Meet the Bitcoin Millionaires

Many people have lost some data while reformatting a computer hard drive. Jered Kenna lost more than that. In 2010 he erased from his computer 800 Bitcoins that have been worth more than $200,000. Kenna isn’t upset: He has plenty more. He says he bought his first batch of virtual currency, 5,000 coins, at 20¢ each. On April 10, Bitcoins traded for as much as $258 each, according to Tradehill, a Bitcoin exchange in San Francisco, before plunging more than $100. Like other enthusiasts, Kenna shrugs off the volatility. While he won’t disclose his total holdings, he says, “I’m happy to be considered a member of the Bitcoin millionaires’ club.” Created four years ago by a person or group using the name Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin is a virtual currency that can be used to buy and sell a broad range of items—from cupcakes to electronics to illegal narcotics. The surge in a Bitcoin’s value has made millionaires out of people who loaded up on them early on—however briefly. Many of them are self-described libertarians, drawn by the idea of a currency that exists outside the control of governments. Some were so taken with the concept that they launched Bitcoin businesses, such as exchanges where people can buy the coins or exchange them for dollars. There are also investors, notable among them, former Facebook litigants the Winklevoss twins, who have amassed around $11 million in Bitcoin, according to the New York Times. Bitcoins are “mined” by computers that solve difficult cryptographic problems to verify transactions. As more Bitcoins are created, the problems become more difficult. Pioneers could mine coins on their laptops. Now, high-powered computer equipment is needed. “I’ve got a friend who forgot he had his computer mining Bitcoins in his garage—he checked and it’s worth about $ 12 million today,” says Kenna, 30, who is chief executive officer of Tradehill. Owners store their Bitcoins in electronic wallets, which are identified by a long string of letters and numbers. The wallet 1933phfhK3ZgFQNLGSDXvqCn32k2buXY8a, for example, currently owns 111,111 Bitcoins, which amounts to more than $15 million sitting on someone’s hard drive. Whose hard drive is a mystery: While anyone can view the wallets, the owners’ identities are not public. As of April 2, there were about 250 wallets with more than $ 1 million worth of Bitcoins. The number of Bitcoin millionaires, though, is uncertain—people can have more than one wallet. The value of Bitcoins began soaring in March, around the time European finance officials approved an unprecedented tax on bank deposits in Cyprus. While the plan did not go through, it led to concerns that other bank deposits might be taxed. The rising price drew increased media attention, which sparked further price gains. There are a little more than 11 million Bitcoins in existence. The software that governs the network will allow no more than a total of 21 million coins to be created. Charlie Shrem, 23, discovered Bitcoins on a website in early 2011, when he was a senior at Brooklyn College. Shrem didn’t mine coins himself but bought them on Tradehill. His first purchase was 500 coins at about $3 or $4 each; he bought thousands more when the price hit $20. When he was still in college, Shrem started BitInstant, a company that allows its customers to purchase the digital currency from more than 700,000 stores, including Wal-Mart Stores and Duane Reade . Shrem wears a ring engraved with a code that gives him access to the electronic wallet on his computer. Friends tease him that a thief could cut off his finger to get the ring. “They started calling me four- finger Charlie,” he says. One of BitInstant’s investors is Roger Ver, 34, who ran for California State Assembly in 2000 as a Libertarian. On his Web page, Ver talks about moving to Tokyo after serving 10 months in federal prison for selling “a product called a ‘Pest Control Report 2000.’ It was basically a firecracker used by farmers to scare deer and birds away from their cornfields.” He says he was prosecuted unfairly because of his political beliefs. Shrem calls Ver “Bitcoin Jesus” for the way he evangelized for the currency by giving away coins to anyone who would take them. “After discovering Bitcoin, I only slept maybe an hour a night for a whole week,” Ver says in an interview. “I didn’t leave my house and spent every waking moment reading about Bitcoin.” Ver says he got so sick that a friend checked him into a hospital, where he was given medication to help him sleep. He sees Bitcoins as a reliable store of value as Japan increases the money supply to boost the economy. “I’m much more bullish about the long-term prospects of Bitcoin than the dollar or yen,” he says. “I cashed out about a year ago—of dollars and yen.” Like other Bitcoin users, Ver celebrates that “Bitcoin totally strips away the state’s control over money.” Bitcoin has drawn the attention of regulators, but no country has issued comprehensive rules governing the digital currency. “Virtual currency is a medium of exchange that operates like a currency in some environments but does not have all the attributes of real currency,” the U.S. Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network said in a March 18 report. (Hardly a clarifying remark.) The European Central Bank warned in October that the emergence of virtual currencies “could have a negative impact on the reputation of central banks” if their use grows considerably. Many Bitcoin tycoons are devoting themselves to expanding the currency’s reach. Yifu Guo was a digital media student at New York University when he began mining some of the first coins, occasionally cashing in a few to help pay his rent. After he recognized Bitcoin’s potential, he quit school and founded a company called Avalon, which sells hardware built solely for the purpose of mining Bitcoins. He isn’t interested in a quick score, he says: “Our goal is to protect the Bitcoin network so profits are available in the long term.” Tony Gallippi is CEO of BitPay, a payment processor he co-founded in 2011 that enables online merchants to accept Bitcoins. He says he includes Bitcoins in his investment portfolio along with stocks, bonds, and real estate. His company holds some Bitcoins as well. “We’d like to take advantage of the price appreciation. Everything we do to sign up more merchants and customers grows the user base.” That, in turn, lifts the value of BitPay’s own holdings. Shrem, who estimates that his assets are split between Bitcoins and dollars, says he is not as driven by ideology as were some of the earliest Bitcoin adopters. Every time the price goes up 20 percent, he plans to cash in about 100 coins. Kenna, meanwhile, says he has no plans to cash out. “I’m doubling down.” April 11, 3:53pm: Updated to include mention of the Winklevoss twins

Meet the Bitcoin Millionaires

Many people have lost some data while reformatting a computer hard drive. Jered Kenna lost more than that. In 2010 he erased from his computer 800 Bitcoins that have been worth more than $200,000. Kenna isn’t upset: He has plenty more. He says he bought his first batch of virtual currency, 5,000 coins, at 20¢ each. On April 10, Bitcoins traded for as much as $258 each, according to Tradehill, a Bitcoin exchange in San Francisco, before plunging more than $100. Like other enthusiasts, Kenna shrugs off the volatility. While he won’t disclose his total holdings, he says, “I’m happy to be considered a member of the Bitcoin millionaires’ club.” Created four years ago by a person or group using the name Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin is a virtual currency that can be used to buy and sell a broad range of items—from cupcakes to electronics to illegal narcotics. The surge in a Bitcoin’s value has made millionaires out of people who loaded up on them early on—however briefly. Many of them are self-described libertarians, drawn by the idea of a currency that exists outside the control of governments. Some were so taken with the concept that they launched Bitcoin businesses, such as exchanges where people can buy the coins or exchange them for dollars. There are also investors, notable among them, former Facebook litigants the Winklevoss twins, who have amassed around $11 million in Bitcoin, according to the New York Times. Bitcoins are “mined” by computers that solve difficult cryptographic problems to verify transactions. As more Bitcoins are created, the problems become more difficult. Pioneers could mine coins on their laptops. Now, high-powered computer equipment is needed. “I’ve got a friend who forgot he had his computer mining Bitcoins in his garage—he checked and it’s worth about $ 12 million today,” says Kenna, 30, who is chief executive officer of Tradehill. Owners store their Bitcoins in electronic wallets, which are identified by a long string of letters and numbers. The wallet 1933phfhK3ZgFQNLGSDXvqCn32k2buXY8a, for example, currently owns 111,111 Bitcoins, which amounts to more than $15 million sitting on someone’s hard drive. Whose hard drive is a mystery: While anyone can view the wallets, the owners’ identities are not public. As of April 2, there were about 250 wallets with more than $ 1 million worth of Bitcoins. The number of Bitcoin millionaires, though, is uncertain—people can have more than one wallet. The value of Bitcoins began soaring in March, around the time European finance officials approved an unprecedented tax on bank deposits in Cyprus. While the plan did not go through, it led to concerns that other bank deposits might be taxed. The rising price drew increased media attention, which sparked further price gains. There are a little more than 11 million Bitcoins in existence. The software that governs the network will allow no more than a total of 21 million coins to be created. Charlie Shrem, 23, discovered Bitcoins on a website in early 2011, when he was a senior at Brooklyn College. Shrem didn’t mine coins himself but bought them on Tradehill. His first purchase was 500 coins at about $3 or $4 each; he bought thousands more when the price hit $20. When he was still in college, Shrem started BitInstant, a company that allows its customers to purchase the digital currency from more than 700,000 stores, including Wal-Mart Stores and Duane Reade . Shrem wears a ring engraved with a code that gives him access to the electronic wallet on his computer. Friends tease him that a thief could cut off his finger to get the ring. “They started calling me four- finger Charlie,” he says. One of BitInstant’s investors is Roger Ver, 34, who ran for California State Assembly in 2000 as a Libertarian. On his Web page, Ver talks about moving to Tokyo after serving 10 months in federal prison for selling “a product called a ‘Pest Control Report 2000.’ It was basically a firecracker used by farmers to scare deer and birds away from their cornfields.” He says he was prosecuted unfairly because of his political beliefs. Shrem calls Ver “Bitcoin Jesus” for the way he evangelized for the currency by giving away coins to anyone who would take them. “After discovering Bitcoin, I only slept maybe an hour a night for a whole week,” Ver says in an interview. “I didn’t leave my house and spent every waking moment reading about Bitcoin.” Ver says he got so sick that a friend checked him into a hospital, where he was given medication to help him sleep. He sees Bitcoins as a reliable store of value as Japan increases the money supply to boost the economy. “I’m much more bullish about the long-term prospects of Bitcoin than the dollar or yen,” he says. “I cashed out about a year ago—of dollars and yen.” Like other Bitcoin users, Ver celebrates that “Bitcoin totally strips away the state’s control over money.” Bitcoin has drawn the attention of regulators, but no country has issued comprehensive rules governing the digital currency. “Virtual currency is a medium of exchange that operates like a currency in some environments but does not have all the attributes of real currency,” the U.S. Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network said in a March 18 report. (Hardly a clarifying remark.) The European Central Bank warned in October that the emergence of virtual currencies “could have a negative impact on the reputation of central banks” if their use grows considerably. Many Bitcoin tycoons are devoting themselves to expanding the currency’s reach. Yifu Guo was a digital media student at New York University when he began mining some of the first coins, occasionally cashing in a few to help pay his rent. After he recognized Bitcoin’s potential, he quit school and founded a company called Avalon, which sells hardware built solely for the purpose of mining Bitcoins. He isn’t interested in a quick score, he says: “Our goal is to protect the Bitcoin network so profits are available in the long term.” Tony Gallippi is CEO of BitPay, a payment processor he co-founded in 2011 that enables online merchants to accept Bitcoins. He says he includes Bitcoins in his investment portfolio along with stocks, bonds, and real estate. His company holds some Bitcoins as well. “We’d like to take advantage of the price appreciation. Everything we do to sign up more merchants and customers grows the user base.” That, in turn, lifts the value of BitPay’s own holdings. Shrem, who estimates that his assets are split between Bitcoins and dollars, says he is not as driven by ideology as were some of the earliest Bitcoin adopters. Every time the price goes up 20 percent, he plans to cash in about 100 coins. Kenna, meanwhile, says he has no plans to cash out. “I’m doubling down.” April 11, 3:53pm: Updated to include mention of the Winklevoss twins

