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Wednesday's Top 10: China's not so ghostly cities; Baboons and executive stress; Here come the robots; US eyes 'currency manipulators' in TPP; 'Platooning' Volvos and economies

Wednesday's Top 10: China's not so ghostly cities; Baboons and executive stress; Here come the robots; US eyes 'currency manipulators' in TPP; 'Platooning' Volvos and economies

I'm back with my once-a-week version. Here's my Top 10 links from around the Internet at 1 pm today. As always, we welcome your additions in the comments below or via email to bernard.hickey@interest.co.nz

See all previous Top 10s here.

1. Not so GhostyWe've all heard of the ghost cities in China where local governments in cahoots with developers have whacked up rows of apartments and motorways aplenty years before they're actually needed.

All this building work through the last 5 years helped cushion the blow of the Global Financial Crisis for Australia, and therefore to a lesser extent for us.

One theory is that all this excess building and investment will blow up in China's face as the returns on all these projects fall below the interest costs, forcing the government to write off gazillions in bad loans and recapitalise its banks.

This would all slow down economic growth and compound the problem.

That's the theory. 

Here's WSJ's excellent RealTimeChina blog with some research from CLSA's Nicole Wong on why most of the ghost cities are not as bad as they appear, although she does note Ordos really is a ghost city.

New Chinese apartments are typically sold as virtual concrete shells that buyers must outfit, installing everything from showers to flooring to kitchen sinks to make them move-in ready. Accordingly, Ms. Wong notes, many such “ghost” developments take awhile to gain traction—especially as it’s often the sale of the land they’re sitting on that allows the city to fund subsequent facilities and transportation links that will eventually help make them mature neighborhoods.

“When buildings are first completed they are actually not that habitable, so it takes a long time before most people want to move in,” Ms. Wong said.

In a report on her findings, Ms. Wong notes that buildings completed between 2008-11 in Zhengzhou, Ordos and Wenzhou—often cited as instances of an overly frothy property market—have typically seen tenants move in over a three-year period. Among such buildings, Ms. Wong’s survey found an average of 48% take-up in the first 12-18 months, another 19% in the next year, and then yet another 15% in the year after that. Such a delay, she says, can be attributed to the fact that residents need time not only to fully outfit their units, but many also like to wait until their neighbors have done so as well to avoid moving in before the dust clouds and drilling sounds have subsided.

2. What executives can learn from Baboons - Being a boss is notoriously stressful, right? 

Scientific American reports from new research on how stressed baboons are that suggests it's not so stressful being top baboon. 

Biologist Robert Sapolsky has studied baboon troops in Africa. He finds that the lower the baboon’s rank in the pecking order, the more likely it is to have high levels of stress hormones and stress-related illnesses. But a high-ranking alpha male, who can mate with any female he chooses and take out his aggression on any lower ranking male, has much lower stress. If executive apes exist, these are the ones.

3. Here come the robots - Academics write in The Conversation that 47% of the jobs now done by Americans could be done by robots in future.

The threat of computerization has historically been largely confined to routine manufacturing tasks involving explicit rule-based activities such as part construction and assembly. But a look at 700 occupation types (pdf) in the US suggests that 47% are at risk from a threat that once only loomed for a small proportion of workers.

The likelihood of a job being vulnerable to computerization is based on the types of tasks workers perform and the engineering obstacles that currently prevent machines from taking over the role.

These technological breakthroughs are, in large part, due to efforts to turn non-routine tasks into well-defined problems. The automation of these occupations is made possible by big data and advanced sensors, giving robots enhanced senses and dexterity, allowing them to perform a broader scope of non-routine manual tasks. For the first time, jobs in transportation and logistics are at risk. Take theautonomous driverless cars being developed by Google. They are the perfect example of a new way in which a human worker, such as a long-haul truck driver, could be replaced by a machine in the modern age.

4. Currency manipulation? - A bi-partisan group of 60 US senators say in a letter to US trade negotiators they want to include measures in the TransPacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) to stop 'currency manipulation.'

You have to start wondering about the colours of kettles given the US Federal Reserve is printing US$85 billion a month at the moment to keep the US dollar low. 

Here's what they're saying:

A study by the Peterson Institute for International Economics found that foreign currency manipulation has already cost between one and five million American jobs. A free trade agreement purporting to increase trade, but failing to address foreign currency manipulation, could lead to a permanent unfair trade relationship that further harms the United States economy.

5. Self driving cars - Here's an excellent in-depth look at the science and implications of Google's driverless cars project from Popular Science.

It also talks about Volvo's 'platooning' experiments and the potential to get by with fewer motorways and less fuel.

In Volvo’s real-world platooning tests, drafting resulted in average fuel savings of 10 to 15 percent—but that, too, is seen as the tip of the iceberg. Wayne Gerdes, the father of “hypermiling,” can nearly double the rated efficiency of cars using fuel-sipping techniques that could be incorporated into auto-driving software. Efficiency could double again as human error is squeezed out of the equation.

Volvo’s goal is to eliminate fatalities in models manufactured after 2020, and its newest cars already start driving themselves if they sense imminent danger, either by steering back onto the roadway or braking in anticipation of a crash. Over time, virtual bumpers could gradually replace the rubber-and-steel variety, and automakers could eliminate roll cages, returning the consequent weight savings as even better mileage.

6. "Pay up Larry' - I haven't mentioned the America's Cup before because it's just too painful. Watching it makes me feel the same things I've felt in every Rugby World Cup quarter/semi/final we've been in since 1991. Only in 2011 did it end well.

