Category: Uncategorized

Revisiting retirement

we’ve run out of options for economic stimulus. it is time to raise the retirement age, commensurate with huge increases in life expectancy since social security was enacted.

We investigate the options for policymakers given this shortage of traditional ammunition, including: (i) reducing the risk of recession; (ii) reverting to quantitative easing; (iii) moving away from inflation targeting; (iv) using fiscal policy to replace monetary policy; (v) using fiscal and monetary policy together in a bid to introduce so-called “helicopter money”; and (vi) pushing interest rates higher through structural reforms designed to lower excess savings, most obviously via increases in retirement age. We conclude that only the final option is likely to lead to economic success. Politically, however, it seems implausible. As a result, we are faced with a serious shortage of effective policy lifeboats.

The Galaxy from Orbit


Astronaut Terry Virts, aboard the International Space Station, shared this picture earlier today, stating this was “the view of our Galaxy from space.”

Normally, the reason you can’t see stars in high oblique photos from the space station is that the shutter speed is too fast. Fast shutter speeds are used to eliminate blur from the motion of the orbiting outpost. One exception to this rule is when astronauts use camera settings specifically to photograph features such as the Aurora and the Milky Way. The crew must use slower shutter speeds in order to capture the light of the aurora. In these cases stars also show up in the photograph. The photos are also slightly blurry because very long exposures are needed to capture these dim nighttime features.

Power Bank phone

You couldn’t be further out of touch with your “iphone”. Uhe interesting developments aren’t going to happen in the places pundits obsess about.

1 thing that quickly became clear when I spoke to people is that the number 1 reason they bought the phone is to use it as a power bank. Ghana is currently experiencing a severe power crisis — city-wide blackouts of 36 hours or more have become the norm in the capital, and a brisk business has grown around selling power banks, which are small portable rechargeable batteries that can be used to charge small electronics such as MP3 players and, yes, phones.

London mystery mansion

If a vast and lavishly appointed house in Manhattan—a palace nearly 2x the size of the White House—were being redeveloped on the edge of Central Park, New Yorkers would want to know who lived there. Londoners are equally inquisitive, and concerted efforts have been made to uncover the identity of Witanhurst’s owners

Human-level object description

Computer vision isn’t just object recognition anymore. Our team has developed a deep learning system that can look at a picture and try to answer specific questions about it, such as “What is the color of the bus?” or even the more complex “What is there on the grass, except the person?” If you had told me 2 years ago we’d be able to do this today I wouldn’t have believed you.

Robots use trial and error

I never particularly enjoyed home improvement anyway.

Algorithms that enable robots to learn motor tasks through trial and error using a process that more closely approximates the way humans learn have been developed.

“They demonstrated their technique, a type of reinforcement learning, by having a robot complete various tasks — putting a clothes hanger on a rack, assembling a toy plane, screwing a cap on a water bottle, and more — without pre-programmed details about its surroundings.”

“The key is that when a robot is faced with something new, we won’t have to reprogram it. The exact same software, which encodes how the robot can learn, was used to allow the robot to learn all the different tasks we gave it.”

Cavemen didn’t live in caves

What tells an archaeologist that Paleolithic people spent less time in caves than we imagined in the past?
1 big clue is seasonal occupation evidence, something archaeologists infer based on things like animal bones. For example, by looking at found animal teeth, we can tell you at what season of the year the animals were killed. Also, certain animals are only available at certain times—fish that spawn at certain seasons of the year, for example. Almost all caves are described by archaeologists as seasonal, namely as autumn or winter occupations. It’s clear that people were in caves for maybe a couple of months a year at the most.