This is so crazy ... I want my own drone, can I get one please Linds ?
If you had a fleet of drones to call your own, what would you do with them? What problem would you use them to solve in whole new way? What existing solution-provider, in so doing, might you manage to obliterate?
The question is not just a flight of fancy. While military-grade Predator drones can cost as much as $4 million, it's already possible to buy one of a new generation of hobbyist aircraft — unmanned aircraft systems complete with cameras, GPS, infrared sensors, and microphones, all under the control of a smartphone or tablet — for less than $300. Not surprisingly, people are lining up to buy them. The Federal Aviation Administration estimates that, within a decade, private drones will constitute a $90 billion industry.
There is another reason, too, that the drone market is set to take off. Currently, according to FAA rules, noncommercial uses of drones are permitted only so long as they stay below 400 feet (the official designation of U.S. airspace) and are flown away from populated areas. Above 400 feet, only the government and specially-permitted drones are allowed. But that is about to change. In February, as part of an FAA spending bill, Congress ordered the agency to develop rules by 2015 that would allow military, commercial, and privately-owned drones to operate in U.S. airspace.
Thus, mass-market drones clearly hold potential for what Paul Nunes and I call "big bang disruption." This is a kind of innovation that, thanks to fast-evolving technology, arrives in the marketplace simultaneously better, cheaper, and more capable of improving than the existing alternatives. Just what current products and services will be disrupted by drone technology remains to be seen, although a few applications are easily predicted. In the realm of law enforcement, drones could offer better performance in search-and-rescue operations, riot suppression, traffic control, surveillance of suspects or fugitives, and in cases of emergencies, natural disasters, or kidnappings.
As George Mason University's Jerry Brito pointed out in a thoughtful essay last month, "Small drones are made from many of the same components as smartphones, and the economies of scale of that industry have driven the cost of gyroscopes, accelerometers, GPS chips, and CPUs to the ground. As a result," Brito writes, "the widespread use of drones in commerce is imminent — unless politicians overreact to the bad press."
That last phrase, of course, is a big "unless." The FAA's impending deadline has created panic among state and local governments, who are falling over each other to legislate who gets to use drones and for what purposes before the FAA rules are issued. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, thirty states have already passed or are considering restrictions on drones, if not outright bans.
Local authorities are getting in on the pre-regulation act as well. Recently, the town of Rancho Mirage, CA joined Charlottesville, VA, St. Bonifaciuis, MN, and Seattle, WA in considering or adopting local rules restricting or prohibiting drones in their respective communities. In Alameda County, near where I live, a public hearing on a plan by the sheriff to deploy drones for law enforcement quickly turned ugly. "We oppose the use of public resources to buy machines to surveil its citizens," one resident was quoted as saying. Another rejected just the potential use of drones by the police as "an assault on my community."
It's not surprising that potential private and law enforcement use of drones invokes intense emotional responses, including fears of an expanded police state with an "eye in the sky" and the further erosion of personal privacy. The Rancho Mirage ordinance, for example, had its origins when a private citizen saw a model drone flying over his backyard. He asked the operators to relocate their activities, and they did. But he wrote to his mayor the next day anyway.
The visceral objection we're seeing to drones is a great example of the "creepy response" I wrote about in a previous post. Novel uses of information technology often trigger deeply negative emotions, particularly among Americans. The truth is that we usually adjust to the new technology by coming to recognize that its benefits outweigh the costs. In the interim, however, the temptation to regulate it out of existence is hard to resist.
And of course, the use of the term "drone" doesn't help. Drones, like many of the most valuable innovations of the past century, began life as military technology, and have notably been used for targeted killings as part of the so-called "war on terror." Hobbyists have made a serious tactical error in adopting the same term for unmanned aircraft that, at least so far, have no weapons attached to them.
