An update to Apple’s iOS will mean AirTags will share their location with airlines – a boon for finding luggage. CC-licensed photo by Luigi Rosa on Flickr.
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A selection of 9 links for you. Localised. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Threads: charles_arthur. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. Observations and links welcome.
Elon Musk may already be overstaying his welcome in Trump’s orbit • NBC News
Dasha Burns, David Ingram and Julie Tsirkin:
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Tech billionaire Elon Musk was handed a major win Tuesday evening when President-elect Donald Trump announced that the Tesla and SpaceX CEO would co-lead a new “Department of Government Efficiency” with Vivek Ramaswamy.
The announcement reinforces the closeness that Musk has managed to achieve with Trump, even after the election. But for some people in Trump’s orbit, Musk’s presence has felt overbearing.
Musk has been so aggressive in pushing his views about Trump’s second term that he’s stepping on the toes of Trump’s transition team and may be overstaying his welcome at Mar-a-Lago, according to two people familiar with the transition who have spent time at the Palm Beach, Florida, resort over the past week.
The sources said that Musk’s near-constant presence at Mar-a-Lago in the week since Election Day had begun to wear on people who’ve been in Trump’s inner circle longer than the tech billionaire and who see him as overstepping his role in the transition. The sources spoke on condition of anonymity because they’re not authorized to speak publicly.
“He’s behaving as if he’s a co-president and making sure everyone knows it,” one of the people said of Musk.
“And he’s sure taking lots of credit for the president’s victory. Bragging about America PAC and X to anyone who will listen. He’s trying to make President Trump feel indebted to him. And the president is indebted to no one,” this person added.
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That the new department (which would have to be created through some sort of Congressional act?) is called “DOGE” would be eye-rolling enough. Politics is about to become “interesting” again, unfortunately. And the clock is already ticking on how long it will be before Musk and Trump fall out.
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Apple AirTags to start sharing bag location directly with airlines • The Washington Post
Chris Dong:
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When Apple introduced its location-tracking device more than three years ago, it quickly became a traveler favorite for one major reason: the ability to keep tabs on checked luggage. Now, AirTags are about to get a major update that will help fliers get reunited with their missing bags.
Apple announced a new feature Monday called “Share Item Location,” providing users the ability to securely communicate an AirTag’s location to third parties — including airlines.
Once rolled out as part of an upcoming iOS update, it could alter how missing items are found, retrieved and returned to their owners at airports around the world.
To start, Apple plans to work with 15 airlines globally, including Delta Air Lines and United Airlines in the United States. These carriers will integrate the new shared tracking technology directly into their customer service processes in the coming months.
Locating mishandled bags, a catchall industry term for lost, damaged or delayed, will look a lot different than today.
“Having an AirTag was great before, but there was no official policy for getting your bag back even if you could show its location to an airline employee,” said Stella Shon, a consumer travel expert for Upgraded Points. “The sharing functionality is a game-changing feature.”
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The airlines are: Aer Lingus, Air Canada, Air New Zealand, Austrian Airlines, British Airways, Brussels Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Eurowings, Iberia, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, Lufthansa, Qantas, Singapore Airlines, Swiss International Air Lines, Turkish Airlines, United, Virgin Atlantic, and Vueling. All of a sudden, AirTags seem a worthwhile purchase!
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Romain Bardet: “carbon monoxide can explain the trajectory of some people we didn’t know about a year ago… it’s now up to the authorities to decide whether or not to ban” • Cyclinguptodate
Kieran Wood:
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An aggressive approach called carbon monoxide inhalation, steps into the scientifically new and much riskier realm of inhaling the lightly poisonous gas (carbon monoxide) for the express purpose of performance enhancement. A growing body of recent scientific research suggests inhalation can have a powerful impact on measures of aerobic capacity like VO2max, or maximal oxygen uptake with reported links to teams such as UAE Team Emirates, Team Visma | Lease a Bike and Israel – Premier Tech.
