Robot Baristas
October 20th, 2013Via: Quartz:
In a common area at the University of Texas at Austin, the Briggo coffee kiosk, covered in fake wood paneling and a touch screen and not much else, takes up about as much space as a pair of phone booths. Its external appearance was designed by award-winning industrial designer Yves Behar, with the intention that it radiate authenticity and what Briggo says is its commitment to making coffee that is the equal of what comes out of any high-end coffee shop.
The kiosk at the university is the second version, the one that will be rolling out across the country in locations that are still secret. It needs just 50 square feet (4.6 sq m) of floor space, and it can be dropped anywhere—an airport, a hospital, a company campus, a cafe with tables and chairs and WiFi just like Starbucks. It’s manufactured in Austin.
Inside, protected by stainless steel walls and a thicket of patents, there is a secret, proprietary viscera of pipes, storage vessels, heating instruments, robot arms and 250 or so sensors that together do everything a human barista would do if only she had something like perfect self-knowledge. “How is my milk steamer performing? Am I a half-degree off in my brewing temperature? Is my water pressure consistent? Is there any residue buildup on my brewing chamber that might require me to switch to a backup system?”
The Briggo coffee kiosk knows how to make a perfect coffee because it was “trained” by an award-winning barista, Patrick Pierce. He’s since left the company, but no matter: as in the techno-utopian Singularity, whose adherents believe that some day we will all upload our brains to computers, once a barista’s essence has been captured by Briggo, his human form is just a legacy system.
Besides, baristas, especially the ones at America’s favorite “high end” coffee shop, don’t often stick around long enough to become as good as Pierce. Turnover at Starbucks, which is typical of all demanding retail environments, leads to what Nater calls “variation,” and not the kind that’s exciting—the kind that coffee connoisseurs frown upon, because it means coffee isn’t being extracted from beans in the optimal way.
“What we’ve created is in essence a small food factory that absolutely replicates what a champion barista does,” says Nater. Briggo roasts its own beans—sourced by a pair of coffee supply veterans who between them spent a combined 40 years at Starbucks. “We have calibrated this machine to pull espresso shots to the same specification as an Illy or a Stumptown or an Intelligentsia. We’ve just done it without the human element.”
Related: Momentum Machines Robots Will Prepare Hamburgers, Eliminate Fast Food Jobs
Level 3 Outage Disrupts East Coast Internet Traffic
October 19th, 2013Via: Wall Street Journal:
Internet users from Brooklyn to Philadelphia suffered slow to nonexistent service Saturday after equipment at a New York-area network hub broke down, disrupting service for several hours.
A spokesman for the Internet service provider Level 3 Communications Inc. said technicians were working quickly to fix the outage, which cascaded down to customers using Cablevision Systems Corp.’s Optimum service and Time Warner Cable Inc., among others.
JPMorgan Agrees to Tentative $13 Billion Settlement with U.S. Over Bad Mortgages
October 19th, 2013Woh. It they are agreeing to a $13 billion settlement, one has to wonder about the true magnitude of the damage caused by JPM’s behavior. These settlements typically represent pennies-on-the-dollar wrist slaps which seem to encourage companies to attempt even greater frauds.
Via: Washington Post:
JPMorgan Chase, the nation’s largest bank, has reached a tentative agreement with the Justice Department to pay a record $13 billion to resolve allegations that it knowingly sold faulty mortgage securities that contributed to the financial crisis, a person familiar with the talks said Saturday.
If finalized, the deal would be the largest penalty ever paid by a single company, representing a tremendous win for the government after years of public criticism over its struggle to hold Wall Street accountable for its crisis-era misdeeds.
It would also leave JPMorgan and its executives still at risk of criminal prosecution, a humbling concession. The bank emerged from the financial crisis relatively unscathed but has struggled to shake off the vestiges of that era. Like many banks, it has been accused of selling bad residential mortgages to investors, including Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which lost billions when the housing market crashed.
Mexico Bans GE Corn
October 19th, 2013Via: Care2:
Just when you think there’s no winning against the biotech industry, news out of Mexico City shows that all is not lost. After years of deliberation, a Mexico judge has placed an indefinite ban on genetically-engineered corn. Effective immediately, companies like Monsanto and DuPont/Pioneer will no longer be allowed to plant or sell their corn within the country’s borders.
The decision comes nearly two years after Care2 reported that the Mexican government had put Monsanto’s GE corn on hold, citing the need for more tests.
“Corn is a staple food crop in Mexico, intricately intertwined with the country’s cuisine, history, and culture. Authorities are concerned that Monsanto’s genetically modified corn will contaminate native species, and could cause both health and environmental issues,” Care2 reported at the time.