Never Mind Facebook; Winklevoss Twins Rule in Digital Money

The brothers began dabbling in bitcoin last summer when the dollar value of a single coin was still in the single digits. To keep their holdings secure from hackers, they have taken the complex codes that represent their holdings off networked computers and saved them on small flash drives, putting the drives, in turn, in safe deposit boxes at banks in three different cities. It’s hard to verify how the Winklevoss holdings compare with other bitcoin players, given the anonymity of accounts, and the twins say they believe that some early users of the system probably have holdings that are at least as large. A Maltese company, Exante, started a hedge fund that the company says has bought up about 82,000 bitcoins — or about $10 million as of Thursday — with money from wealthy investors. A founder of the fund, Anatoli Knyazev, said his main concern was hackers and government regulators, who have so far mostly left the currency alone. These investments were all in an uncertain state on Thursday after the big price swings and the shutdown of trading on Mt. Gox, a Japanese-based company that claims to handle 80 percent of all bitcoin trades. Mt. Gox said in a statement that the problems were a result of the currency’s popularity, making it impossible to process all the incoming orders. It added that it was not the victim of hackers but “instead victim of our own success!” The 6-foot-5 Winklevoss brothers were unfazed. The brothers said they took advantage of the low prices to buy more. “It has been four years and it has yet to be discredited as a viable alternative to fiat currency,” Tyler Winklevoss said. “We could be totally wrong, but we are curious to see this play out a lot more.”

How A Shy Boy From North Korea Became The World’s Scariest Dictator

For the past 50 years, the world has grown used to crazy threats from North Korea that don’t lead anywhere . But with young and untested Kim Jong-un in charge of a nuclear arsenal, no one knows what will happen next.Kim Jong-un was born on January 8 in 1982 or 1983 or 1984. DPRK propaganda via http://www.atimes.com His parents were future North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il and his consort, Ko Young-hee. He had an older brother named Kim Jong-chul and would later have a younger sister named Kim Yo-jong. While Jong-un’s official birth year is 1982, various reports suggest that the year was changed for symbolic reasons, including that it was100 years after the birth of Kim Il-sung and 70 years after the birth of Jong-il.During this period, North Korea was ruled by “Great Leader” Kim Il-sung. While Jong-il was the heir apparent, Jong-un’s path to command was far less certain. Then it was off to Switzerland to attend boarding school. Called “Pak-un” and described as the son of an employee of the North Korean embassy, Jong-un is thought to have attended the English-language “International School” in Gümligen near Bern. Jong-un is described by former classmates as a quiet student who spent most of his time at home, but he had a sense of humor too. “He was funny,” former classmate Marco Imhof told The Mirror. “Always good for a laugh.” “He had a sense of humour; got on well with everyone, even those pupils who came from countries that were enemies of North Korea,” another former classmate told the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag. “Politics was a taboo subject at school . . . we would argue about football, not politics.” Jong-un loved basketball and idolized Michael Jordan Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images The young Korean reportedly had posters of Jordan all over his wall during his Swiss school days. Although Jong-un was overweight and only 5 foot 6, he was a decent basketball player. “He was a fiercely competitive player, very explosive,” former classmate Nikola Kovacevic told The Mirror. “He was the play maker. He made things happen.” “He hated to lose. Winning was very important,” said former classmate Marco Imhof. He also had a “fantastic” collection of Nike sneakers. Jong-un was a member of the “good” gang in a production of “Grease” In a school production of the hit American musical “Grease,” young Kim enjoyed singing “Summer Nights” and “You’re the One That I Want,” according to photos from The Sun. His role required slicked-back hair and a leather jacket as a member of the T-Birds, one of the “good gangs.” There is a bit of controversy over this claim, as The Washington Post points out that the photos may actually be Jong-un’s brother instead. After school in Switzerland, he returned home for military schooling Upon his return to North Korea, Jong-un attended Kim Il-sung Military University with his older brother . Some reports say both started to attend their father’s military field inspections around 2007. While his father faced death, Jong-un was rapidly promoted up the chain of political and military leadership, despite having little experience in either. He was made a four-star general, deputy chairman of the Central Military Commission of the Workers’ Party, and a member of the Central Committee, according to the BBC. Jong-un has a theme song known as “Footsteps” “Footsteps” looks and sounds like propaganda songs from the Soviet Union. Calling the people to follow in “Our Admiral Kim’s footsteps,” here’s a sampling of the lyrics: “Footsteps, Footsteps … spreading out further the sound of a brilliant future ahead … tramp, tramp, tramp, ah, footsteps.” Many North Koreans see Jong-un as a youthful version of “Great Leader” Kim Il-sung Kim Il-sung, 1956 Wikimedia Commons Kim bears a clear resemblance to his grandfather Kim Il-sung in appearance, haircut, and his mannerisms. Rumors had circulated that Kim Jong-un had received plastic surgery to enhance the resemblance even further, although the North finally responded and called the allegations “sordid hackwork by rubbish media.” “The false report … released by enemies is a hideous criminal act which the party, state, army and people can never tolerate,” said official Korean Central News Agency . After his father died, he was quickly declared “supreme leader” of North Korea Getty Images When Jong-il died of a heart attack on Dec. 17, 2011, the young Jong-un inherited the world’s fourth-largest military, a nuclear arsenal, and absolute control over North Korea. He took over ahead of his older brother Jong-chol, who their father thought was “effeminate” and weak. His other brother Jong-nam apparently said negative things about the regime, according to The Australian. Around 30 years old, Jong-un is the youngest head of state in the world. Some believe Kim’s aunt and uncle may actually be calling the shots AP Among Kim’s most trusted advisers are his aunt Kim Kyong-Hui and her husband Jang Sung-Taek, both 66. The couple was reportedly ordered by Jong-il to control the country’s military and help the young leader consolidate his position while he gains more experience. At a recent meeting of the DPRK Workers’ Party, both were photographed sitting close by. Their most important job, it seems, is to push his role as a powerful figure among some generals who do not trust him, according to The Telegraph. He’s married to a former cheerleader and may have two kids KCNA via AP Leaders in the Hermit Kingdom are often very secretive when it comes to their significant others, but Jong-un often has his wife join him and allows photographs. North Korean media revealed in July he was married to Ri Sol-ju — a former cheerleader and singer — but no one knows exactly when they were married, according to NBC News. South Korean intelligence believe the couple probably married in 2009 and already had one child. There are also rumors that Sol-ju gave birth to a child late last year, with many believing it was a girl. Jong-un lived out a childhood fantasy when former Chicago Bulls star Dennis Rodman visited. Courtesy of Vice The entire family are apparently huge Bulls fans. His father owned a video library of “practically every game Michael Jordan played for the Chicago Bulls.” Jong-il tried unsuccessfully to get Jordan to visit in 2001. Jong-un had tons of Jordan posters as a kid. Brother Jong-chol was photographed as a child wearing a Bulls Jersey (#91 — Rodman). But recently, things haven’t been going so well. DPRK Recently he was reportedly the target of an assassination attempt. South Korean intelligence believes the young leader was targeted by “disgruntled people inside the North ” after he demoted a four-star general which resulted in a power struggle. Perhaps as a means of reasserting control, Jong- un has become extremely belligerent, shutting down all links with South Korea and threatening thermonuclear war against his neighbor and the United States. His father and grandfather used to make these threats all the time without following through. At this point most analysts think Jong-un will follow through with a minor attack — something to back up his threats without setting off a horrifying war which North Korea would most likely lose.

