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I am glad that the lady pilots of WWII finally won their right recently to be recognized and accepted after all these 60+ years to be buried at Arlington Cemetery. As a civilian female pilot; I truly respect these women that opened up doors for me and others so that we had a chance.

BTW — to clarify I am not flying for the airlines; just for fun and a passion of mine.

A group of female pilots from WWII can again be buried on the U.S. military’s most hallowed ground.

On Tuesday, the Senate unanimously approved legislation to allow Women Airforce Service Pilots, or WASPs, to be laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery.

“For men, it would be tough. It’s tough for girls, too,” an apparent radio voice from the WWII said.

During WWII, these female pilots took on dangerous jobs. They flew new, untested planes from factories to bases and even towed targets in the air that male pilots used for target practice with live ammo.

The catch was these women weren’t technically considered a part of the military. Instead, they were civilian volunteers, which meant they weren’t eligible for the same benefits. It’s believed 38 of these women died in the war, yet American flags weren’t allowed to be draped over their caskets.

It wasn’t until 1977 that this group of female pilots were given military status. This meant veterans of the program could be buried at Arlington. But last year, the military revoked the right, saying there is little room there.

“They say they’re running out of space. This decision flies in the face of our nation’s efforts to recognize, reward and treat honorably the contributions of all of our veterans,” a member of the U.S. House of Representatives said.

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Today’s reminder that you are definitely living in the future — 3,000 engineers have an “uncertain future” after Holmes, an artificial intelligence (AI) tool at Wipro which can automate these projects.

The Prostitutes Of The Future Will Be Robots, According To This Study

According to the Mint, it will free up 3,000 engineers from “mundane” software maintenance jobs, and save save the company about $46.5 million.

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My new Vice Motherboard article on increased social media use, trolling and what psychologically it might be doing to us:

The internet has turned us into belligerent critics.

The amount of growth Facebook has experienced in active users from 2012 to 2016 is staggering. An extra 650 million members joined worldwide in that election cycle. In the same years, Twitter—the ultimate blow-your-top-outlet-without-thinking—has grown from 340 million tweets a day to over 500 million (or 200 billion a year). In fact, many politicians and similar public personalities weren’t even on Twitter in 2012. Snapchat didn’t even exist until September of 2011.

One of the things that worries me most over this phenomenon is that capitalism allows us make to money off trolling. Lots of money. Like the unsavory consequences of cigarettes, Facebook wants you to get in endless heated discussions with people you don’t personally know and fight it out online. Every time you click and comment, their purse grows from ad sales.

Apart from the negativity of arguing with people endlessly, I’m constantly astonished by the things people say to me on social media—knowing well that I often read them. It’s not the death threats I worry about from the psychos or mentally deranged—it’s the normal people that scare me. Many have good jobs, college educations, and families, but they still say hair-raising stuff. And it’s the fact they espouse this vitriol regularly. Here’s a few:

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Here’s a short video and story from CCTV America (China’s Public TV in America) from my interview at the Augmented World Expo. I discuss robots, the Immortality Bus, and a Universal Basic Income:

CCTV America’s Mark Niu interviewed Zoltan Istvan, the founder of the Transhumanist Party and a 2016 candidate for the U.S. presidency. He asked Istvan one more question about his “immortality bus” and whether robots will take over our jobs.

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Interesting twist; wonder how many tax dollars paid for the experts?

There is a bitter truth for economists, as well as professionals in other areas. Non-experts are typically better at forecasting future trends than experts.

It has been argued that economists should be historians rather than meteorologists and many years before the recent economic crash, John Kenneth Galbraith, the late Harvard economist, joked: “The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.”

Justin Wolfers, an economist, wrote last Friday in the New York Times on the May US jobs report which showed job creation falling to a net 38,000 in the month:

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“Supporters point to the fact that 21st-Century work is increasingly automated, with more and more traditional jobs, in factories, retail and even in finance and accounting, being done by machines. And they do not need salaries.”

(I highly recommend this article, with all kinds of pros and cons, spare a couple of minutes and read it)

Switzerland is holding a landmark vote on whether to give each citizen a guaranteed basic income, the BBC’s Imogen Foulkes reports.

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With the robot economy looming large in the coming decades, one solution to vanishing jobs may simply be to give people money regardless of whether or not they work.

That idea is called “basic income,” and it just gained the support of one of the tech world’s founding fathers, Internet inventor Tim Berners-Lee.

“I think a basic income is one of the ways of addressing massive global inequality,” Berners-Lee, who founded the Web in 1989, explained on a recent episode of The Economist podcast.

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QC will change many industries and even some fortunes as well. So, no wonders Canada & Australia both deem it as a priority.

Mike Lazaridis, founder of Blackberry Limited and the visionary who led the establishment of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics (PI), the Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC) at the University of Waterloo and Quantum Valley Investments, delivered a keynote address highlighting the Quantum Valley model in Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada and the emphasis both federal and provincial governments have placed on the development of quantum technologies.

The Quantum Europe conference comes at a time when large scale investments from tech companies and governments around the world, including in Canada, are being made as part of the “Second Quantum Revolution” – a new global industry fueled by the commercialization of new transformative quantum technologies.

Mr. Lazaridis led a Canadian delegation to the Conference that included Lawrence Hanson, Assistant Deputy Minister, Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, Giles Gherson, Deputy Minister, Research and Innovation and Economic Development, Employment and Infrastructure Ontario and representatives from IQC and PI.

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