Monthly Archives: May 2019

In South America, Venezuela is by far the biggest bitcoin cash adopter. The Marco Coino map shows over 190 businesses accepting BCH there. Under normal circumstances, the country could be a very attractive tourist destination. However, crypto adoption in the past couple of years has been driven largely by severe economic and political crisis combined with record depreciation of the Venezuelan fiat currency, the bolivar. Over 30 companies in neighboring Colombia also welcome bitcoin cash payments. Unlike Venezuela, Colombia has many teller machines supporting BCH.Europe is a pronounced leader in terms of bitcoin cash adoption. Beside Slovenia, where the vast majority of businesses accepting BCH are based, there’s the United Kingdom, which is home to 21 companies that take bitcoin cash, most of which are concentrated in and around London. Some of them, such as Westland Coffee & Wine and Dream Bags Jaguar Shoes Bar, are situated in the very heart of the British capital. There are also 18 BCH ATMs in London.Lithuania is another country catering to BCH users. The small European nation hosts around 30 firms accepting electronic cash. Most of them are located in or close to the capital Vilnius. In general, crypto payments have been spreading rapidly across the Baltic region in the past few years. Businesses from multiple sectors, including real estate, online commerce, the hospitality industry, and even healthcare, are now billing products and services in digital coins. There are several bitcoin cash ATMs in neighboring Latvia and Estonia.Spain, which gathers many tourists during all seasons, has 13 bars, restaurants and shops accepting BCH just in Barcelona, capital of Catalonia which is one of its most developed regions. Other businesses that work with the popular cryptocurrency are located in Zaragoza, Valladolid, Gibraltar and elsewhere. The country also has 15 BCH trading ATMs, one of which is in Madrid and another one on the Canary island of Tenerife.BCH, From Gibraltar to JerusalemA great number of cruise tours are organized each summer in the Mediterranean. There are bitcoin cash accepting businesses in Gibraltar, close to the Spanish city of Alicante, the Tunisian capital Tunis, and in Israel. You’ll find bitcoin cash ATMs in Palma de Mallorca, Palermo and Napoli in Italy, and close to the Old City of Jerusalem. There’s also a BCH trading teller machine in Jeddah, not far from the holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia which like Jerusalem attracts millions of pilgrims every year.Africa has been relatively slow to adopt cryptocurrencies for various reasons, but the South Africa can qualify as an exception. At least three companies in the area of Johannesburg, the largest city, accept payments in bitcoin cash and another one is based in Durban. Uganda, which is also considered to be a crypto-friendly nation, has a bitcoin ATM that supports BCH in its capital Kampala, close to Lake Victoria, the largest African lake and a place that’s worth visiting.If you travel to Southeast Asia, you’ll find numerous places to spend your bitcoin cash. These include bars, restaurants and other businesses in the Thai capital Bangkok and in Singapore. Hong Kong has at least four companies taking BCH but further north, Japan is the pronounced leader with almost 70 businesses accepting payments in bitcoin cash. Most of them are in the capital Tokyo and in Osaka, which is the second largest metropolitan area in the county. Many ATMs across the region support purchases and sales of bitcoin cash, with the highest number in Malaysia that has nine devices, four of which have been installed in Kuala Lumpur.

An Israeli central district court reportedly ruled in favor of the country’s tax authority Monday, recognizing bitcoin as a financial asset and not a currency. Profits on its sale in Israel are therefore subject to capital gains tax.Judge Shmuel Bornstein simultaneously rejected an appeal by the founder of a blockchain startup who argues that bitcoin should be considered a currency, so the proceeds from its sale should not be subject to taxation. Globes daily financial newspaper reported Tuesday:The Central District Court in Lod accepted the tax authority’s interpretation, and held that bitcoin is an asset and not a currency, and that the transaction in question is therefore taxable.Emphasizing that the status of bitcoin is still undefined in the country, the judge stated in his ruling that “it was hard to envisage a result whereby bitcoin would be considered a currency for tax purposes in particular,” the news outlet conveyed, noting that the case could reach the supreme court.