Roman Abramovich No Longer Owns The World’s Largest Yacht

Step aside Roman Abramovich — you’re no longer the owner of the world’s largest yacht. Boat maker Lürssen announced late last week that it had officially launched Azzam, a 590-foot (180- meter) ship, placing it in the water near its Bremen, Germany facility. Billionaire Abramovich’s yacht Eclipse, which previously held the title of world’s largest yacht, measures 538 feet long. While Lürssen has not confirmed the ship’s owner, it’s been reported that it was built for Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, President of the United Arab Emirates, who supposedly paid a whopping $627.4 million for it . Superyachts.com attended the launch and shared some additional details: Amongst many other features the yacht has a main salon with a length of 29 m and a beam of 18m with an open plan and no pillars. She will travel in excess of 30 knots, powered by a combination of 2 gas turbines and 2 diesel engines with a total of 94000 horse powers. The interior decoration was undertaken by the renowned French designer Christophe Leoni who is proud to have been able to realize a sophisticated and luxurious interior in a turn of the century Empire style. The ship still must go through sea trials, and will be delivered to its owner later this year. The photo below shows the massive Azzam:

margaret thatcher quotes

Former British PM Margaret Thatcher has died. Thatcher was one of the more quotable politicians in recent memory. Her wit and sharp lines about socialism have helped cement her reputation as “The Iron Lady.” Via Wikiquote , here are some great ones. “I don’t think there will be a woman Prime Minister in my lifetime.” — BBC, March 5, 1975 “If a Tory does not believe that private property is one of the main bulwarks of individual freedom, then he had better become a socialist and have done with it.” — Daily Telegraph, Jan. 30, 1975. “The Russians are bent on world dominance, and they are rapidly acquiring the means to become the most powerful imperial nation the world has seen. The men in the Soviet politburo don’t have to worry about the ebb and flow of public opinion. They put guns before butter, while we put just about everything before guns. They know that they are a super power in only one sense—the military sense. They are a failure in human and economic terms.” Speech, Jan. 19, 1976 (The Russians would respond by calling her the “Iron Lady.”) — “Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They always run out of other people’s money. It’s quite a characteristic of them.” Speech, Feb. 5, 1976 “Pennies don’t fall from heaven, they have to be earned here on earth.” Speech, Nov. 12, 1979 “No one would remember the Good Samaritan if he’d only had good intentions; he had money as well.” Weekend World, Jan. 6, 1980 “Economics are the method; the object is to change the heart and soul.” Sunday Times, May 1, 1981 “I came to office with one deliberate intent: to change Britain from a dependent to a self-reliant society — from a give-it-to-me, to a do-it- yourself nation. A get-up-and-go, instead of a sit- back-and-wait-for-it Britain.” Speech, Feb. 8, 1984 “It was a lovely morning. We have not had many lovely days. And the sun was just coming through the stained glass windows and falling on some flowers right across the church and it just occurred to me that this was the day I was meant not to see.” Channel 4, Oct 15, 1984, following an assassination attempt by the IRA . “I like Mr. Gorbachev. We can do business together.” — BBC, Dec. 17, 1984 “No. No. No.” — House of Commons, Oct. 30, 1990

Guinness Strips Bugatti Of Its Record For The Fastest Production Car Ever

The Bugatti Veyron Super Sport has been stripped of its production car land speed record by Guinness World Records, almost three years after the record was granted. In July of 2010, Bugatti tester Pierre-Henri Raphanel took a 1,200-horsepower Veyron Super Sport to a top speed of 267.8 mph (the average of two separate runs, per Guinness regulations), which at the time was deemed as the new world record for a production car’s top speed. Unfortunately for Bugatti, the version of the car it chose to sell to the public has a governed top speed of 258 mph , which the automaker says was due to safety reasons. Thus, to achieve the record, the Veyron Super Sport driven by Raphanel needed to have its top speed limiter disabled, which counts as a modification. You may be wondering why this has only come to light now. Last week, America’s Hennessey Performance took its Venom GT supercar to a top of 265.7 mph , and claimed it was the fastest production car available to the public, due to the speed being higher than that of the Veyron Super Sport with its speed limiter in place. This led to Sunday Times reporters reaching out to Guinness officials. In response, Guinness conceded it made a mistake in granting the Veyron Super Sport the record, and has thus withdrawn it. “As the car’s speed limiter was deactivated, this modification was against the official guidelines,” Guinness officials said in a statement. “Consequently, the vehicle’s record set at 431.072 kmh [267.8 mph] is no longer valid.” This means that the 255.8-mph Ultimate Aero TT of America’s SSC, the record holder prior to the Veyron Super Sport, reclaims the official world record. It also means that the 1,244-horsepower Hennessey Venom GT unofficially holds the title of world’s fastest production car, though it may not be able to bask in the glory for long. Overnight, Bugatti released this teaser image, along with the statement, “It’s almost time for us to share the latest example of exceptional Bugatti performance.” The automaker will be sharing something new with the world in a few days, though we can’t be sure what it’s planning just yet. With the 2013 Shanghai Auto Show taking place next week, it’s possible Bugatti has a new, more powerful Veyron special edition. There have also been reports of a new ‘super’ Veyron putting out as much as 1,600 horsepower and capable of a 288-mph top speed, although this new version isn’t expected until the 2013 Frankfurt Auto Show in September. As for losing its record, a Bugatti official said the automaker would seek clarification from Guinness and is standing by the record, since Guinness was fully aware that the Veyron Super Sport’s speed limit would be restricted yet still gave the title back in 2010. Stay tuned for an update in just a few days.

A Crazy Comparison Of Life In North Korea And South Korea

North and South Korea were separated at the end of World War II. They’ve walked quite different paths since then. Under successive pro-American governments, the South has become an economic powerhouse, one of the G-20 major economies. South Korean companies like Samsung, Hyundai , and LG are renowned around the world. The North, led by a family dynasty based on “Juche” philosophy of self-sufficiency, has turned into a bitterly poor and unpredictable nation. The Guardian’s Data Blog has published some figures that show just how divergent the two nations are, economically and socially. Here are some of the crazier ones: South Korea’s GDP (purchasing power parity) is $1,622 billion. North Korea’s is $40 billion. South Korea’s GDP (real growth rate) is 2.7% . In the North it is 0.8% . The GDP per capita is $32,400 in South Korea. In the North it is just $1,800 . South Korea exports total $552.6 billion, while the North’s are just $4.71 billion. For every 1,000 live births in South Korea, 4.08 of the infants die on average. In the North, 26.21 die. Life expectancy in the South is 79.3 years. In the North it is ten years less at 69.2 . 81.5% of South Korea has access to the Internet. Less than 0.1% of North Koreans do. The intentional homicide rate per 100,000 people is 2.6 in the South. In North Korea it is 15.2 . One well-known statistic not featured by the Guardian — the BBC reports that North Koreans tend to be 1.2 – 3.1 inches shorter than their South Korean counterparts. So, judging by this it looks a lot like the South trumps the North. Except in one key area: The South has 655,000 actively serving in the military service. The North has 1.19 million . Of course, data isn’t everything — one of the stranger factors in the North-South relationship is the surprising number of North Korean refugees who return to the North after living in the South for a while. However, the wildly divergent figures certainly show what 50 years of economic policy will do. It’s also likely to be a big factor if reunification ever becomes politically possible. When Germany was reunified, East Germany’s GDP per capita was 40% of that in the West . In North Korea, GDP per capita is barely 5% of that in the South.

Sorry Guys, Penis Size Matters

Penis size is an important factor in male attractiveness, a new study suggests. It’s as important as height and more important than shoulder-to-hip ratios, the study says. Of course, this is a kind of weird study, because usually we meet mates while wearing clothing — and they shouldn’t be able to determine penis size. It would be relevant, though, before humans invented clothing. And it could have influenced how the penis evolved, because without clothes, humanity’s upright posture a man’s “protruding, non-retractable genitalia” would have been clearly visible to potential mates. Females may have preferred to mate with males with larger penises, hoping to pass on the attractive trait to their sons. This could be what led to the human penis being longer and thicker than it is in any other primate. Science Magazine suggests : Women may have selected for larger penises because they’re linked to higher rates of female orgasm and sexual satisfaction, which may explain why the human penis is proportionally larger than those of our evolutionary cousins. Luckily, this has diminishing returns as the penises get bigger and bigger. As Nature News puts it , “men with substantially larger-than average features were not found much more attractive than those with only slightly above-average features.” The study was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . And yes, PNAS does sound a lot like penis. The researchers used 3D models of naked men with varying body shapes, height, and flaccid penis length — up to 5.1 inches. Here’s an example of the three extremes in the mock up, which they projected onto the wall life-size: Mautz, et. al, PNAS, 2013 They showed images like these to 105 Australian women, to see how they would judge each man for attractiveness. Discover Magazine’s D-brief blog explains : Female participants in the new study who viewed random subsets of the life-size figures were also quick to rate those they found unattractive, but spent significantly longer gazing at the computer models they found appealing, particularly those with longer penises. This pattern is consistent with a human tendency to view attractive things for a longer time than those perceived as unattractive. That being said, having a longer penis had a bigger effect on tall people. Short men were less attractive, even if they had a longer penis, the researchers write in the paper: “This result could be because perceived penis size was smaller when assessed relative to the height of a taller man; or because of general discrimination against short men irrespective of the value of other traits, so that even a larger penis did little to increase their net attractiveness.”

