsoft are both back below the $4 trillion line, so Google could easily lose this honor at any time, for any reason. 

And in case you're wondering just how much money is four trillion dollars, here's a fun fact. If you were to convert the $4 trillion into one dollar bills and stack them on a football field, the resulting pile would be about half a mile high, roughly equivalent to the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. Or if you were to simply stack one bill on top of the other, the resulting pile would reach far past the moon.

Russia Bans Roblox over LGBT Propaganda and Extremist Content

US gaming platform Roblox has officially been banned in Russia after the country’s media watchdog said they had identified “mass and repeated distribution” of illegal materials, including extremist content and LGBTQ propaganda. 

Roblox is an online gaming platform with more than 150 million daily active users, marketed largely toward children, where players create their own games, join worlds built by others, and interact across a shared virtual environment. 

On Wednesday, Russia’s Roskomnadzor announced that they would be blocking access to Roblox servers, stating that the platform’s content may harm the “spiritual and moral development of children”. 

The watchdog cited the presence of sexually explicit interactions, harassment, and attempts by adults to contact minors inside Roblox’s chat features. Additionally, the regulator said Roblox has hosted material “promoting and justifying extremist and terrorist activity, calls for violent crimes, and LGBT propaganda”. 

Russian legislators had previously warned that the platform is popular among predators who approach minors in-game before attempting to move conversations offline, pointing to multiple reports of sexual harassment and solicitation. 

Roskomnadzor noted that they have repeatedly notified Roblox since 2019 about prohibited material and concluded that its internal moderation systems have been unable to ensure full safety on the platform. 

The ban comes as Roblox has faced wider scrutiny internationally. Last month, in the US, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit accusing the company of “flagrantly ignoring” safety laws and “deceiving parents”, calling Roblox a “breeding ground for predators” and alleging it puts “pixel paedophiles and corporate profit” over child safety. Kentucky and Louisiana have launched similar suits. 

The platform has similarly been banned in Iraq and Türkiye over concerns about exploitation and inappropriate content. Roblox also came under scrutiny in Singapore in 2023 after regulators said a self-radicalised teenager had joined ISIS-themed servers on the platform. 

Roblox has said it is “disappointed” to be sued based on “misrepresentations and sensationalized claims”, insisting it has a “deep commitment to safety” and uses extensive monitoring systems, text filtering and age-verification measures. 

A day later, Russia blocked Apple's video-calling app FaceTime. The state communications watchdog had alleged it is being used for criminal activity. And Snapchat too. Roskomnadzor said they took action on October 10, even though they only reported the move on Thursday.

Tech CEOs Sing Donald Trump's Praises

The US president may not exactly be popular with many of his fellow citizens – well, maybe except for the MAGA crowd – because of his erratic policies and turnaround actions. But one category of Americans appears to adore him, believe it or not!

At a White House dinner on Thursday which Donald Trump hosted for an elite band of tech CEOs or as Trump dubbed them, the "high IQ group" – it is ostensibly about bolstering tech innovation within the United States – the assembled techie nobility took turns to openly sing his praises! 

Obviously, they must have thought the world of him and they don't seem to mind prostrating themselves at the feet of a bloated Orange Menace! 

Everybody who's who in Silicon Valley were there. Notable guests in attendance included Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Apple CEO Tim Cook, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Google founder Sergey Brin and Microsoft founder Bill Gates. (Obviously, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk was absent).

Amongst the choicest plaudits:

"You and your policies are really helping a lot", Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told Trump. 

AMD CEO Lisa Su praised "the amount of acceleration that we've seen just in the few short months that the administration has been in place". 

Oracle CEO Safra Catz struck a note of adoration at "the fact that you are our president" and that Trump quickly recognized the importance of AI. "You've unleashed American innovation and creativity – all the work you're doing in basically every cabinet post in addition to what's coming out of the White House is making it possible for America to win". 

