Blog

Sick of eReaders and Bluetooth headsets? Witness the Ed Hardy booth! They call their iPhone cases “Icing” for some reason and have two plasticky bikini-clad booth babes. If you’re the kind of person who likes Ed Hardy, you’ll love it.

   + 

Fed may re-enter MBS market later in 2010 – Market News –  The Federal Reserve is discussing re-entering the mortgage-backed securities market later this year if its buying power is needed to hold down interest rates, Market News said on Tuesday in a story citing Fed officials – Reuters

and
The Fed Is Preparing QE 2.0, MBS-Only Edition – Submitted by Tyler Durden – We all knew it would happen, and now the Fed is implicitly confirming it – Quantitative Easing 2.0 is on the docket, with a sole purpose of purchasing of MBS, reports Market News. As the private MBS market is dead and buried, much more on this coming in a post later today, the Fed can not afford to abandon MBS and the GSEs in March. If it does, it is game over for interest rates, mortgages, and the stock market. Period. … – Zero Hedge

————

possible strategy – Bernanke’s Fed Bills coming to a bank near you… – How the Fed proposes to issue its own debt – Submitted by EB – … We suspect the Fed will wait until the US Dollar index rallies to at least 81 or 82 before announcing the next round of long term Treasury purchases.   … – Zero Hedge

————

Rep. Barney Frank: Lenders Fannie and Freddie now a ‘public policy instrument’ – By Michael O’Brien    – … “Remember now that Fannie and Freddie have been converted,” Frank said during an appearance on CNBC. “Part of the losses of Fannie and Freddie are that since the housing collapse, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have become a kind of public utility.” … – The Hill
————

Fannie Mae expedites REO sales – Offers may be accepted without notifying loan servicers – ...  To speed up sales of foreclosed properties, Fannie Mae says after beginning the property disposition process by obtaining opinions on the market value of a repossessed home and listing it with a real estate broker, it may now accept a purchase offer without first notifying the servicer, whether or not a final decision has been reached with respect to the review…. Inman News

————

Derivatives Look Set to Escape Any Serious Regulatory Reform –  The United States and United Kingdom have apparently backed away from previous commitments to forcing most OTC derivatives transactions onto centralised exchanges, Oxford Analytica notes. Given the high importance of the US and UK capital markets globally, this climb-down essentially guts a regulatory aim flagged by the G20 as a rhetorical priority. – Research Recap

————

Lobbying Blows Back on Mortgage Lenders, Shareholders – By Alain Sherter – The researchers show that mortgage companies that lobbied intensively in the years leading up to the financial crisis had higher loan-to-income ratios; more aggressively securitized those loans; and had faster growing loan portfolios. These same lenders subsequently saw a higher rate of defaults, and their stock price fell more than average in 2007 and 2008. Put another way, the firms that lobbied the most took the biggest risks.  – Bnet

Paper download: A Fistful of Dollars: Lobbying and the Financial Crisis at IMF website

»  For those who can’t bear to stop Tweeting even for a moment, Ford is adding a voice-activated service for Twitter messages and internet radio. [AP]

»  A new study shows that the electromagnetic waves from cell phones could prevent Alzheimer’s disease. I[AFP]

»  The Jitterbug phone, aimed at seniors, has a new function—it can call to check up on Grandma. [PC Magazine]

»  The UK has over 8 million mobile gamers, a number some say is indicative of users’ willingness to pay for content. [PocketGamer]

»  Tethering your cellphone to your belt may sound lame, but what if you could do it wirelessly? [AFP]

Review: 2010 Mercedes-Benz E350 Coupe is a worthy companion

The term ‘coupe’ has underwent a series of bastardizations over the last three decades, but the E350 returns the title to its former glory.

Video: We take Kia and Microsoft’s Uvo for a test drive at CES

Kia unveiled its all-new infotainment system earlier this week and we take it for a spin at CES to see if it lives up the hype.

MyFord Touch and SYNC App Ecosystem hands-on [w/video]

The new MyFord Touch system has the specs to revolutionize the way we interact with our vehicles, and we finally get some hands-on time with the SYNC’s sexy successor.

Also of interest:

• General Motors builds first Volt battery pack on production line [w/video]
• Obama urged to push Japan to open its cash-for-clunkers program to U.S.
• GM’s Lauckner says Volt could cost under $40,000
• Cadillac XTS production to start at Oshawa in early 2012
• GM reportedly delays board meeting as new Swedish bidders emerge for Saab

Browse our archive of Daily U-Turn posts or subscribe to the RSS feed

Daily U-Turn: What you missed on 1.7.10 originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 07 Jan 2010 19:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Get ready for another season of Simon and Paula’s signature bickering — on the US adaptation of The X Factor.

