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MONDAY, JUNE 22, 2015 Copyright © 2015 The New York Times

Sanctity of Truth

Transforming the Way We Move

By FARHAD MANJOO

FOR DECADES, PUNDITS and theorists have been expecting a future in which cars drive themselves, and companies like Google have been testing advanced versions of these systems for several years.

But at $136,000, the Mercedes-Benz S550 sedan, with massaging front seats, reclining back seats and a display worthy of a fighter jet, shows that the future of transportation is already here. And today’s semiautonomous car isn’t the only sign that transportation is changing quickly.

Observers say that advances in transportation may be especially apparent in cities, where technology is creating a multitude of options, from app-powered car sharing and car-pooling to new modes of driving and parking to novel forms of short-distance travel and private jitney buses with seats allocated by phone.

Communication systems and sensors installed in streets and cars are creating the possibility of intelligent roads, while systems like solar power are altering the environmental costs of getting around. Technology is also creating new transportation options for short distances, like energy-efficient electric-powered scooters.

“Cars and transportation will change more in the next 20 years than they’ve changed in the last 75 years,” said M. Bart Herring of Mercedes-Benz USA. “What we were doing 10 years ago wasn’t that much different from what we were doing 50 years ago.” He added, “What’s going to happen in the next 20 years is the equivalent of the moon landing.”

But the transportation system of the near future may also be more legally complex and,

Con­­tin­­ued on Page 26

JASON HENRY FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Windshield Displays of Data Prompt Debate

By MATT RICHTEL

NAVDY

Head-up units project data from a cellphone to a screen that hovers in a driver’s field of vision.

In a widely watched YouTube video, a man is driving around Los Angeles when his phone rings. On a small screen mounted on the dashboard, an image of the man’s mother appears.

But there’s an optical twist: The image actually looks to the driver as if it’s floating just at the front edge of the car, right above the roadway.

The man answers the call with a gesture of his hand.

“Hi,” his mother says over the speakers. “I just wanted to say I love you.”

“I love you,” the man responds, and then, before signing off, “I’m making a video right now.”

That video was a promotion commissioned by Navdy, one of a handful of start-up companies bringing a futuristic spin to distracted driving, and how to curb it.

The devices project driving information and data streamed from a smartphone into a driver’s field of view. There are several versions of this nascent technology, but they generally work by

using a projection device that wirelessly picks up information from the phone and uses sophisticated optics to allow the information — maps, speed, incoming texts, caller identification and even social media notifications — to hover above the dashboard. Hand gestures or voice commands allow drivers to answer a call or hang up.

Navdy’s device isn’t shipping until later this year, and it’s not clear if it will work as seamlessly as presented in the video when used in less perfect real-life conditions. But the device falls into a category of in-car gadgetry that might be fairly categorized as “you can have your cake and eat it too.” Drive, get texts, talk on the phone, even interact on social media, and do it all without compromising safety, according to makers of the so-called head-up displays.

Some carmakers also display basic driving information, like speed and turn-by-turn directions, within a specialized windshield so a driver

Con­­tin­­ued on Page 26

INTELLIGENCE

WORLD TRENDS

MONEY & BUSINESS

ARTS & DESIGN

Some old demons haunt Brazil. PAGE 24

Heroin fuels growth in Myanmar. PAGE 28

Tax breaks and lobster in Japan. PAGE 29

Young director enters Jurassic world. PAGE 34

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THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL WEEKLY

Sanctity of Truth

MONDAY, JUNE 22, 2015

O P I N I O N & C O M M E N TA RY

ED I T O R I A L S O F T H E T I M ES

China’s Unsettling Stock Market Boom Something strange is going on in the Chinese stock market.

Even as the country’s economy has slowed, stocks have surged about 147 percent in the last 12 months as individual investors have poured their savings and have borrowed money to put into the market.

The sharp increase in stock prices must worry China’s leaders, because it could put household finances and the financial system at risk of big losses. It is particularly troubling that the rally has been fueled by an explosion of margin lending, in which brokerage firms make loans to investors to buy shares. Margin debt outstanding is five times

what it was a year ago, reaching 2 trillion renminbi ($322 billion) on May 27. The total borrowed to buy stocks is probably even higher, because some investors have presumably borrowed from banks and their families, too.

Stocks of smaller and less proven companies have had the biggest increases, which suggests investors are taking big risks in the hopes of fast gains. The average price-to-earnings ratio, a measure of how expensive stocks are relative to corporate profits, is 143 for companies listed on the ChiNext board of the Shenzhen stock market, which is dominated by smaller companies and tech stocks. One high-flying com-

pany on the market, Leshi TV, an Internet video service, has seen its stock jump almost 250 percent in the last year and has a P/E ratio of 358. By contrast, the ratio for larger companies listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange is about 25.

A booming market might make more sense if the economy were picking up speed, but it is slowing. The International Monetary Fund expects the economy to grow at 6.8 percent this year and 6.3 percent in 2016, down from 7.4 percent in 2014.

Individual investors appear to have flocked to stocks in part because the once-booming Chinese real estate market, which pro-

duced big profits for speculators, has cooled. Some investors now see stocks as the next good bet.

Chinese government and brokerage industry officials have taken some steps to reduce speculation by, for example, restricting margin lending. But it is still far too easy to borrow money to invest in the stock market. And other steps the government is taking to help the economy, like lowering interest rates and encouraging lending by banks, could actually inflate the stock market even more by making credit more easily available and raising investor confidence.

The stock market boom is mostly a domestic Chinese con-

cern, but it could become more important to international investors and the global economy.

Most foreigners buy shares in Chinese companies on stock exchanges in Hong Kong or New York. Chinese officials limit foreign investment in stocks listed on the mainland, but they are making it easier for outsiders to buy and sell those shares.

The last big rally in Chinese stocks was in 2006-07. After the peak in October 2007, prices fell about 70 percent over 12 months.

But because the government tightly restricted margin lending, there was little damage to the financial system. This time, the risks are bigger and broader.

INTELLIGENCE/ANTONIO PRATA

Havaianas, Mizunos And Bossa Nova SÃo Paulo Recent months have been pretty discouraging for Brazilians like me who were thrilled when Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva took over the office of president in 2003. Many of us believed that Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers’ Party) would finally turn our nation into a fair country. But corruption scandals, an economic recession and opportunistic alliances with former rivals have replaced optimism with an old sinking feeling: The defeatism that had been dormant since the early 1990s is now knocking at the door again, whispering to us, “Nothing will ever work.”

In the last decade, for the first time in my life, it was exciting to be Brazilian. Despite the global crisis, the country’s economy was growing and inequality was decreasing. “That’s the guy!”

United States President Barack Obama was heard to say while patting the shoulder of President da Silva. Brazil played host to the World Cup of soccer in 2014, and is going to hold the summer Olympics in 2016. The statue of Christ the Redeemer, a major national symbol, was on the cover of the British magazine The Economist, lifting off like a rocket. It seemed Antonio Prata, a writer, is also a columnist for the Folha de São Paulo. Send comments to intelligence@nytimes.com.

that we had outgrown our old fate of being a rich country inhabited by poor people. It seemed that the prophecy of the Austrian writer Stefan Zweig, the one that said Brazil was “the country of the future,” had been fulfilled. The future, finally, had arrived.

I was born in 1977, during the military dictatorship. One of my earliest memories is of a rally in 1984 where 400,000 people called for direct presidential elections.

At one point, my father put me on his shoulders so I could see my childhood hero on the stage: Socrates, who played for Corinthians, São Paulo’s best soccer team, and the Brazilian national team. Next to him was a chubby, bearded, floppy-eared guy to whom I didn’t pay any attention: Lula. During my adolescence, though, Lula would become one of my heroes as well.

Partido dos Trabalhadores, or P.T., was founded in 1980, as a union of workers, intellectuals and artists. Lula, a migrant from one of the poorest regions in the country, a former metalworker and union leader, led many critical strikes and helped bring down the military dictatorship in 1985.

The dictatorship had only deepened our historical inequality. While taking the bus to and from school as a child, I could see the social apartheid. My friends and I on our way to a private school — white kids with braces

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Many of Brazil’s poor now have flat-screen TVs, but live in homes without public sewers. on our teeth, Walkmans in our backpacks, Nike sneakers on our feet — while most passengers, black or biracial, had missing teeth, wore cheap Havaiana flipflops, and carried their belongings in plastic bags.

For the elections after the dictatorship, I wore P.T. T-shirts or pins with the same conviction I wore the Corinthians jersey on game days. Unfortunately, that bearded guy’s speeches were not as effective as Socrates’ backheel passes, so P.T. ended up losing more elections than Corinthians won games. Only in late 2002, running in his fourth consecutive election, striking a much softer tone, did Lula finally win the office of president.

To some extent, the party fulfilled our expectations after 13 years in power. Lula — and Dilma Rousseff after him — created social programs and raised the minimum wage to hoist more than 40 million people out of poverty and into the middle class.

When I was born, many people were still plagued by hunger; now, one of Brazil’s major health issues is obesity. The buses now

are full of people playing on their smartphones, with mouths full of teeth, and Mizuno sneakers on their feet. If you see someone wearing Havaianas here in São Paulo, it’s probably a foreigner.

The problem is that beyond material goods, not much has changed for the poor. The educational system is weak, and access to good health care is limited. Many homes have flat-screen TVs, but are not hooked up to public sewers. Many say these 40 million whose living standards have been raised are not a new middle class, but are just “poor people with money.” Because being middle class means more than just being able to buy things; it means having access to the common repertoire of civilized society.

It means knowing, for example, that Picasso was the Spanish artist who painted Guernica; that Freud is the “cigar guy” who created psychoanalysis; that “The Girl from Ipanema” is a bossa nova classic written by Tom Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes.

The current economic and political crisis raises many fears. Will all the recent gains

be washed down the drain? Will the Mizuno sneakers and smartphones disappear, to be replaced by flip-flops and plastic bags?

Many believe that the recession and recent political upheavals will soon be overcome. A new finance minister is putting the economy in order, and economic growth is predicted to return in 2016. An independent prosecutor has been investigating cases of corruption and has already sent several politicians and businessmen to jail.

On the streets, protesters shout “P.T. Out!” as if the party was responsible for all our problems. It is not. P.T. has done the most to reduce inequality in Brazil — but its efforts have come up short.

Perhaps as important as overcoming the current crisis is finding new paths to ensure that Brazil is a country where everyone has a fair chance. A country with a middle class that not only can buy imported shoes and mobile phones, but also be moved by a Picasso painting or get distracted by whistling “The Girl from Ipanema.”

This Brazil, unfortunately, remains in the future.

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THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL WEEKLY

MONDAY, JUNE 22, 2015

Sanctity of Truth

25

WORLD TRENDS

Online, Gaining Support for Ukrainian Rebels

By JO BECKER and STEVEN LEE MYERS

WASHINGTON — The Novorossiya Humanitarian Battalion boasts on its website that it provided funds to buy a pair of binoculars used by rebels in eastern Ukraine to spot and destroy an armored vehicle. Another group, Save the Donbass, solicits donations using a photograph of a mortar shell inscribed with its web address and the names of donors. Yet another, Veche, states that its mission is to “create modern, combat-ready” military units fighting Ukraine’s central government.

