Tech news and more ....: October 2015

Friday, October 30, 2015

The Real Reasons Behind China's New Child Policy; #china

China announced Thursday it was reversing its one-child policy, a controversial rule implemented 35 years ago aimed at taming its exploding population.

While the policy has been blamed for forced sterilizations and abortions, China's gender imbalance, and child trafficking, the government's decision to end it is largely symbolic. Here's what you need to know about the change, which will allow all married couples to now have two children and is expected to be approved by the country's parliament in March.

It didn't come out of nowhere.

At 1.4 billion people, China is the world's most populous country. The one-child policy was introduced in 1979 with the goal of relieving the strain the population was putting on demands for water and other resources. According to the government, about 400 million births have been prevented thanks to the one-child rule.

The policy has been a cornerstone of the Chinese Communist Party, and has had a a huge impact on Chinese society, economy and identity. But exemptions, especially in the last five to ten years, have watered it down.

Rural residents and ethnic minorities have long been allowed to have more than one child without penalty — if their firstborn was female. More recently, in 2013, couples who were each single children themselves were allowed to have two children.

As the middle class expanded and as incomes grew, many couples developed the means to give birth outside China, from as close as Hong Kong to as far as the U.S., spawning the birth tourism industry. In this sense, the Chinese Communist Party's decision to eradicate the one-child policy was long overdue. And the Party was aware.

In 2013, the government announced it was folding the National Population and Family Planning Commission — which supervised the one-child policy — into the Health Ministry. And, just as significantly, the government decided to shift responsibility for demographic planning to China's chief economic planning agency, the National Development and Reform Commission.

It's an economic decision.

Economics is key to understanding why China has decided to forego a longstanding policy that has been, ultimately, too successful: It's resulted in a shrinking population. One of the challenges that has contributed to pressure for the country to transition from a low-end manufacturing giant to a consumer-led economy is because it hasn't been able to sustain a cheap labor pool.

There simply aren't enough young people to reinforce the labor pool for factory work in unskilled jobs.

Second, the aging population there has no safety net. Despite its communist badge, the Chinese government does not look after the elderly.

The burden of taking care of the elderly has fallen squarely on the shoulders of their offspring. With each couple bearing only one child, that child now is solely responsible for caring for both parents instead of sharing the burden with siblings.

It may be irrelevant.

Many couples simply can't afford to have another child. In 2007, NBC News interviewed couples for a story about family planning and asked them whether they would want to have more than one child. Many said they did not. Raising offspring in cities like Beijing or Shanghai was already very expensive, and those parents wanted to give the very best of everything to the one child they had.

Minor relaxing of the policy in 2013 were greeted with a similar response.

"We lack a safe social net to support a family with two children," Wang Tao, a 35-year-old Beijing native, told NBC News in 2013. "China doesn't provide a pension or free education."

Demographers said the change might not be able to reverse the declining fertility rate.

"The good news is, it is here. The bad news is, it is too little, too late," Cai Yong, a sociology professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, told the Associated Press.

How it could impact U.S. adoptions.

China is the biggest source of adoptions for families in the U.S. who are adopting internationally. According to the State Department, from 1999 to 2013, nearly 72,000 babies were adopted into the U.S. from China. Of those adopted, 88.9 percent of the children were female — a reflection of Chinese families' centuries-long preference for sons.

Other countries have clamped down on adoptions to the U.S.: Russia stopped adoptions to the U.S. in 2012, and South Korea has turned its focus to domestic adoption, said Dr. Jane Aronson, CEO of Worldwide Orphans Foundation.

That has created a long waiting list for Chinese babies — American families wait an average of seven years if they want to adopt a healthy infant with no special needs, Aronson said.

The change to China's one-child policy will likely result in even fewer babies available for international adoptions. But, Aronson said, "it could take a long time for that."

Nbcnews.com

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Wednesday, October 21, 2015

First impressions: Sony Xperia Z5 and Xperia Z5 Premium. #xperia

Sony has launched two flagship devices for the upcoming festive season in India – the Xperia Z5 and the Xperia Z5 Premium. While the Xperia Z5 is an incremental upgrade to the Xperia Z3+, the Xperia Z3 Premium is the world’s first smartphone with a 4K display on it. The Xperia Z5 is priced at Rs 52,990 whereas the Xperia Z5 Premium will set you back by Rs 62,990. We had a chance to play around with both the phones for some time. Here are our first impressions of the two phones.

