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: 11-17 March, 2019

Summary of this week:

• Google releases learn-to-read app in India
• Boeing 737 planes are being grounded around the world
• And also grounded in the US
• We have a rich-person college-entrance scandal
• Android phone screen mirror comes to Windows 10
• Facebook under investigation for data sharing
• Google, Facebook, and Apple all have service outages this week
• Moron murders dozens and broadcasts it to the world

Monday 11 March 2019

IBM may have found a simple blood test that can detect Alzheimer's years earlier. No cure, but ...

Google releases an app in India aimed at helping kids learn to read.

The government of France has made it easier for tech talent to immigrate.

Amazon raises wages and cut hours to come out ahead. The workers at warehouses and Whole Foods...not so well.

"new research" shows that frequent breaks lead to a more productive day.

The Captain Marvel movie breaks all the opening-weekend $$$ records. Predictable and predicted.

Everyone wants to go to the moon and make lots of money. In the gold rush, the ones who made money were the ones who sold the food, clothing, and shelter. Who will sell the equivalent today?

Tuesday 12 March 2019

Chinese women are being tracked to see if they are "breed ready." You can't make up this stuff folks. This isn't fake news, but real news that is actually news to some and "that's just communist China" to others.

Tracking disability fraud via social media. If you claim a disability, don't post videos of yourself falling trees with an axe.

Apple announces a big event on March 25th. The strongest rumors predict the unveiling of a video service.

Here comes facial recognition to border crossings and airports. What could possibly go wrong?

Ever heard of Nginx ("engine-X")? Me neither, but they run some of the world's most-used websites.

Senator Warren runs ads on Facebook calling for the breakup of Facebook. Then folks are surprised at the ensuing events.

And the Senator proves that "censorship" is when you tell me to be quiet. Me telling you to be quiet is a call for polite discourse and an end to something or other that is bad.

Success leads to failure. Northern California has been THE PLACE to start tech companies. Now housing is so expensive that no one can start anything there.

Charges that Google executives played with other persons' money without their permission. If you found a company, don't you own everything and not have to ask permission?

And now we learn that if someone disagrees with you, their news site is nothing but fake news all the time. We are reaping what we have sown to the detriment of all of us. The wrong person won the Presidential election, so we had to charge cheating of some sort. Now everyone is cheating all the time.

How to fool facial recognition security. First (and last), use a 10-cent video.

The eyeglass market. Yes, we are paying 20 times the cost of making the eyeglasses.

Wednesday 13 March 2019

Just in beta test at this time, but Microsoft releases a feature for Windows 10 that allows screen mirroring from an Android phone.

Again, just in prototype, but LG has an ice cream machine that uses pods for different flavors.

And a big story today is that we have rich people paying extra money to have their kids admitted to the "right colleges." The colleges of course claim innocence as they have no part in making themselves prizes worth the money.

ooops, the Swiss built an online voting system. Researchers quickly found ways to change votes and other such mischief.

Here they come: the smart TV ads that the television makers and advertisers are building. Will they be smart enough to know that all I want to see is a pleasant photo with Dave Brubeck playing in the background?

In the wake of two recent crashes, Boeing makes changes to the cockpit software. The good and bad news is that mechanically all is sound, but the software wasn't so sound.

The World Wide Web turns 30. Here are some memories from The Verge.

Now election collusion charges go the other way. It is all a bunch of fall-der-rall and fiddle-de-dee or something. There was obvious and open endorsement of Democratic candidates by Silicon Valley tech companies. I guess that was okay since they were Americans.

Once again, a cellphone maker tries to show how good its camera is, but is caught using an image taken with another camera.

Reports that Gmail had a world-wide outage last night. Didn't affect me.

Mozilla officially releases "Firefox Send" whereby we can ship 2.5Gigabyte files via Firefox.

We may now have an "acoustic meta-material." It will be thin, light, and transparent to the eye and will block sound. The applications are practically limitless.

