How the Rise In App Distraction Has Led To A Huge Increase in Injuries

Pay attention or die? JL

Tanya Basu reports in MIT Technology Review:

People are being distracted by apps on their phones, and getting injured as a result. The actual number of people with head and neck injuries from cell phone use could be as high as 76,000. Insurance or legal reasons are a big incentive to not mention you were using your phone at the time of the accident. (There was) a spike in injuries in 2007, a dip in 2008, and a sharp climb for the next decade. “It’s not about using your phone to make phone calls. Making a call, while a distraction, still keeps your eyes up and around for hazards. It’s apps."

Is AI Development About To Hit A Wall?

Due to the rising expense of experimentation and testing, the demand for more power - and its attendant costs - the cost-benefit calculation for AI is becoming a concern, even for the biggest tech companies. JL

Will Knight reports in Wired:

Deep learning and current AI has a lot of limitations. We are very far from human intelligence, and there are criticisms that are valid. The rate of progress is not sustainable. If you look at top experiments, each year the cost it going up 10-fold. Right now, an experiment might be in seven figures, but it’s not going to go to nine or ten figures,  nobody can afford that. It means we're going to hit the wall. In many ways we already have. Not every area has reached the limit of scaling, but we're getting to a point where we need to think in terms of optimization, in terms of cost benefit, and we need to look at how we get most out of the compute we have.

The FBI Officially Warns That Your TV Is Probably Spying On You

And the word 'probably' is optional. JL

Karl Bode reports in Tech Dirt:

The FBI issued a warning to cyber Monday shoppers that their smart TV is a little too smart, and likely watches you as much as you watch it. "Do a basic Internet search with your model number and the words “microphone,” “camera,” and “privacy.” Don’t depend on the default security settings. Change passwords if you can – and know how to turn off the microphones, cameras, and collection of personal information if possible. If you can’t turn them off, consider whether you are willing to take the risk of buying that model or using that service."

Fresh Food Vending Machines Are Coming - And Will Be Regulated Like Restaurants

The place where the growing demand for fresh food and automation intersect is...complicated. JL 

Jane Black reports in the New York Times:

What might look like a convenient healthy-eating option to many people looked to the inspector like a food-safety time bomb waiting to blow. The internal temperature of each machine is taken every five minutes and uploaded to servers. Should a refrigerator reach an unsafe temperature, it stops dispensing food. The machines also track how long food has been inside, and will not release a product after its sell-by date. (but) each machine will be treated as a restaurant — or “food service establishment,” per the health code. Every machine will require a permit, inspections and the same kind of letter grade posted from McDonald’s to Le Bernardin.

Retailers Adjust Strategy, Staffing To Meet Customers' Switch To Online Buying

Retailers have adapted to online shopping by investing in retraining their workforces and changing the way their stores are organized to encourage consumers to use them to pick up digital orders.

And customers are noticing. JL


Sarah Nassauer reports in the Wall Street Journal:

Foot traffic to U.S. stores fell 6.2% on Black Friday, as more people ordered online. Target, Walmart and other retailers are staffing stores differently to meet new competitive challenges, as well as attract workers and control payroll costs amid the tightest labor market in decades. Daytime stocking is becoming more popular, efficient use of labor that keeps workers in the store helping shoppers Some chains, adapting to the shift to online shopping, use their stores to handle deliveries or shoppers to pick up orders rather than wait for an Amazon package.Target says it sources 80% of its online orders from stores, not warehouses.

Why Amazon One Day Shipping Doesn't Mean One Day Delivery. Again.

Hmmm. High order volume and wintry weather in December. Who could ever have imagined and planned for such an eventuality?

Maybe next year Amazon will be able to hire extra workers and offer them better wages so they'll stay rather than leaving to take the first available job that doesnt treat them like robots. JL


Jason Del Ray reports in Re/code:

Amazon Prime members, who pay $119 a year in the US for express shipping and other perks, have been flooding the company’s Twitter and Facebook accounts this week with complaints of shipping delays. The tech giant acknowledged that customers’ orders are experiencing shipping delays as the company battles high demand and winter storms. “I can order from Target or Walmart with free shipping and have my order in 2 days. Your excuse about high order volume is pitiful. You knew the holidays were coming and should have hired extra staff. Prime members are paying for service you can’t provide and should all be refunded.”

