Preview of Black Mirror Season 4

While it is true the eps of this show can vary quite a bit in quality, I think even the worst ones are better than a lot of shows and the best ones like S3's San Junipero or Most Hated are priceless gems!

http://www.kurzweilai.net/black-mirror-season-4-coming-to-netflix

More on the Future of Jobs

Some more insights into an important topic for us and especially our kids.  But his comment on sustainable jobs, has a nice ring to it but I don't think there are any, sure some jobs like lawyers\doctors\bankers have stuck around for a long time but the distant future is likely to antiquate them as well.  New jobs are being created for now this is true and so for those who's fields have been wiped out have little choice but to migrate to them but I'm not convinced even that trend will continue.

Again I see a hopefully rising Universal Income being the only realistic solution, once 3D printing then Nanotechnology can build anything from the atom up...for fractions of a penny, not sure there would even need to be an Economy any more much less jobs ;-)  But there's going to be a few decades between us and this potential future so until then gotta earn however you can!

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6298520826526396417

Count the Triangles

Depending on your interest in puzzles esp. of a mathematical variety then this may be nearly trivial (I say nearly because I had to stop myself once or twice from declaring a too quick answer and look deeper).

I'm going to let Chiara tackle it, should be a good challenge for her and help teach her her to take her time and be thorough!

http://www.msn.com/en-ca/lifestyle/whats-hot/no-one-can-work-out-how-many-triangles-are-in-this-picture/ar-AAoUVES?ocid=ientp

Coding is the new Cursive!

Great article in the Globe & Mail...I've been saying this for awhile now!  This is why we'll be sending Chiara to coding camp in a few years.  Many great points in the article, the 1 I want to highlight is that kids learning coding now doesn't mean they are on the path to be software developers, 1 study estimates 65% of kids entering primary school now will end up in jobs that don't even exist yet!  And you can bet whether those jobs are in biology or media they will involve some futuristic form of coding!

A Climate Change Solution

One of my LinkedIn connections shared this link with the caption "someone please share this with POTUS"

The Story of Soil - not sure if it can solve all of the Climate Change problem but if we move to renewables and implement this, could make a big dent in it!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08TI1RKj54g

Witty & Concise Summary of Politics

I saw this on LinkedIn, so true...so true

I told my son, “You will marry the girl I choose.” He said, “NO!” I told him, “She is Bill Gates’ daughter.” He said, “OK.” I called Bill Gates and said, “I want your daughter to marry my son.” Bill Gates said, “NO.” I told Bill Gates, My son is the CEO of World Bank.” Bill Gates said, “OK.” I called the President of World Bank and asked him to make my son the CEO. He said, “NO.” I told him, “My son is Bill Gates’ son-in-law.” He said, “OK.” This is exactly how politics works . . . HAVE A LOVELY WEEKEND FRIENDS!

Jobs! Jobs! Jobs!

I guess a fitting start to new post about jobs is to let my friends know that I'll be starting work at BMO next week!  I'll be in a different area and floor than my wife Carol but we'll both be at FCP which is cool!

It was amazing to spend 6 months at home with my family and then to get a great job at just the perfect time!

Anyway, from Barry Ritholtz's great site I saw a link for a Bloomberg article on what sectors of the job market are losing them the fastest (often now that means never to return).  Also a great interactive table on what jobs are at Risk, you can enter the name of your job/area/field.  It is only so granular,  it didn't of course have my obscure job of Quantitative Analyst or even Risk Manager but you can get a general idea and it's very cool!  

That general idea is unsurprisingly the higher education level required for a job the less likely (usually) it will be replaced by AI/Robots quickly.  When I was job hunting this year, I noticed I got way more interviews for jobs I applied to that needed Grad school degrees as a minimum, clearly I had much less competition there.  For my work, requires balancing Math/Finance/Computing knowledge so that's pretty safe (for now) but another field that's highly educated is Accounting and they are not so safe...which makes sense as it is a very systematic/rules based field...for anyone that can program even a little, you know code to automate such tasks is not that hard.

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2017-jobs-automation-risk/

Finally, has a great section on Coal Mining vs. Retail Sector (esp. bricks and mortar dept. stores)...Trump goes on so much about Coal Mining but the job losses there are but a tiny fraction of the loses in Retail...on one of my fave shows covered this and showed if I recall correctly that JC Penny is facing more job cuts than the entire coal mining industry!!!