Can You Really Sue Fortnite For Stealing Your Dance Move?

It would be hard to win such a suit under US copyright law.

But that will not stop anyone from trying, even if they are ultimately just paid a token amount to go away. JL

Keith Stuart reports in The Guardian:

Though a choreographic work incorporating the moonwalk may be registered,  individual moves may not be, because allowing building blocks to be protected could chill creativity and innovation.“Routines are not considered to be works of original creative authorship. While dances may contain some elements of copyrightability, in that they communicate a theme or concept, they may not be sufficiently complex to be registered.” Fortnite uses brief sequences of dance moves. It is difficult to prove ownership because this artform is littered with appropriation and reinterpretation of expressive movements.

Maximizing Machine Learning: Alexa Grew Up This Year Because People Talked To It

The more it's used, and the data its systems capture is evaluated, the better it becomes. Up to a point. JL

Brian Barrett reports in Wired:

Over the past year, Alexa has learned how to carry over context from one query to the next, and to register follow-up questions. You can ask Alexa to do more than one thing in the same request, and summon a skill without having to know its exact name. Active learning, in which the system identifies areas in which it needs help from a human expert, has cut down on Alexa’s error rates: the system has seen a 25% reduction over the last year.. Those gains have come through the refinement of machine learning.

Who Wins When Cash Is No Longer King?

It is not entirely who, besides banks, credit card companies and merchants will win but it is apparent that the middle class, working class and poor will lose access, choice and opportunity. JL


Sidney Fussell reports in The Atlantic:

Killing cash makes billions for credit-card companies. “Card swipe” fees, a 1% charge that retailers pay to banks when shoppers pay using credit and debit cards, earned Visa and Mastercard $43 billion last year. Arguments against uploading the grocery store to the cloud include potential job losses, but also cybersecurity and IT failures, particularly during disasters. Making a card a requirement for consumption is analogous to making identification a requirement for voting. It disempowers communities of color.” Cashless stores create public spaces that bar low-income people. The unbanked will disappear.

Major US Supermarket Chain Kroger Launches Driverless Grocery Delivery Service

An interesting question is determining the point at which the hassle of shopping is outweighed by the hassle of ordering, scheduling and waiting for robots to do it for you. JL


Theresa Braine in The Daily News and Venture Beat report:

U.S. supermarket chain Kroger said  it has started using unmanned autonomous vehicles to deliver groceries in Scottsdale, Arizona in partnership with Silicon Valley startup Nuro. Kroger said the service would be available at its unit Fry’s Food Stores for $5.95 with no minimum order requirement for same-day or next-day deliveries. "A world without errands, where everything is on-demand and can be delivered affordably.”

Why Mobile Phone Payment History Will Be Added To Consumer Credit Scores

Lenders want to lend more money. But restrictions imposed during the Great Recession have limited growth. By adding mobile payment histories, more consumers without credit are likely to receive it because most people do pay their mobile bills.

The concern is that this may artificially inflate credit scores at a time of full employment, which could create problems when the inevitable cycle turns. JL


AnnaMaria Andriotis reports in the Wall Street Journal:

Consumers’ cellphone and utility payments will be added to credit reports, a move that will likely boost the credit scores of millions of people and increase loan approvals. This could improve their chances of getting credit cards, personal loans and auto loans because paying phone and utility providers consistently could be a sign that consumers will pay other bills as well. The industry’s efforts could make shaky borrowers look better than they actually are. It is unclear how borrowers with limited credit histories will perform when unemployment begins to rise.

Amazon's New Physical Stores Show How Boring Algorithmic Shopping Is

Convenience has driven Amazon to its current success.

