Monday, October 19, 2015

The VW Golf pollutes as much as an 18-wheeler truck!

The New York Times has the answer to a question I have been asking myself since VW got caught cheating: why would VW owners bring their cars to be fixed, if the fix decreases the performances of their car? Here is the answer:

The E.P.A. cannot force owners to repair their vehicles, said Julia Ortiz, a spokeswoman for the agency. 
Automakers also cannot require owners to carry out the emissions recall, just as they cannot force owners to take vehicles in to complete a safety recall.
Some states require vehicles to pass emissions tests before they can be registered each year. But those tests are far less sophisticated than the E.P.A.’s, and the Volkswagens that are not repaired are sure to pass them, said John German, a senior fellow at the International Council on Clean Transportation, which played a crucial role in discovering the automaker’s deceit. 
That loophole means the air pollution consequences of Volkswagen’s action — at least on a small scale — are irreparable if enough owners refuse to have their vehicles fixed.
(...) 
Volkswagen must come up with an incentive plan to make repairing the engines irresistible, said Dan Becker, the director of the Safe Climate Campaign at the Center for Auto Safety. 

The article also explains how bad the polluting problem is:

Despite their small size, the Volkswagen diesels produce a large amount of nitrogen oxide pollutants, Mr. German said, up to 40 times what is allowed under the Clean Air Act. The Passat sedan is emitting an amount of nitrogen oxides similar to that of a modern, medium-duty truck, he said, while the Jetta — and its sibling the Golf — have emissions similar to those of a typical modern 18-wheeler, he said. The Jetta and Golf use a different emissions system than the Passat.


Thursday, October 8, 2015

Volkswagen and the Era of Cheating Software

This New York Times article on the VW scandal makes 3 interesting points:


1. Contrary to what is sometimes claimed in the European/French media, US car firms have already been fined in the US for cheating by using a "defeat device":

"This isn’t the first instance of a car company caught cheating by using a “defeat device” on emissions tests. In 1998, Ford was fined $7.8 million for using defeat devices that allowed its Econoline vans to reduce emissions to pass testing, and then to exceed pollution limits when driving at highway speeds. The same year, Honda paid $17.1 million in fines for deliberately disabling a “misfire” device that warned about excess emissions. In 1995, General Motors paid $11 million in fines for the “defeat devices” on some of its Cadillac cars, which secretly overrode the emissions control system at times. The largest penalty for defeat devices to date was an $83.4 million fine in 1998 on Caterpillar, Volvo, Renault and other manufacturers." (my emphasis)

2. The problem is more general since it potentially affects software in all our ways of life:

"In a world where more and more objects are run by software, we need to have better ways to catch such cheaters. As the Volkswagen case demonstrates, a smart object can lie and cheat. It can tell when it’s being tested, and it can beat the test.

The good news is that there are well-understood methods to safeguard the integrity of software systems. The bad news is that there is as yet little funding for creating the appropriate regulatory framework for smart objects, or even an understanding of the urgent need for it. We are rightly incensed with Volkswagen, but we should also consider how we have ceded a lot of power to software that runs everything from our devices to our cars, and have not persisted in keeping tabs on it. We correctly worry about hackers and data leaks, but we are largely ignoring the ramifications of introducing software, a form of intelligence, to so many realms — sometimes called the Internet of Things."

3. Finally, the accompanying illustration is hilarious ;-)

Monday, October 5, 2015

Media in the digital age

As a complement to my previous post, we learn today from the New York Times that

This week, The Times is celebrating a breakthrough: We recently passed one million digital-only subscribers, giving us far more than any other news organization in the world. We have another 1.1 million print-and-digital subscribers, so that in total, we have more subscribers than at any time in our 164-year history.
Many news organizations, facing competition from digital outlets, have sharply reduced the size of their newsrooms and their investment in news gathering.
But The New York Times has not.
We have our subscribers to thank for that.

I would be curious to have the corresponding data for, say, Le Monde (whose quality has, to my humble opinion, plummeted in the last decade, especially compared to the NYT...)

Friday, October 2, 2015

The Creative Apocalypse That Wasn't

The New York Times has published a very thorough article in its magazine (here) where the author uses data to study how the "creative class" (people creating music, movies or books) has been doing since the advent of Napster. May be surprisingly, its main point is that they have been doing ... quite well!:

"Taking 1999 as my starting point — the year both Napster and Google took off — I plumbed as many data sources as I could to answer this one question: How is today’s creative class faring compared with its predecessor a decade and a half ago? The answer isn’t simple, and the data provides ammunition for conflicting points of view. It turns out that Ulrich was incontrovertibly correct on one point: Napster did pose a grave threat to the economic value that consumers placed on recorded music. And yet the creative apocalypse he warned of has failed to arrive. Writers, performers, directors and even musicians report their economic fortunes to be similar to those of their counterparts 15 years ago, and in many cases they have improved. Against all odds, the voices of the artists seem to be louder than ever."

