That same year, the Asia Society in New York commissioned a story on Chan’s favourite Chinese restaurants. Chan wrote back with a dry list. When the editor followed up, asking why his list only contained places in California and none in New York, he replied with a casual aside, explaining how, in his opinion, New York Chinese food had been stagnating for years as immigration patterns shifted, and was rotten compared with that available in California.
Without Chan’s permission, the editor published his aside along with his list.
“I was horrified,” Chan says. “That was not meant for public consumption, but that thing hit such a nerve.”
New Ikea report finds that people don't feel at home in their homes
This dovetails with a huge amount of research and theory going back to the early 1900s on changing definitions of home. But what’s fascinating about Ikea’s report is that Ikea, simply by being the largest furniture retailer on earth, has a role to play here. The corporation has more than 400 stores in 25 countries. It reported 936 million visits to its stores last year. One favorite faux-factoid, which, obviously, can’t be verified, claims that 1 in 10 Europeans is conceived on an Ikea bed. We are increasin
Source: New Ikea report finds that people don’t feel at home in their homes
The untold story of Stripe, the secretive $20bn startup driving Apple, Amazon and Facebook | WIRED UK
“The idea driving 402 was that it’s obvious that support for payments should be a first-class concept on the web and it’s obvious that there should be a lot of direct commerce taking place on the web,” says John “In fact, what emerged is a single dominant business model which is advertising. That leads to a lot of centralisation, because you get the highest cost per clicks and with the largest platforms. A big part of what we’re trying to do with Stripe is continually make it easy for new business to start, and for new businesses to succeed. Having commerce and direct payment succeed on the internet is a very important component of that. It’s the final piece in the Dream Machine.”
The untold story of Stripe, the secretive $20bn startup driving Apple, Amazon and Facebook | WIRED UK
On February 24, 2016 the company launched the Stripe Atlas platform, designed to help entrepreneurs start a business from absolutely anywhere on the planet. The invitation-only platform allows companies from the Gaza Strip to Berwick-upon-Tweed to incorporate as a US company in Delaware – a state with such business-friendly courts, tax system, laws and policies that 60 per cent of Fortune 500 companies including the Bank of America, Google and Coca-Cola are incorporated there for just $500.
How Berea College Makes Tuition Free with its Endowment – The Atlantic
Higher education in America is plagued by many problems: limited access for low-income and minority students, affordability, etc.—but Berea is different than much of the rest of higher education. But those differences make it fragile. It’s unclear if its model will last forever, but for now, it has a simple purpose. It wants to keep education tuition-free for its students for as long as possible.
“Alright, give me back that bass line,” Clayton told them as the students began clapping again.
“I’m gonna keep on walkin’,” they bellowed, “keep on talkin’. Marching to my destiny.”
Source: How Berea College Makes Tuition Free with its Endowment – The Atlantic
Economic Growth – Paul Romer
Currently, most of these subsidies are given to universities and professors, who then dole them out to graduate students. One experiment worth trying would be to add a large number of fellowships for graduate education that are awarded directly to promising young undergraduates who are considering further study in science and engineering. If these fellowships were portable, so that the recipient could pursue any course of study at any institution, it would add an interesting new dimension of competition to higher education. It might encourage more innovation, perhaps even the entry of new competitors. After all, it is probably not a sign of health that in the research university business, the United States has not seen a successful new entrant since Stanford and the University of Chicago were founded at the end of the 19th century.
Source: Economic Growth – Paul Romer
Economic Growth – Paul Romer
The third big meta-idea is the system of science that has turbocharged the pace at which we can now explore the vast number of possibilities that combinatorial explosion offers up. This meta-idea has its roots in the Enlightenment, but it continues to evolve. One important innovation came with the passage of the Morrill Act in the United States in 1862. It invented a new type of university, one that was instructed to focus on “the agricultural and mechanic arts.” (This is why some of these universities still include A&M as part of the name.) This practical focus had important consequences for economic activity. Well into the 20th century, traditional universities in Britain and Germany had stronger basic science in chemistry (and had the Nobel Prizes to prove it.) But new schools of chemical engineering started by two of the Morrill Act universities (Purdue and MIT) helped the United States surge ahead to the worldwide leader of the petrochemical industry.
Source: Economic Growth – Paul Romer
Economic Growth – Paul Romer
For developing countries, the priority is to find a way to make use of the tested strategies that richer countries have already used to have a higher standard of living. One of the biggest meta-ideas of modern life is to let people live together in dense urban agglomerations. A second is to allow market forces to guide most of the detailed decisions these people make about who they interact with each other. Together, the city and the market let large groups of people cooperate by discovering new ideas, sharing them, and learning from each other. The benefits can show up as a new design for a coffee cup or wages for a worker that grow with experience acquired in jobs with a sequence of employers. People living in a large city cooperate with residents there and through many forms of exchange, with residents in other cities too. Cities connect us all together. China’s growth reflects is rapid embrace of these two big meta-ideas, the market and the city.
Source: Economic Growth – Paul Romer
Economic Growth – Paul Romer
When I was growing up, I was told to eat my dinner because “children are starving in China.” Then, prospects for China looked dismal, far worse than for Africa, India, or Latin America. The changes that have followed from the opening-up reform in China have astonished everyone. One very positive effect is that people in other countries with low GDP per capita are asking “If China did this, why can’t we?” The challenge for growth theory is to understand why growth in China was so much faster after reform th
Source: Economic Growth – Paul Romer
Running Docker in Production: three use cases and the good, the bad and the ugly
Prepare for chaos Chaos is a fact of life; hosts fail, engines fail, containers fail and your app can crash. Being properly prepared for “controlled chaos” means that when it happens, it’s not such a big deal. When planning for production it is highly recommended to do it in such a way that you can “kill” any host, any node, at any time so that at least one host can be forced down by sheer brute force and everything will still be fine. Another piece of advice is that if you’re using one of the previously m
Source: Running Docker in Production: three use cases and the good, the bad and the ugly