The Low-Down: 2019-04-07

Apr 13, 2019

Amazon Now Recommends Products To Prime Members Based On Horoscope

Purchases in tune with your sign. As if people are not already suggestible enough...JL

Kaitlyn Tiffany reports in Vox:

Amazon Prime’s horoscopes, which consist of Amazon product and service recommendations paired with astrological readings, use the stars to make suggestions about where members should put their energy and money in the month ahead. Amazon’s choice to start using horoscopes to recommend its services to people who already use them is wearisome but not surprising. Millennials are the most stressed-out generation alive and are increasingly looking for advice and guidance. It's a lovely opportunity to make money.

Social-media ready selfies with branded props are the rage at weddings, birthday parties and corporate events.

But the big money is in captured text and email links which are a form of monetizable data that can be sold to third parties.

Natt Garun reports in The Verge:

Booths are offering to email or text links to the photos for easy online sharing, reborn as an Instagram machine, transforming the humble self-portrait into theatrical displays for social media currency. There are two types of customers: the birthday, wedding, and anniversary party crowd.But corporate events is where the growth is.While the machines pander to the young demographic that loves these experiences the most, they’re also monetizing a valuable asset in exchange: their data. “Photo booths have become a form of experiential marketing. In the advent of social media, “it’s free advertising.”

More than 300 million people have engaged in online dating. The growth in volume has eliminated much of the early stereotypical thinking about who, how and why.

New research now explains how patterns based on network interactions influence these trends - and the decision making they inspire. JL

MIT Technology Review reports:

In the past 20 years, online dating has become the preferred way to find a mate in much of the Western world. Most interactions are between people in the same age groups and ethnic groups; men tend to contact women who are younger than they are. Women who initiate contact with men are more likely to receive a response from older men than from younger ones. Younger age groups tend to be male-heavy, but the mix becomes more female in older age groups. People tend to contact potential mates who are nearby. "Network techniques applied to online interactions reveal the aggregate effects of individual behavior on social structure.”

Retail is not so much dying as changing, reflecting the new ways consumers prefer to buy.

But it will almost certainly impact employment - and perhaps even more importantly, the nature of choice. JL

Sapna Maheshwari reports in the New York Times:

Less than halfway through April, American retailers have announced plans this year to shut 5,994 stores, exceeding the 5,854 announced in all of 2018. (There are) 2,641 store openings by retailers in the United States this year, compared with 3,239 for all of 2018. Many of this year’s openings are dollar stores and other discount chains less threatened by e-commerce. “It’s not a recession-driven or, even management-driven change, it’s a change in the way people are buying. Retail is not dying. It’s changing."

The frictionless economy turns out to create challenges that may make it more problematic and less profitable. JL

Eugene Kim reports in CNBC:

Amazon Go stores, which let customers buy items without waiting in checkout lines, will start accepting cash, amid intensifying criticism that the company is discriminating against the unbanked, who account for 6.5% (8.4 million) of U.S. households. Amazon has added to its site, including a pilot that accepts government subsidized SNAP benefits and a new program called Amazon Cash, which lets users add cash to their digital accounts by bringing money to a local store like 7-Eleven or CVS. The company is considering opening up to 3,000 cashierless stores by 2021.

Humans are becoming increasingly conditioned to expect immediacy.

Whether it be text responses, deliveries, fast food drive through lanes or city walking, we want what we want when we want it. And that is now.

The problem is that as internet speeds vary, urbanization congests sidewalks and more cars create congestion, those frustrated expectations lead to psychological and sociological reactions which make the overall human condition worse. JL

Chelsea Wald reports in Nautilus:

The fast pace of society has thrown our internal timer out of balance. It creates expectations that can’t be rewarded fast enough, or rewarded at all. We now insist that Web pages load in a quarter of a second, when we had no problem with two seconds in 2009 and four seconds in 2006. Videos that don’t load in two seconds have little hope of going viral. Worldwide walking speeds have gone up 10%. Patience is a virtue vanquished in the Twitter age.The accelerating pace of society resets our internal timers, which go off more in response to slow things, putting us in a constant state of rage.

