Houses aren’t homes: they’re capital

And in the richest cities, like London, they are greatly appreciating capital, as this shows:
Media preview

With some reflection, this makes sense, if you take as a given that:

  •   Stocks and bonds and even wages are fairly stagnant in terms of return on investment
  • Urbanization means homes in cities that are desirable to live in are becoming more scarce

The result is homes becoming one of the forms of capital that can has the means to greatly appreciate in value.

To reverse this will require a greater supply of homes on the market, either through greater density in desirable cities or through more cities becoming desirable to live in. I can see both of these occurring. What I don’t see occurring is other forms of capital becoming more capable of great growth.

It will be interesting to see what happens in 10 years. But right now, bet on homes in key cities to continue to do this.

 

A good list of resources on passwords and PC security in general

I collected a list of all the links I had concerning passwords and PC security and general on this blog. It’s not exhaustive, but it is useful, especially if your knowledge on the topic is limited.

Are you in terrible shape? Not so terrible but bad enough shape? Do you need help? Here you go

Like most people — for instance, me — , you may need to get in better shape. In doing some research on it, I came across the following links that I found interesting, inspiring, and useful. I hope you do too:

Why metadata matters, and what it says about you.

You may hear people talk about metadata. Essentially it is the data wrapped around data. Look at it this way: if you use your cell phone to take a photo, the image itself is the data. Your cell phone also has other data about the photo, such as where it was taken, when, what device took it, among other information and it is that data that is the metadata.

Why metadata is important is strikingly illustrated in this effort:  Pathways Project. Pathways….
In the about section

…is a creative data project showing a month’s worth of geolocation data and message metadata collected from the mobile phones of Londoners. The aim of Pathways is to show what digital data looks like in the context of common relationships. Each of us is intimately and invisibly connected to the data we create, and as the number of internet-enabled devices increases, so does the amount of data generated. This is the reality within which Pathways is situated.

All participants willingly volunteered their data; data was retained solely for the duration of the project. Participants were found through a combination of in-person recruitment and email open calls.

Pathways was created by data researcher and artist Mimi Onuoha as part of the 2014-15 Fulbright-National Geographic Digital Storytelling Fellowship. To learn more about the development process and the themes that inspired the project, see the project posts on National Geographic’s blog. To learn more about Mimi and her work, visit her personal website or follow her on Twitter.

You really should visit the Pathways Project to see how your life is measurable via metadata.

Some thoughts I had after viewing it:

  • Your metadata represents you, like an outline, or your shadow. It is not every detail about you, just like a certain outline or certain clothing doesn’t describe all of you. But it does describe alot about you.
  • Your destinations have purposes, and from these destinations, people can tell something about you. Few of us wander about randomly.
  • You can be tracked indirectly from others you interact with.
  • Your life is based on commitments, and those commitments can be determined from your metadata.
  • The best way to avoid tracking and inferences is to be unpredictable and uncommitted. Unpredictability increases entropy. It makes it harder to codify you.

A very cool Ikea Billy Bookshelves Hack

Over at themakerista.com is a very cool hack of 3 Billy bookcases that result in something with a built in look. Here’s the work in progress:
And here’s the final product:

You may not try something as challenging, but if you are interested in spiffing up your tired old bookcases, check this out this: The Makerista: Laura’s Living Room: Ikea Billy Bookshelves Hack

With the new announcements, Apple reinforces their affordable line of products


Apple took a turn towards something I was hoping they would do: (relative) affordability. You can see it in this piece from  Business Insider:

Apple introduced an iPhone with a smaller screen on Monday called the iPhone SE. The best way to think about it is as Apple’s current top-of-the-line iPhone specs in a smaller body. It costs $399 without a contract — a surprisingly low price for a new iPhone. …the older iPad Air 2 got a price cut to $399…. While the Apple Watch didn’t get a hardware update, Apple did unveil new nylon bands and cut its starting price from $350 to $299.

I was wondering if Apple was going to try and offer some affordable products or reposition itself as a luxury brand. I am glad to see they went with affordable. There are now lots of products from Apple at a wide range of price points, starting with the iPod (at $59). I have always been a fan of the lower priced iPods, and I am glad to see Apple still offers them. Likewise, the iPad Mini 2 is an excellent tablet and the iMac mini is an excellent computer. Relative to the market, they are priced competitively and yet superior technology. Now the new Watch and the new SE phone join them.

For people who want to spend lots of money, Apple has a product for them. By offering the lower end products, they both force their competitors to offer better products as well as allow more people to have access to their excellent technology.

P.S. I realize for some people, even these relatively low prices are not affordable. In the context of this post, affordable is in context to the rest of the marketplace an Apple product competes within.

Is it worthwhile buying a slow cooker?


