The Open Compute Project, a Facebook-led, open-source effort to build big data centers better and cheaper, is going after networking hardware. The project could prod competition among networking gear makers. It could also be a blow to Google, which runs proprietary equipment in its clouds. … Read More
How to prevent future Reinhart-Rogoff meltdowns
In the midst of the Reinhart-Rogoff meltdown, a commenter was aghast to learn that their paper was not peer reviewed.* She asked, reasonably, how could the newspapers report findings that had not gone through that process?It’s a fair question, and I should expand on the too glib remarks from my post:So the answer is to only accept peer-reviewed work as economic knowledge, right? Nope. That would be a) too limiting, and b) wouldn’t advance the epistemological cause as much as you think. Peers have their own sets of biases, particularly as gate keepers.First, had R&R gone through the peer-review process, I’m fairly confident that a) the spreadsheet error would NOT have been found, but b) the paper would have been sent back to them for failing to provide even a cursory analysis of the possibility of reverse causality (slower growth leading to higher debt/GDP ratios vs. the R&R claim of the opposite). Re “a,” peer reviewers do not routinely replicate findings, though they should when possible (more work these days is with proprietary data sets which cannot legally be shared).Continue Reading… … Read More
US urges China to halt hacking spree
In a speech on Monday President Obama’s national securityadviser Tom Donilon implored China to stop hackers within itsborders from engaging in industrial espionage and breaking into UScomputer systems.“The international community cannot afford to tolerate suchactivity from any country,” Donilon said in the New Yorkspeech, stressing that online spying damages international economicties, especially as cyber-security is becoming a “growingchallenge” to the relationship between Washington andBeijing.“US businesses are speaking out about their serious concernsabout sophisticated, targeted theft of confidential businessinformation and proprietary technologies through cyber intrusionsemanating from China on an unprecedented scale,” Donilon saidin prepared remarks for the speech made at the Asia Society, a NewYork think tank.Donilon also mentioned that Washington has urged China toacknowledge the “urgency and scope” of the threat and totake “serious steps” to stop the attacks, asking the Chinesegovernment to engage in a dialogue to establish norms incyberspace.“From the president on down, this has become a key point ofconcern and discussion with China at all levels of ourgovernments,” Donilon said, adding that US hopes China willengage in a “constructive, direct dialogue to establishacceptable norms of behavior in cyberspace.”The two countries have long been pointing fingers at each other,trading accusations of online spying.In February, the White House revealed its strategy to combat thetheft of trade secrets. Among the tools at its disposal, theadministration said it would use “trade policy tools” toenforce intellectual property laws and to compel other nations tostop breaking into US computer networks.According to a February report, an elite military unit ofChinese hackers – the People’s Liberation Army Unit 61398 – hasbeen ferociously engaged in espionage. In the last seven years, ithas allegedly hacked 141 companies across 20 major industries,including those vital to national security.China denies its involvement in the attacks, and has accused theUS of cyber-warfare. A report by China’s top cyber-security agencylast month said that over 2012, a total of 10.5 million infectedcomputers were traced to control servers with American IPaddresses. The agency said US hacks made up 74 per cent of all suchattacks on China. … Read More
Mainstream media meltdown!
The decline of journalism over the past generation, which has accelerated in the last decade, would be a less pressing concern if the existing news media were making a successful digital transition, or if the Internet was spawning a credible replacement. The evidence suggests on balance that emerging digital news media are having a negligible effect upon the crisis in journalism. It certainly is not due to a lack of effort, as commercial news media have been obsessed with the Internet since the 1990s; they understood that it was going to be the future.For traditional news media, it has been a very rocky digital road. A 2012 report based on proprietary data and in-depth interviews with executives at a dozen major news media companies found “the shift to replace losses in print ad revenue with new digital revenue is taking longer and proving more difficult than executives want and at the current rate most newspapers continue to contract at alarming speed.” For every seven dollars of print advertising lost there is only one new dollar of Internet ad revenues; the executives said it “remains an uphill and existential struggle.” The newspaper industry’s percentage of overall Internet advertising fell to 10 percent in 2011, an all-time low; it had been 17 percent in 2003. “There’s no doubt we’re going out of business right now,” one executive said. By all accounts, the “clock continues to tick” for old media to find a way to survive online in the inexorable transition to the Internet.Continue Reading… … Read More
FDA warns company over unapproved flu remedy
WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal regulators say a Florida company has been marketing an untested inhaled formula as a flu remedy in violation of drug safety regulations.
