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White House report says AI will take jobs, but also help solve global problems

2016-10-12T20:03:51-04:00

The U.S. needs to figure out how to grapple with AI while humans are still behind the wheel.

President Obama thinks artificial intelligence could solve many of the world’s biggest problems — like disease, climate change, even economic inequality. To that end, his administration is recommending more investment in the technology across all levels of government, including funding STEM education to have a prepared workforce, advanced research projects, local grants and new federal infrastructure.

The White House released a 48-page report today featuring 24 recommendations for how the government can be involved in an increasingly AI-powered future, as well as ways to regulate the budding technology.

But the report isn’t without warnings.

For one, the White House predicts artificial intelligence and robotics will upend some jobs, noting that low- and medium-skilled workers are most vulnerable to threats of automation. The administration doesn’t offer a solution, but says it’s an issue that deserves careful attention and pledges to investigate appropriate policy responses.

The report further underscores the extremely fine line between necessary regulation and providing the kind of flexibility necessary to innovation.

Drones provide a useful example. Without necessary regulations, drones will potentially crash into airplanes and each other. But without the flexibility for some form of initial testing, the technology will never become safe enough, and America could lose its position as a global leader.

It’s not just about getting the regulations right. It’s also about federal funding and infrastructure. The Obama administration has already promised $3.9 billion for research and deployment efforts to bring self-driving technology safely to American roadways in the 2017 budget.

One theme that emerges throughout the White House’s recommendations is the need for policy making to involve people with technical expertise and deep understanding of how AI systems work, or else policymakers will be making laws about technology they doesn’t understand and can’t enforce.

This issue came to a head last year when Volkswagen was caught circumventing federal emissions standards in its code. With proper technical expertise in regulatory agencies, the government might have been able to catch VW’s cheating software.

Specific recommendations include:

Government agencies need to invite (and recruit) technical experts into senior-level policy-making discussions that involve AI-enabled products.
The U.S. government should invest in and develop a new automated air traffic control system that can manage both autonomous drones and manned aircraft.
The Department of Transportation should develop an evolving framework for the regulation and safe integration of fully autonomous cars for U.S. roads.
All federal agencies should adopt open data standards to enable the use of AI-powered research by the government, academics and the private sector.
Federal agencies that use artificial intelligence to help make consequential decisions should be careful to evaluate outcomes to ensure fairness and prevent discrimination.

The White House is hosting a day-long event tomorrow, The Frontiers Conference, in Pittsburgh on the future of U.S. innovation, including topics in robotics, medicine and space exploration. You can catch the livestream here.

Full transcript: The Wirecutter’s Kevin Purdy talks mattress e-commerce on Too Embarrassed to Ask

2016-10-12T16:57:26-04:00

“They are usually aiming at what they call a medium-firm mattress, which is like the medium-rare steak of the mattress world.”

On a recent episode of Too Embarrassed to Ask, Kevin Purdy, a writer for the Wirecutter, talked with Recode’s Kara Swisher and The Verge’s Lauren Goode about whether consumers should buy their mattresses from the internet.

You can read some of the highlights from their discussion at that link, or listen to it in the audio player above. Below, we’ve posted a lightly edited complete transcript of their conversation.

If you like this, be sure to subscribe to Too Embarrassed to Ask on iTunes, Google Play Music, TuneIn or Stitcher.

Transcript by Celia Fogel.

Lauren Goode: Kara, welcome back from Germany.

Kara Swisher: Thank you. Danke.

LG: I didn't think you were going to make it, but you flew in last night.

KS: I know, I took a plane so I get here so quickly. Right across the globe. I left actually Oktoberfest and went right to the airport.

LG: Did you really? For me?

KS: Yeah, they were drinking at 9 in the morning, so I had a good buzz on by 10:30 when I had to catch …

LG: So what did you do, just take Concord here to get here on time?

KS: No, I took a regular plane. It was nice, though. I was in first class, which was lovely. I watched movies.

LG: Wow, Vox splurging for first class.

KS: No, it wasn't Vox, it was the lovely people who had me over there. Bits & Pretzels.

LG: Is that a tech conference?

KS: Yeah, it's a tech conference. We're big in Germany. Recode is big in Germany. It was really interesting. It was a roomful of geeks — not geeks, startup founders — like an enormous beer hall at Oktoberfest. Everybody has these halls, and you go to a hall and you reserve tables and stuff. But this was 5,000 startup people all dressed in lederhosen but me. Or dirndl outfits. Including, I ran into one of the founders of Airbnb in a lederhosen.

LG: Really?

KS: And I interviewed Richard Branson onstage at this event the day before.

LG: In lederhosen.

KS: Not me, him. They wanted to get me in a dirndl or lederhosen, but I declined.

LG: Well, that sounds like it was rather smart.

KS: Everyone looks good in lederhosen, I hate to say it. It really was ... I thought it wouldn't be. But everyone's wearing it there in Munich. Like you walk around and every single person's in lederhosen. Late at night everyone's eating wursts at the train station before they go home after they're drunk as hell. And everyone's in lederhosen, and I've to say, they look good. They look good.

LG: I went to an Oktoberfest in Oakland recently, and it was not like that. It was a very hip Oktoberfest.

KS: It was lovely. They have, like, all these weird heart-shaped cakes, kuchen, and then they have …

LG: Were there smart boots? Like it's a tech conference, I would imagine they would have these smart steins or something like that.

KS: Nein, nein, nein. They had giant steins of beer. You know, your typical stuff. And literally I was drinking beer and eating a giant piece of chicken, which was delicious because the Germans really know how to cook a chicken, and 9:30 in the morning. That's when it started.

LG: That sounds amazing.

KS: Yeah, I had a great time.

LG: I'm really grateful you left all of that to come back here and do the podcast.

KS: You know, after a while, giant steins of beer ... there's only so many you can drink.

LG: After a while, life calls you back.

KS: Yeah. So here I am.

LG: Well, these past few weeks on Too Embarrassed to Ask we've talked about sex, drugs and Apple products.

KS: Ah, yes.

LG: A reminder that if you missed last week's episode about sexting with Caitlin Dewey from the Washington Post, you can find that at iTunes, Google Play or recode dot net. I will note, we taped that …

KS: We taped that in D.C. I was in D.C.

LG: We taped that on Tuesday of last week and then another Anthony Weiner scandal broke.

KS: Really?

LG: After that ... let's not even get into it. But this week we're taking a break from vices and we're talking about something might not make you think tech necessarily, but it's something that a lot of people have been asking us about. And yes, there is a tech angle, or at least an e-commerce angle.

KS: Yes, we're going to be talking about mattresses, specifically online mattress companies, and there are a lot of them. If you live in New York or San Francisco, you've seen ads for them all over subways and around the city, and there's all kinds of changing ways we buy our mattresses. And I'm pretty sure I read advertisements for some of them on this podcast and also on Recode Decode. In the interest of full disclosure, we have run ads for the online mattress company Casper on this show, Recode Decode, and Recode Replay, and for a different company called Helix Sleep on Recode Media with Peter Kafka. However, those companies are not sponsoring this podcast, and like all our advertisers, they have no say over the editorial content of this or any other episode.

LG: Oh, that's good. The lawyer standing over your shoulder seems to have relaxed a little bit.

KS: [laughs] Yeah.

LG: So we are bringing in an outside guest who is an expert on this topic.

KS: A mattress expert.

