Central Perk

marți, 19 august 2014

Damn Cool Pics

Pets Really Don’t Enjoy Visits to the Vet
Famous Inventors Who Were Killed By Their Inventions
See The Inside Of A Bear Den
When Alcohol Takes Over

Pets Really Don’t Enjoy Visits to the Vet

Posted: 19 Aug 2014 03:20 PM PDT

Famous Inventors Who Were Killed By Their Inventions

Posted: 19 Aug 2014 01:36 PM PDT

Getting killed by your own invention is the epitome of irony.

See The Inside Of A Bear Den

Posted: 19 Aug 2014 01:15 PM PDT

Have you ever wondered where bears go when they hibernate all winter? Take a look at the inside of a bear den.

When Alcohol Takes Over

Posted: 19 Aug 2014 01:11 PM PDT

You may not remember them all, but you make the best memories when you're drunk.

Nine years ago last month, a few of us sat down in my office and started working on Squidoo. Since then, there have been billions of visits to our site, and many of you have clicked, written, and contributed to what we've built. We've been able to pay people from around the world for great content and donate to dozens of charities.

Thanks.

Squidoo was launched before Pinterest, Twitter and Medium were the platforms of the day. It arrived just in time to remind people that in fact they could share what they cared about with people who were interested in hearing about it.

Last week, we announced that HubPages is acquiring the key assets of Squidoo and HugDug, creating the largest site of its kind. Like most projects, this one is coming to a close, and we hope that the combined platform that we're giving to our users will allow them to do more than ever before. HubPages has built a platform that gives user content even more prominence online. I'm excited about where they're going.

I want to point you to the team that built (and even more arduously, improved) Squidoo for all of these years. Many of them are off to start new projects, and some are looking to join teams that are doing important work--people with this much talent don't find themselves in between projects for long. I can't say enough good things about the Squids--each and every one of them is a generous, talented and hardworking expert at what they do.

Thanks to those of you who were part of what we built. I can't wait to see what (all of us) build next.

• Email to a friend •

The Latest on Iraq and Ferguson

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The Latest on Iraq and Ferguson

Yesterday, President Obama delivered a statement on the latest developments in Iraq and in Ferguson, Missouri.

The President discussed how U.S. operations in Iraq have stopped the terrorist group ISIL from advancing on the city of Erbil, and helped Iraqi forces recapture Mosul Dam -- the country's largest dam, which had fallen under terrorist control. He also noted that the U.S. is building an international coalition to address the humanitarian crisis in northern Iraq.

President Obama then gave an update on the situation in Ferguson, noting that the Department of Justice has opened an independent federal civil rights investigation into the death of 18-year-old Michael Brown. Attorney General Eric Holder will travel to Ferguson tomorrow to meet with the FBI agents and DOJ personnel conducting the federal investigation.

Watch the President's full statement here:

Seth's Blog : Slacktivism

Slacktivism

This is far from a new phenomenon. Hundreds of years ago there were holier-than-thou people standing in the village square, wringing their hands, ringing their bells and talking about how urgent a problem was. They did little more than wring their hands, even then.

In our connected world, though, there are two sides to social media's power in spreading the word about a charitable cause.

According to recent data about the ice bucket challenge making the rounds, more than 90% of the people mentioning it (posting themselves being doused or passing on the word) didn't make a donation to support actual research on an actual disease. Sounds sad, no?

But I think these slacktivists have accomplished two important things at scale, things that slacktivists have worked to do through the ages:

They've spread the word. The fact is that most charities have no chance at all to reach the typical citizen, and if their fundraising strategy is small donations from many people, this message barrier is a real issue. Peer-to-peer messaging, even if largely ego-driven, is far better than nothing. In a sideways media world, the only way to reach big numbers is for a large number of people to click a few times, probably in response to a request from a friend.
Even more important, I think, is that they normalize charitable behavior. It's easy to find glowing stories and infinite media impressions about people who win sporting events, become famous or make a lot of money. The more often our peers talk about a different kind of heroism, one that's based on caring about people we don't know, the more likely we are to see this as the sort of thing that people like us do as a matter of course.

Spreading the word and normalizing the behavior. Bravo.