As understandable as the psychological response may be, however, there is a serious problem with the rush to regulate. Overreacting to fears of the unknown could prove disastrous to the development of technology with tremendous potential to benefit society. Drones could make safer and cheaper a number of essential activities that today require human pilots, and also make other activities possible that are today simply unfeasible. These include emergency transportation of supplies to remote areas, agricultural monitoring and maintenance, aerial photography and mapping, protection of wildlife from poachers, pipeline inspection — perhaps even local delivery.
As with any emerging, potentially revolutionary new technology, it is impossible to anticipate all the uses to which unmanned aircraft might be put once they reach mass markets. And therefore, it is hard to know whether existing laws are adequate to limit or ban the potentially destructive uses. Indeed, many of the local authorities considering drone legislation believe the FAA's current restrictions give them a rare opportunity to regulate before a dangerous new technology gets a chance to become mainstream. "We certainly want to get ahead of that curve before there are some abuses of that information," one Virginia legislator said.
As drones continue to become better, cheaper, and more useful, the legal debate is sure to heat up. But until and unless we get more evidence of what "abuses" will actually appear, drafting appropriate laws will be impossible. The mishmash of laws, restrictions, and bans add up to a response that is inefficient, imprecise, bound to cause collateral damage — and certainly not worthy of a drone.
Sparkling wine is already a festive pour for a party, but here's an idea for making it a little more special: serve homemade fruit liqueur lollipops for guests to stir into their bubbly. It's an elegant, surprising take on the usual champagne cocktail.
As the law enforcement authorities search for clues surrounding the bombing suspect at large and inaccurate reports continue to take hold in the cable news circuit, Internet users on Twitter, it appears that the Internet users on 4chan and Reddit have started their own crowdsourced investigation. Some of the highlights so far:
Yesterday, British Redditor oops777 launched the Find Boston Bombers subreddit as a hub site for Redditors to collect and analyze photographs from the scene.
Earlier today, a group calling themselves "4chan Think Tank" shared an image gallery to the 4chan subreddit, which featured dozens of images highlighting individuals who were seen with backpacks near the bombing sites (shown above). Within five hours of posting, the gallery has been viewed more than 1 million times.
Today, Gawker released a list of five most referenced topics in the crowdsourced investigation, while CNN published an article debunking five hoaxes and rumors that have gone viral since the attacks. The Atlantic also offered a reminder of the dangers surrounding social media vigilantism and jumping to conclusions.
"The most important career choice you'll make is who you marry." This career advice from Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg makes good sense based on research. Among couples, career outcomes are indeed linked to the dynamics of support and career priority within couples.
Yet many people end up in less egalitarian marriages than they expected to have, often facing a "choice" to either stay in jobs that threaten to overwhelm them and their families or to withdraw from the workforce entirely. Just as lack of consensus around finances can doom a marriage, lack of support from one's spouse can effectively sink a career. To make dual careers work, a couple needs to be on the same page regarding their career and life goals and how they will support each other in achieving them. Here are four strategies for developing and maintaining an effective dual-career partnership.
Shared vision and values. First of all, talk early and often about what matters most to both of you. What gives you a sense of value, meaning, identity, joy? Which of these things do you share? What would you not give up under any circumstances, even if it meant sacrificing in other important areas? Even though you may hope to "have it all," placing things that are important to both of you (such as career advancement, living in a certain geographic area, starting a business, both being actively involved in your children's lives, maintaining excellent health) in order of priority improves your ability to make optimal decisions. The purpose of regularly revisiting what you hope to create together is to ensure that — to borrow from the title of a now-classic Harvard Business Review article — your commitments match your convictions. In other words, you want to avoid realizing too late (e.g., when you've already called a divorce lawyer) that there is a big gap between what you say you care about most and how you actually invest your time and energy.
