Summary of this week:

HP is splitting into two companies
Symantec is splitting into two companies
Facebook shuttle bus drivers may form a union
The $150 Kano build it and program it computer for education
Yahoo lays off 400 engineers in India
We have the first ebola death in the US
CSS is 20 years old

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

Monday October 6, 2014

Hewlett-Packard will split into two companies (no, not one called Hewlett and one called Packard).

A WiFi tutorial that may help your home system.

Thoughts on email, being interrupt driven, being plan driven, and accomplishing work.

Living longer is not always what a person wants. How do you write that in legislation?

NASA tells Boeing and SpaceX to stop work as a competitor files a contract award protest. And government contracting drags on and on. Your tax dollars at waste.

Posts continue to appear about Google hiring guards as employees vice contractors. This could be the biggest economic news of the year.

Twitter gives MIT A-L-L the pubic tweets and $10million to analyze them.

The cost of 3D printing and CNC milling machines is plummeting. Rising rapidly is the ability to build at home all sorts of things.

There are less useful things to do at home: teenager hacks Android watch so it can run Windows 95.

Our Navy is testing autonomous swarms of small boats that may protect larger ships.

The works of Christian missionary doctors fighting ebola in West Africa is embarrassing humanists.

Ten current arguments among software developers.

It is time for nerds to stop acting like the victims and start acting like adults.

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Tuesday October 7, 2014

Google is widening its search results to "non-traditional" news sources. I think that means Reddit et al.

Google adds more image editing features in its online Slides.

For thrillseekers and grandparents, we can now livestream our GoPro cameras.

Almost inexplicable, people have stopped adopting iOS 8.

A look at the Intex Cloud FX: a $35 smartphone for the masses of India.

Part of the HP split is that 55,000 people will lose their jobs.

The start of ebola infections in Europe.

Now the European Commission is investigation Amazon for tax fraud. Let's consider this one as well: a group of commisioners paid by European governments funded by taxes is considering whether to extract billion$ from an American company. No conflict of interest there. The outcome is quite predictable.

This is troubling and bad for the country: our Department of Justice rules that it was okay for a DEA agent to steal a woman's identity, create a Facebook page about her, and use it to try to contact criminals.

Google opens a new campus for entrepreneurs in Madrid.

The persons who drive the Facebook shuttle buses work 15-hour days for low pay and want to unionize. Okay Facebook, step up and do what Google did by making its guards full-time company employees.

RoomAlive from Microsoft turns an entire room into a video game set.

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Wednesday October 8, 2014

$150 buys us Kano—build a computer and learn how to program it. We shall see if it works in the marketplace.

Our government won't allow Twitter and others to report surveillance requests, so Twitter sues for that ability.

On the transformation of LinkedIn from job hunting to "publishing." I find most of the celebrity expert essays on LinkedIn too simple and almost silly. Perhaps I should pay closer attention.

News on the GitHub Student Developer Pack—free coding tools for students.

Criminals, who else(?), steal million$ from ATM$ using malware worldwide. But of course Health Care dot Gov is completely secure from all that stuff.

We seem to have an overabundance of PhD graduates in the sciences.

Facebook launches hyper-local ads that point users to places within a mile of their current location.

Microsoft and others pledge to protect the information of K-12 students.

Yahoo lays off 400 engineers in India. This story is all over the Internet, so it must be important. Years ago it was a yawn. Today, however, we are connected and this matters to the American economy as well as to India's.

At least one person agrees with me that this Do What You Love DWYL thing points people in the wrong direction.

How Firestone stopped ebola at its plantation in Liberia, and how governments flopped trying.

The IBM Model M: the best computer keyboard ever made.

The Mercedes Future Truck—a person drives it in the city, it drives itself on the highway.

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Thursday October 9, 2014

Google Street View mapped a desert using camels. Truth, sometimes, is stranger than fiction.

Apple posts a video tutorial on making iOS apps with Swift.

Apple confirms its October 16th event. The content is still up to the rumor mill.

AMD names Dr. Lisa Sue as its President and CEO.

For the first time, Apple is one of the top five suppliers of personal computers in the world.

