Anyone who has ever been to a zoo knows that they are usually pretty docile places. The animals, being animals, mostly lounge around all day.
This is especially true for big cats, which don’t seem to have temperaments much different from the house cats all of us on the internet are so familiar with. However, big cats still possess their hunting instincts, and an unfortunate heron took this fact for granted at an Amsterdam zoo recently.
The incident was caught on video by zoo-goers. It shows the heron innocently striding along the water in the Lion enclosure before a lioness takes notice. The heron gets only a spit-second to try and fly away before the lioness takes him down. A very excited younger lion then tries to get in on the action, taking the dying bird away and promptly losing it.
If you’ve ever wondered how your cat catches those birds it leaves on you doorstep, the video below is a good approximation.
If that video hasn’t sated your thirst for zoo animals, you can also check out the video of drunken monkeys that National Geographic uploaded this week.
George Takei, best known as Captain Sulu of Star Trek, says it’s been his “lifelong dream” to make it to Broadway. He came close in 1960 when he was invited to audition for a show. But he did not get the part.
“It was a body blow,” says Takei. “Suddenly, New York turned into a cold, heartless city.”
But now, at age 75, Takei is ready to try again. At TEDxBroadway, Takei tells us why he wrote a musical called Allegiance with composer Jay Kuo and writer Lorenzo Thione. The play speaks to an often-forgotten part of American history: Japanese American internment during World War II. It’s a story Takei knows very well.
“I was 5 years old when my parents got us up early one morning and hurriedly dressed us,” says Takei in this heartfelt talk. “My brother and I were in the living room, looking out the front window. I saw two soldiers with bayonets on their rifles come marching up the driveway. They stomped up the front porch and they banged on the door … We were ordered out of our home.”
Takei’s family spent four years in a prison camp in Arkansas. “Our only crime was looking like the people who bombed Pearl Harbor,” he says. “I remember the sentry tower with machine guns pointed down at us. I remember the searchlight that followed me when I made night runs to the latrine. As a 5-year-old kid, I thought it was kind of nice that they lit the way for me to pee.”
In this talk, Takei shares the profound impact the experience had on his family with humor and tenderness. And he talks about how he built interest in an unlikely musical about a subject he calls a “dark and shameful chapter of American history.” When Allegiance opened at the Globe Theater in San Diego in late 2012, it broke all box office records for the theater.
T-Mobile will be the last of the big four wireless carriers in the United States to offer the iPhone when it launches in the next month. The company’s new “UNcarrier” initiative could make it an appealing choice for consumers looking for a contract-free plan. Horace Dediu of Asymco estimates that T-Mobile could sell about 3.4 million iPhones in 2013, totaling 10% of its subscriber base. The analyst’s sales numbers are based off trends from AT&T (T), Verizon (VZ) and Sprint (S), along with the percentage of total subscribers that each operator has been activating. Dediu notes that the sales patterns are consistent across all carriers and that the longer the iPhone is is available, the higher the activation rate. He estimates that iPhone sales across all four major carriers will reach 53 million in 2013, accounting for 17% of 320 million subscribers, an increase from 14% in 2012.
In real life, a lawsuit was filed against Choudhury Bikram, founder of Bikram Yoga. A woman named Sarah Baughn alleges that Bikram sexually harassed and assaulted her during a yoga instructor training camp back in 2005.
The Bikram Yoga organization responded, calling these “false charges,” but Choudhury has not commented.
Today, President Obama promised the American people that he had not forgotten the 20 innocent chidlren and six brave educators who lost their lives at Sandy Hook Elementary more than 100 days ago. Standing with parents and teachers of gun violence victims, he urged Congress to take action that will protect other children and families from the pain and grief these families have experienced.
“As I said when I visited Newtown just over three months ago, if there is a step we can take that will save just one child, just one parent, just another town from experiencing the same grief that some of the moms and dads who are here have endured, then we should be doing it,” President Obama said. “We have an obligation to try.”
In January, the President put forward a series of common-sense proposals to reduce the epidemic of gun violence and keep our kids safe, and in his State of the Union address, the President called on Congress to give these proposals a vote. “And in just a couple of weeks, they will,” he said.
In the coming weeks, members of Congress will vote on whether we should require universal background checks for anyone who wants to buy a gun so that criminals or people with severe mental illnesses can’t get their hands on one. They’ll vote on tough new penalties for anyone who buys guns only to turn around and sell them to criminals. They’ll vote on a measure that would keep weapons of war and high-capacity ammunition magazines that facilitate these mass killings off our streets. They’ll get to vote on legislation that would help schools become safer and help people struggling with mental health problems to get the treatment that they need.