"Thank you for being such a pro-business and pro-innovation president", OpenAI CEO Sam Altman lauded. "It's a very refreshing change. We're very excited to see what you're doing to make all of our companies and our entire country so successful". And he added for good measure that his company would "invest a ton in the United States". 

I couldn't help but flinch, cringe and squirm!

At the London Squash Classic 2025 yesterday, Malaysia's Sivasangari Subramaniam progresses to the women's semi-finals after she disposed world No. 18 Jasmine Hutton of England 11-9, 11-5 in just 20 minutes. 

The world No. 8 will take on second seed Amina Orfi of Egypt today.

Bomb the Shit Out of Moscow and Beijing

Donald Trump told a private gathering of donors at New York’s Pierre Hotel on May 14, 2024 that he once sought to deter Russian President Vladimir Putin from attacking Ukraine and to deter Chinese President Xi Jinping from attacking Taiwan by threatening to “bomb the shit” out of Moscow and Beijing in retaliation, according to a leaked audio obtained by CNN and detailed in a new book published on Tuesday. 

The said book, "2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America" chronicles how US President Trump secured his victory in the November 2024 election, and how former President Joe Biden's team dismissed concerns about his age in the US campaign cycle. 

It is authored by Josh Dawsey of the Wall Street Journal, Tyler Pager of the New York Times and Isaac Arnsdorf of the Washington Post. And it is based on over 300 interviews conducted over 18 months.

Nvidia beat Apple and Microsoft to the $4 trillion mark. 

Apple entered this year as the world’s most valuable company at just about $3.9 trillion before tumbling in recent months amid Trump’s tariff turmoil. 

Nvidia and Microsoft traded places as the world’s most valuable company in recent months, before the former surged ahead to reach the $4 trillion mark first. The US chipmaker have had a remarkable march to record highs and have soared around 21% this year, thanks to their leading role powering the artificial intelligence boom. Nvidia’s chips power the data centers that companies like Microsoft, Amazon and Google need to fuel their AI models and cloud services – and AI investments are only expected to grow. 

Global spending on AI infrastructure is expected to surpass $200 billion by 2028, according to market research firm The International Data Corporation.

Donald Trump to Walmart: Eat The Tariffs

US President Donald Trump on Saturday ripped into Walmart, saying on social media that the retail giant should eat the additional costs created by his tariffs. 

As Trump has jacked up import taxes, he has tried to assure a skeptical public that foreign producers would pay for those taxes and that retailers and automakers would absorb the additional expenses. Most economic analyses are deeply skeptical of those claims and have warned that the trade penalties would worsen inflation. 

Walmart already warned on Thursday that everything from bananas to children's car seats could increase in price. 

Trump, in his Truth Social post, lashed out at the retailer, which employ 1.6 million people in the United States. He said the company, based in Bentonville, Arkansas, should sacrifice their profits for the sake of his economic agenda that he says will eventually lead to more domestic jobs in manufacturing. 

“Walmart should STOP trying to blame Tariffs as the reason for raising prices throughout the chain”, Trump posted. “Walmart made BILLIONS OF DOLLARS last year, far more than expected. Between Walmart and China they should, as is said, “EAT THE TARIFFS”, and not charge valued customers ANYTHING. I’ll be watching, and so will your customers!!!” 

The posting by Trump reflected the increasingly awkward series of choices that many major American companies face as a result of his tariffs, from deteriorating sales to the possibility of incurring his wrath. He has similarly warned domestic automakers to not raise their prices, even though outside analyses say his tariffs would raise production costs. 

So far, those tariffs have darkened the mood of an otherwise resilient US economy. The preliminary reading of the University of Michigan survey of consumer sentiment on Friday slipped to its second lowest measure on record, with roughly 75% of respondents “spontaneously” mentioning tariffs as they largely expected inflation to accelerate. 

In April, Walmart CEO Doug McMillon (right) was among the retail executives who met with Trump at the White House to discuss tariffs. But the Trump administration went forward despite warnings and has attacked other companies such as Amazon and Apple that are struggling with the disruptions to their supply chains. 

