A gentle introduction to smart contracts | Bits on blocks

In the context of blockchains and cryptocurrencies, smart contracts are: – pre-written logic (computer code), – stored and replicated on a distributed storage platform (eg a blockchain), – executed/run by a network of computers (usually the same ones running the blockchain), – and can result in ledger updates (cryptocurrency payments, …

Watch Transit Move With These Animated Maps

TransitFlow allows the creation of animated maps showing the movement of public transit modes around cities and regions. The TransitFlow team created the tool to help illustrate the importance of frequency, among other critical aspects of transit service.   Source: Watch Transit Move With These Animated Maps

School Supply Lists Have Gotten Ridiculously Long and Expensive. Here’s Why.

School-supply lists are now often shockingly long, requesting dozens of specific and sometimes expensive items. They include particular brands: Prang watercolors, Ticonderoga pencils, Elmer’s glue sticks. “Pens” are no longer good enough; only “Black Papermate Flair Porous-Point Medium-Point Pens” will do. And the definition of “school supplies” has expanded to …

Making Algorithms Fair: An Interview With Cynthia Dwork

Privacy and ethics are two questions with their roots in philosophy. These days, they require a solution in computer science. Over the past five years, Dwork, who is currently at Microsoft Research but will be joining the faculty at Harvard University in January, has been working to create a new field of research on algorithmic fairness. Earlier this month she helped organize a workshop at Harvard that brought together computer scientists, law professors and philosophers.

Source: Making Algorithms Fair: An Interview With Cynthia Dwork | Quanta Magazine

America’s restaurants have evolved with American culture

[Yale historian Paul] Freedman says restaurants reflect American society. Delmonico’s, the first American restaurant that we would recognize as a “fine-dining” establishment, coincided with the rise of railroads, industrialization and an American aristocracy not based on nobility, but on money. And restaurants like Delmonico’s reflected the particular mores of American society, as well. In the 19th century, for example, women were allowed into restaurants only in the presence of men.

Source: America’s restaurants have evolved with American culture

If Waffle House Is Closed, It’s Time To Panic

On a Disaster responders pay attention to [the Waffle House Index], which was created — in the midst of 2004’s devastating Hurricane Charley — by W. Craig Fugate, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency since 2009. Fugate was director of emergency management for Florida when Charley slammed the state …

‘Wages and wives’ are a big reason the rich are getting richer

If high-earning women were marrying low-earning men, the effect of increased female labor-force participation on income inequality might be positive. But that’s not happening. Instead, well-educated, well-paid women marry well-educated, well-paid men, a process sociologists have given the stunningly unromantic label of “assortative mating.” This means that the growing gaps we see in earnings are magnified in terms of household income. My colleague Gary Burtless estimates that between 10 and 16% of income inequality in the US is caused by the “growing correlation of earned incomes received by husbands and wives.”

Source: ‘Wages and wives’ are a big reason the rich are getting richer

Von Kármán vortices

In 1912, physicist Theodore von Kármán first described a process that makes long, spiraling cloud patterns in the sky. These so-called “von Kármán vortices” arise when winds are diverted around a blunt, high-profile area, often an island rising from the ocean. The alternating direction of rotation in the air forms swirls in the clouds.

Source: NASA LANDSAT

Why Everyone Is Hating on IBM Watson—Including the People Who Helped Make It

AI isn’t a thing. Machine learning – statistics writ large – is a thing.

\You’ve probably seen the Watson commercials, where what looks like a sentient box interacts with celebrities like Bob Dylan, Carrie Fisher, and Serena Williams; or doctors; or a young cancer survivor. Maybe you caught the IBM artificial intelligence technology’s appearance in H&R Block’s Super Bowl commercial starring Jon Hamm. “It is one of the most powerful tools our species has created. It helps doctors fight disease,” Hamm says. “It can predict global weather patterns. It improves education for children everywhere. And now we unleash it on your taxes.”

Source: Why Everyone Is Hating on IBM Watson—Including the People Who Helped Make It