Perception is a funny thing: Nearly every Google Chromebook Pixel review says the device is great, but it’s not for you. So is it not great or is it only great for certain people? Starting at $1,299, it’s certainly not cheap, but it’s not priced that differently from similar hardware; in fact its less expensive than laptops with comparable displays. The real issue seems to be that people aren’t ready for the web as a primary interface. I am – I have been for some time, actually — and after using a loaner Chromebook Pixel full-time for several weeks, I ordered my own.
The hardware is outstanding
The hardware is on par with, if not better than, the MacBook Air I owned prior. The design is industrial and pleasing with no extras to take away from the look and feel; no cooling vents are visible, for example. Just a few ports adorn the sides: a pair of USBs, a mini DisplayPort and a microSD card slot. The speakers are hidden under the keyboard and are among they best I’ve heard on a laptop. At 3.35 pounds, the Pixel is near the top end of weight that I’d want to carry around, but I don’t find it too heavy.
Google did a great job with the keyboard and, in particular, the trackpad. The island keys are well laid out and this device is a joy to type on. The top row of special keys — Refresh, Full Screen, volume and brightness, for example — are harder to press, making them more like buttons, but that helps mitigate accidental key strikes. The etched glass trackpad is superb and supports multitouch gestures, such as two-fingered scrolling.
Then there’s the bright, pixel-packed screen that I can’t take my eyes off. Yes, the 2560 x 1700 resolution is similar to the Retina Displays found on Apple’s latest MacBook Pro laptops, but it just looks better to my eyes. I can’t be sure if it’s the default fonts, the way Chrome OS handles resolution doubling or what. I’ve made several side by side comparisons to my wife’s 15-inch MacBook Pro laptop with Retina Display and in every test, the Pixel simply looks better to me.
The Pixel’s display is also a touch screen although I don’t find myself using touch for interaction all that much. On occasional, I’ll dab at the screen to tap a button or a link, or to scroll a web page, but not often. I wish Google had introduced a non-touchscreen version for maybe $200 less as there’s little need for the feature at this time. That could change if Google brings support for touch-optimized Android apps, however.
Performance-wise, the device offers the fastest experience on the web I’ve seen yet. The 1.8 GHz Intel Core i5 processor paired with 4 GB of memory easily keep up with my all day usage requirements. The device boots in seconds and wakes instantaneously: You simply open it and get to work. The HD camera is outstanding for video chats. I do wish the 59 wHr battery lasted longer than 5 hours, however.
Let’s talk software and limitations
First, some clarification on the Chromebook Pixel can and can’t do since the most common misconception is that “it’s just a browser.” Yes, the Pixel runs Chrome OS, which uses the Chrome browser as its main interface. But that browser runs on a Linux kernel and that gives Google some opportunity to flesh out the experience a little more.
There’s a full-fledged File Manager that integrates local and cloud storage for example, as well as a standalone music player and video player; these all work offline. A basic photo editor is included. There’s support for Google Docs, which also works offline. There’s a Camera app for taking pictures, although I haven’t seen much use for it. Essentially, the basics of an operating system are here and sometimes, that’s all you need.
In fact, I’d argue that less is more in this case: I’m far more focused when using the Pixel then when using a device with various third-party applications. It’s the same reason we opted not to get a navigation system in our Chevy Volt when we bought it in November: It was adding more buttons and complications that we simply didn’t want or need on our drive.
It’s true you can’t install native software apps on the Pixel. Is that a problem? For two reasons it isn’t, at least not for me. First, all of my work is done in a browser: Research, blog posts, online classes, social networking, email, and general content consumption. I’ve had no problems doing what I want on the Pixel, which includes watching online video from Amazon and Netflix, enjoying live out-of-market NHL games, writing dozens of articles, etc….
For the few times I’ve wanted to play a game that wasn’t web-based, I simply turned to a device I already have (and one you likely do too): a smartphone or a tablet. I’m getting my app fix from those devices now and using the Pixel for everything else.
From an end-user perspective, this is little different than running Windows in a virtual machine on a Mac; and it’s actually faster to set up. This allows me to install third-party apps as needed: Skype, Audacity, Gimp or whatever else that can’t be done on the web.
Can you live a web-based life?
Chances are that most of you already live in a browser too but there are still a few activities where you prefer a third-party app. But living the web life isn’t as bad as it sounds; in fact, it’s a far better experience than it was in the past. Back in 2008, I took a 60-day web challenge, bypassing all third-party apps (save the browser) and living to tell about it. In fact, I found it actually fun to find web-based solutions for my various needs and still do.
That’s where Chrome web extensions come in today. I routinely use several on a daily basis as these mini-apps help overcome some browser limitations. The Any.DO extension manages and syncs my active tasks, a Pocket extension fires links to my offline reading list and Evernote’s Clearly extension removes the crap from a web page to let the content shine through. Extensions are only the beginning, however. Google is working on Native Client, an effort that will allow native code to run in the browser, as well as Packaged Apps, which it describes as:
“Just like web apps, packaged apps are written in HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS. But packaged apps look and behave like native apps, and they have native-like capabilities that are much more powerful than those available to web apps.”
