Adidas Wilson's Blog, page 122
July 5, 2017
Amazon’s unlimited subscription service for avid readers is $40 cheaper this week
Amazon is having a Prime Day sale on Kindle Unlimited, it’s all-you-can-read digital book service.
You don’t need a Kindle to use Kindle Unlimited — it’s not about the device, it’s all about the books.
If you’ve never heard of Kindle Unlimited before, it has three major components: digital books, audiobooks, and a technology called whispersync.
The first two are pretty self explanatory. Kindle Unlimited subscribers will have access to thousands of digital books and audiobooks through the Kindle Store. Think of it as having a Spotify subscription, but for books. The Audiobooks come courtesy of Audible.com, who Amazon acquired a few years ago.
This is important to note because the quality of Audible’s audiobooks is phenomenal. I’ve been an on-again, off-again subscriber for years and have yet to find a bad-sounding book.
Not all books sold through the Kindle store are accessible for free with Kindle Unlimited, but hundreds of thousands are. The same is true for audiobooks; only Kindle Unlimited-eligible books with an audible version come free with your subscription.
Whispersync is the technology that makes this subscription really cool. Because the free apps for Kindle and Audible are available on multiple platforms, you’re likely to pick up and leave off books in different places.
You might read a book through the Kindle app before going to bed, and pick up where you left off on your phone during your commute. Or, you might listen to the audible version of a book during your commute, and look to keep reading the Kindle version after dinner.
What whispersync does is keep track of where you leave off, so you can pick up exactly at that place later on. It doesn’t matter how you consume the book, or through what device. It’d be a hassle to keep track of that on your own, so this technology is a major value add for subscribers.
Of course, it’s also available for any Kindle book and Audible audiobook, so if you already own multiple copies of the same book in multiple formats, you can take advantage of whispersync now.
If you know someone who’s always searching for something to read, I can’t think of a better gift to give them. They’ll have more options of what to read than ever before and won’t be penalized for reading whenever and however fits their lifestyle.
http://www.businessinsider.com/kindle-unlimited-sale-amazon-prime-day-deal-2017
Child’s Casket Containing Human Organs Found On Pennsylvania Sidewalk
Authorities in Pennsylvania made a disturbing discovery on Monday, finding that a child-sized casket spotted on a Philadelphia sidewalk contained human organs.
“The medical examiner investigator at the scene confirmed that the contents of the casket were indeed embalmed internal organs,” Philadelphia police said in a statement to HuffPost.
The small white casket was found by a passerby in the 3100 block of W. Clearfield Street, police said. No skeletal remains were found at the scene.
Chris James, who was in the neighborhood at the time of the discovery, used his cellphone to record video of responding officers opening the coffin.
“I was pretty shocked,” James told Philadelphia’s KYW-TV. “It looked like something straight out of ‘Thriller.’”
WTXF News in Philadelphia reported the lid to the casket appeared to have been pried open. That, combined with the location of the discovery, which is across from Mount Vernon Cemetery, led investigators to suspect someone dug up the coffin.
“There have been cases where people take remains or human bodies for whatever unusual reason they decide,” Chief Inspector Scott Small told KYW-TV.
A search of Mount Vernon Cemetery failed to turn up any freshly dug-up graves. Investigators have since expanded the search to other nearby cemeteries, Philadelphia Magazine reported.
The Office of the Medical Examiner is analyzing the remains. As of Wednesday afternoon, authorities had no further information to share about the case.
City police ask anyone with information to call 215-686-TIPS (8477). Callers do not have to give their names.
Source:
Mark Zuckerberg doubles down on universal basic income after a trip to Alaska
During his commencement speech at Harvard, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg called for exploring a system of wealth distribution known as “universal basic income.”
Under basic income, all citizens would receive a standard amount of money each month to cover basic expenses like food, rent, and clothes. Advocates say the system is one of the surest ways to lift people from poverty, since it would provide immediate assistance with no strings attached.
On July 4, Zuckerberg doubled down on his initial support of the concept in a post on Facebook.
He recounted a recent trip that he and his wife, Priscilla Chan, took to Alaska, and said the state’s unique social safety net stood out to them. Every year since 1982, law-abiding Alaskans have received a yearly check from the state’s Permanent Dividend Fund, a $52-billion rainy day fund that’s largely made up of oil revenues the government saves in case oil someday becomes less lucrative.
The checks, typically $1,000 to $2,000, are a kickback the government pays to full-time, law-abiding residents.
It’s not technically basic income, since the amount varies each year and is too small by most advocates’ standards, but it’s the closest thing the US has to an ongoing basic income experiment. Zuckerberg praised the system for a couple reasons.
“First, it’s funded by natural resources rather than raising taxes,” he wrote. “Second, it comes from conservative principles of smaller government, rather than progressive principles of a larger safety net. This shows basic income is a bipartisan idea.”
Ultimately, Zuckerberg said the state’s approach “may be a lesson for the rest of the country.”
