Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)

• The Meanings of the Selfie - NYTimes.com

  • attention seems to be the name of the game when it comes to social networking. In this age of too much information at a click of a button, the power to attract viewers amid the sea of things to read and watch is power indeed.

• A New Twist in International Relations: The Corporate Keep-My-Data-Out-of-the-U.S. Clause - Bloomberg

  • Some companies are apparently so concerned about the NSA snooping on their data that they're requiring - in writing - that their technology suppliers store their data outside the U.S.
  • the language began appearing in contracts over the past couple weeks, and could be an early indicator of things to come as businesses adapt to a landscape altered by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden's leaks. Documents leaked by Snowden indicate that the NSA has tapped fiber-optic cables abroad, circumvented or cracked encryption and is massively collecting telephone records and Internet traffic.
  • U.S.-based technology companies face a serious threat.

• The Year Megaplatforms Ruled The Internet

  • 2013 was the year that a major, decade-long internet cycle neared its completion. 2014, at best, will be the very beginning of the next one.

• Do We Want an Erasable Internet? - WSJ.com

  • If the Snapchat model takes off—if other sites and services began to promote the idea of erasability as a competitive feature—the Internet would look very different from the Internet of today. It would be a more private network, one without the constant worry of every ill-considered picture or thought being held up for ridicule by the whole world, forever. But it also might be a less useful Internet, a network on which you couldn't look up an old photo every time you felt nostalgic, or where computers wouldn't always feed you suggestions based on your history, since your history wouldn't be complete.

• Christmas Lights? Electricity Price Index at All-Time High in U.S. | CNS News

  • he seasonally adjusted electricity price index hit an all-time high in the United States in November,

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Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)

• Power Assure and RagingWire Schedule Demo of Software Defined Power at Gartner Data Center Conference 2013 - HispanicBusiness.com

  • The demonstration will show how, once configured with the service level and other application requirements, Software Defined Power continuously and automatically optimizes resource levels, the companies said, both within and between data centers.

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Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)

• Friday Charts: The Death Of TV, Annoying Politicians And The Most Unexpected Economic Stimulus Plan - Seeking Alpha

  • every penny of lower gas prices per gallon yields $1 billion in economic stimulus, according to Deutsche Bank's Joe LaVorgna.
  • Meanwhile, the 800-pound gorilla in the online streaming industry,
  • So for every one American who ditched cable TV, almost two signed up for Netflix. The investment implications couldn't be clearer: Go short cable television and long video streaming.

• 10 Trends for 2014 and Beyond | JWT Intelligence

  • ● Executive Summary
     ● Immersive Experiences
     ● Do You Speak Visual?
     ● The Age of Impatience
     ● Mobile As a Gateway to Opportunity
     ● Telepathic Technology
     ● The End of Anonymity
     ● Raging Against the Machine
     ● Remixing Tradition
     ● Proudly Imperfect
     ● Mindful Living

• Evolve or Die: 5 New Service Areas You Should Be Looking At - Technibble

  • Evolve or Die: 5 New Service Areas You Should Be Looking At

• Wipro - Press Releases > 'Hybrid Cloud is the New Normal', says Wipro-Cisco Joint Study

  • IT decision-makers report great interest in using IaaS in a hybrid cloud approach to complement on premises capacity, rather than replace it, and are planning for the impact that it will have on network operations and spending. While a hybrid approach promises cost savings and significant gains in IT and business flexibility, some concerns remain around how to manage and integrate on-premises infrastructure with cloud services in a hybrid cloud architecture.

     

    The study notes that 60% of the respondents believe virtualization will be the primary technology over the next 12 months. Banking, financial services and insurance companies strongly recognize the link between virtualization and private/hybrid cloud enablement with 97% of those surveyed highlighting this aspect.

• Richard Bernstein's 10 Themes For 2014 - Business Insider

  • RICH BERNSTEIN: These 10 Themes Will Be The Big Market Stories Of 2014

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Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)

• E-cigarettes just more smoke and mirrors, doctors say | Fox News

  • A top concern is the nicotine delivery rate, Leone said. With nicotine patches and gum, the nicotine delivery is regulated, with small amounts of nicotine released slowly into the bloodstream. But with traditional cigarettes and now e-cigarettes, heat creates a freebase form of nicotine that is more addictive or what smokers would call more satisfying. The nicotine goes right into the lungs, where it is quickly channeled into the heart and then pumped into the brain.

      

    Once addicted, the body will crave nicotine. And although nicotine isn't the most dangerous toxin in tobacco's arsenal, this chemical nevertheless is a cancer-promoting agent, and is associated with birth defects and developmental disorders.

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Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)

• BYOD As We Know It Is Dead - Forbes

  • If BYOD 1.0 has been responding to the needs of the employee, BYOD 2.0 efforts will focus more on the needs of where the enterprise and the employee intersect. Perhaps the most valuable key attribute of BYOD 2.0 will be to provide right- time experience (user interface + user experience) to the systems, solutions and points of collaboration that are mutually relevant to the company and to the employee.

