Mind Matters Natural and Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis

CategoryBusiness and Finance

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iron chain and castle on the silk national flag of Hong Kong with beautiful folds, the concept of a ban on tourism, political repression, crime, violation of the rights and freedoms of citizens

Hong Kong: Tech Companies Face Serious Ethical Decisions

As Hong Kong is transformed into a police state, Western companies, faced with demands for snitching on users, are rethinking cozy relationships with China

The semi-autonomous region of Hong Kong is no longer semi-autonomous, at least in practice. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), circumventing Hong Kong’s parliament and courts, passed the Hong Kong National Security Law on June 30 that effectively abolishes the “one country, two systems” regime outlined in the Sino-British Joint Declaration. The law was passed one day before the anniversary of the handover of Hong Kong to China (July 1, 1997), in time to quash any pro-democracy candidates who would likely win in the September elections. Although the CCP justifies its moves from the Hong Kong Basic Law and claims that Hong Kong will maintain autonomy, in practice, it has already arrested dissidents and formed a secretive agency called the Office Read More ›

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Businessman in ponzi scheme concept

Stocks Are Not a Ponzi Scheme and Here’s Why Not

When you mail a letter to someone in another country, you can enclose an international reply coupon (IRC) that can be exchanged for that country’s postage stamps and used to mail a letter back to you. It is like enclosing a self-addressed stamped envelope except that you do not need to figure out how to buy foreign postage stamps. It is the polite thing to do but also the source of the most famous swindle in history. In 1920, a Massachusetts man named Charles Ponzi (right, in 1920) promised to pay investors 50 percent interest every 45 days. Compounded eight times a year, the effective annual rate of return was 2,463 percent! He said that his profits would come from Read More ›

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person holding baseball ball in black leather baseball mitt

Collectors’ Items Are Now on the Blockchain

When I was growing up, trading cards were all the rage. They mostly centered on baseball but trading cards for every major sport emerged. The Topps Company has long had the lead in baseball cards, with Fleer and Upper Deck trailing far behind. Recently, Topps made a radical move into the digital sector by making some of its trading cards available via the WAX blockchain. WAX stands for Worldwide Asset eXchange. WAX is a blockchain (i.e., cryptocurrency) system that is geared around the buying, selling, and trading of virtual items. Previously, WAX was primarily used to trade goods within gaming platforms. For instance, the massively multiplayer economic strategy game Prospectors utilized WAX to allow users to trade items. However, in Read More ›

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The economic crisis of 2020 with the red arrows indicating the economic recession in 2020.

Inflation Is the Least of Our Worries!

Yet some fear that the inflation dragon is about to roar

The Federal Reserve (the Fed) can throw the economy into a recession whenever it feels that it is in our best interests to be unemployed — typically because the Fed is convinced that an unruly inflation needs to be tamed by the discipline of unemployment. For example, in 1979, as the rate of inflation peaked above 13 percent, the Fed moved to make borrowing prohibitively expensive. When Fed Chair Paul Volcker was asked if the Fed’s policies would cause a recession, he replied, “Yes, and the sooner the better.” Interest rates reached 18 percent on home mortgages and were even higher for most other bank loans. Households and businesses cut back on their borrowing and spending and the unemployment rate Read More ›

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crypto currency concept

Is Crypto Just a Flash in the Pan?

Or, to put it more bluntly, will blockchain ever grow up to be a real financial system? Forbes says yes, cautiously
Will blockchain and other non-government currencies ever grow up to be a real financial system? What about the weird Canadian crypto uproar in which the only a dead man knows the code to release the missing millions? Read More ›
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rfid tags

What You Need to Know About The Tactile Web

It’s a user-directed integration of technology into life

Many people have heard the term RFID, “radio frequency identifier,” a technology pioneered in the 1980s for creating tracking chips that needn’t be powered to work. This technology has improved quite a bit over the years. The technology area in which RFID originated is called NFC, for “Near-Field Communication.” In themselves, NFC chips are small and unpowered, but they can receive power from nearby devices, thus enabling them to communicate. The amount of work that modern NFC chips can do is amazing. The NXP firm, for instance, manufactures chips that can do full-blown data encryption and signing. These chips are not only powerful, they are also very inexpensive. NFC tags are available as label stickers at prices as low as Read More ›

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Jay Richards and Steve Forbes Interview

Cryptocurrency a “High-Tech Cry for Help” Says Steve Forbes of Forbes Media

Jay Richards interviews Steve Forbes, Chairman and Editor-in-Chief of Forbes Media, regarding the future of cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies, and the implications of the technologies for global money, global security, and internet architecture. Read More ›
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driver uber car in black car in the street of new york

Why Are There No New Googles and Amazons?

The internet has matured, making many new internet-based companies comparatively low-tech

Today’s startups have targeted a much different set of technologies than did startups in past decades.

