In 2008 I said “I’m gonna make a prediction that someone will make a movie based on Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series within the next 8 years.”
Today Apple announced that they’re making a series to be released on Apple TV next year.
So they’re five years late, according to my prediction. And series rather than movie, which isn’t surprising. That’s kind of the way of things these days.
That means low exposure over a long period of time can be a serious problem.
“Once inhaled, carbon monoxide passes from your lungs into your bloodstream, where it attaches to the hemoglobin molecules that normally carry oxygen. Oxygen can’t travel on a hemoglobin molecule that already has carbon monoxide attached to it. As exposure continues, the gas hijacks more and more hemoglobin molecules, and the blood gradually loses its ability to carry enough oxygen to meet your body’s needs. … In fresh air, it takes four to six hours for a victim of carbon monoxide poisoning to exhale about half of the inhaled carbon monoxide in their blood.”
Those quotes are from Harvard Health.
I only learned about this recently, from an episode of The Sharp End podcast. (The podcast is ok overall… good for adventurers. This particular episode got a bit repetitive.)
I used to usually turn off the “recirculate air” button in my car until some years ago when I read an article in the LA Times. Since then I’ve tended to leave “recirculate air” on.
Some quotes:
“Using that setting…can cut pollution concentrations inside a typical car to 20% of on-road levels.”
“Particle pollution is linked to respiratory illness, heart disease, cancer and premature death.”
“There’s one downside to keeping the windows up and using recycled air, especially if you’re carpooling: It can get stuffy. That’s a product of carbon dioxide from breathing, which can build up on longer drives in tightly sealed new cars with several passengers, according to the study.
‘To prevent this, outside air should be pulled in every 10 or 15 minutes for a minute or two, especially if there are two or more people in the vehicle'”
It makes me think that car review websites should measure and publish air filtration quality. I would take it into account when car shopping.
A study indicates that installing air filters in classrooms improved test scores. For more, see the Vox writeup or the original paper.
Another Vox article has a good collection of info about how poor air quality affects cognitive ability.
Five years ago a friend posted a link to Wikipedia’s list of cognitive biases with this message, “Note to self: review this at least once a year.” And it really stuck with me. I think about it a lot. It’s a fantastic list. It’s challenging and beneficial to try to recognize and account for your own biases.
Edit, 2021-12-31: I’ve made no attempt to keep this info up to date and it’s from January 2020. Since then the availability of EV vehicles has certainly changed. Ford sells the Mustang Mach-E. Polestar has cars on the market. There are probably other changes, too!
Two years ago I wrote about our process for selecting a Subaru Outback. Recently we bought another new car—a Tesla Model 3. We used the same spreadsheet-driven process but with different criteria.
With the Outback we wanted something for long outdoorsy road trips. For this car I wanted something for commuting and getting around town. Something smaller and more fuel efficient. Specifically either a hybrid (“HEV”), plug-in hybrid (“PHEV”), or all-electric (“EV”).
It’s difficult to compare expected total cost of ownership between gas, HEV, PHEV, and EV since it depends on so many variables: price of gas, price of electricity, miles driven, and battery degradation (for which there’s not much data available, especially for EVs because they’re so new), but it seems likely to me that hybrid or all-electric make sense economically in the long run.
Even if not it also seems likely that all-electrics have a lower total environmental impact than the other options. That’s something I care about and am willing to pay a premium for.
I knew my commute would be about 30 minutes one way. A range of 60 miles would cover most days, but 100 miles is safer as it allows for some cushion, especially as the battery degrades over time. That’s longer than the battery-only range of almost all plug-in hybrids, which means I’d still be using the gas engine somewhat if I went that route.
I was particularly drawn to all-electrics because I love the simplicity. People don’t think about it, but automotive engines are absurdly complex. Valves, spark plugs, fuel injection, ignition system, intake, air filter, exhaust, catalytic converter, muffler, radiator, timing belt, cam shafts, fuel pump, fuel filter, sensors for intake and exhaust. It’s crazy. So many parts that require checking, tuning, and replacing. All-electrics have longer maintenance intervals and that’s hugely appealing to me.
