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Showing posts from June, 2018

Private traits and attributes are predictable from digital records of human behavior | PNAS

Private traits and attributes are predictable from digital records of human behavior | PNAS : Private traits and attributes are predictable from digital records of human behavior Abstract We show that easily accessible digital records of behavior, Facebook Likes, can be used to automatically and accurately predict a range of highly sensitive personal attributes including: sexual orientation, ethnicity, religious and political views, personality traits, intelligence, happiness, use of addictive substances, parental separation, age, and gender. The analysis presented is based on a dataset of over 58,000 volunteers who provided their Facebook Likes, detailed demographic profiles, and the results of several psychometric tests. The proposed model uses dimensionality reduction for preprocessing the Likes data, which are then entered into logistic/linear regression to predict individual psychodemographic profiles from Likes. The model correctly discriminates between homosexual and heterosex...
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Cambridge Analytica-linked academic spurns idea Facebook swayed election | Technology | The Guardian

Cambridge Analytica-linked academic spurns idea Facebook swayed election | Technology | The Guardian : The academic researcher who harvested personal data from Facebook for a political consultancy firm said on Tuesday that the idea the data was useful in swaying voters’ decisions was “science fiction”. “People may feel angry and violated if they think their data was used in some kind of mind-control project,” Aleksandr Kogan, the now notorious Cambridge University psychologist whose app collected data on up to 87 million Facebook users, said during a US Senate hearing. “This is science fiction. The data is entirely ineffective.” Cambridge Analytica's 'victimised' ex-chief lambasts liberal media Read more Kogan’s appearance before the Senate comes three months after the revelation that he had transferred his giant dataset to Cambridge Analytica, a now defunct political consultancy that worked on Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. The scandal set off political shoc...
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Think (IBM) - Wikipedia

Think (IBM) - Wikipedia " THINK " is a slogan first used by  Thomas J. Watson  in December, 1911, while managing the sales and advertising departments at the  National Cash Register Company . [1]  At an uninspiring sales meeting Watson interrupted, saying  The trouble with every one of us is that we don't think enough. We don't get paid for working with our feet — we get paid for working with our heads . Watson then wrote  THINK  on the easel. [2] Asked later what he meant by the slogan, Watson replied, " By THINK I mean take everything into consideration. I refuse to make the sign more specific. If a man just sees THINK, he'll find out what I mean. We're not interested in a logic course." [3] In 1914, Watson brought the slogan with him to the  Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR)  and its subsidiaries, all of which later became  IBM . [4] [5] [6] [7]  International Time Recording, one of the subsidiaries, published a mag...
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Soccer On Your Tabletop

Soccer On Your Tabletop Konstantinos Rematas 1     Ira Kemelmacher-Shlizerman 1,2     Brian Curless 1     Steve Seitz 1,3   1 University of Washington      2 Facebook     Google 3 IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), 2018 soccer
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The new version of iOS is the strongest sign yet that Apple finally believes the customer is always right (AAPL)

The new version of iOS is the strongest sign yet that Apple finally believes the customer is always right (AAPL) : "There were more new features for users than there were new tools for developers: screen time limits, monitoring, and reports, grouped notifications, Do Not Disturb at bedtime, Siri shortcuts, new Safari privacy features, performance improvements for previous generation iPhones, and even third-party navigation apps on CarPlay. Apple is forgoing near-term benefits for developers and themselves in favor of a better user experience."
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OptaJoke (@OptaJoke) | Twitter

OptaJoke (@OptaJoke) | Twitter 1941 - The Germans haven’t been embarrassed this badly in Russia since 1941. Achtung. 1,002,883 - Number of people who have missed all the goals from today’s games as they‘re watching the other match when someone scores. Multichannel. 37 - Xherdan Shaqiri would score 37 points in Scrabble. Tiles. 3,300 - There hasn’t been this much interest in an Egyptian for about 3,300 years. Tutankhamun.
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This Tennis Ball Analogy From an IBM Marketing Expert Will Transform How You Think About Your Product | Inc.com

This Tennis Ball Analogy From an IBM Marketing Expert Will Transform How You Think About Your Product | Inc.com : Single-Minded Marketing "Be single-minded," an IBM marketing and advertising expert told me. She used an analogy to explain. "If someone throws 10 tennis balls at you at once, you might be able to catch one before you duck to avoid the others. But if someone throws you one, and then another, you'll probably catch both. It's the same with marketing messages. Don't throw too many at once."�
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Report: Apple mulling all-in-one media subscription plan, combining Apple Music, TV shows and magazines | 9to5Mac

Report: Apple mulling all-in-one media subscription plan, combining Apple Music, TV shows and magazines | 9to5Mac : The timeline for Apple’s original content TV efforts is still murky, but there are some hints that the first shows will be ready to air later next year. TV show production is often prone to delays and setbacks, but Apple has enough shows in the wings at the moment that it should still have a healthy offering even if only half of the orders are ready in 2019.
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Brand New: The History of Branding | Design today

