The UK Institute for Fiscal Studies said today that chancellor George Osborne may have to find another £11bn from tax rises or spending cuts if the economy does not pick up.
In other words: this austerity is not working, let’s try more!
One of the justifications for George Osbourne’s austerity measures is to protect the UK’s ability to borrow money at low rates.
But countries that borrow in their own currencies and can “print” at will don’t have default risk, so their borrowing costs are actually an expression of expectations of future interest rates and growth. The US has been notably profligate since the crisis. The UK (under Cameron) has been prematurely austere.
The upshot: it hasn’t affected their borrowing costs at all, as this chart from Paul Krugman shows.
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You’ve heard that Google is working on computerized glasses. They’re called Google Glass, and developers can already buy them.
Microsoft is working on something similar. It filed these patents on the project and Unwired View dug them up.
But Google Glass isn’t going to use “augmented reality” – where data and illustrations overlay the actual world around you. Google Glass is actually just a tiny screen you have to look up and to the left to see.
Microsoft’s glasses seem to utilize augmented reality. In this patent illustration, you can see that the glasses put data on top of a live action concert and a baseball game.
Could this replace the smartphone as the dominant way people access the web?
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New Zealander Benjamin Betts set out to figure out what consciousness looks like in the 19th century and collected his “findings” in the 1887 tome Geometrical Psychology, or, The Science of Representation.
Thanks to Brain Pickings.
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From ever-inventive designer Stefan G. Bucher comes 344 Questions: The Creative Person’s Do-It-Yourself Guide to Insight, Survival, and Artistic Fulfillment — a delightful pocket-sized compendium of flowcharts and lists illustrated in Bucher’s unmistakable style to help you figure out life’s big answers.
Thanks, Brainpickings.
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Molly Crabapple‘s stunning visual adaptation of Salvador Dalí’s “My Struggle” is from Ramon Gomez de la Serna’s Dalí, and, according to Brain Pickings is:
Posted in: Infographic of the day | Leave a Comment“A rare synthesis of the legendary surrealist’s creative vision and personal credo.”
This chart shows Apple’s share of operating profits from global mobile phones dropped to 60% in Q3. Samsung are now at 39%. HTC at 1%. No other companies are profitable, tweets Horace Dediu.
This raises a few questions.
1. If Motorola, RIM and Nokia go under what happens to Google’s operating system Android?
2. Is Google trying to save mobile maker Motorola so it is not held hostage by Samsung, the only profitable smartphone maker running Android?
3. Is this really a business that Mircrosoft – who are thinking about developing their own smartphone – wants to enter?
Brenda Eich, CTO of Firefox, has the answer.
“2.5 billion people have come on the web in the past 20 years, and we are going to get another 2.5 billion in the next five years.”
And most of those will be from the developing world using mobile.
Bingo! Or should I say ker-ching!
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