What, Exactly, Is That Autonomous Robot Doing In My Supermarket?

The more important question, given the speed of AI development, is not what it is doing now, but what will it be doing a year from now. JL

Andrew Tarantola reports in Engadget:

A robotic brain-in-a-box grants autonomous functionality to otherwise dumb industrial and commercial machines. A variety of cleaner models enable their formerly semi-autonomous floor scrubbers to drive themselves. Automation also delivers items within stores. The system works like an autonomous harbor tug. Human associates load up a trailer with goods and products, then program the AutoDelivery's route and let it do its thing.

As AI becomes both more complex and more important, it is increasingly crucial that humans overseeing or interpreting them have a framework which provides context for what they are seeing in systems that may no longer need human input for their development. JL

Tom Davenport and Carla O'Dell report in Forbes:

The process of extracting domain expertise from experts has been called “knowledge engineering.” Historically, rules relied more on logic than large amounts of data. Rules powered the last generation of AI “expert systems.” But rules are still popular; 49% of executives from large U.S. firms said they were using rule-based AI. The strength of rule engines is their interpretability; a human with reasonable levels of expertise can look at the rules, see if they make sense, and modify them. They are well-suited to small to medium-complexity decisions; above a few hundred rules, they can develop interactions difficult for humans to understand.

To absolutely no one's surprise...

When your business model is based on monetizing personal information and you can gather your raw material without paying the source, you do so. JL

Jordan Valinsky reports in CNN:

Amazon employs a global team that transcribes the voice commands captured after the wake word is detected and feeds them back into the software to help improve Alexa's grasp of human speech so it can respond more efficiently in the future. Amazon reportedly employs thousands of full-time workers and contractors in several countries, including the United States, Costa Rica and Romania, to listen to as many as 1,000 audio clips in shifts that last up to nine hours. The audio clips they listen to were described as "mundane" and even sometimes "possibly criminal,"

The desktop personal computer refuses to die, fueled primarily by corporate users who still value their power and ease of use for office-based industrial and commercial applications.

What may be most interesting is that contrary to the digital economy chatter, old line companies like HP and Dell persist in this market, with Apple a distant fourth despite the preponderance of success it has had with mobile devices. All of which suggests that it is proving very hard to kill a competent, well-positioned tech company. JL

Peter Bright reports in ars technica; photo by Thomas Clavelrole in Flickr:

Stronger than expected commercial desktop sales (were achieved) as companies continue their Windows 10 refresh cycle. IDC puts HP top, at 13.6 million systems and a 23.2% market share, with Lenovo in second place, at 13.4 million systems, a 23.0% share of the market. Gartner puts Lenovo top at 13.2 million systems and a 22.5% share, and HP in second, with 12.8 million systems and a 21.9 % share.Both companies put Dell in third place, with 10 million systems shipped, and Apple in fourth place, with 4 million systems sold.

Better technology means better connectivity and efficiency. But it also means greater vulnerability. JL

Jane Margolies reports in the New York Times:

Providers of office space are providing telecom infrastructure and sophisticated technology like smart windows to better compete. Those that have technological prowess command premium rents; those that lack it may be forced to offer a discount. Some companies certify the reliability of a building’s internet connectivity. 1,800 office buildings globally registered for certification. Using mobile apps, employees can use cellphones to decide where to meet. Data is being monitored by building operators, which raises the specter of surveillance. Even proponents of connectivity admit that the more digital offices become, the more security risks are created.

As even supposedly 'invulnerable' systems - like blockchain - are hacked, organizations are taking more sophisticated steps to protect themselves, their users - and their data.

Enterprises preserve security so their systems won't be gamed, but they also want deniability if - as is almost certain to happen - the algorithms used to rate customers display biases or make mistakes.

