I appreciate his support of analyzing the potential impacts of AI in a longer cultural context. It's a soulful perspective that I've appreciated beyond the basics of data privacy and ethical auditing of models. While many people try to find leaders that match all their positions on issues (an impossible task), I found this Pope Francis to be transparent in applying core beliefs in the Common Good and love for one's neighbors on the planet. Hopefully we will have another Pope that can effectively spread the potential for good in the world. Who knows, maybe technology will help amplify the Common Good over zero-sum outcomes.

I think this might be a good meta punishment. If you lie about it, you get fined. BTW are there any fines for being breached?

I thought the same thing! It's almost like they wanted fear of aging to be the click bait. I knew about radiation causing stress (we all know that), but micro gravity? That was supposed to fun!

We have normalized paying extra for cases. Why do they have different color iPhones?

I agree that the ascent and descent trips would likely agitate / stress the subjects. Over all, a noble experiment in my opinion, but flawed. I think we do need to build a smooth ride via carbon fibre nano-tube to really test this theory.

I'm a fan of the government system we have (it was founded with the assumption of the Common Good driving free citizens). I am also optimistic about the distributed and private phase of technology replacing current analog, non-transparent systems. There is still a big gap between the two. Governments print official money. Bitcoin represents a new store of value. Taxes are the intersection. Look at the countries that have become dollar pegged over the last few decades. They have given up their monetary policy for the stability of the US Treasury. What happens when the US Treasury shifts to decentralized super-governmental store of value? We still need to get through the refactoring and codifying the governance system that encompasses the transition away from the dollar to DeFi. I am not sure Miami is going to be the city to lead this charge unless they are willing to replace their local bureaucracy in concert with shifting away from the dollar.

I totally commend people willing to clean up the existing mess, but yes, we need to stop the source. On Monday I attended a lunch lecture from Beth Terry, author of Plastic Free. It was part of a series hosted by Oceana (https://oceana.org). Here's a short post I wrote on medium: https://medium.com/@davepander...

I think the question is more about what is better? Some would say that the "big-brother" monitoring and tracking of TNCs deters more bad-actors (on both driver and passenger side) than a one-time fingerprint check. Does anyone have any data showing that background checks have prevented people from driving? Or is there a correlation between people with "records" driving with TNCs and committing assaults? Are people debating universal finger-printing as a measure to "make things more safe" or just a "Taxi's have to do it, so everyone else should bear the same economic barrier to entry" argument? If GPS tracking and profiles are more safe, then the taxi industry should adopt that and drop the fingerprinting. An interesting thing about the political process is that the drivers and companies have to deal with the TNCs' technological and social media advantage. I have seen it many times: TNC's can easily accelerate the political process because they have their customers' email addresses. They can get petitions signed much more easily. Cab Companies and Taxi drivers do not have this option. This fact alone has distorted what city councils across America see, TNCs can get their customers to click a few buttons to complain with an email blast or social media post, while taxi companies have a much harder time getting petitions signed. I'm not saying this is "unfair" but more that it's a structural reality in the current TNC vs. Taxi industry conflict.

I think that link has a 300 MB 28 day plan for $1.50 per month, so it's not like the poster is too far off in saying that one third of that would cost less than an dollar.

Wow, I subscribed to Stratfor as a grad student and really appreciated their balanced analysis. Not only that, they talked about travel safety and freely published the bulk of their analysis. I always saw them as a great source of information that wasn't colored by the politically influenced mass media. What a shame, Anonymous just lost a lot of credit in my book. Now they took my Debit Card #? I hope my rent check doesn't bounce, things are still tight.

Does no one else see the typo? That's what leads to these issues. "Updated" vs. "Update" should be noticed. Creativity should be important enough to be checked by the creator.

My passion for programming started long before I attended a well-regarded liberal arts college where I minored in CS. After graduating I found myself in an environment (a start-up) where I was able to prove myself as a software engineer, a much more rewarding experience in the long-run. Within five months I was working alongside peers with CS majors from engineering schools, sometimes taking the lead on design. After a year, we were using frameworks that had not been taught in school --mine or theirs.
I'd say that 90% of my useful software engineering skills came from my on the job learning. It's a question of what you want to do with your degree. My CS studies were a casual continuation of a personal passion, which in the end has turned into a career. I've also worked in finance (not as an engineer, but as an analyst), and find myself now in more a product management position with the ultimate goal of starting my own company. My liberal arts education has definitely helped me leverage technical skills in the business world. Some of my engineering focused friends have to work harder to not be pigeon-holed (i.e. go back for MBA's or Masters).