Interesting Links: May 31, 2019

Teaching driverless cars to navigate unfamiliar roadways; Flipboard was hacked and reset all users' login credentials; Pursuing a blood test for cancer; Emergent exploitation in game-theory relationships; and more...

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Business, News, Science, Technology, or whatever gets my attention.

Straight from my RSS feed:

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Ten links and micro-summaries from my 1000+ daily headlines. I filter them so you don't have to.

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1. Bringing human-like reasoning to driverless car navigation - According to the article, human drivers excel at using simple maps and observation to navigate roads that they haven't seen before. Now MIT researchers have a technique for driverless cars to do the same. The system is trained by watching human drivers in a small area, and after training, it can accomplish the same in a more generalized fashion. In addition to navigating new roads, the system can also reroute itself in response to mismatches between GPS data and sensor observations. Unlike LiDAR maps in traditional autonomous systems, the simple maps used by this system require only 40G of data for the entire world - smaller than LiDAR by a factor of 100. h/t Communications of the ACM


2. News aggregator app Flipboard hacked: All passwords reset after hackers pinch user data - The news aggregator, Flipboard has acknowledged that hackers gained access to personal data from its members. As a result, the platform has reset all user passwords and social media login tokens. The company says that not all users were compromised, and the scope of the intrusion is still being investigated


3. Cancer? This researcher says he can see it in your blood - A Johns Hopkins researcher has received $110 million from a group of investors for his liquid biopsy technique that was able to spot several forms of cancer by looking at 16 genes and 8 proteins in a blood sample. The hope is to create a test that can be done in a doctor's office and detect cancer before symptoms begin, while it's still relatively easy to treat. A large scale study is currently wrapping up, and its results will be published next year. In addition to identifying cancer early, the technology also needs to provide a sufficiently low percentage of false positives.


4. Prisoner’s dilemma shows exploitation is a basic property of human society - Researchers studying the evolutionary roots of exploitation have found a stable scenario in the iterative prisoner's dilemma where two, equally powerful players will coexist in a relationship where one exploits the other. The article says that the situation, where the exploitative situation is optimal for both players, arises from certain starting conditions, and suggests that researchers will begin searching for ways to destabilize the exploitation, so that it collapses into cooperation.


5. “This is a case of good science:” Nature republishes retracted glacier paper - In a first-ever scenario, Nature republished a previously retracted paper, after the authors made corrections. In an accompanying editorial, Nature noted that the conclusions became even more compelling after the corrections were made. The article notes that there is a spectrum of retraction reasons, from fraud through honest mistakes to extreme complexity, and argues that retraction notices should also give readers a way to distinguish among the various reasons for retraction.


6. Does Intolerance Dampen Dissent? Macro-Tolerance and Protest in American Metropolitan Areas - This research summary explores the theory that politically intolerant societies "foster conformity and inhibit dissent", and finds that they do. The research suggests that intolerant political cultures create a spiral of silence where people who hold unpopular opinions keep quiet, which prevents their ideas from spreading. This can be problematic because it doesn't just silence harmful opinions, but also valuable ones that are held by minority groups. As the researchers put it, "By dampening protest, cultures of intolerance undermine the health of democracy."


7. 10 Things You Might Not Know About Walt Whitman -The 19th century poet was known as "The Bard of Democracy". Personally, other than the fact that Philadelphia's Walt Whitman Bridge is named for him, I knew very little about him, so this is all new to me. Of note, he tinkered with his most famous work, Leaves of Grass, publishing 9 different versions (one of which was banned in the city of Boston). He also published an anonymous review in which he raved about the work. Additionally, he started working at 11, became a teacher at 17, worked with wounded soldiers during the Civil War, and was admired by Bram Stoker (who called himself a "Whitmanite"). Later in life, he enjoyed spending time naked with friends, and designed his own mausoleum.


8. Scientists Find Possible Traces of 'Lost' Stone Age Settlement Beneath the North Sea - Scientists have discovered a fossilized forest on the floor of the North Sea that might reveal a settlement of human inhabitants from about 10,000 years ago. The high number of artifiacts that they're locating leads them to believe that they are very close to a settlement, and they are sufficiently familiar with the topology now that they can start using dredging to increase the pace of their exploration. h/t RealClear Science


9. STEEM The right setup for business development! - @arnaudmalfoy gives some business development tips, including advice about the web page, linkedin page, other social media, and hardcopy literature to hand out such as brochures and case studies. (5% of the rewards from this post will go to @arnaudmalfoy)


10. STEEM Pimping out my desktop! - @bengy posts photos and a description from unboxing and connecting his new Razer Chroma Nommo speakers for his gaming setup. (@bengy will get 5% of the rewards from this post)
    

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