Brand New: The History of Branding | Design today : The use of characters had always existed in design and branding before but by the 50’s we see start to see the use of characters moving from being merely decorative illustrations on the packet to become the face of a brand with their own story and mythology.
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Parents’ Screen Time Is Hurting Kids - The Atlantic

Parents’ Screen Time Is Hurting Kids - The Atlantic : Some of the newer interactive games kids play on phones or tablets may be more benign than watching TV (or YouTube), in that they better mimic children’s natural play behaviors. And, of course, many well-functioning adults survived a mind-numbing childhood spent watching a lot of cognitive garbage. (My mother—unusually for her time—prohibited Speed Racer and Gilligan’s Island on the grounds of insipidness. That I somehow managed to watch every single episode of each show scores of times has never been explained.) Still, no one really disputes the tremendous opportunity costs to young children who are plugged in to a screen: Time spent on devices is time not spent actively exploring the world and relating to other human beings.
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Is Bitcoin Really Un-Tethered? by John M. Griffin, Amin Shams :: SSRN

Is Bitcoin Really Un-Tethered? by John M. Griffin, Amin Shams :: SSRN : Abstract This paper investigates whether Tether, a digital currency pegged to U.S. dollars, influences Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency prices during the recent boom. Using algorithms to analyze the blockchain data, we find that purchases with Tether are timed following market downturns and result in sizable increases in Bitcoin prices. Less than 1% of hours with such heavy Tether transactions are associated with 50% of the meteoric rise in Bitcoin and 64% of other top cryptocurrencies. The flow clusters below round prices, induces asymmetric autocorrelations in Bitcoin, and suggests incomplete Tether backing before month-ends. These patterns cannot be explained by investor demand proxies but are most consistent with the supply-based hypothesis where Tether is used to provide price support and manipulate cryptocurrency prices. Keywords: Blockchain, Cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin Prices, Tether Suggested Citation:
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The People Tracking Every Touch, Pass And Tackle in the World Cup | FiveThirtyEight

The People Tracking Every Touch, Pass And Tackle in the World Cup | FiveThirtyEight : On a Sunday last month, Opta1 let me watch as the loggers at its South London headquarters tracked the last 10 matches of England’s Premier League season. I stood among rows of young men at computer monitors as they scrutinized games, sometimes rewinding on one monitor to check a tough call while keeping track of the live feed on another. I tried to stay out of the way while their supervisor leapt away from watching his favorite team’s match to confirm every goal was attributed correctly. And I watched as Opta’s media team processed the raw numbers — 1,600 to 2,000 events per game — into TV-ready factoids, which they heard commentators repeat to TV audiences moments later. In soccer stats, as in so many other numbers-gathering endeavors, big data sets are built piece by piece by human collectors with human imperfections, moods and preferences. Throughout the year, 350 part-time analysts working in L...
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Mere-exposure effect - Wikipedia

Mere-exposure effect - Wikipedia : Two-factor theory[edit] The mere-exposure effect has been explained by a two-factor theory that posits that repeated exposure of a stimulus increases perceptual fluency which is the ease with which a stimulus can be processed. Perceptual fluency, in turn, increases positive affect.[11][12] Studies showed that repeated exposure increases perceptual fluency, confirming the first part of the two-factor theory.[13] Later studies observed that perceptual fluency is affectively positive, confirming the second part of the fluency account of the mere-exposure effect.[14][15]
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THE B2B MARKETING SHIFT How to Measure, Optimize and Engage in the New B2B Marketing Reality New data reveals that in 2015 marketers worked harder than ever before. Looking back over the past year, we’ll review the changing landscape and offer tips so you can work smarter in 2016.

THE B2B MARKETING SHIFT How to Measure, Optimize and Engage in the New B2B Marketing Reality New data reveals that in 2015 marketers worked harder than ever before. Looking back over the past year, we’ll review the changing landscape and offer tips so you can work smarter in 2016.
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U.S. Files Criminal Charges Against Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes, Ramesh Balwani - WSJ

U.S. Files Criminal Charges Against Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes, Ramesh Balwani - WSJ : Federal prosecutors filed criminal charges against Theranos Inc. founder Elizabeth Holmes and the blood-testing company’s former No. 2 executive, alleging that they defrauded investors out of hundreds of millions of dollars and also defrauded doctors and patients. The indictments of Ms. Holmes and Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, Theranos’s former president and chief operating officer who was also Ms. Holmes’s boyfriend, are the culmination of a 2�-year investigation by the U.S. attorney’s office in San Francisco, sparked by articles in The Wall Street Journal that raised questions about the company’s technology and practices.
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How alt-right Twitter tricks the media into panicking | The Outline

