Julien Eperon

July 2021: Article updated to fix some of the rules and details.

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Denmark on Monday (Sept. 2) became the first country to completely ban PFAS from food packaging. The class of chemicals, also referred to as “perflourinated” or “flourinated” compounds, commonly coats microwave popcorn bags, baking paper, and take-out containers.

PFAS are often used to make nonstick pans (like Teflon), waterproof clothing (like Goretex), and firefighting foam. Surfaces coated in PFAS become nonstick and greaseproof, which are great qualities for food packaging.

But here’s the problem: PFAS chemicals have been linked to a range of health risks in humans including cancer, immune system disorders, reproductive abnormalities, and problems with fetal development.

PFAS are present in food packaging around the world. At fast-food chains like Chipotle and Sweetgreen, for example, “compostable” fiber containers are turning up in lieu of plastic ones. While single-use plastic continues to be a very bad idea and a scourge on the planet, and replacing it is, at first blush, a good thing, there’s a problem with the new bowls: They’re lined with PFAS.

The bowls are often marketed as compostable, but as awareness of PFAS grows, that feature is becoming a problem. One study of compost from five US states found PFAS levels as much as ten times higher in the soil from facilities that accepted food packaging. This year, composting facilities in Oregon sent a letter to a biodegradable packaging industry group, to announce that they wouldn’t take any more food packaging. The PFAS would contaminate the facilities’ compost, which could no longer be labeled as organic.

Right now, communities globally are confronting the problem of PFAS contaminating their water supplies. In towns near factories that manufactured PFAS, or used PFAS to make their products, local communities are learning they may have been drinking the chemicals for decades. The compounds are also turning up in water supplies near military bases and airports, which used PFAS foam to put out fires.

The myriad health effects of the many types of PFAS are just beginning to be understood, but already exposure to PFAS is estimated to cost Europe 50 billion euros in health costs each year. The compounds were first manufactured in the US by the companies Dupont and 3M, who knew that their product was a problem, as reporting by Sharon Lerner at the Intercept has shown. 3M, for example, knew that PFAS accumulated in people’s blood and were harmful to their health as early as the 1970s. Likewise, 3M has known since 2001 that PFAS were showing up in the US food supply.

In the US, a bill to ban PFAS in food packaging was introduced in the House of Representatives in May.

In a press release announcing the ban, the Danish government noted that “fortunately” there are other ways to make paper grease-proof and water-proof that don’t have the potential to cause cancer and endocrine disorders (in Danish here).

“We congratulate Denmark on leading the way for healthier food and hope this will encourage similar action across the EU, the US and worldwide,” said Arlene Blum, a chemist at the University of California Berkeley and the founder of the Green Science Policy Institute. “Given the potential for harm, we must ask if the convenience of water and grease resistance is worth risking our health.”

À quoi ressemblerait l'appartement de la transition ? Douze acteurs de l'économie sociale et solidaire ont meublé un trois-pièces parisien pour en faire une vitrine de la maison de demain. Rien d'inaccessible au final, plutôt des idées simples à appliquer au quotidien.

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SEC's ICO, Feeling, Win95 for iOS, and Monocular Performance Capture

1. Howey Coins -- SEC made their own fake ICO site to illustrate the dangers of unregulated offerings. When you click through to buy, you get their information page.
2. Graphene-Based Sensor that Feels As a Human Does -- The device detects changes in electrical conductance and resistance through the graphene film when the film is deformed. [...] The graphene film responds to deformations in just 1–2ms, which Park says is much faster than any other piezo-resistive material. [...] Park and his team incorporate their graphene film onto an artificial fingerprint structure so the film reacts to tiny vibrations caused by the ridges on the fingerprint rubbing against a textured surface. Analysing these vibration signals allows the sensor to “feel” differently textured fabrics.[...] After learning the features of known fabrics, the sensor was able to extrapolate this knowledge and significantly outperform humans when classifying 12 new fabrics – scoring 99% compared to 58% in a blind test of 50 people.
3. ClassicKit -- a collection of classic-style UI components for iOS.
4. MonoPerfCap -- the first marker-less approach for temporally coherent 3D performance capture of a human with general clothing from monocular video.

Continue reading Four short links: 17 May 2018.

OPINION. Un changement d’algorithme sur Instagram qui remplace la publication des photos dans un ordre chronologique par une sélection des photos «les plus intéressantes» déclenche la colère des abonnés

Since late December, South Korea has been battling price-gouging hospitality providers.