The organizations are part of an online campaign that is brazenly raising money for the war in eastern Ukraine, using common tactics that have at least tacit support from the government of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. Most groups explicitly endorse the armed insurgency and vow to help equip forces in the two regions at the center of the fighting, Donetsk and Luhansk.

An examination by The New York Times of the groups’ websites, social media postings and other records found more than a dozen groups in Russia that are raising money for the separatists, aiding a conflict that has killed more than 6,400 people.

Andrew Roth contributed reporting.

BRENDAN HOFFMAN/GETTY IMAGES

Rebels in Debaltseve in eastern Ukraine are among separatist groups trying to create a region loyal to Russia.

The groups have relied on social media to direct donations through state-owned banks in Russia and through a private system of payment terminals owned by a company called QIWI that is affiliated with Visa. While most donations appear to come from Russia, the organizations have solicited funds from abroad using large American and European financial institutions, including Western Union and PayPal. The fund-raising could pose legal risks for those companies, which are prohibited from doing business with blacklisted people or groups. In fact, the sanctions have forced the fund-raising groups to change names and re-

direct donations to new accounts to keep the money flowing.

Mr. Putin has continued to insist that the fighters in eastern Ukraine are part of a homegrown opposition movement, even though evidence shows that Russia has provided manpower and weapons.

The separatist groups identified by The Times claim in social media posts to have raised millions of dollars. The network features a former Russian military intelligence officer credited with starting the uprising, Igor Girkin, who uses the nom de guerre Igor Strelkov; a dissident writer and Putin critic, Eduard Limonov, whose neo-nationalist

followers have championed the territorial expansion in ethnically Russian regions; and a former “foreign minister” of the Donetsk People’s Republic, Yekaterina Gubareva, and her husband, Pavel, a prominent separatist leader.

All share a common cause: establishment of a region loyal to Russia that is sometimes called the Donbass or Novorossiya.

They make similar appeals to ethnic and political solidarity with the fighters opposing the central government in Kiev, and they share methods for raising money for illicit activities that the Internet has made more efficient.

According to their online appeals, the organizations have directed that donations be made via state-owned or state-controlled banks in Russia, including the country’s largest, Sberbank, or credit cards issued by those banks. Mr. Putin’s government has done little to stop the fund-raising.

“Anyone in Russia who wants to provide assistance to the D.P.R. and the L.P.R. is encouraged by and gets support from the Russian government,” said John E. Herbst, a former American ambassador to Ukraine now at the Atlantic Council in Washington, using the abbreviations for the self-proclaimed People’s Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk.

Save the Donbass claimed in

May to have raised the equivalent of $1.3 million in donations through Sberbank and other payment systems, including QIWI. The fund run by Ms. Gubareva and her husband, the Humanitarian Battalion of Novorossiya, claims to have raised $213,000.

Its website allows donors to direct their contributions to specific militia units and boasts that it has provided not only the binoculars used in the destruction of the armored vehicle, but also tactical military gloves, laser range find-

Money flows from Russia to support the separatist cause. ers, radios and a car used by the battery’s spotters.

Meanwhile, new fund-raising appeals keep popping up. A group calling itself Dobrovolec. org was soliciting funds online as of May 26, with QIWI and Sberbank accounts among the payment options. The group called on fighters familiar with such deadly weaponry as surface-toair missiles, flamethrowers and anti-tank guided missiles to join its effort to “participate in military conflict in the west of former Ukraine on Novorossiya side.”

WIJK BIJ DUURSTEDE JOURNAL

Man Who Gases Geese Hears Slurs of ‘Nazi’

By ANDREW HIGGINS

WIJK BIJ DUURSTEDE, Netherlands — The hiss of gas, released by a lever turned by Arie den Hertog in the back of his van, signaled the start of the extermination. The wildlife, crammed into a wooden case, squawked. Then, after barely two minutes, they fell silent.

Glancing at the timer on his cellphone, Mr. Den Hertog declared the deed done. “Now it is

To farmers, a hero who controls pests; to others, a monster. all over,” he said of his work, on the banks of the Lower Rhine.

Reviled as a Nazi by animal rights activists but hailed as a hero by Dutch farmers, Mr. Den Hertog, 40, is the Netherlands’ expert in the practice of killing large numbers of wild geese.

On his recent outing to Wijk bij Duurstede, a village southeast of Amsterdam, he killed 570 Rosanne Kropman contributed reporting.

graylag geese in his portable gas chamber. That brought his death toll to more than 7,000 for the week. “It is not fun, but it has to be done,” he said of his work.

The Dutch authorities insist it must be done, too. They pay Mr. Den Hertog to keep a ballooning geese population from devouring the grass of cow pastures and flying into planes taking off from Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, a major hub in Europe.

Geese populations here have skyrocketed, buoyed by a 1999 ban on hunting them; farmers’ increasing use of nitrogen-rich fertilizer, which geese apparently love; and the expansion of protected nature areas. That combination, plus an abundance of rivers and canals, has made the country a “goose El Dorado,” said Julia Stahl of Sovon, a group that monitors wild bird populations in the Netherlands.

Mr. Den Hertog received a government contract in 2008 to kill geese over fear that theyposed a threat to airline safety.

The contract, however, put Mr. Den Hertog squarely in the sights of animal rights groups, who broke into his offices, setting fire to a back room and scrawling graffiti on the walls.

No arrests were made.

With his offices and adjacent

JASPER JUINEN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

A gas chamber designed by Arie den Hertog, used to help combat an overpopulation of geese. home since fitted with security cameras, Mr. Den Hertog hopes that the worst is over, but he still worries about hate mail.

“You are like the Nazis in the war,” a recent, unsigned, email read. “I hope you get a deadly disease and die slowly.”

Mr. Den Hertog said he gets past the abuse by thinking of “all the happy farmers who like what I am doing.”

The comparisons to Nazi actions packed such an emotional punch that officials for a time backed off from supporting Mr. Den Hertog’s methods.

Mr. Den Hertog estimates that he has killed more than 25,000 geese around Schiphol Airport, and 50,000 to 60,000 in all. All are donated to a butcher.

After the uproar over his methods, Mr. Den Hertog for a while was barred from using carbon dioxide and had to resort to shooting the geeze, or bludgeoning them with a hammer.

“It was very ugly, with blood everywhere,” said Hugo Spitzen, a conservation ranger here.

Mr. Den Hertog concentrates his activities to the few weeks each year when geese shed old

feathers and are unable to fly.

In a recent operation, Mr. Den Hertog and Mr. Spitzen approached geese in small boats and drove them toward the river bank, where others set up a chute to funnel the geese to the gas chamber.

“I love geese. They are very smart,” Mr. Den Hertog said, adding he had been fascinated as a boy with catching animals in the countryside and had spent years perfecting his goose extermination system. “I am always open to suggestions about how to make it work better.”

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Sanctity of Truth

THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL WEEKLY

MONDAY, JUNE 22, 2015

WORLD TRENDS

Experts Say Windshield Displays Add to the Risks Con­­tin­­ued from Page 23 can remain looking ahead, and not down at the instrument panel.

Google, with Android Auto, and Apple, with CarPlay, have also leapt into the evolving business. Each allows phones to be plugged into a car’s USB port so that information streams to a monitor set into the dashboard.

IHS Automotive, which analyzes car industry trends, expects many automakers to integrate these systems.

The argument for making the devices is simple: Drivers are going to do it anyway, so why not minimize the riskiest kinds of multitasking, like looking down at the phone or handling it?

“The best way to handle it is to make it as safe as you can,” said Nagraj Kashyap of Qualcomm Ventures, which has invested $3 million in Navdy.

Experts in the science of attention say that some of the new head-up displays may be raising obvious risks.

“It’s a horrible idea,” said Paul Atchley, a psychologist at the University of Kansas who studies driver distraction. “The technology is driven by a false assumption that seeing requires nothing more than having the eyes fixed on the right spot,” he said.

Navdy’s $299 device has already received $6 million in preorders, said Doug Simpson, the company’s founder.

Mr. Simpson said he got the idea for the device during a trip to Bangkok. He was trying to figure out a map on his phone while driving on unfamiliar streets and

MORGAN SCHWEITZER

narrowly avoided rear-ending another car.

Maps, driving directions and other driving-focused information are important features of many of these products, the idea being that any task that relates to driving should be done as safely as possible. Part of what has created an opening for products like

Navdy is a sentiment among many consumers that the navigation and touch-screen systems built into many cars are faulty, and research shows that voice command systems can be so inaccurate that they create distraction.

The Navdy device streams speed, map information and notifications of incoming calls and

texts that include the identity of the sender, but not the text itself.

The image will look to the driver a bit like a hologram floating in front of the windshield, Mr. Simpson said. “It’s safer than looking down at the dashboard or at an image on your phone.”

In the YouTube video commissioned by Navdy, the driver says

the technology is “just like what commercial airline pilots use when they’re landing.” He adds: “You hear that? Pilots use it. It’s safe.”

“Not true,” countered Christopher Wickens, a professor at Colorado State University and one of the leading experts in the country in safe use of head-up displays for transportation.

Dr. Wickens said that the headup displays used by airplanes show only information critical to flying. By contrast, a head-up display in the car gives nondriving information.

“It is clutter, contributing to potential failure and distraction contributing to potential failure,” Dr. Wickens said.

There is another concern: Head-up technology focused on social media and communication creates the risk of normalizing the behavior of multitasking, “as if we’re telling people it’s O.K. to do it,” said Deborah Hersman, the chief executive of the National Safety Council.

Another take on the fledgling technology comes from a Vancouver, British Columbia, start-up called DD Technologies — started by two entrepreneurs who said they were inspired to build a head-up display after watching an “Iron Man” movie.

The company’s display, Iris allows drivers to read the contents of a text. But the entrepreneurs say they’re not encouraging the behavior — well, not exactly.

“We’re not saying you should be texting and driving,” said the company’s co-founder Dino Mariutti. “We’re saying you should make it safer.”

Transforming the Way We Move Con­­tin­­ued from Page 23 given the increasing use of private systems, more socially unequal. And the moves may be occurring more rapidly than regulators and social norms can adjust.

Using radar and cameras, the S550 can center itself within a lane, remain a safe distance from the vehicle ahead and automatically brake and steer to keep pace with traffic. But that doesn’t mean that a driver could exactly doze off on the road. The self-driving system, for example, can’t handle sharp turns. The car issues an alarm when you’ve taken your hands off the wheel for more than 10 seconds.

The technologies pushing rapid changes in transportation are similar to those altering much of the rest of the world: sensors, smartphones and software. The sensors help cars, roads and other elements of modern infrastructure become aware, letting vehicles keep track of other vehicles and the roads around them.

And smartphones keep track of people. They help companies like Uber take payments and route drivers and riders efficiently.

And they enable companies like Leap Transit, one of several app-powered luxury private bus

services operating in San Francisco, to measure demand on its routes. Finally, the software ties the sensors and the smartphones together. When the entire transportation system has been wired, software will analyze all the incoming data to constantly reallocate resources, watch for any emergencies and prompt action as soon as they happen.