AI-Enabled Robot Returns To Space Station With Enhanced Emotional Intelligence

As long as it doesnt always win at card games or chess it might help. JL

Darrell Etherington reports in Tech Crunch:

The first smart astronaut assistant will demonstrate ways the astronaut support robot can help those working in space from a practical and an emotional angle. Functions include retrieving information, tracking tasks astronauts are doing on board, and helping to alleviate social issues that might arise from settings in which a small team works in close quarters over a long period. 'We’re trying to understand and analyze emotions during a conversation  to see how they’re feeling. That could help evolve a robotic countermeasure for “groupthink.”

Even If AI Can Fix Loneliness, Should It?

Given an increasingly technocentric - and aging - population, there may be no choice. But the consequences for what it means to be human could be more significant - and potentially destabilizing - than realized. JL


David Kiron and Gregory Unruh report in MIT Sloan Management Review:

Where there is an unfilled human need, there is a business opportunity. Social problems, like the global loneliness epidemic, are driving demand for robot companions. One out of three U.S. adults older than age 45 suffer from chronic loneliness. In Britain, 9 million adults are often or always lonely. Businesses that make and sell products that replicate human connection are serving a need, but they may also be changing social norms in ways that can’t be reversed.If part of what makes us human is to connect emotionally with others, and technology plays the role of emotional connector, what it means to be “human” becomes more complicated.

Latest AI Index Reports US Still Leading But China Will Surpass It In 5 Years

The quality of its AI research, talent and funding keeps the US ahead for now, but China is closing fast - with the UK in third place while small countries like Israel, Ireland, Finland and New Zealand have built impressive AI capabilities. JL

Alexandra Mousavizadeh and colleagues report in Tortoise Intelligence :

10,000 artificial intelligence (AI) companies have been founded since 2015, attracting private funding of $37 billion.The US is the leader in AI development, scoring twice as highly as second-placed China, thanks to the quality of its research, talent and private funding. America was ahead on the majority of key metrics – and by a significant margin. (But) China is the fastest growing. Experts predict China will overtake the US in five to10 years. Britain is in third place thanks to a AI talent pool and excellent academic reputation.

The Reason Rising Minimum Wages Have Not Caused Predicted Job Losses

In a full employment economy, the behavioral economics of better compensation beats ideology every time. JL

Stef Kight and Dion Rabouin report in Axios:

Eighteen states rang in 2019 with minimum wage increases — some that will ultimately rise as high as $15 an hour. The data paint a clear picture: Higher minimum wage requirements haven't reduced hiring in low-wage industries or overall. Three of the four states with job growth higher than the U.S. median raise the state minimum wage to at least $13.50. Three of the five states with the slowest job growth rates did not have a  minimum wage above $7.25 an hour. Opposition to higher minimum wage laws is increasingly based in ideology and orthodoxy rather than real-world evidence.

Private Equity: 'There's No Equity Class Too Much Money Can't Spoil'

The implication for tech is that the strategy of keeping startups private rather than going public because of so much private equity money chasing those returns will probably come to an end - and IPOs may come back into favor. JL

Anchalee Worrachate and John Gittlesohn report in Bloomberg:

“Returns are coming down. A lot of money is going into that space and we are seeing excess returns shrinking.”  One of the most fertile grounds for funds harvesting returns in a world of negative-yielding bonds and expensive public companies -- private equity -- is being swamped. Interest in buying the equity of unlisted companies,

property and infrastructure has surged. Historically high valuations for leveraged buyouts has the industry peaking after a decade of double-digit returns. “Valuations have gone through the roof. Returns will have to diminish.”

How Digital Has Necessitated A New Business Model For Consumer Goods

Form is following function as Millennial and Gen X consumers begin to outnumber Boomers but have less money. These digital natives have come to believe that big brands are unhealthy, environmentally damaging and, most significantly, of lower quality.

This means merchants selling household products and food have to create or buy niche brands, re-brand traditional products and otherwise refocus on a consumer increasingly mediated by digitally generated information and access. JL

Gregory Kelly and colleagues report in McKinsey Quarterly:

Consumer goods created 23 of the top 100 brands and return to shareholders 15% a year for 45 years. (But) performance is slipping in household and food products. Digital is revolutionizing how consumers engage with brands. Yesterday’s marketing standards and mass channels are obsolete. Ecommerce requires rewriting channel strategies including how they assort, price, promote, and merchandise products. Millennials are four times more likely  to avoid buying products from “big food companies.” Small brands are capitalizing on millennial preferences and digital marketing. Agile operating requires abandoning command-and-control

Why Technology Has Increased the Time White Collar Workers Spend On the Job

Tech was supposed to liberate knowledge workers. But the elimination of  physical constraints that prevented previous generations of workers from toiling 24-7 has had unintended consequences.

