7 Brilliant Qualities You May Not Know You Have - TIME

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• Inc.
 

Aug. 2, 2014

    

Build on these personal traits to become more effective

By Larry Kim

What does it take to be a great leader?

Once upon a time, birth order and socioeconomic status were considered powerful determinants in who would successfully climb the ladder.

Lately, though, the focus has shifted to personal qualities.

Guiding vision, passion, and integrity are well known leadership traits. But there are lesser known leadership traits, as well–in fact, some historically have been perceived as weaknesses.

These hidden traits can be developed and nurtured to help further your career and your role as a leader, at work, in your community, or in life in general.

See if you just might have some or all of these personal qualities that lend well to leadership:

1. Empathy

Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. This is incredibly important in any workplace environment and helps you to manage conflict and relationships. However, it’s become even more important as businesses compete to better understand the needs of their customers. People don’t want to be analyzed and marketed to–they want brands to understand what they want and need. Empathetic leaders function better within the company, but can also use this trait to power the business, as well.

2. Optimism

You might think of optimism as the quality of one being hopeful, but it also indicates confidence in successful outcomes. Of course, blind optimism isn’t a good thing, but optimistic leaders can inspire and motivate teams.

3. Forgiveness

No one enjoys the boss who lords every mistake they’ve ever made over their head. There is real power in allowing employees to take calculated risks, but they have to know it’s not going to be held against them later. Doing so kills creativity and motivation–it causes people to think twice before bringing a new idea to the table, or experimenting with a new process or product. Learn how to forgive mistakes to nurture creativity and inspiration and your team will pay you back ten-fold.

4. Altruism

Altruism means you care about the welfare of others. In business, this means you want the people around you to do better, feel better, and perform better. You are not an island. You don’t need to take all of the credit for yourself. You understand that building up the people around you makes you all look better. This is an incredible leadership quality, but not one you might traditionally associate with power or strength.

5. Eloquence

The ability to speak and write persuasively has gained importance in the age of digital communications. People expect leaders to communicate and they want to be “wowed.” An eloquent speech can close a deal. An eloquent memo to staff can quell fears, dampen dissent, or inspire people to reach new heights. Practice your writing and speaking to become a more effective, persuasive leader.

6. Discernment

Discernment is the ability to judge well, whether in relation to people, situations, or business decisions. If you are discerning, you take the time to understand a problem and walk your way around various solutions to find just the right one. You don’t jump head first into every opportunity, but think critically and find the best option.

7. Modesty

No one likes to hear how awesome someone else is all the time–especially when it comes from that person. Let your work speak for itself; don’t fall into the trap of being the one who blows your horn the loudest. Confidence is a great trait, but must be tempered with modesty.

These qualities can be powerful tools for entrepreneurs and aspiring leaders who are willing to put the time and effort into developing them.

600 Retailers Ensnared in Major New Malware Attack, Cybersecurity Firm Says - TIME

• Sam Frizell @Sam_Frizell
 

Aug. 1, 2014

    

The Department of Homeland Security is investigating the widespread use of "Backoff" malicious software, which steals data through remote access applications

The number of businesses ensnared in a new malware attack revealed in a Department of Homeland Security report this week may run to six hundred, according to a cybersecurity firm that helped DHS prepare the report.

Hackers are using point-of-sale (PoS) malware to steal consumer payment data, including credit and debit card information, from businesses that use remote desktop applications, according to the DHS report out Thursday. The department is now investigating the breaches.

But cybersecurity company Trustwave says at least six hundred businesses across the country have had themalicious software, dubbed “Backoff,” installed on their networks since Oct. 2013, allowing hackers to steal data. The DHS declined to comment to TIME on the scope of the attack.

Many of the 600 are small independent brick-and-mortar shops, said Karl Sigler, threat intelligence manager at Trustwave, but large national chains have been caught up as well. A DHS official who spoke on the condition of anonymity said that large chains were specifically vulnerable when acquiring a smaller business that could have weaker security protections.

The hackers target businesses that use remote desktop applications, according to the DHS, of the same kind used by technical support to access a computer from an off-site location. Once they find businesses with basic I.T. security or weak passwords, they can gain the same remote access to systems that technical assistance might have and easily install the malware.

“Backoff” then scrapes memory from the victims’ machines, searches for track data and logs keystrokes to reap sensitive data such as credit card information. “Once the malware sees a credit card system in memory, or typed in, it grabs that credit card information, then encrypts it and ships it out to another system under criminals’ control,” Sigler explained.

The DHS first outlined how the hackers gained access to point-of-sale systems to install “Backoff” in its Thursday report. “Recent investigations revealed that malicious actors are using publicly available tools to locate businesses that use remote desktop applications,” it said, citing Microsoft’s Remote Desktop, Apple Remote Desktop, Chrome Remote Desktop, Splashtop 2, Pulseway, and LogMEin Join.Me as commonly used remote desktop solutions.

Many more victims are likely to be discovered in the coming months, Sigler added. “A lot of smaller businesses were affected but there were very large chains that were affected as well. But they’re names anyone in the states would recognize,” Sigler said. “This is just the tip of the iceberg, but only time will tell how far this reaches.”

