Computers have helped drive the medical industry to better and faster diagnosis as well as helping to figure out new treatments for a variety of issues. Until recently, they have primarily relied on programming that uses a linear – or machine – learning model. This type of model is great if you already know the kind of thing that you need to know. Simple things like “does this person have lung cancer or is a brain tumor causing these problems?” But what happens when the situation is more complex? What happens when you don’t already know what you are looking for? What happens when you know there is a problem but don’t have any idea what it could be? How does a machine learning model handle that? In short, it doesn’t. A machine learning model can solve for ‘x’ very well so long it knows if ‘x’ is either apples or oranges. When ‘x’ might not even be fruit, you need a different approach. That’s why deep learning models have developed. These models try to mimic the way the human brain takes in and processes information. Instead of looking at a set of predetermined variables and solving for one particular answer (like you used to do in Algebra class) the deep learning model takes in all the information at once and looks for correlations and patterns. Think of it this way. You look at a picture of someone and right away your brain takes in all the information. You can see if the person is sweating, the pupils are dilated, hair length, freckles, whiskers, and a ton of other information. If you already have a store of information at your disposal, you might already be able to make certain deductions about that person’s health. A deep learning model does the same thing. Already programmed with a vast amount of medical knowledge concerning symptoms and their causes, a deep learning machine can make a diagnosis before a human would see the problem. This is because the machine can hold more specialized information, recall it faster, and will often have much greater attention to detail than most people.&nbsp; A recent study in Nature Communications suggests that deep learning models could be very useful indeed for medical professionals, particularly in the area of brain imaging. This is because the brain is immeasurably complex with more variables than what can be truly accounted for in the machine learning models. These models have been held back though, generally by the fact they take some time to get the results needed. Data may need to be run through the machines a few times to train the program, to give it a chance to develop the best ways to analyze the data and produce good results. So long as the deep model is ‘trained’ in this way then the results are typically better than the older machine learning models.&nbsp; Does that mean that linear, machine learning is strictly a thing of the past? Not at all. Those models still do better when it comes to simple tasks with a limited amount of variables. In fact, the two models can even be used in conjunction. A trained deep learning model can be used to establish the necessary variables to enable a machine learning model to take over and provide the needed solutions.&nbsp; Where might deep learning take us in the future? In addition to analyzing the brain and being able to make early diagnosis of cancer, Alzheimer’s, and other diseases, it could be applied to other things like an annual physical. Imagine you go to the doctor and instead of a lengthy examination (preceded by a long wait) and blood work that might take days to get back, you just walked into a scanner, got a finger pricked and the deep learning model told you your level health and anything wrong with you in a few minutes, complete with recommended treatments? It isn’t that far-fetched. How can you help make that future a reality just a little bit faster? By signing up with TARTLE and sharing your medical data with universities and hospitals working on these models. That will give them...

Deep Machine Learning for Brain Scans. AI Helping Medical Advancements

After a run of pretty dense episodes ranging from TARTLE’s long-term goals to climate issues to brain scans, we thought it would be a good idea to revisit our lively TikTok community and respond to some questions and comments. Let’s jump right in, shall we? We got a couple of comments about ongoing issues with the user interface at tartle.co. First, those comments come from people who are already signed up, the early adopters and we owe you a debt of gratitude. Without people willing to take the leap of faith early on, none of this would be possible. People like you help blaze the trails that others will follow.&nbsp; To the issue at hand though, we should have TARTLE 2.0 rolled out any day now. In fact, it may already be out in the wild before this post is public. The new and improved site will make the process of signing up with and effectively using TARTLE much, much easier. The reason why it has been difficult until now is because when TARTLE was first getting started it was just Alex developing the site. When it’s just one person working on it, he knows everything backwards and forwards and assumes everyone else will find it just as intuitive as he does. With no one else to bounce things off of, to point out the flaws, something goes out that at first seems simple, until other people take a crack at it. Incidentally, this is why writers have editors. They exist to point out the areas of a story that people who don’t know all the off-page details won’t understand. In any case, we have a team in place now working on those details and filling the gaps that one person working alone just doesn’t see. In addition to having a new and much easier-to-handle website in place, we should be able to respond to new issues much faster than before.&nbsp; What about our name? We get questions about this pretty often. If you’ve been here a while you know TARTLE is originally a Scottish term that refers to the awkward pause when two recently introduced strangers are trying to remember each other’s names. This might seem strange for some, but it emphasizes the anonymity of both parties, the fact that in that moment, they don’t really know one another yet. It also points to the potential relationship to come. In that moment, you are both unknowns, after that awkward moment, the situation changes, you are known to each other and it could be the beginning of a wonderful new relationship.&nbsp; There was also an energetic discussion on the description of mortgage as Latin for ‘death grip’. Whether that was the exact meaning or if the origin is really French, and that sort of thing. The point is, be careful with going into debt, especially those sixty-year mortgages for a two-bedroom townhome in California. Almost no one will ever actually pay that off.&nbsp; Finally, while we have early adopters, we also have the skeptics, those who think – or fear – that TARTLE is fake in some way. There isn’t much to say to that except we encourage you to check us out. Do all the research you want into us. Sign up with us and you have the freedom to share as much or as little data as you like. Don’t worry, we won’t be pressuring you, we just ask that you give us a chance. Then perhaps, after we’ve gotten past that awkward phrase, we can form a relationship and you’ll join us and thousands of others in trying to change the world.&nbsp; What’s your data worth? www.tartle.co

The Ridiculous & Thoughtful TARTLE TikTok Comments Part 3

Have you ever stopped to think about all the things that didn’t exist when you were a kid but take for granted now? Or all the things that you’ve never used but your parents and grandparents take for granted? Boomers for example never knew a world without cars. GenX never knew a world without TV. Millennials grew up in a world where video game consoles and compact discs were common. GenZ, the zoomers, may well go their whole lives without ever putting a disc of any kind into a player. Why? Because they have never known a world without the internet.&nbsp; When they were born, their GenX and Millennial parents were already getting most of their information and starting to do a large part of their shopping online from their laptops and early smartphones. Now, we just call them phones. GenZ doesn’t just shop and get their info online, they do everything there. They get their music, movies, books (for those fortunate few who still read) and the rest of their entertainment online. In the wake of COVID, most of their learning, from first grade to college is online. Even their social lives are either online or heavily influenced by it. They spend almost all their time in front of some sort of screen. The tendency of GenZ to share literally every part of their lives has certainly been leading to some interesting and in some cases troubling, developments. In the old days, a person who had issues with bullies in their lives could get away when they went home from work or school. Now, if they are on social media at all, they can’t get away. The bully follows them everywhere. Sure, you can always just stay off of social media but since that’s where everyone is, most will think leaving it would wind up being even worse.&nbsp; Bullies aside, there is the problem of the unrealistic picture that a clever person can paint with social media. A little knowledge of lighting, camera angles and how to pick the right words can make an ordinary life look extraordinary. Instagram is a perfect example. Just because someone takes a picture of themselves putting up a board over a broken window doesn’t prove they are doing anything to help. In fact, it’s pretty likely that it was just a photo-op and the board had already been up for hours if not days. There is even the phenomenon of Instagram couples, people who take pictures together for the purpose of getting more followers and likes but don’t even talk in real life. The relationship someone might be envying is nothing more than a business partnership. Yet, many will compare their own lives to whatever they see online and find themselves feeling inadequate. This has led to massive increases in teenage depression and suicide. So what to do about it? One big thing is that people need to stop associating their identities and worth with what they see online. A good portion of it is fake, and even if it isn’t you’re mostly seeing the good stuff. Even a real Instagram couple has bad days. They just don’t share them. Be careful who you associate too closely with online as well, there are too many people who seem to thrive on pushing others’ buttons. Also, direct your social media time to things you care about. Instead of what filter is popular on Snapchat taking up your time, you could learn about something, or work for a company or cause that you care about. Nature conservation, history, space explorations, there is a whole real world out there that the internet has made more accessible than ever.&nbsp; TARTLE can help with that direction. Using our marketplace you can get your information protected and shared with whatever cause it is that most interests and concerns you. Start putting the internet to work for you. Instead of letting it dominate your life, you can use it as a tool to connect to the material world that exists outside of the digital. And with TARTLE you can work to make it better.&nbsp; What’s your data worth? www.tartle.co

Gen Z Sharing Life All Online. A Generation of Complete Personal Data

Vivaldi’s Four Seasons is one of the greatest and most well-known pieces of classical music around. Nearly everyone (and I mean everyone) has heard at least some part of it whether they know it or not. The great composer wonderfully captures the feel of each season through sound. Spring is light and joyful, while winter is starker, more foreboding. It’s simply a masterpiece that orchestras around the world play on a regular basis. Now, several orchestras have taken on the task of interpreting Vivaldi’s great work in what can best be described as a novel approach.&nbsp; The approach was developed with the help of AKQA, a communications and design group working in conjunction with data scientists to reflect predicted changes to the climate in the next fifty or so years. However, rather than making one composition that would be played everywhere, they used the algorithms they specially developed for the purpose to create hundreds of new versions, each designed to evoke the climate changes in various locations around the globe. The one for Shanghai is actually completely silent. That’s because the computer models they were using show that city being underwater by then. No, I’m not sure how many tickets they plan on selling. Some sort of original introit describing the fall of the city might be more interesting, but they didn’t ask me.&nbsp; I digress. The point of the exercise is to alert people to the kinds of changes that might be coming their way, even within their own lifetimes. The team that developed these new renditions of The Four Seasons will be working with orchestras around the world to perform their work, with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra having signed to perform the first public rendition. Where it goes from there is less important than any effect it might have on those who listen to it. Will it actually encourage the listeners to care about and take some sort of action on the environment? And if so, how? Very often, the way people take action on the environment is to vote for a politician or maybe take up a particular cause. Well, no policy is going to fix everything, no amount of money thrown at the problem is going to just make it go away. What will change things is changing your own behaviors. Want fewer carbon emissions? Keep your house a couple degrees cooler in the winter and ride your bike to the corner gas station ten minutes away instead of driving twenty to get to the grocery store for that gallon of milk. Or install geothermal heating. Worried about straws? Instead of switching to a paper one, don’t use one at all. After all, someone had to cut down a tree for the paper straw.&nbsp; Speaking of straws, if you are a restaurant, at least try to be consistent. Right when the straws were a big deal in the news I went to a restaurant that had signs proclaiming their commitment to not using plastic straws. And then they brought my drink in a plastic cup and when I got my food, I ate it with plastic cutlery. You can’t make this stuff up.&nbsp; What else? Encourage people to take care of the things that are right in front of them. It’s a lot easier to point out the landfill down the road, or the river you want to keep clean and get people to care about keeping that in good condition than it is to get them to take drastic action based on a computer model. It’s too abstract for most.&nbsp; In a way, that’s what the people behind this new interpretation of Vivaldi are trying to do, to make the abstract tangible. However, if you really want to change things, start with your own behaviors and help others to make better decisions on their own. With enough people changing their behaviors in that way, it will have a much bigger effect on global climate, while improving things in your local area, too.&nbsp; Naturally, one thing you can do is to share your behaviors through TARTLE. That way, businesses and researchers can determine what kind of policies are working, or might work, what products...

Vivaldi No Seasons. The Future of Climate Stability in One Song

The internet, cloud computing, data and all the rest of it can be amazing when it is used appropriately. Used correctly, these tools can be a massive benefit, helping us to understand the world we live in and to be better able to solve whatever problems come our way. Unfortunately, these tools can be abused all too easily.&nbsp; It’s like that with all tools. You can use the tool of fire to keep yourself warm, provide light, and cook a meal. An arsonist will take that perfectly neutral tool and use it to burn down a building. A gun can be used to stop a crime or shoot up a school. Digital tools are the same, and just as with those other tools, there is perhaps no more terrifying abuser of digital tools than the government. Just like Nero burning Rome, the KGB using guns and other tools to terrorize their fellow citizens, governments can use the tools of the digital age against their own people. We’ve talked about this before. China uses the internet to control, rather than foster the flow of information and we recently discussed how New York City uses facial recognition software to profile people. The latest abuse comes out of Morocco where a human rights advocate is currently being held based on falsified charges according to Amnesty International. Apparently, the government does not like Maati Monjib advocating for freedom of expression and is using false data to accuse him of embezzlement. This is frankly terrifying. When the government itself is willing to lie and falsify information to attack its own citizens, there is little any one person can do against that. That’s true no matter where you are or which government is doing the abusing.&nbsp; What lessons can we take from this situation? One, it is more important than ever to protect your data. There are simply too many bad actors out there who are willing to steal or falsify data for their own ends. Whether the intent is to steal a credit card number and run up the balance or extort a hospital with some ransomware, the need to be careful about privacy is greater than ever. Yet, how does protecting your data from theft prevent anyone from just making stuff up? After all, can’t they just access a given server and insert whatever information they want? Yes and no. To make that work, the falsified data has to be at least somewhat believable in most cases. Which means they need to have some legitimate data to work with. If your real information is protected, it at least makes that task a lot more difficult. Yet, let’s assume this is possible or that the prosecuting body just doesn’t care. This is why blockchain is important for data. If all data or at least all of your data has a blockchain attached to it, it becomes much harder to falsify. If it doesn’t have the appropriate chain that leads back to you then it isn’t your data. Even if someone figures out how to fake that, it still won’t work because it won’t be duplicated in all the other nodes in the system. A defense, even in a show trial becomes much, much easier.&nbsp; Of course, a reasonable person will ask how you keep bad actors from using blockchain. Well, you do the best you can. TARTLE screens for known bad actors like actual terrorists. However, there isn’t any way to stop every bad actor before they do something they shouldn’t. Even if you engaged in all the profiling and regulating you can imagine, there would be those who would slip through the cracks, while restricting the freedoms of many more innocents.&nbsp; TARTLE believes that the free flow of data is paramount. As such we take an innocent until proven guilty approach. Better that ten guilty men go free than one innocent man is punished. What’s your data worth? www.tartle.co

