Contents
Jeff Bezos will leave Amazon to a subordinate, and Alexei Navalny the opposition to his supporters. Those who recover from coronavirus will retain antibodies for six months, and avatars in virtual life will become a reality
Topics of the week
- Chief retired CEO
Jeff Bezos will step down as Amazon CEO later this year after nearly 30 years. Under Bezos’ leadership, a small online bookstore has grown into one of the largest online retailers in the world. Many of Bezos’ initiatives have impacted how and where people now shop. The skyrocketing company has made millions to shareholders and made Bezos the richest man on the planet. At the same time, regulators have repeatedly viewed Amazon’s success as a threat to competition, and company employees have occasionally told reporters about tight schedules and unfair pay.
“Today, our company employs 1,3 million talented and passionate people. We serve hundreds of millions of consumers and partners. We are considered one of the most successful companies in the world. What helped us in this? Ingenuity. This is the basis of our success. […] If done right, a few years after the invention, the innovation becomes habitual. People start yawning out of boredom. And that’s the greatest compliment an inventor can receive,” Jeff Bezos to Amazon employees.
Bezos said he will continue to be involved in the life of Amazon in his role as executive chairman of the board. But first of all, he will focus on the development of the Blue Origin space company and The Washington Post, as well as his own global initiatives. One of them, the $10 billion Earth Foundation, is fighting climate change. Last year, Bezos distributed a small portion of the amount as grants to environmental organizations. In particular, the EDF (Environmental Defense Fund) received $100 million to launch a satellite in 2022 that will monitor methane emissions. Whether Bezos’ environmental program will help reduce the negative impact on the environment of Amazon’s core business is not yet clear.
Amazon’s new CEO is Andy Yassi, head of Amazon Web Services (AWS). It is the largest cloud platform in the world that provides services for Netflix and Twitter, industrial giants General Electric and Unilever. In 2013, Amazon struck a $600 million deal with the US government to provide AWS power for top-secret CIA and NSA intelligence work.
- Chief prisoner
On February 2, the Simonovsky Court of Moscow replaced Alexei Navalny with a suspended sentence in the Yves Rocher case for 2 years and 8 months in a colony. The reason for replacing the term with a real one was Navalny’s violation of the obligations of the probationer. The oppositionist again got into almost all the front pages of socio-political publications around the world. Experts say that the hype surrounding the Navalny case will help prolong his political life.
“There are examples in history when politicians return from prison and re-enter political life. This happens when the organization to which the politician belonged continues to operate in one form or another, and like-minded people continue to feel like a community,” sociologist Ella Paneyakh explained to Rosbalt.
The events around the oppositionist and his supporters are already having negative consequences for the economy due to the likelihood of new sanctions from the West. The ruble fell to almost a two-month low (76,50 rubles/$). “Sanctions create a general background: the country’s economy is becoming more closed, less capital is coming to the markets,” Natalia Orlova, chief economist at Alfa Bank, was quoted by the BBC.
A group of US senators this week introduced a bill on sanctions against our country to the US Congress. They imply, in particular, the freezing of assets and the denial of visas, but the names and positions of the persons who will be subject to these restrictions are not named. There are also talks about sanctions in the EU countries. French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel demanded the immediate release of Navalny.
In our country, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova called the threat of new sanctions a continuation of “attempts to contain our country” under various pretexts. And the presidential press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, saw “the usual sanctions reflexes” in the bill of the US congressmen. The sanctions strategy is also criticized by some European politicians. Restrictions against our country have already “worse almost everything over the past six years,” Matthias Platzeck, former Prime Minister of the German state of Brandenburg, quotes the words of the publication “Economy Today”.
Week numbers
Superjob: every tenth company has introduced a dress code for remote employees
Employers want professionals to go on video calls in business attire and with a neat haircut. Most often, compliance with business style is required from bank employees and production managers. The dress code is least often used in IT and construction companies.
The number of Internet users in China has approached 1 billion
During the pandemic, since March 2020, the availability of the Internet in the country has grown to 70,4%. The vast majority, 99,7%, of China’s online audience go online from mobile phones.
A third of the world’s adult TV viewers prefer to watch TV on mobile devices
According to a study by British analysts from YouGov, this trend will accelerate the development of 5G networks and the spread of gadgets compatible with them.
Rating of countries where watching TV through mobile devices is most common:
“The use of personal data by platforms, platforms, government institutions in our country is not regulated in any way. This leads to abuse and misuse of data, to the risks of discrimination against citizens on a variety of grounds. If we do not stop the collection of personal data by anyone, we are waiting for digital Fukushima, – Natalia Kasperskaya, President of the InfoWatch group of companies, co-founder of Kaspersky Lab.
News of the week
- TikTok will now warn about videos with questionable information if a user wants to share a video with unverified facts.
- In our country, online bookstores in terms of popularity on social networks in 2020 bypassed household appliances, clothing and food delivery services and were second only to marketplaces.