In an extensive interview with Eurosport upon the end of his career, Bardet was asked for a rider’s view on the controversial topic that currently escapes a WADA ban. “Honestly, I learned about it from the press. You see the studies. Anything is possible. I’ve never heard of anything, but then again, I wouldn’t be surprised. There’s so much research being done into the idea of optimising performance…” the Frenchman assesses. “It’s not surprising that there are some researchers, some teams, some people involved in cycling who are looking elsewhere. There will always be a desire to find competitive advantages.”
Is it a fair advantage though or should the use of carbon monoxide for performance gain be banned? “It’s up to each individual to set the threshold of what seems ethical and fair in the absolute and desperate search for the end result in relation to his or her values. It’s like ketones, like so many things, it’s open to interpretation. And unfortunately, since the rules are not clearly laid down, since this interpretation is left to the discretion of each individual and since we’re in an ultra-competitive sport where only victory counts, we shouldn’t be surprised by possible deviations,” Bardet ponders.
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The Eurosport interview is in French. A report in July quotes one team saying that sure, they use CO rebreathing to monitor riders’ physiology.
Why? How? Because CO binds to haemoglobin (to make carboxyhaemoglobin) and prevents it carrying oxygen, stimulating (in theory) the body to produce more haemoglobin, which is what cyclists want. Except the teams say it’s just to measure haem levels, to see how their training is progressing.
The cycling world can’t seem to decide if it’s good, bad or illegal. (CO in large doses will kill you.)
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23andMe cuts 40% of staff in restructuring • TechCrunch
Maxwell Zeff:
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23andMe announced on Monday it would cut 40% of its workforce, representing more than 200 employees, as part of a restructuring at the company. The genetic testing company is also discontinuing its therapeutics business and winding down its clinical trials; it expects these changes to save $35m annually.
“We are taking these difficult but necessary actions as we restructure 23andMe and focus on the long-term success of our core consumer business and research partnerships,” said CEO and co-founder Anne Wojcicki in a press release. “I want to thank our team for their hard work and dedication to our mission.”
On Tuesday, 23andMe reported $44m in revenue during the second quarter, a decline from $50m during the same period last year.The mass workforce reductions mark the latest disruption in a tumultuous year for 23andMe. In September, 23andMe’s entire board of directors — including Silicon Valley icons such as YouTube CEO Neal Mohan — resigned following Wojcicki’s attempt to take the company private in August.
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Cutting nearly half your workforce suggests you’re in really deep trouble. But it is: in that second quarter it made a $59m loss. Don’t worry, though: in the year-ago quarter it lost $75m! Things are looking up!
Genomics has been a disappointment to so many: turns out too few people want to have their DNA sequenced to tell them what grisly unavoidable diseases lie in their distant future. Or whether they’re 1/64 Viking.
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Exxon CEO Darren Woods: Donald Trump shouldn’t scrap methane regulations • Semafor
Tim McDonnell:
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US President-elect Donald Trump’s aspiration to unleash a lot more oil and gas drilling domestically faces a fundamental obstacle: the global market is already well-supplied, the CEO of ExxonMobil told Semafor at the opening of COP29.
Darren Woods was in Baku for just one day of the global climate summit, ready to convince world leaders and thousands of highly skeptical activists that companies like Exxon can and should play a more proactive role in solving the climate crisis. But that doesn’t mean transitioning away from fossil fuels, the goal that was adopted by negotiators at COP28 last year, Woods said. Instead, Exxon’s approach is to engineer technologies that allow fossil fuels to be burned with lower carbon emissions, which in Woods’ view will serve the company’s bottom line as much as the global climate. Government policies designed to force a rapid phaseout of oil and gas consumption are the wrong strategy, he said: “A lot of the policies that have been pursued to date, which force you to choose between affordable energy and reduced emissions, aren’t working.”
But Woods agreed with recent comments from Patrick Pouyanné, CEO of TotalEnergies, that the Trump administration shouldn’t move to scrap the Biden administration’s regulation to curb methane emissions from oil and gas operations.