When Governments or Corporations Falsify Data. The Effects on Human Rights

Food is a global issue. Once upon a not very long time ago, food was largely regional. If the weather was favorable in your area, you and others grew plenty of food for your family and for the surrounding area. If it rained too little or too much, you were probably looking at a pretty rough winter. The next region over though was largely unaffected. Or if you wanted strawberries in March, you were probably just going to have to wait a couple of months until they were in season again. Now, you can get pretty much any food you want any time you want it. Basically, strawberries are in season somewhere and the food supply chain is robust enough to get them from there to your corner grocery store. Corn grown in Iowa goes all over the world, same with rice in China. Your last Big Mac might have come from a cow raised in Brazil. In a lot of ways, this is a great thing. Despite there being many more people on the planet than there were when food was local, more of them are fed.&nbsp; However, it also comes with a couple of downsides, the biggest of which being that the food supply chain is vulnerable. Now, if the weather or something else disrupts the crops in one area, it doesn’t just affect that area, the whole world can quickly find itself short on corn, meaning many go hungry and the prices for everyone else get higher.&nbsp; For a year now, COVID and the response to it has put unprecedented strain on our food supply, leading to issues from the local small town to far off villages. The response to COVID led to the shutdown of course of pretty much every restaurant in the country, except for takeout, led to the total disruption of the supply chain. Since people weren’t going out to eat as much, they turned to the grocery stores, which put so much strain on them that even Costco and Sam’s Club had limits on how much of certain items could be purchased, if they were there at all. It’s not that there wasn’t food, it’s that there are multiple food supply chains and it proved impossible to redirect the resources from the restaurant supply chain to the grocery stores. As a result, literally tons of food were wasted. Fortunately, the system adjusted in a couple months and most people were only inconvenienced (that’s to say nothing of the unemployed who were relying on food pantries, but that’s a separate issue). Yet, the situation did a lot to show that something as important as our food supply chain is a lot more fragile than most would have thought. Climate issues raised fears of further disruption just months later when a massive storm ripped through the plain states, destroying millions of wheat crops. Again, we seem to have gotten lucky with how the system has managed to respond and other than a price increase due to lower supply things seem to have remained stable. However, should we be faced with these things happening at the same time, we could be in real trouble. Imagine a pandemic as bad as we feared COVID would be, at the same time as a hurricane that decimates a couple of important ports while a drought destroys crops out west. Does that sound far-fetched? Then you haven’t paid much attention last year. Any one of those types of events is happening somewhere in the world at any given point. All it would take is a flap of the butterfly’s wings to get them to line up a little differently. How to weather such a series of unfortunate events? Right now, we can’t really say. Which is exactly why we need to come together and use our data and other resources to better understand the world we are living in. Only then can we hope to be prepared to handle major disruptions to the things we take for granted. It’s a simple choice, use our data to save and build a better world, or don’t use it, and hope we get lucky again.&nbsp; What’s your data worth? www.tartle.co

Post Pandemic Hunger. The Effects of Our World Food Supply Systems

Tic toc, tic toc, it’s time for TikTok again. One of our favorite things to do when there is a little bit of downtime at TARTLE HQ is to go through comments on our TikTok videos and interact a bit with our audience. This is our fourth go around with our TikTokers so let’s jump into it.&nbsp; Debt was a big topic of conversation this time around, with some calling for regulations on the amount of debt one should be allowed to take on, some taking issue with our stance against mortgages, and some pointing out that debt is actually a pretty important tool for business.&nbsp; First, let’s be clear, debt in general is not good. Anytime you owe money to someone else, they have something they can hold over you. When you have a debt you have to pay, that means you are tied into making enough money to ensure you can pay it. That’s true whether you have $4000 in credit card debt, a $400,000 mortgage, or a $4,000,000 loan to start a business. It’s just a good recommendation for people and businesses to have as little debt as possible. That applies to countries as well but that’s a whole other ball of wax.&nbsp;&nbsp; As for regulations on the amount of debt you can have, that would be a huge knot of legislation. Different people can afford different levels of debt, and as someone pointed out debt is actually a tool used in business. Whether that’s good or not is, once again, another conversation entirely. Not to mention, too tight a regulation would get in the way of the person who has a great idea to get a new business started and just needs a start-up load to get it off the ground.&nbsp; Mortgages are a bit different. Renting lets you be flexible, but owning a home is still preferable for a lot of people who want their space for their projects or those with families. Again, just don’t take on more than you can handle. It’s undeniable that a lot of people take on far more house debt than they can really manage. The powers that be suggest up to 25% of your monthly income for a house payment. That’s nuts. One, that doesn’t necessarily take into account property tax, two, that’s just too much of your income when there are still other bills and emergencies. Aim for a lot lower and get that thing paid off as quickly as possible. Then, in addition to all the benefits of owning a home, you get most of the benefits of renting since you can sell for a lot less if you need to pull up stakes quickly.&nbsp; The point is, don’t take on debt unless you need to. Definitely don’t do it just so you can have stuff that you don’t need. Are you taking out a loan for a $50,000 car when you could pay $8000 in cash for a used one that will do the job just as well? If the answer is yes, definitely reconsider.&nbsp; Enough on that. Another commented on automation being big in the future, especially in farming. Soon, the tractor will be going around the field on its own, harvesting crops without needing a bathroom break. We’re actually closer to that than many think. We already have Teslas with autopilot and other automated cars are well into the testing phase. Automated farm equipment is not a huge leap from there.&nbsp; Going back to money related issues, plenty of you commented on the scam known as the credit system. Could not agree more. It is something designed to incentivize consumerism and debt. It hurts individuals, families, society, and the planet. If you have a card – and you practically need one these days – pay it off every month. Trust us, it’s a lot better.&nbsp; That will wrap things up for this visit to TikTok. Keep the comments and questions coming and we’ll be back soon. What’s your data worth? www.tartle.co

Wild and Wacky TikTok Comments Part 4

The next industrial revolution is upon us. Already we are experiencing a major shift in how and where we work. Just a couple of years ago, working from home was something that really only applied to a select few but now it is the norm in many areas. That means companies are moving out of their office buildings and into much smaller, and easier to maintain spaces.&nbsp; Instead of work teams being limited to those in a cluster of cubicles all living a few miles from each other, people now work in teams that include members from all around the world. TARTLE is a great example of that. We are physically based in New Mexico, incorporated as a public benefit corporation in Delaware and work with people everywhere from Michigan to the Philippines. We are hardly the only company that is operating in this way, nearly everyone employs freelancers or firms on an as needed basis in order to save money overall. One of the most surprising things is that there are plenty of people eager for this kind of work. What this portends is a major ongoing shift in the way we do business around the world. Desired skill sets are changing and with all of this is coming a different kind of economy, different enough to call it a new industrial revolution. As with the previous industrial revolutions, there is a need for people with vision to lead the way adapting and making the best use of this new business and economic environment.&nbsp; These visionaries will need to have more than drive, more than the desire to be on top. They need to have a deep understanding of the nature of the new economy. Gone are the days when everything can be thought of as a standalone entity. Not only do they have to see each department of a company as part of a larger dynamic whole, but they also need to see that each company’s actions can have a large effect on the other. Thanks to the advances in technology we’ve experienced over the last forty years, it’s become incredibly apparent that businesses exist as part of an ecosystem. This has always been true, it’s just much easier to see now.&nbsp; Speaking of technology, these visionaries will also have to recognize the importance of data in the new economy. Data is what drives everything these days, making the acquisition of it and analyzing it is the most important thing any company can do for itself. In order to survive the new revolution, much less come out on top, our visionaries will need to realize that they are a data acquisition and technology company as much as they are a doll manufacturer (for example).&nbsp; Of course, not even the best of visionaries can hope to navigate all these waters on their own. They will need help along the way. Just as every athlete has a coach, every bodybuilder a trainer, every visionary will need someone to support them on their journey. TARTLE understands this as the Sherpa model. Like the Sherpas who help people reach the top of Everest, TARTLE is here to team with the visionary, to carry the load and make the journey easier. We don’t seek the glory, our goal is to help others reach their goals. Sherpas can reach the peak of Everest dozens of times in their careers, and we’d love to help many more companies reach the top of their game in the digital economy.&nbsp; We can help you gather and analyze the data you need in an ethical way, a way that still treats data with respect, as the product and work of individuals with rights as well as thoughts and desires. We’ll help make you not just financially successful but a champion of the digital economy.&nbsp; What’s your data worth? www.tartle.co

Why TARTLE Wants to Team Up with Visionaries

You’ve probably seen those payday loan businesses in strip malls across the United States. They’re small one or two-room places with a desk and some crappy chairs and ridiculously gaudy signs. If you haven’t seen them, you have probably heard of their reputation as predatory lenders. They’ll give people a loan at an insanely high-interest rate against the person’s next paycheck, and tend to lock people in a cycle of debt that is very hard to get out of. While these places are bad, they have nothing on what goes on in India on a regular basis.&nbsp; Over in the Asian subcontinent, they handle this sort of thing digitally and there are too many different lending apps to keep track of. In essence, they operate on a similar model to the American payday loan companies. They offer small, short-term loans at a high-interest rate against the next paycheck. The similarities end there though. While American companies charge an average of 20% interest, their Indian counterparts often charge an interest rate of 80% or more. They also charge their victims in another way – the lender demands access to all their data. So to get $40 at an 80% interest, you have to grant the lender’s app access to all the data on your phone.&nbsp; So what happens if you can’t pay? Does the company cut their loss and consider the data as payment? No. Not even close. They actually start harassing their victims. Calling and texting over 1000 times a day in some cases. Some people make use of multiple lending apps, making the problem even worse.&nbsp; I’ve used the term ‘victim’ twice now. That’s a pretty strong word and not to be thrown around lightly. Yet, it is perfectly appropriate here. With that kind of harassment, it is driving many to suicide, and straining every relationship the victim has as he struggles to figure out how to get out of this debt. They are also victims because often the terms of the app are in English which not everyone can read fluently, and even if they can, just like lenders here, the loan agent will do whatever he can to convince the victim that they can handle the loan without any problem, they have full confidence it will get paid back on time.&nbsp; There have even been some companies that would hire professional harassers to stand outside of a victim’s home or business and scream at and berate them for hours on end. Small wonder that some would be driven to suicide and no doubt to crime in a desperate effort to make the yelling and the phone calls stop.&nbsp; To add insult to injury, even after the loan is paid off, the lender still has access to the victim’s data, allowing them to increase their profits by collecting and selling it to third parties until the phone gets replaced.&nbsp; All of this has been made worse over the last year as many people throughout India have lost their jobs thanks to the response to COVID. Millions have found themselves going from working hard to get a little ahead to desperately scrambling to scrape by. It left these people open and vulnerable to predators who have no regard for the people they are hurting while they are getting rich.&nbsp; One way the Indian people can work towards ending this ridiculous cycle is to sign up with TARTLE. You can protect your data with us without giving us access to it. In fact, we never see our users’ data. We just give them the means to protect it. Once signed up, you can share your data on your own terms and make a little money in the process. Control over your data, financial compensation, and no harassment. That’s what TARTLE offers.&nbsp; What’s your data worth? www.tartle.co

India Fintech Loan Sharks. How TARTLE can Help in India

Well, here is something we haven’t done for a while. Recently Alex and Jason were able to sit down and have a conversation with Dr. Kathy Raver, Founder and CEO of Well Life ABQ. Well Life is an Albuquerque, New Mexico based Direct Primary Health Care Provider. That might sound like a typical word salad and therefore a typical doctor’s office. However, it is anything but. Well Life isn’t held down by all the features of modern medicine that we take for granted today, it isn’t hampered by the system as it has developed and too many regard it as normal. Yet, it isn’t an overreaction to that system either. Well Life isn’t going to just hand you supplements and send you on your way. It is a serious provider that also isn’t afraid to give you some supplements if that is the best thing for you.&nbsp; Too often, healthcare really just means dealing with people when they are already sick, hitting them with a barrage of tests, a couple of prescriptions and that is the end of it. It really doesn’t have a whole lot to do with keeping people healthy. In fact, everything about the system is geared towards profiting off of people being sick, not keeping people from getting that way in the first place. Think about it, if there is nothing wrong with you, there is no reason to run all of the many expensive tests that are available which means that the insurance company can’t be charged a ton of money. In short, what we currently call traditional medicine is not traditional and it is barely medicine. Dr. Raver is trying to change that. Dr. Raver is doing that in her little corner of the world by practicing integrated functional medicine. This style of medicine is actually more traditional in that it truly is interested in keeping people healthy and correcting what is wrong when they aren’t, rather than filling people full of prescriptions that typically only mask the real issues while probably causing a few of their own. Naturally, they use all the benefits of Western medicine and the many tools for diagnosis and treatment that it has developed. Well Life is also not afraid to look to other cultures to see if they have good ideas on how to treat certain ailments. Therefore, Dr. Raver will not hesitate to suggest various supplements if that is really the best option available. In many cases, treatments like the kinds that she sometimes recommends often find themselves accepted by Western science, she’s just ahead of the curve.&nbsp; Another area in which Well Life is ahead of the curve is in the area of insurance. Anyone who knows anything about insurance knows that it doesn’t always deliver the peace of mind that it promises. All too commonly, it adds headaches on top of blood pressure as you try to sift through mounds of paperwork to find out your claim was rejected or that you’ll wind up paying much more than expected. Health care providers will sometimes order expensive tests just because they know they can make money from the insurance company. That kind of paradigm is anything but sustainable or responsible. By minimizing their use of insurance companies, Well Life is actually able to save a lot of money because they don’t need to deal with all the paperwork that comes with insurance. They also are able to negotiate their prices for various treatments, at times getting it below the cost that a person would pay with insurance.&nbsp; Well Life ABQ represents the kind of approach that TARTLE would like to see more of in the world. They hold on to the best of the familiar and look to find the best in the new, or simply the unfamiliar. Next time, we’ll get more into their business model and how they put it into action to help their patients stay healthy. What’s your data worth? www.tartle.co

