Four short links: 27 December 2017
When to Decentralize, Uncanny Valley, Anti-Adblocker AI, and Biosensors
- When To Decentralize Decision-Making and When Not To (HBR) — author suggests it depends on whether you need responsiveness, reliability, efficiency, or perennity (e.g., the quality of being perennial, or continuing reliably in perpetuity). If you want responsiveness, decentralize and promote immediacy. If you want reliability, centralize and promote compliance. If you want efficiency, centralize and promote syndication (distribute tasks but centralize management). If you want perennity, centralize and detach the operational unit from other departments that might inhibit execution.
- Creepiness Creeps In: Uncanny Valley Feelings Are Acquired in Childhood — Two hundred forty 3- to 18-year-olds viewed one of two robots (machine-like or very human-like) and rated their feelings toward (e.g., “Does the robot make you feel weird or happy?”) and perceptions of the robot’s capacities (e.g., “Does the robot think for itself?”). Like adults, children older than 9 judged the human-like robot as creepier than the machine-like robot-but younger children did not. Children’s perceptions of robots’ mental capacities predicted uncanny feelings: children judge robots to be creepy depending on whether they have human-like minds. The uncanny valley is therefore acquired over development and relates to changing conceptions about robot minds. (via BoingBoing)
- Measuring and Disrupting Anti-Adblockers Using Differential Execution Analysis — We want to develop a comprehensive understanding of anti-adblockers, with the ultimate aim of enabling adblockers to bypass state-of-the-art anti-adblockers. In this paper, we present a differential execution analysis to automatically detect and analyze anti-adblockers.
- 6 In 1 Biosensor for Smartphones —The six data points that the sensor package is able to collect are as follows: Heart-rate – heart beats per minute; Heart-rate variability – variation in time between heartbeats; Blood pressure trends – measured range of data over time; Peripheral oxygen saturation (SpO2) – measurement of blood oxygen levels; Electrocardiography (ECG) – electrical activity of the heart over a period of time; Photoplethysmography (PPG) – measurement of blood volume changes