“You’re adding intelligence to every step of the system,” said

Road sensors and software are making cars safer.

Stefan Heck, a research fellow at Stanford University in California. He argues that autonomous driving and other advances would make transportation far safer.

Most accidents are caused by human error that could, in theory, be mitigated or avoided by artificial intelligence.

Reducing fatalities on American roads by the tens of thousands is within the realm of the plausible, according to experts

and automakers. In 2008, Volvo set a goal for itself: By 2020, the Swedish carmaker hopes that “nobody shall be seriously injured or killed in a new Volvo.” It is a vision that rests in large part on increasing automation.

Efficiency gains are also likely.

Today, cars spend most of their time idle, and they frequently carry a single person. That could change not just through smartphone-enabled car-pooling and reduced vehicle ownership, but also because automation would change driving itself. Cars that couldn’t crash could be made lighter, and they could pack closer together on freeways and travel in platoons, reducing congestion. Intelligent roads, Mr. Heck argues, could save untold numbers of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars.

But the path to full automation isn’t likely to be smooth or quick.

Although Google recently announced that it would soon begin test-driving self-driving cars, experts said they believed that fully autonomous cars for the public were at least a decade away.

Prototype self-driving cars of the sort that Google uses are usually equipped with a high-end laser sensor that costs as much as $85,000. The devices are too expensive for today’s production

JASON HENRY FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

A camera on a Google autonomous car. Some automakers are turning to older technology to make semi-autonomous cars. cars. But if full automation is still years away, what car companies call “semiautonomous” features are already here — and they’re getting better, cheaper and more widely available every year.

Among these are radar, cameras and ultrasonic systems. Together, these sensors let the car see a lot that a driver would most likely miss, like a sudden slowdown by the vehicle two cars ahead.

Some cars may take advantage of so-called telemetry data, like mapping information that describes an emerging traffic jam.

Manufacturers say it wouldn’t take too much work for such data to be integrated into the semiautonomous systems in today’s cars. Tesla plans to introduce a self-driving feature called Autopilot as a software update to its Model S sedan this year.

The Highway Loss Data Institute, which tracks insurance loss statistics on American vehicles, has found that Volvo’s collision avoidance system, which slows or stops the car if it senses an imminent crash, has reduced claims of bodily injury by 18 percent.

Many manufacturers sell their semiautonomous systems as an upgrade for about $3,000 or less, and several carmakers said they could envision autonomous features becoming standard features across a wide range of vehicles. If they continue to show safety and efficiency gains, they may one day even be mandated by the government.

Erik Coelingh of Volvo said of the semiautonomous features: “There is not a fundamentally expensive technology involved in any part of this.”

THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL WEEKLY

MONDAY, JUNE 22, 2015

Sanctity of Truth

27

WORLD TRENDS

U.S. Law Extends Global Reach

By STEPHANIE CLIFFORD

Arrested in Djibouti while he was en route to Yemen from Somalia, far from his home in Britain, Madhi Hashi was baffled to find himself jailed in Manhattan.

He admitted that he was a member of the Shabab, the Somali militant group. But he “did not understand why he had been brought to the United States to stand trial,” he said, according to court documents.

The world of soccer was roiled by a similar surprise late last month, heads snapping from Italy to Argentina, when Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch announced that Brooklyn prosecutors had indicted FIFA officials from the other side of the globe on corruption charges.

Using a growing body of law that allows the United States to prosecute foreign citizens for some crimes, the government has been turning the federal courts into international law-enforcement arenas.

In terrorism cases, the broadening of a law in 2004, the splintering of terrorist groups and a shift away from military detention has led the United States to bring more foreigners onto its soil, some with only a tenuous link to the United States.

Perhaps no federal prosecutor was more aggressive about expanding her office’s global reach than Ms. Lynch when she was the United States attorney in Brooklyn, and the FIFA arrests suggest that now that she leads the Justice Department, overseas cases are likely to become even more of a priority.

In the FIFA case, prosecutors chose not to invoke “extraterritorial jurisdiction.” Instead they relied on the defendants’ use of American banks and American locations to conduct meetings as the basis for charging them in federal court.

But in terrorism prosecutions, American courts are trying people who were not attacking the United States and had never set foot in the United States. (Prosecutors say the country handing over custody of the defendant is, by definition, choosing to cooperate with the United States in such cases.)

The United States has become “the jailer, the military front and now the prosecutor” of global crimes, particularly terrorism, said Karen J. Greenberg, director of the Center on National Security at Fordham University School of Law in New York.

In Brooklyn, the trial earlier this year of Abid Naseer, a Pakistan-born Qaeda member plotting to set off a bomb in Manchester, England, saw a parade of MI5 agents, Manchester police officers and an English mall security expert.

A nother man, L aw a l Babafemi, who will be sentenced in the summer after pleading

Prosecuting Foreign Citizens With Foreign Targets Citizenship of defendants charged with jihadist crimes, 2001-11 LEBANON 17

PALESTINIAN TERR. 14

JORDAN 14

EGYPT 9

SAUDI ARABIA 7

UNITED KINGDOM 14 AFGHANISTAN 7

CANADA 12

UNITED STATES 241

PAKISTAN 55 YEMEN PHILIPPINES 10 11 SOMALIA 18

UNKNOWN 94

OTHER 55

Prosecutions by target location, 2001-11 FOREIGN

DOMESTIC

Military

Military

Civilians

Civilians

Each block represents one prosecution SOURCE: “Terrorist Report Card,” Center on Law and Security, New York University School of Law

THE NEW YORK TIMES

Technology In Fabric of Our Lives “Higher-end retailers are Google wants to get inside realizing that if you can get a your clothes. guy to buy one, then a second In May, the search giant one, that’s where the growth is announced a project to create going to come from,” Marshal conductive fabrics weavable Cohen, the chief analyst for into clothLENS the NPD Group, a market reing. The fabrics search firm, told The Times could Clothing made before the register age of wrinkle-resistant, touch and computer-infused wearables transmit can find new homes, thanks to informathe Internet. Sophie Hersan and Sébastien Fabre created tion; soon, Vestiaire Collective, a luxury it might be consignment website based possible to send a text message in Paris that sells goods from by swiping a sleeve.

Hermès, Chanel, Céline and Some designers are experothers. imenting with 3-D printers, More than a dozen authenand printed wedding dresses, headwear and jewelry were ticators and inspectors deteron display at the 3-D Print mine the value of more than Design Show in New York in 200 items a day. mid-April.

“We wanted to bring inspi“You might go into a wedration and also trust: trust on the buyers’ side and probably ding salon where you might authority on the sellers’ side,” pick out a dress from thouMr. Fabre told The Times. sands of different kinds availThe company has a presence able, but you can’t get it sort of in Britain, Germany and the co-designed with the designer,” Jessica Rosenkrantz, a founder of Nervous System, a 3-D design house in Boston, told The Times.

Using a 3-D printer allows customers to specify exact parameters and engage in the design process, she said.

At the show, Rachel Nhan presented a 3-D printed chest- SLUG GLOBAL piece over a hand-sewn dress.SECTION met “Other countries are more United States. More than three 2 ol x 5” SIZE avant-garde about pushing million members buy and sell Fordwhich x 7409 ORIGIN and showing very unwearable on the site, manages the things,” she told The Times.

Graphics x1839 posting, selling and shipping “Now it’s coming to the U.S., of items.

053115 DATE and we want to have our own Vestiaire is an insider’s name stake in this thing that’s only for “wardrobe” in French, “And going to get bigger.”

‘Collective’ brings the comEveryday garments have munity side of the business,” also benefited from technoMr. Fabre told The Times. “We know it’s pretty painful for logical developments. Wrininternational expansion, but kle-resistant shirts have faced we assume people realize, you hurdles because of uncomknow, we’re French.” fortable materials and unsafe Some believe the converchemicals. But retailers are developing softer and safer gence of technology and fashshirts. ion needs finessing. Bradley The Italian company ErmeRothenberg, an architect by training, showed a 3-D printnegildo Zegna is using a new, extra-long cotton cultivar and ed tracksuit at the New York Brooks Brothers changed the show, but he said he could not cotton in its non-iron shirts to yet see himself as a clothing Supima and lightened its wrindesigner.

“Tech people think they can kle-resistant treatment. These do fashion and fashion people shirts made about 90 percent think they can do tech,” he told of the retailer’s overall sales The Times. “It’s the collabolast year. ration between the two where magic happens.”

For comments, write to DEBORAH STRANGE nytweekly@nytimes.com.

Texting on your sleeve and printing a wedding dress.

SAM HODGSON FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Working in Brooklyn, prosecutors indicted FIFA officials from the other side of the globe on corruption charges. guilty to providing support for terrorism, was a Nigerian who traveled to Chad and Sudan before being smuggled to Yemen by a Ugandan, then was arrested and sent to Brooklyn after he returned to Nigeria.

In Manhattan federal court, Mohamed Ahmed, accused of terrorism, wrote to the court that he was detained, beaten and interrogated at the direction of the

Some say America is becoming the world’s jailer.

Federal Bureau of Investigation in Nigeria, denied help from the consulates of Sweden, where he was a permanent resident, and Eritrea, where he is a citizen, until he was blindfolded, put on a plane and sent to New York for prosecution.

Federal prosecutors are going after these cases for several reasons, prosecutors and national security experts said. One is simply that they can, after Con-

gress broadened extraterritorial jurisdiction for terrorism in 2004.

They see the cases as a smart alternative to diplomacy or drone strikes.

Federal trials, Ms. Greenberg said, are preferable to indefinite detention and represent confidence in the criminal justice system as opposed to options like unlawful interrogation or targeted killings. “On the downside, it takes on a global responsibility that could one day be troubling in its potential to creep into other areas of law enforcement on global issues, from drugs to cybercrime,” she said.

Mr. Hashi pleaded guilty last month in return for a suggested 15-year sentence. At the hearing, he seemed polite and friendly, joking with the judge as he asked about where he would be sent once his prison term ended.

Susan G. Kellman, a lawyer for his co-defendant Mr. Ahmed, said afterward that the men remained confused by the role of the United States.

“They never wanted to harm the United States,” she said.

“That’s what’s so frustrating for them. Their accuser is a country they never intended to hurt, never wanted to hurt.”

Magic in Shanghai: Intel’s 3-D printed Spider Dress, with sensors to detect the proximity of people.

CHINATOPIX, VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS

28

Sanctity of Truth

THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL WEEKLY

MONDAY, JUNE 22, 2015

WORLD TRENDS

Boom Times in Myanmar, Paid for by Heroin

By THOMAS FULLER

YANGON, Myanmar — Visitors flying into this buzzing tropical metropolis step into a modern glass-and-steel airport that symbolizes both Myanmar’s aspirations to rejoin the wider world after years of isolation and the country’s troubled past.

The company that built the terminal, Asia World, was started by one of the country’s premier drug kingpins, a warlord whose militia peddled heroin extracted from the opium fields of the mountainous hinterlands. It is nearly impossible to visit Myanmar today and not encounter the company’s other projects: roads, hydroelectric dams, the country’s biggest ports and one of its most luxurious hotels, the Sule Shangri-La in Yangon.