All the businesses that have so far been identified as targets of the breach are aware of the attack, Trustwave said.

The Secret Service is investigating the hackers behind the attacks on retailers and Sigler said the Department of Justice would likely prosecute the hackers responsible. The Department of Justice did not return requests for comment, while the Secret Service said it could not comment on how many businesses were affected.

The release of the report will likely spur anti-virus vendors to code defenses against existing variants of “Backoff,” the DHS said in its report. Businesses should create complex passwords for their remote desktop access in order to make their systems harder to break into.

Beats Now Part of the Apple ‘Family’ - TIME

http://time.com/3070136/beats-now-part-of-the-apple-family/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+timeblogs%2Fcurious_capitalist+%28TIME%3A+Business%29

• Denver Nicks @DenverNicks
 

Aug. 1, 2014

    

Tech giant confirms close of deal to buy headphone maker amid reports of possible layoffs

Apple has officially closed a deal to acquire headphone maker and music-streaming service Beats, the company announced Friday.

“Today we are excited to officially welcome Beats Music and Beats Electronics to the Apple family,” Apple said in a statement. “Music has always held a special place in our hearts, and we’re thrilled to join forces with a group of people who love it as much as we do.”

News emerged in May that Apple had struck a $3 billion deal to acquire Beats, a company co-founded in 2008 by Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine. Friday’s announcement makes Apple’s biggest-ever acquisition official.

Beats’ core business is production of high-end audio equipment but it also has a music-streaming service that Apple may leverage as it continues to edge in on the evolving music industry.

News of the sealed deal comes on the heels of reports that Apple plans to cut from Beats’ payroll around 200 positions that overlap with roles already filled at Apple, 9to5mac reports. Beats currently has about 700 employees.

Apple told the site it had offered jobs to all Beats employees, but conceded that some of them were for a “limited period” only. “We’ll work hard during this time to find as many of these Beats employees as we can another permanent job within Apple,” the company said.

7 Cover Letter Mistakes That Will Sink You - TIME

http://time.com/3043580/cover-letter/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+timeblogs%2Fcurious_capitalist+%28TIME%3A+Business%29

• The Muse
 

July 28, 2014

    

By Lily Zhang

Cover letters don’t get a lot of love. And considering how tough it is to write a good one, it’s kind of understandable that people tend to throw them together at the last minute (or update one they wrote last month), attach it to their resume, and call it good.

But this, my friends, is the biggest cover letter mistake you could make. In fact, this document is the best chance you have to give the hiring manager a glimpse of who you are, what you bring to the table, and why you—above all those other candidates—are the one for the job.

Don’t give up your chance to share your best qualifications in a fresh, unique way. And while you’re at it, don’t make these seven other common cover letter mistakes I see all the time.

1. Starting With Your Name

How do you start a cover letter? Let me set the record straight now and say it’s not with, “My name is John Smith.” Unless you’re already famous, your name just isn’t the most relevant piece of information to start with. Not to mention that your name should be listed on your resume, the sign-off in your cover letter, and in other parts of your application.

Instead

Start with a relevant qualification as a way to introduce yourself. If you’re a recent grad with a passion for environmental activism, go with that. Or, maybe you’re a marketing professional with 10+ years of healthcare industry experience—introduce yourself as such, and connect it to the position you are applying to. (Here’s a bit moreabout kicking off your cover letter with an awesome opener.)

2. Rehashing Your Resume

If your cover letter is basically your resume in paragraph form, you’re probably going to need to start over. Your resume likely the first thing a recruiter looks at, so you’re wasting your time (and the recruiter’s) if your cover letter is a harder-to-read version of something he or she has already seen.

Instead

Focus on one or two (OK three, max) examples of your work that highlight what you can bring to the position, and try to help your reader picture you doing the work by really diving deep and detailing your impact. You want the hiring manger to be able to imagine plucking you out of the work you’re describing on the page and placing you into his or her team seamlessly.

3. Not Being Flexible With the Format

Remember those three paragraph essays you wrote in middle school? Your cover letter is not the place for you to be recalling those skills. Rather than fitting your message into a particular format, your format should be molded to your message.

Instead

Consider what message you’re trying to get across. If you’re going to be spending the majority of the letter describing one particular relevant experience—maybe that three-paragraph format makes sense. However, if you’re thinking about transferable skills or want to explain how your career has taken you from teaching to business development, a more creative approach could be appropriate. I’ve seen cover letters use bullet points, tell stories, or showcase videos to (successfully) get their point across.

4. Going Over a Page

There are always exceptions to the rule, but in general, for resumes and cover letters alike, don’t go over a page. Unless you’re applying for a managerial or executive position, it’s unlikely a recruiter would look beyond your first page of materials anyway.

Instead

Keep it concise and, ideally, wrap up around three quarters of the way down the page. Remember that you’re not trying to get everything on one page—you’re trying to entice the hiring manager enough to bring you in for an interview. Think of your cover letter as the highlights reel of your career.

5. Over Explaining

Are you a career changer or doing a long distance job search? No matter how complicated your reasons for applying to a job are, it would be a mistake to spend an entire paragraph explaining why you’re moving to San Francisco from New York.

