Eric P

"Granted I don't have much cause to take notes these days, but to the degree I do I wind up doing it by hand simply because it's still faster to do things like make lines and charts by hand. The trick IMHO is not to end it there though. At the very least I snap a picture to digitize it. But my preference is to recompose it entirely in digital form when I have the time. Digital is still superior as it's easier to index and organize, and allows me to move things around, insert things and add the details I didn't have the time to jot down as it was happening. (Evernote is a godsend for all of this and perfectly designed for this sort of workflow)" - Eric P

"I call shenanigans on your housing claim. The driver of a housing costs isn't the cost of construction, rather it's the value of the land it's sitting on. The value of the land is mostly related to its commute-time to high paying jobs. Just look at the prices in SF, NYC and other coastal cities. People aren't paying a fortune to live there because their houses are so much bigger; quite the opposite. Whether or not this holds true in the future is dependent on a couple of things. If automation destroys jobs as many technologists are predicting, that'll put even more pressure on the housing markets around whatever jobs remain. Alternatively NYC and SF might change their policies and dramatically increase the supply, lowering prices across the board. If self driving cars completely automate our transportation infrastructure and make it incredibly efficient, then that'll lower the commute time to far flung exurbs, creating a de facto increase in housing supply. But I can't imagine is a..." - Eric P

"Well, the human pilots are there as a failsafe system. As predictable, uneventful and safe as flying is (miraculous when you think about it), there's still edge cases where a bird flies into an engine and the pilot has has to land a plane on the Hudson river, for example. Until that level of skill is totally unnecessary, I'd prefer the person flying the plane I'm in to be able to do it and be compensated accordingly. Though I do foresee a day where the pilot is in the ATC tower, and able to remotely fly a plane in those situations, reducing the need to have one on every flight. Then again given the security implications of that I'm not sure it'll ever really happen." - Eric P

"That's the part that rankles me. I can believe a President who murders and gets away with it. I can believe that everyone in DC is corrupt. I can believe all the backroom wheeling and dealing and blackmail; hell if the show has any fault there it's that there's not enough money changing hands and lobbyists offering cushy jobs. But really, no problem there. But the actual politics is beyond ridiculous. Not even the GOP is stupid enough to run on cutting entitlements. The writers really couldn't think of anything better for Frank to do with the Presidency that would make sense for a Democrat to support? I'd think a pro-union agenda would be a natural fit for the character. Or given how he got to the White House, having him campaign on transparency and campaign finance would have been fun. But they went with cutting entitlements. I'd love to know what went on in the writers room to have them come up with that." - Eric P

"But the functionality of my keys and wallet could easily be duplicated by my phone. Why would I want a second device on my wrist to do things my phone can already do? Health monitoring is the one thing the phone can't do, but that doesn't seem to be a set the world on fire feature that everyone will shell out money for." - Eric P

"You get the sense that they made him a Democrat in order to accusations of liberal hollywood painting Republicans as evil, but they're basically writing him (and his party) as Republicans despite that. A southern white dude hell bent on cutting entitlement spending and planning to grow defense as a way to create jobs sure sounds a lot more Republican than Democrat anyways." - Eric P

"I like to note that the US at least already has a basic income program in the form of Social Security, and it's very very popular. The simplest and probably easiest path forward would be a campaign for "Universal Social Security", which can be achieved incrementally. Say by gradually lowering the eligibility age. The biggest problem with that approach would be a public that's bought into the idea that social security is going broke, and it would be easy for opponents to paint expansion as bankrupting the program, and there'd be no way around raising taxes on someone somewhere to pay for it. But we could at the very least draw lessons from the history of how that program was created and implemented." - Eric P

"It depends on the industry, I think. In finance there's a lot of companies that only exist because of regulations. Every new regulation is essentially asking for a new product that complies with that regulation or finds a way around it. Compliance is a headache but not really a significant cost. On the flip side there's industries like telecom, where the barriers to entry are nearly impossible. Google Fiber is only a thing because Google has the muscle to get cities to give them exceptions to all sorts of rules that would inhibit a true startup. And that's also why it's only in a few cities. And then there's a certain class of entrepreneur (mostly tech guys) that just likes to tackle barriers to entry head-on. I'm thinking of Uber vs Taxis and Tesla vs Dealerships." - Eric P

