For a robot to be able to wash clothes, vacuum carpets or serve you cocktails on a Friday night, it needs to be loaded with the appropriate software and data. In the future, though, a robot will easily be able pull info they need to do those things…
The U.S. Open ball boys are doing a test run of sorts with Ralph Lauren’s new smart shirts, which keep tabs on things like heart rates and aggregates it onto a different device like a smartphone. The company says its new smart shirts are the first of its kind to be rolled out by a major fashion label, and could … Continue reading
As the number of gadgets you own grows, the hassle of charging them all grows with them. More convenient than toting around a surge protector is the OmniStation from CYSPO, a dual wired and wireless charging station that includes cables for just about every modern gadget you own. The OmniStation features Qi wireless charging for gadgets that support it, and … Continue reading
In the past, Huawei has dabbled a bit in Windows Phone devices, but have ultimately ended up favoring Android instead. Earlier we reported that Huawei’s boss, Richard Yu, mentioned that they were approached by carriers to make Tizen devices, but apparently they didn’t think it would be a successful platform, and it seems that they don’t seem to think too highly of Windows Phone either.
Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, Yu mentioned that the Windows Phone platform simply wasn’t profitable, which led to the company putting a hold on new Windows Phone handsets. “We have tried using the Windows Phone OS. But it has been difficult to persuade consumers to buy a Windows phone. It wasn’t profitable for us. We were losing money for two years on those phones. So for now we’ve decided to put any releases of new Windows phones on hold.”
We suppose at the moment, the Windows Phone market is too small (at least compared to iOS and Android) to the point where too many cooks can spoil the broth, not to mention Nokia is the dominating OEM and has since been snapped up by Microsoft. Either way we’re sure Windows Phone users are a little disappointed since they essentially have less options to choose from now, but what do you guys think? Was Huawei right in their decision to put future Windows Phone devices on hold?
Huawei Puts Their Windows Phone Plans On Hold
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Earlier this year we mentioned how the California Senate had passed the bill that would make it a requirement for smartphone OEMs to include kill switches in their devices. Well it looks like the law will finally come into effect by 2015, thanks to California Governor Jerry Brown who signed the bill into law.
For those who are unfamiliar with the concept of kill switches, it’s basically a feature where users can remotely disable their device when it is stolen or lost, thus rendering it unusable. Given that smartphones are stolen all the time and resold in the black market or reused by the thief, rendering it useless would make it less desirable for thieves to attempt anything.
While we suppose there could eventually be a way for hackers to find a way around the kill switch, at the very least it would deter common criminals who are planning to make a quick buck. That being said even if the bill had not been passed and had not been made into a law, companies such as Apple, Google, Microsoft, Nokia, Samsung, and so on have recently volunteered to install kill switches into their devices.
Either way we suppose that now that it has been made a law, customers can rest easy knowing that their phones will now come bundled with an additional security measure that will hopefully drastically drive down the amount of smartphone theft that is taking place.
California Kill Switch Bill Has Been Signed Into Law
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Just last week, Dong Nguyen released Swing Copters. If you’re wondering about Nguyen and the significance of his game, Nguyen was the developer behind the famous Flappy Bird game, a game which featured relatively simply gameplay and retro graphics, but turned out to be such a huge addiction that Nguyen felt that he had to remove it from app stores for the good of everyone.
That being said for those who have yet to try Swing Copters, it seems that Nguyen has a knack for creating games that are deceptively difficult, despite the seemingly straightforward gameplay. For those who have tried the game, you know it can be pretty tricky trying to get your copter to fly in the direction that you want.
Well the good news is that if you were particularly frustrated by the game’s difficulty, Nguyen has recently released an update for the game that has made it ever so slightly less difficult for gamers. He has basically moved the initial steel bar and swinging hammers up so that gamers will have more space and time to correct their copter and get into the rhythm before attempting to navigate the obstacles.
Personally I have to admit it’s not that much easier, but the extra space does help. The update has been released and is available for download via the iTunes App Store or Google Play as a free download.
Swing Copters Updated, Now Less Frustrating To Play
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There is a growing push by inflation hawks to get the Federal Reserve Board to raise interest rates. They argue that inflationary pressures are picking up steam and if the Fed doesn’t move quickly, we will soon be caught up in an inflationary spiral.