Time and location are practically irrelevant; no one needs an office or office hours, just a device and wifi. And a global economy means competition can come from anywhere, making the fear of missing out a more compelling threat for those hoping to optimize results - and careers. JL 

Derek Thompson reports in The Atlantic:

Hours worked since 1980 increased 10% for Americans with bachelor’s and advanced degrees because computing has shifted the economy from manufacturing to neurofacturing - intellectually intensive white-collar labor connected to the internet, such as software programming, advertising, consulting, and publishing. Neurofacturing jobs lend themselves to long hours (because) they're less physically arduous. The internet makes every hour of the day a working hour. If the operating equipment of the 21st century is a portable device, the modern factory is the day itself. Overwork becomes an arms race among talented workers.

How 'The Bigger the Better' Mentality Is Harming AI Research

This is an ongoing debate in tech, as the demand for commecializable scale may raise costs keeping publicly oriented research out - and driving development towards more predictable but potentially less interesting outcomes JL

Ben Dickson reports in The Next Web:

Currently, advances in AI are mostly tied to scaling deep learning models and creating neural networks with more layers and parameters. “Within current domains, more compute leads to better performance, and is complementary to algorithmic advances.” (But) the compute requirements of AI research pose constraints on who can enter the field.This trend threatens to commercialize AI research, as commercial organizations become more pivotal in funding AI research labs, they influence the direction.Being too infatuated with increasing compute resources can blind us in finding new solutions for more efficient AI techniques.

Researchers Develop AI That Reads Lips From Video Clips

There are almost half a billion people in the world suffering hearing loss.

But perhaps more important, commercially, as tech turns increasingly to voice and video, accurately interpreting what is being said will become very valuable. JL


Kyle Wiggers reports in Venture Beat:

466 million people in the world suffer from disabling hearing loss, or about 5% of the world’s population. A method uses features extracted from speech recognizers to serve as complementary clues. The speech recognizer and lip reader components are based on an attention-based sequence-to-sequence architecture, a method of machine translation that maps an input of a sequence (i.e., audio or video) to an output with a tag and attention value. It manages industry-leading accuracy on two benchmarks, besting the baseline by a margin of 7.66% and 2.75% in character error rate.

How Texas Instruments Continues To Monopolize Math

Texas Instruments has monopolized the teaching of US math for over 30 years through a deft combination of cronyism, lobbying and the fact that no other company wants to invest in such retro technology.

Teachers can't allow students to use laptops or cellphones because they are too powerful and would do the work for the students, essentially allowing them to cheat. Which means sales and margins for TI remain extraordinary. JL


Maya Kosoff reports in Medium:

Texas Instruments graphing calculators used by high school students 20 years ago are the same ones students use today. Texas Instruments was able to capitalize on its relationship with the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics to ensure its calculators became the educational standard.. “The margin is incredible, like 85% 90%.” The company’s lobbying expenses have remained $2 million a year.  Texas Instruments provides services for free to the College Board, which administers AP tests and the SAT. The price has remained the same. 'When my mom bought my TI-83 2006, it cost $90. Today, that calculator sells for $105.'

Should People Be Able To Sue Social Media Cos Over Misuse of Personal Data?

Where US politicians disagree is on the extent to which a 'private right of action,' aka, the lawsuit, should be extended. But there is growing consensus on the need to provide users of internet platforms with far greater rights over their personal information than they currently enjoy. JL 

Makena Kelly reports in The Verge:

Consumer Online Privacy Rights would provide American consumers with new rights over the data they produce on platforms like Facebook and Google. These rights would require companies to provide greater transparency over user data and give users the power to delete, correct, or transfer it. These basic principles have become the baseline for any federal bill aimed at regulating how a platform treats the data of its users. These rules closely imitate the protections offered under the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation.

The Reason Investors Are Pulling Back From Gig Economy Companies

Contract workers essential to those companies,  policymakers overseeing their operation and both venture capital and public investors are becoming skeptical of gig economy business models' sustainability which appear more reliant on underpaying the workforce than on technology. JL

Miles Kruppa reports in The Financial Times:

Funding to start-ups providing “on-demand” services across the world plunged 22% in the 12 months ending September. Venture capitalists are pulling back from start-ups promising the rapid delivery of everything from groceries to dog walkers, as the companies face pushback from workers and policymakers critical of their business models. Public investors have become sceptical of lossmaking consumer businesses. On-demand companies may have to raise prices and cut expenses as funding dries up.