LG: Kevin Purdy is a writer based in Buffalo, N.Y., who has researched the online mattress industry extensively, and he has written about it for the Wirecutter. Kevin, thank you for joining us. Welcome to Too Embarrassed to Ask.

Kevin Purdy: Well, thank you for having me.

LG: So we're going to get to some questions from our readers about the actual products because we got a lot of questions about these mattress companies, and we're also going to tell you what the Wirecutter's top pick was. But first, let's talk about the business of these online mattress companies. Why are so many of them, ahem, springing up.

Oh my god. There's no springs in them anymore! Kook. [laughter]

Oof.

KS: Oof. There's no springs.

LG: [laughs] That was the worst dad joke ever, and I had to get it in there.

KS: Oh my god.

LG: Eric is laughing.

KS: Anyway. Go ahead, Kevin. Let's hear about the business. Why are they springing up? They've suddenly sort of appeared out of nowhere.

Sure. The main reason is that buying a mattress is a terrible experience that we all had to live with because there was no other way to do it. Like so many internet startups, that's kind of where they come in. They have taken the experience, with the combination of other factors, too, including the progress of drop-shipping and logistics that a lot of companies are taking advantage of. Online marketing, people's just general familiarity and comfort with buying something online, sight unseen. Which, you know, Amazon and other companies have helped propel forward, and now we arrive at this point where the experience of buying a mattress through the traditional store method, which if you've ever done it before, going to a store, super aggressive sales people, confusing names and brands that you can't price match or even compare between stores, sitting on something for four minutes and saying, "Yeah, this is good for 10 years." So that experience now, if compared to buying something you don't even really want to think about that much anyways and you have no expertise in, here come these companies that say like, "Hey, we've done all this research; we've got this product that is the best for most people." Or, "the universal comfort mattress." Asterisk, footnote, get to that later. [laughter] Here they come, and for anywhere between $500 and $1,000, they ship it to your house, and most of us are now pretty familiar with our UPS person by now. They show up, it's in a box, you unwrap it, it's this really cool thing, it gathers up the air again and it expands. And you're done. You're done buying a mattress. You didn't have to blow an entire Saturday or two of them to do it. So yeah. I think the industry kind of springs from a lot of movements inside the industry, but also a lot of external factors that have made buying a mattress online feasible and desirable.

LG: So you mentioned ease of use and ease of process, which we're going to get to. But you also mentioned this industry that existed, or has existed, for a long time. Who dominates the mattress industry right now? Not of the online companies, but of the sort of legacy mattress companies?

Sure. The big four, which are actually really the big two. Simmons and Serta ... well, it's the three S's and the T actually is the industry term for it. Simmons and Serta, they're theoretically competitive brands, but they're actually both owned by a private equity firm that purchased them in 2012. And then Tempur-pedic and Sealy. Tempur-pedic actually bought Sealy in 2012 as well. So it's four brands that live under two ownership stakes. And together, all put together, they control about 77 percent of the traditional mattress market. By comparison, you know, I think some of the newer upstarts have started bragging about hitting their million mattress mark or, you know, 200,000 to 400,000 in a quarter — I'd have to double-check my math on that — but, you know, the big mattress firms are just shipping millions of them every year. So it's a very slow process, but the upstarts are starting to cut in a little bit. But the big firms run the whole market pretty much. They cut themselves up into various sub-brands, and they have a gazillion lines and models that may or may not be different from each other. They usually have exclusives with retailers and department stores, thereby creating even more brands and confusion …

KS: Confusing for the consumer.

LG: Yeah. That's intentional.

KS: So how did these other ones weigh in here? Because that's not something I'd think, mattresses. Obviously Amazon has changed the industry, with people allowing things to be delivered to their home or wanting them regularly to be delivered to their home. But this is not a product that you would say, "Ah, yes, a mattress." It's enormous, first of all, and obviously they've done some cool things about getting the air out of them and putting them in these boxes. I've unboxed one, and it is pretty cool. But where did they come from and who are they?

The mattresses or the companies?

The companies and the mattresses. The companies who make the mattresses.

Sure. Well, it's funny because the companies themselves are a collection of CEOs, venture backers, people who are really good at making sleek-looking websites, and you know, usually some person inside who's either a former mattress person or some kind of designer. They always like to tout, like, their MIT engineers and stuff, like many companies do these days.

LG: "Made by NASA."

Sure, yeah. Oh yeah. NASA everywhere. But they are generally contracting with an established American regional mattress maker. Not any different than any Tempur-Sealy- Pedic or Simmons are doing. They just find a maker of mattresses, contract with them to make their one mattress that they've ... one or two or three mattresses they've created, and then they sell them directly to consumers, which allows them to cut out all that markup at the middle. But as to where they actually come from, from whence they spring, I guess the same place that a lot of startups come from these days. Incubators, meetings of people at other companies, things like that.

LG: And which of the online mattress companies that we're hearing so much about, which was the first one to really stand out. Who was the disrupter that led the pack?

Oh my.

KS: They all seemed to appear at once.

I guess you could say that there are some ... It depends on how you describe dinosaurs. Like ... [laughter] when they turned into birds. There were companies like Bed in a Box and Amerisleep which were doing ... I guess you would say were into it before it was popular, way before 2010. But starting in 2010, 2012-ish, you start seeing companies like Tuft & Needle, Casper, Leesa, things like that. The companies that have gained so much presence and name recognition through things, like advertising on podcasts.

KS: But not just there. I've seen them everywhere. They're all over San Francisco and all over certain cities. You see their ads everywhere. And how are they different? The prices are lower. It's just easier, I guess. But let's talk about, is the quality any different? Is there a difference between polyfoam and memory foam in terms of the cost? Or is it just the mattress business just has really been a brand game and now these guys are just taking the brand out of it essentially?

Sure. good question. Well, if you ask the companies, of course, every one of them is different and better and the only one anyone needs. But the foam and the making of foam mattresses is something that's been around for a very long time. It's how Tempur-pedic got into the market and suddenly became a huge thing. They were offering foam mattresses and kind of caught the other companies asleep at the wheel. As for these newer companies that are direct consumer online focused, they're making a product that is aimed at the most people, and so to do that, they're kind of creating what I ... they are usually aiming at what they call a medium-firm mattress, which is like the medium-rare steak of the mattress world [laughter]. Everyone …

KS: Everyone's comfy with it. You don't dial it, whatever.

Yeah, everyone's pretty comfortable with it.

KS: Those dialing mattresses, I don't even understand.

Yeah, on a bell curve it would hit the most people, because something like ... let's see … 60 to 70 percent of people sleep in their side. Fifteen to 18 percent of people sleep on their stomach. And 12 to 15 percent of people sleep on their backs. So you pick out a mattress that's going to be, like, well, it's soft enough for most side-sleepers, but still a little bit, there's a layer in the middle to give the back-sleepers the support they want. Then you market it. And you say like, "Hey, would you rather just buy this one mattress that our engineers say is great for most people."

KS: So, Kevin, you say in an article on Wirecutter that these online mattress companies do a fair bit of exaggerating themselves. What do you mean by that?

The exaggeration comes from the terms that they use to describe how their mattress is going to work for Everybody. Capital E, Everybody. Casper has used the term "perfect mattress." Tuft & Needle has said that it "adapts to every individual's body." And Leesa, the one that I recommend, actually, in the article, in our guide, has a "universal feel." So anyone who has worked in the mattress industry, designed a mattress, tested them, like Nick Robinson at Sleep Like the Dead, which is just an amazing, nerdy mattress website, will tell you that there's no such thing as a mattress that works for everybody because if there was, there would only be one mattress in the industry.