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This is the thing: the market is moving in one direction on fossil fuels, and just as in Trump’s first term when he talked a lot about coal and the market turned away from it, so one should expect the same this time.
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Nicholas Carlson, former Business Insider editor, launches media start-up • The New York Times
Benjamin Mullin:
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Nicholas Carlson has witnessed spectacular failures in the tech and media worlds over the years. As the former top editor of Business Insider, he chronicled the carnage at Yahoo and Groupon, and then watched several Silicon Valley companies and rival publications make an ill-fated “pivot to video.”
Now Mr. Carlson, 41, is trying to put the lessons he learned to good use. He is preparing to debut a media start-up of his own — one with a focus on video.
The new company, Dynamo, is betting big on the growing popularity of video on platforms such as YouTube, TikTok and LinkedIn. It will produce “cinematic” video stories for those platforms, Mr. Carlson said, focusing on business journalism for a core group of strivers that he calls “dynamos.”
The average dynamo — Mr. Carlson considers himself one — is an ambitious, career-oriented viewer who believes that business can explain the world.
And he is quick to assert that his new company has more in common with Mr. Beast, the mega-popular YouTube star, than it does with Facebook Watch, a video service that was shuttered after struggling for years.“We’re not pivoting to video,” Mr. Carlson said with a laugh. “We’re cannonballing into the deep end of video.”
Many media companies that have created content specifically for social media platforms have had a tough road. But Mr. Carlson said skyrocketing video viewership on tech platforms pointed to a business opportunity that had not been tapped by companies specializing in high-quality video journalism.
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This, and the next story, show how much the media ground is shifting.
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Broadcaster Chris Wallace quits CNN to build future in streaming or podcasting • The Daily Beast
Hugh Dougherty:
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Chris Wallace is quitting CNN after three years as one of its biggest stars, he exclusively told the Daily Beast Monday.
The 77-year-old broadcaster said he will instead find a new home on an independent platform such as streaming or podcasting, which he described as “where the action seems to be.” He highlighted how podcasters including Joe Rogan and Charlamagne tha God had set the agenda during the presidential election, but added, “I don’t flatter myself to think I will have that sort of reach.”
The stunning decision by Wallace to walk away from CNN at the end of his three-year, seven-figure contract, rather than to renegotiate it, is a watershed moment for cable TV. It comes as other anchors face being fired or having salaries cut as declining ratings and cord-cutting hit the industry’s bottom line.
Wallace was one of the main faces of CNN’s election night coverage last week, correctly forecasting that Kamala Harris would need a “miracle” to win as the first exit polls showed the depths of her electoral difficulty. He came to CNN in 2021 after 18 years at Fox News, where he had interviewed Donald Trump repeatedly and earned praise for his handling of the fiery 2020 presidential debate between Trump and Joe Biden.
But he told the Daily Beast that his career in broadcast television–which began on local TV in Chicago in 1973 and spanned NBC’s The Today Show and Meet The Press, ABC’s PrimeTime Live and Fox News Sunday before he joined CNN–will be over when his contract lapses at the end of the year, describing it as “quite liberating.”
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One would hope that Wallace isn’t depending on building a gigantic audience to pay the bills. Best guess is he starts a podcast which is also on YouTube. The Trump years are going to be kerching! times for politics analysts in the US, and Wallace is great at it.
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Russia’s war in Ukraine is powered by ‘Deathonomics’ • WSJ
Georgi Kantchev and Matthew Luxmoore:
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Going to war is now a rational economic choice in Russia’s impoverished hinterlands.
Facing heavy losses in Ukraine, Russia is offering high salaries and bonuses to entice new recruits. In some of the country’s poorest regions, a military wage is as much as five times the average. The families of those who die on the front lines receive large compensation payments from the government.
These are life-changing sums for those left behind. Russian economist Vladislav Inozemtsev calculates that the family of a 35-year-old man who fights for a year and is then killed on the battlefield would receive around 14.5 million rubles, equivalent to $150,000, from his soldier’s salary and death compensation. That is more than he would have earned cumulatively working as a civilian until the age of 60 in some regions. Families are eligible for other bonuses and insurance payouts, too.
