iPhone 15 and USB-C: Expect a Cable Mess, but It Might Not Bug You - "the iPhone 15 will ship with a USB-C port and charging cable that'll give customers a taste of the trouble. That cable reportedly will be fine for charging but will transfer data at a mere 480 megabits per second, the poky speed that arrived with the USB 2.0 standard from 2000. During its launch event, Apple conspicuously avoided saying anything about how fast the iPhone 15 USB-C port is, but the spec sheet says it's only the slow USB 2.0. The iPhone 15 Pro models will work at the more useful 10Gpbs speed of USB 3... USB-C is a much faster, more useful connection technology than the Apple Lightning port iPhone users have had since 2012... Part of the problem with USB is that the term actually refers to three separate standards. Let me explain. The original standard, Universal Serial Bus, governs how devices identify themselves and send data across a connection... The next standard is USB-C, which refers only to the oval-shaped connector technology... Last is USB PD, short for Power Delivery, which governs how USB is used for charging at rates up to 240 watts. Most devices don't require that much power, but they do need to know how to negotiate electrical matters -- for example, whether a portable battery should charge your laptop or vice versa. Having three standards -- USB, USB-C and USB PD -- makes it harder to understand the abilities of all your devices and cables. Worse, plenty of device manufacturers trying to cut costs and quickly ship products skip the certification process that the USB Implementers Forum offers. Unlike with Intel's Thunderbolt, which developed the fast data transfer approach in modern USB, there's no requirement to pass tests."
Meme - "BOSS, FROM TOMORROW, I'LL GO HOME AT 6 SHARP DAILY"
"WHY? WHAT HAPPENED?"
"SIR, MY SALARY IS NOT ENOUGH. I NEED TO DRIVE GRAB AT NIGHT. I HAVE TO SUPPORT MY FAMILY."
"OK. GO AHEAD. BUT IF YOU FEEL HUNGRY AT NIGHT, COME TO BUKIT BINTANG."
"WHY sIR?"
"SATAY?"
Meme - "Privacy no longer a social norm, says Facebook founder"
"Mark Zuckerberg Just Spent More Than $30 Million Buying 4 Neighboring Houses For Privacy"
Impact of social economic development on personality traits among Chinese college students: A cross-temporal meta-analysis, 2001–2016 - "The past decades have witnessed the greatest economic growth and social transformation in China, which have brought about radical changes in society and people's life, which could influence their psychological aspects. In this study, we investigated birth cohort changes in the Big Five personality traits among Chinese college students during 2001–2016, and found a positive trend for multiple traits across years, namely, neuroticism, extraversion, openness, and conscientiousness, while agreeableness did not show obvious changes. In addition, the GDP growth rate of each province moderated the linear changes in personality traits with time, as we found that personality changes were more obvious in areas where GDP growth was relatively faster. Moreover, from the representational similarity perspective, there was significant similarity between the similarity pattern of the Big Five personality across years and the similarity of years, which was mediated by similarity in population growth."
Neuroticism is a First World Problem
Meme - "YOUR INTERNET IS SLOW? YOU MERELY ADOPTED SLOW INTERNET. I WAS BORN IN IT, MOLDED BY IT. I DID NOT SEE BROADBRAND UNTIL I WAS ALREADY A MAN."
