During the Fall 2018 Local Maximum Tech Retreat, we did a panel on the predictions that we make about the future of technology, consumer applications, and society.

Topics and analysis include virtual fitness training, online doctors visits, social media moderation, self driving cars, education, complex voice assistants, and more.

Including panelists Aaron and Crystal Astrachan (Amazon).

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I talk to Naomi Brockwell about Bitcoin and Blockchain - the technology of freedom!

In addition to her work in popularizing this emerging technology, and some of it's implications on human liberty and global human development, we also talk about her media career, moderating debates, interest in video, popularizing this emerging technology, and her work with John Stossel and on the Hard Fork TV series.

Includes a promo for Swarm 6.0 and clips of Naomi's YouTube videos!

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With Google's announcement of the impending demise of Google Plus, we discuss various Google products that have succeeded and failed over the years, and what we can learn from it.

Also: the security breaches from Facebook and Google Plus, Amazon's AI hiring program and the bias it sustains, and Tim Berners Lee's dream of a decentralized web.

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Camille Fournier joins the Local Maximum today to discuss her book on engineering management, Rent the Runway, company culture, engineering ladders, and more!

Plus, learn about Foursquare for Good and Max responds to listener messages about ads and censorship.

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Now with extra mappers and reducers!

I talk to Joe Crobak of the Data Engineering Weekly newsletter about data engineering, and it's importance in modern software projects. We cover:
- The definition of data engineering
- Hadoop, MapReduce, and Spark
- How data engineering has evolved over the last decade.
- Joe's experiences working in government vs. startups. The US Digital service, and the paperwork reduction act.

Remember to check out the new website at localmaxradio.com, and Joe's site at dataengweekly.com.

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The Social Media giants can't handle the fact that they can't control the system they've created. Another "smart" podcaster backs us up on the futility of fixing internet moderation through Machine Learning alone.

Also - how are our elections affected by new communications technology? It's possible that our current situation has been repeated many times in history - but it's also possible that the pendulum is swinging more wildly.

And Facebook's ridiculous ads system finally hits me personally, where they'll block ads for asinine reasons, and push through bad ones.

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Aaron interviews me about what I plan to work on while I take 6 weeks off from Foursquare. We'll talk about the future of this podcast, several prototype ideas that I want to build, and my reading list.

Can I get all this done? Probably not ALL of it - but I hope a good chunk of it!

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We do things every in the hope that it will cause something good to happen as a result. And we're also bombarded with information trying to convince us on what to buy, who to vote for, and how to live.

But most of the time, it's very difficult to tell whether A causes B, or if they are merely correlated. I talk to subject matter expert Shirin Mojarad of McGraw-Hill to break down how scientists can detect causality and what to look for in a causality study.

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Some data scientists are attempting to use data and machine learning to predict the outcome of the next season of game of thrones. In this solo show I discuss the merits of this approach, give an overview of decision trees, adversarial problems, and the role of information theory.

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Assembly Member Clyde Vanel and I talk about new technology that affect the State of New York and the world!
- The rise of Bitcoin and Cryptocurrencies
- The possibility of blockchain technology being used to maintain state government records like birth, death, and voting registration.
- Automation and Jobs
- Entrepreneurship; the opportunities in the new economy
- 3d printing and the Rubik's Cube

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