Category: thoughts

Silicon Valley is full of not serious people and it’s time to treat them accordingly

I really like this piece by Dave Karpf on how not enough people are making fun of Balaji Srinivasan right now. While he goes on the skewer Srinivasan for a stupid bet/stunt he did recently, he touches on a broader topic:

2023 is shaping up to be a big year for recognizing that the titans of Silicon Valley actually have very little clue how the financial system works. That’s essentially what capsized Silicon Valley Bank: the venture capitalist crowd was long on self-confidence and short on basic-understanding-of-how-things-work.

At some point with characters like Balaji, you have to ask yourself whether he’s putting on a show or whether he really is a fool. There are a lot of guys at the heights of Silicon Valley who put on a similar performance. (*cough* David Sacks *coughcough* Jason Calcanis.) They have money, and they speak with such confidence. For years, they’ve been taken them seriously. This ought to be the year when that presumption of omnicompetence withers away.

I think that quote  of how 2023 is going to be “a big year for recognizing that the titans of Silicon Valley actually have very little clue how the financial system works” really can apply to anything, not just the financial system. As Karpf notes, all these leaders in Silicon Valley “have money, and they speak with such confidence” and people take them seriously.

So when Marc Andreessen bloviates on how AI will save the world and how it’s the best technology EVAH, no one says he’s full of crap. They don’t look at how he went long on crypto when others were getting out, for example, and say “yeah maybe he’s not the best guy to listen to on this stuff”.

And that’s too bad. I think we should mock these people more often. We should mock the vapidity of Bill Gates’s recent commencement speech. We should cheer when companies like Hindenburg Research go after Jack Dorsey and block for what a crappy company it is. We should recognize how fraudulent people like Tony Hsieh or Elizabeth Holmes are. We should recognize that these people do not deserve our attention. And if they get it, they should be scrutinized and at the very least, mocked. I mean Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg are talking about fighting in a cage match.

These are not serious people. We should stop acting like they are.

P.S. The fraudster  Elizabeth Holmes finally went to prison after trying in vain to convince people she should not. Did silicon Valley learn anything from this? Not much, if this story on how recently the company Grail told 400 patients incorrectly that  they may have cancer.

As for Tony Hsieh, you can read here how he used companies like ResultSource to make his book Delivering Happiness into a “best seller” (not to mention giving it away). Just another form of fraud. Here’s a good takedown of Tony Hsieh and the emptiness of the tech mogul.

Finally the New York Times has a rundown of the recent high tech phonies and the trouble they are in.

 

It’s time to retire the “Sunday Routine” (at least the one at the New York Times)

Each weekend in the New York Times, there is a story in the section called Sunday Routine, part of “a weekly series that profiles newsworthy New Yorkers and how they spend their down time”. Sounds good. I even liked this one: How a Couple Who Started a Food Bank Spend Their Sundays. Mostly I hate read them, though. Like pieces that ask people what’s on their bedside table and they list out 20 really hard books they are reading, these Sunday routines seem so performative and superior. It’s rare now, it seems, to see people having “down time”.

So if you are someone who tries to be productive during your Sundays and hates down time, then read this series. Otherwise, give it a pass. Don’t be dumb like me and hate read it.

P.S. Ok, this week’s piece on Alice Feiring is also good. I’ll be glad to rescind this if the Times keeps this up. 🙂

On my recurring pandemic dreams

During the pandemic I had a recurring dream that was unique to me. It’s not unlike the recurring dream people have about showing up to class and realizing there is a test. In my recurring dream I am travelling somewhere and I know this because I am on a boat or at an airport or in the process of transporting from A to B. But I can’t get to B. Something in the dream starts to come undone: the transportation breaks down, or I don’t have my travel documents, or I have to go back. I keep trying to prevent the breakdown, but it continues until I wake up. Or in some dreams, I say to myself: you are having the Failed Travel dream again, it’s not real.

I wonder if others have had a similar dream or their own dream during the pandemic?

I wanted to record this in case I forget that this occurred.