It's housing that's killing productivity - "Both Burgess and Kohler are spot on in targeting Australia’s housing obsession, which has manifested in inflated land values. Land is a key input cost for most businesses. So when costs are inflated, it reduces the competitiveness of industry, making it harder for Australia to compete abroad. The associated higher housing costs also places upward pressure on wages. For decades, resource allocation has been channeled away from the tradable sector and infrastructure investment towards the financial sector, as home buyers have taken on ever-bigger mortgages as they chased house prices higher. It should be no surprise that the finance and insurance industries – which are dominated by mortgage lending – have grown at more than twice the pace of the rest of the economy since financial markets were deregulated in the mid-1980s, due in part to the housing quango operated by the various levels of government... Australia’s housing obsession has also starved productive sectors of the economy of credit. In the early 1990s, Australia’s banks lent nearly two-thirds to businesses, with the balance split between housing and personal lending. However, after the mid-1990s explosion of housing values, these ratios have reversed, with housing lending dominating at the expense of businesses... To add insult to injury, much of the boom in mortgage lending has been funded by heavy offshore borrowing by Australia’s banks, in turn driving-up Australia’s net foreign debt... my fellow blogger, Cameron Murray, has estimated that a considerable slice of Australia’s declining multi-factor productivity has resulted from escalating land prices"
From 2014
Canada's standard of living is falling behind: TD - "“Economic growth does not necessarily equate to economic prosperity,” TD economist Marc Ercolao wrote... Canada’s economic output per person (real GDP per capita) has actually been decreasing for many years. Back in the 1980s, the report points out, Canada was doing better than the average of advanced economies by about US$4,000 per person. Over time, however, the advantage faded, and the U.S. jumped to US$8,000 a person... Ercolao writes that the 2014-15 oil shock led to a worsened economic performance... the decline is largely related to productivity. Regions like Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Newfoundland and Labrador, where the economy relies heavily on the exchange of commodities, used to have the highest GDP per person, TD says. Over the past ten years, however, their lead has been challenged. Following the pandemic, only B.C. and P.E.I. have been able to raise their GDP per person levels they had in the years prior to COVID-19"
Canada's worst decade for real economic growth since the 1930s - "Together, exports of goods and business investment in plant and equipment account for fully 37 per cent of our economy. When over one-third of an economy contracts over an eight-year period, overall economic growth is bound to be hit hard. But that’s especially true for investment and exports, which contain Canada’s most productive and innovative technologies: they have to, they face the most pressure to compete and innovate. (As Statcan puts it, “exposure to foreign markets and improvements in productivity go hand in hand.”) Slumping business investment in Canada is a particular concern. There is growing understanding that Canada has wasted a decade of low interest rates on government debt and housing and not enough in business investment. Low levels of investment since 2014 resulted in an outright decline in investment per worker, from $16,000 in 2014 to $11,900 in 2021. The long-run implications of falling capital-to-worker ratios are worrisome. “In the long run,” Stern School of Business Professor Thomas Philippon reminds us in his book The Great Reversal, “GDP and the capital stock tend to grow at the same rate.” Beyond their direct impact on growth, the persistent slumps in business investment and exports point to structural shortcomings in Canada’s economy, including low rates of business formation, policy uncertainty, regulatory barriers to investment (especially in the resource sector), restrictions on internal trade, faltering confidence among foreign investors and low levels of productivity and innovation."
Opinion: The shocking collapse in Canadian productivity: in spite of the Liberals’ best efforts, or because of them? - The Globe and Mail - "Canada’s economic problem is no longer slow or slowing productivity growth. It is declining productivity, in absolute terms – and not occasionally, or tentatively, but steadily, and without much prospect for improvement. The latest figures from Statistics Canada show that labour productivity – measured by real GDP per hour worked – fell again in the first quarter of 2023, for the 10th time in 11 quarters. Much of that decline, of course, is simply a return to trend, after the artificial spike in productivity observed during the lockdown. But productivity has not just fallen back to prepandemic levels: that adjustment was already complete by 2021. Rather, it has continued to fall since then, to a level that is now lower than at any time since 2017... The problem is not that we have too much labour, but too little capital – machinery and equipment – for labour to work with. As a recent study for the C.D. Howe Institute has shown, the alarming deterioration in our already poor productivity performance closely tracks the extraordinary collapse in business investment in Canada in recent years – to levels that are not only lower than in other countries (the study estimates new capital per worker in Canada at less than $15,000 in 2022, compared to $20,000 in other OECD countries and almost $28,000 in the United States), but lower than the amount required to replace existing capital as it wears out or grows obsolete. As a result, the study’s authors