Machines contain the breadth of human knowledge, yet they have the common sense of a newborn. The problem is that computers don’t act enough like toddlers. Yann LeCun, director of artificial intelligence research at Facebook, demonstrates this by standing a pen on the table and then holding his phone in front of it. He performs a sleight of hand, and when he picks the phone up—ta-da! The pen is gone. It’s a trick that’ll elicit a gasp from any one-year-old child, but today’s cutting-edge artificial intelligence software—and most months-old babies—can’t appreciate that the disappearing act isn’t normal. “Before they’re a few months old, you play this trick on them, and they don’t care,” says LeCun, a 54-year-old father of three. “After a few months, they figure out this is not normal.”
Category: News and Views
Why your rent check just keeps going up | Money.Cnn
It’s gotten a lot harder to make the rent.
Rents have been soaring across the country, even outpacing home values, according to a recent Zillow report. Some areas are facing a particularly harsh reality: In San Francisco, renters have seen a nearly 15% yearly increase, and Denver tenants have faced an 11.6% rise.
And it’s not just a big city problem.
“Places that were more traditionally affordable are growing more quickly,” said Skylar Olsen, senior economist at Zillow.
The reason? A shortage of available rentals.
“Vacancy rates are at very low levels, which continues to push rents higher,” said Andrew Jakabovics, senior director, Policy Development & Research at Enterprise Community Partners.
United Flights Halted: The Malicious Work Of A Hacker Or An Old-Fashioned Computer Glitch? | Forbes
Was the world’s second-largest airline grounded for nearly an hour Tuesday morning by a hacker?
Probably not. But that was the immediate suspicion after Chicago-based United Airlines began experiencing significant problems with its flight dispatch system around 8 a.m. CT.
The Federal Aviation Administration quickly issued a ground stop, effectively shutting down the airline’s more than 700 jets (except, of course, those already in the air). The ground stop order was lifted about 40 minutes later.
Wired.com and other media outlets quickly posted online news stories about the event in which they quoted Tweets and other social media postings from passengers stuck onboard grounded United planes. Though all those early reports cautiously added that the actual cause of the dispatch system disruption remained unknown, at least to the website editors – they speculated that United’s system had been hacked into by outsiders.
TV Is Losing Ground to the Internet Where It Really Counts | WIRED
AS A SPATE of new shows from Netflix and Amazon prove that some of the best television being made streams rather than airs, TV will take a financial hit. PwC’s annual five-year forecast for entertainment and media released today has revised downward the growth rate for ad spending on television. Last year, PwC predicted advertising would increase 5.5 percent annually over the next five years; now PwC says that rate will slow to just 4 percent annually through 2019.
And those are just the global figures. In the United States, TV ad spending is growing by just a little more than 3 percent annually on average. By contrast, spending jumped 5 percent between 2013 and 2014, the most recent years that PwC makes available.
Weekly Economic Update | LAEDC
v.19 n. 23 – Released June 1, 2015
This Week’s Headlines:
- California Home Sales and Prices in April
- Incomes Improve, but Spending Flat in April
- Events of Interest
- June 03, 2015: International Trade Outlook
Rare Apple I computer put into recycling | BBC News
A San Francisco recycling centre is seeking a woman who may have handed over a rare Apple I computer by mistake.
The machine was among other components and computers the woman wanted to dispose of after her husband died.
Only about 200 of the first-generation Apple computers were made.
The company recognised the value of the old computer and sold it to a private collector for about $200,000 (£131,000).
Tiny memory
The recycling centre, called Clean Bay Area, has launched a web and media campaign to track down the woman so she can receive her half of the cash they got for the machine.
It has produced a short video it is asking people to share to see if they can reach the donor.
Women pay 76 cents to men’s $1 at shop promoting wage equality | mashable
You pay what you earn at a tiny shop in Pittsburgh that is take a strong stance on gender equality.
Elana Schlenker’s pop-up shop, Less Than 100, sells gifts like ceramics, paper crafts and art by independent makers. It’s like a brick-and-mortar Etsy, except for one distinctive attribute: men pay more.
“I don’t think anyone should be discriminated against, but the wage gap is a pervasive problem and we need to recognize the ways in which our (often unconscious) biases are perpetuating it. I hope the shop sparks conversation around the issue,” Schlenker told Mashable in an email.
Specifically, Less Than 100’s pricing reflects the current average wage gap in Pennsylvania. Women there are paid 76 cents compared to every dollar a man earns for the same job.
It’s not that items are being marked up for men, technically. Rather, women are getting a discount. According to the shop’s website, women pay 76% of any item’s full ticket price, and men pay the full amount.
California’s Water Crisis Is The Result Of Market Failure As Much As Drought | Co.Exist
Weak pricing signals. Poor accounting. Byzantine rules. These are just a few of the reasons why California is in the midst of a water crisis. A lack of rainfall is perhaps the least of the state’s problems.
California’s situation is symptomatic of escalating water risks all across the world, where water is typically undervalued and, as a result, used incredibly inefficiently as more people than ever need it.
“There’s no room to hide anymore, this is where finance hits reality,” said Piet Klop, senior advisor of responsible investment at Dutch pension fund manager PGGM, who spoke with me recently about escalating water risks globally.
At meetings I attended across the state this month with water-savvy investors, the California drought always loomed large. In addition to fallowed farmland and depressed earnings, they acknowledged a larger more profound reality—the devastating drought and growing climate change impacts are likely the “new normal” for California.
Japan Unleashes A Robot Revolution | Bloomberg Business
A new greeter at the entrance of the Mitsukoshi department store in central Tokyo has caused a stir. The worker, dressed in a kimono and cheerfully welcoming shoppers in honorific Japanese, is a robot made by Toshiba and shows how lifelike these machines can be.
This latest example of Japan’s skill comes just as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is calling for a “robot revolution.” Advances in robotic computing power, the ability to recognize voices and images, and machine learning could help the country overcome the handicap of a fast-aging populace and a declining workforce.
At the opening of Japan’s Robot Revolution Initiative Council on May 15, Abe urged companies to “spread the use of robotics from large-scale factories to every corner of our economy and society.” Backed by 200 companies and universities, the five-year, government-led push aims to deepen the use of intelligent machines in manufacturing, supply chains, construction, and health care, while expanding robotics sales from 600 billion yen ($4.9 billion) annually to 2.4 trillion yen by 2020.
Weekly Economic Update | LAEDC
v.19 n. 22 – Released May 26, 2015
This Week’s Headlines:
- April State and Local Employment
- SoCal Home Sales and Median Prices in April
- Events of Interest
- June 03, 2015: International Trade Outlook
Dispatches From The Front 