Ever since cryptocurrencies started gaining value, hackers have targeted exchanges that provide digital asset trading and malicious entities have siphoned billions of dollars worth of bitcoin since 2011. So far, over 1 million of the world’s BTC has been stolen from exchanges and traders continue to leave vast quantities of funds on centralized trading platforms.

GC is scheduled to launch in Q1 2020. Lest confirmation were needed as to how entrenched in the legacy financial system Zuck bucks will be, Facebook’s CEO has reportedly met with Bank of England governor Mark Carney as well as seeking advice from the U.S. Treasury. Project Libra, as the program is known, has been one of the world’s worst kept secrets since 2018, when it emerged that Facebook was seeking to hire blockchain developers for a covert monetary project.GC will be nothing more than another fiat-pegged stablecoin, which is unremarkable. The coin’s real power comes in the network effects that can be leveraged to get the currency into the hands of billions, including Facebook users who don’t have bank accounts. The benefits this could bring to Facebook-loyal consumers, who can seamlessly use the coin in-app (be it FB, Insta, or Whatsapp) to pay friends and purchase goods, are substantial. But the benefits this powerful new trove of data will bring Facebook are bigger still.

“Short-termism is always going to exist,” Peel says. “But what we’re trying to do is to make sure that while we’re doing that we also look after the long-term health of the brand and know that behind those short-term deliveries, the brand is the one that ultimately delivers against them.”Like many publicly-listed companies that have to deliver quarterly earnings to shareholders, the pressure to perform means the bulk of Adidas’s spend is going on short-term activations.This is something Adidas is looking to redress, with the media function trying to “push the 60/40 rule” – the optimum ratio of long-term brand building versus short-term sales activation according to work by Peter Field and Les Binet – as a base across all its markets.“We’re gradually beginning to invest much more in our brand,” Peel says. “As we’ve done that it’s correlated with our growth. I don’t think it’s necessarily been the cause of it; it’s representative of a new way of thinking within the organisation which is about brand desire and looking after the long-term health of the brand.”Peel believes it is a combination of legacy infrastructure and siloed KPIs, meaning teams often aren’t focused on the same outcomes, which have made it difficult to find the right balance in the past.

La majorité des Français reste indulgente et bienveillante avec les annonceurs puisque seuls 40 % des personnes interrogées ont déclaré avoir mis fin à leur relation commerciale avec une marque au cours des douze derniers mois en raison d'une mauvaise expérience. Contrairement à leurs homologues français, les consommateurs aux Etats-Unis et en Inde sont plus radicaux puisque respectivement 69% et 58% d'entre eux cessent toute relation commerciale dès l'apparition du premier couac dans les rouages. Mais les consommateurs attendent toujours plus de leurs marques préférées et le font savoir : 55% des clients français se déclarent plus exigeants qu'il y a deux ans en ce qui concerne les services client, contre 47% dans le monde. Ainsi, 55% des consommateurs sont prêts à payer plus cher pour une meilleure expérience contre 31% dans le monde. Même s’ils gagneraient à être améliorés, nos compatriotes sont prêts à considérer les services clients, tous domaines professionnels confondus, comme des véritables services supplémentaire à valeur ajoutée.  Attente et répétition : les points de crispation des Français Répéter encore et encore l'objet de l'appel est l'élément le plus frustrant pour 37% des Français. Les râleurs les plus célèbres de la planète -french auto-bashing- s’exaspèrent ensuite d’une longue attente avant de voir leur problème résolu -à 24%-, sur la difficulté à trouver le numéro en question -à 14%- et de devoir changer constamment d'interlocuteurs -à 12%. Les clients français sont aussi parmi les plus impatients -avec les Indiens à 15%-, puisque 12% d'entre eux souhaitent une réponse quasi immédiate d'un conseiller -c’est à dire moins d’1 minute d’attente- contre 9% dans le monde. 37% acceptent de devoir attendre entre 1 à 3 minutes et si 29% des Français sont encore prêts à attendre 3 à 5 min, le pourcentage diminue fortement passées les 6 minutes.  Le chat en direct en plein essor Aujourd’hui, les clients, toujours plus actifs et connectés, exigent une expérience selon leurs conditions et leurs canaux préférés. Et ces derniers sont de plus en plus nombreux : 55% des clients français déclarent utiliser déjà 3 canaux de communication ou plus pour interagir avec les marques. D'ailleurs, positionné en 4ème position, le chat en direct est rapidement devenu un canal populaire du service client - 39% des consommateurs mondiaux plébiscitent ce mode de communication. La France voit peu à peu émerger ce canal d'engagement client mais tout reste encore à prouver pour elle. En effet seuls 8% des Français en font leur canal préféré bien loin de l'email à 42% et du téléphone à 33%. SOS Annonceur déconnecté Des clients toujours plus exigeants… confrontés à une méconnaissance flagrante de leurs attentes de la part des annonceurs. Une étude réalisée par Pegasystems, éditeur également spécialisé dans l’engagement client, nous dévoile par exemple que 33 % des chefs d'entreprise interrogés estiment que le niveau de leur service client est « excellent », alors que seulement 17% des clients sondés sont du même avis. 

