Capitalogix

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading - May 27th, 2017

There is a place to go with deep wishes  ...

 

 

Here are some of the posts that caught my eye. Hope you find something interesting.

Lighter Links:

• What the Dying Teach the Living. (LongNow)
• Why Close Encounters with Animals Soothe Us. (New York Times)
• Will We Ever Elect an AI as President? (Wired)
• 'SNL' Releases McCarthy's 'Spicey' Outtakes. (CNN)
• The Dark Art of How (And When) to Buy an Airline Ticket. (NYMag)

Trading Links:

• The Quants Run Wall Street Now. (Wall Street Journal)
• The MMC Ventures AI Investment Framework: 17 Success Factors For The Age Of AI. (Medium)
• The Real Reason Saudis Rolled out the Reddest of Red Carpets. (Bergen)
• SoftBank and Saudis Launch Largest Tech Investment Fund Ever, $93 Billion in Committed Capital. (CNBC)

I Don't Fear Artificial Intelligence - I Do Fear Artificial Stupidity

I don't know if you've ever tried to paint a room - but if you have, I'm sure you've come across some bizarre paint names. 

How does that relate to AI?

Well, Janelle Shane is a research scientist, and neural network aficionado - as any good data scientist should, she spends a lot of her free time playing with neural networks (... to varying results). 

Recently, she attempted to train an algorithm (specifically char-rnn, a neural network that attempts to anticipate the next character in a sequence) to create new paint colors and accompanying names. 

After it was fully trained, here are the results: 

 

via LewisandQuark

As you can see, it knows there are colors, but it struggles to keep the names associated with the appropriate color. 

"Turdly" seems pretty close though ... but I always wanted to paint my room "Stanky Bean."

As you might know, that was not the first time artificial intelligence has created something artificially stupid. 

For example, how about when Microsoft attempted to create an AI chatbot named "Tay" by analyzing tweets?

Tay quickly became very .... very racist. 

via TheVerge

Clearly, mistakes were made (and Tay isn't as dangerous as a human racist) – but, it does raise questions.

AI is cool ... But, artificial stupidity is still scary.

For now, that is the way it is. 

As we explore new avenues and smarter algorithms for AI to be trained with, it will be interesting to see what Frankenstein's monsters we create. 

Here's How I Got My Wife To Go To Memphis - Weekly Links - May 26th, 2017

... She'll do anything for good food.

My friend, Andy Daniels' Tent won 3rd place at the Memphis in May World Championship BBQ rib contest.

 

 

 

Almost as good as the ribs, were the puns - Aporkalypse Now, Love Meat Tender, Me Dry Rub You Long Time.

 

 

 

We had a good time.

Here is a peek at what I've been reading lately. These are the links I saved this week.

Hope you find some interesting and enjoyable tidbits.

Let me know if you read something I'd like ... Or if there are other sources I should add to my weekly reading.

Thanks.

Lighter Links:

Artificial Intelligence: the Promise and the Playbook. (A16z) Diet Myths Examined: Do Carbs Make You Fat? (Infographic) Why Silicon Valley Titans Train Their Brains with Philosophy. (BigThink) 5 of the Easiest Warm-Up Exercises You Should Try. (Cheatsheet) Scientists Have Found a Way to Photograph People through Walls Using WiFi. (BusinessInsider) Sleep Loss Affects Your Waistline. (ScienceDaily) New Genetic Roots for Intelligence Discovered. (NeuroScienceNews) Inversion: the Crucial Thinking Skill Nobody Ever Taught You. (JamesClear) On Same Weekend as Record-breaking Arms Deal, Saudis Announced $100 Million Donation to Ivanka Fund. (DailyKos) Nasa Revives 'Weird Life Forms' Trapped inside Crystals for 60,000 Years, Raising Hopes of Finding Alien Organisms in Space. (TG) 4-Year-Olds Don’t Act like Trump. (New York Times) We Aren’t Built to Live in the Moment. (NYT) Google’s New AI is Better at Creating AI Than the Company’s Engineers. (Futurism) Slop Machines. (Eater) The Mathematics of Mind-Time. (Aeon) Bulletproof Tents, Rivalries and Mating Rituals: What Happened When Kiss Went to Moscow. (NewStatesman) How the Beatles Wrote ‘A Day in the Life’. (The Atlantic) Daryl Bem Proved ESP is Real. (Redux) Breaking News: the Secret Transcripts of the Six-Day War, Part I. (TabletMag) A Murderous History of Korea. (LRB)

