Forgoing the resume for jobs

When Health Data Research UK, a public-health research nonprofit, sought to improve the industry’s track record of recruiting Black women by starting a new internship program, it removed a key aspect of the screening process: the résumé. Instead of looking at the educational or professional experience to choose finalists from the 159 applicants for its program for Black people in health data science positions, the group created a short questionnaire that asked candidates to explain what artificial intelligence was or to talk about a recent piece of technology they were studying. The result was that more female candidates applied than men. In the end, 30 of the 48 interns that Health Data Research hired were women. The organisation is now using the same skills-based recruiting to make full-time hires. The effort was part of a movement of organisations setting up hiring processes that downplay the importance of academic and professional pedigrees.

(Adapted from “Removing Resumes From Hiring Process Can Improve Diversity,” by Naomi Nix, published on February 21, 2022, by Bloomberg Opinion) Why Nasa objects to Elon Musk’s space race)

Lockdown impact on energy

The first critical impact of the pandemic on the energy sector was the reduction in the annual energy demand in Pakistan. According to the Ministry of Energy, the electricity consumption was reduced by around 30-40pc in March 2020. The commercial sector experienced the largest demand drop of around 75pc, followed by the industrial sector that stood at 65pc. Although residential demand for energy increased, this had a significant economic impact as around 70pc of the power consumed by the residential sector is subsidised. The power distribution companies were also substantively impacted as the recoveries fell to 88.77pc from 90.25pc in 2018-19, mainly due to the practice of manual billing which was restricted due to travelling constraints and mobility limitations. Against 7.6pc required an annual decrease of emissions under the Paris Agreement the total emissions in 2020 fall by around 8pc in Pakistan.

(Adapted from “Green Recovery From Covid-19: Outlook For Pakistan’s Energy And Power Sector,” by the Sustainable Development Policy Institute, published in June 2021)

My cartoon ape got stolen

If someone takes your apes on the blockchain, you can try to get them back in federal court. There’s now a lawsuit in which a guy named Timothy McKimmy is suing non-fungible token (NFT) exchange OpenSea for allegedly negligently causing him to lose his NFT in the Bored Ape Yacht Club collection. He would like his ape back. Imagine telling a federal judge “see, my cartoon ape is vastly more valuable than Justin Bieber’s because it is in the top 14pc rarity, so please award me millions of dollars of damages against the exchange that negligently allowed someone to buy my ape for 0.01 ETH.” “What is an ETH,” the judge might reasonably ask. “The ape is a computer image, what does it mean that someone else possesses it, or that it is rare,” the judge might reasonably ask. “Why can’t you just right-click and save it, then you’d have your ape back,” the judge might reasonably ask.

(Adapted from “Bored Apes Go To Court,” by Matt Levine, published on February 22, 2022, by Bloomberg Opinion)

Musk’s space race

Rivals of Elon Musk’s Starlink might be dismissed as jealous or downright anti-competitive when they object to SpaceX’s plan to launch 30,000 more satellites into orbit for its space-based broadband service. It is not so easy to dismiss warnings from Nasa, one of SpaceX’s most loyal customers. Last month the US space agency wrote to the Federal Communications Commission outlining concerns about SpaceX’s plans for a second generation of satellites to add to the 12,000 already licensed. These range from the substantially heightened risk of collisions, adding to an already growing cloud of space debris, to the fact that so many Starlink satellites would make it harder to detect a “potentially catastrophic” asteroid strike on earth. According to Nasa, SpaceX’s proposals would leave a satellite streak in every asteroid survey image ‘rendering portions of images unusable’.

(Adapted from “Star wars: why Nasa objects to Elon Musk’s space race,” by Peggy Hollinger, published on February 23, 2022, by the Financial Times)

Published in Dawn, The Business and Finance Weekly, March 21st, 2022