Archive for the 'Economy' Category
Alphabet Passes Apple to Become the World’s Most Valuable Company
February 1st, 2016Via: CNBC: Google parent Alphabet was set to pass Apple as the most valuable company in the world on Tuesday. At Monday’s after-hours levels (which technically reflect an indication, but not the real-world value), Alphabet’s market cap would roughly be $570 billion, eclipsing Apple’s current market cap of about $535 billion.
Lawyers, Doctors and Public Servants in Firing Line from Rise of the Machines
January 30th, 2016Via: Canberra Times: Machines will end about 40 per cent of today’s Australian jobs within two decades and they’re coming for middle class occupations, one of the nation’s automatisation experts has warned. University of Sydney professor of data science and machine learning Hugh Durrant-Whyte said Canberra’s public servants would be among those in the firing […]
Official Projections for Solar Adoption May be Much Too Conservative
January 29th, 2016Disclosure: I sell solar power systems in New Zealand. — Via: FastCompany: If solar power prices fall in line with other technologies, we could see continued price-drops of 10% a year. That’s according to an historical analysis of 53 technologies that finds a distinct pattern in how major innovations perform over time. If so, the […]
F-35 Software Overrun with Bugs, DoD Testing Chief Warns
January 29th, 2016Via: Ars Technica: The F-35’s flight plan appears to have delays written all over it. A previously unreleased memo from Michael Gilmore, the Department of Defense’s director for Operational Test and Evaluation (OT&E), details a list of problems that will likely hold up the testing of the final configuration of the aircraft—and will mean the […]
Y Combinator: Basic Income
January 27th, 2016Cryptogon 2014: Something like a basic income could emerge, but it will probably only be enough to survive in a setting akin to a favela. The purpose of the basic income will be to prevent a disorderly societal collapse as machine labor really takes off. — Any objective observer can see that so-called “Advanced” economies […]
Japan: Automated, Clean Room Agriculture
January 27th, 2016Via: TechInsider: The Japanese lettuce production company Spread believes the farmers of the future will be robots. So much so that Spread is creating the world’s first farm manned entirely by robots. Instead of relying on human farmers, the indoor Vegetable Factory will employ robots that can harvest 30,000 heads of lettuce every day. Don’t […]
There Is No Excuse for How Universities Treat Adjuncts
January 24th, 2016This is what Soviet-style systems do. The U.S. Government is the enabler via the student loan scam. Via: The Atlantic: Writing a few years ago for this publication, the Johns Hopkins professor Benjamin Ginsberg described colleges and universities as now being “filled with armies of functionaries—vice presidents, associate vice presidents, assistant vice presidents, provosts, associate […]
Oil Breaks Below $27, Down Over 5%
January 20th, 2016S&P500 October 2014 low is taken out intraday. — S&P500 leaning over, real ugly. Through all recent weekly supports now. If anyone at the PPT is awake at the switch… This is it. —- USO bids $8 — This move is nuts. Crude Oil Feb 16 (CLG16.NYM) -NY Mercantile $26.86 Down $1.60(5.62%) 11:07AM EST — […]
IBM Watson Head Mike Rhodin On The Future Of Artificial Intelligence
January 20th, 2016Did you ever read, The Diamond Age, by Neal Stephenson? Do you remember Nell’s copy of the Primer? But to call it a book does not really do it justice — it is really a massively parallel computer in which each page can dynamically rearrange itself to tell a story. Check this out, from the […]
Delhi: The Sleep Mafia
January 18th, 2016Via: New York Times: When midnight approaches in Old Delhi and a thick, freezing fog settles over the city, the quilt-wallah Farukh Khan sits on his corner, watching the market for his services come to life. They shuffle up one by one, men desperate for sleep. The bicycle rickshaw pullers, peeling one of his 20-rupee, […]
