linkstream2 microblog

$GOOG Sells AI for Building #AI
https://www.NYTimes.com/2018/01/17/technology/google-sells-ai.html QT: “Humans must label the data before the system can
learn…once images…labeled…[it] operates w/o human
involvement…It can build a model from scratch.” How can one preview this? Will it be integrated into gphotos?

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Initially, Google will open this service only to a small group of businesses.
…
But sometimes, there is no substitute for good old human labor. With Google’s new service, humans must label the data before the system can learn from it. …

Google says that once images are labeled, its new service operates without human involvement….Given more time, it
can build a model from scratch, specifically for the problem at hand.

If you are a zoologist who wants an algorithm that identifies jaguars and giraffes, said Fei-Fei Li, chief scientist inside the Google cloud group, all you have to do is supply the right images. “You upload jaguars and giraffes,” she said. “And you are done.”
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NYC’s Bold, Flawed Attempt to Make #Algorithms Accountable
https://www.NewYorker.com/tech/elements/new-york-citys-bold-flawed-attempt-to-make-algorithms-accountable QT: “#NYC should commit to demanding openness in all future contracts with vendors of these algorithmic services…It’s a dereliction of duty to allow vital decisions to be made by a black box.”

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“Frank Pasquale,… told me much the same. “While the terms of past contracts are hard to revisit, New York City should commit to demanding openness in all future contracts with venders of these algorithmic services,” he said. “They have the leverage here, not the firms. Secrecy may incentivize tiny gains in efficiency, but those are not worth the erosion of legitimacy and public confidence in government. It’s a dereliction of duty to allow vital decisions to be made by a black box.”
…
Cathy O’Neil, the author of “Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy,” told me. “What we’re finding is that the world of algorithms is one ugly wormhole.” In insulating algorithms and their creators from public scrutiny, rather than responding to civic concerns about bias and discrimination, the existing system “propagates the myth that those algorithms are objective and fair,” O’Neil said. “There’s no reason to believe either.””

At the Solstice, in Praise of Darkness
https://www.NYTimes.com/2017/12/16/opinion/sunday/solstice-praise-for-darkness.html QT: “Imagine a…movie…[capturing] the position of the setting sun…throughout the yr….[the sun] would migrate…betw its southernmost & northernmost positions on the horizon [&]…slow down toward the extremes.”

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“When this cycle was first explained to me as a child, my teacher advised me to imagine the “leaning” Earth as it arcs through its annual orbit around the sun….But such
illustrations, however useful, make it easy to overlook the loveliest aspect of this Thursday: that a solstice is in fact a moment of rest.

What stops at the December solstice is the sun’s apparent southward and night-lengthening (or night-shortening, in the Southern
Hemisphere) march across the sky. The true meaning of “solstice” — indeed, the word’s Latin roots refer to the stilling of the sun — was made clear to me by George Greenstein…He asked me to imagine a continuous movie composed of photographs that capture the position of the setting sun (the rising sun would work equally well) throughout the year.

In this movie…the setting sun would migrate back and forth between its southernmost and northernmost positions on the horizon. The sun would accelerate toward the middle of its journey (around spring and autumn, when the lengths of the day and the night change most quickly) and slow down toward the extremes. Once the sun reached an endpoint, it would at last come to rest — as it will on Thursday — before its motion reversed.
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“Health benefits are harder to quantify, especially in smoggy cities like Beijing. Mobike has found that its bikes are used more or less as much when the air is really bad as when it is not, suggesting that the good done by exercise may be undone by heavy breathing in toxic air. But in less-polluted cities the gains from exercise are larger than the risks from road accidents or air pollution, according to a study of Barcelona in the British Medical Journal.
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How #bikesharing conquered the world
https://www.economist.com/news/christmas-specials/21732701-two-wheeled-journey-anarchist-provocation-high-stakes-capitalism-how Using tech to overcome the problem of theft. Getting health benefits from exercise to counterbalancing breathing polluted air. Reducing congestion a bit.

Might be useful for noncoding comparisons

Alignment-free seq. comparison: benefits, apps & tools
https://GenomeBiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13059-017-1319-7 Great tidbits, viz: Shannon asked von Neumann what to call his info measure – “Why don’t you call it entropy…no one understands entropy…so in any discussion, you’ll be in a position of advantage.”

