TY's takeaways

[tychen927]

[NYT pick comment] - The best way to make this happen is for strippers to own strip clubs as co-operatives and fairly distribute the take. In reality, this probably happens infrequently because a certain amount of muscle is needed oil the industry. That is where exploitative men are more than happy to fill the need. Fix the need for muscle and you could alleviate the problem. - Recently I read an essay comparing the plight of strippers to the regulatory gray area surrounding "gig economy" firms like Uber and the "independent contractor" classification which allows both companies like Uber and strip club owners as described in this piece to skim off their "employees'" labor while not providing adequate compensation, such as health care. My takeaway is that we need a middle ground between regular employee and independent contractor that provides backbone services (Uber without drivers is just an app; strip clubs without strippers are just bars with obnoxious drink prices). Such a classification would have to be flexible, as people's priorities are on a spectrum (drumming up extra cash versus a full-time profession). I do not pretend to know precisely how this classification should look, but until our regulators and lawmakers bring this issue front and center, millions of workers will continue to be fleeced by their employers.

Stop Stealing From Strippers

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/13/opinion/stop-stealing-from-strippers.html

[tychen927]

- “Your” car could give you a lift to work in the morning and then give a lift to someone else in your family—or, for that matter, to anyone else: after delivering you to your destination, it doesn’t sit idle in a parking lot for 20-plus hours every day. By combining ride sharing with car sharing—particularly in a city such as New York—MIT research has shown that it would be possible to take every passenger to his or her destination at the time they need to be there, with 80 percent fewer cars. - Because autonomous vehicles don’t get lost, they create less congestion and shorten travel times. More important, self-driving cars would also make for much safer roads; more than 30,000 people a year die in automobile-related deaths in the United States every year and 1.2 million worldwide.

Full speed ahead: How the driverless car could transform cities

http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/sustainability/full_speed_ahead_how_the_driverless_car_could_transform_cities?cid=other-eml-alt-mip-mck-oth-1508#sthash.SSSbktQf.dpuf

[tychen927]

- In this context, radical Islam offers salvation, or at least purpose, in the form of a life whose moral parameters are strictly set, whose daily habits are prescribed, whose satisfaction of everyday needs is assured and whose rejection of freedom is unequivocal. By taking away freedom, the Islamic State lifts a psychological weight on its young followers adrift on the margins of European society. [NYT picks comment] The great victory of 1989 was not one of "freedom", but of capitalism, consumerism, and plutocracy. This "victory" cleared the way for a stark widening of income and wealth disparities, and a culture based on advertising, the entertainment media, and celebrities that celebrates the affluence of the few. This culture devalues ordinary, nonaffluent people, strips their lives of meaning, and leaves them with only the trivial freedom of deciding which TV channel to watch or which dish soap to purchase. By counterposing radical jihadism to "freedom", Cohen sounds a despairing note. The implication is that there is nothing the West can do to end the appeal of jihadism to the young, except perhaps to give up its own freedoms. But as his account poignantly illustrates, what these young people want is not so much an escape from freedom as a life with value, meaning, and purpose. There is no contradiction between freedom and a meaningful life. The real contradiction is between the rampant materialism of a consumerist and plutocratic society and a meaningful, purposeful life for people of limited means.

Why ISIS Trumps Freedom http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/14/opinion/roger-cohen-why-isis-trumps-freedom.html

[tychen927]

That technology is known as smart contracts—small computer programs that can do things like execute financial trades or notarize documents in a legal agreement. Intended to take the place of third-party human administrators such as lawyers, which are required in many deals and agreements, they can verify information and hold or use funds using similar cryptography to that which underpins Bitcoin. [example] One example is a contract offering a cryptocurrency reward for hacking a particular website. Ethereum’s programming language makes it possible for the contract to control the promised funds. It will release them only to someone who provides proof of having carried out the job, in the form of a cryptographically verifiable string added to the defaced site.

Bitcoin’s Dark Side Could Get Darker http://www.technologyreview.com/news/540151

[tychen927]

Ad Blocking Is Coming to the iPhone, But Will Anyone Notice?

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/538456/ad-blocking-is-coming-to-the-iphone-but-will-anyone-notice/

- PageFair, an ad tech startup, released a lengthy report on ad blocking late last year in partnership with Adobe. It was titled “Adblocking Goes Mainstream” and included some striking figures. Every month 144 million people make use of ad blocking software, it said, approximately 5 percent of all people who use the Internet. PageFair also said that leading ad blockers are growing fast in popularity.

- But the report also found that use of ad-blocking software is concentrated in a very particular demographic. Easy-to-install ad blockers are available for all desktop Web browsers, including Apple’s Safari. But almost all ad blocking is done by people using browsers that they have sought out and installed themselves. Usage in Safari is negligible, and PageFair’s report concludes that only a certain, technically minded demographic really cares about ad blocking.

