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Rethinking Suburbs in the Age of Self-Driving Cars
If you look at how many U.S. suburbs are built today, a clear pattern emerges. There’s the wide arterial road, often called a stroad. It’s usually six to eight lanes, built for speed. Along both sides sit strip malls, big-box stores, and standalone restaurants, each surrounded by large parking lots. Branching off these roads are…
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The Case for Prediction Markets (Even If People Hate Them)
I’ve been thinking a lot about prediction markets lately. And honestly, I keep running into people who really don’t like them. Not just mild skepticism, more like “these should be banned” or even outright illegal. That reaction kind of bums me out. I’ve been into the idea for a long time, even before there were…
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Strip Malls Could Be America’s New Main Streets
I’ve never liked strip malls, but for a long time I couldn’t quite explain why. The buildings themselves aren’t especially offensive. If you strip away the context, a strip mall is not so different from a row of shops that you might find present on a quaint walkable Main Street in a small town. The…
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The Toll No One Charges but Everyone Pays
When you drive on a busy road, you always pay a price. The real question is how you pay it, with money or with time. In most of the United States, we have chosen to charge drivers in time. There is no toll for entering a congested road, but during peak hours you might spend…
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Testing AR Glasses as a Treadmill Companion
I’ve always found treadmill walking to be exceptionally boring. If I’m outside, on a park trail, a greenway, or any kind of walking path, I can walk for hours without thinking about it. The time just disappears. Put me on a treadmill indoors, staring forward at the same wall or the same row of machines,…
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I’m Done With Bilt
Bilt dropped details yesterday about their new credit cards. I’ve been using the original Bilt card for a little over a year, mostly for one very specific reason, and after reading through the announcement I’m pretty confident I won’t be switching to any of the new ones. I’ll probably just close the account at the…
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Luxury Overnight Buses as an Alternative to Flying
I recently came across an intercity bus service starting up in Europe that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about. It’s an overnight bus, but not in the usual sense. Instead of upright seats and cramped legroom, the buses are built around fully lie-flat seats, similar to what you’d find in first class on…
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Taxis still fall short
I was recently in Miami, and like most trips I take in the U.S., my default plan for getting around was Uber or Lyft. I almost never take taxis anymore. It’s been many years since I last relied on one. But this time, I made an exception. I had just gotten off a cruise ship…
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Challenges in Defining True General Intelligence for AI
I’ve been thinking about the concept of artificial general intelligence and, more broadly, what we even mean by general intelligence. There are many proposed tests meant to benchmark AI against this supposed gold standard, but I think there’s a fundamental problem with how these tests are framed. If we treat modern humans as the baseline…
Kyle Piira 