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Tag: #TechCartel

Health Tech and Big Tech: An Unhealthy Alliance

Health Tech and Big Tech: An Unhealthy Alliance

Image by ElasticComputeFarm from Pixabay

HealthIT funding is up right now,  despite the downturn in global digital health investment, with data collection being such a big part of the reason why investors are all in on the HealthIT sector.  Do note that Big Tech et al is paying close attention to the space and making acquisitions.

Dr. Amazon Will See You Now, said the Wall Street Journal, noting that “Amazon and other companies are trying to disrupt the giant, inefficient U.S. healthcare sector. They’ve made little headway but a crop of upstarts is offering industry giants a chance to buy their way in.

“Amazon.com’s repeated failure to disrupt the industry underscores just how hard it is to make meaningful change.. As hard as healthcare has proven to crack, it is also too big of an opportunity to ignore. That explains why Amazon is trying again: It agreed in July to pay $3.9 billion for One Medical, a concierge-type primary-care service with nearly 200 medical offices in 25 markets… and will give Amazon the foothold in healthcare it struggled to build organically. In a not-too-distant future, your Prime membership may include a free annual checkup.” Read More...

The Billionaire Boys of Summer

The Billionaire Boys of Summer

Image by asderknaster from Pixabay

In early July – Independence Day Weekend – 1500 tech leaders and shakers and movers and government representatives met in Sun Valley at the Allen & Co Summit

/Billionaire’s Boys Camp ostensibly to “discuss and somewhat unofficially close on deals that go on to have a greater impact on the rest of the regular world.” Most arrived by private jet as, although lowering the carbon footprint is important to the climate change agenda that applies to the world at large, they’re just not the ‘rest of the world.’

  Read More...

1984: Blueprint for the New Normal

1984: Blueprint for the New Normal

George Orwell. Photo from Gordon Johnson/Pixabay

This just in: Wall Street A-Listers Fled to Florida. Many Now Eye a Return, Bloomberg News reported. For the record, “USPS data shows few New Yorkers moved to Miami, Palm Beach; New Jersey, California and Connecticut were most popular moves.”

Looks like things are about to return to normal, right?

In case you missed it, Google will invest $250 million this year in building out New York City office presence, while Facebook Bets Big on Future of N.Y.C., and Offices, With New Lease, and note to self, “With the 730,000-square-foot lease, Facebook has acquired more than 2.2 million square feet of office space in the city for thousands of employees in less than a year, all of it on Manhattan’s West Side,” the New York Times reported. Meanwhile, we saw Amazon buying Lord & Taylor building for $1.15 billion, “While Facebook has been in talks to lease the 700,000-square-foot Farley Building, Apple last month inked a lease on 220,000 square feet at 11 Penn Plaza,” said the New York Post. Why Is Jeff Bezos Buying Up Apartments in the Coronavirus Capital?, Realtor.com queried during the height of the pandemic.

Why indeed and lest we forget, all of these companies already had a considerable footprint in NYC even prior to the pandemic. While many formerly NY-based companies, shops and restaurants pulled up stakes – or were driven out due to high rents and property damage – seems that the various members of the tech cabal didn’t bat an eyelash, and rather, waited for real estate prices to drop, even though it seems some will still pay top dollar. Read More...

The Shift in the Attention Economy

The Shift in the Attention Economy

Image by John Hain

We’ve long been under glaring misconception that the tech uberlords are the smartest guys in the room. Is it that, or were they simply the first guys in the room? Pay attention:

Big Tech has been flexing its muscles more and more, censoring, deplatforming and demonetizing its users, not exclusively for political or ‘inappropriate’ content, or simply coming up with ‘creative’ ways to bring in more for me, but not for thee – because they can.

We know that, certainly since the Age of Social, the platform formerly known as the information superhighway has become a one-way street, but things are shifting and note to self: the cabal is starting to feel the repercussions. Read More...

Jesus Was a Blackbelt: A Lesson in Moving Forward

Jesus Was a Blackbelt: A Lesson in Moving Forward

Image by Artistraman on Pixabay

Last week, Twitter removed US President Donald Trump from the platform, tweeting that “After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence.” Never mind that Twitter Allows ‘Hang Mike Pence’ To Trend. Violent groups and terrorists have been using the platform for years to coordinate their activities, but we cover technology, not politics, and are more focused on the implications of Twitter’s move – as well as those of tech cabal members Google, who removed Parler from their app store, as did Apple, and Amazon, which eliminated Parler app from its servers.

As actress Emily Ratajkowski warned: If Mark Zuckerberg Can Shut the President Off Facebook, He Can Shut Any of Us Off. History will remind us that no one is truly immune.

There’s no doubt that censorship is alive and well and spreading – unchecked – and it’s not simply to do with politics but also having opinions that are not in lockstep with those of the cabal or the prescribed talking points. Example: Big Tech censors COVID-19 video featuring doctors, YouTube REMOVES viral video of two California doctors questioning stay-at-home orders  and Facebook declares war on anti-vaxxers as it pledges to remove conspiracy theories, never mind that Hundreds (were) Sent to Emergency Room After Getting COVID-19 Vaccines, and “Thousands of people self-reported being unable to work or perform daily activities, or required care from a health care professional, after getting one of the doses from the first tranche,” as the Epoch Times reported. Read More...

