Eat and go out.

Hello everyone!
I finished my internet project last week and I want to share with you my final blog.
If you like good food and having new addresses to try, this blog is for you! You should look at: https://eatandgoout.wordpress.com/
All the best,
Lucie-Anna

The Future of eBooks? Streaming is Now 21% of Music Revenues in the US

Internet is changing our life in everywhere, it is also changing the the business model of many industries. Here is an interesting article which talks about the changes in music and book industry.

The Future of eBooks? Streaming is Now 21% of Music Revenues in the US

The girl effect: The clock is ticking - YouTube

you might find it interesting to watch this and other "the girl effect" videos...



The presentation technique is quite dynamic and fresh! even this one from 6 years ago.

What do you think?







The girl effect: The clock is ticking - YouTube:



'via Blog this'

About Internet of Things

Hi everyone,

My project for this course will be the Internet of Things, how it develops itself in typical French and big companies, and maybe, in the end, what are the potential developments and funding of the IoT in the US compared to France.

Have you ever heard about the Internet Of Things?

These are objects that we or companies may use daily in our lives.

What is the IoT technically speaking?

These things are made up of 3 technologies:

• Components (hardware and software): The object itself is mostly composed of captors, electronical components and the OS (for example: Arduino and Raspberry Pi  are some of the least expensive pieces of hardware)
• Connectivity: The information captured by the object is transmitted on a specific network. IoT mostly use IoT-designated networks developed by SigFox and Lora. These networks allow objects to be very-low energy, but it could also be wifi, Bluetooth, or anything else
• Server and database : Datas are saved on a server, that will transmit the information either to a user, or to calculators or other IoT objects.

Have you figured out what were Internet of Things objects ? Do you want some examples ?

• The drone Parrot
• The NEST thermostat
• want more ? : go check www.aruco.com

Is internet making us stupid?

Hi everyone. 
Do you think internet is making us stupid?
I am writing this article to share with you what I think about this question. 
Share with me what do you think. :)




As a computer science student, I’m always interested in new technologies. Ever since the internet was born, our lives have been changing rapidly. 

I find I'm really lucky to have lived in both periods when there was neither Google nor Facebook and when they have become a part of my life. I strongly feel differences between these two lives. So I'd like to talk about how internet is changing our lives and are there any other changes?

As a big fan of Google, I use almost all the Google products .

Thanks to Google Search, I no longer need to spend my whole day in the library finding  answers to questions. 

Thanks to Google Maps, I no longer need to memorize the way to the nice restaurant which I tested last week.

And thanks to Google Calendar, I no longer worry about missing the big events of the month, Google can remind me two days before with all the details.

Everything becomes so easy and so convenient. 

But “There is no such thing as a free lunch.” We always pay for what we get. What are we paying? What’s the price?

I notice that the way I read has changed. I used to be patient in reading, but now I have more difficulties concentrating on a deep read. Especially when I read a long article, I tend to scan it by reading only the highlighted phrases and I easily miss information.  There are some restaurants where I have been more than three times , but I am not able to find them without my cell phone, because every time it was google which guided me there.

Moreover, I can’t imagine how my life would be badly organized if Google Calendar stopped popping up messages.

 (I can’t imagine what a mess my life would be without google agenda.)

So,  I’m wondering:

When Google is making my life easy, is it also making me stupid?

When Google is changing how I live, is it also changing how I think?

I did a quick search on Google, some studies confirmed what I thought. 

There was an interesting experiment from University of London, researchers analyzed a large number of taxi drivers’ brains and non-taxi drivers’ brains. They found that the hippocampus of taxi drivers was  larger. 

Later, McGill University did another study, they scanned the brains of adults who were GPS and non-GPS users. Their result was that non-GPS users had a greater volume of grey matter in the hippocampus than GPS users. 

The hippocampus is a part of our brain, which is involved in memory and in navigation processes. Due to its functions, we can find the way to our workplace, to home and to other places where we've been. It is one of the first areas of the brain to be affected by Alzheimer's disease, which results in memory loss and difficulties in spatial orientation.

Our brain is like a muscle, if we don’t exercise it, it becomes weaker and weaker it can lose some capacities. 

When we are using GPS or other tools to help us, we are using them to replace the work of our brain. The more we use them, the more we will be dependent on them, because we are losing our own capacities.

Earlier I mentioned that I find myself having more and more difficulties concentrating on a deep read. is it also because of internet? There's no research about this question, but I think it can be related. 

As our brain is plastic, it can be formed by the way we use it.

today when I type a word in Google, the most related information will be put in bold. I don't have to read a huge paragraphe to get what I want. That's extremely efficient. Even traditional medias have begun to use this efficient way. For example, newspaper, magasins have begun to use big titles and highlight important phrases in articles. Television shows have begun to pop up messages, leading us to think in the way they want us to. 

I am getting used to reading in this way, my brain is used to being informed in this way. When I read a long article where there is no highlight, nor easy information which jumps directly into my eyes, I find it tiring and that's why I can't keep concentrated.  

Internet is changing my life, but it's also changing how I think.

Internet is offering me a lot of conveniences, but the price I pay could be some  of my brain capacities!