But will too much curation undermine Amazon's business model by simply boring consumers so much that they actively seek more exciting alternatives? JL

Sofie Werthan reports in Slate:

Surely with Amazon’s vast inventory, the store would yield some cool discoveries. Instead, the items felt familiar (kitchen tongs, Brita filters,). If it’s one of the top-selling items on Amazon, you have seen it. You go to Amazon when you need batteries or shampoo, not to to find something surprising. By expanding into brick-and-mortar retail, Amazon is “going to take data about what we do online and marry it to data about what we do offline. That enables them to spot patterns. But is convenience a worthwhile trade-off for less privacy and fewer options? Amazon is ideal for the functions of daily life, not the serendipitous moments.

Study: Netflix Is Not Killing Movie Theaters. Neither Are Milllennials Or Gen Xers

Streaming is not cannibalizing movie theaters. And young people are not staying at home to watch films on their smartphones.

The entertainment industry has been blaming viewership problems on new technology ever since talkies replaced silent films. Maybe its finally time to take a really hard look at pricing and content. JL


Karl Bode reports in TechDirt:

The chicken-little argument mutated over the years to imply that streaming services like Netflix were killing movie theater attendance. (But) users who visited theaters nine times or more in the last 12 months consumed more streaming content than consumers who visited a movie theater only once or twice. (And) the ages 13 to 17 went to 7.3 movies and consumed 9.2 hours of streaming content, notably more than any other demographic. The lesson, again, is that most media consumption sources are synergistic, not cannibalistic. “People who love content are watching it across platforms."

Cable Internet Provider Ordered To Pay Defrauded Customers For Lousy Broadband

Though the company is huge, which means fines and refunds are relatively insignificant to it, the ruling is part of a larger customer backlash against tech companies which have repeatedly violated consumers' rights.

The implication is that the era of tech impunity to legal or financial consequences is ending. JL


Joseph Spector and Jeff Platsky report in USA Today:

The agreement settles a consumer fraud case brought by New York that claimed the state's largest internet service provider, which operated as Time Warner Cable, didn't provide reliable and fast internet service as promised."The $62.5 million in direct refunds to consumers represent the largest-ever payout to consumers by an internet service provider (ISP) in U.S. history."

Tech Companies Expanding Outside Silicon Valley Are Mostly Going To Other Tech Centers

Clusters have socio-economic benefits.JL

Rani Molla reports in Re/code:

Lately, it’s felt as though tech companies are moving anywhere but the San Francisco Area. Despite this spate, the Bay Area still reigns supreme. Tech companies that are expanding outside of the Bay Area or Seattle, Boston and New York, are mostly expanding within those four locales. That’s not to say tech companies aren’t branching out beyond the top four markets, especially as real estate costs balloon in tech cities. But when they do, it’s to other locales that already have substantial tech company activity.

Why Paying For Facebook Might Be A Good Thing

There could be financial benefits for Facebook as regulators circle and a growing number of users are less engaged. Payments would generate a steady stream of revenue. And given its history of personal data abuses, as well as its consistently less than truthful statements about them, could give a skeptical public a reason to stay on.

But the real advantage would be to paying users who would be protected by commercial transaction law with a well established history which is less favorable to forgiving Facebook's seemingly endless predations.

Of course, getting people to sign up at scale would be predicated on their believing that Facebook would actually adhere to the terms of the contract and not sell their data anyway. Which, given the company's behavior over time, would be a significant challenge. JL


Jeremy Tillman reports in Fortune:

Facebook could offer a version of its platform that is ad- and tracker free. With an $8 to $10 monthly subscription, “Facebook Premium” could help the company attract a privacy-conscious audience that is increasingly less engaged with its platform, and generate the same amount of revenue it does from advertising in the U.S. and Canada. As a paid product with no ads, Facebook would no longer have the impetus to monopolize user attention to maximize ad impressions, nor would it need to harvest data to maximize conversion rates.

Retailers Slammed With 1.5 Million Pre-Christmas Return Packages. In One Day

Easy return policies have boosted consumer confidence in ecommerce and helped make it the dominant force in shopping.

