Posts from Random Posts

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We’ve had my entire family at our beach house this weekend. That includes my 87 year old father, my 19 month old nephew, and a dozen other Wilsons in between.

So I’ve got a house full of folks and not a lot of time to post this morning. So if there’s any action here today, it will be in the comments.

I hope you are enjoying your summer weekend. I am.

The best features are the ones that you discover on your own and say “wow, that’s amazing.”

That happened to me last weekend.

We were coming back from dinner at night and the Gotham Gal was driving our Tesla.

She had the brights on and as another car came into view coming toward us, the Tesla automatically switched the brights to normal.

Then as the car passed, the Tesla switched back to bright.

I don’t know how long Tesla has had this feature on its cars. But I noticed it for the first time last weekend.

It’s such a simple thing. It’s not that hard to swap the brights on and off as you drive at night.

But having your car do it for you is better.

It is a great feature.

Happy fourth of July everyone

Much has been written about the potential to replace menial and dangerous jobs with machines. One of those dangerous jobs that is already being replaced by machines is the foot soldier. Over the past decade the US has ramped up its drone program and reduced the number of men and women we put in harms way in service of our foreign policy and national security goals.

It’s worth a national discussion about the morality and legality of using machines to take out our enemies. We haven’t had that as far as I can tell. And we should.

But the truth is we are fighting more and more of our warfare with unmanned machines and the trend is clearly in that direction. It’s hard for me to see how we turn around and go back.

So while it is not entirely clear to me how this plays out over time, it does suggest that we may be burying less of our young men and women in military cemeteries in the coming years. Which is a hopeful thought on this memorial day in which we remember our fallen soldiers.

I went back and read all of the thanksgiving posts I have written here at AVC this morning. That’s a good way to remind myself of everything I have to be thankful for and I have a lot.

I found this picture of the Gotham Gal cutting a turkey up ten years ago. I remember that thanksgiving well.

I’m glad that our country takes a day off to give thanks. It’s my favorite holiday of the year because it is not tinged with religion or national pride. Thanksgiving has no baggage. It’s a day for friends, family, warmth, food, wine, and relaxation.

I plan to spend the day mindful of all that I am thankful for. Including all of you here at AVC.

Early this summer I walked into my parking garage and saw that they had installed two Chargepoint electric vehicle charging stations. I turned around, walked back to our apartment building, and went upstairs and told the Gotham Gal that the moment I had been waiting for had come and I wanted to get a Tesla. That weekend we took a trip up to the Tesla showroom in the art gallery section of Chelsea and bought one. It came last week and we are enjoying driving a car built by software people. We may be late to this party but we are happy to be at it now.

This past week Tesla announced a software upgrade that offers Autopilot features. I’ve been wondering for a while now how self driving technology would come to market. Google has been working on this technology for close to a decade and I’ve seen driverless cars on 280 heading from San Francisco to Palo Alto. But who wants to get into the back seat of the first self driving car and let the car do its thing? Not me.

On the other hand if self driving technology comes to market feature by feature, the way Tesla seems to be approaching things, we can get used to it bit by bit and someday we will happily get into that back seat without thinking twice about it.

It sounds like it will start with things like highway lane changes and parallel parking (if there ever was a thing that machines can do better than humans that would be it). And over time we will get more and more autopilot features. And at some point the car will be driving itself and we will be fine with that.

This makes a ton of sense to me. Sometimes incremental innovation is better than doing the whole thing at once. When you want to change behavior on something as game changing as driverless cars, I think the incremental approach makes a ton of sense.

Another year, another birthday.

For the past fifteen years, I’ve been spending my birthday on the beach with my family. That seems like the ideal way to do it. I hope that tradition lasts as long as I do.

The weather has been spectacular on the east end of long island this week and we spent most of yesterday afternoon on a boat in Sag Harbor.

Today, I plan to do some yoga, play some golf with my son, and have a family dinner tonight.

I don’t really enjoy receiving presents. The best present for me is to be somewhere awesome surrounded by my family. I’ve already received that present.

But if you feel that you must send me something, please make a small donation to CSNYC here. I would appreciate that very much.

I don’t have much to say today. It’s been a gorgeous weekend in NYC and I’m headed out for a bike ride in Brooklyn with my daughter.

Speaking of biking, here’s an awesome bike project on Kickstarter that William shared with me last week.