This week in forbidden tweets

Generally I think it is a good idea to keep it positive and light on twitter. I especially try and avoid political tweets. However, I found that hard to do this week. To stop myself, I kept a log of all the things I was going to tweet about but didn’t. The following is the log.

(The good thing about sharing them in a blog is you can moderate who comments on such things. I don’t mind saying such things: I do mind having to fight with randos.  I also don’t like to make people read things that they don’t want to read. Twitter does that to you: blog posts don’t. Here’s the things I was going to tweet but didn’t.)

  1. saying things are a war crime doesn’t amount to much. If it did, Kissinger would be locked away. (Lots of people talking about war crimes, as if somehow this will result in some action. It might, but it’s very unlikely).
  2. just because you feel justifiable sympathy for Ukraine doesn’t mean they aren’t lying to you (I mean, maybe 120,000 Ukrainian kids were taken to Russia, but given how the war is going, do you really think Russia is organized to do this?)
  3. accuracy in a war zone is a rare commodity. (Always remember that.)
  4. there’s no way Marine Le Pen is going to win, but it’s fun and dramatic for journalist to make like she will (I mean what is this, her third or fourth try? Every time people get all excited about her chances, and then she fades away. I don’t know why this time is different and I haven’t seen an explanation)
  5. Tucker Carlson’s whole schtick is to get people riled up by hosting vile people.
  6. Elon Musk has nothing more important to do than troll people. (Seriously. I think SpaceX and Tesla now are run by adults who know what they are doing. Musk is just farting around trying to get people to pay attention to him.)
  7. It is a losing game to take people like Musk or Carlson at their word. (The two of them are terrible humans, although Carlson deserves a lower level of hell then Musk.)
  8. The problem with following right wingers or the side opposite of you is that they tweet a lot of thoughtless garbage to show they are on Team Right (or Team Left) (I tried to follow right wingers to get some perspective, but the perspective I got is most of them aren’t critical thinkers. )
  9. People who are good writers can have some amazingly bad opinions and ideas (ahem, David Mamet. Pathetic.)
  10. People thinking highly of something Pierre Poilievre said about housing while forgetting he is PP (I have no idea what Gerald Butts and Chantal Hebert were pumping him up this week. He’s PP! Skippy! A French version of Stockwell Day! All hat no cattle! Sure, he can win the job for head Conservative, but so what? So he can fight Bernier to see who is more like Trump? If support for the Liberals collapse, and that’s a big if, I can’t see him coming out on top. Maybe he will….Doug Ford did. )
  11. Kieran Moore doesn’t care what you think he should do. Some doctors are bad at their jobs. Likely more than you can imagine (I mean this guy is Doug Ford’s man. What else can I say?)
  12. Writing about cancel culture on university is boring. (And yet so many people on twitter love to write about it)
  13. People complaining about consultants. Oy. (They have no clue what consultants do or why. But consultants make a great straw man).

No, I will not be commenting on this post on Twitter. 🙂

Illuminating bad actors on the Internet

The Internet is full of bad actors, though if you lucky, you can easily avoid it, unless you are a celebrity like  Chris Pratt or some poor organization struck by ransomware.

Some bad actors are hard to avoid due to their celebrity, like MTG or Joe Rogan. Sometimes you run into them accidentally, like I did when this toxic individual had his troll like followers harass me on twitter for a spell: Ricky Vaughn.

Bad actors can sometimes be relative. Whether you think the site OnlyFans website is a bad actor depends on your views of pornography/sex work. They must have felt they were, though, because they tried to shed the many individuals using the site who were pornographers/sex workers. It did not go well. You can read about it here, here  and here. I thought this was shabby of them at best, until I heard that a lot of it had to do with the extremely large payment companies, Visa and Mastercard. This  I found especially worrisome because there seemed to be a general censorship being enforced in the dark. This makes the payment companies bad actors, at least in this way. You can read about that here, here  and here. Not to be left out, Stripe even discriminated against witches. It’s one thing for a service like OnlyFans to discriminate again who uses their services: that’s within their rights. It gets to be a big problem when payment companies do this, in my opinion. We all lose when this happens.

