August, 2019

• 14 August

  World’s longest undersea rail tunnel hits its first obstacle

  

  Bloomberg A plan to build the world’s longest undersea rail tunnel has hit its first snag. Financing of 15 billion euros ($16.8 billion) was agreed this year for the tunnel to link Finland and Estonia. But the Baltic nation of 1.3 million people wants more details on that funding, the business plan behind the idea and Finland’s role before giving ...

  Read More »
• 14 August

  UK wages rise at fastest pace since 2008

  Bloomberg UK wages rose at their fastest pace in 11 years in three months through June and employment climbed to a record high. The stronger-than-forecast figures from the Office for National Statistics suggest the labour market remains tight, meaning the Bank of England is unlikely to join the global rate-cutting trend, at least for now. However, unemployment rate rose as ...

  Read More »
• 14 August

  US farmers stung by tariffs now face a $3.5bn corn loss

  

  Bloomberg American farmers already stung by President Donald Trump’s trade wars now face billions of dollars in potential losses as controversial data from the US government snuffs out a rally in corn. The Agriculture Department said farmers planted a bigger corn area than analysts estimated and pegged crop yields that also exceeded expectations, sparking the biggest rout in futures since ...

  Read More »
• 14 August

  Facebook confirms it transcribes ‘audio files’

  

  Bloomberg Facebook Inc. (FB) has been paying hundreds of outside contractors to transcribe clips of audio from users of its services, according to people with knowledge of the work. The work has rattled the contract employees, who are not told where the audio was recorded or how it was obtained — only to transcribe it, said the people, who requested anonymity ...

  Read More »
• 14 August

  British artist gathered 10,000 tulips to show AI is beautiful

  

  Bloomberg If you want to know what a large set of data points feels like, try carrying 500 tulips through the streets of the Netherlands. This was the life of 34-year-old British artist Anna Ridler, when she set out to build with her own two hands the most extensive dataset of tulips possible. While it sounds scientific, the project was ...

  Read More »
• 14 August

  Renault’s no-frills brand bracing for costly exhaust rules

  Bloomberg Close to 10,000 people gathered near a Cistercian abbey north of Paris in June, not for a religious festival, but to celebrate a Romanian automaker named Dacia. Eric Lanneau, a 57-year-old former plumber, attended the Renault SA brand’s annual picnic, which featured a performance by French pop star Jenifer. He bought a Dacia Duster in May, won over by ...

  Read More »
• 14 August

  Let China build longest undersea rail tunnel

  

  An ambitious project to build the longest undersea rail tunnel in the world between Helsinki and Tallinn is being held up by the Estonian government over worries about the plan and where the money is coming from. It should let the life-changing link go ahead, even if its Chinese funding looks suspicious. The project’s developer, Finest Bay Area Development Oy, ...

  Read More »
• 14 August

  Android: A defensive bulwark for Google

  

  Articles sometimes have a long gestation. One that I published this week had its roots in my disagreement with a three-year-old podcast. In this 2016 episode of the Acquired podcast, David Rosenthal and Ben Gilbert assessed Google’s 2005 acquisition of the startup behind the Android operating system for smartphones. Rosenthal and Gilbert had a sensible view that Android was a ...

  Read More »
• 14 August

  The Federal Reserve isn’t sending a signal to buy stocks

  

  It’s time for investors to fight the Fed. A popular Wall Street saw is that the Federal Reserve has a heavy hand in the level of the stock market. The theory is that low interest rates buoy stocks and that high rates sink them, so by controlling interest rates the Fed controls the market indirectly. From that nugget springs the ...

  Read More »
• 14 August

  Stocks slide, bonds flash warning after weak data

  

  Bloomberg American equity-index futures slumped alongside stocks in Europe as weak data from two of the world’s biggest economies overshadowed an apparent de-escalation in the trade war. Treasuries and European bonds rallied, with key parts of both the US and UK yield curves inverting. Contracts on the S&P 500 fell alongside the Stoxx Europe 600 index as data showed Germany’s ...

  Read More »