LG: It would be the platonic form of mattress.

Sealy would just have this thing locked up, and they'd be walking away with like their Kleenex mattress. But yeah. So the best that any company can do is just hope to kind of make something like 85 percent of people happy. And you really should shop for the mattress that you think is going to best adapt to your sleeping style. When we did our surveys to write our guide, and when I talk to people, I learned a lot about the breadth of American sleep habits. I mean, some people, I've asked them like, "Hey, do you sleep on your side, your back, your stomach? How do you do it?" And they would tell me about, like, "Oh, I'm a cigar roller." And I'd say, "I'm sorry?"

LG: What does that mean?

Yeah, like they literally would find themselves waking up at every point in the night on a different side. You know, just like spinning and spinning, and they'd say, "I wake up with the sheets completely wrapped around me." [laughs] So if that's you, I don't know that the universal-fit mattresses are going to work for you. That's really what it is, is just the idea that a lot of startups, to undercut and disrupt the industry they're in, will just describe the industry that they exist in as full of fat cats just making money off of people who don't know any better. And, you know, it's hard because I do see some of that …

KS: It's a good marketing thing. It's a good marketing idea to do that, though. Because everyone does feel bad about buying mattresses, I think.

Certainly.

LG: It's kind of similar to the Warby Parker model in some ways. There's this duopoly, they come in and say, "We're going to disrupt this industry," but that's also a part of their storytelling behind it.

KS: You know, their glasses aren't as nice as others. They break a little more. But they're not that bad. Like, you know what I mean — that's the thing.

There's always something …

KS: There's always something, but they're pretty good. And especially the price. Like $90 is really, really good. So how much money do they lose on returns? Because when they say you can return it for free, I read it, I'm like …

LG: Can you imagine packing it back into the box?

KS: Packing up a mattress. What do you do? You put it outside and put a sticker on it? Like, what the hell? I wouldn't even know ... no one returns them.

The shorthand is, you know, most of the time there's a 100-night sleep trial, and if you don't like it ...they make you sleep on it for 30 days, by the way, because they want to make sure that you adjusted to it and you've really given it a shot, but then somewhere in the 100 days, you can return it. And they use the word “return” just to assure you and get you through the … what do they call it, the funnel? They get you through the buying process. And then returning is actually contacting the company, telling them exactly why you don't like it, and then they usually either have it recycled or donated to a local company near you. And if you live in one of the major cities, this is real easy for them. They have just lists of companies that can do this, or nonprofits or churches that will take mattresses. So usually they just send someone to your house to pick it up and get it recycled or donated to charity, or if they can't do that then they usually contract with a mattress disposal firm.

LG: So you're not actually shipping it back to the company directly. And that's probably just too much of a hassle for them.

No, they explicitly demand that you do not send them back. I believe that one of the companies that …

LG: Right. I can't think what I'd do with a bunch of dirty mattresses.

Yeah. One of the companies actually in some article I read said that one guy actually did it and then asked them to reimburse him, like, "Hey, I sent this back to you by UPS, please give me my $243." [laughter] Or whatever it was.

LG: Wow. So how important is the up-sell for some of these online mattress companies? Because some of them now also sell pillows and sheets and other things having to do with bedding. How big of a business is that for them?

I'm not certain because they ... it's such a newer category for them to have these things. I know that they make margin on their mattresses even though they are touting how they're not like the mattress industry and they make no margin. They do. The origin story of Tuft & Needle is supposedly that they found a $3200 mattress and they found that it only cost $300 to make. You know, even at $300 they're still making money off of these mattresses. And even with the return process, they still do. So I don't know how much it's important for them to up-sell, but I imagine like most companies they want to just kind of hedge their bets, diversify their revenue base and kind of get you into the brand, start trusting them for more things.

LG: Right. Yeah, I've seen people, you know ... when we put out a tweet online soliciting questions from our readers and listeners about this topic, some people wrote back and were talking about things like pillows and dog beds and other stuff that they sell. So it does seem like it's kind of smart from a brand recognition perspective.

Oh, the dog bed.

Yeah, someone said, "Why did they make a dog bed?" And I wrote back, "And not a cat bed. Am I right?" I mean come on! There should be a cat bed if they're making a dog bed. But you hear about stuff like that and you realize the brand recognition is kind of working because people are associating the mattress company with things other than just mattresses, too.

KS: I guess. Cats don't need a bed.

LG: No, they don't. They just sleep wherever the heck they want.

No. Nor do dogs. They just want to sleep in your bed.

KS: Exactly. I woke up this morning with two cats on my head. My head is an excellent cat bed. Anyway. Now we've got some questions and answers from readers. We got quite a few.

LG: Yes, we have so many!

KS: Quite a few people have mattress questions.

LG: People are really excited about mattresses.

KS: So Lauren, why don't you take over?

LG: Well, I'm going to throw in my question first, if that's okay.

KS: Not really, but all right.

LG: Just quickly. So Kevin, the Wirecutter picked Leesa — that's L-E-E-S-A — as their top pick. After hours of literally sleeping on the job.

KS: [laughs] Would you stop?!

LG: Kara is getting so mad at my dad jokes [laughs]. You love them.

KS: I do not.

LG: Okay, before we get into the reader questions, why did you guys pick Leesa?

We recommend the Leesa because we thought it was the best for side-sleepers, pretty good — or even really good — for stomach-sleepers, and okay to decent enough for back-sleepers. So if you're a couple and you're split between all those kinds of sleeping, we thought it did pretty well. We liked the hug and the feel of the mattress …

KS: What's the hug of a mattress? I'm sorry.

The hug is how when you lay on it how it comes up around you.

KS: Ah, the hug.

I mean, you could say sink.

LG: Kara doesn't get hugged enough at home.

KS: [laughs] I get way too much hugging. I'd like to have a little less hugging.

You have to choose how wine sommelier you get about this, but it's how it comes up around you, how it feels on your skin and side …

KS: [French accent] It's a hug, it's a mattress, oh ho [laughter]. Sorry.

And we also like the company's return policy, the look of the mattress, the shopping experience and other things that if you were certain about it, we thought ... we tested it all out and thought it was pretty good.

LG: All right. Leesa is the top pick. Kara, would you like to read one of the next questions?

KS: Yes, I shall. Thank you. "How similar are the mattresses?" This is from George Jones @villageorge. "They seem to be comparable, i.e. Casper, Leesa, Simba." And I guess he didn't mention the other one, the Tuft & Needle.

LG: I never heard of Simba.

Oh sure, and there's …

KS: It's a lion in a very good movie. Ahhhh dahan yaaaa.

LG: Oh my god. Straight to Broadway, you.

KS: I know, exactly. So how similar they are really?

They way that they're made, there's six inches of support foam, a certain amount of foam over that. They come out about 10 inches. There's a machine that folds them up and sucks all the air out of them, wraps them in plastic, puts them in a box. So in that regard, they are very similar. It's an industry practice that has just been adapted and adopted by numerous makers. In terms of how they feel, like what the end product is like. I found that they were notably different, just picking five or six of them to test out. I thought that Tuft & Needle was much more firm than the Casper or the Leesa. A lot of reviews online will point that out, too. I thought that Ikea's mattresses — and you know, one can tend to think of Ikea as just pretty good at making average things for most people — their foam mattress that we tried for a little lower price point, but we thought, "Hey, what the heck?" Just … man. Just a slab of rocks. Foamy rocks.