- Nike has unveiled the first specially designed Flyease shoe that can be put on and taken off hands-free.
- Neuralink has implanted a neuroimplant into a monkey’s brain, and now it can play video games with the power of its mind.
- Delimobil carsharing cars will work with Multi SIM cards that support networks of several operators.
- Mexico approved the use of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine and signed a contract for the supply of 7,4 million doses.
Research of the week
- Duration of preservation of antibodies to coronavirus
British scientists have found that almost all people who have recovered from coronavirus maintain high levels of antibodies for at least six months after the illness. These antibodies are likely to protect against reinfection. Among patients who tested positive for COVID-19, 99% of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies persisted for three months. After a full six months – in 88% of cases.
- Skyscrapers made of wood are becoming more real
American researchers of new materials have developed a technology for the production of transparent wood for new generation homes. “Compared to glass, wood has a lower thermal conductivity, is lighter, stronger and more environmentally friendly,” says Liangbing Hu, professor of materials science at the University of Maryland and one of the study’s authors. With a window made of transparent wood instead of glass, the building would use less energy for heating and cooling.
What to see
The three-minute fitness workout has become one of the most popular videos on social media and media around the world. A 26-year-old physical education teacher from Myanmar shot the video against the backdrop of the start of a military coup in the country. This happened by accident. Khing Hnin Wai regularly recorded her workouts for almost a year against the backdrop of this intersection in front of the Parliament building. After the video of the historic moment went viral on the Internet, some commentators attributed the girl to an attempt to express political views in this way. The musical background for the training was the song of the Indonesian duet Ampun Bang Jago about the confrontation between the people and the authorities. Khing Hnin Wai herself denies that her video has any meaning other than demonstrating the exercises. As proof, she posted on her Facebook page similar videos in the same location, recorded on other days. And the music, according to her, was chosen simply for popularity – the composition has indeed often been heard by TikTok users lately.
Another successful launch of SpaceX ended on February 2 with an unsuccessful landing. After a successful maneuver at an altitude of 10 km, the SN9 went into controlled descent mode. Due to a malfunction of one of the engines, the spacecraft did not have time to slow down and exploded on landing. As explained in SpaceX, the company continues to work on the creation of a reusable system for transporting crew and cargo on long interplanetary flights.
In South Korea, the documentary VR project Meeting You is gaining millions of views and thousands of comments. Its creators demonstrate the use of state-of-the-art technology to meet the avatars of departed loved ones. In the first video of the project, a woman met in virtual reality with her daughter, who died from a serious illness. In the new version, a 51-year-old man contacts the avatar of his deceased wife. It took specialists six months to create a virtual copy of Kim Jung-soo’s wife. They had to combine the voice of a woman with the voice of an actress in order to achieve maximum similarity. Technology and video have received mixed reactions from the internet community.
What to listen
- Episode “Housing in Extreme Regions: Underwater Cities” of the podcast “We’re all going to die. But it is not exactly”.
Underwater archaeologist Viktor Vakhoneev talks about the idea of building an underwater station for long-term residence of researchers. Jacques-Yves Cousteau managed to implement such a project at one time. Another of these laboratories was located in the 1960s in the Crimea. The interlocutors discuss in a podcast whether it makes sense to build civilian underwater settlements.
- An audio recording of a conversation between Tesla creator Elon Musk and Vlad Tenev, founder of the Robinhood broker, in the “room” of the closed audio streaming social network Clubhouse.
This “video” is listened to by tens and hundreds of thousands of viewers of various YouTube channels around the world. The conversation of business stars illustrates the uptrend of a new type of social media. Clubhouse brings users together in conversations and audio conferences. Organizers and listeners can equally participate in the conversation and comment on it in the chat in real time. So far, such meetings have a limit of 5 thousand participants, and registration in the network itself is possible only by invitation.
What to read
- Longread “Northern “bitok”: how the business of the first mining hotel in the Russian Arctic works” from the author of Forbes.
The heroes of the material are Sergey Arestov, Dmitry Kikin and Vitaly Borshchenko, the creators of BitCluster, the northernmost crypto farm in our country. Sea containers equipped with equipment for cryptocurrency mining are located in Norilsk. The owners themselves “mine” and rent out the power. According to the plans of businessmen, in 2021 they will be able to mine up to 6 BTC per day, at the exchange rate at the beginning of February 2021, this is almost 14,5 million rubles.
- The book Dark Data. A Practical Guide to Making Good Decisions in a World of Missing Data by David Hand from Alpina Publisher.
British statistician David Hand writes that the data we have are never complete and may be just the tip of the iceberg. He identifies 15 types of information that influence our decisions and actions. For example, it could be the results of a medical study that were deliberately withheld or accidentally misrepresented, or data that was lost due to a poor set of sampling criteria. Hand breaks down real-life examples, from the Challenger shuttle bombing to financial fraud, and comes up with a guide on how to recognize and control dark data.
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