😅A button😅 - Colorintech Newsletter #215

Colorintech Weekly - 215
(View this version on the web)

Hey

So you may not be able to make BTF in the day, but you have another chance to make it after work as we have a fully fledged afterparty bought to you by Uber. Check it out

This newsletter is free, but if you do want to get us a birthday cake to celebrate over 200 editions of this for our effort, an grab us a cake (and not the one Rihanna sings about :P🎂)

Oh and if you missed an edition, you can find it here or this platform, here

🗞️Diversity and inclusion news🗞️

😮Why do they hate us?😮

We were alerted to this headline "What’s behind conservative opposition to DEI?" and wanted to delve into it.

Like legitimately, we're really fascinated by why a group of often privileged (but not always) usual suspects decide when they wake up in the morning of all the injustices in the world today, that fighting a battle about DEI is the one they want to pick, and put legal effort, money and time into.

What about supporting the LGBTQUIA+ community or Black women inspires such rage, that ones mission is to end all targeted support for these communities? What is the end result these people want to see we ponder? A world where less people of colour or women are in work, or leadership or have less money. Perhaps even, maybe a return to slavery and ethno-supremacy (It sounds ludicrous but we have seen Race riots, and elected officials say some questionable things)?

Anyway we wanted to dive into what the article told us

Needless to say, do read the whole article however we pull out some of the key insights from the peer reviewed research, which suggests that conservative critiques of DEI often boil down to one thing: anti-Black racism.

What is Anti-black racism? Well that great source no one tells you to use Wikipedia puts it down to "is characterised by prejudice, collective hatred, and discrimination or extreme aversion towards people who are racialised as Black people, especially those people from sub-Saharan Africa and its diasporas,^[1]^[2] as well as a loathing of Black culture worldwide"

So basically racism is a big reason.

We then saw this report by the alliance for racial justice that called out the UK government for its approach to Equalities legislation stating

A better way to tackle institutional racism citing a gap in between the vision of the Equality Act 2010 and the ability for powers within the act to be implemented in practice.

The report outlined a number of recommendations

Explicitly define institutional racism and provide stronger mechanisms to hold authorities to account under the legislation.
Take a public health approach to ending institutional and systemic racism.
Appoint a Cabinet Minister for equality

You can read more here

👀Leaning into DEI👀

So we saw this article talking about Riot games and how they are leading into to DEI when many are pulling away. Why?

Well it feeds into this thing we saw in CNN which fundamentally reminds us, inclusion is good for business. In Riot Games' example. If they are to grow their sales and sell more games, they need to reach more consumers who come from a variety of backgrounds. Making sure they reach those consumers and let them know they are included in some of their massive multiplayer online titles like League of Legends is fundamental to that.

Another reason why some companies may not be pulling back so quickly in Europe too is the legal framework here which enshrines elements of reporting into law in the case of Europe’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, which is reported as being aimed at strengthening “the rules concerning the social and environmental information that companies have to report on,”

As the directive took effect this year it will ensure companies are reporting on a number of DEI metrics for years to come

You can read more here

🧠Things that make you go hmmm🧠

📲New iPhone but does anyone care?📲

Apple giveth and taketh away was how TechCrunch put it. In the latest Apple device announcement the new iPhone came out. For those who cared at all, the fuss around it came around the fact of after years of them taking buttons away, that they gave one back in the form of a specific camera button.😅

Yep a year's worth of innovation to include AI features, we already knew about and have seen on other devices in some cases for years, and a camera button🤔

Far from the "Glowtime" as they branded it but well if that is appealing the good news is Apple claim the iPhone 16 up to 30% faster than the iPhone 15 with prices for the new phone starting at $799 for the 128GB model, with the 16 Plus starting at $899 with the same amount of storage. The prices stayed flat which is a sign if any that even Apple don't think they can justify people paying more for this🤔

You can read more on what they announced here

Or on the button specifically here

So what?

Well it wasn't a surprise on this news the share price of Apple dropped but then people remembered it is still going to sell loads and they did announce some more significant improvements to their airpods and watches which should help revenue growth from their other devices

🔍Google's Ad dominance🔍

The UK's Consumer markets authority is unhappy at Google.

It claims

The CMA provisionally finds that Google has abused its dominant positions through the operation of both its publisher ad server and buying tools to restrict competition in the UK
The provisional findings relate to how Google ‘self-preferences’ its own ad exchange - harming competition and, as a result, advertisers and publishers

IN short, For example, the CMA points to Google giving its own buyers preferential access to its ad exchange and manipulating bids to have higher value within its auction than when submitted to rival exchanges.📈

Leading the CMA to alledge, this conduct has also obstructed other ad servers from competing with DoubleClick for Publishers (a google product)😮

Google obviously denies this so let's see where it can go but given they're being looked at for this and in the USA and EU similar things, if their appeals are unsuccessful it could be a very expensive set of fines💸