[tychen927]

Western Business Stands Up to China

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/18/opinion/western-business-stands-up-to-china.html

- Under the guise of protecting national security, one proposal would severely curtail the activities of foreign nongovernment organizations (NGOs), including business-affilated groups and universities, according to media reports. It would require such groups to find an official sponsor, presumably a government-backed agency, and gives broad latitude to the police to regulate the groups’ activities and financing. If NGO representatives and other foreign groups are found to “subvert state power” or to “engage in or provide financial assistance for political activities,” they could be detained for up to 15 days, fined up to 300,000 renminbi, about $48,000, and investigated for “criminal liability.”

- The president of the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China, Joerg Wuttke, told The Washington Post that the definition of national security is so vague and extensive it could apply to almost any activity.

- Foreign businesses have an important role to play in challenging China’s authoritarian laws and they should continue pressing the world’s second-largest economy to adopt international standards of openness.

[tychen927]

How inequality affects growth

http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2015/06/economist-explains-11

- In 1975 Arthur Okun, an American economist, argued that societies cannot have both perfect equality and perfect efficiency, but must choose how much of one to sacrifice for the other.

- While most economists continue to hold that view, the recent rise in inequality has prompted a new look at its economic costs. Inequality could impair growth if those with low incomes suffer poor health and low productivity as a result, or if, as evidence suggests, the poor struggle to finance investments in education. Inequality could also threaten public confidence in growth-boosting policies like free trade, says Dani Rodrik of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.

- More recent work suggests that inequality could lead to economic or financial instability. In a 2010 book Raghuram Rajan, now governor of the Reserve Bank of India, argued that governments often respond to inequality by easing the flow of credit to poorer households.

- Other recent research suggests American households borrowed heavily prior to the crisis to prop up their consumption. But for this rise in household debt, consumption would have stagnated as a result of poor wage growth. Economic eminences such as Ben Bernanke and Larry Summers argue that inequality may also contribute to the world's "savings glut", since the rich are less likely to spend an additional dollar than the poor. As savings pile up, interest rates fall, boosting asset prices, encouraging borrowing and making it more difficult for central banks to manage the economy. 

[tychen927]

If fintech doesn't kill banks, it might instead sap the sector's profitability. A future as a sort of financial utility—ubiquitous but heavily regulated, unglamorous and marginally profitable—is hardly a gratifying outcome for banks. Around half of all (retail) bank customers are unprofitable already. If ever more of them flock to fintech startups for ancillary services such as foreign exchange, that proportion will increase inexorably. One solution may be for charges on current accounts to rise, for example with monthly charges, to compensate for lost cross-subsidies. Another would be for banks to slash costs, and many are shuttering large numbers of pricey branches. A last resort might be for banks to buy the fintech insurgents. A billion dollars sounds like a lot, but it is spare change for a bank CEO wondering if the newcomers will render his firm obsolete.

Why fintech won't kill banks  

http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2015/06/economist-explains-12

[tychen927]

Is the world running out of food?

http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2015/06/economist-explains-13

- Agricultural productivity is often shockingly low in “traditional” farming practices. That leaves plenty of room for improvement. 

- But in most kinds of agriculture, scarce water can be used more sensibly. A study by Britain’s Institution of Mechanical Engineers estimated that 550 billion litres are wasted annually in crop production. Eliminating waste, for example by drip-feed irrigation, could raise food production by 60% or more. Phosphorus (a finite resource, unlike water) is wasted too: only a fifth of the phosphorus mined actually ends up in food.

- Climate change will indeed hurt some farmers but helps others (so, perhaps, does more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere).

- GM crops (such as drought-resistant rice, heat-resistant maize or blight-resistant wheat) have huge potential.

- Technology is only part of the solution. The food chain lacks resilience to other forms of disruption too, from political strife to consumer panics. 

[tychen927]

The German government has mobilized the loans to stabilize Europe economically after the debt crisis. But now it faces an even bigger challenge: to give the Continent a badly needed dose of confidence, a restoration of Europe’s belief in itself. Two big questions need new, clear answers: What does Europe stand for? And what does it stand up for? The old narrative, whereby European integration brings peace and wealth, is history. A narrative of the opposite kind grows stronger. Considerable parts of the third generation of European Union politicians and citizens are openly hostile to the kind of supranationalism established in Brussels. ....... In other words, Europe can’t look to Germany for long-term leadership, at least not now. Germany can only provide interim stability; it cannot resolve the dizzying chaos itself. And this is nothing new for the Continent. Europe has always needed several engines. France must return to its former position as a co-leader of the European Union, and Britain and Poland must stay within it. The real danger of the German moment for the rest of Europe is this: Both European Union governments, and their voters, are getting used to feeling helpless and looking to Berlin for answers, and for help. But, believe it or not, Berlin needs help, too.