LIFE

“EVERYTHING IN LIFE HAS ITS OWN TIME!! •Your friend Graduated at 22, and at 24 you still hustling 2 get admission 4 1st Degree! Cool down! •Your guy got a good job immediately after NYSC, u are still hustling 2 get 1 even after MSc. Calm down! •Your friends are getting married, and all the guys/ girls coming your way seem 2 want just fling, Relax Dear. •When your friends are getting things u thinku deserve, do not despair, remain focus, ••CAUTION: Life isn’t a race with someone else, the 1st to DEPART is not always the 1st toARRIVE. Life is about your own SAFETY, SUCCESS and HAPPINESS. Be Patient,Smart, Focused and God fearing. God is Sovereign and his timing is always PERFECT and he makes it so good. Repeat this:”God you are the ONLY reason I’m still alive, Amen”

Boban: Cavani not worth €63 million

Former AC Milan midfielder Zvonimir Boban believes the €63m release clause in Edinson Cavani’ s contract with Napoli is twice as high as the striker’s actual market value. The Uruguay star has netted 22 goals in 28 appearances in the Serie A so far this season and has been linked with a move to Real Madrid, but Boban feels the Partenopei’s asking price is unrealistic and should be half as high. “Cavani is a great player,” the 44-year-old told Radio Goal. “However, I do not believe that he is worth €63m on the transfer market. That’s just my opinion, an honest one. Perhaps he’s worth about half of that figure.” Meanwhile, Boban revealed he is hoping Juventus win their second-leg tie in the Champions League quarter-finals against Bayern, but believes chances for the Italians to proceed are slim after they suffered a 2-0 defeat in Bavaria last week. “I think Juventus have little chance against Bayern, although I hope that I am wrong. “Bayern proved that they are clearly better and that just can’t disappear. In order for Juventus to qualify then everything will have to go right.”

Sabella’s daughter says Messi ‘lacks heart’ for country

The daughter of Argentina boss Alejandro Sabella has criticised Lionel Messi for a lack of effort while on international duty in contrast with his performances at club level. The 25-year-old has not replicated his record- breaking form for Barcelona when it comes to performing on the international stage. And it has prompted some to question his dedication to Argentina, while others have questioned his effectiveness without the presence of his Liga team-mates. Speaking to Radio Del Plata, Vanessa Sabella claimed Messi lacks “heart” and has urged the star to strike the balance required to scale the heights for country as he does for club. “I will not deny that he is a skilled player who has broken many records,” she said. “He is the best player in the world and never plays badly, but he still lacks some heart [for Argentina].”

What happened to Fergie’s fledglings?

1. GARY NEVILLE
Captain of the United Youth Cup Final sides in 1992 and 1993, Neville went on to play over 600 times for the club spanning 19 seasons. The Bury-born defender broke into the first team in 1994-1995 after an injury to Paul Parker and went on to form a formidable partnership with David Beckham down the right side. After Roy Keane’s departure in 2005, Neville became club captain for five seasons, but during this time he was plagued with injuries. A proud one-club man, Neville won eight league titles, three FA Cups, two League Cups, two Champions Leagues and the World Club Championship. He captained the side in the 2006 League Cup Final win against Wigan. His 85 caps remain a record for an England right- back and along with his brother Phil, he holds the record for the most caps by brothers, beating a mark set by Bobby and Jackie Charlton. After retiring in 2011, he became a Sky Sports pundit and commentator, and since May 2012 combines those duties with the role of England coach under Roy Hodgso
2. DAVID BECKAM
Arguably the most popular English footballer since Stanley Matthews, ‘Becks’ is the sport’s undisputed glamour boy. Despite being a Londoner, his United-supporting parents regularly travelled to Old Trafford for games. A young David then joined Bobby Charlton’s Soccer Academy in Manchester and was picked up by the club. Although he made his senior debut at 17 years old in September 1992 against Brighton in the League Cup, it took him longer than many of Fergie’s Fledglings to establish himself and even spent a loan spell at Preston in the Third Division in 1995. His wonder goal from the halfway line against Wimbledon at Selhurst Park opening day of the 1996-1997 season was a defining moment for Beckham who later revealed he had played with borrowed boots. Beckham was made a scapegoat for England’s 1998 World Cup exit after being sent-off against Argentina in the quarter-finals, but remained a favourite with United fans and he rewarded them the following season as the club won the Treble. His glamorous lifestyle put an increasing strain on his relationship with his boss and it was reported that his pop star wife Spice Girl Victoria encouraged him to leave his beloved United. He joined Real Madrid in 2003 for £25 million and won the La Liga title with them in his fourth and final season at the Bernabeu. Five seasons at MLS side LA Galaxy with loan spells at Milan followed before moving to French outfit Paris Saint-Germain in February, where he is the last Englishman still involved in this season’s Champions League. At 37, England’s most capped outfield player refuses to talk about retirement and still hopes to represent his country at the 2014 World Cup Finals in Brazil.
3. Ryan Giggs
The ‘Peter Pan’ of football continues to represent United 22 years after making his debut as a substitute against Everton in March 1991. Giggs had joined United from Manchester City in 1987 and was an England schoolboy using his father’s surname Wilson, before changing it to his mother’s maiden name and playing for Wales. The wiry and awkward teenager was blessed with pace and poise and soon caught the eye of United boss Alex Ferguson who would invite first-team regulars such as Bryan Robson, Steve Bruce and Gary Pallister to youth games to watch him. He was voted the PFA’s Young Player of the Year in 1992 and 1993, but amazingly didn’t win the PFA Player of the Year award until 2009, though he has made up for it with a phenomenal amount of team and individual honours. Giggs is the only player to play and score in every season of the Premier League, and has amassed an unrivalled 12 league titles, while breaking Sir Bobby Charlton’s club appearance record along the way. Recently he notched up his 1000th competitive match for club and country against Real Madrid in the Champions League, and signed a new one- year contract that will take him beyond his 40th birthday in November. Awarded an OBE for services to sport in 2007, Giggs was one of three over-aged players to represented Team GB at last summer’s Olympics. His current one-year deal will take him into his 40′s and there is every chance it will be renewed again.
4. Nicky Butt
Often overshadowed by Roy Keane and Paul Scholes at the heart of the United midfield, this local lad still managed to be a regular for over a decade. A key member of the 1992 FA Youth Cup winning side, it was only with the departure of Paul Ince to Inter Milan in 1995 that Butt began to establish himself in the first team. His greatest moment came in the 1999 Champions League final where the suspension of Roy Keane meant Butt played a pivotal role in the 2-1 success against Bayern Munich. As Paul Scholes became more of a central midfielder, Butt once again found himself on the fringes and handed in a transfer request in 2004. He joined Sir Bobby Robson’s Newcastle where he made over 150 appearances in five seasons and spent time on loan at Birmingham, before a brief spell in China signalled an end to his career. Now the 38-year-old has returned to his first love where he has been United’s reserve team coach since October last year.
to be continued

Mancini: Manchester United get easy ride against scared opposing teams

Roberto Mancini has claimed that opposition teams “play with fear” against Manchester United but give Manchester City a tougher test. The reigning Premier League champions head into Monday’s derby trailing the top-of-the-table Red Devils by 15 points having won just 18 of their 30 top-flight games this term. In contrast, United are unbeaten since November and have won 25 of their 30 Premier League games and Mancini suggested that teams are intimidated by Sir Alex Ferguson’s charges. “No-one plays well against United because they only play with fear,” Mancini is quoted as saying by The Daily Mirror. “United are strong now because of this importance as a team, as a club.”Every team that plays against United plays very soft because they think this game is difficult, that they can’t beat them. It’s not true. If you play strong against United, you can beat them, like they can beat us. “This is normal, this is football, this is because United is a strong team for a long time. For the other teams they play against, it is difficult. We are young as a team. We don’t have the same importance like United in this moment. Maybe in 10 years it will be the same. The history is very important.” A win for United on Monday will open up an 18- point gap with just seven games of the season left to play, and Mancini has rued failures in the transfer market to a slip in standards from last term. The Italian believes his team would have fared much between domestically and in Europe if he had had more success with recruiting his desired new personnel. “Probably we would be on top, could win the second title and probably we would be in the Champions League quarter- final,” Mancini said. “We had a chance to get three or four players who could improve our team but we didn’t in the end. Now it’s finished. “Last year we played really well because we scored a lot of goals. But this year the only difference is the goals we didn’t score. If we’d scored maybe 15 goals more, probably we would be on the top. “We’ve been missing important goals in games we deserved to win easy. We lost a lot of points because we didn’t score enough goals. This is the difference. We also had a lot of injuries.

