Interesting Stuff from the Internet
An Artist Used 99 Phones to Fake a Google Maps Traffic Jam | WIRED
In the article "An Artist Used 99 Phones to Fake a Google Maps Traffic Jam" from WIRED, journalist Brian Barrett details how artist Simon Weckert manipulated Google Maps by using 99 smartphones to create a fake traffic jam. Weckert placed the phones in a small red wagon and walked around the streets of Berlin, causing Google Maps to register nonexistent traffic congestion. This project dubbed the "Google Maps Hack," highlights how easily digital systems can be misled and serves as a commentary on the influence of technology on society.
Weckert's experiment draws attention to the often unquestioned trust people place in technological systems and how these systems shape our behavior and environment. Google acknowledged the creative use of its service but pointed out its inability to filter out such specific scenarios. Weckert's broader aim was to explore the interplay between technology and society, demonstrating how tools we create to serve us can shape our lives in unexpected ways. The project also sparked discussions about the transparency and reliability of the data used by such services.
Downtown Recovery | School of Cities
a) Median rate of change = +9.35%
b) 52 downtowns are in an upward trajectory, while 12 are trending downwards
c) In general, the downtowns that are seeing the highest rates of activity increase are the downtowns where recovery was lagging in our 2023 rankings.
The 7 most bizarre facts about leap day - Big Think
A "day" isn't 24 hours long:
Due to Earth's elliptical orbit and motion relative to the Sun, the length of a day varies slightly throughout the year. Only four days in the year are exactly 24 hours long.
A year isn't defined by Earth completing a revolution around the Sun:
The calendar year is based on the tropical year, not the sidereal year. The tropical year accounts for the precession of Earth's axis and is slightly shorter than the sidereal year.
There aren’t an even number of days in the year:
A true calendar year is approximately 365.242188931 days long. The Gregorian calendar uses leap years to approximate this length.
The Gregorian calendar isn’t perfect either:
The Gregorian calendar averages 365.2425 days per year, which is very close but not exact. It will drift by one day every 3,200 years.
Earth’s orbit is changing:
Earth's rotation is slowing down due to the Moon's tidal forces. This will eventually require adjustments to our calendar system.
Leap days are needed because a year isn’t exactly 365 days:
Leap years help realign our calendar with Earth's position in its orbit, compensating for the fractional day.
The historical origins and legends around leap day:
Leap Day has various historical origins and is surrounded by myths and urban legends, but its existence is fundamentally scientific to keep our calendar aligned with the seasons.
What is generative AI like ChatGPT and Google Gemini good for? (axios.com)
The article "Generative AI is still a solution in search of a problem" by Scott Rosenberg, published on Axios, discusses the current state and challenges of generative AI technology. Here’s a summary:
Struggling to Define Utility:
Despite the significant investment and hype around generative AI, its practical uses remain unclear. Critics argue that while AI chatbots and image generators are fascinating, their everyday utility is limited.
Common Justification:
The prevalent argument for adopting generative AI is circular: since everyone will use these tools eventually, it’s essential to get ahead of the trend.
Critics’ Perspectives:
Thought leaders like New York Times columnist Ezra Klein and software engineer Molly White express skepticism. They find generative AI impressive at times but not indispensable in their daily lives. Tech historian Margaret O'Mara likens the current AI industry to the historical beaver-fur trade, suggesting the market is being created to fit the technology rather than the other way around.
Historical Context:
Previous technological shifts (PCs, internet, smartphones) also faced early uncertainty about their uses. The industry bets that widespread adoption will eventually reveal valuable applications for generative AI.
Current Value:
Generative AI does have clear benefits in specific areas, such as coding assistance, enhancing interfaces for non-programmers, and summarizing information. However, its tendency to produce inaccurate results limits its reliability.
Future Potential vs. Reality:
The envisioned transformative impacts of AI in fields like healthcare, legal practice, and education remain distant due to the technology's frequent inaccuracies.
