TOWARD AN AI ROADBLOCK

Skeptics say full autonomy could be farther away than the industry admits

By Russell Brandom@russellbrandom  Jul 3, 2018, 10:12am EDT

I have never been a fan of “open plan” offices.  Here is some actual data.

The impact of the ‘open’ workspace on human collaboration

Ethan S. Bernstein, Stephen Turban

” Contrary to common belief, the volume of face-to-face interaction decreased significantly (approx. 70%) in both cases, with an associated increase in electronic interaction. In short, rather than prompting increasingly vibrant face-to-face collaboration, open architecture appeared to trigger a natural human response to socially withdraw from officemates and interact instead over email and IM.”

Markets

This Heat Wave’s So Bad It’s Even Slowing Down U.S. Stock Trades

By

Nick Baker

July 3, 2018, 10:29 AM CDT

I’m not really a fan of Twitter, for lots of reasons, but I just ran across this.  Dinesh D’Souza just re-tweeted a pair of posts with hashtags “burn the Jews” and “bring back slavery”.  I am as sprprised that anyone out there even reads material tagged this way,  such less re-tweets it.  Of course, it was an accident of some sort and the Liberal Media is just making a fuss over nothing.  Wow.  From Haaretz:

Dinesh D’Souza, Recently Pardoned by Trump, Shares Tweet With #burntheJews

D’Souza is a conservative author and filmaker who recently sparked controversy suggesting student victims of the Parkland, Florida shooting showed grief that was ‘politically orchestrated’ and ‘phony & inauthentic’

If you piled up all of America’s surplus cheese, this is how large it would be

By Brian Resnick and Javier Zarracina  Jun 28, 2018, 5:00pm EDT

From The Guardian:

David Lynch: ‘You gotta be selfish. It’s a terrible thing’

The Twin Peaks director lives for his work. He talks about his four marriages, why explaining his films is a ‘crime’, and what makes him a happy camper

From Stratechery:  Intel and the Danger of Integration. A quote from the end:

Intel has spent the last several years propping up its earnings by focusing more and more on the high-end, selling Xeon processors to cloud providers. That approach was certainly good for quarterly earnings, but it meant the company was only deepening the hole it was in with regards to basically everything else. And now, most distressingly of all, the company looks to be on the verge of losing its performance advantage even in high-end applications.

This is all certainly on Krzanich, and his predecessor Paul Otellini. Then again, perhaps neither had a choice: what makes disruption so devastating is the fact that, absent a crisis, it is almost impossible to avoid. Managers are paid to leverage their advantages, not destroy them; to increase margins, not obliterate them. Culture more broadly is an organization’s greatest asset right up until it becomes a curse.

From the BBC:  Sarah Sanders kicked out of restaurant because of work for Trump

The interesting part to me is that people are calling this “bigotry” and comparing it to the recent Supreme Court case where a bakery refused to make a wedding cake for a gay couple.

Let’s all understand this. Bigotry is automatic dislike for a large group of people for reasons beyond their control, like being born black or Jewish or even gay.  To dislike an individual for their personal beliefs and actions is really just about the opposite of bigotry.  Nobody is refusing Sanders service because she is a woman, or because she is from Arkansas.  That would be wrong.  Refusing her service for her stance on immigration, or any other policy is fair game for a public figure.  She wants to have it both ways, and anyone who lets her has been bamboozled.