We have yet another video of a person wearing a policer officer's uniform doing what I don't know how to describe anymore. These are terrible acts that only reinforce distrust between citizens and public officials an dmake life miserable for everyone. What happened to the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Surely police force training must mention those things at some time. What strikes me about this post is that it is in Ars Technica, not some far out right-wing-left-wing-take-your-pick wacko blog.

Look at the HTC RE video camera. More about the camera here.

Sprint will turn off its WiMAX network in November 2015. That was a good technology that just didn't make it in the marketplace.

The physics of the skateboard trick.

Eric Schmidt, "We're going to break the Internet," regarding the NSA and such.

UPS is opening its first lockers for customer delivery and pickup.

"Facebook, Pinterest and Box announced a new pilot program on Wednesday that will provide one-on-one mentorship to help women break into technical roles, and thrive in the industry." This is good, but what about men who want to do the same. It is problematic to discriminate by gender to eliminate discriminating by gender.

Microsoft's current CEO admits that Microsoft('s former CEO) made big mistakes with Windows 8.

Google's Chromecast is the world's most connected device—not sure what that means.

We have our first ebola death in the US.

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Friday October 10, 2014

A new Moleskine ad campaign emphasizes the perils of smartphones and tablets.

Following HP, Symantec will break into two companies.

Google will release a 6" smartphone this month.

Will Yahoo try to change Tumblr into YouTube?

Salary growth in India and China leads to more automation and less outsourced jobs.

Is it worth $150,000 to visit every country in the world?

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said something stupid about women's pay and then retracted it or tried to.

Hackers grab 100,000 Snapchat photos and, well you know what they did. There are many minors in the photos, so this might get really serious for the hackers. And this reminds us that, of course, Health Care dot Gov can't be hacked (not).

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Saturday October 11, 2014

"But you do have precisely the same keyboard as everyone else. It's the most level playing field we've got."—Seth Godin.

This may surprise people, but computer processors aproximate much of the math they perform. See, e.g., Intel.

Adding to the list, K-Mart has been hacked. Call your bank again and change all your credit cards and such. But of course, nothing like this could happen to Health Care dot Gov.

Due to Europe's right to be forgotten, Google has removed half-a-million links so far.

Researchers at Harvard may have found a stem cell "cure" for diabetes.

Apple joins the NFL-and-Bose versus Beats argument.

Which way do you point your solar cells? Do you choose to create the most energy or to help the electric company the most?

The Cascading Style Sheet is now 20 years old.

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Sunday October 12, 2014

Excellent video of a hawk detroying a drone. Note how it comes out of the sun.

The importance of the free food you serve your employees. Federal and other government employees, just look away as you won't ever get anything like this.

Thoughts on the past and future of the book.

This one isn't settled yet: should you read to your child from a tablet? Is that more harm than good?

Our government won't let companies talk about how they help our government.

I love this title as it is cutting and true: the Internet of someone else's things. You own your smartphone, but someone else controls it.

Former DIRNSA Alexander invested in tech firms while he was on duty. Average Federal employees would have been fired for doing such. Just goes to show that there are several sets of rules for Federal employees.

Do you think your writing habits are unusual? See this. I like the idea of writing on index cards. I believe that writing on "word processors" like everyone does today is an extension of that.

Yet more advice on finding writing jobs. If you are being paid $zero, what do you have to lose?

Life and writing are not fair; some writers—usually some other writers—can "get away with" things the rest of us can't.

Mistakes may lead to brilliant ideas.

Lots of posts list tools for writers; this post lists important tools for writers.

Some unusual tips for work productivity. #1 make a list of things NOT to do.

November is fast approaching, so is NaNoWriMo. Ten advantages to participating.

Excellent advice for writers from Andre Dubus II: note the part about ten years. TEN YEARS, not ten days or ten weeks. TEN YEARS is a long time to keep writing and being rejected, but that is how much time it will take in the best case. Fifteen or twenty years may be closer to the actual.

Several benefits of having a blog, especially if you are not a writer.

How writers can move towards thinking like writing is a business.

Places that will publish personal essays.

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