Capitalogix

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading - October 15th, 2017

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

 

 

Lighter Links:

• Radical Candor Will Help Managers Balance Accountability and Empathy. (SmallBizTrends)
• Pretending to Be Batman Helps Kids Stay on Task. (Digest)
• The Secrets of Disneyland: a Company Vet Explains How the Magic Happens. (FastCompany)
• What Actually Happens When You Pull a Muscle? (Popular Science)
• Now that Anyone Can Hack BiologyShould We Be Afraid? (SingularityHub)

Trading Links:

• How to Destroy Our Economy. (Forbes)
• Bulldozers Can Show You Where the Economy's Going before the Official Data Do. (Bloomberg)
• JPMORGAN: Here's What Could Cause the next Financial Crisis. (BusinessInsider)
• Goldman Sachs to Explore Starting Bitcoin Trading Venture. (Bloomberg)
• AI Will Eliminate 1.8M Jobs but Create 2.3M by 2020, Claims Gartner. (TechRepublic)

Misheard Song Lyrics with Peter Kay

Years ago, when my kids were still children, Macy Gray came out with a song called "I Try."

When I heard the kids singing, the chorus went: 

I try to say goodbye and I choke, I try to walk away and I stumble, though I try to hide it, it's clear, I wear goggles when you are not near.

Of course, it's not "I wear goggles when you are not here", even if my youngest son swore it was ... The actual line is "My world crumbles when you are not near" ... which makes a lot more sense. 

This has happened to me several times as well (recently, too – which prompted this post). 

Turns out, we humans are pattern-matching machines.  But not all of the patterns we perceive are really there.

Peter Kay plays on our disposition with this funny bit about misheard lyrics. 

Worth a watch. 

 

via YouTube 

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading - October 8th, 2017

 Old people and their joints ... it's becoming an issue. 

 

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

Lighter Links:

• Why Culture Doesn't Just Beat Strategy, It Must Be the Strategy. (Inc)
• Google Reveals the Top Things People Want to Find out How To' Do. (TechCrunch)
• Pain Leads to Empathy and Self-preservation: Should We Make Robots Feel' It? (Aeon)
• Gartner's Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies Adds 5G and Deep Learning. (Forbes)
• Hostile Terrain: Tank Traps, Fake Towns & Secret Tunnels of the Korean Borderlands. (99PercentInvisible)

Trading Links:

• Seventy-Eight Billion Reasons Why Bitcoin Is the New Gold. (Globe&Mail)
• Amazon Wants to Open a $5 Billion Second HQ in North America. (CNN)
• Has Disruption from E-commerce Run Its Course? (Latest)
• Who Vladimir Putin Thinks Will Rule the World. (CNN)
• Employees at the World's Largest Hedge Fund Use iPads to Rate Each Other's Performance in Real-Time – See How It Works. (Insider)

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)

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)

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

Who Would've Thought I'd Be Giving Fashion Advice - Weekly Links - September 1st, 2017

Since we're technically still in summer, I thought I'd pass along this fashion insight ...

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:

Texas Flood Disaster: Harvey Has Unloaded 9 Trillion Gallons of Water.(Washington Post) How Mushrooms Became Magic. (The Atlantic) Harvard Thinks It's Found the Next Einstein and She's 23. (SecondNexus) 4 TED Talks on How Time Affects You. (TED) INFOGRAPHIC: Data Breaches, Vulnerabilities Spike in First Half of 2017.(Lastwatchdog) Can Computers Make Us Better Thinkers? (Insight) Watson is Just the Beginning. (Insight) Hidden Features and Third Party Programs that Make Spotify Work for You.(MotherBoard) The Power of Framing: It's Not What You Say, It's How You Say It.(TheGuardian) The Future of Deep Learning. (Keras) The Nine Essentials of Story Design Every Storyteller Must Master.(Medium) The Fading Art of Philosophy. (Thecoffeelicious) No One Should Have Sole Authority to Launch a Nuclear Attack. (Scientific American) Philippe De Montebello on How the Metropolitan Museum of Art Can Reclaim Its Glory. (Artnet) How Artificial Intelligence Conquered Democracy. (The Conversation) 15 Amazing Infographics and Other Visual Tutorials. (DataScienceCentral) Scientists Discover New State of Matter Called Time Crystals'. (WSJ) The Key is Not to Prioritize Your Schedule, but to Schedule Your Priorities. -Stephen Covey. (MichaelHyatt) The Voice of Machine Learning Starts and Ends with Humans. (Embedded-computing) The AI Hierarchy of Needs. (HackerNoon)