Short answer: it depends. According to this, Is it worthwhile buying a slow cooker?, slow cooked food tastes better and looks better, though the food in a slow cooker ends up being more moist. Go with an oven if you can  attend to it. Go with a slow cooker if you want to have a minimal cooking process going all day that doesn’t require you to do much more than to load up the cooker and go. An additional consideration: a slow cooker uses very little power. Go with a slow cooker if you want to minimize energy use.

Read the article and see what you think. And if you like the idea of slow cooker recipes but slow cookers aren’t for you, read it and get some ideas on how to use your oven to slow cook instead.

(Image via Wikimedia)

The problem with AI, Bots and social networks

Bots combined with AI and social networks are going to become an increasing problem. I thought of this when reading about the relatively recent Ashley Madison fiasco. Even if you wouldn’t be caught dead using such a service, this applies to you in other ways.

One of the fascinating aspects of Ashley Madison was just how many bots were employed by the company, at least according to this article: Ashley Madison Code Shows More Women, and More Bots. 

How many? Alot! From the article:

After searching through the Ashley Madison database and private email last week, I reported that there might be roughly 12,000 real women active on Ashley Madison. Now, after looking at the company’s source code, it’s clear that I arrived at that low number based in part on a misunderstanding of the evidence. Equally clear is new evidence that Ashley Madison created more than 70,000 female bots to send male users millions of fake messages, hoping to create the illusion of a vast playland of available women.

Here’s some examples:

This matters to you because chances are you will be interacting more and more with bots. Bots are cheap, and companies and organizations are going to go with them to meet their needs and yours.  Maybe the bots will be harmless, like customer service reps that are actually just software programs. However it is also possible, just like it was at Ashley Madison, that these bots will be customized to con you into thinking you are dealing with a real person so that you will give them more money in some form or another. Bots may be obvious now, but as AI improves, so will the ability of bots to fool you. It’s not inconceivable that we will spend more and more time interacting with software that we think is human. It is something we need to think about and talk to fellow humans — and not AI driven bots — about how it will affect us and if it is negative, what we are going to do about it.

Robots in the real world may not realistically resemble humans for a very long time. Online bots that realistically resemble humans will get there much sooner.  We need to quickly anticipate what positive and negative effects that will have and prepare for that.

Twitter: a former bar you used to love and now visit nostalgically

I’ve likely said enough about twitter. So much so, that there doesn’t seem much else to say. I wanted to highlight this comic, though (the long, slow death of Twitter | Technology | The Guardian) because it wonderfully sums up the arc of Twitter over the years. It matches my thoughts and feelings about the platform very well.

I still come to Twitter, the way you go to a bar you used to love. There’s not as many friends there as there was before, but there are still some. It becomes as much a visit to experience nostalgia as anything else. But then the shouters and the fighters show up and you remember why you lost your interest in it.

A better way to follow the US presidential race…

..is to follow this, from Bloomberg:  Who’s Winning the Presidential Delegate Count?

You can still read the news and follow along, state by state, but what really matters more and more is the delegate count.

One thing that surprised me: right now, Ted Cruz is alot closer to Donald Trump than I imagined. Obviously there is a way to go still, but he is doing well. Will Cruz win? I think the odds are against him, but right now they are not insurmountable.

As for the other side, I believe Hillary Clinton is going to win, regardless of the Michigan surprise showing of Bernie Sanders. Sanders is performing better than many imagined, but she has a big lead in delegates and that will only get larger as we go along.

How to Create Tarball & Compress to GZip Under Windows (.tar.gz) and why you should

If you are not familiar with Unix, then you might wonder why you would want to create tarballs and then gzip them. Recently I had a directory that was over 12 GB in size and I wanted to zip it up and send it to someone. By creating a tarball from it and then gzipping it, I was able to shrink it down to under 5 GB. That made it alot easier to send to the person.

Another reason to do this is you want to send a file from Windows to Unix. By compressing the file this way, you can be sure that the Unix user can uncompress it in a straightforward way.

For more on this, see:  How to Create Tarball & Compress to GZip Under Windows (.tar.gz) | Gettin’ Geek

Why Python programs often have this: `if __name__ == “__main__”:`

If you were wondering why Python programs often have this: `if __name__ == “__main__”:` and then a call to a function, a good explanation is here.

In short, if your program is used as input to other programs, then you want to have that snippet of code in them. If your programs are standalone, you can get by without it.

It’s Hump Day. You’ve got that “Fail” feeling. Watch this.

It’s 2 and a half minutes. What? You don’t have time? You have time to get a coffee. You have time to check your phone. You have time to read your inbox again. So you have time to watch this. Don’t play basketball? It doesn’t matter. Check it out.

Work harder. Think harder. Try harder. Fail harder. Be better.

