alwaysinshade

beats didn't require much "energy" to produce

I think the point is that the "energy" isn't what was required to make the product, it was the energy expended to acquire the it. Collecting shells means time spent not collecting food. Wearing the shells signifies a kind of wealth where you have an abundance of time and thus an abundance of resources. Spending hard earned money on shitty earphones is a similar kind of wealth.

Following identification of the beneficiary households through a participatory process in the village, the six activities are:

1. Productive asset transfer: a one-time transfer of a productive asset

2. Consumption support: a regular transfer of food or cash for a few months to about a year (11)

3. Technical skills training on managing the particular productive assets

4. High-frequency home visits

5. Savings: access to a savings account and in some instances a deposit collection service and/or mandatory savings

6. Some health education, basic health services, and/or life-skills training

So let's translate what's happening. Starting with one, we have a tool or array of tools that can help someone be productive. Let's call it a paint brush and paint. At two we have something that provides essentials until the tool-person-couple is making enough money to support themselves - social security/low income supplementation. Three, they're taught how to use the asset effectively - basic job training. Four, make sure they're doing alright - a social worker shows up at their house. Five, a means of saving for a rainy day (which has meaning in the tradesperson world), when things go bad (not enough work for a limited period) or to increase capability or comfort down the track. Finally at six, teaching someone how to take care of themselves which means they can also take care of others.

It'd be interesting to see what would happen if we coupled #1 and #6 in countries high on the HDI with existing social welfare programs. Perhaps a computer with MS Office or cheap, fuel efficient car for #1 and cooking/cleaning/child care training for #6. Throwing money at the problem alone without making sure they have a productive capability is where things are going wrong. This could be something that scales nicely for any country.

A recent article on HN made me realise that the U.S. might be on the right track for fixing this. The article was called Game Theory's Cure For Corruption Makes Us All Cops [0]. The solution is in your pocket.

Imagine a city where police commit blatant traffic violations and never ticket one another. The authorities could decrease power inequalities by developing an online system in which all citizens are able to anonymously report dangerous drivers. Anyone who received too many independent reports would be investigated – police included. This sounds almost laughably simple, and yet the model indicates that it ought to do the trick. It is, after all, essentially the same system used by many online communities.

[0] http://aeon.co/magazine/society/game-theorys-cure-for-corrup...

$249 is a lot of money - you're talking the cost of a subsidized high-end phone for something that has less functionality. My intuition tells me smart-watches wont sell in big BIG numbers unless:

- It's a phone, therefore it can be subsidized by the carriers

- It almost does everything a smartphone can, including having a lot of screen real-estate, but only costs ~$250 unsubsidized. Perhaps like a flexible iPod touch that wraps around your wrist

If someone can come up with a $200+ wrist-mounted device that sells in the millions but doesn't meet the same level of functionality as a smartphone then I'll gladly eat my Fitbit.

Charge a not-inconsequential fee for in-air calls so that people only use it if it's absolutely necessary. Perhaps make the charge go up exponentially with time so that calls remain brief.

Agreed, it would have been better to have the chief scientist discuss the core technologies, design and potential applications than watch an Elon Musk/Tony Stark ripoff drive his Tesla-S home to his sweet pad and knob around with a CAD model of a rocket via a seemingly non-intuitive interface.

If the device was only a few hundred dollars to purchase then the marketing video might have had some merit. But at 3k, you're selling to people who want to know how it really performs, and what technical trickery Mann might have introduced to make it an exciting human-machine interface.

When the executive negotiates without Congress's participation, citizens don't get a say in the process. We don't get to review the agreement, or pressure our representatives into changing or rejecting it. However, special industry groups do, including the RIAA, as advisors to USTR.

- http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120508/17174518835/time-t...

P.S. The TPP stands for Trans Pacific Partnership. A US senator means jack shit to someone in Japan, Australia etc.

let's not forget the biggest lobby group of all: the American citizenry

Does the citizenry have the same level of access to negotiating parts of the TPP as the lobby groups who paid admission? IIRC, the citizenry have been completely cut out of the process. They didn't even know the contents of the TPP. What r0h1n possibly implied is that the US Govt backs interests that are paid for.

