Everything you can imagine is real.

"A large planting rig can run more than $250,000 and is a marvel of modern farming technology. The..."

Mon, 20 May 2013 22:34:06 +0100

“

A large planting rig can run more than $250,000 and is a marvel of modern farming technology. The planters’ arms stretch 90 feet wide when in use and fold for storage. A GPS device inside the tractors helps operators steer straight and prevent planting sections of the field twice, saving seed and time.

Vacuum-release spindles drop kernels at just the right depth, in precisely spaced intervals. And seed hoppers have been centralized on planters to efficiently distribute seed to each row, reducing how often farmers must stop to restock seed.

”

- Monster machines fan out on U.S. farms facing slow sow | Reuters

High tech agriculture prediction: soon such machines will have real-time feed from folks like the Climate Corporation that will give them a risk-adjusted, automated planting algorithm, row by row, field by field.

A modest proposal

Mon, 20 May 2013 22:20:58 +0100

For months (probably over a year now) I’ve been meaning to write a long treatise on global tax policy over at parkparadigm.com but since that is not likely to happen for some time if ever, and since the problems of applying 20th century tax ideas to a 21st century economy are becoming more and more obvious by the day, I thought I’d at least share my punch line here. And you’ll just have to imagine the robust, eloquent supporting arguments and conceptual framework that must underly this…

Make all tax rates - corporate, personal, capital gains, income, VAT - equally low and uniform, say somewhere between 10-15% and get rid of exceptions, deductions etc. And then - and only then - make a big push for global harmonisation. Devil is in the details of course but idea is to get rid of as many details as possible (so you can see the devil…)

An unbelievably large amount of energy and smart people’s talents are today spent playing (legal) tax games. Freeing up this talent alone would pay a big dividend. Of course the accountants and offshore legal services providers wouldn’t be too happy, but it’s a small price worth paying to unburden our economies…

jayparkinsonmd: A team of engineering students at Rice...

Mon, 20 May 2013 22:01:47 +0100

jayparkinsonmd:

A team of engineering students at Rice University have been tasked with developing a new device that can harvest the body’s motion to produce useful electric power. In the process of researching where it’s best to gather the energy they settled on the heel of the shoe, which is normally designed to absorb the shock and finally transfer the energy into heat that is lost forever. They instead developed a mechanical heel that spins a small motor, that in turn generates electric power.

Considering that the iPhone costs 41 cents a year to power, this is a super interesting, and potentially useful way to harness our natural energy to power our external brains.

» Go Owls! Very clever, but wonder how it affects your stride?

"More than 8,000 French households’ tax bills topped 100 percent of their income last year, the..."

Mon, 20 May 2013 18:09:56 +0100

“More than 8,000 French households’ tax bills topped 100 percent of their income last year, the business newspaper Les Echos reported on Saturday, citing Finance Ministry data.”

- Taxes on some wealthy French top 100 pct of income: paper | Reuters

What a welcoming environment for wealth (and job) creators…

Stowe Boyd: What Drives Us?

Tue, 14 May 2013 16:35:02 +0100

Stowe Boyd: What Drives Us?:

stoweboyd:

I’ve been researching some background materials for the Socialogy book I am working on, and was digging into various theories on personality, organizational fit, and human motivations. This started as a modest collection of others’ ideas, but as you can imagine, it led to the outpouring of my own…

"I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones."

Tue, 14 May 2013 16:29:16 +0100

“I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones.”

- John Cage
(via stoweboyd)

"Samsung has developed technology to supposedly support ”5G” mobile networks which it said can..."

Mon, 13 May 2013 19:12:20 +0100

“Samsung has developed technology to supposedly support ”5G” mobile networks which it said can deliver speeds “up to several hundred times faster than even 4G LTE-Advanced technology”. The South Korean vendor plans to commercialise the 5G technology by 2020.”

- Samsung touts “5G” first | Mobile World Live

Streaming HD on your mobile while running real-time sensor analytics… #unevenlydistributedfuture #korea

"Today, the Thiel Foundation announced the third class of fellows. “Though the education bubble is..."

Fri, 10 May 2013 23:32:22 +0100

“Today, the Thiel Foundation announced the third class of fellows. “Though the education bubble is still as much of a problem today as it was two years ago, far more people are now questioning the wisdom of exchanging decades of debt in return for a vague credential with poor job prospects,” Peter Thiel told Co.Exist. “The time is clearly ripe for innovators to develop new ways to help far more young people obtain the knowledge and skills they need to build productive, successful lives.””

