Next year Scotland is starting a Universal Basic Income experiment - Guardian

Next year Scotland is starting a Universal Basic Income experiment

Posted on 29/12/2017 by Greg Evans in news

UPVOTE

Universal Basic Income is a policy often batted around at General Election times, but it is yet to gain any significant traction in the UK.

The scheme which involves the government giving everyone, regardless of employment status, a monthly tax-free income to spend however they choose, has become a reality in places like Finland, Hawaii and Canada.

Although it is still in its infancy in many places, the next adoption of the policy could be in Scotland.

According to Futurism the cities of Glasgow, Edinburgh, Fife and North Ayrshire will pilot UBI in 2018.

Public funding has already raised £250,000 for the idea which will allow the respective cities to develop studies to see how feasible the scheme is. The four cities have until March 2018 to submit their bids.

The intention of Universal Basic Income is to relieve people from the welfare or the benefits system and allow them to pursue their own interests.

The Guardian report that Labour, Conservative, SNP and Green Party councillors have already praised the proposal of the initiative in Scotland.

Although cautious, Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon believes that UBI has potential. She said:

It might turn out not to be the answer, it might turn out not to be feasible.

But as work changes as rapidly as it is doing, I think its really important that we are prepared to be open-minded about the different ways that we can support individuals to participate fully in the new economy.

The overall consensus on the issue remains split between politicians in Scotland but Glasgow councillor and UBI advocate Matt Kerr believes the backing of Sturgeon can help push the idea along.

Reactions to basic income have not split along the usual left/right party lines.

Some people to the left of the Labour party think that it undermines the role of trade unions and others take the opposite view.

But there should be room for scepticism; you need that to get the right policy.

The danger is that this falls into party blocks.

If people can unite around having a curiosity about [it] then I’m happy with that.

But having the first minister on board has done us no harm at all.

The councils that will be involved in the bid are looking at Universal Basic Income as a way of tackling poverty and the scheme will primarily be experimented with in areas with a wide range of demographics.

Joe Cullinane, the Labour leader of North Ayrshire Council, which has already set aside £200,000 for a feasible study, told the Guardian:

We have high levels of deprivation and high unemployment, so we take the view that the current system is failing us and we need to look at something new to lift people out of poverty.

Basic income has critics and supporters on the left and right, which tells you there are very different ways of shaping it and we need to state at the outset that this is a progressive change, to remove that fear and allow people to have greater control over their lives, to enter the labour market on their own terms.

Earlier this year a civil service briefing paper on the policy was published in Scotland and calculated that it could cost around £12.3 billion a year and warned that it would discourage people from working.

In contrast, the independent think tank Reform Scotland suggested that making changes to the tax system and rendering work benefits obsolete would easily allow the country to give every adult a basic income of £5,200.

HT Futurism, Guardian

From the future of bitcoin to Facebook, 2018 in technology - Guardian

From the future of bitcoin to Facebook, 2018 in technology

Social networks and politics, the still unfulfilled promise of augmented reality, pay-to-play games: what might change in the year ahead

Alex Hern

@alexhern

Sun 31 Dec ‘17 18.00 AEDT

Echo and Home will start to talk back

Both of the major smart home platforms have a long-running problem with “discoverability”: it’s very hard to let users know what their devices can do, particularly if they’re always improving thanks to rapid software updates.

Amazon and Google are constantly experimenting with ways to get around this, but so far they have been timid. Amazon sends a weekly email, while Google includes some tips in its app. Expect to see them be bolder, particularly as powerful rivals such as Apple appear on the scene with worse AI but better sound.

So don’t be surprised if your Google Home or Amazon Echo begin to talk back, rather than simply following commands. They might ask for a bit more contextual information, to better carry out the role you’ve assigned them, or they might suggest something that you hadn’t even thought to ask them, based on your use patterns (and, in Google’s case, near-omniscient knowledge of your movements and habits).

Actual conversations will probably be rare for the core assistants, though. Both companies know that they need to avoid irritating their users and are loath to insert themselves too forcefully into their lives.