It’s true that a future filled with apps using either of technologies is just that for now: A possible future. So the best way to see if you can live with just the web is simply to try it. Use your existing computer with just the browser for a week and find out. I think one needs to give it at least that much time because this isn’t a transition most can make in just a day. If it doesn’t work out, you’re no worse for wear, but if it does, maybe a Chromebook could meet your needs.
So: Wi-Fi or LTE?
After test driving the LTE model of the Chromebook Pixel, I opted to spend the extra $150 for that model. Instead of paying $1,299 for the Wi-Fi edition then, I ordered the $1,449 Pixel. The premium nets the integrated LTE radio, 100 MB of included LTE service each month with the option for pay-as-you-go broadband as needed, and 64 GB of local storage, which is double that of the cheaper model. Both devices benefit from 1 terabyte of Google Drive storage for three years and 12 free GoGo in-flight sessions.
The LTE radio can sometimes take a good 15 seconds to grab a Verizon signal — particularly when waking the device — but overall, having integrated connectivity for the times when Wi-Fi can’t be found is worth it to me. My LTE smartphone uses AT&T’s network and can be a hotspot, so I essentially have three ways to keep the Pixel connected: Wi-Fi hotspots, AT&T’s LTE network from my phone (which is already paid for each month) and Verizon’s LTE network as a last resort add-on.
Without a doubt, $1,449 is a seemingly high price to pay. I’ve been using a $450 Chromebook for nearly a year so the question in my mind is: Does the Pixel represent a 3x boost in experience over my lower priced Chromebook? For me it does: It’s at least 3x as fast, includes mobile broadband connectivity, comes with 10 times the cloud storage and has a screen that looks magnitudes better.
It’s all about the future and change
When I think about the Pixel, I can’t help but be reminded of a key GigaOM mantra. “Broadband is the processor,” is one of the big themes my colleague Om Malik had when starting the blog back in 2006. Indeed, if it weren’t for broadband — first wired and later wireless — we wouldn’t have the portable computing products that are so popular and in widespread use today.
No platform I can think of exemplifies this thought any better: Using web technologies as a front-end interface is the heart and soul of Google’s Chromebook Pixel. And because I’ve embraced this thought, and the experience it brings, the Chromebook Pixel with LTE is the best device for how I work. It’s not for everyone – I’d never say otherwise — but it just might surprise you if you take one for a test drive.
Last month, President Obama said in a speech in Chicago, “There is no surer path to success in the middle class than a good education.”
Today, I had the opportunity to speak at the Department of Education’s Higher Education Program Project Directors’ Meeting, which gathered thousands of people who work every day to ensure that more students receive a good education.
Project directors from across the country came together in Washington, DC to discuss how to better serve students in their three program and grant administration areas: Institutional Service (IS), which strengthens institutions that serve largely minority or low-income populations and first-generation college students; Student Service (SS), which works to provide academic preparation, support and career development; and Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE), which seeks to help implement, evaluate, and share innovative reforms to improve productivity, efficiency, and completion in higher education.
To reach this target, we project that the proportion of college graduates in the U.S. will need to increase by 50 percent nationwide by the end of the decade. That means that eight million more young adults will need to earn associate’s degrees, bachelor’s degrees, and postsecondary certificates by 2020.
Canadians have lived for far too long without the security of being able to buy their health and beauty goods from Amazon. The online retailer, after finally extending its Kindle store to our Northern neighbors, is finally delivering all the health goods our Canadian friends could ever ask for.
Amazon announced that it has launched Beauty and Health & Personal Care stores on Amazon.ca. Now Canadian shoppers can choose from over 80,000 health and beauty products, and have them delivered straight to their door. Since this is Amazon, most of the products are eligible for free two-day shipping with Amazon Prime.
“With the addition of beauty, health and personal care products, we’re excited to offer customers the convenience of ordering everyday essentials right to their home,” said Steve Oliver, country manager for Amazon.ca. “Customers can take advantage of Free Two-Day Shipping with Amazon Prime and with the Amazon Mobile App, search, discover and buy from wherever they are.”
A wide selection of international brands, as well as domestic Canadian brands, are available from the new stores:
Beauty Favourites: Amazon.ca now offers more than 45,000 beauty products from over 2,500 popular beauty brands Canadians love including; Aussie, Burt’s Bees, Conair, Cover Girl, Dove, Eucerin, Herbal Essences, Ivory, L’Occitane, L’Oréal, Nivea, Noxzema, Olay, OPI, Pantene, Ponds, Revlon, Tresemméand Vidal Sassoon.