Direct Primary Care - Proactive Revolutionary Decentralized High Functioning Healthcare That Is Affordable for All With Founder of Well Life ABQ Part 1

What is TARTLEcoin? TARTLEcoin is a private blockchain rewards system within the TARTLE marketplace. TARTLEcoin allows individuals to earn priority of receiving bids on the marketplace as their TARTLEcoin balance accrues to a larger value than other data champions. Meaning, as the balance of TARTLEcoin in your account grows, so does the probability of receiving more bids from data buyers. &nbsp; How do I earn TARTLEcoin? Earning TARTLEcoin is easy! TARTLE designed the rewards system to give you specific payout rewards of TARTLEcoin when you complete certain actions and tasks when using TARTLE. Every time you interact with data packets, share your journey, or donate to a Big 7 cause, you earn TARTLEcoin! In the simplest terms, the more work you put in, the more you are rewarded, and the more priority you receive to earn potential income. &nbsp; What else can I do with TARTLEcoin? TARTLEcoin can be shared with others you know who are on the marketplace to help get them started on their journey. Using the email address of another TARTLE user, you may transfer TARTLEcoin from the wallet screen of the marketplace. &nbsp; How do I get started using TARTLEcoin? In order to start earning TARTLEcoin, you must first visit the link below to create a personal PIN number for your new TARTLEcoin wallet. &nbsp; Wallets

Earn Rewards Now. Get Paid Sooner! TARTLEcoin and TARTLE Wallet

Digitainability is a bit of an odd term. It doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. So what is it? It’s the idea of using our digital technology to get to a more sustainable economy. We talked a lot about that last time without explicitly using the term. It will involve making use of our ability to collect and analyze data in order to identify places where we can be more efficient, to recycle more, places where policy can be refined to help promote greater sustainability.&nbsp; One of the key uses of AI will be in working in phases to get from where we are now to where we want to be. Imagine a giant ocean liner trying to make a turn. It doesn’t exactly happen on a dime. Trying to force that ship to turn too tightly risks literally breaking the ship apart and killing everyone aboard. The global, or even your local economic system isn’t terribly different. Trying to change everything all at once will cause massive damage that will do far more harm than good. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to change. Too often, the fact that changing too much too fast is risky has too often been used as an excuse for not changing at all. So, change we must, but without losing sight of the fact that we have to be careful with how we do it. Business as usual may not be able to continue but business completely upended won’t help much either.&nbsp; One way that AI would be of immense help is if we could take all the information we have about how certain changes have affected an area over a certain period of time. That can provide a lot of data for an AI to process in order to determine the effect similar changes will have in a given area. What’s even better is if the people working on such a problem made use of TARTLE and our resources in order to do this. By making use of our data marketplace, they can get real time data from people who are being directly affected by policy changes as they happen. That can then lead to near real time refinements on the ground as well as improving the model with better data. This can lead to determining how best to transition to a sustainable economy in a way that won’t completely upset the apple cart. There is a strong and growing demand for this kind of shift. You see this in the drive for renewable energy, the tiny house movement, and even in boycotts. People will often boycott a product if they think the product is being produced through unethical means, such as palm oil boycotts in Europe. Critics will point out that the company will just shift to a different market that doesn’t care about how palm oil was produced. The business might go so far as to treat their employees in third world countries even worse in order to make up for lost profits. While this is probably true, it’s also a total copout. It denies that the people running the business have any agency themselves, that they simply have to do things the way they do them in order to even exist. Obviously, we at TARTLE completely reject such an idea. We have to be able to expect real change out of companies as well as individuals. Pretending that certain entities just aren’t capable of that change is remarkably unhelpful and will actually make changing to something better even harder. That’s another one of the ways we can use AI to our benefit. Our data can be used to educate the recalcitrant, to show them the impact of different choices on the world as a whole. We can then hope that people will make the kinds of decisions needed to build a truly better world. What’s your data worth? www.tartle.co

Digitainability - How Data Can Create a Sustainable World Part 2

Looks like we are on a bit of a roll with interviews over at TARTLE HQ. Recently, Alex and Jason had the chance to sit and talk with Michael Kennedy, founder of the Talk Python to Me podcast. If you are unfamiliar with it, Python is a programming language that is relatively easy to learn well enough for regular people to be able to do some cool things with it. Michael realized this years ago and started looking around for a podcast to tell the stories of people who learn to adapt Python to whatever field they are in to help answer some genuinely interesting questions. Unfortunately, back in 2015 no one was really doing that yet, so he had to start his own. Talk Python to Me is the result. Since then, Michael has been able to interview a wide variety of programmers and gotten some real insight into how to help people get more into the world of programming and data science.&nbsp; One of the big effects of the rise of the Python programming language is the democratization of both coding and of data science. Because it is so easy to gain a working knowledge of a vast number of people, from philosophers to economists have been able to use it to help in their given fields. Kennedy has noticed that many people who don’t consider themselves coders or software developers are making use of this language. It may be that Python’s greatest accomplishment that people who would normally never get into coding are making effective use of it.&nbsp; Another insight that Michael talks about is that while educating people on the possibilities of both data science and coding it would be more to the point to say it comes down to inspiration. That is contrary to what the prevailing opinion was ten years ago. Back then, people were complaining that there weren’t nearly enough data scientists and we need to try to convince all kinds to be data scientists. However, that wasn’t working. They didn’t understand it and it just wasn’t interesting to them. So, what does it mean to talk about inspiration instead of education? It means that instead of telling people how important things are, we need to actually show them. Demonstrate what data science can do and let people actually play around with it a bit instead of just cramming people’s heads full of information. Also, don’t just shove data science down people’s throats. Instead, show them how it can benefit what they are already passionate about. If a high school student is passionate about volcanoes, show him how Python can help him better predict eruptions. If another is interested in tracing the evolution of language, show her how the programming language can be of use in showing how one language evolves into another. Doing that makes the concept of data science not just real, but interesting. It isn’t just the sciences that benefit either. Guests on Michael’s podcast have included members of F1 and NASCAR racing teams. They’ve found that in switching to Python from Excel they’ve gained an edge on the race track. Pointing out things like that makes it easier and more enticing to people to learn Python. Suddenly, they are able to really get into their own source data, maybe for the first time. That lets people save both time and money by avoiding third parties altogether. They no longer have to pay for some other service to analyze the data they’ve collected, or spend time sifting through reports on data someone else has collected. Now, a person can actually gather their own data and maintain control of it from beginning to end. Saving time and money while putting people in control of their own data? That’s something TARTLE can get behind. What’s your data worth? www.tartle.co

Talk Python to Me - How Python Can Change the World: Special Guest Michael Kennedy

What is a referral? A referral is when you invite friends and family to join TARTLE, and when 11 sign up and link their Facebook account, TARTLE pays you! How do I earn money and TARTLEcoin from referrals? To earn money from referrals, you must share your personal referral code to your friends and family which they will use to sign up. When the code has been redeemed 11 times, and they have linked their Facebook account, we will pay you $3 USD and TARTLEcoin. * How do I get started inviting friends and family now? In order to start earning money and TARTLEcoin, you must go to the INVITE FRIENDS tab in the app. You can enter the email address of your friends or family and share directly to your Facebook Feed. Facebook is most times the best option for getting paid quicker. www.tartle.co

Get Paid Now. Earn Money. Invite Friends and Family to TARTLE! (Refer to Earn USD and TARTLEcoin)

COVID has changed a lot about the way we go through the world and navigate even simple, mundane tasks. No matter how someone feels about all the different things that have gotten wrapped up in the virus, things like masks, lockdowns, vaccines, its origins and so on, the fact is, the effects have been immense. Truth be told, the full effect of the shifts in the economy, distribution networks, and how and where we get our work done won’t be known, much less understood for years to come.&nbsp; One thing we do know is that people’s habits have changed immensely in the last year. While at one time only a relative handful of people were doing curbside pickup or home delivery, now, almost everyone has done that at least once. Things that we never thought we would buy online are now in our cart and at our doorstep, before we even think about going to an actual store for them.&nbsp; That means all the information that companies had on us as a society pre-COVID has virtually no descriptive power for what we are doing now. Such information is now a historical curiosity rather than something that could be a guide for what people will generally be doing this summer. Realizing this, companies are looking to recalibrate how they get their data and how they analyze it.&nbsp; One significant element getting a fresh look is of course data management. Many companies do a bang-up job of collecting tons of data. The problem lies not in whether they are collecting it, but in what they do with it. All too often, data sits in different servers and split up between different departments, siloed, making cross referencing the data difficult. How much time and energy gets wasted because different departments in a company can’t look at each other’s data? Or what about different companies under a larger, umbrella company? They are probably each gathering all their down data, duplicating a ton of effort that could be better spent elsewhere. This is exacerbated by the rush to gather new data to capture all those changed behaviors.&nbsp; In managing it, they also clearly need to secure that data a lot better. There are simply too many data breaches to justify any level of complacency. Especially since that data doesn’t really belong to the companies collecting it. The individuals who generated that data are the ones who own it. At best, these companies might look at it as being on loan to them. As such, they have to take better care of it than if it were truly theirs.&nbsp; That’s what we do at TARTLE, we understand that when someone stores their data with us, we are acting as stewards of that data. We keep it secure and don’t just share it with anyone. The only person who shares the data is you, no one else. What do you think we are? A bank loaning out your money to people without you knowing about it? What is also apparent is that the first problem, the hoarding of data, leads to the attitude on the part of a company that they are the ones who own the data. With server racks full of it, the temptation definitely arises to find ways to monetize it, first to make enough to pay for the servers themselves, and then the question becomes ‘why not more’? What if there were a way to get the data you need without hoarding it? What if you could get it straight from the source, the individuals generating it? What if you did it with their consent? You don’t have to just store it in racks, you can get exactly the data you want, when you want it, avoiding all the extraneous noise, and so save yourself a lot of the costs of data hoarding as well. You can get all of that with TARTLE. Sign up and get the data you need when you need to do the analysis you need now. Then, if you want, you can sell the analysis if it is beneficial to someone else. That helps create a system that works not just for a few but for everyone. What’s your data worth?  &nbsp; Tcast is brought to you by TARTLE. A global personal data marketplace that allows users to sell...

Recalibrating Analytics Strategy for a New World

Guess what? A chunk of ice bigger than New York City recently broke off the ice shelf in Antarctica. The continent has been recording some of its warmest days ever and that ice seems to be breaking off at an alarming rate. Before you ask, yes, we are talking about net loss.&nbsp; If you are thinking about the potential effects of that if the trend should continue - good. There is so much ice on the massive continent that if all of it melted, it would raise sea level by 180ft. Not quite the way the world looks in Waterworld, but certainly there would be a lot less land. Of course, all of that ice is highly unlikely to melt and certainly won’t do so overnight. That doesn’t mean there aren’t some immediate effects that we should concern ourselves with. One aspect is all of the freshwater that is getting added into the ocean. As that melts, the ocean’s salt and minerals are diluted, potentially disrupting sensitive ecosystems.&nbsp; It actually reminds me of another movie, The Day After Tomorrow. While the scenario in the film is outlandish, its premise is founded in a grain of truth. There has been a concern in the past that melting ice at the North Pole would disrupt the Trans-Atlantic Current (TAC). All the freshwater, being lighter than salt water, would in effect submerge the current, interrupting the flow of warm water the TAC brings up from the Caribbean. Some scientists believe that may be what caused the Little Ice Age from roughly 1300 – 1850 AD. This makes sense as immediately preceding that time frame was the equally well-known Medieval Warming Period.&nbsp; The water from melting Antarctic ice is not terribly likely to directly affect the TAC, yet it could have an effect on weather in Australia by disrupting local water currents. The warmer water, in general, could also weaken the polar vortex at the South Pole. The vortex is created because of the difference in temperature between the water immediately around the frozen continent and the warmer water that comes down from the equatorial region. Less temperature difference equals a weaker vortex, which could lead to warmer and drier weather in Australia. If you remember the end of 2019 and the beginning of 2020, large swaths of Australia were a blazing hell-scape that at one point even rained fire. I’m sure they would like less of that, not more.&nbsp; That begs the question, how does one make that happen? Most of us lack the resources to have any significant impact all by ourselves, positive or negative. However, when a large number of people all take action in a particular direction, the results can be astonishing, even though the action taken by one person seems insignificant. For those who fly, maybe the business can have their meetings on Zoom instead. Yes, the Davos crowd would do well to put their money where their mouths are on this one. Don’t fly? Maybe one less steak a week. How does that affect anything? Cows take up a lot of land. A whole lot. That usually leads to the cutting down of lots of CO2 processing trees to make room for the bovine methane generators. A little less consumption on the part of everyone can save acres of rainforest. You most likely drive. Make your next car something more fuel efficient. In the meantime, getting all of your shopping done in one shot and cutting down on those trips to town wouldn’t hurt.&nbsp; Yes, these are all individually insignificant. But if a billion people around the world did it, it would add up to a big gain. You could then share the changes you’ve made via TARTLE, making it possible to track the effects, and determine what had the biggest net gain so people can actually see the results and use them to determine their own course of action. And maybe, that ice will melt just a little bit slower. What’s your data worth?  &nbsp; Tcast is brought to you by TARTLE. A global personal data marketplace that allows users to sell their personal information anonymously when they want to, while...