Advice and Skepticism:
Wharton professor Ethan Mollick encourages people to experiment with AI tools within their expertise to understand their capabilities and limitations. Conversely, Molly White warns that the current hype and investment may lead to disappointment, as the modest benefits of generative AI may not justify the massive industry being built around it.
First experimental proof for brain-like computer with water and salt (phys.org)
The article "First experimental proof for brain-like computer with water and salt" on Phys.org details a groundbreaking achievement by theoretical physicists at Utrecht University and experimental physicists at Sogang University in South Korea. They have successfully created an artificial synapse that uses water and salt to process complex information, much like the human brain. This work represents the first tangible evidence that a system employing the same medium as our brains can function effectively.
Innovation:
The artificial synapse mimics the behavior of biological synapses using a water and salt solution, marking a significant departure from current brain-inspired computers that rely on solid materials.
Mechanism:
The intronic memristor device features a cone-shaped microchannel filled with a saltwater solution. Electrical impulses cause ions to migrate through the channel, altering its conductivity and simulating the strengthening or weakening of neural connections.
Research and Development:
Tim Kamsma, a Ph.D. candidate at Utrecht University, led the theoretical work, which the South Korean team rapidly validated through experimental efforts.
Implications:
This discovery opens possibilities for more energy-efficient computing systems that closely emulate the human brain's communication patterns and medium. While still in its early stages, this research is a significant step toward developing advanced neuromorphic computing technologies.
Publication:
The results have been published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal.
This advancement suggests a future where computers could replicate the brain's extraordinary capabilities more faithfully and efficiently.
Visitors are returning to most — but not all — of America's downtowns (axios.com)
Snippets from the Newsletters/ Newspapers/ Books
WSJ:
Job seekers, frustrated with corporate hiring software, are using artificial intelligence to craft cover letters and résumés in seconds, and deploying new automated bots to robo-apply for hundreds of jobs in just a few clicks. In response, companies are deploying more bots of their own to sort through the oceans of applications.
The result: a bot versus bot war that’s leaving both applicants and employers irritated and has made the chances of landing an interview, much less a job, even slimmer than before.
Ferguson’s Law — states that any great power that spends more on debt service (interest payments on the national debt) than on defense will not stay great for very long. True of Hapsburg Spain, true of ancien régime France, true of the Ottoman Empire, true of the British Empire, this law is about to be put to the test by the US beginning this very year, when (according to the CBO) net interest outlays will be 3.1% of GDP, defense spending 3.0%. Extrapolating defense spending on the assumption that it remains consistently 48% of total discretionary spending (the average of 2014-23), the gap between debt service and defense is going to widen rapidly in the coming years. By 2041, the CBO projections suggest, interest payments (4.6% of GDP) will be double the defense budget (2.3%). Between 1962 and 1989, by way of comparison, interest payments averaged 1.8% of GDP and defense 6.4%.
Free is always a fake price. Free means someone else is paying, or you’re paying and just haven’t figured out how. “Free Shipping” is never free.
NYU neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux says anxiety is “the price we pay for the ability to imagine the future.”
Since the first quarter of 2020, the total public debt of the U.S. has risen from $23.22 trillion to more than $34.5 trillion—with almost $400 billion expected to be issued next month alone.
“Over and over again, people describe being most creative when they’re in motion,” he said. “So whether they put themselves in motion when they’re running or swimming or something like that or biking or even just on a train or an airplane, just moving, the body physically in space moving seems to unleash something in them.”
Last week, The New Yorker released a piece on the cutthroat secondary market for bookings in Manhattan’s hottest restaurants. Alex Eisler, a sophomore at Brown University, made $70,000 last year reselling reservations, which Matt Levine’s readers rightly pointed out sounds a bit like options trading. But Howard Chua-Eoan says it could always be worse. In Japan, some high-end restaurants practice ichigensan okotowari or, no first-time customers. “These are probably the best restaurants you’ve never (or will never) hear of because they only let in regulars and their guests,” he writes.