But with both platforms also open to third-party developers, we can expect to see an evolution of the sort of chatbot-based narrative experiences with which organisations such as the BBC are already experimenting. Want to have Alexa acting as your on-tap dungeon master for a weekly pen-and-paper role playing game? OK, you’ll probably have to wait a bit longer for that one.

Donald Trump in Palm Beach. The issue of Russian interference in the 2016 election has become an existential concern for Facebook. Photograph: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Facebook screws up the 2018 US midterm elections

There is not really any good outcome for Facebook in 2018 and the company seems to know it. It’s stuck between two competing imperatives and it’s hard to see how it can chart a course between Scylla and Charybdis.

On the one hand, the company has to demonstrate conclusively that it has managed to protect the US against further Russian interference. That’s an almost existential concern for Facebook, at this point: the investigation into the Internet Research Agency’s actions on the site has blossomed into the worst press it has ever had and already made 2017 hell for the company.

That defensive need goes further than just Russia, though. Facebook still has a problem with “fake news” and its efforts to stymie the spread of hoaxes, bad reporting and deliberate propaganda haven’t worked. The rot has got so bad that Facebook is experimenting with simply deprioritising news full stop, trialling a news feed in six countries around the world that removes news posts to a secondary column, the “explore feed”.

But commercially, Facebook still needs to show it can swing elections. It’s reaching out to elected officials and candidates around the world – even running a special elections page, walking them through the process of buying an advert, optimising it for organic engagement and getting “honest, real-time” voter feedback.

It’s easy to see Facebook managing to achieve the worst of both worlds. In an effort to guard against misinformation, it has already started to promise new restrictions on political adverts, which could hurt the bottom line when it comes to creaming a portion of the enormous US electoral ad spend. But those restrictions won’t be enough to prevent a determined campaign – nor could they, without completely changing the nature of Facebook’s site.

Pay to play

The world of videogames saw a long-overdue backlash in 2017 against the concept of “loot boxes”, slot-machine style collections of virtual items that gamers can buy for real money to improve their characters. With tales of children spending hundreds of pounds on new players for Fifa and the latest Star Wars game launching to terrible reviews for its “relentless” money-grabbing, the trend looks as if it might be dialled back in the coming year.

Users could be rewarded for achieving simple goals in-game; they could then use that money to buy in-game items

But the economics behind it haven’t changed. Making serious money from games, particularly casual and mobile games, remains a prospect of identifying “whales” – players who will spend hundreds or thousands of pounds on your game in order to be the best there is – and milking every last cent from them, even if the experience hurts the normal players who just want to have fun without pulling their wallet out.

So what’s next? Paying those normal players to stick around, of course. After all, no one is going to spend a thousand pounds on new weapons and armour if there isn’t anyone to shoot them with. And people will do silly things to earn money, even if it’s just pennies an hour.

Crycash, a cryptocurrency launched in partnership with major developers Crytek, offers one mechanism to do just that, providing a “decentralised ecosystem of custom-tailored products providing gamers a means to monetise their game time”. The project suggests that users could be rewarded for achieving simple goals in-game (say, 3 crycash for 100 kills); they could then use that money to buy in-game items or sell it to the whales to cash out.

scene of a motorway pile up in grand theft auto

Games are fertile ground for training advanced artificial intelligences. Unlike the real world, they can be run on fast-forward, reset instantly, and operated in vast numbers simultaneously. That’s how a system such as DeepMind’s AlphaZero was able to learn how to play chess, Go and shogi to better-than-world-class standard in a matter of hours: by “playing” an inconceivable number of games against itself, improving as it did so, until it had more experience in each game than all the world’s grandmasters combined.

The next stage for many AI practitioners is to move from the table top to videogames. More advanced games can be used, not to improve the basic science of how to make a strong neural network, but to take advantage of the same elements of simulation that make them fun for your typical player: the handling of a car on the road in Grand Theft Auto, for instance, or the physics engine that makes bodies fly realistically in a typical first-person shooter.

Self-driving cars have been trained on the open world driving game Grand Theft Auto for more than a year now, learning to label different objects in a scene and drive a car according to the rules of the road.

