Category: Uncategorized

What will Verizon do with Yahoo?

by philg

The decline of Yahoo! has long fascinated me. Here are some earlier postings on the subject:

What happens next, though? Verizon could conduct an experiment by letting a $200,000/year manager handle the Yahoo! division. Then see how this person’s performance compares to what Mayer was able do in exchange for hundreds of millions of dollars in personal compensation. But that still leaves the question of what the manager would actually change?

Personally I’m sticking to my theory that there are still a huge number of useful applications that nobody is providing to Internet users. I think that Yahoo! could code its way out of the pit. But Verizon is not known as a software company. In the late 1990s I was telling everyone who would listen (i.e., mom and dad) that mobile phone companies would be the vendors of all kinds of services, e.g., hotel room and restaurant reservations, because the phone company knew where you were and the phone had a web browser on it (well, a WAP/WML browser anyway). Like other U.S. carriers, Verizon hasn’t done anything like that.

Readers: What strategy would you pursue if you were running Yahoo! on behalf of Verizon?

[Separately, Marissa Mayer is apparently blaming the smoking crater that she left shareholders with on “gender-charged reporting” by the media: “Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Accuses Media of Gender-Biased Reporting” (Fortune, July 25, 2016). If Marissa had changed gender ID to “male” during her time at Yahoo! would the company then have been able to add some value on top of their shareholdings in Alibaba?]

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Olympics question: Why do humans overestimate human capabilities?

by philg

I was watching a bit of the Olympics with a friend. He was awed by the 400m runners. I pointed out that a family’s golden retriever could probably beat them all. He disputed this suggestion so I searched the Web for reference and found that the average dog running speed for all activities is 19 mph, about the same as what the humans do for 43 seconds. Greyhounds are going 40 mph and faster (515m in 28 seconds for a greyhound versus 400m in 43 seconds for the fastest human). I posted this anecdote on Facebook and my friends took a break from their The-Sky-Will-Fall-if-Trump-is-Elected notes to say that perhaps dogs can sprint faster for short distances but humans plainly have more endurance. Most of these folks have seen a family Labrador retriever running around like a demon and/or being unsuccessfully pursued by a group of humans trying to recapture the dog. These are all folks who have seen or heard of the Iditarod, in which a team of dogs will run 1000 miles in 8.5 days… while pulling a sled. Yet somehow in their minds humans have superior endurance to dogs and all other animals as well. “Dogs Versus Humans in the Olympic Games” (Psychology Today) points out, using sled dog numbers, that “in the marathon, after crossing the finish line the dog would have time for a half hour long nap before it’s world record holding human competitor would complete his run.”

There are a bunch of things that we do better than other animals. Why do we insist on seeing ourselves as more athletic?

[I did learn something from watching NBC’s coverage of the Olympics. Sometimes the #1 and #2 competitors in a sport are worthy of attention and comment. However, if they are from China or Russia then nothing that they do is very interesting.]

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Finally a use for those stupid virtual reality goggles: Virtual Hermitage and Louvre Museums?

by philg

Summertime Europe has gone far beyond the breaking point in the major tourist attractions. The unairconditioned repositories of treasures are now packed so full of tourists that the works of art are being subjected to substantially more heat and humidity than they have ever previously experienced. Also, I watched in horror as visitors put their greasy paws on everything within reach. Museums have tried to defend their collection against this new generation of touchy/feely visitors by putting everything famous behind glass, sometimes behind glass and then in a Plexiglas bubble that surrounds the frame as well.

If you can survive the crowds and the heat/humidity the result is that you see the works less well than if you’d looked at a well-printed (in China!) book.

How about this idea for virtual reality then: Tour of the Hermitage or Tour of the Louvre. The museums could shut down for a week in the winter, remove all of the protective glass, and then dolly around with a cluster of high-resolution cameras. After that anyone with appropriate VR equipment could get a far better experience of the museum than any real-world visitor. There would be no crowds, no heat, no humidity, no glass over the best paintings. There would be no tired feet, no thirst, no hunting for a bathroom. For the big churches maybe you could fly up and take a close look at a stained glass window or at least climb up as many levels as desired without breaking a sweat.

If Google can map nearly all of the world’s streets surely it can’t cost that much to map the interior of even the largest museum.

Bonus feature… photos of the Louvre, Versailles, and the Hermitage as actually experienced by a tourist today. Note that the Hermitage crowds are smaller than typical due to the fact that we were on a guided tour allowed to enter the museum 1.5 hours earlier than individuals and, as it happened, we were the very first group admitted that day.

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Boring but important: getting rich and staying rich through government regulation in Mexico

by philg

As more sectors of the economy become subject to government regulation, young people especially should know about the economic opportunities and hazards that are presented. “Mexico’s Richest Man Confronts a New Foe: The State That Helped Make Him Rich” (New York Times) is about Carlos Slim, one of the world’s richest people.

[Separately, I’m recently back from some of the world’s most competitive markets for telecommunications. In Denmark, if a neighborhood is served with fiber optics it is possible to get a symmetric 1 Gbit/second service for about $80/month (100 Mbit/second service at $50/month is available without fiber). See also this ranking for how countries around the Baltic Sea clutter the top-10 for average connection speed (see also this article on Baltic Internet connection throughput).]

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Stupid EU question: Why is it European?

by philg

One of the folks I talked to in Paris is a science writer who lives in Oxford. He bemoaned the stupidity of his Brexiting countrymen (and women). His main argument was that the UK transferred much less to poorer EU states than rich US states did to poorer US states. Thus he couldn’t understand why Brits whined about contributing to, say, the Greeks.

