Facebook is planning to sue Mark Zuckerberg. No, not that Mark Zuckerberg, [the founder of Facebook], but an Israeli businessman, formerly named Rotem Guez, who legally changed his name to Mark Zuckerberg in order to support a business that can only make sense in today’s ephemeral market: selling “likes” to companies who, you know, want to feel more “liked” in their online presence.

{ persuasive litigator | Time }

According to the research, in modern America the average income required to be happy day-to-day, to experience “emotional well being” is about $75,000 a year. According to the researchers, past that point adding more to your income “does nothing for happiness, enjoyment, sadness, or stress.” A person who makes, on average, $250,000 a year has no greater emotional well-being, no extra day-to-day happiness, than a person making $75,000 a year. In Mississippi it is a bit less, in Chicago a bit more, but the point is there is evidence for the existence of a financiohappiness ceiling. The super-wealthy may believe they are happier, and you may agree, but you both share a delusion.

{ You Are Not So Smart | Continue reading }

photo { Joel Meyerowitz, Spinning Christmas Tree, New York City, 1977 }

The question confronting us today is: who owns the Geosynchronous Orbit?

In recent years, “parking spots” in the geosynchronous orbit have become an increasingly hot commodity. According to the NASA, since the launch of the first television satellite into a geosynchronous orbit in 1964, the number of objects in Earth’s orbit has steadily increased to over 200 new additions per year. This increase was initially fueled by the Cold War, during which space was a prime area of competition between the United States and the Soviet Union. Yet over two decades after the end of the US-Soviet space race, even the global financial crisis that began in 2007 does not seem to have diminished the demand for telecommunications satellites positioned in GSO. This ongoing scramble to place satellites in GSO prompted some developing equatorial countries to assert sovereignty over the outer space “above” their territorial borders, presumably with the hope of extracting rent from the developed countries that circulate their technologies overhead. So far, the international community has rejected this notion, but the legal status of the GSO remains in limbo.

{ SSRN | Continue reading }

photo { Roman Signer }

Apple has lost control of the iPad trademark in China. (…) ProView Technologies, the Taiwanese company that presently controls the iPad trademark, was near bankruptcy until yesterday. Apple has $80 billion in cash.

Do we really think Cupertino will let go of an important trademark in what will eventually be the largest IT market in the world?

{ Robert X. Cringely | Continue reading }

Over the last three decades, large cities like Pittsburgh, Detroit, Cleveland, Buffalo, and Toledo have seen their populations shrink, while areas like Houston, Atlanta, Dallas, Tampa, and Phoenix have seen their populations grow rapidly. Examining the policy differences between high-growth and low-growth areas can provide evidence that may help declining cities reverse their fortunes.

In 1980, Austin, Texas, and Syracuse, New York, were roughly the same size. The Austin metro area had a population of about 590,000, and the Syracuse metro area had about 643,000 residents. By 2007, Austin’s population had increased by more than 1 million while Syracuse’s population had been stagnant. That same disparity exists when one examines the growth of employment and real personal income. Another disparity between the two areas is the tax burden. State and local taxes accounted for nearly 13 percent of personal income in Syracuse but only about 9 percent in Austin. Although there are numerous factors that can influence the growth of individual economies, one finds a consistent relationship between low taxes and high economic growth in metropolitan areas, in states, and in nations.

This article details that relationship between taxes and growth for the 100 largest U.S. metropolitan areas.

{ Dean Stansel/Cato Journal | Continue reading | PDF }

It’s quite impractical—nearly impossible—to make a cheeseburger from scratch. Tomatoes are in season in the late summer. Lettuce is in season in spring and fall. Mammals are slaughtered in early winter. The process of making such a burger would take nearly a year, and would inherently involve omitting some core cheeseburger ingredients. (…)

A cheeseburger cannot exist outside of a highly developed, post-agrarian society. It requires a complex interaction between a handful of vendors—in all likelihood, a couple of dozen—and the ability to ship ingredients vast distances while keeping them fresh. The cheeseburger couldn’t have existed until nearly a century ago as, indeed, it did not.

{ Waldo Jaquith | Continue reading }

Hoekstra and Hung (2002) were the first to introduce the concept of the “water footprint” of a nation, which is the total volume of freshwater used to produce the goods and services consumed by the nation’s population.

Therefore, in order to calculate Dutch coffee and tea related water consumption accurately, one must not only include the amount of water used in coffee machines or kettles but also the “virtual water content”, which is the volume of water needed to produce said coffee or tea. (…)

So just how much water goes into the production of a single cup of coffee in the Netherlands? 

Well, the Dutch water footprint was much bigger for coffee than it was for tea because the Dutch consume a lot more coffee than tea and tea has a lower virtual water content than coffee (10.4 cubic metres per kg of tea vs. 20.4 cubic metres per kg of coffee).

