Category: rePosts

For now, Martin and Bionym are courting developers large and small to build apps and devices that use its method of authentication. “If you think of any of the top mobile manufacturers,” he tells me, “we are most likely engaged with them. They saw this was a huge additive value to what they do.” The Nymi is scheduled to come out sometime next year, and will cost $99. It’s not the first product to read a person’s ECG — it’s used on a few devices in the medical community — but it’s the first that promises to do it well and for everyday people.
IT CAN ONLY REPLACE PASSWORDS IF IT WORKS EVERYWHERE YOU NEED IT
Bionym’s challenge is gaining enough trust and support for its product; unless it’s ubiquitous, it’s doomed. Martin doesn’t sound worried — he’s more like impatient. “I’ve got keys in my pocket, and they’re scratching whatever else is in my pocket. I want to go home and my door is unlocked and that’s it.” Even if it’s not his product that does it, Martin believes he’s on the front lines solving a huge problem both for oft-hacked companies like Google and for everyday people.
“Do you think 100 years from now we’re going to be doing this? We’re going to have to remember all our passwords, carry our stupid keys around? I hope not.”
via This bracelet could replace your passwords, your car keys, and even your fingerprints | The Verge.

From the opening episode it becomes clear why Hormones, a drama of daily life at a Bangkok high school, has become the most talked about programme on Thai television.
Within the first few minutes there is the sneaky cigarette during morning register, the bathroom quickie during break time, the mindless chatter about who likes whom, the agony of a boring lecture, and the impending suspension of a handsome bad boy.
Day-to-day life in Thailand is still largely conservative, with programming revolving around game shows and anodyne soap operas, and sex education premised on abstinence over birth control.
Which is why, much like Skins did in Britain, Hormones has struck a nerve in Thailand, where fans appreciate its honesty and critics lambast its “reckless” scenes of youths smoking and kissing on-screen.
Officials have even called for outright censorship, but its director, Songyos Sugmakanan, says the series plays an integral part in Thailand’s culture, primarily because the issues it touches upon – teenage sex, drugs and general hormonal confusion – are not usually discussed at home or in school.
“Thai society has been closed for a long time,” said Sugmakanan, 39. “In my day adults chose not to teach us about sex in the classroom because they feared it would lead to us having sex, when actually it just forced kids to go out and learn on their own.”
Thailand has the second-highest number of teen pregnancies in the world, year-on-year increasing rates of STD infection among its youth, and the highest rate of HIV/Aids in Asia.
While sex education is mandatory, teaching the subject is limited to eight hours a year, with campaigners claiming that conservative teachers often fail to address essential issues such as how to practise safe sex, preferring to focus on abstinence.
Hormones portrays this modern-day dilemma through contrasting characters. In one episode the self-aware, sexually advanced Sprite storms off after a boy refuses to produce a condom during a classroom-based rendezvous, while later the mollycoddled, naive Dow is forced to visit an illegal abortion clinic after losing her virginity. Such scenes have angered the National Broadcast and Telecommunication Committee, which wants them censored for being too “obscene”. But Sugmakanan says avoiding such subjects would be another example of “adults closing their eyes” to reality. “The abortion rate here is so high – the teenage figure is around 100,000 every year. It’s impossible not to talk about safe sex,” he argues.
The series, which is the first of its kind in Thailand, has proven hugely popular, ranking third behind two major terrestrial channels during its Saturday night slot. A second series is slated for air next year. Non-cable viewers are able to catch each week’s episode on YouTube the next day, where some episodes have reached more than 9m views. Sugmakanan says that parents often watch with their teens to get an idea of what school life may entail.
With each episode themed around a particular hormone – such as testosterone or oestrogen – the series follows nine characters, from heartthrobs and goody-two-shoes to wannabe musicians and tomboys. As topical issues are woven neatly into the script, including single parenthood, abortion, homosexuality and class bullying, the series has been lauded as “quality, thought-provoking programming” that could change not only the way Thais see TV, but their own culture as well.
“Hormones is based on real-life problems in Thailand, but that’s scary to most people,” said Jaded Chaowilai of the Women and Men Progressive Movement Foundation, which campaigns for greater sex education in schools.
“We cannot talk openly about sex education in Thai society, so most of the youth don’t know what they’re doing when they have sex. Most of the young women have abortions because they don’t know how to protect themselves – they don’t even know how to use condoms.”
Unsumalin Sirasakpatharamaetha, 22, who plays class president Khwan in the series, says most of the characters are based on real people, with many of the actors incorporating their own life experiences into the series.
“The aim is to provoke the audience to think, and because it acts like a mirror for teens, they know what can happen with each path they might take, and from that learn what to do,” she says. “Censorship is really only to protect those who can’t think for themselves.”
via Thailand’s answer to Skins shocks some, thrills others | Television & radio | The Guardian.