I wasn’t sure I could find an all-electric we’d be happy with, but I felt confident I could find a hybrid at least. So I made a list of every hybrid and EV for sale in the US.
Automaker websites happily tell you about their EVs but rarely detail their availability. For example, Hyundai dealers in NC, SC, and VA don’t keep EVs or PHEVs in their inventory. Dealers in NC have the Kia Niro PHEV in their inventory but not the EV version and they also don’t seem to have the Optima hybrid or PHEV. The VW e-Golf doesn’t seem to be kept in stock at NC dealers. We could probably have ordered any of these cars, but it doesn’t seem great to own a car that local dealers and shops won’t be familiar with. And test driving before buying could be tricky.
The aforementioned limited availability is one indication of this, but there are others. EVs are often small (BMW i3, Chevy Bolt). The Nissan Leaf’s infotainment system felt like it was from the ’90s. I think it’s weird that not all hybrids are plug-in hybrids. I guess there are additional electronics required and added development expense, but it doesn’t seem that bad considering the benefits. Other automakers don’t talk much about fast charging options, whereas Tesla has built out a country-wide network of fast chargers. Also Tesla’s Superchargers are really fast, with a max rate of 250kW. It looks like most alternatives use SAE J1772, which as far as I can tell has a max of 19.2 kW currently, with development in-progress for reaching 90 kW. Though this article talks about 100 kW charging a leaf, so maybe I’m wrong.
EVs have been on the horizon for a long time and it feels like automakers aren’t focusing on them. Tesla has a huge head start. The other automakers are far behind and that’s baffling to me.
Based on a friend’s suggestion I considered used cars. He pointed out that EV tech is advancing rapidly. Early adopters pay a price premium (and are also guinea pigs). Maybe it’s better to get a lightly-used car, own it for a few years, then trade up once there are better and cheaper options.
Since EVs are so new the options for used cars are small. The Nissan Leaf has been around for a while so there is decent pre-owned availability, but model years 2016 and earlier had a range of at most only 107 miles, which I feel is too short even before taking into considering battery degradation (and I’ve read that Leaf batteries do degrade a good bit, especially in hot climates (link 1, link 2, link 3), though some data shows that Leafs are basically on-par with other EVs (link 4, link 5)). So that ruled out used Leafs. The Toyota Prius has also been around for a long time. I looked at prices of used Priuses and the idea didn’t win me over. The options tended to be either very old and in not great shape, or just off a one or two year lease, where the price discount compared to a new car wasn’t huge. And Priuses are of course hybrids, which I was hoping to avoid.
At this point the list of possible cars was pretty short. The top hybrid contenders were the Toyota Prius Prime and Chevy Volt. The top all-electrics were the Tesla Model 3 and Nissan Leaf. The Chevy Bolt is reasonable, too. Maybe a bit short. But I wasn’t excited about it at all.
We test drove the Nissan Leaf and it was good. Acceleration was snappy, as you would expect for an EV. The infotainment felt dated. I got a bit of a weird vibe from the Nissan dealer. Almost like they thought it was weird that we were interested in the Leaf, but this was minor. The salespeople did typical car salespeople things like asked us to come sit in their office so they could try to talk us into buying it, so that was a turn-off—I get angry when people waste my time. The idea of having to negotiate with them on price and going through the purchase process was not appealing.
We test drove the Tesla Model 3 and it was great. I was worried about the lack of instrument cluster and physical buttons (most things are done via the large screen center-mounted on the dashboard), but it wasn’t as bad as I expected (but still bad—I’ll write more about this in a future post).
It seemed clear that the Tesla was the best car of the bunch, now it just came down to price. Was the Tesla more expensive? And if so, was it worth the extra cost?