If this sounds obscure and esoteric, then you better do some quick homework. The Fed’s decisions on the future course of interest rates will have a huge impact on the job prospects and livelihoods of tens of millions of families. If the Fed raises interest rates to prevent inflation, it would be slowing the economy and keeping people from getting jobs. Furthermore, slower job growth will weaken the labor market by raising the unemployment rate.
This is a huge deal, especially for those at the middle and bottom of the economic ladder. The analysis in my book with Jared Bernstein (Getting Back to Full Employment) showed that a sustained 1.0 percentage point drop in the unemployment rate is associated with a 9.8 percent increase in the hourly wage for a worker at the 20th percentile of the wage distribution. For a full-time full-year worker that translates into $2,000 a year.
Lower unemployment rates also typically allow lower paid workers to work more hours. In addition they increase their probability of being able to get a job. A 1.0 percentage point decline in the unemployment rate for white workers is typically associated with a decline in the unemployment rate for African American workers of 2.0 percentage points and a decline in the unemployment rate for African American teens of 6.0 percentage points.
In short, a drop in the unemployment rate would have an enormous impact on the well-being of tens of millions of workers at the bottom end of the income distribution. Earlier this year, many people became concerned over Republican proposals to cut the food stamp program. Multiply the impact of the proposed food stamp cuts by 50 or 100 and you will have a ballpark number of what is at stake for low and moderate income families in getting the unemployment rate down.
The Fed comes into this picture because its decision to raise interest rates can discourage people from buying homes and cars. It can also discourage firms from investing. In this way, it reduces demand in the economy, which slows growth and reduces the rate of job creation. This is exactly what the inflation hawks want, since they argue that the risk of higher inflation more than outweighs the potential benefits to moderate and low-income families from further reductions in the unemployment rate.
There are a few points to keep in mind when considering the arguments made by the inflation hawks. First, most of the loudest inflation hawks have been making the same arguments for 3-4 years now. Some have been arguing since 2010 that the Fed’s efforts to boost the economy with low interest rates and quantitative easing would lead to an explosion of inflation. They have been consistently shown wrong. There is little reason to think their predictive abilities have somehow improved.
The second point is that there really is no historical precedent for their story of an explosion of inflation. In the last thirty five years the general direction of inflation has been downward with a few temporary upward blips. If we go back to the 1970s, when inflation was a problem, it was mostly a story of gradual increases, with the exception of the boost from the OPEC price shocks in 1974 and 1979. It’s hard to envision anything like another OPEC price shock and the Fed’s actions would not protect us in any case.
If the Fed were somehow asleep at the wheel, we might see inflation gradually creep up to 2.5 percent or even 3.0 percent. So what? We had decades of solid growth and general prosperity in which inflation averaged between 3.0-4.0 percent. If keeping its foot off the break allows millions of people to have jobs and tens of millions to see wage gains, who cares if these benefits comes at the risk of slightly higher inflation rate?
Finally, we should recognize that the inflation hawks are not willing to rely on honest arguments. Earlier this month I had an exchange with Harvard Professor Martin Feldstein in which he insisted that the rate of inflation in the consumer price index (CPI) and the core personal consumption expenditure deflator that the Fed uses as its main inflation gage had crossed the Fed’s 2.0 percent target. This is not true, as a quick trip to the websites of the Bureau of Labor Statistics and Commerce Department shows. The core CPI had increased by 1.9 percent over the prior year and the latter measure increased by just 1.5 percent from June of 2013 to June of 2014, the most recent data available at the time.
The public should recognize that the battle over the course of Fed policy is hugely important to the well-being of tens of millions of families. It should also recognize that the folks willing to deny these people jobs and wage increases will not feel constrained by the truth in pushing their agenda.
There are a number of reasons that people can become refugees — from geo-political conflicts to the effects of climate change. It is a devastating thing for people to lose everything in the path of these forces and then be faced with trying to rebuild a life from nothing. Designer Abeer Seikaly has come up with a different kind of shelter for refugees that gives them a small home of their own that is more functional than your average tent.
The Hormel Black Label Bacon-Fueled Motorcycle, based on the rare Track T800 CDI chopper, features an 800cc, three-cylinder diesel engine purposely tuned to run on 100% biodiesel… ideally sourced from bacon grease, of course.
The last thing you might expect to hear on an early 20th century period medical drama about corpse-stealing ambulances and childbirth gone horribly wrong is electronic music. The show in question, The Knick—or Steven Soderbergh and Clive Owen’s Mad Men but with doctors—is by most accounts not so great. The music is however, by all accounts, excellent.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