Antarctica Polar Vortex Data and Climate Change

We have an innate capability to independently perform a wide variety of physical and mental functions. It’s hard-wired into our rules of our survival. However, this is not a perfect mechanism; we do have the ability to silently use language to process our lives, but we don’t really have an in-depth understanding of how it works just yet.&nbsp; This knowledge gap is what fuels the self-help industry, which has a wide variety of ideas and methods. Some are backed by scientific evidence, while others are manifested as a result of a strong placebo effect. Regardless of how these solutions are created, it’s clear that one’s mental state is key to making change happen. So what’s it like inside our heads and how can we improve the way we converse with ourselves? Self-Help: Cutting Through the Pseudoscience: Ethan’s book, entitled Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It provides a welcome academic perspective on the power of that little voice in your head. He provides a refreshing take on how even the oft-overlooked act of talking to ourselves the inner dialogue has a science to it. that leads to obsession, overthinking, and rumination is broken down into chemicals and reactions in your brain.&nbsp; If you’ve ever found yourself obsessing over an issue that happened years ago, or staying up at night because you found yourself triggered by a passing memory, Ethan’s insights on how the immaterial manifests into material may be the key to reining those thoughts in and getting a good night’s sleep. One common critique of the self-help industry is that most coaches and authors often sell placebos for negative ways of thinking. They cover up the problem instead of getting to the root of an idea.&nbsp; While Ethan concedes that placebos can have a powerful effect on one’s mental state, it can also prevent people from seeking the help they need to turn their life around. Mental wellbeing is an important aspect of adult life that may need attention. While his book is not a replacement for therapy, it does give people the opportunity to find sound scientific advice without having to shell out a lot on seeking psychiatric help, which can come at prohibitively high prices even with healthcare insurance. Learning How to Self-Regulate: Our inherent response to negative emotion is to avoid confrontation, or at least refrain from getting triggered. Unfortunately, negativity is an integral part of the authentic human experience. It’s the way we cope, or self-regulate, that’s the game-changer. When faced with a problem, we are challenged to pick between immediately trusting our guts, or holding back and letting it run its course first.&nbsp; We’ve all heard of how we need to trust our intuition; however, it’s not a foolproof method to solving all our conflicts. A better understanding of how our brain is wired to think—and how we wire our brains to think—can better help us distinguish between those two states. Time Travel and Personal Development: Hindsight is an incredibly powerful tool that can be used for both good and bad. This idea of staying in the moment can be harmful because it encourages people to remain stagnant, and ignore opportunities to process important experiences. The pressure to always stay in the moment also places restrictions on what your brain is really capable of. Your mind is constantly working on making calculations based on your past experiences, and translating it into forecasts for the future. In this way, it’s a lot like time traveling. Breaking Destructive Thought Cycles: It’s easy to believe that our internal thought process won’t have an impact on our actions. However, the truth is that living in a constant state of harm or fear does not afford a good foundation for individuals to make good choices— not just for themselves, but also for others.&nbsp; A natural consequence of experiencing adversity is our attempt to look inward and try to analyze...

Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It - Best Selling Author and Award-Winning Professor Ethan Kross

Let’s talk about Dogecoin. We’ve had a lot of requests to discuss it since it has been in the news a lot, stirring up the online world with a sudden spike in price and a subsequent roller coaster of ups and downs. It’s known as the plucky little crypto that could, the gateway for the regular person to get into cryptocurrency without having to mortgage the house to get one or two Bitcoins. Or is it? Let’s dive into the doge pound.&nbsp; Started back in 2013, the meme currency chiefly differentiated itself from Bitcoin right off the bat by using a different, less resource intensive encryption method, which meant that it became much faster and cheaper to mine it as well as transfer it. That also resulted in a lot more of them becoming available in a short period of time. Which in turn made it easier to manipulate. Elon Musk provided the perfect example when he tweeted out his support of Dogecoin, causing that massive spike in its perceived value we mentioned earlier. It went from a fraction of a cent to $0.46 practically overnight. If someone had put down a mere hundred dollars a month before, they suddenly found themselves with a lot of money available to them.&nbsp; Yet, is it a currency? If you recall from our discussion on Bitcoin and whether it is a currency, one of the things that makes it so is whether or not it has fees associated with transferring it. Bitcoin has massive fees to do anything with it and while Doge has few fees, they still exist. It also is a centralized coin that has no real cap. It started with one but it was reached so quickly that they just pumped out five times that cap without thinking twice.&nbsp; It also has had its trade restricted by well-known trading apps like Robinhood. The story is that Doge was trading at such a high volume, it caused a system failure. Taking that explanation at face value it still sucks. It means that Robinhood’s code can’t handle a popularly traded stock or coin. It’s an indictment of the way they run their business. It’s as though they never thought to stress test their system. Normally that wouldn’t be such a big deal but it’s one of the most popular ways to buy and sell crypto of all kinds, including Dogecoin.&nbsp; How do you navigate all of this? All too often, people are constantly reacting. Whether it’s a tweet from Musk or Tom Brady adding laser eyes to his profile pic (this happened and the price of Bitcoin spiked. No joke). This reactive behavior is what is causing the price of Doge, Bitcoin, and others to fluctuate so much. No one is really looking for and getting solid data about what is happening right now. Actually happening, not what a random tweet asserts is happening. It isn’t hard to imagine how regular people are getting hurt here as they sell when they should hold and buy when they should wait. Not just regular people either, but funds and even professional investors can get sucked in when they are too greedy.&nbsp; That’s why TARTLE is such an advocate for getting hard, first person data to make decisions with. Instead of reacting, it’s possible to get a read on what is going on by actually talking directly to people. When a fund does that, they are making decisions not based on the latest tweet but on what real people are planning and perceiving. That is a much better approach than just following whatever pied piper comes along. If enough people can grasp this concept, perhaps the general behavior will change and people will look to fundamentals again instead of just memes and bring some stability back to the market. What’s your crypto worth?  &nbsp; Tcast is brought to you by TARTLE. A global personal data marketplace that allows users to sell their personal information anonymously when they want to, while allowing buyers to access clean ready to analyze data sets on digital identities from all across the globe. &nbsp; The show is hosted by Co-Founder and Source Data Pioneer Alexander McCaig and Head of Conscious...

Taking Dogecoin to the Data Dojo

Can data be used to harm other people? The reality is that in some parts of the world, it is already being used to trial increased surveillance and fuel oppressive social systems. This is a clear indication that technology will only ever be a reflection of the human hands responsible for its creation and maintenance.&nbsp; In this episode, Alexander McCaig and Jason Rigby discuss the social implications of China’s authoritarian hold on its citizens—particularly its military-industrial complex’s creation of a three-billion US dollar supercomputer satellite center in the country’s Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site.&nbsp; Despite the official statement claiming that this enormous tech site will be used as part of a “massive constellation of commercial satellites” that can “offer services from high-speed internet for aircraft to tracking coal shipments,” we think it pays to be a little critical of the difference between what’s being reported—and what’s being done. &nbsp; Big Brother Is Watching: China has been the subject of widespread criticism after it announced the development of a social credit system in 2011. This system builds on a mass surveillance structure of more than 770 million cameras installed across the country as of 2019, with expectations that it will eventually hit the one billion mark by the end of 2021. The social credit system is used to score individuals and companies based on a collection of data from different sources. Individuals are rewarded for appropriate social behavior, such as proper conduct on mass transportation systems and adherence to waste sorting rules in their city.&nbsp; Conversely, they will be punished for “negative behavior” which can include elderly residents suing family members for not visiting regularly (Shanghai); cheating in online video games (Suzhou), failing to show for reservations at hotels or restaurants (Suzhou); and failing to pick up any take-out food that was ordered (Suzhou). Individuals with poor credit scores will face restrictions on loans, transportation, and even education. As part of the system’s effort to encourage good behavior, some local governments offer incentives to those with a higher credit score. These people will be prioritized in health care provision, and can even waive deposits to rent public housing.&nbsp; Businesses are required to submit data on their operations and on their partners and suppliers. Their credit score can be influenced by their behavior and ratings from their suppliers.&nbsp; Finally, individuals and businesses that are deemed “untrustworthy” will be publicly named and shamed. &nbsp; The Social Credit System: Thought Police?: A society where human behavior is closely controlled and dictated by the state, through the latest technological capabilities, sounds like the plot of a dystopian sci-fi novel like George Orwell’s 1984—but this is already the reality for more than a billion individuals and 28 million companies in China. What are the implications of the social credit system? Critics are quick to point out that the government is using incomplete or inaccurate data to determine the provision of social privileges, and sometimes rights, for their own citizens. The implementation of a stable credit system is also dependent on the strength of basic services, such as regulation in the credit industry and data protection. Those with lose credit scores may find it difficult to continue to progress in society, particularly if there is no concrete policy that can support their rehabilitation or reintegration. Lastly, in a world where we have yet to fully account for all the factors that contribute to how and why we make decisions, this could easily turn into a system that disproportionately punishes people and businesses who are already struggling.&nbsp; &nbsp; A Glimpse Into 1984: Beyond 1984, the hit television series Black Mirror also showed a glimpse into a society where people are controlled by...

Data-Driven Government Surveillance Can Be a Nightmare

With all the technology that we have today, imagine how all the most important and meaningful parts of your life have been condensed into a bunch of data packets. Now that people are becoming more aware of how all-encompassing our online presence has become, we are on the cusp of changing the way we deal with our information. This won’t be an easy task and even the most advanced countries are still taking their first steps in redistributing the power of data sharing to the people. However, we are confident about our capacity to push this forward and help in the work of spreading awareness. In this episode, we discuss how the TARTLE marketplace is designed to help restore equilibrium to data management and sharing. Reclaiming Your Data: These days, data is more than just the information needed to access certain websites and applications. It’s what companies, and even some governments, use to provide a tailored experience. This covers our ad preferences, history, and the connections that we make.&nbsp; When you think of how much data you create, you’re bound to wonder: do I create data, or does data create me? In the status quo, people do not have a lot of control over their own information. Our lack of awareness when it comes to what we can do with the data we create has given social media platforms a prime advantage: they can profit off of our interests, social circles, and movements.&nbsp; While the European Union’s GDPR and an overall trend towards increased data awareness around the world is helping alleviate the situation, it’s not enough to help people take the next step forward. We all deserve a platform where we can practice taking initiative and having active ownership over our own data to help expedite the process. TARTLE is a marketplace that operates around the clock and is available around the world. We are offering a nonprofit platform that empowers individuals on the ground to practice autonomy and self-sovereignty. On the TARTLE marketplace, you are fully responsible for your information. It’s our way of helping bring back power to the people. Turning Your Thoughts Into Passive Income: What if you could earn passive income for your thoughts? Technology is capable of shaping the way we think and act in the same way that we are capable of using technology for our own gain. With this in mind, TARTLE created a way for you to place all your data on a secure platform— with the added benefit of having it siloed in there as well. There is plenty of potential in how we express ourselves. Data is always in your possession and as long as you’re online, it’s growing. It does not discriminate as well because regardless of your location, ethnicity, or personal beliefs, technology will still maintain a profile of who you are and what you like doing as a digital citizen.&nbsp; But if so much potential exists, why don’t we feel like we’re doing anything groundbreaking with our smartphones? This is because the power we have over our information has been seized by other actors: corporations and even governments. It’s high time we took it upon ourselves to restore a balance within that system. To parallel it in other scenarios, there is a need for equilibrium in plenty of natural systems. We need balance in our climate, our physical and mental wellbeing, thermodynamics, energy, and more because too much of anything can become dangerous. This is what inspired us to create TARTLE: the need to provide a supportive structure that people and communities on the ground could grow off of. “If there's no balance, then there's no real learning that can happen here,” Alexander argued, “There's no real fair exchange occurring.” The TARTLE platform recognizes that everyone is equal in the creation of information and that everyone has the equal opportunity to earn off of it. Closing Thoughts: How Data Can Make Us Better People: Data is capable of making us better people because it breaks down preconceived...

I Think, Therefore I Earn: Selling Your Data on the TARTLE Marketplace

Social determinants of health (SDOH) refer to a wide variety of nonmedical factors that can influence an individual’s health. It looks at environments where people are born, live, work, play, and age.&nbsp; This has a bigger impact on our wellbeing than we think: according to a , ninety percent of the determinants of our health are derived from our lifetime social and physical environment, not from the provision of healthcare. With so much on the line, TARTLE is working with the world’s foremost researchers and doctors on SDOH to design data packets as a part of its advocacy for public health under the Big 7 initiative. Encouraging Proactivity Using SDOH Data Packets: In the podcast, Alex and Jason discuss how medical research is mostly reactive. It deals with the disease only after it has affected a person. This backtracking, or the habit of “putting out fires,” has a negative effect on our development and gives diseases a head start on their capacity to disrupt lives.&nbsp; So, how can we start building a disease-free society? While it may not be a possibility in our lifetime, the potential to develop the foundations for it is already present. With SDOH data packets, we can build our knowledge of how people are infected by the disease from the ground up. This means that within a country, we can take a closer look at how the disease affects rural versus urban communities in different ways. Local policymakers can start formulating stronger health legislation based on more solid data. On a global scale, we can start answering pressing questions we have had on how different cultures and locations impact the general health of entire communities.&nbsp; For example, the country of Bhutan is one of the poorest countries in the world—but why are they one of the happiest as well, with higher rates of longevity? What more can we uncover about how social determinants influence the quality of life from one continent to another? With SDOH data packets, the possibilities are endless. How SDOH Could Have Helped the COVID-19 Vaccine Rollout: It is difficult to estimate how one’s body would react to the COVID-19 vaccine. As a result, misinformation and fake news have made it doubly challenging for health authorities to convince everyone to take the shot. However, SDOH packets may have the answer to making these injections easier to understand and access. For example, the relevant health authorities could issue surveys for individuals who have taken the vaccine to find out who they were feeling after their first and second shot. They can then cross-reference these answers to the SDOH packets of each person, looking for potential triggers or commonalities that lead to an increased risk of complications. Without a doubt, getting vaccinated is our best shot at beating the COVID-19 pandemic. There have been plenty of efforts to incentivize vaccinations around the world: some governments offer cash payouts, discounts, and other perks. However, the biggest incentive that people will want to follow—particularly the misinformed, who are major victims of this pandemic—is a certainty that the vaccine can do good. This can be achieved through SDOH data packets, which can be used to understand how the vaccine would affect different body types and health profiles.&nbsp; It is important for authorities to be proactive about information dissemination in a world where black propaganda spreads just as fast. When people are empowered with the knowledge they need to make an informed medical decision, we have a better opportunity at decreasing the loss of human life and improving the quality of life overall. The Importance of Sharing SDOH Data Packets: Some people are quick to shoot down the idea of SDOH data packets and the Marketplace. In the podcast, Alex briefly discusses TARTLE’s experience with trolls on social media platforms.&nbsp; Most of the time, poor communication and prejudice are caused by a lack of understanding. In this...