But recent software releases from major gaming tech companies such as Unity and OpenAI look likely to accelerate that trend. Just remember to remove the bit of the game that rewards you for killstreaks before training your AI, OK?

colin stretch of facebook at a microphone addressing a senate committee in october 2017

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Colin Stretch, general counsel with Facebook, speaking at a Senate hearing last October. Photograph: Bloomberg via Getty Images

‘Transparency reports’ will get longer, and still be ignored

Social networks have faced awkward sessions in front of legislatures around the world, as they try to get to grips with the extent of Russian misinformation operations aimed at disrupting democratic elections in the west.

While the prospect of MPs and congressional representatives shouting at executives from Twitter and Facebook is always a juicy one, the real meat of the testimony comes in the data those two companies have been forced to hand over to investigative committees, from which we’ve received an insight into the practices of both the “professional trolls” Russia employed to disrupt the votes and the social media firms themselves.

But this ad-hoc information sharing won’t last and tech has already shown that it knows the best way to bury bad news is in plain sight. Following the Snowden revelations, when the world learned the extent of the US national security apparatus and how it was applied to the tech world, companies including Twitter, Apple and Google began issuing annual transparency reports.

They list how many requests for information the companies have received from law enforcement and which of them they’ve acquiesced to, turning a sporadic drip of information into an annual torrent.

So don’t be surprised if the next load of these reports begins to include information about state-sponsored political manipulation as a new chapter. Where better to bury bad news than in your annual bad news newsletter?

Bitcoin crashes… to higher than it was when people started calling it a bubble

Making predictions about cryptocurrencies is a fool’s game. The first time the Guardian noted bitcoin was in a bubble was June 2011, when the currency had just crashed from a high of $30. As I write, it’s worth $16,500. Who knows what it will be when you read this?

Still. At this point, you’d be a fool if you didn’t expect some sort of crash in the crypto market in 2018. When people are remortgaging houses to invest in something they saw on a tube advert, that’s not a great sign.

The final point in any speculative boom is always the arrival of the “dumb money”, because they’re the investors who put in more than they can afford to lose and get flighty at the downturns. And because this speculative bubble isn’t just bitcoin, instead involving a spread of investments across a number of cryptocurrencies including ethereum, monero and a host of bitcoin forks, that eventual crash could be sparked by any one of about 20 markets.

So the question isn’t whether there will be a crash, but what comes next. With the amount of attention and investment cryptocurrencies have received, and the baked-in assumption of wild volatility in price, it’s hard to see a crash killing the sector. That’s partially because none of the previous crashes has managed to do it, demonstrating a remarkable resilience alongside the huge price swings. And it’s partially because, well, cryptocurrencies are useful. Sure, most of that use is buying drugs and paying cybercriminals, but that keeps demand up high enough that it never quite bottoms out. Many have called the death of bitcoin and many have been wrong.

an american neo nazi at a rally in pikeville kentucky in april 2017

An American neo-Nazi at a rally in Kentucky last spring: YouTube censors violent hate speech but is it still a gateway to extremism? Photograph: Pat Jarrett

YouTube starts paying attention to the far right

The world’s largest broadcaster has started to wake up to the fact that time and again, it is cited as part of the “radicalisation pathway” that turns young men from bedroom shut-ins to mass murderers. For a long time, the site has removed content that includes explicit calls to action or violent hate speech. But it’s taken a softer touch with content that doesn’t breach those rules, but may lead vulnerable audiences to draw their own violent conclusions or seek out stronger content off-site.

In late 2017, it began to take serious action, acting for the first time to remove swaths of material that had previously fallen on the right side of that line – just. Videos featuring sermons by Anwar al-Awlaki, the radical preacher once known as the “YouTube Islamist”, were removed in their entirety. More than 50,000 were taken offline as a result, with most of those left up being about Awlaki, but not authored by him.

But Islamists are not the only extremists on YouTube. The site has also been blamed for its role in the radicalisation of neofascists and white supremacists. Just as with Islamic extremism, the most egregious content gets removed, but the pathway remains.