The Top Technology Trends Affecting Retail

Data  from early holiday shopping suggests that retailers are beginning to recover from their initial failures to adapt to ecommerce and are now deploying a wide and effective array of technological innovations to improve the retail experience - and sales. JL


Bernard Marr reports in Forbes:

Thanks to the volumes of data available and the ability to process it, consumers can receive a personalized shopping experience that wasn’t possible before. Today’s consumers want experiences that include personalization and information to help them make decisions. (This includes) extended reality, predictive analytics, micro moments, recommendation engines, facial recognition, order fulfillment automation, stock management, robotic store assistants, customer chat bots, smart equipment.

Why Most Entrepreneurs Never Learn From Their Mistakes

New research is showing that 'failing fast' in order to be more successful the next time is a myth - and a potentially toxic one.

One reason is that human psychology makes it difficult to accept personal responsibility for failure, assigning too much blame to 'extenuating circumstances' and other externalities. Another is that market conditions, technology and customer attitudes change, making applicable lessons hard to come by. The 'learning from failure' examples, especially in Silicon Valley, tend to be the exception, not the rule. JL


Francis Greene reports in the Wall Street Journal:

Part of the folklore about successful entrepreneurs is that they succeeded because they first failed.  But this is a myth. Research shows that entrepreneurs don’t learn from their mistakes. It’s the opposite: Failed (second time) entrepreneurs are more likely to go bankrupt or dissolve their business than first-time entrepreneurs.A second attempt at a startup won’t face the same context as the first.Whatever you think you’ve taken away from failure may not mean much.Most businesses limp along until the entrepreneur has to close (which) makes it tough to know the cause of the failure.

How AI Is Redefining the Role of Manager

Two-thirds of workers would trust orders from a robot over orders from their manager.

Let that sink in. JL

Dan Schwabel reports in World Economic Forum:

Workers believe robots are better than their managers at providing unbiased information, maintaining work schedules, problem-solving and budget management, while managers are better at empathy, coaching and creating a work culture. The majority of workers trust orders from a robot. Two-thirds of workers said they would trust orders from a robot over their manager, and half have already turned to a robot instead of their manager for advice.“AI is increasingly freeing up their time and allowing them to focus on the essence of their job: the very human skill of being able to be creative and innovate – something that AI isn’t good at yet.”

Amazon Introduces Home Robot That Asks Questions When Confused

And employs machine learning to capture the response so it doesnt make the same mistake again. JL

Kyle Wiggers reports in Venture Beat:

Amazon’s Alexa AI division developed a framework that endows agents with the ability to ask for help. Using a model-confusion-based method, the agents ask questions based on their level of confusion as determined by a predefined confidence threshold, which boosts the agents’ success by 15%. As the user provides answers to the robot’s questions, (it) corrects wrong trajectories, using the feedback to prevent future mistakes of the same kind. The robot adjusted dynamically to unclear and erroneous human responses.“[This] augmentation method is useful in a continual learning scenario [because the] agent can improve its performance continually.”

Consumers Aren't Sure What Authenticity Is, But They Like It

What may be most interesting - especially for marketers - is that it appears to be reaction against modernity and the recognition that despite saying there is no difference between on screen and off, consumers understand they are not the same and are trying to preserve a sense of it. JL

Alne Doris reports in Yale Insights:

“Authentic” sells, whether for an ethnic restaurant, craft beer, a theatrical production, a memoir, or album of music. But there is very little academic consensus on what we mean when we say something is authentic. Findings confirm that authenticity has different meanings for different people in different domains or contexts. A given attribute can be viewed very differently depending on the domain.“We’re living in cities, behind computer or cell phone screens with less interaction with the natural world. People are increasingly reacting by wanting to push back against modernity. What people mean by this term is very different.”

All New Chinese Cell Phone Owners Must Have Their Faces Scanned

But before Americans become too smug, the US Department of Homeland Security has announced that all US citizens returning to the country from overseas must have their faces scanned. And there will be no exceptions. This appears to be the latest wave of government control globally. JL

Lily Kuo reports in The Guardian:

All mobile phone users in China registering new SIM cards must submit to facial recognition scans. (The new law) requires telecoms companies to deploy “artificial intelligence and other technical methods” to check the identities of people registering SIM cards. All physical stores in the country had until 1 December to begin implementing the new standards. Chinese cities will more closely resemble the Xinjiang region, where citizens are constantly monitored for signs of unrest or dissent.