The Social Aspects of Long-Term Health: TARTLE and SDOH Packets

Technology is quickly becoming the backbone of modern infrastructure. At the pace that it is progressing, it may someday become as ubiquitous and as vital to our economy as cement and concrete. However, AI is agnostic. Despite its immense computing capabilities, it will never be capable of human understanding and discernment. One example of this is the results derived from A/B Testing, where researchers compare two versions of a marketing asset to see which one performs better. While it can show which campaign would run better, it cannot provide any new learning.&nbsp; With this limitation in mind, is it still beneficial for us to know what the most probable outcome for a certain event would be—even if we don’t understand the why or how for its occurrence? Can Machine Learning Go Wrong?: At this point, David discussed an imaginary scenario where even something as non-controversial as spam mail could become a problem if it was found that legitimate emails from businesses owned by people of color were found to be falsely marked as spam at an unequal rate, in comparison to people who are not of color. Aside from the inefficiency, the AI would become an unfair metric for emails and may even be damaging businesses on the basis of race. The decision-making process behind sorting emails into the spam folder is compromised because the technology is using so many signals in “deep, complicated, and multi-independent patterns of probability” that will be near-impossible to comprehend without a lot of time, money, and effort. At this point, this massive system is hurting communities that are already disenfranchised in the first place. This brings to mind Microsoft’s Tay.ai, a chatbot on Twitter created by the tech giant in 2016 that was designed to mimic the conversational patterns of a 19-year-old girl. It would learn from continuous interaction with other users on the social media platform. Immediately after its release, Tay became controversial after it started tweeting inflammatory and offensive comments. As a result, Microsoft was pushed to shut down the service only sixteen hours after it was launched.&nbsp; Social Justice And Technology: It’s a clear indication that the people responsible for programming AI have a corresponding social burden to fulfill, particularly in ensuring that their technology does not harm anyone. This burden can become even bigger when machine learning and AI is applied to other fields, such as medicine and smart transportation. Beyond Tay.ai, computer scientists and engineers around the world find themselves at the helm of constructing technologies with so much potential. How do we address inherent human bias in these individuals? David reveals that most people who have the knowledge to work with these complex technologies do not necessarily have the same depth of understanding for social justice as well. This led to a call for participatory machine learning, otherwise known as the design justice movement. Giving Minorities A Seat At The Table: Participatory machine learning involves people who are familiar with related issues on social justice, as well as communities who would be most affected by the presence of new technologies. They are given a position in planning and management.&nbsp; Their input is important from the get-go because it does have an impact on how these systems work. To further explain, David painted the picture of an imaginary emerging smart city that decided to use AI to reinvent its bus system.&nbsp; Ultimately, all the new bus stops, routes, and schedules are successful in moving people faster to their destinations, and the numbers echo its success. However, a caveat: these statistics have been decided on average, and only show that it is successful based on how well it moves affluent communities more efficiently than those located on the outskirts of the city. Those living on the outskirts, who need efficient transportation more than others for work and...

Everyday Chaos: Technology, Complexity, and How We're Thriving in a New World of Possibility with Long-Time Affiliate of Harvard's Berkman Klein Center and Best Selling Author David Weinberger, Ph.D

One common misconception of data is that it is out of reach for many of us: a confusing mixture of encrypted numbers, letters, and other symbols that do not really hold any significance for the general populace. However, recent developments have translated these massive repositories of data and made it possible for us to access that only media conglomerates have had before. As a result, we also have access to parts of ourselves that we used to take for granted or outgrow, in the past. We have a renewed perspective on individual thoughts and behaviors. The data we have on why individuals think or behave a certain way can help us unravel these complex issues at a fundamental level, and we can work on improving ourselves from the grassroots. The TARTLE marketplace is an avenue for people to give voice to these thoughts by turning it into data. Beyond the opportunity to earn from your personal experiences, you can also use the platform to work for a bigger cause that is important to you. Furthermore, it is not just you helping others but also about the potential for others to help you as well. The beauty of data is that it can be used for analysis in several different ways. If you do not have the tools or capacity to extract these insights for yourself just yet, then you can work with data professionals on the platform who can do it for you. How Data Encourages Us to Look Inward: The tech revolution has changed the way we interact with the physical world. We use artificial intelligence and machine learning to reprogram our transportation systems, financial services, social media, and more. However, these are developments that build on the external features of our existence. We have yet to look at how we can capture data at a primary level: our thoughts.&nbsp;&nbsp; Collective intelligence has empowered people to speak up for themselves regardless of who they are and where they are located, and communities can band together to start creating tribes of thought. These groups can be measured and analyzed, with data scientists using their findings to adjust the direction at which the tech revolution progresses. Beyond that, it also allows the people within those tribes to become more self-aware about their individual wellbeing. These data deposits have insights on what they are locally challenged with, which means that people can look into how or why they are affected: what triggers the event, what exacerbates it, and what they can do to manage these thought processes in a healthy manner. As a community, data is the key to showing different communities how their perceptions or preconceived biases lead to trouble within their locality. It serves as the bridge to solving these problems and finding understanding amongst different groups.&nbsp; Clearly, data is more than just a catalyst for the hard sciences. It is our way of advancing in the social sciences as well. We can take that power for ourselves and analyze the data to improve our quality of living as individuals, communities, and as humanity. Life After Death With Data Sets: At the rate we are going, most of our life experiences are captured and stored in the digital space. In terms of speed, consistency, and accuracy, it’s clearly the superior way of retaining human knowledge in comparison to word of mouth and paper. There is no need to worry about human error or the cost of maintaining a printing press.&nbsp; It is interesting to think that data, which is intangible and stored in a virtual space, is derived from physical events and goes on to influence physical events as well. Data is a medium capable of capturing experience, thought and life—even long after the data source passes away.&nbsp; What are the implications of this on the human experience? Having most of our lives recorded in data packets means that we can continue to have an impact on future generations in more tangible ways. Our lives on earth have more potential to have a bigger impact even after our...

Why Data Is Absolutely Necessary for the Evolution of Humans Part 1

How many times have we been placed in uncomfortable situations, and in which ones can we confidently say that we had the knowledge we needed to exit the circumstance with grace? Sometimes, our minds take shortcuts when we need to work through complex problems so that we do not overburden ourselves— but when we start relying on ducking into the side alleys to get to the destination, we do not get a full perspective of what we are truly dealing with. In this episode, Alexander McCaig and Jason Rigby discuss the harmful tendency to live lives within our little bubbles, comfort zones, and echo chambers. They point to how data can show us the ultimate truth and the objective reality—and why we need to start paying attention. Zero and the Inter-Dimension: Right off the bat, Alexander and Jason kickstarted the discussion by comparing the function of our choices to the number line, with zero as the space where there is no value. The positives lie to the right dimension of zero, while the negatives make up the left dimension. This makes zero, as the middle point, an inter-dimension of sorts. We choose to pivot one way or another when faced with difficult events and circumstances in life. However, we may not always have the full capacity to make the best-informed choice. It is human nature to sit within our own comfort zones and echo chambers, because we like information that validates us and exchanges where we know what to do. Our best solution lies in harnessing the power of data. Regardless of religion, political affiliation, or social class, data is capable of making us question the distorted lens we view reality with. We have the opportunity to hold ourselves responsible for our thought processes and interactions with the help of data, instead of continuing to live our lives in a passive manner.&nbsp; It is difficult to face the reality that we may not be making the most out of our lives now. After all, procrastination is a natural human instinct.&nbsp; “When you stagnate and you don’t afford yourself new catalysts. It’s like you’re working with the same old data set every single day. What’s there to be learned? The data sets [have] stopped.” Alexander explained.&nbsp; Data as the Ultimate Truth: We underestimate the power of an objective and apolitical observer in our lives, which is what data represents. It captures our thoughts, actions, and perceptions— even the ugly parts of us that are distorted. This could be caused by a subconscious adherence to tradition, lifestyle, beliefs, values, ignorance, and others.&nbsp; These misconceptions affect our openness to other people. We may become upset because they do not follow the same thought processes or behavioral patterns we do. In the long term, it could isolate us from other people or communities because it feeds into an us versus them mentality.&nbsp; A lack of self-awareness does not just have an impact on our quality of life, or the lives of those around us. We slowly become vulnerable to the whims of more influential figures, who do not have any qualms with exploiting the minorities and pandering to the needs of the masses for personal gain.&nbsp; Since data represents the ultimate truth, we need to harness its power for ourselves. It can empower us to make better decisions on so many levels. We deserve the truth and the ability to make better choices. Closing Thoughts: Overcoming Cognitive and Personal Bias: While the capacity to make better choices is a reward in and of itself, it can now be an opportunity to be financially compensated as well. The TARTLE marketplace is a way for us to earn from contributing to the ultimate truth. It is a platform that encourages us to be more collaborative over authentic information.&nbsp; We are in need of tools and platforms that give us the opportunity to see beyond ourselves. It is time for us to take a step forward. Understanding the truth behind our circumstances gives us a glimpse of what is timeless, of the...

Why Data Is Absolutely Necessary for the Evolution of Humans Part 2

For years, “delebrities” — which refer to the continued licensing of the names and images of dead celebrities, helped rake in millions of dollars for advertising and marketing purposes. In showbiz, they’ve also been utilized from beyond the grave to maintain the integrity of a film in progress.&nbsp; Back when Furious 7 was still in the works, fans all over the world mourned the untimely passing of Paul Walker. In an effort to remain true to the spirit of the film. Director James Wan decided to hire a digital effects studio to insert Walker’s likeness into the last parts of the movie. 350 CGI shots of the late actor, with distant shots of his brother, helped bring his character’s arc as well as the movie into completion. This trend isn’t limited to deceased celebrities. Recently, the DeepNostalgia app brought tons of netizens to tears as they watched old family photos of loved ones come alive in just a few clicks. It’s brought looking to pictures, text chats, and other content of our deceased loved ones for comfort to a different level. If this is a glimpse into what life after death can promise for the ones who’ve been left behind, how will tech professionalists, programmers, and data scientists navigate the ethics of preserving the name, image, and likeness of the deceased?&nbsp; In Loving Memory:&nbsp;In this podcast, we mention how important it is to collect information and knowledge gathered in the past, and forward it in the most efficient manner. Ultimately, the purpose of technology has always been to enhance our capabilities by opening doors to new and exciting possibilities. We’ve been capable of introducing a better quality of life through the introduction of blockchain technology in the global logistics industry, online banking and cryptocurrency for the unbanked in developing countries across the world, and cloud storage for businesses around the world. What’s contentious about this is the intent behind our usage of such technologies. These machines have yet to find a way to operate autonomously and on their own goals; it’s always an extension of our desires and needs. Grief and loss have always been difficult aspects of our existence. However, with the introduction of these technologies, the permanence of their death is brought into question. What if we could create new memories with the artificial likeness of our deceased loved ones?&nbsp; Meaningfully Processing Our Grief: The modern understanding of how we process grief, which can be attributed to Swiss-American scientist Elizabeth Kübler-Ross, laid out the general roadmap: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally, acceptance. There is no question about whether we can develop technologies powerful enough to emulate our deceased loved ones. However, there certainly is contention about whether it would help us come to terms with their passing. A common concern, should these technologies proliferate, is whether it would hinder the grieving from making it past the first stage of denial — where they choose instead to cling to a false, preferable reality.&nbsp; To add to the confusion, progress does not always take a linear path. It is possible for some people to cope well with the loss of a loved one for extended periods of time, only to relapse aggressively into nostalgic and even self-destructive behaviors when they are exposed to a trigger that brings them back to such a painful point in their life.&nbsp; Closing Thoughts - Human Psychology and Experience:&nbsp;When such a visceral reminder of people who have had a strong impact on our lives can become a lingering possibility, the temptation to relapse becomes more tangible. How can these technologies be used to improve the way we process our grief? As is with any other man-made creation, understanding and regulating the impact of our work is just as important as turning the potential of what we make into reality. We live in exciting times and we are, doubtlessly,...