KS: Yeah, that's how they like it in Scandinavian countries, I guess [laughs].

They might.

LG: They're also supposed to be really happy people, so I don't know.

KS: They are happy. They don't sleep a lot. They live, live, live.

For all the detail in “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,” he doesn't get into that …

KS: Herring! Herring for all!

I find that they are different, and I think it depends on what you …

LG: What you like.

Which two brands you compare.

KS: But no Ikea.

There are expensive Ikeas we didn't get to try. But at the price points that we looked at, we didn't really like the Ikea mattress as much, no.

LG: Okay. The next question is from Greg. He's @supersetgreg. He asks a very emphatic question, "Why in the hell are they always on sale?" I think that's a good thing.

KS: Hmm, why in the hell are they always on sale?

LG: You know, most people would say, "Why in the hell are they so damn expensive?" And he was like, "Uhhh, sales. I hate sales."

Presumably the traditional mattresses, not these. Although they're both a little on sale.

KS: No, I think these, too. They're always having a break on those sites. I read that stuff, I know.

LG: They're relatively inexpensive.

KS: Yeah, they are. So why do they feel ... why are they always on sale? Are they just a fake price, the first price?

I'm not sure myself. Someone who's smarter at marketing than I am would be able to tell you why a company persistently says, "This mattress costs $850 but you get a $25 Target gift card and also $75 off!" Like, I assume that's a marketing psychology thing. They're not too often on sale. We watch prices very closely at the Sweethome and the Wirecutter, and so my Slack channel would be pinging all the time if I had to constantly adjust prices or update about sales. So they don't move around too much, but they do do a little bit of that kind of "it costs this much, wink wink, here's a gift card" thing sometimes.

KS: All right, next one is @HunterMoliver —- that's an interesting name — "What is the longevity of these new Casper-like mattresses compared to the traditional mattress? If there's any difference at all?"

Sure. They're about even now. I think old-style spring mattresses that were two-sided, where you could flip them over, used to come with sometimes like 20-year warranties. I guess the joke being, "Feel free to drive your mattress back to the store and tell me you don't like it." But these tend to come with somewhere between five- to 10-year warranties. One thing I point out in that blog post you mentioned earlier is that a 10-year warranty form a brand new mattress startup company is kind of a gamble. You know, you're hoping that the company doesn't get bought up six different ways or you know …

KS: Closes.

Yeah, among these 50 mattress companies that are going to start up.

KS: It happened this weekend. We wrote about Dot and whatever.

LG: Dot & Bo furniture company.

KS: Yeah, they closed and now we have all these readers writing in about getting their money back.

LG: Although if a mattress company closes — I'm going to make another really bad dad joke — what kind of support do you need going forward? [laughter] But in all reality ... Eric is cringing right now. But what kind of, like …

KS: No more of those, do you understand?

LG: Okay, I used up all my dad joke cards.

KS: So you don't know. The longevity is you probably get these things quicker than you used to.

Well, yeah. Consumer Reports, which we are, you know, we do read and we do check out their stuff, and what they recommend ... they have done tests with machines that supposedly simulate the sleeping of someone on a mattress for years and years and years, and they said that, you know, they barely detected any changes in the mattresses they tested after what they called seven years of simulated use. But then, you know, my own inner dad will tell you, it's going to vary based on your size, how you sleep, the kind of foundation you have underneath it, etc, etc.

LG: Yeah, absolutely.

It depends, but they seem about on par with traditional mattresses right now.

LG: That is excellent to know. Okay, the next question is from Geraldine Gray, @GeraldineGray on Twitter. We are back to a business question. "What's the profit margin on mattresses in stores and are they worth the price tag?" And then she also notes, "We have Tuft & Needle."

Sure. I looked into ... I read as many quarterly reports and year-end financials from the mattress companies as I could stand to. It's hard to break it up but, and it's hard to just cite a profit number or whatnot, but basically a lot of folks cite it at about 30 or 40 percent for wholesalers of traditional mattresses, and another 30 or 40 percent margin for the retailers. The companies themselves, like Tempur-Sealy, their gross profit margin goes between 37 and 53 percent in the last decade or two. And you know sometimes 50 percent or above for the other big companies. So, “healthy” is the best way to put it. They obviously have a lot of retail, but, you know, their gross profit is very high. So minusing anything that we're not seeing, all that smoke and mirrors and the Tempur Cool Breeze Flex Supreme branding does seem to work for them.

KS: All right. Almost Spooky Evan — what do you mean almost? You can't be almost spooky — @evcon: "Which one is easier to move?" Meaning are they heavy. The heaviness of them.

Oh, thank you. Great question. I'm actually really disappointed that almost none of the mattresses I tried out from new companies had handles on them. I have no idea why, other than guessing that it's just a manufacturing thing — harder to put handles on or a little bit more expensive. But I miss handles, and I miss even those awkward rope things that used to come out of the sides of mattresses. Those like thick, plasticky ropes that would just cut between two grommets on the side.

LG and KS: Yup, yup.

Because even though you don't turn these mattresses over anymore, you still should rotate them every three to six months. And so I don't know — it's not a bonding experience to wrestle a big foam monster with your partner [laughs].

LG: No, it's kind of frustrating. And none of them had handles of the ones you tested?

Yeah, of the newer brands. I think Ikea did, actually.

KS: Casper doesn't.

LG: Oh, so Ikea. Hard as a rock, comes with handles. A real tradeoff there.

KS: All right, next question. Lauren?

LG: So this question you already answered, but thanks for sending it in, Jeff Kushmerick, @kooshdog. He says, "What do they do with returned ones? #shudder #motel6" We did already answer that earlier in the podcast, Jeff. So thank for sending in your question.

Although, real asterisk, it just depends on where you live and what families are near you. There are some towns and municipalities in areas where they absolutely refuse to accept foam mattresses. So sometimes your mattress does end up just going off to the great graveyard in the sky, but generally they get reused.

LG: Next question?

KS: Jared Kane. @jarednkane. "I paid for a Tempur-pedic and just want to feel justified in my purchase versus Casper ghost bed, etc. Please help." So he wants to feel justified.

Sure. The easiest way to do that is to take the purchase price and divide it by the number of nights you're going to sleep on it and say to yourself, "You know, if I really like this mattress, then was it crazy to pay this much per night as opposed to this much per night to sleep on it?" And you might find out no, it really wasn't.

KS: You totally got cheated, Jared. No, I'm kidding [laughter].

LG: Sorry, Jared.

KS: You sucka.

LG: Hope you sleep well tonight.

It really depends.

LG: Don't lose sleep over it, Jared.

KS: Oh my god, you put another one in! She made another joke when we weren't' watching.

LG: I'm sorry, Kevin, go ahead.

KS: I'm going to give you a little shut-eye in a minute. Ha ha.

LG: So that's the best way to do it. Kara, when did you last buy a mattress?

KS: Recently. I bought a Tempur-Pedic.

LG: How much did you spend? Do you mind if I ask?

KS: It was expensive. I always get really, really good mattresses.

LG: Did you do the math in your head for how many nights you're going to sleep on it?

KS: No. I do not care. I do not care about the price of a mattress.

LG: Kevin, what was the last one you bought?