The paradox? As this media strategy becomes more effective and more common (as it becomes a strategy, not just something that occurs from the ground up as it did in this case), two things are likely to happen, both of which we need to guard against:

Good causes in need of support are going to focus on adding the sizzle and ego and zing that gets an idea to spread, instead of focusing on the work. One thing we know about online virality is that what worked yesterday rarely works tomorrow. A new arms race begins, and in this case, it's not one that benefits many. We end up developing, "an unprecedented website with a video walkthrough and internationally recognized infographics..." (actual email pitch I got while writing this post).
We might, instead of normalizing the actual effective giving of grants and donations, normalize slacktivism. It could easily turn out that we start to emotionally associate a click or a like or a mention as an actual form of causing change, not merely a way of amplifying a message that might lead to that action happening.

The best model I've seen for a cause that's figured out how to walk this line between awareness and action is charity: water. My friend Bernadette and I are thrilled to be supporting their latest campaign. It would be great if you'd contribute or even better, start a similar one.

I think the goal needs to be that activism and action are not merely the right thing to do, but the expected, normal thing to do.

• Email to a friend •

luni, 18 august 2014

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Robot Successfully Hitchhikes Across Entire Length of Canada, Now On Way Back

Posted: 18 Aug 2014 07:07 PM PDT

Meet hitchBOT, a robot from Port Credit, Ontario.

HitchBOT Help explains Everything you always wanted to know about hitchBOT, but were afraid to ask.

HitchBot successfully hitchhiked from Halifax, Nova Scotia to Victoria, British Columbia, a distance of about 4,000 miles. HitchBOT is now on a return trip.

CNN reports ...

The gender-neutral robot was conceived by university researchers David Harris Smith and Frauke Zeller, who view its quest as part performance art, part social experiment.

"People seem to be rather intrigued with hitchBOT, and take very good care (of it)," said Smith, a communications and multimedia professor at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, and Zeller, a communications professor at Ryerson University in Toronto, in a statement e-mailed to CNN.

"We have even seen hitchBOT lying in a camping bed under a blanket, and sitting on a toilet," they said, "so people certainly have fun with it."

hitchBOT has a bucket for a torso, blue swimming-pool noodles for arms and legs and a smiling LED panel for a face, protected by a cake saver. It wears yellow gloves on its hands, and wellies -- rubber boots -- on its feet. Inside is a simple tablet PC and some components from Arduino, the open-source electronics platform. Together, all the parts cost about $1,000.

"We wanted to see what we can build on a shoestring budget ... and with tools/components that one can get in any hardware store," Smith and Zeller said.

Thanks to its computerized innards and speech software, hitchBOT can answer basic questions, make small talk and recite info from Wikipedia. It can also get pretty chatty, not always something you want in a road-trip companion.

"We knew that sometimes ... hitchBOT won't be able to properly understand what people are saying. For these cases, we came up with the solution to let hitchBOT simply chatter away," its creators said. "We taught hitchBOT to say that sometimes it gets a bit carried away, and that its programmers could only write that many scripts, hoping for people to be patient."

hitchBOT records its journey via GPS. It contains a camera and snaps random photos every half hour or so, which are moderated before being posted online to protect people's privacy. It also can record conversations with people it meets -- with their permission -- as a sort of audio diary.

Humans who encounter hitchBOT are directed to its website, where instructions tell them how to handle the robot (tip: drop it off at rest stops or gas stations instead of alone on busy highways).

Smith and Zeller say the goal of their project is to examine the relationship between humans and "smart" technologies while seeing whether an anthropomorphic robot can engender good will, cooperation and even affection.

Instagram Images

Instagram has some pictures of hitchBOT. Here are a couple of them.

Google Images

Google Search provides more images.

HitchBOT On Way Home

HitchBOT successfully completed the trip and is now on the way home as reported by Tech Times.

The kindly people of Canada have helped hitchBOT make it from the country's east coast to its western reaches and, so far, the hitchhiking robot hasn't been rerouted to an electronics supply store and scrapped for spare circuitry.
h
HitchBOT has already traveled the roughly 60 hour, 6,227-kilometer from Halifax, Nova Scotia, to Victoria, British Columbia, and is on its way back home. The cross-country trip is a social experiment, of sorts, as the team behind the hitchhiking robot is seeking to study interactions between humans and artificial intelligence.

"I was conceived in Port Credit, Ontario," states hitchBOT. "My guardians are Dr. David Smith (McMaster University), and Dr. Frauke Zeller (Ryerson University). Growing up I was surrounded by bright, intelligent, and supportive people who I am proud to call my family. I have one sibling, kulturBOT, who travels from one art gallery to the next, tweeting photos of the artwork and of the venues."