Instead

If your reasons for applying to a position would be made clearer with some added explanation, add them in, but keep them short. Limit yourself to a sentence either in the first paragraph or the last paragraph for a location change, and no more than a paragraph to describe a career change.

6. Focusing Too Much on Training

Maybe you just finished your master’s degree or finally got the hang of coding. Great! But even if your most relevant qualification is related to your education or training, you don’t want to spend the majority of your time on coursework. At the end of the day, what hiring managers care about most is your work experience—what you can walk through the door and deliver on Day 1.

Instead

Certainly mention your educational qualifications if they are relevant, but focus the bulk of your cover letter on experiences. Even if your most relevant experience is education, present it more in the form of projects you worked on and job-related skills you gained, rather than actually explaining course content.

7. Sharing Irrelevant Information

Cultural fit is one of those big buzzwords in the recruiting world now, and there’s no question that it’s important to tailor your cover letter to each company to show your compatibility. But it starts getting a little weird when you start writing about your bowling league or active social life. (And don’t try to tell me this doesn’t happen—I’ve seen it.)

Instead

A better way to show that you’re a good cultural fit for the job is to focus on values—not activities. Mine company websites for the way they describe their company culture, then use that intel to show how your own values align. (Here’s some moreon how to show you get the company culture in a cover letter.)

For the companies that have moved away from a cover letter requirement, an additional opportunity to show off what you have to offer is lost. But, for those that require cover letters or at least make them optional, you should absolutely make the most of them—and, of course, avoid these all-too-common mistakes.

4 Ways the TSA Could Really Speed Up Airport Security Lines - TIME

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• Bill Saporito @bilsap
 

July 29, 2014

    

We've all been thereAndrew Harrer—Bloomberg/Getty Images

There's actually a science to these things

The Transportation Security Administration needs your help. The organization that scans your bags and invariably yanks your spouse out of line for the hairy-eyeball treatment when you are late for a flight desires to do something about wait times. I’m presuming that the TSA wants to make the lines shorter. Maybe I should double check.

This doesn’t seem like a particularly difficult goal in some respects. Here’s the way the TSA worked at the Delta terminal at New York City’s LaGuardia Airport on a busy afternoon the last time I was flew: There were two positions open to check IDs and three screening lines for bags and people. The line was nearly out the door. I’m no math expert, but I’m thinking that increasing the number of screening lanes by one increases throughput by 33%. Just a guess.

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Increasing capacity—that is, adding ID checkpoints and scanning lanes—or at least manning all available lanes, seems like the most obvious way to shorten the lines. But that would involve spending more money, and Congress has proven again and again that it cares little for the flying public, which helps explain the current state of flying.

So instead, TSA is trying to crowdsource a solution. It is looking for someone or some group that can create the Next Generation Checkpoint Queue Design Model. Your model will have to incorporate the TSA’s (very successful) Pre Check program, along with plans to accommodate coach, business/first, crew and special needs passengers. Do that successfully and the TSA will reward you. The agency is handing out $15,000 in prize money for the best ideas, including a $5,000 top prize.

Glad to help:

Ban mobile phone calls in the queue. People who talk on the phone while simultaneously trying to get out their laptops and take off their shoes ought to be shot, but I’m willing to merely silence them to speed things up.

Start a Spirit Airlines line. Passengers on ultra-low cost carriers like Spirit and Allegiant are, let’s say, inexperienced at air travel; okay, hopeless. Even with their own line, they’ll still take forever.

Make every airline charge more for using the overhead bins than for checked baggage. Higher fees=fewer bags=shorter waits. Stop hating me. In an ideal world, all baggage would go underneath—for free—and show up 10 minutes after landing.

Fine the TSA for delays. Airlines get fined, so why not the TSA? If it takes me more than 20 minutes get through, the TSA is not doing its job right.

Have a giant, discount health and beauty store at every airport. No need to bring all that product in 3-oz. bottles. Just order in advance and buy’em at the airport, cheap.

There is indeed a science to lines, whether it’s applied to supermarkets, tollbooths, amusement parks, fast food joints, or in the bakery chain Le Pain Quotidien in my office building, where the front end system was designed by people who think dentistry isn’t painful enough. The science is known as queuing theory, and it was invented in 1909 by Danish physicist and mathematician A.K. Erlang to try figure out the optimal size of a central telephone switch to accommodate the most customers most of the time. One of queuing theory’s later advances is something called Little’s Law, expressed as L = λW , where L is the expected number of users in a queuing system, W is expected time in queuing system per user, and λ is the arrival rate. Seems easy, right?

Nope. The TSA’s problem is far more complex because it’s not a steady state system—it ebbs and flows based on the time of day and number of flights, among other factors. “The math gets really hairy, really fast,” says Dick Larson — “Dr. Q” — who teaches queuing theory at MIT. “No human knows how to derive the actual equations.”

Companies like Disney use simulations even before they create rides to try to predict the lines, says Larson, but the math attached to security lines is surely beyond the TSA. “I wish them luck,” he says.

