trapperkeeper79

Wonderful talk. One thing he called for was a wealth tax, which is something that makes complete sense but is going to be very unpopular. On the otherhand, he also calls for progressive income taxes (something that is reported by the media and an easier pill to swallow) - in my country, Canada, progressive income taxes are not the answer IMHO.

We didn't have as much inequality for education (i.e. lots of decent Universities, not terribly expensive). The problem is wealth in the form of housing has exploded for a large fraction of the population (typically older people) and has left young people (well, anybody without a house) in the dust. In major cities like Toronto and Vancouver, average detached houses cost well over a million bucks. This is also happening because of bone-headed environmental policies (I'm all for the environment, I just don't understand why people without homes are punished for having a green belt while people with homes are rewarded). Our current PM (I'm a fan) has done many good things but he doesn't get this. We had something called the child tax credit, which families with children would get unconditionally - this became something you'd get based on income. Now, young people who are desperately saving for downpayments are hampered even more ... buying a home is just out of reach. In my humble opinion, a wealth tax is the way to go and young people should make their voices heard to our representatives.

In summary, people need to understand the difference between income inequality and wealth inequality. I argue the problem is NOT income inequality - it is wealth differences.

I'm surprised why more devs are not getting upset at the lack of an Nvidia GPU option.

No .. there is something to it. I socked away cash in my 401K and then found myself with a big fat 401K and not being able to afford the insane downpayment required to buy a million dollar home. Home prices in a few places increased by quite a bit over the last few years. So by not having cash accessible, I had a big setback. Since then, I lowered my 401K contribution to just be what the company matches. I expect I'll be able to increase it after I put in that 20% down payment. Btw .. I did look into getting a loan against my 401K for purpose of buying a house but I think there is a limit that doesn't reflect the current market in the Bay area (don't remember but something like 20-50K; too early to remember the details).

Likewise. I have phone-based VR and a beefy PC. The pricey headsets, limited content and exclusives for headsets have kept me out of the higher end. A friend (also a dev) and I were just chatting yesterday that we'd get hololens and attempt to write apps with it - were it not for the insane price (especially after I wasted almost 2K on Google's Glass debacle). A lower price point and wide availability across vendors might mean fewer exclusives and that is great for the whole industry.

Incidently, I thought Google was doing a good job with the Google VR SDK. But I now am very skeptical since it appears (just my humble, personal opinion) they are more focused on their Daydream platform than they are on wide availability across vendor devices.

My experience is that OpenCV face detection works relatively well if you are facing the camera directly. We used an opensource face rec built on top of it, and it was okay to classify between a small number of known faces.

I saw some demos of M$FT's apis at a recent tech event and it wasn't obvious that the results with their system were significantly better. The biggest hole seemed to be that camera frames were being sent to the cloud, and there were issues with the presenter's quota (forget the exact problem).

But overall, I think the Cognitive Services are a step in the right direction. They generally make sense for businesses who don't have a full-time team of ML/CV experts.

I enjoyed this. I especially like #5 ... weekly videochat sync ups are a nice idea.

Serious suggestion .. start a youtube channel. I do most of my learning that way (and I do have a PhD).

I think a lot of resources out there at the moment are full of ML jargon and math. And a lot of new stuff that is coming out attacks the absolute beginner. This kind of sucks .. I started using torch, familiar with old fashioned NN and just wanted to quickly get up to speed on convolutional networks. It has been a PAIN (resources I find are either too deep or not deep enough). In any cases .. thanks for putting your links .. they were most helpful.

At this point, the average million dollar home in the far suburbs of Toronto costs about 4K a month (mortgages, utility bills, etc.). A condo in a better location costs 1500 a month. We're just starting out our family (which is why we need a house, but we can also not depend on my wife's income). A 10K salary results in 6k after taxes. While we could put everything into the house, I am very very afraid to do so. When I've asked how others do it, I get crazy answers from parents helped get the downpayment down big time to unregistered rental suites. Craziest story I've heard is people buying a house and living in the basement. It all makes my head spin.

Err .. if you have foreign employment income in the US, you will be taxed at the source, no?

In Toronto, I heard stories of brokers buying 5-10 pre-release condos and selling them all before taking possession. These people didn't have cash to pay more than the deposit and became millionaires overnight. I don't know how pervasive this was though. There are not too many asset classes where one can pull this off .. so I guess kudos to those people.