Talking to Past Loved Ones Through Artificial Intelligence

Have you ever felt like you were too caught up in the minute details of day-to-day living to realize the amount of change that occurred around you? Often, progress happens in increments and these shifts can be tracked in retrospect. However, being mindful of these new trends and circumstances can take some practice.&nbsp; When it comes to data, information is evolving at an unprecedented pace; not just in terms of volume but in speed as well. The size, depth, and speed of all the knowledge we have at our hands can become overwhelming, especially when we have never been properly equipped to deal with our own data in the first place.&nbsp; The TARTLE marketplace is an opportunity for individuals to adapt to this new reality and take control over their data. In a world where historically, corporations have gotten away with profiting off of our personal information, we are committed to helping the people on the ground get their voice back. It’s a worldwide initiative that we have decided to undertake to aid in humanity’s progress. &nbsp; Keeping an Ear to the Ground: The Race for Innovation and Relevance - There is a constant pressure for companies to innovate. Plenty of old tech companies that played such an important role in our childhood eventually became obsolete due to their inability to keep up with the times—such as Kodak, Blockbusters, and Toys R Us. It’s a tough lesson for any business: if you don’t keep up, you will be left behind. One pertinent example is the use of the Internet of Things (IoT) in the healthcare industry. IoT has immense potential in helping health researchers and doctors keep entire populations healthy. This is because it captures large swathes of information in real time. TARTLE is committed to integrating these APIs into its marketplace, so that users have the opportunity to turn it into a fungible data packet and share it with causes that they support. On an individual level, we are also constantly reinventing ourselves on multiple levels. We try out new looks, styles, relationships, thought patterns, and beliefs. Human nature compels us to always adjust, to always be in the search of something that works. This challenge to be better is what makes life so exciting and meaningful. Regardless of whether we speak of individuals or businesses, resistance to change can be fatal. If the first step forward is hidden under a mountain of bureaucracy and red tape, then communication can become impossible. It is easy to find comfort in a routine, or in a process that’s worked for as long as you can remember— but this is not an excuse to shut out the possibility for change. &nbsp; Lending a Voice to the Oppressed - One big challenge in our progress of understanding countries in conflict is that gathering reliable sources of information on the ground can be incredibly difficult, if not impossible. Organizations have problems establishing the foundation needed to conduct their operations, while the people on the ground may not have the opportunity to think of reaching out when their top priority is survival. In any conflicted situation, connection can play a pivotal role in giving privileged actors the capacity to help the disenfranchised. TARTLE gives the oppressed individuals in these scenarios an opportunity to anonymously share data packets about their experiences. &nbsp; Closing Thoughts: Learning to Bend, Not Break -&nbsp;TARTLE is on a constant mission to make sure that it is flexible enough to adapt to any trend or circumstance. The platform’s first priority is the progress of humanity as a collective. Amidst constant growth and evolution, it is important that the marketplace is matched with the amount of people that interact with the system and the way in which they interact with it.&nbsp; The marketplace is an avenue to create new tools and features out of a genuine need to solve a problem, instead of creating more bloatware or products for show. It opens conversations and...

Flexing TARTLE’s Adaptability to Modern Trends and Technology

How can you make the most out of your data? In the status quo, we are used to leaving our personal information and digital footprint in the hands of other entities: multinational corporations, political figureheads— those who claim that they have the right to because they have our best interests at heart. The TARTLE platform wants to cut through this fluff and return the power of data to the hands of those who deserve to wield it: the people. With that said, there are plenty of new and exciting updates being implemented on the marketplace. Here’s what you need to watch out for. &nbsp; More Opportunities to Earn: In this episode, Alex introduced a new and more effective micropayment system, which gives users the capacity to earn more at a faster pace. These updates are available on the TARTLE wallet and can be viewed by anybody logging in to the application. Furthermore, users can now see their available balance in US Dollars. This is a step forward to making income generation more relatable and attractive, because funds were previously shown in TARTLEcoin. Once users have hit a certain threshold, they can withdraw their funds into their PayPal account. Netizens that conduct more work on the platform through syncing their accounts, filling their data packets, changing their settings, and otherwise leaving a trail of activity, will be awarded with more cash. As an additional incentive for first-time users on the fence, the platform offers rewards for users filling out their first data packet. &nbsp; More on the Horizon: Beyond this announcement, Alex and Jason also hinted at the release of high-value data packets in the future. These packets would cover topics that are incredibly sought after, such as healthcare, ancestry, Google profiles, and location history.&nbsp; TARTLE hopes to usher in a new era of data ownership, encouraging people on the ground to become data champions for their own personal causes. There is so much potential in your life experiences and activities. It’s time we reclaim our online persona. What’s your data worth?  &nbsp; Tcast is brought to you by TARTLE. A global personal data marketplace that allows users to sell their personal information anonymously when they want to, while allowing buyers to access clean ready to analyze data sets on digital identities from all across the globe. &nbsp;  The show is hosted by Co-Founder and Source Data Pioneer Alexander McCaig and Head of Conscious Marketing Jason Rigby. &nbsp;  What's your data worth? &nbsp;  Find out at: https://tartle.co/ &nbsp;  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TARTLE &nbsp;  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TARTLEofficial/ &nbsp;  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tartle_official/ &nbsp;  Twitter: https://twitter.com/TARTLEofficial &nbsp;  Spread the word!

TARTLE’s New Micropayment System - And Its Macro Benefits

Why is there so much emphasis on the thoughts and actions that govern our day to day lives, but not as much on the ones that happen as we sleep?&nbsp; It’s difficult to understate the influence of modern technology because its effects are so tangible. We see how platforms like TARTLE are geared towards a clear end goal. We’re connected to our smartphones and devices around the clock. But we seem to be forgetting about the first device and data set that we were given to work with: the human mind, and our subconscious. At most, dreams are an interesting icebreaker or topic for idle talk—but we think that they can mean something more. It is time to revisit how dreams can have an impact on the course of our lives, as well as that of the people around us. &nbsp; Dreams: Our Most Ancient, Most Well-Developed Technology &nbsp; Sidarta Ribeiro shared a personal experience with a fellow PhD candidate. One day, Sidarta Ribeiro needed a ride to the field center of Rockefeller University for an experiment. However, he was unable to push through with his activity because it was used by another candidate. This setback meant that he had to reschedule his experiment, which affected his productivity. Understandably, this affected Sidarta Ribeiro’s perception of the person. He went to sleep feeling annoyed and irritated. However, he dreamt of a scenario where he angrily confronted the person and ended up getting physically hurt. When he woke up, he found himself in the right mindset and mood to peacefully discuss what happened with his colleague, and they made amends. This is a personal example of how dreams can be used to simulate instances of the future using references that we have made in the past. It can help guide us and give us insight. Giving the mind some space to process what has happened throughout our day can have some benefits for our wellbeing. &nbsp; Bringing Back the Focus to the Self &nbsp; Alex mentioned how, surprisingly, we only spend 55 percent of our lives awake. This means that if we don’t pay attention to our dreams, we’re missing out on almost half of our entire life experience In the modern world, there is a growing dichotomy between inner work and outer work that we need to bring our attention to— especially when we put so much value on what is external, but choose to forego focused introspection on the self. Sidarta Ribeiro pointed out that today’s research into mental health and wellbeing appear to be closely intertwined with drugs that induce a dream-like state. This could be the first step in a collective effort to bring back emphasis on our subconscious. It’s time to return to our inner world and start using dreams, one of our most ancient technologies, to our advantage once more. &nbsp; Dreams as a Gamechanger Throughout History &nbsp; The dream state has had a massive impact on the course of history. One solid example is the Oracle of Delphi, a widely revered high priestess of the Temple of Apollo who gave predictions and guidance to both individuals and city-states. Her words influenced the decisions of important figureheads such as Aegeus, the king of Athens; Croesus, the king of Lydia; and Alexander the Great, conqueror of the ancient world. Ancient and contemporary Mayan religion also posited that dreams are sacred, because they functioned as portals that helped an individual connect with their ancestors for guidance. The dream state is closely intertwined in the definition of spirituality across several religions and concepts of faith.&nbsp; Today, the role that our dreams fulfilled in old societies is now being fulfilled by a variety of different mechanisms and technologies. Amidst all this progress, it’s time to take a break and ask ourselves: do we like where we’re going, now that we’re leaving our subconscious in the dust? &nbsp; Closing Thoughts: Human Progress Through the Dream State &nbsp; We are consistently pressured to maximize our productivity and levels of...

Navigating the Dreamscape with Neuroscientist and Author, Sidarta Ribeiro

TARTLE is adding to its leadership team with Martin Herrick as Chief Revenue Officer.&nbsp; Martin has a wealth of experience in education and finance, having worked in higher education for seven years before transitioning to the private education lending space.&nbsp; He has held roles as Chief Revenue Officer in the fintech space, working on a new financial asset class called Income Share Agreements (ISAs). Prior to this, Martin has made an impact in other C-suite and executive positions. He worked as the Vice President for Business Development, and eventually the Senior Vice President, for Education Loan Source in the Greater San Diego Area from 2014 to 2019. Martin’s work with TARTLE brings him closer to individuals who are struggling to gain access to higher education. “The users who will be using TARTLE to fill out education packets are probably in the blind spot of most colleges and universities, who don’t have a direct line of access to these students,” he explained, “They’re not going in to talk to their college counselors, filling out surveys, or completing their FAFSAs. They’re searching for platforms like TARTLE to find revenue that they can make for their family, to help with the tough times that they’re going through right now.” “I’m looking to prove to the higher education administrators that we go out to, in the colleges that we partner with to buy data off of our platform, that these are students they would have otherwise missed out on had they not taken a look at TARTLE to see who’s interacting with our platform.” Martin’s unique skill set and experience in education, finance, and technology will be instrumental in the TARTLE platform’s evolution into a marketplace that is better equipped to cater to its Big 7, particularly in initiatives related to educational access. This episode also deep-dives into:   How the rising cost of education affects our capacity for human understanding The impact of COVID-19 on how people perceive higher education and student loans Discussing how student loans are mostly accessible to those who are already backed with generational wealth TARTLE’s capacity to reinvent higher education Illustrating the difficulties people may run into when trying to pay for higher education Finding clear and data-driven solutions to making higher education more accessible Emphasizing the urgency of finding tangible methods to affordable higher education  For podcast, radio, TV interviews, media opportunities, and other press-related inquiries, please contact Media Director Shiela Pialago at  &nbsp; Tcast is brought to you by TARTLE. A global personal data marketplace that allows users to sell their personal information anonymously when they want to, while allowing buyers to access clean ready to analyze data sets on digital identities from all across the globe. &nbsp;  The show is hosted by Co-Founder and Source Data Pioneer Alexander McCaig and Head of Conscious Marketing Jason Rigby. &nbsp;  What's your data worth? &nbsp;  Find out at: https://tartle.co/ &nbsp;  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TARTLE &nbsp;  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TARTLEofficial/ &nbsp;  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tartle_official/ &nbsp;  Twitter: https://twitter.com/TARTLEofficial &nbsp;  Spread the word!

Helping Enterprises Ethically Establish Relationships with End Customers: TARTLE Welcomes New Chief Revenue Officer Martin Herrick to Champion this Process

How do we encourage economic growth and progress across the country? The United States was once revered as one of the most successful economies in the world—but today, it struggles to generate the job opportunities and market stability necessary for its citizens to ensure their quality of life. This is the question that Jonathan Gruber and Simon Johnson explore in their book, entitled Jump-Starting America: How Breakthrough Science Can Revive Economic Growth and the American Dream. In this episode, Alexander McCaig sits down with Jonathan Gruber to have a meaningful dialogue on what the government’s missing out on by decreasing funding in research and development.&nbsp; &nbsp; The Effect of RnD on the US Economy According to Jonathan Gruber, public investment in research and development played a pivotal role in the economic progress of the United States. All the technological advancements we have the privilege of experiencing today—such as our smartphones and laptops—were, in part, fueled by the amount of funding that was poured into the pursuit of science. However, the level of public investment decreased drastically, from about two percent of GDP in 1962 to just under half of that today. In his book, Jonathan Gruber explains that the nation’s renewed support in science and technology would play a significant part in generating economic growth. This is especially important in an era where plenty of citizens are facing job instability, outright unemployment, and health concerns brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. Ushering in a new era for research and development would not just benefit certain industries. Jonathan Gruber posits further that aside from overall growth, it would create better jobs across the economy. This would naturally occur as the market adjusts to accommodate an influx of tech professionals across the country, because they would need these goods and services to support their work as well as their quality of life. &nbsp; Decentralizing Opportunities for Innovation While the US does have certain cities where tech-based growth is made possible, they are not enough to power the economy. In fact, concentrating opportunities in “superstar” cities such as San Francisco, New York, Seattle, and the Silicon Valley can be counterproductive.&nbsp; This is because the demand for professionals will incentivize people to relocate from one city to another. As a result, these cities experienced increased congestion and housing prices—and those who do not have the experience necessary to become a valuable asset to the area will be forced to leave. At this point, Jonathan Gruber emphasizes the importance of government involvement in encouraging basic research. Setting aside funding for research and development that is carried out in other areas would help incentivize private investors, or venture capitalists, to take that risk as well.&nbsp; &nbsp; Will Robots Take Over Our Jobs? One salient point of discussion in the episode was when Alexander McCaig asked Jonathan Gruber about the impact of robotics on the future of work. Alexander pointed out that there may be some routine jobs that may phase out completely because they would be delegated to robots, who would be more efficient at performing such activities. Jonathan Gruber believes that the outlook for robotics is optimistic, and that people should focus on the capabilities that can be developed when there is enough funding for the country to get a leg up on the tech race. Being able to scout the future of artificial intelligence and machine learning would give researchers a head start on the careers that it would affect, in both a positive and negative manner. “The bottom line is, you can wring your hands about the fact that some low-level jobs are going to be taken by robots, or you can get to work making the robots,” Jonathan Gruber explained.&nbsp; To illustrate his perspective, Jonathan Gruber explained how the invention of the wheel raised...