As for other bad actors, there are still people like the Proud Boys out there  with their wink wink nudge nudge racism and fascism. That said, this was not great for them:  Huge hack reveals embarrassing details of who is behind Proud Boys and other far-right websites. Speaking of things going badly for bad actors, there is this story: A Michigan woman tried to hire an assassin online at RentAHitman.com. Now she‚Äôs going to prison.

I generally focus on sharing positive and useful information on the Internet. But occasionally it is useful to shine a light on some of the darker areas of it and illustrate some of what is going on.

On the 20th anniversary of the Harry Potter films

Harry Potter books

So it’s been 20 years since the release of ‘Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone’. It’s weird to think it’s been a big part of my life. Not because I was a huge fan but because of my daughter.

My daughter was into her film going age when it came out. It’s hard to believe now, but in the 90s it was hard to find good kids films to watch. Whenever one came out, we went. Naturally we went to this one, and like many excited families afterwards, we went to them all.

I was grateful for a decade of Harry Potter films. Unlike so many kids films, they were well made and well acted. While the three main stars developed their acting skills over time, from the beginning they were surrounded with the cream of British theatre. Not to mention fine direction, great set design…you name it. The stories may have been aimed at kids, but the films welcomed parents.

I was grateful for the books as well. The Harry Potter books contributed to my daughter’s love of reading. She and I would go to special events at the neighborhood Indigo bookstore late at night, waiting for the volumes to go on sale at midnight. Everyone was dressed up, and the store was full of Potter displays, not to mention live  magicians, and all forms of theatricality. Even the media attended and interviewed my daughter once. As parenting gigs go, it was a good one. Finally we’d get the book and she would read it well into the night. It was delightful.

Besides the films, I was happy that as my daughter grew up, the books and the characters in them grew up as well. Starting off as small books for children, the Harry Potter series evolved into novels for young adults. The books and the films dealt with events and emotions that their readers were also dealing with. To steal from Bruno Bettelheim, it was a good use of enchantment.

I was sad to see J.K. Rowling go from being a beloved author to someone who caused a great deal of pain for many people. Daniel Radcliffe responded to that, and I think what he wrote was good and echoes my thinking.

I am still glad of all the times I had with my daughter going to the films and the book launches. I enjoyed the films, and I even read and enjoyed the books. Mainly I am fond of that time in my life with her. It was a good decade that was full of good memories.

P.S. The image above is from this collectable set of the books, found here: Harry Potter Hogwarts Set from the folks at  Uncrate.

P.S. S. If you asked me which book/film I liked the most, it’s no contest: Harry Potter and the Prison of Azkaban. It was a bold move to choose Alfonso Cuarón to direct it, and he turned in a strong film I thought. Like the book, the film deals metaphorically with chronic illness, mental illness, stigmatism, loneliness, fear, and many more dark ideas. It’s the turning point in the film series, where they go from the light and brightness of Chris Columbus to darker themes and ideas. While I liked to other films and other directors, I liked the films that Cuarón turned in best of all.

On not forgetting George W Bush

I was reading this analysis of a recent speech by George W. Bush (‘The Nation I Know,’ by George W. Bush – by James Fallows – Breaking the News) and it got me thinking about him again.

It’s easy to forget about Bush. Most Republicans act like they have. Many Democrats too. While reviled towards the end of his presidency — so much so that he was shunned by his party at their conventions — there are people who still think positively of him (For example, Michelle Obama Explains Her and George W. Bush’s Candy Exchange and Friendship).

But no one should forget about Bush and all  the terrible things done during his presidency, from torture to war. To see what I mean, read this: The Legacy of America’s Post-9/11 Turn to Torture – The New York Times. While some in America would like to forget all that and think better of him, much of the world likely thinks like this: George W Bush should shut up and go away | US & Canada | Al Jazeera. Even there, the idea is to dismiss him and forget about him.

Perhaps Bush is a genial and charming man. But he will also be the man that brought the United States and the World to a worse place. That should not be forgotten.

