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: 27 December 2021-2 January 2022
The US enters that week between Christmas and the New Year when just about nothing happens.
It seems that some colleges are reducing and removing degrees in English and Political Science so they can have engineering departments. As an engineer, I see some merit in this practice---some.
The searches conducted on the privacy-focused Duck Duck Go search engine grew 47% in 2021.
Since we all have home offices now, here are tips on how to make it better.
We all have the same amount of time. We all choose how to use it.
We all have days that we don't like. So what? Keep writing. That is what you do. Something I heard from a worn done football coach this week, "No on cares about your problems. Go to work."
Tending to the emotional management of your writing life.
"You, as a writer, are ready for editing when you're warmed up and ready to grow."
....One of America's problems: principles and branches of government don't matter. What matters is party, red, blue, me is not you. Democrats in Congress urge quick laws before the other party wins control in November 2022.
New guidelines from our CDC: if we are sick but not sick, we only need to hide out for five days. Does anyone else see the absurdity in all this?
Dr. Fauci "strongly" urges cancelling all those New Year's Eve parties. When will the media note how many times this man has been wrong and stop putting him on TV?
Harassers are harassing from remote work. They avoid HR rules because they aren't in the office.
Our CDC continues to squash the cruise ship industry. I have yet to see an economic impact analysis of lost wages and the affect on the homelands of those with no income.
Yet another Wuhan Virus story: Apple closes all New York City retail stores. If you have a pickup-order, okay. Otherwise, stay away. Yes, the news this week is all about the virus.
.....The slow holiday news continues.
Iranians were the hacker that hit Cox radio and TV earlier this year.
A view of Waymo's (Google) autonomous electric vehicle that will be here one day. No steering wheel, no owner, this is all public transit.
Our President signs the National Defense Authorization Act of 2022.
WiFi-6E and the FCC and a Federal Court...all sum to much better home WiFi.
Japan aims for putting a person on the moon. NASA? Who?
Here come some really big factories to build batteries. And they are all in the south.
.....In Xian, China there is a virus shutdown of just about everything. Factories close. One of the lessons of the Wuhan virus is that China is not a reliable business partner.
Asian online shopping passes Amazon in global sales.
As our reaction to the virus slows, many stay-at-home products flop in the latter half of 2021.
We enter another round of new HDMI specs, connectors, cables, and the like.
If they won't buy your product, give them money so they will buy your product. Google and others invest in companies that in turn use Google Cloud.
The non-disclosure agreement: more widespread and restrictive than most people think.
The mask market bulges again. The basic masks are not good enough for Omicron. Here come the N95.
.....This is the national holiday for New Year's Day (which is actually tomorrow and all that). Very quiet.
I like this, the domestic realists. "The ideological heartland is filled with what we might call domestic realists. They don't succumb to the centrifugal polar forces. They may sympathize with the tenets of the poles on a variety of hot-button issues, but they don't want to go to war over them. They are comfortable with the idea that people can disagree and still live together peaceably. And they greatly outnumber the polar rabble rousers."
It is time for the best-of-the-year articles. Not as many as usual. Here is one on tech winners.
The big-name companies continue to drop out of the Consumer Electronics Show.
When inspiration strikes, write it down. --- Seth Godin
Ireland has a lot of data centers. Ireland doesn't have enough electric power capacity for them.
.....Time for the annual reviews of this and that. Most are fluff.
Losers in tech for 2021. Meta at the top of the list? They are rolling in money and more and more keeps flowing in. Chip makers? They are working over capacity and raising their prices.
College football semifinals. Two teams from the south clobber two teams from the midwest. I suppose there is much commentary that could be commented.
Premiere League games bounce around on the American cable networks associated with NBC.
Omicron is spreading "at lightning speed." How many people had a cold in 2015? No one knows. We didn't count. Now we are counting mild respiratory illnesses and are shocked at the high numbers.
The metaverse is coming (some experts say so, so it must be so?). At least we will read "metaverse" everywhere this year. Does anyone remember how 3D television was the future?
.....In 2021, we realized we were working from home for a long time. Hence, the sales of the larger and less expensive desktop computers rose. This is all a consequence of how politicians and media reacted to the Wuhan virus.
Apple torments us with the life-and-death benefits of the Apple watch.
From 1936, we have a film that shows how to find a telephone number in a telephone book and then dial that number on a rotary-dial telephone. All this is ancient history now. I'm old enough that I did all this. The film was necessary as prior to this, the phones didn't have a dial. A person would lift the phone, wait, and a switchboard operator would ask the name of the person to whom you wish to be connected.
.....