Links for 12/7

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Alevo reckons that if a grid as big as America's Western interconnection (which supplies the west of the United States and Canada) were to use 18GW-worth of its batteries the grid could save $12 billion a year. Though the company has no North American contract yet, it does have an agreement to deploy its batteries in Guangdong, China.

Grid-Scale Storage: Smooth Operators - Business Insider

At the moment, grid-scale storage is dominated by pumped hydro. According to the Electric Power Research Institute, an American think-tank, 140GW-worth of this is installed around the world, with a capacity of 1.4TWhr. Pumped storage requires friendly geography.

Grid-Scale Storage: Smooth Operators - Business Insider

Alevo's claim that its batteries can undergo more than 40,000 cycles of charging and discharging without noticeable loss of function is an important part of its sales pitch.

Grid-Scale Storage: Smooth Operators - Business Insider

A combination of small portions, lower-calorie foods like fish and vegetables, and beautiful eye-appealing dishes all contribute to a longer and healthier lifespan

Why The Japanese Live So Long - Business Insider

Unwanted wakefulness during the night plagued her deep into her adult years. White noise, lavender oil, and various other home remedies couldn't get her to sleep through the night. Until something saved her. Was it a pill, potion, or some practice of what's known as good "sleep hygiene"? Hardly. It was a book.

Here's A Surprising Reason You Might Not Be Getting Enough Sleep - Business Insider

Sometime next year, the Federal Reserve will likely face an unusual confluence of economic circumstances. One of its mandates, full employment, will call for monetary policy to tighten relatively quickly; the other, inflation, will suggest it should stay loose. How should the Fed weigh these competing goals? It may want to dust off a doctrine from the 1990s, “opportunistic disinflation” and rechristen it "opportunistic inflation.”

What should the Federal Reserve do?: The case for opportunistic inflation | The Economist

During the Great Recession, the total contraction in economic output was noticeably larger in Germany than in the United States, but the rise in the unemployment rate was noticeably higher in the United States than in Germany. How did Germany manage it?

CONVERSABLE ECONOMIST: How Did Germany Limit Unemployment in the Recession?

IHS released its ranking today that put Trina Solar as the top shipper of solar panels in 2014, followed by Yingli Green Energy. Both companies are based in China, which has dominated the solar equipment manufacturing business for many years now…[S]ix of the 10 manufacturers ranked by IHS are Chinese

NewEnergyNews: THE WORLD’S DOMINANT SOLAR MODULE MAKERS

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It is not runaway public spending that is causing borrowing to stay stubbornly high, thus triggering the extreme shrinkage of the state: it is the hollowing out of the tax base. There are three principal causes.

Forget austerity – what we need is a stronger state and more taxation | Will Hutton | Comment is free | The Observer

But in fact in recent weeks, gold has experienced a renaissance of sorts, quietly re-emerging as the centerpiece of a handful of initiatives in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. On Dec. 1, voters in Switzerland considered — and eventually rejected — a populist plan to force its central bank to buy gold in a controversial bid to stabilize its currency. Russia and China both made headlines by snapping up enormous stores of gold. In late November, Marine Le Pen of France, a nationalist politician, called on her government to start amassing gold, and the Netherlands followed suit, revealing that same week that it had repatriated $5 billion of its own gold from a vault in New York City owned by the Federal Reserve.

The Golden Age - NYTimes.com

Rising income inequality has set off fierce political and economic debates, but one important angle hasn’t been explored adequately. We need to ask whether market forces themselves might limit or reverse the trend. Technology has contributed to the rise in inequality, but there are also some significant ways in which technology could reduce it.

How Technology Could Help Fight Income Inequality - NYTimes.com

Dolby has just announced a huge new project, but it's not about audio as you'd expect -- it's about the upcoming launch of its IMAX competitor called Dolby Cinema. This giant screen format will be able to project movies using the "Dolby Vision" technology (something it's been working on for years), which combines high dynamic range videos with something else that the company's keeping a secret. High dynamic range or HDR videos, as you might know, can show shadows and light as you'd see them in real life (take this Disney Research video, for example).