- 1 | This Year’s Thiel Fellows Include A Fashion Designer, A Poet, And A Harvard Dropout | Co.Exist: World changing ideas and innovation

» I wouldn’t be surprised if being a “Thiel Fellow” becomes as prestigious (perhaps more) a credential as being an Ivy League graduate in a few years time…I’d certainly be interested in tracking the careers of these young people and perhaps recruiting or backing one of them if the right opportunity arises.

“Every man lives only in this present time, which is an...

Fri, 10 May 2013 17:36:23 +0100

“Every man lives only in this present time, which is an indivisible poin and all the rest of his life is either past or uncertainty.” - Marcus Aurelius (via Every Man :: Cube Grenades from gapingvoid art)

"Throughout the interview, Buffett talked about how Berkshire Hathaway was his canvas, one that he..."

Fri, 10 May 2013 16:39:41 +0100

“Throughout the interview, Buffett talked about how Berkshire Hathaway was his canvas, one that he got to paint on every day. He doesn’t need to work, he says, but does because he loves it. This is the same alignment he looks for in the people he surrounds himself with, he says.”

- 5 Lessons From Warren Buffett’s Office Hours | Fast Company | Business Innovation

This is a key reason why startups succeed (at innovation and building new businesses) while incumbents almost always fail. You can’t fake it.

It also lies at the heart of why we went against the grain of conventional wisdom and built Anthemis the way we did (as a distributed, connected group of companies): we want to be aligned with the great people creating and building the businesses within the Group. We don’t want them to be working for us (either as investors or managers.) If we choose wisely, the community of excellent people who love what they do we build and curate will generate great returns for our shareholders. Simple.

"You’ve gotta keep control of your time,” Buffett says, “and you can’t unless..."

Fri, 10 May 2013 16:25:59 +0100

““You’ve gotta keep control of your time,” Buffett says, “and you can’t unless you say no. You can’t let people set your agenda in life.””

- Why Productive People Have Empty Schedules | Fast Company | Business Innovation

Startup is a state of mind. (No corner offices.) (via Here We...

Wed, 08 May 2013 22:28:12 +0100

Startup is a state of mind. (No corner offices.)

(via Here We Are :: Cube Grenades from gapingvoid art)

"Make sure that the people around you don’t think, look, and act like you, because you want them to..."

Wed, 08 May 2013 22:19:53 +0100

““Make sure that the people around you don’t think, look, and act like you, because you want them to ask different questions,” says Merrill. “For me, that’s the start of finding a co-founder. You need to get someone who’s super smart, but very unlike you.””

- Former Google CIO on the Art of Co-founding - Forbes

+1 > anyone who knows me, Uday & Nadeem knows how unlike one another we are and it works because we share the same vision and aspirations…

"But notice that I used the word “intervention”. Regardless of core skill area, I want my Board..."

Wed, 08 May 2013 21:54:55 +0100

“But notice that I used the word “intervention”. Regardless of core skill area, I want my Board members to argue with me. At ZestFinance, we focus heavily on hiring for diversity. Diverse teams are more likely to have disagreements that yield better plans and execution. Diversity wins, always. However, even at a place that so explicitly values diversity, it’s still hard to argue with me: I’m reasonably intense. Professional investors — both financial and operational — find it easier to argue with me, and with other entrepreneurs.”

- You should want very engaged VCs - Forbes

+1

(via VIDEO: CNBC’s Jim Cramer Gets Schooled on P2P | Bank...

Tue, 07 May 2013 20:03:05 +0100

(via VIDEO: CNBC’s Jim Cramer Gets Schooled on P2P | Bank Innovation)

Two possible explanations:

(1) Jim Cramer is hamming it up (playing dumb) to make the programme more entertaining, or

(2) He really is familiar - even conceptually - with any of this stuff (which is just frightening, for what it says about culture/awareness of 50-something financial executives…)

I’d vote for (1) but who knows…

"(Joi Ito:) “The Japanese government once asked me to be on a committee about taxes and information..."

Tue, 07 May 2013 18:31:26 +0100

“(Joi Ito:) “The Japanese government once asked me to be on a committee about taxes and information technology. The first thing I said was, ‘Let’s figure out a way to use resources more efficiently to lower taxes.’ And they said, ‘No, no, no–this committee is about using computers to collect more tax.’ So I asked, ‘How do we reduce costs?’ And they said, ‘Oh, there’s no committee for that.’ [Laughs] That’s the problem with large organizations. They create roles and constraints, and sometimes people forget why they’re there.””

