DDI Weekly Selection — March 13, 2019
Economy is all about including people
by Jim Katzaman — 5 min read
Modeling, data and above all, people — Dr. Tayo Oyedeji mixes in all of these ingredients in his recipe for an all-inclusive economy.
“Economic inclusion, the opening up of economic opportunities to under-served social groups, is integral to achieving a transition toward sustainable economies,” he said.
Oyedeji is a professor, business leader and entrepreneur with expertise in marketing and technology. He runs a group of companies with operations spanning technology, advertising and real estate. He works with the business managers to create value for employees and shareholders.
“Economic inclusion means that we need to develop models for including the most vulnerable in the economy,” Oyedeji said. “It’s everything from providing jobs to providing access to financing for disadvantaged communities. This includes jobs, banks and credit unions, investments, economic opportunities, and entrepreneurial support. (read more)
“There Are No Stupid Questions” Promotes Lazy Thinking
by Tesia Blake — 4 min read
We’ve all heard it at some point, from some professor or another (it usually starts in school), “There are no stupid questions.”
That well-meaning phrase is designed to encourage curiosity and discourage bullying. It’s meant to bring insecure students out of their shells and make them feel welcome to clear up their learning difficulties in the classroom, whatever these may be.
“There are no stupid questions” might work well in high school, or even in college, to get people to ask questions that might otherwise be bullied out of the room. The “no stupid questions” mindset, however, might be fostering lazy thinking and discouraging critical thinking at an individual level.
And it doesn’t look particularly good on adults. (read more)
How to slow down: an ode to people who ain’t got time for that
by Brittney Dawney — 5 min read
As a chronic (and recovering) human doing, I almost don’t know any other way to be than on the go — after all, a rolling stone gathers no moss (or something like that). The list of things to do is endless. I’m late for everything. People who waste my time are the worst kind of people. I kind of love/hate every minute of this way of being, because for the most part it serves me well: I get shit done. I accomplish whatever I put my mind to. I pour my heart and soul into my pursuits. It enables me to achieve my goals. And, this way of being has brought me to the brink more times than I can count. Burn-outs, lash-outs, fall-outs — I’ve seen them all. I’ve come to realize that I have a hard time slowing down and just being where I am, who I am, and with what I’m experiencing. For me, slowing down enough to even notice the flowers is hard, let alone stopping to give them a sniff. (read more)
You’re already transhuman, you just don’t know it: MWC Barcelona
by Alyse Sue — 6 min read
Transhumanism is the idea of transcending the limitations of human biology through science and tech to become more intelligent, eliminate disease, and live longer and potentially forever.
We are at MWC in Barcelona, the world’s largest mobile tech conference, and it’s side event for startup tech called 4YFN.
Edgar Pons Forn looks nervous as he takes his seat on stage. A live on-stage demonstration of human chip being implanted is about to happen. Edgar is the brave volunteer who will soon have an RFID chip implanted in his hand. The chip is the size of a grain of rice and will be inserted by an experienced body modification practitioner. (read more)
3 Ideas To Spark Simplifying Your Life
by Carolyn — 3 min read
I’ve been investing pockets of time to clear out my physical and emotional space. At first, the mere thought of giving away my belongings was challenging, especially when I felt like I needed things to make me feel safe. Some items carried sentimental meaning and others items made me feel wasteful. Many items made me question what I was going to do afterdiscarding these items.
I found that the most draining part of the process (both in terms of time and energy) was ‘thinking’ about reducing the clutter. The process of separating the items and putting them into bags went pretty quickly, as soon as I made the decision to part with them. (read more)
Getting familiar with few-shot learning
by Quantum — 5 min read
Usually, when it comes to few-shot learning tasks we hear about how complex neural networks are nowadays and how much data they needed to train (i.e., thousands of examples for each new class even with a network pre-trained on a large-scale dataset with base classes). Also, we have to consider that the human annotation cost as well as the scarcity of data for some classes (e.g., rare animal species or events in general). It all significantly limits the applicability of current deep learning systems to learn new concepts efficiently (as we will see further it’s still possible to train the neural network in a classic way while having limited labeled data). (read more)
