If you read the comments before you listen to the podcast, dont watch the video first like I did, because Jack starts the podcast by playing the audio of the video.

She is pretty amazing though.

Some random future stuff:

Internet & Phone went out the other day. Went to support website for my provider and had option of ‘phone’ or ‘text’ support. Chose text. Support asked my what the problem was, said it was sorry for the inconvenience, tested the line and let me know that there was in fact a problem, scheduled a technician visit. That catch? It was a chat bot. No human involved.

Indian tech support can’t compete on $ with a chat bot. And you can train one by simply recording tech support calls for a couple of months and then running a deep learning algo on the data, here’s a free class if you want to learn how to do it:
https://www.udacity.com/course/deep-learning–ud730

*****

On the uber pricing change based on demand. For those not familiar with it, this is the exact OPPOSITE of the way Taxi fares work, which are legislated and determined by the city the taxis operate in. As they’re legislated, something like demand pricing is impossible.

Jack,

ONe thing I learned is if you have VA insurance, you may very well be qualified to avoid Obamacare taxation. I got a form from the Veterans Administration about it just last month.

Hey John, Funny you should mention flying cars. Here is a link to a human drone that was at CES this year.

http://money.cnn.com/2016/01/06/technology/ces-2016-ehang-drone/

Interesting show. I enjoy hearing from John.

One point I have on the insurance thing. I totally understand that costs are high, but I think that Jack, your costs in TX are unusually high. I have a sibling with two kids who lives in TX, and the best they could get was something like a $15k deductible plan that costs $1k/mo, and that was through her husband’s work. That’s f-ing ridiculous. I’m in MI, and me and my wife had independent insurance that was $400/mo total with a $3000 deductible, with a lot of other stuff covered at 50% and 100% after the deductible, or so. This blows, obviously, but it’s substantially better than what’s going on in TX. I think that whatever is going on in the TX insurance market is really weird compared to other places

Though, I admit I’ve never investigated insurance in any places other than MI and TX… Anyone else have some numbers on that?

An article just came out today in the BBC website. It is the first mainstream media article that I have seen that points out the positives for a controlled widespread deflation. http://www.bbc.com/news/business-28009477 The article is titled : Is Deflation Such A Bad Thing? Near the end of the article it says “And there is an alternative view that moderate deflation is no bad thing, especially if it is the result of innovation that reduces production.

Prof John Cochrane of Chicago University has another reason for suggesting that falling prices can be benign.

He wrote in his blog: “Zero inflation, or even a slow, steady, and widely expected deflation, are in fact much better in the long run. The financial system is much healthier with bundles of cash lying around, at no interest cost, than if everyone is engineering clever, but ultimately fragile, cash management schemes.”

Mending Wall
BY ROBERT FROST

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbour know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
“Stay where you are until our backs are turned!”
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, “Good fences make good neighbours.”
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
“Why do they make good neighbours? Isn’t it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.” I could say “Elves” to him,
But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, “Good fences make good neighbours.”

The wall, the physical boundary, represents the property rights, the legal boundary, of the owners. In the poem the wall needs to be re-established continually as it is under attack by various forms of chaos such as weather and people. The legal boundary of our Constitution has been eroded in the same way.

The poem questions the purpose of the wall, of the boundary marker, and contrasts the traditionalist “darkness” of following blindly with a modernist questioning of purpose. There are traditions that are indeed worth ending, but maintaining a clear agreement of where boundaries lay will always be important. Frost drives this in with the questioning of the mending wall where there seems no physical purpose between the Apples and the Pines. The purpose is not physical but legal. It is the fabric of civilization to have an established law. Mending wall is civics.

To me this echoes the current debate of the importance of the Constitution, the applicability of it today, and work needed to re-establish the authority designated to the People versus the Federal Government versus the States.

For fear and comfort we have ignored our duty of mending wall as a people. We as a people have traded safety and security for self-determination. There is quite a bit of work to do if we are to re-establish the boundary lines that the founding fathers set. The task is not insurmountable, but does require intent, effort, and vigilance. More need to awaken from complacency and stop taking our freedoms and rights for granted to see effective positive change. The revolution may be a slow erosion of Government powers as the juggernaut of The People arises, or something more spectacular. In the meantime, I encourage you all to keep leading by example, understand and effect your circle of influence; the revolution is you.

This was a GREAT episode! But then I just get excited any time I hear about viable distributed systems!

Jack, where did you get that quote on public/government education by Fitch?