How To Buy New Must-Have Products For Next To Nothing

Few things match the thrill of getting an incredible deal on an item we really crave. It’s a basic human response that we all can relate to. That’s why auctions are so much fun – they present the titillating chance of scoring something for a lot less than we would expect. And that leaves us feeling great, because we now have the object of our desire and we have money left in our pocket. Marketers know this and exploit it all the time – hence the profusion of sales, discounts, coupons, and the like… so much so, in fact, that we become numb to the tactic. People just don’t believe they’re really getting a bargain. But now there’s a new online company that has actually figured out a way to sell new must-have consumer products for jaw-dropping prices. It’s called Quibids – and it turns out that they are selling everything from the latest new Apple iPads and iPods, to MAC and PC notebooks, to HDTV’s and gift cards from the top retailers at prices as low as 5% of regular retail prices. Now, of course, anyone in their right mind would be skeptical of such a claim – so we looked into it to learn just how they do it. It turns out that both the prices and the products are real. Quibids runs a unique version of the traditional auction – when you bid on an item you actually get charged a small fee of about 60 cents. Collectively, the amount collected for all of the bids on an item allows the company to sell the item at a price far below actual retail and even below the wholesale price they paid the manufacturer for it. Figuring out how many bids to place and when to place them involves a little strategy but on QuiBids it’s actually a lot of fun. Each auction has a strict time limit and when you place your bid, the system adds a little time to the auction to see if any other bids come in. If you have the winning bid when the clock runs out – you win the item for that price. According to QuiBids CEO Matt Beckham, “Thousands of people are trying QuiBids every day – and then coming back again and again – so we must be doing something right.” For the auction winner, the true cost of the item is slightly higher than their winning bid price because they have also spent a little for their bids, but this amount is usually modest, and the savings still work out to be spectacular in most cases. And then there’s the “ Buy Now” feature. This allows bidders who did not win an auction to still buy the product they want and apply the cost of the bids they placed as a discount on the regular product price. So, you still get the item and the bids you placed previously in the auction don’t cost you anything. So, if you want real deals – like a new iPad for under $34, a new Nikon Digital SLR Camera for less than $24 or a new 46” LED HDTV for under $25 – check out the action at QuiBids .

China’s Telecom Giant Still Hopes To Break Into U.S. Market

Huawei Technologies said it has no plans of giving up on the U.S. telecom market in spite of being branded a national security threat by lawmakers. “I believe one day we could potentially solve the challenges and problems we face in the United States,” said Guo Ping during a media briefing at Huawei’s headquarters in Shenzhen on Monday. Guo is one of three rotating CEOs, the others are Eric Xu and Ken Hu. Guo was repeatedly questioned about the U.S. congressional report released in October that stated Huawei and crosstown rival ZTE Corp. posed a threat to security because the companies’ equipment could be used for cyber espionage. Huawei was founded in 1987 by Ren Zhengfei , a former engineer in the People’s Liberation Army. The company’s main business is providing infrastructure equipment to telecom carriers. Huawei initially focused on selling its equipment in rural areas before expanding to China ‘s cities and then across Asia and Africa. Huawei’s efforts to make inroads into the U.S. telecom market have been effectively blocked by the congressional report, in contrast to Europe where the company has been winning large contracts in all the major telecom markets. Huawei has about 1,700 staff in the U.S. and 7,000 employees in Europe. Last year, the company said it plans to spend a total of $2 billion in the U.K. and double its workforce there over the next five years. “Our products and services have been deployed in more than 140 countries, serving more than 600 telecom operators in the world, and there has never been any incident of our products threatening cyber security or network security,” Guo said. Sales rose 8% to $35.4 billion last year, while profit jumped 32% to $1.8 billion, according to the audited results in Huawei’s annual report released on Monday. Cathy Meng, chief financial officer and daughter of the company’s founder, said Huawei is targeting a compound annual growth rate of about 10% over the next five years. As capital spending by carriers has slowed in recent years, Ericsson , Nokia Siemens Networks and Alcatel-Lucent have been cutting jobs to reduce expenses. Huawei, on the other hand, has been expanding into the consumer market with a growing lineup of mobile devices while providing network equipment to businesses and government agencies through its enterprise group. Sales of Huawei’s consumer devices grew 8.4% to reach $7.8 billion last year. With high-end smartphones like the Ascend P1 and D1 Quad , based on Google‘s Android operating software, Huawei is increasingly competing with the likes of Samsung and HTC Corp. Research firm International Data Corporation (IDC) said Huawei rose to become the world’s third largest smartphone vendor by shipping 10.8 million units in the fourth quarter. The revenue from Huawei’s enterprise division grew 25.8% to $1.8 billion in 2012. Now in its third year of operation, Guo said they would continue to consolidate the company’s enterprise business in China before entering overseas markets on a “selective basis.”

GE Will Purchase Lufkin Industries For $3.3B. So What Exactly Is It Buying?

You’re forgiven if Lufkin Industries, a small, Texas-based oilfield services company, isn’t immediately familiar. It’s bit more now undoubtedly since General Electric says it will buy Lufkin for $3.3 billion. So, what is GE putting billions of dollars into? Lufkin manufactures pumps and lifts designed to help extract natural gas and oil from hard-to-reach reservoirs. It also runs a foundry and makes industrial gear boxes. Lufkin’s roots extend back a century, to 1902, when the company was founded to make railroad and sawmill equipment. The company has made four acquisitions of its own in the past five years, adding (even) smaller businesses that also produce lifts. Lufkin competes with other oilfield services companies like Baker Hughes, Cameron Corp. and FMC Technologies. Here’s a snapshot of Lufkin’s (market cap: $2.2 billion) financials: It earned $81.9 million, $2.45 a share, on $1.2 billion in sales last year. That’s significant top-line (37.5%) and bottom-line (18.5%) growth. Pretty much the way Lufkin has trended for a decade. In 2003, for perspective, Lufkin made just $10 million, 36 cents a share, on $262 million in sales. Most of the growth was self- financed, but Lufkin did issue $330 million in long- term debt last year, putting its debt-to-equity ratio at the industry average of 0.4 times. Lufkin shares have risen more than 1,200% in a decade, to Friday’s closing price of $63.93. Clearly a beneficiary of expanding shale gas production in the United States. GE’s bid values the company at $88.50 a share, a healthy premium. (Lufkin shares in early morning trading promptly rose 37.9% to $ 88.12.) Certainly there’s nothing paltry about the buyout sum. The deal fetches a enterprise value/ EBITDA multiple of 13.5 times. Somewhat high. “The multiple paid for Lufkin appears to reflect a bet that the surge in oil and drilling within North America will continue and/or shale oil development abroad will soon take off,” Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Steven Winoker wrote in a client note this morning. Winoke, who rates the shares as Market Perform, is skeptical. Shale production in the U.S. should continue, he says, but at a reduced pace from the last three years. Some of the most lucrative deposits have been tapped, and new discoveries haven’t been as attractive. GE says its oil and gas business is its fastest growing unit, and CEO Jeffrey Immelt just last week voiced a strongly bullish sentiment on shale gas’ prospects when he announced a new natural gas-focused research center in Oklahoma City. ” The availability of shale in the United States and around the world has to be one of the biggest game-changers I’ve seen in my career. The question is can we tap it? Can we develop the technologies to extract it sustainably? If we do, we’ll have cheaper energy.” If we do, GE will be making (even) more money. The massive conglomerate (market cap: $238 billion) earned $ 13.6 billion, $1.29 a share, on $147.4 billion in sales last year. Its shares were little changed after this morning’s news. A last tid-bit. Even after buying Lufkin, GE will still have more than $120 billion in cash, more than half the conglomerate’s market value.

Margaret Thatcher, Revolutionary Leader

Margaret Thatcher, who died today at 87, was an extraordinary kind of national leader: a person of passionate and unswerving moral and political conviction. She lived her political life not as a career but as a mission. She was from the start an outsider, not just a woman in a nation whose leadership was dominated by men, but the daughter of a grocer. She made her way to the top by sheer energy and talent, studying at Oxford and then rising to the top of Britain’s Conservative party by 1975, when she was 50. She said a couple of years before that that “I don’t think there will be a woman prime minister in my lifetime.” She proved herself wrong. She was prime minister from 1979 to 1990, and at first she alienated almost everybody. As she cut spending and entitlements, unemployment rose above three million, and by 1981 her approval rating sank to 25%. Her response: “To those waiting with bated breath for that favorite media catch phrase, the U-turn, I have only one thing to say. You turn if you want to . . . the lady’s not for turning.” Wanted: Leaders Like We Used to Have Ron Ashkenas Contributor 20 images Photos: The Most Powerful Women In Politics, 2012 Soon the economy began to improve, and then she boosted Britain’s morale by responding to Argentina ‘s 1982 invasion of the Falklands Islands with swift and decisive military force. She broke the backs of labor unions whose power she felt was suffocating the British economy, and she allowed residents of council homes, public housing, to buy their houses, giving millions a new part in the economy. People loved her or hated her. Her unyielding toughness with IRA hunger strikers alienated many who felt she drove protesters in Ireland to violence. She could be very wrong as well as right: She insisted after the fall of the Berlin Wall that an attempt to unite East and West Germany was doomed to failure. She was, depending on your view, either the triumphant champion or the pitiless enforcer of rough, unfettered capitalism. That is why she was a revolutionary leader. She was all about powerfully held principles. She summed up her philosophy in a 1987 interview: “I think we have gone through a period when too many children and people have been given to understand “I have a problem, it is the government’s job to cope with it!” or “I have a problem, I will go and get a grant to cope with it!”; “I am homeless, the government must house me!” and so they are casting their problems on society and who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families, and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first. It is our duty to look after ourselves and then also to help look after our neighbour and life is a reciprocal business and people have got the entitlements too much in mind without the obligations.