Household Supplies: With thousands of household products to choose from, Amazon.ca makes it easy to get a jump start on Spring cleaning. Select from trusted household names like Arm & Hammer, Bounty, Clorox, Febreze, Glad, Lysol, Method, Mr. Clean, Swiffer and Tide.
Baby Care: Whether a first-time parent or child pro, Amazon.ca offers a wide selection of items for the feeding, bathing and care of babies and children with over 2,500 products from trusted brands like Avent, Fisher-Price, Lansinoh, Munchkin, Pampers, Playtex and Safety 1st.
Something For Everyone: Amazon.ca has all stages of life covered. Whether a toddler or teen, parent or senior, Amazon.ca carries personal care items and health and wellness options for everyone in the family from names like Always, Braun, Crest, Gillette, Kleenex, Old Spice, Oral-B, Secret, Slim-Fast, Sonicare, Vaseline and many more.
Canadian Spotlight: Among the ever growing list of products available, Amazon.ca is proud to carry Canadian Beauty and Health & Personal care brands, including Aleva Naturals, Bummis, Escents, Jamieson, Kushies, Obus Forme and Upper Canada Soap.
With this kind of selection, Canadians can finally join their American counterparts in never having to leave the house again.
Quasar Ventures said it has begun operations with $5.4 million in investment capital from a group of investors led by Emergence Capital Partners. The firm will follow a strategy that varies dramatically from an incubator. It plans to use its capital to develop 10 new technology companies globally in the coming four years. The firm is led by former Officenet executives Andy Freire, Santiago Bilinkis and Pablo Simón Casarino.
PRESS RELEASE
Latin American Tech Company Builder QUASAR VENTURES™ Launches With $5.4 Million Influx Led By Emergence Capital
Novel Firm Seeks to Change Startup Model by Matching Strong Business Concepts with Qualified Entrepreneurs; Goal is Ten New Tech Companies Within Next Four Years
BUENOS AIRES – MARCH 28, 2013 – Quasar Ventures™, a new technology company builder led by former Officenet executives Andy Freire, Santiago Bilinkis and Pablo Simón Casarino, announced today that it has begun operations with $5.4 million (USD) in outside investment from a group of strategic investors led by Silicon Valley venture capital fund Emergence Capital Partners. Using a growth model that varies dramatically from incubator approaches, Quasar Ventures plans to use its outside investment to develop ten new technology companies globally in the coming four years.
Quasar, the first company-builder in Latin America, is introducing a novel concept into the region called “parallel entrepreneurship.” The format turns the typical startup formula on its head by identifying robust business models, selecting them as projects, and then getting the best entrepreneurs to partner in order to implement them. Quasar offers the seed capital as well as its global network to ensure proper financing of each startup.
“It is because of these distinctive traits that Quasar is neither an investment fund nor an incubator. We are an experienced group of entrepreneurs with the mission of building groundbreaking and successful technology companies by bringing together robust business models and talented entrepreneur teams,” says Quasar Ventures founder and CEO Pablo Simón Casarino.
Quasar’s innovative approach, based on its partners’ entrepreneurial experience around implementing ideas and building high-impact companies, extends to its method of selecting entrepreneurial partners. Because human capital is a fundamental pillar, the ideal Quasar entrepreneur must have a cluster of unique personal and professional skills: he/she must be intellectually brilliant, ambitious, creative and an extraordinary leader. Quasar plans to find entrepreneurs with an edge who are able to produce a dramatic global impact as leaders of the ten companies that will be built in partnership with the firm in the coming years.
Besides Emergence Capital Partners, other successful and renowned strategic partners have joined Quasar in this effort. Some of them are Peter Kellner, Martin Migoya and Guibert Englebienne, Alejandro Tamer and Roby Souviron, CAP Ventures, Wenceslao Casares and Micky Malka, Alex Mendez, Silvia Torres Carbonell, Verónica Serra from Pacific Investimentos and Gustavo D´Alessandro.
“Having worked with members of the Quasar team for over 15 years, we are convinced that Quasar’s entrepreneurship model is the most robust option for building groundbreaking and successful technology companies in Latin America. We deeply trust this group of renowned entrepreneurs, and we hope to continue to build exciting things together in the future,” says Emergence Capital Partners Principal Santiago Subotovsky.
About Quasar Ventures:
Quasar Ventures is focused on creating disruptive technology companies in Latin America and abroad. The company was formed by Andy Freire, Santiago Bilinkis and Pablo Simon Casarino. As the first “company builder” of Latin America, this new concept of entrepreneurship is emerging globally and is supported by the entrepreneurial experience of its partners to implement ideas and create high-impact companies. For additional information, visit: http://www.quasar-ventures.com/.
