firehose

The merger of China’s two largest state-owned rail equipment makers has created an industry behemoth, second only to General Electric in size, that will be competing aggressively for projects across Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America.

The dual-listed China Railway Construction Corp. began trading on June 8 in Hong Kong and Shanghai after  CSR Corp Ltd and China CNR completed their merger last week. Shares jumped as much as 12% by mid-morning of their debut, bringing the company’s market capitalization to $130 billion, larger than that of many rail industry heavy hitters like Germany’s Siemens, France’s Alstom, or Canada’s Bombardier. And GE, the largest company in the business, also has finance, aviation, energy and other industries in its massive portfolio.

The combined CRCC has revenues of about $36 billion and a workforce of 118,000.

CRRC was created to allow China, home to the world’s largest network of high-speed rail, to become more competitive when it exports rail technology and manufacturing. China, once a major importer of rail technology, wants to be a world leader in high speed rail, with projects that span the globe, focusing especially on emerging markets.

“It used to be that CSR and CNR were competing against Bombardier and Alstom; now it has become China versus everybody else,” Alexious Lee, who leads industrials research for CLSA, told Bloomberg. “China’s products may not boast high-end specifications, but they provide value for money.”

Indeed, China’s advantage is that it offers a cheaper alternative than its rivals. Chinese rail costs, on average, between $17-21 million per km (pdf, p.7), compared to non-Chinese companies’ $25-39 million per km, according to World Bank estimates. Last year, CNR won a $567 million bid to build the subway system in Boston, Massachusetts after bidding 50% less than Bombardier.

Still, China’s global rail ambitions have also run into problems. Its $3.7 billion high speed rail contract in Mexico was abruptly scuppered due to internal politics. While China provides equipment and construction help, so far no mainland company has won any bid to export made-in-China bullet trains.

Many cities offer Wi-Fi hotspots for visitors. Very few local governments, however, offer free, unrestricted, high-speed Wi-Fi, fast enough for streaming video—the sort that makes your paid-for home Wi-Fi look sluggish. And even fewer provide upload speeds on par with download speeds.

Yet visit the Finnish capital of Helsinki, and there is a free hotspot almost everywhere you need one. It’s fast enough to allow video calling and HD streaming. And it doesn’t require a reading of lengthy terms and conditions, nor a password, nor the need to divulge your age, gender, or email address. Helsinki doesn’t want your identity, or your money, or your data—indeed the only warning before you hit “accept” is a reminder that public networks are insecure, so be careful out there. All it wants is to get you online. Fast.

Helsinki’s excellent internet infrastructure is the result of some forward thinking on the part of the city, says Micah Gland of Helsinki Business Hub, an organization that promotes the city. When Helsinki’s city government was installing Wi-Fi in its offices and other facilities, it decided to concurrently install open networks for public use. According to Petri Otranen, who runs IT for the city administration, it was built in 2006 before the capital hosted a meeting of Asian and European heads of state.

The result is not necessarily blanket coverage, but wherever there is a building or space controlled by the city, there is Wi-Fi coverage. And it isn’t particularly expensive. Otranen says the cost is included in overall maintenance of the city’s internet and is not broken out separately, though Simo Volanen of Helsinki’s IT department estimates that the outside base stations cost some €40,000 to buy and install ($45,000) and have an annual maintenance cost of about €4,000. This does not include the cost of running the network, which Helsinki does for its own purposes in any case.

The reason Helsinki is able to do this, and London or New York are not, is partly down to the way Finland is run. Finnish cities have tremendous power, including powers of taxation. Helsinki residents pay a municipal tax of 18.5% of their income in addition to national income tax. Finnish cities have the usual powers—streets, rubbish collection—but also handle things like healthcare, education, and cultural institutions. That means that their municipal footprints are much bigger than London’s, for example, where city authorities have fewer day-to-day responsibilities.