Larson believes that half of the problem in queuing is psychological. People are stressed out about making their flights, about their cranky kids, about setting off an alarm and being groped by TSA agents. Larson’s suggestion for improving matters isn’t mathematical, it’s behavioral. “The key idea is stress reduction versus duration reduction,” he says. “If you can reduce the stress, the complaints would plummet.”

That could be done by guaranteeing that people who arrive at the security line within the airline’s minimum will make their flights, for instance. Diversion may help too. In post World War II New York, office workers in skyscrapers often faced long waits for elevators. The solution wasn’t more elevators, which was not possible. Instead, landlords mirrored the walls at the elevator banks; complaints dropped as worker bees had something to take their minds off the wait.

You can’t do that in airports, but maybe there’s a similar approach. Comedians? A brass band? Magicians? Or how about security-line mimes? Then passengers would have something to hate more than the TSA and the airlines.

These 5 Facts About Apple Will Blow Your Mind - TIME

http://time.com/3043545/5-apple-facts/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+timeblogs%2Fcurious_capitalist+%28TIME%3A+Business%29

• Philip Elmer-DeWitt
 

July 28, 2014

    

Even in a slow quarter the iPhone by itself generates more revenue than all of Amazon

This post is in partnership with Fortune, which offers the latest business and finance news. Read the article below originally published atFortune.com.

After Apple reported its quarterly earnings Tuesday, Slate’s Jordan Weissmann offered several eye-opening comparisons. Among them:

• If the iPhone were a company in its own right, it would be bigger than McDonald’s and Coca Cola combined.
• The iPad generated more revenue last quarter than Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, Groupon, and Tesla combined.
• Apple’s sales from hardware accessories is larger than Chipotle’s revenue.
• Apple’s iTunes, software, and services businesses are bigger than eBay.
• While sales of the old iPod line may be shrinking, it’s still 77% larger than Twitter.

LINK: If Apple Products Were Their Own Companies, They’d Be as Big as …

10 Things Americans Have Suddenly Stopped Buying - TIME

http://time.com/money/3030959/guns-gum-soda-cereal-gluten-sales-drop/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+timeblogs%2Fcurious_capitalist+%28TIME%3A+Business%29

• Brad Tuttle @bradrtuttle
 

July 26, 2014

    

Ross Culshaw—Getty Images

America is just not the clean-shaven, gun-buying, soda-drinking, Chef Boyardee-eating place it used to be

For a variety of reasons—including but not limited to increased health consciousness, the harried pace of modern-day life, and plain old shifting consumer preferences,—Americans have scaled back on purchases of many items, sometimes drastically so. Here’s a top 10 list of things we’re not buying anymore, at least not anywhere near as frequently as we used to.

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Cereal
In one recent four-week period, cereal sales were down 7%, and cereal giant Kellogg’s sales decreased 10%. The reasons for cereal’s declining dominance at the breakfast table are many. As theWall Street Journal reported, consumers are more apt nowadays to turn to yogurt or fast food in the morning, and they’re less likely to have time to eat breakfast at home at all—not even if it’s a simple bowl of cereal.

Consumers also want their breakfast to pack more punch, protein-wise. “We are competing with quick-serve restaurants more, but the bigger driver is that people want more protein,” Kellogg CEO John Bryant told the Journal. It’s no coincidence that milk sales have been falling alongside cereal, with cow’s milk struggling especially due to the rise of alternatives like soy and almond milk. (Sales of yet another breakfast-at-home staple, orange juice, have plummeted 40% since the late 1990s.)

To try to put cereal back on the spoon of more breakfast eaters, food makers have been resorting to all manner of gimmicks, including the promoting of new higher-protein cereals, as well as the idea thatcereal is a great late-night snack rather than just a breakfast-time basic.

Soda
The crash of soda—diet soda in particular—has been years in the making, with consumers increasingly turning to energy drinks, flavored water, and other beverages instead of the old carbonated caffeine drink of choice. The latest Wall Street report from Coca-Colashowed that the soda giant missed estimates, partly because sales of Diet Coke in North America fell in the “mid-single digits.”

While a lot of soda’s slump can be attributed to shifting consumer preferences—more organic, less sugar—the broader war on sodainvolving taxes and big-beverage bans must factor in too. And if First Lady Michelle Obama has any say in things, the decline of soda is a trend that’ll continue: Her ongoing “Drink Up” campaign encourages kids to consume more water—and, consequently, less soda.

Gum
Likely due to heightened competition from mints and candies, chewing gum sales have dipped 11% over the past four years, theAssociated Press reported. The editorial board of the News Tribuneof Washington state, for one, weighed in that it is wonderful that gum sales are down in the gutter, sniffing, “Gum-chewing doesn’t do us any favors, making us look like cows chewing our cud. For humans, that’s not a good look.”

Guns
Gun sales have been booming in recent years, with sales periodically juiced when perceived anti-gun politicians enter office or a high-profile mass shooting takes place, prompting consumers to seek guns for protection—or just out of fear they won’t be able to buy them in the future because tougher gun regulations might be passed.

