Wednesday, September 14, 2016

Interesting Stuff by Crhis Sandoval - 9/14/2016: AI's hard to see; Airbnb’s Work to Fight Discrimination, Build Inclusion; Transportation Overk‏

Some cool stuff from my favorite local tech newsletter.  Thanks for sending this out Chris!

-Mike Cairns

Robots & AI Stuff
“AI systems are already making problematic judgements that are producing significant social, cultural, and economic impacts in people’s everyday lives” MUST READ

“Now is the time to consider the design, ethical, and policy challenges AI technologies raise”

More Robots & AI Stuff:
·         </span>TINY ROBOT VS ANTS

Diversity & Inclusion Stuff
“putting in place powerful systemic changes to greatly reduce opportunity for hosts and guests to engage in conscious or unconscious discriminatory conduct.” MUST READ

“Diversity advocates said Airbnb’s actions were a notable first step, but wondered how some of the changes could be enforced and whether the moves went far enough”

More Diversity & Inclusion Stuff:
·         And Do You Belong? I Do

Trends
“pedestrian struck by vehicle going 40mph has 10% chance of surviving, one struck by a car at 20mph has a 90% chance. So when we post a 40-mile speed limit on a boulevard where pedestrians walk, we’re saying in the event of a crash, a 90% mortality rate is acceptable. Thes e decisions matter.” MUST READ

“5.2% increase was largest recorded by bureau since it began tracking in the 1960s”

More Trends:

Future of Cars Stuff
“You can either put up red tape or roll out the red carpet. If you want to be a 21st-century laboratory for technology, you put out the carpet.”

“ingenious solution could make self-driving cars much safer—if it works”

More Future of Cars Stuff:

Customer Experience Stuff
“Privileging easy money over better user experience is the antithesis of customer centricity”

More Custom er Experience Stuff:

Military Stuff
“The inquiry was retaliation, Bowe says, for embarrassing the Marine Corps brass.”

“revealed departures from policies and procedures established for Marine Corps recruit training”

“Even back in the day when they were really brutal at Parris Island, I can’t imagine that happening. That’s abuse”

More Military Stuff:

Wells Fargo Stuff


Innovation Stuff


Weather Stuff
·      Earth Temperature Timeline MUST SEE
·      Permafrost 'bubbles' leaking methane 200X above norm<span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";color:#FFFF9B">

Magic Box

Voting Stuff

Energy Stuff

Animal Stuff

Diversions
·      Fury Road - Crash & Smash SO GOOD








Wednesday, August 17, 2016

Interesting Stuff by Chris Sandoval

This is a weekly newsletter that I subscribe to by Chris Sandoval that I absolutely love.  I thought I would post it to my blog this week for all to share.

-Mike Cairns

==================================================================================================

The newsletter was on vacation last week and came back with some extra vacation weight. Enjoy this 16% larger issue!

Think & Work Differently
You should send this to your kids. MUST READ

“Alex Honnold doesn’t experience fear like the rest of us.”

“Rather than providing workers with more space, companies were better off pairing workers according to complementary skills”

More Think & Work Differently:

Security, Privacy & Fraud Stuff
“This isn’t a crazy hypothetical, these machines barely work in friendly environments.”

Beware of phishing attempts if you ever lose your phone.

More Security, Privacy & Fraud Stuff:

Disruption & Transformation Stuff
“on the wrong side of major trends in the digital advertising industry”

“The Company Formerly Known as Google is still figuring out how to be a conglomerate. But at heart, it’s the same world-changing cash machine.”

More Disruption & Transformation Stuff:

Customer Experience Stuff
Whoa. Powerful. Have a tissue handy for the videos, especially the third one.

“realm of UX is riddled with preventable tragedies.”

More Customer Experience Stuff:

Innovation Stuff
“brain-machine interfaces, when used in conjunction with exoskeletons and virtual reality, can trigger partial recovery in patients recovering from spinal cord injuries”

You should print this out and hang it at your desk.

More Innovation Stuff:

Robots & AI Stuff
“We build machines with narrowly human properties, skills, behaviors – a terribly restrictive idea of intelligence”

“What will new technology let us do that was previously impossible?”

“ubiquitous AI utility will allow humans to also evolve as it deepens memory, generates immediate recall, speeds recognition, decision making”

“‘automation bomb’ could destroy 45% of work performed in the US”

More Robots & AI Stuff:
·         ROBOT BRICKLAYER

Trends
“US is an outlier”

“one in five Americans remains in the digital dark”

More Trends:

Military Stuff
“The world was far more dangerous when you were born.”

More Military Stuff:

Millennials & Gen Z Stuff
“they’re gravitating toward payment methods skirting both cash and credit”
 

Thursday, June 30, 2016

Akkermansia gut bacteria may promote weight loss

So today while I was reviewing the changes to the new uBiome website, I noticed that they added a section for a rare type of Bacterium that has shown to promote weight loss.  I didn't have any of this particular bacteria in my sample, but it made me wonder what probiotic supplements and prebiotics could be used to promote healthy growth of it in your gut and help overweight individuals lose weight in a more healthy way.

I found this article that explains some ways that you might do that.  This isn't scientifically verified and could be biased to sell a product, but it did get me thinking about ways that I could improve my health using food as medicine.

Akkermansia wiki articles
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akkermansia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akkermansia_muciniphila#Human_metabolism

I post this so that I can follow up and do some further investigation myself and see if trying some of these probiotics actually impact my gut flora of this type of probiotic.


Wednesday, June 15, 2016

New Free Peer to Peer Internet access?

The power of blockchain is popping up all over the place, but this company is one that really has me intregued.  Combine the power of blockchain with wireless peer to peer networks could open up the internet to many more people throughout the world.

To start testing out maidsafe:

Monday, June 13, 2016

I am interested to see if nano degrees are the way of the future.  I think that it could help to get students into the workforce faster without having to spend so much time getting "well rounded" at a traditional university or college.  I am a big fan so far.

Nano Degrees:
https://www.udacity.com/nanodegree

Online Courses:
https://www.udemy.com/

Free Online courses from MIT:
http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm

I see this as a better way to educate in the future and I hope that more companies consider this type of training verses traditional schools.

Monday, May 30, 2016

With all of the AI bots out there, it is exciting to see a simple to build AI bot to play with.  I will have to try this one out.  Thanks Carlos Chavez for pointing this one out to me!

http://venturebeat.com/2016/05/26/motion-ai-lets-anyone-easily-build-a-bot/


Sunday, May 29, 2016

New Amazon Echo in a WebPage



Echosim.io is a new Online tool that allows you to use Alexa in a browser.  This is a great way to test your new Alexa skills without having to be sitting right in front of your Alexa.

Check it out at https://echosim.io/ and make sure to give Sam Machin a shout out for creating this in the Alexa Hack-a-Thon.

Also, you might want to check out the developer community for other cool ideas that people are using Echo and Alexa for.



https://developer.amazon.com/public/community/post/Tx3BB1JHNS1TDTS/Introducing-Echosim-io-A-New-Online-Tool-Built-by-the-Community-for-the-Communit

Tuesday, January 5, 2016

Humanity in 1000 years

I watched the following video and it got me to thinking about how much different humanity will be in 1000 years.  I think that this video is right on on some points.
http://sci-techuniverse.blogspot.com/2015/12/heres-what-humanity-may-be-like-in-1000.html#more

I summarize this video with the following bullets.

  • Nanobots
  • Humans will impact their on evolution
  • Space colonization
What did you think?