Smart companies recognize that transparency about processes is, in the long run, a less expensive and more secure solution. JL

Christopher Mims reports in the Wall Street Journal:

How many of us realize our account behaviors are shared with fraud detection companies we’ve never heard of? And why can’t we access this data to correct or delete it? 16,000 signals inform the “Sift score,” a rating of 1 to 100. Algorithms always have biases, and companies are unaware of those unless they’ve conducted an audit, not yet standard practice. Even the most sophisticated don’t seem fully aware of how their systems are behaving. (They) market themselves as smarter discriminators between “good” and “bad” customers (but) “sometimes your best customers and your worst customers look the same.”

Are We Living In A Computer Simulation? Experts Debate

As if we don't have enough to worry about. JL

Clara Moskowitz reports in Scientific American:

There are reasons to think we might be virtual.Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium, put the odds at 50-50 that our existence is a program on someone else’s hard drive. The more we learn about the universe, the more it appears to be based on mathematical laws. (But) proving that the universe is real might be harder. “You’re not going to get proof that we’re not in a simulation, because any evidence that we get could be simulated. Our creator isn’t especially spooky, it’s just some teenage hacker in the next universe up. What happens if there’s a bug that crashes the entire program?”

What goes around comes around: you have to game AI to get a date or a job. Now you have to game Facebook to prove you're dead. JL

Matthew Schwartz reports in NPR:

Estimates vary, but more than 30 million Facebook users are likely dead.The social network will use artificial intelligence to determine when someone has died, and stop sending those kinds of notifications. Sandberg didn't explain exactly how the new artificial intelligence features will work, but the company will look at a variety of signals that might indicate the person is deceased. A spokesperson wouldn't provide details on what those signals may be.

This is mostly done in collaboration with the colleges or universities the students attend, which act as intermediaries. The costs are broadly comparable to student debt, but the terms may be less onerous and it gives students incentive to succeed.

The looming question is to what degree this approach is more or less advantageous - or burdensome and risky - than the traditional student loan. JL

Claire Boston reports in Bloomberg:

To fund part of the cost of a degree, (students) agree to hand over part of (their) future earnings through an income-sharing agreement, or ISA. Financiers are transforming student debtors into stock investments, with the same risk and return. Some schools let outside investment firms buy a stake in students. Others seek out individual donors, mostly wealthy alumni, or use money from their endowments. (Some) cap payments at 2.5 times what a student borrowed. Students making less than $20,000 a year won’t be charged, as long as they are working full time or seeking work. Those working part time or not seeking work will have their payments deferred

And why their efforts may make their wishes a reality.

How the gathering of intangible information - which is to say pertinent but not collected according to generally accepted accounting principles - is playing an increasingly important role in financial and managerial decision-making. JL

Russ Mitchell reports in the Los Angeles Times:

Tesla short sellers believe the lots full of new Model 3s and Models S and X vehicles, too show Tesla has reached a cliff in demand for its vehicles. When the rest of the world admits the company’s days as a fast-growth story are numbered, its stock price will crash, creating a bonanza for investors who have bet big that Tesla’s shares are grossly overvalued. Tesla is heavily shorted: Of its shares, 17% are held by short sellers (via) a crowd-sourced stock research platform.

It's not that secure, not that anonymous, not that stable - and not as convenient as cash. JL

P.H.Madore reports in CCN:

Cash is still king for terrorists, for a variety of reasons, including the liquidity barriers that regulation and legalization of cryptocurrencies are presenting. Large receipted sums are difficult to manage or spend anonymously, and cryptocurrencies still require infrastructure to manage and spend. Security of current cryptocurrencies is inadequate for terrorist organization needs. Factors that discourage use include continued instability and infighting in the cryptocurrency community, cooperation between international law enforcement and the intelligence community, regulation and enforcement. Terrorism has functioned just fine in the absence of cryptocurrency.

That the most valuable commodity in the global economy comes virtually free to most of its collectors, providers, analysts and merchants is creating financial and operational distortions.