Older Workers Are Being Ignored Despite Tech's Talent Shortage

Their compensation is somewhat higher and some skills may not be completely up to date, but hiring manager age bias appears to be the primary culprit. JL

Angus Loten reports in the Wall Street Journal:

In the three months ended Oct. 31, U.S. employers reported 918,000 unfilled IT jobs.Workers aged 22 to 44 account for 61% of the IT sector, but only 49% of the workforce. Some older IT workers comfortable with their skills risk falling behind. Another issue is cost. Many tech workers in their 50s and 60s  have top-level compensation. “If a company can get someone with a similar skill level who is earlier in their career, they do."  "Hiring managers associate technology innovation with youth. Age bias is alive and well in technology recruiting. In such a candidate-tight market, hiring managers can’t afford to overlook any potential talent pool.”

Meet the New Boss: Will Sundar Pichai Be the Crisis Manager Google Needs?

Well, you gotta love their sense of timing. As criticism of Google grows - from its personnel and privacy policies to its business model - founders Sergei and Larry thought this would be a swell time to throw Sundar Pichai the keys and head to Kauai or New Zealand or wherever the extremely rich go to hide from problems.

The truth is that Pichai is hardly 'the new guy.' He's been effectively running the place for a few years now. The question is whether he has the gravitas and management chops to handle employee dissatisfaction, heightened government pressure, growing global disapproval and, oh yeah, the future. JL


Jennifer Elias reports in CNBC:

Google faces huge changes that could alter the entire course of the company. Four years after the Alphabet reorganization, Larry Page and Sergey Brin announced plans to step down. Sundar Pichai will now be the CEO of the entire company, not just Google. Employee trust is so low Googlers are sleuthing their own human resources department. U.S. and foreign antitrust regulators have increasingly scrutinized Google, naming Pichai. (But) Alphabet faces its biggest direct business challenge in history: finding its next act, (as it) prepares for a slowdown in its core digital advertising business, which  accounts for the vast majority of its revenue.

Why Leaders Must Understand AI's Value Contribution To Deploy It Effectively

For leaders, the 'why' has always been more important than the 'how.' To provide strategic direction means delegating many of the details.

As AI becomes more widely used, leaders can optimize its impact by focusing less on the elemental 'plug and play' and more on what it may contribute to the creation of abstract as well as tangible value for the organization, its investors, workforce - and customers. JL


Mohanbir Sawhney reports in Forbes:

As business leaders look to machine learning and artificial intelligence to solve problems, they should be asking how AI creates value. Value has shifted from the tangible and physical  to the abstract and cognitive. As core AI tools become more commoditized, value creation will shift to AI applications to solve problems. The value created will be by businesses that focus on the “so what” and the “now what” of AI. That means value will migrate to domain and industry-specific applications. Leaders need to understand the value of abstraction so they can profit from the abstraction of value.

AI Is A Tool, Not A Solution For Society's Problems

AI for Good sounds lovely. But it may mask tech arrogance about complex social problems - or simply be a way of beta testing new products on the cheap. JL

Mark Latonero comments in Wired:

Tech companies, from Google to Huawei, have launched programs under the AI for Good banner. They deploy  machine-learning algorithms to address critical issues like crime, poverty, hunger, and disease. (But) tech solutionism can mask root causes and the risks of experimenting with AI on vulnerable people without appropriate safeguards. AI systems built on limited training data create inaccurate predictive models that lead to unfair outcomes. AI for good projects often amount to pilot beta testing with unproven technologies. Companies should approach a complex global problem with humility, knowing that an AI tool won’t solve it.

Where There Are Digital Ads, There Is Fraud: Traffic Buying Comes To Podcasts

Podcasts seemed so pure and audience-driven. But everyone wants a hit and, at some point, the temptation to fraudulently buy support seems to be as natural as it is in the rest of digital media. JL

Lucinda Southern reports in Digiday:

Last year, click farms were used to game the ranking of podcasts in Apple’s iTunes charts through accounts leaving reviews. On podcasts, advertisers can run spot ads, host-read ads, sponsorship or branded podcasts. Setting up fraudulent farms, fake accounts and cross-posting doesn’t require sophisticated tech. Despite the growth, subpar measurement and reporting hold back larger brands from committing more of their ad budget. Keeping the environment brand-safe and fraud-free will determine whether podcasting will live up to its promise. “It doesn’t feel like the commercial side of podcasting is maturing at the same rate as audience engagement,”

