Web/Tech

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading – September 25th, 2017
Interesting week in the Twit-o-Sphere as Steph Curry and Donald Trump feud, and Ted Cruz is "caught" liking porn on Twitter.

Who would have guessed Twitter would play such a strong a role in today's political climate?

I believe that everyone deserves the right to my opinion (as much as anyone) … Still, sometimes silence is the best policy.

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

Lighter Links:
- This Company Wants to Grow A.I. by Using Blockchain. (CNBC)
- New Neuroscience Reveals 4 Rituals that Will Make You Happy. (TheLadders)
- Google Wants You to Know What Data It Has on You. (Fortune)
- Marriage vs. the Single Life: Who Has It Better? (PsychologyToday)
- Hackers Could Program Sex Robots to Kill. (NYPost)
Trading Links:
- One-Tenth of Global GDP is Now Held in Offshore Tax Havens. (ZeroHedge)
- Goldman Sachs Thinks Fintech Has As Much Potential as Trading. (Quartz)
- Cowboys Are World's Most Valuable Team at $4.8 Billion. (AP News)
- Social Finance: Where Wealth and Values Meet. (Forbes)
- Obama Goes from White House to Wall Street in Less Than One Year. (Bloomberg)
September 24, 2017
The A.I. Revolution: Humans Need Not Apply?

We're in the midst of a revolution, and no, I don't mean a political one.

Artificial Intelligence has been around since the 1950's. But, we are at an inflection point. It is no longer an "if" … it is a "when". And the answer is probably "Now!"

AI technologies are expanding into broad and diverse markets.

Artificial Intelligence is no longer seen as a massive R&D effort – it is becoming a core competency.

Here is a chart showing AI adoption in various industries. (replace image with non-blurry one)

McKinsey Global Institute via Vox

While AI is promising on many fronts, this "revolution" elicits fear from many.

For example, Elon Musk told the National Governors Association that the risks posed by A.I. are so great that it needs to be proactively regulated before it's too late.

What about you? Are you afraid of Skynet turning on, becoming self-aware and setting out to destroy the human race.? Or, are you looking to benefit from the new capabilities and possibilities AI creates for us?

September 17, 2017
Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading – September 17th, 2017
Hillary is now on a book tour for her new book "What Happened" … I haven't read it, but Politifact has.

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

Lighter Links:
- Hackers Have Already Started to Weaponize Artificial Intelligence. (Gizmodo)
- Your Future Sex Robot Could Be Hacked and Programmed to Murder You. (BGR)
- You Can Actually Be Allergic to Exercise. (Popular Science)
- Multivitamins a Waste of Money and Just Create 'Very Expensive Urine'. (TheGuardian)
- iPhone X Impressions: 'Striking' Display and 'Sensational-Looking' Design Make High Price Worth It. (MacRumors)
Trading Links:
- In China's Hinterlands, Workers Mine Bitcoin for a Digital Fortune. (New York Times)
- Janet Yellen Has Reached Breakfast-With-The-President's-Daughter Levels of Job Insecurity. (DealBreaker)
- Finance: How It Made Civilization Possible. (CFAInstitute)
- The Blockchain Will Do to Banks and Law Firms What the Internet Did to Media. (HBR)
- 16 Quotes from Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett's Right-Hand Man. (BInsider)
September 17, 2017

Actions Have Consequences – Weekly Reading List – September 15th, 2017

I've always enjoyed the aphorism: "Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid."

Last week, I saw a different version of that … and thought it was worth sharing.

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:

Mind-Reading AI is the Newest Defense against Cyber Attacks. (TNW)

New Apple Watch May Be a Bigger Upgrade Than the iPhone. (NYPost)

How to Explore a City like a Local Using Your Smartphone. (New York Times)

Humans Obtain 80% of Info through Vision, and Computers are Following the Trend. (ValueWalk)

The Drive for Perfect Children Gets a Little Scary. (Bloomberg)

We are Nowhere Close to the Limits of Athletic Performance. (Nautilus)

Fear and Loathing at Effective Altruism Global 2017. (SlateStarCodex)

Transforming to Win Future Wars. (TheStrategyBridge)

Siri vs Google Assistant vs Cortana vs Alexa: Battle of the AI Assistants.(T3)

Scientists Make Step Towards Humans Guiding Robots by Telepathy. (FT)

Kick Ass like a Russian Spy. (OZY)