Paula Abdul has allegedly inked a $4.5 million contract to bring her loopy commentary to the judges panel on an American version of Simon’s hit UK talent show, The X Factor. That’s interesting, considering the star walked away from her post at American Idol because she failed to secure the $10 million-a-year payday she was vying for.

Apparently, Paula isn’t very good at gambling, is she?

A FOX tipster revealed to The National Enquirer’s Mike Walker: “Simon flew Paula to London and wined and dined her relentlessly over the course of several days, even introducing her to everyone who works on X Factor. But what really clinched the deal was Simon’s pledge that she wouldn’t have to deal with all the nonsense and infighting that she hated on Idol.”

The X Factor America will premiere in 2011.

Bruce V. Bigelow wrote:

San Diego-based Prometheus Laboratories, which develops specialty pharmaceuticals and diagnostic tests, says today it has secured $260 million in financing that consists of a $210 million loan and a $50 million line of credit. The company says proceeds will be used to finance the acquisition of more therapeutic and diagnostic products, and to refinance existing indebtedness.

Comments | Reprints | Share:  

 
 
 

With the increasing computing power available to even casual users, the security-conscious have had to move on to increasingly robust encryption, lest they find their information vulnerable to brute-force attacks. The latest milestone to fall is 768-bit RSA; in a paper posted on a cryptography preprint server, academic researchers have now announced that they factored one of these keys in early December.

Most modern cryptography relies on single large numbers that are the product of two primes. If you know the numbers, it’s relatively easy to encrypt and decrypt data; if you don’t, finding the numbers by brute force is a big computational challenge. But this challenge gets easier every year as processor speed and efficiency increase, making “secure” a bit of a moving target. The paper describes how the process was done with commodity hardware, albeit lots of it. 

Their first step involved sieving, or identifying pairs of prime integers; that took the equivalent of 1,500 years on one core of a 2.2GHz Opteron; the results occupied about 5TB. Those were then uniqued and processed into a matrix; because of all the previous work, actually using the matrix to factor the RSA value only took a cluster less than half a day. Although most people aren’t going to have access to these sorts of clusters, they represent a trivial amount of computing power for many organizations. As a result, the authors conclude, “The overall effort is sufficiently low that even for short-term protection of data of little value, 768-bit RSA moduli can no longer be recommended.” 1024-bit values should be good for a few years still.

Given that these developments are somewhat inevitable, even the authors sound a bit bored by their report. “There is nothing new to be reported for the square root step, except for the resulting factorization of RSA-768″ they write. “Nevertheless, and for the record, we present some of the details.” Still, they manage to have a little fun, in one place referencing a YouTube clip of a Tarantino film following their use of the term “bingo.”

Buy This Item: [Click here to buy this item]

Article

Palm stole the show last year at CES when it revealed the Palm Pre and webOS, the company’s new flagship smartphone and Linux-based mobile software platform. It was a bold Hail Mary from a company that many industry observers thought was already out of the game. Palm’s press briefing this year was less daring, but still delivered some significant evolutionary advancements for the company’s mobile vision.

Palm is boosting its hardware lineup, augmenting its software platform, and expanding its developer ecosystem. The biggest news is a pair of new devices—incremental updates of the company’s existing Pre and Pixi smartphones. The new handsets, called the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus, will be available later this month from Verizon. The Pre Plus got a minor facelift with a simplified design that ditches the front navigation button. It will also have more memory.

Buy This Item: [Click here to buy this item]

Article

Bayle et al. / PNAS

Scientists created these virtual 3-D reconstructions of 30,000-year-old teeth.

Did our extinct Neanderthal cousins have an artistic bent, and did they interbreed with modern humans? Newly published research seems to support affirmative answers to both questions, but those answers are far from final.

The fresh findings appear this week in two reports written by overlapping teams of researchers and published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

One study focuses on bones and marine shells found at 50,000-year-old Neanderthal cave settlements in southeast Spain. The other study looks at the teeth of a 30,000-year-old human skeleton from Portugal.

One outlandish theory about food that is consistently recycled by activists is the idea that what we eat is somehow “addictive.” In other words, people can’t control what they put in their mouths.  If you are thinking no sensible human being would honestly believe this, look no further than a commentary in last month’s Canadian Medical Association Journal. Authors Valerie Taylor, Claire Curtis, and Caroline Davis claim that “neurologic findings linked to substance abuse are shared by some individuals with weight problems.”

You read that right. According to this premise, some people who choose to overeat are neurologically the same as cocaine addicts.

See where this is going? The strategy behind this “addiction” claim is to absolve individuals of responsibility for overeating and assign it instead to food manufacturers and restaurants for making food that’s, well, irresistible. And given the deeper-pockets of companies relative to most individuals, it’s no surprise to see that this strategy has drawn the interest of trial lawyers everywhere like John “Sue the Bastards” Banzhaf. Banzhaf has gone so far as to call personal responsibility “crap” and has been a driving force behind obesity lawsuits using this bogus theory.

