"Diary of a Madman, Page 9" in Humanizing Tech
4,000 people peering inside. Don’t get trapped.
- Self-Driving: Driving home from the Miramar Air Show (Top Gun) on Saturday, my fiancé and I were in a bad accident. A car changed lanes into our right side at 65mph on the highway, pushing us into a truck on the left, which flipped it multiple times, skidding upside down, and ultimately trapping the driver inside. We all went to the ER. Luckily everyone is alive and okay with just a few bumps and bruises. But it left me feeling all this research into self-driving cars has a real purpose. None of this would have happened if the car had a sensor that stopped it from blindly hitting us. There would have been no accident. No flipped cars. No ER. Just normal life and a nice Saturday night for us all. It feels like this is a moment when research changes from an intellectual curiousity into a life-changing mission.
- Health: I’ve been commenting in these previous diary entries about hacking our own DNA and how we can use magic to transform our thoughts into reality. What used to sound like witchcraft or sorcery has turned into real science. My favorite parts are the words we use to describe it. Gene Drives and Nanobots. Doesn’t it just sound rad? The various disciplines we believe are separate things, are slowly but surely coming together.
- Energy: The future of energy isn’t fossil fuels or even clean energy but rather the energy of you. Using our own kinetic energy to power our augmented reality wearables. I call it Energy 3.0 but you might just refer to it today as simply, “food”.
- Privacy: The story I wrote about Snowden and a new product to help cover your device cameras and speakers really kind of blew up. It’s been seen by tens of thousands of people, reached Medium’s home page twice, and was one of Medium’s most popular tweets getting over 110 likes and 70 retweets. But of all the outrage and feedback I could have expected, the one I actually received shocked me. People don’t seem to care they’re being watched. Nay, what they‘re really worried about is whether the post was an “ad” for a product, not a real news story. I’m a product guy so to me the story is someone who invents something to solve a problem. That, and everything is an ad, which I wrote almost a year ago.
- Video: I made an argument that the iPhone is gearing up to become an all-weather action camera to compete directly against GoPro’s new line of Hero5 products and drone. I also describe how I think the iPhone is perfectly positioned to become a real interstellar satellite eventually.
- Snapchat: They made some millennial sunnies. Judging by their new name, Snap, I’m guessing they’re focused more on AR than messaging these days. It records up to 30 seconds of circular video in 10 second increments. No live streaming (yet) and syncs to the phone over bluetooth or wifi. So, circular videos are the new vertical videos? Lots of comparisons to Google Glasses but remember that Snapchat’s brand is F-U-N. There’s nothing serious about it, so maybe this puppies have a chance. But, we have yet to see what the actual video looks like coming out of that camera. The ad makes it look as smooth as silk, but I doubt they have auto-stabilization in place so your Snap Stories are probably going to be a bit shaky for some time. I also find it interesting on the space between the cameras, which I’ll write more about this week.
- Akamai: I visited their HQ in Boston last week to meet with our Piksel counterparts and got to see Akamai’s Network Operations Center. We all know Akamai powers the internet, but I had no idea they do 150 million requests per second through their 215,000 points of presence all over the globe. Their new focus: video streaming, web HTML and image hosting, and security to prevent DDoS attacks or SQL injections. Give me a shout if you need some CDN services. I can plug you into my guy who’s been there since the very beginning of the company.
- Apple: They released Mac’s new operating System, Sierra, last week. I was most excited for the Apple Watch to unlock my MacBook. But to my dismay the feature only works 1 out of every 10 times. It still forces me to enter my password after saying “Unlocking with Apple Watch”. Anybody know what gives?
- Newsletter: My good friend Chad’s latest newsletter is just excellent. He lays out a few hacks to help you sleep better. I know he gave up caffeine recently, which I commend. Starting your day with coffee and catching up is a pleasurable experience. But could coffee be the new cigarettes? God, I hope not.
- Magic: I got into the personal-assistant-in-a-message service. I’m beta testing it for a week and will write up my thoughts on what I think and where it works best and doesn’t.
- Stats: We just crossed 4,000 real life humans who are subscribed to this mad man’s diary. Forward it to anyone you think might benefit from reading these looney tunes thoughts.
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— Sean
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Humanizing Tech is a premium publication covering autonomous driving, self-learning AI, personal hedge funds, editable DNA, SAAS space platforms, personal power stations, and niche video portals. This newsletter is a peek inside the Editor’s mind.
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