CAPTCHA kaput? Software cracks “are you human” test
An artificial intelligence company says their algorithm can solve CAPTCHAs — those distorted jumble of letters used to prove you're not a bot — with 90 percent accuracy.
Microsoft's Kinect motion sensor has transformed from a novel gaming controller to a valued tool for robotics, and now is helping to interpret sign language in real time.
Here is a really good assessment of what is happening to the world's fisheries. It will all be pretty familiar if you read SR regularly. But it is particularly thorough, and well grounded. For the most part it is not a happy story. (See: Healing the Seas – Acknowledging the Impact of Humans on the World Ocean).
Although too polemic this essay mirrors my thinking. Obamacare will be better than what proceeded it. But it is still profit based, it is an illness profit system, not a wellness based system. A single payer system that places wellness first will be much cheaper and simpler. The French have the best healthcare in the world and pay about 11.4 per cent of GNP. We are 37th, and spent about 17 per cent.
I think it is very important to understand what this story is saying. As we approach becoming a majority minority nation, there is a certain part of the white community for whom that reality is unacceptable. This is big part of the Theocratic Right. And it is going to go into the next generation, as this report makes clear.
The idea is that open source Android is working like a Petri dish. Instead of growing little Googles, the Petri dish harbors a big Amazon and may soon give birth to a bigger Samsung. Here’s the point I noted:
As much as Google likes and touts that Android is open, that freedom may come with the cost of some control over the platform. Amazon may have started the first truly successful “fork” of Android, but Samsung is going after the whole place setting. Samsung kicked off its first Developers Conference on Monday and based on the keynote message, I wouldn’t be too happy if I were Google.
The point is that Android is supposed to be Google’s open source mobile platform. Others can use it, but Android is Google’s idea.
With iPhones too expensive for most mobile users and Microsoft mobile not getting the buzz Redmond hoped, Android is the mobile platform with legs it seems. Amazon and Samsung have figured this out. The companies have been moving forward with Android that has been reworked to make it less Googlely than Google may have hoped.
Amazon is a lesser problem for Google. Samsung, however, seems to be a bigger potential problem.
But my view is that the larger challenge will be from innovators in other countries who surf on Android. When I was in China, I learned about a number of mobile phones running Android that performed some interesting tricks. One taxi driver had a line of four mobile devices in his taxi. Each mobile had four SIMs. Each SIM connected to a different service providing information about pick ups.
I asked the taxi driver if the phones were running Google Android. The answer was, “I don’t know. There are cheap and do more than a high dollar, upper class phone. These are the future, not Apple or Google.”
Is the taxi driver correct? My view is that Google’s Android is not just fragmented. Android is enabling innovators to go in directions that may prove difficult for Google to control. Samsung may be the near term challenge for Google. Looking out over a longer time line, there may be a different set of challenges created by an open source mobile operating system, new manufacturing options, and a burgeoning demand for mobile devices that are delivering fresh, high-value functionality.
Sure the four phones put on a light show when orders came in. My smart phone has one SIM and was woefully out of step with the Chinese taxi driver’s needs. Google has to think about Android as free and open source software that may spawn some antibiotic resistant competitors.
If you’re a small or mid-sized business it will be easiest to do business if you’re based in Asia — places like Singapore, Hong Kong, and Malaysia.
A new report from the World Bank, says that Asia has about half of the top economies in the world for their ease of doing business. The report ranks 189 world economies based on 11 indicators for how easy it is to start a small or mid-sized business, from access to credit and electricity to ease of employing workers to ability to trade across borders.
“A better business climate that enables entrepreneurs to build their businesses and reinvest in their communities is key to local and global economic growth,” said World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim. “Doing Business shows that economies with better business regulations are more likely to empower local entrepreneurs to create more jobs – another step in the right direction toward ending extreme poverty by 2030.”
Here are the report’s 10 most business-friendly economies in the world:
Gordon Duff first reported in Veterans Today another financial scandal motive for the Repubs wanting to hold up Obama Care. New regulations were going into effect to stop the cross collateralization of insurance company reserves, who are all owned by banks, so they could be market traded. The sums involved were astronomical.
“The Obama Care issue is about ‘funds in management.’ The health insurance industry, through investment banks and hedge funds, accounts for 35% of the entire investment capital of the United States.
This sector has been totally unregulated with, not just individual policyholders but industries and government forced to subsidize a health care Ponzi scheme where in some cases fewer than 3% of policy premiums were paid back in benefits.”
For companies around the world there are literally trillions of dollars worth of revenue up for grabs in what Accenture calls, in a new report, the “switching economy.”
Click on Image to Enlarge
According to the ninth annual Accenture Global Consumer Pulse Survey, which surveys consumer attitudes toward marketing, sales and customer service in 32 countries around the world, consumers are feeling more empowered to stop doing business with, say, a mobile phone provider or any other company if the customer service isn’t meeting their expectations.
Last year, there was a four percent jump — from 62 percent to 66 percent — in the number of people switching a company globally because of poor customer service. That’s a big increase from the 49 percent of people who switched in 2005 when the first survey was conducted.
The top five industries which see the most changes by customers are: consumer goods retailers (28 percent), retail banks (20 percent), Internet service providers (18 percent), wireless phone companies (17 percent), and landline phone companies (14 percent).
Those are the industries that have the best opportunity for taking advantage of the estimated $5.9 trillion worth of revenue that’s available worldwide from consumers switching companies.
Living in the United States, the scale of foreign investment by Chinese companies isn’t so obvious. Much of the $57.8 billion of Chinese investment in the U.S. since 2005 has been in the finance sector. I didn’t comprehend the scale of the Chinese investment until I visited Ethiopia earlier this month where nearly all the construction projects — including a major light rail line — were being done by Chinese firms (sub-Saharan Africa has the most investment from China of any region). Many huge factories on the outskirts of the capital city are joint projects between China and Ethiopia with the flags of both countries flying side-by-side. The redevelopment of a major road was paid for by Chinese government and is now dubbed “Ethio-China Friendship Avenue.” In other words, the scale of Chinese investment is overtly apparent in Ethiopia and many other countries around the world, if not as obvious in the developed world.
Heritage Foundation provides more insight into China’s massive investment all over the world with a new report showing moderate growth in Chinese investment so far in 2013 and the map above with total investment and contracts won since 2005. There’s also a fascinating interactive map with detailed information on Chinese investment for every country where it has investments over $100 million.
Most people I talked to in Ethiopia about all the Chinese investment had mixed feelings. They were glad for the investment — in just a few years the country will have its first light rail — but there’s also skepticism. What are their ulterior motives? Will all the investment ultimately help Ethiopians in the long run? Why us?
As Quartz points out, even if Chinese companies have nothing to hide there’s good reason to be skeptical. The main reason? A lack of transparency. In a report on 100 multinational corporations in emerging markets, Transparency International, an anti-corruption organization, shows that Chinese multinationals perform poorly. “Results show that companies from China lag behind in every dimension with an overall score of 20 percent (2 out of a maximum of 10),” the report said. “Considering their growing influence in markets around the world, this poor performance is of concern.”
CAPTCHA kaput? Software cracks “are you human” test