Now, it appears that Mexican authorities have finally made their decision. According to Environmental Food and Justice, Judge Jaime Eduardo Verdugo J. of the Twelfth Federal District Court for Civil Matters of Mexico City ruled that the genetically-engineered corn posed ”the risk of imminent harm to the environment.” He also ordered Mexico’s Secretary of Agriculture and SEMARNAT (Secretaría de Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales), equivalent to the U.S. EPA, to immediately “suspend all activities involving the planting of transgenic corn in the country and end the granting of permission for experimental and pilot commercial plantings.”
The ruling means that Monsanto and other biotech companies will be required to halt all activities in the country, giving collective action lawsuits initiated by citizens, farmers, scientists and other concerned parties a chance to work their way through the judicial system.
Recovery: “4 in 5 in USA Face Near-Poverty, No Work”
October 19th, 2013Via: AP:
Four out of 5 U.S. adults struggle with joblessness, near-poverty or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their lives, a sign of deteriorating economic security and an elusive American dream.
Survey data exclusive to The Associated Press points to an increasingly globalized U.S. economy, the widening gap between rich and poor, and the loss of good-paying manufacturing jobs as reasons for the trend.
The Navy’s Newest Warship Is Powered by Linux
October 18th, 2013Via: Ars Technica:
The USS Zumwalt will be a floating data center—armed with missiles and robot guns.
When the USS Zumwalt (DDG 1000) puts to sea later this year, it will be different from any other ship in the Navy’s fleet in many ways. The $3.5 billon ship is designed for stealth, survivability, and firepower, and it’s packed with advanced technology. And at the heart of its operations is a virtual data center powered by off-the-shelf server hardware, various flavors of Linux, and over 6 million lines of software code.
A Penny Saved: Psychological Pricing
October 18th, 2013The is very old, but I’m surprised by how few people actually know about it.
Via: Gumroad:
Across the board, prices ending in .99 have higher conversion rates than prices ending in one cent higher, and in one case, the conversion rate is twice as high.
Next Homeland Security Chief Held Pentagon Post
October 18th, 2013Via: USA Today:
President Obama plans to nominate former Pentagon attorney Jeh Johnson as the next secretary of Homeland Security, a White House official said Thursday.
Johnson, general counsel for the Defense Department during Obama’s first term, will be introduced by the president at a ceremony on Friday.
If confirmed by the Senate, Johnson would replace Janet Napolitano, who left the administration to run the University of California education system.
“The president is selecting Johnson because he is one of the most highly qualified and respected national security leaders, having served as the senior lawyer for the largest government agency in the world,” the official said.
The Science-Is-Self-Correcting Myth
October 17th, 2013The scientific method sounds great on paper. Mix in grant swindling, incompetence and fraud and the “science” you get out the other side can turn into a bunch of bullshit.
But don’t worry, science is self correcting!
Via: The Economist:
Academic scientists readily acknowledge that they often get things wrong. But they also hold fast to the idea that these errors get corrected over time as other scientists try to take the work further. Evidence that many more dodgy results are published than are subsequently corrected or withdrawn calls that much-vaunted capacity for self-correction into question. There are errors in a lot more of the scientific papers being published, written about and acted on than anyone would normally suppose, or like to think.
Various factors contribute to the problem. Statistical mistakes are widespread. The peer reviewers who evaluate papers before journals commit to publishing them are much worse at spotting mistakes than they or others appreciate. Professional pressure, competition and ambition push scientists to publish more quickly than would be wise. A career structure which lays great stress on publishing copious papers exacerbates all these problems. “There is no cost to getting things wrong,” says Brian Nosek, a psychologist at the University of Virginia who has taken an interest in his discipline’s persistent errors. “The cost is not getting them published.”
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Fraud is very likely second to incompetence in generating erroneous results, though it is hard to tell for certain. Dr Fanelli has looked at 21 different surveys of academics (mostly in the biomedical sciences but also in civil engineering, chemistry and economics) carried out between 1987 and 2008. Only 2% of respondents admitted falsifying or fabricating data, but 28% of respondents claimed to know of colleagues who engaged in questionable research practices.
Senate Leader Announces Bipartisan Deal to Avoid Default, End Government Shutdown
October 16th, 2013Mmm hmm.
Via: AP:
Democratic leader Harry Reid says Senate leaders have reached a bipartisan deal to avoid default and end the government shutdown, now in its 16th day.
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The deal would reopen the government through Jan. 15 and increase the nation’s borrowing authority through Feb. 7.