Walmart chief financial officer John David Rainey said he thinks $350 car seats made in China will soon cost an additional $100, a 29% price increase. 

“We’re wired to keep prices low, but there’s a limit to what we can bear, or any retailer for that matter”, he told The Associated Press on Thursday after the company reported strong first-quarter sales. 

Apple's Plan to Move iPhone Assembly to India from China Unrealistic.

As Apple grapples with US President Donald Trump’s tariff war with China, they have laid out plans to move to Indian assembly of the majority of iPhones they sell in the US by the end of 2026, a move that would double their current output from the South Asian nation and away from China. 

Eighty percent of the 60 million iPhones sold in the US are produced in China and this proposed shift is a key step that would help them mitigate some of the costs they face amid rising tariffs on China. 

But leading analyst Craig Moffett suggests any plans to migrate US iPhone assembly to India is unrealistic. Moffett, ranked as a top analyst multiple times by Institutional Investor, sent a memo to clients on Friday after the Financial Times reported on Apple's said strategy. He’s questioning how a move could bring down costs tied to tariffs because the iPhone components would still be made in China.

“You have a tremendous menu of problems created by tariffs, and moving to India doesn’t solve all the problems. Now granted, it helps to some degree”, the MoffettNathanson partner and senior managing director told CNBC’s “Fast Money” on Friday. “I would question how that’s going to work”. 

For sure, the switch in production will cost Apple. According to a Reuters report citing an unnamed source, manufacturing iPhones in India is 5-8 percent more expensive than in China. 

“India will help, but it’s not moving the needle on China’s dependence for Apple. It will take years to make this move, as Apple is caught in the tariff storm”, Dan Ives, analyst at Wedbush Securities, pointed out.

And Moffett contends that it’s not so easy to diversify to India – telling clients Apple’s supply chain would still be anchored in China and would likely face resistance. 

“The bottom line is a global trade war is a two-front battle, impacting costs and sales. Moving assembly to India might (and we emphasize might) help with the former. The latter may ultimately be the bigger issue”, he wrote to clients. 

Moffett cut his Apple price target on Monday to $141 from $184 a share. It implies a 33% drop from Friday’s close. The price target is also the Street low, according to FactSet. 

“I don’t think of myself as the biggest Apple bear”, he said. “I think quite highly of Apple. My concern about Apple has been the valuation more than the company”. Moffett has had a “sell” rating on Apple since January 07. Since then, the company’s shares are down about 14%. “None of this is because Apple is a bad company. They still have a great balance sheet [and] a great consumer franchise”, he said. “It’s just the reality of there are no good answers when you are a product company, and your products are going to be significantly tariffed, and you’re heading into a market that is likely to have at least some deceleration in consumer demand because of the macro economy”. 

Moffett notes Apple also aren’t getting help from their carriers to cushion the blow of tariffs.

“You also have the demand destruction that’s created by potentially higher prices. Remember, you had AT&T, Verizon and T Mobile all this week come out and say we’re not going to underwrite the additional cost of tariff [on] handset”, he added. “The consumer is going to have to pay for that. So, you’re going to have some demand destruction that’s going to show up in even longer holding periods and slower upgrade rates – all of which probably trims estimates [in] next year’s consensus”.

According to Moffett, the backlash against Apple in China over US tariffs will also hurt iPhone sales. 

“It’s a very real problem”, Moffett said. “Volumes are really going to the Huaweis and the Vivos and the local competitors in China rather than to Apple”. 

Apple stock is coming off a winning week – up more than 6%. It comes ahead of the iPhone maker’s quarterly earnings report due Thursday after the market close.

MAGA's Make America Wealthy Again

Yesterday, Donald Trump announced plans for sweeping new import taxes on all goods entering the US, in a watershed moment for global trade. 

Declaring a national emergency, the US president said the US had for more than five decades been "looted, pillaged, raped and plundered by nations near and far, both friend and foe alike". 

