Adidas Wilson's Blog, page 82
September 12, 2017
Wary of robots taking jobs, Hawaii toys with guaranteed pay
HONOLULU — Driverless trucks. Factory robots. Delivery drones. Virtual personal assistants.
As technological innovations increasingly edge into the workplace, many people fear that robots and machines are destined to take jobs that human beings have held for decades–a trend that is already happening in stores and factories around the country. For many affected workers, retraining might be out of reach —unavailable, unaffordable or inadequate.
What then?
Enter the idea of a universal basic income, the notion that everyone should be able to receive a stream of income to live on, regardless of their employment or economic status.
It isn’t an idea that seems likely to gain traction nationally in the current political environment. But in some politically progressive corners of the country, including Hawaii and the San Francisco Bay area, the idea of distributing a guaranteed income has begun to gain support.
Over the past two decades, automation has reduced the need for workers, especially in such blue-collar sectors as manufacturing, warehousing and mining. Many of the jobs that remain demand higher education or advanced technological skills. It helps explain why just 55 percent of Americans with no more than a high school diploma are employed, down from 60 percent just before the Great Recession.
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Hawaii state lawmakers have voted to explore the idea of a universal basic income in light of research suggesting that a majority of waiter, cook and building cleaning jobs — vital to Hawaii’s tourism-dependent economy — will eventually be replaced by machines. The crucial question of who would pay for the program has yet to be determined. But support for the idea has taken root.
“Our economy is changing far more rapidly than anybody’s expected,” said state Rep. Chris Lee, who introduced legislation to consider a guaranteed universal income.
Lee said he felt it’s important “to be sure that everybody will benefit from the technological revolution that we’re seeing to make sure no one’s left behind.”
Here are some questions and answers:
What is a universal basic income?
In a state or nation with universal basic income, every adult would receive a uniform fixed amount that would be deemed enough to meet basic needs. The idea gained some currency in the 1960s and 1970s, with proponents ranging from Martin Luther King Jr. to President Richard Nixon, who proposed a “negative income tax” similar to basic income. It failed to pass Congress.
Recently, some technology leaders have been breathing new life — and money — into the idea. Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk and others have promoted the idea as a way to address the potential loss of many transportation, manufacturing, retail and customer service jobs to automation and artificial intelligence.
Even some economists who welcome technological change to make workplaces more efficient note that the pace of innovation in coming years is likely to accelerate. Community colleges and retraining centers could find it difficult to keep up. Supporters of a universal basic income say the money would cushion the economic pain for the affected workers.
Source:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hawaii-considers-universal-basic-income-guaranteed-pay-robots-taking-jobs/
Samsung wants to launch a foldable Galaxy Note in 2018
Apple is preparing to draw scores of eyes to Cupertino later today as it unboxes a clutch of new iPhones, including a new premium handset, called the iPhone X, slatedto have a near bezel-less OLED display, a 3D face unlock feature and a $1,000+ price-tag, while bringing various new camera and feature tweaks — many of which have leaked in recent weeks.
Even so, the new iPhones are set to look like, well, iPhones — aka slabs of expensively shiny glass.
So what better time for rival Samsung to tease that it might finally be nearing the point of outing something rather different: A smartphone with a foldable screen — encouraging consumers who might be thinking of shelling out serious bucks for Apple’s new glass slabs to think twice.
Bloomberg reports that Koh Dong-jin, president of Samsung’s mobile business, has said the company is setting its sights on 2018 to release a smartphone with a bendable display.
“As the head of the business, I can say our current goal is next year,” he told reporters. “When we can overcome some problems for sure, we will launch the product.”
He was speaking at a press event in South Korea announcing the Galaxy Note 8 phablet to domestic media. The future foldable phone is intended to sit in the same Galaxy Note portfolio line-up, according to his comments.
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Samsung has been teasing the fact it’s working on a bendable device for multiple years now — showing investors a range of folding prototypes in 2013, and teasing bendy screen concepts (branded Youm) at CES that year. Though its tests date back further still, while it’s been showing off concept videos of flexible devices for a similarly long time.
But while Samsung has been happy to scatter suggestive tidbits about its folding phone plans over the years, the date for a potential commercial release has never been firmed up. Instead possible release years have been mentioned then pushed further forward in time — apparently as it encountered new manufacturing complications.
So it’s fair to say that the latest claim — that 2018 might finally be the year of the folding phone — should be taken with a large pinch of salt. Especially as the timing of the tease coincides with the most important date in the Apple calendar: iPhone X day.
And, well, let’s face it, concept smartphones don’t have a great record of ever seeing the light of day either.