But here’s the odd thing: Most Helsinkians have little need for free Wi-Fi. Finns receive the most generous data allowance from mobile operators for every euro they spend, according to Politico. For €35 (about $40) a month, a Finnish phone subscriber will get 50 gigabytes of high-speed data, 25% higher than Estonia in second place, and more than 10 times as much as the EU median. Gland of Helsinki Business Hub tells me he is on an unlimited 4G data-voice-text package that costs only €30 per month.

Perhaps the biggest beneficiaries of the service are tourists and other visitors, who forgo expensive roaming fees while in Helsinki. This generates goodwill for the city, says Otranen, Helsinki’s IT manager. (City employees also have no excuse for missing emails or calendar appointments while on the go.) Helsinki’s surprisingly affordable rollout of free public Wi-Fi “makes everyone’s lives easier every day,” he says.

We make thousands of charts a year at Quartz, and when we receive complaints about them, it’s usually that the y-axis doesn’t start at zero.

Their point is that truncating the y-axis, as we often do in line charts, exaggerates what the data really say. Some people consider it a maxim that the y-axis should always be zeroed. They think to do otherwise amounts to lying.

But these complaints are wrong.

Charts should convey information and make a point. We make charts to illustrate ideas that have context beyond their x- and y-axes. Forcing the y-axis to start at zero can do just as much to obscure and confuse the point as the opposite.

Of course, there’s plenty of nuance to when it is and isn’t OK. Below are some guiding principles when it comes the y-axis.

Truncate the y-axis to emphasize what you’re trying to show.

Charts serve to illustrate ideas. If the price of a stock spiked upon news of an acquisition or plummeted on the rumor of a catastrophe, the chart should show a line that spikes or plummets.

A common complaint of this is that it gives the appearance of severity when none exists.

First, this is why charts have scales. Blaming a chart’s creator for a reader who doesn’t look at clearly labeled axes is like blaming a supermarket for selling someone food he’s allergic to.

Second, the degree to which the chart emphasizes certain aspects of the data is a judgement of storytelling not chart-making. Sure, this mindset can yield misleading displays, but how is that different than words? Charts should be fair, not impartial.

Truncate the y-axis when doing so is the norm.

Stock charts, especially intraday charts, use truncated axes. It’s a convention. The purpose of these charts is to show the tiniest fluctuations relative to where the price was moments ago, not relative to zero.

Truncate the y-axis when small movements are important.

Which chart below is better at showing how the most recent financial crisis affected the US economy?

Can you look at the chart above and determine the low point of the recession? Can you determine how much US economic output shrunk? Of course you can’t, because plotting this on a zeroed axis at this aspect ratio obscures those ideas.

Now take a look at this chart. It’s the exact same data.

This chart clearly shows that the low point was in the second quarter of 2009, the result of a $0.5 trillion drop in economic output.

Edward Tufte, an expert in data presentation, agrees. “In general, in a time-series, use a baseline that shows the data not the zero point,” he wrote on his website, “don’t spend a lot of empty vertical space trying to reach down to the zero point at the cost of hiding what is going on in the data line itself.”

Truncate the y-axis when zero values are ridiculous.

Charting is about being true to the data. Some data never falls to zero—the body temperature of a living person, for instance. Who has a fever, Sara or Bob?

Let me help by truncating the y-axis.

Feel better, Bob.

In other data sets, where zero values are technically possible, they are still worth omitting when the implication that it might reach zero is preposterous. Consider the labor force participation rate in the US, which is defined as:

All persons 16 years or older in the US classified as employed or unemployed as a percent of all persons 16 years or older persons who are not inmates of institutions, and who are not on active duty in the Armed Forces.

For this figure to fall to zero, every person in the US would have to either be younger than 16, out of work, not looking for work, furloughed, in the military on active duty, in prison, in a nursing home, or in a mental facility. (At which point, all of those facilities would have to be run by volunteers or members of the military.) The labor force participation rate has never been measured below 58%.

