Whuffie Stream

infoneer-pulse:

Let’s take a trip with the Ghost of Christmas Future. The year is 2016, and George Bailey, a former banker, now a part-time consultant, is looking for a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage for a co-op in the super-hot neighborhood of Bedford Falls (BeFa). He has never missed a loan payment and has zero credit card debt. He submits his information to the online-only PotterBank.com, but halfway through the application process, the website asks for his Facebook login. Then his Twitter. Then LinkedIn. The cartoon loan officer avatar begins to frown as the algorithm discovers Mr. Bailey’s taxi-driving buddy Ernie was once turned down by PotterBank for a loan; then it starts browsing his daughter Zuzu’s photo album, “Saturday Nite!” And what was this tweet from a few years back: “FML, about to jump off a goddamn bridge”?

A new wave of startups is working on algorithms gathering data for banks from the web of associations on the internet known as “the social graph,” in which people are “nodes” connected to each other by “edges.” Banks are already using social media to befriend their customers, and increasingly, their customers’ friends. The specifics are still shaking out, but the gist is that eventually, social media will account for at least the tippy-top of the mountain of data banks keep on their customers.

» via BetaBeat

singularitarian:

Abstract

Enhancement technologies may someday grant us capacities far beyond what we now consider humanly possible. Nick Bostrom and Anders Sandberg suggest that we might survive the deaths of our physical bodies by living as computer emulations.­­ In 2008, they issued a report, or “roadmap,” from a conference where experts in all relevant fields collaborated to determine the path to “whole brain emulation.” Advancing this technology could also aid philosophical research. Their “roadmap” defends certain philosophical assumptions required for this technology’s success, so by determining the reasons why it succeeds or fails, we can obtain empirical data for philosophical debates regarding our mind and selfhood. The scope ranges widely, so I merely survey some possibilities, namely, I argue that this technology could help us determine (1) if the mind is an emergent phenomenon, (2) if analog technology is necessary for brain emulation, and (3) if neural randomness is so wild that a complete emulation is impossible.

Deadheading

infoneer-pulse:

$6 million to fund an institution that would be capable to educate an infinite amount of students throughout the world sounds ambitious if not crazy. 

Nevertheless Shai Reshef, founder and president of the University of the People says that those $6 million would be sufficient to enable the non-profit to reach sustainability and to fulfill its goal - forever. 

In case you haven’t heard of UoPeople yet. Founded in 2009 by serial entrepreneur Shai Reshef the University of the People was the first tuition free, peer-to-peer institution based on Open Educational Resources. Students just pay a very low one time fee, $10 to $50, depending on their country of residence. 

Currently UoPeople has accepted more than 1200 students from 120 countries. Some of these students are living in refugee camps where partners of the UoPeople give them access to the Internet. 

» via BigThink

Much of the iPad’s use in medical settings so far has been in the form of pilots and trials, but it’s getting ready to take off in a much bigger way. The Veteran’s Administration in the U.S. is looking at rolling out as many as 100,000 tablets across 152 hospitals, says Wired, based on the success of the 1,500 trial iPads it currently has in use. Over 80 percent of U.S. hospitals have similar trials in place, according to recent comments made by Apple CEO Tim Cook, which means that many more could soon take the plunge, resulting in a huge uptick of orders from medical organizations for the generally consumer-oriented device.

futuramb:

A flowering of innovation and communication was ignited by the rise of the PC and the Web and their generative characteristics. Software was installed one machine at a time, a relationship among myriad software makers and users. Sites could appear anywhere on the Web, a relationship among myriad webmasters and surfers. Now activity is clumping around a handful of portals: two or three OS makers that are in a position to manage all apps (and content within them) in an ongoing way, and a diminishing set of cloud hosting providers like Amazon that can provide the denial-of-service resistant places to put up a website or blog.

An important point. This development might lead to a closure of the innovation boom around phones, computers and tablets – and, some would say, back to order again when a few large operators are managing ecosystems in which we reside in an embedded and cozy environment, and innovation is steered into the areas these giants are supporting.

But, it might also lead into a completely other direction since these platforms also open up innovation capability to a much broader community. When Internet and the PC was born, the nerds tha drove that development wasn’t that many in numbers due to the relatively difficult and new technology. I would guess that the number of innovators that now are competing to redefine our world by creating iOS and Android apps are much higher, even if they in some sense are more restricted by what the controlling ecosystem manager wants.

It is important to note that the lion part of the historical innovation made possible by electricity took place AFTER the standards of AC 110 or 220V was in place. Yes, it probably stiffled a lot if things you might be able to invent around basic electricity distribution, but on the other hand it enabled an explosion of electricity drive machines that created the 20th centuries homes.

imwithkanye:

When their son, Geoff, passed away, Mary and Steve Patterson decided to honor his memory by keeping up Geoff’s Tumblr where he made fun of shitbirds, fatties, and asswipes. [Onion]