Build and Design

Sony has the same boring design for its 2015 flagships that we have been accustomed to being seeing for the last many years. Sure there’s nothing wrong with the boxy rectangular design, but Sony could have been more innovative with design instead of just adding on an engraved Xperia logo on the left hand side. The Xperia Z5 has ditched the glossy glass back and instead you get one with frosted glass which has an elegant matte appearance. It is certainly not a smudge magnet as the Xperia Z5 Premium’s reflective cover is.

Sony Xperia Z5

Both phones come with a rectangular power button which is a departure from the circular buttons we have been used to seeing on Sony flagships. The rectangular button also houses the finger print scanner. These are the first phones where the fingerprint scanner is located in the side edges. There are no sharp corners and the edges are neatly rounded. The Premium will certainly require two handed operation for most users.

Display

Sony Xperia Z5 comes with the same 5.2inch full HD IPS display and the screen has scratch resistant oleophobic coating. It is powered by Sony’s X-Reality engine. Just like its predecessors, the display looks great and has good viewing angles.

The Sony Xperia Z5 Premium on the other hand rocks a 5.5 inch 4K display. Sony claims that the phone is capable of upscaling any content including videos and photos to 4K resolution. We will have to see how the upscaling looks with non HD content to comment in it.

Sony Xperia Z5 Premium

Displays on both phones look sharp, specially on the Z5 Premium. But despite being on maximum brightness, it still cannot match the levels provided by an AMOLED display.

Both phones sport Android 5.1 OS with Sony’s custom Xperia skin atop it. The user interface is pretty similar to what we have been seeing on this year’s Xperia phones.

Chipset, RAM, Storage

The Xperia Z5 as well as Xperia Z5 Premium house Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 chipset with an octa core processor – one quad-core cluster clocked at 2GHz and the other quad-core cluster clocked at 1.5GHz. This is paired with 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage out of which you get access to around 22GB of storage. Sony also gives you the option to increase your storage by adding in microSD card. In our preliminary usage, the phone seemed speedy, which is expected from such high end specs.

Sony Xperia Z5 Premium

But we are quite interested in how the phone deals with heat, which was one of the major flaws of its Xperia Z3+ we had tested earlier this year. The limited time was not enough to give us an idea about the heating, although the phone did become warm after taking some sample shots.

Camera

If there’s one area where Sony is renowned, then it’s the camera segment. After all, most of the top end phones use Sony’s sensors in their phones. With the Xperia Z5 and Xperia Z5 Premium, Sony has added in a brand new 23MP sensor. The video camera is capable of shooting 4K videos as well. On the front you have a 5MP sensor.

Sony claims that it has worked on the camera to ensure the auto focus speed is 0.03 secs, it has hybrid AF. We will have to test the camera thoroughly to give a verdict on the AF speed and low light image quality. The daylight photographs look detailed from some of the samples we shot.

Sample images clicked by the Sony Xperia Z5 Premium below.

Battery

Sony has put on a 2930 mAh battery on the Xperia Z5 and 3430 mAh battery on the Xperia Z5 Premium and it claims to give two days worth of battery life on both phones. We have had generally good experience with the Xperia phones’ battery and with Sony’s ultra power saving modes, we wouldn’t be surprised if the Z5 does deliver, but we are not so sure about the 4K display sporting Z5 Premium. We will still have to reserve our verdict till we test both devices.

Conclusion

Sony has restarted its two flagships a year cadence and this time there is a 4K display sporting device as well to add to the mix. Sony is betting big on the camera performance on both phones and the 4K display on the Xperia Z5 Premium. Having the two phones side by side we could differentiate between them only when observing the phones from up close, at an arms length it is very difficult to tell the display quality difference.

Sony has priced the phones over Rs 50,000, as expected, with the Z5 Premium costing Rs 62,990. Sony’s last flagship the Xperia Z3+ was a good device marred by heating issues and price point. Will the Z5 / Z5 Premium running on the Snapdragon 810 prevent heating issues? That’s one thing we can tell only after thoroughly testing the devices. As for the price, well Sony is known for premium pricing. But this festive season it has a lot of competition, so we shall see how it stands up.