The trial lawyers are also opportunistically joined by animal rights activists, including the preposterously named “Physicians Committee” for Responsible Medicine and its wacky president, Neal Barnard. PCRM backed lawsuits against meat producers and retailers as far back as 1999, and later applauded litigation that “holds four fast-food chains responsible for an obese man’s health problems.” Barnard also appeared in Morgan Spurlock’s ridiculous film “Super Size Me” to shill the idea that food is addictive. Apparently, Barnard isn’t just using hyperbole when he calls cheese “dairy crack.” Bankrupting establishments that serve animal products is one way that vegan activists can push their save-the-chickens agenda.

But for trial lawyers looking for a super-sized payout, consequences be damned. If they can get their foot in the door here, then after suing food companies they’ll deal with the resulting mess with more litigation. As Banzhaf says: “We’re going to sue them and sue them and sue them.”

It won’t be long until the next CES post, so if you are caught up, pass the time by playing virtual instruments from instrumentube and kokokaka3000. It’s actually a really interesting way to use the timeline.

Rightware, a Finland-based developer of user interfaces for mobiles and mobile applications, has closed a $4.3 million (€3 million) round of funding from Finnish VC firms Nexit Ventures Oy and Inventure Oy. The company has also acquired the Mobile and Embedded business unit from Futuremark, from which it was spun off only last month, for an undisclosed sum.

Rightware develops and markets a 3D graphical UI solution called Kanzi, which it sells into both the mobile and automotive industries. 3D user interfaces have become a standard, and very central, feature in touch-screen handsets. Rightware’s customers include Texas Instruments, Imagination Technologies, China Mobile and Audi. The UK chip maker Imagination counts Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) and Intel (NSDQ: INTC) among its customers and investors.

Rightware’s purchase of Futuremark’s mobile and embedded business division includes all of the unit’s intellectual property rights, assets and liabilities. Some of the platforms currently using the technology include Symbian, Android, Windows Mobile, Linux and mobile Java. TMC notes that Futuremark will use the sale to concentrate on games development and its PC Benchmarks operations. Release

Related

• Apple Increases Stake In UK Radio Chip Firm Imagination

Scientists have figured out a way to switch brain cells on and off like light bulbs, but instead of using a clapper, they’re using microbial proteins and lasers. Ed Boyden, a neuroscientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has developed a way to shut down parts of a brain just by shining light on them. When the light is turned off, the brain switches back on [Forbes].

The research team says their technology will help neuroscientists probe the brain’s circuitry by silencing certain regions and studying the effects. The technique, which was described in the journal Nature, could one day be used to shut down overactive regions of the brain often found in people with epilepsy, depression, Parkinson’s disease, and blindness.

A bit of fancy genetic tinkering is required to prime the brain to respond to light. Neurons fire when electrically charged atoms – ions – flood in and out of them, creating a tiny electric potential across their membranes [New Scientist]. Using this knowledge, the MIT researchers built upon Boyden’s 2005 discovery that demonstrated that certain microbial proteins can create a stimulating effect when genetically engineered into neurons and blasted with light. Boyden has now found a similar pair of bacterial and fungi proteins that also respond to light, but respond by shutting off their neuron hosts.

What’s more, one of the proteins responds to yellow light, while the other reacts to blue. A far-off hope, especially of those who study artificial intelligence, is that using a combination of [the two new proteins] to turn off certain types of neurons along with using Boyden’s earlier method of activating neurons, the brain could be manipulated in complex ways. Researchers could then learn much about how the brain processes information, better copy it and, maybe, better control it [Forbes].

Obviously, using optogenetics to treat humans is years, and maybe decades, away from reality. However, even if the technology never makes its way into medical treatments for human brains, it will certainly prove useful as a research tool for basic scientific research on brain circuitry.

Related Content:
80beats: Can Laser Treatment Rejuvenate the Incandescent Bulb?
80beats: Lasers Write False, Fearful Memories into the Brains of Flies
80beats: Scientists Predict: The 2010s Will Be Freakin’ Awesome—With Lasers

Image: flickr / etwood

Best known for its movie stars, sun and surf, Los Angeles probably isn’t the first place you’d think to breed technology. But when you consider the influence of investors like Jason Calacanis and Mark Suster, in addition to the fact that companies like Demand Media and Docstoc call Southern California home, it’s not surprising that the community is emerging as one of the country’s hottest startup hubs. ReadWriteWeb caught up with some defining characters of the LA Tech scene to find out why they’ve made their homes away from the traditional tech haunts of Silicon Valley.