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Cute pair of sitting French Bulldog dogs dressed up with unicorn costume headbands with flowers

Why Do Today’s Tech Startups Disappoint Investors?

Only 14 of the 45 recent Unicorns showed increases larger than those of the Nasdaq generally

Companies we hear a lot about, like Zoom and Beyond Meat, are not profitable compared to an earlier generation of tech startups.

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couple of two seniors or mature people walking in the airport going to their gate and take their flight wearing medical mask to prevent virus like coronavirus or covid-19 - carrying luggage or trolley

Ten Ways COVID-19 Will Change Your Next Air Trip

You’ll still get there but it definitely won’t be half the fun

On board, the plane will be cleaner but also leaner. Expect to wear a mask and snack before you go.

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Initial public offering icon on dark background. IPO share investment concept. 3d rendering

Where Have All the Profitable Startups Gone?

We must distinguish between COVID-19's devastating impact and pre-existing problems that it is making worse

The most successful startups of today aren’t as profitable as those founded 20 to 50 years ago. Something is terribly wrong with the current startup system.

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economist table with report

What, Exactly, Do Economists Do?

Economist make the world a better place

Thanks to economists, during the economic crisis that began in 2007, the President, Congress, and Federal Reserve did not repeat the errors of the 1930s.

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cryptocurrency equipment mining

Data Mining: A Plague, Not a Cure

It is tempting to believe that patterns are unusual and their discovery meaningful; in large data sets, patterns are inevitable and generally meaningless

Findings patterns in data is easy. Finding meaningful patterns that have a logical basis and can be used to make accurate predictions is elusive. We can see this from 18th-century attempts to cure scurvy through 21st century claims about the stock market or history.

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People on railway station and man in face mask using on phone while epidemic and covid19. Coronavirus and travel and public transport.

Top Consumer Trends COVID-19 Will Change Long Term

Data from 40 countries suggests that, post-COVID, people will continue to stick close to home

According to analysts, robotic devices are becoming more popular for a reason few would have guessed earlier; they reduce the need for physical human contact. Recycling, however, has taken a hit and weaning consumers from disposables post-COVID may prove a challenge. Huge firms are riding the storm, however, and Gen Z is spending the lockdown improving its career chances. Meanwhile, consumers surveyed around the globe say they plan to travel less.

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Retro Robot plays with wooden ABC cubes on floore. 3D rendering. Education scientist robot student

Ruling: AIs Can’t Hold Patents

The US Patent Office has ruled that only "natural persons" can own patents, not machines

An issue left untouched is whether AI can, in principle, be creative in any event. There is no real evidence for that. The big worry, perhaps, is not being replaced by one’s tools but being ruled by them.

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Coronavirus market crash and financial crisis

COVID-19: When 900 Bytes Shut Down the World

A great physicist warned us, information precedes matter and energy: Bit before it

The COVID-19 virus contains about as much information as a sticker in WhatsApp. Walter Bradley Center director Robert J. Marks and Dr. Daniel Andrés Díaz-Pachón  explore a dreadful truth:  “Human biology is so finely tuned that less than a kilobyte of information can stop the world.”

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Post-COVID: Five Ways Your Job Could Change

This is a good time to be a creative thinker and innovator.

Many COVID-driven innovations will likely endure, whether it’s vets doing telehealth, trolls harassing Zoom users, or cybercriminals targeting remote workers, the new opportunities and risks will stay with us.

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Man teleworking from home after coronavirus pandemic

Five Possibly Unexpected Ways the Post-COVID Office Will Change

We’ll all know more about remote working than we ever thought we would

Some managers worry that remote employees will not be productive. They don’t always consider that the remote worker is the person in charge if something affects her work. For example, in an office building, if the water is shut off due to a street repair, a manager would likely co-ordinate. But at home, the worker must decide for herself how best to deal with it, while remaining productive. A level playing field would recognize overall long-term output vs. costs in either case.

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gold-colored Bitcoin coin on ground

And Now… Crypto-COVID!

How the COVID-19 pandemic is creating “social distance” for crypto-currencies

While the equity markets have garnered a lot of attention in the COVID-19 pandemic, cryptocurrencies have been largely ignored by the media. This is partly because interest in cryptocurrency in general has waned over the last two years. But the pandemic has shed some light on their market mechanics.

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Coronavirus, covid-19 news headlines on United States of America 100 dollar bills. Concept of financial impact, stock market decline and crash due to worldwide pandemic

The Stock Market: Gains, Pains, and Panics

A fear that, if prices fall, they will continue falling is not justified by history but by panic

A psychological quirk called loss aversion makes us fear losses far more than we value gains. The panic investors experience from sudden losses can blind them to the overall, long-term picture.  We can demonstrate this tendency with a simple thought experiment.

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