Brad Templeton is founding faculty for Computing and Networks at Singularity University, and Chairman Emeritus and futurist of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the leading cyberspace civil rights foundation. He is on the board of the Foresight Institute. He also advised Google’s team developing self-driving cars, and writes about such cars at robocars.com. He also advises Starship on delivery robots and Quanergy in the LIDAR space. He founded ClariNet Communications Corp (the world’s first "dot-com" company.) He also created rec.humor.funny, the world’s longest running blog. Cool Tools interviewed him about his favorite tools.
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Show notes:
4K TVs as computer monitors
“[I have] a 50-inch 4K television, and you may think, ‘Wow, that’s really big, how far away do you sit from it?’ I sit the same distance I sat from the 30-inch and the 24-inches that so many people use. In fact, if you think about it, the typical 24-inch HD monitor, that is the most common sort of monitor sold today or a few years ago, that actually is one quarter of 4K and it’s 24-inches, which means it’s basically half of the 50-inch screen. … The great thing though is, they’re selling these TVs really cheap. They’re selling them down, you can get them for five, 600 bucks, even less …They didn’t want you to use these as monitors, they designed them to be TVs. So there’s s few tricks to pull, but if you do you can get something that’s just amazing."
VoIP PBX
"I run a voice over IP PBX in my home, that’s a little unusual. You may not need to do that, but there are lots of voice over IP services now, so you can get even your landline phone to travel with you. No matter where you are in the world, even on your cell phone or on your computer or if you want to bring a small phone with you because you like that landline experience, which I happen to. I like the voice quality and the physicality of it for a real conversation. You can get that and proxy it up so that my phone in California, you can call it, and it’s gonna ring at my desk in Paris and I can call you back. It’s gonna look like I’m there. A lot of people are doing that.”
Fire TV Stick ($40)
“I brought [overseas] my Amazon Fire Stick. I have the first generation one, that was my mistake. The second generation one can be programmed to do what you need to do here, which is use a VPN, a virtual private network. Why? Because you want to cheat all these global content controls that are telling me, even though I have an American Netflix account and I’m paying money into it right now, Netflix will not show me the things that I pay for in the US, ‘cause I’m in France."
Sony cameras
"I like the fact that my cameras keep getting smaller. … I’ve got the Sony a7RII, that’s about the best of the digital SLRs for image quality right now. Now, Sony just came out with their A9 which is possibly better. And then in their line I have their APS-C size, that’s the sensor that’s about half the size of a full 35 millimeter frame. That drops a lot of weight. … I also have, again it’s Sony so this one doesn’t have to be, but it’s one of the nicest little point and shoots. That fits in your pocket, and it’s the DSC-RX100 IV, and that guy does get some great images. But of course it just has a point and shoot zoom lens on it.”
Starship Technologies
"My favorite tool I’m working on right now is with a company that’s based in Estonia, and it’s called Starship Technologies. We’re making a delivery robot. It’s a little robot the size of a big beer cooler, and it’s got six wheels, and it’s not fully autonomous yet, but it’s going to be. It’s going to bring you everything that you want to order in 30 minutes, and it’s gonna cost under a dollar to do it. … Like so many things these days, you won’t be able to get one. You’ll be able to get one to bring you something, or if you’re a delivery company you might be able to buy them."
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