Archive for the 'Economy' Category
Australia: Robot Bricklayer Can Build a Home in Two Days
November 19th, 2015Via: Financial Review: Australian investors have begun buying in to the rise of the machines, as a company promising to replace the humble brickie with a robot that can build a four-bedroom house in two days hit the ASX boards. Fastbrick Robotics started trading on the ASX on Wednesday, and was up almost 4 per […]
Australia Just Stopped China Buying a Farm the Size of Kentucky
November 19th, 2015Via: Fortune: You can have too much foreign investment, it seems. The Australian government Thursday blocked the sale of a portfolio of farmland the size of Kentucky to Chinese investors on national interest grounds. Four separate groups linked to Chinese-based investors had been dominating the bidding for properties amounting to 2.5% of Australia’s farming land […]
Recovery: Half of New Yorkers Say They Are Barely or Not Getting By, Poll Shows
November 19th, 2015Via: New York Times: Half of New York City residents say they are struggling economically, making ends meet just barely, if at all, and most feel sharp uncertainty about the future of the city’s next generation, a new poll shows. The poll, conducted by The New York Times and Siena College, shows great disparities in […]
These Biohackers Are Creating Open-Source Insulin
November 19th, 2015Via: Popular Science: The 370 million people worldwide with diabetes rely on injections of insulin to regulate the amount of sugar in their blood, since their bodies can’t make the hormone themselves. Since there are no generic versions available in the United States, insulin is very expensive—that cost was likely a large proportion of the […]
The Next Gold Rush Will Be 5,000 Feet Under the Sea
November 18th, 2015Via: Vice: And that will mean dispatching a fleet of giant remote-operated robotic miners 5,000 feet below the surface to harvest the riches scattered across ocean floor. These mammoth underwater vehicles look like they’ve been hauled off the set of a sci-fi film—think Avatar meets The Abyss. And they’ll be dredging up copper, gold, and […]
Police Civil Asset Forfeitures Exceed All Burglaries in 2014
November 18th, 2015Via: Armstrong Economics: Between 1989 and 2010, U.S. attorneys seized an estimated $12.6 billion in asset forfeiture cases. The growth rate during that time averaged +19.4% annually. In 2010 alone, the value of assets seized grew by +52.8% from 2009 and was six times greater than the total for 1989. Then by 2014, that number […]
Recovery: Japan’s Economy Falls Back Into Recession Again
November 17th, 2015Via: BBC: Japan’s economy has fallen into recession again after it shrank 0.8% on an annualised basis in the third quarter. The preliminary data means the world’s third-largest economy has contracted for a second consecutive quarter, marking a technical recession. Growth was expected to decline after it fell a revised 0.7% in the second quarter […]
Why Human-In-The-Loop Computing Is The Future Of Machine Learning
November 16th, 2015Via: ComputerWorld: Now that machine learning is becoming more and more mainstream, some design patterns are starting to emerge. As the CEO of CrowdFlower, I’ve worked with many companies building machine learning algorithms and I’ve noticed a best practice in nearly every successful deployment of machine learning on tough business problems. That practice is called […]
Robot Audits Store Shelves
November 14th, 2015Via: ComputerWorld: An autonomous robot was unveiled this week that can make sure that when you’re hankering for Doritos, there’s a bag waiting for you at the market. Simbe Robotics, based in San Francisco, announced its first product, a 30-pound robot called Tally that can move up and down a store’s aisles checking inventory. The […]
The End-Point in Financial Credit
November 14th, 2015Via: GoldMoney: Since the 1980s, markets have had to adapt to a world of infinite credit. Of course, this credit has not been available to everyone: it has been principally deployed in favour of governments, financial markets, and big business. It amounts to a cartel, planned or unplanned, a partnership between banks and government that […]