write, “the real stock of capital per worker has been on a downward trend since 2015 – a deterioration unlike anything since these measures began.” Surely the most remarkable part of this performance, however, is that it has occurred under a party that came to power promising to boost Canada’s economic growth after what it decried as a lost decade under the hands-off, austerity-driven policies of the previous government. In the short term, it ran deficits to “kickstart” the economy (who could forget the multiplier estimates in that first budget, of three and four dollars in GDP for every dollar in government spending?). But it was in the longer term that it would set itself apart, as an advocate of the sort of modern, forward-looking industrial policy that sensible people agreed was needed to move Canada onto a permanently higher growth track – using the levers of government to “make big bets” on industries of the future, invest in productivity-enhancing infrastucture, and generally drive innovation and “grow the economy.” No one can say they failed to deliver on the policies. A short list would include the Canada Infrastructure Bank; the “superclusters” program, designed to create world-beating hives of activity in selected sectors in cities across Canada; Innovative Solutions Canada, a program to boost startups through government procurement; the Strategic Innovation Fund; the various government-sponsored venture-capital funds administered by the Business Development Bank; all the way to the Canada Growth Fund, the Canada Innovation Corporation (the renamed Canadian Innovation and Investment Agency), and the massive subsidies for battery manufacturers of more recent budgets. All those agencies, all those acronyms, all those billions, and what is the result? Falling capital stock, falling productivity and falling relative living standards – year after year after year. I can’t imagine a more perfect test of Liberal economic theories, or a more complete failure."
Matthew Lau: Canadian governments are spending us into misery - "In stark contrast to recent years of rising government spending, miserable economic growth and declining business investment, Canada actually led the G7 in the growth of both real GDP growth and business investment from 1997 to 2007. These positive outcomes were achieved on the heels of significant spending cuts by the federal government and many of the provinces; notably, Saskatchewan and Alberta, whose governments drastically reduced spending and whose citizens greatly benefited from increases to investment, economic growth and living standards. A key to this success was that spending cuts left more resources to the private sector and enabled tax cuts, particularly in business taxes, which do the most economic damage. By contrast, governments today accompany their rapid spending increases with higher taxes. The Trudeau government in particular is escalating its carbon tax annually and recently introduced special taxes targeting financial institutions in general, banks’ dividend income and corporate share buybacks — all of which discourage business investment and reduce economic productivity."
The U.S. poses a serious threat of enticing Canada's skilled workers to move south - "Canada appears to be going all-in on non-producing assets such as real estate, with residential investment accounting for a whopping 54 per cent of GDP growth in Canada in Q1 and 10.3 per cent of total GDP. This surpasses the 9.3 per cent garnered from business investment on non-residential structures, machinery and equipment, and intellectual property. Other important areas such as research and development are also being ignored. Canada is the only country in the G7 where R&D as a percentage of GDP has been on the decline over the past decade, according to Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) data, and that has only gained tremendous downward momentum over the past five years. Meanwhile, other economies like the U.S. are already seeing the benefits of diversifying their economies into highly competitive and disruptive sectors such as technology, robotics, automation and renewables. Simply look at the number and size of the tech companies within the S&P 500, representing 27.5 per cent of the index, whereas tech accounts for 10.3 per cent of the S&P/TSX composite and is dominated by one company: Shopify Inc. Unfortunately, instead of encouraging innovation, the Canadian federal government (both past and present) has allowed politics to drive policy by continually supporting poorly run companies simply because of the province they reside in. The Biden administration may be increasing tax rates, but it is at a level that wouldn’t apply to most Canadians considering a move south... income tax rates are quite similar across provinces, but that is not the case in the U.S., where some states have little to no income tax... the city of Hamilton is now more expensive than Los Angeles. Think about that for a second. Many younger highly skilled Canadians are simply priced out of their home markets when it comes to owning a home, but that’s not an issue in most U.S. cities, even those that are booming like Austin, Tex."
Increasing monopoly power poses a threat to Canada’s post-pandemic economic recovery - "The Competition Act has been criticized for failing to prevent acquisitions that allow large firms to eliminate competitive threats and solidify their dominance. As Canada’s competition watchdog, the Competition Bureau can review mergers to determine if they will be harmful to competition. But since its introduction in 1986, the bureau has only challenged 18 mergers and has never won a challenge on final judgment. The law also has a high bar for intervention in a merger, often favouring negotiated agreements that include concessions or remedies that address some of the competition concerns, but not necessarily all."
