Links for Jan 25 2016

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The costs of having to switch careers can be severe, because employees lose seniority and firm-specific skills, such as how to use particular tools or software. From 2011 to 2013, 4.3m workers were displaced from jobs they had held for at least three years. Three in five found a job by January 2014; of those, over 20% lost more than a fifth of their income. Transport and utilities workers were hardest hit; 40% of those who found jobs faced losing a big chunk of their income. If the wage loss persists over a career, it can total hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Creative compensation | The Economist

Anyone who has family or friends abroad will likely be very well acquainted with Skype. Although the service allows you to call landlines and mobiles directly, you have to buy credits to do so. Now a new Android-only app, Aznog, has taken things a step further by allowing free calls to landlines and mobiles in 19 different countries. Oh and it’s absolutely free. As long as you have an internet connection, whether 3G, 4G, LTE or Wi-Fi, you can call anyone on their phone without them needing to have the app installed. Calls are currently limited to two minutes but you can call as many times as you want and the limit is set to increase soon. Could this be the start of free international calls for all?

Best Android Apps: 24 best apps for Android

The pain from the rout in global commodity prices is sweeping through nations from Brazil to South Africa. The biggest beneficiary? Arguably it’s China, the nation often blamed for driving prices lower due to its slowing economic growth. China’s annual savings from the commodities rout amount to $460 billion, according to calculations by Kenneth Courtis, former Asia vice chairman at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. About $320 billion of that is from cheaper oil, with the rest from other energy, metals, coal and agricultural commodities.

Crashing Commodities Are Saving China $460 Billion a Year - Bloomberg Business

Since the end of World War Two, all 11 recessions have coincided with falling stock prices. But not every bear market has been omen of an impending recession. The bears have run wild on Wall Street in a number of instances — 1962, 1965, 1971, 1976-78, 1987, 1998, 2002 and 2011 — without any ill effects on Main Street.

Bear market unlikely to trigger U.S. recession, history shows - MarketWatch

In a recent randomised placebo-controlled trial of 17 heavy-drinking American men, for example, they found that taking kudzu cut alcohol consumption by between 34% and 57%. Intrigued, we decided to test kudzu in the wild, so to speak, with a group of Brits. So we recruited a group of volunteers from Reading willing to have two nights out in the name of science.

Could a Chinese herb stop you drinking too much? - BBC News

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Apple is close to matching Intel's processing power and performance, according to an analysis by AnandTech.  The processor in the iPad Pro, the newest and most powerful tablet from Apple, is the A9X which is designed and made entirely in-house. This is important to note because as Apple becomes more and more proficient at making its own CPUs, it becomes less and less reliant on Intel.

Apple's A9X CPU vs Intel Core M: AnandTech - Business Insider

I have argued that the low level of German wage increases before the financial crisis were a significant destabilising influence on the Eurozone, which also indirectly contributed to Germany taking a hard line on austerity. The basic idea is that Germany gained a significant competitive advantage over its Eurozone neighbours, which it has since been unwilling to unwind (through above average German inflation). What this competitiveness gain did was lead to very healthy export growth and a large current account surplus, and that additional demand meant that Germany did not suffer as much as its neighbours from the second Eurozone recession that policy created. Peter Bofinger has made a similar argument.

mainly macro: German exports and the Eurozone

After all, a blockchain is essentially an incorruptible ledger of blocks of data, and that data can be records of just about anything. Like records of land ownership. Creating and maintaining incorruptible registers of land titles is a huge – and mostly unsolved – problem for developing countries. So when the government of Honduras launched an investigation into whether a blockchain-based land registry could solve it, the non-geek world sat up and began to take notice.

Is Blockchain the most important IT invention of our age? | John Naughton | Opinion | The Guardian

Amazon Prime, the company's $99-per-year loyalty program, now has 54 million US members, according to a new analysis from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP). That's up 35% from this time last year — again, based on CIRP estimates

New CIRP Amazon Prime numbers - Business Insider

If robots rise, interest rates will fall. That was the assumption of delegates at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, as revolutions in automation and artificial intelligence reshape how economies work.