KS: I buy it here in San Francisco, McRoskey. There are some others. I like them.

I bought a mattress from a local mattress company, like regional to Buffalo, when I was out of college. And I slept on it into my marriage. And then we bought a Tuft & Needle right before I even got assigned this guide.

KS: Are you pleased?

Jumped right into it.

KS: Are you happy with your Tuft & Needle?

It turned out that we ended up buying a Leesa instead.

LG: There you go. See.

KS: I met the people who made my mattress in San Francisco.

LG: Really? That's so artisinal of you.

KS: I know. I got an artisanal mattress is what I got.

LG: Wow. We went to this place in Palo Alto …

KS: But I'm worth it. I am worth it.

LG: You are worth it. And you sleep on it.

KS: My butt is worth it.

LG: This old shop in Palo Alto that's been around for, I don't know, more than 25 years, where the guy, he sells traditional mattress brands. But it's funny because he runs the shop, he owns the place, he does all the deals. And then he's the one that shows up at your house with like the mattress strapped to his back. And his name is Armando. He drops it off. That's the last one I bought.

KS: The only thing about buying the expensive mattress is that things pee on it. My kid when he'd crawl into bed peed on the mattress several times, and the same thing with pets. So that's the only issue with mattresses.

LG: Yeah.

KS: That's why you might want to replace them.

LG: Yeah, we should do a whole other podcast on this.

KS: No, we won't, but anyway, next question.

If only there was a site that could recommend the best mattress cover.

KS: It doesn't matter.

LG: Yes, like the Sweethome, which is one of my favorite sites. Okay, the next question is from @anoushasakoui, similar to the last question. She says, "Yes, I need a new mattress. I don't want memory foam, I don't want to pay $3,000," and then she writes, "Help." This is so funny because we never get questions from people for this podcast that are like "help me." And people are really passionate about their mattresses.

KS: Oh my god that was another joke shoved in there somewhere.

LG: No, I wasn't even trying to be …

KS: And yet you did.

LG: You're the one that thought about passion and mattresses, not me.

KS: Okay, whatever. Go ahead. What are you going to do to help her, Kevin.

We tested for our guide ... we specifically stuck to fold-and-ship mattresses, sub-$1,000, because that's what we wanted to test. In looking around at the category and choosing what we were going to test, we found that there are other brands that offer, I would say, like adjacent kinds of business models — where it is a spring mattress, they sometimes have like micro-springs or actually full springs, but they have the same kind of “try it out and send it back if you don't want it” models. I haven't tested any of these so I can't verify them, but I know that Saatva — S-A-A-T-V-A — makes coil mattress they'll ship to you, actually, or deliver to you with that same kind of model. Brooklyn Bedding, I believe, makes some. There's Brentwood Home, I think. So in a spreadsheet in my mind somewhere there's a bunch of them.

KS: Brooklyn Bedding? That's very hip.

Yeah, they actually do make them in Brooklyn there.

LG: Why would you buy a bed from Brooklyn Bedding?

KS: I wouldn't. It's like the artisanal chocolate from Brooklyn. I just ... I have a ban against it.

LG: You watch your mattress being made.

KS: Yeah, exactly. You watch it made and then you discuss it over homemade kombucha and artisanal chocolate.

And only bearded people have touched this bed.

KS: I went to Brooklyn and there was a hot sauce place …

LG: [laughing] And only bearded people …

KS: Yes, there's a hot sauce place that literally they were talking about hot sauce like it was something like it was fine wine. They went on and on, all these hipsters, and of course Nelly was participating and I was sitting in the corner going, "Get me the hell out of here." Hot sauce. Yeah. Whatever.

LG: Did you tell them you've got hot sauce in your bag?

KS: No, no. I do not.

LG: Like the queen.

KS: Oh, that's true.

LG: And the last question is about the dog bed that we referenced earlier. Dylan Stalley, @dstaley. Dylan, thanks so much for sending in your question.

KS: About the Casper dog bed.

LG: About the Casper dog bed.

KS: And lack of cat bed.

LG: Well, I said there should be a cat bed. Kara shakes her head.

KS: Any more jokes? Any more jokes you need to make? Got them out of your system?

LG: No, I've got to sleep on it. [laughter]

KS: All right, Kevin, we’ve got to stop her. Thanks so much more joining us. This has been another great episode of Too Embarrassed to Ask.

LG: I can't stop laughing at myself. I'm laughing at my own joke.

Wireless charging could keep drones in the air for much longer

2016-10-12T16:23:22-04:00

Most drones now can fly for only about 20 minutes before landing to recharge.

Most hobby and commercial drones can fly for only about 20-30 minutes max. That’s because batteries eventually die. And the larger and more powerful the battery, the heavier the craft, which in turn needs more battery power to fly.

But there are a number of projects taking off now aiming to keep drones in the air much longer by harnessing solar energy, as well as a technology known as wireless energy transfer.

If drones don’t need to recharge, they won’t have to land. And that means drones will be able to travel longer distances and potentially never land, which will be especially important for drones beaming internet access or performing long-term surveillance operations.

Last month, researchers from the Imperial College of London released a paper detailing how long-range wireless charging for drones might work. The technology is only at an early stage: Right now the researchers are only able to fly a quadcopter wirelessly within five inches of a charging base that transmits power to a receiver made of copper foil attached to the drone. The team had to engineer a drone especially for wireless charging so as not to fry the drone’s components.

Earlier this summer, a company called Global Energy Transmissions demonstrated how it was able to fly a tethered drone for one hour, which it claimed was charging wirelessly while it flew. Aerial wireless charging without docking would require some infrastructure upgrades. The Global Energy Transmissions team has invented a power cord that would wrap around buildings and charge a passing drone equipped with wireless charging receiver hardware.

Aerial charging is something Amazon has been thinking about with its drone program, too. The company was issued a patent this summer for a network of docking stations on cell towers or other tall structures where their drones could recharge and share navigational information.

Solar power is also an option for drone charging, but that’s mostly being explored for winged drones, which require fewer motors and may handle smaller payloads than quadcopters.

Facebook’s Aquila drone, which the company hopes to eventually power with solar energy, completed a successful test earlier this summer. Google also has a solar-powered drone project called SkyBender that the company has been testing New Mexico.

Last year the first solar-powered manned aircraft, the Solar Impulse 2, completed a flight around the world without refueling. Monday, the Swiss aviators of the Solar Impulse team said their next project is a solar-powered drone.

Impossible Foods makes fake meat burgers with plant blood (and they’re actually not bad)

2016-10-12T15:46:30-04:00

The company reverse engineered real burgers to figure out how to make synthetic meat tastier.

Burgers aren’t sustainable.

One third of the planet’s arable land is devoted to raising livestock, and the methane produced from animal farming is one of the biggest sources of greenhouse gas emissions contributing to climate change.

Enter Silicon Valley.

There are a handful of food startups racing to create the most meat-like plant-based burger replacement imaginable. Companies like Impossible Foods and Beyond Burgers are betting on the fact that the demand for beef will one day outpace what’s sustainable to produce, and that today’s veggie burgers aren’t a delicious enough replacement.

Investors seem to agree. Impossible Foods raised $182 million in venture capital since it opened its operations in 2011, including funds from Bill Gates, Google Ventures and Li Ka-shing’s Horizon Ventures from Hong Kong. And Beyond Burgers, which already has products available for sale at select Whole Foods markets, recently added Tyson Foods, the largest meat processor in the U.S., to its list of investors.

