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: 10-16 June, 2019

Summary of this week:

• Apple acqui-hires Drive.io
• Raytheon and United Technologies to merge
• Mary Meeker's Internet Trends 2019 report is out

Monday 10 June 2019

It warms my heart to know that people still play Microsoft Flight Simulator. Of course the scenes are better.

A maker of paper-less voting machines now admits that paper-less voting machines are too insecure to use any more. They know sell only paper-based voting machines. Perhaps we have learned something.

Amazon lets Wired inside one of its warehouse and shipping facilities where people still do a few tasks while "robots" run around—they don't get tired of running around, they just need recharging.

This is a good article on how thieves use stolen medial and personal information to make money. Basically, they create fake persons and get governments to send them money. Governments are easily duped and government have all (our) the money.

Want to learn how to censor (and a lot of American companies seem to want to learn this), look at China. They block two more western newspapers from the view of their subjects.

Apple acqui-hires Drive.ai.

Somehow...local law enforcement has funds to help people buy Ring doorbells and create surveillance networks.

Tuesday 11 June 2019

Facial recognition, our government, travel convenience, and big brother collecting our identities and all that mixed together. What could possible go wrong?

Here is what can go wrong...hackers break into imagery database of a government contractor and obtain all sorts of interesting things.

Not everything at Amazon works. They are stopping the food delivery from restaurants service.

Blessings Groups on Facebook: people ask for small amounts of money to make it through small(er) but pressing problems. Much good is being done, and yes, there is much potential for scams.

AMD announces a 16-core processor built for gaming. It beats Intel's old 8-core processor. The races continue.

Successful companies from our coasts are criticizing voters in flyover states about abortion constraints. These companies have practically no jobs in those states and no real influence. Hmmm, if you want to influence politics in some states ... you, uh, hmmm.

Raytheon and United Technologies are merging into what will be the second largest defense contractor in the US.

Wednesday 12 June 2019

Mary Meeker releases her annual Internet Trends report. No big surprises, and not mention of censorship, which I find to be the most disturbing trend on the Internet.

The cycle of "content moderation," a.k.a., censorship that everyone uses. The squeaky wheel silences the other side—every time. And money doesn't hurt, either.

Pinterest censors Live Action—a group with 3.3million followers.

Seth Godin on brevity and clarity in communication. "Free coffee, next exit."

If you are a tech plutocrat, what do you do with all that money and free time? You buy a $3,000 sweater and travel to Italy to meet the guy who designed it.

Another American politician running for office slams another company for abiding by tax laws passed by the same American politician. Do these guys read before signing?

Someone made a deep fake video of Mark Zuckerburg talking nonsense. So, now, who censors this?

Gravity still wins: ride a scooter, you may fall down, and concrete is hard stuff.

If you have the answers, you can used supervised learning to train neural networks to do just about anything, like creating the face of a speaker given only their voice.

Thursday 13 June 2019

Limited Internet viewing today.

Gotta' get a new house: Samsung shows a 292" televisor. Really, there is no place in my current house where this will fit. Is it weatherproof? My backyard is big enough.

Microsoft advances its Windows System for Linux 2. Faster and more reliable with the days.

Facebook promises to censor such-and-such. Reality doesn't even come close as they miss 93% of their promise.

More dirt on Facebook and Zuckerburg. Why don't these celebrity CEOs just go away to a private island and enjoy their riches?

Facebook admits to gathering personal data on 187,000 (give or take a thousand) users. The pile is getting bigger.

This one is just too much: Spain's top pro soccer league used its app to spy on fans and find bars that were showing games they weren't supposed to be showing.

Friday 14 June 2019

A look at IBM's Research Division. It is the future of the company and is working with universities and other smart folks worldwide to find the future.

Yes, it is time to break up Facebook. Piece #1 will be the dozen or so celebrities that can't stay out of trouble. Piece #2 will the the online service where people stay in touch with their friends and relatives.

Cloud Gaming is right around the corner. Google and Microsoft will have the early lead. Perhaps someone else we don't yet know will pop out of no where.

Some non-censored alternatives to the major social media sites are appearing.

Comcast and Charter partner with Apple to launch mobile services. As part of the deal, they will subsidize the sale of some Apple devices.

