3-D Printing Promises to Change Manufacturing - WSJ
The Future in 3-D
Marry carbon fiber and 3-D printing and things get interesting, writes our technology columnist Christopher Mims. Carbon fiber, a man-made material used in airplanes, race cars and wind turbines, is stronger, ounce for ounce, than steel or aluminum, but is usually expensive and surprisingly labor intensive to make. Now companies are working to make carbon fiber with 3-D printers, opening up possibilities from making light but strong parts for drones and other aircraft to replacing materials in many everyday objects. The chief executive of a company that sells a machine that 3-D prints carbon-fiber composites says: “We give you the strength of metal for the cost of plastics.” And a competing technology aims to replace injection molding with carbon-fiber 3-D printing using the same principles as an inkjet printer. Traditional manufacturing won’t go away, but it may never be the same again.
Monday, February 29, 2016
Sunday, February 28, 2016
Sensitivity to Language versus Weakness of Character
Sensitivity to Language versus Weakness of Character
Did you ever have someone say to you “oh, you shouldn’t say that, you might hurt their feelings?”
It seems as though that was all part of good manners – things like avoiding dinner party topics like religion, politics, etc. The idea of being provident and sensitive to others feelings.
Let me posit an alternative view that is clearly being churned up by the hypersensitivity – I would say “plaguing” – colleges, universities, etc.
For instance, Harvard is changing the use of the term “house master” to “faculty dean” . Why? Because somehow the term “master” has connotations of slavery and certain ‘sensitive’ people with sensitive constitutions – and I would argue a desire to focus on the past and not let it go – feel the potential derogatory connotations of the word might make someone feel insecure, insulted, whatever.
As a result, people are trying to insulate others (and since this whole movement of censored speech is apparently spreading, maybe it’s time to take a strident opposing view.
We could focus on ‘those’ needing the most protection – take a look around us and see all of the movements trying to achieve hegemony for their viewpoints. Of course American evangelicals and their social constructs including opposition to gay marriage and abortion come to mind. But, gee whiz, I don’t see any loud outcry from recent Republican Presidential candidates like Ted Cruz or Mark Rubio coming out against these points of view.
And, let it be briefly said, the idea of slavery and masters are over with. Such there is prejudice, but protections against slavery are enshrined in the law. But what about gay rights and abortion rights?
Here we have a major part of one of the two dominant political parties in the US fostering hatemongering and a goal of prescriptive legislation (against gay marriage and abortion rights) all of it ensconced in their religious beliefs.
Let’s get rid of all of this verbal hypersensitivity. We used to ban entire books because of some mention of a forbidden topic. Oh yes, coming out of the Victorian era, one just did not talk about sex in polite company or in books. Now it is hard to pick up a novel without very explicit sexual descriptions (some more colorful than others).
Let’s focus on respecting an individual’s right to learn about the history of the world and the perfidies of all those movements that want to enshrine prejudice.
Let’s all become less sensitized to bending to those whose own self-identity is harmed by their own desire to be lazy and not build a stronger self image. All of the tools are there for people to work to build a good self-image.
And, let’s not blame others for not teaching us or letting us learn and become adults. Censorship is horrific because it lets those who censor think better of themselves than those who wish to enjoy free expression and conscious exploration.
As the old saying goes, “there’s none so blind as those that will not see”.
Anyone who panders to subject restrictions (colleges in the US), word restrictions, etc. is just confirming the right of the small-minded to constraint and hold back self development. Quite a share really.
A smattering of other links would include the following:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/01/banned-words-should-schoo_n_1467265.html
http://nativenewsonline.net/currents/california-becomes-first-state-to-ban-the-derogatory-r-word-for-sports-teams-names-in-sports/
Thursday, February 25, 2016
Tuesday, February 23, 2016
Monday, February 22, 2016
Sunday, February 21, 2016
European Bank Nightmare Far From Over as Fines and Fintech Loom - Bloomberg Business
European Bank Nightmare Far From Over as Fines and Fintech Loom - Bloomberg Business
If you had to pick the moment when European banking reached the point of no return, which would you choose? ... Sept. 12, 2010, when Basel III’s raft of costly capital requirements started upending the economics of global finance?...
...Now they have to find a way to prosper in a marketplace that’s being reshaped simultaneously by strict new capital regulations and myriad financial technology startups that don’t have to abide by them...