The situation seems unsustainable, however. If content can be removed because it contributes to radicalisation, even if it doesn’t directly contravene the site’s guidelines, then how can one class of radicalisation be treated differently from another?

monsters overlaid on reality in the game hologrid monster battle

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Reality with all the trimmings: HoloGrid: Monster Battle, inspired by a scene from Star Wars. Photograph: HoloGrid: Monster Battle

AR’s less-than-killer app

Augmented reality currently feels like a hammer in search of a nail. The tech, which received a big boost with the release of iOS 11 in September 2017, lets developers overlay virtual items on top of the real world. You can hold your phone up to the night sky and see constellations on its screen or wave it around while playing Pokémon Go and watch Pikachu jump about like he’s really in the park.

But currently, the tech is floating in novelty territory and it looks like it will be hard to rescue that without something major coming to save it. Thankfully, unlike its sister technology virtual reality, AR doesn’t require any special hardware to use – just a relatively new phone running the latest operating system – which means that it doesn’t need to convince people to spend tens or hundreds of pounds on new gear.

Instead, AR just needs something fun or useful enough to keep people remembering that it’s a thing, at least until something actually good comes along. There are a lot of developers vying to fill that niche, but the ones with the best potential take something that people are already happy doing fairly physically and improve it. That means no to AR Twitter timelines and yes to AR boardgames.

There are already a few experiments that point the way, from AR-powered table-top war game The Machines to weird Star Wars-inspired chess variant HoloGrid: Monster Battle. None has quite nailed it, but they all demonstrate the potential. Imagine being able to sit at a real table with a real board and play a virtual game with friends and loved ones around the world. It would be… well, sort of crap, but at least it might be memorable.

Iran's Revolutionary Guard Vows to Crush Anti-Government - Bloomberg

31/12/2017

Iran's Revolutionary Guard Vows to Crush Anti-Government

By GOLNAR MOTEVALLI / BLOOMBERG 10:20 AM EST

Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guard Corps vowed to crush one of the biggest shows of dissent against the government in years, as days of confrontations between demonstrators and security forces turned deadly in a western province. Stocks fell.

The guard — whose mandate is to safeguard the Islamic Revolution — warned late Saturday that it would respond with “a hard punch” if demonstrations didn’t stop. Two protesters were killed in Dorud in the province of Lorestan late Saturday during clashes with security forces, Habibollah Khojastehpour, deputy for political affairs for the province of Lorestan, said in an interview posted on the website of Iran’s state broadcaster.

The protests, which began in the northeastern city of Mashhad on Thursday, present a serious challenge to President Hassan Rouhani and the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Protesters first took aim at rising food prices and corruption, driven partly by a sense that the July 2015 nuclear deal hasn’t delivered the broad economic recovery many were expecting. By Friday, the dissent spread to other areas, and evolved into a wider condemnation of the clerical establishment and security forces.

Government officials have said the protests are part of a wider attempt by Rouhani’s opponents to discredit his leadership. Iran’s hardline media have said justified criticism of the government has been hijacked by a wider foreign plot to sow sedition in the country.

‘Improper Behavior’

Protesters “must certainly know that improper behavior will be to their detriment, and the nation will come out and stand against these actions and throw a hard punch in their faces,” the Revolutionary Guard’s commander for security in Tehran, Brigadier General Esmail Kowsari, said according to a statement carried by the semi-official Iranian Students’ News Agency late Saturday.

The Iranian parliament’s national security and foreign policy committee called an extraordinary meeting for this week to assess the events, lawmaker Hossein Naghavi Hosseini told the Iranian Students’ News Agency in an interview. Rouhani’s office denied a report in the semi-official Iran Newspaper that he planned to give a televised speech on Sunday.

Iran’s TEDPIX Index fell 1.7 percent to 95,561.58 in Tehran on Sunday, down to the lowest level since Dec. 20, according to data on the bourse’s website.

Overnight unrest in the capital Tehran was concentrated in a few major intersections, according to the semi-official Tasnim news agency. The report said bus stops had been vandalized and garbage dumpsters set on fire. There has been heavy police and security presence in restive areas, including scores of anti-riot police clad in black uniforms and helmets. The capital was quiet on Sunday.

The protests have erupted at a time of deepening strains between Iran and the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump, who has imposed additional sanctions on Tehran and has threatened to scuttle the nuclear accord. Trump said on Twitter that the “world is watching” events in Iran, and that the government “should respect their people’s rights, including right to express themselves.”

