Capitalogix

The Sound of Silence [The Disturbed Music Video Version]

I spent last week with almost no Internet or cell service.  On one hand, I suffered some withdrawal symptoms.  On the other hand, it was nice to hear the sound of silence.

50 years ago, Simon & Garfunkel become folk-rock stars with their song, ‘Sound of Silence’.  I don't think that's what they meant.

Recently, someone else made it a hit ... a heavy metal rock band, Disturbed.

Here is the video.  Believe it or not, totally worth watching.

 

 

 

 

YouTube.

Surprisingly good.

Mr. Kim Jong Un, Give Up Those Nukes!

Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un met last week in Singapore. At the meeting, Donald shared a four-minute movie trailer called "A Story of Opportunity for North Korea"

I was a little surprised by the video clip that Trump brought with him.  I don't normally think about diplomacy and videos.  But, it is a new world.

It depicts a brighter future for North Korea in the event of a nuclear deal.  It also presents a stark choice to Kim ... trade in your nuclear weapons for a peace deal with the U.S., or don't and you'll be decimated. 

Was it me, or does the video seem strangely reminiscent of a pitch you might receive for a real estate deal or a timeshare? 

It's worth a watch. 

 

Was the intended audience Kim Jong Un, American voters, or the World?

Did it remind you of  Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev?

It will be interesting to see the results of the movie ... and this meeting. 

What did you think?

Slaughterbots Assemble!

Technology can be scary - especially when it is used to move towards autonomous killing machines. 

Recently, a UC Berkeley computer science professor helped to create a video that imagined a world where nuclear weapons were replaced by swarms of autonomous tiny drones that could kill half a city and are virtually unstoppable.

Stuart Russell, the professor, said these drones are already a technological reality.

The video takes the viewer to an auditorium where a speaker showcases a drone roughly the size of a mockingbird. At one point the drone lands on his hand, the speaker quickly recalibrates it and then throws it out into the audience again. After a few seconds, the small drone turns back to the stage and crashes into the forehead of a dummy standing off to the left of the speaker.

 

 

The video was released earlier this month by the Future of Life Institute, which is backed by Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk. It was presented by Russell at a United Nations Convention on Conventional Weapons in Geneva, according to The Mercury News.

“Trained as a team, [the drones] can penetrate buildings, cars, trains, all while having the capacity to evade any countermeasure. They cannot be stopped,” the speaker told the audience in the video.

Russell said that although A.I.’s “potential to benefit humanity is enormous, even in defense,” allowing the widespread use of machines that “choose to kill humans will be devastating to our security and freedom.”

Expect to hear a lot more about Swarm Intelligence (and some of the more positive things it can do).

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading - March 11th, 2018

 

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

Lighter Links:

• Google Teaches AI to Fool Humans So It Can Learn from Our Mistakes. (TheNextWeb)
• Bill Gates and Warren Buffett Explain a Simple Way to Build an Inner Circle that Helps You Be Great. (Inc)
• The Moon is Getting a Reliable 4G Connection before Certain Parts of the UK. (Alphr)
• Ce*sored! China Bans Letter N (Briefly) from Internet as Xi Jinping Extends Grip on Power. (TheGuardian)
• Here's the One Thing that Would Make Oprah Run for President. (Huffington Post)

 

Trading Links:

• Does Anne Hathaway News Drive Berkshire Hathaway's Stock? (The Atlantic)
• Billionaires Warren Buffett and Ray Dalio Agree on What to Do in a Volatile Market. (USAToday)
• Who is a Better Insider Trader, Gary Cohn, Carl Icahn, or the Folks at the SEC? (ComplianceX)
• Opening a Bank is a Genius Move for Amazon. (TheNextWeb)
• S&P Global Buys Startup in Artificial-Intelligence Push. (Wall Street Journal)

Stay Away From Negative People ... Weekly Reading Links - March 9th, 2018

 

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 No. 1 TED Talk of All Time Teaches a Critical Lesson in Intelligence (That We Often Forget). (Inc) Thirteen Lessons of Innovation to Guide You through 2018.(FastCompany) Apple Confirms It Runs ICloud on Google's Cloud, and You Shouldn't Be Surprised. (TheNextWeb) Elementary : a Theory of Why Some Things Do Not Exist. (TLS) America's Secret Ice Base Won't Stay Frozen Forever. (Wired) Barbara Streisand's Cloned Dog Colony is a Science Fiction Nightmare. (Inverse) Does a USB Drive Get Heavier as You Store More Files on It? (Sciencefocus) What is Malware? Everything You Need to Know about Viruses, Trojans and Malicious Software. (ZDNet) Trump Hides under Desk after Diet Coke Can Opens Loudly.(NewYorker - Satire) Bye Bye Black Box: Researchers Teach AI to Explain Itself.(TheNextWeb) A Video that Explains the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.(BoingBoing) The Feds May Be Able to Spy on Your IPhone (But You Can Easily Stop Them). (NYMag) Bill Gates: Cryptocurrencies Have 'Caused Deaths in a Fairly Direct Way'. (TheGuardian) This STD is Reportedly the Top Reason People Can't Get on the Bachelor'. (Huffington Post) Palantir Has Secretly Been Using New Orleans to Test Its Predictive Policing Technology. (TheVerge) Inside the OED: Can the World's Biggest Dictionary Survive the Internet? (TheGuardian) The Best Books on Military Strategy. (FiveBooks) Here's What You Need to Know about Malware and Phishing. (Quartz) Can IPhones Get Viruses? How to Detect & Remove Viruses from Your IPhone. (iPhoneLife) The Best VPN Services: Our 10 Favorite Vendors for Protecting Your Privacy. (ZDNet)