The cheapest Model 3 is the “Standard Range.” It’s $33,175 when factoring in the $1,875 federal tax credit. Side note: It’s not possible to order a Standard Range using Tesla’s website. I’ll write more about this in a future post
The Leaf configured with the options we wanted and after the federal tax credit would have been around $28,000 according to TrueCar, so around $5,000 cheaper than the Tesla. That’s not a huge difference. I have a little more faith that Tesla batteries last longer than Leaf batteries, which is a significant future expense in the Leaf’s total cost of ownership.
I was actually a bit surprised by how expensive non-Tesla EVs are. I expected them to target a lower price point to compete against Tesla, but aside from the e-Golf (which is $11,000 cheaper) they weren’t much cheaper.
The Prius is actually quite affordable, at $25,000. That’s $13,000 cheaper. We possibly should have considered this more closely, but again, it’s a hybrid and I was drawn to the simplicity of EVs.
After thinking about all the options we went with the Tesla. We’ve had it about four months now and it’s been great. I’m still happy the decision. In a future post I’ll write about the highlights and lowlights.
Here’s the spreadsheet we used:
Switch to “The Short List” tab at the bottom to see only highly ranked cars. View full size in Google Sheets for ease of use and to see full column titles. Please be sure to note all the caveats at the bottom of the full list!
NPR hosts things called “Tiny Desk concerts” about twice a week. A band or musician plays a short set of 3 or 4 songs in the NPR office and they post it on YouTube. The quality is high and I’ve found it to be a great way to learn about new music. Some examples:
Unrelated to Tiny Desk I recently stumbled upon the early Cranberries song “Íosa” and I love it. Also this early Cranberries performance is mesmerizing. If you’re not sure whether you want to watch the whole thing then I recommend skipping to 3:38 because the second song is more lively. It’s crazy how young Dolores O’Riordan looks.
Three other amazing non-Tiny Desk performances:
I bought a laptop four months ago. A 13″ MacBook Air with Retina display, 16 GB memory and 256 GB SSD.
I was laptopless after leaving Honor. I have a great desktop but I knew a laptop would be useful during our move from California to North Carolina. I’m a thorough shopper. I investigate every option and circle in until I find the best choice. I wanted to record my notes for my own sake, but also I thought it could potentially be useful to someone else.
This was a big factor. Smaller is nice because it’s light and portable. Bigger is nice if you use the laptop a lot or it’s important to have multiple windows open side by side. I’d been using a laptop with a 15.4″ screen and it was fine. I knew I didn’t want anything much bigger than that. I didn’t intend to use the laptop for programming full time, so a smaller screen would be fine. But how small? I visited a local Best Buy to see a bunch of screen sizes in person. 13.3″ felt a little small. 14″ was good, though still on the small size. My sweet spot was between 14.5″ and 15″. Unfortunately there’s a dearth of options in that range. There are a lot of laptops with 13.3″ screens a lot with 15.5″ to 15.7″. It’s a shame, and a missed opportunity for laptop makers.
I decided that performance was not at all important to me. I rarely play games. I wanted to be able to run Android Studio and Xcode but didn’t need them to be blazing fast, so I avoided ARM, Intel Atom, and Intel Celeron CPUs. I do think 16 GB memory is a good idea, rather than 8 GB, which is a common default. I hate disk swapping and 8 GB is cutting it a little too close. And I’m strongly in favor of SSDs, for reliability/durability as much as lower latency.
Note: Prices and weights are from my notes from months ago and aren’t up to date.
The main thing that pushed me over the edge to the Mac is that I don’t like Windows. It has always been a poor operating system. The job of an operating system is to be unobtrusive. A facilitator. It should get out of your way and let you do whatever it is that you want to do with your computer. I’ve used Windows only rarely over the last 20 years, but my impression is that it still fails in this regard. It has regular severe security problems. Installing software updates requires reboots too often. It’s too easy to get into a state where the system is misconfigured. Uninstalling software frequently leaves artifacts on the computer. Windows 10 Home doesn’t even have full disk encryption standard. That’s completely unacceptable on a laptop in 2019.