And those may be leading to inefficient and suboptimal resource allocation decisions negatively impacting socio-economic growth and stability. JL

Rana Faroohar comments in the Financial Times:

The fastest growing part of the American economy (is) the gathering, analysing and selling of digital data. The extraction of Americans’ personal data, the most valuable resource in the world today, is worth $76bn in yearly revenue. Sales derived from data harvesting have grown by 44.9% over the past two years. If trends hold, data will be worth $197.7bn by 2022, more than the value of American agricultural output. Google and Facebook have double-digit profit margins because they do not pay for their raw inputs. “The collection and sale of personal data via targeted advertising is the business model. It’s not ancillary.”

How A Reporter Identified Colleagues Using Publicly Available Genetic Genealogy

As more people use genetic geneology sites like 23andMe, and those who are interested cross reference that data with voluntary postings on social media, the ease of finding people - whether they want to be found or not - grows exponentially.

The question for society, as usual at the cross section of data and tech, is whether the public cares enough to resist the blandishments and power of those who are benefitting from the information generated. JL

Peter Aldhous reports in Buzzfeed:

It’s a numbers game: The more people who put their DNA into databases that can be search(ed), the greater the chance (researchers) will find matches. As I discovered, if you find relatives closer than second cousins, you can identify your target within hours. But from third cousins or further out, it can be a long haul. My 60% clearance rate is an overestimate of how easy it is to solve cases through genetic genealogy. Unease I had about genetic racial profiling came not when I was examining matching DNA profiles, but when I pored through people’s Facebook timelines, trying to discover something about their family relationships.

The data and the technology have converged to create the automated farm, where the fields are as uniform and as monitored as a factory floor - and where AI is the farmer.

What that means for the taste and quality of produce for a populace increasingly concerned about food quality and safety remains to be seen. JL

John Seabrook reports in The New Yorker:

Seasonal labor has become more scarce, and more expensive, making it difficult for growers of apples, citrus, berries, lettuce, melons, and other handpicked produce to harvest their crops. Artificial intelligence, robotics, big data, G.P.S., machine vision, drones, and material science have been finding their way onto the farm. “Variation is the enemy of the robot.”A solution is to make farms into highly structured environments, such as the factory. The machine is the farm itself. The entire operation has been automated, and the operating system makes all the decisions. The A.I. is the farmer.

As the uses of AI grow, the basis by which decisions are made have increasingly complex legal, ethical - and life or death implications. JL

Forbes Insight Team reports:

“The business world has been much more focused on the upside, not the downside, of these technologies.” Codifying ethical standards or enforceable regulations is incredibly complex. And the challenges in using AI ethically are not equal across industries (such as) the programmed intelligence they will use to occasionally make life-and-death decisions on behalf of humans; the risk of bias if an applicant is denied a loan due to a low credit score or slapped with exorbitant insurance premiums; directing people to content that will keep them clicking on ads; “who is deciding who constitutes a target? Who gets to decide what an enemy looks like?”

Reducing costs while improving both customer engagement and revenues. JL

Patrick Kulp reports in Ad Week:

The retail banking industry has been embracing digital automation to keep its lead against financial tech upstarts that understand how machine learning and personalization can improve customer experience. Cost savings from chatbots could reach $7.3 billion by 2023. That would represent a reduction in call-center time equivalent to 862 million hours.“Chatbots in banking allow automated customer service, in a highly scalable way.”The banking industry is the second biggest investor in AI technology worldwide behind retail. It’s expected to sink $5.6 billion into applications like automated customer service agents and fraud prevention in the coming year.

This is yet another round in the on-going convenience-privacy boxing match.

