Strategic changes are hard

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I’ve been pondering the problem of how to make a reasonably-successful organisation that’s been going for half a century realise that it may need to make some major shifts to address the challenges it will face in the next half-century. Headline: it ain’t easy. So then I started thinking about organisations that have managed the switch. Apple and the iPhone is one, I guess. But then I remembered that I’d once done an interview with Gordon Moore, the co-founder of Intel — a company which made that kind of radical switch when moving from making semiconductor memory to making processor chips. And that wasn’t easy either.

I then happened upon on a famous essay – “Seven Chapters of Strategic Wisdom” by Walter Kiechel III — which discusses the Intel experience. Here’s the relevant bit:

Just how difficult it is to pull this off, or to make any major change in strategic direction, is wonderfully captured in “Why Not Do It Ourselves?” the fifth chapter in Andrew S. Grove’s Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points That Challenge Every Company, published in 1996. Grove tells how in 1985 he and Gordon Moore realized that Intel, the company they led, needed to get out of the business on which it was founded, making semiconductor memory chips, to concentrate instead on microprocessors. The reaction they encountered as they navigated their company through this “strategic inflection point” won’t surprise anyone who has tried to effect change in an organization. “How can you even think of doing this?” came the chorus from the heads of the company’s memory-chip operations. “Look at all the nifty stuff we’ve got in the pipeline” (even if we are losing our collective shirt to low-cost Japanese competitors).

Grove and Moore persisted, even though the effort entailed shutting down plants, laying off thousands of employees, and giving up what many thought of as the company’s birthright. Intel’s subsequent success in microprocessors, beginning with its celebrated “386” model, would soon make it the world’s largest semiconductor company. Read over the tale of what it took to get there if, in a delusional moment, you’re ever tempted to think that putting strategy into practice is easy, even a seemingly emergent strategy.

Quote of the Day

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”The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the “rat race” – the constant gnawing sense of having had and lost some infinite thing.”

David Foster Wallace

So WhatsApp isn’t as secure as we supposed?

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From The Inquirer:

The end result was the researchers had effectively found ways to hack and exploit WhatsApp.

“By decrypting the WhatsApp communication, we were able to see all the parameters that are actually sent between the mobile version of WhatsApp and the Web version. This allowed us to then be able to manipulate them and start looking for security issues,” the researchers explained.

As such, Check Point was able to then carry out three attacks against WhatsApp users, including changing the identity of a sender in a group chat even if they aren’t a member of said chat, changing a correspondent’s reply to effectively fake their response, and sending private messages to a person in a chat group but ensuring that when they respond the whole group sees the reply.

Basically, the attacks could enable malicious actors to sneak into group chats and manipulate conversations and cause communications havoc, and spread misinformation.

Hmmm… They had to do any awful lot of tedious stuff before they were able to pull off those tricks. On the other hand, this is what GCHQ and NSA do all the time, I guess.

How the American dream ended

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Bleak essay by Frank Rich on the national mood. Sample:

In the Digital Century, unlike the preceding American Century, the largest corporations are not admired as sources of jobs, can-do-ism, and tangible goods that might enrich and empower all. They’re seen instead as impenetrable black boxes where our most intimate personal secrets are bought and sold to further fatten a shadowy Über-class of obscene wealth and privilege trading behind velvet ropes in elite cryptocurrencies. Though only a tiny percentage of Americans are coal miners, many more Americans feel like coal miners in terms of their beleaguered financial status and future prospects. It’s a small imaginative leap to think of yourself as a serf in a society where Facebook owns and markets your face and Alphabet does the same with your language (the alphabet, literally) while paying bogus respects to the dying right to privacy.

