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Americans To Get Access To Cuban Lung Cancer Vaccine

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Americans To Get Access To Cuban Lung Cancer Vaccine

While thoughts of travelling to Cuba’s unspoiled beaches was likely the first thing that came to many American’s minds when Cuba and the United States said they were going to be friends again, a more important benefit is coming our way.

The Roswell Park Cancer Institute of Buffalo, New York signed an agreement this week to import a Cuban lung cancer vaccine. The drug, named CimaVax, helps treat symptoms and recurrence of the deadly disease, said institute director Candace Johnson. Dr Johnson returned Tuesday from a two-day trade trip to the island.

“[Lung cancer] patients have a very high risk for recurrence. You have one nodule, you know you are maybe going to be get another nodule. You can now take this vaccine that could help prevent a recurrence,” Johnson told Buffalo TV’s WIVB News 4.

The institute will perform clinical trials of CimaVax in the United States and seek approval from the Food and Drug Administration, Johnson said. Cuban scientists will also travel to Buffalo to help with testing and research work.

The delegation to Cuba was led by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, the first U.S. governor to visit Cuba since Presidents Obama and Castro announced the historic thaw of relations back in December.

Following the announcement the Obama administration has rewritten some Cuba policies, which now allow deals like this. Only Congress can change the full scope of the embargo however.

The tiny island has long invested in medical research and is known for putting its extensive health system to work in ‘doctor diplomacy’.

CimaVax was developed by the government-run Molecular Immunology Center. The drug is not new, and Cuba hasn’t kept its success a secret. Cuban researchers began testing the drug in the 1990s and major world media outlets have reported on it in the 2000s.

Lung cancer is the most common cause of cancer deaths, killing over 163,000 Americans annually, according to the American Cancer Society.

HSBC To Flee London Because Of More Regulatory Oversight

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HSBC To Flee London Because Of More Regulatory Oversight

After freshly paying a record fine for market manipulation schemes, HSBC Holdings, Europe’s biggest bank, said it will review whether to move its headquarters out of Britain following regulatory and structural changes in the industry. The regulations are designed to shore up the financial system after 2008’s market crash.

The move shows just how imperial the big banks feel and the lengths they will go to in order to avoid regulation and accountability.

Shareholders, themselves other big banks, have urged HSBC to move its headquarters to Asia, likely Hong Kong, due to a hefty UK bank tax and increased regulatory scrutiny in London.

“The board has therefore now asked management to commence work to look at where the best place is for HSBC to be headquartered in this new environment,” said HSBC Chairman Douglas Flint on Friday.

“The question is a complex one and it is too soon to say how long this will take or what the conclusion will be; but the work is under way.”

The news comes after rival Standard Chartered was rumored to be looking at quitting London for Asia. Like HSBC the firm has blamed taxes yet is likely also looking for a more lax regulatory climate offered by Asia.

The decision for a formal review was made by the board on Thursday.

HSBC sees less regulation as “critical to our future success”. Among notable new regulation, designed to shore up the financial industry after 2008’s meltdown, is the requirement to separate its British retail business from the rest of the group by 2019.

Knowledgeable investors said that move is more significant than the bank levy and is likely the catalyst for the bank to move.

Army On Track To Have Women In Elite Ranger Ranks

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In what is a first for the Army, eight women have made it through the initial four-day assessment at Ranger School, officials said Thursday. The news raises the prospect that female soldiers will graduate from the elite course for the first time ever.

The tough women made it past Ranger Assessment Phase, commonly called “RAP Week,” along with 184 men according to officials at Fort Benning, Ga. Only 40 percent of students usually make it through the phase, which includes doing everything from chin-ups and push-ups to an exhausting 12 mile road march and a survival test that calls for climbing along a rope that is suspended over water.

Monday marks the first time ever that Ranger School was opened to women. An army spokesmen said 381 men and 19 women started on Day 1, meaning 48.3 percent of men and 42.1 percent of women made it through RAP Week. Both are within historic norms for Ranger School, which shows that the women did not get any special treatment either for or against.

RAP Week is usually the largest hurdle to graduating the 62 day Ranger School. Approximately 75 percent of the students who make it through eventually go on to graduate, Ranger School officials said.

The prospect of having women in the Army’s elite ranks shows the Army is slowly but surely becoming more progressive, though it still faces calls to include women in its elite units should they pass the standard tests.

Why Kleiner Perkins Should Sue Ellen Pao

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News broke that Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, the prestigious venture capital firm, is offering serial liar and opportunist Ellen Pao a deal to pay its one million dollar court costs and not tarnish its name by dragging the case further.

The offer was made in filings this week in California Superior Court in San Francisco. The firm said the case, which drew waves of negative publicity for the firm, cost it $972,815 in witness fees, deposition and court reporter costs.

As the winning party, KPCB is requesting the former associate, Ellen Pao, to reimburse it for these bills. But if she forgoes any appeal and lets the case die, the firm will forgive and forget, or at least move on.

Debra S. Katz, a Washington, D.C., lawyer who specializes in gender discrimination suits, said Kleiner sounded a little punitive.

“If Kleiner wanted to look classy, it could have said, ‘This was hard fought and we obviously disagree with your view, but it’s in the interest of all parties to walk away. In the meantime, there have been lessons learned and we are going to fund organizations that focus on glass ceiling issues,’ ” Ms. Katz said.

Ms. Katz is dead wrong. Ellen Pao, who somehow landed a CEO gig at tech company Reddit, should be made to account for her criminal actions.

Ms. Pao deliberately slept with a partner in a sophisticated scheme to blackmail the company into promoting her. When the firm caught onto her actions she pursued the case in court, claiming it was a gender issue. She dragged both Kleiner and gender diversity in the workplace through the mud. The former has every right to seek redress while the latter needs to loudly and vocally condemn her actions to disassociate from her selfish actions.

Pao is a fraud who sets hardworking women everywhere back 30 years. By falsely playing the gender discrimination card she devalues a serious issue and makes it harder for legitimate victims of discrimination to be taken seriously. She hurts the credibility of hard working American women everywhere.

Like all fraudsters, Ms. Pao should be publicly shamed and personally made to pay for her crimes in every way possible. Women everywhere need to condemn her actions and use her case as a textbook example of ways to set back women’s causes. There is nothing about Ms. Pao that is aligned with women’s issues anywhere. To use her case as any sort of victory is disingenuous.

Kleiner is right to go after her. Women everywhere should as well.

Ex-CIA Spyboss Petraeus Gets Slap On Wrist For Leaking Docs

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Ex-CIA Spyboss Petraeus Gets Slap On Wrist For Leaking Docs

While Chelsea Manning rots in a military brig ex-CIA head David Petraeus has been sentenced to just two years’ probation and fined $100,000 after admitting leaking classified documents to his mistress.

The married general, 62, dumped military logs containing classified material to his official biographer and mistress, Paula Broadwell. He then lied to FBI agents investigating the case, and faced charges that could have put him behind bars for up to five years.