For instance:

"According to the O.E.S., songwriters and music directors saw their average income rise by nearly 60 percent since 1999. The census version of the story, which includes self-­employed musicians, is less stellar: In 2012, musical groups and artists reported only 25 percent more in revenue than they did in 2002, which is basically treading water when you factor in inflation. And yet collectively, the figures seem to suggest that music, the creative field that has been most threatened by technological change, has become more profitable in the post-­Napster era — not for the music industry, of course, but for musicians themselves. Somehow the turbulence of the last 15 years seems to have created an economy in which more people than ever are writing and performing songs for a living."


How can this be?


"Part of the answer is that the decline in recorded-­music revenue has been accompanied by an increase in revenues from live music. In 1999, when Britney Spears ruled the airwaves, the music business took in around $10 billion in live-­music revenue internationally; in 2014, live music generated almost $30 billion in revenue, according to data assembled from multiple sources by the live-music service Songkick. Starting in the early 1980s, average ticket prices for concerts closely followed the rise in overall consumer prices until the mid-1990s, when ticket prices suddenly took off: From 1997 to 2012, average ticket prices rose 150 percent, while consumer prices grew less than 100 percent. It’s elemental economics: As one good — recorded music — becomes ubiquitous, its price plummets, while another good that is by definition scarce (seeing a musician play a live performance) grows in value. Moreover, as file-­sharing and iTunes and Spotify have driven down the price of music, they have also made it far easier to envelop your life with a kind of permanent soundtrack, all of which drives awareness of the musicians and encourages fans to check them out in concert. Recorded music, then, becomes a kind of marketing expense for the main event of live shows."
(...)
"It’s true that most of that live-­music revenue is captured by superstar acts like Taylor Swift or the Rolling Stones. In 1982, the musical 1-­percenters took in only 26 percent of the total revenues generated by live music; in 2003, they captured 56 percent of the market, with the top 5 percent of musicians capturing almost 90 percent of live revenues. But this winner-­takes-­all trend seems to have preceded the digital revolution; most 1-­percenters achieved their gains in the ’80s and early ’90s, as the concert business matured into a promotional machine oriented around marquee world tours. In the post-­Napster era, there seems to have been a swing back in a more egalitarian direction. According to one source, the top 100 tours of 2000 captured 90 percent of all revenue, while today the top 100 capture only 43 percent."


And the news seem to be even better for the other creative industries:

"Of the big four creative industries (music, television, movies and books), music turns out to be the business that has seen the most conspicuous turmoil: None of the other three has seen anywhere near the cratering of recorded-­music revenues. The O.E.S. numbers show that writers and actors each saw their income increase by about 50 percent, well above the national average. According to the Association of American Publishers, total revenues in the fiction and nonfiction book industry were up 17 percent from 2008 to 2014, following the introduction of the Kindle in late 2007. Global television revenues have been projected to grow by 24 percent from 2012 to 2017. For actors and directors and screenwriters, the explosion of long-form television narratives has created a huge number of job opportunities. (Economic Modeling Specialists International reports that the number of self-­employed actors has grown by 45 percent since 2001.) If you were a television actor looking for work on a multiseason drama or comedy in 2001, there were only a handful of potential employers: the big four networks and HBO and Showtime. Today there are Netflix, Amazon, AMC, Syfy, FX and many others."

And the news are good even for independent bookstores:


"This would be even more troubling if independent bookstores — traditional champions of the literary novel and thoughtful nonfiction — were on life support. But contrary to all expectations, these stores have been thriving. After hitting a low in 2007, decimated not only by the Internet but also by the rise of big-box chains like Borders and Barnes & Noble, indie bookstores have been growing at a steady clip, with their number up 35 percent (from 1,651 in 2009 to 2,227 in 2015); by many reports, 2014 was their most financially successful year in recent memory. Indie bookstores account for only about 10 percent of overall book sales, but they have a vastly disproportionate impact on the sale of the creative midlist books that are so vital to the health of the culture."

And why is the culture sector still alive and kicking, despite ubiquitous piracy?

"At the same time, there are now more ways to buy creative work, thanks to the proliferation of content-­delivery platforms. Practically every device consumers own is tempting them at all hours with new films or songs or shows to purchase. Virtually no one boughtanything on their computer just 20 years ago; the idea of using a phone to buy and read a 700-page book about a blind girl in occupied France would have sounded like a joke even 10 years ago. But today, our phones sell us every form of media imaginable; our TVs charge us for video-­on-­demand products; our car stereos urge us to sign up for SiriusXM."