Mutual interest, appreciation and investment. Remember that you fell in love with this person because you found him or her interesting. Being interested in and learning about your partner's work life and sharing about your own are important ways of maintaining that mutual interest and of promoting the limitless possibilities of mutuality. In less successful couples, partners come to inhabit separate, non-overlapping worlds, with the result that they know each other less well and have fewer opportunities for mutual enrichment over time. A good guiding principle to follow is to look for solutions that reduce career-related conflicts and maximize opportunities for career enrichment between the members of the couple. In a recent HBR blog post, Stew Friedman described a relevant example of an executive who improved both his job performance and the quality of his relationship with his spouse by sharing upcoming work challenges and inviting her input. My husband and I routinely help each other decide how to approach issues we encounter in our careers by listening, asking questions, and offering a broader perspective.
A team orientation. If you've been working on the first two strategies, it should be fairly natural to help each other out and to work together to find solutions that help you to achieve your shared goals.This often means taking turns, as my husband and I did when we put each other through school. Many dual-career couples confer with each other before accepting travel commitments to ensure that both parents are never away at the same time. The most successful dual-career couples avoid consistently sacrificing one partner's career in favor of the other's. This might mean saying to one's boss, "I'd like to work from home until mid-morning the last week of next month because my spouse will be away at a conference." In less successful dual-career partnerships, each partner's interest in the other's career is often more self-referential — as in, "How will my partner's work demands or rewards affect me?" as opposed to "How do we meet the demands and enjoy the rewards together?"
Flexibility and adaptability. Both partners need to be open to change and adaptable. Plotting an inflexible dual-career roadmap at the outset and expecting that you will be able to stick to it forever is a recipe for disappointment and missed opportunities. Modern careers don't typically follow a predictable path; the road is ever-changing. Few people make it all the way through a career without experiencing an unexpected company event that affects their career prospects, a significant failure, an apparent success that turns out to be unsatisfactory, or a desire to make a significant change. Fortunately, having two careers takes the pressure off either person to be responsible for all of the material support of the family unit. Furthermore, shared goals, mutual understanding, and a commitment to helping each other are powerful resources that help dual-career couples work through career and life challenges and changes.
If you fundamentally respect each other, value and appreciate each others' careers, want to help each other succeed, and keep the lines of communication open, you'll be able to handle and quite possibly even embrace the twists and turns you encounter along the way.
It’s a “digital currency”. Normal currencies have banknotes, each with a registration number. Imagine that, instead of printing the notes, you just kept a list of the registration numbers of each of the notes and who owned them. People could pay one another by transferring the registration numbers online. That’s how Bitcoins work. A network of computers is keeping track of who owns a pot of 11m of these numbers. It’s the price of putting a number in your Bitcoin account that’s soaring – this week it hit $147, a more than tenfold increase in price since January.
That doesn’t sound revolutionary.
Well, Bitcoin has a few peculiar features. The oddest is that we don’t yet know who actually devised the whole system.
What do you mean?
All that we have is the founder’s pseudonym: “Satoshi Nakamoto”. It’s a Japanese name, but they could be a person or people anywhere in the world. Whoever they were, they mistrusted government enough to set up a private currency and an online bank account system outside its reach.
What’s the monetary policy for this currency?
Rather simple. The network of computers generates a fixed number of new Bitcoins a day. The system also has a cap built into it – so there can never be more than 21m of the registration numbers.
Weird.
It gets odder. The whole network is anonymised. So while there is a register saying who owns which of the numbers, it is designed to make it extremely difficult to track which real-life person owns what.
Why did someone do this?
They wanted a currency they could use online that was outside government control.
And they don’t trust the conventional banks?
I think that goes without saying these days.
How easy is it to get an account?
It’s a hassle.
And do any major businesses accept them
for payment?
Er, no.
That sounds like quite a significant bug in something calling itself a “currency”.
They are, in that regard, less useful than Air Miles.
So is a Bitcoin account as secure as a bank account?
No. It’s safe from governments – for now – but there have already been several high-profile hacking incidents and thefts from accounts on the network. Savers who lose out aren’t covered by any insurance – and the police can’t trace thefts.
So why exactly did people start to use this service?