In March he pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor of unauthorized removal and retention of classified material in a plea-bargain with prosecutors. The government’s lawyers recommended a $40,000 fine, but Magistrate Judge David Keesler raised that to $100,000 in light of the serious nature of the crime. He will now have to make regular visits to a probation officer for the next two years.

“A slap on the wrist is the most one could say about what can barely be called a sentence for what could have been treated as serious crimes including espionage,” said Michael Ratner, a lawyer representing WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange

In a move that exposes the shocking lack of integrity in our financial markets the disgraced general is now off to Wall St., where he is chairman of private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts.

The case and its outcome show the two sets of laws governing our country – one for the wealthy and connected and another set for the rest of us.

Google’s Internet-By-Balloon Scheme Is Lunacy

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Google’s Internet-By-Balloon Scheme Is Lunacy

Google has posted a new video showing the progress it has made on Project Loon, a plan to float thousands of balloons into the upper atmosphere to provide internet connectivity for developing nations.

The video shows project lead Mike Cassidy talking about scaling up Project Loon to build the thousands of balloons necessary to cover most of the world. He also highlights how the company plans to launch, track and recover them.

While the project is revolutionay in a meteorological sense and is surely a technical triumph, it should scare the pants off any current or prospective Google investors.

Yesterday Google announced its financial results for the year and for a 7th straight year they missed on earnings. While revenues were up so were costs and at a greater rate.

Google’s pursuit of side projects, such as self driving cars and internet-by-balloon schemes show a lack of focus at the company and a penchant for pursuing technically advanced projects with little market potential.

Google Glass, the failed glasses-meet-webcam, are a prime example. Technically remarkable yet ill conceived.

The projects demonstrate a culture of hubris and superiority that are proving ruinous for the company.

Take, for instance, Cassidy’s statement in the video:

“One of the key things we will do is partner with a telco in every country”

Yet Google has begun to compete with these telcos but launching Google-fi and Google Fiber. It’s unlikely telcos would be keen to partner with the company on yet another product that directly competes with them.

Cassidy also glosses over the suitability of existing mobile technologies for communication in tough to reach places

People walk around at ground level as a considerable amount of effort has gone into designing cellular systems to not waste power by beaming up into the sky which is why Ericsson CEO Hans Vestberg dismissed the idea last year, saying that conventional networks are rolling out so fast there is no market for Loon.

While Google may be the smartest guys in the room they have a focus problem. This starts with CEO Larry Page, the distractor-in-chief, and snowballs from there.

Anyone investing in Google should account for these distractions. Projects like Loon will never make it to market and be the game-changers Google wants them to be. While Google dithers with them other competitors will emerge and start taking market share. Between this and their anti-trust issues Google will be dead money for years to come.

What China’s Crackdown On Funeral Strippers Says About Its Government

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The Chinese Ministry of Culture announced Thursday that the government will begin clamping down on the hiring of strippers for funerals.

In a statement released Thursday, the ministry says they will be paying close attention to obscene performances in the eastern province of Jiangsu, as well as in Handan, and will charge individuals violating the prohibition.

Pictures are making the rounds on Chinese social media showing a dancer removing her bra for mourners.

The photos show that six erotic dancers had been hired to appear at the funeral of an elderly man from Handan earlier this year. An investigation was launched into the incident and found that their performance to be in violation of public security regulations.

The person “responsible for the performers” was arrested and held in jail for more than two weeks. He was then fined the equivalent of $10,000. The Chinese government vocally condemned the incident for “corrupting the social atmosphere”.

The recent crackdown is the latest government effort against the phenomenon and comes after a ten year battle against the practice.

The governments interest in this issue exposes the weakness of China’s communist political system. By centrally planning the economy resources continue to be mis-allocated – either to fat cat party members or through throwing money at issues not critical to the health and well-being of its citizens.

It also highlights China’s tough stance on personal liberties and freedoms. It spends vast sums of money and effort keeping its citizens from thinking independently and expressing personal beliefs.

This is a losing cause and one which will catch up to the communist party eventually. The current system of government in China is nothing more than a mechanism for ruling elites to enslave the population while they run off with the fruits of their labor. Sooner or later people will get wise to this, despite all the censorship and propaganda. When they do, watch out.

Apple Watch Requires 10 Videos To Understand

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Despite its very limited availability Apple has released a series of tutorial videos on its website, giving step-by-step instructions on how exactly to use the complicated new device.

Video number one: learn how to wait. Seriously, that’s the first video.

The videos feature super-high Apple production quality complete with patronizing voice-overs, telling you things like “to read the time you don’t even need to switch it on”.

The videos also tell what you what the watch can’t do.

The “Faces video” says the watch is “easy to make look however you want”, meaning you can change the display. While there are configuration options there are no tools to upload backgrounds or build your own watch app. It’s Apple’s way or the highway.

If you wanted your Apple Watch to look like a Tag Heuer or Cartier, forget it.

What’s most significant about the videos is that they expose major usability issues with the watch. While the watch packs a ton of technical power, and it should given the battery lasts under a day, its difficult to interact with.

It’s also notable that Apple felt the need to release a video about how to wait for you watch. The launch was clearly bungled and the delays mean people’s expectations for the product will increase as the weeks go by. This is not good for a first run product which will naturally not be as elegant or refined as the 6th iteration iPhone. People expect this refinement from Apple and making them wait longer for the watch only compounds this problem.

When you need a set of videos to work an Apple watch it indicate the UI is a nightmare. The combination of buttons, jog dial digital crown, swiping, standard and firm presses are just very complicated to use.

How the UI behaves also depends on what either you watch or your iPhone is doing. Swiping up will do different things if the phone is playing music or the phone is running maps. Not exactly the picture of uniformity customers have come to expect from Apple.

Another glaring issue address by the video is using Apple apps for common functions. For instance to use Apple Pay you need to double click on a button and then swipe to choose your card and then awkwardly present the face of the watch to the card reader. The process is cumbersome and non intuitive.

While Apple will no doubt sell a ton of watches it will be interesting to see how sales hold up going forward. Apple has a lot of money and reputational karma riding on the product and early indications are that it doesn’t live up to the reputation the firm has cultivated over the last 10 years.

Why People Get Happier With Age

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Why People Get Happier With Age

New research from Buffalo University and Northwestern University confirms previous studies that as people age, they tend to become happier and more satisfied with their lives.

The new study helps pinpoint one possible reason behind this improvement: people become more trusting as they age, which in turn leads to a number of benefits for their overall well-being.

“When we think of old age, we often think of decline and loss,” Claudia Haase, a professor of social policy and one of the study’s authors, said in a press release. “But a growing body of research shows that some things actually get better as we age.”

The research was composed of two separate studies. In the initial study, researchers looked at the link between age and trust by sampling nearly 200,000 people from 83 countries at different points over the past 30 years. A second, follow-up study, tracked over 1,200 Americans of different ages (Millennials, Gen X and Baby Boomers) over time.

The increased level of trust found in people as they aged led to improvements in well-being and happiness it was observed.

“Trust may benefit well-being because a sense of trust in other people allows us to derive support, comfort and pleasure from our social relationships,” Haase said. “People who trust more are also happier. Moreover, our study shows that people who trust more are not only happier today, but they also experience increases in happiness over time.”