• BYOD As We Know It Is Dead - Forbes

  • 90%+ of BYOD activities are email, calendar, personal banking, news, family life coordination, Twitter and Facebook Facebook, but little else.
  • If BYOD 1.0 is about employees, what might a BYOD 2.0 look like?
  • how do we move from this Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) paradigm into BYOD 2.0, which you talk about as more of a “Use Your Own Device” mentality?

• Tech Trend for 2014: The Risk in BYOD Offices | Entrepreneur.com

  • 60 percent of businesses allow employees to access company networks via their personal devices under a strategy known as Bring Your Own Device (BYOD).
  • "The problem I have with BYOD is security," Hussain says

• Guest Post: Is Obamacare The Final Nail In The Coffin Of The Middle Class? | Zero Hedge

  • If there were any shreds of hope left that the stunning decline of the middle class could be turned around, Obamacare has absolutely destroyed them.
  • Obamacare is causing millions of Americans to lose their current health insurance policies, it is causing health insurance premiums to explode to absolutely ridiculous levels, and it is systematically killing jobs even though the employer mandate has been delayed for a while.

• New lithium-ion battery design that's 2,000 times more powerful, recharges 1,000 times faster | ExtremeTech

  • According to the researchers, this is not simply an evolutionary step in battery tech, “It’s a new enabling technology… it breaks the normal paradigms of energy sources. It’s allowing us to do different, new things.”

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Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)

• Patent Properties Announces Third Quarter 2013 Results - WSJ.com

  • In addition, we remain on schedule to launch an entirely new patent licensing solution for the mass market in the second half of 2014. We believe our new licensing platform, once built, will address significant inefficiencies in the multi-billion dollar patent licensing market

• How Silicon Valley turned on President Obama

  • Executives at Google, which issued a polite denial when the first revelations about PRISM came out, were publicly furious over the new revelations (which the NSA denied): "We are outraged at the lengths to which the government seems to have gone to intercept data from our private fiber networks," David Drummond, Google's chief legal officer, told The Verge. This is the same company that in October 2012 gave $342,409 to Democrats and only $37,250 to Republicans, according to data from OpenSecrets.
  • "There's a strong libertarian streak that dampens support for the Obama administration... Entrepreneurs don't like the government telling them what they can or can't do with their bodies or their wallets," says Craig Montuori, a Caltech aerospace engineer

• Little-Known Tax Funding Obamacare - My9 New Jersey

  • If you are single with an adjusted gross income of $200,000 or file jointly with an income of $250,000 or more, you may be impacted. Once you sell your home, any profits over the first $500,000 are already subject to a capital gains tax. And now those profits will have an additional 3.8% tax to fund Obamacare.

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Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)

• Report: MEMS sensors and hands-free UI will revolutionize mobile | TG Daily

  • Accelerometers, gyroscopes, NFC, and gesture recognition are predicted to be the big winners in mobile devices. These mobile technologies are projected to make the greatest penetration gains over the coming years, according to a recent study by analysts at ABI Research.
  • Hands-free operation or gesture recognition is soon going to become a key differentiator in high-end flagship smartphones, media tablets, and smart glasses,

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Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)

• HHS brings in Verizon to help HealthCare.gov

  • HHS office said Sunday the department would reach outside its government contractors to civilian companies that might be able to solve HealthCare.gov's problems more quickly

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Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)

• Obamacare's broken website cost more than LinkedIn, Spotify combined | Digital Trends

  • The exact cost to build Healthcare.gov, according to U.S. government records, appears to have been $634,320,919, which we paid to a company you probably never heard of: CGI Federal.  The company originally won the contract back in 2011, but at that time, the cost was expected to run “up to” $93.7 million – still a chunk of change, but nothing near where it ended up.
  • Government has a long history of spending money unnecessarily. But in an age when the U.S is home to the world’s largest, most successful Internet companies, how is it possible that we can’t even manage to build a functional website without blowing through hundreds of millions of dollars?
  • What I cannot stand is a nation that has vast technological resources in its citizenry spending $600 million of our collective money to slap together a product that, thus far, has only managed to waste people’s precious minutes. So the next time our government comes up with any bright idea that relies upon a massive website, let’s all be sure to ask how they plan to build it.

• Ann Coulter - October 9, 2013 - DEMOCRATS TO AMERICA: WE OWN THE GOVERNMENT!