Dolby is launching its super-vivid IMAX competitor in the Netherlands

By Thursday, however, he'd found some dark humor in the case — namely, in the rationalizations being made for why police had to choke Garner to death for selling cigarettes. The narrative, if parsed closely,  quickly collapses in on itself. As Stewart puts it, it ends up painting Garner as a "a dangerously large, but incredibly fragile, out-of-shape, monster weakling."

Watch Jon Stewart's face when "martial arts student" Sean Hannity discussed Eric Garner - Vox

“An oil-driven pullback is a totally irrational reaction that offers a buying opportunity. With oil prices near four-year lows, we have occasionally been hearing the question: What impact will this have on the solar space? The short answer is: Fundamentally zero,” analysts at Raymond James said in a note.

Investors Sell Off Solar Stocks on Oil Price Drop; Analysts Call it a ‘Buying Opportunity’ : Greentech Media

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Back in 2001 Ken surveyed the impact of Rudi Dornbusch’s “overshooting” model of exchange rates, which had an enormous impact on international macroeconomics, and arguably saved it from much of the nonsense that afflicted domestic macro. At the core of Rudi’s analysis was his resolution of what might seem like a paradox. Here’s the question: Suppose that for some reason a central bank increases the money supply, and that everyone believes that the increase is permanent. What happens to the exchange rate?

Shinzo and the Invisibles - NYTimes.com

A group of economists, tech entrepreneurs, and academics discuss whether technological advances will automate tasks more quickly than the United States can create jobs.

Automation, jobs, and the future of work | McKinsey & Company

It is widely believed that small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are engines of job creation and help spur economic growth. Such thinking has led to lots of incentives for small enterprises and also — in countries such as India — the reservation of entire categories of products being “reserved” for production by small firms. But how true are these beliefs? That is the question that Wharton management professor Ann Harrison and her co-authors, Shanthi Nataraj of the RAND Corporation and Leslie A. Martin of the University of Melbourne, set out to answer in their research. Their conclusion: Large and young firms generate far more jobs than small ones do.

For Driving Job Growth, Youth -- Not Size -- Is What Matters

At Business Insider’s annual Ignition conference Tuesday, CEO Jeff Bezos explained why Amazon's stock price keeps rising despite almost zero profits: The company continues to invest in new businesses, and Amazon’s investors are OK with that. "If you're going to take bold bets, they're going to be experiments," he said. "And if they're experiments, you don't know ahead of time if they're going to work. Experiments are by their very nature prone to failure. But a few big successes compensate for dozens and dozens of things that didn't work.” But Amazon hit a road bump in 2014: Its stock is down 18 percent, and investors are no longer optimistic about the company’s outlook. This year has exposed the limitations of Bezos’s business strategy.

Amazon's Revenue Growth Has Fallen, Making Investors Nervous | New Republic

“We are entering a new era for oil prices, where the market itself will manage supply, no longer Saudi Arabia and OPEC,” said Mike Wittner, the head of oil research at Societe Generale SA in New York. “It’s huge. This is a signal that they’re throwing in the towel. The markets have changed for many years to come.”

Oil in new era as OPEC refuses to yield to U.S. shale

Japan's economic contraction in July-September was deeper than initially expected on declines in capital expenditure, according to revised data on Monday that backs Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's recent decision to delay a second sales tax hike.

Japan's third-quarter economic contraction bigger than expected - Yahoo Finance

"That's the problem with being a value investor—sometimes the market does not provide value investments," he continued. "The discipline means you wait until you find value, and that's what the great investors of our generation do," Chandler said. "They say 'There's no opportunity now, so I'm going to have to stay in cash.'"

Made in the USA! Investors bet 2014's big trend will continue

Instead of the rising living standards he’s delivered the past 15 years in exchange for the public’s acquiescence, the Russian president now holds out declining wages and more austere lifestyles as the price of swollen national pride.

Putin’s New Deal Spells End to 15 Years of Wage Gains - Bloomberg

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Oil affects countries around the world differently. Generally speaking, low prices are great for net importers of oil, but bad for net exporters. UBS's macro strategy team considered what a permanent $10 drop in a barrel of Brent crude would mean.

