Hasta La Gadget!

For decades, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence has looked and listened for evidence of another civilization in our galactic neighborhood.

That hunt is intensifying with NASA’s Kepler telescope’s discovery of thousands of verified planets since its 2009 launch, including some planets that appear Earth-like and possibly habitable.

Now, a Columbia University astronomer has an idea for making Earth stand out to any alien civilization that may be conducting similar searches for planets — aiming laser beams through the vast distance that separates us in this region of the Milky Way galaxy.

“We mostly use the transit method, which is currently the most successful and dominant method of detecting planets,” said Columbia’s David Kipping. “Very simply, it works by staring at a star — you can’t see the planets directly, because they just reflect too little light or they’re too close to their star. Now and again, the planet sometimes will pass in front of the star, blocking some of the star light for a short amount of time.” 

Essentially the star “winks” at us, the first visual clue that a planet may be passing in front of it. An advanced extraterrestrial race could, in a similar way, detect Earth as they see a dip in the brightness of our sun as our planet passes in front of it every 365 days on our orbital path.

But there’s a way Earth could make its appearance stand out to other civilizations — and a way ETs could send an unmistakeable sign to Earth, Kipping said.

“An alien civilization might choose to try and make their transit signature — as seen by Earth — look weird or funky. One thing they might do is turn on a laser beam and make any pattern they want in the transit signature,” said Kipping.

The kind of laser-created patterns Kipping talks about are geometric forms — circles, squares, triangles, even a laser-based city skyline — anything totally unexpected that our scientists, and the Kepler telescope, would notice.

“This has lots of advantages,” Kipping added. “We are already looking for their signature. Somehow, if they follow the same path of detecting planets, they would perhaps assume this very simple method might be one way to broadcast themselves.”

The idea of deliberately trying to make our presence known to other civilizations is the subject of some debate. Leading those who say Earth shouldn’t reach out and say hello to the cosmos is renowned physicist Stephen Hawking, who warns that aliens might not have the best intentions for earthlings.

With that in mind, Kipping and Columbia graduate student Alan Teachey wrote a paper explaining how laser technology may be useful to cloak our planet from the prying eyes of those in deep space who would do us harm.

They put together this video to make their point:

Are you for or against the idea of letting other advanced cultures know we’re here?

Kipping said the idea of whether humans are alone in the universe is perhaps our species’ ultimate question.

“Who can predict what possible benefits a confirmed signal would have? It’s impossible for us to foresee how that could change our society,” Kipping said. “There’s over 2,000 confirmed planets, and we definitely have examples, no matter how you slice and dice it, of planets which resemble Earth in the Kepler data.

“To say that I hope, certainly it would be intellectually extremely interesting if we discovered something. In that sense, it would be fantastic.”

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Earlier this year the FCC voted on a plan to fix crappy cable boxes. Dubbed “Unlock the Box,” the plan would make cable companies open up their services for use on boxes made by other companies. Now, after a few months of complaining and poking holes…

Mouse Computer is offering you their latest gaming PC, the NEXTGEAR i650GA7. As part of the G-Tune series, this high-end gaming PC is configured with a 4.0GHz (TB: 4.2GHz) Intel Core i7-6700K processor, an Intel Z170 Express Chipset, a GeForce GTX 1070 8GB GDDR5 graphics card, a 16GB DDR4 PC4-17000 RAM and a 240GB SSD.

Apart from that, the system is also built with a DVD Super Multi Drive, a multi-card reader and a 700W 80PLUS BRONZE power supply. For operating system, the NEXTGEAR i650GA7 runs on Windows 10 Home 64-bit OS.

Backed by a 1-year warranty, the Mouse Computer NEXTGEAR i650GA7 is available now for 179,800 Yen (about $1,719). [Product Page]

The post Mouse Computer’s Latest NEXTGEAR i650GA7 Gaming PC Featuring GeForce GTX 1070 Graphics Card appeared first on TechFresh, Consumer Electronics Guide.

This article is written by Don Tapscott and Alex Tapscott.

It can create a true sharing economy.

Prosperity first and foremost is about one’s standard of living. To achieve it, people must have the means, tools, and opportunities to create material wealth and thrive economically. But for us it includes more — security of the person, safety, health, education, environmental sustainability, opportunities to shape and control one’s destiny and to participate in an economy and society. In order to achieve prosperity, an individual must possess, at minimum, access to some form of basic financial services to reliably store and move value, communication, and transactional tools to connect to the global economy, and security, protection, and enforcement of the title to land and other assets they possess legally. This and more is the promise of the blockchain.

