marți, 11 august 2015

Compared to...

Without a doubt, there's someone taller than you, faster than you, cuter than you.

We don't have to look very far to find someone who is better paid, more respected and getting more than his fair share of credit.

And social media: Of course there are people with more followers, more likes and more of just about anything you'd like to measure.

So what?

What is the comparison for?

Is your job to be the most at a thing? Perhaps if you play baseball, the goal is to have the highest on-base percentage. But it's probably more likely that you should focus on the entire team winning the game.

Just because a thing can be noticed, or compared, or fretted over doesn't mean it's important, or even relevant.

Better, I think, to decide what's important, what needs to change, what's worth accomplishing. And then ignore all comparisons that don't relate. The most important comparison, in fact, is comparing your work to what you're capable of.

Sure, compare. But compare the things that matter to the journey you're on. The rest is noise.

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luni, 10 august 2015

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Governments Don't Really Want Clean Energy; Economic Madness In US and Spain

Posted: 10 Aug 2015 04:14 PM PDT

A curious thing is happening in the battle on carbon. Solar panels are finally becoming cheap enough and efficient enough to warrant usage, without government subsidies, at least in sunny places.

Everyone should be happy. Right?

Instead we have tariffs, fees, and taxes on those who use solar panels.

In effect, when solar energy made no economic sense, companies received subsidies, now that solar makes sense, many governments want nothing to do with it.

Solar Energy Storage is Worse Than Nuclear Spillage

In sunny Spain, Solar Energy Storage is Worse Than Nuclear Spillage

Storing solar energy in a battery in Spain is more criminal than spilling radioactive waste. That's the implied message written between the lines of a recently drafted law poised for fast-track approval by the government of Spain. Proposed fines for residential and SME use of solar energy self-consumption will be as high as €60 million ($67.7 million).

Spain's "Ideological Campaign Against Solar"

Speaking recently to PV Tech, Union Espanola Fotovoltaico (UNEF), the PV Association of Spain, stated that "this would be the only self-consumption law in the world created only to prohibit the development of self-consumption."

UNEF added that Spain's new law is "retroactive" because if projects do not fit within the new parameters they will become illegal, even if already legally approved. Specifically, the new law requires that the owner and consumer must be the same person, and installations may no longer exceed 100 kW. Infringements will be treated very seriously, resulting in the maximum fines of up to €60 million ($67.7 million). This amount is twice as high as the penalty for causing a leak of radioactive waste in Spain, currently set at €30 million ($33.85 million).

The new levy on solar energy self-consumption from a grid-connected owner's storage unit will have a seriously negative impact on the solar installation payback period. SMEs using self-consumption are expected to have a lengthening of payback time from four to seven years. PV Tech also notes that taxation on "residential self-consumption of solar energy in Spain could increase payback time from around 16 years to 31 years."

Solar Madness Arizona Style

Sunny Spain does not want solar, what about Arizona?

In sunny Arizona SolarCity Relocates 85 Workers, Citing Solar Fees

In the wake of Salt River Project's recent solar rate hike, SolarCity Corp., the largest rooftop solar installer in the state, is relocating at least 85 of its 900 Arizona workers out of state, with more to come.

SolarCity CEO Lyndon Rive said Wednesday the SRP fees approved in February are too restrictive and eliminate the potential to save money with solar for nearly all customers.

"That is bad for the economy," Rive said. "Arizona is the state with all the sun. All the other states (where we operate) are doubling their solar capacity, and Arizona is shrinking, which makes no sense."

SRP officials in February approved a new rate plan for any new customers installing solar under which they will pay a monthly "demand charge" based on their highest 30-minute average demand of power from the grid during peak hours.

US Tariffs

Arizona depicts state level madness. Inquiring minds may be interested in what's happening with recent events in solar energy the US national level.

For the answer, please consider U.S. Revises Tariffs and Duties on Chinese Solar Imports.

The U.S. revised some taxes on solar products from certain companies in China to help thwart dumping amid a renewable-energy spat between the two nations.

Some units of Yingli Green Energy Holding Co., the second-largest solar manufacturer, received the lowest so-called anti-dumping rate, 0.79 percent. The rate for another group of companies including Canadian Solar Inc., JinkoSolar Holding Co. and some other Yingli units was set at 9.67 percent. Other companies will pay 239 percent.

"Economically counterproductive tariffs have artificially made solar panel prices in the U.S. the most expensive in the world," Shah said. CASE was formed to represent most of the U.S. solar industry against the petition.

Economic Madness

Does the Obama administration want clean energy or not?

All tariffs are economic madness. But 239 percent tariffs and even the average rate of 20.94% is especially inane. Do we want to reduce independence on carbon-based energy or not?

If China gave us free solar panels we would be crazy not to take them. At a cost of zero, they would truly be affordable. Numerous businesses would spring up installing them.