...European banks aren’t going through a stormy phase that will eventually clear and permit them to claim a new golden age.The industry is undergoing a metamorphosis that will demand a thorough and radical alteration of its core operating model...
... More than 100 startups are now attacking the core services of retail banking in the U.S. and U.K...Venture capitalists, angel investors, and bankers themselves have plowed more than $24 billion into fintech startups worldwide in the last two years...
...UBS has been running experiments on issuing “smartbonds” in its blockchain lab here. Dopay, a startup based here that enables companies to pay their employees via an app, has joined forces with Barclays. ... “What no one expected was fintech.”...
...With most of their legal bills paid and Dodd-Frank’s rules written and implemented, U.S. lenders are getting back to business...
...Steve Schwarzman, the chairman and CEO of private equity giant Blackstone, suggested in the same discussion that regulators were stifling economic recovery in Europe by leaning too hard on banks. “Regulation has made the world more dangerous,” Schwarzman said. “Please don’t say that we have overregulated the banks,” said Dijsselbloem, who also serves as the president of the Eurogroup, which is made up of the euro area’s finance ministers ... Rather than saying regulatory regimes put in place are smothering economic activity, I think it’s actually the opposite. ...”
...London-based Funding Circle has arranged more than $1.5 billion in loans to small businesses in Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, the U.S., and the U.K. since 2010, delivering an average annual return of 7 percent to lenders. The startup is still tiny compared even with midsize banks. By matching borrowers and lenders on its website, it doesn’t have to use its own balance sheet to make loans...
...banks could just acquire fintech companies and try to fold them into their operations... JPMorgan Chase’s recent decision to distribute small-business loans through On Deck Capital, a New York-based online lender, groundbreaking. The bank is essentially telling the marketplace that it trusts On Deck’s methodology for managing risk. That’s huge for the burgeoning peer-to-peer industry...
If you had to pick the moment when European banking reached the point of no return, which would you choose? ... Sept. 12, 2010, when Basel III’s raft of costly capital requirements started upending the economics of global finance?...
...Now they have to find a way to prosper in a marketplace that’s being reshaped simultaneously by strict new capital regulations and myriad financial technology startups that don’t have to abide by them...
...European banks aren’t going through a stormy phase that will eventually clear and permit them to claim a new golden age.The industry is undergoing a metamorphosis that will demand a thorough and radical alteration of its core operating model...
... More than 100 startups are now attacking the core services of retail banking in the U.S. and U.K...Venture capitalists, angel investors, and bankers themselves have plowed more than $24 billion into fintech startups worldwide in the last two years...
...UBS has been running experiments on issuing “smartbonds” in its blockchain lab here. Dopay, a startup based here that enables companies to pay their employees via an app, has joined forces with Barclays. ... “What no one expected was fintech.”...
...With most of their legal bills paid and Dodd-Frank’s rules written and implemented, U.S. lenders are getting back to business...
...Steve Schwarzman, the chairman and CEO of private equity giant Blackstone, suggested in the same discussion that regulators were stifling economic recovery in Europe by leaning too hard on banks. “Regulation has made the world more dangerous,” Schwarzman said. “Please don’t say that we have overregulated the banks,” said Dijsselbloem, who also serves as the president of the Eurogroup, which is made up of the euro area’s finance ministers ... Rather than saying regulatory regimes put in place are smothering economic activity, I think it’s actually the opposite. ...”
...London-based Funding Circle has arranged more than $1.5 billion in loans to small businesses in Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, the U.S., and the U.K. since 2010, delivering an average annual return of 7 percent to lenders. The startup is still tiny compared even with midsize banks. By matching borrowers and lenders on its website, it doesn’t have to use its own balance sheet to make loans...
...banks could just acquire fintech companies and try to fold them into their operations... JPMorgan Chase’s recent decision to distribute small-business loans through On Deck Capital, a New York-based online lender, groundbreaking. The bank is essentially telling the marketplace that it trusts On Deck’s methodology for managing risk. That’s huge for the burgeoning peer-to-peer industry...
Friday, February 19, 2016
China's Empty Malls Get Weirder - Bloomberg View
China's Empty Malls Get Weirder - Bloomberg View
... The advent of online shopping has stunted brick-and-mortar retailing around the world. But China offers a unique example, thanks to the pervasive use of social media and the development of apps -- in particular, WeChat -- that seamlessly integrate shopping and messaging. WeChat's 600 million monthly users can easily toggle between a message about a pair of shoes and a mobile store on the same app where those shoes are for sale.
