ALTIOTAKE FROM 3-7 MAY
Each week, we review the press, highlighting and responding to interesting and relevant articles in the news.
Old McDonald had a Carbon Farm
After a 2 year study on carbon farming, the European Commission published a framework on the implementation of carbon farming for both private and public actors. Carbon farming refers to the farm-level management of carbon pools, flows, and greenhouse gas fluxes. This initiative is a transition away from action-based payments towards a results-based scheme in which individuals receive payment dependent upon measured outcomes. Why this matters: this is the first incentivisation of carbon farming from the EU, as there previously was no targeted policy or fiscal tool to encourage farmers to undertake carbon management.
Verizon’s Spring Cleaning
Verizon will sell AOL and Yahoo for $5B to private equity firm Apollo Global Management. This sale follows a series of media divestitures from Verizon, who sold Tumblr in 2019 and HuffPost in 2020. Verizon had wanted to use its media assets to compete with Google and Facebook in online advertising, though the market was too competitive for Verizon to successfully enter. In turning away from online advertising ambitions, Verizon’s spring cleaning of its media assets suggests that the telecom giant plans to focus solely on its wireless and internet networks, sticking to core competencies and continuing to roll out 5G.
Into the DARK
Did you know that 6 out of 10 US IT executives found themselves more vulnerable to cyberattack during the pandemic due to the WFH migration? In light of heightened cybersecurity needs and high-stake attacks on the US government and Microsoft during the pandemic, Darktrace, an AI-powered cybersecurity firm, recently went public in London. Darktrace is interesting as it breaks from the norms of cybersecurity by employing unsupervised machine learning. The self-learning AI of Darktrace is analogous to the immune system, learning the “digital DNA” of an organization in order to adapt to changing environments and fend off attacks accordingly. The flexibility of Darktrace’s AI is a disruptive and welcome advancement in cybersecurity, moving beyond merely learning from past threats towards a reactive and specialised approach.