The questions are at what point free returns become such an economic burden that merchants are forced to begin charging. And the corollary is, at what point consumers will assume the charge on their credit cards without complaint as a cost of doing business? JL


Rachel Premack reports in Business Insider:

1.5 million packages were returned on Wednesday, which would make it the peak returns day this holiday season. It was the first time "National Returns Day" fell before Christmas. $94 billion worth of goods are expected to be returned this holiday season. 79% of consumers check return policies before buying products. 44% of US shoppers returned an item purchased online and most shipped the item back. Retailers simplified the returns process and therefore boosted people's confidence in buying online. "An easy return policy makes return customers for retailers."

The End of Scale?

New developments in technology are changing the fundamental economics of business.

The industrial revolution was based on the advantages of scale. But the digital revolution which is supplanting it, enables smart enterprises to harness the exponential economies of data, analytics and machine learning to optimize unscaled opportunities. JL


Hemant Taneja and Kevin Maney report in MIT Sloan Management Review:

Business in the century ahead will be driven by economies of unscale, in which traditional competitive advantages of size are turned on their heads by economies of unscale, enabled by the emergence of platforms and technologies that can be rented as needed.  AI supplants mass production and mass marketing as a competitive advantage. It can learn about individuals, then tailor products for them at scale. AI enables mass customization for increasingly narrow markets. Because companies can stay nimble by renting scale, they can adjust more quickly to changing demand at lower cost with less effort. This is the basis of economics of unscale.

Life or Death Algorthims: Avoiding the Black Box Of AI Medicine

Inexplicable decisions based on indecipherable data, which is proprietary, so the patient is not allowed to see. JL


Thomas Hornigold reports in Singularity Hub:

As ever with artificial intelligence algorithms, the aim is not to replace doctors, but to give them tools to reduce the repetitive parts of the job. The problems of black-box algorithms that make inexplicable decisions are bad enough when you're trying to understand a chatbot. In healthcare, the consequences of algorithmic failure could be grave. The statistical models that underlie neural networks assume variables are independent of each other, but in a complex, interacting system like the human body, this is not the case. The current system for testing medical products needs adaptation before it can successfully test validate the new algorithms.

Addressable TV Advertising: Has the Myth Finally Become Reality?

Given the measurement issues affecting all digital ads, the gap between myth and reality is probably in the details. But the larger question is how consumers will respond: with joy or horror? JL


Tim Peterson reports in Digiday:

An ad shown on a TV-size screen alongside TV-quality content but pinpointed with digital’s precision — it’s the thing of John Wanamaker’s dreams. But like any good dream, it’s hard to tell what’s real. In 2019 TV networks, cable and satellite TV providers and streaming TV services will make more TV inventory available for addressable, which is TV’s term for “targeted,” advertising. One-eighth of TV inventory today is available for addressable advertising. There are 60 million households in the U.S. that can be served addressable ads on traditional cable and satellite TV.

The Implication of Uber Losing Its Appeal Over Driver Employment Rights

Though this ruling will be appealed, Uber has now lost twice with the same argument.

The latest finding cuts to the question at the heart of Uber's (and Lyft's) future: is their business model so contrived and so dependent, not on technology, but on underpaying their workforce, that their legitimacy and long term sustainability is at stake once that shaky economic foundation is rendered illegal? JL


Sarah Butler reports in The Guardian:

Judges have dismissed Uber’s appeal against a landmark employment tribunal ruling that its drivers should be classed as workers with access to the minimum wage and paid holidays. “For [Uber] to be stating to its regulator that it is operating a private hire vehicle service and is a fit and proper person to do so, while at the same time arguing in this litigation that it is merely an affiliate of a company which licenses tens of thousands of proprietors of small businesses to use its software, contributes to the air of contrivance and artificiality which pervade’s Uber’s case.”

