- Remembering Harold Bloom Nice memoir by one of his former students.
- If you doubt that corporations are sociopathic entities: just consider banks that lend to poor people Thoughtful and depressing memoir by a former employee.
- Why we must ban facial recognition technology now
- Zuckerberg still thinks he has First Amendment responsibilities He still doesn’t get it.
- Computational photography: The reason your smartphone photos keep getting better
Quote of the Day
“Watergate had All The President’s Men. Trump’s version will be All Roads Lead to Putin.”
Linkblog
Sheer genius!
The Telegraph’s cartoonist is a genius. No other word for it.
Linkblog
- Anton Howes: The crucial century The mystery of why the industrial revolution started in Britain.
- Michael Kramer’s O-ring theory of development One of the contributions that got him his share of the Nobel prize for economics.
- Trump’s letter to Erdogan Truly, you couldn’t make this up.]
- The University of Washington’s Centre for an Informed Public Now that would be a good idea.
- Should you disclose to an incoming guest that your home has a ‘smart’ speaker? A question that until recently apparently had not occurred to Amazon, Google, Apple or Facebook executives.
Esther Duflo
Esther Duflo is only the second woman to win the Nobel Prize in economics (she shared this year’s prize with Abhijit Banerjee and Michael Kremer). She’s also the youngest recipient of the prize. This is the TED talk she gave in 2010 explaining some of the work which won the prize.
Linkblog
- “The Seductive Diversion of ‘Solving’ Bias in Artificial Intelligence” Trying to “fix” A.I. distracts from the more urgent questions about the technology.
- Unpacking “Ethical AI”: a curated reading list
- Defending our data: Huawei, 5G and the Five Eyes
- Sully Sullenberger’s letter to the Editor of New York Times Magazine about the Boing 737 MAX Since he’s the pilot who safely landed his airliner in the Hudson River all those years ago, it’s worth paying attention.
Linkblog
- Bill Gates met with Jeffrey Epstein many times, despite his past. Uncharacteristically foolish and naive.
- Is Amazon Unstoppable? For the moment, probably yes.
- Dining with Stalin Not good for your health.
- Limiting forwarding on WhatsApp slowed disinformation
- Benedict Evans on ‘New Productivity’
India is suddenly wary about sharing research with China
Well, well. This from Times Higher Ed Supplement:
Despite rolling out the red carpet for Chinese President Xi Jinping last week, India seems to be pulling away from China when it comes to science and research. Indian universities have been informed that all academic cooperation with China must be approved by the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Ministry of External Affairs, “in addition to other clearances”. Analysts speculate that the growing distance between the countries’ scientific achievements and economic power has made India more tentative about sharing its talent.
Not sure I’d like a government department to be deciding what kind of research I can do and with whom, but this is an interesting straw in the wind.
Quote of the Day
“Belief in the corruptibility of all institutions leads to a dead end of universal distrust. American democracy, all democracy, will not survive a lack of belief in the impartiality of institutions; instead, partisan political combat will come to pervade every aspect of life.”
Francis Fukuyama