The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master
This book reminds me a lot of Programming Pearls, but it’s actually better, because it’s less focused on code. Instead of worrying about code, the authors boiled down all the practical approaches that they’ve found to work in the real world into this one book. Not all of these things are technically programming. For example, asking yourself “why am I doing this? Is this even worth doing at all?” isn’t thinking outside the box; it’s something you should incorporate into your daily routine to keep yourself– and your co-workers– sane. And that’s what makes Pragmatic Programmer such a great book.
If you’d like to know a little more about the book, I created a HTML version of the pullout reference card included inside, which provides a nice overview of the contents.
via Coding Horror: Recommended Reading for Developers.

Ultimately it’s difficult to assess how a tool like Glass might change our information habits and everyday behavior, simply because there’s so little software for it now. “Glass is more of a question than an answer,” in the words of Astro Teller, who heads Google X, the company’s “moon shot” skunk works, which supervised Glass’s development; he says he expects to be surprised by what emerges in the way of software. Phil Libin, the C.E.O. of Evernote, told me that my frustrations with Glass were off-base. I was trying to use it to replace a phone or a laptop, but the way head-mounted wearables will be used — assuming the public actually decides to use them — will most likely be very different. “This is not a reshaping of the cellphone,” he added. “This is an entirely new thing.” He predicts that we’ll still use traditional computers and phones for searching the Web, writing and reading documents, doing e-mail. A wearable computer will be more of an awareness device, noting what you’re doing and delivering alerts precisely when you need them, in sync with your other devices: when you’re near a grocery store, you will be told you’re low on vegetables, and an actual shopping list will be sent to your phone, where longer text is more easily read. Depending on your desire for more alerts, this could be regarded as either annoying or lifesaving. But as Libin puts it, “The killer app for this is hyperawareness.”
via Googling Yourself Takes on a Whole New Meaning – NYTimes.com.

Corporate suicides highlight stresses at the top
By Clare Hutchison, Reuters
Posted at 09/01/2013 9:26 AM | Updated as of 09/01/2013 9:26 AM
LONDON – The suicides of two top executives in Switzerland has prompted calls for greater support for boardroom highfliers.
Heavy workloads, frenetic schedules and extensive overseas travel has obliterated the so-called “work-life balance” for many bosses and the financial crisis has piled on the pressure with job cuts, firesales and the scramble to survive.
“It has always been tough at the top and it has always been lonely at the top and certainly since the global financial crisis, it’s got even lonelier and even tougher,” said Executive Mentor David CM Carter, author of self-help book Breakthrough.
“That’s why it’s really important that those people at the top pay attention to the need for balance,” he said, pointing to entrepreneurs such as Richard Branson and Bill Gates, who have teamed glittering careers with a successful family life.
“They do hot air ballooning, they save the planet as well as running their fantastic empires. They have holidays and hobbies or they focus on their family and their relationships and on their health.”
But career chief executives often face more pressure from shareholders and their boards than company founders such as Branson and Gates.
And while they usually have a coterie of staff running around them, chief executive officers often feel isolated by their position and the high-stakes decisions they have to take. The need always to present a “game face” can inhibit them from confiding in colleagues.
Zurich Insurance Group’s Chief Financial Officer Pierre Wauthier was found dead at his home on Monday in what police said appeared to be a suicide.
Just weeks earlier, Carsten Schloter, the chief executive of telecoms group Swisscom, killed himself.
The deaths shocked Switzerland’s corporate community and have highlighted the sometimes lonely existence of high-ranking executives.
In media interviews, Schloter expressed regret about the distance between him and his three children in Germany, whom he saw far less frequently due to the breakdown of his marriage. He also said he found it “difficult to unwind”.
Executives often spend large amounts of time away from their friends and family and it is not uncommon for bosses to live in a different city or even country for work and commute home at weekends.
Schloter had also faced pressure after an acquisition he championed led to 1.3 billion euros of writedowns. More recently, Switzerland’s competition body said it had opened a probe into Swisscom after a rival suggested it abused its market position.
via Corporate suicides highlight stresses at the top | ABS-CBN News.

The critical question, then, is whether existing reserves are big enough to handle the struggling economies’ short-term obligations. Things are dicier than they could be. Mr Bussière et al note that not all emerging market economies rebuilt reserves after the crisis. India’s, for example, never recovered their pre-crisis peak. Meanwhile, short-term foreign-currency debt has grown sharply in many economies since 2008.
But on the whole, there is good reason to be optimistic. In 1997, Indonesia’s short-term debt was roughly 188% of its reserve holdings. As of last year, by contrast, the figure was around 40%. In India the number in 2012 was closer to 30%. Ratios are higher in South Africa and Turkey but remain well short of the Asian crisis danger zone, at least as of last year.
Balance-sheet effects aside, the biggest worry is that depreciation will disrupt monetary policy. A large depreciation raises import costs which can feed through to inflation. As financing grows tighter interest rates may rise; ominously, the yield on 10-year Turkish debt recently topped that on similar duration Greek bonds. Central banks may exacerbate the rises by raising short-term interest rates, either to encourage foreign capital to stay put or to head off looming inflation. After a hefty 50-basis-point rise today Indonesia has raised its policy rate 125 basis points since May, even as GDP growth has weakened.
via Emerging market currencies: Reserve judgment | The Economist.