Market-Related Links

Big Data in Capital Markets. (Luxoft) The Logic of Risk Taking. (Medium) Yellen Warns against Erasing Regulations Made after Financial Crisis. (NYT) Half-Time Report on PwC's Vision for Asset Management. (AllaboutAlpha) New Breed of Super Quants at NYU Prep for Wall Street. (Bloomberg) Powerball Winner Already Broke One Rule. What Else Not to Do. (CNBC) Banks May Soon Use Our Facebook Friends to Assess Our Creditworthiness. Should We Worry? (Insight) Why the Fed Raised Rates for the Third Time. (NYTimes) 61 Books Nassim Taleb Recommends You Read in His Own Words.(Medium) What Do Economists Actually Know? (Medium) Is It Better to Be Poor in Bangladesh or the Mississippi Delta? (The Atlantic) New Force on Wall Street: the Family Office'. (WSJ) These Economic 'Black Swans' Could Rock Global Markets. (BI) 10,000 AI Startups Need to Learn these Lessons. (VentureBeat) Why Fragmentation is the Solution, Not the Problem. (CharlesHughSmith) We'll Have Twice as Many Super-Rich People in 10 Years. (CNW) Russell 2000: False Breakout May Spell Trouble for Small Caps.(SeeItMarket) For Big Banks, Regulation is the Mother of GPU Invention. (QuantNews) Upgrading Our Infrastructure: Targeting Repairs for Locks, Dams and Bridges. (The Conversation) AI Trader? Tech Vet Launches Hedge Fund Run by Artificial Intelligence.(QuantNews)

Let me know what you think. Thanks. - Howard

NFL - Boom or Bust

Are you ready for some Football?

This chart may explain why my foreign friends prefer a different form of "football" ... It shows how many Super Bowl Championships each region has.

 

 

The regular season is about to start, and the buzz is building ... but, not all of it is good. 

Violence ... drugs ... concussions ... There has been a lot of bad press surrounding the NFL lately.

The Cowboys, alone, have somewhere between  4 to 7 players (depending on appeals) subject to miss games due to league suspensions for misconduct.  

 

The Teflon League:  NFL Revenues and Viewership Are Up.

 

Currently, the NFL is the 11th most important private company in the USA according to Fortune, and has the highest revenue of any sports league worldwide. 

via howmuch

While critics contend that something needs to be done about the various issues surrounding the NFL, it's hard to conclude that those issues affect viewership.  The NFL currently dominates attendance per game, viewership, and revenue.

In an experience economy, the NFL puts out an extraordinary product.

Long term may prove to be a different story, however.  Each year there are less high-school football players and more competition. 

I guess we'll see.

Regardless ... "How About Them Cowboys!"

 

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:

• AI Beats the World's Best Gamers after Just Two Weeks of Learning. (NewAtlas)
• Russia-linked Hackers Targeted Hotel Guests across Europe: Security Firm. (Reuters)
• One Year after Rio: What's Left behind after the Flame Goes Out. (ESPN)
• Humans and Robots are on the Cusp of a Sexual Intimacy We May Never Reverse. (Quartz)
• Elon Musk Just Shared His 4-Step Plan for Mars - Colonists Should Be "Prepared to Die". (ScienceAlert)

 

Trading Links:

• Ray Dalio Urges Investors to Hedge Against Possible North Korea War. (FN)
• There Has Never, Ever, Been this Many Trades Betting on VIX. (ZH)
• Amazon Could Start Selling Event Tickets in the U.S. (TechCrunch)
• South Korea Introduces World's First Robot Tax. (ZeroHedge)
• The Number of Cash Payments Dipped 11 Per Cent Last Year - But It's Still the Most Used Payment Method. (CityAM)

Rubik's Cubes ... More than just a game.

One of my unique abilities is pattern matching.

Even if I'm not an expert in a field, based on context and patterns, I quickly see the big picture – and recognize the bottlenecks and leverage points that impact transformative results.

Perhaps that's why Rubik's Cubes fascinate me. 

A scrambled cube presents an insurmountable challenge to newbies.  It almost seems that there are infinite possibilities ... and most lead towards chaos and failure. In reality, a Rubik's cube is pretty easy to solve if you understand a few simple algorithms (and match the positions of a couple key blocks in relation to the decisions you need to make next). 

As more people learn to solve standard cubes, the game evolves.  There is new generation of "Cubers" that attempt to find new creative situations to add difficulty, solve it faster than the next person, or try crazy variations of the cube that barely resembles the original. 

 

If you're trying to learn how to solve a basic cube, here's a great resource. 

After you've learned the basic patterns, and solved a few puzzles,  you can up the ante.

Here are some examples of bigger cubes with more variables and different shapes.

 

via hananujiya

Ultimately, it is that base pattern recognition and simple solving skills (applied in the right order) that sets the stage.

It doesn't matter where you start.  As long as you continue to make progress, the result is inevitable.