But one of the few things Europe’s right-wing populists have in common with each other is their opposition to recent EU efforts to regulate the big tech platforms—efforts that have been driven by Europe’s centrist establishment parties. Some far-right leaders, like Italy’s anti-immigrant deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini, are vocally opposed to these efforts on the grounds that they amount to censorship of the internet, and they are just as vocal in their outright praise for platforms like Facebook.Others are simply Euroskeptics—nationalist politicians who wish to nullify the EU itself and tend to oppose any stringent, far-reaching legislation coming from Brussels—or market conservatives who tend to favor the rights of corporations. And many of them owe their rise to power at least in part to viral campaigns.“When you look at the voting pattern of the right, and the populist parties of Europe in general, you can clearly see that they seem to resist this call—which is very much coming from the establishment—to govern or stamp some authority on Big Tech,” says Alberto Alemanno, a professor of EU Law at HEC Paris, a prominent business school. Many of them, says Alemanno, prefer the Wild West version of social media that allowed fake news—and far-right parties—to flourish. “That's where they come from,” Alemanno says. Ultimately, the current online “ecosystem is what produced them in the first place, so they need to preserve it in order to exist.”Which is all to say that the stakes attached to this week’s elections could be significant for Silicon Valley in some surprising ways. The European Parliament is a supranational institution with 751 elected members, called MEPs, drawn from the 28 European Union member states. When a piece of legislation like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)—last year’s expansive EU measure to strengthen users’ data privacy—passes in the European Parliament, it then moves down to each state’s national parliament, which they then need to implement into domestic law. And the EU governing body has become a key legislative battleground for the likes of Google and Facebook.“When it comes to tech, generally speaking, the European Union is the regulator,” says Alexander Mäkelä, a former Brussels-based Facebook employee who worked as a policy adviser on content issues and fake news, as well as public relations in the EU in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. “When it comes to international norms and standards, global norms start in Brussels."