Even if you assume Samsung has made some progress on its bendable prototypes, having worked on the concept for more than five years at this point, there’s no doubt that creating a screen robust enough to be opened and closed (and prodded) as much as 150 times+ a day by touchscreen-addicted humans is a huge challenge.
And after the flaming disaster of the Galaxy Note 7, which had to be recalled after some batteries caught fire, the risk-margin for Samsung on this potential release must be very tight indeed…
No one wants a folding phone if that means screen glitches and/or a handset that feels tacky and whose dimensions hark back to the heft of late 1990s mobile devices.
(For the record, Samsung’s folding phone has been rumored to be called the Galaxy X. So Apple’s choice of premium brand name for its top tier new iPhone is probably causing more than a little irritation in South Korea.)
Source:
Ahead of iPhone X day, Samsung teases 2018 foldable phone launch plan
‘The Walking Dead’ Showrunner Delivers Potentially Heartbreaking News
Production on The Walking Dead has been temporarily put on hold due to Hurricane Irma, but when it returns, it will no doubt continue filming episodes involving the All Out War between Rick and Negan. In the meantime, showrunner Scott Gimple has made some potential news.
Some context first: We have talked ad nauseam about the time jump this season on The Walking Dead. We’ve seen future Rick in the season eight trailer, and we know, thanks to Robert Kirkman, that the time jump will take place in the season premiere. My guess based on statements we’ve heard from Kirkman and what we know from the source material, is that the time jump will frame season eight. The season premiere will begin with Future Rick, and then it will flash back to all of the events leading up to the eventual time jump.
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That time jump presumably will also include other characters on the series, and fans of the series may have a particular interest in one character: Baby Glenn. Recall that Maggie is pregnant on The Walking Dead, so any time-jump longer than a few months (and this one looks like a few years) would necessarily answer the question: Will Maggie have her and Glenn’s baby?
To that question, Scott Gimple told a fan at a The Walking Dead season eight preview, “Maggie’s baby will not be born in season eight.”
If we are years into the future, and Maggie’s baby is not born, does that mean that Maggie will not have the baby? Possibly. After all, there’s already one baby on the show, Judith, although a time jump would make Lil Ass Kicker a toddler. It’s possible, however, that Gimple is just toying with fans. Maybe the season begins and ends with the time jump, and we don’t see any of the characters beyond Rick before the end of season eight. Next season would then potentially open several years in the future, when we finally meet Baby Glenn.
Or maybe Maggie and/or her child do not survive the All Out War. We may have to wait until the ninth season to find out for sure. In the meantime, Fear the Walking Dead is killing time before The Walking Dead returns on October 22nd, and Gimple promises ” lots of explosions, lots of killing, a lot more Negan.”
Source:
‘The Walking Dead’ Showrunner Delivers Potentially Heartbreaking News
Samsung’s Gear watches will help with senior care and employee safety
Samsung is taking on the world of work via three new integrations with its Gear smartwatches. SoloProtect uses the Samsung Gear S3 to keep tabs on people who work alone, like real estate agents and home healthcare workers, while Reemo integrates with the Gear S3 and S2 to monitor the health of seniors in care facilities. Ability Wearables, along with Samsung’s Gear Fit 2 and S3 devices, helps keep track of people who work long shifts, like truck drivers, construction employees and healthcare workers. Samsung is spotlighting these and a VR solution for fitness centers at the Mobile World Congress Americas conference in San Francisco this week.
SoloProtect is a 24/7 monitoring and communication service that provides emergency alerts, geo-location and status checks to businesses that employ lone workers in higher-risk environments. “Safety and reliability are top of mind for all employers, but historically, it has been difficult to manage safety for individual employees operating outside the traditional office setting,” said SoloProtect CEO John Broady in a statement. “By equipping workers with a high-quality Samsung smartwatch integrated with SoloProtect, we can help businesses increase the safety of those operating alone in the field, and provide them with the ability to concentrate on their task at hand with greater peace of mind.”
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Reemo’s platform tracks activity level, heart rate and sleep quality of seniors in care centers, which can help their caregivers provide better care. “We’re thrilled to join Samsung at Mobile World Congress Americas this year to further demonstrate mobile technology’s impact in the senior care industry,” said Reemo’s CEO, John Valiton, in a statement. “Samsung’s enablement of the Reemo platform through its wearable devices has made technology truly accessible to seniors by providing mobility, safety, awareness and connectivity to create independence in the aging experience.”