Lots of people agree that the government can’t or shouldn’t be trusted with the money supply. Some Bitcoin investors are libertarians who want to support a private central bank. And others worry that expansionary monetary policy – like Japan’s super-loosening this week – will set off hyperinflation.
And they think Bitcoins are valuable precisely because not that many of them can be generated.
Exactly.
Like those “limited edition” plates commemorating royal weddings?
I suspect Bitcoin investors would prefer to think of it as a digital alternative to gold. But the rationale is the same. Less idealistically, there are other people for whom untraceable bank accounts are rather helpful.
Go on . . .
Bitcoin’s anonymity attracted illegal operations. Its most famous use, until recently, was as the currency in an online narcotics emporium.
So why has its price risen so fast? A rise in the demand for drugs?
Not quite. It looks like the tax on bank deposits in Cyprus spooked some people, who jumped to buy untaxable, unfindable Bitcoins. Then, as the price rose, more people bought in.
People bought because the price was rising?
They expect more rises. It’s a modern tulip mania.
Except without a pretty flower at the end of it.
Or a Kate Middleton plate.
So what does the rise in the price of Bitcoins mean?
In the real world, even when inflated to $1.5bn, the Bitcoin market is tiny. That said, the inflation hawks who bought early can make a killing from the rise in the price. If, that is, they can be persuaded to turn them in for government-backed money. You know, the kind you can buy actual stuff with.
When James Nares turns a high-speed camera on the citizens of New York, every moment becomes nuanced and significant.
When Hollywood wants to add a bit of drama to an explosion or a smooch, there’s nothing like a generous dollop of slow motion. It may be overused, but the very mechanics of slow motion make a lot of sense. How do you make a moment last longer? By literally making it last longer.
Street, by artist James Nares, takes slow mo’s philosophies and elevates them to high art. Roving through Manhattan at 40 mph, Nares filmed 16 hours of footage from the back of an SUV. His tool? A Phantom Flex camera, which is capable of filming not just Hollywood’s slow motion standard of 48 frames per second (fps), but a scientific-research-friendly 10,750 fps (though I don’t believe he cranked the settings that high).
The results are unbelievable. Edited down to 61 minutes with a soundtrack by Sonic Youth founder Thurston Moore, a simple jaunt down an NYC street becomes a living sculpture carved from humanity itself or a spontaneous ballet in which every microsecond of movement (walking, texting, even face scratching) is graceful.
Amidst what feels like a world caught in deep introspection, in which everyone seems fraught with highly personalized inner turmoil, surreal moments dot the landscape. Mickey Mouse snaps a mimed photo, a man casually flirts with a woman resting her arm on gigantic tennis rackets.
But this is actually the world we live in. Nares just gives us the time to appreciate its nuance in full--maybe for the first time ever.
The full-hour experience of Street is on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art until May 27.
Check out "Reasons My Son is Crying," an anonymous dad's daily Tumblr blog featuring photographs of his bawling toddler with captions describing all the inane reasons that made him upset, including (from top left, clockwise):
Those of us who believe that managers make better decisions when key data are presented visually tend to get very excited about all the innovation going on in the graphical display of information. (For a sampling of some new and cool tools, see the popular Hans Rosling TED talk.) However, if you work in a large organization and want it to make better use of data visualization, I'd argue that commonality is more important than creativity. If you can establish a common visual language for data, you can radically upgrade the use of the data to drive decision-making and action.
The best case I can cite for this argument is Procter & Gamble, which has institutionalized data visualization as a primary tool of management. Working with visual analytics software vendor Tibco Spotfire, P&G has put visual displays of key information on desktops — over 50,000 P&G employees now have access to a "Decision Cockpit" (shown below).
In addition to the desktop displays, P&G has built meeting spaces that it calls "Business Spheres" in over 50 locations where management information is displayed for review and decision-making by groups. Some of these rooms, like the one at P&G's Cincinnati headquarters shown below, actually are spherical in shape, though most are conventional rectangular meeting rooms freshly outfitted with large screens on the walls.
