OrCam + more things

2 minutes estimated reading time

OrCam

OrCam Read – Transform the Way You Read – YouTube – I watched this video and wondered if this was a sign of failure in the education sector in terms of literacy. As far as I can tell, OrCam is a dedicated OCR appliance that reads back the text to you. In essence it is playing the same role as a scribe to a medieval lord. I suspect that OrCam is a product looking for a market and this is a skewed pitch

Business

Chinese investment in UK assets estimated to be £135bn : CityAM 

Another One Bites The Dust: Why Verizon’s Divestiture Of AOL And Yahoo Is No Surprise | Forrester – Verizon’s sale represents a giant write down. I remember the uproar when Tumblr got wrote down from $1Bn to zero. This is a greater write down in absolute value.

Consumer behaviour

Are some personalities just better? – All-blues might really be happier and healthier. If so, it could a result of late modernity, or it might have always been true. Still, that doesn’t mean that evolution will favor all-blues, or that all-blues are “more successful”

Economics

The Failed Promise of Malaysia’s New Economic Policy – Asia Sentinel – Malaysia’s 49 year affirmative action programme for the Malay majority failed and helped precipitate a brain drain of Malaysian Chinese overseas (paywall)

Ideas

How the U.S. Government Can Learn to See the Future – LawfareResearch over the past decade funded by the U.S. government demonstrates that “keeping score” by quantifying the probability that a potential event will or will not happen leads to improved forecasting accuracy. This is especially true when that scorekeeping is paired with training to reduce cognitive biases, as well as tools that combine the forecasts of many people together, harnessing the “wisdom of crowds.” These methods are not just for carnival games and stock trading. They can provide clearer insight on national security questions – it looks like prediction markets might be getting their time in the sun again

Security

Sweden drops Russian hacking investigation due to legal complications | The Record by Recorded FutureSwedish government dropped today its investigation into the 2017 hack of its sports authority, citing the legal constraints that would have prevented prosecutors from charging the Russian hackers responsible for the intrusion, which officials claimed were mere pawns operating on behalf of a “foreign power.”

China-linked hackers used VPN flaw to target U.S. defense industry -researchers | Reuters

Chinese military unit accused of cyber-espionage bought multiple western antivirus products | The Record by Recorded Future 

Apple brass discussed disclosing 128-million iPhone hack, then decided not to

Wireless

Opinion | Steve Jobs Never Wanted Us to Use Our iPhones Like This – The New York Times