3 Noticias economicas ingles

Merger of consumer electronics will resolve weaknesses and lift sales, says Japanese group’s Kimio Maki

Merger of consumer electronics will resolve weaknesses and lift sales, says Japanese group’s Kimio Maki

Merger of consumer electronics will resolve weaknesses and lift sales, says Japanese group’s Kimio Maki

With the vaccine rolling out, many of us are seeing our friends, family, and coworkers for the first time in a year and a half. Determined to burn their sweatpants and emerge with a whole new look, many are looking to replace their wardrobes, get new haircuts, or try out bold new makeup. One thing that shouldn’t be forgotten: scent. To me, a new scent can feel transformational, a subtle way to announce a new identity to the world. Here are a few that our editors love.

[Photo: courtesy Violet Grey]Dark Is Night by Henry Rose
On a cool summer night, senior editor Amy Farley loves Dark Is Night, a scent from one of our favorite perfume houses, Michelle Pfeiffer’s clean fragrance line Henry Rose. “When it first comes out of the bottle, it’s a decadent, woody vanilla blend,” Farley says, adding that it lightens into a sweet and breezy scent after a few minutes. Henry Rose’s latest scent, Windows Down is also perfect for a summer’s day, with notes of grapefruit, bergamot, and earl grey tea that dry down to a subtle, fruity scent.

Dark is Night - $120Windows Down - $120

Clémentine California Pure Perfume by Atelier Cologne
For a light, citrusy summer scent to wear in the heat, Fast Company art director Chelsea Schiff loves French perfume company Atelier Cologne’s Clémentine California Pure Perfume. “Every so often you wake up to an overcast day and it just makes you feel—for lack of a better word—blah. Those are the times I reach for this scent,” she says, adding that the clementine scent reminds her of Vespa rides along the Italian coast.

Clementine California - From $80

[Photo: courtesy Henry Rose]Mojave Ghost by Byredo
Those easily overwhelmed by strong fragrance may like Stockholm luxury brand Byredo’s subtle Mojave Ghost. The sophisticated woody and floral scent smells clean, like you just stepped out of a very fancy shower. Plus, the chic, minimalist (and pricey) bottle looks great on a vanity.

Mojave Ghost by Byredo - $270

L’Eau Eau de Toilette by Jimmy Choo
When social media producer (and my Hit the Ground Running podcast cohost) Christina Royster wants to feel luxurious, she turns to Jimmy Choo’s signature floral scent. “I wear it on date nights or days when I need a boost of confidence. I only need a few sprays onto pulse points for this scent to make an impact,” she says.

L'Eau by Jimmy Choo - From $60

Lost Cherry by Tom Ford
Recommender writer Rachel Raczka loves the sweet, sultry, and overpowering effect of Tom Ford’s Lost Cherry, a warm and spicy perfume that smells like cherry, almond, and vanilla. A bonus? The perfume’s staying power. “A light spritz of this at the nape of my neck and in my belly button lasts all day,” she says.

Lost Cherry by Tom Ford - From $75

[Photo: courtesy Violet Grey]Functional Fragrance by the Nue Co
The Nue Co’s Functional Fragrance is designed to do more than just make you smell good—the brand claims that the blend of clean, woody, and spicy scents can help destress the mind. Developed with perfumer Frank Voelkl, one of the noses behind Le Labo’s iconic Santal 33, the subtle scent incorporates notes of iris, palo santo, and green cardamom.

Functional Fragrance by The Nue Co - $95

Sailing Day from Replica by Maison Margiela
Staff editor Lara Sorokanich became obsessed with finding a new signature scent this summer, and turned to a sample set for help. Maison Margiela’s $35 Discovery Set contains 10 samples of the company’s intriguing and unusual perfumes that smell like everything from springtime in the park to barber shops to old libraries. “To my surprise, the unisex Sailing Day is my absolute favorite: To me, it smells like a cool ocean breeze on a hot summer day, fresh and bright and full of promise. Which is to say, it feels exactly like summer 2021,” she says.

Sailing Day by Replica - $135

Fast Company’s Recommender section is dedicated to surfacing innovative products, services, and brands that are changing how we live and work. Every item that we write about is independently selected by our editors and, wherever possible, tested and reviewed. Fast Company may receive revenue from some links in our stories; however, all selections are based on our editorial judgment.

Sizzling kit for summer living

Hedge funds were battered by the surge of stocks such as GameStop and AMC in January, and they are still struggling to recover.

After languishing for months, the group has staged a resurgence with several tech behemoths hitting records in recent sessions.

The wealthy are borrowing more than ever, using low-interest loans backed by their investments in a strategy known as “buy, borrow, die.”