UBS: GDP Impact Of $10 Decline In Oil - Business Insider

But it was Tesla, a Silicon Valley startup, which realised that many early adopters of new technologies are likely to be well heeled and would prefer a large high-performance saloon that is both luxurious and extremely high-tech.

Tesla's CTO Wants To Take Batteries To A New Dimension - Business Insider

But to hit the Model 3's expected price of around $35,000, Mr Straubel now needs to reduce the cost of his battery packs by at least a third.

Tesla's CTO Wants To Take Batteries To A New Dimension - Business Insider

The Fed’s quantitative easing programs have basically turned it into a huge institutional investor earning returns on a bond portfolio valued at more than $4 trillion . The Fed is required to turn most of its profits over to the Treasury, and since 2010 it has contributed $325 billion to government revenue, or $81 billion a year.

The federal deficit is down—but it won’t last - Yahoo Finance

Geopolitical tensions between Ukraine and Russia since the start of the year and a five-month long mine strike (which ended in June) in South Africa – the second biggest producer of Palladium – have resulted in the steepest supply shortfall of the metal in about 14 years.  Notably, Russia is the biggest producer of palladium and accounts for 40% of its global supplies. Though the metal had slipped to a low of $729 in October from its August peak of $911.50 due to the rebounding South African mining output, strong fundamentals have driven the metal back to $750 levels.

Is palladium the best precious metal ETF now?

The Shanghai Composite Index SHCOMP, +1.42%  is up some 40% since the middle of the year, and up 21% in just the past month. Last Friday, turnover in Shanghai surpassed 1 trillion yuan ($162 billion) for the first time ever, while Hong Kong has also seen trading volumes surge. Analysts have been scrambling to explain the awakening of mainland Chinese equities from a multi-year bear-market slumber.

Why China stock gains may make sense - MarketWatch

The very best photovoltaic cells, the kind seen on many roofs, convert sunlight to electrical energy with an efficiency of around 35%; for more affordable cells the figure is closer to 20%. Plants accomplish the same process with about 90% efficiency during the first stage of photosynthesis. How do they do it so effectively?

The Economist explains: How plants exploit sunlight so efficiently | The Economist

I’m all for policy reforms that raise potential GDP, and several of those proposed in the Cato forum would probably do that. We might want to undertake several of them at once to counteract the drags on potential GDP that Robert Gordon has outlined. But we can’t be fooled into thinking that any of them would make a really appreciable difference to economic growth today. You can revolutionize education, or corporate taxation, or urban planning, or immigration all you want, but the gains those changes induce will take decades to manifest themselves.

The Limited Effect of Reforms on Growth | The Growth Economics Blog

Plummeting crude oil prices, international sanctions, the crumbling ruble and rising sovereign debt yields are creating what one analyst called the “perfect storm” for the Russian economy.

For Russia, a perfect storm of economic woe looms - MarketWatch

Yields on Russia’s dollar-denominated debt continue to climb. The yield on the most-recently issued dollar-denominated 10-year Russian bond was around 6.2% Friday, the highest level since it was issued a year ago. Meanwhile, the spread on Russia’s sovereign credit default swaps has hit its highest level since July 2009, when the global economy was still suffering from the fallout of the financial crisis.

For Russia, a perfect storm of economic woe looms - MarketWatch

As of Friday, the Central Bank of Russia had $393.6 billion in gross reserves. Meanwhile, it’s total outstanding debt was $642 billion, according to data from Credit Suisse. Russia has relied almost exclusively on profits from energy exports to pay down this debt. Now those profits are seriously threatened. Oil and natural gas constituted about 68% of Russia’s exports last year, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

For Russia, a perfect storm of economic woe looms - MarketWatch

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Italy has rejected Standard and Poor's (S&P) downgrade of the country's sovereign credit rating to just above junk level, saying the government doesn't share the same concerns as the international credit rating agency.

Why Italy and investors are brushing off downgrade

There are 10 stocks in the Standard & Poor's 500, including biotech Vertex Pharmaceuticals (VRTX), Southwest Airlines (LUV) and Electronic Arts (EA) that you can be certain to hear people talk about owning. We know this because these are the stocks that were up 50% or more this year through last week — and are up again over the past week, according to data from S&P Capital IQ and analyzed by USA TODAY.

