Tuesday, 19. July 2016

Rätselhafter Riesendeal: Japanischer Milliardär kauft Chip-Designer ARM


Telekomkonzern Softbank übernimmt britische ARM Es ist ein Milliarden-Deal, der Rätsel aufwirft: Der japanische Konzern Softbank kauft sich den führenden Entwickler von Smartphone-Chips. Möglicherweise geht es um das zukünftige Geschäft mit unzähligen vernetzten Geräten im "Internet der Dinge". Die Firma, von der die Chip-Architektur in fast allen Smartphones und Tablets auf der Welt stammt, wird bald einem wagemutigen japanischen Milliardär gehören. Diese Vorstellung ist an sich schon denkwürdig, doch der am Montag angekündigte Deal birgt auch noch ein großes Rätsel: Was will Masayoshi Son überhaupt mit dem Chip-Designer ARM aus Großbritannien? Ins bisherige Kerngeschäft seines Tech-Konglomerats Softbank – Mobilfunk und Beteiligungen an Online-Diensten – lässt sich ARM jedenfalls nicht einfach so einbinden.

derstandard.at

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ARM founder says Softbank deal is 'sad day' for UK tech


The founder of ARM Holdings has told the BBC he believes its imminent sale to Japanese technology giant Softbank is "a sad day for technology in Britain". Hermann Hauser said he was "very sad" at news of the £24bn ($32bn) takeover which was announced on Monday morning. The Cambridge-based firm designs microchips used in most smartphones, including Apple's and Samsung's. ARM, which was founded in 1990, employs more than 3,000 people. Mr Hauser called ARM Holdings his proudest achievement.

bbc.com The sell-off of British businesses like ARM must stop

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Sunday, 17. July 2016

Dances of the Planets


The planets in the heavens move in exquisite orbital patterns, dancing to the Music of the Cosmos. There is more mathematical and geometric harmony than we realize. The idea for this article is from a book Larry Pesavento shared with me. The book, 'A Little Book of Coincidence' by John Martineau, illustrates the orbital patterns and several of their geometrical relationships. . Take the orbits of any two planets and draw a line between the two planet positions every few days. Because the inner planet orbits faster than the outer planet, interesting patterns evolve. Each planetary pairing has its own unique dance rhythm. For example, the Earth-Venus dance returns to the original starting position after eight Earth years. Eight Earth years equals thirteen Venus years. Note that 8 and 13 are members of the Fibonacci number series. Earth: 8 years * 365.256 days/year = 2,922.05 days Venus: 13 years * 224.701 days/year = 2,921.11 days (ie. 99.9%) Watching the Earth-Venus dance for eight years creates this beautiful five-petal flower with the Sun at the center. (5 is another Fibonacci number.)

Dances of the Planets

ensign.editme.com

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"Krone": "Mann von einer Ex-Grünen ließ Hunde verenden"


Natürlich hätte die Story mehr hergegeben, wenn es sich nicht um den Mann und nicht um eine Ex-Grüne gehandelt hätte Wo immer das Böse sein scheußliches Haupt erhebt, können wir gelassen bleiben, wacht doch die heilig-heimische Dreifaltigkeit von "Krone", FPÖ und Polizei darüber, dass es nicht triumphiere. Dass dabei nicht immer mit Samthandschuhen gekämpft werden kann, muss jeder und jedem klar sein, dem das Gute noch etwas bedeutet. Um es zu pflegen, griff die "Krone" am Mittwoch zu dem schweren Geschütz nicht der einfachen, nein, gleich der doppelten Sippenhaftung. FPÖ-Abgeordnete empört: "Mann von einer Ex-Grünen ließ Hunde im Auto verenden."

derstandard.at

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One striking chart shows why pharma companies are fighting legal marijuana


There's a body of research showing that painkiller abuse and overdose are lower in states with medical marijuana laws. These studies have generally assumed that when medical marijuana is available, pain patients are increasingly choosing pot over powerful and deadly prescription narcotics. But that's always been just an assumption. Now a new study, released in the journal Health Affairs, validates these findings by providing clear evidence of a missing link in the causal chain running from medical marijuana to falling overdoses. Ashley and W. David Bradford, a daughter-father pair of researchers at the University of Georgia, scoured the database of all prescription drugs paid for under Medicare Part D from 2010 to 2013.

washingtonpost.com slashdot.org

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Saturday, 16. July 2016

Ulysses and the Lie of Technological Progress


How a broken Twitter adaption of James Joyce’s novel reveals the secret of Bloomsday. Today is Bloomsday, a folk holiday adopted to celebrate the life and work of the Irish writer James Joyce, in particular his 1922 novel Ulysses. The name derives from the book’s protagonist, Leopold Bloom, one of the Dubliners the book follows through the day of June 16, 1904. First celebrated mere years after the novel’s publication, Bloomsday festivities have been enjoyed for decades. Today, Bloomsday is marked globally in various ways, but especially in Dublin, where it has taken on the character of a citywide festival and as a pilgrimage for aspiring high modernists worldwide. In our age of fast-obsolescing smartphones and apps, it’s hard to find fault in a makeshift holiday that celebrates a book nearly a century old. But nevertheless, it’s also troublesome to observe Bloomsday as a rote paean to Joyce and Ulysses.

theatlantic.com wikipedia.org

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For 90 years, lightbulbs were designed to burn out. Now that's coming to LED bulbs.


