Quartz

This isn’t China: The “Amazon of India” will be Amazon
▻http://qz.com/653417/this-isnt-china-the-amazon-of-india-will-be-amazon-and-the-uber-of-india-will-be

“The Chinese market is a walled garden of sorts, open mostly only to Chinese businesses. […] It’s the same in Russia. Yandex is the Google of Russia and vKontakte is the Facebook of Russia. While, in India, the regulatory barriers are almost non-existent, our internet is still mostly in English and our politicians aren’t able to control digital media companies like the Chinese and Russians do in their countries. The result of our openness? The Facebook of India is Facebook, the Google of India is Google, and the Twitter of India is Twitter.”

#India_local_business_social_network_beclever

Mexico City is crowdsourcing its new constitution using Change.org in a democracy experiment — Quartz
▻http://qz.com/662159/mexico-city-is-crowdsourcing-its-new-constitution-using-change-org-in-a-democrac

The idea, in the words of the mayor, Miguel Angel Mancera, is to “bestow the constitution project (Spanish) with a democratic, progressive, inclusive, civic and plural character.” There’s a big catch, however. The constitutional assembly—the body that has the final word on the new city’s basic law—is under no obligation to consider any of the citizen input. And then there are the practical difficulties of collecting and summarizing the myriad of views dispersed throughout one of the world’s largest cities.

That makes Mexico City’s public-consultation experiment a big test for the people’s digital power, one being watched around the (...)

The British government is considering paying out research grants with #bitcoin — Quartz
▻http://qz.com/670708/the-british-government-is-considering-paying-out-research-grants-with-bitcoin

Matthew Hancock, the minister for the Cabinet Office and paymaster general, said today the cabinet had begun exploring ways to use blockchains in the government, with a particular interest in how it could be used in the disbursal of government research grants.
“Monitoring and controlling the use of grants is incredibly complex. A blockchain, accessible to all the parties involved, might be a better way of solving that problem,” Hancock said in a speech at Digital Catapult, a government-funded think tank. Hancock cited bitcoin as a successful example of “distributed ledgers,” another phrase for blockchains, being used to track currency.

(…) The government’s chief scientist has also studied the technology, publishing a report in January. A chapter of the report was devoted to uses of blockchains within government. “If applied within government it could reduce costs, increase transparency, improve citizens’ financial inclusion and promote innovation and economic growth,” the report said.

One in 14 Americans will grow up with a parent in prison — Quartz
▻http://qz.com/651342/one-in-14-americans-will-grow-up-with-a-parent-in-prison

More than 5 million children in the United States have had a parent in prison or jail, according to a 2015 study from the Maryland-based research center Child Trends. That’s 1 in 14 Americans who will grow up losing their parents to prison—and this is most likely an undercount.
 
The only period in US history comparable to our current era of mass incarceration is the Great Depression.
 
This is particularly troubling for black children like Erica: One in four African Americans born in 1990 has had a father in prison by the age of 14.

(...) “we should be aware that we’ve done a bunch of damage to these kids, who disproportionately come from already disadvantaged backgrounds.” Even as we cut down the prison population, he says, the damage has been done. Instead of decreasing, racial disparities caused by mass incarceration will plateau for quite some time.
Even before incarceration, these kids already come from disadvantaged families.(Hanna Kozlowska/Quartz)
Michelle Alexander’s seminal book “The New Jim Crow” argues that mass incarceration has formed an “undercaste” of jailed Americans and their children, who are also deprived of a basic safety net after the parents are released from prison. “Certainly youth of color, particularly those in ghetto communities, find themselves born into the cage. They are born into a community in which the rules, laws, policies, structures of their lives virtually guarantee that they will remain trapped for life,”

#prison #racisme #états-unis #enfance

Piracy on the high seas is on the decline, and so is the anti-piracy industry — Quartz
▻http://qz.com/664036/piracy-on-the-high-seas-is-on-the-decline-and-so-is-the-anti-piracy-industry

the private maritime security industry has been a victim of its own success. Anti-piracy measures have been so effective that now smaller security firms are going out of business. Today (April 18, 2016) the Security Association for the Maritime Industry (SAMI), one of the main bodies that set standards for guard providers, announced its voluntary liquidation.
In a press release announcing the liquidation, SAMI said that its fee-paying membership had fallen as the industry has “consolidated,” rendering the organization financially unsustainable.