Apple Dividend: Bad Earnings Band-Aid or Good Earnings Accelerant

March 19, the first anniversary of Apple’s 2012 dividend announcement, came and went without remark from the company, let alone the 56 percent increase in that dividend some analysts were predicting. And now, as it heads towards its next earnings report, scheduled for release on April 23, questions are emerging about Apple’s intent in delaying word on its dividend. Could the company’s silence about its capital allocation plan be an indicator of bad earnings news in the pipeline? Is Apple planning to use news of a dividend increase as a poultice for a share price bruised by some disappointing financials? That’s a theory that’s been growing legs in recent weeks. If Apple were to report March results below its guidance on April 23, bundling those numbers with an increase to its shareholder dividend could take some of the sting out of them. “The lack of announcement [has] increased speculation that the company is planning to package the good news of a new capital plan with the bad news of the quarter or even worse … fears of a pre-announcement,” BTIG analyst Walter Piecyk explains . “Even the contemplation that the management team would stoop to packaging good news with weak results should be disappointing enough to investors that have considered this company as ‘different’ and above the cosmetic games played by far too many management teams.” Certainly a plausible theory. And it may well be that we see it play out on the 23rd. Or not. Apple recently changed the way it provides earnings forecasts, moving from a conservative point estimate of results that it had reasonable confidence in achieving to a range of guidance that it feels it’s likely to achieve. And that’s the big wild card in the company’s next earnings report. If that shift in guidance succeeded in lowering analysts’ expectations to a more reasonable level for the March quarter, it’s entirely possible that Apple will meet them — assuming that it meets its own forecast. Note that Apple’s guidance for the quarter it will soon report was for $41 billion to $43 billion, and there are a few analysts calling for it come in below that. So, if Apple reports in that range — or surpasses it — it’s good news. And if it announces a dividend at the same time? Well, that’s very good news, indeed. It’s just the sort of propellant Apple’s share price needs right about now. And something very different from the “cosmetic game” some folks fear the company will play.

Nokia Lumia Phone Gets Plowed Over, but Still Answers the Call

Nokia may have taken a beating in the press in the past couple of years, but it appears that the company hasn’t stopped cranking out phones that can take a beating. According to a Finnish newspaper report, a Lumia 920 phone was recently run over by a 24-ton earth mover. Although its screen was battered — and the phone’s frame bent a little out of shape — the device was still able to make and receive calls . “Before any Nokia device is released to the world, they undergo a series of quality tests to ensure they stand up to the wear and tear of everyday usage. Tests for extreme weather, humidity, and repeated drops onto a hard surface are the norm,” a Nokia representative told AllThingsD . “I guess you can add being run over by a 24-ton tractor to that list.”

Twitter, hate speech, and the costs of keeping quiet

Last month was a bittersweet seventh birthday for Twitter. The Union of Jewish French Students sued the social-media giant for $50 million in a French court in light of anti- Semitic tweets that caried the hashtag # unbonjuif (“a good Jew”). In January, Twitter agreed to delete the tweets, but the student group now wants the identities of the users who sent the anti-Semitic messages so that they can be prosecuted under French law against hate speech. Twitter is resisting. It claims that as an American company protected by the First Amendment, it does not have to aid government efforts to control offensive speech. Internationally, America is considered radical for protecting speech that is highly offensive. But even in the U.S., Twitter should not be surprised to discover ambivalence and even outright hostility toward its principled aversion to censorship, especially in that once great institution for the open exchange of ideas: American higher education. “Hate speech” is constitutionally protected in the United States. But the push against “hurtful” and “blasphemous” speech (primarily speech offensive to Islam) is gaining ground throughout the world. Last fall, for example, when many thought a YouTube video that satirized Mohammed caused a spontaneous attack on our consulate in Benghazi, academics across the country rushed to chide America for its expansive protections of speech. And as someone who has spent more than a decade fighting censorship on American college campuses, I run into antagonism toward free speech on a regular basis, most recently last month, when I spoke at Columbia Law School. After my speech, law professor Frederick Schauer criticized his American colleagues for not being more skeptical about the principle of free speech itself. Forcing hate speech underground by banning it is like taking Xanax for syphilis. You may briefly feel better about your horrible disease, but your sickness will only get worse. This has become a fairly standard refrain, in my experience, as academics who want to limit free speech often paint themselves as a beleaguered, enlightened minority struggling against the unquestioned dogma of free speech. Free speech is certainly alive in U.S. courts. For example, since 1989 more than a dozen courts have declared different politically correct college speech codes unconstitutional. Nevertheless, the idea that hurtful or offensive speech should be banned prevails on American campuses: approximately 63 percent of over 400 top colleges maintain codes ( PDF) that violate First Amendment principles. Meanwhile, prominent professors, such as Jeremy Waldron and Richard Delgado , attempt to seize the moral high ground for “enlightened censorship,” and some students even paint themselves as heroes for tearing down campus “free speech walls.” What strikes me about the arguments academics make against free speech is how shallow they tend to be. The critics somehow miss that First Amendment jurisprudence is an extraordinarily thoughtful exposition on what limits are appropriate in a free and diverse society — and, contrary to the meme of America’s mindless approach to speech, there are limits (including, for example, libel, as well as threats or incitement to imminent illegal action). The authors of the Constitution also realized that people — flawed, imperfect humans, with biases, blind spots, shortcomings, and agendas — will decide what speech is and is not acceptable. Part of the wisdom of First Amendment law is that it recognizes that we flawed humans will be tempted to ban speech for no better reason than that officials (or voters) simply dislike or disapprove of an idea or a particular speaker. That’s why First Amendment doctrine forbids the use of highly subjective standards, which would invite arbitrary punishment of dissenters, oddballs, satirists, or the misunderstood. Too many scholars seem to think a robot could simply apply such standards to produce a perfect outcome every time. A common academic argument against free speech relies on the idea that the primary, if not sole, justification for freedom of speech is that it is necessary in order for society to discover “objective truth” — what I will call “Big T” Truth. But now, so the fashionable argument goes, the academy has found that objective truth does not exist, so we are free to regulate harmful, hurtful, or hateful speech because the benefit of unfettered speech — revelation of Truth — is illusory. (A revealing preview of today’s anti-free speech arguments can be found in the oft-overlooked dissent to Yale’s famous 1975 pro-free speech, pro- academic freedom “Woodward Report” [ PDF].) The idea that society achieves something positive by mandating that people with bad opinions must hide them, or discuss them only in forums of the like-minded, is not only extraordinarily naive, it can be dangerous. Bigots driven into echo chambers may only become more extreme. No doubt the open, anarchical, epistemological system that was celebrated in the Enlightenment — which Jonathan Rauch dubbed “liberal science” in his classic work on the value of freedom of speech, “Kindly Inquisitors” — has resulted in a flowering of creative and scientific thought. It has helped reveal what we consider to be objective facts (e.g., the Earth is an oblate spheroid; gravity is a fundamental force). But the free exchange of ideas benefits society not only by unearthing “Big T” truths; more importantly, it continually exposes mundane yet important pieces of information about the world. I will call this “Little t” truth. “Little t” truths include: who disagrees about what and why, what people feel about a particular issue, what events the newspapers think are important to report. The fact that “Argo” is a movie is truth, whether or not it represents an accurate view of history, as is the fact that some topics of discussion interest no one, while others are radioactive. Twitter provides a powerful way to view the world. Never before have human beings been able to check the global zeitgeist with such immediacy and on such a massive scale. Its primary service is not to dispense the Platonic ideal of Truth (“the form of beauty = x”), but rather to provide unparalleled access to the peculiar thoughts, ideas, misconceptions, genuine wisdom, fetishes, fads, jokes, obsessions, and problems of a vast sea of people from different cultures, classes, countries, and backgrounds. In order to be an effective mirror to global society, Twitter thinks of itself primarily as a platform and does its best to get out of the way. Therefore, we know things we simply would not know otherwise — from the trivial to the serious. The people who want to scour mass media and cleanse it of all hateful or hurtful opinions miss that their purge would deny us important knowledge. Simply put, it is far better to know that there are bigots among us than to pretend all is well. As Harvey Silverglate, co-founder of FIRE (the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, where I serve as president), likes to say, he supports free speech because he thinks it’s important that he know if there’s an anti- Semite in the room so he can make sure not to turn his back to that person. The idea that society achieves something positive by mandating that people with bad opinions must hide them, or discuss them only in forums of the like-minded, is not only extraordinarily naive, it can be dangerous. Bigots driven into echo chambers may only become more extreme, as discussed in Cass Sunstein’s book, “Going to Extremes.” Meanwhile, what does society gain from such quarantining? A coerced but false silence that, if anything at all, plays into the hands of the paranoid and dangerous who already believe that there is a global conspiracy to shut them up. Forcing hate speech underground by banning it is like taking Xanax for syphilis. You may briefly feel better about your horrible disease, but your sickness will only get worse. Simply making bigoted speech illegal results in two distortions of reality. First, it can create an overly rosy picture of public sentiment, thus preventing real and festering social problems from being addressed. Or second, paradoxically, it may lead people to believe that they live in a far less tolerant society than they actually do. John L. Jackson, an anthropology professor at the University of Pennsylvania, teased out this idea in his 2008 book “Racial Paranoia: The Unintended Consequences of Political Correctness .” Jackson argues that if a minority group believes that only the threats of formal or informal punishments are preventing people from constantly shouting racial slurs at the top of their lungs, the minority may conclude that those other people are far more hateful and bigoted than they may, in fact, be. In this way, attempts to police hateful or hurtful speech may be making people more paranoid than they need to be about the feelings most people actually hold in their hearts. The only lasting fix to the real problem of racism or anti-Semitism is cultural. A necessarily incomplete attempt to suppress bigotry may well have far worse unintended consequences, as legal regimes that try to ban hate speech drive social resentments underground, thus preventing the right allocation of resources to address social problems openly. Twitter lets us see people as they are — a mixed lot on any given day, to be sure. But it is especially important for a free society to learn not just the good news but the bad news as well.