Why Robots Mean Interest Rates Could Go Even Lower In The Future - Bloomberg Business

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Sir Robert Owen’s languid upper-class vowels and baggy London clubland suit don’t capture the indefatigable essence of the man. He represents the best of the British tradition of the rule of law. His report into the circumstances of the death of Alexander Litvinenko released last week is a classic of the genre – scrupulously evidence-based, impartial and judicious. It is what a rule-of-law society should produce... Russia can use command-and-control economics to create a Gazprom. It can never create a Google, an Apple, a BBC, a Siemens or even the Anglo-Saxon rock’n’roll culture. For that, it would need the rule of law and all the open democratic structures that support it... Not even China mandates the killing of its nationals anywhere in the world if they say something that President Xi Jinping considers libellous. This is the law not even of a communist dictatorship, but of a tsar. The reaction to Litvinenko’s death in Moscow was carelessly gleeful: a traitor had received his just comeuppance.

Litvinenko’s murder shows why Putin’s Russia will never prosper | Will Hutton | Opinion | The Guardian

In 1948, 69 percent of American men reported having at least one experience with a prostitute, according to a study by The Kinsey Institute. By the 1990s, that fell to as little as 15 percent.

How sex tech could threaten the world's oldest profession - CNET

Huang Weimin, the hedge fund manager whose Chinese stock-index futures wagers returned more than 6,200 percent last year, has some advice for investors in 2016: Sell your shares now, before it’s too late. The 45-year-old former worker at a state-owned company, a virtual unknown until last year, has become a star of the Chinese futures market after a slew of timely bets on the direction of share prices propelled his Yourong Fund to the top of the country’s performance rankings. He’s carried the winning streak into 2016, returning 35 percent through Jan. 22 after selling stock-index futures just days before the market’s worst-ever start to a year.

Trader Who Made 6,200% on China Futures Says Go Short or Get Out - Bloomberg Business

The world is waking up to the petrodollar reversal issue… as well as its significant liquidity impact on EM countries (i.e. NOT oil exporters, but importers). This, as we’ve explained before, is down to the contraction of petrodollar base money in the global monetary system, which acted as a sort of unofficial float for a market-controlled an international fractional reserve system. There’s also a significant feedback loop connected to what we’ve previously described as the petrodollar vendor financing circle, wherein those who are long petrodollars extend duration by investing them in countries which redeploy them on growth projects, which create demand for commodities. Global growth-based commodity consumption, in this way, is underpinned by the availability of recycled petrodollars.

Petrodollars are eurodollars, and eurodollar base money is shrinking | FT Alphaville

Using Warren Buffett’s measure of total market cap-to-GDP, stocks are still well above their long-term average valuation even after the declines we have seen recently. In fact, the only time they were more expensive than today, even after the recent selloff, was during the height of the dotcom bubble in 1999-2000.

Stock market dip not buying opportunity - Business Insider

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Bed bugs have developed a resistance to neonicotinoids, a group of the most widely used insecticides, according to a new study published in the Journal of Medical Entomology. Products developed over the past few years to control bed bugs combine neonicotinoids, or neonics, with pyrethroids, another class of insecticide.

Bed bugs have developed a resistance to the most widely used insecticide | Environment | The Guardian

A chronically depressed economy, rising unemployment and an aversion to free-market reforms. Sound like a familiar European tale?  But it’s not Greece, Spain or Portugal. It’s Finland. As the indebted and ailing countries in the euro region’s southern rim struggle out of their six-year crisis, some with more success than others, Finland is succumbing to its own.

The New Sick Man of Europe Has an AAA Credit Rating - Bloomberg Business

A teenage blogger claims he saved £7.72 on his train journey from Sheffield to Essex – by taking a plane via Berlin. Jordon Cox, 18, who blogs as the Coupon Kid for MoneySavingExpert.com, wrote on the website that he travelled an extra 1,017 miles last week and saved £7.72 by getting back to Essex from Sheffield via Berlin.

