So while much of the rest of the world, including Canada and Sweden, looks to credit cards as the key to a cashless economy, Africa has – out of necessity – leapfrogged this step all together and tapped into the power of the ubiquitous cellphone. These services are changing people’s lives and countries’ economies, as well as underpinning a thriving startup community across the continent developing an eco-system around these payment giants.
First all-carbon solar cell made with nanotubes and buckyballs instead of silicon
Stanford University research could lead to cheaper, more flexible photovoltaics.
Big ideas like this one start conversations and new thinking that bring by great innovations. I love this concept by Priestmangoode:
The Moving Platforms concept was designed to address the infrastructure shortcomings that inhibit the optimum functioning of high-speed rail. Local trams connect to a network of nonstop high-speed trains. When a moving tram docks with a moving train, passengers can embark and disembark, transferring passengers to and from their local destinations without forcing the high-speed training to slow. The tram, in effect, acts as a moving station.
Mr. Karp, who founded the blogging service Tumblr, talked in depth about why his service did not provide a mechanism for commenting on Tumblr sites. He said the absence of such a mechanism was intentional, to prevent nasty comments. He said comments on most sites mad people feel like second-class citizens. “It makes you feel like you have to speak in all caps,” Mr. Karp said.
He said that no one had really figured out how to conduct meaningful and pleasant conversations online, but that he wanted to try to solve that difficult problem.
He said that no one had really figured out how to conduct meaningful and pleasant conversations online, but that he wanted to try to solve that difficult problem.
Lung-on-a-chip research could give us new ways to fight disease
Scientists at Harvard’s Wyss Institute have managed to recreate a pulmonary edema (a build-up of fluid in the lungs) inside a lung-on-a-chip. The team used techniques similar to those developed for microchip manufacturing to build the mechanical structure of a lung before lining it with human tissues. Air is passed through one side of the lung, while a liquid solution containing white blood cells mimics blood on the other side.
Michael Lopp:
Apple is eventually doomed. Yes, the most valuable company on the planet will slowly fade into stagnant mediocrity. It will be replaced by something that they will not predict and they will not see coming. This horrifically efficient culling is a fact of life in technology because it is an industry populated by a demographic intent not on building a better mousetrap, but who avidly ask, “Why the hell do we need mousetraps?”
That’s exactly right. Yes, Apple will eventually fall because guess what? All companies do. But it won’t be because someone like Microsoft or Google builds a better tablet or smartphone. It will be because another company you’ve never heard of builds something that makes tablets and smartphones obsolete.
This is the main problem I have with all of the recent “Apple is failing” stories. All seem to imply that missteps will allow their big rivals to take over Apple’s position of power. That’s not going to happen.
That’s why Lopp’s last point is so important: while the ouster of Scott Forstall makes a ton of sense from an org perspective as it seem to make Apple more stable, maybe that’s not the best thing in the world for Apple going forward. If they’re going to defeat these unknown assailants with unknown products in the future, maybe Apple (and really, any company) needs some level of instability to keep the creative juices flowing. At the very least, it makes it hard for anyone to know what and how to attack.
It doesn’t sound like much of a disguise, but John McAfee is doing his best to change his appearance as he continues to evade the police in Belize.
In a case that seems to get more bizarre by the day, the 67-year-old has continued to call me with semi-hourly updates. The latest disclosure: He claims to have dyed his hair, eyebrows, beard, and mustache jet black.
“I have modified my appearance in a radical fashion,” McAfee said, “I’ll probably look like a murderer, unfortunately.”
Artist is 3D-printing his own skeleton…
skeleton - prologue (by Caspar Berger
