If you follow this blog, you may have figured out that I spend a massively dispositional amount of my time trawling various business related media sources with the reckless abandon of a rabid monkey hopped up on caffeine. Most people have hobbies like Skiing, or Mountain Biking, but reading stuff is mine. I’m a nerd, and that’s how it works. Deal with it, bro. Recently, I’ve made a habit of listening to various Motley Fool Podcasts in the morning. One of these podcasts is called Industry Focus, a Podcast which drills into cool happenings in different industries every episode. A couple of days ago, I was listening to an Industry Focus Podcast that talked about the technology industry as it appeared at South by Southwest (SXSW).
On this podcast was a focus on comma.aI. Comma.ai touts themselves as being “Ghost riding for the masses” and the Company makes an Open Source module which can be installed on pre-existing cars for a mere $1,000 or less. As if that wasn’t intriguing enough, the podcast contained an extended interview with George Hotz, the man behind comma.ai. Hotz first rose from anonymity by being the first person to hack an iPhone, and let me start by saying that Hotz is my kind of dude. This guy tells it like it is: straight, with no chaser. As evidence, Hotz is quoted on his former feud with Elon Musk of Tesla in The Virge as saying, “I’m an Elon Musk fan. He jerked me around, I jerked him around, we’re even.” Yeah, this guy: this is my kind of guy right here.
In Hotz’s words, most incremental discoveries are in their essence pretty boring, but the magic really comes when these small breakthroughs are compounded. So, here’s why even though the fledgling venture isn’t exactly on the shelves yet, you should care: The basic issue with driverless cars is that although they’re cool, they’re not at all affordable. How is an $80,000 Prius with $150,000 tech reachable to anyone short of the C-suite of a global Fortune 500? Simple, it isn’t. A $200,000 + price tag might be okay for a commercial market - automated trucks maybe - but it is not a consumer-friendly option. So, what’s the answer? Open Source, that’s the answer.
Hotz has designed his whole system, called Open Piot (as opposed to Tesla’s “Autopilot”) on Linux, and using other Open Source projects. This allows him to keep his costs down, so he can offer you a self driving car for $1,000, or less - you’re welcome for Open Source magic, by the way. The code itself is for both an Open Source adaptive cruise control, and a lane keeping assist system. Code for Hotz’s software, and plans for his hardware known as Comma Neo, can be found on Github, here. Before you get too excited though, the software only supports the 2016 Acura ILX, and 2016 Honda Civic Touring Edition for certain at the time of this blog post (or as Hotz claims online probably all Acuras and Hondas). Comma Neo needs a special OS called NeOS which can only be run on the OnePlus 3. Additionally, you’ll need access to a 3D printer to print the Comma Neo housing. Although Holtz does not comment on the Neo side restrictions of his project, he claims that his software will eventually be expanded to include different models of cars. You can also follow along with comma.ai’s progress on their blog here.
Now if you’re in the loop, you may have heard about the new Red Hat film, The Road to AI. If you’re really in the loop, you’ve watched the trailer and noticed that the problem outlined seemed to be data driven. Hotz may have solved that issue: since comma.ai doesn’t have cars like Google or Tesla to gather driving data, the Company is again moving to the community for answers. Instead of using hardwired rules to guide their system (when X happens, always do Y), comma.ai is using aggregated data from drivers for commands. Therefore, if most drivers slow down at a specified point, so too will comma.ai’s systems. By the end of 2018, comma.ai hopes to gather 1 billion miles of information. In order to gather this data, Hotz announced the Chffr app, which runs on a phone, attached your dashboard and records your driving habits. For your efforts, comma.ai will reward you with “Comma points” which can be redeemed for things that will make you “feel really great” according to Hotz.
So there you go, a quick teaser of Open Source driverless cars. For more information, Google comma.ai - as it turns out, it's a pretty hot topic! Anyway in this writer's opinion, the winners of our new industrial revolution are going to be the ones who can deliver power back to the people i.e Twitter, Facebook, Airbnb. Open Source can help put that power back into the hands of the masses, and this time, it’s in the form of driverless cars. Boom Shakalaka.
I Wasn’t Born with These Powers, I’ve just Learned to Live with Them...
Wanna know how to get a discount on your Summit pass? Wanna know where or what, the Summit party is gonna be? Then you should watch me embarrass myself in front of thousands of people in the Summit Party Promo video!