Recent research suggests that Alaskans see a lot of benefit from their dividends. A survey from the Economic Security Project found that 81% of people said the cash-transfer program increases their quality of life, and 90% agreed the money should go to everyone who is a full-time resident of Alaska.
In his post, Zuckerberg also pointed to a smaller dividend program involving what the state calls Native Corporations. These corporations are owned and run by native Alaskans and sit on native land. Each year, the corporations pay a small dividend to their shareholders.
“So if you’re a Native Alaskan, you would get two dividends: one from your Native Corporation and one from the state Permanent Fund,” Zuckerberg wrote.
The Facebook CEO became the latest tech executive to endorse basic income with his May 25 commencement speech — but Zuckerberg is in good company. Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Y Combinator President Sam Altman, eBay Founder Pierre Omidyar, and a handful of others have expressed interest in basic income as a way to stave off the negative effects of widespread automation.
“I think we’ll end up doing universal basic income,” Elon Musk told the crowd at the World Government Summit in Dubai earlier this February. “It’s going to be necessary.”
Source:
http://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerberg-universal-basic-income-alaska-2017-7
Prison Letter Reveals 2Pac Dumped Madonna Because She Was White
There are few celebrity couples that seem like odder fits than 2Pac and Madonna were when they were together. On the surface, they existed within very different spaces as artists, with ‘Pac speaking on issues of police brutality and black power while Madonna was cranking out pop hits.
And as it turns out, there was a bigger elephant in the room than the type of music they made. In a newly-publicized letter 2Pac wrote from prison, he explains a motivating factor behind his breakup with Madonna—race. Though segments of the letter shared by TMZ have been blurred out, there are long sections we can read, including this bit on calling it off.
“For you to be seen with a black man wouldn’t in any way jeopardize your career, if anything it would make you seem that much more open and exciting,” he wrote. “But for me at least in my previous perception, I felt due to my ‘image’ I would be letting down half of the people who made me what I thought I was. I never meant to hurt you.”
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Though he doesn’t say it outright, the implication from the letter is clear. If you listen to 2Pac’s early work, especially his debut album 2Pacalypse Now, a lot of the issues he’s speaking to specific to the black experience in America. “Why did you lie to me? I couldn’t find a trace of equality,” he rapped on the song “Trapped,” and the message of black America’s tilted playing field was intertwined through his work until his untimely death. In his eyes—or at least in the eyes of a certain segment of his fan base—continuing a relationship with a white pop star like Madonna was no bueno.
This is also a lot different than, say, Kodak Black’s recent assertion on his racial dating preferences. 2Pac’s motivations don’t appear driven by his own perception of beauty, but rather societal pressures put on him by the people supporting his music.
Later in the letter, 2Pac also admits that things Madonna said publicly cut him deep. One interview she conducted in particular struck a chord, and it looks like it caused friction between them.
“An interview where you said, ‘I’m off to rehabilitate all the rappers & basketball players’ or something to that effect, those words cut me deep seeing how I had never known you to be with any rappers besides myself,” he said. “It was at this moment out of hurt & a natural instinct to strike back and defend my heart & ego that I said a lot of things.”
In the end, it seems like they were able to leave things on good terms, and 2Pac even closed the letter by asking Madonna to visit him in prison so he could talk about this with her in person. Though he felt they needed to end things for various reasons, it doesn’t sound like there was any ill will between them.
The letter, which will be up for auction for $100K starting on July 19, can be viewed here.
Source:
http://www.complex.com/music/2017/07/tupac-prison-letter-dumped-madonna-white
Google’s DeepMind Turns to Canada for Artificial Intelligence Boost
Google’s high-profile artificial intelligence unit has a new Canadian outpost.
DeepMind, which Google bought in 2014 for roughly $650 million, said Wednesday that it would open a research center in Edmonton, Canada. The new research center, which will work closely with the University of Alberta, is the United Kingdom-based DeepMind’s first international AI research lab.
DeepMind, now a subsidiary of Google parent company Alphabet (GOOG, +1.49%), recruited three University of Alberta professors from to lead the new research lab. The professors—Rich Sutton, Michael Bowling, and Patrick Pilarski—will maintain their positions at the university while working at the new research office.
Sutton, in particular, is a noted expert in a subset of AI technologies called reinforcement learning and was an advisor to DeepMind in 2010. With reinforcement learning, computers look for the best possible way to achieve a particular goal, and learn from each time they fail.
DeepMind has popularized reinforcement learning in recent years through its AlphaGo program that has beat the world’s top players in the ancient Chinese board game, Go. Google has also incorporated some of the reinforcement learning techniques used by DeepMind in its data centers to discover the best calibrations that result in lower power consumption.
“DeepMind has taken this reinforcement learning approach right from the very beginning, and the University of Alberta is the world’s academic leader in reinforcement learning, so it’s very natural that we should work together,” Sutton said in a statement. “And as a bonus, we get to do it without moving.”
