Week 8
News
Google is preparing to offer its own ride-hailing service [..]
Competition is a good thing
Link
The effects of the autonomous car movement will be staggering. PricewaterhouseCoopers predicts that the number of vehicles on the road will be reduced by 99%, estimating that the fleet will fall from 245 million to just 2.4 million vehicles.
Disruptive innovation does not take kindly to entrenched competitors – like Blockbuster, Barnes and Noble, Polaroid, and dozens more like them, it is unlikely that major automakers like General Motors, Ford, and Toyota will survive the leap [..]
Ancillary industries such as the $198 billion automobile insurance market, $98 billion automotive finance market, $100 billion parking industry, and the $300 billion automotive aftermarket will collapse as demand for their services evaporates. We will see the obsolescence of rental car companies, public transportation systems, and, good riddance, parking and speeding tickets. But we will see the transformation of far more than just consumer transportation: self-driving semis, buses, earth movers, and delivery trucks will obviate the need for professional drivers and the support industries that surround them.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics lists that 884,000 people are employed in motor vehicles and parts manufacturing, and an additional 3.02 million in the dealer and maintenance network. Truck, bus, delivery, and taxi drivers account for nearly 6 million professional driving jobs. Virtually all of these 10 million jobs will be eliminated within 10-15 years, and this list is by no means exhaustive.
Damn
Alexis Tsipras
My party, and I personally, disagreed fiercely with the May 2010 loan agreement not because you, the citizens of Germany, did not give us enough money but because you gave us much, much more than you should have and our government accepted far, far more than it had a right to [..]
[L]et me be frank: Greece’s debt is currently unsustainable and will never be serviced, especially while Greece is being subjected to continuous fiscal waterboarding […]
Soo
.. Tsipras is saying instead of repaying some old debt with new debt and trying to repay both, erase some of our old debts? That’s what it all comes down at the end right? Who is paying when, or not paying.
US Department of Labor
Unemployment is at 5.6%
Untrue
Gallup
Gallup defines a good job as 30+ hours per week for an organization that provides a regular paycheck. Right now, the U.S. is delivering at a staggeringly low rate of 44%, which is the number of full-time jobs as a percent of the adult population, 18 years and older.
Right
This page here shows the “true” unemployment rate, updated daily.
News
CIA fears enemy will gain control of the weather
Errr
Dude can you guys focus on something else.. I mean, like go topple a foreign leader or something..? Where does this is stupid shit come from?
Wired
There’s been a lot of fear about the future of artificial intelligence. [Some] worry that AI-powered computers might one day become uncontrollable super-intelligent demons [..] But Baidu chief scientist Andrew Ng—one of the world’s best-known AI researchers and a guy who’s building out what is likely one of the world’s largest applied AI projects—says we really ought to worry more about robot truck drivers than the Terminator.
Yes
NPR
We mapped the most common job in every state
I would definitely forget about the Terminator now
Bill Gates
Why aren’t more ppl afraid of [AI calamity]?
I dont know, ask your own research chief
Microsoft Research Chief
Out of control AI will not kill us
Dude
You totally disagreed with your ex-CEO there… Like, not cool.
George Orwell
If she had not been aided by Britain and America, Russia would have been defeated by Germany [during WWII]
Orwell knows
Maybe during one of their WWII “parades”, Russian leaders should salute their saviors, in the direction of the West. Because if it wasn’t for the rest of the Europe and US, it seems that their ass would have been grass.
Question
What do you think about Internet of Things?
Lukewarm
I cant see much reason to get excited about it. Plus exposing household items to outside can pose a security risk; it is enough government agencies of rouge states try to get into ordinary people’s accounts, now potentially they can hack into your home..? Imagine the scenario - in your kitchen they knock you out with the refigrator door, turn on your oven, get your roomba to throw your ass on the grill. That would suck.
Home devices being able to connect to eachother, locally, can be good of course; but still, meh.
Yann LeCun
[LeCun is a Deep Learning expert] Some aspects of our models are inspired by neuroscience, but many components are not at all inspired by neuroscience, and instead come from theory, intuition, or empirical exploration. Our models do not aspire to be models of the brain, and we don’t make claims of neural relevance [..] I’m very careful not to use words that could lead to hype. Because there is a huge amount of hype in this area. Which is very dangerous [..] In a cargo cult, you reproduce the appearance of the machine without understanding the principles behind the machine. You build radio stations out of straw [..]