(Image above: Official White House photo by Pete Souza – https://www.flickr.com/photos/whitehouse/4291602492/ (direct link))

Is math political? Does it need to be? A few thoughts

You would think so, if you read this: Sneering at Ontario’s anti-racist math curriculum reveals a straight line to what people value in The Star

What has the columnist angry was the removal of several passages of progressive political text that went with the update to the recent changes of the math curriculum. I can see why that removal would anger some people with progressive political values.

I can also imagine how many conservatives would have been angry if there was text like this removed from a new curriculum: “recognize the ways in which mathematics can be used as a tool to uncover, explore, analyse, and promote actions to address greater productivity and growth within our economy and to lead Canada to a strong future of wealth and opportunity”, or if the government removed anything to do with teachers creating “pro-capitalist and pro-business teaching and learning opportunities.” Any group that tries to explicitly frame a curriculum and then have that framing removed will be upset.

Mathematics itself is not political, but it is always taught within a political and historical context. For example, I have math texts that make it seem that the only worthwhile math came from European men, while I have others that show mathematics has roots all over the world. I have math textbooks that mention 0 women, while other texts show the role women have played in mathematics and delve into why women had a hard time making more of a contribution.

Whatever context you want to frame a curriculum, I think that emphasizing politics and history with regards to teaching mathematics will not achieve some of the goals that progressive thinkers hope it will achieve. I think the new changes in the curriculum with regards to things such as streaming will help achieve those goals, as I wrote here.

Additionally, I think there are other things that can be done outside the curriculum that could help students that are disadvantaged when it comes to education in math. I am thinking of the work done by organizations like BlackGirlsCode. We could use more organizations like that who can provide specialized programs not just to help kids who are struggling with math, but to uplift kids that excel in math. Organizations that can support the next Maryam Mirzakhani, wherever she is. The kids who are struggling with math need more help than what the schools can provide: the same is true for kids that excel in math.

(Photo by ThisisEngineering RAEng on Unsplash)

A few thoughts on Marie Kondo

Marie Kondo and her method of cleaning up are very hot now, likely due to her TV show. This hotness sparked a number of discussions about her, such as this: “Tokimeku” Means So Much More Than “Spark Joy” in Japanese | Apartment Therapy. It also sparked other, more extreme discussions, such as how it is racist to not account for the deeper Shinto meaning in her works.

I read her book when it first came out and I admired it. I didn’t agree with all of it, but I liked her approach to life and the things we own. I got the Shinto aspect of the book, but I don’t recall that  it was emphasized, so criticizing people of missing that who are unaware of Shintoism is a ridiculous criticism.

There have been shows like Marie Kondo on before. It makes sense. We are driven in North American culture to accumulate, and shows like hers provide us with an antidote to this. When Marie Kondo is forgotten, another home organizer will come along.

I have read more extreme versions of Marie Kondo, like “Goodbye, Things”, which promotes a very minimal life style. I bought it the way I buy other books that have subjects to aspire to but will never achieve. I guess others have too.

There is something to be said for a minimalist lifestyle, a maximalist life style, and something in between. In the end, what counts is that you have positive feelings towards the place you inhabit, however much you have.

One thing Marie Kondo misses is the notion of a room as a workshop. If you have a hobby, be it cooking or woodworking or gardening or reading, you likely have a room where all your tools and supplies are. If you are good at your hobby, you likely have alot of them. That makes sense. It doesn’t make sense to get rid of them just because you want to have less things. Have what you need to do the job when you want to. You could still trim back: do you really need 10 cutting boards or 3 screwdrivers that are exactly the same? But otherwise keep the tools you need or may need.

I think Marie Kondo is great because she encourages us to live better with some simple guidelines. Even if you don’t follow them all, you will live better if you consider her message and try to apply it. In the end you’ll have a better home, and you will have a better idea of what you consider a better home.

Image from the NYTimes article on her, here.

