Machine learning image classifiers use context clues to help understand the contents of a room, for example, if they manage to identify a dining-room table with a high degree of… Read the rest of the article: There's a literal elephant in machine learning's room
Copyright markets are — and always have been — broken. People make art because they have to, and there's always a middle-man ready to take advantage of the oversupply of… Read the rest of the article: To fix Canadian copyright, let creators claim their rights back after 25 years
Fan Bingbing is a Chinese megastar who has also appeared in western movies like "X-Men: Days of Future Past"; she has not been seen since June and the smart money… Read the rest of the article: X-Men star's disappearance blamed on China's new "anti-corruption" snatch squad
As low interest rates and terrible bond yields have driven more everyday people into the stock market in the hopes of protecting their savings from inflation and building their pensions,… Read the rest of the article: The world's richest families got MUCH richer, thanks to the stock market
Adam Rutherford's amazing book A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived is on shelves in the USA now; debunking the absurd claims made by genetics testing companies — claims… Read the rest of the article: DNA ancestry tests are bullshit
François Chollet's "Notes to Myself on Software Engineering" is posed as reminders from Chollet to himself, but they're a really wonderful list of extremely sensible advice on how collaborative projects… Read the rest of the article: Incredibly sensible notes on software engineering, applicable to the wider world
Hank Green (previously) is one half of the famous and much-loved Vlog Brothers; while his brother John Green (previously) is well-known for his novels, Hank hasn't ventured into fiction — until now. His debut novel, An Absolutely Remarkable Thing is a deceptively romp-y novel about mysterious samurai alien robot statues appearing all at once, everywhere that has hidden and absolutely remarkable depths.
With 41 days until the midterm elections, today is the day to put your lawmaker on notice: vote for the Congressional Review Act, overturn the Trump FCC ban on Net… Read the rest of the article: Vote for Net Neutrality: today's the day to tell would-be Congresscritters where you stand
Gerrymander Jewelry: charms in the shape of America's most gerrymandered district; you don't have to live in Michigan's 14th, Texas's 35th or Ohio's first to rock one of these. (via… Read the rest of the article: Jewelry in the shape of gerrymandered US congressional districts
Facebook's terms of service require users to use their real names; though thiis has lots of potential downsides (including allowing dictators to identify and round up opposition figures), you'd hope… Read the rest of the article: Facebook reminds America's cops that they're not allowed to use fake accounts
Facebook usage is falling in the US and Canada, especially among young people, but it's still dominating the internet overseas, especially in countries where Zero Rating is legal.
MiniVAN (Android, Iphone) is a mobile app designed for volunteers who canvas door-to-door during election seasons; though the app has been around since 2010, it's seeing a surge in popularity,… Read the rest of the article: Record numbers of people have downloaded and used the Democrats' mobile app for doorknocking canvassers
Canada and Uruguay are the only two countries to have legalised the recreational use of marijuana (the Netherlands has laws on the books against it, but they're not enforced); the… Read the rest of the article: Canada's legal weed stock-bubble is a re-run of the dotcom bubble
Redditor Ch8s3 created this custom game controller by creating a new case, seating the mainboard in it and soldering new LEDs on, then swapping out the buttons for dremeled-out shell-cases… Read the rest of the article: Homebrew game-controller
The roster of people carrying student debt is really just "a list of people liable to additional taxation after graduation"; in 2007, GW Bush signed into law the Public Service… Read the rest of the article: Since 2007, debt-haunted grads have been doing public service to earn loan forgiveness, which they won't get
McDonald's workers in ten US cities staged a mass walkout last week, demanding that the company take action on the rampant sexual abuse and harassment in its franchisees' stores; as… Read the rest of the article: #MeToo meets the #FightFor15 as McDonald's workers walk out over sexual harassment
When the private equity raiders who took over Toys R Us, saddled it up with debt, extracted $200,000,000 and then crashed it, they took the employee severance fund with them,… Read the rest of the article: Exploring the ruins of a Toys R Us, discovering a trove of sensitive employee data
In a new Columbia Law and Economics Working Paper, Columbia Law prof Joshua Mitts uses "stylometry" (previously) to track how market manipulators who publish false information about companies in order… Read the rest of the article: Anonymous stock-market manipulators behind $20B+ of "mispricing" can be tracked by their writing styles
Olive ("Open Library of Images for Virtualized Execution") is an experimental service from Carnegie Mellon University that stores images of old processors, as well as the old operating systems that… Read the rest of the article: OLIVE: a system for emulating old OSes on old processors that saves old data from extinction
Property of the People and Propublica used the Trumptown database of Trump's political appointees and the Freedom of Information Act to pull the appointees' resumes (chock full o' data that… Read the rest of the article: Search the databases of Trump political appointees' resumes and discover their undisclosed conflicts of interest