  • Americans didn't ask for Obamacare, they don't want it, but now their insurance premiums are going through the roof, their doctors aren't accepting it, and their employers are moving them into part-time work -- or firing them -- to avoid the law's mandates
  • No doctors who went to an American medical school will be accepting Obamacare
  • Obamacare is turning America into a part-time nation

• Amazon’s ‘Login and Pay with Amazon’ Service Challenges PayPal For The Web’s Payment Business | TechCrunch

  • Amazon launched a service called Login and Pay with Amazon today at Money 2020 that lets partner sites enable a payments button that will compete with PayPal

• visualant_s1a3-15716.htm

  • We expect that we will need additional financing to implement our business plan and to service our ongoing operations and pay our current debts
  • Although the Company recently secured financing as a result of its private placement with Special Situations Fund and other investors, the funds received by the Company in that transaction may not cover all debts and other obligations due in the coming months. We may need additional financing within the next six months. If we raise additional capital through borrowing or other debt financing, we will incur substantial interest expense. Sales of additional equity securities will dilute on a pro rata basis the percentage ownership of all holders of common stock. When we raise more equity capital in the future, it will result in substantial dilution to our current stockholders
  • Some of the present shareholders have acquired shares at prices as low as $0.001 per share,

• Disability, USA - CBS News

  • It's been called a "secret welfare system" with it's own "disability industrial complex," a system ravaged by waste and fraud.
  • Go read the statute. If there's any job in the economy you can perform, you are not eligible for disability. That's pretty clear. So, where'd all those disabled people come from?
  • If the American public knew what was going on in our system, half would be outraged and the other half would apply for benefits
  • In 1971, fewer than 20 percent of claimants were represented. Now, over 80 percent of claimants are represented by attorneys or representatives.

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Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)

• Need health care coverage? Just dial 1-800-F**KYO to reach Obamacare's national hotline | The Daily Caller

  • Need health insurance? The Obama administration has you covered. Simply dial 1-800-FUCKYO to reach the next available health-care provider.

     

    Far from being a mistype, that’s the official number that Health and Human Services wants Americans to dial when seeking health care. Obamacare’s national call center really did list its number as 1-800-318-2596, helpfully spelling out President Barack Obama’s tendency to blatantly flip the bird in plain view.

• Researchers claim many jobs at risk for automation. Here's what they missed.

  • 47 percent of U.S. jobs are “at risk” of being automated in the next 20 years.

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Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)

• Are Robots Killing The Middle Class? | The Federalist

  • A few years back, President Barack Obama claimed that America was experiencing “structural issues with our economy.” It wasn’t simply that inflexible Republicans were standing in the way of prosperity but that “a lot of businesses” had become more efficient. “You see it when you go to a bank and you use an ATM,” he went on, “you don’t go to a bank teller, or you go to the airport and you’re using a kiosk instead of checking in at the gate.”
  • A few years back, President Barack Obama claimed that America was experiencing “structural issues with our economy.” It wasn’t simply that inflexible Republicans were standing in the way of prosperity but that “a lot of businesses” had become more efficient. “You see it when you go to a bank and you use an ATM,” he went on, “you don’t go to a bank teller, or you go to the airport and you’re using a kiosk instead of checking in at the gate.”
  • “Productivity is at record levels, innovation has never been faster, and yet at the same time, we have a falling median income and we have fewer jobs. People are falling behind because technology is advancing so fast and our skills and organizations aren’t keeping up.”

• Day traders, angels and venture capital: The internet changes everything, including money - Tech News and Analysis

  • Fast forward to 2013 and we are seeing history repeat itself with new financial innovation dropping regulatory barriers, lower costs, and driving much wider participation in a previously closed market. The club-like closed ecosystem of startup investing is about to be pried open, thanks to new rules from the Securities & Exchange Commission, which has approved many reforms as part of the Jump Start our Business Startups (JOBS) Act
  • During the day-trading revolution, the biggest beneficiary was Island/Datek Online, a day trading platform started by Joshua Levine and Jeffrey Citron. The analogy in the startup world is AngelList, a startup funding platform co-founded by Naval Ravikant and Babak Nivi.

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Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)

• IW 500 Lessons: Endless Projects To Consumerization Myths - Network

  • Dish Network Service, the satellite TV company, provides a typical example of the tablet and smartphone innovation we saw this year. Dish gave 15,000 field technicians Samsung Galaxy Note "phablets" on which they do all their work. Each device replaces three: a tablet PC, push-to-talk phone and in-vehicle GPS. The consumerization payoff comes from having a dramatically cheaper tech platform (several million dollars in savings the past year, the company says) and doing less training because the interface is familiar and easy to use.