What Does the Future of Democracy Look Like? (Scout)

What Science Fiction like 'Westworld' and 'Black Mirror' Tells Us about Our Near Future. (Business Insider)

Edge Computing Will Blow Away the Cloud. (CIO)

See a Haunting Vision of the War Machines of the Future. (Futurism)

Meet the Startup That's Boot-Strapping Robot Learning with Human BrainPower. (TechReview)

Scientists Find Out How Much Pee is Really in the Swimming Pool. (HuffPo)

The Next-Generation Operating Model for the Digital World. (McKinsey)

Microsoft's Azure Stack' for On-premises Servers Will Use Pay-as-you-go Cloud Pricing Model. (GeekWire)

AI and the End of Truth. (Medium)

Market-Related Links

Ultra High Net Worth Families Are Moving Towards Riskier Asset Classes as Investment Performance Bounced-Back Last Year. (CityAM)

Apple Unveils IPhone X and 8 Models as It Upgrades TV Set-Top Box.(NYT)

America's Fiscal Doomsday Machine. (DailyReckoning)

Swarm Fund Launches ICO for Alternative Platform. (Wealthadviser)

JAMIE DIMON: Bitcoin is a Fraud That's 'Worse Than Tulip Bulbs'. (BI)

Catching up on the Chinese Economy. (BaldingsWorld)

The Rise and Fall of Historical World Economies. (BizInsider)

A Sentimental Warning for Bulls and Bears. (HumbleStudentOfTheMarkets)

Google is Acquiring Data Science Community Kaggle. (TechCrunch)

Congress Just Passed a Bill that Tells NASA to Send People to Mars by 2033. (BI)

Clean Disruption – Why Energy & Transportation Will Be Obsolete by 2030.(YouTube)

JPM: "We See Increasing Risk of Sell-Off in the near Term". (ZeroHedge)

VIX: the Truth about a Very Misunderstood Index. (Barrons)

IBM, Salesforce Join AI Forces with Watson, Einstein. (USAToday)

Silicon Valley and Venture Capital Firms Bet on Ag Start-Ups. (Agriculture)

Global Reflation Need Not Mean Higher Inflation in 2017. (FT)

Warren Buffett Shares How to Get Rich During Turbulent Times. (Mic)

The World's Biggest Gamblers. (Economist)

S&P 500 Records 3rd Most Overbought Reading in 10 Years. (SeeItMarket)

Why Markets are Inefficient: a Gambling Theory' of Financial Markets for Practitioners and Theorists. (SSRN)

Let me know what you think.

Thanks.

– Howard

September 15, 2017

Cyber Security: A Human Weakness

Last year, I shared an e-mail my son sent me about security.

With the Equifax breach, I was reminded of something else he told me.

"It's not whether or not you've been hacked … because you have … it's whether you've been targeted."

As data becomes more valuable, and IP more coveted, security concerns grow, but the biggest security concern isn't where you would expect it to be.

When people think of hacking they often think of a Distributed Denial Of Service (DDOS) attack or the media representation of people breaking into your system in a heist.

In reality, the greatest weakness is people, it's you … the user. It's the user that turns off automatic patch updating. It's the user that uses thumb drives. It's the user that reuses the same passwords.

via xkcd

Whether it's malicious or unintentional, humans are often the biggest security weakness.

As proof, watch the first few minutes of the video below to watch a social engineer find out this man's email and gain access to his cell phone account. She locks him out of his account at the same time.

I started the video at the interesting part so you don't have to search for it.

As for passwords … I recommend not knowing them. You can't disclose what you don't know. Consequently, I recommend a password manager like LastPass or 1Password.

How many cyber security measures you take comes down to two simple questions … First, how much pain and hassle are you willing to deal with to protect your data? And, second, how much pain is a hacker willing to go through to get to your data?

It doesn't make sense to put all your data in a lockbox computer that never connects to a network … nevertheless, it might be worth it to go to that extreme for pieces of your data.

Think about what the data is worth to you, or someone else, and protect it accordingly.

September 9, 2017
What Do You Need To Know About Equifax’s 143 Million Consumer Hack?

You probably heard that one of the biggest credit-reporting bureaus got hacked recently. It was pretty bad.

Equifax, TransUnion and Experian are the big three providers of credit scores (and other data, including: social security numbers, full names, addresses, birth dates, and even drivers licenses and credit card numbers for some) to potential lenders and consumers.