Amazon wants to dominate yet another field - health care - and, in the process, hoover up users' personal health information. Which it will then monetize by pushing solutions that primarily benefit itself. And there appear to be few, if any, constraints on its ability to share, sell or re-use whatever data it gathers from prescription orders, testing or communications between users and health professionals. JL

Melanie Evans reports in the Wall Street Journal, image by Stephanie Aaronson, iStock:

Amazon is positioning Alexa to track consumers’ prescriptions and relay personal health information to insert the technology into everyday health care. Amazon and health-care providers will collect data to improve voice recognition and track how consumers use the services.Voice technology has been slow to take hold in health care because of patient-privacy concerns. Consumers have been measured in their willingness to use Alexa for all but basic tasks. (And) Alexa has stumbled on privacy.

Intelligent people have more ways of rationalizing incorrect information when its rejection conflicts with their core beliefs and personal identity. JL

David Robson reports in The Guardian:

Misinformation is designed to bypass analytical reasoning, even of the most intelligent and educated. Smarter people may be more vulnerable to certain ideas, since their greater brainpower allows them to rationalise (incorrect) beliefs. (But)“cognitive misers”don’t always apply reflective, analytical thinking. When a statement feels “fluent” (easy to process) and familiar, we focus not on the details and go with the gist. Purveyors of misinformation tweak claims to increase fluency and familiarity. 'Motivated reasoning' says for any issue that strikes at the core of who we are, greater brainpower preserves that identity at the expense of the truth.

Gene Therapy Was Hailed As A Revolution. Then Came the Bill

Pharmaceutical companies want to be rewarded for innovation and risk. But the drugs may be too expensive for increasingly constrained health insurance plans.

Both sides will have to compromise for the new field to grow. JL

James Paton reports in Bloomberg:

The new therapies aim to fix the root causes of disease with a single dose, in which the correct genetic material is introduced into the patient’s cells. If the treatments can replace a lifetime of conventional costly drugs, they may slash overall spending, even at multimillion-dollar prices. Beneath the excitement about these potential cures lies an important catch: No one knows how much to charge for them. How the to define success and account for a lack of long-term evidence are among the hurdles. Rational prices are critical to ensure the breakthroughs get to patients who need them.

Focusing its startup in Australia probably helped. Concentrating on smaller packages with faster delivery times was a factor.

But the larger issue will be who gets to scale first with a variety of package sizes. And in tech, historically, fast followers have frequently surpassed first movers. JL

Jake Kanter reports in Business Insider:

Wing has been piloting the Canberra project for about 18 months, completing 3,000 deliveries. On its official launch, the service is expected to be available to a confined number of homes in the Canberra area before gradually expanding. CASA said 100 homes would be eligible initially. Wing is designed to allow users to place orders through an app, with deliveries made by drone within minutes. Popular delivery items include fresh food, coffee, ice cream, and medicine. (But) "With the windows closed, even with double glazing, you can hear the drones."

Given the strategic importance of electronic ecosystems in capturing customer attention - and the attendant data and revenues that flow from it - this relatively small piece of 'real estate' may make or break the future of companies and industries.

Customer demand for convenience and transferability may make compromise inevitable - but the operational and financial question is who will dominate the relationship. JL

Tim Higgins and William Boston report in the Wall Street Journal:

The auto industry and Silicon Valley are locked in a battle for control of one of the last unconquered screens: your car dashboard display.At stake are billions of dollars in revenue from ads and services as well as the balance of power between industries.Car makers are counting on these few square inches to help build closer relationships with customers. Some fear handing control to Silicon Valley. Alphabet and Apple, meanwhile, are itching to put their familiar screens and apps inside vehicles.

The reality is that there are only two aircraft suppliers in the world. Airplanes are expensive, take a long time to build - and when airlines buy them, it is with the thought that they will be used for decades based on their passenger demand models.

So while Boeing may be hurt in the short term, this is probably not a threat to its brand - or its continued profitability: because for the airlines and the flying public, there are currently no real alternatives. JL

Joe Pinsker reports in The Atlantic:

Grounding a plane affects the supply of (not the demand for) seats. Airplane are so expensive that once an airline buys one, it wants to put it to use as much as possible.A plane takes a long time to make, a year or longer, and even buying used planes can take a while. “It’s not like they have a bunch lying around." The airplane-building industry is a duopoly. Airbus’s order book is also not empty. The DC-6 and the Boeing 727 both went on to have “stellar” careers after early incidents. So the 737 Max just might get rebranded. One analyst who follows Boeing closely didn’t see “meaningful long-term risk” for the company.