Central bank officials in both Mexico and Canada have raised their forecasts for economic growth in their respective countries, in part because of the strong U.S. rebound.

Guggenheim Partners and Nuveen among managers who held out against consensus

Companies with 1m users will need to pass review to ensure sensitive data cannot be obtained by foreign regulators

Companies with 1m users will need to pass review to ensure sensitive data cannot be obtained by foreign regulators

Companies with 1m users will need to pass review to ensure sensitive data cannot be obtained by foreign regulators

The 5G arms race is about to kick off in India and Google has a head start.

Last month, the company announced that it’s partnering with Reliance Jio, India’s leading wireless carrier, to launch an “ultra-affordable” smartphone in the country. Called JioPhone Next and due to arrive in September, it will run on an optimized version of Android OS. It will also aim to leverage Jio’s vast network and ability to reach Indian consumers to reach “millions of new users who will experience the internet for the very first time.”

In order to understand the significance of JioPhone Next, it’s worth taking a step book to look at what Google has been up to in India. Over the last few years, the country has undergone a digital revolution. As cellular data and smartphone prices continue to fall, hundreds of millions have logged on for the first time. Today, India hosts nearly 700 million internet users–more than double that of the United States–and this upward trajectory will only climb, since half of the country’s population still isn’t online.

Due in September, the JioPhone Next is an Android phone optimized for the emerging market of price-conscious Indian consumers. [Photo: Jio]With the Chinese market either cut off to western companies or rife with hazards, U.S. tech giants consider India their last chance to acquire a giant pool of new users. For Google, the country is a project that’s been a long time in making and it’s been part of the country’s digitization journey well before the current connectivity boom.

With its six-year-old “Next Billion Users” effort, Google has been hard at work to capture this upcoming wave of internet users, most of whom will come from non-English speaking rural regions. Its  initiatives have covered the end-to-end online experience—from teaching digital literacy to offering free internet access—and prepared it for this moment. For instance, its “Internet Saathi” program offered Android and internet lessons to millions of women from underprivileged backgrounds. And Google Station supplied complimentary internet access at over 400 railway stations. The list goes on.

A $10 billion bet

Last year, Google further amplified its investment in India with a $10 billion “India Digitization Fund”–about half of which went into acquiring over 7% of Reliance Jio. The JioPhone Next is, in many ways, the culmination of these efforts for Google.

Prachir Singh, a senior research analyst at Counterpoint Research, estimates that the JioPhone Next can potentially target 520 million users, which includes 320 million dumbphone users and 150 million unconnected people who will likely come online in the next year or two.

The JioPhone Next is fine-tuned for such first-time smartphone and internet users. It comes loaded with Google’s services for emerging markets, such as instant translation in regional languages and a “Listen” tool that can read-aloud any on-screen content like web pages and text messages.

Jio has emerged as the hot ticket into India’s burgeoning digital economy.

The JioPhone Next also benefits from a range of Android perks usually reserved for Google’s own Pixel line of phones. Its camera app comes bundled with Google’s HDR technology, which will come in handy given the hardware won’t be top-of-the-line. Plus, Google says it will regularly roll out “feature drops” and security updates to the JioPhone Next.

While Google takes care of the underlying technology, Reliance Jio is responsible for driving traffic to the JioPhone Next. Jio has been able to sell its phones at a breakneck pace by offering them at little or no cost and earning when people pay for its cellular plans. In 2018, when the telco announced a 4G-enabled feature phone, it soared to the top of the world leaderboards in just 10 months. Google is hoping it can replicate that success with the JioPhone Next.

For both Jio and Google, Counterpoint’s Singh says, this new initiative is about more than selling smartphones. Like Google, Jio has a suite of content services for movies and news. And it’s still looking to quickly add more subscribers to its mobile network. As has been the case with Jio’s feature phones, the JioPhone Next will be heavily subsidized. If history is any indication, it will be available for free to existing Jio feature phone users.
That’s an easy 60 million user win for Google—and an opportunity to sign all those new smartphone owners up for its services.

Local expertise

The Jio alliance has broader significance for Google. Although the search engine giant has stayed in local authorities’ good books by complying with any new laws, U.S. tech giants have recently come under increased regulatory pressure in India as the government tightens its grip over media and social networks. Partnering up with a local conglomerate, experts believe, will ensure that Google can continue its march without undue hassle.

Globaldata analyst Deepa Dhingra says that local support and collaboration “can reap significant returns for western companies,” and it’s vital for them to join hands with domestic players to sail through the “fiercely competitive nature of the telecom market and highly regulated regime in India.”