I'd say I'm a hipster, but I still like Google. I think you would have been down-voted for shitcanning hipsters (the implication is that rage-quitting Google's services it's fashionable and they're sheep) rather than you being correct that it's due to hipster mentality. In a way, shitcanning hipsters is fashionable, so we're all treading the same ground. Let's all have a beer together and chill out, just mind the beards.

Disclaimer: I don't have a beard

No, that's just Tony Abbott. Expect more hilarity in the years (days?) to come. If you can't wait, just Google some of his past statements. If you like prejudice, two-dimensional thinking and more meaningless rhetoric than you can shake a stick at, then you're going to love Tony Abbott.

Let's see where he can take a country that ranked #2 on the Human Development Index and the highest of 34 countries on the OECD Better Life index. Should be interesting, considering he was voted in by the "Aussie battlers" who were enjoying a better quality of life than they've ever experienced in Australian history (notice Australia doesn't move on the HDI even when you account for inequality? The US sure does, from #3 to #16). Should be great when, under the Trans-Pacific Partnership he sells out to the US to trade a few horses [1] and our healthcare/pharmaceutical industry emulates the American system. Good times ahead.

[1] "there's always horse-trading in these negotiations, but in the end … everyone is better off" - Tony Abbot, November 14, 2013

Good question - looking at the OECD Better Life Index [1] for the Netherlands:

In general, 86% of people in the Netherlands say they have more positive experiences in an average day (feelings of rest, pride in accomplishment, enjoyment, etc) than negative ones (pain, worry, sadness, boredom, etc), more than the OECD average of 80%.

Perhaps it's a case of better access to health services, so more people in the Netherlands are able to be diagnosed and treated with depression whereas countries with poor health services and high levels of depression are ultimately under-reported?

[1] http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/countries/netherlands/

"So what do we think they're manufacturing with sapphire?"

This is just fun conjecture, so take it with a grain of salt the size of a racoon's head, but considering you can make sapphire panels large enough for vehicle windows [1], you might be able to cover a TV with it (among other things).

Consider that Jony Ive is credited with a design for a TV where the display slides inside a glass enclosure [2][3]; Perhaps you'd want to coat the enclosure with artificial sapphire to maintain a strong protective layer, or even use a thin, strong sapphire enclosure to reduce thickness while achieving good-enough strength.

We know that Apple was happy to build its new Mac Pros in the US because they're expensive (high margin) and the largest number of buyers would be in the US (video production, music production), thus a reduction in logistics costs could help balance higher worker costs. We can make the educated guess that an Apple TV would cost a lot - perhaps approaching or exceeding the cost of a new Mac Pro. So it's not hard to imagine a chunk of production moving to where the customers are.

Either way, looking at [3] we can see that Apple is interested in glass enclosures for its devices, so sapphire would be a good way to minimize scratches and general wear.

[1] http://www.photonic.saint-gobain.com/uploadedFiles/SGphotoni...

[2] http://www.patentlyapple.com/.a/6a0120a5580826970c0192ac6465...

[3] http://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2013/08/apple-fi...

"if "bigoted" ideas are delusional, shouldn't the fact that we have far more integration and exposure to different sub-cultures in sufficient time eliminate all bigotry"

I'm not sure if delusional is the right term - small minded might fit the bill a little better. So if it's due to mental laziness or an inherent dearth of mental ability, perhaps bigotry is difficult to abate without laws to protect minorities.

Nonetheless you ask a good question - with time and exposure can we eliminate bigotry? I hope so. But it's easy to invent new targets for ridicule: Emos, Hipsters, Rockabillies etc. They're not exactly unprivileged minorities, but it shows how easy it is to disparage someone because of their appearance and cultural differences.

"But that's exactly what Rockstar does"

Rockstar acts as a firewall, sure, but the parent companies make things. IV made a mosquito-killing laser that no one could buy, then allegedly got down to business by flicking individual patents to shell LLCs and suing indie app developers for using iOS's in-app-purchase APIs. Classy.

"I thought it was impossible to be more of a douchebag than Intellectual Ventures, but apparently, there's a new winner in town."

What Rockstar is doing is very shitty, but IV takes the cake because they're a non-practicing entity. It's one thing to sue competitors for making products similar to your own, it's another to make no products and sue people who dare to make something vaguely encroaching your vaguely defined patent.