• Give Back? Yes, It's Time For The 99% To Give Back To The 1% - Forbes

  • All proper human interactions are win-win; that’s why the parties decide to engage in them. It’s not the Henry Fords and Steve Jobs who exploit people. It’s the Al Capones and Bernie Madoffs. Voluntary trade, without force or fraud, is the exchange of value for value, to mutual benefit. In trade, both parties gain.
  • It turns out that the 99% get far more benefit from the 1% than vice-versa

• With iBeacon, Apple is going to dump on NFC and embrace the internet of things - Tech News and Analysis

  • For a couple of reasons: it opens a door to new set of applications such as indoor maps and in-store marketing, it makes the internet of things a realty and it might kill NFC (near-field communications), the wireless technology most linked with mobile payments
  • Using Bluetooth Low Energy(BLE), iBeacon opens up a new whole dimension by creating a beacon around regions so your app can be alerted when users enter them. Beacons are a small wireless sensors placed inside any physical space that transmit data to your iPhone using Bluetooth Low Energy (also known as Bluetooth 4.0 and Bluetooth Smart)
  • Just like NFC, iBeacons even allow you to pay the bill using your smart phone. The best part? iBeacon can run for up to two years on a single coin battery and it comes with accelerometer, flash memory, a powerful ARM processor and Bluetooth connectivity
  • On the other hand, iBeacons are a little expensive compared to NFC chips, but iBeacons range is up to 50 meters. Not all phones have NFC chips, but almost all have Bluetooth capability.

• Obama administration urges FCC to require carriers to unlock mobile devices - The Washington Post

  • Several months after calling for legislation to unlock cellphones, the White House filed a petition with the Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday asking that all wireless carriers be required to unlock all mobile devices so that users can easily switch between carriers.

• Investors Must Be Careful in the Hot New E-Cig Market (LO, RAI, VPCO.OB)

  • With so many competitors in such a relatively small but rapidly growing market, it is highly likely that price wars will soon start to ripple across the market. Rising competition means smaller margins, which will inevitably push some smaller competitors out of the market.
  • All of these factors point to one conclusion: Big tobacco has the ability to lock out smaller competitors.
  • All in all, e-cigs may be one of the fastest-growing and most disruptive technologies to hit the market this year. With so much competition now hitting the market, however, it could be wise to stand back and only back the winners -- when they emerge

• Student Loan Debt Could Cause The Next Financial Crisis | Market Daily News

  • Student debt in the U.S. economy is taking the shape of a bubble
  • The U.S. government has effectively become the biggest creditor to students. It has gotten to a point where it is forcing the big banks to move away from issuing student debt

• Seen At 11: 'Pulse Passwords' Could Soon Replace Pin Numbers « CBS New York

  • Soon, your heart and your body might be used to keep track of just about everything if new technology is able to unlock “pulse passwords”.

     

    Your heartbeat reveals more about you than your health, Bionym chief executive officer Karl Martin explained.

  • Our heartbeats are as unique to us as our fingerprints and now they are being used to replace passwords, key cards, and bank cards,
  • The new technology could pose considerable roadblocks for hackers because heartbeats cannot be replicated.

• Apple's Fingerprint ID May Mean You Can't 'Take the Fifth' | Wired Opinion | Wired.com

  • Because the constitutional protection of the Fifth Amendment, which guarantees that “no person shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself,” may not apply when it comes to biometric-based fingerprints (things that reflect who we are) as opposed to memory-based passwords and PINs (things we need to know and remember).
  • The privilege against self-incrimination is an important check on the government’s ability to collect evidence directly from a witness. The Supreme Court has made it clear that the Fifth Amendment broadly applies not only during a criminal prosecution, but also to any other proceeding “civil or criminal, formal or informal,” where answers might tend to incriminate us.

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Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)

• Everywhere I Go I See Jobs That Will Be Replaced By Robots - Business Insider

  • regardless of whether you believe automation is good or bad it is inevitable.
  • The bigger point is that we’re on the cusp of an era of accelerated automation of our workforce
  • This automation will happen at a speed that will mean people won’t simply be able to retrain into another role as has happened in the past
  • This will be one of the biggest challenges to mankind as it needs to reshape mindsets developed for thousands of years.

• 20 Great Ideas To Steal In 2013 - Network Computing

  • Two common themes this year are the use of Web-based collaboration tools and mobile apps that take up arms against bloated software and workflow complexity

• Virtualization: A Way To Do Much More With Much Less and With Greater Agility | Flash Foresights from Daniel Burrus | Big Think

  • Virtualization and cloud computing go hand-in-hand, and virtualizing servers is just the tip of the iceberg. The trend to virtualize everything from servers to processing power to software offerings actually started years ago in the personal sector.
  • Cloud computing, which refers to companies using remote servers that can store data and allow users to access information from anywhere, takes three different evolutionary forms
  • The second form of cloud computing, which is a private cloud, is growing rapidly. A private cloud exists when a company wants added security with cloud computing, yet they still want their people to have access to their bigger files and bigger databases from any device anywhere. Since it’s private, it’s secure and the public does not have access to it. Companies of all sizes are now establishing private clouds.
  • In February 2011, the TV game show Jeopardy featured IBM’s supercomputer Watson against human contestants. Watson beat the humans at Jeopardy quite well because it knew what it was good at and it focused on those categories. With virtualized processing power, you’re basically getting a Watson on your phone. That means you and your employees can make informed decisions about many things, very quickly

• The Cloud Era Begins for Enterprise Tech - NYTimes.com

  • The world now passing away consisted of business systems dominated by computer servers and personal computers. The new one subsumes these into cloud computing and devices like smartphones and tablets
  • One way to do that is to become the unifying agent for all the data that companies are spreading across their servers and cloud services.