Hiring would increase. GDP would rise.

Instead, we have tariffs and additional fees on solar-based energy just as the technology is beneficial enough to use, on its own accord, without subsidies. This is economic madness.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Germany Isolated as Greece Near €86 Billion Deal With Creditors; Ambitious Yes, Feasible No

Posted: 10 Aug 2015 10:17 AM PDT

In reaching a deal with Greece, Germany is the last remaining holdout.

Even Greece-skeptic countries like Finland have shifted 180 degrees to become true believers in mathematical nonsense.

And after bitter fighting and infighting, Greece nears €86bn Accord with Creditors.

Significant concessions by Alexis Tsipras and his negotiators in the past month have encouraged other hawkish eurozone members such as Finland to break with Berlin, which wants to hold out longer to squeeze more reforms from Athens.

Even previously sceptical EU diplomats now say that a full agreement could be reached by the August 20 deadline, when Athens must make a €3.2bn debt repayment to the European Central Bank.

The cautious optimism contrasts sharply with the acrimony at last month's eurozone summit, which came close to ushering Greece out of the currency bloc before agreeing to negotiate a deal. The main elements of the proposed deal include spending cuts, administrative reform and privatisations. Remaining sticking points between Athens and its creditors include details of a €50bn privatisation plan and proposals for raising the planned budget surplus, excluding debt interest, to 3.5 per cent of gross domestic product in 2018 from zero this year.

Officials in Brussels said an early deal was "ambitious but feasible". But they emphasised that while this was the "preferable" way forward, the option of a €5bn bridging loan to give negotiators more time, championed by Berlin, was still on the table.

Germany, the biggest creditor, was late last week still holding out for more reforms from Athens, arguing that a two- or three-week bridging loan was better than hurriedly striking an inadequate three-year deal. Jens Spahn, deputy finance minister, tweeted on Friday: "It is better done thoroughly than hastily."

An EU official said that even if Wolfgang Schäuble, Berlin's hawkish finance minister, dug in his heels, chancellor Angela Merkel would not want Berlin isolated.

Ambitious Yes, Feasible No

The plan certainly is ambitious. And it appears increasingly likely everyone will sign off on the deal, including Germany.

My doubts are not over whether everyone signs a deal, but rather whether Greece can stick to the terms.

I maintain that Greece is surely not going to reach and maintain a current account surplus of 3.5% of GDP in three years.

In fact, Greece is not going to maintain a primary account surplus (surplus excluding interest on debt) of 3.5%. Nonetheless, let's play the "What if?" game.

What If?

If by some miracle, Greece were to hit that fantasyland 3.5% surplus projection, Greece would be in very good position to tell the Troika to go to hell, declare the debts odious (as it did once before) and default.

As long as Greece can maintain a primary account surplus, no one could force it out of the eurozone.

Schäuble hopes to prevent such a default by requiring Greece to put up €50 Billion in assets as collateral for the loan. But realistically, Greece will have a hard time coming up with state assets worth that amount.

Also, agreeing to pledge assets and actually doing it are two different things.

Meanwhile, the cost of the bailout (and potential default) keeps going up, and up and up. A default five years ago may have cost banks €60 billion to €80 billion or so. Now, counting target2 imbalances Greece would default on over €400 billion.

Those who pretend the deal is "feasible" have not looked at the long-term math: To prevent banks from taking an €80 billion hit, taxpayers are at risk for well over €400 billion, counting all Greek liabilities.

IMF Participation

It will be interesting to see how the IMF plays this.

On July 31, the IMF staff reiterated Greece Disqualified for Bailout, Participation Depends on Debt Relief and Reforms.

More than likely, senior IMF officials will keep their mouth shut until the German parliament approves a deal. Then the IMF is very likely to demand haircuts for participation.

Germany's only choice at that point will be to pony up still more money, or agree to a haircut.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Damn Cool Pics

Magazine From 1998 Predicts The Invention Of Twitter

Posted: 10 Aug 2015 08:39 AM PDT

American Research Laboratory released this magazine in 1988 and the cover seemingly predicted the invention of Twitter without even knowing it.

Undeniable Truths That Everyone Can Understand

Posted: 10 Aug 2015 08:29 AM PDT

There's how you think it is, then there's how it actually is.

Moz Ranking Factors Preview - Moz Blog

Moz Ranking Factors Preview

Posted by EricEnge

How do the SERPs for commercial queries vary from the treatment of informational queries? Moz is about to publish its new Search Engine Ranking Factors, and was kind enough to provide me with access to their raw ranking data. Today I am going to share some of what I found.

In addition, I am going to compare it against raw ranking data pulled by my company, Stone Temple Consulting (STC). What makes this so interesting is that the Moz data is based on commercial queries across 165,177 pages and the STC data is based on informational queries over 182,340 pages (for a total of 347,517 result pages). Let's dive in!