See that big guy doing nothing particularly embarrassing? Yeah? Well, that’s not me. I’m the plucky little guy in the backwards Sox hat who plays the butt of the joke in the last four seconds or so. Yup, that’s me, yours truly, ya boy, the self-deprecating weirdo.
So how did I get myself into this? Well, look out cause I’m fixin’ to tell ya, again…
I came from the era where the Boston Red Sox and The New York Yankees actually hated each other. We never won a thing until one fateful year, and watching the Sox play the Yankees was like watching a boxing match. I still get giddy like a little girl watching Pedro Martinez throw Don Zimmer to the ground, something which he totally deserved by the way. There was always something about that big green field under lights of the cool summer night, fastballs as hard as you could possibly chuck them without tearing out your arm out of the socket, and competition so tense you could cut the air with a knife that got to me. I’ll admit to being a competitive person, just like one of my personal heroes Kevin Garnett said in his famous interview with John Thompson, “Whatever we’re doing, I hate to lose.” And maybe that’s why I was always obsessed with all Boston sports. That said, the Red Sox always came first for me. That’s my team on the field. So when the Red Sox made a their run in 2013, my buddies and I grew out our beards, and when Koji Uehara came to the mound, my nerves disappeared – that’s why I have a baseball that Koji signed in Japanese on a shelf in my room. To that end, when I heard this little filming had to do with the Red Sox, I had to be involved, it wasn’t an option. I can move wherever I want but I’ll always be that kid from Boston. Little did I know that it would become one of the official promo videos for Summit… Oh boy…
So go ahead, have a laugh on me; I don’t take myself that seriously, and neither should you. We’re all just people after all. Also, don’t forget to register for Summit, and receive a discount with the promo code revealed in the video.
Don’t forget that Red Hat’s JBoss Middleware is part of the Shared Economy, too.
Whether it’s Uber, Airbnb, Waze, Snapchat, or Spotify, the new shared economy is the way of the future, or at least it seems so right now. In 2017, the Shared Economy is going to be a buzzword. What will happen to the Shared Economy under the U.S government’s new administration, what about taking Shared public in the Snapchat IPO, how is the Shared Economy going to deal with regulation issues? Regardless of the specific ponderings of the day, the Shared Economy is more often than not, at the front of most of them – just read the latest copy of Fortune Magazine. According to Investopedia, the definition of the Shared Economy is “… an economic model in which individuals are able to borrow or rent assets owned by someone else. The sharing economy model is most likely to be used when the price of a particular asset is high.” Huh, that sounds a little like Red Hat’s Open Source approach to Middleware, doesn’t it? I know it’s a big claim to make, but Open Source was one the originals of the Shared Economy, and Red Hat belongs in conversations on the topic. Further, Open Source is needed now more than ever.
Back the in ancient days of yore, when hand-smoothed, grey, sliding rocks calculated arithmetic problems and giant Poodles and Chihuahuas roamed the earth’s surface, hardware manufacturers supplied their software, free-of-charge. They did this because their machines would simply not operate without a set of procedures. Back then, no one gave thought to software piracy or any of the other seemly more complex issues of today; a certain software was needed to run its paired machine, and only small fee was paid to cover the costs of copying the needed software from its master. In the 1960’s software production costs started increasing, and free software proved to be the inverse of those production costs; it was simple economics, and the dark ages started creeping in.
It is often said that many things in life move in a circular motion – keep your old stuff from the 70’s, there’s a massive payday when you sell your old junk in the future. Technology is actually not as different in certain ways. Fast forward a couple years or so through the GNU Project, and a peculiar Finnish fellow with glasses named Linus Torvalds, and it looks like the era of light and free software may be back. What is old is now new again and Open Source, one of the original forms of the Shared Economy, can solve a lot of today’s problems. Just like Snapchat, or Airbnb, Red Hat’s JBoss Middleware needs to be part of the conversation on the Shared Economy. Why is it needed today more than ever? Well, I’m fixin’ to tell ya, as one of our former presidents used to say. Here’s a few thoughts…
Better Security, Together.
Unless you live under one of the hand-smoothed, grey, sliding objects of yore, security is most likely one of your first concerns in a piece of software nowadays. Open Source is traditionally bashed for a lack of security from those who aren’t thining outside of the box. What is more secure than thousands of developers across the globe continually testing your software? JBoss Middleware utilizes assets in the form of borrowed, collective human intellectual resources to remedy security concerns.
Stay Up To Date, Together.