The plan sets a baseline tariff on all imports of at least 10%, with Trump claiming that this will create a hard reset on the country’s industry, eventually leading to a stronger economy and lower prices for US consumers. Items from countries that the White House described as the "worst offenders", including the European Union and China would face higher rates for what Trump said was payback for unfair trade policies. 

Trump's move breaks with decades of American policy embracing free trade, and analysts said it was likely to lead to higher prices in the US and slower growth in the US and around the world. 

The 10% tariffs start on April 05, with the higher duties beginning April 09. 

The White House affirmed the latest changes would not change anything for Mexico and Canada, two of America's closest trading partners. Other allies will also face tariffs, including 10% for the UK and 20% for the European Union. And tariffs on goods from China will jump a further 34%, adding to an existing 20% levy, while it will be 24% for Japan, and 26% on India. [Note: Malaysia's tariff rate is 24%].

Some of the highest rates will be levied on smaller countries, with goods from the southern African nation of Lesotho facing 50%, while Vietnam and Cambodia will be hit with 46% and 49% respectively. The latter two have both seen a rush of investment in recent years, as firms shifted supply chains away from China following Trump's first term. 

The baseline tariffs will apply to more than 100 countries, according to a White House fact sheet, of which some 60 will face a higher "reciprocal" rate. 

Gustavo Flores-Macias, professor of government and public policy at Cornell University, called it a "dramatic transformation" of the international trade order, which the US had helped to create after World War Two. "We're seeing that system unravelling", he said. 

The stock market was closed for trading when Trump made his announcement. But in after-market trading shares in major American companies sank sharply. Apple, which rely heavily on China and on Taiwan, which is facing tariffs of 32%, sank more than 7%. Amazon was down more than 6%, while shares in Walmart dropped more than 4%.

P.S. It's worth pointing out that Trump's tariffs used a simplistic formula to calculate the rate for each of them. The formula’s central value is the trade deficit, the difference between imports and exports between each country and the United States, for the year 2024. Trump has said these tariffs will reduce trade imbalances and level the international playing field. But his one-size-fits-all formula is blunt: It applies the exact same (arbitrary) math to countries whether they have hefty trade barriers or wide-open markets. It considers only the size of a trade deficit, not why the deficit exists. Moreover, the Trump administration calculated the trade deficit using only goods − physical items that can be shipped − and not services, such as technology, media, banking and tourism. (E.g., A DVD counts; a Netflix subscription doesn’t).

US Companies Still Doing Business in Russia

In spite of multiple rounds of sanctions imposed on Moscow by Washington, Kirill Dmitriev, President Vladimir Putin’s special representative for investment and economic cooperation with foreign countries, disclosed that some 150 US companies continue to operate in Russia. 

Apple, Coca-Cola, Ford, Microsoft, IBM, McDonald’s, and many other American brands decided to withdraw from the country after the escalation of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine in February 2022 and the ramping up of sanctions against Moscow by the administration of then-US President Joe Biden. However, still many other enterprises opted to stay, with some doing so by re-branding their Russian enterprises. 

😂😂😂

Speaking on the sidelines of the meeting of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs in Moscow on Tuesday, Dmitriev insisted that these American firms “absolutely want to continue doing business in Russia”.

At the same meeting, Russian President Vladimir Putin had expressed bewilderment why the G7 are called the "big" seven, although they are hardly "visible on the map"! As reported by TASS on March 18. 

😕😕😕

The GDP growth in the G7 countries for 2024 was just 1.9%, while the BRICS countries saw a growth rate of 4.9%. In Russia, the growth was 4.1% for two consecutive years, as highlighted by Putin. 

[Note: Russia was a member of the G8 (which existed in the G7 format, comprising the UK, Germany, Italy, Canada, the US, France, and Japan since 1976) from 1997 until its suspension].

The US Economy Is Suddenly Looking A Bit Shaky

It didn't take long for doom and gloom to slowly but surely manifest itself under US President Donald Trump's presidency. And many people will be cheering.