Market-Related Links

 

• A 'Paradigm Shift' is Taking Place in Financial Technology. (BI)
• Farming the World: China’s Epic Race to Avoid a Food Crisis. (BB)
• EBA Cryptotechnologies in International Payments - PDF (Abe-eba)
• Bank Relationships: It’s Not You, It’s Me. (Gtnews)
• Why Thinking beyond Money is Vital for Solving the Poverty Puzzle. (The Conversation)
• What Major Stock Market Tops Look Like. (SeeItMarket)
• Will Technology (XLK) Continue to Lead the Market Higher? (Stockcharts)
• How Central Bankers Get Their Communication Timing Wrong. (Bloomberg)
• America’s Car Market Has Stalled. (Economist)
• Study by MIT Economist: U.S. Has Regressed to a Third-World Nation for Most of Its Citizens. (Theintellectualist)
• The Advantage of Being a Little Underemployed. (Collaborativefund)
• Decoded: Breaking down How an Actual Trading Algorithm Works. Want to Impress Your Friends? Learn How Trading Algos Work. (WSJ)
• Did Volatility Traders Overreact Again Last Week? (SeeItMarket)
• Fundraising Hacks for Venture Capital and Private Equity Funds. (Teten)
• Inflation Could Be the Market's Biggest Upside Surprise of the Year. (CNBC)
• This Bull Market Might Not Be Hated, but It Still Isn't Trusted. (CNBC)
• In Tumult of Trump, Jon Corzine Seeks a Wall Street Comeback. (New York Times)
• The Limitations of Technical Analysis. (Technicality-me)
• It's Official: SoftBank's Tech Fund Becomes World's Biggest with $93 Billion to Invest. (BI)
• The Return of the Proprietary Trader. (LinkedIn)

 

Let me know what you think.

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Motivation For Your Week

It's easy to think that motivation is for athletes, or for "them" ... and not you.

The reality is that motivation is a key aspect of everyone's day!  

Here's a video I found this week that is worth a listen.

 

 by Basquiat Picasso via YouTube

The transcript is here.

You can rely on external factors to bring you motivation, or you can make it an internal habit. 

The same way people love change – but resist being changed ... Being driven (by yourself) feels better than when someone tries to push you or drive you.

Sure, it's easy to be unmotivated and wonder why things never get done. 

Often, I'll see employees, or friends, get something 80 - 90% done and then move on to some new exciting prospect. 

They get distracted by "shiny" and use it as an excuse to ignore the hard part (that last 10%), and whine that nothing's ever finished. 

As long you are making progress (and refuse to give up) you are guaranteed to meet and exceed your goals.

So, stop whining and start grinding! It's time to get to the getting!

Here Are Some Links for Your Weekend Reading - May 21, 2017

The "He Said – She Said" loop is funny ... But it is still giving me a headache.

 

 

Here are some of the posts that caught my eye. Hope you find something interesting.

 

Lighter Links:

• Here are the Ridiculous Things Celebrities Demand Backstage. (BusinessInsider)
• Garry Kasparov on AI, Chess, and the Future of Creativity. (Medium)
• The Ultimate Guide to Personal Productivity Methods. (Todoist)
• Hundreds of Privacy-invading Apps are Using Ultrasonic Sounds to Track You. (ZDNet)
• Why Would Aliens Even Bother with Earth? (LitHub)

  

Trading Links:

• Elon Musk Says Robots Will Help Tesla Catch up to Apple in Value. (Fortune)
• Retailers Look past Apps to the next Frontier of Digital Shopping: Chatbots. (WashPost)
• Vending Machine-like Skyscraper Concept Plans to 3D Print Custom Homes. (Mashable)
• Indonesian Islamist Leader Says Ethnic Chinese Wealth is next Target. (Reuters)
• Financial Technology is Proving Less of a Battleground Than Feared. (Economist)

 

Bitcoin Is At New Highs – But, Is It A Strong Investment?