Alexa's Echo installed base of @100 million is smaller than Apple's iPhone base but much larger than its HomePod. AirPod (ear buds) could be at the 100 million mark in two years.

Strategically, this means that if Amazon is able to produce an ear bud with design and features that compete successfully with the AirPod, it could seriously challenge Apple at its phone and service core. But consumers want convenience and utility, meaning Amazon will have to partner with other service providers to make this a hit. JL

Lisa Lacy reports in Ad Week:

Amazon is developing Alexa-enabled earbuds to take on Apple’s AirPods. Amazon’s Fire Phone was released as an iPhone competitor, but sold less than 35,000 units because users thought it was boring, gimmicky and too expensive.One of Amazon’s mistakes with Fire Phone was a scan-and-buy feature for Amazon products (which) seemed heavy-handed. It should focus on “ freaking amazing experiences first.”Amazon needs to figure out cross-platform functionality, so consumers can use Amazon earbuds as they would any mobile device. That means integrating with other ecommerce and music platforms.

The problem is usually not efficiency, it's focus. JL

Adam Grant reports in the New York Times:

Time management is not a solution it’s part of the problem. Productivity struggles are caused not by a lack of efficiency, but lack of motivation. Productivity isn’t a virtue. It’s a means to an end. Most productivity challenges are with tasks that we don’t want to do but we need to do.One reason is attention residue: Your mind keeps wandering back to the interesting task, disrupting focus on the boring task. If you pay attention to why you’re excited about the project, you’ll be pulled into it by motivation. There’s an eighth habit of highly effective people. They don’t spend time reading about the seven habits of highly effective people.

The Right To Repair: How Come People Should Be Able To Fix Their iPhone - or Tractor

Aside from the moral argument about fairness, the financial constraints of having to continually buy new equipment due to the high cost of authorized repair rather than finding a less expensive means of doing so might just stimulate the economy. JL

The New York Times comments:

John Deere and Apple, and their peers, use aggressive tactics, including electronic locks and warranties, to push customers to seek help from authorized repair facilities or buy a replacement. Customers who used independent auto repair shops spent 24% less on repairs. Apple charges $279 to fix the screen of an iPhone X, while a repair store quoted a price of $219. This is unfair to consumers who might be able to obtain, or perform, lower-priced repairs, to independent businesses who might do the work. And it’s bad for the environment, because the high cost of repairs leads people to toss devices that might have been fixed.

Is there really a correct answer? That depends on your end goal - and your technological orientation. JL

Harriet Dempsey-Jones reports in The Conversation:

'Somatosensation” – which we normally refer to as touch but technically incorporates all sensations from our body won the poll. From a neuroscience perspective, it is easy to see (no pun intended) why vision almost won the poll. (But) what actually makes a sense more or less valuable? And, are some senses fundamentally more important in making us human? Sensory substitution technology might upend our assessments of what sense is more or less important. As science reveals that with the right device you can learn to see with touch or sound.

Given the data on sea level rise and the peculiar geography of the Miami area, it appears destined to become the next New Orleans - or simply disappear beneath the tropical blue seas.

But that has not stopped a massive construction boom nor the influx of new residents who have made Florida the third largest state by population, surpassing New York.

Are they missing something - or just not planning on staying? JL

Sarah Miller reports in Popula:

The sea will rise in Miami Beach between 13 and 34 inches by 2050. By 2100, it is likely to be six feet, which means, unless you own a yacht and a helicopter, sayonara. There are problems with comparing Miami to the Netherlands. Amsterdam has spent billions of dollars on climate change and Miami has spent millions. The Dutch strategy is holistic, whereas in Miami they have installed some pumps and raised roads and buildings. In Miami, sea water will just go under a wall. It will come up through the pipes and seep up around the manholes. It will get under the water table and push the ground water up."It’s being figured out, and we shouldn’t be concerned. Unless you have a family, and you’re planning on staying here.”

