Month: September 2018

Bitcoin, or the inelegance of technology

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Blockchain is a very promising technology. But for now it is young, flawed and still a bit inelegant.

A tech-addict friend of mine recently confessed to me the frustrating pain he felt when he desperately tried, a few weeks ago, to explain the concept of elegance in technology to his smirking colleagues. I padded him he back with compassion, and thought : “OK I will have your back on this. I will write about it”.

Meanwhile I thought about it and realized : “Holly cow ! There is no better example to explain this than to talk about cryptocurrencies !”

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A battle is lost, war is not over

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The asset management lobby just won one more battle in France. The transfer of life insurances between insurers still won’t happen… for now.

You probably missed it completely, but a few days ago a battle of the highest importance for French investors and the French economy took place. It was short, it was brutal.

Indeed, last Thursday, two brave MPs, Amélie de Montchalin and Joël Giraud, proposed, finally, to allow, finally, French life insurance plans to be transferable.

I do know what you think now: “Wwoooo… This post is going to be so boring…“

Think again ! On the contrary, it is of upmost importance for French and worldwide investors to read this as a reminder of what is currently at stake and why we fight !

Continue reading A battle is lost, war is not over

Global warming. What can we really do about it ?

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Global warming is frightening, and hope is thin to contain it. So maybe we should start not only fighting it, but also preparing for it.

In my last, and more obscure, post about data-mining bias ( that you should of course read, see here ) I illustrated my argument with the example of extreme weather news reports. To sum it up, my point was that while the increasing regularity of extreme heat/frost waves is probably a consequence of global warming, one separate occurrence was absolutely not sufficient to prove anything about it.

In the meantime however, summer passed in the north hemisphere, and it was hot. Damn hot all around. And while still not proving anything “by itself”, it did make me think about global warming. And I am sure you did too.

Global warming is here. No doubt. What was once upon a time a scientific theory became a few decades ago a scientific and political issue. Now it is starting to turn into a scary and material reality for everyone. And it is probably just the beginning.

Continue reading Global warming. What can we really do about it ?