Young Canadians feeling the least satisfied with Canada: Nanos survey - " "Put this into context … the national report card right now would be a C. Canadians would give Canada a C on the satisfaction front. But for individuals that are under 35 years of age, that C grade drops to a D," said Nanos... "Young people are usually the most optimistic and positive because they're healthy, they're starting to get jobs and they're at the beginning of their earnings cycle … so those numbers for [young] Canadians and their level of satisfaction is absolutely brutal.""
Houston Woman Faces Jail for Screaming in Dubai - "Apopular social media influencer and truck driver from Texas has reportedly been stuck in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates for months after she was arrested for allegedly screaming in public. Police are believed to have confiscated her passport, meaning she cannot leave the country. Houston woman Tierra Allen could now face prison time after being charged with the alleged crime, her mom, Tina Baxter, told local news station FOX 26. The incident is said to have occurred during a dispute between the 29-year-old and a male employee at a car rental firm. Laws on conduct in public in the U.A.E are very different to those in the U.S. and the Department of State has warned Americans who consider visiting the predominantly Muslim country, that: "Public decency and morality laws throughout the U.A.E are much stricter than in the United States."... Allen, who is originally from San Diego, California, is known online for running a social media account across various platforms called The Sassy Trucker that documents her journeys."
She can try playing the race card, but that won't work there. They can throw the Islamophobia card back at her
- "Clinicians now use the word to describe almost any adversity. This change in usage is driven by a specific political agenda. “Trauma” has become a useful term for mental health practitioners who are involved in social justice activism, because it makes some of their core concerns, such as social inequality, seem more threatening and alarming. It is both true and unfortunate that some people have more difficult lives than others. But if we tell such people that they are traumatized victims will that improve their mental health? And is it even true?... Until recently, everyone knew what trauma meant. In the latest Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) , trauma is defined as a psychiatric disorder with unmistakable, extremely debilitating symptoms that are closer to those of psychosis than of depression. These symptoms can occur after people have been subjected to or have witnessed “actual or threatened death, serious injury or sexual violence” — things outside the realm of “normal human experience.” This does not include “more subtle and insidious” harms, such as racism or oppression (however morally wrong these may be). We should also question the idea that “painful and distressing” situations will necessarily “overwhelm people’s ability to cope.” This assumes that most people are fragile and powerless in the face of adversity. This simply isn’t true. Most humans (including children) are extremely resilient — even when they experience genuinely traumatic events. One 2008 study, for example, surveyed the subjective well-being of German nationals over a twenty-year period before, during, and after the death of a loved one. Around 60 per cent of the subjects dealt with the bereavement relatively well and recovered within a year. Another 20 per cent suffered considerably during the crisis period but returned to their previous levels of subjective well-being over the following 2–3 years. The remaining 20 per cent were still grieving many years later — but many of them had already reported suffering from mental health issues before the death occurred. The authors note that humans have a propensity to “return to a set-point of well-being relatively quickly after even the most aversive or auspicious life events.” Psychologists have known this since the 1970s... In fact, relatively few people suffer from trauma (traditionally defined), even among the most vulnerable populations. Rates of PTSD amongst addicts, for example, are lower than those of other mental health disorders. In one study, cited by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration (SAMHSA), the largest mental health services organization in the U.S., researchers looked at the prevalence of psychiatric disorders among a sample of chronic crack cocaine users in a poor community. While 24 per cent of the users had a diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder and 17.8 per cent suffered from depression, only 11.8 per cent had experienced PTSD. Interestingly, the researchers found that white drug users were more likely to suffer from mental health conditions than black drug users, which suggests that — contrary to the Drexel University statement cited above — trauma is not primarily the result of institutionalized racism... By this definition, a toddler who refuses to go to bed on time and whose emotional resources are “overwhelmed” by bedtime to the point of nightly tantrums could be said to be experiencing “trauma.” This broadening of the definition has naturally led to an increase in the