Biofuel: feeds cars, starves people

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Interesting paper by a trio of complexity theorists about the near-term implications of the US drought. Abstract reads:

Recent droughts in the midwestern United States threaten to cause global catastrophe driven by a speculator amplified food price bubble. Here we show the effect of speculators on food prices using a validated quantitative model that accurately describes historical food prices. During the last six years, high and fluctuating food prices have lead to widespread hunger and social unrest. While a relative dip in food prices occurred during the spring of 2012, a massive drought in the American Midwest in June and July threatens to trigger another crisis. In a previous paper, we constructed a model that quantitatively agreed with food prices and demonstrated that, while the behavior could not be explained by supply and demand economics, it could be parsimoniously and accurately described by a model which included both the conversion of corn into ethanol and speculator trend following. An update to the original paper in February 2012 demonstrated that the model previously published was predictive of the ongoing price dynamics, and anticipated a new food crisis by the end of 2012 if adequate policy actions were not implemented. Here we provide a second update, evaluating the effects of the current drought on global food prices. We find that the drought may trigger the expected third food price bubble to occur sooner, before new limits to speculation are scheduled to take effect. Reducing the amount of corn that is being converted to ethanol may address the immediate crisis. Over the longer term, market stabilization requires limiting financial speculation.

The uses and abuses of Skeuomorphism

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This morning’s Observer column.

Or consider this, from Wired magazine, claiming that Apple’s iPhone app, Find My Friends, “includes astonishingly ugly, faux stitched leather that wastes screen space. On the new iCal for the Macintosh, things are odder yet: When you page forward, the sheet for the previous month rips off and floats away, an animation so artless you’d swear it was designed personally by Bill Gates.”

Ouch! What Apple’s designers are being accused of, it turns out, is the grave sin of skeuomorphism. Now there’s a conversation-stopper if ever I saw one. A skeuomorph is, according to the OED, a ‚”derivative object that retains ornamental design cues to a structure that was necessary in the original”.

Raspberry Pi: cautionary tale

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From a Facebook post by Jon Crowcroft:

So raspberry Pi ships with a) sshd on b) root login on sshd on c) the same default password on every Pi – doh! Do not plug in your pi to a net before changing at least one of the above, or you will, like a famous professor in the computer lab last week, get hacked, and deserve to be:)

Noted! (I’ve just ordered a new Raspberry Pi to replace the one that died on me.)

Footnote: the victim was not Jon!

The real significance of the phone-hacking scandal

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Very interesting analysis of the Digger’s recent moves by Anatole Kaletsky.

Outside shareholders of News Corp have long dreamt of the company ridding itself of scarcely profitable newspaper businesses to become a pure TV and movie business. This move was considered impossible under Murdoch, because of his sentimental attachment to print. But that was almost certainly a misunderstanding. Murdoch did not build the world’s greatest media empire through sentimentality. The reason why he loved papers, even when they suffered big losses, was because they gave him political power. For News Corp shareholders, in turn, Murdoch’s power brought business benefits.

Murdoch’s political influence allowed News Corp to overcome regulatory and political obstacles that defeated other media companies. The obvious case was News Corp’s recent attempt to take full control of BSkyB, the British satellite broadcaster, but there were many other cases. In fact, Murdoch’s ability to overcome obstacles – whether erected by politicians, regulators, unions or business rivals – that thwarted other moguls has been the key to his success.

Kaletsky argues that even when the newspapers lost money, they were still useful.

Throughout Murdoch’s career, his bold personality and vision have been usefully supplemented by the political influence derived from newspaper ownership. This ingredient in the Murdoch formula has now been transformed.

Once the phone-hacking scandal sabotaged the BSkyB bid, the business calculation behind newspaper ownership completely reversed. The papers were suddenly transformed from an asset into an albatross – and the arguments for keeping a print business within News Corp vanished. In July, Murdoch duly conceded this, announcing that all his publishing businesses would be split off into a separate company.

Smart piece. It’ll be interesting to see who lines up to buy the Times.