It would be easy to blame the national mood all on Donald J. Trump, but that would be underrating its severity and overrating Trump’s role in creating it (as opposed to exacerbating it). Trump’s genius has been to exploit and weaponize the discontent that has been brewing over decades of globalization and technological upheaval. He did so in part by discarding the bedrock axiom of post–World War II American politics that anyone running for president must sparkle with the FDR-patented, chin-jutting optimism that helped propel John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan to the White House. Trump ran instead on the idea that America was, as his lingo would have it, a shithole country in desperate need of being made great again. “Sadly, the American Dream is dead,” he declared, glowering, on that fateful day in 2015 when he came down the Trump Tower escalator to announce his candidacy. He saw a market in merchandising pessimism as patriotism and cornered it. His diagnosis that the system was “rigged” was not wrong, but his ruse of “fixing” it has been to enrich himself, his family, and his coterie of grifters with the full collaboration of his party’s cynical and avaricious Establishment.

Great essay. Worth reading in full.

Does TV damage your sex life?

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When I was a kid people used to say that television had ruined the art of conversation. Strangely, this assertion was often made by pompous people who were not exactly noted conversationalists. And I had a friend who used to say that the best conversations in his house were between him and the TV. But now some economists have tackled the much more important question of whether TV affects viewers’ sex lives. This NBER paper — “Does Television Kill Your Sex Life? Microeconometric Evidence from 80 Countries”, by Adrienne Lucas and Nicholas Wilson, argues that it does.

The Abstract reads, in part:

This paper examines the association between television ownership and coital frequency using data from nearly 4 million individuals in national household surveys in 80 countries from 5 continents. The results suggest that while television may not kill your sex life, it is associated with some sex life morbidity. Under our most conservative estimate, we find that television ownership is associated with approximately a 6% reduction in the likelihood of having had sex in the past week, consistent with a small degree of substitutability between television viewing and sexual activity. Household wealth and reproductive health knowledge do not appear to be driving this association.

So now we know!

Will Tesla just be the Apple of the electric-car market?

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Ben Evans is one of the most perceptive observers of the tech industry.

When I bought my first Toyota Prius hybrid many years ago I marvelled at the engineering ingenuity that went into making hybrid tech so seamless. And then realised that (a) Toyota would license the drivetrain to other manufacturers and (b) the technology would eventually be commoditised. So now almost every car manufacturer offers hybrid models even though few of them actually developed the drivetrain themselves. It’s Brian Arthur’s model of technological innovation at work.

What was once cutting-edge has now become mainstream, with hybrids and EVs transforming from niche products to essential offerings in every major automaker’s lineup. This evolution underscores how quickly the automotive landscape can change, with advancements in battery technology, charging infrastructure, and energy efficiency driving rapid improvements in performance and affordability.

For drivers looking to embrace this new era of automotive innovation, Billingsley Ford of Duncan offers a range of hybrid and electric vehicles that blend cutting-edge technology with the reliability and performance Ford is known for. From the versatile Ford Escape Hybrid to the all-electric Mustang Mach-E, Billingsley Ford provides options that cater to a variety of driving needs and lifestyles. Their knowledgeable team helps customers navigate the transition to hybrid and electric models, offering guidance on everything from charging solutions to maximizing fuel efficiency. As hybrid and EV technology continues to advance, having a trusted dealership ensures that you’re not only keeping pace with innovation but also driving with confidence and peace of mind.

In the rapidly evolving electric car market, Tesla has emerged as a frontrunner with its innovative designs and cutting-edge technology. As the demand for electric vehicles continues to grow, Tesla’s ability to maintain its competitive edge and capture significant market share will depend not only on the performance and efficiency of its vehicles but also on its ability to offer unique and desirable accessories. One aspect that sets Tesla apart is its attention to detail in interior design, as exemplified by the tesla model y interior. By creating a stylish and futuristic cabin space that seamlessly integrates advanced features and user-friendly interfaces, Tesla has managed to differentiate itself from other electric car manufacturers. This focus on enhancing the overall driving experience through well-crafted accessories may give Tesla an advantage in sustaining higher margins and maintaining its position as a leader in the electric car industry.

The iPhone — multitouch — analogy is useful. Most smartphones are not iPhones, but most of the profits from smartphones are currently captured by Apple. The big question for Tesla is whether — when electric cars become mundane — it can hold onto Apple-scale margins. In that context, you could say that Nissan — with its Leaf — might be the Samsung of the electric car business.

