The Big Picture

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• Rory Sutherland: Sweat the small stuff
• 10 Monday PM Reads
• Employee Headcount at Samsung
• Don’t be a Technology Schmuck!
• 10 Monday AM Reads

Rory Sutherland: Sweat the small stuff Posted: 29 Sep 2014 05:00 PM PDT It may seem that big problems require big solutions, but ad man Rory Sutherland says many flashy, expensive fixes are just obscuring better, simpler answers. To illustrate, he uses behavioral economics and hilarious examples.

10 Monday PM Reads Posted: 29 Sep 2014 01:30 PM PDT My afternoon train reads: • Investing: Market timing is for the birds (USA Today) • Incredible Images Of Wall Street Trading Before The Bloomberg Terminal (Business Insider) • How a 10-year-old girl got her father, Mohamed El-Erian, former CEO of PIMCO, to quit his $100 million a year job (CS Monitor) • Looking at Productivity as a State of Mind (Upshot) • U.S. Outgunned by Extremists on New YouTube, Twitter Battlefield (Bloomberg) • What It's Really Like to Work at Google (At Work) • Neuroscientist Carl Hart: Everything you think you know about drugs and addiction is wrong (Raw Story) • Venture Firms Fret as Y Combinator Soars (News Genius) • The bias fighters: Psychologists are testing ways to reduce unconscious racial prejudice–not just in the police, but in all of us. (Boston Globe) • ‘Modern Family’ Editor Live-Tweets Plane Passenger’s Drunken Meltdown (Mashable) What are you reading?       How Not to Quell a Riot Source: The Economist

Employee Headcount at Samsung Posted: 29 Sep 2014 09:30 AM PDT Why Apple is so much more profitable than Samsung: Employee Headcount   click for larger graphic Source: Ars Technicha

Don’t be a Technology Schmuck! Posted: 29 Sep 2014 06:00 AM PDT The human capacity for making bad decisions about technology seems to be limitless. In many ways, this parallels bad approaches to trading and investing: Lots of unfounded rumors, emotional decision-making, poor risk-reward analysis, an inability to perform simple math. The spasms of technology silliness surrounding the iPhone 6 are just the latest in a never-ending stream going back to the IBM 5100 Portable Computer. You should learn to watch all such foolishness with detached bemusement — and always from a distance. It isn’t that I am not a gadget head; I have been an Apple fanboy since using my first Mac Classic back in the 1980s. For context, see this ATPM column from 1998, about the time it looked like Apple was going to take the long dirt nap. When it comes to making bad choices, things are no different today than they were 25 years ago. Sure the technology is infinitely better, but the same sorts of bugs are ever-present in the hypercomplex software that drives these products. The key difference between today and back then is that a) we have decades of experience showing us what NOT to do, and 2) so many people are so willing to pay good money to be beta testers for the tech giants. No thanks. When it comes to buying the latest and greatest technology, consumers should recall that it is the proverbial second mouse that gets the cheese. (You know what happens to the first mouse). As a consumer, you have no obligation to endure these snafus. Whether it’s bendable iPhones, operating-system glitches or bad security, all it takes is a little bit of intelligence and patience to avoid the predictable headaches. Don’t be a technology Schmuck. Continues here

10 Monday AM Reads Posted: 29 Sep 2014 05:00 AM PDT Welcome back to the monkey house. This morning, we bring you our reads from Detroit to Hong Kong to Abbey Road: • "Do we need to fire Pimco?" (TRB) see also How Bill Gross and Pimco got too big for each other (LA Times) • Americans have been told over and over again we’re unprepared for retirement. But new research says the news isn’t so dire. (Barron’s) • Small Caps Miss Out on Stock Rally (WSJ) see also Stock Valuations Go Under the Lens (WSJ) • Detroit demolishes its ruins: ‘The capitalists will take care of the rest’ (The Guardian) • China’s decision to expel journalists to Hong Kong is now blowing up in its face (Vox) see also Hong Kong’s protesters are using the “hands up, don’t shoot” gesture from Ferguson (Vox) Continues here

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