Besides, just on its own, Google has been unable to crack the sub-$100 price segment in India. Two other initiatives to build devices for emerging markets, Android One and Android Go, struggled to take off.

“With Jio, it could be different,” says Singh, thanks to the “local expertise of Indian companies” like Reliance Jio that have historically done well in offering products customized to Indian consumers’ needs.

In addition, the Jio partnership is also unlocking several new avenues of growth for Google’s enterprise arm. As part of the tie-up, Jio has agreed to shift its core retail businesses–the largest retailer in the country–to Google Cloud’s infrastructure, a deal that will reportedly earn the latter at least $1 billion in revenue.

Google isn’t alone either. For a series of U.S. tech giants, including Facebook, Snap, and Qualcomm, Jio has emerged as the hot ticket into India’s burgeoning digital economy. Next owners, for instance, can access Snapchat lenses right from the camera app. Though the JioPhone Next is a 4G device, U.S. companies hope that it will help them secure a front-row seat as India gets ready to deploy 5G widely.

“We believe,” Globaldata’s Dhingra says, “that Google is likely to play an important and crucial role in the development of India’s 5G ecosystem and forthcoming digital era.”

This past year has revealed with brutal clarity the intersection between a global health crisis, climate crisis, and systemic social injustice. It has also made clearer than ever the moral imperative not only to deploy all the tools in our arsenal, but also to seek out new solutions. We need discontinuous, ambitious, change and we need innovations that can help drive solutions at a systemic level. Dame Ellen MacArthur recently told us that her vision for a circular economy “is a much bigger idea than recycling,” she said. “This is about systemic change and restructuring the global economy.”

While innovation can sometimes come in the form of a flash of individual inspiration, it can also come from looking at problems in a new way, collaborating with new partners, and sometimes, using old-fashioned tools in new combinations. Take, for example, solutions like India’s SELCO, which bridges the need for light with education. Rural families receive LED lamps that use a pocket-sized rechargeable solar-powered battery in place of dirty kerosene lanterns. The central solar charging station for the batteries is intentionally located at the local school, creating incentives for families to send children to school to get the batteries recharged. Not only do families receive clean, safe light at home, but the school-based charging stations encourage school attendance and improved education outcomes.

In that spirit, the Morgan Stanley Institute for Sustainable Investing is sharing our people, our expertise and our network to lean into on the power of innovation and cooperation; the result is the Morgan Stanley Sustainable Solutions Collaborative. Our first cohort features five of the brightest, ground breaking concepts from around the world—representing industry, non-profits, and academia, as those selected bring forth innovations in health care, climate solutions, plastic waste reduction and ecosystem services, together with re-engineered distribution methods, technology platforms, and a new perspective on the value of nature.

One such company from our cohort is SunCulture. SunCulture brings together innovations in solar technology, sustainable agriculture practices and access to inclusive finance to help smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa address their biggest challenges: getting affordable, accessible, clean energy to electrify their homes and power irrigation to their farmland. By solving these problems in tandem, SunCulture can help farmers boost their crop yields between two to five times and increase their incomes by five and ten times.

Based in Kenya, the company offers a proven solution that is now aggressively scaling across Africa, with plans to take the idea global. They’re working hand-in-hand with local and national governments to promote the uptake of solar irrigation. They’ve recently launched a partnership with the government of Togo to offer thousands of solar irrigation systems across the country and have an ongoing project in Kenya through the World Bank. At a time when an existing global food crisis is exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, potentially doubling the number of people facing starvation globally to 265 million, SunCulture’s solutions are even more critical to ensuring smallholder farmers are productive and families are fed.

The collaborative mindset isn’t limited to startups. Clothier Eileen Fisher has created the Renew and Waste No More takeback program, reclaiming and reselling clothes as “second life” garments. And, for “third life” garments, the company takes damaged and old clothing, deconstruct the items, and remanufacture them as totally new garments. Even acrylic and nylon pants can be remade into a new pair. Since 2009, the brand has kept 1.24 million garments from going into the landfill and has opened its doors to collaborate with other designers, sharing and creating new systems with innovation and remanufacturing techniques.

For some corporate leaders, this may require a mindset shift. As IKEA’s CEO Jesper Brodin recently told me, “Before, we were thinking, ‘How do we protect the uniqueness of our company by locking others out of it?’ I think now we protect our companies by having speed, we protect our companies by being relevant for our customers and co-workers, and … [those that] work in your own funnel and [do] not collaborate with others, will also have a price to pay.”