For Data Driven Marketers There's A New Keyword - Intent

Data's value increasingly depends on its ability to help predict consumer behavior. JL

MIT Technology Review reports:

Machine learning and data-driven attribution enable marketers to focus on customers who have the highest potential lifetime value (LTV) a forward-looking measurement of the overall value that a customer will generate throughout the relationship with a brand. Data-driven attribution (DDA) uses machine learning to calculate the contribution of each customer action along the conversion path. It examines how people find a business and decide to become its customers, then assigns credit. That helps marketing teams determine which ads, keywords, and campaigns will most directly affect business goals.

Markets Are Tanking, But Tech Companies Going Public At Record Pace

Even as equity markets are collapsing, tech unicorns (companies with a valuation above $1 billion) have been going public at a rate not seen since the dotcom boom 18 years ago.

Some of this may be due to entrepreneurs and VCs somewhat belatedly recognizing they had better cash in while they can, but it may also be that as the global economy becomes increasingly tech dependent, even unheralded enterprises are gaining acknowledgement of their value. JL


Corrie Driebusch reports in the Wall Street Journal:

In 2018, to little fanfare, 38 tech and internet companies valued at $1 billion or more at the time of their IPO listed shares in the U.S., the most to do so since the height of the dot-com boom in 2000. Many (are) lesser-known software companies that tout private valuations between $1 billion and $5 billion. Many were based in China. These less commercially recognizable companies have made up many of the 2018 unicorns, and haven’t gotten much attention. “These are stories people don’t know well because they’re not an app on your phone,”

Why Future CEOs May Increasingly Come From An Unlikely Source: Supply Chain

As operational excellence surpasses new technology to become an increasingly significant differentiator in establishing competitive advantage. JL

Nader Mikhail reports in Fortune:

We live in a world in which customers are no longer impressed by two-day delivery. This “Amazon effect” has reset the bar for operational execution. Business leaders must now perfect how they get products to the right place at the right time or risk losing their customers to faster competitors. (But) product companies only control 20% of their supply chain; they work through external suppliers, carriers, and contract manufacturers. Supply chain isn’t about potential; it’s (about) execution, consistent performance, and juggling complex, constantly changing details; the secret weapon to maintaining a competitive edge.

How Computers Got So Good At Recognizing Images

A team of academics entered a competition and won. Google recognized the significance of their discovery and acqui-hired them, jump-starting the commercial aspects of the field. JL

Timothy Lee reports in ars technica:

A 2013 paper described how Google was using deep convolutional networks to read address numbers from photos in Google Street View images. "Our system helped us extract close to 100 million physical street numbers from Street View imagery," the authors wrote. Researchers found that the performance of neural networks kept improving as they got deeper. "We find that the performance of this approach increases with the depth of the convolutional network, with the best performance occurring in the deepest architecture we trained."

Lyft Challenged People To Ditch Their Cars. The Results Were Unsurprising

Behavioral Economics 101. JL

Sasha Lekach reports in Mashable:

The Ditch Your Car Challenge offered personal driving alternatives, paid for by Lyft. More than 130,000 offered to participate in the challenge. Following the month, it wasn't that surprising to see the highest ranking forms of transportation for commutes were 75 percent for ride-sharing, then 42 percent for public transit, and then 32 percent for walking. The main finding from the Lyft experiment: if you pay people they'll give up anything.

The Reason the Electric Car Can't Be Killed

Over a million sold, with 43 brands already available with more on the way. Plus, GM and Tesla have already sold so many their buyers no longer qualify for tax credits - and don't seem to care. This has gotten too big to kill. JL

Michael Grunwald reports in Politico:

Now that electric vehicles are going mainstream in the U.S.most automakers believe “the future is electric." There are 43 plug-in models for sale in the U.S., with dozens more expected. The main obstacle to mass adoption has been battery costs, but they’ve plunged more than 80%, and they’re expected to keep plunging. The credit phases out for automakers that sell 200,000 EVs, a milestone that both Tesla and General Motors reached in 2018. The status quo would keep the tax credit afloat, but in reduced form for GM as well as Tesla. “Trump couldn’t bring back coal, and he won’t kill the electric car.”