The Food and Drug Administration and the Federal Trade Commission issued a warning letter to Flu and Cold Defense LLC for making misleading, unproven claims about its GermBullet inhaler.
The Boca Raton, Fla.-based company advertises the product as a “proprietary blend of 11 organic botanicals.” The company’s website claims that “an FDA recognized virology lab” tested the formula and “confirmed that it has the potential capability to kill cold and flu viruses.”
But FDA regulators say the mixture has never been reviewed as safe and effective and the company is violating drug safety regulations. All new drugs marketed in the U.S. must be submitted for approval to the FDA before they can be sold to consumers. The GermBullet is sold online through retailers like CVS.com and at a handful of small pharmacies and natural food stores in Florida.
A man reached by phone at Flu and Cold Defense’s office could not immediately comment on the warning letter.
The warning comes amid a worse-than-usual flu season that has hit the elderly particularly hard. So far, half of confirmed flu cases are in people 65 and older.
Sorry, Dealers: In the Future We’ll Get All Our Drugs From This 3D Printer
Pills, pills, pills. (Photo: Global Post)
3D printing aficionados eager for the new technology to disrupt the vice market were dismayed to discover this week that the much-hyped 3D printed gun fired six shots before falling the f*ck apart. But fear not: Kurzweil AI reports that a new 3D printer has been developed, and this one prints drugs.
The new printer allows scientists to print molecule-by-molecule, specifying exactly where to place each atom. This means they can create drugs from scratch in a faster and more streamlined way: Instead of testing out compounds to see “what sticks,” software accompanying the printer automatically matches created compounds with strands of DNA, allowing scientists to design ”very specific drugs based on their molecular structure.”
According to Kurzweil AI:
Using a simple “drag-and-drop” computer interface and DNA self-assembly techniques, Parabon NanoLabs researchers have developed a new automated method of drug development that could reduce the time required to create and test medications…To develop new drugs, scientists can use the CAD software to design molecular pieces with specific, functional components. The software then optimizes the design using a cloud supercomputing platform that uses proprietary algorithms to search for specific sets of DNA sequences that can self-assemble those components.
The 3D printer will also help find experimental new treatments, particularly when it comes to cancer drugs.
Of course, we can’t ignore the implications an invention like this might have on how you get your addies: It’s a long ways away, but once stuff like this hits the black market, it’s a slippery slope towards artisinally-crafted, molecularly organic ecstasy. … Read More
Angry Bonds? Bloomberg LP Lets Developers Play With Its Data for App Store Launch
Financial data just little (little) more fun, with Bloomberg LP announcing a new platform for third-party applications powered by the Bloomberg data and news.
There are already more than 45 apps available on the new platform, called the Bloomberg App Portal, including products for data analysis, portfolio management and risk analysis. The app portal can also be used to by Bloomberg clients to share proprietary tools with their own employees, according to a release.
The offering should help Bloomberg compete with Reuters and Markit, both of which have launched similar projects.
“I know a lot of people thought of us as sort of a closed system. Maybe this will make people look at us a bit differently,” Bloomberg co-founder Tom Secunda told The Financial Times, which reported that like Apple before it, Bloomberg will take a 30 percent cut of app store sales. Of course, unless you sit at a trading desk or design financial software, and maybe even then, what you really want to know is, will there be games? Not as far as we can tell, but here’s the next best thing:
With RiskVal’s Angry Bonds, view the most lucrative USD Treasury securities instantly. Our proprietary relative value analytics arm you with the Top 5 Bond trades of the day based on current levels against 3 Months of historical data on True ASW, OIS Spread, 2+ RVS, Yield Roll, and ASW Roll. Richest and cheapest trades are displayed in real-time by maturity or origin buckets so you can pick the securities with the most potential for your investment strategy.
Which Treasury bond has the cheapest ASW spread over the last 90 days? Which bond has the best 3-month Roll down in the entire Treasury curve? Getting actionable answers to these complex questions requires effort to set up and then maintain with each new bond announcement; Angry Bonds tells you what you need to know for a fraction of the cost of a standard system.
Sounds like fun! … Read More
