Machine Learning. Particularly of the unsupervised variety. Neural nets.

We have entered the era of big data, and this has provided a huge resource that can be used to train computers to reason, and to train them to reason for themselves, without human barriers and guidelines. The field is evolving rapidly, and unsupervised ML is revealing its potency. We may be decades away from a 'self-aware' machine, and it may never happen... but computers have already used machine learning to outstrip human achievements - including creative reasoning. AlphaGo Zero being a prime example.

Most computers at the moment are limited by the capabilities of their designers. But some, for specific tasks, are not. And the trend is only going to accelerate.

I don't think you can use one person as an example of a general trend. There are many people of that age and older who have died. And Moyes is not elderly anyway really, more middle-aged.

The cause of the problem is the government's irresponsible short-termism, coupled with the fact that they are only interested in keeping the economy going, and couldn't care less how many people die. What they should have done is bring in quarantine at national borders as soon as this thing started spreading beyond China. Result - brief minor economic hit, no global pandemic, no huge death toll, no lockdowns.
Instead they weren't willing to take even minor economic damage, hoped everything would carry on as normal, and then reacted too late, leading to huge deaths, lockdowns, and the massive economic damage they had hoped to avoid.

I don't think it's the players. Replace a few Liverpool first-teamers with Liverpool substitutes, and they should still comfortably out-perform Villa. But we are seeing some good players performing badly. The reason for this and for the bizarre results is I think mainly the lack of a pre-season. We've had a bit of a summer break, and now suddenly everyone jumps straight into the 20-21 season, slightly rusty, needing time to get going again. Some teams have adapted more quickly than others, that's all I think it is.

Yes, sorry - I just meant she would be unlikely to hit quite the same heights she did vs Halep, it being difficult to do that twice in two matches against top seeds. But I shouldn't have used the word 'disappointing' - she's had a phenomenal tournament.

Yes - my previous 'Swiatek losing to Bertens' comment is now irrelevant. This match is wide open, anyone could win - and the same can be said for the whole tournament - on the women's side, at least.

I'd say you need more Bitcoin, and less Litecoin. Eth at 30% looks reasonable. If your knowledge isn't perfectly up to date then you are right to stick to established coins. I'd question having that much in Litecoin though - is this a personal favourite from your early days in crypto? I ask that because many of us have our early favourites (mine being Eth), where we form a somewhat emotional attachment.

Halep in huge trouble at the moment... looks like going out.

... and she's lost! 6-1 6-2, against the world number 54, Iga Swiatek.

I don't think that Serena leaving the tournament was a big shock (whether injury or defeat)... but Halep losing in this way has surprised me. Maybe she didn't take her opponent seriously enough. Big shock. Some context - they played in the same round at the same tournament last year, and Halep won 6-1 6-0.

If Swiatek ends up playing fifth seed Bertens in the next round (although Bertens is currently losing)... then I'd predict that Swiatek will be disappointing and fail to hit her earlier heights. A shock victory against a big seed can I think often trigger a hangover effect in the next round, and Bertens should win easily. You saw the prediction here first! Unless Swiatek thrashes her, in which case please forget I predicted anything .

It probably is the toughest league in the world. Having said that, the top teams teams are so far ahead of other Premier League teams, that any dropped points can prove vital over the course of a season. The margin for error if you want to win the title is very small indeed. Man City dropped 5 points in 3 games... you would imagine it would need several months of constant victories to get close to overhauling that deficit. Liverpool and Man City really can['t afford to start the season slowly... as Man City may find to their cost.

I think one reason City are struggling is that they finally have true competition. They've had it their own way in the Premier League for too long... and now they are faced with a team that is better than them. They were never under much pressure before, but now the pressure is huge... which leads to dropping points, which leads to a loss of confidence... which becomes a vicious circle. They need to snap out of it quickly and get back to winning ways. If they leave it too long, Liverpool will be out of sight and impossible to catch.

Here in the UK we watch the US with interest. We are a couple of years behind, and looking at the US is often a bit like looking into the future. The two countries are quite similar in certain respects, and this time it might be that people in the US can see the future by looking at the UK - our own mask-shunning hand-shaking freedom-loving populist demagogue of a leader contracted Covid 19 in the spring. And the government milked the situation for all the sympathy they could get. Johnson was even hospitalised and moved to intensive care at one point, despite his symptoms not meriting it and a normal person in a similar condition not requiring hospitalisation. He also received 4 litres of oxygen, when the standard for Covid patients is 15.

https://www.eveningexpress.co.uk/news/uk/raab-i-worried-pm-would-die-of-coronavirus/

At the moment with the characteristic mix of misinformation and conflicting reports, we don't know how badly Trump has the virus. He may die, he may be absolutely fine... but it's a cast-iron guarantee that the Republican party will have a carefully thought out strategy and play this for all it is worth.