 

Some thoughts on the 10th Anniversary of the App Store

  1. I remember what a big deal it was that Apple was going to support third party software developers. That was by no means a given: Apple could have restricted the iPhone to only their apps and a handful of third party software vendors. By being much more open, they made the iPhone so much more than it could have been if they had not.
  2. I believe iTunes had a big influence on this. It was a model, in a sense, for what the App Store could be. And as iTunes helped make the iPod a success, so would the App Store help make the iPhone (and the iPod Touch) a success.
  3. One influence iTunes had on the App Store was software pricing. Before the App Store software was either free or pricey. Suddenly the App Store came along and software was the price of a song. The few vendors that wanted to charge more could not compete with those who were fine with the low cost. The App Store changed the way people thought about what they should pay for software.
  4. Another effect the App Store had on software was time to market. With mobile apps, people expected updates regularly and bugs to be fixed right away. Companies that used to ship annually now were shipping weekly or daily. This had a huge effect on how software teams developed software. Everyone had to have a mobile app, and every mobile app had to keep up with the new pace. This effect rippled through companies. Software developers adopted the pace for mobile apps to other software being created and released that frequently as well.
  5. The App Store also improved software quality. If you released bad software, you would hear from users immediately via the ratings. There was no hiding bad apps. As well, if your app sucked, other people would come out with better apps and steal whatever market share you had.  Software development teams were on tighter leashes because of the App Store.
  6. The App Store allowed software developers to make money in ways they could not before. You had a direct channel to consumers of software via the App Store. And lots of developers made a good amount of money as a result.
  7. Apps  became part of our culture. Games like Angry Birds found an audience because of the App Store.
  8. We downloaded so many apps we lost track of them. And some of them turned out not to be good for us. Speaking of that, if you want to do a bit of spring cleaning on your apps and make sure that the ones remain are good, I recommend you read this: On the 10th anniversary of the App store, it’s time to delete most of your apps (Popular Science)

On finding comfort in times of discomfort

There are times of discomfort when you expect that you should experience constant distress and misery. In such times you will find there will arise moments where you can actually find ease and comfort in spite of your situation. In such difficult times you will find places where you gain rest and solace and a break from the things that assail you. They may seem illusory but they are not. They may not last long but they are not false.

In times of discomfort, savour such moments of comfort. Use them to gain perspective. Use them to gain some rest. Use them to relax and to recover.

Such times will not last, but they last long enough. Take time to appreciate what you have in such moments. Such moments will carry you through the darkness.

How many lives do you have to live

Stage

It’s a cliche: you only have one life to live. But it’s not really true. We experience many lives in our lifetime. Maybe it’s closer to 11, like this great post illustrates: You Only Live 11 Times, SMBC | Jesse Rogerson. Or maybe it is closer to some other number. Certainly we all go through major stages in our lives, and as we leave a stage, it can seem like we leave one life behind for another one. We are like performers, going from one theatre to another, retaining some parts of our act while discarding others.

Enjoy the life (or stage of life) you are in right now. Savour the best parts of it. Never assume they will last long, for they won’t. (Parents, in particular know this.) Likewise, for the more challenging aspects of your life right now: they won’t last for long, either. (It just seems that way). Accept and deal with them the best way you can, and know they will also recede and end.

On ward!

If you like Teju Cole, you can find some of his things here

Two pieces by Teju Cole related to Trump.

This first one he wrote about Trump was a Facebook post, captured here. It struck me at the time, for he seemed to want to pivot from Trump’s bigotry to attack something else. The attack against something else was understandable to me: the downplaying of Trump was not.

Now he has a new piece out, making parallels between Trump and Ionesco’s “Rhinoceros”, here.

If you like Cole, you might like them.

I used to follow Cole on twitter, and much of what he wrote was interesting and thought provoking.

I do not care for these pieces. Downplaying Trump was a terrible idea in the first case. In the second case, I do not believe that Trump is going to lead to widespread fascism, though many bad leaders and followers are going to stampede out from the worst places and take center stage for awhile. Unlike Ionesco, I don’t believe everyone will turn into a rhinoceros: a small minority crashing about is enough to make it feel like everyone has transformed. They will be taken down, in due time or well past due time, but never made extinct.

A better symbol than rhinos may be snakes or reptiles. The political climate is such that these cold blooded animals feel they can come out and cause havoc. It seems like others are transforming into them, but there are just more of them and less warm blooded creatures in our midst in this time of transformation. When the climate changes, they will retreat. Until then, we have to wrangle with them as they appear.

