Daily Archives: July 3, 2012


Google and Asus show that form doesn't have to completely give way to functi… 1

Google and Asus show that form doesn't have to completely give way to function.

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With one millimeter, the Nexus 7 proves powerful and thin devices can still be repairable
Google’s new Nexus 7 tablet has some impressive hardware beneath its sleek, stunt driver-styled skin — impressive enough, in some ways, to go toe-to-toe with Apple's iPad. But there's one takeaway from peeping at the device's internals that's particularly worth noting: with hardware design trending toward thinner, less serviceable, and thus shorter-lasting devices, the new tablet is still easier to repair than the most recent iPad, despite being only one millimeter thicker.
That one millimete…

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I saw this morning that much of the mainstream media started yelling fire in the…

I saw this morning that much of the mainstream media started yelling fire in the wake of a press release from the Highway Loss Data Institute on driver assistance systems. 

Before anyone panics it might worth actually pausing to read the full report and giving some thought to how the data was derived. (yeah I know, Ready- Aim-Fire is how media handles news these days) HLDI is the branch of the auto insurance industry that compiles data on claims. In general they don't go out and actually test vehicles like the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) does. The data in this study is based on real world claims data for various models from five different car makers that are available with one or more driver assistance systems including forward collision alert, autonomous emergency braking, adaptive headlights and lane departure warning.

In general the data indicates that active safety systems that intervene autonomously to avert or mitigate accidents can improve safety and reduce insurance losses. Systems that only provide an alert to the driver but don't attempt to correct the problem seem to be at best neutral or provide worse results although these differences were statistically insignificant and in a larger population of vehicles, the results could go either way. 

Unfortunately these apparent results may be a bit premature and even misleading. Since this is basically a summary of claims data correlated to vehicle equipment it's not really a very good experiment.

The comparisons of cars equipped with/without each system don't attempt to isolate the effects of those systems. For example the Volvos equipped with lane departure warning seem to do better than Mercedes or Buicks with similar systems.  However, the Volvos are also bundled with forward collision alert with automatic braking while the others are available as stand-alone options. The report's authors acknowledge this, but it does somewhat limit the validity of the apparent results. 

Another major factor to consider is that in almost if not all cases, these assistance features can be switched off by the driver and in some cases are off by default. The results do not seem to account for whether the systems were on/active or switched off. This way a car with lane departure warning that was switched off would still be counted in the group of vehicles that had the system if it slid off the road, even though it might as well have not been equipped. 

There are nuggets of very valuable data in this report and the efficacy of these systems is worthy of further investigation. However, this particular report is in no way conclusive of anything at this time and shouldn't be treated as such. 

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http://www.iihs.org/externaldata/srdata/docs/sr4705.pdf

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Here's something I don't recall hearing about the Affordable Care Act be… 1

Here's something I don't recall hearing about the Affordable Care Act before.

Starting today, health insurers will have spend at least 80% of the premium dollars they collect providing the actual medical services that customers are paying for. That means they will have cut down the outrageous overhead they have today such as the multi-million dollar salaries for CEOs and the huge staffs that are dedicated to finding ways to not actually pay for services.

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The Bomb Buried In Obamacare Explodes Today-Hallelujah! – Forbes
Image by AFP via @daylife I have long argued that the impact of the Affordable Care Act is not nearly as big of a deal as opponents would have you believe. At the end of the day, the law is – in the …

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