Mobile-friendliness

Google rolled out their Mobile-Friendly Update on April 21 to much fanfare. We published our study results on how big that impact was here, and in that test, we tracked a set of 15,235 SERPs both before and after the SERPs.

The following chart shows the percentage of the top 10 results in the SERPs that are mobile friendly for the Moz (commercial) queries, and the STC informational queries before and after the mobile update:

Clearly, the commercial queries are returning a much larger percentage of mobile friendly results than the informational queries. Much of this may be due to it being more important to people running E-commerce sites to have a mobile-friendly site.

What this suggests to us is that publishers of E-commerce sites have been faster to adopt mobile friendliness than publishers of informational sites. That makes sense. Of course, our friends at Google know this is more important for commercial queries, too.

Your actionable takeaway

Regardless of query type, you can see that more than 60% of the results meet Google's current definition for mobile friendliness. For commercial queries, it's nearly 3/4 of them. Obviously, if you are not currently mobile friendly, then solve that, but that's not the whole story.

Over time, I believe that what is considered mobile friendly is going to change. The mobile world will become much more than just viewing your current desktop site with a smaller screen and a crappier keyboard. What are some more things you can expect in the long term?

Different Site Architectures for Desktop and Mobile: I am of the opinion that the entire work flow may be different for many mobile sites.
Voice navigation: We will stop seeing the keyboard as the primary navigation option for a mobile site.
Continuing Rise of Apps: The prior two points may be a large factor in driving this.

My third point is an item that is already in progress, and the first two are really not for most people at this time. However, I put them out there to stimulate some thinking that much more is going to happen in this space than meets the eye. In the short term, what can you do?

My suggestion is that you start looking at the mobile version of your site as more than a different rendering of your desktop site. What are the different use cases between mobile and desktop? Consider running two surveys of your users, one of desktop users and one of smartphone users, and ask them what they are looking for, and what they would like to see. My bet is that you will quickly see that the use cases are different in material ways.

In the near term, you can leverage this information to make your mobile site optimization work better for users, probably without re-architecting it entirely. In the longer term, collecting this type of data will prepare you for considering more radical design differences between your desktop and mobile sites.

HTTP vs. HTTPS

Another one of the newer ranking factors is whether or not a site uses HTTPS. Just this past July 22, Google's Gary Illyes clarified again that this is a minor ranking signal that acts like a tiebreaker in cases where the ranking for two competing pages are "more or less equal."

How has that played out in the SERPs? Let's take a look:

As with the mobile-friendliness, we once again see the commercial queries placing significantly more emphasis on this factor than the informational queries. Yet, the penetration levels are clearly far lower than they are for mobile friendliness. So should I care about this then?

Yes, it matters. Here are three reasons why:

At SMX Advanced, Google's Gary Illyes indicated at SMX Advanced that they plan to increase the strength of HTTPS as a ranking factor over time.
Google's Chrome is making moves toward warning users visiting unsecure web sites.
Mozilla has also laid plans to follow suit.

Yes, I know there is much debate about whether or not you need to have HTTPS if all you are doing is running a content site. But a lot of big players out there are taking a simple stance: that it's time for the plain text web to come to an end.

The big thing that HTTPS helps prevent is Man in the Middle Attacks. Do read the linked article if you don't know what that is. Basically though, when you communicate with a non-secure web site, it's pretty trivial for someone to intercept the communication and monitor or alter the information flow between you and the sending web site.

The most trivial form of this can occur any time you connect to a third party Wifi connection. People can inject ads you don't want, or simply monitor everything you do and build a profile about you. Is that what you want?

Let me offer a simple example: Have you ever connected to Wifi in a hotel? What's the first thing that happens? You try to go to a website, but instead you get a login screen asking for your room number and last name to sign in - and most times they charge you some fee.

That's the concept - you tried to go to a web site, and instead got served different content (the Wifi login screen). The hotel can do this at any time. Even after you login and pay their fee, they can intercept your communication with other web sites and modify the content. A simple application for this it to inject ads. They can also monitor and keep a record of every site you visit. They can do this because they are in the middle.

In an HTTPS world, they will still be able to intercept the initial connection, but once you are connected, they will no longer be able to see inside the content going back and forth between you and the https websites you choose to access.

Your actionable takeaway

Eventually, the plain text web will come to an end. As this movement grows, more and more publishers will make the switch to HTTPS, and Google will dial up the strength of this signal as a ranking factor. If you have not made the switch, then get it into your longer term plans.

Summary

Both mobile-friendliness and HTTPS support appear to matter more to commercial sites today. I tend to think that this is more a result of more e-commerce site publishers and informational site publishers have made the conversions, rather than it being the impact of the related Google algorithms. Regardless of that, the importance of both of these factors will grow, and it would be wise to aggressively prepare for the future.

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