My mid-week morning train WFH reads:

• How Vladimir Putin Miscalculated the Economic Cost of Invading Ukraine The Russian leader apparently failed to anticipate the unprecedented targeting of the Central Bank of Russia, a step that has battered the ruble and shaken the country’s financial system. (New Yorker)

• One Year, 14 Metrics: The State of Biden’s Presidency. Evaluating Biden’s first year in office through a series of metrics as our guide to the administration’s progress throughout his second year and beyond. The Metrics: Energy | Household Wealth | Labor Force | Supply Chain | Markets | Electric Cars | Health Coverage | Immigration | Global Confidence (Bloomberg)

• As Tanks Rolled Into Ukraine, So Did Malware. Then Microsoft Entered the War. After years of talks about the need for public-private partnerships to combat cyberattacks, the war in Ukraine is stress-testing the system. (New York Times) see also Is the cyberwar coming or is it already here? Russia’s history of destructive cyberattacks in Ukraine is raising concerns about a cyberwar in the future. (Vox)

• Walmart Pushes New Delivery Services for a Post-Pandemic World As e-commerce growth slows, Walmart hopes new delivery services and supply-chain investments will help it boost online orders (Wall Street Journal)

• He Marketed Beanie Babies. He Doesn’t Get NFTs. Two Q&As about asset bubbles, NFTs, and Phil Mickelson’s crypto brain. (The Atlantic)

• Apple Has a Chance to Launch an iPhone Costing Just $199 A device priced at $200 could make inroads in regions like Africa, South America and parts of Asia that are currently Android strongholds. That would let Apple Inc. sign up more customers for services, potentially making a low-end iPhone quite lucrative for Apple in the long run. (Bloomberg)

• Who’s Requiring Workers to Be Vaccinated? The New York Times surveyed 500 top corporations about their Covid-19 policies as some workers prepare to return to offices. Many require vaccinations, but the consequences for failing to comply vary widely. (New York Times)

• Cryptographers Achieve Perfect Secrecy With Imperfect Devices For the first time, experiments demonstrate the possibility of sharing secrets with perfect privacy — even when the devices used to share them cannot be trusted. (Quanta Magazine)

• If You Drive a Giant Truck, You Are Declaring You’re Cool With Accidentally Killing a Stranger Killer Truck, Dude — How will you feel when it actually does? (Slate)

• ‘Hard-partying bands are the outliers now’: how rock’n’roll broke up with booze and drugs (The Guardian)

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business next week with Sebastien Mallaby, whom we previously had on as a guest (MiB is here) discussed “More Money Than God: Hedge Funds and the Making of a New Elite.” His new book is a must-read, a powerful tour de force on the history of the VC: “The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future.”

Ruble-Denominated Bitcoin Volume Surges to 9-Month High

Source: CoinDesk

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