There is no evidence to suggest the company has any current ties to drug trafficking, but as Myanmar strives to modernize after decades of dictatorial rule, Asia World’s role in that effort Wai Moe contributed reporting.

provides a prominent example of how the drug trade is inextricably intertwined with the country’s new economy.

According to interviews with real estate brokers, economists, and current and former law enforcement agents, illicit drug profits have been a major source of investment in rebuilding the country, and companies linked to the drug trade are building new roads and bridges and reshaping the skyline of Yangon.

Until recently, Yangon was a low-rise city frozen in time, where dangerously potholed sidewalks bordered decrepit colonial buildings. Today cranes swing in nearly every corner of the city.

While the new infrastructure may be welcome, the drug economy threatens the country’s transition to democracy. The drug trade, analysts say, reinforces corruption, bolsters the power of the military and threatens to return Myanmar to a pariah state.

Since Myanmar began opening up to the world four years ago, heroin trafficking has surged.

The United Nations estimates that opium poppy cultivation has nearly tripled over the last six years. Myanmar has become the world’s second-largest producer of heroin.

Myanmar’s drug tycoons have estimated annual revenues of around $2 billion, experts say.

Yet in a country where many business deals and real estate transactions are still done in cash and less than 15 percent of adults have a bank account, it is nearly impossible to trace where all that money goes.

Real estate agents and economists say the drug trade has helped fuel the vertiginous rise in property prices in Myanmar’s major cities.

“Almost everyone involved in this business is laundering money,” said U Sai Khung Noung, the managing director of a real estate company in Yangon.

He calculates that average prices for apartments in Yangon rose 600 percent over the past decade to an average of $2,700 per square meter, higher than the average price for a new condomini-

Chaos Batters Jordan’s Tourism

um in much wealthier Bangkok.

Illegal drugs are not the only source of black-market cash.

During military rule, which ended in 2011, illegal trade in teak, jade and precious gems also created huge off-the-books fortunes.

Starting in 2007, when the government slashed real estate taxes to 15 percent from a prohibitive 50 percent, traffickers seized the opportunity to convert their cash to real estate.

U Khin Maung Aye, a real estate agent in Yangon, said a home buyer brought him a down payment, the equivalent of $200,000, in cash stuffed into rice sacks, not uncommon for home purchases.

The buyer was later arrested on drug trafficking charges and sentenced to 20 years in prison, the police said.

National Parks System For People’s Republic

By EDWARD WONG

By RANA F. SWEIS

JERASH, Jordan — The tour guides sat in a dusty white trailer a few steps from the main gate, drinking thick black coffee and smoking. There were 42 of them, ready to show a visitor around a world-renowned archaeological site in any of nine languages.

But even though it was a sunny spring day, there was no work for 38 of them.

“Four years ago, I would do two to four tours a day for visitors,” said Ahmed al-Qaim, 43, who has been a tour guide for the past 19 years. “Now, we mostly just sit around discussing things like, ‘How do you like your coffee?’ ” The ruins of ancient Gerasa, known now as Jerash, are among the best preserved of any provincial city of the Roman Empire.

The monuments and temples, plazas and colonnaded streets transport visitors back to the first few centuries A.D., when the city prospered under emperors like Trajan and Antoninus. The marks of chariot wheels can still be seen in the paving stones.

The 65-hectare site has been one of Jordan’s main tourist attractions, and a sustainable longterm source of revenue. But it is just 30 kilometers from the border with Syria, where a civil war has been raging for four years — and the region’s conflicts are anything but a magnet for foreign visitors.

Sites all over Jordan are suffering. In 2010, the year before the

After dictatorial rule, drug money fuels a rebirth.

But such arrests are relatively rare in a country with weak law enforcement and where vast areas are under the control of ethnic militias, not the central government. Officials say law enforcement is hampered by the legacy of a dictatorship under which the educational system was destroyed, millions of Myanmar’s most talented citizens fled the country, and the economy and banking system were rendered dysfunctional.

U Tin Maung Than, a director of a research organization that advises the government, says the country does not have the wherewithal to distinguish good from bad money.

“There is no effective mechanism or capacity to crack down on money laundering and corruption,” he said.

Because most of the economy is informal — unregulated and all cash — Mr. Tin Maung Than said, “if we cracked down on informal-sector businesses and black money, we would not have enough space in prisons in Myanmar.”

TARA TODRAS-WHITEHILL FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Jerash, one of Jordan’s main tourist attractions with its ancient ruins, is only 30 kilometers from war-torn Syria.

Arab Spring erupted, some 8.2 million people visited the country, according to the World Bank, but by 2013 the figure was down to 5.4 million, and it is still falling.

And many of the foreigners who do come now are not tourists, but people drawn here by the very turmoil that keeps the tourists away: aid workers, diplomats, journalists, refugees.

The Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities says visits to Jerash are off by 35 percent this year from a year ago. At some other sites, like Mount Nebo, Wadi Rum and Karak, the fall has been even sharper, almost half.

“When I look around the region, I see there’s nothing to be optimistic about,” said Ahmad Shami, the antiquities ministry official in charge of Jerash. “We have a responsibility to promote and preserve Jerash, because this place belongs to the world and to humanity.”

Some Jordanians say that what the ministry calls a problem is really an opportunity.

“We aren’t doing enough to lure in visitors,” said Thiab Atoom, who opened a restaurant near the main gate at Jerash The government and others

have tried a few modest initiatives: discount airline tickets, visa fee waivers, a social media campaign. But even the minister of tourism, Nael al Fayez, has said much more needs to be done.

In calmer times, it was easy for visitors to book a tour with stops at three spectacular ancient sites — starting at Petra, the city carved from stone cliffs in southern Jordan, then Jerash, and on to Palmyra in Syria.

Palmyra has much in common with Jerash: Both were crossroads of cultures in the ancient world, and both feature well-preserved colonnades and Roman amphitheaters. But Palmyra recently fell under the control of the Islamic State extremist group, which has been known to loot or smash many cultural artifacts.

According to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the Islamic State used the amphitheater in Palmyra to kill nearly two dozen prisoners.

That same week in Jerash, about 40 girls in blue school uniforms smiled and greeted a small group of Chinese tourists, who posed for group photos holding umbrellas to shade them from the sun.

BEIJING — More than 140 years ago, the United States government designated Yellowstone as the nation’s first national park. The national parks program eventually expanded to include more than 450 sites and has become one of the country’s greatest tourist draws.

Now China is trying to do with some of its natural spaces what the United States did during its own industrial boom. Chinese officials have announced a plan to undertake trial national park projects in nine provinces over the next three years.

“A Chinese national park system that protects and manages the country’s ecologically rich, beautiful areas can be a source of great national pride and environmental education,” said Henry M. Paulson Jr. of the Paulson Institute, where research on China’s environmental problems has been a major focus. “The trick in China will be how to let the public share its natural treasures, while at the same time protecting them.”

In the popular Huanglong and Jiuzhaigou alpine parks in Sichuan Province, conservation efforts have become secondary to moneymaking ventures by tourism concession companies. Such areas are also often threatened by industrial pollution and construction.

But in December 2013, according to state news reports, Xi Jinping, the country’s president, told senior officials that China should move forward with a true park system.

The Paulson Institute began talking last fall to the National

Development and Reform Commission, the government agency that helps oversee economic planning, about how to help out.

“This was really big news,” Rose Niu of the Paulson Institute said of Mr. Xi’s remarks.

“Number 1, the national park system is a new concept to China. Number 2, not so many environmental conservation issues have been highlighted” at such a high level.

Ms. Niu said the Paulson Institute would provide “technical support” to the Chinese agency as officials explore ways to manage the trial parks.

Some Chinese officials have experimented with park con-

Pollution among threats to China’s natural beauty. servation. Ms. Niu, who is from Yunnan Province, played a critical role in helping establish a conservation area there. The protected area covers about 300 square kilometers where the parallel flows of the Yangtze, the Mekong and the Salween have carved deep valleys.

“China wants to develop a national park system in line with international practices and standards, but also fitting into a Chinese context,” Ms. Niu said.

“These kinds of resources are less and less in China. China not only needs to fight pollution of air, water and soil, but it also needs to invest in its natural capital.”

THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL WEEKLY

MONDAY, JUNE 22, 2015

Sanctity of Truth

29

MONEY & BUSINESS

Saudis’ New Oil Plan: Focus on Themselves

By CLIFFORD KRAUSS and STANLEY REED

HOUSTON, Texas — The international cartel of oil producers has long followed the same basic strategy. When the market was soft, the group slashed production to raise prices.

But Saudi Arabia has a new agenda. It is now less concerned about the price of crude oil in the global markets and more concerned about delivering fuel to its growing economy.

The shift is upending the traditional market dynamics that have influenced the direction of oil prices for decades.

Saudi Arabia, the largest producer in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries by far, has been pumping more and more barrels. Saudi Arabia’s daily production in March and April nearly equaled its record output in 1980 when prices were soaring. The country’s allies, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, are also drilling at record rates, while Iraq is shrugging off widespread civil conflict to

OPEC’s largest producer keeps pumping more. increase production. Even Iran plans to develop more oil fields.

The acute pressure to cut production is also off: Oil prices, after a sharp drop over the last year, have stabilized somewhat at more than $60 a barrel.

“No cut is coming,” said René G. Ortiz of Ecuador, formerly of OPEC. “Each and every country, and particularly the Saudis and the other monarchies of the gulf, will protect their market share and increase their market share as much as possible.”

For decades, Saudi Arabia was the primary force that made OPEC the swing producer in global markets. Now, United States oil production has nearly doubled over the last six years, crowding out Saudi Arabia and other OPEC imports. The situation has forced producers into stiffer competition in Asia with supplies that once flooded the American market.

Saudi Arabia also needs to focus on its own larger and more diverse domestic needs. As the population has surged and the middle class has expanded, con-

sumption has skyrocketed in recent years.

Saudi Arabia has been looking to higher-margin businesses like refining and petrochemicals. The country has a new $22 billion joint venture with Dow Chemical and several new refineries costing $12 billion each.

Saudi experts say oil policy is increasingly being set by younger technocrats surrounding the new king, Salman, who came to the throne in January. While the new leadership is still focused on the price of crude, it is equally attuned to how any cuts in production might slow the Saudi economy and hurt jobs at a time of political turbulence in the region.

“Is Saudi Arabia still willing to play the swing producer and juggle the whole domestic economy, refineries, power plants, desalination, petrochemicals, just to meet the expectations of either OPEC or non-OPEC producers?” said Sadad Ibrahim al-Husseini, a former vice president for Saudi Aramco, the state oil company.

“The answer is no, obviously not.”

Energy consumption in Saudi Arabia is growing faster than in almost any other country in the world, at an average of 6 percent a year over the last decade. Oil is the base fuel for electricity and water desalination.

Saudi Arabia is pumping 10.3 million barrels a day. The kingdom needs to produce nearly eight million barrels to collect the natural gas that comes out of the ground with the oil; such gas is critical for powering its residential and industrial needs.