• The Four Disruptive Technology Forces that Will Change the World | LinkedIn

  • 1. The internet of things
    A world where everyone and everything is connected. Sensors in everyday objects and devices will be capable of automatically transmitting data over high-speed networks. Those previously 'dumb' objects will then become 'smart' objects capable of automated machine-to-machine (M2M) communications.
    
    2. 3D printing
    This technology opens up amazing possibilities for individuals and businesses, with fully working parts able to be created at the touch of a button and for a fraction of the cost of doing it previously. Already 3D printers have been used to create everything from toys and parts for NASA's Mars explorer to medical implants.
    
    3. Graphene
    The development of the super strong and highly conductive graphene has huge implications for the traditionally silicon-dependant technology industry. Potential applications include flexible display screens, electric circuits, solar cells and use in medical, chemical and industrial processes.
    
    4. Connectivity
    Ubiquitous connectivity through a combination of superfast mobile broadband, fibre optic fixed line broadband and wi-fi will drive massive changes in consumer activity and also the way we live and work, especially with faster, lighter and smarter mobile devices.

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Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)

• Was Mitt Romney Right About Everything

  • I look at things happening and I say, you know what? Mitt was actually right when he talked about Russia, and he was actually right when he talked about how hard it was going to be to implement Obamacare, and he was actually right when he talked about the economy. I think there are a lot of everyday Americans who are now feeling the effects of what [Romney] said was going to happen, unfortunately

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Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)

• Labor Participation Rate Hits 34-Year Low

  • Following the Great Recession, we've entered into the Great Shift," says Express Employment Professionals CEO Bob Funk, who previously served as chairman of the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank. "This is a period defined by the Boomer retirement, Millennial frustration, and growing reliance on government programs. All indicators suggest this shift is not sustainable.
  • he New York Times reported on the study and suggested that "another cause [of the Great Shift] may be the rise in the number of workers on disability."

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Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)

• Lou Basenese - Seeking Al...

  • According to the 21st Business Herald, citing sources close to the National Population and Family Planning Commission, “China may relax its one-child policy at end-2013 or early-2014 by allowing families to have two children if at least one parent is from a one-child family,” says BofA Merrill Lynch economist Ting Lu.
  • if the Chinese start (ahem) getting it on, we’re talking about an extra 9.5 million screaming mouths to feed each year, or about 170 million more Chinese by 2033. That’ll be enough to put the U.S. Baby Boom to shame. And then some

• Home | Mail Online

  • Watt a bright idea! Brazilian mechanic uses plastic water bottles and bleach to create LIGHT - illuminating 1million homes

• Devices Connect with Borrowed TV Signals, and Need No Power Source | MIT Technology Review

  • A novel type of wireless device sends and receives data without a battery or other conventional power source. Instead, the devices harvest the energy they need from the radio waves that are all around us from TV, radio, and Wi-Fi broadcasts.

    These seemingly impossible devices could lead to a slew of new uses of computing, from better contactless payments to the spread of small, cheap sensors just about everywhere.

  • The devices communicate by varying how much they reflect—a quality known as backscatter—and absorb TV signals. Each device has a simple dipole antenna with two identical halves, similar to a classic “rabbit ears” TV aerial antenna. The two halves are linked by a transistor, which can switch between two states. It either connects the halves so they can work together and efficiently absorb ambient signals, or it leaves the halves separate so they scatter rather than absorb the signals. Devices close to one another can detect whether the other is absorbing or scattering ambient TV signals.

• NBC News buys smartphone video streaming company in bet on user-generated footage | The Verge

  • enable real-time sharing of smartphone video, which chief NBC News digital content officer Vivian Schiller believes is going to be the next generation of news coverage

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Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)

• The Business Case For Going Mobile - Network Computing

  • but there are plenty of good reasons why "mobilizing" your developer corps makes competitive business sense.
  • Adapting enterprise applications to the mobile world can be difficult but Mobile-Backend-as-a-Service promises to help.

• Creative Destruction Of Internet Age: Unstoppable - Global Cio -

  • Software is eating the world," is how Netscape founder and tech venture capitalist Marc Andreessen puts it. "More and more major businesses and industries are being run on software and delivered as online services -- from movies to agriculture to national defense," Andreessen wrote in The Wall Street Journal two years ago. "Many of the winners are Silicon Valley-style entrepreneurial technology companies that are invading and overturning established industry structures. Over the next 10 years, I expect many more industries to be disrupted by software, with new world-beating Silicon Valley companies doing the disruption in more cases than not.