Real world example:

Real world criticism:

Putting a zeroed y-axis on this chart would suggest that it’s plausible that either every 15-64 year old in Europe could die or every person over 64 never had kids in their life. How’s that for upping the scariness?

Use a zeroed y-axis when it doesn’t matter.

None of this means you shouldn’t zero your y-axis. If doing so doesn’t obscure the point your chart is trying to make, or muddle the information, it’s often a good idea. The chart above works exactly as well with a zero axis as it does without it.

Always use a zeroed y-axis with column and bar charts.

Of course column and bar charts should always have zeroed axes, since that is the only way for the visualization to accurately represent the data. There is no debating this one (except for a few exceptions).

Never use a zeroed axis on a log scale.

That is impossible.

An anonymous reader writes: There's some sad news for those of you looking forward to playing Fallout 4 on your Xbox 360 or your PS3. Bethesda has announced that Fallout 4 will be a current-gen and PC exclusive game and that there will be no last-gen releases in the future. Bethesda global community manager Matt Grandstaff says of the old consoles, "the stuff we're doing will never work there."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

OED Word of the Day: plum, v. To swell up; to become light or spongy, as dough when rising

Words for Pets

While hackers pose external threats in both The Net and GoldenEye, the problems the digital world raises in the messy cyber-steampunk Johnny Mnemonic are more internal. The film posits that, by the year 2021, people will have installed upgrades in themselves that will turn them into human flash drives; data too sensitive to send over the regular internet could be transmitted through human courier. (Don’t worry—if that seems gross, the fax machine is still in use in 2021.) Here, internet and virtual reality are basically one and the same; they’re distinct in other films, and virtual reality has pretty much ceased to be an ongoing concern today. In any case, this method of data transfer, while profitable if the courier feels comfortable working with shady people, is not without its costs. For his “one last job” before he’s out of the business, Johnny Mnemonic (Keanu Reeves) overloads his system, taking on more information than he has memory. (Get it? Memory? If that wasn’t clear enough, Johnny also had to get rid of some cherished childhood memories to make room for his last big score.) He spends the rest of the movie suffering from “synaptic seepage,” with the information leaking out of its storage center and causing him migraine-like pain. His virtual data is damaging his physical, real-life body.

Immediately, both the yakuza and a Jesus-like bounty hunter (Dolph Lundgren) start coming after the information in Johnny’s brain. It turns out that the package he’s carrying is the cure for 2021’s big pandemic, Nerve Attenuation Syndrome, which causes seizures and is ultimately fatal. What causes it? An unjustly discredited doctor, Spider, played by a bespectacled Henry Rollins, lays it out: “It’s information overload,” he tells Johnny. “We have all of this shit because we can’t live life without it.” Exposure to the radiation from all the electronics causes a worldwide plague, but people are just too addicted to get rid of it. In its convoluted way, Johnny Mnemonic is a warning that one day we’ll all be too reliant on the internet for our own well-being. It’s a theme that still resonates throughout popular culture, though usually without any priestlike bounty hunters delivering the message.

Virtual reality is also an addiction in Kathryn Bigelow’s underrated Strange Days. Set at the turn of the millennium (just four years away from the film’s release), the movie presents a world in turmoil: Fires, riots, and looming doomsday fears are the film’s constant, often-unremarked-upon backdrop. Yet even in a world in dire need of escapism, virtual reality has been outlawed. That makes former cop Lenny Nero (Ralph Fiennes, with a level of smarm and haircut that suggests today’s Bradley Cooper), a black-market VR dealer. “This is not like TV only better,” he explains to a potential client. “This is life—straight from the cerebral cortex.” Although it’s a passive medium—users can only watch and feel, and not participate or interact with others—it’s the good stuff.

