Lonny Lee in Hamilton

2013年1月16日星期三

Germany calls home 674 tons of gold in a high-security operation spread over 8 years

Why?
Germany calls home 674 tons of gold in a high-security operation spread over 8 years:
FRANKFURT, Germany — Germany’s central bank is hauling home tens of thousands of gold bars currently stored in the United States and France, in a high-security operation spread over eight years.
All 374 tons of German gold held in Paris vaults will be moved back to the Bundesbank’s vaults in Frankfurt by 2020, the bank said Wednesday. A further 300 tons of gold stored in New York will also be brought back.
In total, the shipments are worth US$36 billion at current market prices and represent about 19% of Germany’s gold reserves — the world’s second-largest after the United States’.

Once the shipment is complete, Frankfurt will hold half of Germany’s 3,400 tons of reserve gold — currently worth about US$183 billion — with New York retaining 37% and London storing 13%.
But don’t expect the Bundesbank to reveal how it’s going to keep the valuable cargo safe on its way back to Germany — especially after the stunning raid of a Berlin bank earlier this week in which burglars tunneled 30 metres to reach the safety deposit room.
“For security reasons we can’t discuss that, partly to protect the gold, partly to protect the staff that will be carrying out the transfer,” said spokesman Moritz August Raasch.
“But of course since we transport large sums of money around Germany every day, we’ve got a certain amount of experience with this.”
During the Cold War, Germany kept most of its gold abroad for fear it could fall into the hands of the Soviet Union if the country was invaded. Another reason was that it’s easier to swap the reserves for foreign currency in London, Paris and New York, where gold is traded.
The move follows criticism last year from Germany’s independent Federal Auditors’ Office, which concluded that the central bank failed to properly oversee its gold. The auditor suggested the central bank should carry out regular inspections of the gold held abroad.
The auditors’ report stunned Germany, where the Bundesbank routinely tops polls of the nation’s most trusted institutions.
“With this new storage plan, the Bundesbank is focusing on the two primary functions of the gold reserves: to build trust and confidence domestically, and the ability to exchange gold for foreign currencies at gold trading centers abroad within a short space of time,” the Bundesbank said. It said the complete withdrawal of reserves from Paris reflects the fact that Germany no longer depends on France as a financial center to exchange gold because both nations use the euro.
Germany’s Audit Court sparked a debate about the country’s gold reserves last year when it called on the Bundesbank to take stock of its holdings abroad, saying their existence had never been verified. German gold reserves, the second-largest in the world after the U.S., amounted to 3,391 tons as of Dec. 31 and were valued at 137.5 billion euros.
‘A Lot of Emotion’
“In Germany, a lot of emotion is attached to the topic of gold reserves,” Bundesbank board member Carl-Ludwig Thiele said at a press conference in Frankfurt. “The Bundesbank has managed the gold reserves with great caution and will continue to do so.”
The Bundesbank isn’t taking any chances should anything happen to the gold on its way back to Frankfurt.
“Of course the transports are insured,” Raasch told The Associated Press.
With files from Bloomberg.com

2012年12月30日星期日

The Big Lesson Apple Learned In 2012

The Big Lesson Apple Learned In 2012:
By Sarah Kessler

This story originally appeared at Fast Company.

While Apple's new products are generally met with fawning praise and long lines, its first map app inspired nothing but complaints. It mislabeled cities, flattened the Statue of Liberty, didn’t include public transportation and is, by one estimate, three-times more likely to get you lost than Google Maps.

The company at first defended its work. “We are continuously improving it," a spokesperson argued, "and as Maps is a cloud-based solution, the more people use it, the better it will get."

But the problem was not necessarily that Apple Maps was a terrible product. It just wasn’t as good as Google Maps. "What Apple has learned is that maps are really hard," Google's executive chairman Eric Schmidt told AllThingsDigital in an on-stage interview shortly after Apple Maps went live. "We invested hundreds of millions of dollars in satellite work, airplane work, drive-by work, to get the maps accurate."

From a business perspective, cutting Google out of the iOS home screen makes sense. While the companies once happily played in different industries (with Schmidt even serving on Apple’s board at one point), the rise of Android makes them competitors with diverging interests. From a product perspective, however, Apple's maps app replaced an important feature with an inferior one, and that was not a good move.

Apple CEO Tim Cook acknowledged his mistake in a public apology letter. It's not the first time Apple has apologized. Steve Jobs made a similar concession regarding problems with syncing system MobileMe (Apple has also apologized for antennagate and other mishaps). But it was the first time the apology read like a sincere admission of a mistake rather than a response to a customer service complaint. Cook went as far as to recommend using competitor map products while Apple gets its own up to par. Not only did his apology calm the uproar, but it demonstrated a kinder, humbler Apple.

Read this story at Fast Company.

More from FastCompany:

China to release data on city pollution

China to release data on city pollution: Air pollution in big cities will be monitored and hourly information made public, in a sign the government is responding to air quality concerns

2012年12月28日星期五

Are Instagram Users Fleeing?

Are Instagram Users Fleeing?:
The New York Post, knowing sensationalism like no other, wrote an article Friday about Instagram that must have sent jitters through the folks in Facebook's offices in Palo Alto, Calif.