I LOVE the fare adjustment machines at the train stations in Japan. Just buy the cheapest ticket, get to your intended destination, then go to the fare adjustment machine and slip the ticket in. Short by 100 yen? Dump some change in to pay the balance and you're good to walk through the gate. It's an extra step in the process, but makes me smile.

Much better than the system in my home city where if a ticket inspector finds you've exceeded the area covered by your ticket, you cop a hefty fine. Like the article says, we should aim to design FOR the edge cases not design them away with rigid, sometimes really inconsiderate systems.

"The law is and should be subservient to morality; people who've done something good but illegal are naturally lauded (and those who've done something bad but legal are condemned)"

Really thoughtful response. I think that really captures the spirit of what people find attractive in modern day Robin Hoods like Dread Pirate Roberts, Satoshi Nakamoto and, in the art world, Banksy (consider that they could be collectives, not individuals). People would argue it's romance, and wouldn't necessarily be wrong, but the core of our admiration is fighting things which inhibit progress.

"a man who wants to assert his ego, against others and the state, vs a man who entertains the middle class with whimsical, nostalgic, left wing drawings"

I'd argue that Banksy achieves both - his work is treated as acceptable because it carries a reason for saying "fuck you" as opposed to an indecipherable personal logo. And that's the line for what is considered destruction vs expression - value to others and not just yourself. Essentially your "fuck you" needs to carry a raison d'être.

The same could apply to saying "fuck you" to someone - if you can at least explain why you're saying "fuck you" then you might not get punched in the face.

"banksy wouldn't even exist without what filtered out of upper manhattan and the southern bronx and was known as 'tagging.'"

Fair, but we've reached the point where we can discern the difference between something that conveys a message, and what is merely a trademark. A tag is territorial and self serving - a trademark. It might have been what gave birth to other forms of street art, but its value is intrinsically less than something that exists to conjure discussion and consideration, even if the public sentiment towards it is negative.

No wonder no one is buying it.

"Months of rumors about order cuts and so forth, so let me take a moment to comment on these. No comment on any particular rumor.

I suggest its good to question the accuracy of any kind of rumor about build plans. Even if a particular data point were factual, it would be impossible to interpret that data point as to what it meant to our business. The supply chain is very complex and we have multiple sources for things. Yields can vary, supplier performance can vary. There is an inordinate long list of things that can make any single data point not a great proxy for what is going on."

- Tim Cook, Q1 conference call, regarding rumors that demand for the iPhone 5 was waning. Q3 results? 31.2 million iPhones sold.

Analysts aren't very good at predicting things when they're using isolated data points from the supply chain.

"If the amount is greater than zero, then you're admitting that you're really buying an experience and set of emotional states in addition to a physical good."

Absolutely, and I think that's the message being conveyed by Banksy. In a similar project he erected pieces in undisclosed locations throughout the English countryside - their existence only documented in pictures on his website. That way money is removed from the equation while the message remains.

"I've always been a fan of Banksy's work. Especially the work he did at the dividing wall on both sides in the West Bank and Israel."

And this is why I roll my eyes a little when people deride Banksy (not necessarily on HN - rather in face to face discussions) as boring artistically, politically, or as some kind of a sell-out.

His works use the environment they're placed in to great effect (e.g. Bethlehem), use props (higher risk, more planning required, more interest generated) and are messages rather than trademarks (e.g. King Robbo).

And when someone drops the tired line that he copies others like Blek Le Rat; when you've had a go at making a stencil you quickly realise that you're limited by the medium (stencils can convey only so much detail), thus similarities arise. It's the message that's important, not the piece itself.

Ironic

It's zero-day art. The people who try to preserve it by bolting glass plates over the top are missing the point.

Acquiring a high-DPI scan of a fingerprint from someone's phone, printing it to a sheet of plastic with a high-DPI laser printer, then making a copy of the print out of liquid latex doesn't sound easy unless you're in the business of pentesting. Taking a picture of someone (or lifting it from a social network) to access their device does sound relatively easy.

If I was the kind of person who was worried about someone accessing the contents of my phone, I'd simply turn off touch ID and use a long password (or spend less money on a phone that didn't have a feature I wouldn't use).

