Bloomberg – The disruptive innovators of 10 years ago are today’s stable incumbents. “Internet-enabled industry disruption defined business strategy in the 2010s, but as 2020 begins, that era appears to be winding down. The disruptors have largely become the new establishment, and unlike a decade ago, it doesn’t look like the new leaders will be displaced any time soon. Today’s internet is a mature and mainstream technology. This was not the case a decade ago. In 2009, multiple industries were in the midst of upheaval thanks to internet-enabled transformations. The iPhone was only two years old. In the music industry, compact discs still represented a plurality of revenues, and most of the rest came from digital purchases. Streaming, whether of music or on Netflix, was still in its infancy. We were in the middle of the transition from print ads to digital ones; 2009 was the last year the newspaper industry had higher ad revenues than Google, and the last year Facebook’s revenues were less than $1 billion. E-commerce was growing, but Sears and Kmart were still large retail chains. YouTube was known mostly for a handful of viral videos (Susan Boyle, anyone?). Today, much has changed. The music industry has become the streaming industry, with compact discs and digital sales becoming less and less important; today’s industry growth is powered by subscriptions. Beginning a few years ago, total revenues have started to grow again after 15 years of declines. The competitive threats to the leader in music streaming, Spotify, come from well-financed competitors with similar offerings, like Apple Music and Amazon Music, rather than a brand-new technology. The music industry may have been the first to be threatened by internet-related disruption in the late 1990s, with the growth of mp3 sharing and Napster, and is now perhaps the first industry to have completed its transformation…”.
How open-source software took over the world - CNBC – “Much of the software that powers the world’s largest companies, protects our personal data, or encrypts national security information is open to the public. Anyone can download the source code behind Facebook’s user interface, Google’s Android operating system, or even Goldman Sachs’s data modeling program, and use it as a building block for a totally new project. What’s more, lots of this software is actually developed collaboratively, created and maintained by an army of thousands, from unpaid volunteers to employees at competing tech companies. This is the world of open-source software, where code is written and distributed freely. So how did a business model that essentially revolves around giving away information and products take over the world?…”
A century from now, what will historians remember about the 2010s? “Populist threats.” “Irony abounded.” A period of paralysis
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ROBERT MICKENS. Pope Francis begins the most important year of his pontificate.
When the history of Pope Francis’ time as Bishop of Rome is finally written, there is a good chance that the Year of Our Lord 2020 will be recorded as the most important of his entire pontificate. Some are wondering whether it may actually be his last.
New crypto journal About Nakamato. With most of the famous people in it, and more to come.
This latest front in the food wars has emerged over the last few years. Communities like Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Fort Worth, Birmingham, and Georgia’s DeKalb County have passed restrictions on dollar stores, prompting numerous other communities to consider similar curbs. New laws and zoning regulations limit how many of these stores can open, and some require those already in place to sell fresh food. Behind the sudden disdain for these retailers—typically discount variety stores smaller than 10,000 square feet—are claims by advocacy groups that they saturate poor neighborhoods with cheap, over-processed food, undercutting other retailers and lowering the quality of offerings in poorer communities. An analyst for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, for instance, argues that, “When you have so many dollar stores in one neighborhood, there’s no incentive for a full-service grocery store to come in.” Other critics, like the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, go further, contending that dollar stores, led by the giant Dollar Tree and Dollar General chains, sustain poverty by making neighborhoods seem run-down.