Lately, however, gun sales have fallen, sometimes sharply. The big reasons why this is so seem to be that there’s little in the way of likely gun control for gun enthusiasts to motivate new purchases, and also that everyone who has wanted to buy a gun in the past couple of years has already bought one (or seven). In the first quarter of 2014, the guns-and-ammo-focused Sportsman’s Warehouse retail chain saw comparable stores sales drop 18%, while gun sales at Cabela’s fell 22%.

But a little perspective is necessary. While guns sales and background checks are down compared to the past couple of years, they remain far above the levels of the early ’00s. As gun industry experts have put it, the decline probably just represents a “returning to normal” for gun sales—which aren’t as strong as they once were, but are still very strong nonetheless.

Cupcakes
Well, it looks like many of us at least have stopped buying the pricey “gourmet” variety of cupcakes. That’s the conclusion to be drawn with the collapse of Crumbs, the 65-store chain that shut down abruptly in early July. The news was widely interpreted as a sign that the gourmet cupcake trend is officially dead.

Chef Boyardee
ConAgra recently issued a warning to Wall Street that its consumer food volume experienced a 7% decline, and that it faced “continued profit challenges” due to some of its flagging, tired products—in particular, Chef Boyardee, the 86-year-old canned pasta brand.

Golf Gear
It’s not surprising that going hand in hand with fewer people playing golf, there are also fewer golf purchases being rung up at sporting goods store registers. The most notable eye-opener occurred this past spring, when Dick’s Sporting Goods announced that its golf equipment sales were down around 10%, at the same time the average driver was selling at a price of 16% less.

Razors
Beard-loving hipsters were blamed for the decline in razor sales last summer, and in 2014, razor giants like Procter and Gamble (owner of Gillette) has continued to blame poor sales on the trendiness of beards. Everything from the shaggy beards worn by the World Series champion Boston Red Sox, to month-long no-shave “challenges” likeMovember and Decembeard have been cited as reasons why guys have scaled back on razor purchases. In response, marketers have introduced even more varieties of new high-tech razors, while also pushing the concept of “manscaping,” with special razors designed just for the task. The hope is that even if men aren’t shaving their faces, they might still shave one or several other parts of their bodies.

Bread
According to one survey, 56% of American shoppers said they are cutting back on white bread. White bread was surpassed in sales by wheat bread sometime around 2006, but in recent years the gluten-free trend has hurt sales of all breads. Sales are even down in European countries like baguette-loving France, where consumption is down 10%. In American restaurants, meanwhile, there’s anepidemic of free bread disappearing from tables, as fewer owners want to bear the expense of putting out free rolls and other breads that no one is going to eat.

Convertibles
The fun-loving, wind-in-your-hair thrill of driving in a convertible just hasn’t been enough to keep consumers buying the classic ragtop in strong numbers. Businessweek noted that convertible sales have fallen 44% since 2004, and automakers have been significantly scaling back the number of models that are even offered in convertible form. Apparently, too many consumers see convertibles as impractical, and/or not worth the $5,000 or so premium one must pay compared to the regular model.

Data recently released from Experian Automotive indicates that the convertible is largely now a toy purchased by the rich. Nearly 1 in 5 convertible buyers have household incomes of at least $175,000 (compared to 11% of buyers of all cars), and 12% of convertible buyers own homes valued over $1 million (compared to 4% of buyers of other cars). For what it’s worth, convertible drivers are also better educated than the average car owner (50% of convertible buyers have at least a bachelor’s degree, versus 38% overall), and nearly one-quarter of all convertibles are now purchased in three sunny states with ample coastlines: California, Florida, and Texas.

Only Germans Think They Are Helping to Fix Global Warming - TIME

http://time.com/3028723/germany-climate-change-coal-poll/

• Denver Nicks @DenverNicks
 

July 24, 2014

    

Wind turbines stand behind a solar power park on October 30, 2013 near Werder, Germany.Sean Gallup—Getty Images

Germans have a pretty high opinion of themselves when it comes to environmental stewardship, according to a recent TIME poll, but their pride might be a little premature.

From among six large countries surveyed in a recent TIME poll, only Germany sees itself as more a part of the solution to global warming (60%) than part of the problem (40%). Only in Germany did the majority of poll respondents report that their country has a “mostly” or “somewhat positive” role in combating global warming.

The TIME poll surveyed 3,505 online respondents between May 10 and May 22 from the Germany, the United States, Brazil, Turkey, India and South Korea, with an equal number of respondents in each country. The margin of error in the survey is 1.8%.

Despite their environmentalist pride, Germans are not optimistic about the ability of the world as a whole to change its polluting ways—just 19% of Germans think the planet can reduce carbon emissions by 80% by 2050, compared to 37% of respondents overall.

The Germans’ pride likely stems from Energiewende, or “energy transition,” Germany’s closely-followed effort to ramp up energy production from renewable sources. The country has indeed significantly increased solar and wind power, and the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy in April found Germany to be the most energy-efficient major economy on earth. Germany hit a new record around noon on a day in May this year, producing 74% of its electricity needs from renewable sources.

The problem is that, while solar power plants may be super-effective power producers at noon on a sunny day, without scalable energy-storage technologies they aren’t so effective producing power for other times—when it’s dark, for example. Because Energiewende has been accompanied by a rapid move away from nuclear power following the Fukushima disaster Germany has had to make up its energy deficit by increasing its reliance on coal for the first time in years. German CO2 emissions have actually been rising over past three years.