If you take into account the 7 grams of roasted coffee that goes on average into making a single cup and that a standard cup of coffee is about 125 ml, you find out that a total of 140 Liters of water goes into making a single cup of coffee in a Dutch household.

Now, the Dutch drink an average 3 cups of coffee a day, which totals to 2.6 billion cubic meters of water being used every year to satisfy the population’s need for caffeine.

{ Salamander Hours | Continue reading }

photo { Loretta Lux }

Just when it seemed that things couldn’t get worse, it appears that they have. Even some of the ostensibly “responsible” members of the eurozone are facing higher interest rates. Economists on both sides of the Atlantic are now discussing not just whether the euro will survive, but how to ensure that its demise causes the least turmoil possible. (…)

Public-sector cutbacks today do not solve the problem of yesterday’s profligacy; they simply push economies into deeper recessions. Europe’s leaders know this. They know that growth is needed. But, rather than deal with today’s problems and find a formula for growth, they prefer to deliver homilies about what some previous government should have done. This may be satisfying for the sermonizer, but it won’t solve Europe’s problems – and it won’t save the euro. 

{ Joseph E. Stiglitz/Project Syndicate | Continue reading }

The strong countries of Europe are being asked to foot the bill for the profligate countries and that is not a sustainable policy. The weak countries are de facto bankrupt, should face that fact, and default, if necessary, on their debt. This will force them into balancing their budgets, becoming more disciplined, and to live within their means. Investors will return if these actions are credible, as investors are remarkably forgiving, buoyed by hope that stability and growth will return. Default is not the end of the world but a means to restore government balance sheets that are in effective negative equity. And the US is by no means immune to the consequences of having engaged in unsustainable excesses both public and private.

{ Vernon Smith/Truman Factor | Continue reading }

It is not new to talk about the need to acquire “irreplaceable” skills. But what is not properly appreciated is the scope of the challenge this poses to people in all kinds of jobs, and the exact defining characteristic of what will make a skill “irreplaceable.”

The basic rule of economics after the Industrial Revolution is: if a task can be automated, it will be. Or to put it differently, if a worker can be replaced by a machine, he will be. Call it the principle of expendability. The only thing that has changed since the first power loom is the number and nature of the tasks that can be automated. The first thing the Industrial Revolution did was to automate physical tasks. But now we are beginning to automate mental tasks, and what we are just beginning to see is the scope of the mental work that can be automatized. It is much wider than you probably think.

An awful lot of work that is usually considered to require human intelligence really doesn’t. Instead, these tasks require complex memorization and pattern recognition, perceptual-level skills that can be reduced to mechanical, digitized processes and done by a machine. These include many tasks that currently fill the days of highly educated, well paid professionals.

Take doctors. A recent article by Farhad Manjoo, the technology columnist for Slate, describes how computers have begun to automate the screening of cervical cancer tests. A task that used to be done by two physicians, who could only process 90 images per day, can now be done with better results by one doctor and a machine, processing 170 images per day. (…)

One more example. I recently came across a story about a composer and music theorist who created a computer program that writes cantatas in the style of Johann Sebastian Bach. (A cantata is a short piece with a well-defined structure, which makes the task a little easier.) The climax of the story is a concert in which an orchestra played a mixture of the computer’s compositions and actual Bach cantatas. An audience of music experts could not reliably determine which was which.

{ Robert Tracinski/Real Clear Markets | Continue reading }

illustration { Julian Murphy }

{ The Geography of Stuck | The Atlantic }

{ The Amazing History and the Strange Invention of the Bendy Straw | Centuries before Darwin, Leonardo guessed through his study of rocks and fossils that the world is far older than Genesis claims }

Facebook is steamrolling forward. It now boasts 800 million active users. The company is reportedly preparting for an initial public offering. It’s laying plans to sell a Facebook phone, strengthening its presence on the mobile web. But Facebook’s plans may be hampered by a new backlash against the company’s efforts to get its users to share more of their lives online.

In September, Facebook announced at its annual f8 developers conference that it was upgrading its Open Graph technology. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg introduced Open Graph in 2010 to let web sites and apps share information about users with Facebook. The revamped Open Graph takes sharing to a new level, allowing apps to automatically share what articles users are reading or what music they’re listening to.

Zuckerberg said the new feature would allow “frictionless experiences” and “real-time serendipity.” At the time, only a few observers found them to be scary. “They are seeking out information to report about you,” wrote developer and blogger Dave Winer. But suddenly, a critical mass of critics are speaking up about the changes, how they affect users and publishers alike.