I've gone down the route of using both a long password and touch ID simply because touch ID works so reliably - I've never had to enter my password. That way someone either needs my long password or a physical copy of my fingerprint to access my device. I'd say that's much better than the 4 digit numerical code I relied on previously - which had been seen by friends and family.

"Games are also universal. Girls and boys, young and old, physically fit and physically infirm, poor and rich: pretty much everyone can enjoy a game.[1] It is a form of entertainment that is capable of demanding zero to full emotional, financial and intellectual engagement."

Really well put. My wife and I play FPS's as a way to chill out at night. Despite being violent, fast paced and the lobbies are typically full of boys, my wife loves it. As a result we purchased a 1ms response monitor, Scuf controller and new Billion (Broadcom chipset) fiber-ready modem so that we could play more competitively (financial-intellectual-engagement).

Anecdotally, we've both noticed our reflexes to real-world things such as driving, traversing busy sidewalks, making quick decisions, catching objects etc has improved. I guess when the difference between dead or alive is seeing something, forming a strategy of engagement, and pressing a combination of buttons while manoeuvering - all in the space of a second - helps you process unforeseen events a little quicker.

Jonah Berger at Wharton has done research on WoM and emotions that spread

The study (8.3mb PDF) is here: https://marketing.wharton.upenn.edu/files/?whdmsaction=publi...

The main takeaway: "How do specific emotions affect virality? The relationships between specific emotions and virality suggest that the role of emotion in transmission is more complex than mere valence alone (Table 4, Model 3). While more awe-inspiring (a positive emotion) content is more viral and sadness inducing (a negative emotion) content is less viral, some negative emotions are positively associated with virality. More anxiety- and anger-inducing stories are both more likely to make the most e-mailed list. This suggests that transmission is about more than simply sharing positive things and avoiding sharing negative ones. Consistent with our theorizing, content that evokes high-arousal emotions (i.e., awe, anger, and anxiety), regardless of their valence, is more viral."

Is the custom hardware so fundamentally critical to the experience that you couldn't provide it otherwise?

You could spin the question around and ask why do point & shoot cameras (analog: consoles) or SLR's (analog: PC's) exist when you're always carrying a camera in your pocket? The answer is level of control, depth of experience and quality. Such hardware will be used by enthusiasts, whereas those who just want something to snap selfies, dinners out etc will stick with whatever is most convenient.

I can play games on my phone anywhere I go but they lack the richness and intensity of playing a multiplayer FPS or RTS game on a stable wired connection and dedicated controller.

A way around this was mentioned in the article - tactile displays. A display or bezel that can raise parts of its topography into customizable shapes that react to touch. This will largely solve the input issue. It might even make it better than the fixed human-machine interface like a controller because it provides freedom for the developer (or user) to craft the input mechanism to perfectly suit the game/app.

wait till she goes to work or talks to her friends who expect to see it

You can always game the system. My wife purchased a lab-made champagne diamond (colouring is from nitrogen IIRC). It was a pretty damn big rock, had only VVS inclusions and was cheap. Slap that thing in a gold band and your wife-to-be has a real diamond - your average jeweler won't have the tools to spot that it's artificial unless it's tagged. Thing was, my wife was a chem student at the time and thought it was cool. I was a young bloke with something to prove so I purchased the real-deal and spent the next three years paying it off.

Moral: marry nerds. And perhaps swallow your pride.

Guy says it's not about benchmarks

I think what he meant was that the current benchmarks are unable to quantify the benefit to users of having a GPU for computational power while the other is driving the displays. The new Pro configuration suggests you'll be working in real-time when doing graphically intensive tasks rather than waiting for something to render. Animators & video editors will benefit from this in ways that are difficult to slap a technical benchmark on.

These machines are probably aiming to scoop up some high-margin high-end workstation business, hence the demo by Pixar at the last WWDC.

I think Apple has really dropped the ball with the new Mac Pro

Guy English made some great points about potential for the new Mac Pro:

"The CPU is a front end to a couple of very capable massively parallel processors at the end of a relatively fast bus. One of those GPUs isn’t even hooked up to do graphics. I think that’s a serious tell. If you leverage your massively parallel GPU to run a computation that runs even one second and in that time you can’t update your screen, that’s a problem. Have one GPU dedicated to rendering and a second available for serious computation and you’ve got an architecture that’ll feel incredible to work with."

http://kickingbear.com/blog/archives/349