... In Beijing, an extraordinary 82.6 percent of retail sales now occur online, according to the local government.
...the Chinese shopping mall won't ever go away completely. In the country's increasingly cramped cities, malls will still serve as places to eat, be entertained and socialize
... The advent of online shopping has stunted brick-and-mortar retailing around the world. But China offers a unique example, thanks to the pervasive use of social media and the development of apps -- in particular, WeChat -- that seamlessly integrate shopping and messaging. WeChat's 600 million monthly users can easily toggle between a message about a pair of shoes and a mobile store on the same app where those shoes are for sale.
... In Beijing, an extraordinary 82.6 percent of retail sales now occur online, according to the local government.
...the Chinese shopping mall won't ever go away completely. In the country's increasingly cramped cities, malls will still serve as places to eat, be entertained and socialize
Leftists for Trump? This Year, Anything's Possible - Bloomberg View
Leftists for Trump? This Year, Anything's Possible - Bloomberg View
It's pretty clear that the Republicans want to be defined as conservatives. But they can't agree on what that means. Thus, John Kasich and Jeb Bush are compassionate conservatives, and Trump calls himself a "common-sense conservative."
It's pretty clear that the Republicans want to be defined as conservatives. But they can't agree on what that means. Thus, John Kasich and Jeb Bush are compassionate conservatives, and Trump calls himself a "common-sense conservative."
Monday, February 15, 2016
Putin is No Ally Against ISIS by George Soros - Project Syndicate
Putin is No Ally Against ISIS by George Soros - Project Syndicate
Putin’s current aim is to foster the EU’s disintegration, and the best way to do so is to flood the EU with Syrian refugees.
Read more at https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/putin-no-ally-against-isis-by-george-soros-2016-02#0uTuErIOUZKertDc.99
Putin’s current aim is to foster the EU’s disintegration, and the best way to do so is to flood the EU with Syrian refugees.
Read more at https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/putin-no-ally-against-isis-by-george-soros-2016-02#0uTuErIOUZKertDc.99
Saturday, February 13, 2016
The Oil Industry Got Together and Agreed Things May Never Get Better - Bloomberg Business
The Oil Industry Got Together and Agreed Things May Never Get Better - Bloomberg Business
Throughout the gloom, champagne flowed, backed by a jazz quartet.
If it's hard times for the industry, that wasn't obvious from the cocktail party circuit. Kuwait Petroleum Corp. welcomed guests to ballroom of the Four Seasons hotel in London’s exclusive Mayfair district with hospitality as if nothing had changed since 2014, when oil was $100 a barrel. Tables were laden with shashlik, oysters and even a whole lamb carved by a chef. In the dessert room, a chocolate fountain bubbled alongside bowls of strawberries.
The State Oil Co. of the Azerbaijan Republic - where a currency crisis has provoked street protests - offered four whole roast lambs, a sushi bar and chocolate truffles to thousands of guests at Park Lane’s Grosvenor House Hotel.
“We didn’t cut back,” said Elshad Nassirov, the company’s vice-president of marketing and investments, “in order not to spoil the mood.”
Throughout the gloom, champagne flowed, backed by a jazz quartet.
If it's hard times for the industry, that wasn't obvious from the cocktail party circuit. Kuwait Petroleum Corp. welcomed guests to ballroom of the Four Seasons hotel in London’s exclusive Mayfair district with hospitality as if nothing had changed since 2014, when oil was $100 a barrel. Tables were laden with shashlik, oysters and even a whole lamb carved by a chef. In the dessert room, a chocolate fountain bubbled alongside bowls of strawberries.
The State Oil Co. of the Azerbaijan Republic - where a currency crisis has provoked street protests - offered four whole roast lambs, a sushi bar and chocolate truffles to thousands of guests at Park Lane’s Grosvenor House Hotel.
“We didn’t cut back,” said Elshad Nassirov, the company’s vice-president of marketing and investments, “in order not to spoil the mood.”
... only 0.1 percent of global output has been curtailed because it’s unprofitable,
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-12/the-oil-industry-got-together-and-agreed-things-may-never-get-better
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-12/the-oil-industry-got-together-and-agreed-things-may-never-get-better
Thursday, February 11, 2016
Tuesday, February 9, 2016
Oil - Reasons to Pump Even More - Climate Change (project syndicate)
in the long term, the fact that fossil fuels are major contributors to the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide and thus climate change is likely to prompt policymakers – and investors – to take serious action.