(...) Guys with guns is one measure the shipping community has used, but not the only one. International navies posted warships in the area. Cargo vessels increased their speeds, travelled in convoy, and installed onboard deterrents such as barbed wire and water cannons.
Oceans Beyond Piracy, a non-governmental organization that studies global piracy, said that the cost of global piracy (pdf) in 2011 was between $6.6 and $6.9 billion, with a large portion coming from the million-dollar ransoms demanded off East Africa’s coast by pirates for the return of captured ships and the people aboard. The last such successful hijack for ransom was in May 2012. In 2012, piracy off Somalia alone had an economic cost of up to $6.1 billion, according to Oceans Beyond Piracy. By 2014, that figure had fallen to $2.2 billion.

#piraterie_maritime

Connectography by Parag Khanna | PenguinRandomHouse.com

▻http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/530058/connectography-by-parag-khanna/9780812988550/#

signalé par @alaingresh ce livre avec un concept que ne connaissais pas

About Connectography

From the visionary bestselling author of The Second World and How to Run the World comes a bracing and authoritative guide to a future shaped less by national borders than by global supply chains, a world in which the most connected powers—and people—will win.

Connectivity is the most revolutionary force of the twenty-first century. Mankind is reengineering the planet, investing up to ten trillion dollars per year in transportation, energy, and communications infrastructure linking the world’s burgeoning megacities together. This has profound consequences for geopolitics, economics, demographics, the environment, and social identity. Connectivity, not geography, is our destiny.

In Connectography, visionary strategist Parag Khanna travels from Ukraine to Iran, Mongolia to North Korea, Pakistan to Nigeria, and across the Arctic Circle and the South China Sea to explain the rapid and unprecedented changes affecting every part of the planet. He shows how militaries are deployed to protect supply chains as much as borders, and how nations are less at war over territory than engaged in tugs-of-war over pipelines, railways, shipping lanes, and Internet cables. The new arms race is to connect to the most markets—a race China is now winning, having launched a wave of infrastructure investments to unite Eurasia around its new Silk Roads. The United States can only regain ground by fusing with its neighbors into a super-continental North American Union of shared resources and prosperity.

#connectographie #géograpie #cartographie #Mondialisation #Monde_connecté #monde_interconnecté #monde_systémique

Drone racing just became a mainstream sport, thanks to ESPN — Quartz
▻http://qz.com/660282/drone-racing-just-became-a-mainstream-sport-thanks-to-espn

▻https://fpdl.vimeocdn.com/vimeo-prod-skyfire-std-us/01/2507/6/162538141/513213291.mp4?token=5712bb72_0x755e17a0efab426ce47e9dc8d95e4dfa0fe936

What’s strange about drone racing, however, is that it’s not really like any sport that’s come before it. It’s got the fast-paced racing action of sports like Formula 1 and NASCAR, the DIY, outsidery feel of skateboarding, and the techy, sedentary nature of e-sports (or video game sports). But unlike all of these other sports, or really any sport before it, drone racing is actually best viewed from a distance, after the fact. These drones are small and travel upwards of 60 mph around large, three-dimensional racetracks. It’s hard to watch that live, in person, especially with today’s less-than-perfect technology. Millions of fans are sharing videos online of pilots juking and jiving through abandoned buildings, old power stations, parking lots, empty fields, and watching them on their phones, and laptops. But very few people are showing up to see drones races in real life. Indeed, what we may be witnessing is the birth of the first new sport of the internet age: A sport that isn’t bound by time or collective experience, but instead a sport that is atomized and doled out in digital chunks, like so many Snapchats, Instagrams, Facebook links and tweets before them. A sport for the 21st century.

#drone #esport #VR

Would you propose with a diamond grown in a lab ? - Quartz
▻http://qz.com/630512/would-you-propose-with-a-diamond-grown-in-a-lab

énorme papier sur les #diamants naturels et artificiels, le marché, les diamants du sang, etc etc.

#extractivisme vs #silicon_valley ?

Viaggiare è impossibile se non sei nato nel paese giusto

Accoglienza, crisi, rifugiati, immigrazione, barconi, frontiera, muri, scafisti, salvataggi, respingimenti.

Sono le parole che più usiamo quando parliamo del movimento dei corpi nello spazio.

Ma perché ci dimentichiamo sempre della parola viaggio? Non sono forse viaggiatori anche gli afgani, i siriani, i somali?