The equivalent in AI is to try to copy every detail that we know of about how neurons and synapses work, and then turn on a gigantic simulation of a large neural network inside a supercomputer, and hope that AI will emerge. That’s cargo cult AI. There are very serious people who get a huge amount of money who basically—and of course I’m sort of simplifying here—are pretty close to believing this [..].
I do believe that some of the claims by the IBM group have gone a bit too far and were easily misinterpreted. Some of their announcements look impressive on the surface, but aren’t actually implementing anything useful. Before the True North project, the group used an IBM supercomputer to “simulate a rat-scale brain.” But it was just a random network of neurons that did nothing useful except burn cycles. “If you build a convolutional net chip [instead] . . . it can go into a lot of devices right away. IBM built the wrong thing. They built something that we can’t do anything useful with.”
The sad thing about the True North chip is that it could have been useful if it had not tried to stick too close to biology and not implemented “spiking integrate-and-fire neurons.” Building a chip is very expensive. So in my opinion—and I used to be a chip designer—you should build a chip only when you’re pretty damn sure it can do something useful [..].
I’m going to get a lot of heat for this, but basically a big chunk of the Human Brain Project in Europe is based on the idea that we should build chips that reproduce the functioning of neurons as closely as possible, and then use them to build a gigantic computer, and somehow when we turn it on with some learning rule, AI will emerge. I think it’s nuts. Now, what I just said is a caricature of the Human Brain Project, to be sure. And I don’t want to include in my criticism everyone who is involved in the project. A lot of participants are involved simply because it’s a very good source of funding that they can’t afford to pass up.
Yes
I had my doubts on HBP as well; besides the cargo cult aspect, I believe whichever agency is behind this is probably thinking along the same lines of Large Hadron Collider, that is, they are equating high-energy physics with artificial intelligence (incorrect in this case as well) and wanted to go big. AI is not physics. With LHC there was a clear objective, utilizing methods that are [mostly] understood, all there was left to do is building the BFC - the big f-king collider. The basis of HBP is not entirely understood. Going big in this case would not help IMHO.
Link
Saudi Muslim cleric claims the Earth is ‘stationary’ and the sun rotates around it
The man is deranged
Saudi ruling elite themselves go to best schools in the world, then they turn around and push this guy on the populace?
Robert Green
33 Strategies of War
Muslims then marched through the mountain valleys upon Mecca. Muhammad divided his force into four columns…. Muhammad gave strict orders that no violence was to be used. His own tent was pitched on high ground immediately overlooking the town. Eight years before, he had fled from Mecca under cover of darkness, and lain hidden three days in a cave on Mount Thor, which from his tent he could now see rising beyond the city. Now ten thousand warriors were ready to obey his least command and his native town lay helpless at his feet. After a brief rest, he [..] entered the town [..]. Muhammad [..] was not vindictive. A general amnesty was proclaimed, from which less than a dozen persons were excluded, only four being actually executed. Ikrima, the son of Abu Jahal, escaped to the Yemen, but his wife appealed to the Apostle, who agreed to forgive him…. The Muslim occupation of Mecca was thus virtually bloodless. The fiery Khalid ibn al Waleed killed a few people at the southern gate and was sharply reprimanded by Muhammad for doing so. Although the Apostle had himself been persecuted in the city and although many of his bitterest opponents were still living there, he won all hearts by his clemency on his day of triumph. Such generosity [..] was particularly remarkable among Arabs, a race to whom revenge has always been dear.
There
The Atlantic
What [does] ISIS really want? ISIS is no mere collection of psychopaths. It is a religious group with carefully considered beliefs [..]
They are psychopaths
Does the description above, about Mohammed, in any shape or form, resemble what ISIS is doing today?
There can be a big difference between what a founder of a movement intended to create, and what institutions do later on, in their name. Would Jesus persecute Galileo for claiming all heavenly bodies did not revolve around Earth? He would not, but the Catholic Church did. A scientist in Istanbul, Hazerfan, constructed wings and managed to fly / glide for over 3 kilometers, during the 17th century. Would Mohammed persecute him for inventing something? He would not. But the Ottoman dipshit calling himself sultan and caliph did. ISIS is simply the continuation of this defunct culture, it is nothing new, simply a collection of ignorant, genocidal beliefs that need to be battled with. That’s it.
Comment
[Paraphrasing] Maybe [the Greek finance minister] Varoufakis should not act like a game theorist so he can do a better job during his talks with EU ministers.
