Items I happen to view each day. Science, Technology, Management, Culture, and Writing

    This is my day book for this week. It is a log of things I see on the Internet.

This week: 18-24 June, 2018

Summary of this week:

• BitTorrent is bought by a blockchain company
• Elon Musk claims there is a saboteur in Tesla
• US government employees are attacked online...LinkedIn etc. accounts deleted
• Disney will probably buy Fox
• Walmart hiring 2,000 "technologists"
• Supreme Court rules in favor of taxes on online purchases
• And Supreme Court rules that a warrant is needed to use cell tower location data

Monday 18 June 2018

BitTorrent sells itself to a blockchain company.

The US Cyber Command takes a far-more offensive position.

Google pumps half a billion $$$ into Chinese e-commerce player JD.com.

"Too often, we spend our time and effort on the exciting last step. And too often, we forget to spend our time and attention on the preparation that’s a lot less urgent or glamorous, but far more important."—Seth Godin

It appears that the great Stanford Prison Experiment of 1971 was faked. Everyone knew it was a sham at the time and went along with it to make the professor famous.

I never heard of CryptoKitties, a blockchain game for digital collectibles. Good, it was a $12Million financial bust. Really folks.

Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post and, according to current employees, is a really bad boss.

Tuesday 19 June 2018

Our current President calls for the creation of a Space Force to be separate and equal to the Air Force. Perhaps one day.

Amazon sells facial recognition software to our law enforcement agencies. Shareholders want this to stop. Yes, there are abuses. Yes, there are excellent uses.

Microsoft has its turn. It has a contract with the US government's ICE and folks don't like ICE right now.

American companies have contracts with American government at the Federal, State, and local levels. When the government is "popular," everything is good. When some folks deem it unpopular, well, we see those examples, too.

Google's work in artificial intelligence is leading it into the medical field. This is basic supervised learning, and the technology has been available for several decades.

Google adds the ability to send text messages from a desktop computer to its Android Messages. Of course it is an obvious feature.

Elon Musk claims there is a saboteur inside Tesla.

A former CIA employee has been charge with espionage in leaking hacking tools.

Adobe updates its scanning app and how it integrates with its document cloud.

Microsoft tries to push into the education market with the purchase of FlipGrid—never heard of it, but it has 20million users. The good news is FlipGrid is now FREE for schools instead of $1,000.

A look at Steve Case and his bus tour to promote startups across America, i.e., the flyover zone.

"Gaming Disorder" is now officially a mental health disorder. There are serious mental disorders out there. This one doesn't qualify.

HPE is building an ARM-based supercomputer for our Department of Energy. The numbers are astounding: over 5,000 processors each have 28 cores.

This story is all over the Internet, so it must be important: IBM has a computer that debates and defeats humans.

Stop complaining and do something: couple raises over $3Million to help immigrants.

Wednesday 20 June 2018

China is succeeding in playing the long game. Nine of the biggest Internet companies in the world are based in China.

The government of China is quietly rewriting the Internet regulations for the world—all in its favor.

The government of China is hacking everyone else's systems world wide.

China-based companies are not protesting the immigration and other inhumane policies of the Chinese government. They aren't allowed to do so. All American tech companies, based on the Pacific coast, are now experts regarding the Texas-Mexico border.

Nvidia has a new technique for interpolating time. This enables creating slower, more detailed, slow motion video. But let's always remember that it is synthetic, not real.

Do gooders are attacking Federal government employees online at LinkedIn, Github, Medium, and who knows where else. We used to call these folks vigilantes, but since they are on the right side of history, they are social activists or something.

"Do you cook your own food or eat out all the time?" People used to ask me this when I was single. With all the food delivery services, the question arises again.

Fornite has hauled in $100Million in 90 days. 90 days from now we will fail to remember its name, but for now, its makers are smiling—big.

The government of Australia extracts $6.6Million from Apple for something or other. Must be nice to impose fees like this on foreign companies.

MUST READ ARTICLE: How to remember what you read. TAKE NOTES. There are many ways to do this. Find what works for you and DO IT.

Let's put an active microphone in our hotel rooms that is connected to the Internet. What could possible go wrong?

Is this inspiration or desperation? Tesla is manufacturing cars in tents instead of solid buildings.

Thursday 21 June 2018

Facebook is allowing small groups to charge membership fees. It has become a members-only clubhouse area.

Tesla thinks it has caught its saboteur and is suing him.

InstaGram tries to jump into the YouTube market with IGTV and one-hour videos.

And Instagram hits 1Billion monthly users.

WalMart will try to grow its technology labs from 6,000 to 8,000 this year. Reston, Virginia—where I live—is one place where hiring is promised to occur.

Google employees demanded they quit working for the US Dept of Defense, yet they still work for the Chinese government on its projects (that watch and watch and squash its own subjects).

The Car Connectivity Consortium (CCC), Apple and others, announced the publication of a new Digital Key Release 1.0 specification so we can all unlock our car doors with our smartphones. I guess this solves a problem we have.

Disney and Comcast are bidding to buy Fox. Disney offers $71Billion.

