This is a really big deal, whatever the sceptics say. Blog post explaining the background here. It also confirms what a smart move it was on Google’s part to acquire DeepMind.
LATER
The Nature editorial on the paper reporting the breakthrough, and Elizabeth Gibney’s comment on its implications.
Apple has over $200B in cash, and yet it borrows money to fund buy-backs of its shares — to keep its investors happy. How come?
Simple, says the NYT:
Mr. Maestri [Apple’s CFO] said that Apple would continue to raise money in debt markets in the United States and abroad to continue to return money to investors in the form of dividends and stock buybacks. Because Apple houses the majority of its $216 billion in cash overseas, it has borrowed money over the last three years to pay out more than $9 billion to investors.
And why is that $216B housed overseas? Equally simple: if Apple repatriated it to the US, it would have to pay tax.
Semur-en-Auxois one lovely summer evening.
This morning’s Observer column:
There are not many occasions when one can give an unqualified thumbs-up to something the government does, but this is one such occasion. Last week, Sir Mark Walport, the government’s chief scientific adviser, published a report with the forbidding title Distributed Ledger Technology: Beyond Block Chain. The report sets out the findings of an official study that explores how the aforementioned technology “can revolutionise services, both in government and the private sector”. Since this is the kind of talk one normally hears from loopy startup founders pitching to venture capitalists rather than from sober Whitehall mandarins, it made this columnist choke on his muesli – especially given that, in so far as Joe Public thinks about distributed ledgers at all, it is in the context of Bitcoin, money laundering and online drug dealing. So what, one is tempted to ask, has the chief scientific adviser been smoking?
“A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention”.
Herbert Simon
Botanical Garden, Cambridge, late last year.
“People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.”
Isaac Asimov
This morning’s Observer column:
Good news for Hillary Clinton: there are very few Republican voters in Silicon Valley. Bad news: the Democrats there are not Democrats as you know them. They detest trade unions, for example, and they’re very keen on immigration – so long as the immigrants have PhDs from elite Indian or Chinese universities. They are in favour of government, so long as it’s “smart” government. And they believe that all change is good – especially in the long term.
We know this courtesy of a fascinating piece of opinion polling by Gregory Ferenstein, the guy who runs TechCrunch’s policy channel…