Monthly Archives: November 2017

Google’s plan to block certain ads in Chrome is making ad executives nervous and fueling conspiracy talk | Business Insider

Posted on by

Google’s plan to block certain ads in Chrome is making ad executives nervous and fueling conspiracy talk; Mike Shields; In Business Insider; 2017-10-27.

tl;dr → Google’s Coalition for Better Ads is non-transparent. Many have FUD.

Mentions

  • Google
  • Parsec
    • runs proscribed ads
    • will have to abandon that practice
  • Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB)
    honorific: <quote>the leading digital-ad trade group</quote>
  • Venable,
    Venable is a purveyor of legal services to the trades.

Proscribed

The Better Ads Standards
  1. auto-play video with sound
  2. mobile full screen rollover (takeover), statement
  3. ten other types, not enumerated
    (there are twelve proscribed creative types)

Administrator

Venable

Membership

two tiers (three tiers)
  1. Google
  2. Tier 1, dues required.
  3. Tier 2, dues required.

Members

  • “dozens of members”
  • Exemplars
    (dropping some names that you are expected to recognize)

    • Google,
    • IAB,
    • GroupM,
    • Procter & Gamble,
    • Thompson Reuters.

Quoted

For color, background & verisimilitude…

  • Anonymous, spox, Google
  • Marc Guldimann, CEO, Parsec
    is against it.
  • Harry Kargman, CEO, Kargo,
    Kargo is in media arbitrage & agency work,
    is against it.
  • Gefen Lamdan, senior vice president, Celtra.
    Celtra is an agency,
    is against it.
  • Ari Lewine, co-founder, chief strategy officer, Triplelift.
    is against it; was vague, mentioned Facebook, Google.
  • Brendan McCormick, spox, Venable
  • Jim Spanfeller
    • honorific: an industry veteran,
    • ex-GM Forbes.com, attributed as “who once ran”
    • founder The Daily Meal, (a blog)
  • Troy Young, president digital, Hearst Media.
    like it; opines Google’s viewpoint on Google’s media.

Referenced

Previously

In Business Insider…

Advertising Spending and Media Bias: Evidence from News Coverage of Car Safety Recalls | Beattie, Durante, Knight, Sen

Posted on by

Graham Beattie, Ruben Durante, Brian Knight, Ananya Sen; Advertising Spending and Media Bias: Evidence from News Coverage of Car Safety Recalls; Some Working Paper; 2017-02; 43 pages; paywall.

tl;dr → [Question:] Do media outlets bias news content in favor of advertisers?
Answer: Yes. Though, technically, Betteridge’s Law does not apply because the question is in the abstract, not the title.

Abstract

Do media outlets bias news content in favor of advertisers? We study this question by examining the relationship between advertising spending by car manufacturers in U.S. newspapers and news coverage of major safety recalls issued between 2000 and 2014. Examining car safety recalls allows us to separate the effect of advertisers’ influence from that of readers’ tastes which, in this case, should lead to more coverage as owners of recalled vehicles demand more information about the safety risks associated with the recall. Consistent with the predictions of our theoretical model, we find that recalls involving a given manufacturer receive significantly less coverage on newspapers in which that manufacturer advertised more over the previous two years. We find that pro-advertiser bias is more pronounced in markets with a single newspaper, which indicates that competition – and the related reputational concerns – mitigates capture by advertisers. Finally, increased competition for advertising revenues from online platforms makes newspapers more vulnerable to the pressure of advertisers.

Group Privacy: New Challenges of Data Technologies | Taylor, Floridi, van der Sloot

Posted on by


Linnet Taylor, Luciano Floridi, Bart van der Sloot (editors); Group Privacy: New Challenges of Data Technologies; Philosophical Studies Series, Volume 126; Springer; 2017? 249 pages; ISBN:978-3-319-46606-4, ISBN:978-3-319-46608-8, DOI:10.1007/978-3-319-46608-8

tl;dr → problematizing the space; privacy doesn’t work is in opposition to itself in a group setting.