One motel reportedly raised prices as high as 900,000 won a night (about $840) ahead of next month’s Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang. Others were advertising nightly rates of 300,000 won (about $280) before government officials promised to take action.

Choi Myeong-hee, mayor of the city of Gangneung, announced a campaign against hotels and motels charging excessively high fees. Choi Moon Soon, governor of the Gangwon province, said he’d crack down on those that overcharge or refuse individual reservations. Son Jung-ho, head of the Gangneung branch of the Korea Accommodations Industry, pushed the businesses to lower prices and refund the difference to guests who had already booked rooms at exorbitant rates.

“Through this campaign I hope Gangneung can leave behind its disgraced reputation for ripping visitors off,” Son reportedly said. “And I think accommodation charges will be stabilized with more people participating in the campaign.”

Another weapon the government has in its arsenal against price-gouging hotels? Airbnb.

The home-sharing startup is looking to do brisk business during the Olympics It became an “official supporter” of the games last November, saying it would work with locals in the Gangwon province on offering short-term rentals. Airbnb also partnered with Gangwon earlier in 2017 to help the province scale up its 1,000 home-sharing listings.

The average price of an Airbnb listing in Gangwon province during the Olympics period is $100 per person, per night, the company said in an email, significantly cheaper than the rates that enterprising hotels and motels were charging in recent months.

Airbnb makes it harder for traditional lodging companies to price gouge because it expands the supply of rooms. The hotel industry describes nights when more than 95% of rooms are occupied as “compression nights,” enabling them to raise prices. In August 2016, a report from financial services firm UBS found that hotels in two of Airbnb’s biggest markets—New York and San Francisco—had noticed a decline in compression nights during 2015. The analysts theorized that was happening because rooms on Airbnb had given customers more options.

In July 2015, Pebblebrook Hotel Trust CEO Jon Bortz told investors that Airbnb had limited what the company could charge during events like marathons. “We used to have really intense compression and an ability to price maybe what the customer would describe as sort of gouging rates,” he said. “I’d say we’ve lost a lot of that ability at this point.”

A few weeks ahead of the opening ceremonies in Pyeongchang, Airbnb says it’s expecting 6,000 guests in Gangwon, with more bookings to come. Jake Wilczynski, Airbnb’s spokesman for the Asia Pacific region, said listings in Gangwon have tripled from the previous year thanks to the company’s regional partnerships, and that based on current bookings, local hosts are set to earn around $2 million. Airbnb says 1.9 million travelers stayed in an Airbnb in South Korea in 2017.

During the 2016 Olympics in Rio, Brazil, Airbnb hosted more than 85,000 guests. According to a survey sponsored by the Brazilian Ministry of Tourism, 21% of Brazilians and 25% of foreigners opted for home-sharing.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Electric cars are already cheaper to own and run than petrol or diesel cars in the UK, US and Japan, new research shows. The lower cost is a key factor driving the rapid rise in electric car sales now underway, say the researchers. At the moment the cost is partly because of government support, but electric cars are expected to become the cheapest option without subsidies in a few years. The researchers analyzed the total cost of ownership of cars over four years, including the purchase price and depreciation, fuel, insurance, taxation and maintenance. They were surprised to find that pure electric cars came out cheapest in all the markets they examined: UK, Japan, Texas and California. Pure electric cars have much lower fuel costs -- electricity is cheaper than petrol or diesel -- and maintenance costs, as the engines are simpler and help brake the car, saving on brake pads. In the UK, the annual cost was about 10% lower than for petrol or diesel cars in 2015, the latest year analyzed. Hybrid cars which cannot be plugged in and attract lower subsidies, were usually a little more expensive than petrol or diesel cars. Plug-in hybrids were found to be significantly more expensive -- buyers are effectively paying for two engines in one car, the researchers said. The exception in this case was Japan, where plug-in hybrids receive higher subsidies. The study has been published in the journal Applied Energy.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Around since 1928, BBDO is a worldwide advertising giant that's 15,000 people in 289 agencies across 81 countries. I worked with the San Francisco office leadership to develop a look that spoke to the San Francisco and West coast vibe. The challenge was to do this while still maintaining the feeling of their established global brand. CREDITS: Jim Lesser, Matt Miller, Craig Mangan, Steve Rutter PHOTOGRAPHY: Eric Louis Haines