People at risk for falling asleep on the job can wear a Gear smartwatch that connects through Samsung’s GearUP platform to connect with Ability Wearables’ real-time health intelligence systems, letting employers both predict and react to employee fatigue on the job. “Samsung is pushing the envelope with its range of wearables,” said Ability’s CEO Shiv Madan in a statement. “By applying this collaborative solution to employees at high-risk of fatigue, we believe we can help solve many of the fatigue-driven challenges facing today’s workers.”
Source:
https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/samsung-apos-gear-watches-help-050900205.html
Chatbot offers legal help to Equifax data breach victims
The DoNotPay robot lawyer generates documents US consumers can take to the small claims court.
Depending on the state, consumers can sue Equifax for up to $25,000 (£19,000).
The Equifax data breach has affected 143 million US customers.
Despite repeated requests by the BBC, Equifax has not confirmed exactly how many UK consumers were affected, but reports suggest the details of up to 44 million British people may have been compromised.
The firm has committed to working with regulators in the US, UK and Canada on next steps. It is also offering free credit monitoring and identity theft protection for a year.
“We pride ourselves on being a leader in managing and protecting data, and we are conducting a thorough review of our overall security operations,” said Richard Smith, Equifax chairman and chief executive, when the breach was revealed.
DoNotPay was invented by British teenager Joshua Browder, who is an undergraduate at Stanford University.
The free service was originally designed to help appeal against parking or speeding tickets by selecting the right letter that corresponds to the user’s issue.
This is not the first time it has been programmed for altruistic purposes – in March, Mr Browder adapted the bot to help asylum seekers with immigration applications and to obtain financial support.
As of July, he estimated that the bot had helped to defeat 375,000 parking tickets in two years.
Unauthorised access
At the end of July, Equifax discovered signs of unauthorised access to data including names, addresses and social security numbers.
The credit report giant set up a website where consumers can check whether their information was accessed and sign up for free credit and identity theft monitoring.
The data breach is one of the biggest ever reported in the US and victims are at risk of identity theft and fraud.
Source:
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-41239513
Facebook has pulled Instant Articles off Messenger
While Facebook prepares to offer readers a way to subscribe and pay for news directly from inside its app, the social network continues to tinker with how it presents publishers’ content elsewhere. In the latest development, TechCrunch has learned and confirmed that Facebook has removed Instant Articles — Facebook’s self-hosted, faster-loading article format for mobile — from Messenger.
“As we continue to refine and improve Instant Articles — and in order to have the greatest impact on people and publishers — we’re focusing our investment in Instant Articles in the Facebook core app and are no longer offering Instant Articles in Messenger,” a spokesperson said. “We believe that Messenger is an exciting channel for new and interesting news consumption experiences, including the opportunity to build unique messaging experiences in Messenger that many publishers (including TechCrunch) have executed successfully via the Messenger Platform.”
Instant Articles was a pared-down article format launched by the social network in 2015 with the aim of speeding up page load time by ten times compared to the mobile web, thereby cutting down the number of people dropping off when reading on mobile devices. (The “Instant” feel and performance is something that Facebook appears keen to develop: just this week it started to test Instant Videos.)
Originally designed to run in the News Feed, a year ago Facebook expanded Instant Articles to Messenger as part of a wider strategy to enhance content on its popular messaging platform, which today has over 1.2 billion users.
But while Instant Articles does what its name suggests, there have been some teething pains with the format.
Several high profile publications and publishers, including the Guardian, Forbes, Hearst, The New York Times, Bloomberg, the Wall Street Journal, ESPN, CBS News, NPR, Financial Times, and VICE News either pulled, scaled back, or never participated in Instant Articles in the first place because of the lack of monetization on the platform. There have also been issues with traffic reporting with the format.
Source:
Facebook has pulled Instant Articles off Messenger
This Place Lets You Pay Your Taxes In Bitcoin
The Swiss municipality of Chiasso is going to let residents pay their taxes in bitcoin, its mayor has announced.
The community, on Switzerland’s southern border with Italy, is vying with Zug to be the country’s cryptocurrency hub. Zug, which styles itself as “Crypto Valley,” launched a pilot last year in which it started accepting bitcoin payments for municipal services. The pilot was apparently a success, so Zug has kept the program running.
Chiasso—sorry, “CryptoPolis”—is going one further by accepting bitcoin for small tax payments, up to a value of 250 Swiss francs ($261).
“Chiasso is recognised internationally as an epicentre of a growing technological and economic growth for both the canton and in Switzerland,” Mayor Bruno Arrigoni said, according to local media. The move is apparently part of Chiasso’s drive to make up for contraction of the traditional financial sector after the financial crisis.
Zug’s scheme also caps bitcoin payments fairly low, only accepting them for a value of up to 200 Swiss francs. At the time of writing, one bitcoin is worth 4122.94 Swiss francs (and $4306.01).