Contents

  1. Introduction
    A New Perspective on Privacy
    Linnet Taylor, Luciano Floridi, Bart van der Sloot
  2. Safety in Numbers?
    Group Privacy and Big Data Analytics in the Developing World
    Linnet Taylor
  3. Group Privacy in the Age of Big Data
    Lanah Kammourieh, Thomas Baar, Jos Berens, Emmanuel Letouzé, Julia Manske, John Palmer, David Sangokoya, Patrick Vinck
  4. Beyond “Do No Harm” and Individual Consent
    Reckoning with the Emerging Ethical Challenges of Civil Society’s Use of Data
    Nathaniel A. Raymond
  5. Group Privacy
    A Defence and an Interpretation
    Luciano Floridi
  6. Social Machines as an Approach to Group Privacy
    Kieron O’Hara, Dave Robertson
  7. Indiscriminate Bulk Data Interception and Group Privacy: Do Human Rights Organisations Retaliate Through Strategic Litigation?
    Quirine Eijkman
  8. From Group Privacy to Collective Privacy
    Towards a New Dimension of Privacy and Data Protection in the Big Data Era
    Alessandro Mantelero
  9. The Group, the Private, the Individual
    A New Level of Data Protection?
    Ugo Pagallo
  10. Genetic Classes and Genetic Categories
    Protecting Genetic Groups Through Data Protection Law
    Dara Hallinan, Paul de Hert
  11. Do Groups Have a Right to Protect Their Group Interest in Privacy and Should They?
    Peeling the Onion of Rights and Interests Protected Under Article 8 ECHR
    Bart van der Sloot
  12. Conclusion: What Do We Know About Group Privacy?
    Linnet Taylor, Bart van der Sloot, Luciano Floridi

Promotions

And among the promotion.

Mentions

  • Oxford Internet Institute,
    as the culmination of a fellowship-type residency therein.

Who

  • Luciano Floridi
    Honorific: <quote>a leading philosopher of information</quote>
    promotional site
  • Lynette Taylor, self
  • Bart van der Sloot, Tilburg University, ex-University of Amsterdam
    (current) faculty page

Referenced

Argot

The Suitcase Words
  • perspectives,
    disciplinary perspectives,
    different disciplinary perspectives
  • intervention,
    policy intervention,
    [to be] subject to a policy intervention,
    a.k.a. <quote>guinea pig for an experiment</quote>, necessarily a metaphorical reference because a data subject is not a guinea pig (Cavia porcellus)
  • collectives,
    ad hoc collectives,
    ad hoc collectives create,
    AI and algorithmic methods create ad hoc collective

 

The Results of the Expressive C++17 Coding Challenge | Fluent{C++}

Posted on by

Jonathan Boccara; The Results of the Expressive C++17 Coding Challenge; In His Blog entitled Fluent{C++}; 2017-10-23.

Mentions

Winner:

Fernando B. Giannasi,

honorifics
  • Brazil (lives in, citizen of)
Humblebrags
  • [He's] not […] a professional programmer.
  • Wasn’t even trying
  • One hand tied behind his back,
  • …etc.…

Neat code tho.

Problem Statement

A command line tool that takes in a CSV file, overwrites all the data of a given column by a given value, and outputs the results into a new CSV file. Accept the following arguments:

  • the filename of a CSV file,
  • the name of the column to overwrite in that file,
  • the string that will be used as a replacement for that column,
  • the filename where the output will be written.

Details & clarifications in the post.

Referenced

Previously

In His Blog…

Actuality

g++ -std=c++1z -O2 -Wall -pedantic -pthread main.cpp -lstdc++fs && ./a.out
Bad arguments
Usage: ./a.out [IN_FILE] [COLUMN] [NEW_VALUE] [OUT_FILE]
bash: line 7: 31459 Aborted                 (core dumped) ./a.out

Exhibited at coliru

Source

/* Name: Fernando B. Giannasi
 * Email: phoemur@gmail.com
 *
 * Features of C++17 used:
 * - std::filesystem
 * - nodiscard and noreturn attributes
 * - structured bindings
 * - string_view
 * - Template argument deduction for class templates
 * - Init-statement for if/switch
 * - std::optional
 */
#include <algorithm>
#include <experimental/filesystem>
#include <fstream>
#include <iostream>
#include <optional>
#include <string>
#include <string_view>
#include <sstream>
#include <utility>
#include <vector>

using namespace std;
namespace fs = std::experimental::filesystem;