{ Kevin Kelleher/Teuters | Continue reading }

Two men have been arrested for installing “skimmers” on 11 separate Chase ATMs near Union Square in January. They stole $300K altogether. Maybe some was yours!

{ Gawker | Continue reading }

related { Using a credit card induces euphoria, new research shows. }

The sun strikes every square meter of our planet with more than 1,360 watts of power. Half of that energy is absorbed by the atmosphere or reflected back into space. 700 watts of power, on average, reaches Earth’s surface. Summed across the half of the Earth that the sun is shining on, that is 89 petawatts of power. By comparison, all of human civilization uses around 15 terrawatts of power, or one six-thousandth as much. In 14 and a half seconds, the sun provides as much energy to Earth as humanity uses in a day. (…)

It’s small wonder, then, that scientists and entrepreneurs alike are investing in solar energy technologies to capture some of the abundant power around us. Yet solar power is still a miniscule fraction of all power generation capacity on the planet. There is at most 30 gigawatts of solar generating capacity deployed today, or about 0.2 percent of all energy production. (…)

Over the last 30 years, researchers have watched as the price of capturing solar energy has dropped exponentially. There’s now frequent talk of a “Moore’s law” in solar energy. (…)

The cost of solar, in the average location in the U.S., will cross the current average retail electricity price of 12 cents per kilowatt hour in around 2020, or 9 years from now. (…) 10 years later, in 2030, solar electricity is likely to cost half what coal electricity does today.

{ Scientific American | Continue reading | via/more: Overcoming Bias }

photo { Eylül Aslan }

This week Apple introduced a new feature for the iPhone in its Apple Store app. The feature, called EasyPay, allows people to take a picture of the bar code of a product with the phone’s camera and then buy the product on the spot, using their iTunes account.

For now, use of iTunes as a traveling wallet is modest; you can use it to buy the cheaper accessories in an Apple store. The phone’s location tracker has to be on, too, so Apple can verify that you are in one of its stores.

{ NY Times | Continue reading }

photo { Tina Modotti, Hands of the Puppeteer, Mexico, 1929 }

First we need to differentiate between two kinds of innovation and think about their effects. The first kind of innovation is geared toward brute maximization of production. It is typically centralized and makes use of economies of scale. Examples might include an assembly line factory or a big, coal-fired power plant. Because these innovations tend to be centralized, they introduce points of control. The capital is typically fixed and therefore easy to tax and regulate. It’s well known in the development literature that it’s really hard for governments to control rural peasants who live off the grid. Once they move to the cities and plug into centralized services, it is easier to require them to send their children to school, for instance. Because these innovations introduce points of control, I will call them technologies of control.

On the other hand, not all innovations are about brute maximization of production. Some are about producing things that we already know how to produce in ways that have ancillary benefits. An important ancillary benefit is evading control. Examples of these innovations include 3D printers and solar power. The evasion of control that is possible with 3D printers is the subject of Cory Doctorow’s short story Printcrime. And portable solar power cells can make people harder to control by supplying electricity without the need to register an address, have a bank account, stay put, and so on. These are obvious examples, but control can be evaded through more subtle innovations as well.

{ Eli Dourado | Continue reading }

photo { Arnold Odermatt }

Roy Lichtenstein’s 1961 painting of a man looking through a peephole sold for $43.2 million last night in New York, one of 13 records set at an auction of contemporary art by Christie’s International. (…) The Lichtenstein, the top lot, was one of 16 guaranteed artworks, 10 of which were backed by third parties, the auction house said. At the equivalent sale in 2010, only seven lots were guaranteed. (…)

The Lichtenstein, from the collection of Courtney Ross, the widow of former Time Warner Chief Executive Officer Steven J. Ross, had a high estimate of $45 million. She was guaranteed an undisclosed minimum price financed by third parties. The painting was acquired at auction in 1988 for $2.1 million.

Lichtenstein’s previous record of $42.6 million was set a year ago for “Ohhh… Alright…” (1964), depicting a sexy redhead on the phone.

{ Bloomberg | Continue reading }

Aaron Lefkove was struggling to raise close to $200,000 to open a New England-style clam shack in a Gowanus, Brooklyn, storefront.

Bank loans were out of reach. “We didn’t have the kind of collateral they wanted,” said Mr. Lefkove, a 31-year-old punk rocker and publisher’s copywriter, nostalgic for family visits to Bigelow’s New England Fried Clams in Rockville Centre, N.Y.

“I liquidated my 401(k) and my I.R.A. as well,” Mr. Lefkove said. “I even sold my guitars.”

It wasn’t enough. He and a partner reached out to friends and family and used their own credit cards. Still not enough. “We picked up investors — some became partners, some would get a return, everyone was structured differently,” he said. “Even that was not enough.”