How alt-right Twitter tricks the media into panicking | The Outline : “Profiles that are tweeting in excess of 70 times a day present the potential to be what we might call cyborg-like, [or having] an element of human-meets-machine,” explained Mentionmapp co-founder, John Gray. “So I would definitely consider any profile that is tweeting more than 300 times a day programmatic — the Oxford Internet Institute use[s] the phraseology ‘computational propaganda.’” That’s not to say that they’re bots, though. Not in the traditional, 100-percent-machine, wholly anonymous, copying-and-pasting-poorly-spelled-messages sense of the word, anyway. Instead, they’re human sockpuppets amplifying @thebradfordfile’s particular brand of divisive political messaging. (BuzzFeed News reported on an account that worked to trend certain topics or names in 2017.) Amplification at this scale can have profound effects on the experience of real people trying to get an idea of what’s actually happening online — wh...
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Elo rating system - Wikipedia

Elo rating system - Wikipedia : There are three main mathematical concerns relating to the original work of Elo, namely the correct curve, the correct K-factor, and the provisional period crude calculations.[citation needed]
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How the Enlightenment Ends - The Atlantic

How the Enlightenment Ends - The Atlantic : Second, that in achieving intended goals, AI may change human thought processes and human values. AlphaGo defeated the world Go champions by making strategically unprecedented moves—moves that humans had not conceived and have not yet successfully learned to overcome. Are these moves beyond the capacity of the human brain? Or could humans learn them now that they have been demonstrated by a new master? EDMON DE HARO Before AI began to play Go, the game had varied, layered purposes: A player sought not only to win, but also to learn new strategies potentially applicable to other of life’s dimensions. For its part, by contrast, AI knows only one purpose: to win. It “learns” not conceptually but mathematically, by marginal adjustments to its algorithms. So in learning to win Go by playing it differently than humans do, AI has changed both the game’s nature and its impact. Does this single-minded insistence on prevailing characterize all AI? ...
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How the Enlightenment Ends - The Atlantic

How the Enlightenment Ends - The Atlantic : Second, that in achieving intended goals, AI may change human thought processes and human values. AlphaGo defeated the world Go champions by making strategically unprecedented moves—moves that humans had not conceived and have not yet successfully learned to overcome. Are these moves beyond the capacity of the human brain? Or could humans learn them now that they have been demonstrated by a new master? EDMON DE HARO Before AI began to play Go, the game had varied, layered purposes: A player sought not only to win, but also to learn new strategies potentially applicable to other of life’s dimensions. For its part, by contrast, AI knows only one purpose: to win. It “learns” not conceptually but mathematically, by marginal adjustments to its algorithms. So in learning to win Go by playing it differently than humans do, AI has changed both the game’s nature and its impact. Does this single-minded insistence on prevailing characterize all AI? ...
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The Day a Computer Writes a Novel :: Ministry Of Counterculture

The Day a Computer Writes a Novel :: Ministry Of Counterculture : If you are looking for a startup idea, it may be time to write an app that assists people with creative writing. At least it seems that is where literature - and technology - is headed. A novel written with the use of artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm passed the screening process for a literary award in Japan.
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(23) Hit Song Science | Dr. Ali Fadlallah | TEDxFargo - YouTube

(23) Hit Song Science | Dr. Ali Fadlallah | TEDxFargo - YouTube : Hear how a songwriter, music business insider, and professional educator connected the dots across his work to make sense of his love/hate relationship with Lil Wayne, pop culture, and the man in the mirror. Ali is a musician, writer, and social entrepreneur from Dearborn, MI, and a Lebanese, Muslim-American. Ali recently earned his Doctorate in Education Leadership from Harvard University, as well as his Master's in Business Administration from Emory University. Ali runs Rima Records, an independent record label that supports top performers in the music industry who are passionate about social change. Ali is a musician, writer, and social entrepreneur from Dearborn, MI, and a Lebanese, Muslim-American, and a doctoral graduate from Harvard. Ali runs Rima Records, an independent record label that supports top performers in the music industry who are passionate about social change, and top reformers in the education ...
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Researchers explain how musicians can craft their next chart-topper

Researchers explain how musicians can craft their next chart-topper : People like to say that mainstream music all tends to sound similar. While this is true to an extent, an analysis of more than 26,000 songs by researchers at INSEAD and Columbia Business School shows that breakout songs - the songs that hit the very top of the charts - are those that conform to current musical preferences while infusing a modicum of individuality. Noah Askin, Assistant Professor of Organisational Behaviour at INSEAD, and Michael Mauskapf, Assistant Professor of Management at Columbia Business School, analysed the acoustic attributes of more than 26,000 songs that appear on Billboard's Hot 100 from its beginning in 1958 to 2016. Data on 11 acoustic features, such as a song's key, mode and tempo, were collected from The Echo Nest, a music intelligence and data platform now owned by Spotify. Their results were recently published in the American Sociological Review in a paper titled What Makes...
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What Makes Popular Culture Popular? Product Features and Optimal Differentiation in Music - Noah Askin, Michael Mauskapf, 2017