10 stocks everyone will brag they own

The average legroom on a short-haul U.S. flight is 32 inches, according to SeatGuru.com. I get it that people — tired from traveling and giddy with exhaustion — might tell a lie to snag an upgrade. Doing it regularly — like the millionaire with the walking stick — risks taking the last First Class seat from someone who might need it more than you do.

Is lying to get an airplane upgrade so bad? - MarketWatch

Australian scientists said Monday they had made a breakthrough in increasing the efficiency of solar panels, which they hope could eventually lead to cheaper sources of renewable energy. In what the University of New South Wales described as a world first, the researchers were able to convert more than 40 percent of sunlight hitting the panels into electricity.

Australian scientists announce solar energy breakthrough - Yahoo Finance

Mario Draghi is about to get an idea of how far reality falls short of his intentions. A round of long-term loans by the European Central Bank to lenders this week won't even cover the repayments they owe from a previous program, according to a Bloomberg News survey of analysts. The operation could show that stimulus measures the ECB president says are "intended" to add as much as 1 trillion euros ($1.23 trillion) to the financial system won't suffice without large-scale buying of assets such as government bonds.

ECB Loans May Show Stimulus Measures Fall Short in Acid Test for Draghi - Yahoo Finance

Germany’s stance toward Europe has become one of rejection and disengagement. Its policymakers deny the eurozone’s crisis-ridden countries a more active fiscal policy; refuse to support a European investment agenda to generate demand and growth; have declared a fiscal surplus, rather than faster potential growth, as their primary domestic goal; and have begun turning against the European Central Bank (ECB) in the struggle against deflation and a credit crunch. On all four counts, Germany is wrong.

Germany’s Four Neins by Marcel Fratzscher - Project Syndicate

New schools, care homes and hospitals should be built far away from major roads because of the dangers of air pollution, a report by MPs says. The Environmental Audit Committee argues air pollution is a "public health crisis" causing nearly as many deaths as smoking. It also suggested a scrappage scheme for diesel cars to cut emissions.

BBC News - Air pollution 'causing deadly public health crisis'

The big story on Monday is the warning from the BIS that a resurgent dollar could disrupt EM markets due to the fact that collectively the region has three quarters of its $2.6tn debt denominated in the US currency. Meanwhile, international banks’ cross-border loans to emerging market economies amounted to $3.1tn in mid-2014, mainly in US dollars, the BIS added.

These are not the dollars you’re looking for | FT Alphaville

Analysts at the Berlin thinktank Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, and the European Council on Foreign Relations warned last week that if the rift with Russia over Ukraine was not overcome, Europe could – in one scenario – face 15 years of protracted confrontation, including a military buildup in eastern Europe, a new arms race with Nato, and the creation of a semi-permanent “zone of instability” from the Baltic to the Balkans and the Black Sea.

Russia’s tough rhetoric over Ukraine does not tell the whole story | World news | The Guardian

Spare a thought for the flight attendant who fails to observe snack-serving etiquette in first class – particularly when the passenger in question happens to be the daughter of the airline’s chief executive. South Korea’s government is investigating an air-rage incident on board a Korean Air flight from New York to Seoul last Friday that culminated in a senior member of crew being ordered to leave the plane by the passenger moments before it was scheduled to take off.

Korean Air executive could face legal action following nuts-rage incident | World news | The Guardian

But there is no support in these data for those, like the Bundesbank’s Weidmann, who oppose the ECB’s use of QE. The fact is that the uptick in Germany’s private consumption is trivial in historic and cross-country context.

Chart Of The Week: Hopes Shelves For A German Consumption-Led Recovery | Alpha Now | Thomson Reuters

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“We continue our R&D efforts because we believe that we can do more with battery electric, and very soon take the issue of range off of the table,” said Nissan’s Jeff Kuhlman in a follow-up interview. “In other words, cars with a comparable range to today’s petrol vehicles.”

Nissan Long-Range Electric Car In The Works

Without fanfare—indeed, with some misgivings about its new status—China has just overtaken the United States as the world’s largest economy. This is, and should be, a wake-up call—but not the kind most Americans might imagine.