Why After AI, Fashion and Shopping Will Never Be the Same

It is accelerating the impact of tech's two primary drivers, speed and convenience, while adding greater clarity and improving the rate of customer purchases. JL

Peter Diamandis reports in Singularity Hub:

The act of turning desire into purchase: virtual reality, augmented reality, and 3D printing are converging with artificial intelligence, drones, and 5G to transform shopping. As a result, shopping is becoming dematerialized, demonetized, democratized, and delocalized… a transformation of the retail world. For instance, revenue from products purchased via voice commands is expected to quadruple from today’s US$2 billion to US$8 billion by 2023. AI makes retail cheaper, faster, and more efficient. It redefines the shopping experience, making it frictionless and—once we allow AI to make purchases for us—ultimately invisible.

The Hard Truth Behind Netflix's Success

Learn, adapt, iterate, grow. JL

Greg Satell reports in Digital Tonto:

What made Netflix successful wasn’t one big idea. Just about every assumption they made when they started the company was wrong. It was what they learned along the way that made the difference. You need to maximize your focus by limiting the number of opportunities you pursue. It’s why they dropped DVD sales to focus on renting movies and then dropped a la carte rental to focus on the subscription business. That singularity of focus played a big part in Netflix’s success. That’s the truth of how Netflix became a media powerhouse.

How Blacklisting Prompted China To Quickly Become Less Reliant On US Tech

Be careful what you wish for.

As many experts warned, rather than forcing China to its knees, US blacklisting of Chinese companies, products and, increasingly, scientists and engineers, has simply caused China to innovate faster. The result is less dependence on US technology, which not only reduces sales of US software and hardware, but may boost global sales of Chinese products and services. JL

Kavita Chandran and Ana da Costa report in CNBC:

The "Chinese drive towards self-sufficiency" has accelerated over the past year as a result of "decoupling." Huawei unveiled a new 5G processor for its mobile devices, highlighting the company's ambitions to take control of its supply chain amid political pressure from the U.S. "Our products are shipped without the reliance on the U.S. components and chips." China's ambition to become the world leader in technology - whether it's 5G, blockchain or artificial intelligence  - (is) more urgent now that it's embroiled in a tariff war with the U.S.

Meet the HENRYs: Millennials Making 6 Figures Who Still Cant Afford Big City Life

HENRY stands for High Earner, Not Rich Yet. The cost of bi-coastal (and some mid-coastal, like Denver, Chicago or Dallas) urban life, expensive tastes and oppressive student debt combine to make what would once have been princely compensation feel inadequate.

Not that many people feel sorry for them - or should - but since they have largely fueled the urban revival, their abandonment of it could have significant economic consequences. JL

Hillary Hoffower reports in Business Insider:

What do you call a millennial who makes between $100,000 and $250,000 but still feels broke? That would be a "Henry," which stands for "high earner not rich yet." "They're people who want to get their financial s--- together, but still keep their avocado toast, SoulCycle, and boozy brunch lifestyle." Three traits characterize a Henry: a higher-than-average income, little to no savings, and feelings of low material wealth. The "working rich" work in tech or engineering, earn $180,000 annually on average, and have $80,000 in student-loan debt.

As $100 Billion Evaporates, Silicon Valley Adjusts To New Reality

Reversion to the mean strikes again. JL

Heather Somerville reports in the Wall Street Journal:

Silicon Valley’s highest-flying  have collectively lost about $100 billion in value this year. The magnitude of value destruction has cast uncertainty over the venture-capital industry. It has prompted soul-searching and calls for stricter corporate governance. Deals for consumer-technology companies that  six months ago would have closed in a week or two are taking a month or longer. Startups planning on raising $80 million to $100 million are being told they should expect $20 million to $30 million. “We are in dot-com bubble 2.0, except it’s not happening in  public markets but in private.”

Facebook Bows To Singapore Law, Issues Disclaimer Acknowledging Untrue Content

This is the first time Facebook has bowed to specific legislated governmental authority with regard to the content on its site.