I don't agree with this assessment. Machine Learning is developing at pace. We may still be a long way from a computer that is self-aware, but we already have computers that can out-think humans in creative terms. We could consider for example AlphaGo and AlphaGo Zero. The game of Go is much more challenging for a computer than is chess.

AlphaGo was primed with huge quantities of data from human vs human games of Go... and it was able from that start, with its neural net and deep learning algorithms to become better than the best human player in the world.
But its successor, AlphaGo Zero, was not primed with human data. All that its neural net knew about Go was the rules. It had to learn by playing itself. It surpassed the human-trained version of AlphaGo extremely quickly, and beat it 100-0 in a head-to-head match. AG Zero is so good and so creative - in ways that humans hadn't conceived - that human Go players are now influenced by its style of play.

This trend will only continue.

Physical robots replacing humans for the execution of physical tasks started a long time ago. Think of car manufacturing plants for example. They don't have to look like humans, it's just that it can be quite unnerving when they do. The advances in robotics are impressive though, particularly the Boston Dynamics stuff. But I think the main area of advancement where humans are starting to be replaced by machines is in automation and improvement of human mental tasks. Increasing segments of the workforce will find their jobs under threat.

... but this isn't to say that physical robots aren't coming. For example, take a look at the robot that is already working as a sheep dog.

I'd expect Thiem to win fairly comfortably. This was a huge win for Gaston, but often when a player achieves this sort of triumph, they find it difficult to sustain the same level in the following match. He may be the home favourite, but Thiem is one of the tournament favourites and should have a straightforward victory.

The reason that these things get so fevered is the success of bitcoin. People come into cyrpto because they see the huge gains that bitcoin holders have made over the years. They think the bitcoin opportunity has gone, and they sit there waiting for the next big crypto thing. As soon as something comes along that has some potential, people buy in quickly, FOMO kicks off, and the scammers smell an opportunity and jump in, too. It happened with ICOs, now it's DeFi's turn.

Only if both candidates agree. Trump would have to submit his vote by postal ballot.

It has to be said that if the debates are going to be remote due to Trump's Covid... it is a lot easier for the presenter to press the mute button on a screen than on the man himself. It's not just a flippant comment - this seems like it is a small thing, but it can profoundly influence the dynamic. I know they were floating the idea of muting before the Covid announcement, but if he's muted and still physically on the stage, he can still have an impact, whereas penned in by the walls of a screen, there's not much he can do.

Difficult to say how it will affect his chances. You can see people turning against him because it highlights his mismanagement of the pandemic... but you can probably also see new voters supporting him because they feel it demonstrates he's a 'man of the people' rather than part of an elite that is untouched by normal concerns. If he gets hospitalised, this just increases the strength of both the gains and the losses. Overall I think the losses might outweigh the gains, but a large part depends on how the media plays it. There's also the question of whether this will be used to attempt to delay or even cancel the election, as discussed above.

He may not have the authority, but that's not stopped him trying things before. If he thinks he's going to lose - and he's already lined up 'fraudulent' postal votes as an excuse - then this offers a potential get-out. He may be tempted to try to take it.

If the electrical college don't cast their votes, will they be charged? Sorry, can't resist taking advantage of typos and auto-completes

I'm still not sure. You don't know whether these players are 100% fit or rusty or are just being played to get some game time. You don't know whether they are going to play with 100% commitment if the club doesn't take the competition seriously. Of course if you are able to make a success from betting on these matches, then that's good - but I'm not, and I just find them too risky a proposition.

Yes, definitely. I think it's extremely risky to consider betting on the EFL Cup games. We have no idea how strong the team sheets will be, and even then there's no guarantee that players from the top teams will be giving it 100% effort. Bit of an extreme example, but Liverpool got knocked out last year because due to fixture congestion and the world clubs cup, they basically had to play with an under 23s team.

No, but it looks extremely likely based on his past behaviour. Has he ever conceded defeat on anything in his life? Has he ever admitted he's lost in even the most minor contest? Now put him in the most high-profile 2-way contest on the planet, with billions of people watching the result.
If the results say he's lost, I think it's likely he'll take it to court. If the courts decide he's lost, I'm not sure what his next move will be... but he's unlikely to gracefully concede that he has been beaten.

Thiem looked good, yes... but I'm not sure it's a big surprise as he has a great record in Paris, and has been the runner-up for the last 2 years. Overcoming the almost invincible Nadal is of course the main challenge for anyone here.



It's becoming increasingly unlikely. Certainly she still has a chance, but as players get older it becomes more difficult to sustain a physical peak across the full duration of a slam. Plus I think there is a mental barrier for Serena to overcome. I did actually post (in another thread) just before she withdrew that I think she may struggle to win another slam: