“
By far the best way to prevent a tug-of-war is to not pick up your end of the rope.

Don Lancaster

[via]

(via merlin)

(via merlin)
This was posted 6 days ago. It has 68 notes.
dbreunig: The AP’s Twitter account was hijacked and used to post the following: “Breaking: Two Explosions in the White House and Barack Obama is injured.” Within a few moments, the stock market took a 1% nosedive, before returning to the norm when it became apparent the account was fake. A few thoughts and questions: Are automated bidders using natural language analysis now? Is some cobbled together sentiment engine marking a tweet from a (usually) trusted source as negative, triggering a precise sale? If so, will we see a rise in noise bots, creating a shadow news economy to screw with competitive holdings? Look how liquid the market is: within a couple minutes 1% was gone. People are making real business decisions from Twitter. (This blip will likely figure into countless social media presentations for years to come.) What will we legislate first: news speed or market speed? Thoughts? (Via The Atlantic Wire)

dbreunig:

The AP’s Twitter account was hijacked and used to post the following: “Breaking: Two Explosions in the White House and Barack Obama is injured.” Within a few moments, the stock market took a 1% nosedive, before returning to the norm when it became apparent the account was fake.

A few thoughts and questions:

  1. Are automated bidders using natural language analysis now? Is some cobbled together sentiment engine marking a tweet from a (usually) trusted source as negative, triggering a precise sale? If so, will we see a rise in noise bots, creating a shadow news economy to screw with competitive holdings?
  2. Look how liquid the market is: within a couple minutes 1% was gone.
  3. People are making real business decisions from Twitter. (This blip will likely figure into countless social media presentations for years to come.)
  4. What will we legislate first: news speed or market speed?

Thoughts? (Via The Atlantic Wire)

This was posted 3 weeks ago. It has 126 notes. .

Today’s computers are so complex that they can only be designed and manufactured with slightly less complex computers. In turn the computers used for the design and manufacture are so complex that they themselves can only be designed and manufactured with slightly less complex computers. You’d have to go through many such loops to get back to a level that could possibly be re-built from scratch.
This was posted 2 months ago. It has 1 note.
What Really Smart People Worry About At Night

nevver:

  1. The proliferation of Chinese eugenics. – Geoffrey Miller, evolutionary psychologist.
  2. Black swan events, and the fact that we continue to rely on models that have been proven fraudulent. – Nassem Nicholas Taleb
  3. That we will be unable to defeat viruses by learning to push them beyond the error catastrophe threshold. – William McEwan, molecular biology researcher
  4. That pseudoscience will gain ground. – Helena Cronin, author, philospher
  5. That the age of accelerating technology will overwhelm us with opportunities to be worried. – Dan Sperber, social and cognitive scientist
  6. Genuine apocalyptic events. The growing number of low-probability events that could lead to the total devastation of human society. – Martin Rees, former president of the Royal Society
  7. The decline in science coverage in newspapers. – Barbara Strauch, New York Times science editor
  8. Exploding stars, the eventual collapse of the Sun, and the problems with the human id that prevent us from dealing with them. — John Tooby, founder of the field of evolutionary psychology
  9. That the internet is ruining writing. – David Gelernter, Yale computer scientist
  10. That smart people—like those who contribute to Edge—won’t do politics. –Brian Eno, musician
  11. That there will be another supernova-like financial disaster. –Seth Lloyd, professor of Quantum Mechanical Engineering at MIT
  12. That search engines will become arbiters of truth. —W. Daniel Hillis, physicist
more


This was posted 2 months ago. It has 4,290 notes.

The Glass Bicycle

When I see the Google Glass UI sitting in the upper right hand corner of my vision, I think of it as potentially being one of the greatest tools man has ever come up with. It’s the true bicycle for our minds. It’ll make everyone smarter, faster, and better connected. It takes away the clunky interface of the computer, and it brings the world’s information directly to your mind.
The difference between Wikipedia twenty seconds away in your pocket and the answer to your question instantly and unobtrusively in your vision is enormous.

Dustin Curtis - The Glass Bicycle

This was posted 2 months ago. It has 0 notes.

Endless Pleasures

A computer is a magical box that provides endless pleasure for free. Simon is used to constant access to this box—a never-ending flow of pleasures.When the box stops working—or even just briefly slows down—he becomes so enraged that he curses our God, the one who gave us life and brought us forth from Egypt.

— New Yorker: Sell Out pt. 1

This was posted 2 months ago. It has 0 notes.

mattmireles:

Too Big to Fail has become Too Big for Trial

This was posted 3 months ago. It has 1 note.