If you had invested $10,000 in gold in July of 2010 your investment would be worth ~$9981 ... In contrast, if you had invested $10,000 in Bitcoin, at the same time, your investment would have grown to over $200,000.

Bitcoin hit all-time highs this week.  I saw a chart that caught my interest.  Bitcoin's value seems closely correlated with the number of searches for it on Google.

DataIsBeautiful via Reddit

From a behavioral economics perspective, this makes sense.  Google searches can be a good indicator of public sentiment, interest, demand, or public sentiment. 

Bitcoin is a digital currency decentralized over a peer-to-peer network. The more people are willing to accept it as a medium of exchange, the more valuable it becomes.

It's decentralization provides it safety from censorship and government interference - meaning it has value as an international currency, and as a currency for black-market transactions.

However, the worth of a bitcoin clearly isn't just based on sentiment (on one hand, there are desires to avoid fiat currency vagaries, government interventions and scrutiny, while having a fair price discovery method, etc.  ... on the other hand, there are also the costs to mine a bitcoin, transaction fees, etc.).

Compared to a reserve currency – whose worth is primarily influenced by trade value and other macroeconomic factors - watching Bitcoin's volatility can be scary. 

That being said, Bitcoin is in a relatively unique position, and as the internet grows and our world becomes more interconnected, it's entirely possible that Bitcoin will continue to legitimize. 

It's a brave new world.  For what it's worth, I remain a skeptic of the currency.  Yet, I am bullish on the underlying Blockchain crypto-currency technology. 

 

Related articles

Taking Bitcoin to the stock market won't do much for its risky image

Why de-centralised digital currencies are finding a permanent place in societies, as government actions jeapordise livelihoods

What's the Deal With Cryptocurrency Market Caps? | Lets Talk Payments

Bitcoin isn't 100 percent secure - here's how to further hide your purchases

Bitcoin price surges to all-time high of $1,400

3 charts show the crazy gains of crypto-currencies

An Unexpected Overnight In Chicago - Weekly Links - May 20th, 2017

I'm in Chicago, speaking at the Quant Trading Conference. My topic was "Next-Generation Data" - what tools, technologies, and applications will be more critical for enabling alpha discovery

My flight to Memphis was canceled due to high winds. So, I got to have deep dish pizza with a good friend. You don't get a body like this on a low carb - low sugar diet. Here is a peek at what I've been reading lately. These are the links I saved this week. Hope you find some interesting and enjoyable tidbits. Let me know if you read something I'd like ... Or if there are other sources I should add to my weekly reading. Thanks.   Lighter Links: The Internet’s Most Cringe-Inducing Subculture: Pimple-Popping Videos. (WSJ) New Software Program Translates Thousands of Rare Languages. (TechReview) Where Have All the Insects Gone? (ScienceMag) The Body and Us. (NYBooks) Is this a Constitutional Crisis? (Politico) Himalayan Monks Have Super Human Abilities that Stun Scientists.(Universe) 'Great Wall of Culture': China to Launch Its Own Version of Wikipedia. (Telegraph) Why Everything We Know about Salt May Be Wrong. (NYT) The World's Fastest Camera Can Capture 5 Trillion Frames Per Second. (Mashable) Lockheed Martin Bets on Blockchain for Cybersecurity. (CNet) Scientists Have Created a Lightweight Wearable that Dissolves in Vinegar. (TheVerge) What's the Best Way to Start Writing a Book? (James Altucher) The Future of Recruiting is an Internal Talent Consulting Group, as Technology Handles Daily Recruiting Tasks. (EreMedia) Death by Fire. (LongReads) Bertrand Russell, “On History.” (Drew) The Meaning of Life in a World without Work. (TheGuardian) The Thieves Who Steal Sunken Warships, Right down to the Bolts. (Outsideonline) Life Below the Surface of the Earth (And on Mars) — a Five Books Interview. (Five books) The Mozart in the Machine. (Bloomberg) Look Back with Danger : Why Nostalgia is Not What It Used to Be. (TLS) Market-Related Links How Standard Portfolio Theory Changes When Assets are Technologies Following Experience Curves. (QuantNews) A Fuzzy Approach for Expert Evaluation of Investment Portfolios. (SSRN) Amazon Makes Major Push into Furniture. (Wall Street Journal) U.S. Laptop Ban Could Hit 350 Flights a Day from Europe. (Apple) More is More. (NYBooks) Digital America: a Tale of the Haves and Have. (McKinsey) Cambridge Analytica Explained: Data and Elections. (Medium) The Rules about the Rules. (NationalReview) Emmanuel Macron, the Novel. (Project-syndicate) If Not Britain, Where? the Case for a French Industrial Revolution. (Medium) Which Industry is Ready to Be Disrupted? (Quora) Here's Why Russia is Opening the Door to Cryptocurrencies. (BusinessInsider) Where Oil Rigs Go to Die. (TheGuardian) Inequality and the Fracturing of American Democracy. (NationalReview) Uber Vs AirBnB: Do You Have to Be an Asshole to Found a Brilliant Start-up? (NewStatesman) There’s Never Just One Stock Market. (CrossingWallStreet) Investment Strategy: What Matters in the Search for More Return Sources.(AdvisorPerspectives) "Winner-Take-All" Dynamics and Hedge Fund Investing. (Rzepczynski) The Real Message of Virtu and KCG Merger. (Points & Figures) The Weed is Coming and the Bitcoin is Not Leaving. (HowardLindzon)