While some express concern that this could lead to a reduction in 'free expression,' others counter that the social media giant has become such a vast source of disinformation that any reduction in content under its auspices is a net positive. JL

Cat Zakrzewski reports in the Washington Post:

“Facebook is legally required to tell you that the Singapore government says this post has false information,” said a disclaimer accompanying the post that the Singapore government ordered posted. The government ordered Facebook to run the disclaimer on a post from a fringe news site which contained accusations about the arrest of an alleged whistleblower the government denies happened. Singapore's law allows government ministers to order tech companies to issue correction notices or remove material that officials say is false. "With huge, onerous fines and the possibility of prison time, it's hard for any company to not comply”

How Neural Networks Became A Huge Business

Neural nets combine versatility, big data and computing power to provide better results faster. JL

Timothy Lee reports in ars technica:

Deep learning has conquered so many different fields because it is extraordinarily versatile. Backpropagation - the larger an input's value, the more its weight gets increased - made deeper networks more tractable, but those deeper networks still required more computing resources than shallower networks. Dramatically deeper networks could deliver breakthrough performance if they were combined with ample computing power and lots of data to complete the training process in a reasonable amount of time and see big performance gains.

High Tech Firms Have Revived Manufacturing In New York City

The city has good engineering schools, a vibrant tech scene - and A LOT of moneyed investors.

The old sweat shops may be gone, but precision high tech industry is growing. JL


Clay Risen reports in the New York Times:

It’s been a long time since “New York” and “manufacturing” sat together in a sentence that didn’t include words like “decay,” “pollution” and “job loss.” In recent years, the city has been undergoing an industrial transformation; 2015 was the first year in decades that New York did not see a drop in manufacturing jobs.These jobs don’t take place in the sweaty, iron-and-oil factories of old. They are high-tech and, not automated, requiring sophisticated human skills to navigate 3-D printing and computer-numerical-control milling  to produce small batches of precisely engineered products.

How Machine Learning Identifies Extremists on Social Media

Patterns of behavior from large volumes of data not necessarily discernible to basic analysis. JL


Roberta Kwok reports in Yale Insights:

Researchers used machine learning to predict which users were likely to be extremists, based on features such as who the person followed. Suspended users often sign up again under a slightly different name. When a suspended user created a new account, that person would re-follow many of the same people they had previously so to detect these new accounts, AI  identified typical features of suspended accounts. Following certain users or concealing one’s location was linked to a higher likelihood of extremism. Researchers could automatically identify 60% of accounts that were later suspended. "When you kill as ISIS account, it comes back."

Cyber Monday Shoppers Are Competing With Bots For Holiday Deals

And the bots are winning, then offering the discount purchases for higher prices on third party sites. JL

Ben Popken reports in NBC:

97% of all online traffic to retailer login pages this holiday shopping week comes from bots, largely operated by cybercriminals.On a normal shopping day, humans outnumber bots on login pages by two to one. On the days leading up to Black Friday and Cyber Monday, bots outnumber humans by 20 to 1.The bots fill out online forms and navigate retail sites faster than a real person can, and swiftly purchase limited supply gifts before you’ve even filled up your cart. The items are then sold for a higher price on third-party sites.

The Reason Microtasks May Be the Future Of White Collar Work

Rather than attempting to manage distraction, building it into the design of work. JL

Clive Thompson reports in Wired:

Microproductivity emerged in part as an evolutionary response to everyone's number one complaint about office life: interruptions. It takes 25 minutes to truly resume a task we've been distracted from, on average. Even still, attention shifts across computer screen every 47 seconds, research has found. With each interruption we lose context. When we come back, we tend to forget what we were doing. Instead of lecturing people about mindfulness and staying focused, what if you engineered work to fit into fractured moments? Companies like Microsoft have begun weaving microtasks into commercial software.

The Behavioral Economics Behind New, Less Distracting, More Comfortable Offices

The trend away from personal offices - or even desks - continues. But in an economy driven by competition for talent, companies have heard the complaints about the noise and discomfort of open office plans.

New designs may provide less personal space, but they reflect the demands for quiet, flexibility, team collaboration and personal comfort of their necessarily expensive human capital, whose enhanced or decreased productivity can be measured and optimized. JL


Chip Cutter and Rachel Feintzig report in the Wall Street Journal:

The U.S. job market has been on a hot streak and keeping workers happy at the office is one of the most important facets of retaining talent, recruiters and management experts say. More companies are taking employee complaints seriously, often spending millions on gleaming offices that incorporate their ideas. Office workers want more natural light and views.(But) amenities don’t distract from the fact that many workers’ dedicated personal spaces continue to shrink inside open offices.

Why AI Is Not Similar To Human Intelligence

And the larger question may be, even if it were, would that really be an advantage? JL

Elizabeth Fernandez reports in Forbes:

It’s easy to anthropomorphize artificial intelligence. We imagine befriending Siri, or that our self-driving car has our best interests at heart. “Algorithms are not ‘just like us’... by anthropomorphizing a statistical model, we grant it agency that not only overstates its true abilities, but robs us of our own autonomy... It is always humans who choose whether or not to abdicate this authority, to empower some piece of technology to intervene on our behalf. It would be a mistake to presume that this transfer of authority involves a simultaneous absolution of responsibility.