• Market Daily News

  • It would be bad enough if hard working Americans just had to pay for their own health insurance.  But no, they are also expected to pay for the health care of members of Congress, employees of the IRS and other federal agencies, state and local government employees, their adult kids (because they can’t afford health insurance), the elderly, the poor, and now under Obamacare they will also be expected to subsidize the health plans of tens of millions of other Americans that are not poor enough to qualify for Medicaid. 

    When you add it all up, the hard working, productive members of society are at least partially subsidizing the health care of well over half of all Americans while having to pay for their own health care at the same time.

  • And if you can believe it, Obamacare actually provides an incentive to not work too hard, because if you make too much money you could lose your health insurance subsidy…

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Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)

• Exclusive: Cancer - A cure just got closer thanks to a tiny British company - and the result could change lives of millions - Science - News - The Independent

  • Immunocore is probably the only company in the world that has developed a way of harnessing the power of the immune system's natural-born killer cells:

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Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)

• Disruptions: Medicine That Monitors You - NYTimes.com

  • As society struggles with the privacy implications of wearable computers like Google Glass, scientists, researchers and some start-ups are already preparing the next, even more intrusive wave of computing: ingestible computers and minuscule sensors stuffed inside pills
  • You will — voluntarily, I might add — take a pill, which you think of as a pill but is in fact a microscopic robot, which will monitor your systems” and wirelessly transmit what is happening, Eric E. Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google, said last fall at a company conference. “If it makes the difference between health and death, you’re going to want this thing.

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Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)

• Windows 8.1 fingerprint reader support includes option to secure folders with a finger | The Verge

  • Microsoft is also working with various OEMs to encourage them to add fingerprint readers into laptops, tablets, keyboards, and mice. "You'll begin to see these be more pervasively available just to make it that much easier to log in to Windows," says Microsoft's Stephen Rose.

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Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)

• California Debates Fracking Ban - Business Insider

  • Three separate bills to ban fracking in California have been introduced in Sacramento, as the state reckons with sitting on top of enormous shale energy deposits.
  • the bills call for separate conditional moratoriums on the practice, which involves shooting huge volumes of water down into rock formations to free up oil and gas

• Stock Buybacks Surge To Record Levels - Business Insider

  • many companies have been borrowing money to buyback massive amounts of their outstanding shares
  • Buyback announcements over the past 3 months total a record $214bn, or double the quarterly pace of actual repurchases (~$100bn)," write the analysts.
  • that's a lot of stock being pulled out of the market.

• Why Bonds Are Getting Slammed - Business Insider

  • fears that the Fed will begin to taper its bond purchases soon have risen in a big way this month
  • the central bank could begin reducing the pace of its bond purchases as soon as Labor Day if the data warranted such action.
  • If the U.S. economic data continue to improve and cause investors to push further and further into risky investments – and the Fed actually does begin to tighten monetary policy stimulus – the "safe haven" appeal appeal of the U.S. Treasury market could continue to dissipate

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Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)

• In search of the perfect GMO potato

  • Unlike transgenic varieties Monsanto commercialized in the 1990s using genes from synthetic bacteria to kill insect pests, Simplot's new "Innate" brand potatoes use only potato genes
  • Haven Baker, Simplot's Yale- and Harvard University-trained vice president of plant sciences, said his scientists journeyed inside the vegetable's genome to "silence" unwanted attributes, while making sure it remained 100 percent potato

• Chesapeake Energy Corporation (NYSE:CHK): Natural Gas Will Be The Primary Fuel For The Next 100 Years | Market Daily News

  • natural gas will be the primary fuel for the next 100 years. Well-positioned gas companies will be golden for many years to come

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Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)

• Google urges fast adoption of VP9 video compression | Internet & Media - CNET News

  • At its Google I/O conference Wednesday, company employees made the case for the royalty-free, open-source technology as a higher-quality alternative to today's dominant video codec, H.264. Moving to VP9 -- available now in testing on Chrome and YouTube -- will save bandwidth costs.
  • One problem is that Google is moving very fast. Software such as Web browsers on PCs can be updated rapidly, but it's harder and slower work to build hardware support into chips so mobile phones can decode video without crushing battery life. The industry barely has started coping with VP9's predecessor, VP8, which has been on the market for three years.
  • Another big issue is that VP9 isn't competing only against H.264, a codec that's about a decade old. It also must reckon with HEVC, aka H.265, a standard that's now complete and that has the potential to spread as widely as H.264.
  • But there's another big part of the VP9 sales pitch: no royalty payments. VP9 is free to use, unlike H.264. HEVC/H.265 also will be free to use once the licensing organization MPEG LA finishes up its patent royalty plans. Google sees that as an unacceptable financial burden for startups, programmers, schools, and others who might want to launch a video project on the Internet

• DRM in HTML5 is a victory for the open Web, not a defeat | Ars Technica

  • The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the group that orchestrates the development of Web standards, has today published a Working Draft for Encrypted Media Extensions (EME), a framework that will allow the delivery of DRM-protected media through the browser without the use of plugins such as Flash or Silverlight.
  • Further, the groups argue that the Web is moving away from proprietary, DRM-capable plugins. The EFF writes that "HTML5 was supposed to be better than Flash, and excluding DRM is exactly what would make it better," and the petition claims that "Flash and Silverlight are finally dying off."

