Barbarians at the Gateways

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The goal of this article is to introduce the problems on both sides of the wire. Today a big Wall Street trader is more likely to have a Ph.D from Caltech or MIT than an MBA from Harvard or Yale. The reality is that automated trading is the new marketplace, accounting for an estimated 77 percent of the volume of transactions in the U.K. market and 73 percent in the U.S. market. As a community, it’s starting to push the limits of physics. Today it is possible to buy a custom ASIC application- specific integrated circuit to parse market data and send executions in 740 nanoseconds or 0.00074 milliseconds.4 Human reaction time to a visual stimulus is around 190 million nanoseconds.

via Barbarians at the Gateways – ACM Queue.

By 2005, most shops were also modifying kernels and/or running realtime kernels. I left HFT in late 2005 and returned in 2009, only to discover that the world was approaching absurdity: by 2009 we were required to operate well below the one-millisecond barrier, and were looking at tick-to-trade requirements of 250 microseconds. Tick to trade is the time it takes to:

1. Receive a packet at the network interface.

2. Process the packet and run through the business logic of trading.

3. Send a trade packet back out on the network interface.

To do this, we used realtime kernels with bypass drivers (either InfiniBand or via Solarflare’s

When Will Google Try to Make Android More Profitable?

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Despite Android’s size, do advertisers and developers really see the OS as the most effective platform for their (monetary) needs? A new study by ad-buyer Nanigans suggests that Facebook ads on the iPhone generate 1,790 percent more return than equivalent advertising on Google Android (hat tip to VentureBeat for the link). “Retailers are realizing significantly greater return from audiences on iOS than audiences on Android,” that study reported.

via When Will Google Try to Make Android More Profitable?.

Drones and aerial mapping

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From Professional aerial mapping

Collects aerial photography of 1-10sqkm in a single flight at down to 5cm precision.
The eBee has a flight time of up to 45 minutes allowing to cover areas of up to 10sqkm in a single flight. With its 16MP camera it can shoot aerial imagery at down to 3cm/pixel resolution. The images can then be used to create maps and elevation models with a precision of 5cm.

Disclaimer:  The above does seem like a sponsored ad but this site does not advertise for anyone.  I am interested in drone technology and creative applications for them and found this interesting.   Click here for more references to drones on this site.

The Problem with Android is Choice

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Perhaps the most famous is Sheena Iyengar’s 1995 “jam jar study“, which showed a 4x increase in options decreased purchases by 85%.

Iyengar’s study is not alone. Barry Schwartz’s excellent book The Paradox of Choice covers the problem in detail. Of particular interest is his discussion of how choice affects buyer’s remorse. The more choices you consider, the more likely you’ll be to regret your decision, and the less satisfied you’ll be.

via The Problem with Android is Choice.

U.S. flips switch on massive solar power array that also stores electricity

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Abengoa Solar described the array as the world´s largest parabolic trough plant. The solar arrays use parabolic shaped mirrors mounted on moving structures that track the sun and concentrate its heat. That heat is used to heat water into steam, which is then used to power a conventional steam turbine. Being able to store the power allows the plant to continue distributing energy when the sun goes down or is blocked by poor weather.

via U.S. flips switch on massive solar power array that also stores electricity – Computerworld.

China’s State Press Calls for ‘Building a de-Americanized World’

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It’s not a new refrain: Back in March 2009, China’s central bank governor, Zhou Xiaochuan, also called for the creation of a new reserve currency, albeit in less heated language. The world needs a new “super-sovereign reserve currency” to replace the current reliance on the dollar, Zhou wrote in a paper published on the People’s Bank of China’s website (Zhou still heads the bank). The goal, he wrote, is to “create an international reserve currency that is disconnected from individual nations and is able to remain stable in the long run.”

via China’s State Press Calls for ‘Building a de-Americanized World’ – Businessweek.

10% of Amplify Tablets Broke in Their First Month, One North Carolina School District Reports

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This tablet was always intended to go into schools, and that is why it was supposed to have been built with a layer of Gorilla Glass over the screen. This was in the contract that GCS signed, and it was also mentioned prominently in the early news coverage of this tablet. According to the school district, none of the Amplify tablets that they bought had that protective layer, which might help explain why so many tablets broke.

Or to put it another way, the absence of Gorilla Glass is a sign that someone cut corners on the build quality for this production run. Given that there were also complaints about misfitted cases and defective power supplies,  I am not terribly surprised.

via 10% of Amplify Tablets Broke in Their First Month, One North Carolina School District Reports – The Digital Reader.

As I reported when the Amplify tablet debuted in March of this year, this tablet is NewsCorp’s “solution” to the “problem” of education:

Scientific Data Has Become So Complex, We Have to Invent New Math to Deal With It

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Scientists like DeDeo and Vespignani make good use of this piecemeal approach to big data analysis, but Yale University mathematician Ronald Coifman says that what is really needed is the big data equivalent of a Newtonian revolution, on par with the 17th century invention of calculus, which he believes is already underway. It is not sufficient, he argues, to simply collect and store massive amounts of data; they must be intelligently curated, and that requires a global framework.

via Scientific Data Has Become So Complex, We Have to Invent New Math to Deal With It – Wired Science.

Among the most notable insights Euler gleaned from the puzzle was that the exact positions of the bridges were irrelevant to the solution; all that mattered was the number of bridges and how they were connected. Mathematicians now recognize in this the seeds of the modern field of topology.

Russian Topol missile test spotted from ISS

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This matches. The missile has three stages (like the old Saturn V rockets that took humans to the Moon), and what the astronauts saw may have been a fuel dump from the second stage or the last of the fuel leaking away after the booster phase was complete. In space, the cloud would expand more or less freely, moving rapidly as it traveled along with the booster in its path. In the photo, you can see a slight streaking to the cloud, most likely due to motion.

via Russian Topol missile test spotted from ISS..

iss_russianmissile2.jpg.CROP.original-original
Original tweet from astronaut Mike Hopkins here.