More Books Sold Online Than in Brick-And-Mortar Retail
July 2nd, 2014Via: Book Industry Study Group:
In formats, eBooks hit record volume numbers while revenue was flat; downloaded audiobooks hit all-time highs in both revenue and units. In sales channels, publishers’ net revenue from sales of digital and print content via online retail is now ahead of revenue from brick-and-mortar retail.
PayPal Froze Account of Secure Email Startup ProtonMail Due to “Technical Problem”
July 2nd, 2014Via: Gigaom:
About 6 weeks ago my colleague Barb Darrow covered a new secure email startup called ProtonMail, which was set up by a bunch of MIT, Harvard and CERN researchers who are annoyed with the NSA’s intrusive ways.
The team’s Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign has done pretty well in the last 2 weeks, thus far raising $283,675 off a $100,000 goal. But Geneva-headquartered ProtonMail, which is keen to rent servers and get the product out of beta, hit a snag on Monday when it discovered PayPal had frozen its account.
Restrictions on the account were lifted on Tuesday, with ProtonMail crediting the reversal to media coverage, but PayPal said the account had only been frozen in the first place due to a technical problem. However, when ProtonMail was trying to find out why the block had been put in place, a PayPal representative apparently asked whether the startup had sought government approval for offering encrypted services.
Research Credit: alvinroast
The Military Is Already Using Facebook to Track Your Mood
July 2nd, 2014Via: Defense One:
Critics have targeted a recent study on how emotions spread on the popular social network site Facebook, complaining that some 600,000 Facebook users did not know that they were taking part in an experiment. Somewhat more disturbing, the researchers deliberately manipulated users’ feelings to measure an effect called emotional contagion.
Though Cornell University, home to at least one of the researchers, said the study received no external funding, but it turns out that the university is currently receiving Defense Department money for some extremely similar-sounding research — the analysis of social network posts for “sentiment,” i.e. how people are feeling, in the hopes of identifying social “tipping points.”
Argentina at Brink of Default Again
June 30th, 2014Via: Bloomberg:
Argentina is poised to miss a bond payment today, putting the country on the brink of its second default in 13 years, after a U.S. court blocked the cash from being distributed until the government settles with creditors from the previous debt debacle.
The nation has a 30-day grace period after missing the $539 million debt payment to seek an accord with a group of defaulted bondholders led by billionaire Paul Singer’s NML Capital Ltd. and prevent a default on its $28.7 billion of performing global dollar bonds. While both Argentina and NML have said that they’re open to talks, public comments signal little progress has been made so far.
McDonald’s Testing Order-Ahead and Payments App
June 30th, 2014See: Seattle Hikes Minimum Wage to $15 Per Hour:
Cashiers and food service workers: You’re pretty much screwed.
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Notice how companies in Seattle have between three and seven years to start paying the $15/hour rate? *wink*
Will this be a ready-the-robots phase? I don’t know, but it wouldn’t surprise me if that’s what happens, at least to some extent in fast food.
Via: Business Insider:
McDonald’s is quietly testing an order-ahead and mobile payment app at a tiny handful of its more than 14,000 U.S. locations.
The pilot is limited to 22 locations in the Columbus, Georgia area. Called “McD Ordering,” the app links to a credit or debit card, which is automatically charged when a customer arrives and scans a QR code displayed at the restaurant.
The phone then displays the customer’s order number. Once everything’s ready, the customer picks up food and drinks — without waiting in a line or interacting with a cashier.
Fastest-Growing Metro Area in U.S. Has No Crime or Kids
June 30th, 2014Via: Bloomberg:
For Jerry Conkle, life in America’s fastest-growing metropolitan area moves as slowly as the golf carts that meander through his palm-lined neighborhood at dusk. Most days, he wakes early, reads the newspaper, and then hops into his four-wheeled buggy for a 20-mile-per-hour ride to one of the 42 golf courses that surround his home.
“It’s like an adult Disney World,” Conkle, 77, said of The Villages, Florida, whose expansion has come with virtually no crime, traffic, pollution — or children.
The mix has attracted flocks of senior citizens, making The Villages the world’s largest retirement community. Its population of 110,000 has more than quadrupled since 2000, U.S. Census Bureau data show. It rose 5.2 percent last year, on par with megacities like Lagos, Nigeria, and Dhaka, Bangladesh.
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“They own everything,” said Andrew D. Blechman, author of “Leisureville,” a book about The Villages and other retirement communities that ranks Morse’s as the biggest. “You basically have a city of 100,000 people, owned by a company.”
Gary Lester, a spokesman for The Villages, did not return calls seeking comment.
Google: Better Than 50% Chance That Loon Becomes a Reality
June 30th, 2014They also have drones: Google Buys Drone Maker Titan Aerospace.
Via: Wired:
Cassidy has always contended that by providing the Internet to unserved areas, his project could help make those dreams achievable. A year after the project’s public launch, he’s confident that Internet service enabled by high-altitude balloons is more than a possibility. “We’ve definitely crossed the point where there’s a greater than 50 percent chance that this will happen,” he says.
Facebook’s Secret Mood Manipulation Experiment
June 28th, 2014Via: The Atlantic:
Facebook’s News Feed—the main list of status updates, messages, and photos you see when you open Facebook on your computer or phone—is not a perfect mirror of the world.
But few users expect that Facebook would change their News Feed in order to manipulate their emotional state.
We now know that’s exactly what happened two years ago. For one week in January 2012, data scientists skewed what almost 700,000 Facebook users saw when they logged into its service. Some people were shown content with a preponderance of happy and positive words; some were shown content analyzed as sadder than average. And when the week was over, these manipulated users were more likely to post either especially positive or negative words themselves.
This tinkering was just revealed as part of a new study, published in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Many previous studies have used Facebook data to examine “emotional contagion,” as this one did. This study is different because, while other studies have observed Facebook user data, this one set out to manipulate it.
Armed U.S. Drones Over Baghdad
June 28th, 2014Via: CNN:
Seven Iraqi soldiers were killed and 29 others were wounded on Saturday in clashes between Iraqi security forces and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), Iraqi security officials said.
ISIS fighters attacked a military base in the town of Jurf al-Sakhar, about 85 kilometers (53 miles) south of Baghdad on Saturday morning, the officials said.
The military has requested air and ground support.
ISIS has taken over swaths of northern and western Iraq in its quest to create an Islamic state stretching from Syria to Iraq. And the crisis has embroiled countries around the world.
U.S. drones over Baghdad
Armed U.S. drones have started flying over Baghdad to provide additional protection for 180 U.S. military advisers in the area, a U.S. official told CNN on Friday.
But using the drones for any offensive strikes against ISIS would require approval from U.S. President Barack Obama.
Google Pulls Robot from Military Competition to Focus on Commercial Product
June 27th, 2014Via: The Verge:
The $2 million Robotics Challenge, run by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), is a competition for the most advanced robots in the world. The three-year competition is less than halfway over, but there was already a clear frontrunner: the Japanese team Schaft, which posted videos on YouTube of their incredible robot performing all the tasks weeks before the qualifying round. But today, DARPA announced that the Schaft team will be dropping out of the competition.
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In March, Schaft announced it was renouncing DARPA funding but would stay in the competition. It seems Google has changed its mind since then. “Team Schaft has elected to withdraw from the finals,” DARPA program manager Gill Pratt told reporters on a press call today. “They are going to be focusing on the development of their first commercial product. It was a very difficult decision for them, but they’ve really done extremely well and we’re really glad to see them being successful now in the commercial world.”