Why Germany Can’t Lead Europe

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/17/opinion/-2015-06-17-opinion-bittner-why-germany-cant-lead-europehtml.html

[tychen927]

How Adulthood Happens

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/12/opinion/david-brooks-how-adulthood-happens.html

- These twenty-somethings live in a world of radical freedom, flux and insecurity. Surveys show they are very pessimistic about the state of the country, but amazingly optimistic about their own eventual destiny.According to the Clark University Poll of Emerging Adults, 86 percent agree with the statement, “I am confident that eventually I will get what I want out of life.”

- As Jeffrey Jensen Arnett and Elizabeth Fishel write in “Getting to 30,” “The value of youth has risen, and the desirability of adulthood has dropped accordingly. Today’s young people expect to reach adulthood eventually, and they expect to enjoy their adult lives, but most are in no hurry to get there.” 

- The first big ordeal is finding a job. Many young adults have not been given basic information about how to go about this. As my Times colleague April Lawson, 28, notes, they are often given the advice, “Follow your dream! The possibilities are limitless!” which is completely discordant with the grubby realities they face. They want meaningful work with social impact. They want to bring their whole selves to work, and ignore the distinctions between professional and intimate life that were in the heads of earlier generations. But meaningful work is scarce. Fifty-three percent of college graduates in the Arum and Roksa sample who were in the labor force were unemployed, underemployed or making less that $30,000 a year. 

- They develop their own internal criteria to make their own decisions. They fear what other people think less because they learn that other people are not thinking about them; they are busy thinking about themselves.

[tychen927]

专车冷思考：让干A行的人用业余时间去干B行，一定不是最完美的解决方案

http://wwww.huxiu.com/article/117077/1.html

共享经济有两种：一种是让人可以共享专业技能的，比如厨师、按摩，这个很好；另一种则是反其道而行之，让不专业的人来做应该由专业人做的事情。出租车恰恰是介于专业与不专业之间的工种，一个干出租车多年的老师傅，不只是更认路，在避免拥堵、突发应对、职业素养诸多方面，都可能会专业一些。

[tychen927]

过去的例子像是有液压挖土机对蒸气挖土机形成破坏，以及汽船对帆船形成破坏。一开始，汽船的稳定性和速度都还不够，无法在远洋航行时取代帆船，但因为能够在逆风、甚至无风的情况下航行，适合用在运河及内陆水道，而且因为航行时离岸不远，稳定性的问题也就没那么重要。经过一段时间，汽船性能慢慢提升，大小及速度都增加，变得更稳定可靠，最后整体性能超越了帆船。

特斯拉算什么，“高尔夫球车”们才是真正的破坏式创新 http://wwww.huxiu.com/article/117209/1.html

[tychen927]

Why America's military is losing its edge

http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2015/06/economist-explains-9

- Critical to that effort has been the role of technology in maintaining a military edge over potential adversaries through the first and second “offset strategies”. a) In the 1950s it offset the Soviet Union’s numerical advantage in conventional forces by accelerating its lead in nuclear weapons. 

b) From the late-1970s, after the Soviets closed the gap in nuclear capability, America began making investments in emerging technologies that led to the ability to “look deep and shoot deep” with precision guided munitions. For the next quarter of a century American military dominance was assured.

- The same technologies that made America and the West militarily dominant have proliferated to potential foes. In particular, precision-guided missiles are widely and cheaply available. Rather than investing in the next generation of high-tech weapons to stay far ahead of military competitors, the Pentagon has been focused more on the very different demands of counter-insurgency operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

- Meanwhile, America’s military establishment has shown little appetite for axing much-cherished “legacy programmes” to pay for the game-changing new stuff, such as stealthy, long-range strike drones able to survive in the most contested airspace.

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- While America has been distracted, China has been busy developing asymmetric capabilities specifically designed to counter America’s power in the West Pacific.

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- These days the scientific and technological developments that will help sharpen America’s military edge, such as artificial intelligence for unmanned systems, are as likely to come from the consumer tech companies in Silicon Valley as the traditional defense industry. Just how these two very different cultures will mesh creatively remains to be seen.