Digital Data Gives Billboard Owners More Reason To Love A Good Traffic Jam

If you have a mobile device, you're generating data someone else is monetizing. JL

Jason Notte reports in the New York Times:

The average one-way trip for commuters in the United States in 2017 was 26.9 minutes. Slower traffic helped the data collection programs determine who was looking at the board and for how long. Using anonymous data from mobile devices and apps, (advertisers)have figured out how fast cars are passing by, how much “dwell time” drivers spend paying attention to billboards, what the demographics of the drivers are, and even where they live, travel and shop.

Why It Matters That UK Tax Authorities Classify Cryptos As Property, Not Money

The issue is not whether evading taxes is possible, as in the fever dreams to which the most fervid crypto supporters still cling, but whether, more prosaically, holders will be taxed for capital gains or income.

Oh, and pay their national insurance obligations. JL


Nikhilesh De reports in Coindesk:

The UK government (is) treating crypto assets more as property than as a form of money. “HMRC does not consider crypto assets to be currency or money." How a token is treated for tax purposes depends on the token’s use, rather than its definition. Investors who purchase tokens specifically in the hopes that their value will increase will be required to pay capital gains tax when they sell, while individuals who receive tokens from their employers as a form of payment, from mining, transaction fees or airdrops will have to pay income tax and national insurance contributions.

Monetizing Every Move You Make: The Commodification Of Life As We Know It

With the advent of more connected devices, from smart speakers to smart faucets to microwaves and thermostats, every human action can be codified, commoditized and monetized.

The big question is to what degree people feel this is helpful or intrusive, beneficial or harmful. Whatever the outcome, they should probably not expect to have a say in it.

Smart companies are considering the frameworks within which this access to and application of data can be socially engineered in ways that optimize outcomes within cultural norms. But people's behavior may change - and, for some, that is the point. JL


Joe Pinsker reports in The Atlantic:

Thousands of devices capture an unprecedented amount of data about domestic life. They present a future in which the experience of doing stuff at home converges with the experience of being online, in which a company can catalog people’s daily habits and present them with more of what it thinks they’ll like, the transformation of the home into just another tech platform. Every sip of milk, every hour of TV watched, and every game played could be used to try to sell you something else. “What we do, we get more of . There’s a compromise to have anything replicated, reified, reinforced in ways you’re not choosing.” People’s behavior might change.

Scientists Accidentally Create Mutant Enzyme That Eats Plastic

Serendipity strikes again. JL

Damian Carrington reports in The Guardian:

New research was spurred by the discovery iof the first bacterium that naturally evolved to eat plastic. Scientists then tweaked the enzyme to see how it had evolved, but tests showed they had inadvertently made the molecule even better at breaking down the plastic used for soft drink bottles. The mutant enzyme takes a few days to start breaking down the plastic – far faster than the centuries it takes in the oceans. Researchers are optimistic this can be speeded up even further and become a viable large-scale process.

The Big Business Of Making A Social Media Star

You may have read about the Hollywood studios from the 1920s through the 1950s. They controlled everything creative from inventing stars to supervising scripts, filming and sound stages to talent management, public relations and marketing.

Welcome to the world of social media stardom today. JL


Eric Johnson reports in Re/code:

There’s a war between Instagram and YouTube. There’s a war between YouTube and Spotify. There’s a war between Spotify and Amazon. There’s a war between Amazon and Hulu. There’s a war between Hulu and Netflix. We want to be that one company supplying these platforms with the missiles and tanks and armor. We do everything in-house: artists managed in-house, the music side, the touring side, video, product and brand, editing and post production. 12% of Brazil's population, 220 million people, follow Anitta on social media.

How Much Do Tech CEOs Make Pre- IPO?