The study was published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science.

Massive Magma Reserve Found Under Yellowstone

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Massive Magma Reserve Found Under Yellowstone

Yellowstone National Park is as beautiful as it is dangerous according to a discovery made by researchers from the University of Utah. While scientists have long known the park is an enormous supervolcano, its exact size has puzzled geophysicists for decades.

New research from the group, using seismic technology to scan hundreds of feet below the park’s surface, have made a bombshell discovery.

It turns out that in addition to Yellowstone’s 300 active geysers and thousands of hissing steam vents, it is also the planet’s greatest time bomb.

Using the new technique the scientists found that Yellowstone’s magma reserves are many magnitudes greater than previously estimated. According to the new data there is enough molten rock lurking below the surface to fill the Grand Canyon nearly 14 times over. The bulk of it is in a newly discovered magma reservoir, which the scientists featured in a study published on Thursday in the journal Science.

The discovery will help scientists better understand why Yellowstone’s previous eruptions, in prehistoric times, were some of Earth’s largest explosions ever to be recorded.

Using their data the scientists also created the first three-dimensional model of the geothermal structure under Yellowstone.

The discovery illustrates that, for now, the supervolcano is stable. But when it does erupt, and it will eventually, the explosion and its effects will be felt around the world.

“If another large caldera-forming eruption were to occur at Yellowstone, its effects would be worldwide,” the U.S Geological Survey said in a statement. The destruction would not only be felt in the immediate area, which would be covered in lava and ash, but also the rest of the world. The ash cloud would disrupt world air travel for possibly months, creating a major international situation.

For now though there is nothing to be alarmed about. “The actual hazard is the same, but now we have a much better understanding of the complete crustal magma system,” said lead researcher Robert B. Smith.

Snowden Popularity Shows Tech Literacy Gap In America

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An interesting study was published late Thursday about America’s perception of Edward Snowden, the ex-NSA contractor who leaked classified information about America’s illegal spying operations against its citizens.

The poll is interesting because it shows a deep divide in the nation between those who understand technology and are able to see its implications and those who don’t and are not.

Pollsters KRC Research found about 64 percent of Americans, who are familiar with Snowden, hold a negative opinion of him.

Yet 56 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 34 have a positive opinion of Snowden. This contrasts sharply with older age cohorts. As the age of cohorts increases, Snowden’s popularity decreases.

“The broad support for Edward Snowden among millennials around the world should be a message to democratic countries that change is coming,” says Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union. “They are a generation of digital natives who don’t want government agencies tracking them online or collecting data about their phone calls.”

The views of millennials are significant in light of a January 2015 finding by the U.S. Census Bureau that they will surpass the baby-boom generation as the United States’ largest living generation this year. This news should be heeded by politicians as they take stances on the controversial national security issue in the upcoming elections.

Millenials appreciate the effect of a spy agency having a dossier on every single American citizen. They appreciate that core values of the United States – like democracy, the judicial process and civil liberties – are serious compromised when this type of program is in existence.

It will be curious to see which politicians pick up on this shift in voter demographics and align their policies with this significant cohort.

NSA Now Spying On Your Snail Mail

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NSA Now Spying On Your Snail Mail

The NSA and America’s other secret police continue their war on Americans with revelations this week that the U.S. Postal Service photographs the front and back of all mail sent throughout the U.S.

The program is ostensibly for “sorting purposes” but the revelations are another example of an obscure surveillance program run by law enforcement. In this case the secret agency is the Postal Inspection Service, which in turns feeds the data to the National Security Agency, the agency who collects records from all spying program in the country.

For regular law enforcement who don’t have access to all the NSA data, the program lets state or federal law enforcement agencies request what’s called a “mail cover” which gives them access to detailed records of address information contained on the cover of envelopes and packages sent or received.

The program is not limited by warrants or a requirement that a person be targeted in a criminal investigation. Much like programs run by Google, Facebook, Comcast and AT&T a simple request on official letterhead is enough to get a list of every package coming or going from your residence.

Our courts, who increasingly take a dim view of privacy, have ruled that because a mail cover involves reading only information on the outside of the envelope it is not a violation of the Fourth Amendment.

The courts obviously have not considered the scenario where mail is fed through an automated, digital scanning machine that then builds a detailed database of every letter coming or going from every address in the country. Perhaps the implications of this dragnet are beyond their level of technical education.

“If your mail’s gonna be monitored—every single thing you send and receive—I would certainly feel that my privacy has been violated,” Steven R. Morrison, an assistant professor of law at the University of North Dakota said in a statement.

An internal audit found that in 2013 the Postal Service approved nearly 50,000 requests through a process with “insufficient controls” to prevent abuse.

Shockingly the system apparently also handle requests for non-law enforcement agencies, accepting over 80% of requests despite the organizations or individuals having no law enforcement affiliation.

The Postal Service runs another shadowy initiative called the Mail Isolation Control and Tracking Program, which it says has been used only in a handful of cases where toxic or contaminated mail was found in the system. It is not clear the full scope or rationale for the program.

The new revelations show just how pervasive spying on U.S. citizens has become. It is increasingly apparent that every single movement, transaction, comment or email is being logged, tracked and traced by our government.

Thus far, somewhat predictably, few elected officials have stood up against this most un-American behavior. One begins to wonder, if the NSA has elaborate records on everyone in the country, whether our elected officials are simply unable to for fear of retribution.

Why It’s Wrong To Value The Ocean At $24 Trillion

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An interesting piece of research came from one of Australia’s Queensland University. Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, one of Australia’s leading marine scientists and director of the University of Queensland’s Global Change Institute in St Lucia, published a report claiming to value the world’s oceans at $24 trillion.

Hoegh-Guldberg is the lead author of Reviving the Ocean Economy, a report published today by the conservation group WWF. It attempts to estimate the value of the ocean and proposes steps for its safeguarding.

The report looks at the ocean as one system, which has not been the case in previous efforts to value the oceans. In the past interactions between local and global factors have been missed along with interactions between fishing and ocean chemistry and so on.

“If the ocean were a country it would be the seventh-largest economy on the planet.” proclaimed the author.

After identifying the various interactions that could be priced the next step was to put a value on them. ”

“That is ambitious. No one has really tried to do that. One of the reasons why is people thought we can’t evaluate everything. How do you put a value on the climate regulatory activities of the ocean? And so the answer is: this is the minimum number. Despite that it’s quite large.” Said the scientist.

The report goes on to detail that ocean assets such as fisheries, shipping lanes and tourism are worth US$24 trillion and produce an annual value of $2.5 trillion from their outputs.

This is an interesting concept but the outcome is problematic. Jane Gleeson-White, author of Double Entry: How the Merchants of Venice Created Modern Finance devoted over 5 years of her life documenting it.

Our modern system of accounting and finance does not have a method of assigning value to things like the ocean, happiness or social connections. The value of these go far beyond mere dollars and simply cannot be valued using the present system.

In the case of the ocean it is the giver of life to our planet. It gives us every single piece of food consumed and every drop of water we need for life. To assign it a value, even a very large one, makes it seem replaceable. It is not.