And so if I got a PC I’d want to run Linux. But Linux on a laptop requires a lot of work to be on par with Windows and Mac OS regarding battery life, suspend/resume, Wi-Fi, special keys (volume up/down, brightness), etc. I’m busy and didn’t want to invest the time.
So I settled on a Mac. The only laptops Apple sells with a screen bigger than 13.3″ is the MacBook Pro. It has a 15.4″ screen and is $2399, which is more than I wanted to spend.
And then it turned out Emily needed a computer so she could start working as a contractor. She does a lot of intensive image editing, so larger screen and better performance are important. She got a Dell XPS 2-in-1 with an Intel Core i7-8705G, 16GB memory, a 512 GB SSD, and the nicer screen option for $2,034. She generally prefers Macs, but a similarly configured MacBook Pro is $2,600 and that’s a hefty premium.
I’m in the market for a job! I left my old job at Honor in San Francisco at the end of February. I love Honor, loved working there, I’m proud to have been a part of their growth over the last four years, and I know they’ll continue to be a shining light in the home care industry.
So now what do I do?
I’ve been keeping a list of ideas, technologies, and companies that are interesting to me or seem valuable or useful to the world. I’m sharing the list here as a way to organize my thoughts and figure out what to do, and also because I thought other people might be interested. I’d love feedback! Are you working in one of these fields and looking to hire a software engineer? Let me know! Is there something else I should look into? Something I’m overlooking? Any mistakes or oversights in my thought process? Any help is appreciated. Leave a comment or email me at mark@kingant.net.
I’m sure there are a ton of city, state, and federal government websites (both internal and external) and software that could be improved and I always get satisfaction out of making things work better. Things that are used by large numbers of people, like HealthCare.gov, DMV online services, online property tax payments, etc.
Let me share an example about paying property tax online… In either Wake County, NC or San Mateo County, CA (sorry, I don’t remember which) the website threatens a >$50 fee for failed bank ACH payments. Like, WTF? That should cost them $0. What are they doing that justifies needing to charge any fee at all? The form might have also prevented pasting into the account number field for some reason and used bad terminology like “e-check.”
Related links: The United States Digital Service, Code for America, America’s Cities Are Running on Software From the ’80s
My understanding is that SpaceX’s entrance into the satellite launch business has caused launch prices to drop significantly. Also there has also been increased attention on building small satellites. Consequently we’re launching more satellites and getting more clever about how we use them.
There’s so much going on here. There are the old launch companies like United Launch Alliance and Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems, and new launch companies like SpaceX, Blue Origin and Rocket Lab. Companies that build satellites like SSL (now part of Maxar) and SpaceQuest. Companies with for-hire observation satellites like Planet, BlackSky, DigitalGlobe (also now part of Maxar), Radiant Solutions (also also now part of Maxar) and Spire. Companies working on satellite-based internet service: Swarm Technologies, OneWeb and Astranis. There’s the company “Spaceflight,” which helps people get their satellite into space. There’s an increased need for satellite tracking/coordinating, and an increased need for the ability to clean up space debris (see e.Deorbit and read about laser brooms). Also ion thrusters are cool.
This idea requires a long explanation to do it justice, so I wrote a standalone post.
Before we bought our car in 2018 I made a spreadsheet that listed every crossover and SUV. I filled in statistics that were important to me and used them to narrow down the list. I thought it was a fantastic tool.
There are websites that let you compare a few vehicles at a time, but that’s not sufficient. I want to be able to filter through all cars and keep refining the list until it’s sufficiently short. My approach is:
Building the website would be a great project with a little bit of everything: design, frontend, and backend to store all the vehicle stats and allow people to save their progress. Maintaining accurate vehicle specs over time would be an ongoing and tedious effort. But it’s easy enough for one person to create and maintain. It seems plausible that it could earn enough ad revenue to justify the effort.
