Category: personal_noteS
Fast Food Comparables
with Yahoo Finance and Google Sheet…
And fast food companies can be such profitable
India E-commerce Chaos and Complexity
The New E-commerce Regulation in India – Be a participant or an organizer, not both
Starting from February 1, 2019, Amazon India and Flipkart by Walmart, among others, are not allowed to hold inventory and sell to customers.
The rules now bar any entity in which an e-commerce firm or its group companies have a stake from selling on their online platform. This is a problem for Amazon, which had been picking up stakes in offline Indian retailers to boost its market share. (Reuters)
The Regulation In Four Dimensions
eCommerce in India can be broadly categorized as:
- domestic and cross-border
- B2B and B2C
- marketplace and inventory based
- single brand and multi brand
B2B: 100 percent FDI is allowed in companies engaged in B2B eCommerce, e.g. Walmart and Alibaba can operate a cash & carry (B2B) business.
B2C Marketplace: 100 percent FDI is allowed in the online retail of multi-brand goods and services B2C under the marketplace model, e.g. Amazon, Flipkart, Snapdeal. Any eCommerce entity providing a marketplace cannot exercise ownership over the inventory and is not permitted to sell more than 25 percent of total sales through its marketplace from one vendor to their group companies. There are also conditions restricting to offer discounts by marketplace.
B2C Inventory-Based: FDI is not allowed in inventory-based model of eCommerce.
Single Brand: A single brand retail trading entity operating through brick and mortar stores is permitted to undertake retail trading through eCommerce subject to local sourcing requirements. Food retail: 100 percent FDI is allowed for trading (including eCommerce) of food products manufactured or procured in India.
Multi-Brand Retail: No FDI is allowed in companies which engage in multi-brand retail trading by means of eCommerce.
Source: https://www.export.gov/article?id=India-e-Commerce
Other Conditions
- E-commerce marketplace may provide support services to sellers in respect of warehousing, logistics, order fulfillment, call centre, payment collection and other services.
- An e-commerce entity will not permit more than 25% of the sales value on financial year basis affected through its marketplace from one vendor or their group companies.
- In marketplace model, any warrantee/ guarantee of goods and services sold will be responsibility of the seller.
- E-commerce entities providing marketplace will not directly or indirectly influence the sale price of goods or services and shall maintain level playing field.
- The government has also prohibited e-commerce firms from pushing merchants to sell any product exclusively on its platform. The sellers can, however, choose to have a preferred online partner.
Source: https://dipp.gov.in/sites/default/files/CFPC_2017_FINAL_RELEASED_28.8.17.pdf
Some Context
Indian marketplace is dominated with many small shops and business. If foreign investment in multi-brand retail is to be permitted, then the business of these small shop owners will be in danger. Consumers will be spoilt with choices and due to high competitions, prices will go down, thus these multi-brand retail establishment will be able attract consumers at a large scale. However, in case of single-brand retail shops, they usually bring premium or luxury goods in the market so as such they are not in direct conflict with Indian small business. (blog.ipleaders.in)
EHR and HIPAA, A Dilemma
EHR and HIPAA – Overview
Both are essential parts of running a successful business in health care.
An electronic health record (EHR) is a digital version of a patient’s paper chart. EHRs are real-time, patient-centered records that make information available instantly and securely to authorized users. (healthit.gov)
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) sets the standard for sensitive patient data protection. Companies that deal with protected health information (PHI) must have physical, network, and process security measures in place and follow them to ensure HIPAA Compliance. (digitalguardian.com)
PHI is any demographic information that can be used to identify a patient. Examples include: names, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, insurance information, phone numbers, full facial photos, and health care records, to name a few examples. (compliancy-group.com)
A Short History
EHR Emerging in the 1970s
US federal government began implementing VistA (formerly known as the Decentralized Hospital Computer Program) at the Department of Veteran Affairs. A study by the Institute of Medicine (now National Academy of Medicine) began in the 1980s, and its findings recommended the use of EHRs when they were published in 1991. (readwrite.com)
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act introduced in 1996
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) was passed on August 21, 1996, with the dual goals of making health care delivery more efficient and increasing the number of Americans with health insurance coverage. Since its implementation, healthcare organizations have been issued huge fines for non-compliance, e.g. Anthem $16 million HIPPA fine paid in 2018.
The Dilemma
Tough regulations were implemented before the applications (EHRs, etc.) grow into their best format/position in the healthcare system. The regulations made the softwares slow to upgrade/adjust themselves and prevented certain competitions.
EHRs are only an example of healthcare data regulated by HIPAA but a good one. It could have been a program like Apple Health Kit (on patients’ end) in the current era of well-designed apps like uber/gmail/amazon/instagram; but it was limited at the beginning stage and was left no time to refine itself. No wonder most parts are a vivid demonstration of tech/IT system some twenty years ago.
Left-turn Nightmare
Left turn problem while driving, on the one hand, is so common that most people won’t think about it; on the other hand, it is so complicated and “evil” that remains mainly unsolved and avoided.
UPS avoided it
The most famous no-left-turn application is probably demonstrated by UPS. It’s route planner system ORION, based on heuristic algorithm, told UPS drivers not to turn left. Since 2004, turning right, plus other efficiency-optimizing efforts, has saved about 10 million gallons of gas and reduced emissions equal to taking more than 5,000 cars off the road for a year. (UPS)
Accident Rate
According to the US National Highway Traffic Safety Association, turning left is a leading critical pre-crash event, and occurs in 22.2 percent of crashes.
Law
The driver making a left hand turn will only have the right of way if they are proceeding on a left-turn arrow.
Otherwise, the driver turning left at a green light must wait until all oncoming traffic is gone or far enough away to allow for a safe and complete turn.