The firm is renouncing its status as a venture capitalist and formally registering as a financial advisor - with all the regulatory oversight that requires - in order to make bigger bets - and get a bigger piece of a pie now dominated by SoftBank and its $100 billion fund. JL

Alex Konrad reports in Forbes:

Today there are a record number of rival billion-dollar funds and SoftBank, which, armed with a $100 billion megafund, makes them all look quaint. AH are registering their firm—a move requiring reviews of all 150 people—as a financial advisor, renouncing (their) status as a venture capital firm.Why? VCs have long traded a lack of Wall Street-style oversight for the promise that they invest mainly in new shares of private companies. It was a tradeoff gladly made—until the age of crypto, a type of high-risk investment the SEC says requires more oversight. By renouncing its venture capital status, it’ll be able to go deeper on riskier bets:

One of the benefits frequently overlooked in discussions of both digitization and sustainability is how they complement one another.

Digitization means fewer products need be produced on spec, reducing industry's environmental impact while, at the same time, it reduces costs and focuses consumer attention on the advantages of merging ecommerce and retail.

Aerospace, automotive manufacturing and entertainment have already recognized how such strategies can optimize outcomes while brands and merchants are beginning to implement such systems, as well. JL

Sandra Gagnon reports in IEEE Spectrum:

A digital transformation requires retailers and brands to embrace new ways of creating, thinking, and working. One strategy is to collaborate across a variety of groups and industries. A collaborative group of global retailers and brands (is) working to advance 3D technology for apparel, accessories, and footwear designers; retailers; manufacturers; and supply chains. The focus is how technologies such as 3D virtual modeling can drive the industry in sustainability, speed to market and transparency around product development.

Lack of inspiration is tied directly to lack of engagement. And lack of engagement impacts performance.

It may also help explain, among other factors, the elusive gains in productivity despite technological advances and the ostensible skills gap (which may actually be an 'I don't want to work for you' gap).

Most employees perceptions of the organization for which they work and of the broader economy are refracted through their experience with their immediate supervisor. Smart companies realize that issue needs to be addressed to attain optimal results. JL

Sam Walker reports in the Wall Street Journal:

A company’s productivity depends, to a high degree, on the quality of its managers.What no one saw coming was the size of that correlation, something Gallup calls “the single most profound, distinct and clarifying finding” in its 80-year history. The study showed managers explained a 70% of the variance. If it’s a superior team you’re after, hiring the right manager is nearly three-fourths of the battle. No other single factor, from compensation levels to the perception of senior leadership, came close. The top 10% of companies, ranked by engagement, posted profit gains of 26% through the last recession compared with a 14% skid at comparable employers.

How IBM AI Predicts With 95 Percent Accuracy Who Is About To Quit Their Job

The theory being that guiding people towards better opportunities before they consider leaving is the best way to retain them. JL

Eric Rosenbaum reports in CNBC:

IBM AI is now 95% accurate in predicting workers who are planning to leave their jobs.IBM HR has a patent for its "predictive attrition program," developed with Watson to predict employee flight risk and prescribe actions for managers to engage employees. The AI has saved IBM $300 million in retention costs. By better understanding data patterns and adjacent skills, IBM AI can zero in on an individual's strengths.This can enable a manager to direct an employee to future opportunities they may not have seen using traditional methods. "We found managers are subjective in ratings. We can infer and be more accurate from data."

San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Washington, Seattle among others.