Citing data from App Data, a firm that tracks the popularity of Facebook, iPhone and Android apps, the Post wrote that the photo-sharing app shed 4 million active daily users during the week it announced its controversial new Terms of Service.

"The app, which Facebook acquired for $1 billion earlier this year, may have shed nearly a quarter of its daily active users in the wake of the debacle," according to the Post.

Twenty-five percent is a steep and scary decline. But should we believe it? Observers at many prominent tech blogs, including TechCrunch, Gizmodo and The Verge, are pushing back against claim that the dip in Data App's data is due to an exodus of users afraid that their photos will now be sold off.

Obviously, Instagram is denying the decline, too. "We continue to see strong and steady growth in both registered and active users of Instagram," a spokesperson told The Verge.

Indeed, as nice of a tool as App Data is, its analysis is incomplete because it includes only Instagram members that have connected their accounts to Facebook. While App Data is reporting that it the number of Instagram users it observes dropped from 16.4 million to 12.4 million, these figures represent only a fraction of Instagram's total users, which numbered over 100 million in September 2012.

Furthermore, the decline isn't really aligned with the date Instagram's new rules were unveiled, Dec. 17. "Though the terms of service change spurred a lot of negative media attention and complaints from users, the decline in Facebook-connected daily active users began closer to Christmas, not immediately after the proposed policy changes," App Data itself told The Wall Street Journal.

A 24.7-percent drop between Dec. 17 and Dec. 27!

Therein lies the strongest piece of evidence that the decline doesn't have much to do with the new rules. Many other Internet services had fewer people log in during the days leading up to Christmas. App Data notes dropoffs in usership at Pandora, Pinterest and Yelp during Christmas week, as well. The same appears to have happened at Twitter, too, and The Next Web runs down similar holiday dropoffs at other companies. The celebration of the birth of Jesus (and associated end-of-year get-togethers) seems to be one of the only things capable of pulling people away from their computers and smartphones.

Here are those four other Christmastime drops in daily visitors. The percentage decrease in daily active users is from Dec. 17 to Dec. 27, the time period the Post analyzed for Instagram. Suddenly, it doesn't look like Instagram has been left out in the cold by users on Christmas.

Twitter, a 21.6-percent decrease

Pandora, a 36.9-percent decrease

Yelp, a 34.2-percent decrease

Pinterest, a 21.6-percent decrease

2012年12月2日星期日

First Snow in My Life

Having been in Hamilton for three months, I keep feeling homesick. I don't know whether it is because of the stronger and stronger festival atmosphere. Last night, waiting for bus in the snow, I felt really upset. I was not that prepared for being alone in such a cold weather.

I have never thought of seeing snow such far away from home. The distance is nearly half Earth. It was really cold outside. The wind blew the snow everywhere. Soon some cars were covered with a layer of snow. The trees looked exactly from what I saw in TV. Without bright lights, it felt a little lonely looking outside the bus, though we were in traffic jam. Compared to the snow on trees, the snow on the roadside was dirty. That reminded me of a description of locus in China, "It grows from mud but never gets dirty." It's more a dream than reality. The reality is here. Purity may get dirty, and will be washed away.

The first semester will end in two weeks. I learned a lot though writing is still torturing me. My poor vocabulary holds back the whole study progress. Once I wondered whether I should apply for master degrees. After a long talk with my cousin, I decided to try. It kept me busy.

I didn't pay much attention in study last month, because reading novels cost me lots of time. But reality is still ahead. It never waits for me, I know.

Time will tell.

2012年11月26日星期一

Night at Niagara Falls

This was another great trip to Niagara Falls. We had a lot of time to walk around the area and enjoyed the Christmas lights.

Niagara Falls, in my opinion, is not a grand sightseeing spot there. But here we feel local citizen’s respect to nature. A Chinese girl on the bus felt the same. We sat together and became friends.

The bus brought us to an outlet mall first. It is small, but I found a pair of boots. Shopping never bothers girls. For international students, this is considerate arrangement. Most of us don’t own cars. In such a large city with only a few malls, we don’t really have time and money to go far away to an outlet mall ourselves.

The weather was good for shooting. Though I took a lot of photos last time I came here, I couldn’t help shooting. We found more features of it. After that, we went to an attraction street for two hours and then came back for Christmas lights.

To be honest, the lights are normal to me. I even felt a little naïve. We even laughed for a while thinking that we came here particularly for these lights. They looked very low end. But suddenly we realized that these are all tax payers’ money. We lost in thought for a while. In China, we are used to government’s lavish expenditure. We enjoyed the great scenery produced by our government but never asked whether those were worth our money.

I can't say which style of government is better. Sometimes we did blame our government of using a lot of money to show off. But in reality we enjoyed the fantastic views as well.

In China, we don’t really have an entertainment street like this one. The facilities are separated. They seem to have different owner. We only pay for what we get. I love the buildings there. Though it’s really short, we enjoyed wondering around there.

Now I wonder how it looks like in winter. I heard that it snows. Will the whole fall be frozen? I guess not. Let's expect for a third trip there in winter.