Some loose thoughts on the magic of Christmas

When you are very young, Christmas is a magical time. We all know that. But
it is magical when you have children, too, for .then you are the magician.
I realized that the hard age for Christmas is in your 20s. The magic
bypasses you then. No wonder people of that age cut up Christmas. The magic
they once held is lost.

Christmas is magic not because the day itself is magical, but because we
invest the magic that we have within us on that day. It would be better if
we brought forward that magic every day, but one day is better than no
days. We have such, well, .. Magic!..within us. We need to be reminded to
let it out.

(Originally posted on posterous, December 24 2011, 9:24 PM)

Some thoughts on memory and winter

There are bad associations with winter. We talk of the dead of winter. Or the bleak midwinter. Plants and trees are barren. Animals hibernate, deathlike. Cold itself, winter’s prime attribute, we associate with the dead. As is the additional darkness that winter throws over us.

Yet these should not be the only associations we come to know of winter. For it is a time of joy and birth and beauty. And though light and heat are scarce, where they are concentrated, they are a treasure.

If spring is a season of rebirth and hope, summer a time of happiness and luxury, while autumn is a time of transition and abundance, then winter is a season of reflection and memory. Winter is a season of the mind. In winter we can look to the trees bare and the frozen earth and recall and imagine the fullness of leaves and grasses and flowers that will arrive in the months to come. Though they are not there yet, we can imagine them still. And in these acts of imagining, we can imagine further as we pass through the snow falling the times past and the times still to come. We can do this in other seasons too, but winter concentrates the mind.

(Originally posted on Posterous, January 18 2011, 10:25 PM)

Against gratitude and being grateful. Some thoughts from Barbara Ehrenreich and me

This piece, The Selfish Side of Gratitude – The New York Times, is a scathing attack on gratitude by Ehrenreich. She makes some good points, but overall the writing is so dismissive, from the references to yoga mats to the numerous quotation marks around so many things, that I didn’t find it persuasive. No doubt some abuse the notion of being grateful, but I think there is more too it than a form of evasion. Read it and see if you agree.

My criticism of gratitude is smaller. My problem with the notion is that it isn’t as useful for me. I think there are better words for expressing how I feel, like glad or appreciative. Gratitude in the context of other people is subservient. I do not look down on the people who provide me a service, nor do I think they should think themselves somehow superior. Likewise if I do something for you, I don’t expect you to be grateful: if you are appreciative, that’s enough. And gratitude for certain aspects of nature or the universe make no sense if you are not religious.

There are people who I am grateful towards. Most of the time I can use other words to describe my feelings toward them and what they do. Grateful and gratitude are two words that should be used less often.

It’s not A.I. or robots that are taking away jobs. It’s you.

A year or so ago, a parking lot I use had a human in a booth to take tickets and provide other  services. That human booth was replaced by the thing in the photo above.

It’s not a robot and it’s not A.I., but it is replacing humans.

Stories about A.I. or robots taking over work makes them interesting. It’s also secondary to the real story. What is really taking people’s jobs is a willingness of others to use technology, and a willingness of companies to replace people with technology. People are not afraid to use technology. If anything, sometimes they prefer to deal with technology. This makes it easier for companies to go with technology as compared to using people, and if companies can save money or make money, so much the better.

It is happening in all sorts of industries, from food to sportswriting. The technology isn’t the driver of this: it’s the willingness of people to prefer technology that is the driver.

Thinking critically about robots. (Hint: think vending machines)

The following is anuncritical and hyped-up analysis of robots, from Wired (On Cyber Monday, Friendly Robots Are Helping Smaller Stores Chase Amazon). A key quote from it is this (highlighting by me):

… (Amazon) is relying on more than 100,000 temp workers this holiday season to supplement its already massive warehouse workforce, the advantages of offloading more of that work onto machines are easy to see. Robots don’t slow. They don’t tire. They don’t get injured or distracted or sick. They don’t require paychecks or try to unionize.

