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One of the best parts of writing the Afternoon Edition each day is that I get to explore all kinds of interesting topics. Two of those recent topics continue to be all over the news, and they are the issues of robots and automation, and artificial intelligence and the "Singularity." These topics do materially affect markets, although their effect may not be as acute as, say, a monthly employment report. And speaking of which, we got a new monthly employment report this morning, as February saw 235,000 new non-farm payroll jobs created. That's good economic news; however, I wonder how many more jobs would have been created if there weren't as many advancements in the field of automation.

More investors are setting their sights on the financial technology (Fintech) arena. According to consulting firm Accenture, investment in Fintech firms rose by 10 percent worldwide to the tune of $23.2 billion in 2016. China is leading the charge after securing $10 billion in investments in 55 deals which account for 90 percent of investments in Asia-Pacific. The US came second taking in $6.2 billion in funding. Europe, also saw an 11 percent increase in deals despite Britain seeing a decrease in funding due to the uncertainty from the Brexit vote.

Here's an analogy using a concept that we can all relate to: a supermarket. Picture the scene: Shopping list in one hand, shopping basket in the other, you're ready to tackle your weekly shopping in your local supermarket. Your items range from fruit and vegetables to washing detergent, perhaps with some free-range eggs thrown in for good measure. Quite the eclectic mix, but you know that you'll be able to find all you need under one roof. The fact that this is possible is in itself quite remarkable.

The famous cartoon series "The Jetsons" predicted 53 years ago how our lives would look like in 2063 when all our "daily devices" such as home appliances or cars would be connected to the internet. In 2016, the Internet of Things (IoT) is still evolving to a convergence of multiple technologies, including wireless communication, real-time analytics, machine learning, commodity sensors, embedded systems, automation, and more. On October 21, a series of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks caused widespread disruption of internet activity across Europe and the US. This attack was also unique because it targeted IoT devices due to the fact they have soft security profiles. As the awareness of what impact connected objects would have on our lives and on our security.

In this paper we look into the problem of planning over hybrid domains, where change can be both discrete and instantaneous, or continuous over time. In addition, it is required that each state on the trajectory induced by the execution of plans complies with a given set of global constraints. We approach the computation of plans for such domains as the problem of searching over a deterministic state model. In this model, some of the successor states are obtained by solving numerically the so-called initial value problem over a set of ordinary differential equations (ODE) given by the current plan prefix. These equations hold over time intervals whose duration is determined dynamically, according to whether zero crossing events take place for a set of invariant conditions. The resulting planner, FS+, incorporates these features together with effective heuristic guidance. FS+ does not impose any of the syntactic restrictions on process effects often found on the existing literature on Hybrid Planning. A key concept of our approach is that a clear separation is struck between planning and simulation time steps. The former is the time allowed to observe the evolution of a given dynamical system before committing to a future course of action, whilst the later is part of the model of the environment. FS+ is shown to be a robust planner over a diverse set of hybrid domains, taken from the existing literature on hybrid planning and systems.

Inferring macroscopic properties of physical systems from their microscopic description is an ongoing work in many disciplines of physics, like condensed matter, ultra cold atoms or quantum chromo dynamics. The most drastic changes in the macroscopic properties of a physical system occur at phase transitions, which often involve a symmetry breaking process. The theory of such phase transitions was formulated by Landau as a phenomenological model [1] and later devised from microscopic principles using the renormalization group [2, 3]. One can identify phases by knowledge of an order parameter which is zero in the disordered phase and nonzero in the ordered phase. Whereas in many known models the order parameter can be determined by symmetry considerations of the underlying Hamiltonian, there are states of matter where such a parameter can only be defined in a complicated non-local way [4]. These systems include topological states like topological insulators, quantum spin hall states [5] or quantum spin liquids [6].

Has a digital coup begun? Is big data being used, in the US and the UK, to create personalised political advertising, to bypass our rational minds and alter the way we vote? The short answer is probably not. A series of terrifying articles suggests that a company called Cambridge Analytica helped to swing both the US election and the EU referendum by mining data from Facebook and using it to predict people's personalities, then tailoring advertising to their psychological profiles. These reports, originating with the Swiss publication Das Magazin (published in translation by Vice), were clearly written in good faith, but apparently with insufficient diligence.

First of all, I will explain the reason for the post title. For those who have not seen the films, I summarize: "A group of four illusionists win year after year to the public with their incredible magic shows and even mocking the FBI. GSMA is a great illusionist and MWC is their principal magic show. We are invited year after year to visit an event with unique keynote speakers, an enormous list of exhibitors, amazing performances and a great LinkedInplace where we can meet in person some of our social media contacts. What else can we ask for? I know that it is very ruthless to compare the GSMA with illusionists and the MWC as their greatest magic show, but at least I see quite a few reasonable resemblances, you don t. If in 2015 I wrote " MWC 2015: Everything Connected, Tapas and Jamon", and I argued as one the reasons to attend MWC was the fact it was celebrated in Barcelona. In 2016, in my post "GSMA need to think how to reinvent MWC" I justify the reasons why the MWC needed to reinvent itself. One thing has become clear to me after many years attending MWCs, this is the world's biggest phone and mobile networks show, with manufacturers set to unveil a raft of new phone handsets and new technology. However, the GSMA had insisted on introducing more and more distractions like Internet of Things (IoT), Connected Living, Connected Car, AR/ VR, Robots. Maybe the reason is because Telecom operators do not have the DNA to change. Still, many telecom operators take a dim view of some of the aggressive moves being made by these peers, especially when it comes to business models based on commercializing customer data. "I expected to see less hype and a dose of common sense" Starting by the announcement of Spain's Telefonica to introduce a broad plan "4th Platform" to help both consumer and business customers keep greater control over their data rather than giving it away to web giants Google, Facebook and Amazon. "I expected to see more applications where IoT will become a lot less exciting, but more useful and profitable.

At the heart of AI systems are statistical models that have no concept of social inequality, fairness, or hardships. In Cathy O'Neil's book, Weapons of Math Destruction (WMD), she points out that big data is discriminating nearly at every juncture of our society and pummeling the poor at each opportunity. Her book points to many avenues of misuse of data, but most offensive is through the use of proxies. Data statistics that are designed for one purpose but are repurposed to be used for economic or convenience sake. There are a number of examples of this.