I just saw a news report that the Nasdaq Composite plunged more than 10% from its record high set in late 2024. The S&P 500 is also down nearly 9% from its February peak. And Monday saw the tech-heavy Nasdaq-100 posted its worst day since September 2022, wiping out more than $1 trillion in value. Investors sold shares in the so-called “magnificent seven” – Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Meta, Nvidia and Tesla. Meanwhile, the Dow Jones lost almost 900 points, slipping below its 200-day moving average for the first time since November 01, 2023.

The market selloff comes as Trump’s back-and-forth tariff announcements have unnerved investors and stoked fears that the US economy could be headed for a major slowdown, or even a recession. 

The spreading fear is that Trump's tariffs – which are taxes on goods applied as they enter the country – will lead to higher prices and dent growth in the world's largest economy.

Even Trump in an interview with Fox News that aired on Sunday acknowledged that the economy was in a "period of transition", when asked about suggestions of a potential recession. 

Kevin Hassett, an economic adviser to Trump, pushed back against those projecting a bleak outlook for the country. In an interview with CNBC, Hassett said Americans can be optimistic about the US economy and that that tariffs imposed on Canada, Mexico and China were already bringing manufacturing and jobs to the United States. 

"There are a lot of reasons to be extremely bullish about the economy going forward", he pronounced. Still, he admitted there were some "blips in the data" for this quarter, which he pinned on the timing of Trump's tariffs and the "Biden inheritance".

The above aside, a Harris poll from February 13 to 15, among a nationally representative sample of 2,131 US adults found that 51% of Americans now believe that the US economy is worsening, while just 20% said it was improving and 29% said it was the same.

Huawei Unveil Mate 70 With Homegrown OS

Chinese tech giant Huawei on Tuesday unveiled their first smartphone equipped with a fully homegrown operating system, a key test in the firm’s fight to challenge the dominance of Western juggernauts. 

 

Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android are currently used in the vast majority of mobile phones – but Huawei are looking to change that with their newest Mate 70 devices, which run on the company’s own HarmonyOS Next. 

 

The launch caps a major turnaround in the fortunes of Huawei, which saw their wings badly clipped by gruelling US sanctions in recent years but have since bounced back with soaring sales. 

 

And unlike their triple-folding phone, the Mate XT, priced at an eye-watering $2,800, which made it three times the cost of the newest iPhone, the Mate 70 has a much lower starting price of 5,499 yuan ($757.60). Pre-orders began on November 18 and over 3.34 million reservations were placed as of 06:00 PM on Tuesday, the Xinhua News Agency reported.

 

In any case, the risks remain high – unlike a previous iteration, based on Android’s open-source code, HarmonyOS Next requires a complete rewiring of all apps on the smartphones it powers. 

 

“It is unclear whether developers overseas will be willing to spend the money needed to build a completely new version of their apps for the latest smartphones”, said Rich Bishop, co-founder and CEO of AppInChina, a publisher of international software in China. 

 

“One third-party agency in China quoted a price of two million yuan ($275,500) to custom-fit a foreign app for HarmonyOS Next”, he told AFP. 

 

To convince them, “Huawei need to continuously improve the software, provide better support for developers, and convince the developer community that (they are) committed to the long-term development of the Harmony ecosystem”, Paul Triolo, a partner at consulting firm Albright Stonebridge Group, told AFP.

Google an Illegal Monopoly over Internet Search, US Judge Rules

A US judge has ruled Google acted illegally to smash its competition and maintain a monopoly on online search and related advertising. 

 

The landmark decision on Monday is a major blow to Alphabet, Google's parent company, and could reshape how technology giants do business. Google was sued by the US Department of Justice in 2020 over its control of 90% of the online search market.

 

This case has at times been described as posing an existential threat to Google and its owner given its dominance of the search and online advertising business. It is unclear yet what penalties Google and Alphabet will face as a result of the decision. The fines or other remedies will be decided in a future hearing. 