What Makes Popular Culture Popular? Product Features and Optimal Differentiation in Music - Noah Askin, Michael Mauskapf, 2017 : In this article, we propose a new explanation for why certain cultural products outperform their peers to achieve widespread success. We argue that products’ position in feature space significantly predicts their popular success. Using tools from computer science, we construct a novel dataset allowing us to examine whether the musical features of nearly 27,000 songs from Billboard’s Hot 100 charts predict their levels of success in this cultural market. We find that, in addition to artist familiarity, genre affiliation, and institutional support, a song’s perceived proximity to its peers influences its position on the charts. Contrary to the claim that all popular music sounds the same, we find that songs sounding too much like previous and contemporaneous productions—those that are highly typical—are less likely to succeed. Songs exhibiting some degree of op...
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mmm What Makes Popular Culture Popular? Product Features and Optimal Differentiation in Music

Abstract In this article, we propose a new explanation for why certain cultural products outperform their peers to achieve widespread success. We argue that products’ position in feature space significantly predicts their popular success. Using tools from computer science, we construct a novel dataset allowing us to examine whether the musical features of nearly 27,000 songs from  Billboard ’s Hot 100 charts predict their levels of success in this cultural market. We find that, in addition to artist familiarity, genre affiliation, and institutional support, a song’s perceived proximity to its peers influences its position on the charts. Contrary to the claim that all popular music sounds the same, we find that songs sounding too much like previous and contemporaneous productions—those that are highly typical—are less likely to succeed. Songs exhibiting some degree of optimal differentiation are more likely to rise to the top of the charts. These findings offer a new perspective on...
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15 Things You Didn't Know About Hit Songwriter Max Martin

15 Things You Didn't Know About Hit Songwriter Max Martin : The producer’s actual name is Martin Sandberg. He's been known by various names throughout his musical career, including Martin White in his metal band days. When he earned his first credit as a producer, his mentor�Denniz PoP�chose Max Martin. As Martin�became more successful, the name stuck.
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The 100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time | Rolling Stone

The 100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time | Rolling Stone : Mann and Weil met in 1960 at the song-publishing company Aldon Music, married in 1961 and have been living and working together ever since. Their songs of struggle and triumph brought class consciousness to Brill Building pop, with hits like "On Broadway" for the Drifters, "Uptown" for the Crystals, and "We Gotta Get Out of the Place" for the Animals, but they are best known for the Righteous Brothers' "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'." Unique among their peers, they never stopped, writing Linda Ronstadt and James Ingram's 1986 hit "Somewhere Out There" and Hanson's 1997 Top 10 single "I Will Come to You." Mann also had a recording career, including a 1961 Top 10 hit about songwriting "Who Put the Bomp (In the Bomp, Bomp, Bomp)"; in 2015, Weil published a YA novel, I'm Glad I Did, about songwriting in the Sixties.
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'It's Kind Of A Myth That Readers Love Personalisation' | Articles | Digital Publishing | Innovation Enterprise

'It's Kind Of A Myth That Readers Love Personalisation' | Articles | Digital Publishing | Innovation Enterprise : How much of a place - if any - do you think personalisation has in digital publishing? It's kind of a myth that readers love personalisation. They often say they do in surveys, but when you look at the data the engagement with those tools is generally low. Particularly with news, readers are reluctant to edit their own feed too much in case they miss out on important stories. Too much personalisation also kills the serendipity element. It's part of the mix, but it shouldn't dominate your thinking as a publisher.
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TV audiences of the Top 5: FC Bayern Munich - Bayer 04 Leverkusen posts best audience of 2017-18

  Go to the site - Choose Categories TV audiences of the Top 5: FC Bayern Munich - Bayer 04 Leverkusen posts best audience of 2017-18 Reg, Media - Paris - Friday, June 8 2018 - News #121124 In Germany, FC Bayern Munich - Bayer 04 Leverkusen (3-1), the opening match of the 2017-18 Bundesliga season, broadcast on the public-TV channel ZDF , drew 7.94 million viewers (audience share: 29.3%), on 18/08/2017 (kick-off at 20:30 CET ). This was the best TV audience among the Top 5 European leagues ( Premier League , LaLiga Santander , Bundesliga, Serie A TIM and Ligue 1 Conforama ), all channels combined. On pay-TV, Borussia Dortmund - FC Bayern Munich (1-1, Matchday 11) posted the best audience of the 2017-18 Bundesliga season with 1.78 million viewers on Sky Bundesliga, on 04/11/2017 (kick-off at 18.30 CET). ...
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