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: 12–18 October, 2020

Summary of this week:

• Columbus Day in the US
• Amazon's Prime Day(s) this week
• Disney shifts to streaming services from movie theaters
• Apple shows the iPhone 12
• Zoom announces OnZoom

Monday 12 October 2020

Five Eyes nations (US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) are joined by Japan and India asking for government keys to backdoors to tech products.

Those who look for such claim to have found 24 planets that are habitable just like our good old earth.

The Linus 5.9 kernel is released.

Out U.S. Transportation Command (USTRANSCOM) wants SpaceX to build rockets that will deliver cargo anywhere in the world in under an hour. Let's take care here as we don't want anyone to confuse a cargo flight with a nuclear warhead.

One day ahead of Amazon Prime Day (Tuesday), Walmart is having a big sale today (Monday).

Tuesday 13 October 2020

Google's Nest updates their thermostat.

Disney adjusts to the year of the virus and looks to a future of mostly streaming online.

Today is the first day of Amazon's Prime Day 2020.

There is hope for us all: we can play video games on our fridge.

Razer updates its line of gaming computers and monitors AND gives us a new gaming chair.

The tide turns:  more than 18,000 medical, science and public health practitioners are among the 190,000 persons signing the Great Barrington Declaration calling for an end to virus lockdowns for low-risk persons, i.e., most of us.

Recent research shows...long-time married couples DO NOT start to look alike.

Alphabet's X lab (Google research) is working on a robot system for agriculture. The goals are general at this time—basically learning what can be done.

Wednesday 14 October 2020

The iPhone 12: over $1,000. Flat edges (wow?). 5G. LIDAR scanner. Better display. New processor. Over $1,000?

And Apple—to get a new smaller box (who asked for that?)—stops shipping earbuds and chargers with the phones.

Blue Origin (Jeff Bezos' company) has a successful launch and landing of a booster and capsule.

Depending on how you calculate cost, solar energy is at its lowest cost ever.

Science brings us a dose of reality: an COVID-19 vaccines this year will be about 50% effective.

The year of the virus widens the divide of rich and poor with a shortage of home computers required for basic education.

KDE Plasma 5.20 is released.

Thursday 15 October 2020

Microsoft improves its image-captioning software. This will increase the usefulness of its Seeing AI app that helps sight-impaired persons use the Internet and other digital services. This is the type of thing we should be doing with technology.

Some thoughts on aggregators (Google and Facebook) and integrators (Disney) on the Internet.

The year of the virus has been good for government surveillance worldwide. oooops, that isn't good.

Zoom announces "OnZoom." It is a convenient way to charge people money to attend your Zoom meetings.

Facebook and Twitter censor information on a NY Post story regarding Mr. Biden's son. The first stories of Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky were based as silliness (we didn't have "fake news" back then), then they proved to be true. Now, we just claim fake news at anything we don't like. Interesting times.

A reminder that the development of open-source software has had people working from home and having remote teams for over 30 years.

Same facts, different opinions. A German research ship reports good news: melting polar ice has opened the up-to-now mythical northwest passage. Well, actually not. They reported the same facts, but called them some sort of disaster. I guess it depends on what you want to do next.

Friday 16 October 2020

Google does reveal some information about how they are using Artificial Intelligence techniques to improve search.

Western civilization is safe: Google search lets us hum that song stuck in our heads and it finds it for us. What a waste of technical talent.

Saturday 17 October 2020

The news in technology remains scarce as the US presidential election nears. I predict an end to the Trump administration. Mr. Biden will spend four years reversing the executive actions of Mr. Trump which reversed much of the eight years of executive actions by Mr. Obama. The economy will slow; it will continue to grow, but at a much lesser rate. We will then have a third one-term president after Mr. Biden which takes us back to the Nixon-Ford-Carter days. Mr. Biden has neither the health nor the inclination of eight years in the White House. Look for a Kamala Harris presidency. Those who wish for a woman in the White House will be crushed as her re-election bid will end as did Carter's with a humiliating defeat. There, that covers the next generation of the American presidency. No great originality here as pretty much anyone who gives it five minutes of thought could find the same result. Then again, in a few weeks we could awaken to another four years of Mr. Trump.

An in-depth look at how Apple is able to put a lidar sensor in an affordable smartphone, i.e., one that doesn't cost $10,000.

News flash (not): in corrupt countries, corrupt politicians use Facebook and the like to cheat people, hence earning the adjective "corrupt."

By some count or another, we have surpassed 8million coronavirus cases in the US. (1) Charge China with war crimes and gain war reparations. (2) Admit how many virus cases there are every year and stop all the hyperventilating. But again, I know not of what I speak.

Some people have a lot of spare time: someone ports the Microsoft calculator to Linux.

The bubble bursts in the San Francisco rent market.

Sunday 18 October 2020

This story of one person's quest to make a virus vaccine illustrates how little "science" knows about testing and virus vaccines and the lot.

ooooops, governors in San Francisco discover to their amazement that while working from home is good in some ways, it is a disaster in other ways. Who da' thunk it?

A writer writes about their mental illness. A writer writes about their life in great detail. It works.

A few good tips on marketing as a freelance writer.

“How do you know when you’re done editing?” Good question. Many good answers and many more bad answers.

Euphemisms: the same old adage, remove needless words.

A few ideas on earning some money writing short stories. Submit to publishers. When rejected by one, submit to another. Repeat.

Several different ways to set up or structure a memoir.