Source: Fail Harder | Basketball Motivation – YouTube

More on the decline of Twitter from a variety of sources

From the New Yorker and Business Insider. A rebuttal here, on Medium, and also Slate.

My take is a simple one: most people are interacting less on Twitter. This likely leads to people contributing less on Twitter, which leads to a downwards spiral. I see this on other social media as well.

The one exception to those interacting less are active self promoters. Self promoters, whether doing it personally or professionally, are still interacting regularly with social media such as Twitter. After all, it’s free and it’s better than doing nothing.

Overall, though, I expect there to be a decline in use of all kinds of social media, until someone can invent a social media that is more effective than what we have today. That may be a few years off.

The timeline of the World Wide Web

If you are going to talk about the Web or the Internet, it pays to know the history of it. The people at Pew put together the key dates and events of the World Wide Web here: Web History Timeline | Pew Research Center. Of course the history of the Internet is even older.

A very useful thing to consult whenever you read some think piece on “The Internet used to be X or Y”.

What companies mean when they say money is offshore

When you hear of companies like Apple having their money offshore, you might imagine piles of gold bullion or paper bills sitting in a physical bank somewhere in Switzerland or Ireland. More likely that money is residing in one of the big banks head-quartered somewhere in the United States. (For that matter, it is likely residing as so many numbers in a computer run by one of these banks and not piles of paper or gold.)

The Times and Slate explain it here: For U.S. Companies, Money ‘Offshore’ Means Manhattan – The New York Times and Offshore accounts not actually offshore.

Finally! The cappuccino scandal revealed by  The New York Times. (I am not joking)


For some time, I have been complaining that cappuccinos have evolved into something I call “latte-ccinos”, which is a drink that is somewhere between a latte and a cappuccino. Good to see that the New York Times has a piece on it highlighting the sad state of North American coffee and in particular the sham cappuccinos now commonly served.

But what is a true cappuccino? As the Times points out, there is a debate about what it is:

There was a time when cappuccino was easy to identify. It was a shot of espresso with steamed milk and a meringue-like milk foam on top. … “In the U.S., cappuccino are small, medium and large, and that actually doesn’t exist,” the food and coffee writer Oliver Strand said. “Cappuccino is basically a four-ounce drink.” … Others cling to old-school notions of what makes a cappuccino, with the layering of ingredients as the main thing. “The goal is to serve three distinct layers: caffè, hot milk and frothy (not dense) foam,” the chef and writer Mario Batali wrote in an email. “But to drink it Italian style, it will be stirred so that the three stratum come together as one.”

I agree with Strand: a cappuccino should be a small drink and the espresso, milk and foam proportional.. If you want a bigger drink, get a latte. And if you want a true cappuccino, find a good Italian establishment — in Toronto, Grano’s makes a superb one — and get your fix there.

For more on this, see: Is That Cappuccino You’re Drinking Really a Cappuccino? – The New York Times. The photo above is a link to that article.

Your Late-Night Emails Are Hurting Your Team

Put away that email you are about to send out and read this: Your Late-Night Emails Are Hurting Your Team. The same is true for the Sunday evening emails. Stop sending them.

Once you do that, look at how many emails you send out and try and find ways to reduce that, either with meetings, quick chats, or other media (e.g., internal blogs, status updates).

The result will be a better informed and a more motivated team.

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.

Some links to support your new year’s resolutions

If you’ve decided to become more fit, work better, or be better generally, then consider these resources to support you as advance towards achieving your goals:

Good luck!

If you’re having a rough start to the new year, here’s how to fit your work into 16.7 hours

It does sound too good to be true, and no, I haven’t tried it, but if you want to change your work routine, consider the pomodoro technique.

If you are still interested, there is an article on it: The Simple Technique To Fit A 40-Hour Workweek Into 16.7 Hours. I find it hard to believe, but for some of you, it may just be the thing you need to improve your work life.

The Uber juggernaut comes to a halt in parts of Europe

This is the first I’ve heard of a major failure for Uber:  Uber’s No-Holds-Barred Expansion Strategy Fizzles in Germany from  The New York Times. The focus is the city of Frankfurt, but in other cities in Germany and cities elsewhere throughout Europe, Uber seems to be getting serious push back. It seems tactics that have worked well in North American cities (and likely elsewhere) are backfiring in the cities mentioned. Whether you love Uber or hate it, this NYT story is worth reading.

At Theranos, things are coming undone

And the journalists at Wall Street Journal have been leading on this story for some time now. Their latest piece, which is a good summary of what has been happening recently with the blood testing company is here:  At Theranos, Many Strategies and Snags – WSJ.

Everything I see leads me to believe this will be a debacle. It’s hard to tell, since Theranos consistently defends themselves against the many charges against them. Perhaps they will come out successful in the end. I think we’ll find out soon enough.