Seth Godin to all recent graduates and the rest of us too: Learn to write.

One day, where I work may allow me to have a real computer in portable form...like this one from System76.

AMD is bringing us a 64-core processor real soon now.

Saturday 15 June 2019

ThinkGeek is closing after 20 years of selling stuff to geeks like me (once bought pocket protectors for the entire engineering team). Some merchandise will still be available at GameStop.

I guess we'll have to change what we label as extremist or how we hire law enforcement officers because there seems to be a large mixing of the two.

The state-of-the-art in detecting actions in video has advanced. Of course there are abuses possible as some of us tend to misuse just about anything and abuse just about anyone.

Yet another study shows that most of the devices used in hospitals are foolishly connected to the Internet and can be remotely controlled by persons who should not be remotely controlling them.

A trend: poorer people are accessing the Internet through smartphone ONLY. No home Internet service. Broadband for all? Forget about it.

Another failure at Amazon as the game division lays off dozens. Not everything works at these highly successful companies.

WeChat: once again, the government of China shows everyone else how to keep track of its subjects.

A deepfake Game of Thrones video, just for fun. Of course we can tell it is doctored.

The founders of Uber and Lyft argue for "flexible employment" over collective bargaining. Of course they can't operate if the drivers are in a union. It is all part-time work at low pay. No one ever intended "Uber driver" to be a career.

Bluetooth beacons in the grocery store. Yes, the grocery store is monitoring you shopping habits and your location all the time.

Sunday 16 June 2019

We have made terrible mistakes in how we hire and train law enforcement officers in our country. This costs us million$ in lawsuits and, far far worse, loss of trust in our communities. No one trusts anyone else, especially if they are employed by "the government."

Reports are that we are planting offensive cyber weapons in Russia so that when needed we can cripple that country with the press of the Return key. We shall see. Or perhaps this is all an elaborate deception campaign to sow distrust among the Russian people and their government, sort of like that recent election where the wrong guy was elected and everyone was crippled by spending vast amounts of time and money investigation everybody else.

Per the above two, the news isn't rosy this morning. There is still time.

Walmart pushes its grocery delivery service with a $98 annual subscription fee to compete better with Amazon.

Want a safe career? Go to law school, specialize in anti-trust law, get a job with the Department of Justice. We are about to make a decades-long investigation into the plutocrats and their corporations. They must have done something wrong to become so successful, right?

I wasn't at a Target yesterday. Good fortune for me as their "system went down" for a few hours and they wouldn't take our money in exchange for their goods.

According to one oft-cited index, Python is now the #3 programming language lagging only Java and C. I am surprised that it isn't #1. Java is obtuse and C thought by many to be dangerous.

The BASIC programming language now has a state historical marker in New Hampshire. BASIC launched Bill Gates to fame (tiny BASIC) and introduced millions to the idea of having the computer do all the tedious, repetitive tasks.

Speaking of tedious repetition...here comes the "AI" software that will monitor all the video in security cameras and either save or doom us.

Educated speculation—speculation nonetheless—about self-driving vehicles and when they will be commonplace.

Privacy at work? It is all an over reaction to a lack of knowledge on the part of the supervisor (we don't know if someone is accomplishing work at the rate we desire) and lack of trust by all us (we don't trust the other person to earn their pay and the other doesn't trust me to mind my own business).

Discussions with the persons who actually need the power and RAM of the new Mac Pro.

Looking for feedback or looking to be discovered (for the great talent that I am...hah)? What, as a writer, am I seeking?

I guess I didn't take enough writing classes in school to be mistaught everything. And this is a good reference website that explains the five-paragraph essay (something I never learned).

Launching a writing career: pick up a pencil, put the pencil to paper, start moving the pencil. You can find all these tools in little cardboard boxes at any public library.

I love this George Will piece on the continued predictions of doom and scarcity that were and continue to be all wrong.

Ten basic writing and editing tips. Go back to the basic now and then.

In fiction, building a world which we want to visit. We can do similar in non-fiction, but it's a little trickier.

Are writers born or made? Yes. And it comes at different times.

A writer becomes older. Learn learn learn. Keep learning.