Creating a True Peer-to-Peer Sharing Economy

Pundits often refer to Airbnb, Uber, Lyft, TaskRabbit, and others as platforms for the “sharing economy.” It’s a nice notion, that peers create and share in value. But these businesses have little to do with sharing. In fact, they are successful because they do not share–they aggregate. It is an aggregating economy. Uber is a $65 billion corporation that aggregates driving services. Airbnb, the $25 billion Silicon Valley darling, aggregates vacant rooms. Others aggregate equipment and handymen through their centralized, proprietary platforms and then resell them. In the process, they collect data for commercial exploitation. None of these companies existed a decade ago because the technological preconditions were not there: ubiquitous smartphones, full GPS, and sophisticated payment systems. Now with blockchains, the technology exists to reinvent these industries again. Today’s big disrupters are about to get disrupted.

Imagine instead of the centralized company Airbnb, a distributed application–call it blockchain Airbnb or bAirbnb–essentially a cooperative owned by its members. When a renter wants to find a listing, the bAirbnb software scans the blockchain for all the listings and filters and displays those that meet her criteria. Because the network creates a record of the transaction on the blockchain, a positive user review improves their respective reputations and establishes their identities–now without an intermediary. Says Vitalik Buterin, founder of the Ethereum blockchain: “Whereas most technologies tend to automate workers on the periphery doing menial tasks, blockchains automate away the center. Instead of putting the taxi driver out of a job, blockchain puts Uber out of a job and lets the taxi drivers work with the customer directly.”

Rewiring the Financial System for Speed and Inclusion

The financial services industry makes our global economy hum, but the system today is fraught with problems. For one, it is arguably the most centralized industry in the world and the last industry to feel the transformational effect of the technological revolution. Bastions of the old financial order such as banks go to great lengths to defend monopolies and often stymie disruptive innovation. The financial system also runs on outmoded technology and is governed by regulations dating back to the 19th century. It is rife with contradictions and uneven developments, making it sometimes slow, oftentimes insecure, and largely opaque to many stakeholders.

Distributed ledger technology can liberate many financial services from the confines of old institutions, fostering competition and innovation. That’s good for the end user. Even when connected to the old Internet, billions of people are excluded from the economy for the simple reason that financial institutions don’t provide services like banking to them because they would be unprofitable and risky customers. With the blockchain these people can not only become connected, but more important become included in financial activity, able to purchase, borrow, sell, and otherwise have a chance at building a prosperous life.

Similarly incumbent institutions can transform themselves around blockchain technology, if they can find the leadership to do it. The technology holds great promise to revolutionize the industry for the good–from banks to stock exchanges, insurance companies to accounting firms, brokerages, microlenders, credit card networks, real estate agents, and everything in between. When everyone shares the same distributed ledger, settlements don’t take days, they occur instantly for all to see. Billions will benefit, and this shift could liberate and empower entrepreneurs everywhere.

Feeding the Creators of Value First

Under the first generation of the Internet, many creators of intellectual property did not receive proper compensation for it. Exhibit A was musicians and composers who had signed with record labels whose leaders failed to imagine how the Internet would affect their industry. They failed to embrace the digital age and reinvent their own business models, slowly ceding control to innovative online distributors.

Consider the major labels’ reaction to Napster, the peer-to-peer music file-sharing platform launched in 1999. Incumbents in the music industry teamed up to sue the new venture, its founders, and 18,000 of its users, dismantling the platform by July 2001. Alex Winter, director of a documentary on Napster, told The Guardian, “I have a problem with black-and-white thinking when it comes to big cultural changes … With Napster, there was an enormous amount of grey” between the ‘I can share everything I’ve paid for’ position and the ‘You’re a criminal even if you share only one of the files you’ve purchased’ point of view.”

We agree. Co-creating with consumers is usually a more sustainable business model than suing them. The whole incident turned a huge hot spotlight on the music industry, exposing its outdated marketing practices, gross distribution inefficiencies, and what some interpreted as anti-musician policies.
Very little has changed since then. Until now. We look at the new music ecosystem emerging on the blockchain, led by British singer-songwriter Imogen Heap, cellist Zoë Keating, and blockchain developers and entrepreneurs. Every cultural industry is up for disruption, and the promise is that creators get fully compensated for the value they create.
Realizing Governments by the People for the People

Buckle up for big changes in government and governance.

Blockchain technology is already revolutionizing the machinery of government and how we can make it high performance–better and cheaper. It’s also creating new opportunities to change democracy itself–how governments can be more open and free from lobbyist control, and behave with the four values of integrity. Blockchain technologies can change what it means to be a citizen and participate in the political process, from voting and accessing social services to solving some of society’s big hairy problems and holding elected representatives accountable for the promises that got them elected.

Reprinted from Blockchain Revolution: How the Technology Behind Bitcoin Is Changing Money, Business, and the World by Don Tapscott and Alex Tapscott with permission of Portfolio, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © Don Tapscott and Alex Tapscott, 2016. This post was originally published in Fortune.

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When President Obama declared that anyone earning less than $47,500/year would be taken advantage of if not paid overtime, he made sure to exclude one class of Americans. I’ll get to who is less deserving than the rest of us in a moment.