Funny
.. but this comment is based on a widely held assumption that Game Theory is all about “one-up’ing the other guy”. This is an incorrect view of the theory. A lot of GT deals with how cooperation can emerge out of situations; the math is about optimality, at whatever, whichever point it may be.
Comment
Why is [the German finance minister] Schauble such an hard-ass? Why does he want to keep Greeks in Euro and punish them?
He supported Grexit actually
.. when the crisis started, but he didn’t get his way.
An economist
Excessive free marketism caused the 2008 recession.
No it didn’t
Guy is still mumbling this trash believing it’s real. Here are a few key points about the existing “global” economic system, choices and pillars it runs on.
1) Create a central bank which does central things trying to “guide” the economy.
2) Don’t f**k with the banks
3) China is world’s manufacturer
None of the items above have anything to do with the free market philosophy. #1: Central bank, with its “central” design is the very antithesis of a free-market institution. It came into being during the modern era, and it tries to influence the market through a backdoor. #2: we all know banks have a special status in the economy. If Wal-mart were to go bankrupt tomorrow, it would be chalked to bad management, and people would simply watch. If equally sized banks on the other hand, were to go under, government would step in and save them in a second. Because they are special. #3: US / West (with aggreement from China of course) made a strategic choice to turn China into a manufacturing base. Why? Decision makers wanted to see capitalism in China, turning foe into a potential friend (if systems are more alike, there can be more friendship, etc). Also, China’s cheap labor could be guaranteed to stay cheap for a while due to the presence of an opressive government.
These are the pillars. Here is what happened before 2008.
#1, central bank pushed the interest rates down, and kept it there for too long. A non-free market actor, doing a non-free market thing, causing a mess in the process.
#2: Politicians f***d with the banks by repealing Glass-Seagall.
#3, China, which in no shape or form was “needed” as a manufacturing powerhouse (because even during the 80/90s countries could automate instead of sending production to China) generated huge surpluses, that money needed somewhere to go, it coult stay in its home country (no mature financial infrastructure) so it came to US. Boat loads of investment blew through all checks and balances. This was the point when financial institutions started giving loans to dead people, or homeless and wrapping the shit up under AAA rating. Free market?
Right…
Oh and there is a 4th item actually.
#4: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Link
Geoengineering comprises technologies designed to counteract human-caused climate change: towering “carbon scrubbers” that would suck carbon dioxide from the atmosphere [and clean it].
It could work
I remember hearing once if the Earth was an orange, its atmosphere would be, get this, not its peel, but the thin color film on the peel of the orange. Like wow dude, I totally did not know that! So we dont have much of this thing called air. How much do we have exactly? It is estimated at 4.2 billion cubic kilometers, if you take a cubic root (to imagine one side of an imaginery cube) it is 1613.42 km. We have a cube whose one side is 1613.42 km and some machine needs to clean the contents of this cube. Maybe?
Paul Graham
American technology companies want the government to make immigration easier because they say they can’t find enough programmers in the US. Anti-immigration people say that instead of letting foreigners take these jobs, we should train more Americans to be programmers. Who’s right?
The technology companies are right. What the anti-immigration people don’t understand is that there is a huge variation in ability between competent programmers and exceptional ones, and while you can train people to be competent, you can’t train them to be exceptional. Exceptional programmers have an aptitude for and interest in programming that is not merely the product of training.
The US has less than 5% of the world’s population. Which means if the qualities that make someone a great programmer are evenly distributed, 95% of great programmers are born outside the US [..].
I asked the CEO of a startup with about 70 programmers how many more he’d hire if he could get all the great programmers he wanted. He said “We’d hire 30 tomorrow morning.” And this is one of the hot startups that always win recruiting battles. It’s the same all over Silicon Valley. Startups are that constrained for talent.
Right
The new economy is all about talent whose output can be scaled to billions. No wonder there is such high unemployment.
A character in a novel
Those Jesuits can teach
Yes they can
They say Jesuits teach well, especially how to research, gather information, etc. The character making this comment is from a Tom Clancy book, I believe it was his Jack Ryan. Clancy himself apparently was educated by Jesuits too. And yes, the man could do research.
But let’s not forget how and when the Jesuits were created; They came into being during Renaissance, as a response to Renaissance. Basically the Catholic Church was being slapped around pretty badly during this era by the new way of thinking, they figured they had to “win back the minds”, had to keep up, and this is when Jesuits were born. The new pope BTW happens to be a Jesuit now. And that’s good. The man is trying to fix some things, I hope he succeeds.