[tychen927]

廣告行銷已死，大數據行銷的時代來臨

http://startuptaiwan.com/blog/post/5575561a34994b1308a86516

1.原生廣告在行動廣告領域稱霸

知名創投Andreessen Horowitz的合夥人Benedict Evans說，行動裝置正在稱霸全球，行銷調查公司eMarketer預計今年美國行動廣告支出今年將成長50％，達到284.8億，2016年更達到401.6億，顯示了舊的廣告預算，大部分都投入到行動廣告領域。智慧型手機的螢幕大小限制了廣告放送的方式，融入手機應用程式的原生廣告增加，而迫使橫幅廣告減少。 Facebook在行動廣告上2200億的市值就說明，行動廣告有很大的商機。除了社群媒體，像2013年由Twitter併購的Mopub公司，以及許多快速增長的新創公司，試圖幫助媒體以及App開發者，在開放的網路世界將流量貨幣化。根據市場研究機構BIA/Kelsey的數據，行動廣告的市場有望在2018年達到57億的產值，是2013年的5倍。

2.社群媒體握有行銷主導權

出版業者和企業品牌正在創造新的內容經濟，提供更好的內容服務給使用者。內容也跟著廣告幅度大小與模組化，而有不同的呈現形式，新的商業模式和營收分成的比例，社群平台握有很大的討論空間，而Twitter、Google、和Facebook就證明了，他們的行動廣告潛力是頗為可觀。

3.大數據分析新勢力

手機的興起讓分析師有重要的分類得以研究，行動分析新創公司Mixpanel在2014年12月完成6500萬美元的融資，由Andreessen Horowitz領投，達到8.65億美元的估值。同時，App開發公司Annie最近收購行動市場分析公司Mobidia，這些新創公司幫助企業更了解使用者如何操作他們的App，以利企業提供更好的服務、使用者體驗，以及效果更好的廣告。數據是這些新創公司的核心，這就是為什麼最有價值的廣告和科技行銷公司，也被視為是大數據公司，Facebook就是是市場分析領域的開創性案例。

4.10倍的行銷市場

大數據行銷也包含了人性因素，就像所謂的10倍開發者與10倍行銷者，是指一位高度具有大數據行銷專長的人，可以抵10個人的工作。Hubspot、Marketo等行銷軟體，就能運算複雜的行銷計畫，以及分析不同管道的行銷效果，例如電子郵件、手機等等。諷刺的是，這些大型的行銷自動化平台，需要很多時間培訓行銷人員執行簡單的活動。例如線上廣告公司Marketo已經放慢腳步調整報告內容，因為市場需要更簡約的報表，以及讓人們感到有興趣的內容。

5.Facebook上廣告主與媒體的新戰場

Facebook推出新聞推播功能Instant Articles，與紐約時報等9大新聞媒體合作，當使用者點選動態消息上的新聞連結時，不會連結到新聞網站上，而是直接在Facebook的頁面中顯示，大幅縮短新聞瀏覽、下載網頁內容的時間。這意味著新聞媒體將放棄流量與內容，以換取更大的廣告收入，這項合作讓幾間已經在苦撐的媒體經營得更辛苦，讓Facebook的內容更加豐富。而廣告也會因此更加依賴新聞作為收入來源，因為他們在有限的動態訊息空間受到擠壓。各大媒體和科技廣告新創公司之間的角力之戰，也代表著新一波獨角獸的誕生或殞落。

[tychen927]

New Research Says Robots Are Unlikely to Eat Our Jobs

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/06/04/new-research-says-robots-are-unlikely-to-eat-our-jobs/

In brief, they explain, 

1. “step up” is to head for “higher intellectual ground” of conceptual pattern recognition in jobs like senior management and consulting. 

2. “Step aside” is to use different kinds of intelligence such as the creativity of designers and the empathy of elder care givers. 

3. “Step in” is to monitor and guide the machines that handle tasks like automated ad buying and approving loans. 

4. “Step narrowly” is to focus on a niche that is unlikely to be automated economically, brokering deals for fast-food franchises, for example. 

5. “Step forward” is to build the next generation of computing and artificial intelligence tools.

Competitive advantage, they suggest, will be lost by those organizations infatuated with technology alone. Automation, they add, is often useful but rarely a game winner for most companies. “That realization,” they write, “will dawn as it becomes increasingly clear that enterprise success depends much more on constant innovation than on cost efficiency.”

[tychen927]

一樣「大」的理由 – 半導體、網路媒體併購潮的共同原因

https://yowureport.com/%E4%B8%80%E6%A8%A3%E3%80%8C%E5%A4%A7%E3%80%8D%E7%9A%84%E7%90%86%E7%94%B1-%E5%8D%8A%E5%B0%8E%E9%AB%94%E3%80%81%E7%B6%B2%E8%B7%AF%E5%AA%92%E9%AB%94%E4%BD%B5%E8%B3%BC%E6%BD%AE%E7%9A%84%E5%85%B1/

半導體與媒體近期大量併購原因：

1. 客戶集中、供應商集中，需要擴大規模增加談判籌碼

2. 成本增加，合併以減少成本