added about 2 months ago by @icyflame ARCHIVES
A member of Tchen’s task force, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss its work, portrayed the role of the committees as contradicting the academy’s public position that awards are fully decided by industry peers. “The idea came through,” this person said, “that they do not want it just voted on by the hobbledehoy of the music industry.”
added about 2 months ago by @icyflame ARCHIVES
japan fax paperless business productivity
「ダウンタイムは全然違いますね。メールは年1～2回はプロバイダのシステムダウンがあるし、相手側のサーバーの都合でつながらないことも年に数回あるんですけど、ファックスは年間を通してまったく落ちないんです。ファックスって要は入力と出力が紙というインターフェイスだけが問題で。
added about 2 months ago by @icyflame ARCHIVES
software internet unix-philosophy
I put together this pic that visualizes how entrepreneurs have tried to carve out niches from craigslist, some more successful than others. This is in no way a comprehensive list (feel free to add to it in the comments below), and in some places, one might argue that craigslist is getting whipped (homeaway? others?). Also, some companies may have been founded early enough that craigslist wasn’t an original competitor. Regardless, it’s amazing how craigslist’s broad, horizontal approach to creating marketplaces is successful overall.
added about 2 months ago by @icyflame ARCHIVES
For Disney, consumer products are the earnings gifts that keep on giving — even during a pandemic. While revenue tied to its theme parks and cruise ships tumbled more than 40% in the fiscal year that ended in early October, merchandise licensing and retail revenues were down just 7%. In the latest quarter, Disney earned about 55 cents in profit for every dollar of consumer-product sales. This line of business consistently contributes more than $1.5 billion of operating income per year, and licensing carries much higher margins than producing a series that viewers binge in one sitting. In 2012, the Hollywood Reporter said that lifetime sales of “Star Wars” licensed goods had reached $20 billion, and that was before Disney acquired it.
added about 2 months ago by @icyflame ARCHIVES
japan climate-change energy nuclear-power
毎回のレポートでは、年代差に注目しています。今回の回答結果の中で最も年代差が大きかったのが、原発政策でした。〔図3〕は、日本の原発政策について聞いた結果を、年齢別にプロットしたものです。全体の回答は、「原発はゼロにすべきだ」が39％、「ある程度の原発は必要だ」が56％、「原発を増やすべきだ」が4％となりました。多数を占めた「ある程度必要だ」をみると、18－29歳から50代までと60代以上との間に断層が存在します。一方、「ゼロにすべきだ」は、若年層から中高年層へと比率が直線的に上昇していきます。比率の絶対値の差も非常に大きく、明確な「若低－老高」型の構図となっています。
added about 2 months ago by @icyflame ARCHIVES
security china surveillance supply-chain hardware hack
Two people with direct knowledge said the manipulation combined two pieces of code: The first was embedded in instructions that manage the order of the startup and can’t be easily erased or updated. That code fetched additional instructions that were tucked into the BIOS chip’s unused memory, where they were unlikely to be found even by security-conscious customers. When the server was turned on, the implant would load into the machine’s main memory, where it kept sending out data periodically.
added about 2 months ago by @icyflame ARCHIVES
security surveillance america startups
The hackers’ methods were unsophisticated: they gained access to Verkada through a “Super Admin” account, allowing them to peer into the cameras of all of its customers. Kottmann says they found a user name and password for an administrator account publicly exposed on the internet. After Bloomberg contacted Verkada, the hackers lost access to the video feeds and archives, Kottmann said.
added 2 months ago by @icyflame ARCHIVES
japan technology progress internet
ガラケーの頃は本体のストレージ容量が限られていたため、端末内部でも古いメールから順次消去される仕組みになっていた。重要なメールが自動的に消えないようにするには、「保護」の操作が必要だったのである。 しかし大切なメールを保護したところで、それは機種変更までの短い命だった。キャリアによっては受信メールの「引っ越し」が可能なケースもあったが、仕組みの違うスマホにはさすがに移せなかった。だから「あの頃のメール」は押し入れを探り、古いケーブルで充電しないと表示できない。 携帯電話の普及以来、我々は仕事や友人関係、そして恋のメッセージまで、全部をポケットに入れて持ち歩くようになった。ただのつまらない文字列でも、当時の画面に当時のフォントで表示されると、よみがえる記憶があるかもしれない
added 2 months ago by @icyflame ARCHIVES
covid19 vaccine pandemic pfizer business economics
In late December a flurry of news stories from the Middle East revealed that Pfizer had contracted to sell millions of doses to countries in previously unreported deals. Dubai got its first doses flown in from Belgium and announced it would aim to inoculate 70% of its 3.3 million people with the Pfizer vaccine. Officials in Saudi Arabia told TV broadcaster Al Arabiya they were expecting 3 million Pfizer doses, with a third of those to be delivered by the end of February. Oman ordered 370,000, paying $30 a shot for early supplies arriving in December and $24 a shot for later shipments, the health minister told a government news outlet. This appeared to be one of the highest prices outside Israel, though lack of disclosure makes it impossible to say for sure.
added 2 months ago by @icyflame ARCHIVES
stock-market wash-trading strange motives
He did 129 wash trades on 68 days over roughly 10 months, representing about 5.4% of the volume during that period. “On the days that Mr Horn executed wash trades, on average they accounted for 39.4% of the total market volume in McKay shares.” As far as I can tell no one told him to do this, and it ended when Stifel noticed he was doing it and told him to stop. His motivation seems to have been … sort of charmingly innocent?