The question is one of balance, or competing lifelines—no human pressure means a diverse ecosystem thrives, but radiation could tamp down that ecosystem’s ebullience. One of the methodological problems, though, is that no one’s really sure exactly how much radiation is there. Some people think that the radionuclides left on the ground are trapped in the soil; others think that animals traipsing through the forests could carry those particles with them and transport them to new locations. Even ascertaining the radiation level is a problem. Researchers from the University of Bristol have tried using quadcopter drones to map them; Beasley’s team is deploying GPS collars for animals with built-in dosimeters to try to answer, finally, the actual doses that critters pick up.Those differences have knock-on effects that get to the heart of why this place is so hard to study. In the Red Forest, for example, the conifers that died were replaced by deciduous trees that could tolerate radiation better, but their leaf litter is less acidic, changing the microorganisms that live in it. “You’ve changed the ecosystem,” says Beasley. “It’s not just radiation. There are confounding factors.”This all matters because the Exclusion Zone is all but unique. There are only a few other places on Earth that used to have humans but no longer do. They become models for a different kind of world, even if—or maybe especially because—two of those places, Chernobyl and Fukushima, are also radioactive. That’s important too. If you believe that nuclear power will be one of the key ways to produce energy without exacerbating Earth’s ongoing climate crisis, it’s important to know just how bad an accident at one of those nuclear power plants could get. Nuclear is a green, or at least green-ish, source of power—it requires cold water (which it then heats up) and creates a certain amount of waste, but that might be tolerable if you’re also willing to put up with the occasional risk of a Chernobyl or a Fukushima until someone reengineers these systems to be safer.Oh, and that’s not the only reason to be thinking about climate change and Chernobyl. In 2015, two wildfires in the Exclusion Zone re-aerosolized radioactive particles in their smoke and carried them aloft, dosing parts of Europe all over again—at about the level of a medical x-ray. In fact, says Møller, the Exclusion Zone is constantly plagued by fire. And climate change has already increased the likelihood of fires in abandoned urban and peri-urban areas in Europe. Which means one of the lasting legacies of the Exclusion Zone extends far beyond its boundaries: climate change-induced radioactive wildfires.

Afin de s’engager dans la protection des abeilles, McDonald’s s’est allié avec l’agence créative NORDDDB pour créer le premier « restaurant » pour ces insectes cruciaux à nos écosystèmes. Il s’agit du plus petit établissement McDonald au monde, présenté sous forme de ruche. L’initiative nous vient de Suède, où beaucoup de franchises avaient déjà installé des ruches sur leur toit. Au fur et à mesure, cette idée a fait le tour du pays et sera bientôt adoptée dans d’autres pays autour du globe.En plus de cette démarche éco-friendly, dans plusieurs restaurants l’erbe autour des établissements a été remplacée par des fleurs spécifiques, afin d’attirer les instectes en danger et favoriser leur bien-être. Une tentative pour le moins originale de combiner fast-food et respect de la nature.

"We and others in the field have predicted for a long time that there would be misidentifications. We predicted there would be abuse. We predicted there would be state surveillance, not just after-the-fact forensic face identification," says Alvaro Bedoya, the founding director of Georgetown Law's Center for Privacy & Technology. "And all those things are coming true. Anyone who says this technology is nascent has not done their homework."At Wednesday's House hearing, witnesses similarly emphasized that facial recognition technology isn't just a static database, but is increasingly used in sweeping, real-time, nonspecific dragnets—a use of the technology sometimes called "face surveillance." And given the major shortcomings of facial recognition, especially in accurately identifying people of color, women, and gender nonconforming people, the witnesses argued that the technology should not currently be eligible for use by law enforcement. Joy Buolamwini, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher and founder of the Algorithmic Justice League, says she calls the data sets used to train most facial recognition systems "pale male" sets, because the majority of the photos used are of white men."Just this week a man sued Uber after having his driver's account deactivated due to [alleged] facial recognition failures," Buolamwini told the Committee on Oversight and Reform on Wednesday. "Tenants in Brooklyn are protesting the installation of an unnecessary face-recognition entry system. New research is showing bias in the use of facial analysis technology for health care purposes, and facial recognition is being sold to schools. Our faces may well be the final frontier of privacy."Representatives across the political spectrum said on Wednesday that the committee is ready to develop bipartisan legislation limiting and establishing oversight for facial recognition's use by law enforcement and other US entities. But tangible results at the federal level have been scarce for years. And advocacy in the private sphere has faced major hurdles as well. On Wednesday, for example, Amazon shareholders rejected two proposals related to reining in use of the company's controversial Rekognition facial identification software to allow for research into privacy and civil rights safeguards.Still, with facial recognition's ubiquity becoming increasingly apparent, privacy advocates see 2019 as a potential turning point."I think it’s too late to stop the proliferation of facial recognition tech. Both government and corporate actors are using it in new ways every day," says Tiffany Li, a privacy attorney at Yale Law School’s Information Society Project. "Hopefully we reach a critical point where we start really working on those problems in earnest. Perhaps that moment is now."