Disney remains smart in business; the Han Solo movie flops at the box o$$fice, so the other Star Wars movies are on hold.

Amazon extends its Prime Wardrobe services to all Prime members. Buy the shirt in two sizes and return the one that doesn't fit.

Intel stumbles at the 10nm scale; AMD may be able to leap frog them.

Friday 22 June 2018

Microsoft owns Github. Microsoft sells software to ICE (excuse me, Microsoft sells software to every Federal, State, and local government in America). Github users threaten to quit Github.

Microsoft brings visual search to the smartphone to compete with Google's offering.

Google brings its Measure(ing) app to many more mobile platforms.

Channel Memberships: YouTube expands ways for creators to connect with payers and earn a little money.

Robotics, jobs, votes, and presidential elections: Toledo, Ohio leads the country in robotics in manufacturing.

A look at a basic income experiment in a relatively small Canadian community. It works; it doesn't work, and there are all sorts of conclusions.

Twitter moved towards news; the move saved them from going under as they have made a comeback in the last two years.

How teens today watch a variety of televisors. Yes, maybe we will start calling the devices we watch the correct term. And cable TV companies, remember them?, are in big trouble.

US Supreme Court rules that online sellers have to collect sales taxes for states.

Amazon employees protest selling facial recognition software to law enforcement. Odd, do Amazon employees protest the horrible working conditions at Amazon's own shipping centers? There are a number of other things Amazon employees could be protesting, but those aren't economically or politically expedient at this time.

Must see video: a machine (robot) cooks a custom-ordered hamburger, and it is better tasting than anyone else's. Jobs?

SpaceX wins a contract to launch Air Force satellites.

Saturday 23 June 2018

US Supreme Court rules in favor of privacy, and requires a warrant before using cell tower location data.

"Testing" a self-driving car is a boring job. Uber and others are not hiring capable testers. Uber's was watching movies instead of watching the road.

A look back and forward with Intel's Compute Card. Make a computer the size of a credit card. Plug it in where you want.

Samsung starts production of its 8TeraByte solid state disks. That is a lot of bytes.

Ok, so Apple did have problems with sticky keyboards on recent portable models. Now they are fixing them.

Just in case anyone was wondering...comedians cannot make fun of Communist Chinese leaders. They are censored immediately. Odd that Amazon et al employees are not asking their CEO to stop working with the Chinese Communist Party.

Here is one of those letters the Amazon employees wrote to Jeff Bezos. Again, why? Facial recognition software led to the capture of the Boston Marathon murderers. Now that what's his name is President, I guess all law enforcement is bad.???

Paul McCartney, yes that Paul, shows up on Carpool Karaoke.

Amazon brings about 1,000 summer interns into Seattle each year. $4.4Million room and board. Salaie$???

Facebook once again stumbles in its venture into censorship as it marks hair salon ads as "too political."

Interesting article on tech's guilt in how some persons abuse other persons. Should all Microsoft employees feel guilty because the name-your-worst-bad-person uses Word and Outlook? Maybe the inventor of the microprocessor should be labeled EVIL. Do we go back to the Difference Engine or the inventor of the abacus? Some persons use sticks to abuse other persons. Who invented the stick? Really?

Sunday 24 June 2018

Rumors that Qualcomm will build a Snapdragon processor just for portable computers.

DC Comics partners with Walmart for an exclusive, monthly, 100-page anthology comic.

"The problem with the jerk path is that not that it isn’t more effective, it’s that you have to spend your days being a jerk."—Seth Godin along the lines of "the winner of the rat race is a rat."—me (and many others)

One writer's experience and learnings on how to start as a freelance writer and actually earn a decent living wage.

Writing based on a true story. I know of no other way.

No ideas at this moment for the writer. Start writing about that. The ideas are likely to come. Practice. Do almost anything. I struggle with starting. I hate it. If, however, I start with "blah blah blah I don't know what to do..." in five or ten minutes...I know what to do. Still hate it.

A good interview about the business of writing with Johanna Rothman—someone I consider a friend for many years.

If all you write is fiction, perhaps a non-fiction book about all you write is appropriate. For a long time all I wrote was non-fiction. Delving into fiction was a good practice.

Looking for story ideas? Visit a graveyard. Take lots of notes. Sit quietly and think.

How ADHD helped one writer to be a better writer. Careful when us amateurs toss about such diagnoses.

Like scriptures and music? Look at this site that has set long passages to music.

A few more sophisticated tips on marketing books.

More tips on selling your books. Consider them. Try some. Use what works for you.

Have trouble finishing what you are writing? Here are some tips. Basically, I finish because I really really want to see how the story ends.

How to use just 15 minutes to accomplish some work. Plot the story. Plan writing in small chunks. Go to it. Stay with it.

A simple way to add words that add to the reading, not just to the word count.

A writer does a lot of other writing (blogs, about pages, this, that)—try hard on everything.

"No, I’m not working on a new novel right now. No, I haven’t written a book in almost five years. What do I do for a living? I’m a writer."—Kathleen McCleary