This raises a simple question: why was the EU set up as an inter-country welfare system to begin with? If getting together in a union makes everyone richer wouldn’t the poorer states be happy to join without handouts?

The harder question for me to understand is why the union is fundamentally tied to geography. With container shipping it costs less to send a product from Korea to England than from England to Italy by rail. Did someone in England actually decide that it would be better to be clustered with no-growth high-debt Italy than with high-growth low-debt Korea?

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Biking around Paris as a tourist

by philg

Paris is mostly flat and home to a public bike sharing system (Velib). Does it work to join Velib for a day or a week and use the service? Given the fearsome reputation of Parisian drivers, I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it is to get around Paris by bike. Although the city is nothing like Copenhagen (see “Danish happiness: bicycle infrastructure”) there are marked-off bike lanes on a lot of streets. Sometimes cars waiting for a red light block these lanes but usually it is possible to weave around. Thus at rush hour a bike is actually somewhat faster than an Uber.

The Velib kiosks have instructions in English.

One nit is that if you’re over about 5’9″ tall it is likely that the seat can’t be raised high enough for long-term biking comfort and efficiency.

2016-07-22 18.35.56

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Can you call others racist and/or sexist while concentrating on the skin color of Olympic athletes?

by philg

One of my Facebook friends is a Boston-area business manager. A staple of his postings is decrying the racism, ignorance, and stupidity of Donald Trump supporters (none of whom, presumably, he has met in person). Here are a few examples:

At this point I have nothing more to say about Trump. The man is deranged and his views despicable and morally reprehensible. The open question now is whether Republicans, especially the leadership, will explicitly repudiate him or go down in history as moral cowards. [After this posting announcing “I have nothing more to say about Trump” the rate of postings regarding Donald Trump was unchanged.]

Not being complacent but I don’t think Trump will win. There are far far more stupid white males in the US than I had thought, but there are not enough.

Male Airhead. There are actually more of them. [reference to an article about Clint Eastwood]

It still amazes me that Trump is a serious contender for President. He has to be the most morally vile and disgusting human being I have come across in public or private life. [After this one I verified that he has not actually ever met Donald Trump.]

Hillary. You go Girl. [how does he know that Hillary Clinton continues to identify as female, much less as a “girl”?]

I Michelle Obama am very proud of ObamaCare. We are able to provide health care to everyone who needs it, including Donald Trump who is seriously mentally ill. [after changing his profile picture to one of a young-looking Michelle Obama.]

It is not enough to defeat Trump. He must be defeated resoundingly. Let this be our first and last flirtation with fascism. We have to show ourselves and the world that we have not forgotten the ideals that make us a great country and the envy of the world.

The Fuhrer appears. Sieg Heil. [during the Republican National Convention]

… When we have a cancer in our midst, pointing it out is not saying that all cells in our body are cancerous. ‪#‎BlackLivesMatter‬ protesters are not anti-cop. They are anti-cancer. Americans we have a serious problem. Let’s wake up and own it.

Why the strong reaction against Hillary? Is it because she is smart, eloquent, and tough as nails? We don’t like strong women, do we? [i.e., people who disagree with him regarding the merits of an Argentina-style election of the former leader’s spouse are sexist]

In other words, pretty much standard fare for any Facebook member with a Massachusetts academic connection (see “Haiku contest: Summarize your Facebook feed”). Yet here is a recent one that confused me:

Blacks are not supposed to be ballerinas: Misty Copeland. Blacks are not supposed to be swimmers: Simone Manuel. Blacks are not supposed to be gymnasts: Simone Biles. Amazing, Amazing Ladies.

If it is in fact other Americans who are racist, why is this righteous Hillary Clinton supporter even noticing the skin color of the Olympic athletes that he has seen on television? Have any of the athletes cited skin color as a factor in their training, performance, or competition? (This story says that “[Biles when questioned about her skin color] was kind of visibly annoyed” and “Biles resisted being tokenized for her race.”)

[And, separately, why the cisgender-normative assumption that “Misty”, “Simone”, and “Simone” continue to identify as “ladies”?]

Finally, why are we so thrilled when Americans win Olympic medals? So far in this summer’s games it looks like Australians are the best athletes. With a population of 23 million they’ve earned 17 medals. With a population of 320 million, Americans have earned 40 medals. In other words, per million population, we’ve collected medals at a rate of 0.125 while the Australians are at 0.74.

Readers: Have you watched the games? What have been the best parts as far as you’re concerned and is there any way to watch these parts online or on demand somehow? (In our household we decided to take an 18-year break from all of the television programs that we used to love…)

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Albert Marquet and the price of non-collaboration with prevailing politics

by philg

If you’re in Paris between now and August 21, be sure to visit the Albert Marquet exhibit at the city’s modern art museum. My Facebook feed is heavily populated by comparisons of Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler. The biography of Marquet (Wikipedia) presented by the museum shows a heavy price paid by the artist for dissociating himself from the Nazi movement. In 1941 Marquet withdrew from a show because of the government’s requirement to provide a certificate of “non-membership of the Jewish race.” Apparently disgusted with his fellow French citizens for their collaboration with the German during World War II, in 1946 Marquet refused the Legion of Honour. Though not Jewish, that same year he contributed work to a benefit sale for Jewish children. Partly as a result of these protests, Marquet never achieved the success that his quality of painting would have justified.

If Donald Trump actually does prove to be just like Hitler, how many of us will have the courage to reject Trumpism(?) and pay the career consequences? [And, separately, what would be the tenets of Trumpism to which Americans would have to pledge fealty?]

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