Verne Harnish - On Scaling Up

A couple of weeks ago, I shared a video of me with Scott Harris - explaining that spending time with individuals who can understand your problems from a different point of view is the best way to 10x your growth.

Well, today, I want to share with you a conversation I had with Verne Harnish, who specializes in growth and scale.  He is the founder of the Entrepreneur's Organization, Gazelles (which is a global executive education and coaching company), and Birthing of Giants (which is now called the Entrepreneurial Masters Program at MIT).  So, he kind of knows what he's talking about.

Here is a brief video ...

 

 

I recommend that you check out Verne's books - Scaling Up,  Mastering The Rockefeller Habits, and The Greatest Business Decisions of All Time.

He also offers some great one-page tools that you can download here.

Good Stuff!

Here Are Some Links for Your Weekend Reading - May 14th, 2017

Happy Mother's Day!

 

 

Here's to simpler times. 

 

 

 

Here are some of the posts that caught my eye. Hope you find something interesting.

 

Lighter Links:

 

• Now We Know - Bill Clinton Cost His Wife the Presidency. (Washington Post)
• Creating Simple Rules for Complex Decisions. (HBR)
• Quantum Computing Demands a Whole New Kind of Programmer. (SingularityHub)
• Christian Governor in Indonesia Found Guilty of Blasphemy against Islam. (New York Times)
• Just How Crazy is the Trump Presidency? (FastCoD)

 

Trading Links:

• Forbes Small Giants 2017: America's Best Small Companies. (Forbes)
• Apple Becomes First US Firm to Cross $800B Market Cap Threshold. (AppleInsider)
• IBM Faces Credit Rating Cut from S&P. (FT)
• Businessmen Start to Replace Soldiers as Israel’s Political Heroes. (Economist)
• It's Happening Again - And the Last 2 Times this Happened, The S&P 500 Fell by 57% and 19%. (Fool)

 

The World's New Most Valuable Resource ... Data!

What is the #1 world commodity?  

Is it Oil?  Try to name a country that hasn't been reliant on it to survive.

OK, then what about water?

Nonetheless, arguably, a new commodity has taken over.  In our new digital era, the #1 commodity is data.  And countries (and businesses and people) are becoming even more reliant on it. 

Consequently, some of the new tech titans - Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft - have an unprecedented amount of data (and power). 

 

via Statista

The new tech titans also make a massive amount of money.  According to the Economist, they collectively made over $25 billion in net profit in Q1 2017.

With those titans controlling so much of the industry, they're facing calls for them to be broken up, as Standard Oil or AT&T was. 

There are questions, though.  Is size, alone, an issue? Are these titans abusing their power?  Do we need new forms of antitrust laws (or consumer protection laws) to handle them?

At this point, most of these titans' sites are monetarily free to use for consumers ... But, does that mean that they don't require regulation?  Realize, the free sites are a way to attract users, and then to sell data and ads to companies marketing to them.

One thing is for sure ... Privacy is a rare commodity in a time of digital omniscience.