Thursday 14 March 2019

Our FAA has grounded the Boeing 737 Max 8. There are plenty of other 737 planes still flying (safely).

Federal prosecutors are going after Facebook regarding data-sharing contracts.

Google boasts about all the ads and apps it has banned. I guess this is a good thing as most people seem to think so.

Google closes its Spotlight Stories. Just one of those things that didn't work.

Facebook had technical problems for 24 hours. During that time, Telegram gained 3million new users. THREE MILLION in one day. The definition of success has changed.

More rumors about Apple's coming video service and how it could take on Netflix. I suppose that indicates how successful Netflix is. Apple, HBO, et al have to team up to fight it.

Chicago and Minneapolis are the first to have 5G networks.

Friday 15 March 2019

Facebook's big outage was a result of a configuration change. Configuration management and systems engineering. Who needs 'em any these days of devops and all that new cool stuff? (everyone still does)

Apple had their own boo-boo this week as the iCloud went down.

Google sets a new record for digits of pi. They used a virtual cluster on the cloud.

Headline says it all, "The Hottest Chat App for Teens Is … Google Docs" My grandkids are using it.

Facebook launches a gaming hub to bring in more users.

Google helps the People's Liberation Army advance its technologies. History repeats.

Tesla unveils its new Model Y vehicle. Price is promised to by $39,000. Are tires optional?

DARPA is attempting to build an open-source, secure voting system. It shouldn't be too hard to do, so I'm not sure why DARPA is doing it.

Saturday 16 March 2019

Apple's ad campaigns are often pure genius. The latest is an ad about privacy.

Apple and Qualcomm...with friends like these, who needs...? Judge rules that Qualcomm owes Apple $1Billion.

And a jury rules that Apple violated Qualcomm's patents and owes $31Million. Seems like Apple won the week.

Research. It is a little different world. Scraping data from the Internet is a job skill, not an invasion of privacy. As I wrote...it is a little different world.

A moron in New Zealand murdered dozens of persons. He broadcast his moronic acts live to the world. Everyone has a copy of the recording. So, now what do we do?

The drought in California is officially over.

Beto O'Rourke, Cult of the Dead Cow, running for President, and other oddities collide.

It appears that Amazon is the second largest employer of PhD Economists in the world. What are they up to?

How about a 16TeraByte solid state disc? Someone finally reaches their senses about how much you would lose if it failed.

HP releases the first Big Format Gaming Display. 65" of WOW, do you think you have a good monitor? Look at mine!

The rest of us can settle for Acer's mere 49" display.

But these two are mere toys. Try this 86" monitor instead.

Sunday 17 March 2019

Stanford and Apple study heart monitoring with an Apple Watch. While not perfect, the thing works pretty well, especially considering the price and that you use it for many other things.

"A person's voice contains clues about what they will do." Really? Maybe. What could possibly go wrong?

Meanwhile, here in the Commonwealth of Virginia, local government approves $51Million for Amazon. We hope that these few know what they are doing.

Merit? "The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all."—The Qoheleth

The tech-company trail that leads to neighborhood names being changed on maps without anyone who lives in the neighborhood knowing.

Apple may be betting everything on the Apple TV service. And no one knows exactly what that will be.

How do couples meet? I like this moving graph that shows trends over the last 60 years. "Met Online" is the rising star, but Friends, Church, and College are remarkable steady.

Give up these things to be a writer. How about, writing takes time and space. I want to write more than I want... Some never make the statement or ask the question. They just write because they have to write. And some of us never sell anything or move into any of the traditional measures of success.

Are you burned out writing a blog? I suppose it is possible. I'll let you know when I stop writing.

Do you want to earn a living writing? Good luck is a part of it. Then there is work, work, and more work.

Proud to be a writer. Proud to have words to give to others. They can change the world one life at a time. Give it a try.

Some thoughts on productivity as a writer. If you write a sentence, that is producing which I think means productive.