Ultimately, we are excited to partner with innovators from all corners—those that have Eureka! moments of discovery as well as those who discover new ways of combining existing tools to meet the accelerating challenges we face. We draw great inspiration from a recent conversation with U.N. Deputy Secretary General Amina Mohammed who urged us, “Make each step count. If you do that, when you look back, you’ll appreciate those steps. You’ll know that your journey was rich, it was fruitful, and you made a difference in people’s lives. And hopefully your footprint was green”

Audrey Choi is chief sustainability officer and chief marketing officer at Morgan Stanley.

The history of cinema as an art parallels its history as a technology. Ever wondered why the color in The Wizard of Oz is so saturated? Well, it wasn’t the first technicolor film, but it was the first to effectively advertise MGM’s new 3-strip color process to a global audience. Why advertise something at half mast?

This kind of technological innovation in cinema is, of course, spurred by economic motives. For instance, 3D thrived in three waves in direct response to the economic threats posed by new technologies: in the 1950s, in response to television, in the 1980s, responding to VHS, and in the 21st century in the face of increased online streaming. (Now we have 4DX, a gimmick one suspects won’t take off.)

In this era of digital cinema, with celluloid virtually replaced by video technology, the latest technological battle concerns image resolution.

A digital image is made up of pixels—little shapes (usually boxes) that are the smallest controllable element of the image. Resolution refers to the number of pixels appearing in an image, and is usually measured in pixels per inch. As a rule, the more pixels, the crisper the image—that is, the sharper the edges of the subject appear.

In digital cinema’s resolution wars, you will often hear people speak about 4K—as in, 4000—or 8K, or now even 12K resolution. This number refers to the number of horizontal pixels. A typical 4K digital cinema image for instance, has a resolution of 4,096 (horizontal) x 2,160 (vertical) pixels.

Image capture resolution is only one factor in how an image looks—dynamic range, that is, difference between the darkest and lightest parts of the image, is another. But most cinematographers and techies agree the camera’s resolution is crucial to the crispness of the image.

In 2018, Netflix were snubbed by the Cannes Film Festival on the basis Netflix-produced films are not true cinema. This year again, there are no Netflix-produced films in the festival competition due to a rule all films selected to compete must have a local theatrical release.

Cannes is right. Most made-for-Netflix productions don’t look like the cinema we’re used to. Why? There’s a technical answer. Though the company streams some films that are not “Netflix Originals,” it requires narrative feature films made for Netflix be shot on cameras with a “true 4K UHD sensor.”

In other words, the sensor—which detects and conveys the information required to make an image—must be at least 3,840 pixels wide, or “Ultra High Definition.”

Flat and depthless

This technical specification is strikingly evident in David Fincher’s recent Netflix Original production, Mank, a black and white biopic about Herman J. Mankiewicz’s ghostwriting of Citizen Kane.

An old black and white film, shot on celluloid, has a grainy texture that draws the eye into and around the image. This is partly the result of the degradation of the film print, which occurs over time, but primarily because of the physical processing of the film itself.

All celluloid film has a grainy look. This “grain” is an optical effect related to the small particles of metallic silver that emerge through the film’s chemical processing.

This is not the case with digital cameras. Thus video images captured by high resolution sensors look different from those shot on celluloid. The images in Mank look flat, depthless, they are too clean and clear.

This is not as much of a problem on a big screen, when the images are huge, but the high resolution is really noticeable when the images are compressed on the kind of domestic TV or computer screens most people use to stream Netflix. The edges look too sharp, the shades too clearly delineated — compared to what we have been used to as cinemagoers.

The absurd thing is companies like CineGrain now sell digital overlays of film stock that can endow video with the grainy film look. (Their company motto is “make digital more cinematic using CineGrain.”) The natural result of the physical process has been superseded by video, but digital cinema makers reintroduce this as one component in achieving a “film look.”

Netflix does allow limited exceptions to its rule, with use of non-approved cameras requiring its explicit approval and a “more flexible” approach to non-fiction productions. According to Y.M. Cinema magazine, 30% of Netflix’s “best movies of 2020” were made on non-approved cameras. Still, in stipulating the use of 4K (or higher) sensor cameras, Netflix radically reduces the aesthetic autonomy of film directors and producers.

If we think of Netflix as a production studio, this is not surprising—all studios (like all major corporations) dictate the nature of their products, including the aesthetics and feel of their films. But this requirement means their productions look similar, and the imagery (to a cinephile, anyway), too clinical.

Glorious granularity

All film festivals, distributors, and networks request delivery of films conforming to their specifications, but this usually has nothing to do with the source camera behind the delivered file. If it looks and plays well, it looks and plays well.

The film Open Water (2003), for example, which made over $50 million at the box office (from a budget of under $200,000), was shot on mini-DV, a low quality and now obsolete video format, but it perfectly suited the film and thus works.