"The problem isn't too much objectivity. Objectivity is exactly what we should expect from journalists. They should report the facts, and most journalists emphatically don't do this. Calling bullshit is being objective, and there's not enough of that. The problem is false equivalency that comes from the pursuit of "balance". That's what leads to the media presenting two talking heads, one of which outright lying, but the journalist in question treating each as if they're equally valid and factual. I'm not sure what to call it, but it's certainly not objectivity. Objectivity would be the journalist telling the audience that 97% of scientists and tens of thousands of peer reviewed research papers support man made climate change, thus Bill Nye is correct and the Republican is wrong. The news media has other problems too. One is everything that Fox News does, which I won't even get into. But they also have a curious aversion to facts in general, given that it's theoretically their job to..." - Eric P

"It's not too surprising to me. There are a lot of careers where 15 years experience is worth a lot more than 5 years experience. But there's not a whole lot of careers where 30 years experience is worth a lot more than 20. So you're basically going to hit the top of your field around age 40ish, after which your only options for significant income increases would be to change careers entirely (go into management) or make some other kind of drastic change that most people are too risk averse to make at that age (when they'll typically have a house, family, etc)" - Eric P

"His heart isn't in it, and hasn't been for a while. It's hard to pinpoint exactly when that happened though. Like many things in life, it was a gradual shift. The writing is still top notch IMHO, but Stewart himself just seems tired. But the fact that I'm so sad to see him go is proof enough that the show hasn't gotten bad or anything. (By contrast I'd be genuinely glad to hear The Simpsons was finally put out of its misery). So yeah, he's probably picking a good time to step down, but it doesn't make it less depressing for me." - Eric P

"The absence of current location and ETA information for most busses is completely absurd in this era of GPS equipped mobile devices that we live in. Which makes me think of Uber - it seems like they might eventually try to disrupt busses the same way they disrupted taxis. Busses are basically just a big car pool, and it all boils down to a logistical problem after all - and an an app that's armed with knowledge of where the vehicles are, where the passengers are, and where the passengers want to go could handle it way for efficiently than busses traveling on fixed routes at fixed times. If I could pull out my phone and say "I want to get from here to someewhere else" and have it offer me the option of a slightly less convenient bus-like service for a lot less money than a cab-like service, I'd probably opt for the bus at least occasionally." - Eric P

"It's not shame or fear, it's reliability and quality of service. Bus service is undependable and infrequent with labyrinth routes that will rarely go between where you are and where you want to go with any sort of efficiency. Buses are also *slow*. A bus is likely to get caught in the same traffic that a car would get caught in; a problem that's not easily solved by dedicated bus lanes. Boarding them is also a hassle, because everyone pays *as they board* as opposed to at some point prior as is the case with every other form of mass transit. I'd also note the same reason city planners hate rail is the reason everyone else loves it: rail is fixed infrastructure. There's an ever-present threat of rail service changes, but if you buy a house that's walking distance from a rail stop you can be pretty damn sure it'll *always* be within walking distance of a rail stop. The same for any business you might want to open. Penny pinching cities can move bus stops or easily eliminate service..." - Eric P

"This seems almost impossible to implement successfully. How would you define "spends very little time there"? And how would you go about enforcing it, proving one way or the other that an owner was "living" there for that amount of time? Does it count if I, the owner, am rarely there but I let friends and relatives use it for much of the time? You might be able to construct a tax around non-primary residences, but I wonder how that would effect landlords and the rental market. In the end it doesn't do much to solve NYC's housing problem, which is that there's too little supply to meet the demand. Build a few million more houses across the city's five Burroughs to lower the prices, and a couple of empty ones won't seem like such a big deal." - Eric P

