Weekend Reads 11/5/16

Google AI invents its own cryptographic algorithm; no one knows how it works

The AIs were not told how to encrypt stuff, or what crypto techniques to use: they were just given a loss function (a failure condition), and then they got on with it.

The Curious Have Won

The defenders of the status quo fought back by pointing out that the face of Moneyball, Billy Beane, hadn’t actually won anything substantial in the playoffs as general manager of the A’s, and in a sports culture that values postseason success above all, this was a tricky point to refute. Or at least it was until 2004, when the analytics-first, Bill James–reading, Micro League Baseball–playing Epstein, the twentysomething who landed the Boston GM job after Beane declined, delivered Red Sox fans the championship that had eluded his predecessors for 86 years.

Have the Koch brothers jumped the shark?

"We were not able to educate many in the tea party more about how the process works and how free markets work," a Koch donor told Politico. "Seeing this movement that we were part of creating going off in a direction that’s anti-free-market, anti-trade and anti-immigrant — many of us are really saddened by that."

Processing the Spirit of Fear Pervading This Election Season

I think back to the young man, perhaps pained, riding by on his bike scaring people. I wish we had a moment to let him know that he’s not alone. As a community, I wish we had a chance to stand together, share with each other, listen, and understand one another. I wish we could have diffused his spirit of fear and transformed it into love.