China Has Overtaken the U.S. as the World’s Largest Economy | Vanity Fair

For 30 years Chile has been a laboratory for free market economics, with privatised pensions and even a school voucher system designed by Milton Friedman, the godfather of Chicago economics, who once described Chile’s success as a “miracle”. Yet now Latin America’s most prosperous country may be reversing the experiment, to the consternation of free marketeers everywhere.

Chile rethinks its free market experiment - FT.com

Central European countries are planning to combine forces to target the EU’s proposed new €315bn investment fund to join up their energy networks, as the region seeks to exercise its growing political clout in Brussels.

EU’s eastern members plot joint raid on €315bn Juncker fund - FT.com

In the U.S. the iPhone 6, the smaller, cheaper model, outsold the phablet-class iPhone 6+ 3-to-1.  In Great Britain this gap was even bigger, with the iPhone 6 outselling the iPhone 6+ 4-to-1.  The lukewarm reception for the iPhone 6+ may in part be due to negative publicity over design weakness that made the phone suceptible to certain kinds of bending forces, woes that the public dubbed "bendgate".

DailyTech - iPhone 6 Helps Apple Regain Market Share, But iPhone 6+ Sales are Weak

Greece may see elections early next year, and a new poll just out has the radical leftist Syriza party in first place by more than 3 percent. If Syriza takes power, the relative calm of Greek financial markets could be rocked.

It's Time to Start Paying Attention to Greece Again - Businessweek

Rarely has a country repaired its image with creditors so quickly. The world’s attention has moved on since the Greek debt crisis (a lot has happened since), but it’s worth stopping for a moment to look at what went right, as well as the huge challenges that remain.

Yasou: Greece Is Pulling Off an Amazing Recovery - Businessweek

It's no secret that Russia is plagued by the crash in the oil price and Western sanctions, but there are also a host of structural economic problems. If the present conditions endure or worsen, there is a reasonable chance that Russia will default on part of its foreign debt, mostly in the hands of private companies. Despite being cheap, Russian stocks generally don't seem a good bet. Not only because of the present problems, but also because of deep seated structural problems in the economy

A Russian Default? | Seeking Alpha

As the Nasdaq 100 closes in on its all-time high, the one recorded way back in the bad old days of 2000, you are hearing a lot of talk of dread about "here we go again!" and "when will we ever learn?"

Jim Cramer: Why This Is Not the Tech Bubble We Saw in 2000 - TheStreet

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Fresh fruits, veggies or meat are often not what they appear. Produce masquerading as just-picked, for example, may be months — even years — old. According to an independent study conducted in 2010 by Lindstrom of 25 supermarkets across five countries, the average apple in many grocery stores is 14 months old — typically picked more than a year ago and then kept in cold storage for months before being shipped to the grocery store. Berries and other fruits sometimes meet a similar cold-storage fate, experts say. This can mean that the products have a much blander taste, says Phil Lempert, CEO of grocery information site SupermarketGuru.com. And, of course, those already chopped fruit packages may have been made from the less fresh fruits that the store took off the shelves, says Lindstrom.

10 things grocery stores won’t tell you - MarketWatch

The toilet seat in the supermarket bathroom may be cleaner than your grocery cart, says Charles Gerba, a professor of soil, water and environmental science at the University of Arizona — likely because in many stores the bathrooms get scheduled for regular cleanings while the carts do not.

10 things grocery stores won’t tell you - MarketWatch

It’s often noted that consumer spending accounts for about two-thirds of gross domestic product. But Roberts pointed out that history does not seem to support the idea that lower gasoline prices, and other cheaper energy costs, lead to higher consumer spending

Cheap oil’s economic benefits may be a big myth - MarketWatch

Hybrid cloud brings together the best of both worlds by enabling businesses and their IT organizations unprecedented flexibility in where they host their many and varied workloads. It also increases business agility — the flexibility to use a variety of services, the scalability to keep pace with business volume, the efficiency to keep costs to a minimum, and, of course, the ability to protect data and other technology assets.

