This is why the deal makes so much sense, AOL provides the technology to target individuals instead of content, and Verizon the ability to track those individuals — at least the over 100m customers they already have — at arguably a deeper level than anyone else in digital advertising (for non-Verizon customers, AOL’s ad platform is still useful, albeit not as targeted; rates would be commensurately lower). The talk of this mashup joining Facebook and Google to form a “Big 3” of digital advertising is not unrealistic.
Month: May 2015
Fact-resistant humans
Scientists have discovered a powerful new strain of fact-resistant humans who are threatening the ability of Earth to sustain life. The research identifies a virulent strain of humans who are virtually immune to any form of verifiable knowledge
Humans are terrible drivers
In any given daylight moment in America, there are 660K people behind the wheel who are checking their devices instead of watching the road
the data from this research should make us want these cars sooner, instead of being scared.
Top Music Pirate
RNS was the most pervasive and infamous Internet piracy group in history. In 11 years, RNS leaked more than 20k albums. For much of this time, the group’s best asset was Glover—there was scarcely a person younger than 30 who couldn’t trace music in their collection to him
12 ga planets
PSR B1620-26 b is an extrasolar planet located 12k light-years away from Earth in the constellation of Scorpius. it is one of the oldest planets in the universe, at 12.7 ga
Can life survive for billions of years longer than the expected timeline on Earth? As scientists discover older and older solar systems, it’s likely that before long we’ll find an ancient planet in a habitable zone. Knowing if life is possible on this exoplanet would have immense implications for habitability and the development of ancient life
Living computers
Our ultimate goal is to make living computers. Biological systems can do signal processing like human brains at very low power. We want to see if we can build a CMOS hybrid life form, eventually
AR localization
coincidentally, i spent several weeks in 2000 modeling this same train station for a political referendum
we used the then cutting-edge VRML to allow you to explore the new train station in 3D in your browser. we worked off of architectural blueprints to create our 3D rendering.
Here is a small video of what we have been working on in my team at ETH over the last weeks. We are working on creating models for localization in large buildings such as malls. These models are the result of fusing data provided by multiple users over time. This should inspire developers to see which kind of indoor localization support to expect from the Tango API in the course of the next months.
Future filter bubbles
how we’ll deal with a future where you’ll only be exposed to what you want to see.
I think most people, if asked “Is it important to listen to arguments by people who disagree with you?” would answer in the affirmative. I also think most people don’t really do this. Maybe having to set a filter would make people explicitly choose to allow some contrary arguments in. Having done that, people could no longer complain about seeing them – they would feel more of an obligation to read and think about them. And of course, anyone looking for anything more than outrage-bait would choose to preferentially let in high-quality, non-insulting examples of disagreeing views, and so get inspired to think clearly instead of just starting one more rage spiral.
Remote driving
it will still have a driver to monitor the truck’s systems and intervene in the event of a malfunction.
a bit of a stretch to call this autonomous, and it’s not obvious to me why this is economically better, but a nice start.
2022-01-29: this is becoming a broader trend, with 1 operator ideally controlling several systems at once:
“There’s just no way this isn’t going to explode as a category”. As industrial machines become more capable and connected, the number and variety of these jobs will grow. New forms of remote physical work may involve supervising multiple autonomous machines. Some companies see remote human helpers as a stopgap. Phantom Auto has sold its remote driving technology to companies working on self-driving cars and delivery robots. These vehicles can handle many situations on the road autonomously but struggle with unusual situations, poor weather conditions, or instrument anomalies, requiring a person to step in and help.
Energy Storage
even at 2-3x the battery prices announced by tesla, it is economical for utilities to replace peak gas plants with batteries. this is before price drops that will inevitably happen as scale increases. battery prices are already below most predictions for 2020.
Gregor J. Rothfuss 