  

What a horrible remark. What is  more horrible is that today I can't live without internet, I can't stop this change of our society.

fortunately, what I can change is myself. Adapting ourselevs to survive is always the law of nature. Since remote antiquity, the environnement change has  always been faster than the evolution  of our body, our brain. human being survived till today,this is because we know how to adapt to different situations. 

today, internet is everywhere, it has becomea part of our life condition . we can't completely reject  it, but we can use it better so that we can  benefit more and suffer less.

Is Internet changing how we think?

Hi everyone !

As a computer science student, I'm interested in new technologies, especially new technologies related to Internet and Digitalisation.
Internet and Digitalisation is changing our lives.
Are they changing us in other ways?
Are they changing the process of our thought ?

I found a very interesting article about which talks about these questions.

The internet: is it changing the way we think?

Can We Auto-Correct Humanity? - YouTube

My project is about social media and i found an interesting video about that. I would like to know your thoughts about this. Do you agree with it?





Can We Auto-Correct Humanity? - YouTube

Can We Auto-Correct Humanity? - YouTube

My project is about social media and i found an interesting video about that. I would like to know your thoughts about this. Do you agree with it?





Can We Auto-Correct Humanity? - YouTube

What does social media do to our society? Benefits and Detriments

Facebook has now reached more than 1.6 billion users. Twitter has also more than 500 million users, with more than 300 million active users. Different types of social media have appeared more and more since the creation of these two pioneers and they have become such an important part of our daily lives.
How has it come to be that social media has such an importance? What is the real effects on our society? What type of individual and general solutions can help us to avoid the bad effects?

I chose this topic for my project to answer all these questions and more.

Infrastruture

Infrastructure is always left behind by the politicians because it isn’t an attractive topic, especially for voters. It is also a boring subject because It is quite technical.

There are many infrastructure facilities in the US : damns, bridges, roads, pipelines...

For example, Damns used to be very popular facilities in the US during the fifties. Unfotunately, today, America’s Damns are in a state of serious disrepair. There are 84000 damns in the US, and the average age of a damn today in the US is 52 years. And the lack of maintenance of these damns make them very dangerous.

Although this figure is very alarming, many states pay no attention to their damn problems : For example, in Texas, in 2007, there was about 7400 damns. Unfortunately, only  7 inspectors were assigned to take a deeper look on those damns. Consequently, only 239 damns were inspected during this year. More alarmingly, there was no infrastructure inspectors at all in Alabama since 2007.

Furthermore, on the international level, the US had D+ rating for infrastructure from the American Society of Civil Engineers.

Other statistics from the World Economic forum  Global Competitiveness report showed that the USA ranked 16th in the quality of overall infrastructure.

And the consequences of the bad ifrastructure maintenance can be very disastrous. For instance, a pipe burst in UCLA and turned the campus into a « swimming pool » for more than 3 days.

Added to the high economic costs of bad infrastucture maintainance, there can be human costs at stake.

One of the most striking examples is Pittsburgh, the city of bridges, where the bridges situation is so poor because of the structural engineering strategy behind it (strategy from the fifties): for example, in order to minimize risks, the engineering team decided to build a bridge under a bridge :

However, Business representatives from The US chamber of commerce and labor representatives from the american federation of congress and indurstrial organizations-who rarely agree on any issue what so ever- agreed on the fact the infrastructure is an important issue today and that transportation infrastructure fundings should be increased.

Even Donald Trump made a statement about rebuilding the american infrastructure.

Despite all the urges for rebuilding the US infrastructure, the politicians seem to be deaf. Indeed, one of the biggest funds, the US highway trustfund, which is dedicated to support infrastructure maintenance projects, will be soon bankrupt ! In fact, this fund is primarely funded by the gaz tax fund. (18.4 cent/gallon gaz tax is attributed to the US Highway Trustfund), but the tax hasn’t increase to keep up with the inflation since 1993. More importantly, the gaz tax has actually gone down by 39% since 1993. This is due to the fact that raising the gaz tax is a highly impopular  in the US.

The lack of political urgency in tackling this problem is represented by speaker Boehner interventions for the last two years. He an American politician who served as the 53rd Speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 2011 to 2015. He highlighted the fact that they were trying to find resources in order to rebuild the US infrastructure, but there was no concrete proposition on how to find those resources.

Today, there is an "Extra $1.44 trillion needed to rectify US infrastructure problems". 

source

Unfortunately, here are the concrete propositions from the two likely nominees Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump about this issue :

« Hillary clinton will:

Boost federal investment by $275 billion over the next five years.

Create a $25 billion infrastructure bank to support critical infrastructure improvements.

Harness public and private capital to fix and build new roads and bridges, expand public transportation, give every American access to broadband internet, and more. »

 source

Donald trump made no official statement other than :

« I think it is crumbling and I think I can fix it. I  can do it faster and cheaper than anyone else... »

We will see how the next president will tackle this issue.

Oprah Winfrey's 2008 Stanford Commencement Address - YouTube

Oprah Winfrey's 2008 Stanford Commencement Address - YouTube: "Oprah Winfrey's 2008 Stanford Commencement Address"

...

