One of the big problems most modern insurance companies face is fraud. Why is it that some customers feel they can overstate a claim or make a false claim altogether? At least partially it is because they feel they are ripping of a big corporation which is an abstract entity instead of cheating on say their group of friends or individuals they interact with frequently. Insurance companies in return respond by making the filing of claims more difficult, in the process often denying legitimate ...

I learned how to program on this Apple II over 30 years ago. Over that time period – as a first approximation – programming has stayed the same. Yes, I have learned new tools and new programming languages, but programming still amounts to typing a bunch of text into an editor in a syntax that’s generally easier to read for a machine than a human. That is about to change dramatically. When I teach programming to novices I introduce it by saying: programming is just telling a machine what to do...

The rumor is that Facebook will on Monday unveil a fairly full fledged webmail solution. At the same time Google is working hard on some kind of new social network. Microsoft too is trying to have email, search, social, etc. all under one roof. The rationale here seems to be one of wanting to own as much of a user’s experience as possible. It is supported by an economic logic in which companies are making lots of money in one area and using that to subsidize other parts of functionality. Once...