Move Over, Apple and Google: Apperating Systems Are Taking Over Your Phones

Last week’s Facebook announcement was not much of a surprise. Everyone knew Zuck & Co. were out to invade Android, offering big, blue and white thumbs to stamp on every aspect of a user’s mobile experience. Sure, Chatheads are neat, and coverflow looks pretty. But Facebook Home, in and of itself, isn’t that big of a deal . What it represents, however, is huge. We’re calling Home an apperating system, one of a new breed of software platforms that sit between operating systems and apps. Apperating systems are coming —in a major way. Facebook Home is the most fully realized apperating system yet, enveloping the underlying Google Android operating system with a radical new look and augmenting it with important and genuinely useful new social features, all while preserving perfect compatibility with Android apps, including anything you might download through the bundled Google Play app store. It proves that a mobile platform can be custom tailored for a particular audience or context without sacrificing power and extensibility. But Facebook Home is hardly the first of its class. Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablet contains probably the most prominent apperating system, a suite of apps and Android customizations developed by Amazon engineers. Software makers have also developed platform layers on top of Apple’s iOS, a system that offers far fewer opportunities for integration than Google’s famously customizable Android. As apperating systems spread and improve, they will help Android and iOS better serve niche audiences and serve as labs for features that migrate back to the host system and into general use. At the same time, they’ll raise thorny questions about the appropriate balance of power between operating system vendors like Google and Apple on the one hand and app makers like Facebook and Amazon on the other. A slide from the Facebook Home launch event shows how Facebook Home sits between the Android operating system and apps — i.e., it’s an apperating system. Photo: Alex Washburn/Wired More so than Facebook Home, the Kindle Fire already seems to be pushing the limits of the operating system/apperating system relationship. The Fire ejects Google’s digital store, Google’s browser, and Google’s email client from Google’s own operating system, replacing them with Amazon-native alternatives. Unlike with Facebook Home, installing core Google services like the Google Play app store and basic Android apps involves hacking the device and voiding your warranty. Still, Facebook Home makes its own big changes to the default Android experience. Most significantly, it buries most Android apps several clicks away from the home screen, meaning they are less likely to be used — or even discovered — by consumers. Facebook content and advertisements, meanwhile, will get top billing, appearing even when a user has the phone or tablet locked. These system tweaks could mean a big loss of revenue for Google. The company spends heavily to develop Android but freely shares the source code, betting that the operating system will usually be distributed in the default, Google-approved configuration, in which it is bundled with Google’s suite of proprietary apps like Gmail, Chrome, and Google Maps. These apps, rather than Android per se, are where the money comes from; once in use, they begin displaying advertisements funneled into the device by Google, ads that can be carefully targeted based on factors like location. Undermining the link between Android and Google’s proprietary apps, as Facebook Home and Kindle Fire do, upsets the Android business model. Apple’s tightly-controlled iOS faces its own subversives. A proprietary, locked-down system, iOS isn’t nearly as customizable as Android. But Apple’s restrictions have only fueled the rise of Dropbox, a third-party system that allows data to be more easily shared between apps, silo-ed off from one another within iOS, via Dropbox servers. Originally designed to sync files between desktop computers, Dropbox has become “the linchpin in the workflow” for Apple’s iPad, in the words of Apple fan John Gruber, thanks to the fact that a great many iPad productivity apps have added Dropbox sharing hooks. Normally, apps on iOS are locked into their own sandboxed portion of a device’s local flash storage, meaning they can’t read files written by other apps or by the same app on a different device. If you have a Dropbox account, however, apps can send data over the internet to your global Dropbox folder, assuming the apps are Dropbox enabled, and read data from that same folder. If you install the Dropbox app, you can even use it to send files to apps that aren’t Dropbox enabled, like Apple’s Pages. Also on iOS, Google has launched its own constellation of apps that share data with one another, including Google+, Snapseed, Gmail, Google Maps, Google Talk, and Google Voice. Many, like Gmail and Google Maps, are arguably the best in their class on iOS, and together they form a sort of apperating system. Apperating systems can find themselves in conflict with the operating systems on which they are based. If they add a useful capability, as Dropbox does, the operating system might try and co-opt their functionality, as Apple’s own iCloud has tried (poorly) to do with Dropbox. If they undermine the goals of the operating system vendor, meanwhile, they might find themselves banned, as when Apple tried to block certain Google apps from its iOS store (federal regulators eventually intervened) Because of this inherent tension, Facebook executives faced a barrage of questions this week over whether Google would find a way to lock Home out of Android in future versions. “Anything can change in the future, but we think Google takes their commitment to openness in this ecosystem really seriously,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told assembled members of the press. “Their operating system really is designed from the ground up to support these things. It is theoretically possible that they go back on their commitment to openness, but I don’t think they will. It would take a lot of really concerted effort to change the rules of something like this and make the system different… It would be a complete 180 on their philosophy and promise of openness.” Of course, revenue threats have a way, historically, of undermining prior commitments in the tech world. The best way for apperating systems to protect themselves isn’t to collect promises but to make themselves indispensable to users. Dropbox is well on its way; whether Facebook Home and Kindle Fire ever become quite so essential remains to be seen.

Move Over, Apple and Google: Apperating Systems Are Taking Over Your Phones

Last week’s Facebook announcement was not much of a surprise. Everyone knew Zuck & Co. were out to invade Android, offering big, blue and white thumbs to stamp on every aspect of a user’s mobile experience. Sure, Chatheads are neat, and coverflow looks pretty. But Facebook Home, in and of itself, isn’t that big of a deal . What it represents, however, is huge. We’re calling Home an apperating system, one of a new breed of software platforms that sit between operating systems and apps. Apperating systems are coming —in a major way. Facebook Home is the most fully realized apperating system yet, enveloping the underlying Google Android operating system with a radical new look and augmenting it with important and genuinely useful new social features, all while preserving perfect compatibility with Android apps, including anything you might download through the bundled Google Play app store. It proves that a mobile platform can be custom tailored for a particular audience or context without sacrificing power and extensibility. But Facebook Home is hardly the first of its class. Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablet contains probably the most prominent apperating system, a suite of apps and Android customizations developed by Amazon engineers. Software makers have also developed platform layers on top of Apple’s iOS, a system that offers far fewer opportunities for integration than Google’s famously customizable Android. As apperating systems spread and improve, they will help Android and iOS better serve niche audiences and serve as labs for features that migrate back to the host system and into general use. At the same time, they’ll raise thorny questions about the appropriate balance of power between operating system vendors like Google and Apple on the one hand and app makers like Facebook and Amazon on the other. A slide from the Facebook Home launch event shows how Facebook Home sits between the Android operating system and apps — i.e., it’s an apperating system. Photo: Alex Washburn/Wired More so than Facebook Home, the Kindle Fire already seems to be pushing the limits of the operating system/apperating system relationship. The Fire ejects Google’s digital store, Google’s browser, and Google’s email client from Google’s own operating system, replacing them with Amazon-native alternatives. Unlike with Facebook Home, installing core Google services like the Google Play app store and basic Android apps involves hacking the device and voiding your warranty. Still, Facebook Home makes its own big changes to the default Android experience. Most significantly, it buries most Android apps several clicks away from the home screen, meaning they are less likely to be used — or even discovered — by consumers. Facebook content and advertisements, meanwhile, will get top billing, appearing even when a user has the phone or tablet locked. These system tweaks could mean a big loss of revenue for Google. The company spends heavily to develop Android but freely shares the source code, betting that the operating system will usually be distributed in the default, Google-approved configuration, in which it is bundled with Google’s suite of proprietary apps like Gmail, Chrome, and Google Maps. These apps, rather than Android per se, are where the money comes from; once in use, they begin displaying advertisements funneled into the device by Google, ads that can be carefully targeted based on factors like location. Undermining the link between Android and Google’s proprietary apps, as Facebook Home and Kindle Fire do, upsets the Android business model. Apple’s tightly-controlled iOS faces its own subversives. A proprietary, locked-down system, iOS isn’t nearly as customizable as Android. But Apple’s restrictions have only fueled the rise of Dropbox, a third-party system that allows data to be more easily shared between apps, silo-ed off from one another within iOS, via Dropbox servers. Originally designed to sync files between desktop computers, Dropbox has become “the linchpin in the workflow” for Apple’s iPad, in the words of Apple fan John Gruber, thanks to the fact that a great many iPad productivity apps have added Dropbox sharing hooks. Normally, apps on iOS are locked into their own sandboxed portion of a device’s local flash storage, meaning they can’t read files written by other apps or by the same app on a different device. If you have a Dropbox account, however, apps can send data over the internet to your global Dropbox folder, assuming the apps are Dropbox enabled, and read data from that same folder. If you install the Dropbox app, you can even use it to send files to apps that aren’t Dropbox enabled, like Apple’s Pages. Also on iOS, Google has launched its own constellation of apps that share data with one another, including Google+, Snapseed, Gmail, Google Maps, Google Talk, and Google Voice. Many, like Gmail and Google Maps, are arguably the best in their class on iOS, and together they form a sort of apperating system. Apperating systems can find themselves in conflict with the operating systems on which they are based. If they add a useful capability, as Dropbox does, the operating system might try and co-opt their functionality, as Apple’s own iCloud has tried (poorly) to do with Dropbox. If they undermine the goals of the operating system vendor, meanwhile, they might find themselves banned, as when Apple tried to block certain Google apps from its iOS store (federal regulators eventually intervened) Because of this inherent tension, Facebook executives faced a barrage of questions this week over whether Google would find a way to lock Home out of Android in future versions. “Anything can change in the future, but we think Google takes their commitment to openness in this ecosystem really seriously,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told assembled members of the press. “Their operating system really is designed from the ground up to support these things. It is theoretically possible that they go back on their commitment to openness, but I don’t think they will. It would take a lot of really concerted effort to change the rules of something like this and make the system different… It would be a complete 180 on their philosophy and promise of openness.” Of course, revenue threats have a way, historically, of undermining prior commitments in the tech world. The best way for apperating systems to protect themselves isn’t to collect promises but to make themselves indispensable to users. Dropbox is well on its way; whether Facebook Home and Kindle Fire ever become quite so essential remains to be seen.