"Well, I might be okay with this if we coupled it with stronger anti-discrimination laws - basically we need to criminalize the firing/not-hiring of individuals for anything that's not germane to their ability to do the job. We should probably do that anyway. But even so, I think you're underestimating the chilling effects that come from the pressure to conform. People need an ability to compartmentalize various facets of their lives. There are many communities and families where the social consequences are really high for being "out" about being an atheist, a democrat (or republican), participating in a sexual subculture (or just buying porn now and then), etc. People need to be able to engage in these things without the knowledge of their neighbors and families in order to feel like they *can* do these things. If everyone's secrets were laid open then *maybe* everyone would realize everyone is deviant in some way and they'd get over themselves. But I think the more likely consequence..." - Eric P

"Sure, but why would you imagine AI without robotics? The main thing holding robotics back now is a lack of intelligence, which would cease to be a problem with a real AI (well that and battery/energy tech - but maybe an AI would be smart enough to figure that out better than we can). Anyway AI could utilize everything from drones to self driving cars to 3D printers to humanoid robots to specially built machines for particular tasks. It'll have plenty of resources to learn about the world and do science to gain new knowledge." - Eric P

"Data isn't a problem; a computer has instant access to the internet, a trove of data far larger than anything a human can consume in our lifetime. Wikipedia alone is more than a single person can hope to read. And whereas a human is limited to data we can collect through our own bodies senses, an AI would be able to collect and learn from video data from any camera it has access to, as well as any other kind of sensor it can connect to. A robot could conceivably see everything in a building at once (including itself) if it's wired up that way and learn from all that visual data." - Eric P

"It does explicitly say "scripted" series. That usually excludes most forms of reality TV." - Eric P

"I basically concluded the same thing on climate change myself. There's just no way we're going to reduce emissions as needed, and we're probably too late anyway. And there's just no way we're going to convince everyone to leave the oil in the ground that needs to stay there. Geoengineering is a less than ideal solution, but it is a feasible solution. So I've turned to advocating for that. There's still a danger we'll wait too long and irreversible effects will have kicked in. Disagree on space though. I'd bet we'll have a permanent moon base in my lifetime, but we'll only colonize it in the same way we've "colonized" antartica. It'll be for scientists, mostly. Whether or not human beings visit the rest of the solar system depends on if we can get a space elevator built, as I just don't see it happening as long as we're dependent on rockets to get out of Earth's gravity well. But like fusion, that's dependent on a breakthrough that could happen tomorrow or never or at any point in..." - Eric P

"On point 4, UBI only gives workers a "walk away" power if the UBI is equal to or greater than a living wage. The fear being expressed here is that if the UBI isn't a living wage, then workers will still *need* work. Wal-Mart will be able to get away with paying workers even less (since UBI makes up the difference), which enriches the stockholders even further and the workers won't have any more leverage than they do today." - Eric P

"Well on number 3, patent reform is a low hanging fruit. One of the first things a tech startup has to do is lawyer up against the trolls. Even though we see a lot of tech startups, we'd probably see a lot more without that. And as to regulation... let's not kid ourselves about how many companies put regulatory moats around their business once they're big enough, and how that affects innovation. Uber somehow busts through them, Tesla is wrangling with them, but other startups like Aereo fell victim to them. There's a ton of industries out there just begging for disruption - I'm looking at you, Comcast - where there's virtually no startup activity because regulatory barriers are so high." - Eric P

"Cubicles don't exactly block noise or ensure privacy. The higher walls do make it harder to collaborate though; there's rarely enough room inside one for someone to sit next to you. When I need to focus to get something done I work at home, where I can eliminate all distractions and create a work environment exactly to my liking. The whole point of going to the office is my co-workers are physically there and I can collaborate with them, and the office environment ought to be conducive to that." - Eric P

"Meh, I still don't really get Twitter. Occasionally I'll keep an eye on it during breaking news events because yeah, the feed is real time. But that's it for me really, and it sort of baffles me that that's the place the world decided that should take place. And it still has huge downsides that I can't get over: 1. The 140 character limit drives me bonkers. I find it nearly impossible to say anything substantive within that limit, let alone have a discussion. 2. If you're a celebrity or mini-celebrity you can pretty much tweet anything and see responses rolling in, and have any conversation you're in the mood for. But the most common experience is to ask a question or say something and get no reply, and no indication anyone even saw it. 3. Even with just a moderately sized follow list (50 or so accounts) it becomes way more noise than signal, and there are no tools for getting at the stuff I'm actually interested in, which means I'm more likely to miss it than not. Why bother? 4. You..." - Eric P