New : Check out what Professionals need to know in order to capitalize on Hybrid Cloud? - TechRepublic

Moore’s Law has been dead for some time, and the productivity boost from the third industrial revolution has nearly run its course, a leading economist said Thursday. Northwestern University Professor Robert Gordon, who’s long been a pessimist on the issue, used everything from economic data to the latest underwhelming Consumer Electronics Show to make his point at a Cato Institute event.

The third industrial revolution is basically dead, leading economist says - MarketWatch

Five years ago, Thomas L. Friedman famously formulated "The First Law of Petropolitics," drawing on research showing that oil-producing countries tend to grow more repressive and aggressive when oil prices are high. Russia's descent into authoritarianism and virulent nationalism over the past decade appears to bear out the theory. It's far from certain, however, that the law will work in both directions

Putin Breaks First Law of Petropolitics - Bloomberg View

Exchange-traded funds were invented for small investors. Like index funds, which they resembled, ETFs weren’t meant to produce world-beating returns but to mirror the performance of a broad group of securities — the original ETF, State Street’s SPDR, launched in 1993, tracked the S&P 500. Funds like that were a simple way for small investors to reduce risk by diversifying portfolios. ETFs also have lower fees than mutual funds, lower taxes than index funds and are easier to buy or sell quickly than either. Those advantages made ETFs the fastest-growing product in the U.S. money-management industry, with assets approaching $2 trillion. But along the way they got less simple.

Exchange-Traded Funds - QuickTake - Bloomberg

The race is on to give U.S. exchange-traded fund investors access to $9 trillion of stocks and bonds in mainland China.

China’s $9 Trillion Untapped Market Spurs U.S. ETF Frenzy - Bloomberg

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Alzheimer's could be prevented and even cured by boosting the brain's own immune response, scientists at Stanford University believe. Researchers discovered that nerve cells die because cells which are supposed to clear the brain of bacteria, viruses and dangerous deposits, stop working. These cells, called 'microglia' function well when people are young, but when they age, a single protein called EP2 stops them operating efficiently. Now scientists have shown that blocking the protein allows the microglia to function normally again so they can hoover up the dangerous sticky amyloid-beta plaques which damage nerve cells in Alzheimer's disease.

Has Stanford University found a cure for Alzheimer's disease? - Telegraph

The Bank for International Settlements warns about global risks associated with a strengthening U.S. dollar, and Friday’s U.S. jobs report suggests those risks will only intensify in the months ahead as global central bank policies diverge.

Grand Central: Currency Mismatch Seems Likely to Deepen as Central Banks Diverge - Real Time Economics - WSJ

China’s stock market boom has reached outright mania, with equities galloping higher at a parabolic rate, despite threats of a crackdown by regulators and the continued slowdown of the national economy. The Shanghai Composite Index has risen 32pc in the past six weeks, blowing through 3,000 to a three-and-a-half-year high even though corporate earnings are declining steeply.

China's stock mania decouples from economic reality - Telegraph

According to the distinguished American economist Robert J Gordon, IR3 is simply much less significant for the growth of per capita GDP, and therefore living standards, than the two earlier industrial revolutions. He could be right – but I don’t think he is. It is striking that the technological improvements of the past took many years to come to full fruition. In IR2, the new methods made possible by electric power for a long time operated side-by-side with the old technology.

A third revolution that will keep raising our incomes - Telegraph

Hewlett-Packard will take a big step toward shaking up its own troubled business and the entire computing industry next year when it releases an operating system for an exotic new computer. The company’s research division is working to create a computer HP calls The Machine. It is meant to be the first of a new dynasty of computers that are much more energy-efficient and powerful than current products.

HP Will Release a “Revolutionary” New Operating System in 2015 | MIT Technology Review

HP plans to use a single kind of memory—in the form of memristors—for both long- and short-term data storage in The Machine. Not having to move data back and forth should deliver major power and time savings. Memristor memory also can retain data when powered off, should be faster than RAM, and promises to store more data than comparably sized hard drives today.

HP Will Release a “Revolutionary” New Operating System in 2015 | MIT Technology Review

The Machine’s design includes other novel features such as optical fiber instead of copper wiring for moving data around. HP’s simulations suggest that a server built to The Machine’s blueprint could be six times more powerful than an equivalent conventional design, while using just 1.25 percent of the energy and being around 10 percent the size.