Blogger says flying via Berlin was cheaper than Sheffield to Essex train | UK news | The Guardian

There is No Reason to Believe that Tax Cuts are an Elixir for Economic Growth: Many folks, and from time to time, majorities in Congress, apparently believe that the cure for what ails the economy is lower taxes – in particular, lower tax rates for high-income earners. Now this enthusiasm has spread to state governments that are led by conservatives, offering new tests of a proposition that has generated scant evidence of success elsewhere. Failure of this idea at the federal level does not necessarily imply that tax cuts would fail to increase output and jobs at the state level. For one thing, lower taxes in one state might lure existing businesses (and jobs) from other states, even if they yield no overall increase in employment or output. But it’s also worth noting that the stakes are higher for the states. Washington can finance shortfalls in revenue by selling bonds to the public or by borrowing from the Federal Reserve – in effect, printing money. States are far more constrained by the skepticism of the private credit markets or constitutional prohibitions against deficit finance, or both. Thus, any failure of supply-side economics to work its magic could force punishing cuts in state programs

Economist's View: ''There is No Reason to Believe that Tax Cuts are an Elixir for Economic Growth''

Can your broadband connection be faster, cheaper and wholly wireless? A startup called Starry thinks so and intends to take the place of your cable or phone company. The New York- and Boston-based startup, created by the folks who tried to shake up the television industry with the now-defunct Aereo, hopes to create fresh competition for major cable and telecommunications players that sell Internet. Starry plans to launch a wireless broadband service called Starry Internet at a lower price than current providers. The company plans to roll it out in Boston this summer and spread to more cities throughout the year. The eventual goal is to go nationwide.

Hate your cable company? Superfast, wireless Internet is coming - CNET

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"The scans showed that when meditating on compassion, Ricard’s brain produces a level of gamma waves – those linked to consciousness, attention, learning and memory – ‘never reported before in the neuroscience literature’, Davidson said.The scans also showed excessive activity in his brain’s left prefrontal cortex compared to its right counterpart, allowing him an abnormally large capacity for happiness and a reduced propensity towards negativity."

How to be happier according to Matthieu Ricard, the world's happiest man

Can future innovations match the great inventions of the past? Will artificial intelligence, robots, 3D printing and other offspring of the digital revolution do for economic growth what the second industrial revolution did between 1920 and 1970? The techno-optimist school of economics says yes. I disagree. The rise in the U.S. standard of living from 1870 to 1970 was a special century -- and won't likely be repeated. Growth over the next quarter century will resemble the slow pace of 2004–2015, not the faster growth rate of 1994–2004, much less the rapid rate achieved between 1920 and 1970. The good news is that the economy will be able to maintain relatively full employment as the fruits of computerization cause work to evolve slowly, rather than in a great rush. I'm optimistic that job growth will continue and that new jobs will appear as rapidly as technology destroys old ones.

Goodbye, Golden Age of Growth - Bloomberg View

Startup Stratio says its small spectrometer can attach to your smartphone and figure out which pills are the real deal.

A Smartphone-Connected Spectrometer for Spotting Fake Pills | MIT Technology Review

The armed conflict destabilizing some Arab countries has unleashed a huge wave of refugees headed for Europe. About 1.1 million came to Germany alone in 2015. At the same time, the adoption of the principle of freedom of movement within Europe has triggered massive, but largely unnoticed, intra-European migration flows. In 2014, Germany experienced an unprecedented net inflow of 304,000 people from other EU countries, and the number was probably similar in 2015.

Europe’s welfare states wake up to the danger of immigration - MarketWatch

Digging through the literature they found that exercising in natural environments, particularly in green spaces, "was associated with greater feelings of revitalisation and positive engagement, decreases in tension, confusion, anger and depression, and increased energy". They also found that people who exercised outdoors claimed to enjoy it more, find it more satisfying and said they were more likely to do it again. Though whether they actually did is another matter. One other advantage of exercising outdoors is that you've got a greater chance of being exposed to sunshine and therefore topping up your vitamin D, (although in UK, at this time of year, that is not a particularly convincing argument).

Is it better to run outside or on a treadmill? - BBC News

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An expert in U.S. national cybersecurity research and policy says the next generation of technology must have security built in from the very start.

