HFT

Last night, Charlie Rose Show interviewed author of the book, "Flash Boys", which was the follow-up of last Sunday's "60 Minutes" coverage of the buzzword, high-frequency trading. Within a few milli-second front-running, HFT can preempt your stock transaction and earn a few pennies profit per share. They don't need to do any market analysis to know which stock to buy, they just need to lurk in the stock exchange center and make the transaction a few milli-second before your transaction goes to the next exchange center. People with capital and skill can really rig the market.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qFpmht1zbs

Harvard and MIT may merge in the future?

Economics departments of both Harvard and MIT will be merged. If successful, this pilot project may lead to complete merger of MIT and Harvard, the unparalleled super institution.
http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2014/04/announcement.html

Aggressive PR drive will make a difference

It takes a leap of faith to see the future of Adobe with plunging revenue in consecutive 5 quarters but stock price increases almost two-fold in the same time. Adobe boldly adopted a cloud on-line subscription to replace traditional fixed packaged price. It takes a lot of guts and determination to do this switch-over. What it impresses me is the PR drive from Adobe to pitch this pricing strategy to its customers with, e.g., a lot of light-hearted YouTube videos. If government in Taiwan could launch a massive PR drive for the Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement (服貿) several months ago, probably acceptance rate might be much higher than it is now.
http://www.economist.com/news/business/21599370-adobes-bold-embrace-computing-cloud-should-inspire-others-super-subs

Interview of Drew Faust

Tonight's Charlie Rose Show interviewed Harvard Uni. President Drew Faust. I have seen her interviews several times and was impressed by her articulation and her vision of higher education, especially her dedication of leveled playing field in access to college education. I start to feel that probably a general-discipline university should not elect a president with highly acclaimed prestige in a narrow and esoteric field, rather, a president with liberal arts background (Faust herself is a historian) may have a broader mind and have a better vision for leading a university.

競爭的殘酷

不清楚服貿的實質內容但相信服貿是一個強化和強迫競爭的催化工具。在美國這麼多年，經歷了無數次10%到35%的公司解雇，強烈地感覺到在無憂無慮的環境下生存，第一，這是奢想。第二，這只會讓自己前進的速度變慢。游泳時，旁邊泳者速度和自己差不多時，潛意識速度會加快些。開會時，別人侃侃而談時，潛意識就會注意到如何吸取對方的長處。真的無法和對方並駕齊驅時，也應該在自己還有利用籌碼和利用價值時，為自已爭取最大的利益，為下一步的競爭做最有利的準備(雖然人類的安逸本性永遠會抗拒這種想法) 競爭很殘酷，有人獲利，有人受害。新興國家的崛起，使得美國的低技術(高中畢業)的中產階級已蕩然無存。全球化和自動化已不可阻擋，資本和技術正吞食和改變全世界每一個國家的社會結構。抗拒競爭，永遠不可能有完全勝利者。如何強化一個國家的競爭優勢，是最艱困和最重要的當務之急。不可能有一蹴而成的 silver bullet 來提升競爭優勢，但討論競爭和思考如何制定政策才會使競爭對社會結構的衝擊降到最低，總比花全部時間來抗拒競爭要付出的代價低一點

Vanishing customer representatives

In the future, all the customer representatives will be laid off. Today, we missed a Fedex package delivery. When I called Fedex, I only talked to computer (all voice communications). I asked computer to redirect our package to the nearest Fedex office and, when the redirected package is ready, computer will be instructed to call my specified phone number . It is just like talking to a human being. The "Second Machine Age" has already engulfed our life and the job market crunch will be worse rather than better in the future.

New guard or old guard

New guard is always more prestigious than old guard? Obviously, I am an old guard. I wrote many codes but have no idea how to write web app codes even API is readily available for anyone. All you need when writing apps is just "innovation" and do not need to do any meticulously algorithmic implementation as do by old guards. Silicon Valley is full of new guards du jour. Yet if new guards only want to have innovation and pat solutions to the complex problems with no intention to tackle game-changing challenges such as energy exploitation, souped-up IT infrastructure or drug research, do we need so many new guards?
Silicon Valley's Youth Problem