While there may be something for these towns to gain by enticing cryptocurrency fans to set up shop on their turf, their caution makes a lot of sense too.
The value of bitcoin, along with other virtual currencies, has been particularly volatile in recent weeks, largely because of China’s cracking down on initial coin offerings (ICOs)—a trendy but risky form of fundraising that involves issuing new types of tokens—and possibly banning bitcoin exchanges altogether.
Source:
http://fortune.com/2017/09/12/switzerland-chiasso-bitcoin-tax-zug/
Self Publishing : The Secret Guide To Writing And Marketing A Best Seller
Publishing your own eBook has never been a walk in the park, but it has been easier by the availability of services, platforms and tools. With so many options for self-publishers to choose from, authors should be sure to position themselves in such a way to reach a maximum audience.
Book Includes:
Introduction
1. How to Self-Publish
2. Guest blogging to Promote Your Book
3. A Guide to Amazon Book Reviews
4. How Indie Authors Can Create Super fans
5. How to Market Your Book
6. Tips to Creating Best Selling Book Ideas
7. Email List
8. Book Landing Page
9. Write a Nonfiction EBook
10. How Long Should Your EBook Be?
11. Finding a Niche as a Self-Publisher
12. Marketing Video for your Book
13. Mistakes Self-Publishers make on Book Covers
14. Why Self-Published Books Don’t Sell
15. Hybrid Publishing
16. A Complete Guide to Ghostwriting
17. Evernote an Essential Tool for Writers
18. Book Publishers and Subscriptions
19. Find Readers That Love Your Work
20. Kobo Writing Life
21. Choosing the Best eBook Publishing Platform
22. Pronoun for Self-Publishing
23. Self-Publishing on Amazon
24. How Should You Price Your EBook
25. Word Count for Your Self-Published Novel
26. Before You Self-Publish a Chapbook, Poetry Book, or Collection of Poems
27. Getting Book Bloggers to Review Your Book
28. Book Trailers
29. Ins And Outs of Copyright
30. Facing Critics
31. The Art of Kindle Keywords
32. It’s Time to Get a Literary Agent
33. How to Start a Book Publishing Company
34. Write a Compelling Author Bio
35. Give Your Book a Title That Sells
36. Apple’s iBook store
37. Conclusion
Mastering LiteCoin: A Beginner’s Guide To Start Making Money With LiteCoin
Litecoin was founded to act as a Bitcoin alternative to make up for its perceived shortcomings—it was developed to be “lightweight” and be more plentiful than Bitcoin. Litecoin also has almost zero payment cost and facilitates payments approximately four times faster than Bitcoin.
Table of Contents
Litecoin Introduction
1.Cryptocurrency Wallet Guide
2.How to Buy Litecoin
3.Mine Litecoin and Other Altcoins
4.A Better Investment: Bitcoin or Litecoin
5.Litecoin Wallet Clients
6.Bitcoin vs Litecoin
7.Invest In Litecoin
8.SegWit in the Wild
9.Coinbase Users
10. Second Largest Currency
11. Bitcoins in 8 Ways
12. The Purpose of Blockchain
13. Feathercoin
14. ICO
15. Understanding Cryptoeconomics
16. Cryptocurrency: The Ultimate Guide
References
California bans drones from delivering marijuana
Drones delivering hamburgers, beer, and Amazon products might be right around the corner, but don’t get your hopes up if you want your weed sent to you via robot. That’s because California’s Bureau of Cannabis Control has recently unveiled new regulatory rules that will ban drones from delivering marijuana, as spotted by Ars Technica. The Bureau is currently developing regulation surrounding weed use and sales under the Medicinal and Adult-Use Cannabis Regulation and Safety Act (MAUCRSA) after recreational marijuana was legalized in California.
“Cannabis goods will be required to be transported inside commercial vehicles or trailers,” the proposed program description reads. “Transportation may not be done by aircraft, watercraft, rail, drones, human powered vehicles, or unmanned vehicles.” That means a host of start-ups promising to deliver marijuana by drone like MDelivers and Eaze might see that part of their business left in the lurch. Under the rules, deliveries can only be made by licensed retailers, “in person by enclosed motor vehicle,” and the vehicles used for deliveries must have a GPS that allows the seller to track the package. The Bureau also specifically states that those delivering the cannabis aren’t allowed to consume the substance while out on the delivery.
California is the largest economy in the US and the legal marijuana industry could be worth $5 billion to the state. Licenses for cannabis distributors, retailers, testing labs, and other businesses will be issued beginning January 1, 2018.
Source:
https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/11/16286350/california-ban-drones-delivery-marijuana