About Emergence Capital Partners (@emergencecap): Emergence Capital Partners, based in San Mateo, Calif., is the leading venture capital firm focused on early and growth-stage SaaS and technology-enabled services companies. Its mission is to empower business users and organizations around the globe by unleashing the power of technology-enabled Services. The firm’s investments include Salesforce.com (CRM), SuccessFactors (acquired by SAP), Yammer (acquired by Microsoft), Lithium, YouSendIt, Box, and Veeva Systems. Founded in 2003, Emergence Capital has $575 million under management. More information on Emergence Capital can be found at http://www.emcap.com/.
The Internet and mobile experiences of 2013 continue to become more beautiful, personal, contextual and better designed. Web design pioneer Pinterest has amped up its photos more than ever, while apps like Dark Sky continue to win over fans with simple, visual experiences.
At the same time the digital infrastructure underlying these sites and services also continues to mature. Webscale computing giants like Google, and Facebook are innovating around the actual servers, and the physical layout of the data centers, while cloud computing leaders like Amazon’s web services make sure the web and mobile apps can be built for more low cost than ever before.
But take it down another layer below the latest photo sharing app and the computing infrastructure and you’ll encounter the quiet workhorses that keep the Internet and its apps working and improving: resources. It’s mostly energy, but also water, as well as the rare materials used in things like batteries.
Data centers consume huge amounts of both energy and water, as does the production of the devices where we’re spending our virtual lives. These gadgets are also collectively consuming a growing amount of energy as they operate 24/7 and remain always on and always connected.
The production and use of these core resources has historically gotten little innovation, and drawn little excitement. But as the world starts to enter an era of increasingly constrained resources — as the population hits 9 billion by 2050 and the climate starts to change – it’ll be the resources that are supporting the virtual world that will be next to rise in prominence and will get a coming wave of innovation.
Quiet backbone
It’s because of the virtual nature of connected technology that resources have become so decoupled from digital services. Years ago our CD collections were stacked up on our walls in our living rooms, and our books across our shelves. Now our digital music collections are stored in Apple’s iCloud, or sit on Spotify’s servers and our books are compressed into our Kindles. The physical goods are hidden, and replaced with energy produced by a power plant and used to keep the data center running thousands of miles away, and energy produced at a power plant probably hundreds of miles away and piped to your outlet.
Grid energy, in the developed world, works like magic: unquestioned, and accepted. Go to a developing country where the grid is spotty or non existent and it’s another story. But when it works, you don’t even know where that energy is coming from and what source — natural gas, coal, nuclear or clean power, and from which plant? Who cares.
But energy being used by data centers, by connected devices and by the network itself is huge and growing. Data centers in the U.S. are estimated to consume 12 percent more energy every year due to the continued growth in construction, according to the National Data Center Energy Efficiency Information Program’s factsheet. While the largest data centers are becoming much more energy efficient, it’s the older and smaller data centers that are still highly inefficient and consuming large amounts of energy keeping the servers cool. Gadgets themselves consume energy both in production and in use, and while devices are getting more efficient, too, the growth in sheer volumes means collectively this will go up a lot over time.
Pressure points
The era of constrained resources is just beginning, so right now access to resources acts as sort of dark matter, quietly putting pressure in complex ways on how the virtual world operates. Behind the scenes, access to low cost energy and water dictates where the Internet giants are building their next data centers and where consumer electronics companies are manufacturing their next hit gadgets. In turn, where new power plants are being built in developing nations like China, is becoming dependent on where fresh water is available.
In places where there’s not a functioning grid, one of the biggest drivers behind building distributed electricity systems (like putting a solar panel on a village rooftop) is so people can charge up cell phones, enabling access to text and mobile services like payment systems.
As resources become more constrained — through depletion or legislation — these pressure points will become even more acute. It’s already happening in some regions. And forward-thinking companies are proactively getting ahead of that era.
Today Apple is looking to power 60 percent of the power for its Maiden, North Carolina, with clean power produced on site. It’s built the largest non-utility-owned solar system and the largest non-utility-owned fuel cell farm in the U.S. That’s a highly unusual move by an Internet company, and Apple did that because it wanted to pioneer and innovate for the sector and probably experiment with controlling its own energy production. Remember, it’s brand is dependent on being an early adopter.
But there will be a time, and many a place, where fossil fuel energy produced at a traditional power plant and used by a data center won’t be so cheap or accessible. In Europe, it’s regulation that’s driving that change. European data centers are being pushed to reduce their carbon emissions, and are having a hard time meeting those goals through efficiency and clean power.
Take that energy down to the micro level, and it’s the battery in the device that often times is the quiet influencing force that commands the form of the device. Slow innovation in batteries means the battery has been one of the least flexible pieces and also hasn’t change much in decades. Battery innovation will be particularly important for wearable computing as it will operate as both fashion and function.
