Just finished The World Until Yesterday by Jared Diamond this weekend and here is an excerpt I would really want to recommend, where you could literally replace “languages” with other words.
How do languages go extinct? … so too are there different ways of eradicating a language.
The most direct way is to kill almost all of its speakers…
The next most direct way to eradicate a language is not to kill its speakers, but instead to forbid them to use their language, and to punish them if they are caught doing so… the French government’s official policy is in effect to exclude the Breton language form primary and secondary schools…
But in most cases language loss proceeds by the more insidious process now under way at Rotokas… Young people in search of economics opportunity abandon their native-speaking villages and move the urban centers, where speakers of their own tribal language are greatly outnumbered by people from other tribal backgrounds, and where people needing to communicate with each other have no option except to speak the majority language…
Eventually, minority languages are spoken only by older people, until the last of them dies. Long before that end is reached, the minority language has degenerated through loss of its grammatical complexities, loss of forgotten native words, and incorporation of foreign vocabulary and grammatical features.
target was a nearby galaxy dubbed M87 and its supermassive black hole, which packs the mass of six and half billion suns. Despite its size, the black hole is so far from Earth – 53 million light-years – that capturing the image took a telescope the size of the planet.
Meanwhile, a firm in China claimed the copyright of this picture and tried to charge fees for it.
The firm, called Visual China, is China’s largest stock images provider.
It shut its website and apologized on Friday after it falsely claimed copyright of images such as the first photo of a black hole and China’s national flag. [Reuters]
It is a time that China is doing more to protect intellectual property but company in this is embarrassing. It’s definitely not a representation of the “highest” level of IP protection in China, but it does show us that a lot of work needs to be done.
That is also the reason that Lyft’s valuation is under pressure these days. It all makes that Lyft and Morgan Stanley have something to argue about… Lyft’s high valuation at IPO makes it difficult for Morgan Stanley and other banks to sell Uber. (and the pressure is much higher in such a big deal – $10 billion)
So relatively speaking, how much “higher” is Lyft valued?
Uber adjusted ebitda -1.85 billion vs. Lyft -944 million, ~2x
Uber revenue 11.27 billion vs. Lyft 2.16 billion, ~5x
Uber total trips 5.2 billion vs. Lyft 619 million, ~8x
Meanwhile, Pepsi Co has made a series of investments and acquisitions. The most recent move is to buy SodaStream for $3.2 billion.
Source: sodastream.com
I feel like consumers’ tastes in China need to catch-up…. at least a certain percentage of people should look for heathy brands. There is no well-recognized Chinese brand in this category (at least to me).
Future is closer than most will believe. Drone delivery is yet another example.
Imagined Reality
A few days ago (around April Fools’ Day), a FAKE video (by rendering) populated on Twitter, presenting an Amazon mothership equipped with drones.
However, this may not be far away from what the future will look like, especially for the drone part.
Amazon’s Plan
The idea could be seen in an Amazon patent US000009305280B120160405 filed in December 2014 and issued by the USPTO in April 2016.
Amazon patent for massive flying warehouses equipped with fleets of drones that deliver goods to key locations | Source: BBC
This is part of Amazon Prime Air program first announced in 2013. It looks more viable on the drone-only side, the first delivery made in December 2016 in Cambridge, UK.
And in 2017, an Amazon Prime Air drone dropped off some bottles of sunscreen for attendees at the company’s invite-only MARS conference in California. [The Verge]
The deliveries will start with roughly 100 homes in the Canberra area. The drones are required to operate during daylight hours, banned from crossing over major roads and there’s a minimum distance they have to maintain from people on the ground.
Following California’s ban in November 2016, New York State will begin a similar ban of single use plastic bags in March 2020, according to its FY2020 budget agreement.
According to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, an estimated 23 billion plastic bags are used by residents across the state annually. New York City alone uses more than 10 billion single-use plastic bags a year. [National Geographic]
If 5 billion recycled paper bags are used in the new program with a 5-cent fee, New York City will generate an additional $250 million. [40 percent will be supporting local programs to buy reusable bags for low and fixed income consumers, and 60 percent will be supporting programs in the State’s Environmental Protection Fund]
Once characterized as the challenger for Facebook, Snap Inc. has faced fierce competitions from FB’s Instagram, which introduced a similar story feature in August 2016.
Snapchat vs. Instagram users comparison | Source: statista
By and large, Snap is learning from Facebook and is pivoting to becoming an “infrastructure”.
Broadly speaking, many firms are pursuing the infrastructure play: AWS wants to be the infrastructure for internet services (servers); Facebook & Google want to be the infrastructure of ads; Twitter & Youtube contents can be embedded in various ways, etc.
Snapchat Audience Network is also being built to help other apps to monetize – a revenue-sharing practise to expand the audience/utility of Snap Ads, so that people who are not on Snapchat will be broadcasted the ads created by advertisers through Snap. [Read more about Facebook Audience Network]
Additionallly (besides ads), Snap announced the partnership with Fitbit to integrate Bitmoji avatars to Fitbit’s devices (Fitbit Ionic™ and Fitbit Versa™), a clock face that dynamically updates throughout the day based on your personal health and fitness data, activity, time of day, and weather. Also, Bitmoji will be seen on Venmo.
Citadel not open for investments and Mr. Griffin focusing on education. He was sad that Amazon moved out of New York. He was outbid (and very frustrated) when first trying to buy artworks from a very passionate artist.
