SNAP MAKES BET ON THE CULTURAL SUPREMACY OF THE CAMERA

TOP OF THE NEWS:

- Snap Makes a Bet on the Cultural Supremacy of the Camera (NYT) "But Snapchat uncovered something deeper about the camera. Not only could we use pictures to document the world, but we could also use them to communicate. Snapchat, which was at first dismissed as a mere sexting app, showed that with the right design, a phone’s camera could add an extra dimension to communication that you couldn’t get with text alone."

BUSINESS/ECONOMY:

- Job creation posts blowout month in February (CNBC) "Companies added jobs at a blistering pace in February, with a notable shift away from the service-sector positions that have dominated hiring for years, according to a report Wednesday. Employment in the private sector surged by 298,000 for the month, with goods producers adding 106,000, ADP and Moody's Analytics said. Construction jobs swelled by 66,000 and manufacturing added 32,000. The total shattered market expectations of 190,000, according to economists surveyed by ADP."

NEWS:

- Trump Knows the Feds Are Closing In on Him (Foreign Policy) "There is a good reason why Trump and his partisans are so apoplectic about the prospect of a special counsel, and it is precisely why it is imperative to appoint one: because otherwise we will never know the full story of the Kremlin’s tampering with our elections and of the Kremlin’s connections with the president of the United States. As evidenced by his desperate attempts to change the subject, Trump appears petrified of what such a probe would reveal. Wonder why?"

- Trump campaign gave Page permission for Moscow trip (USA Today) "For months, Trump officials tried to distance the campaign from Page after his speech at the New Economic School in Moscow, which drew intense political scrutiny because he called aspects of U.S. foreign policy 'hypocritical' and sharply criticized America’s sanctions against Russia. In the weeks that followed, Trump campaign aides first said he was only an informal adviser, while others said he had no role at all, though Trump himself had publicly named Page as an adviser."

- President Trump’s Island Mentality (NYT) "It would be beyond foolish for America to withdraw into a shell. The country is not diminished, but strengthened, when it engages with the world."

- The Curious Case of Sebastian Gorka, Trump’s New Terrorism Guru (Foreign Policy) "...it appears Gorka doesn’t have a Top Secret or a Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information (TS/SCI) security clearance. Why does any of this matter? It matters because if it is true that Gorka lacks a Top Secret clearance, it calls into question the credibility of Gorka’s repeated claims that he has insights personally gleaned from supposedly attending meetings on terrorism or other sensitive national security meetings (you know, the ones the media can’t possibly know the truth about). Similarly, if Gorka does not have a Top Secret clearance, any reference to classified intelligence by Gorka to justify Trump’s policies represents, um, 'alternative facts,' since sensitive intelligence on terrorist threats to the U.S. homeland is typically marked at the Top Secret or TS/SCI level."

- Peanut Butter on the Trump Team’s Chins (NYT) "More troubling was watching an honorable soldier, Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly...defend Trump’s claim on CNN, saying that 'the president must have his reasons.' That’s how a morally bankrupt president soils everyone around him, even such a good man. There is not a G.O.P. congressman or U.S. ally abroad who today is not asking: Can I trust this guy when the going gets tough, or will Trump lay a fact-free Twitter rant on me? Can I even trust sharing information with him? There is nothing more dangerous than a U.S. president who’s squandered his trust before he has to lead us through a crisis."

- North Korea Tensions Pose Early, and Perilous, Test for Trump (NYT) "But by beginning to install the antimissile system, the delicate international front against North Korea is splintering, with Beijing expressing more concern about American intentions in the region than about the dangers of the North’s latest surge in nuclear and missile testing. China condemned the new antimissile system as a dangerous opening move in what it called America’s grand strategy to set up similar defenses across Asia, threatening to tilt the balance of power there against Beijing."

- McMaster Faces Limits in Overhauling Flynn’s NSC (Foreign Policy)

- Why Liberals Are So Depressed About Trump (Atlantic)

SCIENCE:

- How an Atari Chip Set Off a Bitter War Among Neuroscientists (Wired) "Neuroscientists want to figure out how neurons influence each other, gaining a broader understanding of how the brain computes. But his microprocessor paper suggests that, at least with the tools neuroscientists have now, that wouldn’t be possible."

SPORTS:

- The Race to Design the World's Fastest Running Shoe (Outside) "Taken side by side, the VaporFly and the adizero appear to be adopting different approaches to hitting that elusive sweet spot of maximal cushioning and minimal weight. Nike is betting more heavily on the former, Adidas on the latter."

- The surprising places MLB teams get their information from in the post Moneyball era (CBS Sports) "In a way, third-party data has created a collective action problem. Every team is behaving rationally by gobbling up as much information as possible. But if everyone is acting rationally, then, as the theory goes, everyone is getting worse results for their troubles."

TECHNOLOGY:

- How Artificial Intelligence Will Change Everything (WSJ) "And the difference between speech recognition that is 95% accurate, which is where we were several years ago, versus 99% accuracy isn’t just an incremental improvement. It’s the difference between you barely using it, like a couple of years ago, versus you using it all the time and not even thinking about it. Things may change in the future, but one rule of thumb today is that almost anything that a typical person can do with less than one second of mental thought we can either now or in the very near future automate with AI. This is a far cry from all work. But there are a lot of jobs that can be accomplished by stringing together many one-second tasks."

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