As the pressure increases on these pain points, as resources become more constrained in various ways, more and more innovation will emerge around how resources are generated, consumed and stored. And might not be from the startups out there. The cleantech investing wave of the last five years still hasn’t produced many winners. But Apple and Google have already begun innovating around clean power for data centers.
And as more innovation occurs, more prominence will also come. Resources could start to move from being the dark matter behind the virtual world, to an important piece that can’t be ignored.
How do we negotiate when to sell a stock, whether to rat out a partner in crime, how to play a poker hand, or what to ask for when negotiating a job offer? In each of these situations, the actions of others will greatly affect our outcomes — and yet, we have no idea what they are thinking. These are the kinds of situations that game theory has helped mathematicians and economists parse for decades.
In today’s talk, given at TEDxCalTech, behavioral economist Colin Camerer surveys new research that is taking game theory to the next level — by taking fMRI and EEG scans of people’s brains as they engage in bargaining games. The idea is to see what brain circuitry is used as people make decisions, and to map out what agreement and disagreement look like in the brains of humans … and in chimpanzees, who appear to be better at these negotiations than we are.
While the seeds of game theory were planted as early as Plato, the field gained prominence in the 1940s and 1950s, thanks to the work of John von Neumann (who wrote Theory of Games and Economic Behavior) and John Nash (of A Beautiful Mind fame). Since then, eight game theorists have won the Nobel Prize in Economics. To hear about new neuroscience approaches to this classic area of study, watch Camerer’s talk. And below, read some recent several articles about how game theory can apply to our everyday lives.
What makes a person decide to donate a kidney? As Stanford economist Alvin Roth has shown, it is largely a question of game theory and market economics. According to the October 2012 Reuters story, “Alvin Roth Transformed Kidney Donation System,” in 2004, Roth created the New England Program for Kidney Exchange, a method that used computers — and an algorithm designed by UCLA mathematician Lloyd Shapley — to pair groups of donors and create the types of kidney donation chains depicted on Grey’s Anatomy. Before this system, says Reuters, there were just 19 kidney transplants from live donors in the United States. In 2011, that number rose to 443. In total, about 2000 people have received kidneys through Roth’s system. And in October of 2012, both Roth and Shapley were awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics for their work in taking “stable allocations” from an abstract concept to a reality. .
Another real-life problem that Roth has tackled: in extremely large school systems, how can students be matched with the right school? In the Forbes magazine story, “What Al Roth Did to Win the Nobel Prize in Economics,” journalist Susan Adams takes a look at how Roth leveraged the tools of game theory to tame the high school matching system in New York City, where 80,000 8th graders must be dispersed to 700 schools every year. She writes, “Before Roth got involved, the matching system was so screwed up that a third of the city’s eighth graders didn’t even participate.” .
In their book, It’s Not You, It’s the Dishes, journalists Paula Szuchman and Jenny Anderson wonder if the daily negotiations of marriage are more like playing a game of poker than most people realize. In the article “Marriage and the Art of Game Theory,” which ran on the Daily Beast in July of 2012, Szuchman writes, “Game theory is the study of how we make decisions in strategic situations. Classic examples: the Cuban missile crisis, soccer penalty kicks, and the first scene of The Dark Knight. When you find yourself debating whether to wait for the bus another minute or give up and walk, you’re facing a game-theory dilemma … To cooperate or not to cooperate? To budge or stand your ground? To say ‘OK, fine’ or ‘not a chance’? These are questions married people find themselves asking with surprising frequency.” .
Could game theory explain why so much head-butting happens in the United States Congress, especially as they approached the fiscal cliff in late 2012? (Watch Adam Davidson’s talk explaining the fiscal cliff.) In The Atlantic op-ed “How Game Theory Explains Washington’s Horrible Gridlock,” Mohamed A. El-Erian applies the principles of game theory to Congress’ negotiation over the budget. He writes, “Here is the typical cycle: Responding to the ‘national call,’ the two parties’ initial narratives trend towards ‘grand bargains’ aimed at removing headwinds to growth, jobs, and prosperity. As differences prevail, this gets replaced by a ‘mini bargain,’ or one that would deliver some progress together with momentum for future success. As this also proves elusive, negotiations get quite acrimonious. If and when an 11th-hour compromise emerges, it lacks both content and momentum: The majority of meaningful decisions are postponed, and both Democrats and Republicans emerge from the experience more bitter — at each other, and also within their respective parties.” (Also see: “Game Theory Expert Analyzes Fiscal Cliff.”) .