Software-defined radio (SDR) is a radio communication system where components that have been traditionally implemented in hardware are instead implemented by means of software. —Wikipedia
I don’t have any experience with this. There are certainly malicious uses, such as OpenSesame, a small device that opens non-rolling code garage doors by broadcasting every possible code very quickly and RollJam, which attacks rolling code garage doors and car remotes.
But I think there’s a lot of potential non-malicious uses, too:
I mentioned security audits in the context of software-defined radio above, but there are many more things that would benefit from a security audit. Electronic door locks with keypads might ship with default admin codes and not force the user to change it (that’s bad because people tend not to change them). Same with apartment intercoms/door buzzers. Here’s a related article about an IBM security team who found problems with visitor management systems. There are a ton of Wi-Fi enabled appliances these days that could have problems: refrigerators, doorbells, cameras, TVs, etc.
The economics here are tough. Companies don’t want to spend more money than necessary, and security problems only become a problem when they start being publicized or exploited. Some companies pay rewards (called bug bounties) when problems are shared with them privately, but generally only large players who are already security-conscious, like Google and Facebook. There might be justification for a government agency or non-profit to perform security audits as a public service.
As a material I think carbon fiber reinforced polymers aka carbon composites are super cool. Also to a lesser extent carbon fibers themselves, carbon nanotubes, and graphene. There are so many products where “light and strong” are important qualities. In the relative scheme of things these materials haven’t been around very long. It’ll be exciting to see the improved products we make. It will be good to see prices decrease over time, too, so more people can get the benefits of things like carbon composite wheelchairs, crutches, and walkers.
We also need to make improvements to carbon composite recycling techniques, infrastructure and cost effectiveness.
Update 2021-05-10: Real Engineering has a video with great info about carbon nanotubes.
WebAuthn is a web standard for more secure logins by using a physical device like a fingerprint scanner or USB keychain instead of (or in addition to) a password. Essentially eliminates account hijacking from compromised passwords. Two factor authentication is fantastic and everyone should use it for their important accounts (email and banks), but typing in a six digit code is kind of a pain. With WebAuthn you can touch your finger to your phone or laptop’s fingerprint scanner, instead. Or tap on a tiny piece of metal sticking out of a USB port. It’s roughly the same level of security with a fraction of the effort for the user. I thought this article had decent explanations, if you’re looking for more info.
Websites that want to support these types of logins will need changes to support WebAuthn, so it’ll never become ubiquitous. But I’m hopeful that major websites will adopt it over the next few years.
I don’t know what this would be used for, but it sure does sound cool. Maybe ocean research, surveying, or surveillance (e.g. scouting for pirates off the east cost of Africa).
I’ve read of two similar efforts: the Zyvex Marine Piranha Unmanned Surface Vessel and the Pliant Energy Velox. The latter page mentions some potential uses.
Update 2020-11-27: IBM and an ocean research organization have built an autonomous boat for marine research.
I read about this recently and I think it’s pretty smart. Intelligent water heaters (decrease water temperature at known low demand times and increase temperature for peak demand) and intelligent hot water recirculation pumps also have the potential to save water and electricity.
Some instructions here. Originally I thought this would make a great website, then I discovered that it already exists. But I still think it’d be interesting to make a bunch of mugs of tea and measure how caffeine content differs based on tea type, water temperature, and steep time. And also how much variation there is even when keeping those factors consistent. Could be a good science fair project.
An online marketplace for great deals on pork products. Emily suggested the logo could be the normal Amazon logo but with a pig nose above the smile arrow. Mostly I just think it sounds funny.
I love Linux. When I was younger I did some work on the Pidgin instant messaging program. I’ve always wished I had more time to smooth out Linux’s rough edges. It’s fair to say my dream job would be for someone to pay me to improve whatever random weaknesses I encounter in Linux software.
Let me explain the idea first. I’ll get into why I love this idea further down.
I envision a public forum for the drafting of laws. “Crowd-sourced” is another way to describe it. The goal is to create turnkey legal text that can be incorporated into city, state, or federal law.