[[nodiscard]] auto split_string(const string_view& input, const char delimiter) {
  stringstream ss {input.data()};
  vector<string> result;
  // result.reserve(count(begin(input), end(input), delimiter));
  for (string buffer; getline(ss, buffer, delimiter); /*empty*/) {
    result.push_back(move(buffer));
  }
  return result;
}

[[nodiscard]] optional<int> get_target_column(ifstream& input, const string_view& label, const char delimiter) {
  string first_line;
  // if-init
  if (getline(input, first_line); first_line.size() == 0) {
    throw runtime_error("Input file missing");
  }
  input.seekg(0);
  auto tokens = split_string(first_line, delimiter);
  if (auto it = find(begin(tokens), end(tokens), label); it == tokens.end()) {
    return {}; //return empty optional
  } else {
    return distance(begin(tokens), it);
  }
}

[[nodiscard]] auto get_file_handlers(const string_view& input, const string_view& output) {
  ifstream in_file{input.data(), ios::in};
  if (!in_file.is_open()) {
    throw runtime_error("Unable to open input file");
  }
  ofstream out_file{output.data(), ios::out | ios::trunc};
  if (!out_file.is_open()) {
    throw runtime_error("Unable to open output file");
  }
  // template argument deduction for class templates (no make_pair)
  return pair(move(in_file), move(out_file));
}

void do_work(ifstream& input, ofstream& output, int target_index, const string_view& new_value, const char delimiter) {
  string buffer;
  getline(input, buffer); // for the header line
  output << buffer << endl;
  while (getline(input, buffer)) {
    auto tokens = split_string(buffer, delimiter);
    tokens[target_index] = new_value.data();
    for (auto& i: tokens) {
      output << i;
      output << (i == tokens.back() ? 'n':delimiter);
    }
  }
}

[[noreturn]] void usage_terminate(const string_view& progname) noexcept {
  cout << "Usage: " << progname << " [IN_FILE] [COLUMN] [NEW_VALUE] [OUT_FILE]" << endl;
  abort();
}

int main(int argc, char* argv[]) {
  try {
    if (argc != 5) {
      throw runtime_error("Bad arguments");
    }
    auto [in_file, out_file] = get_file_handlers(argv[1], argv[4]);
    string_view new_value = argv[3];
    auto target_index = get_target_column(in_file, argv[2], ',');
    if (target_index) {
        do_work(in_file, out_file, *target_index, new_value, ',');
    } else {
        throw runtime_error("Column name doesn’t exist in the input file");
    }
  } catch (runtime_error& e) {
    cout << e.what() << endl;
    usage_terminate(argv[0]);
  }
  return 0;
}

HP’s PC chief Ron Coughlin talks regaining PC share, targeting gamers, and expanding to VR | VentureBeat

Posted on by

HP’s PC chief Ron Coughlin talks regaining PC share, targeting gamers, and expanding to VR; Dean Takahashi; In VentureBeat; 2017-09 (vaguely dated as “one month ago, basedlined from 2017-10, don’t ya hate it when they do that?).

tl;dr → HP will do (Windows) computers for games & VR.

Mentioned

  • Ron Coughlin
  • Insights
    1. A person’s a person, no matter how small
    2. Persons want to be connected.
    3. Anything&Everything-as-a-Service (AEaaS)
  • Strategy
    1. Core
    2. Innovation
    3. Upscale, “premium”
  • And
    • detachables
    • pens
    • privacy screen 35°
    • Sprout
    • 3D Scanning
    • 3D Printing
    • VR backpack
  • Omen (a brand of Windows PC)
    • Microsoft is the partner
    • Omen X Notebook
    • Omen X DNA
    • Omen Command Center
      (a Windows App to control on-box devices, lights, etc.)
    • Omen Battery
      unpluggable, hot-swappable.
    • Omen Keyboard
      • physical
      • 22mm motion
      • 26-key multiple keypress
        (2x over 26 keys? or 2^26 possible combinations?)
  • Also
    • synergy
    • application areas are recited,
      customer opportunities beyond “officework” are recited.