Enough to keep them sullen but not mutinous? JL

Price Economics reports:

There have been a flurry of IPOs in 2018. The base salaries for (those) CEOs are $100K to $500K. Across all  compensation packages, the base salary represents, on average, 42% of total compensation. If we compare this to the distribution for Fortune 100 CEOs (base salary is 8% of total compensation), it’s relatively low. There is a slight positive correlation between the CEO’s total compensation and annual revenue (R-squared = 0.33). With rumored high-profile IPOs in 2019 (such as Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, Pinterest, Palantir, Postmates), we are interested to see how their CEOs’ salaries compare.

The Ways Unilever Uses AI To Recruit and Train Employees

The processing is more efficient. The question, yet to be answered, is to what degree the candidates screened algorithmically perform over time as compared to their colleagues who were recruited and assessed using more traditional human methods. JL

Bernard Marr reports in Forbes:

Unilever recruits 30,000 people a year and processes1.8 million job applications. Candidates can be assessed in front of a computer or mobile phone screen. 70,000 person-hours of interviewing and assessing had been cut, thanks to the automated screening system.  “All of our applicants get  feedback; how they did in the video interviews, what characteristics fit, and don’t fit, the reason why they didn’t, and what they should do to be successful in a future application. Another machine learning initiative helps new employees adapt to day-to-day routines as well as corporate culture. “It’s an example of AI allowing us to be more human.”

The Reason Tech Stocks Should Not Move Together

Could it be that both the dramatic increase in the equity markets over the past year - and their equally precipitous decline - is due to a destructive and inaccurate obsession with the similarities of the tech companies that have dominated those markets - rather than effectively assessing their differences? JL

Jeff Sommer reports in the New York Times:

All big companies today are tech companies. In late 2018, using advanced technology isn’t a distinguishing characteristic. “What we call ‘tech companies’ includes a broad range of companies at different stages of maturity. The aging process for tech companies, which usually start out as high-growth companies, is rapid." The differences between tech companies tend to be more important than the similarities. When it comes to assessing what individual companies are worth, treating tech stocks as homogeneous is a  mistake. It is sloppy thinking that leads to wacky share valuations and an inefficient, vulnerable market.

Why Amazon Is Targeting Unprofitable Items To Sharpen Its Focus

Amazon has succeeded in becoming the indispensable force in ecommerce in the developed world. Now, as many feared, it is focusing on profitability, meaning that it is pressuring suppliers.

This seems like a natural evolution from a business perspective: grow market share to the point where others cannot compete, then raise profits.

But the interesting question is whether, given growing concerns about its dominance, legislators, regulators and citizens will begin see the rising profitability on top of runaway growth as a sign the company should be broken up. JL


Laura Stevens and colleagues report in the Wall Street Journal:

As Amazon focuses more on its bottom line, it is taking aim at items known as CRaP, short for “Can’t Realize a Profit.” Think bottled beverages or snack foods. The products tend to be priced at $15 or less, are sold directly by Amazon, and are bulky, therefore costly to ship, characteristics that make for thin margins. Amazon’s profit has risen in the past couple of years, helping its stock price. Most of that profitability has stemmed from its growing cloud business and advertising unit. Predictive technology monitors pricing dynamics (to) adjust sizes, change  variety or redesign packaging to ensure  products will be profitable enough to stay on Amazon.

AI-Based Models Predict Heart Attack Survivability And Improve Treatment

The next step is presumably to use AI to identify means to improve survivability rates. JL

Kyle Wiggers reports in Venture Beat:

AI models achieved 85.12% accuracy in identifying the 30% of patients who died within one year of admission. A deep neural network model with layers of mathematical functions that loosely mimic the behavior neurons in the human brain outperformed all of the machine learning algorithms studied in its ability to identify patients who died within one year. “The improved predictability obtained by using machine learning can help at-risk patients strive for compliance to treatment plans to improve mortality risk.”

How Come Movie, TV and Music Stars Are Uncomfortable Being Digitally Scanned?