 

The government have asked for "structural relief" – which could, in theory at least, mean the break-up of the company.

 

“Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly”, Judge Amil Mehta wrote in his 277-page opinion. 

 

Alphabet said they plan to appeal against the ruling. “This decision recognizes that Google offers the best search engine, but concludes that we shouldn’t be allowed to make it easily available", the statement from the company said. 

 

Federal antitrust regulators have filed other pending lawsuits against Big Tech companies – including Meta Platforms, which own Facebook, Amazon.com and Apple Inc – accusing them of operating unlawful monopolies. 

 

Monday's ruling comes after a 10-week trial in Washington DC, in which prosecutors accused Google of spending billions of dollars annually to Apple, Samsung, Mozilla and others to be pre-installed as the default search engine across platforms. The US said Google typically pays more than $10 billion a year for that privilege, securing its access to a steady stream of user data that helped maintain its hold on the market. Doing so, prosecutors said, meant other companies have not had the opportunity or resources to meaningfully compete.

 

In his ruling, Judge Mehta concluded that being the default search engine is "extremely valuable real estate" for Google. Very true!

Apple Replaced as the World’s Second-most Valuable Company

Nvidia have overtaken Apple to become the world’s second-most valuable company, with furious demand for the artificial intelligence chipmaker’s shares taking their valuation to over $3 trillion. 

 

Shares of Nvidia gained 5.2 percent on Wednesday to close at $1,224.40, lifting the company’s market capitalisation to $3.012 trillion.

 

Microsoft, the world’s most valuable company, rose 1.91 percent, while Apple gained 0.78 percent. 

 

Nvidia’s rally continues an extraordinary streak of gains for the California, US-based firm, whose graphics processing units have fueled a boom in artificial intelligence (AI). The company’s revenues have soared more than 260 percent over the past year as tech giants such as Microsoft, Meta, Google and Amazon race to roll out AI.

 

Americans love to believe they are righteous and morally upstanding, even if that is a big lie.

 

👇This is the original United States of America, where over 20 million Native Americans dispersed across over 1,000 distinct tribes, bands, and ethnic groups populated the territory:

 

But when the Europeans arrived on American shores, the lands, before long, bled uninterrupted as Native Americans were soon slaughtered.

 

In fact, it has been claimed that over 1,500 wars, attacks and raids had been waged on the "Indians", the most of any country in the world against its Indigenous people. 

 

By the close of the Indian Wars in the late 19th century, fewer than 238,000 Indigenous people remained, according to www.history.com. 

 

They have been almost wiped out! The description "slaughter" doesn't begin to detail the mass killings that visited the Indians; it was pure genocide! 

 

And according to www.history.com, the reasons for this racial genocide were multi-layered. Settlers, most of whom had been barred from inheriting property in Europe, arrived on American shores hungry for Indian land – and the abundant natural resources that came with it. Indians’ collusion with the British during the American Revolution and the War of 1812 exacerbated American hostility and suspicion toward them. 

 

Even more fundamentally, the Native Americans were just too different: Their skin was dark. Their languages were foreign. And their world views and spiritual beliefs were beyond most white men’s comprehension. And so, the Indians were painted as pagan savages who must be eliminated in the name of civilization and Christianity.

 

The Indians became a broken, vanishing race. Ironically, just over 100 years later, the resilient American Indian population survived into the 21st century and swelled to more than 5 million people.

 

Fast forward to today. According to the US Census Bureau (2022, October 11), people who are American Indian (or Alaska Native), often considered an “invisible minority”, make up just 2.9% (9.7 million, alone or in combination*) of the total US population of 329.5 million in 2021.

 

[*Race, like all other US Census data, is self-reported. Since 2000, the US Census allowed people to indicate more than one race. 

 

Those who marked “American Indian or Alaska Native” along with one or more additional races are classified as “American Indian or Alaska Native in combination”. Those who marked only “American Indian or Alaska Native” are categorized as “American Indian or Alaska Native alone”]. 