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“Reportedly, Claude Shannon, who was a mathematician working at Bell Labs, asked John von Neumann what he should call his newly developed measure of information content; “Why don’t you call it entropy,” said von Neumann, “[…] no one understands entropy very well so in any discussion you will be in a position of advantage […]” []. The concept of Shannon entropy came from the observation that some English words, such as “the” or “a”, are very frequent and thus unsurprising” ….
“The calculation of a distance between sequences using complexity (compression) is relatively straightforward (Fig. ). This procedure takes the sequences being compared (x = ATGTGTG and y = CATGTG) and concatenates them to create one longer sequence (xy = ATGTGTGCATGTG). If x and y are exactly the same, then the complexity (compressed length) of xy will be very close to the complexity of the individual x or y. However, if x and y are dissimilar, then the complexity of xy (length of compressed xy) will tend to the cumulative complexities of x and y.”
…
“Intriguingly, BLOSUM matrices, which are the most commonly used substitution matrix series for protein sequence alignments, were found to have been miscalculated years ago and yet produced significantly better alignments than their corrected modern version (RBLOSUM) []; this paradox remains a mystery.”
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What Happens When a #Superstorm Hits DC?
http://www.RollingStone.com/politics/news/what-happens-when-a-superstorm-hits-dc-w504341Storms estimated at 1/100yr in ’50 now could be 1/3yr. Are coastal areas prepared?

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“A report compiled in part by scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and published in 2013 in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, included a study that found that increases in sea-level rise related to climate change have
significantly increased the probability of a Sandy-level flood as compared to 1950. … Another paper, published in 2012 in the journal Nature Climate Change, determined that by the end of the century what is presently considered a 100-year storm-surge flood in New York could actually be occurring as frequently as once every three years. … “Other nations are well aware of this changed risk regime,…In Britain, the Thames Barrier, completed in 1982, presently protects London against a one-in-1,000-year flood, … The Dutch design levees and regulations to protect their cities against a one-in-10,000-year flood, and are considering fixes that would ensure protection against a one-in-100,000-year flood.
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Useful thoughts….

http://stephaniegosselin.com/understanding-connecticut-agency-law/

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The Buyer Representation Agreement is with a firm
A Buyer’s Agent…
Assists in making an offer with the buyer’s interests in mind by showing what other buyers are paying for similar properties in the area.
…
Dual agency occurs when a Buyer’s Agent shows a property to a buyer that is also represented by that Realtor’s firm, or when the Listing Agent shows real estate to a buyer who is also represented by the same firm.
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http://www.ct.gov/dcp/cwp/view.asp?q=423310

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When you hire an agent to help you buy a home, the agent must be working for you — and only for you.
Every real estate agent’s commission is negotiable. There is no set percentage or commission to which an agent is entitled. Before signing the contract, you can ask the agent to take a smaller commission than what he or she proposed. …
The duration of your agreement with the agent is also negotiable. ….
he contract must have a beginning date, an ending date, and be signed by all parties to the contract.
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http://www.nytimes.com/1997/05/11/realestate/new-law-to-change-broker-client-relationships.html

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”If the seller refuses to pay the commission, even though he agreed to it when the listing was taken,” Mr. Halsell said, ”the buyer is liable for it and he can bring down the price of the house by that amount. It’s not a good situation.”
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http://www.ctrealtors.com/mt_consumers/selectingARealtor.shtml

https://www.thebalance.com/should-buyers-sign-exclusive-agreements-with-an-agent-1798310

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Should You Sign an Exclusive Agreement?
Little turns off buyers faster than an agent they’ve looked up online who emails a buyer’s broker agreement before they meet in person. …
Interviewing a real estate agent can help to ease a buyer’s
uncertainty. But many buyers are leery of signing agreements because they are concerned that the relationship might not work out. They don’t want to be stuck with a crummy agent, and that’s understandable. …

Ask for Short-Term
The term of a buyer’s broker agreement is negotiable. Although many agents might request a 90-day commitment at a minimum, you are free to ask for a 24-hour, seven-day or 30-day term; it’s whatever you can negotiate.

Request a Nonexclusive Agreement
These agreements provide compensation to the agent if you switch agents midstream but end up buying a home introduced to you by the first agent. …
Compromise
You can tell the agent that you prefer to spend a little time getting to know her before signing an exclusive buyer’s broker agreement. It’s reasonable to say, “Let’s spend an afternoon looking at homes, and if I think we can work together, I’ll sign an agreement with you before we go out again.”
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“For many stories, Times moderators will be able to check the machine learning model against an article’s comments by reading through the submissions with between, say, a 15 to 20 percent likelihood to be rejected. If those comments can be approved, then a moderator might approve all comments between the 0 to 20 percent range. In our previous platform, we would need to read each of those comments individually before they were approved.

Most comments will initially be prioritized based on a “summary score.” Right now, that means judging comments on three factors: their potential for obscenity, toxicity and likelihood to be rejected. “}}