Summary of this week:

Bill Gates to be more visible at Microsoft
HP offers Windows 7 on new PCs
White Hat hackers prove healthcare.gov is insecure (again)
Soylent already has $2million in sales
Apple's Mac is 30 years old
Microsoft had a record quarter and sold a lot of game consoles and tablets
Google Mail goes down for a while

Monday - Tuesday - Wednesday - Thursday - Friday - Saturday - Sunday

Monday January 20, 2013

Stupid interview questions and snappy answers to them. The most stupid question I have ever been asked was, "Can you type?" The follow up to it was, "How many words a minute?" At the time I had three degrees and had written a book and some 20 magazine articles.

Linux kernal 3.13 has been released.

More analysis of Obama's speech regarding the Intelligence Community: if you define "spying" narrow enough, we will all get to keep the privacy we have now.

Now we have vigilantes on the Internet to punish the bullies.

More on how (1) the economy is much worse than the government lets on and (2) retail stores are dying.

Bill Gates won't be the next CEO of Microsoft, but people will see more of him.

Someone or something put a rock in front of the Mars rover's camera.

Samsung is putting some of its tablets in Illy Coffee shops. I guess those are in the UK - none in my neighborhood.

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Tuesday January 21, 2013

HP is offering Windows 7 on some new PCs. Windows 8 is the new Vista - a big flop. And I guess that makes Windows 7 the new XP, a good OS that will last much longer than Microsoft wanted.

"password" is replaced by "123456" as the most commonly used password.

Want wireless broadband? Go to South Korea for 300Mbps wireless.

Watch a match ignite at 4000 frames per second. Must see video.

Details on the great Target data breach. If a teenager in Russia can mess with Target, imagine what professionals can do to Health Care dot Gov. It is coming; it is only a question of when.

It looks bad if you are trying to find a job in the computer industry - H-1B visas, health care, etc. are reducing full-time jobs.

Ah the Internet of things will be so much fun. Hackers make connected appliances send spam emails - 750,000 of them.

One non-tech person's experience with the Raspberry Pi. And over two million Raspberry Pi units have been sold.

The Gates Foundation's annual letter.

Apple sold over 50million iPhones in the last quarter alone. The definition of success has changed.

A step in the right direction. Per the recent bill from Congress, half of publicly funded research will be available to the public. I don't understand why 100% of publicly funded research will be available to those who paid for it.

Net neutrality doesn't exist in the developing world.

Guest blogging for SEO is dead.

This is the point of wearable computing: let people write software that improves their work. In this case, a firefighter enables Google Glass to make life as a firefighter safer.

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Wednesday January 22, 2014

Trying to build a wheelchair that is controlled by thoughts. That is what we should be doing with technology.

Later this year, Hyundai and Kia cars will comes with 3G wireless.

Massive data theft continues: half of Korea had its credit card info stolen. And there are supposedly intelligent adults who belive that Health Care dot Gov will be absolutely secure. Will someone please explain to me how I might believe that as well.

And to show that I am not some kind of nut...experts break into Health Care dot Gov in four minutes. The site contains private information on every U.S. citizen. What type of lunacy is this?

The battle of the version control systems: Git is gaining on Subversion.

A dozen project types for Raspberry Pi.

Your tax dollars at waste. Our Defense Department is keeping Blackberry alive by using phones that no one would buy on their own.

LogMein eliminates free use today. What am I going to do?

The habits of gentlemen. And I watch with horror professional athletes behaving during and just after football games.

More angst at Yale over students posting student evaluations of courses and professors.

Don't wear your Google Glass to a movie theatre. I am sure that the FBI will lengthen that list of places that you can't wear your glasses. And yes, I think the FBI should be spending its time chasing real criminals, but then again, that is hard work, and well, you know.

Coursera moves towards certifications for students on MOOCs.

Further video evidence of why you can't believe what you see in images and videos.

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Thursday January 23, 2014

This article illustrates the intellectual power of the crowd on the Internet. A family puzzled over cryptic notes left by a dying grandmother since 1996. The cards were posted on the Internet, and the decrypted answer came back in 14 minutes.

Take care with the "do what you love" concept. It, too, can lead to abuses.