numbers of people reporting trauma. The mental health profession has responded by offering trauma-informed care (TIC). According to SAMHSA, most of the more than 10,000 behavioral healthcare programs in the U.S. now provide TIC of some kind... Perhaps the worst aspect of this supposedly compassionate approach to mental health is a phenomenon I call therapeutic absolution. It allows therapists to effortlessly absolve their patients of responsibility for their own behavior. This is extremely unhelpful. Addicts, for example, have almost always caused considerable turmoil in both their own and other people’s lives. They need help to turn their lives around. They shouldn’t be told that “it is society that must change, not you.” In a recent article published by Edinburgh University Press, entitled “Trauma: An ideology in search of evidence,” Mark Smith, Claire Cameron and Sebastian Monteux argue that “The prominence given to trauma perspectives has potentially iatrogenic consequences for those identified or self-identifying as traumatized.” In other words, frivolous trauma diagnoses and misguided policies can leave vulnerable people worse off than they were before they encountered mental health services. The article’s authors — Professors of Social Work and Social Pedagogy and a Lecturer in Mental Health Nursing — also note that proponents of trauma-informed care “speak of kindness, compassion and even love as being all that is required to furnish social policy with a full set of improved wellbeing outcomes … the certainty and the moral rectitude with which they do so reflects ‘a system talking to itself,’ a ‘magic circle.’”... This expansion of the concept of trauma is what Rob Henderson calls a luxury belief: it confers no cost on the elites that hold it, but has disastrous consequences for those who need to rebuild their lives and who will never be able to do so if they are convinced that they are powerless victims by a psychological profession that is becoming more deluded and out of touch by the day."
Clearly anyone who disagrees that one has suffered trauma is toxic and gaslighting you, and needs to be cut off
A case for flattening our cities - "Fair wasn’t talking about knocking down skyrise buildings, but rather about redistributing such essential urban resources as housing, retail and entertainment throughout various parts of a city or into satellite communities, all for the sake of creating more vibrant yet more affordable neighbourhoods. “City centres are going to struggle for the next decade (because) I don’t believe we’re going to get hundreds of thousands or millions of people to move downtown, particularly when the main motivation in the last 20 years was to be closer to work,” says Fair. “If you don’t have to work in the office as much, then one of the main reasons to live downtown has been taken away (so) the real innovation has to come in terms of the urbanization of the suburbs.”... the first prerequisite comes down to placemaking and creating a greater sense of community in parts of the city previously perceived as offering little in the way of lifestyle or entertainment experiences. “When you look at museums, nightlife, restaurants… things that obviously would be appealing to a visitor… well they’re highly appealing to young professionals as well,” he says. So the solution is to invest more in what he describes as the ‘software’ of a city (e.g. cultural experiences, nightlife, restaurants) as well as such ‘hardware’ amenities as museums and cultural institutions."
Infanticide by married couples was routine in 1500-1800 - book - "Hanlon called attention to the limited scope of existing scholarship that has never focused on sex ratios of infants brought for baptism within hours or days after their birth. Records reveal startling spikes in the number of male baptisms in the aftermath of famines or diseases, he said. In rural Tuscany at the height of infanticide, the victims might have constituted up to a third of the total number of live births, his research found. Using baptismal registers and ecclesiastical censuses drawn from scores of parishes in Italy, France and England, Hanlon showed similar infanticide patterns across cities and countries for Catholics, Calvinists, and Anglicans alike. In Italy’s rural 17th-century Tuscany, parents seemed willing to sacrifice a child if they were a twin, opting to keep just one of the newborns, Hanlon said. In the northern Italian city of Parma, Laura Hynes Jenkins found that working-class parents preferred girls over boys. Contributor Dominic Rossi found a clear pattern of a preference for girls in the French town of Villeneuve-sur-Lot after 1650. Rossi, one of the five former students who contributed to the book, raised the idea that “the lower-status families would want to marry their daughters up at the same time as economic conditions allowed them to make long-term plans for social movement.” Evan Johnson, another contributor, showed that upper-class parents in rural Mézin had a clear preference for keeping newborn males. Hanlon called attention to lax punitive measures taken for crimes of infanticide. “Tribunals operated against single mothers almost exclusively, but only if they killed the newborn deliberately,” he said. “Simple abandonment was not a comparable offense.”"
