Capitalogix

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)

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The following chart is a bit outdated (it's from 2014), but it's a good study with diverse leanings.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.

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!

What Are The Top 100 Websites?

There are over 1 billion websites on the internet, and it is constantly growing.

In fact, Google only indexes about 16 percent of the surface Web – and misses all of the Deep Web. 

Not surprisingly, the most popular sites comprise the majority of internet usage. 

The list of the top 100 trafficked sites was somewhat surprising (and not just because there were only three porn sites that made the cut).  

Before looking, who do you think made the list?

Here is an infographic that shows who rules the Internet.

 

via Visual Capitalist

 

Leading the pack – Google, YouTube, and Facebook top the list (with Google, itself, getting an astonishing 28 billion visits per month) ...  For scale, that's over 500 times more visits than #100 site on this list.  

Pretty insane! 

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading - July 16th, 2017

Science, Art, or "PooPoo De Toro"...

  

 

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

Lighter Links:

• Ray Kurzweil: There's a Blueprint for the Master Algorithm in Our Brains (Futurism)
• Brain-training Games Don't Really Train Brains, a New Study Suggests. (WashPost)
• Why Men Don't Live as Long as Women. (Nautilus)
• What a Hunter-Gatherer Diet Does to the Body in Just Three Days. (CNN)
• Is Philosophy Simply Harder Than Science? (TLS)

Trading Links:

• Return of the Day Traders. (Forbes)
• The Unexpected Economic Consequences of Video Games. (Vox)
• Why Elon Musk's Early Adopters Take Risks. (Forbes)
• Nvidia Heads 50 Companies that Will Change the World. (Alphr)
• This is the Future of Investing, and You Probably Can't Afford It. (BizInsider)

Rich People Spend Their Time Differently: An Income Distribution in Americans' Pastimes

When it comes to American pastimes, many people focus on the big 3 sports: Football, Basketball, and Baseball. Nevertheless, there are a lot of different ways people spend their time.  It is interesting to see what they watch - and what they actually play. 

Nevertheless, there are a lot of different ways people spend their time.  It is interesting to see what they watch - and what they actually play. 

There is also a big difference based on income distribution.   Here is an infographic.

 

via VisualCapitalist

Apparently, rich people like golfing,  yoga and racquet sports ... while poorer people disproportionately liked relaxing, writing for personal interest, and having hobbies.

It is also kind of interesting to see when people tend to do certain activities.   Here is a chart showing the peak time for various sports and activities.

via Henrik Lindberg

You could build a business around data like that.

Interesting?

The Bezos Empire: Amazon, Whole Foods and More

Jeff Bezos is has acquired a lot of businesses since starting Amazon - Zappos, Audible, IMDB, and most recently Whole Foods (for $13.7 billion dollars).

On top of acquiring those businesses for Amazon - he also has diversified his own interests through Bezos Expeditions and as an angel investor. 

Here is a chart to put things in perspective.  Click on the image to see the whole infographic.

 

via VisualCapitalist

 

To grow the business, their customer base, and their competitive advantage ... Amazon and Bezos re-invest heavily by aggressively acquiring companies and technologies - even though that strategy virtually eliminates Amazon's profit.

Despite minimal profits (literally less than a handful of profitable quarters since it started in 1994), Amazon has a market cap of roughly $470 billion in market capitalization.  They've shown that there's a new algorithm for success - it's about vision and market domination. It is a long game with big stakes ... and it looks like he's winning.

They've shown that there's a new algorithm for success - it's about vision and market domination. It is a long game with big stakes ... and it looks like he's winning.

But You'd Still Call Them A Success

"Bezos recently told shareholders that the goal is to 'experiment patiently, accept failures, plant seeds, protect saplings, and double down when you see customer delight.'" 

via Forbes

It's a similar idea to one that I've adopted - though on a different scale.

When people first look at Capitalogix they see a hedge fund – but that is just an application of our core capabilities.  Internally, we know that we are an innovation engine that uses domain expertise in algorithmic trading, data science, and high-performance computing to generate something new. 

Edges decay or disappear faster than ever before - that's what drives our pursuit of more ways to win.

When changing the way people play a game -  you can't play by the same rules people used to.

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekend Reading - June 3rd, 2017

 

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

Lighter Links:

• Expanded Laptop Ban Could Cover Half a Million Travelers a Day. (CNN)
• Someone Posted the Codes to Every United Cockpit Online. (TheNextWeb)
• A Neuroscientist Explains the Radical Theory that Our Free Will is Just an Illusion. (BI)
• Scientists Think They're More Rational Than Other People. (Scientific American)
• 50 Books Recommended by this Year's TED Speakers. (Inc)

Trading Links:

• Once Considered the Titans of Wall Street, Hedge Fund Managers are in Trouble. (WP)
• Apple: Supercycle Hopes Drive Supersize Bets. (Wall Street Journal)
• To Stabilize the Oil Market, OPEC Refines Its Strategy. (Stratfor)
• Switch It up this Year: Buy in May, till November Stay. (EconomicTimes)
• The Quants: Meet the New Kings of Wall Street. (Wall Street Journal)

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.