HP Will Release a “Revolutionary” New Operating System in 2015 | MIT Technology Review

The World Bank on Tuesday predicted that Russia's economy would shrink by 0.7 percent in 2015, but warned that the contraction would be worse if oil prices were to keep sliding. The World Bank said its forecast is based on a scenario of crude prices averaging at $78 in 2015. But if oil prices fell to $70, Russia's output would shrink by 1.5 percent, it said.

World Banks President Russia's Economy Shrink 0.7% by 2015. - Business Insider

Humin is basically your own personal assistant who specializes in remembering all the tiny details when you meet somebody new, allowing you to later look that person up based on context search cues like "lives in Manhattan" or "emailed last week." Say I meet someone while at a bar or a party in Brooklyn and I add a new contact in Humin, adding their name and number. Those two details are all Humin needs to work its magic, as the app will also automatically record and remember a ton of other important details that make it easy to search for them later.

Humin Personal Assistant Comes To Android - Business Insider

A series of spectacular cyberattacks drew headlines this year, and the situation will only worsen in 2015 as hackers use more advanced techniques to infiltrate networks, security researchers said Tuesday. McAfee Labs' 2015 Threats Predictions report sees increased cyber-warfare and espionage, along with new strategies from hackers to hide their tracks and steal sensitive data.

Cyberattacks to worsen in 2015: McAfee researchers - Business Insider

Master Sun put it simply: “Know the enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles you will never be in peril.” We failed on both counts. I know I sure did. As generals, we did not know our enemy — never pinned him down, never focused our efforts, and got all too good at making new opponents before we’d handled the old ones.

A 3-Star General Explains Why America Lost The Global War On Terror - Business Insider

In the wake of several high-profile cases involving black Americans killed after encounters with the police, writers Stacey Patton and David J Leonard examine why blame is often shifted to the deceased.

BBC News - Viewpoint: Why Eric Garner was blamed for dying

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A Bloomberg Politics poll shows that on two controversial issues, the budget deficit and deporting illegal immigrants, the public believes Obama's critics–even though reality favors the president.

Bloomberg Politics Poll: Perceptions Blur Reality When It Comes to Obama's Key Issues - Bloomberg Politics

Companies seeking to shield valuable data from criminals and government spying should assume the attackers have already penetrated their systems and adjust defensive strategies, security firms McAfee and Symantec Corp. (SYMC) said.

Be Paranoid About Cyber-Attackers Already Inside, McAfee Says - Bloomberg

The pace at which customers are moving their data to the cloud is picking up, and the price of such services will drop at a slower pace in 2015 compared to this year, said Barak Regev, Google’s cloud chief for Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Google Says Banks to Manufacturers Are Speeding Shift to Cloud - Bloomberg

First, let me explain why this loophole is the most flagrant of all giveaways to the super-rich. Carried interest allows hedge-fund and private-equity managers, as well as many venture capitalists and partners in real estate investment trusts, to treat their take of the profits as capital gains — taxed at maximum rate of 23.8 percent instead of the 39.6 percent maximum applied to ordinary income. It’s a pure scam. They get the tax break even though they invest other peoples’ money rather than risk their own. The loophole has no economic justification. As one private-equity manager told me recently, “I can’t defend it. No one can.”

Robert Reich (Wall Street's Democrats)

Rising income inequality has weakened economic growth in most developed economies, and policies that seek to redistribute income through high taxes on the rich don’t slow growth, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said Monday.

Rising Income Inequality Harms Growth, OECD Says - WSJ

Now, some health-care clinics and counselors are using cooking or baking as therapy tools for people suffering from depression, anxiety and other mental-health problems.

A Road to Mental Health Through the Kitchen - WSJ

Oil market analysts are debating if oil will fall to $50. In North Dakota, prices are already there. Crude sold at the wellhead in the Bakken shale region in North Dakota fell to $49.69 a barrel on Nov. 28, according to the marketing arm of Plains All America Pipeline LP. That’s down 47% from this year’s peak in June, and 29% less than the $70.15 paid for Brent, the global benchmark. The cheaper price for North Dakota crude underscores how geographic and logistical hurdles can amplify the stress that plunging futures prices have put on drillers in new shale plays that have helped push U.S. oil production to the highest level in 31 years.