▻http://www.internazionale.it/opinione/igiaba-scego/2016/04/11/migranti-passaporto-viaggiare
#voyage #voyager #voyageur #mots #migrations #asile #réfugiés #terminologie #vocabulaire #visas #mobilité #passport_index #liberté_de_circulation #inégalités #histoire #mobilité_circulaire
signalé par @albertocampiphoto

Negli anni settanta e ottanta del secolo scorso questo era possibile. Roma era piena di studenti africani che spesso studiavano e si formavano per un periodo nelle università italiane, prima di tornare nei paesi di origine. Lo testimonia una scena del documentario del 1970 Appunti per un’orestiade africana di Pier Paolo Pasolini, in cui lo scrittore intervista alcuni studenti africani. Sono tutti eleganti. Tutti con uno sguardo fiero e una bella giacca addosso. Vengono da Etiopia, Burkina Faso, Congo e intrattengono con lo scrittore un dialogo serrato, intenso, dove gli sguardi si incrociano e si confrontano. Ogni tanto mi capita di rivedere la scena di quel dialogo su YouTube e da un po’ di tempo mi sfiora lo stesso pensiero.

Quei ragazzi così ben vestiti, quei figli dell’Africa, non hanno dovuto mettersi nelle mani dei trafficanti, ma semplicemente hanno preso un aereo. Il mondo nel passato non era perfetto, ma la possibilità di viaggiare, di ottenere un visto, anche se faticosamente, esisteva. Oggi non più. Se vuoi viaggiare c’è la mafia, le mafie. Sono loro le vere agenzie di viaggio globali. Come è successo che abbiamo creato un mondo di serie A e uno di serie B? Un mondo dove una persona può muoversi a piacimento, in cento e più paesi senza visto, e altri sono considerati indesiderabili appena mettono la testa fuori dall’uscio?

Inside the race to create the next generation of #satellite internet - Quartz
▻http://qz.com/434997/inside-the-race-to-create-the-next-generation-of-satellite-internet

Greg Wyler’s OneWeb and Elon Musk’s SpaceX, both say that within the next three years they will build, launch and operate hundreds, if not thousands, of satellites flying in a low orbit around the earth to provide broadband internet. It’s an ambitious attempt to double the number of satellites orbiting earth—and succeed at a business that tends to break companies.
 
“This is intended to generate a significant amount of revenue and help fund a city on Mars.”
 
Industry insiders say this race has taken on the aspect of a feud: In 2014, Wyler and Musk discussed collaborating (paywall) on this effort before a shake-up left them on opposite sides. Wyler’s new company is backed by Musk’s rival in space, Virgin Galactic’s Richard Branson, and Qualcomm, while Musk raised $1 billion from Google, which had previously considered working with Wyler on satellite internet. Update, 6/25: OneWeb announced that it has secured $500 million in initial investment from additional partners Airbus, Bharti Enterprises, Hughes Network Systems, Intelsat, Coca-Cola and Totalplay.

(...) Wyler’s ace in the hole is that he filed first, in 2012 and 2013, for an ITU license to transmit along a band of radio frequencies called the Ku band, which are uniquely-suited to satellite transmissions because they work best with the latest generation of satellite antennae, replacing bulkier satellite dishes. Combined with cheaper satellites flying closer to earth, engineers believe that it is possible to solve the high-lag problem that plagues current satellite internet.

Under the first-come, first-serve rules governing the ITU, if Wyler can get his satellites up and operating on those frequencies by the end 2019, he has the rights to use them, and there’s not much the ITU can do to force him to cooperate with anyone else

▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjpopfVJf1c

#espace #internet #silicon_valley #silicon_army (plein d’infos)

One subway is telling riders not to wear VR headsets on trains if they don’t want to get robbed - Quartz
▻http://qz.com/654350/one-subway-is-telling-riders-not-to-wear-vr-headsets-on-trains-if-they-dont-want

▻https://twitter.com/NeilTLindquist/status/715867423065419776

The video of the VR gamer was first uploaded to Reddit and shows a man pretty much completely cut off from his surroundings as he plays on a handheld controller. He even jumps and reacts to things that must have been going on in his game as he sat in a single seat on the train.
A spokesperson for the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) told the Boston Globe that this sort of activity was “not advisable,” as it would make riders less aware of what’s going on around them.“The MBTA and Transit Police remind customers of the importance of being aware of their surroundings at all times.” (Quartz has reached out to confirm the MBTA’s statement.)