Market-Related Links

The Rise of Quants in Trading and Financial Markets. (StockTwits) Bitcoin is Falling out of Favor on the Dark Web. (The Atlantic) What's next for Blockchain? (TheFinanser) Here's Why Predicting the Weather is Still So Difficult. (Observer) Podcast: Thinking in Bets with Annie Duke (Wes). (AlphaArchitect) Apple Continues to Dominate the Smartphone Profit Pool. (Forbes) How Modern Infrastructure and Machine Intelligence Will Disrupt the Industry. (Forbes) Stanford is Using Machine Learning on Satellite Images to Predict Poverty. (AnalyticsVidhya) A Model for S&P 500 Bottoms (Are We There Yet?). (Stockcharts) Bloomberg Narrows Down Potential Locations for Apple's Upcoming U.S. Campus. (MacRumors) The Amazon Headquarters Search Mystery Has Been Solved! or Has It? (ChicagoTribune) Spotify Files for Its Unusual IPO. (Axios) Malta: an Island of Secrets and Lies. (NewStatesman) Xi Jinping Amends China's Constitution. (Jeromecohen) An AI Just Beat Top Lawyers at Their Own Game. (Mashable) Crypto/Blockchain Safe Harbor. (Continuations) When Malls Saved the Suburbs from Despair. (The Atlantic) Welfare Versus GDP: What Makes People Better Off. (IMF) The Stock Market Cannot Tell Us Which Economic Policies are Best.(ValueWalk) Blockchain to Blockchains: Broad Adoption and Integration Enter the Realm of the Possible Tech Trends 2018. (Deloitte)

Let me know what you think. Thanks. - Howard

Why Elon Musk's SpaceX Launch Is So Important

Last Tuesday, Musk launched his Tesla Roadster and it's passenger "Starman" into space on his Falcon Heavy rocket. 

Cool?  Clever Marketing?  Or Both?

 

Space via Twitter

This feat is exciting for a number of reasons.

1. Falcon Heavy is cheaper than other heavy lift rockets – yet, it is twice as powerful. 
2. This means we can ship payloads to Mars (or potentially farther). 
3. The boosters landed back on their platform to be reused.
4. And, ultimately, it's inspiring and momentum building to a new age of future space explorers.

When I was growing up, the space race caught the public's hearts and minds.  I was a kid, but I still remember watching the lunar landing.  It was a big deal! 

Likewise, I remember when astronauts were positioned as national heroes.  Now, we're more jaded.

In the past decade, rockets, space-stations, satellites, etc. were often just an afterthought or a small filler news item.  Meanwhile, A.I., Cloning, Voice Recognition, 3D Printing, Drones, and other technological advances were the sexy attention-getting topics. 

Recently, that has changed.  The space race is getting hot again.  Resources are pouring into this area, and SpaceX's launch is proof that we are making progress (and probably altering life's history). 

Take a look. 

 

 

This was supposed to be captivating.  Teachers can show their students a rocket launch where a man shot a car into space ... then they can watch the car float through space.  It's taking what we're used to only seeing in movies ... and making it real. 

Passion in the sciences is important, and successes like this can ignite passion in our future, in more than just space exploration. 

We live in exciting times. 

Onwards!

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!

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!

Face Your Fears - Will Smith's Video

Recently, Will Smith shared a video of himself at Skydive Dubai.

Apparently, the experience taught him much more than how to jump out of a plane.

 "The point of maximum danger is the point of minimum fear."

  

Worth a watch.

 

 via YouTube

Likewise, Tony Robbins preaches the importance of expanding your "threshold of control."

The idea is that you need to continuously push your limits and grow your tolerance of what is within your comfort zone.

Think about the problems and annoyances you had when you were 18, 13, or 8 ... Chances are that they were much smaller than what you now face comfortably. 

Expanding your thresholds of control, and facing your fears (and discomforts) is a big part of growth.

In my company, we call it "Getting Comfortable Being Uncomfortable."

The old way wasn't enough, and the tools and techniques that got you where you are, won't get you where you want to be.

So, into the unknown we go.

What do think will catapult you to that next level?  

What's the first step?

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekend Reading - March 25th, 2017

Let's play "Caption This Picture."

 

Found it under the headline "Aides Wrestle Drill From Trump's Hands As He Tries To Remove Obama Listening Device From Skull."  What would you caption it?

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

  

Lighter Links:

• ‘Homo Sapiens as We Know Them Will Disappear in a Century or So’. (Yuval Noah Harari)
• A Stunning Video of Mars that Took Three Months to Stitch Together—by Hand. (Wired)
• Stephen Hawking is Going to Space. (TheNextWeb)
• Darth Vader’s Suit Would Cost $18.3 Million in Real Life. (Dailyinfographic)
• How to Tell a Good Story, as Explained by George Saunders, Ira Glass, Ken Burns, Scott Simon, Catherine Burns & Others. (OpenCulture)

 

Trading Links:

• Steve Cohen is Trying to Teach Computers to Think like Top Traders. (Bloomberg)
• John Oliver on the Federal Budget. (Ritholtz)
• Measuring the Cost of Living Worldwide. (Economist)
• Are Bonds Flashing a Warning Sign for Stocks? (SeeItMarket)
• Quants are Eating Away at Wall Street's Edge. (QuantNews)