Don’t Look Now, But the Tech Surveillance State Just Upped the Ante

Don’t Look Now, But the Tech Surveillance State Just Upped the Ante

We know that the lockdowns with the Covid flu went far in enriching the coffers of the tech cartel at an (even more) accelerated rate than usual (World’s Richest People Smashed Wealth Records This Week). At some point, it’s no longer about money: it’s about what that largesse can bring and in case you missed it, NSA Chief Who Oversaw Sweeping Domestic Phone Surveillance Joins Amazon Board As Director. “This is the very NSA chief (Keith B. Alexander) who was the face of the agency’s mass sweeping up of Americans’ communications exposed by Edward Snowden’s leaks. The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit earlier this month ruled the invasive NSA program was “illegal” and that US officials lied about it… For those keeping score, not only does Amazon own the The Washington Post and oversees the CIA’s Commercial Cloud Enterprise, it now has on its powerful board of directors the most visible figure from the NSA who illegally spied on Americans for the better part of a decade.” ZeroHedge reported, and it’s a must-read, and note to self: “Crucially his tenure as Director of the National Security Agency went for nearly a decade, from August 2005 to March 2014. From there he founded a cybersecurity technology company in 2014, of which he’s still leads as Co-CEO and president, called IronNet Cybersecurity, Inc.”

The hire came “Just days after Amazon published a scathing letter (in the Washington Post, which, like Amazon, is also owned by Jeff Bezos) slamming President Trump for not allowing the American multinational tech company to get the $10 billion Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) contract, which instead was awarded to Microsoft.”

Never mind that Amazon Web Services is now authorized to host the US Department of Defense’s most sensitive data, including top secret Pentagon and NSA information (as of 2017) and also has “a monopoly on many services on the internet,” as Esha (@eshaLegal) noted, and “Even without an ex-spy chief with a less-than-stellar reputation in terms of privacy protection on its board, Amazon has faced growing pushback over its intrusive high-tech devices. Its virtual assistant Alexa was caught red-handed passively recording intimate conversations of unsuspecting family members, while its new fitness tracker ‘Halo’ promises to scan users’ bodies and track emotions in their voice,” RT reported, Read More...

Showing their FAANGs

Showing their FAANGs

Post 9/11, Americans feared for their collective safety. Two hijacked planes brought down the World Trade Center. Another hit the Pentagon. The fourth was diverted by a handful of passengers who downed it in a field in Pennsylvania rather than risking it hitting its intended target. The result: the Patriot Act (which was quietly renewed while we were being distracted by the ‘impeachment’), an acronym for “Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism.”  Under the guise of making Americans ‘safer,’ it also infringed on the rights of citizens by giving law enforcement officials permission to collect intelligence on citizens, reducing public accountability; reducing the ability of the public to go to court to challenge a government search; allowing government officials to target citizens not under criminal investigation, and allowing unlawful imprisonment by denying due process.

Now there’s Covid-19 and even more of our freedoms have been eroded in just a few short months. Without a shot being fired, 40% of the world is basically under house arrest/lockdown under the guise of sheltering in place. Tomatoes, tomahtoes. Read More...

Antitrust: The Bill Gates Playbook

Antitrust: The Bill Gates Playbook

This week, in addition to the Federal probe, “States to Launch Google, Facebook Antitrust Probes,” The Wall Street Journal et al reported. As one commenter said, “The real problem with both is their pernicious theft of our personal data and sales of that data to all sorts of entities looking to prod us, outrage us, excite us, sell us, etc. This is what their businesses have become: resale of stolen data.”

Google (is also being) Targeted By 50 U.S. AGs In Potential Sweeping Antitrust Investigation Read More...

Don’t Look Now, But Tech Just Became Way More Dangerous (Actually, You Need to Look)

Don’t Look Now, But Tech Just Became Way More Dangerous (Actually, You Need to Look)

While we’re not big on conspiracy theories – we’re simply too busy to get sidetracked – we do love to follow trajectories to see where things may be going. Or to once again quote Wayne Gretzky, if you want to know where the puck is going, look to where it has been.

The news this week was the banning that has been happening with the social media platforms. War on Free Speech: Facebook Bans People It Considers “Dangerous”, and Twitter is at it, too. While the question seems to be coming up more and more – Is it time to break up Twitter, or regulate it as an edited platform (Big Tech Trying to Have it Both Ways as Platform and Publisher)?, and this would extend to all of the socials – let’s be honest, aren’t they publishers, after all? In fact, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg himself is calling for regulation, and that should be concerning, especially given his focus, which is in lock step with that of the tech cartel, trust us. As Wired reported, Platforms Want Centralized Censorship. That Should Scare You.

So, why now?

Forest through the trees time, and Big Tech has gotten the four Ds down to an art, and yes, four – Deny, Deflect, Defend, Delay. Important, considering what else has been going on in tech to which not many people have been paying much attention: the rise of the Fakes, or as we prefer to call them, PHAkEs, which is our acronym for Post Human-Acknowledged Entities. Read More...

Beware Big Companies ASKING to be Regulated

Beware Big Companies ASKING to be Regulated

In a seeming change of heart, Mark Zuckerberg backs stronger Internet privacy and election laws: ‘We need a more active role for governments’, he said, and no, there wasn’t a sudden rip in the universe. Zuckerberg penned an opinion piece in the Washington Post entitled The internet needs new rules. Let’s start in these four areas, which are harmful content, election integrity, privacy and data portability.

The editorial, no doubt, comes on the heels of the attention that Facebook, Twitter, Google and Amazon have been getting from Congress and various Presidential candidates, and as a result of the recent announcement that Facebook, Twitter and YouTube execs face jail and multi-billion pound fines over terror videos. “Australia could become the first country to introduce prison terms and fines if firms fail to speedily remove terror videos like the Christchurch massacre live-stream,” reports The Sun. Read More...