Flesh-and-Blood Advisers Face Threats from Robots
November 3rd, 2014
Via: Reuters:
Fidelity and Charles Schwab will be offering automated financial advice that’s low-cost or even free, pushing other advisers to be tech-savvy to compete.
Last month, both Charles Schwab Corp and Fidelity Investments unveiled so-called “robo” advice programs that offer free or very cheap algorithm-driven portfolio management to investors.
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That strikes fear into the hearts of many financial advisers who typically charge 1% or more of assets under management to offer personalized advice to investors.
40KG of Cocaine Found on Ship Owned by Mitch McConnell’s Inlaws
November 3rd, 2014Via: The Nation:
Before the Ping May, a rusty cargo vessel, could disembark from the port of Santa Marta en route to the Netherlands in late August, Colombian inspectors boarded the boat and made a discovery. Hidden in the ship’s chain locker, amidst its load of coal bound for Europe, were approximately 40 kilograms, or about ninety pounds, of cocaine. A Colombian Coast Guard official told The Nation that there is an ongoing investigation.
The seizure of the narcotics shipment in the Caribbean port occurred far away from Kentucky, the state in which Senator Mitch McConnell is now facing a career-defining election. But the Republican Senate minority leader has the closest of ties to the owner of the Ping May, the vessel containing the illicit materials: the Foremost Maritime Corporation, a firm founded and owned by McConnell’s in-laws, the Chao family.
Research Credit: almaverdad2
New Zealand’s Electricity Bought and Sold in a “Phoney Market” which Represents Another Form of Taxation
November 3rd, 2014Via: Southland Times:
The former Meridian Energy director, who is also Upoko of Awarua Runanga, said New Zealand’s electricity was bought and sold in a “phoney market” which represented another form of taxation.
If the electricity market was genuinely competitive, every electricity company director and chief executive would be thrown in jail.
Eleven Countries Studied, One Inescapable Conclusion – The Drug Laws Don’t Work
October 31st, 2014Oh, drug laws work great if you’re a corporation that turns a profit on locking people up.
Via: Guardian:
The UK government’s comparison of international drug laws, published on Wednesday, represents the first official recognition since the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act that there is no direct link between being “tough on drugs” and tackling the problem.
The report, which has been signed off by both the Conservative home secretary, Theresa May, and the Liberal Democrat crime prevention minister, Norman Baker, is based on an in-depth study of drug laws in 11 countries ranging from the zero-tolerance of Japan to the legalisation of Uruguay.
Brain Decoder Can Eavesdrop on Your Inner Voice
October 30th, 2014Via: New Scientist:
TALKING to yourself used to be a strictly private pastime. That’s no longer the case – researchers have eavesdropped on our internal monologue for the first time. The achievement is a step towards helping people who cannot physically speak communicate with the outside world.
“If you’re reading text in a newspaper or a book, you hear a voice in your own head,” says Brian Pasley at the University of California, Berkeley. “We’re trying to decode the brain activity related to that voice to create a medical prosthesis that can allow someone who is paralysed or locked in to speak.”
Google’s Secretive DeepMind Start-Up Unveils A “Neural Turing Machine”
October 30th, 2014Via: MIT Technology Review:
DeepMind has built a neural network that can access an external memory like a conventional Turing machine. The result is a computer that mimics the short-term memory of the human brain.
Related: “With Artificial Intelligence, We Are Summoning the Demon”
Swiss Company to Build Utility-Scale Batteries in North Carolina
October 30th, 2014Via: Fortune:
A Swiss maker of giant storage batteries for wind and solar farms is taking over a giant Philip Morris plant.
The Philip Morris plant in Concord, North Carolina used to manufacture a billion cigarettes a year. But Americans are smoking less, and in the tobacco giant shuttered the factory’s doors years ago and announced plans to sell the 2,100 acre, the 3.5 million square foot facility. In a sure sign that the U.S. economy is changing for the better, the empty space is not being turned in an outlet mall or water park but into a giant manufacturing site for utility-scale batteries that will store wind and solar electricity. Alevo, the Swiss maker of the battery technology, plans to open the plant Tuesday, and says that within three years they will create 2,500 high paying jobs.
Research Credit: almaverdad2
Verizon Launching Tech News Site that Bans Stories on U.S. Spying
October 29th, 2014Via: The Daily Dot:
Verizon is getting into the news business. What could go wrong?
The most-valuable, second-richest telecommunications company in the world is bankrolling a technology news site called SugarString.com. The publication, which is now hiring its first full-time editors and reporters, is meant to rival major tech websites like Wired and the Verge while bringing in a potentially giant mainstream audience to beat those competitors at their own game.
There’s just one catch: In exchange for the major corporate backing, tech reporters at SugarString are expressly forbidden from writing about American spying or net neutrality around the world, two of the biggest issues in tech and politics today.
Unsurprisingly, Verizon is deeply tangled up in both controversies.
Verizon Wireless Injects Identifiers that Link Its Users to Web Requests
October 29th, 2014Via: Ars Technica:
Cellular communications provider Verizon Wireless is adding cookie-like tokens to Web requests traveling over its network. These tokens are being used to build a detailed picture of users’ interests and to help clients tailor advertisements, according to researchers and Verizon’s own documentation.
The profiling, part of Verizon’s Precision Market Insights division, kicked off more than two years ago and expanded to cover all Verizon Wireless subscribers as part of the company’s Relevant Mobile Advertising service. It appends a per-device token known as the Unique Identifier Header (UIDH) to each Web request sent through its cellular network from a particular mobile device, allowing Verizon to link a website visitor to its own internal profiles. The service aims to allow client websites to target advertising at specific segments of the consumer market.
While the company started piloting the service two years ago, privacy experts only began warning of the issue this week, arguing that the service is essentially tracking users and that companies paid for a fundamental service that should not be using the data for secondary purposes.
Google Pill to Diagnose Disease
October 29th, 2014How about a Google suppository?
Via: Wired:
Google is attempting to develop a pill that would send microscopic particles into the bloodstream in an effort to identify cancers, imminent heart attacks, and other diseases.
Andrew Conrad, the head of life sciences inside the company’s Google X research lab, revealed the project on Tuesday morning at a conference here in Southern California. According to Conrad, the company is fashioning nanoparticles—particles about one billionth of a meter in width—that combine a magnetic material with antibodies or proteins that can attach to and detect other molecules inside the body. The idea is that patients will swallow a pill that contains these particles, and after they enter the bloodstream—attempting to identify molecules that would indicate certain health problems—a wearable device could use their magnetic cores to gather them back together and read what they’ve found.