Tech.firstpost.com

#Toyota to Recall 6.5 Million Vehicles Globally

Recall is Toyota’s fourth since 2009 due to faulty power-window switches

TOKYO— Toyota Motor Corp. is recalling 6.5 million vehicles world-wide over power-window switches at risk of fire, the auto maker said Wednesday, the latest in a series of similar recalls involving around 14 million cars.

This is the fourth time since 2009 that Toyota is recalling vehiclesdue to faulty power-window switches, it said. All the problematic switches have been supplied to Toyota by Tokai Rika Co., the two companies said.

Tokai Rika will book a special loss of ¥14.5 billion yen ($121 million) to deal with the latest recall, it said Wednesday.

The number of recalls has been growing, in part because some auto makers are more proactive in recalling vehicles following a series of industrywide scandals, and partly because companies use more common components among models. That can lead auto makers to recall a relatively big number of vehicles when problems are found in a part.

The latest move follows recalls by Toyota and other car makers involving tens of millions of vehicles carrying potentially explosive air bags made by Takata Corp.

In the vehicles recalled Wednesday, a component inside the power-window switch on the driver’s side didn’t have enough grease applied to it. That could result in the switch overheating and melting, possibly leading to fire, Toyota said.

The problematic switches will be either fixed or replaced in less than an hour, it added.

In the past, recalls took place because the switches had too much grease applied, which put cars at risk of fire, Toyota said. This time, the switches had too little grease, which could also lead to fire.

“We have been taking various measures to prevent problems from recurring. But the recalled vehicles carry older components,” said Seiko Kawai, a spokeswoman for Tokai Rika.

The recalled vehicles were produced between 2005 and 2006, and between 2008 and 2010, Toyota said. In North America, Toyota will recall around 2.7 million vehicles, it said. Models to be recalled outside Japan include certain Corolla compacts and the Camry sedan.

In 2009, Toyota recalled around 150,000 vehicles over faulty power-window switches made by Tokai Rika, once in China and once in Japan. Three years later, Toyota recalled about 7.5 million vehicles over a similar problem. Some of the vehicles recalled in 2009 are included in the latest recall, because the switch used to repair those vehicles may have been problematic, Toyota said.

Wsj.com

Wednesday, October 14, 2015

Here's how #Dell plans to finance its purchase of #EMC

The deal is a complicated financing structure that will spread the debt Dell is trying to raise over a number of markets.

Dell’s $67 billion acquisition of EMC will not only be one of the largest tech deals ever, it could also be one of the most leveraged. But doesn’t seem to have stopped the banks from wanting in.

According to Dell’s proxy statement, eight banks have committed to providing the company with as much as $49 billion in financing. One question was how the banks would structure the deal given that regulators and the market are increasingly worried about rising risks in the corporate lending market. One banker tied to the deal said there was a concern that regulators would flag the deal because it had too much leverage. What’s more, the high-yield loan market has slowed recently, with investors particularly worried about buying debt tied to merger transactions.

The result is a complicated financing structure that will spread the debt Dell is trying to raise over a number of markets. According to one banker close to the deal, Dell will raise a total of $45 billion in debt to do the deal, slightly lower than has so far been reported. Only about $10 billion of that though will be bank loans. On top of that, the banks will provide an additional $3 billion in a revolver. Dell is expected to raise about $10 billion through the high-yield market. Institutional shareholders have committed to providing $8 billion in funding to the deal. But the big surprise is that bankers are expecting to be able to sell $17 billion in high-grade bonds connected to the deal.

Just how leveraged the deal is is hard to tell. The combined Dell-EMC EMC -2.79% is expected to have $56 billion in debt after closing. EMC is expected to generate $6.3 billion in EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization). Dell hasn’t released earnings numbers since it went private in 2013, but back then its EBITDA was $4.5 billion. And there is some indication that Dell’s cash flow has slipped since then. Still, use those numbers and the deal has a leverage ratio (Debt-to-EBITDA) of around five times.

Regulators have warned banks against lending to deals with over six times leverage. So Dell-EMC appears to be below that bar.