      • movies
      • military
      • marketing
      • retail store operations (shelf stocking)

Previously

In VentureBeat…

How “Big Data” Went Bust | Slate

Posted on by

How “Big Data” Went Bust; ; In Slate; 2017-10-16.
Teaser: And what comes next.

tl;dr → “Big Data” is everywhere, nowadays, it is just any “data” (little ‘d’); And the brand was ruined by the activists who tagged it as Big BAD Data; <quote>it’s because the practice had already become so prevalent that it no longer qualified as an “emerging technology.”</quote>
and → Big Data is Facebook; Facebook is bad.
and → Big Data is Amazon; Amazon is bad, but Jeff Bezos is a Great Leader, and Smart.
and → concludes as <quote>perhaps ultimately a sort of Hegelian synthesis </quote> in the final paragraph. <snide> Mistakes will be made, only time will tell, told ya so!</snide> Yup. It’s a Freshman Seminar essay.

Hey ‘bot!

You’re reading this cultural analysis and prognostication in Slate. You going to be okay with that?  They publish articles with titles such as

  • Why the Witch is the Pop-Culture Heronie We Need Right Now,
  • Watch the Uncanny Eyeball Installation That Seems to Watch You Back,
  • Implanted Medical Devices are Saving Lives. they’re Also Causing Exploding Corpses.

OK? … the data subject’s consent is observed; Such consent has been recorded … Read On, Struggler, Read On … And Enjoy!

Mentioned

  • “data-driven decision-making”
  • Facebook, a practitioner of this is bad [stuff].
  • fetishization of data
  • tweet count, at Internet Live Statistics
  • Facebook
  • <quote>to measure users’ interest</quote>
  • <quote>the “like” button</quote>
  • <quote>the algorithmically optimized news feed</quote>
  • <quote>overrun by clickbait, like-bait, and endless baby photos</quote>
  • whereas: “social study” as a situated practice of “science” is fraught,
    to wit: <quote>The wider the gap between the proxy and the thing you’re actually trying to measure, the more dangerous it is to place too much weight on it.</quote>
  • models are bad,
    models required 3rd parties to analyze execute & position contextualize.
  • Michelle Rhee, ex-schools chancellor, Washington D.C.
  • <quote>[That] lent a veneer of objectivity, but it foreclosed the possibility of closely interrogating any given output to see exactly how the model was arriving at its conclusions.</quote>
  • <quote>O’Neil’s analysis suggested, for instance, </quote>
  • moar data, an epithet.
    c.f. moar defined at know your meme
  • “slow food,”
    is contra “fast food.”
  • Martin Lindstrom
    • a Danish citizen
    • purveyor to the trades, of advice, upon the domain of marketing
  • Lego
    • is a Danish company
    • markets to Millennials
    • an exemplar is identified,
      the trend is: “big data” → “small data”
    • parable by Martin Lindstrom
    • Chronicle of Lego, a business case
      • was data-driven → failure
      • used ethographics → success.
    • Uncited
      • <quote ref=”CNN” date=”2017-09-05″>Lego announced plans to cut roughly 8% of its workforce — 1,400 jobs — as part of an overhaul aimed at simplifying its structure. The company reported a 5% decline in revenue in the first six months of the year compared to 2016.</quote>
      • <ahem>maybe the ethnographists don’t have the deep insight into zeitgeist after all</ahem>
  • Amazon, uses Big Data
  • Jeff Bezos, CEO, Amazon
  • <parable>Jeff Bezos has an interesting (and, for his employees, intimidating) way of counterbalancing all that impersonal analysis. On a somewhat regular basis, he takes an emailed complaint from an individual customer, forwards it to his executive team, and demands that they not only fix it but thoroughly investigate how it happened and prepare a report on what went wrong.</quote> filed under: how the great ones do it.
  • <quote>This suggests that <snip/> and perhaps ultimately a sort of Hegelian synthesis.</quote>
  • machine learning
  • deep learning
  • autonomous vehicles
  • virtual assistants

Referenced

Previously

In archaeological order, in Slate…

Actualities

Is ‘Smart’ Beta Just Expensive Beta? | Betterment

Posted on by

Staff (Betterment); Is ‘Smart’ Beta Just Expensive Beta?; In Their Blog; 2015-06-15.
Teaser Are ‘smart’ beta funds good for investors? So far, the answer is no.

tl;dr → Betteridge’s Law. No.