Saudis’ demand for gasoline, diesel and jet fuel has expanded.

To compensate, Saudi Arabia has spread its refinery business across the globe, building and expanding in the United States, China, Japan and South Korea.

Many of those ventures are meant to process lower Saudi grades of crude to defend against similar products, particularly in Latin America.

The domestic and overseas investment also gives the country an advantage in an increasingly competitive business. A huge refinery network provides the Saudis with a home for their oil at a time when they are battling OPEC rivals like Iran and Iraq over markets, especially in Asia.

“When competition is so keen to sell crude oil, the Saudis sell it in dedicated systems that they control,” said Fereidun Fesharaki of FGE, a research firm. “They don’t have to fight for every barrel. No one else can do this.”

TOMAS MUNITA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

As Saudi Arabia’s population has surged and its middle class has expanded, its oil consumption has skyrocketed.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY KO SASAKI FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Lobster, With Tax Breaks A woman packing dried fish, a gift for donors who have helped finance the village of Hirado. Japan’s tax system lets towns send gifts to donors, like Shigeki Kanamori, above.

By JONATHAN SOBLE

HIRADO, Japan — In this small fishing village, tax breaks come in a cooler.

Taxpayers who donate money to Hirado get a nice deduction and a shipment of slipper lobsters, spiral-shelled mollusks and oysters. Don’t like seafood?

Hirado has hundreds of other thank-you gifts, like a monthly vegetable delivery, a fold-up electric bike or a wedding photo shoot with hotel stay included.

Donors — 36,000 in one year — now outnumber residents. “I think of them as neo-citizens,” said Hirado’s mayor, Naruhiko Kuroda.

Exploiting a quirk in the country’s tax system, scores of towns with dwindling populations are supplementing revenue by courting outside donors.

Local governments are offering things as diverse as marbled Wagyu beef and hot-spring vacations. One city in central Japan, Bizen, attracted 56 million yen, or about $450,000, with a deal on tablet computers. The tablets were available for a donation of 100,000 yen, or about $800. After the tax rebate, the cost to donors was just 2,000 yen The government doubled the upper limit on tax deductions on April 1, to 20 percent of the value of the donor’s municipal tax bill.

That could spur a big increase in donations, which hit 14 billion yen nationwide last year. Japan views it as a way of addressing stubborn wealth disparities between cities and the countryside.

Critics, though, say the system has lost its initial purpose, which was to allow city dwellers to support their ancestral towns. The system is known as furusato nozei, or “hometown taxation.” But there is no requirement that donors have any connection to the places, and few actually do.

The cost of thank-you gifts is also rising steadily as local governments compete to attract patrons — leaving less to spend on civic projects. Urban areas, where most donors live, end up bearing the cost, according to

In Japan, money from the city props up the countryside.

Takero Doi, a professor at Keio University, since donors’ tax write-offs subtract from other cities’ revenue. “Ultimately, it’s a zero-sum game.”

While Hirado began accepting donations soon after the program began in 2008, it only recently started to earn serious money. It set up a website where donors can choose gifts and a point system to claim rewards.

It takes a donation of 10,000 yen to get the seafood delivery.

The town earned 1.46 billion yen in donations in its latest fiscal year, which ended in March — 7 percent of its annual budget.

That was the most of any local government in Japan.

“My wife saw something about it on TV and said it would be a good way to save on taxes,” said Shigeki Kanamori, a wealthy real estate developer in Tokyo. Mr. Kanamori gave 3 million yen to about 200 municipalities. In return, he received gifts worth roughly half that amount. Out of pocket, the haul cost him just 2,000 yen, about the price of lunch at a Tokyo restaurant.

“My biggest problem is that my refrigerator’s full,” he said.

He has written a book about where to find the best deals.

A few towns have opted for whimsy as a way of standing out. Higashi Kagawa, on the island of Shikoku, sends donors a selection of exotic beetles.

Most donors give a modest amount. Mutsuko and Yuzo Sarashina, a retired couple from Saitama, a suburb of Tokyo, said they recently gave 10,000 yen to the town of Genkai. The town, in southwestern Saga prefecture, ranked second to Hirado in donations last year, thanks in part to the popularity of its Wagyu beef. “I had no idea where Saga or Genkai were,” Mutsuko Sarashina said. “I was happy to get such high-quality beef so cheaply, but I also like the idea that my contribution could help a small town in the countryside.”

Defenders of the system say its merits more than make up for its flaws. Japan’s regions already depend heavily on outside subsidies. But much of the money is opaquely handled and poorly spent, experts say.

In contrast, furusato nozei is more transparent, according to supporters. Recipients provide a list of proposed uses for donors’ money upfront and let them choose which ones to pay for. Popular causes include child care subsidies and computers for local schools.

Takayuki Fukuoka, an asparagus farmer in Hirado, said he was earning about 30 percent of his income from gift requests.

He said he hoped the program would open farmers’ eyes to new ways of marketing produce, instead of relying on the monopolistic wholesale system that dominates Japanese agriculture.

He said, “This has been a very closed-off place until now.”

30

THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL WEEKLY

Sanctity of Truth

MONDAY, JUNE 22, 2015

MONEY & BUSINESS

Taking Honey From Hives Without Suffering Stings

By CLAIRE MARTIN

Cedar Anderson sometimes drizzles an entire jar’s worth of honey on his food. “Some people call me Pooh Bear,” he says.

To feed his habit, Mr. Anderson, 35, keeps bees in the backyard of his home in Broken Head, on Australia’s east coast.

Ten years ago, he grew impatient with the traditional methods of extracting honey. In a backyard shed, he and his father, Stuart, invented an alternative setup called Flow Hive, and this year they began to sell it.

Domesticated honeybees live in artificial hives — boxes containing wooden frames laced with honeycombs. Bees fill the combs with honey and seal them with wax. Traditionally, beekeepers don protective suits, sedate the bees with smoke and remove the frames. They cut off the wax caps, place the frames in an extractor and filter out the wax and dead bees.

“If you’ve got a grumpy hive, which lots of mine are, they might

A new harvesting tool sets a record for crowdfunding.

comb frames, without bees, for preorder on the crowdfunding site Indiegogo. A hive with six frames cost $600.

Just seven seconds into the Indiegogo campaign, the Andersons met their $70,000 goal.

Within a day, they had $2.18 million in preorders. And by the end, they had sold $12.2 million worth of hives and frames, setting a fund-raising record for an Indiegogo campaign, said Slava Rubin of Indiegogo.

Crowdfunding platforms have become popular ways for entrepreneurs to bypass traditional channels, but the biggest success stories have typically involved tech items, video games and Hollywood movies. Flow Hive, on the other hand, isn’t a particularly hightech product. Instead, it’s a new way of doing a laborious, age-old task.

Sixty percent of Flow Hive preorders came from the United States, where do-it-yourself and sustainabi l ity trends have spawned leThe Flow Hive is an alternative method of gions of backyard harvesting honey developed in Australia. chicken farmers, artisanal-pickle be stinging you through your bee makers and home brewers. The suit,” Mr. Anderson said.

Flow Hive Indiegogo campaign The Flow Hive frames contain also attracted buyers from 150 honeycomb cells made of plastic other countries and territories, as well as wax, and they open Mr. Rubin said. when the beekeeper inserts a “Honey is just such a mainkeylike tool into the side. The stream concept,” he said. “It’s honey drains through a short like, right away, everyone in the tube, and the hive has a clear world understood it.” plastic panel that lets beekeepers Michael Bush, author of the gauge the honey level. “You can “Practical Beekeeper” series of actually watch the bees’ tongues books, was initially skeptical. “I depositing honey,” Mr. Anderson thought it was impossible when said.

I first saw a video,” he said in an The bees, he adds, remain email. “I actually wondered if it unconcerned when beekeepers was a spoof or if it was real.” remove honey. “They don’t even When the Andersons sent him notice at first,” he said. one of the hives and asked him To begin production, the Anto test it, his opinion shifted.

Though he thinks it overpriced, dersons needed at least $70,000. he also calls it “the coolest beeIn February, their company began offering hives and honeykeeping gadget I have ever seen.”

Cedar Anderson and his father, Stuart, working on a part for their honeyextracting invention.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY FRED McKIE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

CAPUCINE GRANIER-DEFERRE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Up to 70 percent of those who, like Sabine de Buyzer, left, work at phantom companies as part of training programs throughout Europe, go on to find paying employment.

From Fake Firms, Real Jobs

By LIZ ALDERMAN

At 9:30 a.m. one weekday, the phones at Candelia, a purveyor of sleek office furniture in Lille, France, rang steadily with orders from customers across the country and from Switzerland and Germany. A dozen workers processed sales, dealt with suppliers and arranged for desks and chairs to be shipped.

Sabine de Buyzer leaned into her computer and scanned a row of numbers. Candelia was doing well. “We have to be profitable,” she said. “Everyone’s working all out to make sure we succeed.”

This was a sentiment any boss would like to hear, but in this case the entire business is fake. So are Candelia’s customers and suppliers. Even the bank where Candelia gets its loans is not real.

And there are thousands more fake businesses like this across Europe. These companies are all part of an elaborate training network that effectively operates as a parallel economic universe. For years, the aim was to train students and unemployed workers looking to make a transition to different industries. Now they are being used to combat the alarming rise in long-term unemployment, one of Europe’s most pressing problems.

Ms. de Buyzer lost her job as a secretary two years ago and has been unable to find steady work. Since January, though, she arrives by 9 a.m. at the small office in a low-income neighborhood of Lille, where joblessness is among the highest in the country.

While she doesn’t earn a paycheck, Ms. de Buyzer, 41, welcomes the routine. She hopes Candelia will lead to a real job.

“It’s been very difficult to find a job,” said Ms. de Buyzer, who like most of the trainees has been collecting unemployment benefits. “When you look for a long time and don’t find anything, it’s so hard. You can get depressed,” she said. “I just want to work.”

Five years after Europe descended into crisis, there are

signs that a recovery may finally be taking hold. Yet longterm unemployment — the kind that Ms. de Buyzer and nearly 10 million others in the eurozone are experiencing — has become a defining reality. Last year, a staggering 52.6 percent of unemployed people in the eurozone were without work for a year or more, the highest on record, according to the statistical agency Eurostat.

“If you have a significant part of the population that’s not integrated, they won’t increase their spending, which dampens a possible recovery,” said Paul de Grauwe of the London School of Economics. When lots of people go jobless for long stretches, “you also subdue optimism, which will weigh on an economic turnaround.”

The concept of virtual companies, also known as practice

Europe’s virtual companies train the unemployed. firms, traces its roots to Germany after World War II, when large numbers of people needed to reorient their skills. Intended to supplement vocational training, the centers spread rapidly in the last two decades. Today about 5,000 practice firms operate on the Continent, supported by government funds, with at least 2,500 elsewhere in the world.

Within France, 12 new centers have sprung up since 2013, said Pierre Troton of Euro Ent’Ent, which oversees the nation’s network of 110 virtual companies.