Trying to get started running? Here’s four links that can help

If you want to get started running, first see your doctor and make sure you can without any risk to your health. Assuming you are cleared, then check out these worthwhile links and get ready to hit the road:

  1. How to Go From Sedentary to Running in Five Steps : zen habits
  2. Start Running Now: Our Get-Going Guide – Beginners – Runner’s World
  3. Overweight? That’s ok, you too can start running! | RunAddicts
  4. How I Got Over the Jogging Beginner’s Hump

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.

Dietary food guides are just that: guides. A good reminder of that, here.

And as you can see from this: Italy’s dietary guidelines actually say pasta and cookies are food groups in Vox. Depending on where they originate, food guidelines are often very different. There is some overlap (which isn’t surprising), but there are just as many differences.

If you are confused as to what you should choose, try going with Sweden’s (below): it seems the most sensible.

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.

Why Bankers Want Rate Hikes

It looks like the Fed in the US is going to raise rates. It is highly arguable whether it is a good idea. For a long time, it was a bad idea. Despite that, commercial banks recently have been arguing for the Fed to raise rates.  Now whatever reasons they have been given, the true and underlying reason is mentioned here:  Why Bankers Want Rate Hikes – The New York Times.

It is more difficult for banks to make money with lower rates. Higher rates make it easier for them to make money. Hence the push by some of them to raise the rates.

Banks aren’t stupid: they don’t want the economy to tank: they don’t make money that way either. But the sooner rates rise, the easier it is for them. Here’s hoping the US Fed continues to be smart enough to resist the pressure and do the right thing for the American economy.

 

There is one key thing to know about Uber. This is it.

Uber is a global logistics company based on sophisticated computer technology. It takes a modern software approach to delivering services. That’s the key thing to know about Uber.

Uber is not:

  • an app. The app is just your entry into the services that Uber provides. Behind that is the sophisticated computer technology that really makes it work.
  • a taxi service. Uber is a logistics company. “Logistics is the management of the flow of things between the point of origin and the point of consumption in order to meet requirements of customers or corporations” (Wikipedia). That’s what Uber is. If there is something that needs to get from A to B, Uber will do that. It could be people, it could be food,  or it could be goods. Regardless, Uber is capable of doing that. If that is what your business does too, you will be competing with Uber.
  • local. Uber is not interested in just your city. Uber will disrupt your city, but it is not focused just on where you live. It is a global company looking to provide services globally, one city and territory at a time.

Finally, Uber is delivering logistic services, but it is delivering them the way other companies deliver software. That means it is going to take VC money and rapidly deploy service after service, upgrade after upgrade, to do what it needs to do to be successful. It doesn’t need to be profitable. It does need market share. If market share comes at the expense of your logistic services, so be it.

Lots of people talk about Uber. If they are not thinking this way, they are missing the bigger picture.

On the future of Apple and the case for an Apple car

Well-respected Apple analyst Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray gave a presentation on the company’s future at Business Insider’s Ignition conference and it’s really good. The entire presentation is here and worthwhile: Future of Apple presentation by analyst Gene Munster at Business Insider Ignition – Business Insider.

Earlier I wrote about how I don’t think Apple will get into the car business. However, after reading what Munster said, I can see how others think Apple will get into cars. Specifically, here’s are the pro-car points he makes:

  • Apple could align with and compete in the BMW market: BMW sold 1.8M cars in CY14.
  • If Apple priced them at $75K, 1.8M cars is $135B in revenue
  • Apple could start small: sell 30K in first year (similar to Tesla’s 35K in CY14)
  • In a market of 88M cars in CY15, 1.8M cars is nothing

The approach laid out in those points is a similar game plan that Apple followed in the smart phone market.

The more I thought about it, the more I am leaning towards Apple getting into the car business, at least in a limited way. The bulk of the market would not be Apple and there likely would still be lots of car manufacturers after Apple jumps in, just like there are many smartphone makers. But Apple would take over the most profitable part of the car manufacturing marketplace.

Read the analyst report: you will get great insight into where Apple is heading.

What do you do if you suffer insomnia? If you are Michael Massaia, you make something beautiful

Michael Massaia spends his sleepless hours haunting NYC and Central Park, taking incredible photos. This is just a sliver and doesn’t do his photos justice:

If you can’t sleep and want to see what one person can do in the sleepless hours, see,  Haunting images of New York City’s Central Park from Michael Massaia. His photos are great.

MyDomaine will make you appreciate IKEA in a new way

The folks at MyDomaine.com have a number of great articles of how to use IKEA furniture in a chic way. Here are four of them:

Well worth a look if you are on a budget and need to furnish your place. For example, I really like how they used IKEA bookcases to make this:

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.