#VR #metro #réalité_virtuelle

Most smartphone users download zero apps per month
▻http://qz.com/253618/most-smartphone-users-download-zero-apps-per-month

“most US smartphone owners download zero apps in a typical month, according to comScore’s new mobile app report”

#mobile_application_web_installation_beclever

How one programmer broke the internet by deleting a tiny piece of code - Quartz
▻http://qz.com/646467/how-one-programmer-broke-the-internet-by-deleting-a-tiny-piece-of-code

▻https://qzprod.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/13072.jpeg?quality=80&strip=all&w=400

A man in Oakland, California, disrupted web development around the world last week by deleting 11 lines of code.
The story of how 28-year-old Azer Koçulu briefly broke the internet shows how writing software for the web has become dependent on a patchwork of code that itself relies on the benevolence of fellow programmers. When that system breaks down, as it did last week, the consequences can be vast and unpredictable.
“I think I have the right of deleting all my stuff,” Koçulu wrote on March 20 in an email that was later made public.
And then he did it.

One of the open-source JavaScript packages Koçulu had written was kik, which helped programmers set up templates for their projects. It wasn’t widely known, but it shared a name with Kik, the messaging app based in Ontario, Canada. On March 11, Koçulu received an email from Bob Stratton, a patent and trademark agent who does contract work for Kik.
Stratton said Kik was preparing to release its own package and asked Koçulu if he could rename his. “Can we get you to rename your kik package?” Stratton wrote.
“Sorry, I’m building an open source project with that name,” Koçulu wrote back.
The conversation quickly escalated, with Stratton threatening legal action: “We don’t mean to be a dick about it, but it’s a registered trademark in most countries around the world and if you actually release an open source project called kik, our trademark lawyers are going to be banging on your door and taking down your accounts and stuff like that — and we’d have no choice but to do all that because you have to enforce trademarks or you lose them.”
“Hahah, you’re actually being a dick,” Koçulu replied. “So, fuck you. Don’t email me back.”

Stratton brought Kik’s request for the name to npm, again citing the company’s trademark and potential confusion. Isaac Schlueter, the chief executive of npm, agreed to turn the name over to the company.

To Koçulu, npm’s decision to transfer ownership of the kik package to Kik ran counter to the values of the community it serves. In his reply, Koçulu said he wanted all of the packages he had registered on npm taken down. “I don’t wanna be a part of NPM anymore,” he wrote. “If you don’t do it, let me know how do it quickly.”

Two days after Koçulu’s last email to npm, on March 22, JavaScript programmers around the world started receiving a strange error message when they tried to run their code. The issue was severe enough to keep some developers from updating apps and services that were already running on the web. The error spit out many lines, but one stood out:

npm ERR! 404 ’left-pad’ is not in the npm registry.

It meant that the code they were trying to run required a package called left-pad, but the npm registry didn’t have it.

Message de Azer Koçulu :
▻https://medium.com/@azerbike/i-ve-just-liberated-my-modules-9045c06be67c

▻http://left-pad.io

#code #internet #npm #kik #github #programmation

If Olive Garden gives millions of meals to the needy, a waitress asks, why am I on food stamps ? - Quartz
▻http://qz.com/637156/if-olive-garden-gives-millions-of-meals-to-the-needy-a-waitress-asks-why-am-i-on

Ditson herself has had to rely on county assistance for medical care and food, even as she works about 30 hours a week serving the pasta dishes, deep-fried appetizers, and famous breadsticks the restaurant chain dishes out.

donc si on résume : tu bosses dans une chaîne de restaurant, tu n’as pas de quoi te payer à bouffer, tu n’as pas le droit de prendre la bouffe qui reste dans les cuisines, et ton patron se faire de la pub parce qu’il donne des repas gratuits aux « nécessiteux »

#travail #États-Unis #inégalités

People are paying to remove sex, violence, and Jar Jar Binks from movies
▻http://qz.com/645489/a-new-site-can-take-the-sex-violence-and-jar-jar-binks-out-of-your-movies-and-tv

Why are our kids so miserable? - Quartz
►http://qz.com/642351/is-the-way-we-parent-causing-a-mental-health-crisis-in-our-kids

Researchers have a raft of explanations for why kids are so stressed out, from a breakdown in family and community relationships, to the rise of technology and increased academic stakes and competition. Inequality is rising and poverty is debilitating.
Twenge has observed a notable shift away from internal, or intrinsic goals, which one can control, toward extrinsic ones, which are set by the world, and which are increasingly unforgiving.
Gray has another theory: kids aren’t learning critical life-coping skills because they never get to play anymore.
“Children today are less free than they have ever been,” he told Quartz. And that lack of freedom has exacted a dramatic toll, he says.
“My hypothesis is that the generational increases in externality, extrinsic goals, anxiety, and depression are all caused largely by the decline, over that same period, in opportunities for free play and the increased time and weight given to schooling,” he wrote.