Of course, the economic standoff of late 2012 wasn’t fully resolved — it was in large part delayed, leading to the more recent “sequester.” In the article “The Strange Game Theory of the Sequester,” Pacific Standard writer David Dayen wonders if Barack Obama is using game theory tactics in moving forward on sharp budget cuts. He writes, “Making clear the impact of forced austerity may offer the best hope for discrediting and reversing it. When faced with closures of national parks, shutdowns of government offices, delays in needed services like the disposition of federal benefits, and long lines at the airport due to a reduction in TSA personnel and air traffic controllers, the thinking goes, perhaps Congress will get moving on a less painful solution.”
Google (GOOG) on Thursday announced a new open source initiative for dealing with patent infringement lawsuits. Duane Valz, the company’s senior patent counsel, said that moving forward Google won’t sue any user, distributor or developer of open-source software utilizing its patents “unless first attacked.” The company hopes its Open Patent Non-Assertion (OPN) Pledge will serve as a model for the industry and encourage other patent holders to take similar approaches.
I’ll preface this post by saying (again) that I think there’s a permanent place in the world for wired and wireless access. The question of preference has come up lately as people are required to make choices – generally based on finances. Remote communities choose wireless options because it’s so much cheaper than fiber. Residents choose wireless often because a wireless-friendly device (tablet, smartphone) is so much cheaper than a laptop. The National Broadband Plan and federal funding leans toward wireless with the Mobility Fund.
But Telecompetitor is reporting that when asked, UK residents would choose wired over video and mobile services…
If they had to give up one service (video entertainment, mobile, broadband), U.K. consumers would ditch video (49 percent) or mobile (30 percent) before their fixed network broadband connection (two percent), a survey of more than 10,000 U.K. consumers has found.
The article goes on to describe the survey takers…
Nor is it clear whether the thinkbroadband findings are in some way atypical of “most” consumers. The survey is skewed towards early adopters and information technology-literate users.
About 41 percent of respondents described themselves as “confident” with IT and 49 percent said they considered themselves “power users.”
Still, 51 percent of respondents say they use broadband “for personal use only.” Some 46 percent of respondents use their broadband for work.
With the new compose enabled, Gmail no longer takes you to a different screen to write a message. When you click “compose,” a small message box pops up in the bottom-right-hand corner of the page. From there, you retain all the functionality of the old compose method – it’s just smaller and looks more like a chat box.
“You are busy people, so it’s no surprise that an overwhelming number of you opted to try out Gmail’s faster, simpler compose experience after it launched last October. In addition to telling us what you love about the new compose experience (like how much easier it is to multitask!) you’ve also been sending us helpful suggestions for what features you’d like to see added. As a result of your input, we’re now ready to introduce the new compose experience as the default for everyone. We’re looking forward to hearing what you think!” says Gmail Product Manager Phil Sharp.
Over the past few months, Google has been tweaking the new compose feature and has added the ability to send files with Google Drive, pop-out replies, and starring and labeling while composing.
Google says that the rollout will take a few days.
Overall, the compose box is pretty useful in some circumstances – especially when you’re writing an email and you have to reference another email. It simply saves a lot of time. You can also write multiple messages at a time and minimize any of them to finish later. It’s a solid improvement to the Gmail experience, and I doubt we’ll hear any bitching from Gmail users as the rollout proceeds.
FundersClub said it received a no-action letter from the Securities and Exchange Commission. The letter suggests that the SEC will not take action against venture capital advisers who are not registered as broker dealers, the company said.
FundersClub operates a site that aggregates money from accredited investors for investments in startups. The firm recently announced a $1.1 million fund to invest in Y Combinator startups.
“We give money directly to the poor — no strings attached.”
I was skeptical of the idea being pitched to my team. Two decades in philanthropy, including eight years at The Gates Foundation and six at Google Giving, had shown me the power of development done well. Living in India, I saw firsthand how an HIV prevention program could literally save millions of lives. Based on this experience, I believed — like many others — that doing for the poor is a better investment than giving money to them directly. Data from a startup nonprofit called GiveDirectly changed my opinion.
Last fall, my team huddled in a room to review our pipeline for the Global Impact Awards, Google’s program to support entrepreneurial nonprofits using technology to change the world. Like other venture philanthropists in Silicon Valley, we hunt for projects that are tech-enabled, data-driven, and have an element of informed risk.
Prior to that meeting, we had already identified a few awardees. We had decided to support World Wildlife Fund’s pilot use of unmanned aerial vehicles to stop wildlife poaching and Equal Opportunity Schools’ use of data analytics to identify and move high-performing yet underrepresented students into advanced math and science classes.
But our team was divided on GiveDirectly. We were looking for scalable, disruptive ideas but weren’t convinced this particular leap would be successful. We invited founders Paul Niehaus and Michael Faye to bring their best data and pitch us live.