Recode visited the Impossible Foods lab in Redwood City, Calif. to try the latest iteration of its burger technology and learn more about how the high-tech patties are made.

Impossible Foods isn’t just putting black beans and tofu in a blender to create a veggie patty. They hired scientists who worked to uncover the exact elements that make beef burgers so delicious, reverse engineering for flavor and texture. It turns out, the main ingredient that gives meat its distinctive meaty flavor is also found in plants.

It’s a blood-like compound called heme, and although it’s more concentrated in meat, the scientists at Impossible Foods have figured out how to isolate it in crops like soybeans and clover. They’re also using coconut oil, which melts like beef fat in a hot pan, and potato protein to give the burger its meaty texture.

Impossible Foods is already served in Nishi, a high-end New York restaurant, and is moving to the left coast this winter, where it will be served in Crossroads Kitchen in Los Angeles and at Cockscomb and Jardinière in San Francisco. There’s no word yet on when it’ll be available in the grocery store.

Recode spoke with Impossible Foods CEO Pat Brown and chef Dominique Crenn at our annual Code Conference earlier this year. Listen or watch the full interview to learn more about their efforts to change the way people think about the future of food.

A new generation of 5G will change everything from platforms to self-driving cars

2016-10-12T15:30:03-04:00

The high-speed wireless network will be a critical component in the federal government’s agenda to develop the next level of U.S. innovation.

This week, President Obama will arrive in Pittsburgh to convene the first-ever White House Frontiers Conference. The conference will bring together innovators from across the country to focus on how science and technology is shaping the 21^stcentury, and particularly the role of innovation in building smarter and more inclusive communities. It will be an important discussion, and a timely one, as we are on the cusp of a key technological revolution that will change everyone’s lives in ways we can only dimly envision today.

Back in the 19^th and 20^th centuries, the railroad, the telegraph and the telephone vastly expanded the scope of commerce and transformed our conceptions of time and space. Now, the next generation of mobile networks holds a similar promise.

In each case, the infrastructure created by these earlier innovations became platforms on which others could build new enterprises and reach new markets. Built on clear standards and protocols (e.g., the gauge of railroad tracks, Morse Code, dial tone and phone numbers), they provided powerful capabilities that could be used by others for their own value-added purposes.

Those who built and operated these platforms did well, but they enabled many others to flourish, as well. As John Hagel from the Deloitte Center for the Edge has noted, successful platforms create rich ecosystems of resources that benefit all participants.

Platforms have emerged as one of the most significant models for internet-based businesses at the heart of our modern digital economy. Apple’s iTunes transformed the way music is distributed, while its App Store is responsible for creating an entire “app economy” that sustains tens of thousands of app developers. Facebook provided a framework that is being used by more than a billion people to share their lives with others and that has become a powerful channel for everything from news to advertising and commerce. Amazon not only sells merchandise directly but has also provided a platform that connects many other sellers to customers.

The growth of wireless broadband networks greatly amplified the reach and impact of platforms like these. The smartphone has become the primary means by which people stay connected, get information and conduct business in their everyday lives. There are currently some three billion smartphones in use globally today, and the number is projected to reach six billion — 70 percent of the world’s population — by 2020. Because these devices are used on the go, people depend on the simplicity, consistency and reliability that established digital platforms can provide.

And now wireless networks are on the brink of becoming exponentially faster, more pervasive and more versatile. The arrival of next-generation 5G-based networks in the next few years will provide what has been described as a uniquely powerful “platform for platforms” and is notably the foundation for the personal, local and national frontiers of innovation the Obama administration seeks to advance.

Offering “perceived infinite capacity,” 5G will provide the basis for the emergence of ubiquitous new wireless platforms that, in turn, will support the creation of an array of new services and businesses.

For example, the speed and responsiveness of 5G networks will be critical for supporting fleets of self-driving vehicles that will depend on getting instantaneous guidance “from the cloud.” The Internet of Things, which will put billions of devices online, will also make use of 5G’s capabilities, as will a rich new world of augmented reality (of which Pokémon Go provides a simple but compelling preview).

Beyond these much-heralded uses, we are likely to see the development of platforms to support everything from wireless payments and remote medical monitoring to the on-demand delivery of education and government services.

And while we may be able to discern the broad contours of this emerging hyper-connected world, it is a safe bet that it will also provide surprises that are the product of imaginative entrepreneurs who know how to leverage the power of platforms.

To realize this 5G future, policymakers at all levels of government and the private sector will need to address unprecedented challenges — some known, some not — that come with laying the technical foundation of this new technology. It will take real work and close cooperation, but the potential value of 5G to society and the economy is too great to delay.

Richard Adler is a noted futurist and distinguished fellow at the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto, Calif. He has spent more than two decades tracking key technological, demographic, and economic trends and exploring their implications for companies, organizations and society. Reach him @iftf.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has done the ‘real’ Iron Man several favors

2016-10-12T15:01:02-04:00

“Iron Man” and “Iron Man 2” director Jon Favreau explains on Recode Decode.

Savvy techies may have noticed, in 2010, that Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk had a cameo in “Iron Man 2” as a spectator at the Monaco Grand Prix, pictured above. But Jon Favreau, who directed the first two films in the series, said Musk’s involvement in the films goes further than that.

“It’s not based on him, it’s based on the comic book,” Favreau said on the latest episode of Recode Decode, hosted by Kara Swisher. “But Robert Downey, when we were prepping ‘Iron Man,’ said, ‘There’s somebody we should sit down and talk with.’”

“[He] said, ‘This is a guy who can give us some insight into what it’d really be like to be Tony Stark.’”

Hence why Musk’s short cameo, embedded below, includes a little banter between him and Downey’s Tony Stark character about working together on an electric jet.

Favreau said after the initial sit-down for “Iron Man,” he stayed friends with Musk.

“‘Iron Man 2,’ we filmed at SpaceX,” he said. “He let us film there for free. He’s been a very good friend of the Marvel family there, and we’ve maintained a friendship with him.”

To hear the rest of Favreau’s interview with Swisher, in which he talks about films like “The Jungle Book” and his new virtual reality project “Goblins & Gnomes,” you can listen in the audio player above, or subscribe on iTunes, Google Play Music, TuneIn and Stitcher.

And in case you missed it back in May, check out the full video of our interview with Musk from the 2016 Code Conference.

The Vice News boss says he’s not distracted by Disney acquisition chatter

2016-10-12T14:08:00-04:00

Josh Tyrangiel is keeping his head down and focusing on “Vice News Tonight.”

On the latest episode of Recode Media with Peter Kafka, Vice News boss Josh Tyrangiel talked about how he’s trying to make a nightly news show for HBO that millennials will want to watch.

But Tyrangiel’s news division is just one part of Vice, the 22-year-old digital media company valued at more than $4 billion. That company’s largest investor — and the frequent subject of acquisition chatter — is the Walt Disney Company, which has put in $400 million to date.

So: With a major new project riding on his shoulders, how much does Tyrangiel think about what Disney CEO Bob Iger might do?

“It’s not a distraction for me, [and] I don’t think it’s a distraction for other people,” Tyrangiel said on the new podcast. “What happens, happens.”

He said most of Vice’s staff is much younger than him (“I’m fucking Methuselah around this joint”), so their interest would be limited, too. He compared the Vice M&A rumors to his experience as an up-and-coming editor at Time Magazine, in the late ‘90s, on the eve of the infamous AOL-Time Warner merger.