Bakken oil already under $50/bbl due to regional discount

OPEC’s price war against the American shale industry will erode drilling budgets, shrink profits and even bankrupt some companies. It won’t do the one thing cartel leader Saudi Arabia wants: reduce U.S. production. In the three geologic formations that account for 88% of U.S. shale oil output -- North Dakota’s Bakken and the Eagle Ford and Permian in Texas -- explorers can drill new wells profitably in some areas even if crude falls to $25/bbl, according to a team of analysts led by Manuj Nikhanj at ITG Investment Research Inc.

U.S. producers say bring it on in oil price showdown

Oilfield contractors hired to drill wells and fracture rock to raise crude and natural gas to the surface will have to lower prices by as much as 20% to help keep their cash-strapped customers working. Ultimately, that could carve out more than $3 billion from the 2015 earnings outlined by analysts for the world’s four biggest oil-service companies -- Schlumberger Ltd., Halliburton Co., Baker Hughes Inc. and Weatherford International Plc.

Fracing discounts seen cutting over $3 billion in 2015 profits

Instead of hiring someone to stage your home, scheduling showings, and lighting one of those candles that smells like baking cookies, Opendoor takes the hassle out of selling. It offers to buy your home, as is. Once you enter your address and a few details about the condition of the house the service emails you an offer a few minutes later. Based on the local market, historical data, and other details about the home, Opendoor determines the price. Homeowners can then set the their move-out date, and so it goes.

Opendoor Will Buy Your Home Online in Minutes | Digital Trends

Now, the Guardian reports that the body of the Shuar indigenous leader has been found, bound and buried in an unmarked grave on the banks of the Zamora River. A well-known leader of the local Shuar communities, Tendetza Antun was also a vocal critic of a Chinese-operated Mirador mine in Ecuador's remote, and hugely biodiverse, Cordillera del Condor region.

Shuar Anti-Mining Activist Murdered Before Climate Summit - Business Insider

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The other myth about Sweden, which Jansson dismisses quite convincingly, is that Sweden has had weak economic performance since because of monetary policy decisions since 2010.

Sweden’s Riksbank responds to the critics | FT Alphaville

The International Monetary Fund has identified a $15bn shortfall in its bailout for war-torn Ukraine and warned western governments the gap will need to be filled within weeks to avoid financial collapse.

IMF warns Ukraine bailout at risk of collapse - FT.com

One of the primary investing trends in the post-crisis market is breaking down, providing an opportunity—at last—for stock picking to come back into vogue.

This could be the most important trend for 2015

Kostin said the difference between the two views is pretty big: He forecasts that Fed tightening will cause the S&P 500 to end 2015 at 2,100, which would be little changed from its current level. If the client view should take hold and the Fed not raise rates, the stock index would escalate to 2,300, a gain of about 10 percent, he said.

Goldman: Why 2015 could be better than we think

With a storage capacity double the size of any current iPods still being made, versions of the 160GB Classic – which can hold around 40,000 songs – are being sold as new via Amazon for up to £670. More than 3,000 of the models – the seventh, final version came out in 2010 – have been sold on eBay since the Classic was retired in October, most for between £350 and £500.

iPod Classics Popular In Holiday Shopping - Business Insider

The U.S. expansion is expected to strengthen in 2015, according to surveys released Tuesday by the Institute for Supply Management. The semiannual forecasts of manufacturing and nonmanufacturing supply executives show revenues, capital investment and employment are expected to grow at solid paces next year. Nonmanufacturers–mainly service providers–are especially upbeat about revenue prospects.

Businesses See Revenues, Employment Growing in 2015, ISM Says - Real Time Economics - WSJ

That chart, and many others, are from an MS look at the PBoC past and future — it’s tools, policy path etc. It will find its way to the usual place. Particularly useful we’d suggest in the face of recent China carry on.

China’s changing monetary policy, charted | FT Alphaville