Hackers have had access to this information between May and July, and it's taken five weeks for the company to disclose the breach.

Equifax claims that they responded immediately, but three Equifax executives sold shares of their company before they publically announced the breach on Thursday.

Since the breach became public, Equifax's (EFX) stock is down over 13 percent.

via MarketWatch

How is Equifax responding to the risk?

Equifax has made public statements that the leak has been fixed … but that does not protect or remedy the data that already leaked.

As a result of the breach, Equifax created a website for you to determine if you've been affected.

Regardless of whether or not you were affected, they are offering "Trusted ID Premier" monitoring free for a year as an extra layer of protection. But, beware, TechCrunch has pointed out that agreeing to their ToS seems to waive your right to sue Equifax.

Situations like this are reminders to pay even more attention to your own online security.

Related articles

Fraud Expert Offers Advice In Wake Of Equifax Breach

ScamSafe: Equifax Data Breach – 3 Steps To Protect Yourself

September 8, 2017
Swarm Intelligence: The Power of Ants in Hurricane Harvey

Houston, Texas is currently recovering from Hurricane Harvey (which dropped an average of 30 inches of rain, and up to 51.88 inches in Cedar Bayou).

To put it in perspective, if they weren't evacuating, residents were told to write their name and social security numbers in sharpie on their arms.

Nature is the great equalizer, and in a disaster like this you the fight is for survival and escape … and not just by humans.

Check out this "raft" of ants banding together to survive the storm.

NBCNews via Youtube

An ant is pretty cool. It can lift more than 50 times its weight and handle pressures up to 5000 times its weight.

But, what makes ants interesting is what they do when there's a colony (or swarm) of them.

An ant can only be "so" smart – their heads are tiny – but a colony of ants is a superorganism whose collective intelligence is much greater than the sum of its parts.

Ants release pheromones from glands all over their bodies that can tell their colony an array of things. It can tell them how many ants they need to accomplish a task, it can tell them where there's food or danger, and it can even be used to relocate their whole colony to a new geography.

Clearly, it can also be used to communicate that the best way to survive danger is to create a mass of each other and allow the most possible to survive … there's no fear or greed, only what's best for the colony.

In a very real sense, this is where technology and trading are starting to move. I say starting, but swarm intelligence has been an area of research in technology since the late 80's.

There are many simple applications of swarm intelligence in creating CGI crowds, telecommunication networks and more, but technological advances are drastically increasing the power and uses of swarms.

Using the communication of various systems in order to gain real-time data from their actions and interactions will create hidden opportunities that we couldn't capitalize on previously.

We're in a golden age of innovation … How cool is that?

September 3, 2017
Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading – August 20th, 2017
Change is the only constant.

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

Lighter Links:
Trading Links:
August 20, 2017
Who Can You Trust? Ranking Your News Sources

Fake news this … phony sources that …

It is harder than ever to know what to trust.

"Noise Reduction" is important in this volatile geo-political climate.

The chart, below, lists the least and most trusted news sources.

via RJI

As someone who reads a lot, this was interesting.

As a side note, I was a little surprised to see the "Internet" on the list as source itself. Darwin would be somewhat comforted to see that people don't trust everything they see on the internet.

The following chart is a bit outdated (it's from 2014), but it's a good study with diverse leanings. It presents the trust levels of various news sources by ideological group.

via Journalism

Which of your news sources do you follow? Were they as trusted as you expected?

Another question worth asking yourself is "Am I getting an idea of what the other side is thinking?" In trading, I always want to understand what the other side sees.

Finally, let me know if there are resources you think I should look at.

You are either growing or dying.

August 12, 2017
AI Isn’t Just Crawling Forward … Now It’s Learning To Walk

The pace of AI progress is awe inspiring.

We are entering a golden age of innovation, disruption, and new possibilities.

Here is a small example. It's not the first time computers have learned to walk, but Google's DeepMind taught itself to walk with no human interaction.

Here is a video.

With very little structure around their knowledge, it's interesting to see how they developed movement – and where it seems distinctly artificial.

For a more instructional video, you can check out "Flexible Muscle-Based Locomotion for Bipedal Creatures" from 2013. It shows the generational differences between their bots as well.

AI is getting smarter, faster. Soon it'll have knowledge that we don't understand. And that will still only be the beginning.

Cool stuff!

July 22, 2017