In the San Francisco area, if you don't like something, go to a person's house and protest in the face. That is the American way, or is it? I thought the bay area led the world in tolerance and diversity.

IBM sells its server business to Lenovo.

Excellent piece about learning to program computers and breaking the cycle of poverty.

Google modified its search this year: the result is a lot more money for Google and fewer shoppers for Amazon.

A huge Internet blackout in China today, probably caused by a glitch in the government's monitoring software.

20,000 people have already ordered $2million of Soylent - that food drink stuff.

This has been all over the Internet this week: pollution from China hits the U.S.

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Friday January 24, 2014

The Linux desktop never made it. Of course, Linux and GNU are everywhere with OS X and Android.

The Apple Macintosh is 30 years old today. Why is it that no one marked the 30th birthday of the Apple Lisa?

Oh woe is Microsoft? Microsoft just had a record high revenue quarter.

A big part of that was from selling hardware game consoles and tablets.

The all-wonderful Steve Jobs cooperated with other Silicon Valley executives to drive down engineer salaries.

The War on Drugs failed, so our government decided to wage war on hackers instead. Hackers don't carry real guns and do other things that make work more difficult.

The rumors of a large iPhone this year are becoming stronger.

This tiny power plant can generate electricity from the movement of heart beats. This is the kind of technology we should be building.

Qualcomm buys the old Palm patents from HP.

Follow the sequence of stories.
A government privacy board recommends the NSA stop much of what it is doing.
Key people in the White House reject the report.
And our Attorney General says it is all legal, so don't worry.
We the People lose.

A story about a man's grandfather rediscoverying photography via his iPad.

If you write computer programs, beware of floating-point numbers.

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Saturday January 25, 2014

It seems that Google Mail went down Friday for many people. I use it and didn't notice any problems, but I didn't use it continously all day.

More on how our current Administration argues that all this surveillance of American citizens is legal.

Considering the book subscription services being offered by several companies.

Microsoft makes a panoramic photo of Seattle and fills it with photographic Easter Eggs.

Amazon, then Microsoft, drops cloud storage fees.

How Apple and Microsoft are taking different paths in operating systems and hardware.

More benefits of drinking coffee. I love to read posts that reinforce what I love.

A discussion of the fights in San Francisco following the movement of Silicon Valley dwellers into the city. It is a simple matter of supply and demand. The demand for housing in the city is growing faster than the supply of new housing. Hence, prices are rising. If you have lived in the city for decades, your kids cannot afford to live in the city, and you hate that, so you blame somebody.

Kentucky to spend $100million for more rural broadband. I like this. It is local. No one is saying, "You guys should pay for broadband in our state."

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Sunday January 26, 2014

How one writer creates a workspace that works for her.

And more on the class warfare that is happening in San Francisco-Silicon Valley. The proletariat is attacking the ... well I can't spell the booz-wa-zee word. And is it the other way around?

One in five computers bought by American schools last year was a Chromebook.

I applaud this: in Kentucky, programming languages fulfill the foreign language high school requirements.

Excellent notes from Seth Godin about the Conference Call.

The RYNO: an electric-motor unicycle kind of thing. This is neat, but really a stunt. It does, however, point to a near future when handicapped people can move about with a one-wheel wheelchair type of machine that is smaller than their footprint. That will be wonderful.

We are now not so sure about the existance of black holes.

An important tool for writers: the trash can.

How Merle Haggard and a bus driver wrote a million-selling song in ten minutes. Inspiration and topics are everywhere. Notice them.

Writing to write, not to be published.

Incorporate all the senses in describing a scene.

How one writer found jobs on Freelance Writers Den.

Places to find magazine article markets.

"I’d soon realize persistence wasn’t an end game. It was the name of the road." for writers.

Ten things you can write in ten minutes. Practice, write, write, write - even if you only have a few minutes, write.

Two excellent bits of experience from an experienced, prolific writer: (1) Because it takes as long as it takes. (2) And a writer takes a long time to become a writer.

This pieces contains good, practical tips for new writers.

Tools to help you write faster - basically these tools remove distractions.

A site that creates a bibliography in the correct format for several standard styles - Writing House.

Creating a writer's group.

How to put keywords in the title of your books. Tim Ferris devoted a lot of pages to this topic in his "The Four-Hour Work Week."

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