- Forgetting why you/they’re here | Creative Leadership

"The battle for DailyMotion is not in France, where growth is limited. It’s all about nailing..."

Tue, 07 May 2013 15:45:41 +0100

“

The battle for DailyMotion is not in France, where growth is limited. It’s all about nailing the international strategy - no amount of posturing is going to change any of that.

Now they killed the deal with best possible partner to go execute on that strategy. That is all. Take your responsibility. As Pierre Kosciusko-Morizet, the awesome founder of PriceMinister, put it : “if DailyMotion does not find a strong international partner. in the end, it will die”.

I hope this pyrrhic victory acts as a watershed moment in France when the startup community, #geonpis and others realize it’s time to say STOP. Maybe we have not yet reached rock bottom, but it cannot be far off now.

”

- Shame on France : the Yahoo - DailyMotion debacle

» They say you get the leaders you deserve, but I don’t think the French (or anyone for that matter) deserve this bunch of incompetents…it all starts with indoctrination on an epic scale by the Orwellian “Education Nationale”.

True story: (horrified) friend’s children being taught how to collect benefits and state subsidies in high school economics/social studies class. Not making this up…

Instead of being taught Bastiat (who by the way was French, not some crazy anglo-saxon…):

“The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else.”

"Free’s competitors have grumbled that Niel, by undercutting their margins, forced them to cut jobs...."

Mon, 06 May 2013 21:29:36 +0100

“

Free’s competitors have grumbled that Niel, by undercutting their margins, forced them to cut jobs. Niel dismisses the complaint: “If a bakery opens in a street in London, will the baker opposite tell the newspapers to say, ‘Oh là là, I’ve had to sack workers’?” Chewing his fricassée, he adds: “My greatest point of pride is that last year we gave the French €2bn in purchasing power. Each French person, I gave €40 through my work.”

Iliad’s market capitalisation has risen more than tenfold since 2004 to €10bn. (Niel owns about 60 per cent of the company.) If his methods work in France, why not go global? Niel explains: “Telecoms is a national business. There isn’t a European market. There’s no Telecom Italia in France. Look at our difficulties getting a mobile phone licence in France. If we hadn’t been French, it would have been impossible.”

And so Niel plays on the French elite’s terrain. How does he find the elite? Niel tries to describe their mindset: “You went to the same school. Your parents knew each other. On all these paths, you’ve been among yourselves. And among yourselves, nobody wants to upset anyone. If you get on well together, you’re not going to break the price of mobile phones. Why lower your margins? You’re not going to quarrel among yourselves.”

He diagnoses elite “cronyism”. Most French business leaders, he says, “are heirs, who frequent the same circles, or were given their posts directly or indirectly by the political powers. Then there’s a very egotistical remuneration. And they generally don’t create great things. Look at the French stock market: in the CAC 40 [France’s 40 largest listed companies], you have only one company – Gemalto, which makes smart cards – that’s under 30 years old. In very few countries would you find this.”

”

- Lunch with the FT: Xavier Niel - FT.com

A hero. France needs a thousand Xavier Niel’s.

"Our long-term vision is that this becomes an acceptable alternative to college,” says Kane Sarhan,..."

Mon, 06 May 2013 20:08:12 +0100

““Our long-term vision is that this becomes an acceptable alternative to college,” says Kane Sarhan, one of Enstitute’s founders. “Our big recruitment effort is at high schools and universities. We are targeting people who are not interested in going to school, school is not the right fit for them, or they can’t afford school.””

- Enstitute, an Alternative to College for a Digital Elite - NYTimes.com

Very interesting model. Combine with online coursework like EDX and I know who’d I’d like to hire…

cc @jobsworth

"Six of the world’s ten fastest growing economies of the past decade are in sub-Saharan Africa. A..."

Mon, 06 May 2013 20:03:18 +0100

“Six of the world’s ten fastest growing economies of the past decade are in sub-Saharan Africa. A clutch of countries have enjoyed growth in income per person of more than 5% a year since 2007.”

- Development in Africa: Growth and other good things | The Economist

Called it. ;-)

http://www.parkparadigm.com/2006/11/11/a-trinity-finance-mobile-phones-africa/