Basically a wiki… but a simple wiki isn’t sufficient. To be successful, structure is needed. Rules. Guidelines. A semi-rigid framework. A community where contributors can earn reputation and respect. These qualities have made Wikipedia and The Stack Exchange Network successful. The process and the people are the critical factors.
The main landing page would be a list of possible laws. Contributors would add a page for each law they want to draft, with each page divided into a few standard sections:
Why should legislators be the only ones drafting laws? Why shouldn’t ordinary citizens do it, too? We can certainly hope our elected representatives will do the work to enact the best laws for their constituents, but also their time is finite. It stands to reason that reducing their burden would allow them to accomplish more. If we want a law to be enacted then we should do what we can to help. We should do the research, draft the law, get feedback, iterate, and hand it off to legislators as a nice little ready-to-go package. Related: A description of how federal laws are created currently.
There’s nothing stopping people from drafting their own laws now, of course. As an example, Marion Hammer is a lobbyist in Florida for the NRA who writes laws and basically hands them off to state legislators to be voted on: “Hammer is not an elected official, but she can create policy, see it through to passage, and use government resources to achieve her aims.” That quote is from an article in The New Yorker. But there’s no framework for people to follow, no guide, no examples. And that’s a large barrier.
I have a tendency to think about this being used for federal laws, but the potential benefit at the state and local levels is greater. City council members are less likely to be career politicians and may not have much experience themselves. And local municipalities have fewer resources to lean on. Think of all the duplicate effort drafting, discussing, and revising similar laws in every city and state across the nation. I also would hope that having a central repository for laws would result in less variation across municipalities.
An advantage of a crowd-sourced approach is that it brings into the open a process that has tended to happen behind closed doors. I would hope that discussing issues in the open with a wide audience would encourage the creation of laws with broader appeal. And that less sound laws are identified and improved earlier in the process. And that making these improvements and having these discussions earlier in the process would streamline the final revising and voting.
Lack of interest/uptake/momentum/critical mass
Making laws is hard and people don’t want to do it in their free time, that’s why we pay our representatives to do it. Would there really be people willing to spend time doing this? How do you spread the word about this and get people interested?
Joshua Tauberer, the creator of GovTrack wrote a thoughtful blog post warning people about thinking they can “fix” democracy. He even lists “have Americans draft legislation” as an example idea that won’t work. I think he makes valid points, but there’s a comment on that post that I like a lot: “It’s good, IMHO, to dream big about changing the world … It’s even possible that someday those big dreams could become reality. But not if you don’t dream them in the first place.”
And so I recognize that this might only be appealing to a very small number of people, and I think that’s ok.
Disagreements over what the law should be
This is a hard one. People have different opinions about what laws should and should not exist. Some people are in favor of the government paying unemployment benefits and some people are against it. Even two people who are both in favor of unemployment benefits might disagree on amounts, durations, eligibility, etc. I don’t have a solution for this. My only two suggestions are: people should try to use data to justify their beliefs, and people should focus their efforts on common ground (e.g. work on less contentious laws and leave the contentious ones to elected representatives).
Incivility
It’s easy to get emotional about politics. It can be hard to come to terms with other people’s opinions. It’s important for contributors to be civil, find common ground, and avoid polarizing issues.
Legalese is hard. Can we really expect average people to do a good job?
I’m not worried about this. Worst case the laws on the website would need more work before they’re ready. That isn’t any worse than what we have today. But I think people would learn over time how to write good laws. I think the community could create guidelines to help. And I think people with legal expertise could chip in.
I’d love to hear feedback about this! Does such a thing already exist? Are there reasons it would never work? I have very little insight into the legislative process, government, politics, etc… what things am I overlooking? I think it would work best as a non-profit. Is anyone aware of an existing non-profit where this would be a good fit?
I’ve thought about this idea for years and I love it, but I also currently have no intention of doing anything about it. So, uh, if you think this needs to happen then share this with your friends and talk people (and me) into working on it.