An interesting example of public speaking. Almost as good, but not quite, as Steve Jobs' Stanford talk.



'via Blog this'

How To Learn Anything in 20 Hours with Josh Kaufman

How To Learn Anything in 20 Hours

Josh had a daughter two years ago. He thought that his life have changed forever and that with his girl he would never find free-time again. This idea was so bothering for him as he was found of learning new things which needs obviously free-time. So he  decided to know more on how we learn by going to the library and he found the rule that said "It takes 10,000 hours to learn something new" everywhere.

"10,000 hours is a full-time job for 5 years". How will you learn something ? You will never find 5 years of full time job. But, in fact you need 10,000 hours to reach the top of the top of an ultra competitive field. A "society -wide game of telephone" have transformed it into “It takes this time to become an expert at a given field then to become good at something and finally to learn something.

This is the learning curve :

Source :http://www.intropsych.com/ch07_cognition/learning_curve.html

The beginning is slow and frustrating? How much time does it take to overcome this barrier and to feel you well know something: 20 hours that can be seen as 45 minutes each day during a month.

It should be 20 hours of full concentration to fulfill their purpose.  

Josh gives us 4 steps for learning:

1) Deconstruct the shell by deciding which abilities you want to acquire

2) Learn enough to self-correct as you practice

3) Remove all kinds of distractions which build a barrier 

4) Practise at least 20 hours 

Then Josh shows us how he learned to play Ukulele in 20 hours, he said there's only a small set of things that does really matter: mastering only 4 or 5 chords is sufficient.

Special Districts

Special Districts (With John Oliver)

Special Districts in the US are governmental units held to provide special services to the people living within the borders of the districts. The first SDs (Special District) was built in California in 1887 and it was an irrigation district. In the second part of the 20th Century, Special Districts proliferated a lot, we can find more than 40000 of them now and you can live in many SDs in one time.

SDS are special taxing district as they are allowed to co tax to fulfill a special purpose. They have collected more than B$ 100 which is more than Russia military spending by B$16.
There are different types of: Irrigation District, Fire District, Mosquito District, Lighting District..
See more on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special-purpose_district
John Oliver was joking about the Mayor of West Suburban Evergreen who was recovering from a mosquito bite while he was living in the middle of four SDs dedicated to Mosquito.

SDS is a form of ghost government because it lacks a lot of transparency, few people are hearing about them, and fewer are running them. John Oliver gave the example of Mosquito Control SDS run by 2 men that did all the formalities in a scrupulous way and published in a 43min video on youtube that was literally watched by no-one. Another example is Conroe in Texas where a company hoped to create a special district to issue bonds on undeveloped land but as there was nobody living there, they brought a couple that will live there for 9 months and vote for M$ 500 worth of bonds for their housing project.  So basically, they will vote for a M$ 500 project and leave the place..

The participation rate for special district election is as low as 1.8% as election are held every 10.9 business days on average with no one taking place on Election Day
See what is Election Day on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Election_Day_(United_States)
So, the number of SDS is growing steadily and many of old SDS continue to exist only because when they were created, no disbanding process was made.

more American politics

any truth in this???

Hillary Clinton: pro's and con's

"In another up-and-down, anything-can-happen primary season, Hillary Clinton has shown herself to be a strong candidate—and a much happier one. Will she finally, at long last, make history?" 

The 2016 presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton has served as secretary of state, senator from New York, first lady of the United States, first lady of Arkansas, a practicing lawyer and law professor, activist, and volunteer. As first lady, Hillary tenaciously led the fight to reform the American health care systems and avidly spoke for women’s rights. Shortly after winning the U.S. presidential election, Obama nominated Hillary Clinton as secretary of state. She accepted the nomination and was officially approved as the 67th U.S. secretary of state by the Senate on January 21, 2009. Also a best-selling author, Clinton’s memoir Hard Choices where Clinton shares the difficult decision made during her reign as secretary of state.

Today, she is the front runner as the democratic candidate with 1446 delegates and 502 superdelegates, followed by her major opponent, Bernie Sanders, with only 1200 delegates.

Hillary Clinton, pro's and con's of a future (potential) president:

The Pro's:

- She knows how Washington DC works because she has served as Secretary of State in the Obama administration,

- She would be the first woman president (I am not a real fan of the argument but many American citizens seem excited about the perspective of having the first American woman president after the first American black president)

- great knowledge and experience

- served as first lady in the USA during her husband's presidency

- she has a lot of endorsements (U2, Beyonce, Barack Obama )Hillary Clinton's list of endorsements

The Con's:

- Age: If Mrs. Clinton wins the polls, she will be the eldest woman head of state

- Unsolved scandals such as the email scandals (Clinton Email Scandal ) and the specter of other scandals (such as her financing packages, her Wall Street banks endorsements (Goldman Sachs paid her $220K for a speech lately))

- she has trust issues within the democratic party ( seen as too sharp, too fake)

- inconsistent in many political areas

- seen as "too liberal"

If you want to have more details about how to nail a marketing ad, have a look at: Hillary Clinton campaign ad