“We have more long-term unemployed people than ever before,” he said. Most are under 25 and have either not found work or are getting only precarious temporary jobs. But there is also a surge in unemployed people over 50. “Today,” Mr. Troton said, “more and more people who lose their jobs stay jobless.”

In the virtual companies, workers rotate through payroll, accounting, advertising and other departments. They receive virtual salaries to spend in the make-believe economy.

Some of the faux companies even hold strikes — a common occurrence in France. Axisco, a virtual payment processing center in Val d’Oise, recently staged a fake protest, with slogans and banners, to teach workers’ rights and to train human resources staff members to calm tensions.

“The products and the money are fake, but you call a virtual firm in Switzerland and a person answers,” said Helene Dereuddre, 19, who was receiving administrative training at Candelia. “People see that they are capable of learning and working.”

At Candelia, Ms. Dereuddre spent a week compiling a catalog of discounted furniture and a spring sales brochure to move inventory that hadn’t been selling well. To do so, she studied real market prices.

Several of the firms slid into virtual bankruptcy when they became unprofitable. When that happened, the staff members took steps to shut down the company. They also learned how to open a new one, including applying for loans at a fake bank.

About 60 percent to 70 percent of those who go through France’s practice firms find jobs, Mr. Troton said.

Most are low-paying and last for short stints, sometimes only up to six months. Today, more than half of all new jobs in the European Union are temporary contracts, Eurostat said.

Armed with university degrees in literature and art, Bryan Scoth, 23, had searched seven months for work. After training at Candelia, he landed a one-year contract this spring as an administrator at an unemployment office in Lille. While the position was not what he had hoped for, it was a triumph after a string of rejections.

“I’ve gotten my head above water,” Mr. Scoth said.

THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL WEEKLY

MONDAY, JUNE 22, 2015

31

Sanctity of Truth

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

The Event Horizon Telescope A network of telescopes as big as the Earth is trying to measure the boundary of what astronomers suspect is a supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. Placing the telescopes as far apart as possible increases the array’s ability to discern small details and effectively increases the resolution of the resulting images.

30-meter telescope CARMA

Pico Veleta, Spain

Combined Array for Research in Millimeter-Wave Astronomy Cedar Flat, California S.M.T.

Submillimeter Telescope Mount Graham, Arizona J.C.M.T. AND S.M.A.

James Clerk Maxwell Telescope and Small Millimeter Array Mauna Kea, Hawaii L.M.T.

Large Millimeter Telescope

A Galactic Hunt For Star Eaters

Volcan Sierra Negra, Mexico APEX

Atacama Pathfinder Experiment Llano Chajnantor, Chile S.P.T.

South Pole Telescope Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station, Antarctica (The South Pole Telescope was not part of the experiment in March 2015.)

MERIDITH KOHUT FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

The Large Millimeter Telescope on the Sierra Negra volcano in Mexico had to be repaired with duct tape.

By DENNIS OVERBYE

PICO DE ORIZABA NATIONAL PARK, Mexico — Sheperd Doeleman’s project to take the first-ever picture of a black hole wasn’t going well.

For one thing, his telescope kept filling with snow.

For two weeks at the end of March, Volcan Sierra Negra, an extinct 4,570-meter volcano also known as Tliltepetl in southern Mexico, was the nerve center for the largest telescope ever conceived, a network of antennas that reaches from Spain to Hawaii to Chile.

Known as the Event Horizon Telescope, its job was to see what has been until now unseeable: an exquisitely small, dark circle of nothing, a tiny shadow in the glow of radiation at the center of the Milky Way galaxy. There, astronomers think, lurks a supermassive black hole, a trap door into which the equivalent of four million suns has evidently disappeared.

If Dr. Doeleman and his colleagues succeed, the images they capture will be in textbooks forever, as definitive evidence of Einstein’s weirdest prediction: that space-time could curl up like a magician’s cloak around massive objects and vanish them from the universe. In short, that black holes — objects so dense that not even light can escape their maws — are real. That space and time as we know them can come to an end right under our noses.

Conversely, they could produce evidence that Einstein’s theory of gravity, general relativity, the rule of rules for the universe, needs fixing for the first time since it was introduced a hundred years ago.

Seeking Event Horizons Astronomers today agree that space is sprinkled with massive objects that emit no light at all.

Many of them are supposed to be the remnants of massive stars that have burned out, collapsed and imploded.

Generations of theorists, including Stephen Hawking, are still arguing about just what happens inside a black hole and the ultimate fate of whatever falls in.

Nearly every galaxy seems to harbor one of these dark monsters, millions or even billions of times as massive as the sun, squatting at its center. Black holes lie with their mouths open, and when something — a wayward star or gas cloud — falls toward it, it is heated to billions of degrees as it swirls in a doughnut called an accretion disk around the cosmic drain. Black holes are sloppy eaters, and when they feed, jets of X-rays and radio energy can be squeezed from the accretion disks. Astronomers believe this is what produces the energies of quasars, brilliant beacons in the cores of galaxies that far outshine the starry cities in which they dwell.

“Paradoxically, that makes black holes some of brightest things in the sky,” said Dr. Doeleman, a 48-year-old researcher from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Haystack Observatory and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

The center of the Milky Way, 26,000 light-years from here, coincides with a faint source of radio noise called Sagittarius A*.

Astronomers tracking the orbits of stars circling the center have been able to calculate that whatever is at the center has the mass of four million suns. But it emits no visible or infrared light.

If this is not a black hole, no one knows what it could be.

“That is the strongest evidence so far for an event horizon,” Dr. Doeleman said, using the name for the boundary of a black hole that is the point of no return.

The Sagittarius black hole, if it is there, would appear as a ghostly dark circle amid a haze of radio waves, theorists say. Its exact shape would depend on details like how fast the hole is spinning.

The black hole’s own gravity will distort and magnify its image, resulting in a shadow about 80 million kilometers across, appearing about as big from here as an orange would on the moon. The proof would be if astronomers could determine that the shadow, the graveyard of four million suns, really was that small.

In 2005, a group led by Shen

THE NEW YORK TIMES

Zhiqiang of the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory narrowed the diameter of Sagittarius A* to a cloud of energy less than 145 million kilometers across, about twice the size of the long-sought shadow. But there was a problem getting measurements any finer.

The ionized electrons and protons in interstellar space scattered the radio waves into a blur that obscured details of the source. “You need the right frequency to see through the debris at the galactic center,” Dr. Doeleman said.

Enter the Event Horizon Telescope, which involves 20 universities, observatories, research centers and government agencies, and more than a hundred scientists.

Pointing in Unison The observing run in March was the first time the group would have enough telescopes — seven radio telescopes, on six mountains — to begin to hope they could glimpse the black hole.

They would have five chances over a period of two weeks.

On each night, they hoped to have two black holes in their sights: Sagittarius A*, and one in a giant galaxy known as M87, which anchors the enormous Virgo cluster of galaxies about 50 million light-years away. The M87 black hole has been estimated at six billion times the mass of the sun, and from here, it would appear only slightly smaller than the Milky Way black hole. Moreover, jets of energy shoot like a blowtorch from its accretion disk and across intergalactic space.

In late March, Dr. Doeleman’s collaborators were camped out on similarly uncomfortable mountains in Chile, Hawaii, California, Arizona and Spain, waiting for his signal, based on weather forecasts and the state of their equipment to begin observing. All the telescopes would point in unison at M87, and then at the galactic center.

If everything went right they would see that any given wavefront would arrive bearing the marks of interference, a complicated pattern of crests and troughs — “fringes,” in the astronomical vernacular. With enough

fringes from baselines going in different directions across the sky from the various observatories, the astronomers could reconstruct a map of what was happening out there, thousands of millions of light-years away.

Nobody would know if the whole telescope had worked until the data recorded from each instrument had been correlated in a supercomputer back at M.I.T., a process that would take months.

Duct Tape to the Rescue The first setback occurred when the receiver of the radio telescope in Chile died. It had to be sent back to Europe for repairs. This put more of an onus on the Mexican telescope.

Sierra Negra was a natural choice as the fulcrum of the Event Horizon Telescope. Not only is it centrally located, but the new Large Millimeter Telescope, with its giant dish designed for short wavelengths, is also the most sensitive radio telescope in the network. Completed in 2006 by the National Institute of Astrophysics, Optics and Electronics in Puebla state and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, at a cost of $116 million, it is the largest and most expensive scientific project in Mexico.

But snow kept collecting on its dish. Then there was the matter of a mysterious electrical buzz afflicting the telescope’s new receiver. Strong sources like Jupiter still came booming through above the noise. But the buzz was louder than faint sources like Sagittarius A* at the galactic center, meaning that the astronomers could not be sure they were recording data from the right target. As a result, the Mexican telescope had to sit out the first official observing run.

The telescope’s chances of helping to produce a black hole image were hanging in the balance. The black-hole party now became a race against time. One night, the Mexican telescope was shut out by the weather completely.

The expert on the receiver, Gopal Narayanan of the University of Massachusetts, traced the noise to mechanical vibrations, which he treated with duct tape.

The scientists were now down to their last official chance to join the Event Horizon Telescope party.

The weather remained unpromising, but they went up Sierra Negra anyway. They spent half the night going through their piggyback routine to point the telescope, writing computer code on the spot.

Then they clicked with the Event Horizon Telescope for good, first for Virgo and then for Sagittarius, collecting data until dawn. That night marked the end of the Event Horizon Telescope’s official observing run, but as it happened, there was an encore.

California, Arizona and Mexico were available for an extra night.

That was the best night of all.

And Dr. Narayanan’s taped-up receiver was able to do the pointing by itself.

Dark Shadow of Eternity As a result, some 200 terabytes of data — about as much as is contained in the printed material in the Library of Congress in the United States — are now at M.I.T. This year, astronomers may finally know if the dark shadow of eternity is smiling at us through the star clouds of Sagittarius.

At the end of April, an email went out to the Event Horizon collaboration, dense with graphs, the result of correlating the observations from one night between two mountains — Sierra Negra and Mauna Kea, in Hawaii.

They showed striking signs of an interference pattern. The fringes were there.

If the scientists are lucky, sometime later this summer or fall, they might see emerging from the computers at M.I.T. the first rough image of a black hole. And its size and shape could provide a judgment on general relativity, a century after Einstein dreamed up the theory.

Dr. Doeleman says he is excited about the chance to see inside the engine that produces the monstrous energies of quasars.

“We can see a black hole eat in real time,” he said. “If something is dancing around the edge of the black hole, it doesn’t get any more fundamental than that. Hopefully we’ll find something amazing.”

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THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL WEEKLY

Sanctity of Truth

MONDAY, JUNE 22, 2015

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

In a Drop of Blood, a History of Viral Infections

By DENISE GRADY

Using less than a drop of blood, a new test can reveal nearly every virus a person has ever been exposed to, scientists said.

The test, which is still experimental, can be performed for as little as $25 and could become an important research tool for tracking patterns of disease in various populations, helping scientists compare the old and the young, or people in different parts of the world.

It could also be used to try to find out whether viruses, or the body’s immune response to them, contribute to chronic diseases and cancer, the researchers said.