The WWF and Ove Hoegh-Guldberg have not failed in their efforts. Their study is drawing attention to the environment and for this they should be lauded. But the idea that we can financially quantify the value of the ocean is an impossibility. It is time we looked beyond mere numbers to get a sense of the true worth of such things. It’s more holistic, less mathematical and for those reasons it is avoided by most. This should not be the case – we should increasingly try to move beyond debit, credit and balances when accounting for items precious to humanity.

E-waste Hits Record Highs In 2014, Leaves Horrific Legacy

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E-waste Hits Record Highs In 2014, Leaves Horrific Legacy

The volume of global e-waste — discarded electrical and electronic equipment — reached 41.8 million tonnes in 2014, an all time high, according to a new United Nations University report.

What’s worse is that the bulk of the expensive to dispose of waste ends up in developing countries where environmental regulations are lax and labor is cheap. The resulting environmental and health effects are devastating and lead to lasting health issues for workers involved in the disposal process.

The Global E-waste Monitor 2014: Quantities, Flows and Resources goes into an unprecedented level of detail and accuracy about the size of the world’s e-waste problem, what progress is being made in establishing special e-waste collection and treatment systems, and the outlook going forward.

Of the world’s e-waste in 2014 nearly 60% was discarded kitchen, laundry, and bathroom equipment. Personal information and communication technology (ICT) devices such as mobile phones, personal computers, and printers accounted for only 7% of e-waste last year.

E-waste in 2014

ewaste

This waste actually represents some US$52 billion of potentially reusable resources, yet virtually none of it was collected for recovery or even treated in an environmentally sound manner.

Less than one-sixth is thought to have been properly recycled or made available for reuse.

While e-waste constitutes a valuable “urban mine” — a potential reservoir of recyclable materials — it also includes a “toxic mine” of hazardous substances that must be (but too-seldom are) managed with extreme care.

It contains substantial amounts of toxins such as mercury, cadmium, chromium, and ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons.

The report found that just two countries — the U.S. and China — discarded nearly one-third of the world’s total e-waste in 2014.

It usually ends up at landfills, such as those shown below.

E-Waste_Landfill

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Pile of Waste - Electronic Waste Documentation (China: 2007)

Do You Use Online Forums? Read this.

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Parents and internet addicts take note: participating in online discussion forums may be good for your health, according to new research. The findings may also show negative health consequences associated with using Facebook and other social media.

The study, published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior, has found that internet discussion forums not only have positive links to well-being but are even associated with increased community engagement offline, contrary to common perception.

Further, the Researchers found, online forums have benefits for both individuals and wider society and are of greater importance than previously realized.

Although seemingly made obsolete in the past decade by social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, forums are still regularly used by around 20% of online users in the US. The study’s authors believe this value may be because forums represent one of the last remaining places online that afford the user anonymous interaction.

In the research, users were approached on a range of discussion forums serving a wide variety of interests, hobbies and lifestyles. Those successfully enrolled in the study were classified in two groups: those whose forum subject could be considered stigmatized (such as those dealing with depression, mental health, or a particular parenting choice) or non-stigma-related forums (such as those for car enthusiasts, weight lifters and social issues).

Participants were asked a set of questions about their motivations for joining the discussion forum, the realization of their expectations, their degree of identification with other forum users, their satisfaction with life and their offline engagement with issues discussed on the forum.

The study’s lead author, Dr Louise Pendry of the University of Exeter, said: “Our findings paint a more optimistic picture of old-style online discussion forums. Often we browse forums just hoping to find answers to our questions. In fact, as well as finding answers, our study showed users often discover that forums are a source of great support, especially those seeking information about more stigmatising conditions. Moreover, we found that users of both forum types who engaged more with other forum users showed a greater willingness to get involved in offline activities related to the forum, such as volunteering, donating or campaigning.”

Dr Jessica Salvatore of Sweet Briar College, added: “What we are seeing here is that forum users who get more involved develop strong links with other users. They come to see themselves as more identified with other forum users. And then these more identified users see the greatest benefits, in terms of positive links with mental health and getting involved offline. In a nutshell, the more users put into the forum, the more they get back, and the pay-off for both users themselves and society at large can be significant.”

The findings raise interesting questions about Facebook, which is notoriously strict about allowing people to disguise their identities. While this may help with some aspects, such as spam, it does not encourage the full honesty and range of discussion found in forums that allow for anonymity. This could explain several studies that linked increased social media usage to lower self esteem and happiness levels.

Baby Gear Rental Shows The Economics Of Sharing

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The sharing economy has produced some innovate ways to better match usage and ownership. Rent The Runway allows women to rent designer dresses, which are often only worn a handful of times if purchased. Airbnb allows house and apartment owners the opportunity to let someone else use it when they aren’t around. Dogvacay does much the same thing for pets. And then there’s Uber, the darling of regulators everywhere, who lets you share rides.

A new startup aims to achieve similar results by renting baby gear. Spoiled-One, started by two sisters, allows you to pay for only the baby gear you use. An added bonus is that they take all the research out of purchasing decisions which saves time – a precious thing for new parents.

Founded in Toronto and coming to America in the near future, the company offers modern, eco-friendly and non-toxic equipment for babies and toddlers, delivered straight to homes, hotels and airports. Their service, started in 2013, takes time, high cost, clutter and commitment out of the equation, leaving parents with a convenient, affordable and hassle-free experience.

For consumable products the service allows parents to “try before they buy” to ensure that any future purchases are a good fit. Her baby grew fast (as all babies do), which required her to constantly replace outgrown toys and gear. This was quite expensive, time consuming and on top of that, created clutter.

“I quickly realized that many mothers were experiencing the same challenge and recognized an opportunity to help address this. I took the idea to my sister-in-law Vicki and asked if she’d be interested in partnering. She agreed that this was a unique concept with plenty of potential and jumped on board. We put a plan in place and soon after Spoiled-One was founded.” Vicki said.

Typical customers for the service are young parents in major cities but also parents from out of town traveling to a new world.

The service is clearly a very modern approach to parenting as many of customers find them through social media (Facebook, Instagram and Twitter), traditional media and word-of-mouth. The company also works with high-end hotel concierges who help refer guests.

It will be interesting if this sort of service catches on in the American market, particularly with regular Americans. The service is currently high end but it seems there is no reason why it should remain there. By effectively managing to re-sell used baby gear to other new moms, the service should be able to create value for all parties and get a cut of the action for themselves.

Bees At Risk Of Addiction From Nicotine Related Pesticides

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Bees At Risk Of Addiction From Nicotine Related Pesticides

It’s not just human smokers or vapers than can become addicted to nicotine. New research has found that bees may be getting hooked on nectar laced with widely used nicotine-related chemicals in pesticides.

In addition to being hooked on the contaminated nectar the researchers also found that exposure to so-called neonicotinoids affects reproduction and colony growth in some bee species. The findings could help explain the rapid collapse of bee populations that have been observed over the last decade.