This leads to what the German economist Hans-Werner Sinn has called “The Green Paradox.” The possibility that the use of fossil fuels will one day be restricted creates a powerful incentive for oil producers to sell as much as they can before the limitations take effect....
And yet, the forecast is far from rosy. History is replete with examples of technological advances interacting with resource availability, with enormous geopolitical impact. Britain’s oak forests allowed it to become the world’s premier naval power during the Age of Sail, when a good timber supply was the key to control of the seas. The Industrial Revolution turned steel and coal into strategic goods, and struggles over oil dominated much of the twentieth century, including during World War I, when the loss of Romanian petroleum contributed to the German collapse on the Western Front in 1918.
...
epochal consequences, as weakening oil prices undermine the authoritarian regimes that control the main producers. There is a large amount of scholarly evidence linking dependence on natural resources with poor governance – the “resource curse.” Whatever the many differences among Nigeria, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iran, and Iraq, all have one thing in common: Oil revenues have corrupted the political system, turning it into a deadly struggle for the spoils. As prices fall, the bandits in charge will quarrel more among themselves – and with their neighbors…
German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble’s recent proposal to pay for accommodation for refugees with a European petrol tax makes perfect sense….
…The blowback from ever-cheaper oil is a problem that no country is likely to be able to deal with on its own.
Read more at https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/low-oil-prices-political-instability-by-harold-james-2016-02#Rrrxfgsuk1OpeDlh.99
Italian Clans Build Cash Pile After Record $67 Billion of Deals - Bloomberg Business
Italian Clans Build Cash Pile After Record $67 Billion of Deals - Bloomberg Business
...a rising trend of prominent Italian entrepreneurs seeking to diversify their fortunes after selling family assets to take a more financially-oriented role in companies across industries and countries,...
..."As a consequence of the economic crisis, which started in 2008, some farsighted families understood that the only way to let their business survive in the global environment is to become part of bigger transnational group, leveraging on their capital, international connections and capabilities,” Tortorici said...
...
While the downside for Italy is losing the ownership of iconic brands such as Loro Piana SpA and Alitalia SpA, the upside is preservation of jobs and opening the way for new investments by industrial families that have struggled in the last few years to expand their businesses amid the deepest recession since World War II. That’s the case of unprofitable car designer Pininfarina SpA, which was sold by the family of the same name to India’s Mahindra in December, giving a future for its Italian workers.
...a rising trend of prominent Italian entrepreneurs seeking to diversify their fortunes after selling family assets to take a more financially-oriented role in companies across industries and countries,...
..."As a consequence of the economic crisis, which started in 2008, some farsighted families understood that the only way to let their business survive in the global environment is to become part of bigger transnational group, leveraging on their capital, international connections and capabilities,” Tortorici said...
...
While the downside for Italy is losing the ownership of iconic brands such as Loro Piana SpA and Alitalia SpA, the upside is preservation of jobs and opening the way for new investments by industrial families that have struggled in the last few years to expand their businesses amid the deepest recession since World War II. That’s the case of unprofitable car designer Pininfarina SpA, which was sold by the family of the same name to India’s Mahindra in December, giving a future for its Italian workers.
Sunday, February 7, 2016
New Air Force Satellites Launched To Improve GPS | TechCrunch
New Air Force Satellites Launched To Improve GPS | TechCrunch
before the Block IIF series, the accuracy of GPS could be off by 1 meter. With the new Block IIF satellites in place that error is down to 42 centimeters.
The change won’t mean much to the average civilian, but it could mean the difference between life and death for the military who uses GPS to guide munition to specific targets.
Saturday, February 6, 2016
The True Measure of Inequality - Bloomberg View
The True Measure of Inequality - Bloomberg View
That's an extreme case, but the tax-and-benefits system has so many overlapping components it's full of anomalies similar in kind if not in degree. If nothing else, the study underlines the harm, in economic terms and as a matter of basic justice, that follows from letting a needlessly complicated system proliferate unchecked.
That's an extreme case, but the tax-and-benefits system has so many overlapping components it's full of anomalies similar in kind if not in degree. If nothing else, the study underlines the harm, in economic terms and as a matter of basic justice, that follows from letting a needlessly complicated system proliferate unchecked.
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