Capitalogix

Autonomous Lyft - Waymo

I went to a conference in Phoenix with my son Zach last week.  While there, he noticed something interesting ... Lyft is testing Alphabet's Waymo autonomous driving service live on the streets.

Regardless of concerns about the future of the gig economy – this is a glimpse into our not-to-distant future.  

Here's what they say about it.

I had to leave early to catch a flight, so my son decided to use Lyft to get around.  He accepted the Waymo terms, but didn't get a Waymo vehicle. Still, I thought this was cool.

 

There will likely soon be a tipping point where autonomous vehicles proliferate.  Even though we are not "there" yet ... the progress is obvious and the "quickening" is happening. 

Meanwhile, examples of innovation and exponential technology successes and adoption are all around us. 

The future is getting closer. 

Onwards.

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading - January 12th, 2020

As the Australian wildfires rage on - an inestimable number of animals have died.

If you wish to donate to help relief efforts, you can do so with any of these trusted sources. 

• The Australian Red Cross
• GIVIT - Donating Essential items to Victims
• St. Vincent De Paul Society
• The Nature Conservancy Australia

 

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

Lighter Links:

• 20-year-old McDonald's Burger Still Looks Brand New, Smells like Cardboard. (FoxNews)
• Japanese Woman Turns 117 Years Old, Extends Record as World's Oldest Person. (Reuters)
• China Quietly Confirms a Third CRISPR-Edited Baby Has Been Born. (ScienceAlert)
• Pope Francis Apologizes for Losing His Patience after Slapping Woman's Hand. (FoxNews)
• Fresh Cambridge Analytica Leak Shows Global Manipulation is Out of Control'. (TheGuardian)

 

Trading Links:

• Jeff Bezos is Still the Richest Person in the World. (CNN)
• 4 High-Potential Sectors for AI and ML Startup Success. (Readwrite)
• Tesla Delivered 367,500 Cars Last Year. (CNN)
• The Market Surged Last Year. Don't Expect the Same in 2020. (New York Times)
• It Was a Dismal Year for Hedge Funds: Here Are 2019'S Fund Closures and Family-Office Conversions. (ZeroHedge)

 

I See You

It feels like we're always being watched, right?

It's not just me?

From governments, to Google, to Facebook ... it feels like it's impossible to have any expectation of privacy today. Amazon knows what I want before I do. 

This is an issue that cuts both ways. On the one hand, increased surveillance means we are arguably safer – because the digital omniscience makes it harder to get away with crimes ... but all this extra data on us makes it easier to commit other crimes and to suffer from the increasing lack of privacy. 

Paul Bischoff via Comparitech

Unsurprisingly, 8 of the top 10 most-surveilled cities in the world were in China. It's even less surprising with the Hong Kong protests and the new social credit system. 

My eldest son spent several years focused on cybersecurity. One of his "warnings" was that everyone's been hacked - not everyone has been targeted. 

I find that somewhat comforting. 

If everyone's information is out there, that's a lot of noise to sift through. 

Still, this is one of the issues that will be increasingly important.  Big Data with an AI parser creates a new set of promises and perils.

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading - December 8th, 2019

For a candidate with an "age" issue, not sure if this was a smart move ...

 

 

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

Lighter Links:

• Don't Apologize for Having High Standards. (LinkedIn)
• Automation is Not Intelligence. (Forbes)
• How to Talk to Aliens. (Economist)
• 52 Things I Learned in 2019. (Medium)
• McLaren Unveils $1.7 Million Supercar with No Roof and a Windshield Made of Air. (CNN)

 

Trading Links:

• When to Buy into Aramco. (Wall Street Journal)
• How Spices Have Made, and Unmade, Empires. (New York Times)
• The First New US Airport since 2010 is in North Dakota's Oil Country. (TPG)
• This Widening Crack in the Mortgage Market Could Sink U.S. Home Prices. (MarketWatch)
• One Man's Quest to Challenge Wall Street With a New Silicon Valley Stock Exchange. (Telegraph)

Is WiFi Becoming Part of Our Hierarchy of Needs?

My wife's mother and sister were staying with us last week.  We also had two other house guests.  And our Internet service went out.  Not just momentarily, but for days.  Catastrophe!

Is Internet access becoming one of our basic human needs?

In 1943, psychologist Abraham Maslow published his famous “Hierarchy of Needs”. The idea was simple: the essential survival needs in the lowest level of the pyramid must be satisfied before the individual can turn his or her attention to the next level, and so on. Maslow’s “essential needs” are physiological; food, water, shelter, and physical safety.

Today, as we approach the 2020s, perhaps we need to add one more layer to Maslow’s pyramid: WiFi.

 

 

OK, humans probably don’t really need WiFi more than food, but without it, we feel frustrated and "twitchy". 

My solution: dual providers and a fail-over router.  

On a higher level, is Internet access a "basic human right" that should be handled like the New Deal treated electricity at the beginning of the 20th Century?

Expect to hear more about this (and not just because Bernie Sanders made it a campaign issue).