“I will tell you, I saw the worst issue of a magazine ever produced that week,” Tyrangiel said. “People were buying summer houses, they were running out the door. They’d been there a long time and they were celebrating. That’s not this. And I think while people are interested — I don’t think they’re old enough or invested enough for it to be meaningful for them, personally.”

He had a similar answer when asked about the reportedly low ratings for Vice’s cable channel Viceland, and for the reportedly volatile ratings of HBO’s other big new web-to-TV show, “Any Given Wednesday” with Bill Simmons. Tyrangiel called them “externalities” that he could easily tune out.

“Even though the media business is sometimes a fucking nightmare, you have control over what you make,” he said. “If you make something that you feel is really great, more often than not, you don’t have that much to worry about. It’s hard, because you hear lots of noise, and the media business — and the journalism business, in particular — has never been more competitive. But I think if we focus on what makes us different and smart, and we listen to people’s feedback on what we’re doing, that we’ll probably be okay.”

You can listen to Recode Media in the audio player above, or subscribe on iTunes, Google Play Music, TuneIn and Stitcher.

Elon Musk is pushing the Tesla-SolarCity merger through despite naysayers and lawsuits

2016-10-12T11:36:05-04:00

Next up: Shareholders will vote on November 17.

The proposed Tesla-SolarCity merger has been a controversial one.

As of earlier this week, seven Tesla stockholders have filed lawsuits against Elon Musk over the proposed acquisition of SolarCity and alleged Musk was in breach of his fiduciary duties for not disclosing the proposed merger properly. Some of these stockholders are asking the judge for an injunction to prevent the merger from going through.

But today, Tesla and SolarCity announced the companies were going ahead with the merger. The companies have set the date for their respective shareholders to vote on the $2.6 billion all-stock transaction for Nov. 17.

“If the Merger is completed, SolarCity stockholders will have the right to receive 0.110 shares of Tesla Common Stock for each share of SolarCity Common Stock issued,” an S4 the company filed with the SEC on Monday read.

Shareholders can expect a number of events leading up to that date that may affect the merger. First up, Tesla will be in court on Oct. 14 to ask that a judge consolidate the seven lawsuits brought against the company by stockholders.

Then, on Oct. 17, Tesla will be revealing an “unexpected” product. It’s possible the product may not be related to SolarCity. On Oct. 28, Tesla and SolarCity are jointly revealing a solar roof and on Nov. 1 the company will be publishing its financial plans and other information for the combined company.

In an SEC form filed on Oct. 7, Elon Musk indicated that the company “is currently planning to raise additional funds by the end of this year, including through potential equity or debt offerings, subject to market conditions and recognizing that Tesla cannot be certain that additional funds would be available to it on favorable terms or at all.”

But in a tweet on Sunday, Musk walked back that statement and said neither SolarCity nor Tesla will have to raise equity or debt in either the end of this year or in the first quarter of 2017. In a revised form, filed on Oct. 11, the company changed the language to “Tesla may raise funds in the future, including through potential equity or debt offering.”

Would also like to correct expectations that Tesla/SolarCity will need to raise equity or corp debt in Q4. Won't be necessary for either.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 9, 2016

The company did not provide an explanation as to why the language originally indicated otherwise.

Mossberg: Why does Siri seem so dumb?

2016-10-12T09:00:06-04:00

And if doesn’t get smarter soon, what does it mean for Apple?

Welcome to Mossberg, a weekly commentary and reviews column on The Verge and Recode by veteran tech journalist Walt Mossberg, executive editor at The Verge and editor at large of Recode.

I’ve been familiar with Siri longer than most people. Way back in 2009 — two years before Apple incorporated the intelligent digital assistant into the iPhone — I stood onstage with the inventors of the service while they debuted it at a tech conference I co-produced. At the time, it was just a third-party app on the iPhone App Store. Not long thereafter, Apple bought the company, and the assistant reemerged in 2011 with a splashy introduction as a core feature of the iPhone 4s.

In addition to the iPhone, Siri is now on the iPad and was recently added to the Mac. It’s also on Apple TV. Via the phone, it’s the key user interface in Apple’s CarPlay infotainment system for autos, and even the soon-to-be-released wireless AirPod earbuds.

Siri is also the point of the spear for Apple in the coming tech war — it’s just getting started, to make artificial intelligence a natural, conversational, part of your world at home, on your phone, in your car, everywhere. And Apple had a big head start with Siri.

So why does Siri seem so dumb? Why are its talents so limited? Why does it stumble so often? When was the last time Siri delighted you with a satisfying and surprising answer or action?

For me, at least, and for many people I know, it’s been years. Siri’s huge promise has been shrunk to just making voice calls and sending messages to contacts, and maybe getting the weather, using voice commands. Some users find it a reliable way to set timers, alarms, notes and reminders, or to find restaurants. But many of these tasks could be done with the crude, pre-Siri voice-command features on the iPhone and other phones, albeit in a more clumsy way.

A blown advantage

It seems to me that Apple has wasted its lead with Siri. And now Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook and others are on the march. Apple has made excited announcements each time it added knowledge domains like sports and movies and restaurants to Siri on the iPhone. But it seems like it hasn’t added any major new topic domains in quite a while.

The only new domain listed on Apple’s Siri web page is for controlling home devices compatible with Apple’s HomeKit platform, a use case that’s quite small. You can now use Siri to “turn the lights blue” or “turn on the bathroom heater” — integrations that Amazon’s Echo and Alexa assistant have led the way on. And the always-listening Echo is faster than pressing the iPhone’s home button to call up Siri, and more reliable than the “Hey Siri” command, which can be hit-or-miss.

When’s the presidential debate? Siri had no clue.

If you try and treat Siri like a truly intelligent assistant, aware of the wider world, it often fails, even though Apple presentations and its Siri website suggest otherwise. (And I’m not talking about getting your voice wrong. In my recent experience, Siri has become quite good at transcribing what I’m asking, just not at answering it.)

In recent weeks, on multiple Apple devices, Siri has been unable to tell me the names of the major-party candidates for president and vice president of the United States. Or when they were debating. Or when the Emmy awards show was due to be on. Or the date of the World Series.

When I asked, “What is the weather on Crete?” Siri gave me the weather for Crete, Illinois, a small village which — while I’m sure it’s great — isn’t what most people mean when they ask for the weather on Crete, the famous Greek island.

Google Now, on the same Apple devices, using the same voice input, answered every one of these questions clearly and correctly. And that isn’t even Google’s latest digital helper, the new Google Assistant.

If you try most of these broken examples right now, they’ll work properly, because Apple fixed them after I tweeted screenshots of most of them in exasperation, and asked the company about them.

Apple stressed to me that it’s constantly improving Siri, and also stressed that it focuses its Siri efforts on the kinds of tasks that it says millions of people ask every day: Placing phone calls, sending texts and finding places. It puts much less emphasis on what it calls “long tail” questions, like the ones I’ve cited above, which in some cases, Apple says, number in only the hundreds each day.

But I suspect that people don’t ask those questions because, after trying a time or two and getting no answers or wrong answers, they just give up on Siri. And I can’t see how asking when the 2016 presidential debates are being held is a more “long tail” query than asking when Abraham Lincoln was born. That’s a question Siri not only can answer, but which Apple touts on its website.