HTC March revenue up 40% compared to February, still down nearly 50% year-over-year

As usual around this time, smartphone and tablet maker HTC released its monthly consolidated revenue numbers for the month before. At first look, they don’t look too bad, but don’t be fooled. The Taiwanese company reports sales in March 2013 of NT$15,88 billion (roughly $530 million). Compared to the month before, that’s an admirable increase of nearly 40 percent. Don’t break out the champagne just yet, though, because February sales were phenomenally bad (NT$11.37 billion or approximately $384 million) and in fact the lowest monthly sales HTC had reported in three full years. Delivering worse results would have actually been a challenge, and it’s worth noting that HTC was in a far better financial position around this time last year. Compared to March 2012, HTC’s revenue for last month fell 48.57 percent, the worst YoY drop the company’s seen since October 2012. Update: And, as Bloomberg points out, HTC posted its lowest quarterly profit (NT$85 million or $2.8 million) on record during the first fiscal quarter of this year, a staggering 98 percent drop compared to the first quarter last year. Revenue for Q1 2013 fell 37 percent year-over-year. Bloomberg also reports that the company is struggling with delayed shipments of its HTC One smartphone in ‘key markets’. Thus, the numbers still paint a bleak picture for HTC, which is struggling to compete against Apple, Samsung and others in the ultra-competitive global smart devices race. HTC hopes that the upcoming HTC One and ‘Facebook phone’ HTC First will turn things around, but it’s facing an increasingly uphill battle. HTC’s audited Q1 2013 results will tell us a lot more about just how uphill.

Sponsors Now Pay for Online Articles, Not Just Ads

Articles in a series on Mashable.com called “What’s Inside” looked for all the world like the hundreds of other articles on the digital media site. But journalistically, they were something very different. Enlarge This Image Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times Lance Ulanoff, Mashable’s editor in chief. Enlarge This Image Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times Pete Pachal of Mashable wrote about Google Glass for a sponsor. The articles, about technology topics in a wide variety of products, including modems and the Hubble Space Telescope, were paid for by Snapdragon, a brand of processor chip made by Qualcomm, and the sponsor of the series. Most were even written by Mashable editorial employees. An article on Google Glass technology was shared almost 2,000 times on social media, indicating that readers may not have cared, or known, if it was journalism or sponsored content, although the series was identified as such. Advertisers and publishers have many names for this new form of marketing — including branded content, sponsored content and native advertising. Regardless of the name, the strategy of having advertisers sponsor or create content that looks like traditional editorial content has become increasingly common as publishers try to create more sources of revenue. Calculating what advertisers spend on such content industrywide is difficult because of the many ways the content is defined and sold. A banner ad on one home page may be comparable in price with a similar banner ad on a different site, but a series of customized articles on one Web site and a series of social media posts on another are harder to compare. Well-known online publications like The Huffington Post, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, BuzzFeed and Business Insider all use some form of branded content. A result is a media universe where it is increasingly difficult for readers to tell editorial content from advertising. “Brands are everywhere, and brands have now leaked into what has been traditionally the editorial space,” said David Hallerman an analyst at eMarketer, “not just the content but the look and feel of the content.” The Huffington Post has struck partnerships with brands like Johnson & Johnson and Cisco Systems to sponsor a topic, like women and children or the impact of technology, for Web pages that pair content written by the brand and content written by Huffington Post reporters independently. Business Insider now offers sponsored slide shows beside its editorial content. The Atlantic recently apologized after running a branded feature written in support of the Church of Scientology. Publishers are largely being driven to support the use of sponsored content because of fewer people clicking on banner ads, the abundance of advertising space and other factors make it more difficult to make money from traditional online advertising. As advertising technology becomes more sophisticated, ads can be bought and sold at cheaper rates across the Web . Often they are ignored by the very customers advertisers are trying to reach. “There was a period where newspapers had monopolies, and they made money,” said Jonah Peretti, the co-founder and chief executive of BuzzFeed at a digital advertising conference in February. “Now what we are faced with is a very different industry that has shifted, and we need to elevate advertising.” One of the biggest users of sponsored content, BuzzFeed is well known for its reliance on quirky articles like “20 Baby Animals Say Hello to Spring ” and “This Is the Greatest Sports GIF of 2013.” Brands like Dunkin’ Donuts and General Electric have contributed their versions of BuzzFeed content with articles like “10 Lifechanging Ways to Make Your Day More Efficient ” and “ 18 People Who Will Not Be Stopped .” Forbes has worked with about two dozen brands in its two-year venture into branded content. Articles written by FedEx employees for the site have focused on small businesses. Other articles have competed for space on the most-e-mailed list for the site. Michael S. Perlis, the president and chief executive of Forbes Media, said the brands are never allowed to make a direct pitch to consumers in their articles. “It is, in fact, content,” Mr. Perlis said. “It’s not advertising. Its about big issues that relate to thought leadership.” Newspapers for years have run special sections to appeal to advertisers, and almost all of the publishers running branded content say they abide by the traditional church-and-state separation — news on one side of the wall, advertising on the other. But the sponsored content runs beside the editorial on many sites and is almost indistinguishable. The content can be ranked on the sites and shared on social media just like any other article. The Mashable staff said that, despite having a sponsor, the articles they write are editorial content. “These are not advertorials,” said Lance Ulanoff, the editor in chief at Mashable. “I know what an advertorial is. These are pure editorial.” The “What’s Inside” articles are surrounded by ads for Snapdragon. To the right of the articles are modules where readers can “like” the Snapdragon page or read Twitter posts from the brand. A paragraph telling readers that the section is being “presented” by Qualcomm Snapdragon processors also explains how the Snapdragon technology allows users to “seamlessly switch from app to app, enjoy breathtaking download speeds, and you’ll most likely run out of juice before your battery does.” Stacy Martinet, the chief marketing officer at Mashable, said brands want to be aligned with a specific theme, in this case sophisticated technology. And that readers want articles about it. “Mashable is working with brands to write content that aligns with our audience and what they want and aligns with the brand’s value,” said Ms. Martinet, who has worked for The New York Times. Some of that content has been in the most-read articles, she said. The sponsorships also let the company finance longer form articles, said Lauren Drell, a campaigns editor at Mashable. “Because we treat this very much like editorial they don’t feel like they are shilling for a brand,” she said of the reporters. “They actually get excited about the content because it’s something that they want to do in the day to day but they can’t do it.” Mashable’s journalists write on average five to eight short articles a day for the site. The price for a sponsored series can run close to six figures. In their articles, the writers are not allowed to write about the brand specifically, or any of its competitors, Ms. Martinet said. Brands that want too much say over the content by, for example, putting their product in an article, will be turned down, she said. Pete Pachal, a technology editor at Mashable who wrote the Google Glass piece in the Snapdragon series, said the writers have no contact with the series sponsors. “There’s always people with conspiracy theories,” he said, responding to a question about whether editorial staff should write articles in sponsored series. “The article isn’t even about the brands or what their products are, so you’re not even entering that territory.” Not everyone agrees. “I am aghast at this,” said Andrew Sullivan , a writer and the former editor of The New Republic and blogger for The Daily Beast. Readers do not pay attention to the names of people who write articles, he said. “Your average reader isn’t interested in that. They don’t realize they are being fed corporate propaganda.”