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading - December 1st, 2019

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

Lighter Links:

• How Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning is Changing Medicine. (NewsNetwork)
• The Lines of Code that Changed Everything. (Slate)
• Why All Birds CEO Just Asked Amazon to Steal Its Idea. (Inc)
• Storytelling is a Powerful Communication Tool Here's How to Use It, from TED. (Ideas)
• 3,000-Year-Old Tablet Describing Babylonian Noah's Ark Tale Could Be 'Earliest Ever Example of Fake News,' Scholar Says. (FoxNews)

 

Trading Links:

• Eyeing Presidential Bid, Michael Bloomberg Makes Big Television-Ad Buys. (Wall Street Journal)
• This Invisible Company Powers Almost the Entire Finance Industry. (Forbes)
• Malls are Dying. the Thriving Ones are Spending Millions to Reinvent Themselves. (Washington Post)
• These Maps Show How Many People Will Lose Their Homes to Rising Seas – And It's Worse Than We Thought. (Popular Science)
• Billionaire Hedge Fund Manager Ray Dalio Says the Economy Isn't Growing Because 'The World Has Gone Mad'. (CNBC)

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading - November 24th, 2019

Hope you are ready for the Thanksgiving holidays.

 

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

 

Lighter Links:

• Gartner's Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2020: the Good, the Obvious, the Renamed & the Missing. (Forbes)
• New Cardiology A.I. Knows If You'll Die Soon. Doctors Can't Explain How It Works. (DigitalTrends)
• The Science is Extremely Clear: You Need to Prioritize Sleep. (Wired)
• How to Get Die-Hard Meat Eaters to Try Impossible Burgers: Trick Them. (Wall Street Journal)
• Japan's Cheapest Hotel Will Charge You Just $1 Per Night If You Don't Care About Privacy. (OddityCentral)

 

Trading Links:

• The USPTO Wants to Know If Artificial Intelligence Can Own the Content It Creates. (TheVerge)
• 100 of the World's Most Promising Start-ups to Watch in 2019. (CNBC)
• Bezos Interested in Seahawks? Maybe. NFL Interested in Bezos? Definitely. (WashingtonPost)
• The American Dream is Alive in China. (Palladium)
• How Jim Simons Became the Most Successful Investor of All Time. (Economist)

Sea-Thru Sea

An engineer and oceanographer, Derya Akkaynak, created an algorithm that removes the water from underwater images - meaning it takes away the haze & tint that come with most underwater photos. It doesn't require a color chart either (though it does need distance information it gathers through numerous photographs from different angles). 

Check it out. 

 

via ScientificAmerican 

From the abstract: 

The Sea-thru method estimates backscatter using the dark pixels and their known range information. Then, it uses an estimate of the spatially varying illuminant to obtain the range-dependent attenuation coefficient. Using more than 1,100 images from two optically different water bodies, which we make available, we show that our method with the revised model outperforms those using the atmospheric model. Consistent removal of water will open up large underwater datasets to powerful computer vision and machine learning algorithms, creating exciting opportunities for the future of underwater exploration and conservation.

Essentially, the algorithm goes through every pixel and color balances the image based on collected data on distance/color degradation.

As with most algorithms of this type - the more data we feed it, the better it gets. Sea-thru already has great applications for furthering ocean-based research, but the follow-up question is can this algorithm be extrapolated outward to deal with other atmospheric conditions outside of water - smog, etc. 

What other uses can you imagine?  It is not hard to imagine how this could be applied to market data either ... Interesting stuff! 

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading - November 17th, 2019

The holiday season is coming fast.

 

 

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

Lighter Links:

• What's New in Gartner's Hype Cycle for AI, 2019. (Forbes)
• What Monkeys Can Teach Us About Being Human. (NPR)
• Why It's Time to Take Electrified Medicine Seriously. (Time)
• What's CRISPR Doing in Our Food? (Gastropod)
• The Problem that Google Solved with Quantum Supremacy.(DataScienceCentral)

 

Trading Links:

• Why Hedge Fund Billionaire Ray Dalio Loves Silicon Valley.(Finance)
• Tokenized Venture Capital. (DailyFintech)
• Betting on Bitcoin Prices May Soon Be Deemed Illegal Gambling. (Economist)
• Map: The Richest Person in Each U.S. State. (Money)
• Here's What Quantum Supremacy Does and Doesn't Mean for Computing. (TechReview)

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading - November 10th, 2019

Here's a quick reminder about Veterans Day.

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

Lighter Links:

• Why Futurists are (Almost) Always Wrong. (ZDNet)
• AI Rising: How Companies, Police and the Public are Already Grappling with Artificial Intelligence. (GeekWire)
• Macallan Bottle Sells for $1.9 Million, Breaks Whisky World Record Again. (Forbes)
• Suzy Batiz's Empire of Odor. (NewYorker)
• The 35 Best CEOs in the World, According to Harvard Business Review. (BusinessInsider)

 

Trading Links:

• Lilium is One Step Closer to Making Its Flying Car a Reality. (FastCompany)
• Gartner: Corporate Blockchain Won't Take off for Another Decade. (News)
• Singapore is the World's Most Competitive Economy. What Can Others Learn? (WEForum)
• The Countries with the Most Millionaires. (Statista)
• The Unicorn Bubble is Bursting. (SeekingAlpha)