The Foreign Ministry in Tehran dismissed Trump’s comments, saying “the Iranian people place no value or credibility in the opportunistic claims of U.S. officials or of Mr. Trump himself.”

Here are the Republicans retiring from Congress in 2018 - CNN

Here are the Republicans retiring from Congress in 2018

By Daniella Diaz, CNN

Updated 1416 GMT (2216 HKT) December 31, 2017

Rep. Farenthold announces plan to retire

Rep. Farenthold announces plan to retire 00:59

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Sen. Bob Corker and Sen. Jeff Flake are retiring from the Senate

There are a few more influential Republicans retiring in the House

Washington (CNN)The list of lawmakers leaving Congress in 2018 is notable for the number of Republicans who have cited their own party's president as one of the reasons for their retirement.

Here's a look at Republicans who have announced they won't run for re-election in 2018:

Senate

1. Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee; announced on 9/26/17

Corker has been a strong critic of President Donald Trump.

"After much thought, consideration and family discussion over the past year, Elizabeth and I have decided that I will leave the United States Senate when my term expires at the end of 2018," Corker said in a statement.

2. Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona; announced on 10/24/17

Flake, also a frequent critic of Trump, announced his retirement in a blistering speech on the Senate floor that bemoaned the "coarsening" tenor of politics in the United States.

Flake denounced the "complicity" of his own party in what he called an "alarming and dangerous state of affairs" under Trump, blaming the President for setting the tone. In his speech, Flake assailed a "flagrant disregard for truth or decency" and attacked a "regular and casual undermining of our democratic norms."

"When such behavior emanates from the top of our government, it is something else: It is dangerous to a democracy," Flake said.

House of Representatives

3. Rep. Sam Johnson of Texas; announced on 1/6/17

The longtime congressman made his announcement in a message posted to his website.

"After much prayer, I have decided I will not seek re-election to serve the Third District of Texas in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2018," Johnson said in the statement. "This will be my final term in the appropriately named 'People's House.' "

4. Rep. Lynn Jenkins of Kansas; announced on 1/25/17

Jenkins announced she would instead work in the private sector, shutting down rumors that she might run for Kansas governor.

"With the unique opportunity given to us by the American people, with Republican majorities in the House, the Senate, and now a newly inaugurated President, this is a time for action and serious policy making. This is a time for fighting for Kansas and making the tough calls; not fundraising and campaigning," Jenkins said in a statement.

She continued: "In two years, at the conclusion of this Congress, I plan to retire and explore opportunities to return to the private sector, allowing a new citizen legislator to step up and serve Kansans."

5. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida; announced on 4/30/17

Ros-Lehtinen, the first Cuban-American elected to Congress, is retiring after 38 years -- handing Democrats a major opening to pick off a GOP-held seat.

She announced her decision in an interview with The Miami Herald. She has been a key moderate voice in the House, but she said her decision had nothing to do with her differences with Trump.

"I've served under all kinds of different dynamics in all these years that I've been in office here," she told the newspaper. "Though I don't agree with many, if not most, positions of President Trump."

6. Rep. John J. Duncan Jr. of Tennessee; announced on 7/31/17

Duncan, who served for three decades, made his announcement to the Knoxville News Sentinel.

"It has been a very special privilege to represent the people of the Second District in the U.S. House of Representatives," the Knoxville Republican said. "However, I will not be running for re-election in 2018."

7. Rep. Dave Reichert of Washington state; announced on 9/6/17

Reichert is a moderate Republican in a swing seat, which could be at play in the 2018 midterms.

"After spending time during the August work period with family and friends, reflecting on the past, discussing the future, and celebrating another birthday, I have decided this will be my last term," Reichert said in a statement.

He is one of 23 Republicans who represent districts Hillary Clinton carried in the 2016 presidential election.

8. Rep. Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania; announced on 9/7/17

Dent, also a moderate, said Thursday that while Trump hadn't been the determining factor in his decision to retire at the end of his term, he was a part of it.