Netflix, in stipulating 4K camera sensors, reproduces the assumption higher resolution is necessarily better, for all (or even most) films.

But one of the reasons American film noir still looks so good — or the New Hollywood films of the 1960s and 1970s, like Easy Rider and Bonnie and Clyde — is partly because of the celluloid technology itself, in all its glorious granularity. The beauty of these cinematic images has nothing to do with the sharpness of the edges of the photographed subjects.

From where is this assumption that sharper images are better, and more aesthetically effective? Art has always sought to say something in its deviation from its realistic reproduction of the world — that is, in its expression.

As with all technological innovation in a capitalist context, this assumption stems from the competitive impulse to appear to be doing something better than everyone else — the bigger, more expensive, clearer, the better. But when it comes to aesthetics, this is a redundant form of economy.

Ari Mattes is a lecturer in Communications and Media, University of Notre Dame Australia. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Semiconductor maker talks of ‘ecosystem-wide project’ as it lobbies for support from bloc

Semiconductor maker talks of ‘ecosystem-wide project’ as it lobbies for support from bloc

I don’t have any career goals at the moment. I’m not worried about it.

Career progression is one of the most important stories in our culture. The American Dream. You’re supposed to start at the bottom and work your way toward the top. But you know what? The top sounds like a nightmare to me, and so do the steps in between.

I still want to get better at what I do, and I still want to learn new skills, but I’m doing those things for their own sake, not because of any sort of career plan.

I’m not saying everyone should give up on moving up the ladder—if that’s what you want, do it. But if you don’t want to, that’s ok. Let’s talk about why.

If I work hard enough, I can get to where I am now

Here’s a thought experiment: what would you do with your time if you didn’t have to work?

My initial reaction is probably like yours—drinks, beach, sleep, repeat—but I’d get bored with that eventually. I know myself. I need to be creating something, and words are how I do that. So I’d probably end up writing blog posts about things I think are interesting.

Which just happens to be the job I have right now.

I work in a marketing department. To move up the ladder, I’d have to advance as a marketer—not a writer. I know from experience that would make me deeply unhappy. But it’s easy to suppress those feelings and work toward a promotion you don’t want, especially when you feel that pressure in the background radiation of our culture. Because that’s what you’re supposed to do—advance, keep moving.

But if my money-isn’t-an-object ideal would mean doing what I’m doing now, why should I spend any time at all doing something else? And if I have no desire to be a leader, why work toward being one?

Most people don’t have a job they enjoy. I’m lucky. If you don’t like your current job, it makes sense that you’d want something else, and it’s worth working toward that goal. But the pressure in our culture to advance, always advance, makes it hard to notice when you’re already in a good spot. Try to pay attention to that.

What to do when you don’t have goals

You know what I like about Star Trek? (Please don’t leave, I’ll keep this short.)

Star Trek is set in a future without scarcity. Technology means there’s plenty of food and energy for everyone, so the only reason to work is self-improvement—to become better at something for its own sake. People work hard anyway because it’s fulfilling to them. That’s enough. It’s a utopia built around the idea that people aren’t primarily motivated by need: they’re motivated by achievement and learning.

It makes sense. Most people on earth have at least one hobby they will never get paid to do: playing guitar, gardening, I could go on. These things are fun because you get better at them, and that feels good. Heck, even video games are built around this basic human need for progression.

And this can translate to your career—you don’t need goals to feel motivated. Getting better at what you do can be motivation enough, and that’s what I’m focusing on.

Lately, I’ve been thinking in terms of themes, as an alternative to goals. I was inspired by a video by CGP Grey, in which he suggested giving up on New Year’s resolutions and thinking in terms of themes instead. For example: I’m pretty good at writing once I have an idea, but recently, I’ve had trouble coming up with things to write about. That’s why my current theme is “ideas.”

• I’ve turned my daily journal entries into brainstorming sessions.

• I’m taking a course on writing personal essays, which is in part built around thinking up ideas.

• I’m asking questions every day on Twitter, in the hopes that a response might inspire a blog post.

• I’m taking more walks, alone, so I can think up ideas.

In a few weeks, I’ll think up a new theme and keep finding small ways to improve on that front. This system is working for me, so I’m going to stick to it for a while.

It’s not scientific, it’s not based on metrics, and it’s not the sort of thing that will get me promoted in the short term. That doesn’t matter: I feel like I’m improving, and that’s enough.

You don’t need to have specific goals to get better at what you do. You can focus on improvement for its own sake, even if it doesn’t feel that way.

This article originally appeared on Zapier’s blog and is reprinted with permission.

Cartel to face rising tensions as peak in demand for oil approaches