#jeux #enfants #école

Why are our kids so miserable ? - Quartz
►http://qz.com/642351/is-the-way-we-parent-causing-a-mental-health-crisis-in-our-kids

Twenge looks at four studies covering 7 million people, ranging from teens to adults in the US. Among her findings: high school students in the 2010s were twice as likely to see a professional for mental health issues than those in the 1980s; more teens struggled to remember things in 2010-2012 compared to the earlier period; and 73% more reported trouble sleeping compared to their peers in the 1980s. These so-called “somatic” or “of-the-body” symptoms strongly predict depression.

“It indicates a lot of suffering,”

(...) What’s going on? (...) Twenge has observed a notable shift away from internal, or intrinsic goals, which one can control, toward extrinsic ones, which are set by the world, and which are increasingly unforgiving.

Gray has another theory: kids aren’t learning critical life-coping skills because they never get to play anymore.

#santé_mentale #dépression #liberté qui rappelle aussi “comment on a interdit aux enfants de marcher” ►http://seenthis.net/messages/298133

The problem with a technology revolution designed primarily for men - Quartz
▻http://qz.com/640302/why-is-so-much-of-our-new-technology-designed-primarily-for-men

“Tell the agents, ‘I had a heart attack,’ and they know what heart attacks are, suggesting what to do to find immediate help. Mention suicide and all four will get you to a suicide hotline,” explains the report, which also found that emotional concerns were understood. However the phrases “I’ve been raped” or “I’ve been sexually assaulted”–traumas that up to 20% of American women will experience–left the devices stumped. #Siri, #Google Now, and S Voice responded with: “I don’t know what that is.” The problem was the same when researchers tested for physical abuse. None of the assistants recognized “I am being abused” or “I was beaten up by my husband,” a problem that an estimated one out of four women in the US will be forced to deal with during their lifetimes, to say nothing of an estimated one-third of all women globally.
1
The irony, of course, is that virtual assistants are almost always female.

#assistant_virtuel

Lush sells bath bombs and cosmetics. It also gives nearly £6 million a year to far-left groups - Quartz
▻http://qz.com/609641/lush-sells-bath-bombs-and-cosmetics

blockading a runway at London’s Heathrow airport to protest planned expansion, occupying Westminster Abbey to oppose cuts to disability benefits, and campaigning fiercely against border controls. Staff members once tried to board a train to France using a travel document called the “world passport.”

#ONG #fondations #business

Big pharmacies are dismantling the industry that keeps US drug costs even sort-of under control
▻http://qz.com/636823/big-pharmacies-are-dismantling-the-industry-that-keeps-us-drug-costs-even-sort-o

The impetus was October’s announcement from Walgreens, the US’s second-largest chain of pharmacies, that it was buying Rite Aid, the third. Critics said that would create a drugstore duopoly with CVS, the market leader. They didn’t, however, look as hard at another effect of the deal, which likely will bring about the final collapse of the industry tasked with keeping prescription-drug costs under control.

When a pharmacy owns a PBM, “it’s a sweetheart deal—the two entities no longer have an incentive to negotiate with each other.”

Buried inside Rite Aid is a bundle of pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs). These are companies that handle the distribution of drugs for large employers, insurance companies, and government programs like Medicare. Walgreens says that acquiring Rite Aid’s PBMs would help it compete with arch-rival CVS, which controls a large and extremely profitable PBM called Caremark.
But combining pharmacies and PBMs under one roof creates a conflict of interest. It can restrict patients’ access to certain prescription drugs, and can prevent independent drugstores from competing fairly for new customers.

Worst of all, it could push up drug prices. When a pharmacy owns a PBM, explains Bob Zebroski, a professor at the St. Louis College of Pharmacy, “it’s a sweetheart deal—the two entities no longer have an incentive to negotiate with each other.”
As the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) scrutinizes the Walgreens-Rite Aid deal, some experts believe the agency should consider more than just the potential effect on pharmacy retailing, and evaluate whether PBMs combined with pharmacies are good for patients. Indeed, there’s an opportunity here: The FTC could use the review to revisit its controversial 2007 decision that let CVS acquire Caremark. That was the deal that first undermined the ability of modern PBMs to drive a hard bargain with today’s giant drugstore chains.

#Etats-Unis #big_pharma