"Well, at least in my case, I would say the President was a factor, but not the factor for me deciding to leave," Dent told CNN's Poppy Harlow. "A very challenging midterm environment" also contributed to his decision, he said.

9. Rep. Dave Trott of Michigan; announced on 9/11/17

Trott's announcement opened up a competitive House seat for the 2018 midterms.

"Representing the Eleventh District has been an honor, but I have decided not to seek re-election in 2018," Trott said in a statement. "This was not an easy decision, but after careful consideration, I have decided that the best course for me is to spend more time with my family and return to the private sector."

10. Rep. Pat Tiberi of Ohio; announced 10/19/17

The senior congressman said he plans to leave Congress to lead the Ohio Business Roundtable.

"While I have not yet determined a final resignation date, I will be leaving Congress by January 31, 2018," he said in the statement. "I have been presented with an opportunity to lead the Ohio Business Roundtable that will allow me to continue to work on public policy issues impacting Ohioans while also spending more time with my family."

10. Rep. Jeb Hensarling of Texas; announced on 10/31/2017

The powerful chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, who represents Dallas, hails from a Republican-heavy district.

In an email sent to his supporters, Hensarling said it was never his intention to make congressional service a career.

"Although service in Congress remains the greatest privilege of my life, I never intended to make it a lifetime commitment, and I have already stayed far longer than I had originally planned," he said.

11. Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas; announced on 11/2/2017

Smith, the chairman of the House Science Committee, said he hopes to stay in politics.

"For several reasons, this seems like a good time to pass on the privilege of representing the 21st District to someone else," Smith, who has served since 1987, said in a statement. "I have one new grandchild and a second arriving soon! And I hope to find other ways to stay involved in politics."

12. Rep. Frank LoBiondo of New Jersey; announced on 11/7/2017

He announced his decision in a statement, saying it was not "health-related" or "electoral," and he bemoaned the polarized nature of Congress.

"As some of my closest colleagues have also come to realize, those of us who came to Congress to change Washington for the better through good governance are now the outliers," LoBiondo's statement read. "Today a vocal and obstinate minority within both parties has hijacked good legislation in pursuit of no legislation."

LoBiondo has been in the House since the 1990s.

13. Rep. Ted Poe of Texas; announced on 11/7/17

He announced in a statement on Twitter, adding that he was proud of the work he had done during his time in office.

"I will continue this work every day until I retire at the end of this term," Poe said. "And that's just the way it is."

14. Rep. Bob Goodlatte of Virginia; announced on 11/9/17

Goodlatte, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, announced just two days after a stunning defeat by GOP candidates in statewide and local contests in Virginia.

In a written statement, Goodlatte said he and his wife had discussed the 2018 midterm election and his time as chairman coming to an end in 2018 was a factor.

"After much contemplation and prayer, we decided it was the right time for me to step aside and let someone else serve the Sixth District," Goodlatte wrote. "I will not seek re-election. With my time as Chairman of the Judiciary Committee ending in December 2018, this is a natural stepping-off point and an opportunity to begin a new chapter of my career and spend more time with my family, particularly my granddaughters."

15. Rep. Joe Barton of Texas; announced on 11/30/17

Barton, the longest serving member of the Texas House delegation, announced he would not seek re-election following a scandal that involved a nude photo of him surfacing on Twitter.

After the photo leaked, Barton apologized for not using "better judgment."

"While separated from my second wife, prior to the divorce, I had sexual relationships with other mature adult women," Barton said in a statement first reported by The Texas Tribune. "Each was consensual. Those relationships have ended. I am sorry I did not use better judgment during those days. I am sorry that I let my constituents down."

16. Rep. Blake Farenthold of Texas; announced on 12/14/17

Farenthold, who's been under fire for accusations of sexual harassment, announced he is not planning to run for re-election in a video.

"I'd never served in office before. I had no idea how to run a congressional office. And as a result, I allowed a workplace culture to take root in my office that was too permissive and decidedly unprofessional," he said in the video. "I understand fully that this issue has become a political distraction and I would be forced to engage in a monthlong campaign for personal vindication. Quite simply, my constituents deserve better. Therefore I'm announcing my decision not to run for re-election."