Opinion | The Gig Economy Is Coming for Your Job – The New York Times:
“… he was an expert in delivering carefully assembled trays of food and drink to hungry guests. But the number of orders had sharply decreased. What was once 50 glasses of orange juice every morning had dwindled to 10, and Mr. Martín’s tip income fell accordingly. At lunchtime, he seemed to make more deliveries of plates and silverware than actual food.”
How a High Schooler Scooped Everyone on the Iowa Poll:
“How does Mr. Rawal do it? He correctly figures out the URL — the uniform resource locator, or full web address — that a graphic depicting the poll’s results appears at before their official release.
‘URL manipulation is what I do,’ he said, ‘and I’ve been able to get really good at it because, with websites like CNN and Fox, all the file names follow a pattern.’”
*This is going to become harder if the people in charge want to keep information secret until they reveal it themselves.
Opinion | Who Killed the Knapp Family? – The New York Times:
“‘The meaningfulness of the working-class life seems to have evaporated,’ Angus Deaton, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, told us. ‘The economy just seems to have stopped delivering for these people.’ Deaton and the economist Anne Case, who is also his wife, coined the term ‘deaths of despair’ to describe the surge of mortality from alcohol, drugs and suicide.”
*Read this article. I’ve placed a hold on the book at my local public library.
For tech-weary Midwest farmers, 40-year-old tractors now a hot commodity – StarTribune.com:
“Tractors built in 1980 or earlier cause bidding wars at auctions. “
“But the most reliably successful people I know are precisely the opposite. They are desperate to see and know what’s making other people tick. They actively engage, and they do it with empathy and generosity.”
*Surely this is a better path even if one never becomes hyper successful. It’s just a better way of operating.
How self-driving car tech could help drones monitor power lines:
“California has more than 150,000 miles of overhead power lines. Drones searching for downed lines could inspect the system a lot faster than human counterparts and alert crews to where they’re needed. “
Sound waves used to separate microplastics from laundry wastewater:
“In lab tests, the BAW setup was found to capture 95 percent of PET (polyethylene terephthalate) fibers, and 99 percent of Nylon 6 fibers. Before the system can enter production, though, the fiber-separation process needs to be speeded up, as it would currently take washing machines quite a long time to drain.”
*Interesting advancement.
What 23andMe and other genetic testing tools can do with your data – Vox:
“companies with fewer than 15 people are exempt from this rule, as are life insurance, disability insurance, and long-term care insurance companies — all of which can request genetic testing as part of their application process. “
Hackers Can Use Lasers to ‘Speak’ to Your Amazon Echo or Google Home | WIRED:
“Hackers Can Use Lasers to ‘Speak’ to Your Amazon Echo or Google Home By pointing lasers tuned to a precise frequency at a smart assistant, researchers could force it to unlock cars, open garage doors, and more.”
*Interesting. Worth a read.
McDonald’s acquires AI company trying to automate the drive-thru:
“McDonald’s said Tuesday it has agreed to acquire a company that is trying to automate the drive-thru. It’s the fast-food giant’s third tech-focused deal this year.
Apprente, a Silicon Valley company founded in 2017, uses artificial intelligence to understand drive-thru orders, which could cut down on service times. McDonald’s said the technology also could be used someday in its self-order kiosks and mobile app.”
*Not only can technology be used to show people different menu items based on time of day to increase order size, AI could be used to reduce labor costs.
D.L. Damore 