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Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)

• The Biggest Thing Since Amazon to Happen To .com

  • I predict that the eBay Global Sales platform will be the biggest thing to happen to online retail since Amazon.com.
     
     What is it? It's a new feature eBay soft opened last month, and it is available for all U.S. sellers.
     
     1. You enable it on eBay with a few clicks
     2. eBay then propagates your listings over their network in 27 countries
     3. When you get an international order, you ship it to eBay in Kentucky
     4. You pay the same fees as you would for any other domestic shipment
     5. eBay then ships it overseas, handling customs, export, and shipment
     6. Did I mention your fees don't change? eBay charges the customer for the international shipment.
     7. eBay removes any negative feedback as to the process from Kentucky forward, were you to receive any
     
     In the click of a mouse, you can now take your business from domestic to worldwide, as simple as shipping your packages to Kentucky.
     
     This is a game changer. For anyone that sells on Amazon, you now know why you have received 5 emails in the last 2 weeks from Amazon talking about you expanding with Amazon to other countries, but Amazon thus far makes it difficult to do so.
     
     I predict that the eBay Global Sales platform will be the biggest thing to happen to online retail since Amazon.com, and create a domino effect that will become the new global standard for international eCommerce.

• White House looks to 3D printing with $200 million plan for military, energy manufacturing | The Verge

  • The White House is looking to 3D printing as a model to revitalize the American manufacturing industry. Oh, and to help design new weapons and equipement for the military. That's the basis of a new $200 million public-private initiative announced by the White House this morning, which will create three new advanced manufacturing centers around the country. The White House is opening a competitive bidding process to universities and companies to host these centers, but all three will be modeled after a 3D printing institute launched in Ohio late last year, also funded by the government.

• New Zealand Government Announces That Software Will No Longer Be Patentable - Forbes

  • New Zealand Government Announces That Software Will No Longer Be Patentable
  • In a bill passed earlier today, the Government of New Zealand announced that software in the country will no longer be patentable.

• Internet Service on Planes: FCC to Consider Using Satellite Airwaves - WSJ.com

  • U.S. airlines have been rolling out Internet service on flights for several years. But the service, which typically uses Earth-based antennas, is often too slow for today's data-guzzling Web apps.

     

      Qualcomm Inc.  QCOM +0.23%  is pushing the Federal Communications Commission to free up airwaves used by the satellite industry. Such a system could be years away, but commissioners are likely to vote Thursday in favor of opening the issue to public comment, agency officials said.

• Say goodbye to the pin: voice recognition takes over at Barclays Wealth - Telegraph

  • Advanced voice recognition will detect whether a customer is who they say they   are after just 30 seconds of normal conversation, the bank claims.  

     

     The system, which is powered by the voice specialists Nuance, who are also   widely known to be behind Apple’s Siri technology, could end the frustration   of customers who struggle to remember passwords.

  • Barclays, is the first financial   services firm to deploy voice biometrics as the primary means to   authenticate customers in their call centres. A verified voiceprint is used   to identify the caller to the system, which will be rolled out across   Barclays in the future.

• 3D printing with metal: The final frontier of additive manufacturing | ExtremeTech

  • Few areas of technology have seen as much development in one year as that of 3D printing. Undoubtedly, the most dramatic and challenging has been printing with metal

• Nordstrom Using Smart Phones To Track Customers Movements « CBS Dallas / Fort Worth

  • the retailer is using software to track how much time you spend in specific departments within the store
  • sensors within the store collect information from customer smart phones as they attempt to connect to Wi-Fi service. The sensors can monitor which departments you visit and how much time you spend there.

• Daniel Burrus

  • For example, governments, organizations, corporations, educational institutions, and the military are in the process of installing connected sensors to just about everything, from the concrete in streets, bridges, highways, and buildings, to cars, boats, and everyday products,
  • Heaven must be really small ,because I can see it in my Mom’s eyes

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Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)

• Citi: The Solar Age Is Dawning - Business Insider

  • The biggest surprise in recent years has been the speed at which the price of solar panels has reduced, resulting in cost parity being achieved in certain areas much more quickly than was ever expected; the key point about the future is that these fast ‘learning rates’ are likely to continue, meaning that the technology just keeps getting cheaper.

• Tiny Device Will Detect Domestic Drones - US News and World Report

  • A Washington, D.C.-based engineer is working on the "Drone Shield," a small, Wi-Fi-connected device that uses a microphone to detect a drone's "acoustic signatures" (sound frequency and spectrum) when it's within range.