So to help get his restaurant, Littleneck, over the finish line, the next stop was Kickstarter.com — a Web site that solicits donations to finance art, technology and business projects. Promising little more than good karma, some discounts and a T-shirt, he raised $13,000 from 162 donors — $5,000 more than his goal. With the help of a few final investors, the 38-seat restaurant began serving fried clams and lobster rolls last month. (…)

John Fraser used Kickstarter to raise about $24,000 for his short-lived but well-reviewed pop-up restaurant, What Happens When. And the Brooklyn Grange rooftop farm in Long Island City, Queens, raised more than $20,000 that way.

{ NY Times | Continue reading }

As an employee in an agency creative department, you will spend most of your time with your feet up on a desk working on an ad. Across the desk, also with his feet up, will be your partner-in my case, an art director. And he will want to talk about movies.

In fact, if the truth be known, you will spend a large part of your career with your feet up talking about movies.

The ad is due in two days. The media space has been bought and paid for. The pressure’s building. And your muse is sleeping off a drunk behind a dumpster or twitching in a ditch somewhere. Your pen lies useless. So you talk movies.

That’s when the traffic person comes by. Traffic people stay on top of a job as it moves through the agency. Which means they also stay on top of you. They’ll come by to remind you of the horrid things that happen to snail-assed creative people who don’t come through with the goods on time.

So you try to get your pen moving. And you begin to work. And working, in this business, means staring at your partner’s shoes. That’s what I’ve been doing from nine to five for over 20 years. (…)

There comes a point when you can’t talk about movies anymore and you actually have to get some work done. You are faced with a blank sheet of paper, and you must, in a fixed amount of time, fill it with something interesting enough to be remembered by a customer who in the course of a day will see, somewhere, thousands of other ad messages.

You are not writing a novel somebody pays money for. You are not writing a sitcom somebody enjoys watching. You are writing something most people try to avoid. This is the sad, indisputable truth at the bottom of our business. Nobody wants to see what you are about to put down on paper. People not only dislike advertising, they’re becoming immune to most of it—like insects building up resistance to DDT. (…) When people aren’t indifferent to advertising, they’re angry at it. (…)

So you try to come up with some advertising concepts that can defeat these barriers of indifference and anger. The ideas you try to conjure, however, aren’t done in a vacuum. You’re working off a strategy—a sentence or two describing the key competitive message your ad must communicate.

In addition to a strategy, you are working with a brand. Unless it’s a new one, that brand brings with it all kinds of baggage, some good and some bad. Ad people call it a brand’s equity. (…)

People generally deny advertising has any effect on them. They’ll insist they’re immune to it. And perhaps, taken on a person-by- person basis, the effect of your ad is indeed modest. But over time, the results are undeniable. Try this on: 1980—Absolut Vodka is a little nothing brand. Selling 12,000 cases a year. That’s nothing. Ten years and one campaign later, this colorless, nearly tasteless, and odorless product is the preferred brand, selling nearly 3 million cases a year. All because of the advertising. (…)

Diet Coke didn’t just happen. Coca-Cola didn’t simply roll it out and hope that people would buy it. Done poorly, they could have cannibalized their flagship brand, Coke. Done poorly, it could have been just another one of the well-intentioned product start-ups that fail in six months. It took a lot of work by both Coca-Cola and its agency, SSCB, to decipher market conditions, position the product, name it, package it, and pull off the whole billion-dollar introduction.

{ Luke Sullivan, Hey, Whipple, Squeeze This | Thanks Tim }

About five years ago, Apple design guru Jony Ive decided he wanted a new feature for the next MacBook: a small dot of green light above the screen, shining through the computer’s aluminum casing to indicate when its camera was on. The problem? It’s physically impossible to shine light through metal.

Ive called in a team of manufacturing and materials experts to figure out how to make the impossible possible, according to a former employee familiar with the development who requested anonymity to avoid irking Apple. The team discovered it could use a customized laser to poke holes in the aluminum small enough to be nearly invisible to the human eye but big enough to let light through.

Applying that solution at massive volume was a different matter. Apple needed lasers, and lots of them. The team of experts found a U.S. company that made laser equipment for microchip manufacturing which, after some tweaking, could do the job. Each machine typically goes for about $250,000. Apple convinced the seller to sign an exclusivity agreement and has since bought hundreds of them to make holes for the green lights that now shine on the company’s MacBook Airs, Trackpads, and wireless keyboards.

Most of Apple’s customers have probably never given that green light a second thought, but its creation speaks to a massive competitive advantage for Apple: Operations. This is the world of manufacturing, procurement, and logistics in which the new chief executive officer, Tim Cook, excelled, earning him the trust of Steve Jobs.

{ BusinessWeek | Continue reading }