MAGA Through Research and Development with MIT Economist, Jonathan Gruber

Changes in technical breakthroughs and evolving skill needs are shaping the nature of the workplace of the future. While the pandemic did not fundamentally alter the way people cooperated, it did speed up the pace of change. This resulted in a faster adoption of the concept of remote work. With the world adjusting to a new life after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, how do we best utilize the tools that we have so that we can continue our levels of productivity even in remote working situations? In this episode, Alexander McCaig discusses this issue with Phil Simon, a keynote speaker, adviser, and Zoom and Slack educator. He is also the author of eleven non-fiction works, the most recent of which is Reimagining Collaboration: Slack, Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and the Post-Covid World of Work. Adjustments in the Workplace According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of Americans working remotely more than doubled from around 30 percent to 60 percent in March 2020, and organizations began embracing new collaboration platforms such as Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Zoom as part of the adjustment process as a result of this increase.&nbsp; At the start of 2020, few people would be familiar with the names of even one of these tools, much alone all of them. Several of us are now working remotely as a consequence of COVID-19, and Zoom has been so widely used that it has become a verb: to "Zoom" means to communicate using video conferencing technology. When businesses were forced to close and employees were required to wear masks, just a few&nbsp;businesses were allowed to continue operations as usual. The vast majority of people were entirely unprepared for the enormous changes that were about to take place in their lives. When it came to internal communication, they continued to rely on email as well as on typical corporate processes and attitudes. A New Age of Productivity To cope with COVID-19’s repercussions on corporate organizations, employers, human resource managers,&nbsp;and consultants were obliged to think creatively about how they might implement a remote work strategy. Businesses had an urgent need to alter these barriers in dealing with the international economic instability caused by the virus. If a shift to a new system is the path moving forward, what possible methods can businesses use to better utilize the tools that we currently have in this day and age? Phil Simon suggests that companies should start embracing the Hub-Spoke model of collaboration. This model&nbsp;is a technique of distribution wherein a centralized "hub" operates. From the hub, products are sent outward to smaller groups known as spokes for further storage and delivery. With this model, it aims to help firms significantly increase staff productivity, simplify current business procedures, and provide the basis for&nbsp;subsequent machine-learning and artificial intelligence advances. The hub may be thought of as a meta-organization that functions in parallel to established innovation laboratories. Employees at the innovation-hub can connect informally over the web and work freely on innovation to bolster the firm's performance. Out with the Old, In the New? Efficiency should not be dependent on one factor alone. While the hub-spokes model creates a more systematic approach in revamping business models to fit the current situation, it is best to have it hand-in-hand with tried and tested organizational techniques. By adopting particular initiatives and establishing a culture that supports their virtual workforce, executives may boost their teams' performance output and engagement. They must build and sustain a culture of trust, as well as modernize leadership communication methods and procedures in order to properly educate virtual personnel.&nbsp; Additionally, team members must be encouraged to share leadership. Finally, executives must establish and conduct frequent alignment checks to ensure that virtual workers adhere to the...

Connectivity and Productivity: A Discussion With Author and Speaker, Phil Simon

Junk. It’s everywhere. From island-sized floating masses of garbage to the thousands of tons of space debris found in low orbit, mankind has left its permanent mark on planet Earth. As junk is generated as a byproduct of consumerism, the debris left behind by satellites, or the inefficient data-grabbing of companies; we are faced with mountains of waste every day. &nbsp; The question then is, how should we tackle this junk problem? Similarly, how should companies handle the acquisition and exchange of data? In the information age, the ever-increasing volume of data is proving to be a challenge within the data marketplace.&nbsp; &nbsp; In this episode, Alexander McCaig and Jason Rigby discuss human junk and its effect on our evolution. &nbsp; The Self-Destructive Situation of Our Space Debris &nbsp; There are a hundred million pieces of debris found in Earth’s low orbit. Each of those are only larger than a millimeter. That may sound harmless, but the environment is different in outer space. Up there, there’s barely any friction or gravity, which allows the individual pieces to speed up at around 17,500 miles per hour. &nbsp; And so, a tiny piece of junk floating around can cause large amounts of damage to any equipment unfortunate enough to get hit. A bigger yet obvious problem is the difficulty with which people can repair damages, as it’s hard to even reach the damaged equipment. &nbsp; As of the year 2020, there are currently 3,372 active satellites in orbit. Now, the US Regulatory has already permitted SpaceX from launching satellites, of which they plan to launch 42,000 of them. This will only increase the risk of important satellites and instruments from being damaged. &nbsp; The International Space Station has even had near-miss events because of space debris, which cements it as a real problem with real consequences. Obviously, this isn’t the problem of the ISS alone. &nbsp; Humanity’s Junk and Its Effects on Our Evolution &nbsp; Junk has become such a prevalent issue around the world, and yet we don’t even consider why it exists in the first place. We create plastic and other pollutants for commercial goods, without taking into account what happens to it after it is thrown away. &nbsp; Ever since humans have developed technology, we created this mentality of not caring about the aftermath of our actions. Which, in turn, has created all this junk and waste around us, which is hindering our evolution as a society. &nbsp; This isn’t to say that we are unaware of our predicament. However, the way we try and solve this problem is by simply going around the junk. For example, instead of trying to get rid of space debris, they instead designed better spacecraft to withstand the high-speed debris that crashes into our satellites. &nbsp; In addition to humanity’s indirect approach towards junk, our pre-existing systems are open and do not take into account the amount of waste that will inevitably get created. Because of the open systems that society has relied upon, we are continuously burying ourselves beneath our waste. &nbsp; As an example of society’s indirectness towards problems, picture this scenario. A child is left in their car seat as the parents go inside the store. The parents are reliant on the car’s system, that it will provide AC and therefore keep the child cool. However, what happens when the AC malfunctions? We could design a camera to observe, but that’s simply an indirect fix. &nbsp; Instead of simply going to the root of the problem and simply bringing the child along, the parents create complicated measures.&nbsp; &nbsp; TARTLE’s Mission to Eradicate Junk Data &nbsp; Junk is everywhere, and yet it is simply tolerated. Instead of finding roundabout ways to avoid junk, we should instead focus our efforts on it. Focusing on it gives humanity a deep understanding of the cause and effect of junk, and how we can eliminate it. &nbsp; Within the data marketplace, TARTLE is cleaning...

We’re All One Big Pile of Space Junk

Risk and intelligence are two factors that define the success of any organization. Information is everywhere, and yet companies and organizations are still faced with data-related challenges that hinder their development. Is information-gathering all there is to running an operation? &nbsp; In this episode, Leo Tilman joins Alexander McCaig to discuss risk and its relevance to finance, strategy, and more. Leo Tilman is a leading authority on strategy and risk, who predicted the financial crisis between 2007-2008. He also authored Agility: How to Navigate the Unknown and Seize Opportunity in a World of Disruption, which is featured in this podcast. &nbsp; Definition of Agility Within Risk Intelligence &nbsp; To adapt to the everchanging uncertainties that organizations, governments, and even individuals face, agility is a must. This seven-letter word is often defined as the ability to assess and respond to changes, while making it distinct from flexibility or adaptability. What sets agility apart is that it calls for an individual to be purposefully decisive, while still grounded in the will to succeed in whatever endeavor an individual or group is facing.&nbsp; &nbsp; Regardless of an entity’s position in the world, they are always within the environment that surrounds them. To understand what defines an individual’s or a group’s agility, we must first define the environment they are in. This is important because it helps provide insight into how agility can be expressed in those specific circumstances. &nbsp; An environment consists of two components: first, the dominant trends that shape the world around us. These are the specifics of an environment, and illustrate how the environment is a dynamic entity that is capable of changing over time. &nbsp; The second component refers to the fundamental nature of environments, described through theories. An example is Clausewitz’s theory on war and its accurate description of competitive environments. &nbsp; &nbsp; The Portfolio of Risks and Risk Assessment &nbsp; An organization must be proactive in assessing the risks that it will face. Here comes the portfolio of risks, which is a set of risks that an organization must make to meet its objective. This involves multiple facets within the organization, like financial risks, strategic risks, and so on. &nbsp; However, the executives of an organization need to come together and discuss the risks they face, as well as the environment they are in. By discussing and analyzing their circumstance, they’re able to determine what factors they have control over, and what they don’t. &nbsp; Because of the vast amounts of data that companies and organizations have access to, it becomes a challenge to try and filter through all the data. Furthermore, companies soon realize that truly valuable information, like data about their clients or competitors, isn’t available all the time. &nbsp; And so, being proactive about data-gathering is essential. By dedicating time and resources towards gathering valuable data, one can understand not only the situation but also the necessary risks needed to be taken. With that in mind, the portfolio of risks is then created. &nbsp; The Human Element Within an Organization &nbsp; Regardless of the amount of information that an organization has, and regardless of the strategies put in place, nothing can succeed without the human element. It is the flexibility of human beings that allows groups to move towards their goals. &nbsp; It is the ability for human beings to adapt through the uncertainty of an environment, and process information that may change the status quo of their situation. Because of the complexity of the environment that anyone is in, it is up to the agility of human beings to formulate responses towards these changes. &nbsp; For that reason, cultural assessments within an organization are important to move through the internal fog of data that organizations have access to. Because...

Diving Into the Deep End With Financier and Author, Leo Tilman

Research and data are paramount if we want to improve physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing across the board. These not only concern those who are already struggling with illness; healthcare should also focus on being preventive, rather than waiting for people to get sick. &nbsp; However, the longstanding institutions that we rely on actually create a roadblock for researchers to do their job. Instead of keeping the population healthy, institutions are merely waiting for the people to get sick. In such a set-up, are we truly maximizing the capabilities and technologies that we have developed for the good of humanity? &nbsp; In today’s episode, Alexander McCaig and Jason Rigby talk about exchanging healthcare data and its importance to the world. Join them as they listen to comments made by Lex Fridman and David Sinclair on bioinformatics and more. &nbsp; Challenging the Data Barrier in Bioinformatics &nbsp; To gain research info regarding healthcare, companies must first collect data. Data collection gives us the opportunity to detect certain diseases, their properties, and how the human body reacts to these. &nbsp; Perhaps the biggest obstruction that bioinformaticians face are the privacy and ethical concerns when collecting data. Because health institutions aren’t able to disclose and share data regarding their patients, research slows down. &nbsp; With TARTLE, you have the chance to purchase datasets to help your bioinformatics research or any study for that matter. Data that is being collected by TARTLE is consensually gathered, as users share their information for financial incentives.&nbsp; &nbsp; Data collection through TARTLE is also ethical because companies are buying ownership from consenting owners. Through this, the privacy and ethical barrier brought on by HIPAA is no longer an issue. &nbsp; TARTLE benefits everybody. It gives users the power and knowledge on selling their data while paying them for doing so. It also offers companies massive amounts of datasets that they’re able to use, like medical research.&nbsp; &nbsp; Insurance Companies and Their Impact on Data Collection &nbsp; In the podcast, Alexander McCaig and Jason Rigby listen to a video of David Sinclair discussing his checkup with a doctor. Through this, we discover that proactively collecting data about one’s self gives doctors better insight into your health, more than they ever could with a simple consultation. &nbsp; In addition to this, we find out that doctors may opt to not perform lab tests that are not immediately needed, or if you do not have a family history for a particular disease. They are disallowed by insurance companies who do not want to spend on anything preventive. Insurance companies only shell out money when someone is already sick. &nbsp; Insurance companies are only incentivized to save money. Therefore, preventative healthcare becomes impossible for those of a lower socioeconomic profile, and thus cannot afford private lab results. &nbsp; A Proactive vs. Reactive Approach on Healthcare Development &nbsp; The TARTLE marketplace is one of the means for preventative healthcare to grow and develop. Because insurance companies aren’t incentivized from giving away data, nor are hospitals allowed to.&nbsp; &nbsp; Because hospitals are a reactive system, we are not able to act on someone or gather data until someone is already sick. That is why preventative care is so important. Sickness is better understood, and hopefully lessened, in a world where we are encouraged to actively look out and test&nbsp; for our own health.&nbsp; &nbsp; Hospitals are part of a system that’s economically driven, forcing people into two-dimensional systems that prioritize money before the well-being of a person. The system views unique individuals not as people, but as numbers and statistics without uniqueness.&nbsp; &nbsp; The metric that medical institutions should focus on is the maintenance of a disease-free population. How long...

What’s the Price for Good Health?

As long as you are alive, you are constantly creating data—and in today’s digital age, it has become more important than ever before to know how to harness the power of your own data.. The question now is, how is data exchanged? How do companies obtain data? Through the TARTLE Marketplace, everyone is able to exchange data. Even better, people are financially incentivized to sell their data to sellers. Buyers can also purchase specific data packets, from medical to financial data. In this episode, join Alexander McCaig and Jason Rigby as they discuss the value of data, and what it means to share private information. They will also be listening to David Sinclair and Lex Fridman’s opinions on harnessing big data. &nbsp; Taking Ownership of Your Data &nbsp; Most people nowadays use the internet in their everyday lives. Since everyone is almost always plugged into the digital world, it’s no surprise that everyone’s data is up for grabs as well. There are plenty of third-party sites accessing our personal data and this complex web of interactions makes it near impossible to scrub our data off of the internet. While it is difficult to find solutions to all the data ownership problems that we’ve run into on the internet, TARTLE does make it possible for individuals to become more informed and responsible about their own data. Through the platform, you have the capacity to share and sell your data. You also have the right to erase any of your unsold data whenever you want. &nbsp; Assets and Liabilities within The TARTLE Marketplace &nbsp; When it comes to data exchange, security and privacy are top priorities. Fortunately, TARTLE has a completely self-sovereign architecture for every person. That means that nothing gets leaked, as the passwords and other related information are only known to their respective owners. This is especially important for companies who want to purchase data from TARTLE. When a privacy issue arises, these companies do not want the liability of a data breach, nor do they want to get sued by their clients and those who sold their data. Additionally, purchasing data through TARTLE can be seen as a verifier that the data was acquired ethically. TARTLE obtains data with consent from its respective owners while paying them, and gives them the power to choose how their data is used. &nbsp; Ensuring Data Privacy and Accountability &nbsp; One of the most common concerns when it comes to sharing any kind of information online, regardless of whether it is related to our personal health or medical records, is whether it will be safe and secure once it is uploaded to another platform. When people feel that their data may end up being permanently stored on the internet, or that they do not have control over their own information, then they will naturally stop feeling the incentive to share. A part of the hesitation to share personal data stems from the reality that we do not feel like we have control over it in the first place. Another common reason could be attributed to the misperception that if we have any ailments or illnesses, it is because we do not take care of our health. Sharing valuable and relevant information is key to helping improve the lives of everybody. There is nothing to be embarrassed about. Not your medical records, nor anything else. Every single one of us is a human being, and we are all learning from each other. How do we encourage people to be more proactive about sharing their information? &nbsp; Closing Thoughts: A Safe Space for Medical Records &nbsp; The TARTLE platform gives people an opportunity to experience the benefits of sharing data in multiple ways. First, it encourages individuals to be more empowered about their own information. They no longer have to feel like they are victims of their own data. Second, TARTLE provides a safe space for people to learn how to control their information. The marketplace does not profit from the data gathering in any way. Its main goal is...