Now check out this robot:

Once you get over the word “robot”, you can see it resembles alot of the other machines you see in workplaces. Machines like high speed printers, scanners and even vending machines.  All of those things don’t slow, don’t tire and don’t unionize. They don’t get sick, but they break down alot, which is just the same. They don’t require a paycheck, but they do cost the organizations that use them. Sometimes they perform their function so poorly that people bypass them altogether.  As well, robots need others to take care of them. An army of robots just doesn’t show up: there is an entire process of testing, deploying, fixing and replacing them that is costly and non-trivial. There is a process for deploying human resources, too, but to say that that is costly and the process of deploying robot resources is not costly is wrong.

Robots will take over some functionality in workplaces, be that function blue collar or white collar. But that is no different from alot of other machinery already in place. The difference with robots will be that they are mobile. That’s it. We should get over the notion of robot as some magical creature and just accept them as another machine.

This article about body cameras is asking the wrong questions, which is not surprising, since everyone is.

This article,  Will Body Cameras Work? – The Atlantic, is asking the wrong questions. The wrong questions are occurring because the initial answer to the question of “how do we deal with bad policing?” was often, “body cameras”. The better question to repeatedly ask: “how can we make police more accountable?” because if “body cameras” is the first answer to that question, the next question should be concerning the information captured by those body camera. How are police accountable for that? Which should then lead to another question: how are police accountable for information they capture generally? Because with new technology, police will soon be able to capture alot more information about you than just images. It will soon be possible for police to look at you or your vehicle and have that information feed back to centralized computer systems, essentially collecting information about you without you even knowing it. How will police be accountable for that?

Police accountability will come, likely through the courts. In the meantime, we will likely struggle with the fallout of police forces capturing more information.

Is Mark Zuckerberg’s $45 Billion Facebook donation good or not? Best to consider the alternative

In analysing the donation, Forbes (in The Surprising Math In Mark Zuckerberg’s $45 Billion Facebook Donation) sums it up like this:

Mr. Zuckerberg’s pledge is incredibly generous. But it is also likely to involve some very savvy tax planning.

It’s true, the donation is incredibly generous. You can use all the superlatives you want, and it still amounts to something out of the ordinary. Is the donation financial savvy? Of course, but why shouldn’t it be? Either way, will it be spent well? Possibly, possibly not. For that, we will have to wait and see.

As I read people arguing against the donation, I thought about what the alternatives could be. One alternative is no donation at all. Plenty of very rich people donate only a small fraction of their money to good causes. Young billionaires aspiring to be large benefactors is something that should be encouraged, not discouraged. Another alternative is donations to political causes I disagree with. Quite a few billionaires do that. I prefer to see the billions directed otherwise.

As for people arguing for the donation, I wondered if they considered the alternative of the donation going to taxes or charities. Perhaps Zuckerberg will be very good with directing the money, better than the state or NGOs. I’d like to see a good portion go to them, though. Too little of the wealth of the 1% (or .01%) go to paying taxes that pay for a lot of things like social services and health care and the military and infrastructure. More money to pay for those things would be better. Likewise, well run charities are already up and running and could spend the money in efficient ways that a new organization cannot.

This donation is a positive thing, but you should still be able to think critically of it. Mark Zuckerberg is a smart guy and he’s maturing. Let’s hope he uses his good fortune to do good in the world.

 

It’s not that Brooklyn is getting more expensive: it’s that Manhattan is expanding. Why?

Home prices in some of the city’s neighborhoods have not just climbed over the last decade, they’ve blasted off, landed on Mars and found water.

Why? Well, look at where the growth is, and then look at this map of the NYC Subway:

More than other factors, the price of real estate seems  is tied to how easy it is to get back and forth from Manhattan.

That said, I’d be interested to know the story behind the areas of Manhattan that are stagnating.

NYC is never boring.

Source: New York Home Prices | New York Real Estate Price History

On starting to take my personal life offline

I am supportive of people sharing things, both good and bad, on social media. Some people think sharing only positive things is best, but I think sharing bad things has benefits. When you share bad things you allow people to express empathy which can be good for them and you. Sharing negative experiences can also help people feel that they are not the only ones feeling that way. In either case, a small dose of negativity can lead to a larger response of positivity.