The country is continuing to perfect and expand its renewable energy portfolio and may one day succeed in cutting back again on its coal habit. For the time being though German perceptions aren’t quite in line with the reality.

A Small World Concept - in Science of Networking

A Small World

The Small World Concept is derived from the notion that in this vast and complicated world there are bound to be some common threads that link people and things together through some underlying connections which may not be obvious at first glance. These subtle links will reveal themselves if we observe the system from the right perspectives and the Science of Networks will provide us with the tools to carry out such observations and analysis.
In 1967, a US social psychologist called Stanley Milgram conducted a strange experiment. He sent a number of letters to various unrelated persons in the Mid- West . He explained in his letters that each letter was, in fact, intended for one of his sharebroker friends who lived in the Boston area whose address he had mislaid. The recipients of his letters were asked to try their best to assist him in forwarding the letter to this friend of his with just the details of his friend's name and profession. As if by divine intervention, most of his letters reached the hands of his sharebroker friend in Boston in something like six steps. This was the birth of the now famous phrase - “ Six Degrees of Separation “ after which a movie was made. As unlikely as it may sound, it is claimed that all people on earth are connected to every other person only by a personal link of no more than six people. This is the origin of the Small World Concept. We are actually more closely connected than we would at first realize.
To understand this idea better, we must first know some basic facts about networks in general. There are three main kinds of networks for expressing the relationships between different variables. The first kind is a random network, the second one is the fragmented network and the third is the small world network. The first kind, as lts name implies, does not have any connections or feed-back loops among its constituent parts while the second kind contains connections among each local module but not as a whole. The third kind is the most interesting and useful one. Such a configuration means that there are shortcuts in the access routes between different parts of the small world network that can be exploited to increase the effeciency in communications among these divided regions of the network. These are the subtle connections, so to speak.

It is easy to visualize how the small world effect can come about in just a few examples. Let us look at some of these in turn. Suppose you are an accountant and your circle of friends are mostly accountants. Then, suppose your wife is a doctor and most of her circle of friends are in the medical profession. Normally, accountants and doctors have no frequent and necessary contact with one another but because of the relationship between you and your wife these two seemingly separate groups of people are subtly linked and may very well develop social and professional contact through you and your wife. Due to the multiple capacities each person must necessarily assume, each person's social and professional networks of friends may cover vast and complicated groups of seemingly unconnected people. If you add the blood relationships and in-law relationships of each person to his or her lists of possible groups of people they will interact, you can easily build up an extensive and colourful social network for each person. You may not realize the potential connections but they are there and can be very useful for you when you need them. For social networks, the significance of understanding such connections will be advantageous in terms of potentials in friendships, business development, personal assistance, job opportunities and exchange of important information when you need it.

 However, if the small world effect is applied to other phenomena such as epidemics, its proper understanding can save precious lives.The most vital and rewarding characteristic of the small world effect that scientists have discovered is that subtle or informal connections may be even more important and decisive in the functioning of any particular network in which the effect is present. The following example will illustrate this point. The formal communication network in a big corporation is, of course, the local area network of computers but before any policy is finalized and approved by the management it has to be discussed. Therefore, any hints of a forthcoming administrative policy will not come from the formal information system. 

In fact, management scientists have conclusively discovered that the most sensitive information system for capturing intelligence on upcoming company policy decisions exists in the informal circle of the secretaries of the various department heads during their coffee break gossips. This finding is the absolute truth and not a joke ! The chatting and gossiping of a group of secretaries is actually the medium for the propagation of the small world effect in any big corporation. The subtle link in the present example shows how the various parts of a big corporation can be connected by an informal sub-system and that remarkable shortcuts can be found in the corporate network's information system outside the mainframe computer. This, once again, is the same lesson taught us by the Science of Networks as in other theories to be meticulous in our observations and not simply following our instinct of paying attention only to the conspicuous facts. In many cases, it is the inconspicuous details that make the vital difference. 

Think Your Flight Delays Are Bad? Try China, Where the Military Hogs Most of the Skies - TIME

http://time.com/3022331/china-flight-delays-aviation-shanghai/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+timeblogs%2Fcurious_capitalist+%28TIME%3A+Business%29

• Hannah Beech @hkbeech
 

July 23, 2014

    

Air China aircraft stand parked at Shanghai Pudong International Airport in Shanghai, China, on Saturday, Oct. 26, 2013.Bloomberg—Bloomberg via Getty Images

Even in this era of jam-packed commercial air travel, the armed forces still control most of China’s airspace

Last week, I flew in and out of Shanghai over two days. Both flights idled on the tarmac for more than one hour. I felt rather lucky.

Airport delays are such a constant in China that a mere one-hour wait is practically a gift from the aviation gods. International flight monitors put Chinese cities at the bottom of a list of on-time takeoffs at major airports worldwide. On July 21, nearly 200 flights leaving from Shanghai’s two airports, Pudong and Hongqiao, were cancelled. Around 120 more planes were delayed from takeoff by two or more hours.