“The Threats Are Bigger Than They’ve Ever Been” | MIT Technology Review

Chipmaker Intel (Santa Clara, CA) has announced its 6th-generation Intel Core vPro processor family, which now features the company's Authenticate - a hardware-enhanced multifactor authentication solution that strengthens identity protection. The latest iteration of Intel Core vPro processors is designed to address the security and productivity demands of large businesses. In addition to the new security feature, the processors are said to offer enhanced performance and collaboration for "2 in 1s," Ultrabooks, and desktop computers.

Smart2.0 - New Intel chips feature anti-hacker tech

More than 6 billion people live in countries where serious levels of public sector corruption are fuelling inequality and exploitation and locking millions of men, women and children into poverty, according to the annual index of perceived corruption. Transparency International’s corruption perceptions index 2015 – which ranked 168 countries on a scale of 0 (highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean) – is once again topped by Denmark, which scored 91. Close behind are Finland (90), Sweden (89), New Zealand (88) and the Netherlands (87).

Billions locked in poverty by public sector corruption, report shows | Global development | The Guardian

It's worth knowing that when you run on a treadmill you tend to overestimate the pace at which you are going. A study carried out in Singapore which asked people to run outdoors and then match their speed on a treadmill, found that when people ran on a treadmill they went significantly slower, even though the thought they were going just as fast. The scientists behind this particular study suggest this is probably because when you are running indoors you don't get the same visual cues... Whatever the cause, it seems that when we run outside we unconsciously work harder.

Is it better to run outside or on a treadmill? - BBC News

A dreamy business offering has at least four characteristics. Customers love it, it can grow to very large size, it has strong returns on capital, and it’s durable in time — with the potential to endure for decades.3 Amazon University meets this standard, and then some.

How Amazon could destroy college as we know it - Vox

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There's a constant conflict between social scientists and the reporters who cover them. It's derived from "a fundamental tension between the media's desire for novelty and the scientific method," as Sanjay Srivastava, who researches personality at the University of Oregon, tells me. He's right. Journalists have a need for digestible headlines that convey simple, accessible, and preferably novel lessons. The scientific method stresses a slow accumulation of knowledge, nuance, and doubt. "By the time some piece of scientific knowledge is solid enough to be worth spending money and changing lives over, the idea should not be 'new' anymore," Srivastava says.

What journalists get wrong about social science, according to 20 scientists - Vox

An agreement for US firm Google to pay £130m in UK back taxes has been labelled as "derisory" and a "sweetheart deal" by critics. The payment covers money owed since 2005 and follows a six-year inquiry by Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs.

Google tax deal labelled 'derisory', as criticism grows - BBC News

Gym bunnies who spend hours working out in an attempt to shed unwanted flab are wasting their time, research suggests. The body adapts to higher activity levels - changing metabolism so that fewer calories are burned, the US study indicates. Researchers measured the daily energy expenditure and activity levels of more than 300 men and women. Those with moderately active levels – such as a daily walk to work, and a trip to the gym twice a week – were found to burn about 200 calories more per day than those living couch potato lifestyles. But after a certain threshold – described by scientists as a “sweet spot” – the extra time working up a sweat made no difference to the amount of calories burned.

Gym bunnies are wasting their time, study suggests - Telegraph

The NYU WIRELESS research center (Brooklyn, NY) will build an advanced programmable platform to rapidly design, prototype, and validate technologies vital for the millimeter wave (mmWave) radio spectrum, which is key to launching 5G. Funded by a National Science Foundation (NSF) program that supports exploratory work on potentially transformative research, the platform will be one of the first of its kind available to researchers from academia, government, and industry who are driving the early stages of mmWave technology.

Smart2.0 - Public testbed to speed path to ultra-fast 5G

Netflix has started blocking users who try to bypass country-based content restrictions by using a VPN, beginning its enforcement last week with Australian subscribers. The problem is, by forcing customers to turn off their VPN, Netflix is putting them at risk of being maliciously hacked. Netflix is trying to protect copyright, local distribution rights and contracts. It would be a totally reasonable idea if the only people who used VPNs were a minority of duplicitous streaming thieves, trying to sneak a peek at Doctor Who in Malaysia. And that's how Netflix is trying to sell it -- except its VPN user base is hardly a minority, and most people who use VPNs, like enterprise businesspeople, use them for security and privacy protection.

Why the war on VPNs is one Netflix can't win