This is the second of two installments – here’s the first:

Obama Destroys Young Careers – Part One

We are in Carrboro, North Carolina – Not San Francisco. All Cities are not Equal
There is a Federal Minimum Wage – and beyond that, states and, in some cases, cities, adjust the Minimum Wage as needed. This is in part because cost of living varies so wildly in our country. Below, you can see that the new FLSA rule will require us to pay OT to people earning well above the average per capita salary in Carrboro, NC where our office is located.

– the average per capita salary in Carrboro, NC is $34k & Average HH income is $50k
– the average per capita salary in Manhattan is $63k & Average HH income is $72k 
– the average per capita salary in San Francisco is $52k & Average HH Income is $77k 

Some Employees are More Efficient Than Others – Should we Fire Less Efficient Employees Who Still Get Their Work Done?
Many of our white collar staff are paid for their ability to create art while others are paid for their ability to organize, synthesize and process information. In either scenario, what one person completes in 8 hours might take another person 10 hours. We don’t fire people who take longer – we just do our best to evenly distribute the workload and let people set their own schedules. It’s important to note that with one or two exceptions, only a very short list of senior management regularly works more than 45 hours in a week.

What if Someone Wants to Show Initiative?
Effective 12/1, if a 20-something rookie wants to show initiative, work hard, put in the hours and make a mark – stand out and be promoted – we can no longer permit that. The OT risk is too great. Our business, like many others, thrives on finding and promoting superstars. I imagine all that will change under the new ruling.

Young New Talent + Learning Curve + Fast Growing Company = $ Disaster
We regularly hire people out of school as well as folks early in their careers and not yet accustomed to a professional work environment like ours. These folks come in with spirit and thirst for knowledge. They often work extra hours for six months to a year as they absorb as much as they can, work inefficiently, and, overall, try to hit their stride. Consider that we tend to double our work force every two years – and our retention rate is strong. We’re growing careers, teaching folks, giving them skills that will last a lifetime not to mention a chance at growing a career with us. In return, people work at entry level salaries and put in the extra time needed to find their way. The new FLSA requirement makes this model of training and nurturing young talent all but impossible. 

The Only Americans Overlooked by This Rule Are…
It speaks mountains about our nation’s unfortunate priorities that teachers are a class of Americans entirely exempt from this rule. There is, of course, rationale for this as there is for every injustice that’s ever been forced upon a class of helpless people. There is simply no excuse – none – for excluding teachers. The only possible rationale is that the public (and many private) school systems would collapse if forced to follow the new FLSA OT rules. If The President and the FLSA truly believes that working more than 40 hours/week without OT pay if you’re paid less than $47.5k/year is an economic injustice, then there should be only one class of American Citizen – teachers must be included.

Hill Staffers
Ditto for Hill Staffers whom I understand are also meant to be excluded. This means that members of Congress, The White House, the Judiciary, can pay staffers less than $47.5k/year and work their staff 60+ hours a week. Again, there is absolutely no excuse to create two tiers of citizens.

Capitalism Works 
I am an avowed believer in capitalism. At the core of capitalism is the base concept that most human beings, given the chance, modify behavior to pursue wealth. So imagine it’s a post 12/1 world and you’re someone who is now eligible for OT. It’s 6PM and the office is closing, but there are a few more emails you have in your inbox. There’s the initiative/idea you’ve been meaning to work on but haven’t had time to do. Or maybe you just spent a bit too much time dawdling and chatting with co-workers during the day and you’re a bit behind. Do you shut down your computer and leave – or sit and work another 30-60 minutes when you know the work you’re going to complete is valid and you’ll get paid OT for the extra hour? What about catching up on work on a rainy Sunday?  In effect, this new OT rule incentivizes people to stretch their workload beyond 40 hours regardless of actual need.

Isolating the Real Issue
FLSA defines a range of worker classes. It appears that the problem this new OT law is trying to address is specific to a class that exists in reality, but has yet to be defined by the FLSA. In short, the challenge is with salaried people whose job it is to oversee, manage and schedule hourly employees. From McDonalds to Walmart, Target and the rest – an hourly floor worker gets promoted to management, gets a raise and then is given 50-60 hours of work to complete each week with no additional compensation. The challenge for this manager is that he or she doesn’t have a transferable skill set to look for another, better paying job.

Companies like ours train workers – and the more successful someone is, the more their salary increases. If we can’t pay a competitive salary to a smart, valuable employee, that person has skills and can look elsewhere. In short, our staff have competitive job skills.

Suggested Correct Solution
FLSA should create a new class of workers  – “Managers of Hourly Wage Earners”- these folks should be eligible for OT if paid less than $47.5k/year. That makes sense and addresses the problem at hand without punishing those of us trying to nurture and build actual careers that come with built-in salary escalators.

I have no illusions. The new FLSA law will likely stand. Businesses large and small will need to address the challenge in their own way. We won’t fire anyone, but other companies will. We won’t cut anyone’s salaries – but other companies undoubtedly will. We will have find our own way to protect ourselves from insolvency. We have five months to figure out how to do this.

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