“Going to the front and being killed a year later is economically more profitable than a man’s further life,” Inozemtsev said, a phenomenon he calls “deathonomics.”
So many soldiers have now been killed that the payments—totaling as much as $30 billion in the past year as of June—are a telling symptom of how the war is transforming Russian society and the economy at large. Since the start of the invasion, the Kremlin has boosted military spending to post-Soviet highs, offsetting some of the impact of Western sanctions. Weapons factories work around the clock, providing employment and high wages.
Now the mounting death payments are providing an injection of wealth into some of Russia’s poorest areas in return for a steady stream of soldiers for the war effort. Poverty levels are now at their lowest since data collection began in 1995, according to official statistics. Perceptions of what it means to join the military have been transformed.
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It is rather weird; it feels like going back to the Middle Ages, when being a mercenary was a legitimate life choice that someone might make. (Thanks Karsten for the link.)
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Teen infected in Canada’s first bird flu case is in critical condition • The Washington Post
Lena Sun:
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A Canadian teenager infected with bird flu — that country’s first case involving a locally acquired infection — is in critical condition and experiencing difficulty breathing, health officials said Tuesday.
The previously healthy British Columbia teen went to a hospital emergency room Nov. 2 with initial symptoms of pink eye, fever and cough, conditions common to many respiratory illnesses, Bonnie Henry, provincial health officer, said during a news conference. The teen was sent home.But after the patient’s condition deteriorated, the teen was admitted to BC Children’s Hospital in Vancouver late Friday.
So far, no one who came into contact with the teen has fallen ill.
After a presumptive positive test for bird flu, the teen began receiving Tamiflu, an antiviral treatment. That medication works best when given in the first days of illness but is less effective in treating severe sickness, Henry said.
During the weekend, the teen received treatment to address severe respiratory conditions, Henry said.
“They are experiencing acute respiratory distress,” Henry said.Severe illness occurs when a profusion of virus particles travel deep into the lungs causing viral pneumonia, making it hard for the body to get oxygen, she said.
Health officials do not yet know how the patient was exposed.
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Totally a watching brief, nothing to be alarmed about, not at all. (Actually it isn’t, unless this thing figures out how to spread between humans.) (Thanks Joe S for the link.)
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| • Why do social networks drive us a little mad? • Why does angry content seem to dominate what we see? • How much of a role do algorithms play in affecting what we see and do online? • What can we do about it? • Did Facebook have any inkling of what was coming in Myanmar in 2016? Read Social Warming, my latest book, and find answers – and more. |
Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified
The Overspill: when there's more that I want to say 
Hmm, has Trump fallen out with Putin yet? Or with Netanyahu? One of my apparently very contrarian views is that Trump isn’t stupid. Rather, he’s like some sort of defection-optimizing game-theory bot, which is much harder than it looks. He asks, “Does this person have something I need?” – if yes, be nice, if no, attack them. Most people cannot make this work long-term, because of retaliation. But a few can do it, such as him. By definition, successful bullies have a keen sense of who they can abuse (people “below” them, which tends to be almost anyone), and who they can’t abuse (people “above” them or comparable, which is relatively few). Both Trump and Musk are extremely powerful people who have an alliance, so this is not comparable to how either treats subordinates. And this isn’t like Hitler-Stalin, in that there’s no “border country” for them to fight over.
That article strikes me as real “palace intrigue” gossip, something like, “Certain ministers of King Donald are upset that this wealthy merchant is putting on airs. They say he does not know his proper place in the hierarchy.”
I agree that the real story feels like it’s the *courtiers* who are annoyed about Musk. The question is whether Musk will – as in the story of the fisherman who finds the fish that grants wishes – go back too often to demand things and eventually be thrown aside. It’s unclear how many people of Trump’s type (who I think you identify correctly: he’s purely transactional) Musk has ever had to deal with.