DeepMind has also been investigated by the United Kingdom’s Information Commissioner’s Office for failing to comply with the United Kingdom’s Data Protection Act as it expands to using its technology in the healthcare space.
ICO information commissioner Elizabeth Denham said in a statement on Monday that the office discovered a “number of shortcomings” in the way DeepMind handled patient data as part of a clinical trial to use its technology to alert, detect, and diagnosis kidney injuries. The ICO claims that DeepMind failed to explain to participants how it was using their medical data for the project.
DeepMind said Monday that it “underestimated the complexity” of the United Kingdom’s National Health Service “and of the rules around patient data, as well as the potential fears about a well-known tech company working in health.” DeepMind said it would be now be more open to the public, patients, and regulators with how it uses patient data.
“We were almost exclusively focused on building tools that nurses and doctors wanted, and thought of our work as technology for clinicians rather than something that needed to be accountable to and shaped by patients, the public and the NHS as a whole,” DeepMind said in a statement. “We got that wrong, and we need to do better.”
Source:
http://fortune.com/2017/07/05/google-deepmind-artificial-intelligence-canada/
Apple Wants Face Scanning to Replace Touch ID
The company’s goal to do away with Touch ID, its fingerprint identity sensor that has been used to unlock iPhones models launched since 2013, is expected to occur in time for the launch of the iPhone 8, due to be released later this year. People familiar with the product’s development claim that the new facial-recognition technology will feature a 3-D sensor capable of scanning faces and unlocking iPhones within a few hundred milliseconds.
The sensor will also be used to authenticate payments and launch secure apps and has reportedly been designed so that users don’t have to hold the device close to their face — laying the phone flat on a table is sufficient enough to gain access. Bloomberg’s sources add that Apple’s facial-recognition technology, which is still in development and may not be ready in time to feature on the new iPhone, is more secure than Touch ID as it takes in more data points.
Apple is also said to be in process of testing eye-scanning technology to supplement its new system. By using 3-D sensors, it hopes to avoid running into the same issues that dogged Samsung (SSNLF). The South Korean company’s Galaxy G8 smartphone featured iris scanners that could be breached by placing a printed photo copy of the user’s eyes in front of it.
Aside from introducing a face-unlocking feature, Apple’s new iPhone is set to include an artificial intelligence chip. Called the Apple Neural Engine, the chip’s ability to handle tasks, such as image recognition and typing suggestions, is expected to improve battery life. The iPhone 8 will also feature screens capable of displaying content at a higher frame rate.
The addition of these complex features has led to concerns that the iPhone 8’s launch date might be delayed and hindered by costly production issues. Some analysts are also concerned that the expected retail price of $1,000 may put consumers off buying it.
Read more: Apple Wants Face Scanning to Replace Touch ID | Investopedia http://www.investopedia.com/news/apple-wants-face-scanning-replace-touch-id/#ixzz4lxPcIXKU
July 4, 2017
Power recap: ‘Things Are Going to Get Worse’
Ghost, back at it with the white Vans, hovers over the toilet in his jail cell. He’s hurting, physically and mentally, after being denied bail, and we’re seeing the aftermath of the guards beating him down. He’s limping; there’s blood. It’s bad. Proctor pays his client a visit and suggests that Ghost keep a low profile. Behind bars, he’s no longer Ghost — he’s James St. Patrick. I’ll take the family man alter ego for $1,000, Alex.
James’ kids, though, are butting heads about their father. Raina believes her father is innocent, while bratty Tariq thinks he did it, no thanks to Kanan. At this point, Tariq is over his parents and doesn’t trust them, leading him to look to Kanan as a father figure. I can’t wait to see Tariq’s face when he finds out he’s being used as a pawn. (No new friends, Tariq. No new friends.) Tasha, trying to keep the kids in line, takes them to school and gives them a pep talk: They shouldn’t discuss their father with anyone or call him Ghost. Tasha tries to get Tariq to talk and asks him about Kanan, which will come back to bite her later. I think he’ll be the first to turn, but don’t let me speak too soon.
Keisha, meanwhile, runs up into Tommy’s place, demanding that he and Tasha remove their names from the shop. She wants her life back, and she deserves it. Although Tommy shuts that idea down, he assures her she’s safe. We saw what happened to Holly, but something’s telling me this will end differently. And here’s something I don’t think anyone saw coming: Later, Tommy and Keisha hook up. Yes, I know. Keisha feels like Tommy’s the best thing that’s come out of all of this, but both of them agree to keep it hush around Tasha, as they should. We’ll have to revisit this one; I’m still not sure how I feel about them.
Angela is pretty much Hester Prynne in her office, as she overhears her colleagues plotting to exploit her sexual relationship with both Knox and James as an angle for the trial. She interrupts the festivities when her fave, John Maks, interrogates her about her relationships with James and Knox as if she’s on the stand — where everyone agrees she shouldn’t be called. Anyway, introducing the love triangle discredits their office since they all knew about it.
Source:
http://ew.com/recap/power-season-4-episode-2/