The talkative robot has been offering to chat up drivers about topics such as astrophysics and philosophy and it is sharing its soul-searching journey on Instagram and Twitter. While hitchBOT is conversational, its English skills aren't perfect yet.

"After much thought and contemplation, I've come to realize that there is so much to experience beyond the boundaries of Toronto," stated hitchBOT before setting out. "Every time I think about all of the mountains and valleys, towns and inlets, and people and lifestyles that exist across Canada, I become increasingly excited -- and nervous at the same time -- about my hitchhiking journey across Canada."

Hitchbot vs. Bubble Headed Boobie

No offense to hitchBOT, but it looks rather like the "bubble headed booby" from Lost in Space.

Looks don't count. So congratulations to hitchBOT and the hitchBOT team!

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Rising Robots: Is it Obvious Robots Cost Human Jobs? Looking for Someone to Blame?

Posted: 18 Aug 2014 11:46 AM PDT

Technology Review has an interesting infographic on the Rising Use of Robots, and which sectors show the biggest increase in use.

I broke up the infographic into a series of smaller ones for purposes of discussion, adding red, blue, and purple colored boxes in the following chart.

Robot Usage Since 2009

In Europe, except Germany, robot usage is up and employment down.
In the US, South Korea, and Germany, robot usage is up and so is human employment.
In Japan robot usage and employment are both down.
Japan did not even benefit from a falling Yen.

This shows the relative increase in demand for US and Korean cars, and the relative lack of demand for Japanese cars and European cars other than German cars.

In the US, as long as cars sales remain strong, it appears auto jobs will stay. How long will that be?

Robot Usage by Sector

Note the robust use of robots in automotive and electronic. Contrast that with the three lowest usages of pharmaceuticals, food, and plastics.

Given the huge numbers of people employed in food industries, especially fast food, a growth area for food robotics seems relatively easy to spot.

Cost and performance of robots vs. cost of human labor is the key impediment to more robot use in food service.

Social concerns may also be at play. Do people prefer social interaction and the occasional bad server to a robot for whom you have to leave no tip?

Robot Sales

Robot sales are up, and so is job growth in the US. On a comparative basis, job growth in the eurozone, except for Germany is stagnant.

Point - Counterpoint

A comment to the infographic by Cathal Haughian caught my eye. Haughian commented "Those countries that have high minimum wages automate first. I had a tour of Mc Donald's newest Chicken factory, in China, this year. It employed a third of the workforce of a similar plant in the US. It's fully automated. Slaughters 5 million chickens per day. Robots the size of a two story house. Amazing. The Robot revolution will break the back of our economic system by 2020, I'd bet."

Technology Review editor replied "No it's actually more ambiguous than that, obviously: sometimes robots create entirely new jobs in new industries; sometimes they allow reallocation of labor to more productive uses; sometimes they sustain industries that would otherwise disappear. The truth is that no one knows whether we are witnessing a long-term restructuring of employment (in the sense that "full employment" may be a lower percentage of the population in industrialized nations) - and anyone who tells you otherwise is an ideologue on one side or another of this debate."

I side with the editor. Over the long haul, technology creates jobs. The problem being "over the long haul".

Why Robots?

It's obvious robots increase productivity.

But that is not the only force in play. The Fed (central banks in general) have cheapened the cost of money so much that some of the increase in use of robots is due entirely to cheap money.

Moreover, the push for rising minimum wages has done the same. Set the minimum wage at $20 per hour, and I bet you see far more robots, in far more places than you do today.

Looking for Someone to Blame?

Technology improvements are an inherently good thing. They lower prices, increase standards of living, and give us more free time.

Yet, if robot usage is artificially high thereby costing human jobs (and it likely is), blame the Fed for poor economic policy and blame Congress for poor fiscal policy. Don't blame the robots or the companies that use them.

Different This Time?

Some claim it's different this time, that robots are going to take your job no matter what it is.

Is it that simple?

For a robust discussion from multiple angles, including a couple of solutions, one of them grim, please see It's Different This Time: Humans Need Not Apply; Two Possible Solutions.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

marți, 19 august 2014

Damn Cool Pics

Damn Cool Pics

Seth's Blog : Squidthanks

Squidthanks

More Recent Articles

The Latest on Iraq and Ferguson

Seth's Blog : Slacktivism

Slacktivism

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luni, 18 august 2014

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

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