The test can detect past exposure to more than 1,000 strains of viruses from 206 species — pretty much the entire human “virome,” meaning all the viruses known to infect people. The test works by detecting antibodies, highly specific proteins that the immune system has made in response to viruses.

Tried out in 569 people in the United States, South Africa, Thailand and Peru, the blood test found that most had been exposed to about 10 species of virus — mostly the usual suspects, like those causing colds and flu.

But a few subjects had evidence of exposure to as many as 25 species, something the researchers had yet to explain, said Stephen J. Elledge, the senior author of the report, published in the journal Science, and a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School.

There were some differences in patterns of exposure from continent to continent. People outside the United States had higher rates of virus exposure. Researchers said it might be due to “differences in population densi-

Stephen J. Elledge helped develop a blood test that can detect past exposure to more than 1,000 strains of viruses.

BRYCE VICKMARK FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

ty, cultural practices, sanitation or genetic susceptibility.”

“This will be a treasure trove for communicable disease epidemiology,” said Dr. William Schaffner of Vanderbilt University in Tennessee. “It will be like the introduction of the electron microscope. It will allow us to have more resolution at a micro level.”

One possibility, Dr. Schaffner said, would be to use the test in large populations to find out the ages at which children are exposed to illnesses in order to help with timing vaccinations.

Another idea, he said, would be to test frozen blood samples to learn about patterns of disease.

A new test may shed light on many common illnesses.

By showing all the antibodies a person has produced against viruses, the test may shed light on many illnesses, said Adolfo Garcia-Sastre of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York. “A lot of diseases could be affected by the type of antibodies a person has,” he said.

The most obvious candidates are autoimmune diseases like

multiple sclerosis and Type 1 diabetes. Researchers have long suspected that viruses may contribute to such ailments, by provoking the immune system to produce antibodies that mistake a person’s own cells for viruses and attack them. To look for such viruses, scientists had to test for them one by one.

The new test, Dr. Garcia-Sastre said, “in an unbiased way, allows you to look at the whole repertoire.”

The technology could help answer questions about cancer, he said, such as why the same disease progresses faster in some patients than in others.

There were some surprises, Dr.

The Chef is a Chimp?

The Potential Is There

By JAMES GORMAN

Chimpanzees have the cognitive ability to cook, according to new research, if only someone would give them ovens.

Scientists from Harvard and Yale found that chimps have the patience and foresight to resist eating raw food and to place it in a device meant to appear, at least to the chimps, to cook it.

That is no small achievement.

In a line that could easily apply to humans, the researchers write, “Many primate species, including chimpanzees, have difficulty giving up food already in their possession and show limitations in their self-control when faced with food.”

But they found that chimps would give up a raw slice of sweet potato in the hand for the prospect of a cooked slice of sweet potato a bit later. That kind of foresight and self-control is something any cook who has eaten too much raw cookie dough can admire.

Testing a hypothesis with sweet potatoes and plastic bowls.

ONLINE: KITCHEN READY?

Chimpanzees distinguish raw from cooked sweet potatoes: nytimes.com Search chimps

The research grew out of the idea that cooking itself may have driven changes in human evolution, a hypothesis put forth by Richard Wrangham, an anthropologist at Harvard and several colleagues about 15 years ago.

He argued that cooking may have begun something like two million years ago, even though hard evidence only dates back about one million years. For that to be true, some early ancestors, perhaps not much more advanced than chimps, had to grasp the concept of transforming the raw into the cooked.

Felix Warneken and Alexandra G. Rosati, both of whom study cognition, wanted to see if chimps, which often serve as stand-ins for human ancestors,

Elledge said. One was “that the immune response is so similar from person to person.” Different people made similar antibodies that targeted the same region on a virus.

Another surprise came from people infected with H.I.V. Dr. Elledge expected their immune responses to other viruses to be diminished. “Instead, they have exaggerated responses to almost every virus,” he said.

The test can take up to two months, but it could be done in two or three days, Dr. Elledge said, if a company were to streamline the process.“That’s what can make it work for people,” he said.

ALEXANDRA ROSATI

Scientists had chimpanzees emulate the process of cooking a sweet potato as a test of their cognitive abilities. had the cognitive foundation that would prepare them to cook.

One obvious difficulty in creating an experiment was that chimps have not yet figured out how to use fire, and the scientists were wary of giving them access to real cooking devices. So the scientists hit on a method that, as they write in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, presents the chimps with “problems that emulate cooking.”

“We invented this magic cooking device,” Dr. Warneken explained in an interview: two plastic bowls that fit closely together with pre-cooked food hidden in the bottom tub.

When a chimpanzee placed a raw sweet potato slice into the device, a researcher shook it, then lifted the top tub out to offer the chimp an identical cooked slice of sweet potato.

It was known that chimps pre-

fer cooked food, but it was an open question whether chimps had the patience to wait through the pretend “shake and bake” process. And, the researchers wanted to know if the animals could understand “that when something raw goes in there it comes out cooked,” Dr. Warneken said.

The chimps resisted eating raw food and put it in the device, waiting for cooked food. They would bring raw food from one side of a cage to the other in order to put it in the device.

Dr. Rosati said the experiments showed that chimps had the “minimal causal understanding they would need” to make the leap to cooking.

Whether or not chimpanzees could operate a real oven on their own — Dr. Rosati thinks they probably could — the research leaves no doubt that they have the cognitive ability to take advantage of a restaurant (bring your own potato, of course).

MONDAY, JUNE 22, 2015

THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL WEEKLY

Sanctity of Truth

33

ONLINE

Sharing Their Personal Details, but Not Happily

By NATASHA SINGER

Should consumers be able to control how companies collect and use their personal data?

Timothy D. Cook, the chief executive of Apple, recently gave a speech in which he endorsed this simple idea. Yet his argument leveled a direct challenge to the premise behind much of the Internet industry — the proposition that people cede their digital activity to companies in exchange for free or reduced-priced services subsidized by advertising.

“You might like these so-called free services,” Mr. Cook said.

“But we don’t think they’re worth having your email or your search history or now even your family photos data-mined and sold off for God knows what advertising purpose.”

Now a study from the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania has come to a similar conclusion: Many Americans do not think the trade-off of their data for personalized services, giveaways or

discounts is a fair deal either. The findings are likely to fuel the debate among tech executives and federal regulators over whether companies should give consumers more control over the information collected about them.

In the survey, 55 percent of respondents disagreed or strongly disagreed that “it’s O.K. if a store where I shop uses information it has about me to create a picture of me that improves the services they provide for me.”

About seven in 10 people also disagreed that it was fair for a store to monitor their online activities in exchange for free Wi-Fi while at the store. And 91 percent disagreed that it was fair for companies to collect information about them without their knowledge in exchange for a discount.

Companies are scrambling to develop new techniques to influence people who increasingly use mobile devices to shop, bank and socialize. Yet many are mistrustful of the kinds of inferences that companies might make based on

the information gathered.

The Penn survey concluded that many people are now resigned to having little say over how their information is used.

Among people who took part in the survey, 84 percent strongly or somewhat agreed that they wanted to have control over what marketers could learn about them; at the same time, 65 percent agreed that they had come to accept that they had little control over it. The randomized telephone survey of 1,506 adult American Internet users has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Although he did not take the survey, Jeff Allen, a manager at a school yearbook company in the Atlanta area, is one of the reconciled. Mr. Allen said he was troubled after he learned that Uber was updating its privacy policy to explicitly allow the company to record the location of customers’ devices even when they were not actively using the app.

“I think it’s none of their business where I am up until the moment

Paying Hackers, For Not Hacking

By NICOLE PERLROTH

SAN FRANCISCO — In 2011, two Dutch hackers in their early 20s made a target list of 100 hightech companies they would try to hack. Soon, they had found security vulnerabilities in Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Twitter and 95 other companies’ systems. They called their list the Hack 100.

When they alerted executives of those companies, about a third ignored them. Another third thanked them but never fixed the flaws, while the rest raced to solve their issues.

Thankfully for the hackers, no one called the police.

Now the duo, Michiel Prins and Jobert Abma, are among the four co-founders of a San Francisco tech start-up that aims to become a mediator between companies with cybersecurity issues and hackers like them who are looking to solve problems rather than cause them.

They hope their outfit, called HackerOne, can persuade other hackers to report security flaws, rather than exploit them, and connect those “white hats” with companies willing to pay a bounty for their finds.

In the last year, the start-up has persuaded some of the biggest names in tech — including Yahoo, Square and Twitter — and companies you might never expect, like banks and oil companies, to work with their service. They have also convinced venture capitalists that

Forced to choose between privacy and a good deal. when I elect to use their service,” he said. Nevertheless, he said he planned to continue using Uber, at least for the moment, because he found it more convenient than taxis.

Companies that are more transparent about how they use customer details may find it easier to maintain customer trust.

“People are always willing to trade privacy and information when they see the direct value of sharing that information,” said Mike Zaneis, the chief counsel for the Interactive Advertising Bureau, an industry group.

The researchers found that many consumers may not fully comprehend the data-mining practices that occur when they

use sites and apps. For instance, 58 percent of survey respondents wrongly believed that when a website had a privacy policy, it meant that the site would not share their information without their permission.

The more concrete situations the survey described, the more likely people were to reject deals. For instance, 43 percent of respondents said they would accept a discount if the supermarket where they shopped kept detailed records of their purchases. But only 19 percent said they would accept discounts if the supermarket could use their history to make assumptions about their race or ethnicity.

Fatemeh Khatibloo of Forrester Research describes consumers’ experience with data-mining systems as “frog-in-the-caldron syndrome.”

“You start off by putting the frog in tepid water,” Ms. Khatibloo said, “and then you raise the temperature so the frog doesn’t realize it’s cooking.”

Streaming Breaks Down Genre Walls

PETER EARL McCOLLOUGH FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

The founders of HackerOne have convinced companies to pay a bounty when a security flaw is uncovered.

HackerOne has the potential to be very lucrative. HackerOne gets a 20 percent commission on top of each bounty paid through its service.

“Every company is going to do this,” said Bill Gurley, a partner at Benchmark, which invested $9 million in HackerOne. “To not try this is brain-dead.”

Hackers who find new holes in corporate systems can, depending on their severity, expect six-figure sums to sell their discovery to criminals or governments, where those vulnerabilities are stockpiled in cyberarsenals and often never fixed.

Alternatively, when they pass the weaknesses to companies to get them fixed, they are ignored or threatened with jail.

Mr. Prins and Mr. Abma started HackerOne with Merijn Terheggen, a Dutch entrepreneur living in Silicon Valley. The three met their fourth co-founder through the Hack 100 effort when they sent an email alerting Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, of a vulnerability in Facebook’s systems. Ms. Sandberg didn’t just thank them, she printed out their message, handed it to Alex Rice, Facebook’s product security guru at the time, and told him to fix it. Mr. Rice worked with them to fix the issue, paid them a $4,000 bounty and joined them a year later.

Tech companies began rewarding hackers five years ago when Google started paying hackers $3,133.70 for bugs (31337 is hacker code for “elite”). Since then, Google has paid as much as $150,000 for a single bounty and doled out more than $4 million to hackers. Mr. Rice helped pioneer the bounty programs at Facebook and Microsoft.

