App Swaps Children"s Book Text With News To Save Bored Parents" Sanity

Magic Story Maker sneakily replaces the text in children’s book illustrations so you can read the news to your unassuming toddler. (Mwahaha…)

By Joey Carmichael Posted 06.20.2013 at 1:30 pm

Magic Story Maker Your child will…never know the difference? FWIW, via iTunes Store

Like puppies, kids are wildly energetic and easy to fool. My siblings once recited a “hilarious joke” to my toddler cousin: an arduous, incomprehensible story, ending with the punchline: “Soap! It was the soap!” They then burst into laughter, on cue, and my amusingly gullible cousin followed suit, laughing uproariously.

Such is the idea with the new app, Magic Story Maker. The app comes equipped with three storybook themes, and all you have to do is choose your favorite news stories to plug in. Sure, parents can tolerate reading Sylvester and the Magic Pebble to their kids once or twice, but wouldn’t pretty pictures suffice? All the while you can be keeping yourself up-to-date on your daily news, child none the wiser–heck, hearing about four-quark particles might even fool me if accompanied by pretty, fantastical illustrations.

“Plus you’ll be doing your child a favor. Research indicates that reading articles such as these helps build vocabulary, which leads to higher IQs later in life,” claims the app’s description. “It makes sense—the child who is read science news every day is going to be much smarter than the one who learns that a cow goes moo 8,000 times in a year.”

The app is available for just $ 1.99 here—just imagine how much more you’ll know about current events! And plus, this feels way less unethical than that other tongue-in-cheek bedtime book….

Popular Science – New Technology, Science News, The Future Now

App Swaps Children"s Book Text With News To Save Bored Parents" Sanity

Court dismisses Bloomberg suit against swaps regulator

By Douwe Miedema

WASHINGTON | Sat Jun 8, 2013 11:19am EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The top U.S. derivatives regulator won a legal victory over Bloomberg LP late on Friday when a court dismissed a case the data vendor had filed that claimed a new rule on trading swaps would hurt its business.

Bloomberg is one of a dozen or so providers launching a platform on which to trade swaps, as regulators across the world crack down on the $ 630 trillion market to prevent a repeat of the 2008 financial crisis.

But that effort would be hurt by a new rule from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission which will force buyers and sellers of swaps to set aside enough money – or margin – to cope with the impact of a deal falling apart, Bloomberg had argued.

That is because the margin on a swap should be enough to cover five days of unwinding the position, but only one day for futures, a similar type of product traded on rival exchanges, making them cheaper to use.

The court said, however, that Bloomberg had provided no evidence that this requirement would hurt its business.

“Bloomberg … simply assume the worst-case scenario … without grounding their assumption in the actual behavior,” it said in its ruling.

On another point, it said that the “plaintiff’s contentions in this regard are remarkably perfunctory and devoid of factual support.”

Bloomberg could not be reached for comment.

Commissioner Bart Chilton said in a statement that the CFTC could focus on the task ahead of tightening regulations of swaps now that “another attempt to second-guess regulators on financial reform measures sought by Congress and President (Barack) Obama” was behind it.

Underlying the lawsuit is a looming battle between exchanges and investment banks over who rules the lucrative derivatives market, a vast playground for speculators, parts of which were long unregulated.

Exchanges, which dominate the futures markets, have been regulated for decades and now operate at a lower cost because of the CFTC’s rule.

The banks hold sway over the swaps market, and fear clients will defect to the exchanges, hurting their revenues as well as the trading platforms – called Swap Execution Facilities (SEF) – Bloomberg and others want to launch.

Bloomberg is a competitor of Thomson Reuters Corp (TRI.TO).

The case is Bloomberg LP v United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, No. 13-52

(Reporting by Douwe Miedema; Editing by Vicki Allen)

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Reuters: Business News

Court dismisses Bloomberg suit against swaps regulator