Nero specializes in what he calls “street life,” or VR clips that feature dark and gritty sex, violence, and crime. What he chooses to watch himself, though, is altogether more wholesome: sunny clips of roller-skating with his ex-wife (Juliette Lewis) that, fine, also end in sex. But whether VR is used to live vicariously through others or recall happier days, it’s incredibly addictive. Characters talk about getting “strung out” and doing “too much playback,” which makes them turn violent and paranoid. Escapism turns out to be a dangerous drug.

Eventually, Nero is sent a “black jack,” or a snuff clip of a murder, and he’s compelled to solve it. In a twist on the old trope where a cop has to put himself in killer’s shoes, Nero has to actually live out a killer’s life, feeling his sense of elation as he claims a victim. For Nero, living through those moments is sickening and torturous. (In the course of his investigation, Nero finds a clip showing a police killing of an unarmed black man that feels oddly prescient today.) In Strange Days, VR isn’t just corrosive to the body; it’s corrupting to the soul as well.

Courtney shared this story from Super Opinionated.

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Courtney shared this story from Super Opinionated.

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The John Waters commencement address, RISD

tastefullyoffensive:

Little-Known, Totally Legit Animal Facts (images via learn2post)

Previously: Animated Animal Facts

Today, gift circles exist in a variety of cultures and communities across the country. But this particular circle is mostly comprised of Orbuch’s network -- college-educated 20 to 30 somethings, living in the San Francisco Bay Area. Many of them are new to the circle which means that first, everyone needs to introduce themselves. As they go around the circle, each person says whether they have past experience with gift economies. The annual Burning Man art festival comes up a lot, as gifting is one of the event’s main principles, and participants are forbidden from cash exchanges.

Then, one woman introduces herself and mentions that she’s currently trying to leave what she calls a “money gifting circle.”

The tone of the room shifts suddenly. A few people in the room nod, or hum knowingly. Orbuch looks at the woman with wide, solemn eyes. “That isn’t a good thing,” she says. “I’m glad you’re getting out. Let’s talk afterwards.”

The introductions continue, then the gift circle gets under way. Afterwards, Orbuch and the woman talk. It turns out that  “money gifting circle” is an old fashioned pyramid scheme, with the twist of having adopted a lot of the same new age rhetoric as a gift economy.

An anonymous reader writes: Operating as personal offline versions of iTunes and Spotify, the téléchargeurs, or downloaders, of Mali are filling the online music void for many in the country. For less than a dime a song, a téléchargeur will transfer playlists to memory cards or directly onto cellphones. Even though there are 120,000 landlines for 15 million people in Mali, there are enough cellphones in service for every person in the country. The spread of cell phones and the music-sharing network that has followed is the subject of this New York Times piece. From the article: "They know what their regulars might like, from the latest Jay Z album to the obscurest songs of Malian music pioneers like Ali Farka Touré. Savvy musicians take their new material to Fankélé Diarra Street and press the téléchargeurs to give it a listen and recommend it to their customers....This was the scene Christopher Kirkley found in 2009. A musicologist, he traveled to Mali hoping to record the haunting desert blues he loved. But every time he asked people to perform a favorite folk song or ballad, they pulled out their cellphones to play it for him; every time he set up his gear to capture a live performance, he says, 'five other kids will be holding their cellphones recording the same thing — as an archivist, it kind of takes you down a couple of notches.'”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

:(

Stephen Curry Chance No. 1 to beat the Cleveland Cavaliers in the final seconds of overtime:

Stephen Curry Chance No. 2 to beat the Cavaliers in the final seconds of overtime:

One badly air-balled step-back jumper out of a timeout, one forced pass to Klay Thompson intercepted by the tentacles of Iman Shumpert -- a fitting end to a 5-of-23 performance and a night rife with squandered opportunities. The Cavs go home with a tied series, and Steph goes home with a frown:

The review found that the Major Crimes Section was critically understaffed and its detectives managed high workloads with little supervision.