"This issue is a pet peeve of mine, because I see so many problems everywhere: 1. It drives me bonkers that financial institutions don't implement two factor authentication across the board. As it is I'm not sure there's *any* that do. 2. As time goes on more and more security is out of users hands. No matter how good my personal security habits are, it's doesn't matter if hackers can get into a company's database. See: Sony, Target, Home Depot. I'm less afraid of someone compromising my password to get into my Facebook account than I am of a hacker getting into Facebook's servers and downloading millions of accounts worth of data at once, including mine. I *assume* that any tech company has implemented best practices for security, but I can't really know that. 3. Password managers are great, but these really need to be baked in as a low level service, not third party apps. They're a pain in the ass to use on mobile. (Open App, open Password manager app, lookup password, copy username,..." - Eric P

"I think the idea is simply that AI will automate away the vast majority of jobs, and especially so the kind of white collar office jobs that most people go to college in order to get. Universities will still exist because there will always be an interest in education. But they can't charge $200k unless there's some sort of expectation the degree will be worth >$200k." - Eric P

"> Please tell me WHAT "Government Agency" has so impressed you with their fiscal responsibility, lack of corruption and/or incompetence or their transparency that you can be comfortable with the Federal Government having complete control over YOUR Health Care? Well, Medicare, for one..." - Eric P

"If it's really the same sensor then it's the same camera. Everything else is just a nice-to-have (at best) or gimmick (at worst). Will wait and see what they actually announce but my initial thought is I'll be quite comfortable skipping this generation." - Eric P

"The blockchain will be a big technology going forward, but in terms of "epochs" it's more an extension of the internet than an epoch in of itself. What you'll see is new internet apps built on it, in a burst of creativity similar to when public API's and AJAX were new and enabled "Web 2.0". Same for wearables and the "Internet of Things"; it's more an extension of the mobile era than a new one of itself. Personally, what I believe will drive the next "epoch" will be cheap, powerful AI. Not in a singularity-cometh sort of way, but in applications that go light years beyond what current apps offer in terms of understanding context and language, and helping with what we're trying to do." - Eric P

"I have a tough time imagining how governments can really stop people from using it as a currency if they really want to, just as governments haven't been able to stop people from using bittorrent for piracy. You can flat out make it illegal but it's a really hard thing to crack down on. But that said, Bitcoin is more exciting for it's underlying technology (the blockchain) than as a currency. It's a relatively secure, publicly query able database of transactions - there's all sorts of innovations (most of which yet to be imagined) which can be built on top of it. A very simple example is that you can build a document service which would function much like notaries, and probably eliminate the need for the later. As a currency, I don't really see it becoming a currency of choice for most people. But I do see it filling in some valuable niches. It solves the long vexing problem of how to enable micro-transactions. It'll probably replace western union for transferring cash overseas. My..." - Eric P

"Can't you just use the Nook web app? A lot of developers don't support native Windows & Windows phone apps, but in most cases there's a web app that works equally well. And for what it's worth, I think you might see more developer interest once Windows 10 roles out, if MS actually achieves true unity where mobile apps can run as windowed desktop apps. MS has a paltry mobile share, but there's still an awful lot of desktop Windows keyboard and mouse users out there." - Eric P

"What *should* be done is obvious enough. Infrastructure programs, student loan relief, single payer (medicare for all), universal pre-k, universal broadband, net neutrality, cap and trade, and hell I'll even say a wealth tax and basic income (universal social security) program out there. Sure, nothing will get done in the next two years. But democrats could at least talk about this stuff and shout from the rooftops why these are all good ideas. Convince enough people that these ideas are good and who knows, they might even win an election or two and get the chance to actually implement them." - Eric P

"It was a good joke *because* Max had no idea who Alfred was. She knew Robin was Batman's sidekick back in the day, but at that point she didn't have any reason to be familiar with the name of Bruce Wayne's (presumably deceased) butler." - Eric P