Wealthy techies, new media stars, lawyers, budding financiers and their confreres want the charm of old neighborhoods - but larger apartments. So while urbanization globally continues to drive people into cities, some of the most desirable 'hoods are shrinking in density, causing rents to increase and availability to decline. JL

Henry Grabar reports in Slate:

Shifts are keeping populations low by historical standards even in the most in-demand neighborhoods. Those include displacement of longtime residents by newcomers; the rise of Airbnb, which has taken thousands of units out of residential supply in every major city; and, declining household size. 300 New York buildings are renovated to decrease the number of units each year in neighborhoods where there’s demand for bigger, more expensive units. Tight zoning laws have clamped down on new construction, while rising home prices have spurred buyers to renovate flats into single-family homes and combine apartments.

In a visual, emotive, post-factual digital environment, white papers and qualifiers and subtlety dont cut through the clutter and engage an audience.

And that's a problem is you're trying to get attention, let alone win hearts and minds - and votes. JL

Stephanie Mencimer and Mark Helenowski report in Mother Jones:

Memes litter social media, but some experts think they might have helped elect Donald Trump. Conservative groups are making a push to train internet-savvy right-wingers in the art of meme-making, enlisting a growing army in the coming meme war of 2020. People on the left are more concerned with nuanced facts and gray areas that can’t be boiled down into a photo with a caption. On the left “every meme has to have a million qualifiers, so that it’s no longer a meme. It’s a Medium post.” Conservatives communicate their ideas “in ways that are reductionist. They’re also more comfortable lying, and their audiences are much more likely to accept it.”

That might get their attention.

Though given that this only concerns the UK, which may soon leave the EU and thereby diminish its global influence, emphasis on the word 'might.' JL

Heather Stewart and Alex Hern report in The Guardian:

A survey last year found that 45% of adult internet users had experienced some form of online harm and 21% had taken action to report harmful content.The government will legislate for a new statutory duty of care, to be policed by an independent regulator and likely to be funded through a levy on media companies. The regulator will have the power to impose substantial fines against companies that breach their duty of care and to hold individual executives personally liable.

It can tell a tremendous amount about your emotional and physical state. And the data belongs to whoever captures it. JL

John McCormick reports in the Wall Street Journal:

Businesses and government agencies are exploring new systems that analyze the human voice to determine a person’s emotions, mental and physical health, and even height and weight. The technology is already used by call centers to flag problems in conversations. Doctors are testing it as a way to spot mental and physical ailments, and companies are starting to tap it to help them vet job applicants. AI systems can measure tone, tempo and other voice characteristics and compare them with stored speech patterns identified as happy, sad, mad or other emotions. (It) can get more powerful when used with computer vision in emotion AI / affective computing.

Gig work has become rebranded by its employer beneficiaries as a 'side hustle,' making it sound cool.

But is a second job really on the 'side' if the income generated is necessary to pay rent and put food on the table because the 'primary' job that takes up most of a person's time doesnt pay enough? JL

Alissa Quart reports in the New York Times:

30% of Americans do something else for pay in addition to their full-time jobs. Nouveau moonlighting continues to be exalted as cool, empowering or freeing, disguising unstable working hours and a lack of bargaining power as liberation.. This mantra is false: Side hustles are not simply a new version of working as a “wage slave” so that we can do what we love in our off hours. Instead, far more often, people take on second or third side hustles because of wage stagnation or low pay at their full-time jobs.

When society surrenders influence - let alone control - in return for ephemera like convenience, there is a point at which it may also lose the ability to reclaim what has been lost.

The question is to what degree consigning power to a few institutions which, to date, are not subject to laws or regulations, means abdicating responsibility as well as power. JL

Ailsa Sherrington interviews James Bridle in The Next Web:

Centralized and surveilled networks shape power relationships and thus our everyday lives, and the ways in which really horrific physical and psychological – even neurological – hacks are built into many of the things we interact with, from the manipulations of recommendation engines to the dopamine rewards of pop-up alerts and endlessly scrolling timelines. "I’m much more interested in decentralized and distributed networks, open source applications and operating systems, and technology designed with thought and care to educate and support users, rather than enchant, disempower, and even radicalize them."

Apr 13, 2019

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