This may be the first sensible step that Obama has taken in the Syrian crisis, and may prove to be one of the better ones of his Presidency—even if he loses the vote, as could happen. Politically, he may have just saved his second term from being consumed by Benghazi-like recriminations and spared himself Congressional mendacity about what they all might have done. It will likely divide the G.O.P. Although he said that he didn’t really, truly need to ask Congress for permission, he is doing so. Presidents—including Obama, in his decision to ignore the War Powers Act in Libya despite its clear application—have abandoned even the pretense that they need to seek Congressional approval. (Representative Peter King has already complained that the President is “abdicating”—a verb that tells you a lot about why this was a good decision.)
If he loses it’s not unambiguously clear, given how ill-thought out the military strategy appears to be at this point, that Syria, or even his Presidency, will be worse off. (See George Packer’s post on the possible costs, and wonder for a minute if getting the Gulf of Tonkin resolution through was such a victory for Johnson.) “Our democracy is stronger when the President and the people’s representatives stand together,” Obama said; he might have added that it can also be stronger when they stand apart, as long as they are standing up, voting, and being counted. As for his goal of reasserting the importance of international norms, laws, and processes—he would only have undermined that by heading off alone, and can at least live by it by losing.
Would a loss in Congress mean that there is impunity for the use of chemical weapons? That is what Obama will argue: “Here’s my question for every member of Congress and every member of the global community: What message will we send if a dictator can gas hundreds of children to death in plain sight and pay no price?” That case will only be stronger if it is argued in front of a legislature and the public, and not in a closed room in the White House. And a loss, as devastating as it might feel, might do less to undermine the possibility of a future consensus than a reckless strike that could have gone very, very wrong, and left too many people regretting having cared. A no vote could also shake other countries out of the view that international treaties and bodies are for show, while the real decisions happen in Washington, and lead to a strengthening of them.
Or it might go badly. Obama is certainly taking a risk, but that’s what the Presidency should be, and this one is worth it. The worst outcomes would involve either Congress or the President dodging this moment and its meaning. Congress might do so by constructing some legislative monstrosity, as it did during the debt-ceiling crisis, that relies on a complicated series of mechanisms that assure nothing—except that whatever happens is Obama’s fault—or too-sweeping powers. And the most disastrous thing that Obama could do is not admitting that he’s lost if he does, and bombing anyway. Perhaps it’s too optimistic to say that today’s decision might be what keeps some future President, our country, and who knows what other nation and people from the sort of tragedy that destroys cities. But it will certainly help, in an area where the world needs all the help it can get. And that makes this a morally important moment for the President as well.
via Going to Congress: Obama’s Best Syria Decision : The New Yorker.

Though the novel starts a bit slowly, the adventure heats up once our characters arrive in dragon country and Isabella starts to come into her own. This is the first book in a trilogy, and Brennan isn’t afraid to take major risks with beloved characters you might be hoping to have around for a while — and that is a good sign.
What’s truly great about this novel is the seamless merging of fantasy themes and incredibly realistic scientific and social details. Come for the dragon adventure — because there’s a lot of it. But stay for characters whose stories feel as real as Marie Curie’s.
via Don’t miss this engrossing novel about the science of dragons.

Goldin and Lawrence Katz have done about as close to an apples-to-apples comparison of men’s and women’s wages as exists. (They talk about it here in a Freakonomics discussion.) They tracked male and female MBAs graduating from the University of Chicago from 1990 to 2006. First they controlled for previous job experience, GPA, chosen profession, business-school course and job title. Right out of school, they found only a tiny differential in salary between men and women, which might be because of a little bit of lingering discrimination or because women are worse at negotiating starting salaries. But 10 to 15 years later, the gap widens to 40 percent, almost all of which is due to career interruptions and fewer hours. The gap is even wider for women business school graduates who marry very high earners. (Note: Never marry a rich man).
If this midcareer gap is due to discrimination, it’s much deeper than “male boss looks at female hire and decides she is worth less, and then pats her male colleague on the back and slips him a bonus.” It’s the deeper, more systemic discrimination of inadequate family-leave policies and childcare options, of women defaulting to being the caretakers. Or of women deciding that are suited to be nurses and teachers but not doctors. And in that more complicated discussion, you have to leave room at least for the option of choice—that women just don’t want to work the same way men do.
via Gender pay gap: The familiar line that “women make 77 cents to every man’s dollar” simply isn’t accurate. – Slate Magazine.