The same day, a notice attributed by state media to the Civil Aviation Administration of China warned that a dozen airports in eastern Chinese metropolises would suffer even more serious delays through August 15. The reason? An unnamed “other user” would be hogging the skies. That aerial monopolist is thought to be the Chinese military, which even in this era of jam-packed commercial air travel still controls most of China’s airspace. On July 23, the People’s Daily, the mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party, tweeted a picture of dejected looking passengers camped out on the floor of the airport in Dalian, a port city in northeastern China. The cause, according to the paper, was mass cancellations stemming from “planned military activity.”

On Monday, Jiao Xuening, a resident from the southern city of Shenzhen, described on his Chinese social-media account how he had been stranded at a Shanghai airport for almost six hours. “At first I was disgruntled,” he wrote. But then he listened to a stream of flight cancellations over the loudspeaker. “I was told my flight was merely four hours delayed and was not cancelled, so I became happy again.”

On July 22, the Shanghai Daily, the state-controlled newspaper in China’s most populous city noted that Pudong airport’s outbound on-time rate had nosedived to 26% the day before. “Shanghai’s air traffic control authority has refused to explain” the Shanghai Dailycomplained of the delays. “With the authority remaining tight-lipped about the reasons behind this, speculation has been rife on the Internet.”

Such conjecture, though, can be dangerous. Earlier this month, some people had speculated online that a dragnet around a “high-ranking official” had perhaps prompted the grounding of planes in Shanghai. The Chinese authorities didn’t take kindly to such gossip; nearly 40 “rumor-mongers” were detained or “held” for wondering online about the flight cancellations, according to the Shanghai Daily.

The chronic flight delays are a huge hassle. But the opacity surrounding their circumstances also speaks to the inefficiencies of doing business in China. In the first half of 2014, non-financial foreign direct investment in China dipped, compared to the same period the year before. Government paranoia about social instability is such that Facebook, Google and Twitter are inaccessible within mainland China. Major foreign news websites are also blocked by censors. Basic things overseas businessmen expect to do can’t be done.

Then there’s the suffocating air pollution, which has dissuaded some expatriates from traveling to China, much less living here. Now, with the routine airport delays, it’s no longer practical to, say, fly from Hong Kong to Shanghai in the morning, attend a few meetings and then return to Hong Kong by the evening. A Beijing-Shanghai-Beijing run makes more sense by the punctual high-speed train service. But that still means committing around 10 hours to traveling the rails.

In the meantime, customer-service representatives for Chinese airlines are trying to cope as best they can. Political sensitivities are such that the carriers cannot complain about the Chinese air force’s monopoly of the skies. Employees for Air China and China Southern said they were only informed about the continuing air congestion the day after the latest round of delays began on July 21. Air China says it will send text messages to passengers’ cellphones to update them on the latest scheduling. “Most of our customers understand the situation,” said an Air China customer-service staffer in a somewhat beleaguered tone. To cope with the long waits in airports notorious for meager services, the statement attributed to the Civil Aviation Administration of China dispensed further advice: “Flight passengers please bring with you food and water.”

—with reporting by Gu Yongqiang/Beijing

Will MH17 air crash damage Russia's Putin? - BBC NEWS

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-28421196

By Dmitri TreninDirector, Carnegie Moscow Centre, Moscow

Russia has been accused of providing military help to the rebels to shoot down the Malaysia Airlines plane

Right up until the downing of flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine on 17 July, President Vladimir Putin's handling of the Ukraine crisis was seen in Russia as fairly successful, both strategically and tactically.

Russia was obviously supporting the militants in the Donbass region, while still pursuing a policy of plausible deniability. At the same time, it had joined Germany and France in a diplomatic effort to promote a political settlement within Ukraine that would also take Russia's interests into account.

The European Union was balking at further sanctions against the Russian government, with a number of countries resolved to protect their important economic relations. The Obama Administration's attempts to rally the Europeans around the sanctions agenda appeared largely ineffectual.

Russia and China signed a landmark gas deal in May 2014, boosting relations between the two countries

Mr Putin was, by contrast, expanding Russia's relations with China, gaining a measure of moral support from the other Brics countries (Brazil, India, China and South Africa), and rekindling old and striking new friendships in Latin America.

The MH17 tragedy abruptly changed all that.

The United States and several of its closest allies have immediately accused Russia of aiding and abetting, if not actually perpetrating, a heinous crime.

Mainstream Western media are already calling for Russia to be treated as a pariah state. As a majority of the victims were from the Netherlands, relations with Europe are particularly likely to suffer.

UK PM David Cameron sees the crash as a "defining moment" for Russia

The gap between the US and EU approaches to sanctions on Russia is about to become narrower, destroying Moscow's hopes of a serious divergence within the West.

In Asia, where Russia is now "pivoting" to, the shooting down of the Malaysian passenger plane may also give rise to anti-Russian sentiment. Mr Putin recently signed a 30-year gas deal with China.

Elsewhere in the non-Western world, which still relies to a significant degree on the Western media for covering world developments, the reputations of both Russia and President Putin will take a big hit.