“A lot of companies have hackers — they just don’t know it,” Mr. Terheggen said. “The bad guys are on there already. The good guys don’t show up unless you invite them.”

About 1,500 hackers are on HackerOne’s platform. They have fixed around 9,000 bugs and received more than $3 million in bounties.

HackerOne competes with the bounty programs its founders helped start at Facebook, Microsoft and Google. HackerOne also competes with Bugcrowd, a similar start-up that charges companies an annual fee to manage their bounty programs.

Bugcrowd works with young companies like Pinterest and institutions like Western Union.

“Every technology has vulnerabilities, and if you don’t have a public process for responsible hackers to report them, you are only going to find out about them through attacks in the black market,” Mr. Rice said.

“That is just unacceptable.”

My two children, ages 4 and 2, have suddenly become obsessed with Simon and Garfunkel.

At their insistence, the 1960s folk duo is the only music we listen to during car rides. Their interest in 1960s-era folk came after their immersion in MaESSAY roon 5, the catchy pop group; a monthslong mania for Michael Jackson; and an intermittent passion for singles from every era and genre.

Their cultural acumen is entirely the product of technology — in particular, being introduced to new artists through Spotify, the world’s largest subscription music-streaming service.

Spotify says that because online streaming services let us call up and listen to anything we like, and because its curated playlists push us toward new stuff, we are all increasingly escaping rigid genres.

That trend may accelerate as streaming becomes ubiquitous. There’s also Pandora, which claims nearly 80 million listeners, and Rhapsody, a paid service that reports 2.5 million users. Rdio recently introduced a plan that goes for $4 a month.

Spotify, which has about 60 million active users and costs $10 a month, exposes each of them to one new artist every day on average. That is making listeners less beholden to styles and eras. Spotify is betting that fixed musical genres will fade.

In the new version of its iPhone app, the company has expanded its programming for moods and activities rather than merely certain kinds of musical tastes.

FARHAD MANJOO

“What we want to do is make Spotify more of a ritual,” said Shiva Rajaraman, the company’s vice president of product.

“You’ll begin to use it for a set of habits, and we will start to feed content for every slot in your day.”

If Spotify is right about our increasing willingness to try new stuff — and critics who follow the pop charts said it may be — the trend could upend how we think about music.

Chris Molanphy, a pop critic and pop chart analyst who writes for Slate and National Public Radio, told me Spotify’s power to expose listeners to new songs resonates beyond the service itself. The Billboard charts now count plays on Spotify and YouTube in their calculation of the country’s top hits.

As a result, Mr. Molanphy said, Internet plays are pushing quirky new acts to the top of the charts faster than ever. He pointed to Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used to Know,” an unusual hit that catapulted to the top in 2012; and “Royals,” by the New Zealand teenager Lorde, which was an early online hit before it topped the charts in 2013.

“These were all songs that were different from what radio was playing, and radio tends to be a homogeneous medium,” Mr. Molanphy said.

That’s the good news.

The bad news is that many of the new artists tend to be one-hit wonders; in fact, 2014 was one of the worst years for follow-up hits. “There’s just far less loyalty, and many artists are having a hard time following up on their hits,” Mr. Molanphy said.

I expect that soon my children will forget about Paul Simon. My son is already asking about Bob Dylan.

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Sanctity of Truth

THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL WEEKLY

MONDAY, JUNE 22, 2015

ARTS & DESIGN

Nascent Director In Giant’s Shadow

By BROOKS BARNES

LOS ANGELES — In “Jurassic World,” scientists create a living theme park attraction called Indominus rex by splicing the DNA of two very different dinosaurs.

They are ecstatic. Behold! The glorious future, a ticket-selling machine.

But there are critics. Madness!

This monster may draw crowds, but it is not natural.

The director and a writer of “Jurassic World,” Colin Trevorrow, and the film’s heavily involved executive producer, Steven Spielberg, are most definitely in the first camp. “Jurassic World,” even with a production budget of $150 million, is in many ways an experiment: Can a relatively inexperienced art-house director (Mr. Trevorrow, 38) meld his filmmaking ideas with those of a cultural giant (Mr. Spielberg, 68) to successfully rejuvenate — but not overhaul — a 1990s-era movie series?

Mr. Trevorrow is hardly the first unseasoned filmmaker to be put in charge of a major franchise, but it is relatively rare for the originator of a movie series to remain so involved in a rejuvenation effort. Mr. Spielberg did not visit the “Jurassic World” sets, but he approved the script, watched film daily and emailed and texted suggestions.

One question was whether “Jurassic World,” starring Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard, would benefit greatly from Mr. Spielberg’s steadying hand or end up a lumbering mishmash of vintage and modern. “I remember that first two-hour meeting with Steven, when I had to stop being a fan and think about work,” Mr. Trevorrow recalled.

ILM/UNIVERSAL PICTURES AND AMBLIN ENTERTAINMENT; BELOW, EMILY BERL FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Colin Trevorrow, 38, an unseasoned filmmaker, created ‘‘Jurassic World’’ with mentoring from Steven Spielberg, 68.

“I was like: ‘Look, if “Jurassic Park 4” fails, you continue on being a legend. I’m finished.’ ” Reinvigoration is the true goal.

“It’s not a secret: The earlier movies had diminishing returns for the audience,” said Mr. Trevorrow, sitting in the Santa Monica, California, offices of Frank Marshall, a “Jurassic World” producer. “If we were going to make another one of these dinosaur movies, it had to be something that could rebuild our love for the franchise.”

Mr. Spielberg, who has made

a point over the years to mentor budding directors, said in an email that he was impressed by Mr. Trevorrow’s confidence.

“Jurassic World” has a rather tortured back story, spending more than a decade in development.

Mr. Trevorrow was hired in March 2013 without his having seen the script. He disliked what he read. “I didn’t understand what it was about,” he said. So, along with his writing partner, Derek Connolly, Mr. Trevorrow cranked out a new draft built around three bedrock ideas from Mr. Spielberg: The park was open; the raptors could be trained; and a synthetic dinosaur had been created. Among other Spielbergian parameters, there had to be children involved.

Along with big action moments provided by marauding dinosaurs — sniff, chomp, sniff, chomp — Mr. Trevorrow wanted “Jurassic World” to have elements of romantic adventure and screwball comedy. “I wanted to make something that is funny and warm and emotional and romantic while also being scary and intense and dark,” he said.

“A movie doesn’t have to be just one thing.”

That may be Mr. Trevorrow’s confidence talking, or maybe his lack of Hollywood-weary cynicism. As studios seek to attract ticket buyers overseas, event movies are becoming stripped of their nuance. Witty banter? Hard to translate. Nix that, too, and just have a superhero destroy another city.

But Mr. Trevorrow misses

New and old talents collaborate to revive a movie franchise. more artisanal movies from his 1980s childhood, like “Romancing the Stone” and “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom,” both of which added a gender war element to the action. “We haven’t seen that in a long time,” he said. “Those kinds of male-female dynamics are things that are universal. Men and women

A Pioneer of Disco Resurfaces

By JON PARELES

LOS ANGELES — Giorgio Moroder’s living room proudly displays souvenirs from a career as a disco pioneer and pop hitmaker — a career that Mr. Moroder, who recently turned 75, is about to resume.

On a glass table were two Oscars, two Golden Globes, a People’s Choice award and three Grammys. On the walls there are gold, platinum and multiplatinum albums — in the form of vinyl, CDs and even cassettes — for his writing and production on Donna Summer’s hits, the “Flashdance” soundtrack and “Take My Breath Away,” the ballad sung by Berlin for “Top Gun.” By the end of the 1980s, Mr. Moroder had proved himself with disco standards and pop hits and soundtrack scores like “Midnight Express” and “Scarface.” But for

much of the 1990s and 2000s, he all but retired from music, producing only a handful of songs.

Lately, as the fondly remembered beats and atmosphere of disco have resurfaced in pop hits

by Pharrell and Robin Thicke, Mr. Moroder has found a wave of younger admirers.

This month, Mr. Moroder is releasing his first album under his own name in 30 years: “Déjà Vu,” featuring vocals from Sia, Britney Spears, Charli XCX, Kelis, Mikky Ekko and others.

“Déjà Vu” is a dance-pop album from start to finish — a gleaming, effervescent, crafty blend of the disco that gave Mr. Moroder his first hits and the electronic dance music that has been extrapolating his ideas for decades. Behind the assorted voices and swelling trance-music chords, the irrepressible pulse

that runs through the album is immediately recognizable as Mr. Moroder’s sound. So is the sense of melody and counterpoint, of string sections and rhythm guitars teasing the beat, of tension and release.

The preview single from the album — “Right Here, Right Now” featuring Kylie Minogue — was Billboard’s Number 1 dance club song in the United States in April.

The disco hits Mr. Moroder wrote and produced in the 1970s with Ms. Summer are cornerstones of dance music.

She was an American singer living in Munich, and he was a young pop composer from South Tyrol, in northern Italy, with ambitions toward the international market.

To strengthen the rhythm on Ms. Summer’s 1975 international breakthrough, “Love to Love You

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Giorgio Moroder, a hitmaker in the 1970s, is putting out his first album in 30 years.

Baby,” Mr. Moroder put a thumping kick drum on every beat: a foundation that every club D.J. now knows as four-on-the floor.

Two years later, Mr. Moroder was trying to envision music of

don’t understand each other, and I don’t find that in any way to be a trope.”

The bespectacled Mr. Trevorrow, who is married with two young children, comes from a showbiz family of a sort. He grew up in Oakland, California, the oldest son of a musician father.

“I’m definitely from the ‘Let’s put on a show and entertain everybody’ school of filmmaking,” he said. Mr. Trevorrow graduated from New York University, where he studied film and dramatic writing.

Mr. Trevorrow’s time with Mr. Spielberg is not finished. In March, one of Mr. Spielberg’s companies, DreamWorks Studios, announced that it would make “Intelligent Life,” an original science-fiction thriller co-written by Mr. Trevorrow. But Mr. Trevorrow has said he will not return to direct a fifth “Jurassic Park” movie.

“This opportunity has been amazing, but I also want to make original films,” he said. “My body of work at the moment is two tiny shoes and a giant head balancing on the shoes. I need a body of work!”

the future and came up with the all-synthesizer arrangement for Ms. Summer’s “I Feel Love.” Its mechanized feel and openly artificial sounds made it an immediate hit. Its beat and bass line, and its contrast between human voice and synthetic propulsion, have echoed through dance music ever since.

“In what everybody is calling E.D.M. now, probably the most influential people were Giorgio Moroder and Kraftwerk,” said the D.J. and producer David Guetta, whose single “Hey Mama” is currently Billboard’s Number 1 Hot Dance/Electronic song. “A lot of kids that are big D.J.s now, they don’t even know the influence of these people.”

Today, Mr. Moroder is working on a soundtrack for a major movie that he would not disclose. And he’s starting a musical that would include some of his hits and half a dozen new songs; it’s still untitled, he said, but, “It probably has the word ‘disco’ in it.”