• Profits At High, Wages At Low - Business Insider

  • Corporate profit margins just hit another all-time high. Companies are making more per dollar of sales than they ever have before.
  • Wages as a percent of the economy just hit another all-time low
  • Fewer Americans are working than at any time in the past three decades

• Citi: Disruptive Innovation - Business Insider

  • Disruption 1: 3-D Printing
  • Disruption 2: E-cigarettes
  • Disruption 3: Genomics And Personalized Medicine
  • Disruption 4: Mobile Payments
  • Disruption 5: Energy Exploration Technology
  • Disruption 6: Oil To Gas Switching
  • Disruption 7: Over The Top Content
  • Streaming is already nudging out regular old TV
  • Disruption 8: The SaaS Opportunity
  • Disruption 9: Software Defined Networking
  • Disruption 10: Solar

• Senator Charles Schumer Targets Patent Trolls, Wants USPTO To Review Infringement Suits Before They Head To Court | TechCrunch

  • Today, U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) is expected to announce legislation that looks to snuff out patent suits brought by these companies in their early stages, by sending the suits to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for vetting before they hit the courts.
  • This could not only help snuff out bogus suits, but it could also highlight which patents may be bogus as well, creating a framework for preventing their use in subsequent suits.
  • the bill proposes a new process by which all patent cases will get vetted by the USPTO — not just the “extortion” (his word) brought by trolls. “This will apple to all patent cases, but if you have a legitimate case it will go forward in a month. It just eliminates all the frivolous suits. We think it’s the best solution.”

• UK.Gov passes Instagram Act: All your pics belong to everyone now * The Register

  • For the first time anywhere in the world, the Act will permit the widespread commercial exploitation of unidentified work - the user only needs to perform a "diligent search". But since this is likely to come up with a blank, they can proceed with impunity. The Act states that a user of a work can act as if they are the owner of the work (which should be you) if they're given permission to do so by the Secretary of State.

      

    The Act also fails to prohibit sub-licensing, meaning that once somebody has your work, they can wholesale it. This gives the green light to a new content-scraping industry, an industry that doesn't have to pay the originator a penny. Such is the consequence of "rebalancing copyright", in reality

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)

• The Presidential Wheel Turns - WSJ.com

  • This week something changed. George W. Bush is back, for the unveiling of his presidential library. His numbers are dramatically up. You know why? Because he's the farthest thing from Barack Obama.
  • Obama fatigue has opened the way to Bush affection.
  • One thing Mr. Bush didn't think he was was superior. He thought he was luckily born, quick but not deep, and he famously trusted his gut but also his heart. He always seemed moved and grateful to be in the White House.

• Apple's 10-Year-Old iTunes Loses Ground to Streaming - Businessweek

  • “There is nothing on iTunes’ store today that gives anyone the impetus to buy something.”
  • “It’s no longer about individual tracks, it’s about access,”
  • “The concept of buying music at 99¢ a song is becoming irrelevant.”
  • the market for downloads will begin to decline, albeit slowly, within five years. “We are in an interesting transition,” McGuire says. “Download-to-own will persist, but with younger consumers, access through streaming services makes more sense.”

• 22nd Century unit signs overseas deal | WKBW News 7: News, Sports, Weather | Buffalo, NY | Top Stories

  • Dutch Magic cigarettes fall into the "very low nicotine" category, and contain approximately 95 percent less nicotine than typical "ultra light" and "light" cigarettes
  • The new deal with Wilshire marks the first time VLN tobacco products will be available to consumers in Europe

• The economics behind Amazon's possible set-top box gambit | Internet & Media - CNET News

  • Here's his logic: If Apple, Roku, and others can make money on streaming media devices, so too can Amazon. The advantage Amazon has, though, is that it already provides streaming content. So if Amazon decides to give its set-top box customers Amazon Prime subscriptions for, say, one year, the company will be able to offer a better value than rivals even if they charge the same amount for the device.

• The TV Everywhere Revolution Has Finally Kicked Into High Gear -- AppAdvice

  • Cable’s stranglehold on Hollywood looks less secure than at any time in the history of the medium. The result is that 2013 could finally be the year when TV Everywhere finally becomes a reality, at least in a larger way than before
  • While cable is still the dominant method of TV viewing, streaming is gaining in popularity.
  • the ability to download or stream ad-supported content will be everywhere, no matter the device

• Few cable users aware of TV Everywhere - paidContent

  • Only about a fifth of pay TV subscribers know their cable, satellite or telco service provider offers technology that lets them view video content over the internet on digital devices.

• The Abundance Of "Rich-Hating" | Market Daily News

  • Wealth is no longer seen as a sign of virtue and hard work but as a symbol of exploitation.
  • Mitt Romney was right when he said there exists a mindset of “victimology”. No matter what brilliant entrepreneurs bring to the market, they are demonized simply because they earn much more money than the average Joe. This has lead to a growing sect of businessmen who find it necessary to tell the public that not only do they not support the system that brought them immense wealth, but they support government regulation to make things more equitable.

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