As for the supply side:


"And just as there are more avenues for consumers to pay for creative work, there are more ways to be compensated for making that work. Think of that signature flourish of 2000s-­era television artistry: the exquisitely curated (and usually obscure) song that signals the transition from final shot to the rolling credits. Having a track featured during the credits of ‘‘Girls’’ or ‘‘Breaking Bad’’ or ‘‘True Blood’’ can be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to a songwriter. (Before that point, the idea of licensing a popular song for the credits of a television series was almost unheard-­of.) Video-­game budgets pay for actors, composers, writers and song licenses. "
(...)
"The biggest change of all, perhaps, is the ease with which art can be made and distributed. The cost of consuming culture may have declined, though not as much as we feared. But the cost of producing it has dropped far more drastically. "
(...)
"It has never been easier to start making money from creative work, for your passion to undertake that critical leap from pure hobby to part-time income source. Write a novel or record an album, and you can get it online and available for purchase right away, without persuading an editor or an A&R executive that your work is commercially viable. From the consumer’s perspective, blurring the boundaries has an obvious benefit: It widens the pool of potential talent. But it also has an important social merit. Widening the pool means that more people are earning income by doing what they love."

Read the whole article here, it is worth it.

Thursday, October 1, 2015

Quel budget décent pour un célibataire ou une famille en France?

C'est la question que s'est posé l’Observatoire national de la pauvreté et de l’exclusion sociale (ONPES), et qui est abordée dans cet article du Monde.

(D'où on infère, entre autres, que le salaire d'un Directeur de Recherches au CNRS (3200€ par mois environ en milieu de carrière) ne suffit pas à générer un budget décent pour un couple avec deux enfants...)


Les minima sociaux sont loin des critères d’« une vie décente »

Quel est le budget décent pour un célibataire ou un couple avec deux enfants permettant une participation à la vie sociale dans la France de 2015 ? C’est à cette question de fond que s’est attelé pour la première fois l’Observatoire national de la pauvreté et de l’exclusion sociale (ONPES). Dans une étude qui doit être rendue publique vendredi 6 mars, l’organisme indépendant s’est penché sur les besoins incontournables au quotidien, et la distance avec le réel du quotidien des Français. Il faut ainsi entre 1 424 euros et 3 515 euros selon la composition du ménage et son type de logement (social ou privé). Bien loin des minima sociaux.


La méthode est nouvelle : des chercheurs français ont réuni 200 ménages vivant dans deux villes moyennes (Tours et Dijon), de tous niveaux sociaux, pour leur demander pour chaque situation sociale quel serait le budget en deçà duquel on ne vit pas décemment. Ils ont ainsi évalué le« panier de biens et de services » nécessaire dans tous les domaines : logement, transports, alimentation, vie sociale, habillement, équipement, hygiène, santé, garde d’enfants… Faut-il disposer d’une chambre pour les enfants de sexe différents, d’une voiture ? Quels soins sont incontournables pour participer à la vie sociale ? Partir en vacances une semaine par an, inviter des amis, prendre un repas à l’extérieur, est-ce indispensable ?
L’ONPES évalue ainsi le budget de référence d’un couple avec deux enfants logeant dans le parc social à 3 284 euros, celui d’une famille monoparentale logée dans le privé à 2 830 euros. Un retraité devra disposer d’au moins 1 816 euros s’il habite le privé, plus qu’un célibataire dans le même cas (1 571). Les résultats surprenants de l’étude qualitative sont corroborés par les études plus classiques de l’Insee ou celle du ministère des affaires sociales. Mais au lieu de dessiner la France des pauvres, elle met en lumière celle qui a peur de tomber dans la pauvreté. Qui, sans dans le besoin, s’astreint à des restrictions dues à la crise.


Logiquement, ce sont les familles monoparentales - des femmes seules avec enfants - et les retraités qui sont le plus touchés par ces économies forcées : les premières sont à 55 % en situation de pauvreté et à 40 % avec des moyens insuffisants pour vivre décemment. Les personnes retraitées vivant seules sont dans une situation également inquiétante, avec des taux de 14 % et 45 %. Les autres catégories ne sont cependant pas florissantes. « Ceux qui se serrent la ceinture représentent près de 40 % de la population », précise Didier Gelot, secrétaire général de l’organisme


C’est dans le détail des tableaux de l’étude que se nichent les enseignements les plus précieux sur les économies forcées réalisées par les différents ménages. Si on savait que ce sont les budgets loisir, santé, et vie sociale qui sont les premiers amputés, les résultats diffèrent selon la composition de la famille. Les familles monoparentales rognent pour moitié sur leurs besoins en matière de soins, et dépensent près de trois fois moins que ce dont elles auraient besoin en frais de garde d’enfants et de cantine scolaire. Les retraités, eux, font aussi des économies sur le poste santé, plus encore quand ils sont en couple ; ils dépensent proportionnellement plus en habillement. Les couples actifs avec ou sans enfant ont des dépenses en transports deux fois supérieures aux budgets de référence.