It doesn't look like TO will implement the foreigner tax. Just hear talk but no action. Frankly, the amount of the tax is so tiny, it makes me believe that there is something else afoot. In any case, I'm dreaming of the day housing becomes affordable in Canada once again.

Well .. then I'm not sure how anyone affords a 2.5 million dollar detached home pretty much from Yonge and Finch to Yonge and Bloor. I mention the subway lines cause working people typically have to get to work :-p

Poster has a point. Toronto real-estate has been said to be on the verge of collapse since 2004. It keeps growing at insane rates .. we're talking around 10% per annum (don't recall the actual figure). Also, this is despite a ton of construction .. we're talking near-China level cranes here ... any open space near subway lines turns into condos. Lots of stories of people flipping pre-construction units, waiting in line for days to put a deposit down on new construction, etc. I think Toronto is closer to Hong Kong when it comes to the real-estate game. Oh .. and for your viewing pleasure:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PT3YdJm6y3Y

I think it has to do with local incomes and land area. The GTA is massive when considering land area. Incomes don't compare to places like SF and NY. Although I might be wrong on the income front. A friend of mine remarked that lawyers and bankers in TO may be making 300K+. So maybe I'm wrong about local incomes being depressed.

No .. but Apple makes its rather hefty margin on hardware. I thought Google makes its margins on software and services. At these rumored price points, I'd rather go with an iPhone (and deal with stupid adapters). I bought a nexus 5x last year .. it had a weird screen issue. It was eligible for a change but I didn't want to go through the hassle of mailing it in. With Apple, I could have gone to a retail store. Not saying Apple is awesome .. they are acting like overlords these days (lack of Macbook refreshes, selling two year old hardware at premium prices such as the ipad air 2, etc.) but I guess they can do it because they have no formidable competition. This pricing is silly .. I suspect they will have big discounts by January.

So that this is not just a rant, here is how to fix the situation: I think Google needs to think different ;-) Compete on what Apple cannot give. Aggressive prices, expandable storage and removable batteries. It is sad that Android phones (Nexuses and others) have become more and more like iPhones when it comes to consumer hostility.

Just my personal opinions btw.

I'm going to say something that will going to downvote me into oblivion ... but I think self-driving tech needs to be given away for free. This is not unprecedented. Volvo gave away the seat belt. Edward Jenner gave away the smallpox vaccine. More recently, Toyota is "giving away" their patents with respect to hydrogen fuel cells and Tesla is doing this for batteries.

How many people die of traffic fatalities? We are so close to a world where such deaths are the exception rather than a commonplace occurrence. If only we had truly bold individuals at the helm.

Terje Vigen is a fascinating tale .. thanks for pointing it out. Does it end in a cliff hanger or does he exact revenge on his captor???

Same here. The QE+low interest rates have delayed our home purchase perhaps indefinitely. We feel a bit like migrants .. can't afford homes in the city we grew up. It used to feel very miserable ... I'm looking at it positively now that I don't have "roots" that take away my job mobility. This also means we just have cash for retirement .. no housing at all. I suspect we'll end up moving to an ultra-low cost location when that time comes , and try to stretch out our savings + social safety net. It is a raw deal people of my generation got .. but I guess it could be a lot worse when we look at history (wars, famine, etc). As an aside, it is just sad that the only popular politician calling out the Fed is Trump :/

I got an HP Spectre 360 .. loving it. Get a USB docking station, an external keyboard and mouse. Awesome dev setup. Oh .. I was an avid Mac user before. Was in the same situation as you. I also thought the only alternatives were Mac or Dell XPS. I then had to waste an hour at a best buy and spent time with all the machines they had in stock. Liked the HP one the best. It has a finicky touchpad but I was able to adjust the trackpad settings to make it usable. Finally ... I recommend Windows Signature edition so you don't have to deal with too much third party bloat.

I'm a newbie so pls excuse my ignorance .. Cypress has these had these things for a bit .. they call them PSOC. Basically, an ARM core plus some programmable logic. Is the difference here that the processor and PLD are both beefier? I'm generally confused about the difference between PLD vs FPGA vs CPLD. It seems there is no precise definition and it changes based on who is talking.