But this made me smile. A San Francisco strip club is suing Oracle to pay up for a US$33,540 bar tab incurred by an Oracle employee. The club does not serve alcohol, but it does sell 'club dollars' to pay for lap dances, Wired reports.

7. He said what!#$! - The CEO of AIG, which sponsors the All Blacks, is in deep trouble for comparing the outrage over bonuses for AIG executives with the lynch mobs that killed black Americans in the South. HT David.

Here's the offending quote, as cited in an interview by Robert Benmosche with the WSJ:

The uproar over bonuses “was intended to stir public anger, to get everybody out there with their pitch forks and their hangman nooses, and all that -- sort of like what we did in the Deep South [decades ago]. And I think it was just as bad and just as wrong."

He then went on to say after the comments attracted...er...some comment that:

“It was a poor choice of words. I never meant to offend anyone by it

Too late, mate.

8. Flipping burgers at 77 - Here's Bloomberg with a look at the new low wage service jobs post GFC and how many 'middle-class' retirees are going back to work.

At the height of his corporate career, Tom Palome was pulling in a salary in the low six-figures and flying first class on business trips to Europe.

Today, the 77-year-old former vice president of marketing for Oral-B juggles two part-time jobs: one as a $10-an-hour food demonstrator at Sam’s Club, the other flipping burgers and serving drinks at a golf club grill for slightly more than minimum wage.

9. Oops - The Guardian reports how a B-52 broke up over the eastern United States in 1961, dropping two nuclear bombs onto the ground below. They almost exploded. 

A secret document, published in declassified form for the first time by the Guardian today, reveals that the US Air Force came dramatically close to detonating an atom bomb over North Carolina that would have been 260 times more powerful than the device that devastated Hiroshima.

The document, obtained by the investigative journalist Eric Schlosser under the Freedom of Information Act, gives the first conclusive evidence that the US was narrowly spared a disaster of monumental proportions when two Mark 39 hydrogen bombs were accidentally dropped over Goldsboro, North Carolina on 23 January 1961. The bombs fell to earth after a B-52 bomber broke up in mid-air, and one of the devices behaved precisely as a nuclear weapon was designed to behave in warfare: its parachute opened, its trigger mechanisms engaged, and only one low-voltage switch prevented untold carnage.

10. Totally Jon Stewart and deranged millionaire John Hodgman on weekend work rates and child labour

 

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9 Comments

#6 the sailing, not the other.  Plus,ties in to #3 and #5 - a Trifecta!

 

As a software type, I can't help noticing the smoothness and real-time optimisation (particularly VMG upwind) that Oracle's boat is now exhibiting.  While it's tempting to think that this is all down to teamwork and optimised brawn, #3 and #5 should point, rather or at least, as well as, to a whole lotta clevver software and an ability to spin the ol' OODA loop faster and faster.

 

The old joke about Oracle's LE runs: 

Q:  What's the difference between Larry Ellison and God?

A:  God doesn't believe he's Larry Ellison...

 

But LE, being as how he heads up one of the best software shops on the planet, must surely be applying great dollops of code, to all a them foils, aerofoil control surfaces, trim tabs and the other doo-dads.  And if each little tweak yields a fraction of a percent....and if each dev cycle spins a little faster....then the Boat goes faster.

 

I'm sure there's a Lesson in here, somewheres.

 

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Well Oracle sure have got their act together and came back from the dead....have to admire them for that.

Oracle software, ikky....

regards

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Added note re the Cup:

 

Stats page here for those who feel inclined to work out their woes via data analyses. 

Interesting sidebar to the stats:  the early races' VMG is quoted to 0 DP:  the last few races to 1 DP.  It's those fractions of a percent that count....

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As disappointed as I confess to feeling, am sure Dean Barker, Davies and Dalton will be feeling a lot worse. You have to feel for them; whereas presumably most of us will be over it by Monday.

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Interesting Waymad.

 

I do a bit of it myself:

http://www.odt.co.nz/opinion/opinion/142927/another-day-office

enjoy the pic.....     :)

 

 

Oracle always looked the better to me, as a cat man. I remember Dalton talking about it a long time back, saying 'one of us has it wrong'. The only problem with the Oracle hull shape is the potential to not recover from a bow-plant, but they've clearly mastered 'not going there'. The only potential problem with their rig - a lesser ability to twist - seemed to be less of a problem at those speeds, than it might be lower down when the pressure is more spilled than turned into acceleration. Their rig looked smoother too.

 

Foils have been sailed on since the early '50's, wing-masts since the late '50's. I built what I think was the planet's fifth biplane rigged cat in 1980, with two-surface sails. It's nice to see it coming of age.

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Why did the NZ dollar drop so much today?

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Since it seemed to start just after 10am, I would guess early leaking of the trade deficit, probably not helped by the much later in the day apple fungus. But that is just speculation based on timings.

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Either someone took a very lucky guess, or there is a very leaky sieve somewhere in Wellington. Compare that to the overnight furore in the US over $600 billion US treasuries traded in the 7 seconds prior to the last FED announcement. Big investigation going on. Meanwhile, in new zealand a 45 minutes lead-time and no comment. Must have been that protected cat the RBNZ

It will show up as a solid positive in the upcoming GDP figures.

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It's the passive acceptance in new zealand that's the worry

us-fed-investigating-leak-allegations

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