Aspartame sweetener is 'possibly carcinogenic', says WHO - "It was placed in category Group 2B, based on the limited evidence available, which specifically concerned hepatocellular carcinoma – a type of liver cancer. There was also limited-strength evidence regarding cancer in experimental animals. The Group 2B category also contains extract of aloe vera and caffeic acid found in tea and coffee, said Paul Pharoah, a professor of cancer epidemiology at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. "The general public should not be worried about the risk of cancer associated with a chemical classed as Group 2B," he said. The IARC's Mary Schubauer-Berigan said the limited evidence for hepatocellular carcinoma came from three studies, conducted in the United States and across 10 European countries. "These are the only epidemiological studies that examined liver cancer," she told reporters... A second group, JECFA – the Joint Expert Committee on Food Additives formed by the WHO and its fellow UN agency the Food and Agriculture Organization – met in Geneva from 27 June to 6 July to evaluate the risks associated with aspartame. It concluded that the data it evaluated indicated no reason to change the acceptable daily intake (ADI), established in 1981, of zero to 40 milligrammes of aspartame per kilogramme of body weight. With a can of sugar-free soft drink typically containing 200 or 300 mg of aspartame sweetener, an adult weighing 70 kg would therefore need to consume more than nine to 14 cans per day to exceed the ADI, assuming no additional aspartame intake from other sources... The International Sweeteners Association said that Group 2B classification puts aspartame in the same category as kimchi and other pickled vegetables. "JECFA has once again reaffirmed aspartame's safety after conducting a thorough, comprehensive and scientifically rigorous review," said ISA chief Frances Hunt-Wood. But for Camille Dorioz, campaign manager at the consumer organisation Foodwatch, Friday's update leaves a "bitter taste". "A possibly carcinogenic sweetener has no place in our food and drink," he said."
Of course people who huff and puff about aspartame won't avoid coffee & tea, kimchi, salted fish etc. Or sunlight
Is your tap water safe? Study claims cancer risk even in 'safe' water - "A new report from an environmental advocacy watchdog group cautions that carcinogenic products in tap water may altogether increase cancer risk for thousands of U.S. residents over a lifetime."
‘Incredibly intelligent, highly elusive’: US faces new threat from Canadian ‘super pig’ - "a Canadian “super pig”, a giant, “incredibly intelligent, highly elusive” beast capable of surviving cold climates by tunneling under snow, is poised to infiltrate the north of the country... Brook and others are particularly troubled by the emergence of a “super pig”, created by farmers cross-breeding wild boar and domestic pigs in the 1980s. The result was a larger swine, which produced more meat, and was easier for people to shoot in Canadian hunting reserves. These pigs escaped captivity and swiftly spread across Canada, with the super pig proving to be an incredibly proficient breeder, Brook said, while its giant size – one pig has been clocked at more than 300kg (661lbs) – makes it able to survive the frigid western Canada winters, where the wind chill can be -50C. “All the experts said at that time: ‘Well, no worries. If a wild pig or a wild boar ever escaped from a farm, there’s no way it would survive a western Canadian winter. It would just freeze to death.’ “Well, it turns out that being big is a huge advantage to surviving in the cold.” The pigs survive extreme weather by tunneling up to 2 meters under snow, Brook said, creating a snow cave. “They’ll use their razor-sharp tusks to cut down cattails [a native plant], and line the bottom of the cave with cattails as a nice warm insulating layer. “And in fact, they’re so warm inside that one of the ways we use to find these pigs is to fly first thing in the morning when it’s really cold, colder than -30, and you will actually see steam just pouring out the top of the snow.”... One method that has worked in the US, Brook said, is the use of a “Judas pig”. A lone pig is captured and fitted with a GPS collar, then released into the wild, where hopefully it will join a group of unsuspecting swine."