Investigators did not find evidence of a pattern of dishonest behavior, but “given the high workload and flexible work environment of MCS, dishonest, or even dilatory,behavior would be difficult to detect if it were to occur,” the report concluded.

It also found that the Oregon State Police lacked a clear policy on how detectives should store and disclose digital evidence like recordings and photographs.  

“Because technology is frequently used by criminals to commit crimes and by law enforcement as a means to collect evidence, some form of digital evidence will be present in almost any case. For that reason, we recommend that OSP adopt a specific evidence-handling and disclosure policy regarding digital records and recordings,” investigators wrote.

OSP spokesman Lieutenant Bill Fugate said the agency is committed to making the necessary changes.
(Permalink)

Star power took precedence on Sunday with the first award presented by Bradley Cooper to Helen Mirren for her lead performance as Queen Elizabeth II in "The Audience." It was an unusual step for the Tonys to present such a major award so early in the evening, a move that could be interpreted as a ratings play by CBS.

"Your Majesty, you did it again," Mirren said in accepting her first Tony. In the play, Mirren incarnates Britain's ruling monarch at various stages of her life as she meets with prime ministers to discuss matters of state.

The actress won an Oscar for playing Queen Elizabeth II in the 2006 movie "The Queen."
(Permalink)

A police officer in McKinney, Texas, was placed on administrative leave after a video surfaced showing him wrestle a 14-year-old girl to the ground and point his gun at two young men.

The officer was one of 12 who responded to reports of a disturbance among a group gathered at a private community pool in the Dallas suburb, said Greg Conley, chief of the McKinney Police Department. Residents said some of the youths were fighting and refusing to leave, according to Mr. Conley.

The video, which was posted on YouTube, captured a tense scene, as the officer sought to restrain the girl and some onlookers screamed and protested.

Mr. Conley promised a “complete and thorough investigation into this incident.” He said the department also would review how officers respond to such situations. “Any time you confront a large group of people, it’s a very dynamic situation, and tensions can rise very quickly,” he said.

Mr. Conley said the girl involved was temporarily detained and later released to her parents. Police arrested one man for interfering with an officer and evading arrest, he said.
(Permalink)

“This is not 'Morning in America' or a hope-and-change campaign,” CNN reported when Graham announced last week. “Instead, Graham sees a world where radical Islam is on the march, ‘rogue nations’ like Iran and North Korea are bristling with threats and the security of the homeland can't be guaranteed…. Graham's doom-laden rhetoric is in keeping with his hawkish world view and belief that the Obama administration has presided over a feckless foreign policy.”

He’s also one of the few members of Congress who’s served in the military (active duty, National Guard, and reserves), retiring as an Air Force colonel in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps (JAG).

But Graham also is known as a Republican who can work in bipartisan fashion with Democrats, and he’s more inclined than many in his party to vote for a Democratic president’s nominees to Senate-confirmable positions – as he did with US Attorney General Loretta Lynch, whose nomination had languished for more than five months in the Republican-controlled Senate, and with President Obama’s nominees to the US Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

“I'm going to vote for her because I believe this election has consequences. And this president chose someone who is qualified to serve on this court,” Graham said in explaining his Kagan vote. “At the end of the day, it wasn't a hard decision … She would not have been someone I would have chosen, but the person who did choose, President Obama, chose wisely."

Graham has taken heat from tea partiers – who refer to him pejoratively as a “moderate Republican” – for his willingness to work with Democrats on such issues as climate change, taxation, and immigration reform.

Speaking to the Council on Foreign Relations in March, he said that climate change “is real” and that “man has contributed to it in a substantial way.”
(Permalink)

Monsanto on Sunday made a new attempt to acquire Syngenta, the Swiss agricultural chemical manufacturer. But rather than increase the price it is willing to pay, Monsanto instead offered to pay Syngenta $2 billion if Monsanto cannot obtain the regulatory approvals necessary to complete the deal.