President Putin publicly backs an international inquiry into the MH17 disaster

Some in Russia may see the dramatic worsening of relations with the West over Ukraine as being driven by an undeclared US policy of containing Russia, but few welcome it.

While most Russians sympathise with the plight of the people of eastern Ukraine, around two-thirds are against a military invasion of Ukraine.

With Mr Putin's popularity still topping 80%, he has been widely credited so far with pursuing the right course: protecting Russia's interests, while avoiding unacceptable risks.

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The MH17 air disaster, however, raises questions.

Russians, by and large, have long assumed that Moscow is giving the self-declared people's republics of Donetsk and Luhansk more than moral and political support.

At the same time, they hear from their own leaders that Russia does not control those whom it publicly backs. For a while, they may have accepted this apparent incoherence as a diplomatic ruse.

If the international investigation, however, establishes that Russia has indeed given the Donbass militants powerful weapons which they used to shoot down - by mistake - a passenger plane, part of the Russian public, not necessarily pro-Western or liberal, will see the Kremlin's approach as irresponsible brinkmanship.

Sensing this danger, Vladimir Putin is pushing back hard against the US-backed version of the crash.

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The stakes are very high.

If the investigators' verdict does eventually fall against Russia it is not so much Vladimir Putin's integrity that will suffer, as respect for his strategic skill. He has, after all, never said that the rebels had nothing to do with the disaster; instead he blamed Ukraine for attacking them.

Mr Putin will survive politically, but will have to work hard to restore faith in him, and his good fortune.

Russia may, however, avoid the blame. And if it does, then the onus for the crime, and the responsibility, will be on others. And Vladimir Putin will have dodged that bullet, too.

Malaysia, the World’s Unluckiest Airline, Will Now Struggle to Survive - TIME

http://time.com/3011201/malaysia-airlines-ukraine-crash-survival-business-mh370-mh17/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+timeblogs%2Fcurious_capitalist+%28TIME%3A+Business%29

• Michael Schuman @MichaelSchuman
 

July 21, 2014

    

Malaysia’s national carrier was already in a weak financial position. Now its future is highly uncertain

Only four months after Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 vanished somewhere in the Indian Ocean with 239 passengers on board, Flight 17 was shot down over Ukraine, causing the loss of another 298 souls — an unprecedented blow to a major international airline. Even a robust operator would have trouble overcoming twin disasters like that. But the fact is that Malaysia’s flag carrier is in no financial shape to absorb these catastrophes. In fact, analysts wonder if it will ever be able to recover.

“The outlook is very dire,” says Mohshin Aziz, an aviation analyst at Kuala Lumpur–based Maybank. The airline, he fears, “won’t be able to survive beyond the year in its current form.”

The next months could prove humbling for an airline that had grand ambitions. The Malaysian government had high hopes that its national carrier would compete with the region’s best, and invested much money and emotion into building it. But Malaysia Airlines got badly squeezed in the fiercely contested Asian airline industry. Its cost base is too high to compete with lean and mean budget carrier AirAsia, also based in Kuala Lumpur. At the same time, it lacks the prestigious brand image to raise its ticket prices and take on East Asia’s more premier airlines, such as Singapore Airlines and Hong Kong’s Cathay Pacific. As a result, the company has been bleeding for years. The airline’s Kuala Lumpur–listed parent, Malaysian Airline System, has racked up losses of more than $1.4 billion since 2011. Management has tried cutting costs and improving service to turn around the airline’s fortunes, but such efforts were making only minimal progress.

Now whatever hope remained may get dashed by the two crushing tragedies. Analysts are concerned that the fallout will scare passengers away from flying on the airline, or force management to discount tickets to convince them to book — reducing revenue either way. That could push the airline’s fragile finances to the breaking point, causing “the ticking time bomb to explode,” says Daniel Tsang, founder of consultancy Aspire Aviation in Hong Kong. That reality will likely force Malaysia Airlines to take more drastic measures to stay afloat. Even before the latest crash over Ukraine, CEO Ahmad Jauhari Yahya told shareholders in June that the MH370 incident “sadly now added an entirely unexpected dimension, damaging our brand and our business reputation, and accelerating the urgency for radical change.”

There are options, but all are equally unsavory. Mohshin believes that Malaysia Airlines will have to greatly shrink its business, perhaps eradicating most of the international routes it flies, to focus on the more profitable parts of the operations. “It will never get back to the large size it was before,” he says. “The sooner they accept that fact, the better off they will be.” Tsang says that bankruptcy proceeding would be a “pretty good option” for Malaysia Airlines. That process would make it easier to strip out more of the legacy costs and make the airline more competitive.

What happens next ultimately depends on the Malaysian government. A state-controlled investment fund owns a majority of the shares in the carrier’s parent company, and that makes the future of Malaysia Airlines a political issue. The airline’s powerful union has been able to fight off previous efforts at radically overhauling the carrier and analysts say that rescuing Malaysia Airlines this time will require a high degree of political commitment. Still, if Malaysia Airlines manages to streamline its operations, it may live to fly another day.

“The restructuring will be painful for a lot of people,” Tsang says. “But a phoenix can rise from ashes.”