In 1924, representatives of the world's leading lightbulb manufacturers formed Phoebus, a cartel that fixed the average life of an incandescent bulb at 1,000 hours, ensuring that people would have to regularly buy bulbs and keep the manufacturers in business. But hardware store LED bulbs have a typical duty-cycle of 25,000 hours -- meaning that the average American household will only have to buy new bulbs ever 42 years or so.

boingboing.net

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The Curious Case of the Bog Bodies


One Saturday in the spring of 1950, brothers Viggo and Emil Højgaard from the small village of Tollund, in Denmark, were cutting peat in a local bog when they uncovered a dead man. He looked as though he had only just passed away. His eyelashes, chin stubble, and the wrinkles in his skin were visible; his leather cap was intact. Suspecting murder, the brothers called the police in nearby Silkeborg, but the body wasn’t what it seemed. Cracking the case required a special breed of forensic analysis. Famed Danish archaeologist Peter V. Glob, from the University of Aarhus, arranged for the body, along with its bed of peat, to be excavated and transferred to the Silkeborg Museum in a giant wooden box. An examination of the contents of the dead man’s stomach suggested—and radiocarbon dating later confirmed—that he had lived during the third century B.C., in the pre-Roman Iron Age. For more than 2,000 years, Tollund Man, as the corpse became known, had lain at the bottom of the bog, nearly untouched by time, as all of recorded history marched forward over his head.

Tollund Man

nautil.us

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Are We All Becoming Pavlov’s Dogs?


Blame your smartphone (and Steve Jobs).

Scenario 1: Your smartphone buzzes. Without a moment’s hesitation you grab it out of your pocket and check the alert: Was it an email? A test? A Facebook notification? Or just a phantom vibration? Scenario 2: You looked at your phone a few minutes ago, but now you're standing in line at the market and grab it to check for messages even though your phone has not beeped, vibrated, or flashed. Scenario 3: You posted on Facebook a few minutes ago and although you have not been notified of any responses, likes, or whatever, you tap the icon and scroll through the newest posts. You see that your best friend from high school just posted a photo of her trip to Maui, and you smile when you become the first to “like” it. Scenario 4: You are at dinner with a group of friends and you have all agreed to put your phones on silent and stash them away. After the appetizer, you get up to go to the restroom (even though you really don’t need to go) and upon opening the restroom door, you grab your phone and check the sports scores, your email, or whatever. Looking around you notice that every other person in the restroom is doing the same.

psychologytoday.com

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Fast jeder Zweite surft am Klo im Internet


Dies ergab eine Umfrage des Portals YouGov Einer Umfrage von YouGov zufolge nutzt mittlerweile fast jeder Zweite das Smartphone am Klo. 45 Prozent der 1035 Teilnehmer gaben an, dass sie auf der Toilette selten oder regelmäßig im Netz surfen. Für 61 Prozent der Frauen ist die Internet-Nutzung am Klo eher tabu als für Männer (48 Prozent). Nur 13 Prozent der 18- bis 29-Jährigen gaben an, noch nie das Smartphone oder Tablet für Internetzugang auf der Toilette verwendet zu haben.

derstandard.at

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WWW-Erfinder ruft EU-Bürger auf, sich noch an Netzneutralitäts-Debatte zu beteiligen


Bis Montag noch kann sich jeder der EU-Konsultation zur Netzneutralität beteiligen Am 18. Juli endet die öffentliche Konsultation der EU zur Netzneutralität. In einem offenen Brief fordert WWW-Erfinder Tim Berners-Lee gemeinsam mit der Stanford-Professorin Barbara van Schewick und Creative-Commons-Gründer Lawrence Lessig EU-Bürger auf, sich daran zu beteiligen. Sie appellieren an Nutzer, Aktivisten und Organisationen, "das Internet in Europa zu retten".

derstandard.at

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2 Days to Save the Open Internet in Europe: An Open Letter


We have four days to save the open Internet in Europe By Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Professor Lawrence Lessig, and Professor Barbara van Schewick Network neutrality for hundreds of millions of Europeans is within our grasp. Securing this is essential to preserve the open Internet as a driver for economic growth and social progress. But the public needs to tell regulators now to strengthen safeguards, and not cave in to telecommunications carriers’ manipulative tactics. We are so close. In October, the European Parliament voted on network neutrality rules for the European Union. Now regulators are writing guidelines to determine how the law will be applied in practice. These guidelines could secure net neutrality in Europe – if regulators use them to close potential loopholes in the law.

Save the Open Internet in Europe

webfoundation.org

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