“We’re encouraged by the reaction to our proposal from our respective shareowners, customers and other stakeholders,” Hugh Grant, the chief executive of Monsanto, said in a statement issued on Sunday evening. “It is disappointing that Syngenta has not engaged in substantive discussions about the many benefits of this combination, including the benefits for farmers around the world.”

But despite speculation that it would raise its offer, Monsanto kept it at 449 Swiss francs, in a combination of cash and stock, for each Syngenta share, worth about $45 billion. Monsanto said the deal represented a premium of 43 percent to Syngenta’s share price on April 30 before rumors of the offer became public.

Instead, Monsanto chose to address one of the objections Syngenta raised when it both announced and rejected Monsanto’s initial offer on May 8. Syngenta said then that the offer undervalued its prospects and underestimated “the significant execution risks, including regulatory and public scrutiny at multiple levels in many countries.”

The regulatory issues stem from the fact that Monsanto is the largest seller of seeds in the world, and also has a substantial presence in the herbicide business with Roundup, the world’s most widely used weed killer. Syngenta is the world leader in agricultural chemicals, but also has a substantial position in the seed business.

Monsanto had already said that it would sell off Syngenta’s seed business to obtain antitrust approvals. It also said it would sell other overlapping businesses.

In its statement on Sunday, Monsanto said it was so confident that it could obtain regulatory clearance that it was offering to pay the $2 billion “reverse break-up fee” if it could not.
(Permalink)

fripperiesandfobs:

“Electric Light” fancy dress designed by Worth for Alice Vanderbilt, worn to the Vanderbilt Ball, March 26, 1883

From MCNY via The Huffington Post & Jewels Du Jour 

batmanisagatewaydrug:

stuffaboutminneapolis:

Feminist Sexual Harassment Card (1960’s) via Minnesota Historical Society

Here’s the thing about second wave feminism

It wasn’t perfect

But it was metal as fuck

pepperjunkie:

Sinkhole in Xuanen county, China’s Hubei province by Song Wen-Barcroft Media..

We all know our bodies are home to countless millions of bacteria and microorganisms, but without seeing them with our bare eyes it’s almost impossible to comprehend. This petri dish handprint created by Tasha Sturm of Cabrillo College, vividly illustrates the variety of bacteria found on her 8-year-old son’s hand after playing outdoors. The print itself represents several days of growth as different yeasts, fungi, and bacteria are allowed to incubate.

It’s safe to say almost everything you see growing in this specimen is harmless and in many cases even beneficial to a person’s immunity, but it just goes to show why we sometimes it’s good to wash our hands. Sturm discusses in detail how she made the print in the comments of this page. (via Ziya Tong)

ratherbookish:

sushinfood:

reeferkitten:

king-faded:

angelclark:

Historic Black and White Pictures Restored in Color

1. Women Delivering Ice, 1918
2. Times Square, 1947
3. Portrait Used to Design the Penny. President Lincoln Meets General McClellan – Antietam, Maryland ca September 1862
4. Marilyn Monroe, 1957
5. Newspaper boy Ned Parfett sells copies of the evening paper bearing news of Titanic’s sinking the night before. (April 16, 1912)
6. Easter Eggs for Hitler, c 1944-1945 
7. Sergeant George Camblair practicing with a gas mask in a smokescreen – Fort Belvoir, Virginia, 1942
8. Helen Keller meeting Charlie Chaplin in 1919
9. Painting WWII Propaganda Posters, Port Washington, New York – 8 July 1942
10. Construction of the Golden Gate Bridge ca 1935

This is awesome.

Not something I’d typically reblog but I like.

This is bloody fantastic.

Honestly seeing old photos in color makes the past so much more tangible.

The US Navy's next-gen electromagnetic catapult for aircraft carriers works! Well, OK, the military hasn't exactly used it to launch an actual fighter jet yet, but a recent test has proven that it can handle 80,000 pounds of steel. The Navy has been ...