As odd as it may seem, sometimes people ask me for advice on life’s problems. I’m not exactly sure what makes them so positive that I know what I’m doing, but I often respond that unless someone is either dead, or dying, it isn’t really a huge problem in the first place! Seriously though, relevance is one of the keys to life. As Niccolo Machiavelli noticed, availability is paramount and you’ve gotta be on the scene. Sound familiar? If so it’s because Open Source isn’t that different. Our world is evolving at an increasingly rapid pace with each passing day, and our version of Kaizen though Open Source is becoming more and more needed. With JBoss Middleware, you can the harness the power of collective human intellectual resources in order to stay with the times and get the latest software updates. Besides, someone once said if I have an idea and you have an idea and we trade ideas, we both have two ideas – let’s innovate together and keep you on top of the times, welcome to the machine.
Lower Costs and Eliminate Waste, Together.
Okay, let’s get our heads out of the clouds for a second here and get down to brass tacks: unless you already utilize Open Source, your IT is probably costing you a lot of money. Excess spending makes for waste in your value chain. As things get more complicated, a scope-creep will likely ensue, and your bills are only going to get larger. Them’s the breaks, kiddo; scarcity is a basic human condition, and trade-offs are a thing, so your budget is a zero-sum gain in that sense. As we know, the Shared Economy comes into its own when costs are high. Costs, like your Middleware IT solutions. So, why not harness the power of people and collective intellectual assets in the Shared Economy to lower your costs? That’s what happened in the hotel industry, that’s what happened in the transportation industry, and that’s what happened with your Middleware. Money is simply a tool to be used strategically, a good deal is a good deal, and you can do better for cheaper thanks to the power of people. You’re now leaner than before thanks to Red Hat JBoss Middleware and the Shared Economy. Boo-yeah, and you’re welcome.
I would say that one could think of at least a couple more advantages to Red Hat’s Open Source Middleware, but what I’m trying to say here is that we utilize human capital to create a better world in terms of value too, and we’ve been doing it for quite awhile now.
Marcus Aurelius wrote in The Meditations, “Humans have come into being for the sake of each other…”. At Red Hat, we agree, and that’s why we share. Waze harnesses the power of human resources for traffic updates, Uber for transportation, and Red Hat JBoss Middleware harnesses the power of human resources for your IT. With this new Shared Economy, the cheese looks to have moved. I can’t be so arrogant as to say exactly how the cheese moved. Maybe Linus knows, maybe you can Crowdsource that answer, or you could even try a book – a book called The End of Power by Moises Naim might start you heading in the right direction. The only thing that I can tell you for sure is where you can find a pretty sweet slice of that cheese: it’s here at Red Hat JBoss Middleware. Mmmm… Open Source Mozzarella…
India is a woman – India is a woman but she is not a supermodel who wears the Rosso Corsa while she sits in her vineyard, enjoying the finer points in life. She does not have silver arrows or anything close to white precision engineering. She never wore the Bleu de France, either. She used to wear British Racing Green but that color has since faded to the drab color it always was before she put on her makeup. In reality, she has no racing color. Still, she has a charm about her. Although she has a sense of charm, she is no place for the weary traveler who just wants to rest and have a little peace. Even though she does not wear the Cunningham Racing Stripes like America, she is the real underdog. She is the one that nobody ever expects to win. She has features she is embarrassed of, and even the ones she isn’t are not something any other girl would be proud of. Still, there is something oddly lovable about her. Although, she comes off as rough and unmannered upon first impressions, she is warm, giving, kind and pure of heart. She does not come in the name of one god or another, giving only false hope that things will get better. She understands her flaws, openly admits them and has sworn that she will fix them even if it is not until her dying day.
India is not pretty; she stands a shelled shadow of her former self, like a hummingbird that has lost its grace. She is trying now to regain it and although she faces many obstacles, some of which are not her fault, I am confident that she will do it. I am also confident that I will not be alive to see it, but someday India will be beautiful again. She has hope. Hope for a better tomorrow, even if nothing else. She does not pretend she has anything besides hope, but her hope is more beautiful and more powerful than any tangible manifestation imaginable. Someday she will wear vibrant racing colors once again and they will not just be makeup. Someday, she will race alongside the other beautiful colors and know that she has accomplished this by herself and only by herself. When they ask her why she will tell them that she has a soul that has suffered defeat one too many times and although she has deep scars, she decided that she will never lose again.