Sponsor

FUNDING
Says Sean Percival, developer and founder of LA tech blog Lalawag, “The tech space in the Valley feels over saturated at every level, at least to me. Here in LA there are still so many untapped resources and opportunities.” Similarly Twiistup producer Francisco Dao remarks, “There’s certainly a smaller funding infrastructure in LA but it is MUCH more accessible. SoCal VC’s can be easily found at events looking to meet entrepreneurs. In Northern California, it’s harder to get into the loop and get to know some of the VCs and players.”

In some cases, competition to pitch angels in the Bay is so fierce that entrepreneurs have paid to present their companies. Upset by the exploitative practice of pay-to-play angel pitch sessions, serial entrepreneur Jason Calacanis recently launched the Open Angel Forum. Based out of LA, the Forum allows companies to submit an application free of charge with the best applicants invited to dinner alongside some top-tier angels. Other LA-based funding sources include firms like Rustic Canyon Partners and GRP VC. Dealmaker Media also hosts regular LA-based events where founder Debbie Landa invites some of the country’s top VCs to coach LA startups through industry trends and tactics.

MENTORSHIP
As for mentorship opportunities, in 2009 GRP VC‘s Mark Suster created Launchpad LA to offer help to early-stage LA-based entrepreneurs. The group meets virtually 2 times per month and seasoned veterans pass their knowledge on to startup newcomers. Some of these newbies include companies like band app-maker Mobile Roadie and parenting social network Totspot.

Says Suster, “We historically didn’t have a ton of successful tech companies. But things have changed and now companies like PriceGrabber, MySpace and Shopzilla are well established. LA is seeing a resurgence in second time entrepreneurs and it’s this generation of people that are helping breed success for others.”

Docstoc CEO Jason Nazar also works with Dealmaker to host a monthly Startups:Uncensored meet up series. Meanwhile, Francisco Dao’s Twiistup is the event to attend for SoCal tech networking.

Says Dao, “I think the smaller more familial environment in LA may act as almost a natural incubator. Everyone talks to everyone else here.”

There’s an old saying that “a cloudy day is no match for a sunny disposition.” Lucky for them, the LA tech scene gets to experience warmth in more ways than one.

Photo Credit: Lisa Newton

Discuss

New year, the typical time of the year when everyone sets their goals for the coming year. And so should you! Setting your goals is important if you want direction, and face it, we all need direction, or we’re just wandering around.
When you set your goals, you should set them SMART: Specific, Measurable, Ambitious, Realistic and Tim-based. Let’s first take a look at what these SMART goals are, and later we’ll see a great way to reach them.

Setting your goals

Specific: You need to set specific goals. Don’t just say I want to monetise my blog in 2010, or, I want to lose weight, but specify: I want my blog to earn me a living by the end of the year, or I want to reach a healthy BMI score by the end of march.

Measurable: This point is very closely related to the first point. By setting a number, you make your goals measurable: I want my blog to earn me 2500$ a month by the end of the year, or I want to lose 5 pounds by the end of march.

Ambitious: There is no point in setting goals if they don’t take you somewhere. Preferably somewhere further down the road. Make your goals ambitious. Very ambitious. There is no point in setting a goal like: I want my blog to earn me 1$ a year by the end of 2010. Or I want to lose half a pound in the coming 6 months. Reach for the stars! Like Michelangelo said it: “The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.”

Realistic: It may sound contradictory to the previous point, but however high you aim, your goals must still be realistic. Don’t set goals like I want to lose 100 pounds in two weeks. That’s not healthy, really. Or, I want my blog to earn me 1 million dollars by the end of this month. That’s just plain luck!

Time-based: As you’ve seen in all the points before, your goals need to be time-based. There is no point in setting your goals without timing. I mean, I want to lose 10 pounds. Yes, if you wait long enough, you will, eventually, in 150 years or so, I bet you’ll weigh even more than 10 pounds less then today… Or, I want my blog to earn 100$. Over a timespan of 10 minutes? Great blog! Or over a timespan of 10 years? Man, your blog sucks then.

But… Which timeperiod to choose? And now (drum roll)… what this post is all about: You should set your goals short. Why’s that? Well, setting your goals on a short time, will create very strict deadlines for you. This gives you no time to wander off to other things. This gives you no time to get into doubt about the better best of bestest way to reach it. This gives you no time for distractions. This gives you only time for action! And that is what you need to reach your goals!

So go out now, take a piece of paper and a pen, and write down your goals. Not for 2010, not for january, but for this week, for tomorow, for today. And then go and achieve them.

Oh, and come back over here, and share your goals in the comments, because another factor in achieving your goals is sharing them (what? Do I see you lighting a cigarette? You told me your goal was… etcetera, you get the point ).

Related posts:

1. What do you want? And how can I help you? Those are two important…
2. Internet earning in 2009 Many people are wonderingen in these economical bad times, will…
3. 10+1 commandments of a blogger 10 + 1 commandments that every blogger should obey. 10…