Lately, however, I have had so many bad things, big and small, happen to me that I no longer feel it is a net benefit to share them. I even wrote them down tonight and thought: yeah that is a lot of bad things at once. I think that sharing them all the time will just have a negative effect on other people. It will bring them down more than help them. It will also affect me as well, as people move away from me for various reasons, either because they don’t know how to respond or they don’t want to deal with it.(something I have experienced this year.)

As a result, I started logging much of the difficulties I have been having in Day One, which is a great app. Writing things there helps me vent and review it later without having it social. As I found, after I vented, I was able to gain some perspective and think better about the situation, which helped. Sharing things can be useful, but in some cases not sharing can be more beneficial.

If you share a lot of your life, I recommend this approach for people in a similar situation. I recommend the Day One app too.  It is great. 

Facebook Publishes New York Times, BuzzFeed with “Instant Articles”. Let’s note this.

According to Re/code, the New York Times, BuzzFeed and others have received really good terms with Facebook regarding the publishing of “Instant Articles”. For instance:

Facebook’s “Instant Articles” are designed to load, um, instantly on Facebook’s iOS app — which is the heart of Facebook’s pitch.

Facebook lets publishers use their own publishing tools, and then converts stories automatically into a format that works on Facebook’s app. There are also some cool bells and whistles, like a photo and video-panning feature Facebook imported from its all-but-forgotten Paper app. Here’s a demo video:

Facebook will let publishers keep 100 percent of the revenue they sell for “Instant Articles”; if they have unsold inventory Facebook will sell it for them via its own ad network and give publishers 70 percent of that revenue.

Facebook will give “Instant Article” publishers access to performance data on their stuff, provided by Google Analytics and Adobe’s Ominiture.

ComScore, the Web’s most important measurement company, will give “Instant Article” publishers full credit for any traffic those stories generate on Facebook’s app.

Publishers can control much of the look and feel of how Facebook presents their stories; the item BuzzFeed publishes tomorrow won’t be mistaken for National Geographic’s.

Facebook says it won’t alter its algorithm to favor “Instant Articles” over any other kind of content. But given their novelty, and the fact they’re designed to be eye-catching, it seems very likely that these things will get lots of attention at the start.

Very generous. Enticing, even.

I am keen to revisit this in a year from now, to see if Facebook has revised these terms. If Facebook treats these terms like they treat your privacy, in a year or so I expect the revised terms will not be as generous. And if some companies are not careful, they will find they let their own IT teams dwindle and they will have no choice but to stick with Facebook.

Should you go to (film) school? Some brief thoughts on education

If you read this Open Culture post, Director Robert Rodriguez Teaches The Basics of Filmmaking in Under 10 Minutes, you’d be inclined to say “no”. As for me, I appreciate the points raised in the piece. Much of directed learning in school is less than valuable. That said, there are many ways to learn: experience, reading and watching how others do things, schools and teachers. The idea of limiting yourself to one way of learning is to deprive yourself unnecessarily. Learn any which way you can.

The myth of adult independence

When you are a child, you believe that adults are independent. That they can handle themselves. That they can deal with things. Manage things.

As you get to be an adult, you see this is mostly true. Mostly. Then there are those moments when you see adults in anguish. Adults struggling against forces they can’t handle. Can’t manage. Internal forces and external ones. Smart adults will seek out others to aide them. People they can depend on, no matter how much they prefer to be independent. Other adults, the not so smart ones, suffer in isolation and separation from others who might help them.

The other myth of adult independence is when as an adult you think you can provide all your own needs. That you don’t need much of anything from anyone. That you are self-sufficient. That what you have is enough, because to ask for more means depending on others.

The reality is that we are dependent on others, and there are things we can’t deal with on our own. If anything, being able to depend on many people makes us more independent, not less. For it is a myth that we are independent, when all through our day we depend on a countless number of people to provide us food and shelter and work and protection and human companionship.

The more we see the dependencies we have on each other, the better we can mutually change it for the better. By doing so, we increase our independence, not decrease it.

Just trying to work out sone ideas in my mind. Thanks for reading this.