Paul and Michael started GiveDirectly in 2008 while pursuing advanced degrees in economics at Harvard. Their graduate research had uncovered multiple reports demonstrating the effectiveness of cash transfers as a model to alleviate poverty. They wanted to donate, but couldn’t find a single nonprofit using this approach, so they created their own.
Today, GiveDirectly remains the first and only nonprofit devoted to unconditional cash transfers directly to the impoverished. Their lean model uses mobile-based banking technology from M-Pesa to transfer 90% of the money raised into the hands of the poor. Just 10% is spent on transfer fees and the cost of locating and enrolling recipients.
Since launching in Kenya, GiveDirectly continues to evaluate its approach with randomized control trials. They use a lottery system similar to medical trials and compare developmental outcomes of households who have received funding against those who haven’t. Their rigorous data shows that no-strings-attached cash transfers improve health and downstream financial gains. They also use this data to refine their model, and make it available on their website.
Recipients, who are often living on less than 65 cents a day, invest in everything from food for starving children to long-term assets, including land, livestock and housing. The data fights conventional wisdom: Money spent on alcohol and cigarettes either decreases, stays constant or increases in the same proportion as total other expenses (approximately 2% to 3%).
Paul and Michael shared all of this data with us last fall and left us convinced. In December 2012, we provided GiveDirectly with $2.4 million to scale to multiple countries and test the model’s effectiveness across geographies.
Investments in common goods such as roads, schools and wells are critical in helping people out of poverty. But GiveDirectly has a new concept: What if cash transfers are used as a standard benchmark against which to measure all development aid? What if every nonprofit that focused on poverty alleviation had to prove they could do more for the poor with a dollar than the poor could do for themselves?
In this world, cash transfers could play a role like index funds play for private investors: They could be a sizeable share of your philanthropic portfolio and a benchmark used to evaluate more expensive, “actively managed” investments. We’d learn more about which programs need additional funding and which are falling below the “direct to the poor” mark.
GiveDirectly is one of many nonprofits using data and technology to set new standards. Charity: water (another Global Impact Awardee) is working to install remote sensors on water wells that monitor whether they are still pumping days, months or even years after being built. Data from sensors will help improve maintenance efforts on the ground and provide a transparent report to partners, peer organizations, and donors. This information will give us a better understanding of the most effective ways to make clean water continuously available to the 800 million who currently lack access.
As funders, we need to support nonprofits like these that use data-driven approaches, especially randomized control trials where possible, and we must challenge conventional wisdom on what works.
Please join the conversation and check back for regular updates. Follow the Scaling Social Impact insight center on Twitter @ScalingSocial and give us feedback.
Scaling Social Impact Insights from HBR and The Bridgespan Group
While Kris Humphries has been dealing with his contentious divorce from reality TV star Kim Kardashian, it turns out that he has also been trying to get back in the dating game.
According to a New York Post report, this week’s US Weekly will report that Humphries was wooing Lindsey Vonn last year. This was allegedly during the same period that Tiger Woods was getting more intimate with the blonde skiing star. Vonn announced via a Facebook post earlier this month that she and Woods are now dating.
US’s unnamed source stated that Humphries’ and Vonn’s relationship never got to the physical stage, but that the two are close.
Vonn has been nursing her injuries after a horrific crash at a competition in Austria last month. She had to be airlifted to a nearby hospital, and later had surgery performed on her right knee. She is now chronicling her recovery via her social media feeds:
Like other companies operating at webscale, Netflix knows that processing and serving up lots of data — some to customers, some for use on the backend — doesn’t have to happen either right away or never. It’s more like a gray area, and Netflix detailed the uses for three shades of gray — online, offline and nearline processing — in a post on its tech blog on Wednesday.
The Netflix way of processing data online, offline and nearline.
The whole point of its data architecture is to tackle latency by pointing workloads and tasks toward systems designed to work at their speed. People love to think about Hadoop when they think about web data, but the reality is that relying solely on batch processing means data can get stale and applications probably don’t include the newest user input.
Netflix uses online processing for receiving information from users in real time and serving up responses right away, such as looking at a new rating or some other customer action to change the set of movies shown to the customer. Real-time processing works best when algorithms are relatively simple and when data is on the smaller side. The data feeding in to computations must also be available right away.
Nearline processing happens when the data needs to be computed in real time but can be stored for serving up at a later point in time. This option makes sense when computations are more complex and are amenable to a more-traditional database-oriented approach. Netflix uses a variety of databases, including MySQL, the NoSQL Cassandra database and its own homemade EVcache system.
Offline processing in Netflix’s world might also be called batch processing — think bigger and longer-term Hadoop jobs. It also fits for compute-heavy projects to train new models that will come into use at a later date. And it’s a backup for situations when real-time processing isn’t possible.
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I am now down to one crutch!! 