They are concerned that the corporate entities that own the productions in which they act, sing or perform will control their digital images in perpetuity and could use the imagery in place of the performer at considerably lower cost.

Ownership and use of such rights is being negotiated but has not been legally settled. JL


Chris Lee reports in Vulture:

“When we’re scanning somebody, we don’t know if it’s for stunt-double work, for replacement shots or if it’s in case something happens, they’ve got data of the actors that could finish the movie.” Welcome to the increasingly common practice of scanning actors to manipulate their

digital images. Scanning digital doubles serves as a hedge against cast members premature deaths or unexpected rehab stays. (But) the rights go to the (studios). "They could own my intellectual property forever.Who’s to say  they won’t take that scan and say, ‘Let’s make another movie. He’s been dead for fifteen years but we can do whatever we want with him.’”

The Reason the Uber and Lyft IPOs Won't Change Much

The path to profitability will remain elusive, early stage VCs will retain control and despite evidence that the price war between the two seems unlikely to abate, investors will continue to believe that the duopoly will generate 'excess profits.' Some day. JL


Henry Grabar reports in Slate:

With each company poised to raise a ton more money and the business model exposed to the scrutiny of public markets, both Uber and Lyft continue to burn through cash at astounding rates, even as American city-dwellers increasingly take their services for granted. (But) voting control won't be for sale. Uber will be by far the biggest IPO in history. Ultimately, the rides will still be cheap, the business will still lose money, and you’ll forget the “race to IPO” ever happened.

The End of the Ad-Supported Web?

There will always be a place for advertising supported internet access, just as there has been for print, television and every other medium.

But it may be that the digital ad model as we have known it is ending, rendered irrelevant by the harsh economics of attracting, measuring and monetizing attention. JL


Julie Genestoux reports in Medium:

Our naive “content-wants-to-be-free” approach failed to account for externalities.The rules of what is possible are now being superseded by the rule of law. Using ads to support content creation is not working, whether the ads are not being displayed, or, outside of larges platforms, nobody is able to scrape cents per hour (from) ads. Smaller websites do not have the resources to block the blockers. Both Apple’s ad blocking crusade and Europe’s GDPR are reinforcing the duopoly. Anything that can steal a few minutes of web users time is rewarded. But What if creators were being paid based on the value they create for consumers?

How One More Robot In An Area Can Reduce Employment By Six Workers

The cumulative effect of automation to the economy is more significant than previously thought. JL

Thomas Edsall reports in the New York Times:

The (2018)  tax bill permits “U.S. corporations to expense their capital investment, through 2022. So, if a U.S. corporation buys a robot for $100 thousand, it can deduct the $100 thousand immediately to calculate its U.S. taxable income, rather than recover the $100 thousand over the life of the robot, as under prior law. One more robot per thousand workers reduces employment-to-population ratio by about 0.2 percentage points or, one new robot reduces employment by about 3.3 workers and wages by about 0.37%. “One more robot in a commuting zone reduces employment by about six workers.”

Why Hope Is A Better Motivator Than Fear

Research suggests that motivating is a long term endeavor whereas fear is most impactful in the short term.

For those wishing to build lasting institutions - groups, teams, companies, societies - hope provides the optimal means to achieve the desired outcome. JL


Knowledge@Wharton reports:

Hope trumps fear. Hope breeds confidence and emotions tied to positive performance. The relationship between group hope and commitment to a failing venture is stronger than the relationship between group fear and terminating that venture.All emotions have value. Fear signals something has gone wrong, needs to be fixed and gives energy. Though those are positive outcomes, fear causes people to become rigid, less creative. It tends to be better in [small] doses. The question is, are they retaining the best talent? Motivation is a long game, are they gaining the best outcomes? Are they only losing the people they don’t want to keep?