If a traffic light is not present, the left turning driver must still abide by the same precautions. The oncoming traffic will have the right of way and do not have to stop or slow down to allow left-turning drivers to pass.
Drivers making left turns must also wait for all pedestrians and cyclists are safely across the street before they can proceed with the turn.
This is why it is rare to find the other driver at-fault for this type of accident, and can be even more difficult to prove.
However with that being said, like anything, there are always a few exceptions to the rule.
- The car driving straight was driving significantly over the speed limit when they were going through the intersection.
- The car that is driving straight ran a red light or stop sign.
- Unforeseen circumstances may warrant the other driver at-fault for the accident.
According to Price Benowitz blog
Selft-driving & Waymo
Self-driving car prototypes have been known to wait for long intervals at intersections before they finally made the left turn – heavily testing the patience of human drivers stuck behind them.
When a self-driving car hesitates at an intersection, the reason is not a problem with the algorithm but rather that the self-driving car finds that the safety margins for executing the turn are too small in the current situation: the risk is too high. Unfortunately, this problem can not be solved through better algorithms but only by increasing the level of acceptable risk! (driverless-future.com)
The Waymo vans have trouble with many unprotected left turns and with merging into heavy traffic in the Phoenix area, especially on highways. (The Information)
Tencent vs. Toutiao and Tencent’s Core Asset
Just two days ago, one of the most popular growing app China “Douyin/Tiktok” (owned by ByteDance, formerly known as Toutiao) was founded to be blocked to login with WeChat (owned by Tencent) for new users.
The two old king in social apps is fighting the rising new star.
In March 2018, WeChat global MAUs surpassed 1 billion.
Douyin said its global MAUs is over 500 million in July 2018.
Tencent’s WeChat has been on the market way earlier (since 2011). Douyin was launched in Sep 2016 but its growth has been so terrifying that Tencent has adopted several defensive actions, including blocking sharing Douyin links in WeChat.
Tencent has also backed Qutoutiao to combat with Jinri Toutiao (Toutiao’s flagship and first product) and Weishi for Douyin.
Now the war has escalated. Toutiao launched a new social app “Duoshan” to challenge the King and Tencent blocked WeChat login for Douyin.
Things are just getting started. But it reminded me of the 3Q war in 2010 between Tencent and Qihu360. Tencent didn’t have WeChat yet and relied on its QQ platform (the previous King).
During the war, one particular action by Qihu was seen by Pony Ma (Tencent founder and CEO) as the most threatening and he forced users to log off QQ if they don’t uninstall Qihu.
The key in that situation and in Ma’s mind is the copy of social map. The full connections between almost every relevent Chinese internet user.
This is probably what Ma values most and is one of Tencent’s core secrets.
That is what Toutiao is trying to obtain with Duoshan and Douyin today ina different way than Qihu) – the social map of almost every relevant Chinese (young) mobile users. And those would be the future Chinese internet revenue sources/assets/reserves.
The war will continue to unfold and Toutiao is much more powerful than Qihu. Toutiao is one of the most valued private companies in the world, but it is also taking on Baidu for news feeds and ads – multi-battleground just like Uber.
Airline Operation Results 2017 & 2018 (2)
Following up on yesterday’s post – added Delta and United to the little python program.
Data Download
Airline Operation Results 2017 & 2018
Wrote a little python… to extract the monthly operation results from airlines, and calculated load factor change, RPM change and ASM change.
- RPM = Revenue passenger miles, and its percentage change year-over-year
- ASM = Available seat miles, its percentage change year-over-year
- Load factor = RPM / ASM, its change year-over-year
- RPM_g = RPM(t) / RPM (t-12) – 1
- ASM_g = ASM(t) / ASM (t-12) – 1
I did Alaska and Southwest tonight and will add more…
Data Download:
Only 5% of Earth Land Unmodified by Human
How much of the terrestrial lands have been modified by human beings?
A recent study published on Global Change Biology revealed a far lower estimate of 5% than the previous 19%.
Thirteen human factors in 6 categories are considered in calculation.
- human settlement (population density and built‐up areas)
- agriculture (cropland and livestock)
- transportation (major roads, minor roads, two tracks, and railroads)
- mining
- energy production (oil wells and wind turbines)
- electrical infrastructure (powerlines and nighttime lights)
Meanwhile, nearly 50% of the lands are considered with low human modification.
So there is a contrast of how little of the land (5%) we haven’t touched and how much of the land we haven barely explored (44%)
2019 US Cancer Update by American Cancer Society
The annual report from American Cancer Society is up today, available 1) in the article format “Cancer Statistics, 2019” (published in the American Cancer Society’s journal CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians), 2) in a companion report, Cancer Facts and Figures 2019, and 3) on the interactive website, the Cancer Statistics Center.
Steady Decline In Cancer Death in US
Compiled within includes the death rate of cancer through 2016. It marked a continuous 25-year of decline in cancer death in US since 1991.
The overall age-adjusted cancer death rate rose during most of the 20th century, peaking in 1991 at 215 cancer deaths per 100,000 people, mainly because of the tobacco epidemic. As of 2016, the rate had dropped to 156 per 100,000 (a decline of 27%) because of reductions in smoking, as well as improvements in early detection and treatment.
– American Cancer Soceity
Lung cancer & smoking
While lung cancer is still the largest category, it is declining with the smoking trend as mentioned above.
2019 Cancer Estimation
The 2019 cancer estimation has also come in.
Incidence rates are estimated to be 494.8 and 419.3 per 100,000 population for male and female; death rates are estimated to be 193.1 and 137.7 per 100,000 population for male and female.
In total, there will be an estimated 1,762,450 new cancer cases and 606,880 cancer deaths.