As Tesla continues to set the standard for electric vehicle innovation, maintaining peak performance is just as important as sleek design and cutting-edge technology. Like any vehicle, even the most advanced EVs require regular maintenance and occasional repairs to ensure longevity and efficiency. This is where Blue Wrench comes into play, offering specialized repair services that cater to both electric and traditional vehicles. Just as Tesla owners invest in premium accessories to enhance their driving experience, keeping their vehicles in top condition through expert diagnostics and servicing is equally essential.

Whether it’s battery optimization, brake system maintenance, or ensuring that advanced software functions operate seamlessly, the right repair and maintenance support can make all the difference. As the EV market grows and competition intensifies, drivers will increasingly rely on high-quality service providers to maintain their vehicles’ performance—ensuring that their investment in cutting-edge transportation continues to pay off for years to come.

Quote of the Day

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”When a thousand people believe some made-up story for one month, that’s fake news. When a billion people believe it for a thousand years, that’s a religion, and we are admonished not to call it fake news in order not to hurt the feelings of the faithful (or incur their wrath).”

Yuval Noah Harari, Observer, 5 August 2018.

The commodification of machine learning

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From The Register this morning:

The latest version of TensorFlow can now be run on the Raspberry Pi.

“Thanks to a collaboration with the Raspberry Pi Foundation, we’re now happy to say that the latest 1.9 release of TensorFlow can be installed from pre-built binaries using Python’s pip package system,” according to a blog post written by Pete Warden, an engineer working on the TensorFlow team at Google.

It’s pretty easy to install if you’ve got a Raspberry Pi running Raspbian 9.0 and either Python 2.7 or anything newer than Python 3.4. After that it’s only a few simple lines of code, and you’re done.

Here’s a quick overview on how to install it, it also includes some troubleshooting advice just in case you run into some problems.

Quote of the Day

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If you had to rate your satisfaction with your life so far, out of 10, what would you score?

“I like the number eight. When you turn it through 180 degrees, it becomes infinity.”

Hans Ulrich Obrist, quoted in the Financial Times, 4/5 August 2018.

LATER Clive Page emails to point out that the trick only works if you rotate 8 through 90 degrees! Which is embarrassing for the esteemed FT sub-editors, not to mention this blogger!

Global Warning

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I’m reading Nick Harkaway’s new novel, Gnomon which, like Dave Eggars’s The Circle, provides a gripping insight into our surveillance-driven future.

Before publication, Harkaway wrote an interesting blog post about why he embarked on the book. Here’s an excerpt from that post:

I remember the days.

I remember the halcyon days of 2014, when I started writing Gnomon and I thought I was going to produce a short book (ha ha ha) in a kind of Umberto Eco-Winterson-Borges mode, maybe with a dash of Bradbury and PKD, and it would be about realities and unreliable narrators and criminal angels in prisons made of time, and bankers and alchemists, and it would also be a warning about the dangers of creeping authoritarianism. (And no, you’re right: creatively speaking I had NO IDEA what I was getting myself into.)

I remember the luxury of saying “we must be precautionary about surveillance laws, about human rights violations, because one day the liberal democracies might start electing monsters and making bad pathways, and we’ll want solid protections from our governments’ over-reach.”

Oops.

I remember the halcyon days of April 2016 when I thought I’d missed the boat and I hadn’t written a warning at all, but a sort of melancholic state of the nation, and I really did think things might get better from there. Then Brexit came – I was half expecting that – and then Trump – which I was really not – and now here we are, with the UK boiling as May’s government and Corbyn’s Labour sit on their hands and clock ticks down and the negotiating table is blank except for a few sheets of crumpled scrap paper, and the only global certainty seems to be that this US administration will try to wreck every decent thing the international community has attempted in my lifetime, with the occasional connivance of our own leaders when they aren’t busy tearing one another to bits.

And now I’m pretty sure I did write a warning after all.

He did.