How DeepMind Mastered Complex Games With No Human Input

Increasing computing power exponentially - and pitting generality against specificity. JL

Edd Gent reports in Singularity Hub:

Game-playing AI typically exploit the properties of a single game and rely on hand-crafted knowledge coded into them. But AlphaZero was built to be game-agnostic. It was given the rules of each game, and then played itself thousands of times, using trial and error to work out the best tactics for each. It was then pitted against the most powerful specialized AI for each game. By making programs more general, they can break out of the confines of  rigid environments and tackle real-world challenges. A factor in the tractability of many problems is how many chips are dedicated to them: the computing used to train programs are increasing exponentially.

Counteracting the Undue Influence of Negative Online Ratings

Products, services or businesses with a few initial negative ratings can salvage the situation and may even turn it to their advantage. JL


Roberta Kwok reports in Yale Insights

Products or businesses that initially receive poor reviews are likely to get fewer ratings in the future. Since the rest of the “crowd” doesn’t weigh in, the item may be stuck with an unfairly low score. It “might never be corrected. If there are few reviews, the score is not only inaccurate but biased. There is a systematic tendency for such scores to be underestimations.” Businesses that start off with bad reviews can counteract the effect by asking more customers to review their product or service. (And) customers shouldn’t dismiss low-rated items with few reviews. “You’re likely to be positively surprised.”

The Reason Lyft Has Eaten Into Uber's US Market Share

There are some differences in the numbers - such as whether Canadian rides and/or Ubereats are included - but it appears that Uber's early negative publicity has given Lyft an opening which it has effectively exploited primarily through increased public awareness and by treating its drivers better. JL


Rani Molla reports in Re/code:

As of October, Uber and Lyft owned 98% of the U.S. consumer ride-sharing market. Uber held 69.2% (3% points lower than in October 2017) while Lyft controlled 28.4% (3% points higher than last year). Uber’s ride-sharing sales included revenue from Uber Eats until May 2017, when the measurement company was able to separate the two.

Starbucks Plans To Expand Delivery Across the US and China

If fewer customers are coming to you, go to them. JL

Julie Jargon reports in the Wall Street Journal:

The coffee chain has been facing slowing traffic to its domestic coffee shops, began testing delivery with UberEats and will begin offering it next year. Delivery (has) added sales for chains that have seen traffic erode. Delivery has attracted customers who don’t come in. Starbucks is farther ahead on delivery in China since the chain joined with a delivery unit of Alibaba. The company says it has solved the challenges delivery poses  with splash-proof lids, delivery containers designed to keep drinks hot or cold and tamper-proof packaging seals. Dedicated drivers in China promise to deliver Starbucks coffee in 30 minutes

How Google Became A Good Neighbor In New York (Listen Up, Amazon)

Google's touch was respectful and quiet. It tried to fit in, rather than dominate.

And while attitude is important, timing is everything. The urban world was less sophisticated about the impact of technology and tech companies when Google made its move ten years ago than it is today as Amazon plans its New York debut. JL

Winnie Hu and David Goodman report in the New York Times:

In a city where almost any change is met by fierce resistance, Google has drawn relatively few complaints as it has made itself at home in Chelsea, a neighborhood where public housing projects sit beside luxury buildings, art galleries and trendy restaurants and clubs. Google made a statement sby moving in. “It said to the world: This is where technology meets cool."Smaller technology companies soon followed in Google’s wake. “There is a certain brand that comes with being in the area. “It’s less about customers. It all comes down to recruiting.”

Machine Politics: The Rise Of the Internet And the New Age Of Authoritarianism

The notion that engineers and the machines they build can 'fix' politics or society is as naive as the idea that technology is always good.  JL


Fred Turner reports in Harpers:

Computer-­supported interconnection is simply no substitute for face-to-face negotiation, long-term collaboration, and the hard work of living together.A community that replaces laws and institutions with a cacophony of individual voices courts bigotry and collapse. We have every right to apply the same standards to social-media companies that we have applied to other extraction industries. We cannot allow them to pollute the lands they mine, or to injure their workers, nearby residents, or those who use their products.