What we’re reading (4/22)
“American And Southwest Report Stronger Bookings, Ramp Up Schedules” (CNBC). “American Airlines posted its fifth consecutive quarterly loss on Thursday, while Southwest Airlines swung to a profit, boosted by federal payroll aid. Both carriers have noted an improvement in travel bookings and plan to increase flying during the peak spring and summer months as more people are vaccinated against Covid-19 and tourist attractions reopen.”
“Just Because You Can Work From Home Doesn’t Mean You’ll Be Allowed To” (Vox). “[A]s the return to the office picks up, the extent to which American office workers are allowed to continue working from home — which the vast majority of them have done during the pandemic — stands to affect everything from their satisfaction at work to where they are able to live.”
“Yes, Working From Home Makes You More Productive, Study Finds” (The Edge Markets). “The great work-from-home experiment occasioned by the pandemic has divided opinion in the corporate suite and sparked endless debates about whether employees work as effectively from the kitchen table as they do from the office. A new study finds that, in fact, remote work does indeed make us more productive… ‘[o]ur data on employer plans and the relative productivity of WFH imply a 5% productivity boost in the post-pandemic economy due to re-optimized working arrangements[.]’”
“The Curious Case Of First Union Capital” (Institutional Investor). “An investigation into First Union Capital reveals that its founder is not being truthful, if he even exists; that it appears not to be registered with the financial regulatory agencies in any country in which it claims to do business; that hundreds of thousands of traders have not used its online trading program over the past four years, as it claims; and that its assertion of the almost perfect predictive powers of its trading program is certainly bogus.”
“The Gray Market: How A Brazen Hack Of That $69 Million Beeple Revealed The True Vulnerability Of The NFT Market (And Other Insights)” (artnet news). “In the opening days of April, an artist operating under the pseudonym Monsieur Personne (“Mr. Nobody”) tried to short-circuit the NFT hype machine by unleashing “sleepminting,” a process that complicates, if not corrodes, one of the value propositions underlying non-fungible tokens. His actions raise thorny questions about everything from coding, to copyright law, to consumer harm. Most importantly, though, they indicate that the market for crypto-collectibles may be scaling up faster than the technological foundation can support.”