added 2 months ago by @icyflame ARCHIVES
That being said, both Crandall and Bethune said one of the lessons the airline industry should learn from this crisis is that large-scale share buybacks are ill-advised. It’s a cash-intensive business, and there’s always the risk of some kind of unexpected crisis, Bethune said. Crandall went a step further and said buybacks should be prohibited at all companies, in every industry. “It's a popular tactic because it makes the executives rich,” he said. “Airlines absolutely should be prohibited from buying back stock. They should be at the top of the list. We know that airlines always have a liquidity problem and are always turning to the government.”
added 2 months ago by @icyflame ARCHIVES
Maybe Buffett’s style doesn’t fit the current moment, but a moment is all it is. Value investing has cycled in and out of fashion, and as fad securities sold off this week, there’s talk that it may be back “in” again. In any case, “energy” isn’t what earned Buffett his celebrity. It was patience, conviction, a sense of duty to his partners and a rejection of complex profit adjustments that are so often used to obscure and confuse. That philosophy should never go out of style.
written by Brad Japhe. added 2 months ago by @icyflame ARCHIVES
liquor whiskey japan provenance
Logistically, this is because the country doesn’t possess a ton of grain distilleries to produce the lighter, filler liquid that makes up the majority of the volume of a blend. A whisky’s robustness and weight comes from the malt, which often is produced domestically. Philosophically, the notion of provenance is actually a secondary consideration in this part of the world. Blending is the true art. It’s why Japanese whisky houses are more likely to champion master blenders than distillers on marketing material. And it’s also why Nikka is confident about preserving the precise blend of Whiskey From the Barrel, even if it means shedding the words “Japanese whisky” from its moniker.
written by Jonathan Swan, Zachary Basu. added 3 months ago by @icyflame ARCHIVES
trump america elections democracy defeat strange funny
Giuliani told Trump he was going to come over to the White House. The president, having forgotten about the others on the line, hung up and cut multiple people off the call. Herschmann, Cipollone and Lyons left the Oval Office, but soon discovered that the Powell entourage had made their way to the president’s residence. They followed them upstairs, to the Yellow Oval Room, Trump's living room, where they were joined by Giuliani and Meadows. Trump sat beside Powell in armchairs facing the door, separated by a round, wooden antique table. Giuliani sat in an armchair to the right of them, while Byrne and Meadows sat on a couch. Byrne wolfed down pigs in a blanket and little meatballs on toothpicks that staff had set on the coffee table.
added 3 months ago by @icyflame ARCHIVES
japan business climate-change government fukushima 3.11
Much of what he says comes down to this: Coal is integral to Japan’s energy security and economic health. If there's a difference between Sugiyama and the officials from METI, it's only that he’s more direct about the competition with China, a superpower whose industry is supported by cheap, coal-fired power. “It’s a subtle point, so I must be careful,” he says. “If you lose economic ability in this Japanese geopolitical location, it’s very dangerous for the existence of the nation.”
added 3 months ago by @icyflame ARCHIVES
climate-change natural-gas bill-gates
C-Zero can make about 10 kilograms of hydrogen per day in a small pilot plant. The next step is to build a demonstration unit that can make 100 kg of the gas per day, followed by a commercial unit that is capable of producing more than 1,000 kg per day. Most clean-energy startups fail at the scaling stage.
added 3 months ago by @icyflame ARCHIVES
Terminology issues may even reflect a shortage of climate expertise across the top echelons of business and government. Among the 1,188 board members of the 100 largest U.S. companies, for example, only three had climate expertise and only 6% offered broader environmental expertise, according to a new study from the New York University’s Stern Business School. In the last U.S. Congress, less than 10% of elected officials had scientific qualifications. In Britain, which will host the crucial COP26 climate conference in November, only 16% of members of parliament have backgrounds in science.
added 3 months ago by @icyflame ARCHIVES
apple business china america trump sanctions management
Cook was willing to do what was necessary to protect Apple’s China-centric supply chain, even if that meant letting Trump spin falsehoods. Trump told the Wall Street Journal in mid-2017 that Cook personally promised to build “three big plants, beautiful plants” in the U.S., which was false as well, and which Apple declined to correct. After the photo op in Austin, Trump tweeted, “Today I opened a major Apple Manufacturing plant in Texas that will bring high paying jobs back to America.” Apple let that one slide, too.
added 3 months ago by @icyflame ARCHIVES
What compels a sperm donor to donate so profusely? In 2013, a journal article by the Donor Sibling Registry identified three main motives, at least for average donors: money, generosity and the desire to pass along their DNA. “I think you have to look at No. 3, passing on their genes to have children,” said Ms. Kramer, the registry’s executive director. “Is it part of some men’s DNA to do this? What makes a man donate for six years? Ten years? If each donation can create between 4 and 24 kids, they can do the math. Why wouldn’t they think twice about this?”
added 3 months ago by @icyflame ARCHIVES
As you can see in the chart below, Kulkarni successfully appealed to the South Asian American community, raising more than half of his money from other South Asian Americans during his first run in 2018, as is typical of many first-time candidates. He started out his 2020 run with the support of many South Asian American donors, too, although with his higher profile and more support from the Democratic Party, he was able to diversify his base of financial support. Still, by the end of his 2020 run, about a third of his funding from individual contributors came from South Asian Americans.
Cutouts is an open source application. Code licensed under the MIT license. Copyright 2018 Siddharth Kannan