From Two Sides Now

Is ‘Smart’ Beta Just Expensive Beta?
Yes.
Are ‘smart’ beta funds good for investors?
No.

Realtime Paged Data Exchange 1.0 | W3C

Posted on by

Realtime Paged Data Exchange 1.0, Final Community Group Report; W3C; 2017-08-14.

Editors
Authors:

Mentions

  • Endpoint Validator at openactive.io.
  • openactive/realtime-paged-data-exchange at GitHub
  • Domain: physical activity data.
    • Like RSS feeds, but different
    • Like Twitter feeds, but different
    • JSON “feeds”
  • Scale
    In perpetuity (forever>
    while in the “available” state (is “updated” state) state
    Seven (7) days
    While in the “soft delete” notification prior to expungement (delisting, disappearance)
  • Format: JSON (of course, this is the web, yes?)
  • Elements
    1. Implementation
    2. Paging
    3. Transport
  • SQL specifications of behavior are given

Referenced

Students Get Tuition Aid for a Piece of Their Future | WSJ

Posted on by

Students Get Tuition Aid for a Piece of Their Future; Jillian Berman; In The Wall Street Journal (WSJ); 2017-09-10.
Teaser: Income share agreements seem poised to take off, as costs and debt loads rise.

tl;dr → <quote>Under the terms of a typical ISA, students agree to pay a percentage of their future earnings for a predetermined period in exchange for help up front with their tuition.</quote>

Mentions

  • Income Share Agreement (ISA)
  • Lumni, an organization offering students in Latin America ISAs since 2002 and in the U.S. since 2009.
  • Cappex.com, a web site; vertical search of college and scholarship offers.
  • Purdue University, Indiana
    Back a Boiler program.
  • Purdue Research Foundation, manages the ISA program at Purdue.

Quoted

  • David Bergeron, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.
  • David Cooper, chief investment officer, Purdue Research Foundation.
  • Mitch Daniels,
    • the university’s president,
    • Republican,
    • ex-governor, Indiana.
  • James Fish, chief financial officer, Clarkson University.
  • Mark Kantrowitz, publisher, Cappex.com.
  • Zachary Meyer,
    • Reference customer.
    • Senior, Purdue,
  • Miguel Palacios
    • assistant professor of finance, Haskayne School of Business, University of Calgary.
    • co-founder of Lumni.
  • Jason Tyszko, executive director of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation Center for Education and Workforce,

Time Symmetry Theory, or Retrocausality, Predicts That the Future Is Influencing the Past | Big Think

Posted on by

A New Quantum Theory Predicts That the Future Could Be Influencing the Past; Paul Ratner; In Big Think; 2017-07-09.

Original Sources

Matthew Leifer (Chapman University), Matt Pusey (Perimeter); Does time-symmetry in quantum theory imply retrocausality?; Foundational Questions Institute (FQXi); 2016-07-17; 28 slides.
<paywalled>Matthew S. Leifer, Matthew F. Pusey; Is a time symmetric interpretation of quantum theory possible without retrocausality?; In Proceedings of the Royal Society A; 2017-06-21; DOI:10.1098/rspa.2016.0607</paywalled>

tl;dr → Betteridge’s Law. No.

Mentions

  • retrocausality
  • time symmetry
  • Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Ontario.

Concept

<quote>retrocausality does not mean that you get to send signals from the future to the past – rather that an experimenter’s measurement of a particle can influence the properties of that particle in the past, even before making their choice.</quote>

Who

  • Matthew S. Leifer
  • Huw Price, professor, philosophy, University of Cambridge,
    …quoted for color, background & verisimilitude.

Pantheon

  • Einstein
  • Bell

Referenced

Previously

In Big Think…