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Justin and Jason talk about the latest with Pluggio, the dangers of starting with a free service and the Google nuclear winter, the irregularities with the Facebook IPO, CashBase and the personal finance market, the effect of Elon Musk’s success with SpaceX and what sets him apart, the power of balancing relentless optimism with brutal self-awareness, the against all odds story of Jimmy Conrad, how an e-paper watch raised over $10 million on KickStarter, how Jason is learning electronics so he can teach it to his son, the power of spending a fixed amount of time per day on a project, Jason’s idea for a virtual standup web app, how Germany set a new solar power record, the overwhelming size of the universe and the powerful new telescope to be located in South Africa and Australia, the self-driving Google car and why the future of space is going to be robotic, the CDC on preparing for a zombie apocalypse, whether HFT, or most startups for that matter, have any real social value, Jason’s equation for measuring evil, a proposed amendment to lift the ban on government propaganda, the Internet Bat Signal, the Citizens United verdict and the power wielded by super PACs, the new patent troll, Rockstar Consortium and why Justin donated $25 to a human powered helicopter project.
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Thank you for the mention, guys.
Happy to support your cause! 🙂
I bet most personal finance apps have started out of their creators’ own need. That’s my story, at least.
Facebook and calling? they’re not that far from the idea it seems! http://m.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/may/28/facebook-buffy-phone-google-apple?cat=technology&type=article
There’s no dark side of the moon really 😉
As for an equation for evil? I don’t think it’s easy to formulate. A good example of this (karma to SMBC-Comics) where if you, for example, count the number of lives saved by Batman (call it B), then by induction, the number of lives saved by the people who killed Batman’s parents = B-2.
I like to think of actions in terms of how they increase or decrease the complexity of the surrounding environment. But it’s easy to see that the evaluation of whether it’s an increase or decrease depends a lot on the size of the environment and the duration with which you use to measure the effects.
Jason – I came across a product similar to your standup app the other day: https://www.thinkfuse.com/welcome/
Not so sure if you can do an equation for evil. The reason being that “evil” is determined by upbringing, social norms, and self thought. Using your example of politicians, they may do evil by your thinking, but it may be totally reasonable by their own. Same thing could apply to day traders, lawyers etc… Whats evil and whats not depends on where you are standing. Its also very easy to rationalize “evil” behavior depending on your circumstances.
I remember discussing this some time ago with some friends. Imagine two civilizations start at the same time. One fosters the idea of helping one another, and as it grows forms alliances with its neighbors. The other becomes a death cult where the strong exploit the weak and it conquers its neighbors and sacrifices people to its gods.
Which one is evil? From out point of view the death cult one is evil, but assuming they both started at the same time neither is any more right then the other. What they are doing is what each society believes is right and might see what the other does as “evil”. After all its easy to say sacrifice is evil, but fostering weakness allowing you to be conquered later could also be evil.
Not sure how you could add the “social norm” into your equation, but im fairly sure its not going to be a case of plugging in some numbers to work out if someone is evil or not as its really subjective.
Thanks for another solid show guys.
Just heard you talking about the amazing vastness of space (and how average our sun is as a star) and wanted to blogspam you with a recent post on my own blog, with a mindbending video about relative sizes of stars.
The vastness of space is so difficult to get your mind around!