…Penny, an artificial intelligence that uses satellite imagery to predict income levels in the Big Apple and how they change as you tinker with the urban landscape.
Source: An AI That Predicts a Neighborhood’s Wealth From Space
The problems of policing with Artificial Intelligence
‘Thankfully we barely have any reports of human trafficking. But someone at intel got a tip-off and looked into cases at car washes, because we hadn’t really investigated those much. ‘But now when we try to model human trafficking we only see human trafficking being predicted at car washes, which suddenly seem very high risk. So because of increased intel we’ve essentially produced models that tell us where car washes are. ‘This kind of loop is hard to explain to those higher up.’
Source: The problems of policing with Artificial Intelligence | AiiA IQ
Hundreds of New York Judges don’t have Law Degrees
Nearly three-quarters of the [town and village] judges are not lawyers, and many — truck drivers, sewer workers or laborers — have scant grasp of the most basic legal principles. Some never got through high school, and at least one went no further than grade school….
But the majority of the cases resulting in action involve the town and village judges. Marisa Harrison, the public records officer at the commission, said 70 percent of the cases resulting in discipline over the course of the commission’s existence dealt with such judges.
Source: Despite Exposés and Embarrassments, Hundreds of Judges Preside in New York Without Law Degrees
The Postal Service is losing millions a year to help you buy cheap stuff from China
According to the terms set out in Universal Postal Union treaty, the USPS in 2014 gets paid no more than about $1.50 for delivering a one-pound package from a foreign carrier, which makes it hard to cover costs. [1] The USPS inspector general’s office estimated that the USPS lost $79 million in fiscal year 2013 delivering this foreign treaty mail. (The Postal Service itself declined to provide specific figures.)
The Oscar-Meyer WienerDrone
The WienerCycle and WienerDrone will begin traveling the country this summer.
Source: Oscar Mayer takes to the skies, adding a WienerDrone to their fleet.
The death of the electric guitar
In the past decade, electric guitar sales have plummeted, from about 1.5 million sold annually to just over 1 million. The two biggest companies, Gibson and Fender, are in debt, and a third, PRS Guitars, had to cut staff and expand production of cheaper guitars.
Why is ketchup called ketchup?
Spoiler alert: because ketchup began as a fish sauce from south-east Asia
Source: Why is ketchup called ketchup? · Amuse Our Bouche · The A.V. Club
99th quantile of income compared to the 90th
What I’m reading
I read a lot. A lot, a lot. Along the way I find things I think are really interesting that I want to share with others. Up-to-now I’ve shared those tidbits, links and images only on social media or in emails with folks I know. Starting today I’m going to start adding them to this page – a running log of things I think are interesting or cool. A directed random walk of the internet if you’ll indulge.
ISBIS 2017
I’ll be speaking about mobile device location data quality at the 2017 International Society for Business and Industrial Statistics conference at IBM’s Watson Research Lab in Mount Kisco, NY on June 8th.