In Europe, restrictions have been placed on three such pesticides due to concerns for bees, but debate continues about the impact of low doses on these and other insects.

Companies including Bayer and Syngenta, makers and supporters of neonicotinoids, say the benefits outweigh the risks because they destroy pests and boost crop yields.

Researchers, however, fear they contribute to a decline in bees, which are crucial for crop pollination. Bee populations are slow to recover from dramatic die-offs and anything that encourages such events can have long last impacts beyond what can be observed in a lab or field study.

To learn more about the chemicals, Geraldine Wright of Newcastle University and colleagues offered bees a choice of drinking pure sugar water or a sugar water containing very low doses of neonicotinoids.

The researchers were shocked to find that honeybees and bumblebees drank far more from pesticide-containing solutions, implying that bees foraging in the wild would do likewise.

“There’s a conundrum that they are attracted to the stuff that actually is having a negative impact on their motor function and their ability to collect food and forage,” she told reporters.

The cause of the addictive behavior seems lie in the similarity of the chemicals to nicotine, which is actually produced by tobacco plants to prevent attacks by insects. In large amounts it is highly toxic.

“As soon as it gets into their blood they are getting a little buzz, as it were, and they are responding to that,” Wright said.

Evidence against the chemicals is growing

Backing up the researcher’s findings is a Separate study conducted by a team of Swedish researchers. The study found that oilseed rape sown from seeds coated in neonicotinoids reduced wild bee density, bumblebee colony growth and solitary bee nesting.

“At this point in time it is no longer credible to argue that agricultural use of neonicotinoids does not harm wild bees,” said David Goulson, a biologist at the University of Sussex, who was not involved in either of the research efforts.

It seems to be yet another case, similar to Monsanto’s stance on Roundup, where big commercial chemical companies are putting profits ahead of health. Perhaps its time we eliminate these chemicals from our own food supply.

Why Oil Prices Could Stay Low For Years

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Oil prices have been rallying lately and there is mounting evidence that oil prices are poised to rebound from a historic bust.

– Rig counts hit new lows this week. Baker Hughes says the U.S. lost 34 oil and gas rigs, bringing the total in operation down to 954.

– Domestic crude oil production looks to have plateaued and the EIA expects it to drop lower in May. Virtually every driller is dramatically scaling back spending, which will increasingly cut into new output.

– Oil consumption is finally picking up, as drivers across the country take advantage of cheap fuel.

But what is the bust really over yet? ExxonMobil’s CEO Rex Tillerson thinks talk of a price recovery is premature. Speaking at the IHS CeraWeek conference in Houston, Tillerson said he thinks that oil prices will remain low for the next several years.

There’s quite a bit of evidence to suggest that Tillerson may be correct.

For one, oil inventories continue to build. Although this build has slowed in recent weeks, it is still far higher than the average over the last five years. Until production slows to the point that consumers are drawing down inventories faster than they can be replaced, oil prices have bo room to increase.

Another notable factor that could limit any further increases in prices is the enormous backlog of wells awaiting completion. Most of the value of oil and gas coming out of shale, the most popular form of production right now, occurs in the first few months of production. Drillers are avoiding finishing hundreds of wells because selling into the low-price environment would earn them a lot less money than if they wait until prices rise again. The result is that there is a vast collection of shale wells that will be completed once oil prices increase which could bring a flood of new production online.

The precise effect on prices is debatable but the CEO of ConocoPhillips thinks it could send oil prices down once again.

“If you get a price signal, you’ll see more supply come on,” ConocoPhillips Ryan Lance said at CeraWeek. “That certainly has the opportunity to exacerbate the problem depending on where demand is.” He went on to add, “If $80-$90 [per barrel] comes back, there’s a good chance that $50-$60 comes back as well because of all the new oil that will come online from completed wells. Boom, bust, boom, bust.”

In addition to these factors if we look at the substantial declines in costs for drilling and Saudi Arabia now producing oil at the highest level in decade there seems to be lots of reasons why oil could stay low for some time.

Nobody knows where oil will settle for the next few years but we figure the CEO of Exxon would be fairly knowledgeable on the subject.

Why Is Our Country Only The 15th Happiest Place In The World?

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Why Is Our Country Only The 15th Happiest Place In The World?

Today the third World Happiness Report was released and America has come up short again. The report, which analyzes well-being through measures such as life expectancy, per capita incomes and perceptions of corruption, ranked the land of opportunity just 15th.

The results are surprising but we shouldn’t get mad. The report shows some key areas for improvement that don’t arise when looking at traditional measures we associate with happiness. We should take the feedback as a learning opportunity and not a failure. Our country is still great (and beats all others in one key metric, shown below) but we can always do better.

More countries, such as the United Kingdom, are looking at broader indicators, beyond GDP, to track their progress and inform policy decisions. The report, released Thursday, is edited by John Helliwell, professor emeritus of economics at University of British Columbia, Richard Layard, professor at the London School of Economics and Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute.

“We are encouraged that more and more governments around the world are listening and responding with policies that put well-being first,” said Prof. Helliwell. “Countries with strong social and institutional capital not only support greater well-being, but are more resilient to social and economic crises.”

Given the top countries are Scandinavian, not quite comparable to our country, Canada provides the most similar counterpart from which to measure ourself.

Canada has moved up a notch from its last report in 2013. Compared to its southern neighbour, “the U.S. is higher on GDP per capita, but Canada is higher on all five of the remaining variables: healthy life expectancy, social support, corruption, generosity, and freedom to make life choices,” noted Prof. Helliwell. “The net effect of the latter is much larger than the former, putting Canada significantly higher than the U.S.”

These areas for improvement are useful as we decide the future direction of our country. Should we support leaders, like Hillary Clinton, who seem to operate with impunity from the rules that govern our country?

Should we continually be re-hashing personal freedom issues like abortion and medical marijuana or allow people to make their own decisions?

And should we allow big corporations to dictate terms to the population on key issues like drug patents, international trade agreements and even new laws?

It seems we need to leverage our superior productivity, a huge advantage relative to the other countries in the top 25, and catch up with the rest of the world on the other factors. The good news is we’re probably further ahead than the report indicates. With medical marijuana reform sweeping the nation it likely signifies a trend towards more personal decision making and less ‘father knows best’ state interference.

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Facebook Invents Caller ID, Reveals Problems At Company

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Facebook Invents Caller ID, Reveals Problems At Company

Facebook has released a smartphone app called Hello that matches the numbers of incoming calls to friends and businesses on the social network, in a 21st century version of caller ID.

The tech press is going bonkers about it exclaiming “if you’re a retailer and you target millennials, it’s time to take note. This new Facebook feature could be a game changer,” exclaimed the Huffington Post.

Hello runs on Android and also allows people and businesses to call each other directly from their Facebook pages. This perhaps handy if you don’t have their number on hand.

“When you get a call, Hello will show you info about who’s calling you, even if you don’t have that number saved in your phone,” wrote Facebook product manager Andrea Vaccari. “You will only see info that people have already shared with you on Facebook.”

The more interesting element of the story is that the announcement came along with Facebook’s profit numbers, which were down 20 per cent year-on-year. While revenue was up it shows that Facebook’s business is in a tough spot.