The average leveraged buyout deal this year had a leverage ratio of 5.7. So Dell-EMC is not high for all deals. But for large tech deals, which tend to have less debt, the leverage in the deal is very high. For instance, Carly Fiorina’s much maligned acquisition of Compaq when she was head of Hewlett-Packard only resulted in a combined leverage ratio of 2.3. The most recent large tech deal to even come close is Broadcom’s $36.5 billion takeover of Avago Technologies, which was announced earlier this year. And even in that deal the leverage ratio was only 3.2.

What’s more, the Dell-EMC deal comes at a time when investors are increasingly worried about corporate debt. Corporate bond spreads, or the difference between how much companies have to pay in interest to borrow and U.S. Treasuries, have been rising. There have been more downgrades of corporate bonds this year than at any point since the financial crisis. And coverage ratios, or how much more companies are making than the debt they owe, have been falling. And there is some sign that debt investors are worried about the Dell-EMC deal. Existing bonds tied to EMC have sold off since the link-up has been announced.

Nonetheless, the Dell-EMC deal shows that if there is a growing bubble in the corporate debt market, at least for now, the banks don’t see it.

Fortune.com

Tesla's Elon Musk Is Thinking About Designing An Electric Plane. #tesla, #ElonMusk

#Volkswagen to change system for exhaust in new cars

BERLIN — Volkswagen said Tuesday that it would revamp the technology it uses for controlling diesel exhaust in future models as it struggles to overcome an emissions cheating scandal that has battered its reputation and threatened its financial stability.

The company said it would switch to what it called a selective catalytic reduction system to decrease emissions on its diesel engines in Europe and North America, where the scandal erupted last month.

The approach is conceptually similar to an emissions system Volkswagen considered until 2007, when it adopted the system now at the center of its scandal. The alternative technology, which is not part of its plan to fix cars already in circulation, was rejected by the company at the time as too costly.

Reflecting the scandal’s mounting financial toll, Volkswagen also said Tuesday that it would cut investments at its leading brand by 1 billion euros ($1.14 billion). That will limit the company’s ability to innovate at a time when carmakers are trying to keep ahead of a rush of new technology.

Volkswagen, Europe’s leading automaker, was forced to admit that about 11 million of its diesel cars worldwide were equipped with software that allowed it to cheat on tests of noxious gas emissions. The company now faces a raft of investigations in the United States, Europe, and China.

The change involves adding a tank of a urea-based fluid to clean exhaust and affects only coming models, said Volkswagen spokesman Peter Thul.

“Diesel vehicles will only be equipped with exhaust emissions systems that use the best environmental technology,” Herbert Diess, chairman of the car brand, based in Wolfsburg, Germany, said in a statement Tuesday. The change will take place “as soon as possible,” according to the statement.

It also appears Volkswagen will be moving away from diesel as its preferred clean technology. Volkswagen said Tuesday it was pushing ahead with the development of electric and plug-in hybrid cars based on a series of components that can be used in different models.

Exemplifying this shift will be a transformation of the next generation of Volkswagen’s luxury Phaeton limousine into an all-electric model, expected in 2019 or 2020.

Last week, Volkswagen submitted a detailed proposal to German authorities of how it planned to remove from its vehicles in the country the software used to cheat emissions tests. The Federal Motor Transport Authority is reviewing Volkswagen’s proposal to remedy the issue on its 1.2-, 1.6-, and 2-liter diesel engines.

The German Transport Ministry has said there will be a recall for affected vehicles, with a software fix for the 2-liter engines expected to be ready early next year. The 1.6-liter motors, however, would require further modifications that cannot be expected before later in 2016. No information has been released regarding a fix for the 1.2-liter engines.

In testimony before Congress last week and the British Parliament Monday, Volkswagen officials indicated that fixes would vary by country, given varying emissions standards.

Paul Willis, general manager of the Volkswagen Group in Britain, said Monday that repairs for diesels sold in Europe would not involve the installation of a new emission filtration system using urea as an additive. But such a remedy is expected in many vehicles in the United States, which has tougher standards for emissions of nitrogen oxides, which have been linked to a host of respiratory and cardiovascular illnesses.

Fallout from the scandal has ricocheted throughout Germany, Europe’s largest economy, with a benchmark survey released Tuesday showing economic sentiment dropped more than expected in October.

Bostonglobe.com