Gawker
In this fraught American media landscape, who can be trusted? Brian Williams is a faker, and Bill O’Reilly is too [really?]. The credibility of our most cherished cultural lodestars is crumbling before our eyes, and the mighty haven’t stopped falling. That’s right: Xzibit is a fraud, and Pimp My Ride was insane bullshit.
What is going on?
The paint is coming off on a lot of stuff all of a sudden.
Gallup CEO
Jim Clifton, the CEO of Gallup, has backtracked on claims he publicly made about the job numbers [..] as being a “big lie,” saying he was concerned that his statement might cause him to “suddenly disappear” due to foul play.
Ha ha
NY Times
As a student activist for the Communist Party, Mr. Tsipras learned that the way to get things done was by confronting authority while making maximal demands [..]
Mmmm
Financial Times
[D]uring the late 1990s student protests [in Greece]: Many of the students, particularly on the leftist fringes, were pushing for a radical overhaul of the country’s education system. “We didn’t want exams, we didn’t want grades, we wanted an open school,” recalls Matthaios Tsimitakis, an Athens journalist who was one of the student leaders at the assembly.
But not Mr Tsipras. Despite his leftist credentials, Mr Tsipras urged only one demand: withdraw the reforms. Although the protests would grow tense — a teacher was killed in clashes between rival groups in January 1991 — Mr Tsipras, who became one of the main negotiators with the government, held his line. And, three months after they were proposed, the government sacked its education minister and withdrew the reforms. The protests ended.
So he did not make a maximal demand
Comment
[Paraphrasing] In movies like The Matrix where humans are enslaved by artificial intelligence [..]
You had to bring The Matrix into this did you?
Yes, the first movie was pretty standard AI-gone-wild scenario; But if one looks at the entire trilogy, it ended with AI needing humans. Right? MII showed “the one” business was all planned by the machines (Dude! I totally did not get what that Architect guy said maan), then in MII and MIII the bug in the system grew larger, the Smiths keps multiplying…? Finall the machines needed Neo to fix the shit.
Well; it’s just a movie anyway.
News
Bank of England Governor Mark Carney worries that technology will disrupt the banking and financial services industry in just the same way that it has torn apart newspapers, radio and the postal service. His chief concern is [..] “an Uber-type situation [will take place],” as he put it at the World Economic Forum in Davos last week.
The news that foreign currency exchange startup TransferWise has raised $58 million in investment at a valuation of $1 billion proves that Carney is right to worry: Tech startups — or fintech startups, as they’re called in Europe — are working as fast as they can to turn traditional banks into the steam-engine manufacturers of the 21st Century.
Why worry?
History
At 1814, Britain invaded Washington D.C.. The soldiers went to the White House, the president and his wife had fleed already leaving their lunch on the table. The British soldiers sat down and ate their lunch.
Ha ha
That is hilarious. I bet there was a tad stiff Brit commander there, he sat down on the table took a few bites, chewed it really quick, and then said something like: “It’s a bit overcooked I’m afraid”. I’d love to be there to see that scene.
George W. Bush
There’s an old saying in Tennessee [..] that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again.
How did this man’s mind work?
It’s a complete mystery to me.
Blog
If you are a good calculus teacher, your school comes to depend on you [..]
Syntax error
What’s said above is so obnoxiously beyond intelligible that I dont even know what to make of it. What the funk does it mean “if you are a good teacher”; the motivation of that sentence is a complete non-sense. The good teacher is already there; he or she is online. There is no if around the concept of availability, presence of quality; there is only the necessity of building a new system around this fact, this new abundance.
Miles Kimball
The road ahead [on education] is clear: the potential in each student can be unlocked by combining the power of computers, software, and the internet with the human touch of a teacher-as-coach to motivate that student to work hard at learning. Technology brings several elements to the equation:
Customized lessons adapted to each student’s individual learning style at a cost that won’t break the bank Lectures from some of the most talented instructors in the world [..] The kind of software motivational tricks that make it so hard for kids to pull away from video games Flexibility for students to learn at their own pace.
Flexibility is key
.. and so is access. Few decades ago if you want to learn Multivariable Calculus at MIT, you had to go to MIT. Now you simply watch lecture videos from OCW. You dont need any bells and whistles on top of that, really, i.e. digital effects, online quizzing tech interspersed within that video. The availability of that video (and being able to store it, for offline viewing) is already revolutionary. You want to go get coffee during the lecture, hit pause, and Prof. Denis Auroux will be waiting for you when you come back. How crazy cool is that?