Around the world, P&G managers are conferring in such rooms, with embedded analysts from P&G's Information and Decision Solutions group aiding their deliberations with Spotfire-enabled visuals.
Some of the displays are quite cool — I particularly like, for example, the "heatmap" showing where P&G's products stand in their respective markets. (See below.) But their purpose is not, of course, to dazzle managers with coolness and creativity. The real goal is to help them understand quickly what's going on in the business, and to decide what to do about it. P&G's CIO Filippo Passerini calls it "getting beyond the what to the why and the how." If decision-makers have to spend too much time with the data figuring out what has happened in an important area of operations, they may never get to why it happened, or how to address the issue. Good visual displays keep the focus on managing the business by exception, and direct management attention to where it is most needed.
Take the heatmap shown here (click to see a larger version), for example, which is a typical one for P&G in Europe. Simultaneously it shows all the markets in which P&G products compete and their relative share (red indicating low market share and green indicating high market share), and also puts in clear perspective the importance of growing the share of any one of those markets. Guy Peri, an IT Director at P&G who until recently was in charge of business analytics, explained why that perspective is useful:
Historically, we used to celebrate businesses or initiatives being "green" or spend time on businesses/initiatives that were red — when in comparison to the broader portfolio, those businesses/initiatives were relatively immaterial to the overall performance. With visual analytics, we are able to quickly focus business decision makers on the businesses issues that are material.
Having such displays in common use is especially important to P&G because it is an extremely global company, and prefers to develop managers by moving them regularly from one brand and geographical market to another. Consistent data visualization across the corporation reflects and supports that strategy. Step into a Business Sphere in Cincinnati, Singapore, or Geneva and you'll see the same charts and graphs projected. Sit down at a desk in any P&G location, and the Decision Cockpit works the same way. P&G tries to make its graphics and colors "Apple simple" to ensure that managers can focus on the important business issues wherever they are in the world.
It's also important, of course, that not only the displays but the information itself is common across the organization. At P&G, there are a set of seven "business sufficiency models" that specify what information is used to address a particular problem domain. If you're focused on supply chain issues, for example, the sufficiency models specify the key variables, how they should be displayed visually, and (in some cases) the relationships between the variables and forecasts based on the relationships.
P&G's dedication to common and well-understood data displays shows what is possible when senior managers are able to stop spending so much time discussing whose data is correct, what data should really be used, and how it should best be displayed. They can spend that much more time devising ways to address the problems and opportunities. It's the creativity that is exercised on those fronts that really drives the success of businesses.
The company, Redigi, wants to be the used record store of the digital age.
Tim Boyle/Getty Images
We have secondary markets for almost everything. If you no longer want that old record or CD, you can sell it to a thrift store, used record store, or on eBay.
But what about songs from your iTunes library you no longer want? Or ebooks you've purchased and don't want to keep? Do you have the right to resell these digital goods?
Today on the show, we've got the story of a company that wants to be the used record store for the digital age. Redigi launched in 2011 and quickly found themselves in court facing allegations of copyright infringement. The case involves a law from 1976, a phonorecord and a judge that quotes Star Trek.
For more on the legal case involving ReDigi check out our earlier posts:
Many people have made macaronsthatlooklikeburgers, but this video from Japanese YouTube user hockie8612 (who seems to specialize in cute food) is the first time I've seen a bunch of different burger macarons side by side—in this case, representing a chunk of McDonald's burger menu.
I love these little sketches.
These McDonald's-inspired burger macarons are made with chocolate ganache "patties," green crepe "lettuce," yellow icing "cheese," and macaron "buns"—with sesame seeds when applicable. (Mustard, ketchup, pickles, and onion seem to be missing, but I think these interpretations are close enough.) If you want to make these at home, check out the video's page for the recipe and our macaron-making tutorial.
How to make Macaron Burgers マカロンバーガーの作り方Recipe(レシピ)
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