As it stays around for longer it must continually invest in research and development to maintain relevance. By trying all these new things (not because they want to but because they are forced to), the company’s true business performance is revealed: not great.

Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel, in emails leaked from the Sony debacle, summed it up best:

“Facebook has continued to perform in the market despite declining user engagement and pullback of brand advertising dollars — largely due to mobile advertising performance – especially App Install advertisements. This is a huge red flag because it indicates that sustainable brand dollars have not yet moved to Facebook mobile platform and mobile revenue growth has been driven by technology companies (many of which are VC funded). VC dollars are being spent on user acquisition despite unknown LTV of users – a recipe for disaster. This props up Facebook share price and continues to justify VC investment in technology products based on abnormally large mkt cap companies (i.e. “If this company attracts just 5% of users that FB has, it will be HUGE” – fuels spend on user acquisition as user growth is tied to values).”

What we’re witnessing, in the release of Hello and Facebook’s acquisition of Oculus, is that the company must resort to increasingly more expensive ways to drive user engagement. This shows clearly the underlying sickness in Facebook’s core business.

It will be interesting to see, as the tech sector cools and VC dollars dry up, how the situation plays out for Facebook and its investors.

New Study Shows Babies Feel More Pain Than Adults

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In what is sure to stir up the corporal punishment debate new research has uncovered that babies feel pain in much the same way as adults and perhaps even more. The findings challenge some experts’ beliefs that babies don’t feel pain.

The logic behind the seemingly ridiculous idea that babies don’t feel pain is that babies’ brains aren’t developed enough for them to really “feel” pain, said study lead author Dr. Rebeccah Slater, who works in the department of pediatrics at Oxford University in England. “Our study provides the first really strong evidence that this is not the case,” Slater said.

“Our study suggests that not only do babies experience pain, but they may be more sensitive to it than adults,” she said in a press release issued by the university.

The study was composed of 10 healthy infants, ages 1 to 6 days, and 10 healthy adults, ages 23 to 36. All were subjected to MRI scans of their brains while they were poked on the bottom of their feet.

The MRI scans showed that 18 of the 20 brain areas that were active in adults in response to pain were also active in the babies.

Most interestingly, the scans revealed that babies had the same response to a weak poke as adults did to a poke that was four times as strong, which suggests that babies have a much lower pain threshold than adults.

“Up until recently, people didn’t think it was possible to study pain in babies using MRI because, unlike adults, they don’t keep still in the scanner,” Slater said.

But babies less than a week old are more calm than older babies, and “we found that their parents were able to get them to fall asleep inside a scanner so that, for the first time, we could study pain in the infant brain using MRI,” she explained.

The findings are particularly important since babies can’t articulate well their experience of pain and it is tough to assess pain from visual observations.

Practically speaking, said Slater, babies undergo painful procedures every day, but there is usually no pain management guidelines available to help clinicians.

“We have to think that if we would provide pain relief for an older child undergoing a procedure, then we should look at giving pain relief to an infant undergoing a similar procedure,” Slater concluded.

An interesting line of further research will be the pain tolerance of children versus adults and the implications this has on discipline techniques like spanking, which could turn out to be more severe than we assume. The researchers intend to pursue several different lines of inquiry related to their findings, according to the report.

Self Driving Cars Estimated To Cut 90% Of City Traffic

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New research shows just why Google and Uber are so interested in the idea of self driving cars. European transportation experts say congested cities could become a thing of the past, so long as people are prepared to be chauffeured by a robot driver.

A new study, published Thursday by the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, suggests that wide scale adoption of “taxibots” could cut the number of cars needed to perform the same number of journeys per day in major cities to just 10% of their current numbers.

The scientists used data from Lisbon, Portugal, to simulate how such self-driving cabs would affect traffic. Even with only one passenger per ride and no public transport like streetcars or buses in operation, the number of cars would still drop by 77 per cent.

The authors said replacing personal cars with self-driving cabs would also open up valuable real estate currently used for public parking to lucrative development opportunities. In Lisbon’s case this would be the equivalent of over 200 football fields.

The scope of the opportunity shows the potential size of the market and who would stand to capitalize – those making the automated cars and more importantly whoever was controlling the dispatch of them.

While Uber seems poised to control dispatch it’s unclear whether such cabs would be privately or publicly run. Given they would operate very similarly to public transit and be under tight regulation by the city, its conceivable that such ride sharing services could be an extension of public transit and not the taxi industry.

Hillary’s Tax Troubles Just Politics As Usual

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Hillary’s Tax Troubles Just Politics As Usual

Headlines are starting to mount against Democratic Presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton. After fellow contender Rand Paul tipped a major scandal to drop against the former First Lady, revelations broke that Clinton’s numerous charities had been given tens of millions of dollars in contributions which were not disclosed.

It now appears, according to Reuters, the Clinton’s numerous charities will refile half a decade of taxes to correct “mistakes”. While we of course expect better of our elected officials, the honest truth is that this is nothing new or remarkable.

When treasury secretary Timothy Geithner went through his Senate confirmation hearing the process exposed he, too, had ‘forgotten’ significant tax contributions towards Medicare and Social Security. The former Goldman partner, known for his financial wizardry, must have just made an honest mistake. The same honest mistake former Rhodes Scholar Clinton surely made by forgetting millions in donations from controversial governments like Russia.

The unsettled numbers on the tax returns undermine the concept of 990’s, the legal structure for political charities, role as a form of public accountability, experts in charity law and transparency advocates said today.

In Clinton’s case, for three years in a row beginning in 2010, the Clinton Foundation reported to the Internal Revenue Service that it received zero dollars from foreign and U.S. governments, a dramatic fall-off from the tens of millions of dollars it received in previous years.

The foundation now says those entries were “errors” and that several foreign governments continued to give tens of millions of dollars toward the foundation.

The revelations come weeks after the former Secretary of State and First Lady acknowledged she ran a private email server to conduct State business and then deleted nearly all emails from this time despite strict laws that forbid such actions.

Hillary clearly has ethical problems and believe the ends, no matter how extraordinary, justify the means.

But a bigger concern is our convoluted system of campaign finance and being elected to office. Between specific finance laws and our messy tax code it is all too easy for people, especially those with great means, to play games and hide the truth from American voters.

It’s high time we simplified this system so that the American public can have faith in the process and its easy to audit. It would mark a return to the simplicity that used to define America’s democracy.

Another Day Another Bank Scandal – Deutsche Bank Fined $2.5 Billion

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Americans should be outraged today as The New York Department for Financial Services announced that Deutsche Bank will pay a $2.5 billion fine “in connection with the manipulation of the benchmark interest rates, including the London Interbank Offered Bank (“LIBOR”), the Euro Interbank Offered Rate (“EURIBOR”) and Euroyen Tokyo Interbank Offered Rate (“TIBOR”) (collectively, “IBOR”).”

Predictably this latest fine is “the largest fine to date in the sprawling worldwide Libor investigation” according to the Financial Times. And yet it still amounts to just a slap on the wrist for another megabank as we shall explain below.