 

The white Americans have yet to properly face up to the genocide. And to think, these Americans remain stubbornly convinced that they are superior to everybody else. This explains why they are so determined to maintain US hegemony over the rest of the world.

 

As for the American Indians, sad to say, they are a defeated people and having to submit themselves to their colonisers.

 

Apple Ad Crushes Memories

When an ad goes viral, it’s usually for one of two reasons – it resonates so deeply with viewers that they can’t stop talking about it… or it makes people so upset they rush to social media to voice their outrage. 

 

An Apple ad for its new iPad Pro seems to fall into the latter category. Posted on social media Tuesday by Apple CEO Tim Cook, the ad starts off as a sort of time capsule for human creativity. 

 

There’s a metronome. A record player. Then the lights come on in a warehouse-like room, where you see those items and dozens of other creative tools sitting on a metal slab in the center of the shot. There’s also a CRT TV, cans of paint, a globe of the Earth, a piano, an ‘80s arcade video game, a sculptural bust of a human head and a trumpet. 

 

Another giant metal slab hangs ominously above it all. As we hear the opening words of “All I Ever Need Is You”, a 1972 single by Sonny & Cher, the metal slab starts descending. 

 

The items are in a giant hydraulic press, and within about 40 seconds everything will be gone – crushed under tons of force in an often dramatic fashion.

 

After the destruction, the hydraulic press starts rising again. The debris is now gone. In its place is a shiny, new iPad Pro. A voiceover says, “The most powerful iPad ever is also the thinnest”. 

 

Cher closes out the minute-long spot, crooning “All I ever need is you”. 

 

Videos of hydraulic presses demolishing everything from electronics to candy have become very popular in the past few years, in part due to the often mesmerizing nature of the way things collapse under pressure. Apple are seemingly trying to capitalize on this trend while making a point about how their new iPad Pro is so powerful it can replace other means of creative expression. 

 

But for many viewers, the ad doesn’t land the right note. “I’m not sure ‘wanton destruction of all the good and beautiful things is (sic) this world’ was really the vibe you were trying for”, says one commenter on X. 

 

“I can’t relate to this video at all. It lacks any respect for creative equipment and mocks the creators”, says another. 

 

Others say that even though they understand what the ad is trying to say, it doesn’t resonate with them. 

 

“It’s a creative concept & good execution, but wow the ad made me surprising (sic) sad!” says one X user. “The song choice also seems to especially idolize tech over real life. Now I just want to avoid screens & spend more time enjoying the world offline”. 

 

“It should have been about capturing and honoring the essence of what’s so special about all of those things and experiences to bring them together in a device, not crushing the soul out of them”, says another person on X. 

 

The plug is telling me that technology is hell-bent on destroying our collective memories. And then, to declare that is a good thing before showing off the Apple tablet is obnoxious, objectionable and even offensive!

Apple's iPhones Reward Some Sleepers with Unexpected Lie-ins

It has been reported that some of Apple's iPhone alarms aren't being activated and they are rewarding their slumbering users an unexpected lie-in.

 

For many people, their phone is an indispensable alarm clock and some over-sleepers turned to social media to vent. One TikTokker even complained that she had set "like five alarms" and they didn't go off. 

 

Apple have confirmed they are aware of the issue and are already working quickly to fix it. They have yet to spell out what they believe is causing it, or what users can do to avoid a late start. It is also unclear how many people are affected or whether the problem is restricted to particular models of iPhone.

 

But, until then, these affected late risers may need to dust off a bit of retro tech, and swap their "smart" alarms for the more old-fashioned – but dependable – tick-tock of an alarm clock! 😁😁

 

In the US, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office have, on Wednesday, disclosed plans to retry film producer Harvey Weinstein on charges related to sexual assault, less than a week after a New York court overturned his conviction for rape. [Refer my post titled "Cicadas Emerge From Underground" published April 26]. 

 

FYI, seventy-two-year-old Weinstein is maintaining his innocence, alleging the sexual encounters were consensual.