A Safe Space for Personal Data

Once upon a time, everything in aerospace was designed with nothing more complicated than the slide rule. How many people even know what a slide rule is anymore? Those tools and a bunch of people crunching numbers with a calculator and pen and paper put men on the moon. To this day we haven’t built a rocket more powerful than the legendary Saturn V. We still have not made an aircraft that flies higher and faster than the equally impressive SR-71 Blackbird, a plane that first flew in 1964 and was retired back in 1999. The base designs for aircraft and rockets haven’t really changed much since then.&nbsp; So what is left for our massive improvements in computing power as well as data gathering and analysis to accomplish? There are certain obvious things like making improvements to those base designs. There have been massive gains in engine efficiency, tweaking the aerodynamics of aircraft and the incorporation of stealth technology. Rockets of course haven’t seen many improvements in those fields but recent advancements from companies like Blue Origin and Space X have greatly improved the reusability of rockets, especially the recent successes by Elon Musk’s Space X in landing first and second stage boosters to be refurbished for reuse. Thanks to extensive use of data to build and refine their designs, those stages can land on something a little bigger than a helicopter pad. This is much more efficient than the space shuttle’s reusable boosters that would just fall into the ocean and have to be picked up by a large ship with a crane before they sank.&nbsp; Even here though, in some ways, things have been pushed to their limits. In the realm of fighter craft, the human body is the limit now, as demonstrated by the existence of ‘Raptor cough’. It was discovered years ago that pilots of the F-22 Raptor had developed respiratory issues due to the stresses that flying the craft and the oxygen system used to help keep pilots alert while doing so put on the human body. Data will help design better support systems but it’s clear that physical limits are now the barrier, not our imaginations.&nbsp; So again, what is left for data in aerospace and defense? Much of the best and most exciting uses of data is happening in low earth orbit, thanks to improvements in satellite technology. One of the reasons we haven’t make anything bigger than the Saturn V is because our satellites can be made smaller and still accomplish a lot more. One of the recent things that data analysis and satellites did was uncover and break up a human trafficking operation. Thanks to analysis of patterns and satellite imagery they were able to find where the traffickers’ boats were operating in the middle of the ocean.&nbsp; Of course there is also the various intelligence uses of data. The ability to rapidly collect and analyze data has grown exponentially ever since 9/11 and has been used effectively to track any number of terrorist operations, including the Boston Marathon bombers. Of course, there is a whole other side to that, but that’s a different article.&nbsp; Cyberwarfare has also increased dramatically since then and being able to track the spread of viruses and other malware across the internet will only become more important in the years ahead.&nbsp; Finally, there is the issue of space junk. There are millions of satellites and pieces of satellites in low earth orbit right now and tracking them is a full time job. NASA has to be aware of every bit of stuff floating around up there to prevent collisions. Data analysis is essential to that operation as they don’t just have to predict where an old satellite will be tomorrow, they have to predict where it will be in ten years. Not to mention the various bits of bolts, frozen fuel, and even paint chips that can’t be so easily tracked and yet can still cause considerable damage.&nbsp; While most of the major physical designs have already been nearly perfected, there are still...

Big Data in Aerospace and Defense

Guest what? TARTLE has a Tik Tok account! It’s one of our favorite places to post and interact both with members of TARTLE and with people curious about us and what we do. Recently Alex and Jason sat down to answer a few questions from the TARTLE Tik Tok community. Below are some of the better or more fun questions and answers. Let’s deal with a serious one first, and one we get pretty often. Question: What does TARTLE do with your data? Answer: The answer of course is simple, we don’t do anything with your data. We don’t sell it, we don’t even use it for our own benefit without your consent. What we do is collect and store it in an encrypted format so that you can sell it when you chose, to whom you choose, for whatever reason you choose using the TARTLE data marketplace. That’s it, and yes, it is that simple. Q: Does big tech need to die? A: No, it doesn’t need to die. It does need to be reminded that it shouldn’t be using its power to manipulate people. That’s one of the goals of TARTLE, to provide a model of cooperation with users and other companies that shows it is possible to harness the power of data without taking advantage of others. Q: I tried to integrate my Facebook account but it wouldn’t work. What gives? A: In short, Facebook is constantly changing its rules and often that means we need to change things on our end. We are still small so it takes time to catch up to a company that literally employs thousands. We are working on it. Not every question is serious or technical though. Sometimes, they’re just fun. Q: Is Alex forty feet tall? A: Nope, a mere 6’5” which is tall but not tall enough to live at the top of a beanstalk.&nbsp; Q: What is up with the burlap sack? A: Hey, that was a cashmere sweater in that video. It is completely different than burlap.&nbsp; Let’s get back to some of the more serious and technical questions. Q: Do we need to give our data to TARTLE? A: Well, if you sign up with us, that’s what you are deciding to do. Of course, you decide how many accounts you want to connect with us. How much of your data you entrust to our care is entirely up to you. And again, we don't do anything with it except store and secure it for your own later use. We put all the power to control it into your hands.&nbsp; Q: How on earth do I use your site? A: This is one of the joys of being a new company, we have a few growing pains. We acknowledge our initial system was difficult to use. Fortunately, we are getting close to finalizing a redesign that is both inherently easier to use and set up to do a much better job of walking you through the process of signing up and getting started making use of TARTLE. Q: Are we a scam or spyware? A: No. We don’t work for anyone else, no company or government agency is pulling our strings. We encourage anyone suspicious of us to research TARTLE and see if you come away still having those suspicions.&nbsp; Q: What does TARTLE mean? A: It’s actually a Scottish term. When you are introduced to someone and realize a moment later that you forgot their name and have that awkward pause while trying to remember it – that’s a TARTLE. Q: We need some return on our loss of privacy. A: Yes we do. For too long, we’ve been giving up our privacy thanks to all of these companies taking and manipulating our data without our consent and getting rich off it. It is past time that we should both get some privacy back and some money on our end as well.&nbsp; Q: How can we stop the government from taking our data? A: To completely stop it is almost impossible. However, you can slow them down. Use a TOR browser, get a VPN, and stop pumping out all your data for all to see on the internet.&nbsp; Q: Do you use crypto/blockchain? A: Yes, we use crypto currency for payment, which allows our system to be global and unaffected by whatever happens with fiat currencies. The blockchain also allows us to be transparent with how much and the type of data being...

TARTLE CEO & CMO Respond to TikTok Comments LOL

Why New Mexico? One question we at TARTLE get a fair amount is why on earth we are located in New Mexico. After all, we got started in Delaware which is near a lot of creative and technology hubs. If for some reason we wanted to be somewhere else, why wouldn’t we just relocate to Silicon Valley, Texas, Denver or up and coming Nashville? Isn’t New Mexico just a massive swath of desert in the middle of more desert? There are a lot of reasons. One is that all those other places are already saturated with tech companies. From the massive household names to a ridiculous number of startups you can’t swing a stick in those places without hitting someone working for a tech company. Out there, we would be competing with all of those companies for talent, resources, and attention. In short, we would be a small fish in a big pond. Out here, we have the chance to be the big fish, the biggest talent magnet in the area. Yet, there is also plenty of talent around. As it turns out, New Mexico has a ridiculous number of PhDs, actually the highest concentrations in the country. Yet, because it doesn’t have the reputation as a tech hub, the people aren’t very pretentious. That itself is extremely valuable as having to massage egos and defuse situations is not what we should be worried about at work. The history of the area is also something that is both personally appealing and fits well with TARTLE’s vision. How so? It has an ancient and rich history with Native American cultures and is also the home of Los Alamos, one of the major places the first nuclear bombs were built. It is a mix of the old and the new. This reflects TARTLE in that we want to bring back a time when people had control over their own data while using the latest technology to do it.&nbsp; The local culture as a whole is also fantastic. It’s one that is very laid back, very personal and very willing to engage with new ideas and new companies like ours. This creates a more flexible culture than what is found in most of the major technology centers, a culture that works very well for us here.&nbsp; Another great advantage of New Mexico is that the government out here is very interested in getting new businesses into the state. While they have been an oil and gas state for a long time, they’ve realized that those resources won’t last forever and in the meantime it doesn’t hurt to have a more diverse economic base. They’ve made it easy to work with a lot of the government research facilities out here (those labs are the big reason there are so many PhDs here) which opens up a massive amount of intellectual capacity and past and current research. They’ve done a lot to make it easier to do business in New Mexico than it is in a lot of other places. Others are noticing this as well, many of the big tech companies are already planning on moving out here. TARTLE is ahead of the curve.&nbsp; We would be remiss if we didn’t mention the fact that practically speaking, it almost doesn’t matter where we are based out of. We are a tech company working in the digital age. Given how easy it is to work remotely now, it would be unnecessarily restrictive to limit our recruiting to whomever is available locally. And if we can work anywhere, why not live somewhere that you want to live instead of going to a big city so you can rent out a shoebox for the price you can own a house somewhere else? So, why New Mexico? Because it is a great culture, with an amazing history and a wealth of opportunities from a business and personal perspective that fits perfectly with TARTLE’s own culture and mission. TARTLE is proud to call The Land of Enchantment home.&nbsp; What’s your data worth? www.tartle.co Tcast is brought to you by TARTLE. A global personal data marketplace that allows users to sell their personal information anonymously when they want to, while allowing buyers to access clean ready to analyze data sets on digital identities from all across the globe. The...

Why does TARTLE a Technology Leader Choose New Mexico?

Have you ever noticed how you stop and listen almost every time a bird sings? Even if you don’t stop, you still listen as you keep going. In fact, it might seem like you can’t help it. The truth is, you can’t. We’re literally genetically hardwired to pick up on the sound of birds. That and a rising or setting sun are things we can’t help but notice whenever we encounter them. Why might that be? In the case of birds, we can hazard a guess or two. Birds of prey and scavengers let us know that there is likely food in the area. The birds themselves of course would have been a source of food back in the early days of humanity. Not to mention, the presence of a lot of birds means there aren’t a significant amount of predators around, meaning the area is safe. The sound of a bird also lets you know there is probably water nearby. Our ancestors may have also learned to associate the presence of many different kinds of birds with good farmland. A diversity of bird species means there is a diversity of other sorts of life in the area. Plants of different kinds provide homes as well as insects and small mammals to provide food for the birds. And lots of insects and plants means the soil is likely fertile. Those are just educated guesses though. One thing we do know for sure in the modern day is that the presence of birds correlates with human happiness.&nbsp; How so? Well, on one level, it could be the birds themselves. Who doesn’t enjoy listening to the sound of a robin or nightingale? Or even just watching a hummingbird hovering outside the window? It certainly brings a little smile to my face. Or maybe it’s the fact that where there are birds, there are natural areas. If there are birds around there are trees, streams, flowers, and tons of other beautiful and relaxing things. About the only bird you hear in the city is a pigeon. And even there, people often sit on benches and throw bits of bread to attract the birds. We are literally happier wherever there are birds (except maybe seagulls, nobody likes seagulls). As for whether or not the correlation between happiness and birds is because of the birds themselves or because of the natural areas they tend to be in – it doesn’t matter much. The birds and the natural areas are almost always a package deal anyway.&nbsp; We tend to create those natural areas wherever we can. For people with discretionary income, one of the things they like to do is get out into nature. Whether it’s camping, rock climbing or backpacking people will spend a lot of money just to go outside and enjoy nature. Even in the cities, wherever there is enough money to do so, parks are a feature, the most famous of them being Central Park which is practically a forest in New York City. We crave to renew our connection with nature, even if only for a little while. One of the interesting side effects of spending time with the birds and the kinds of places that they like to live in is that it makes us more productive for the rest of our lives. Why? Simply because we are more relaxed, more at peace. After all, we are part of nature too, a fact we often forget. Getting out in it every now and then reminds us of that and recharges us in a way that no amount of modern entertainment can.&nbsp; Just as data shows us that there is a correlation between happiness and birds, so too can looking at data from birds warn us of problems in the natural world. Even just superficially, birds tend to circle an area where another animal has recently died or is about to. They are amongst the first to flee from a forest fire. And of course, a drop in the diversity of bird species could be an advanced warning for the introduction of a plant disease or a new invasive species. Collecting and analyzing data on bird behavior could help devise better ways of managing and caring for the environment that we both share.&nbsp; What’s your data worth? www.tartle.co

Birds and Human Happiness

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