The bank’s fines will be allocated as follows: New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) will get $600 million, $775 million will go to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), and $340 million to the United Kingdom’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). $800 million will end up in the bank accounts of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).

Legitimate traders hope that the CFTC which can now afford to upgrade its systems to actually have some sense of the pervasive manipulation taking place in the S&P futures market on a daily basis.

Most shockingly, despite the record fine, nobody will go to jail. Again. Just like JP Morgan. Just like HSBC. Just like UBS. Etc. Etc.

The latest fine should have Americans outraged. There are clearly two set of standards being applied – one for common folks, who go to jail for much lesser offences and one for rich bankers, who simply pay to avoid jail time. To cap it all off the fines are socialized amongst the banks shareholders, including your pension funds, so effectively it is main street America that pays the fine and not the bankers themselves.

To give some sense of absurdity the fine works out to Deutsche Bank paying $25,474 per employee to keep its Libor-manipulating employees out of prison, which is a bargain compared to the $150,000 per employee JP Morgan had to pay late last year.

When Cronies Play Cop The Public Is At Risk

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Police and sheriffs departments all over the country use civilian volunteers to boost their forces. The practice allows them to wear badges and uniforms and even authorizes them to carry guns. If best practices are followed this can be a smart way for cash strapped departments to stretch their resources or to vet potential full-time hires.

Every once in a while, however, things go bad. Seldom do they go as bad as they did in Tulsa on April 2.

That’s when volunteer sheriffs Deputy Robert Bates, a 73-year-old insurance executive, shot and killed a suspect who had fled an undercover sting. Bates later said he thought he was pulling out his Taser but drew his gun instead and fatally wounded 44 year old Eric Harris.

Bates pleaded not guilty on Tuesday to a charge of second-degree manslaughter, posted $25,000 bail and got permission from the court to go to the Bahamas. The act displayed a tone-deafness about the killing that has plagued this case from the beginning.

The Tulsa incident is a vivid example of the terrible risks of giving unqualified people the life or death power police have.

It should remind every sheriff and police chief that they’re putting the public at grave risk if they use volunteer programs to do favors for the wealthy or well-connected people who have no business being on the street.

That’s what appears to have happened in Tulsa. Bates is far past the age when most active duty street cops retire and there are indications he was inadequately trained for his backup role.

Bates and sheriff Stanley Glanz are long-time friends. Bates has donated tens of thousands of dollars worth of vehicles and police equipment to the department. Bates ran Glanz’s 2012 re-election campaign and gave the sheriff a $2500 donation. Glanz initially excused the incident as a simple “error” saying that Bates had done nothing wrong.

Prosecutors took a different view.

Whether the friendship and the donations persuaded Glanz to look at the other way might become clearer during Bates’ prosecution. If that’s what happened, it wouldn’t be the first time.

Police chiefs and sheriffs desperate for money, besotted by celebrity or simply doing favors for friends, have too often handed out badges and guns to people who should have neither.

The chief of Oakley, Michigan sold the right to be a reserve officer for a donation of $1200. More if you actually wanted a badge. The Los Angeles County sheriffs department suspended a special reserve unit for celebrities in 1999 after one reserve deputy was arrested for brandishing a gun and another for money laundering.

Some departments run their volunteer programs the right way. Reserves are restricted to tasks such as office duty or crowd control or allowed to carry guns on the street only after rigorous training and careful supervision.

In Tulsa we know have a reserve deputy who face’s a manslaughter charge. This level of scrutiny shouldn’t be reserved for just the ride-alongs. Officials who let cronies play cop should face just as much scrutiny and be forced to account for the consequences of their decisions.

Google Blames NSA For Its Sloppy Security

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“Randomly watching and surveilling what’s going over the internet and invading the privacy of American citizens is not OK. Encryption is the solution.” answered Google Chairman Eric Schmidt when asked his thoughts on the state of cyber security during a conference yesterday.

While Schmidt has an extremely valid point – wanton surveillance of the citizens of our country puts us back in the middle ages – his words ring hollow when compared to Google’s role as a huge collector and commercial beneficiary of people’s data.

“When the Snowden revelations came out, we were very upset,” Schmidt answered. “It was not in collaboration with us. NSA stands for ‘Never Say Anything,’ and they didn’t say anything to us. We embarked on a programme to fully encrypt and secure the information that customers entrust with us. That means encryption at rest and encryption in transit. We know that it worked because now all the people who were snooping are complaining.”

Yet this explanation is far too convenient and ignores the dirty little secret of Silicon Valley: it’s all about making money. You and your data are the product and nobody cares what happens to you so long as it doesn’t hurt profits.

Take Snapchat, the social media darling that “destroys” pictures after a fixed amount of time. Yet it doesn’t actually destroy anything – the pictures remain on your phone and on the company’s servers in case that data becomes useful at some point.

The downside is that any of our numerous police or secret police can request any and all of your data without so much as a warrant. A polite letter on official looking letterhead is usually enough to do the trick.

Then take Mr Schmidt’s Gmail product. The premise there is to store every single email you’ve ever written or drafted, forever.

The premise is so scary that Schmidt himself deletes, twice, every single email he receives. He understands the implications of having every email you’ve ever sent looming over your head. Imagine how damning some of them could be if, say, you were facing an anti-trust investigation by the European Commission? Hillary Clinton too knows the danger of this.

If big tech companies actually cared they would engineer clever solutions to make sure the information the CIA / NSA and everyone else so critically want wasn’t collected and stored in the first place. But this type of truly sophisticated engineering is difficult and costs money. Companies like Google, Facebook and Snapchat would rather make gobs of quick cash than create products that truly advance society and prevent abuse by authorities.

The lesson here is that if you log it and store it the NSA or other secret police will come calling. To truly prevent this kind of spying the data needs to not be collected in the first place or stored in such a way it is impossible to use for spying. That is Silicon Valley’s real challenge and it will be interesting to see who steps up to the plate.

Why Our Politicians Should Study Singapore’s Prime Minister

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John McCain, the senior Arizona Senator, revealed in March he doesn’t use email. Senator Ted Stevens, of Alaska, once referred to the internet as a “series of tubes”. Mitt Romney, regarded as one of the brighter Senators, was “amazed” by touch screen technology during a 2012 campaign stop.

And then there’s Chief Supreme Court Justice John Roberts, a man who makes monumentally important decisions about all aspects of society, crime, business, politics and daily life in America.

In response to a case that involved social media, Roberts admitted “I don’t think any of us have a Facebook page, or tweet – whatever that is”.

Time and again we see legislators struggling to understand the subject they are passionately debating, yet lots of politicians talk about the importance of wielding technology.

Our elected officials and the people who put them in office should take note of Singaporean prime minister Lee Hsien Loong, who puts his money where his mouth is.

Yesterday he revealed he’s upset that he doesn’t have time to code stuff anymore.

The PM did so in a speech outlining the city-state’s many and enviable innovations. While touting the achievments he highlighted that the minister in charge of Singapore’s Smart Nation Programme Office, Vivian Balakrishnan, “… used to be an eye surgeon but since he does not get to operate on eyes nowadays, he dabbles in building simple robots, assembling watches, wireless devices and programming apps.” Clearly more technologically advanced than virtually all our elected officials.