Who Really Hacked Sony Pictures Five Years Ago?

Russians, Ukrainians, equity traders who had shorted the stock, disgruntled employees, teen hackers who stumbled upon a foreign government job...Almost everyone has a theory.

But there is one theory they almost everyone agrees on: it was not the North Koreans. JL


Tatiana Siegel reports in Hollywood Reporter:

The massive cyberattack just before Thanksgiving 2014 crippled a studio, embarrassed executives and reshaped Hollywood. The FBI blamed a North Korea scheme to retaliate for the comedy 'The Interview,’ but alternate theories and conspiracies circulate widely. Some believe it was the work of Russian hackers, or an investor looking to profit from a post-hack stock collapse. Others speculate it was a disgruntled former employee. In the aftermath, nearly all of Sony's top management was swept out.

What Is the Impact of Surgeons Starting To Use Augmented Reality Headsets?

It makes everything clearer to the doctor. Whether it improves outcomes is the most important question. JL

Michele Marill reports in Wired:

The HoloLens headset is finding a niche among surgeons and biomedical engineers. “It’s like having X-ray vision. You can see the anatomy inside the patient.” There are no actual X-rays; the images come from pre-operative CT scans or MRIs, projected holographically through a head-mounted display and coupled with ultrasound and electromagnetic tracking devices.The headset displays images that hover in the surgeon’s field of vision. The apps align images of the patient’s anatomy with the real-life view. A surgeon can walk around the patient, viewing three-dimensional holographic images of internal structures—such as arteries, veins, and internal organs—from different vantage points.

Why Media Executives Keep Failing

For starters, what the hell is media? And if you don't know how to produce it, how can you be expected to run it successfully? JL

Joe Ragazzo reports in Talking Points Memo:

The business challenge that faces journalism is not one of technology or “scale,” as we so often hear from media executives. The problem is that journalism is an essential public good that is expensive to produce. “The tragedy of digital media isn’t that it’s run by ruthless, profiteering guys in ill-fitting suits; it’s that the people posing as the experts know less about how to make money than their employees, to whom they won’t listen.”

How Apps Use Cell Phone Data To Collect On Loans. Which, BTW, Is Illegal

The illegality of the practice is considered a feature, not a bug, as it gives the tech companies more leverage to negotiate. JL

Newley Purnell and Justin Scheck report in the Wall Street Journal:

Silicon Valley venture capital is funding a wave of fintech startups that use data from borrowers’ cellphones to collect on debts in ways that are illegal. It is the latest example of Silicon Valley pushing legal and ethical boundaries in a global race for customers and profit. Lured by the promise of massive populations of people who are just beginning to transact online, tech companies are moving into banking in emerging markets, where cultural norms are complex, regulations are often weak, and many consumers lack credit histories or even official identification.

Your Vote Is For Sale - And Big Tech Is Selling It

There are lots of willing buyers. the question is at what point citizens of democracies will begin to notice how this is impacting their lives - and not for the better. JL

Jennifer Baker reports in The Next Web:

“The tension between the integrity of electoral systems and an unregulated digital sphere have become an inherent danger to democracies worldwide." The twin shocks of the Brexit referendum and the US presidential election in 2016 point the finger at microtargeting. But the volume, velocity and vectors for information have all increased exponentially, while who takes responsibility for generating and disseminating that information grows ever more opaque. We want responsibility and accountability. And transparency appears to be the first step on that road. (But) do we want Big Tech to become the arbiter of truth?

How Amazon Weaves Itself Into the Life of An American City

Amazon continues to claim that it 'only' accounts for 4 or 5% of total retail sales, but that belies its growing dominance of US commerce - and it wants more.

State, local and regional governments that defy it risk their economic well-being. Its power is that of a nation - and it wields that influence without compunction or regret. JL


Scott Shane reports in the New York Times:

Globally, Amazon, the “apex predator” of digital business, delivered 10 billion packages last year — more than the number of people on the planet. Issues that Amazon’s conduct has raised nationally (include)erosion of brick-and-mortar retail. modestly paid warehouse work and automation, government and institutional procurement,  expansion in air cargo, the spread of video and audio surveillance, and the conquest of the computing infrastructure that underlies commerce, government and communications, like an electric utility — except without the regulation.