WSJ:
Researchers have seen a wild animal treat an open wound with a medicinal plant for the first time.
After getting injured—probably in a brawl with another male—a wild Sumatran orangutan chewed the stems and leaves of a vine humans use to treat wounds and ailments such as dysentery, diabetes and malaria.
The orangutan then repeatedly smeared the makeshift salve on an open gash on its cheek until it was fully covered. After the treatment, scientists saw no signs of infection. The wound closed within five days and healed within a month.
Women now collect nearly 60 percentof bachelor’s degrees. And they generally outnumber men in academia: 75 percent of Ivy League presidents, 66 percent of college administrators, and 58 percent of recent graduates are now female. Almost one in five men aged 25 to 54 lack full-time work. This limits opportunities to establish stable families or even find decent partners. The Brookings Institution’s Richard Reeves has found that one-third of the decline in marriage rates is driven by the inability of women to find stable, smart, and successful partners. As many as one in four women will be childless for their entire lives in the near future according to analyst Lyman Stone. Many, he notes, will be approaching retirement age with no immediate family.
To be sure, the long-standing pay gap between men and women still exists, but women are making progress toward the top echelon in the U.S. Women started a majorityof all new firms in the U.S. in 2020 and 2021. Men still earn more, but among young adults aged 20 to 24, the income gap has narrowed to just $43 a week.
As Richard Reeves has shown in a new research brief, men account for just 23 percent of U.S. public elementary and secondary school teachers (not including kindergarten), down from 30 percent in 1988. There are now more women working in STEM fields (26 percent female, up from 14 percent in 1980) than there are men working in school classrooms.
Imagine New York City only had 100 residents and they all went to dinner. When the bill came due, the person with the most income would cover nearly half of it, the next 9 people (ordered by income) would pay a fourth of it, the next 40 would pay a fourth, and the remaining half of the table would cover the 2% left on the bill.
"Contrary to our species' presumed superiority, the researchers found that children and apes performed similarly on puzzles involving spatial, quantitative and causal reasoning… The clear exception was in social learning, where the toddlers were easily able to solve a problem when given a demonstration, but virtually none of the apes could… The cliché of mindless learning, 'monkey see, monkey do,' has it exactly backward. Imitation is the foundation for human ingenuity."
In 2021, only 51% of homicides were solved, according to FBI statistics analyzed by the Murder Accountability Project. The country is seeing a continued decline in cleared cases compared to previous decades when the rate was closer to 70%.
Freels introduced me to the Twist Test, a more useful way to gauge if sneakers are ready for retirement. “Take the heel with one hand, then take the toe in the other and twist it,” she said. If there’s any bend in the midfoot or arch area, very few runners could use the shoes long term without pain, she explained. You want that area to feel stiff and firm.
Jiro dreams of sushi:
“I do the same thing over and over, improving bit by bit. There is always a yearning to achieve more. I’ll continue to climb, trying to reach the top, but no one knows where the top is.”
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When you open your own restaurant you need to be tough. I told [my son] to leave and open this restaurant because I knew he could do it. If he weren’t ready, I wouldn’t have made him go. But, I felt he was ready so I gave him a gentle push out the door.
But I told him, “there is no turning back, you must make your own way.”
When I say things like this people often disagree. But when I left home at the age of nine that’s what I was told. When I was in the first grade I was told: “You have no home to come back to. That’s why you have to work hard.” I knew that I was on my own. And I didn’t want to have to sleep at the temple or under a bridge so I had to work just to survive. That has never left me.
Nowadays, parents tell their children, “You can return if it doesn’t work out.” When parents say stupid things like that, the kids turn out to be failures.
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“Even at my age, after decades of work, I don’t think I have achieved perfection. But I feel ecstatic all day––I love making sushi. That’s the spirit of the shokunin.”