Prime minister Loong said he envies Balakrishnan having time to code. “The last programme I wrote was a Sudoku solver in C++ several years ago, so I’m out of date.” he remarked.

But Loong already sees his next personal skills upgrade: one of his two MIT-educated kids recently gave him a book on the Haskell programming language. “One day that will be my retirement reading.” he said.

We should look at Loong and the elected officials of Singapore to see what it takes to be a truly technology-driven economy. While we have Silicon Valley a plan to turn all of America into a truly progressive, modern economy will take leaders that understand both the technology and the issues. It seems our current class of representatives could use a little personal skills upgrading themselves.

Comcast Interference In Hulu Deal Could Torpedo Time Warner Merger

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Comcast Interference In Hulu Deal Could Torpedo Time Warner Merger

Comcast is reported to have interfered in the sale of Hulu, a competitor to its cable TV business, in a move that could derail its mega-merger with rival Time Warner.

The cable giant allegedly talked its fellow Hulu investors out of selling the TV streaming service to DirecTV or AT&T by insisting it could steer the business to financial success.

The accusations are serious because Comcast had explicitly agreed with the FCC and US Department of Justice to keep its hands off the management of Hulu. After Comcast’s interference, Hulu’s investors Disney and Fox decided against selling the upstart to Comcast’s cable rivals.

The allegations were published in Thursday’s Wall Street Journal: it reports that, during a convention in Idaho in 2013, Comcast repeatedly assured Disney and Fox executives that it would position Hulu as a money-making rival to Netflix.

The indiscreet bragging apparently torpedoed a sale Hulu had planned to Comcast’s competitors DirecTV and AT&T. If the allegations are true, it means Comcast broke its 2011 agreement with the DoJ before Comcast acquired NBC/Universal from General Electric. In the deal Comcast promised it would give up any management control over Hulu, including its seat on Hulu’s board of directors, and make its content available to Hulu for streaming over the internet.

Comcast has thus far been silent on the matter.

Should the DoJ pursue a case against Comcast, the cable giant’s proposed $45bn acquisition of Time Warner Cable would likely be in jeopardy. The merger already faces stiff opposition, and is headed for a formal hearing with the FCC. A further DoJ complaint could be the final nail in the coffin of a deal already considered to be on the rocks.

What We Can Learn From Belgium’s Stance On Uber

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Uber, the American taxi hailing app the is dragging the industry kicking and screaming from the dark ages, appears set to score a rare victory in its war on middle ages taxi hailing.

Belgian Mobility Minister Pascal Smet has put out a plan to fully legalize the service, which is still technically illegal in Belgium despite the widespread popularity of the UberPop ride-sharing app, which connects travellers with drivers who are not regulated taxi drivers.

In addition to over 13 lawsuits statside, Uber has faced issues in France, the Netherlands, Germany and Spain. Belgium looks set to be the first country to overturn its existing ban on the service and bring it within legal regulation.

Smet’s plan — which includes a complete overhaul of current normal taxi rules from 2016 — has a good deal of political support. Sources from liberal party Mouvement Réformateur said they would back the Flemish socialists’ move and had long supported it.

Uber has over 700 drivers in Brussels, some of whom have been the victims of violent attacks from traditional taxi drivers who see them as a threat.

According to insiders familiar with Smet’s proposal, Uber drivers would be liable for tax on their earnings but would be free to operate so long as it was not their main job.

This is exactly the type of approach every single state, county and city in our country need to take with Uber. There is nothing dangerous or inherently wrong with Uber. The negative headlines come from ancient taxi monopolies who are loath to see competition in their markets.

Uber, in fact, makes taxis more accountable and safer. There is a permanent record of who drove whom, to where and in what vehicle. Uber holds its drivers to a higher standard than your average cabbie and makes communicating feedback about drivers easy and painless. Gone are the days of asking for a business card and calling into a switchboard to complain or inquire about lost items. If you forget your purse or laptop just text your driver. Simple. Painless.

It’s sad that a truly innovative company like Uber, which indisputably makes America a safer, better and more efficient place must waste hundreds of millions of dollars fighting red tape and bureaucracy.

Our country was founded on being a place that is easy to do business. Today we should look at Belgium and reflect on our founding principles. If we don’t, we’ll risk ending up just like the country we fled from all those years ago.

Idaho Native Creates Ingenious Shoe That Grows

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Having proper footwear is a serious health issue in the developing world. There are more than 300 million children in the world without shoes, with many more wearing shoes that don’t fit or are hanging together by a thread.

With no footwear, it’s easy for kids to get cuts on the soles of their feet which lead to infections and parasites. These health issues not only threaten their lives but they keep them from school.

In 2007, after graduating university, Idaho native Kenton Lee had travelled all the way to the Mothering Care Children’s Home in Nairobi, Kenya, to see if missionary work was really for him.

One day, while walking in the dirt to church with a group of orphans, Lee looked down at the ground and saw a little girl in a white dress who had cut open the tops off her shoes so that her feet would fit.

“Wouldn’t that be nice if there were a pair of shoes that could adjust and expand their size?” Lee thought.

Now 30, Lee can confidently say that there are. While he ultimately felt a little too homesick to be a missionary, he returned to Nampa, Idaho, with a mission: create a Shoe that Grows.

“I realize that my life isn’t just about me here in Idaho. We’re all in this together,” he said.

Like his customers Lee had to overcome many great challenges to make his dream a reality.

Upon his return Lee founded a non-profit, Because International, focused on what he calls “practical compassion.” He approached every big shoe company they could think of: Nike, Reebok, Crocs. And every one of them turned him away

Except one. Proof of Concept, a shoe prototype design company based in Vancouver, Wash., heard about Lee’s idea and instantly saw both the potential and the opportunity.

“I’ve been in the footwear industry for 30 years, and to my knowledge I’ve never seen one that did that. So the first question is: is it possible?” stated Gary Pitman, president of Proof of Concept.

While an average shoe might go through two or three prototypes, Lee’s shoe went through eight.

They arrived at a high-quality, durable leather and compressed rubber design to make sure the shoes are flexible and strong. They decided to use snaps because they are less likely to break than Velcro or buckles.

The final product is an ingenious sandal that uses straps and snaps to grow up to five times in size, meaning growing kids get to keep their shoes for years.

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To get the shoes to markets that needed them, Because International joined with four aid groups to distribute the shoes around the world, but it also accepts orders from any aid group that knows of kids in need of shoes.

“I don’t know every kid who needs a pair of shoes out there,” Lee said. “We really rely on people who work with kids anyway.”

The shoes are collapsible and can be packed tightly into a suitcase, which makes them easy to bring overseas. An order of 100 pairs comes to $1,200, or $12 a pair.

Lee’s American ingenuity and enterprising spirit are something to be celebrated, despite the fact he is a very humble guy just trying to make the world a better place.

To donate or purchase Lee’s amazing shoes visit: theshoethatgrows.org

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