Everyday stumbles

Apple also says Siri is focused on enabling you “to work with your device in a hands-free way.” But in my recent tests, it even fails for me, or is inconsistent, too often, when relying on data that’s right on the device or in iCloud.

For instance, when I asked Siri on my Mac how long it would take me to get to work, it said it didn’t have my work address — even though the “me” contact card contains a work address and the same synced contact card on my iPhone allowed Siri to give me an answer.

Similarly, on my iPad, when I asked what my next appointment was, it said “Sorry, Walt, something’s wrong” — repeatedly, with slightly different wording, in multiple places on multiple days. But, using the same Apple calendar and data, Siri answered correctly on the iPhone.

When I asked it for pictures I had taken in York, England, this summer, it mixed them up with pictures I took years ago in Yorktown, Virginia. And yes, it had transcribed the question itself perfectly.

It couldn’t find recent iMessages from my daughter-in-law, saying I had none, on the very day she had sent two. And if you have duplicate information for frequent contacts, Siri isn’t smart enough to know which one you use most often, or used last time, to call or text.

Who is Tim Cook?

It also can’t distinguish between the question of “who is” a person and a request for that person’s contact card. For instance, I have a contact card for Apple CEO Tim Cook. When I ask, “Who is Tim Cook?” Siri shows me the contact card, not his bio. But, on a Samsung Galaxy S7 (Samsung’s non-exploding model) which also has a contact card for Cook, Google Now understands the question perfectly and gives me his Wikipedia entry. If I ask Google Now on the Galaxy to “email Tim Cook,” it does that, too — just like Siri.

Some consolation

Siri isn’t the only element of Apple’s artificial intelligence strategy. Its latest operating systems and core apps do some smart things, like guessing an unknown caller’s name from information in an email. Or automatically marking on a map where you parked your car. Or notifying you via your Apple watch how long your commute is when your phone connects to the Bluetooth in your car at a certain time of day.

Bottom line

Yes, Siri can usually place a call or send a text. It can tell you sports standings, Yelp restaurant reviews and movie times — features Apple added years ago. And it must be said that all of its competitors have their own limitations and also make mistakes.

But in its current incarnation, Siri is too limited and unreliable to be an effective weapon for Apple in the coming AI wars. It seems stagnant. Apple didn’t become great by just following the data on what customers are doing today. It became great by delighting customers with feats they didn’t expect. The AI revolution will demand that.

I’m done pretending that Silicon Valley tech is visionary

2016-10-12T09:00:03-04:00

We’re smart enough to solve real problems, but we don’t.

A version of this essay was published on Medium.

In Silicon Valley, there’s an entrepreneur on every corner, and a new you-sit-at-home-naked-while-I-do-your-shopping app every week. Only a handful of companies, proportionally speaking, are actually trying to do things that will have a meaningful impact, and the organizations that have true vision are generally underfunded and unnoticed.

Many startups define their mission just well enough to discover an avenue to revenue. And some don’t even want revenue. They just want users, because lately that’s as good as cash when going in for a round of funding. Most of these startups die within the year, and most people will forget their names long before then.

Last week, I read this amazing piece by Mark Suster on why he invested in Imbellus and its founder, Rebecca Kantar. A few sentences really struck me:

“Building any business is hard, all-consuming, frustrating and fraught with personal challenges. When a founder is ‘opportunity driven’ it’s too easy to quit at the first bump in the road. When a founder is ‘mission driven’ you get the sense that he or she will do whatever it takes to make an impact in the market they serve and will keep persevering whatever the startup trends of the month.

I encourage entrepreneurs to try and tackle harder problems even if it makes fund raising more difficult and is less likely to succeed …”

Full disclosure: I’ve been guilty of thinking small, too. I’ve launched my own products, and they were fun to build. They were received well by tech blogs. Users were singing our praises. The front page of Reddit was an interesting place to be, twice. My ego was being stroked at maximum efficiency. And throughout all that, I knew I was building things just because people would use them.

I’m done with that shit.

If you’re going to start a new venture, care. Find a problem you really care about solving and pursue that. Even if the likelihood of success is slim, put your head down and go. Sure, Elon Musk is an outlier on the intelligence spectrum, but the dude was almost certain that Tesla and SpaceX would both fail, and they would have had he not signed away the rest of his fortune to save his companies.

Real talk: I want to give this guy a hug. Undeniably, he has a vision and is willing to sacrifice everything for it. Watch this for 45 seconds and tell me you don’t feel how much he cares.

Homie is tearing up because that’s how much he cares about seeing his mission through. Can you imagine believing in your company that much? And it seems to me that Elon’s success is because of the singular and noble purpose his companies have, not in spite of them.

He has an unrelenting focus to achieve his goals because his mission is bigger than himself. His vision doesn’t take into consideration his paycheck. It doesn’t plan to be a good story at a dinner party. Elon does it because the world will be better off when he completes his mission.

But what are “we” actually doing?

Silicon Valley is filled with intelligent and capable minds that are constantly looking for ways to exploit markets and seize windows of opportunity. I mean, business is business, and I love having new products. But first convince me that having another “best way to send money to my friends” app that isn’t PayPal, Venmo or Google Wallet is actually necessary. Not to mention that money transfer through Apple Pay could launch at any moment and would still have to compete with Facebook Pay, Snap Cash and Square Cash for relevance.

Applying the same energy to problems that significantly impact the world would provide more than enough drive, creativity and inspiration to push through the unimaginable challenges you’ll face along the way. You’ll face these difficulties anyway — why not make it worth the struggle?

Right now, entrepreneurs are trying to fix things that aren’t broken. And we can all name a lot of things that are broken: Health care, education, homelessness and poverty, food waste, climate change ... need I continue? These aren’t even small market problems. There is so much room for people with good ideas to make change, and probably make some good money while they’re at it.

Not all startups need to be steadfastly mission-driven and focused on the far future, but I do think there should be a lot more startups that are.

I’m defining goals that are in alignment with my ideals. I encourage you to do the same. Solving a problem that reflects the ideals that shape who I am is a surefire way to persevere when the odds are stacked against me, everything is spiraling out of control and it feels like birds are snipers hidden in the trees.

So, what do I care about? I care about empowering people to realize their potential. It underpins all human advancement.

From my perspective, that starts with education and entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is the mechanism by which these advancements and innovations will happen. Education is the foundation upon which these entrepreneurs will be able to build innovative organizations. When there are more educated people, there will be more skilled entrepreneurs with the ability to execute on their vision for the future. These two areas actually have a compounding effect and, depending on the individual, can be two inclusive phases of a person’s life.

Will I build my own organization that tries to “change the world,” like any self-respecting (or self-aggrandizing) Silicon Valley startup? Right now, I’m not trying to figure that out. I’m just trying to be around people who are working on things that I believe are heading toward the same goal on at least a parallel path.

I want to learn from the people around me. I want to work in a space where I’m challenged to think differently. I want to start taking the steps toward my goal of helping humanity realize its potential.

If you want to go deeper on this, please reach out. I’m looking to collaborate, on any level, with people who see their skills as an asset that the world can benefit from.

I would love to hear your thoughts, through email, or whatever :)

Marco Marandiz is a product manager and product designer. After working for Capital One, he start a consulting agency, Kogg, which provided app development, product and business strategy consulting services. With his Kogg colleagues, Marandiz created HoverCards and Instant Logo Search. He is a graduate of California State University Northridge, living in Silicon Valley, Calif. Reach him @allthingsmarco.