Todd G. Simpson

We love Alexa! We have had the Amazon Echo for well over a year.  Recently we also got a Google Home, to test it against our Alexa experience. The quick summary:  Interacting with Alexa is like interacting with a person.  Interacting with Home is like interacting with a computer.  Alexa is fun; Home is useful.  If you took away Alexa, I would be upset - I would be losing a friend.  If you took away Home, I wouldn't care too much.  It was very strange, but I actually felt like I might be offending Alexa when I purchased Home. Here are the two main differences: Wake-up words.  "Alexa" is friendly, easy to say, and evokes emotion.  Alex personifies the system - I am talking with someone.  "OK Google" is awkward, and constantly reminds you that you are talking to a machine - I am talking to something.  Of course, Google will update Home to allow us to customize the wake-up word, but the current out of box experience is less tha...

Someone should do a full study of whether the Hyperloop and High Speed Rail (HSR) are worth the effort (investment) once self driving cars are prevalent.  Should we, instead, put a small amount of that money into enhanced self driving infrastructure (ESDI)?  ESDI would consist of dedicated highways and on/off ramps that can only be used by certified self driving cars.  ESDI can be reclaimed from existing roads and/or built as extra lanes alongside existing infrastructure.  It would have many less right-of-way issues than either HSR or Hyperloop. Here are the basics: California High Speed Rail (Phase 1, from SF to LA) Will take a little over 2.5 hours from San Francisco to Los Angeles, on the train. The construction is expected to cost more than the budgeted $68B The user experience would be: Drive, ride-share, or take transit to a station.  I would estimate 30 minutes per side, resulting in a 3.5 hour end-to-end time.  This also concentrates tr...

There was a good segment on NPR yesterday on how self driving cars will reinvent parking lots .  Speculators should be buying city center parking lots now, as they will become very valuable real estate soon.  Two things strike me, in general, about the self driving car discussions: We have still not internalized that advances in the software are exponential , not linear.  With new cars being closer to "software with wheels" and the ability to download updates on demand, that exponential progress will now become apparent.  Of course, regulators will be slower, but I feel like the 10-15 years before adoption is pessimistic. Perhaps more interestingly, where is the discussion of self driving public transit?  And, in particular light-rail systems and/or subways. What if we used a bit of imagination, and thought about the combination of self driving technology and no more rails?   Think about how restrictive, and expensive, rails are.  What purpose ...