Summary of this week:

US stock market loses 10% of its value—another lost year
Jeff Bezos reacts to the Amazon horror workplace stories
Google rebuilds Hangouts
Facebook rebuilds Notes (blogging)
10GB of Ashley Madison data released

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

Monday August 17, 2015

Wikipedia's latest problem: not enough volunteers to edit edits of paid people. People are paid to edit Wikipedia pages in favor of their financiers. Wiki-editing volunteers try to keep the pages honest. The volunteers are losing. One reason is that Wikipedia is sitting on a pile of donated money and won't pay its trusted editors.

The LinuxOne: an IBM mainframe running Ubuntu Linux. IBM has been selling Linux machines for 15 years.

Jeff Bezos reacts to the weekend horror stories about working at Amazon. Email him directly if you see such abuse. We shall see what happens and if anyone steps up and calls Jeff.

Perhaps the Apple Watch is a success as it is the leading seller in its market.

Great photos of Mars from an Indian Mars Orbiter. I hear that NASA is running a contest to make a video game for the ISS, really on mission there guys.

Maybe, just maybe, computer vision analysis of hand sketches can detect dementia years earlier.

How one person reprogrammed, a.k.a., hacked the Amazon Dash Buttons to be a baby monitor.

Donald Trump, businessman, doesn't like H-1B visas. Hire American first!

One of the reasons that America's government employees are separated from America is that they are separated, i.e., the only encounter other citizens in bad situations. This affects police and regulators as well. It is bad for America, and the police won't listen to "outsiders." That is the problem, they consider others as "them."

Virginia, where I reside, is finally changing its insecure computer voting machines. Perhaps others will learn as well.

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Tuesday August 18, 2015

Google completely rebuilds Hangouts for another try . Why not use it? Free multi-person video conferencing.

This is real—not an animation. A 6' tall biped robot running through the woods. Yes, it is attached to a cable for power and such, but this is a big step forward in robotics.

For the airplane and other situations: a cup holder that attaches to your laptop.

The 6th version of Android is M for Marshmallow.

The FAA claims that this past weekend's fiasco was due to a bad software update.

Our State Department finds tens of thousands more Hillary Clinton emails. So much for press conferences.

The Internet in North Korea –censored access for a few thousand in a country of 25 million.

Computer vision algorithms in this little camera edit your videos for you.

Google's Project Sunroof: combine mapping, your house's location, and atronomy to tell if you get enough sunlight to amke solar energy worthwhile.

ooops, our IRS underestimates the damage of its latest data breach. What a surprise (not).

Stories of horrific working conditions at Amazon go back for years.

ooops, breathing Beijing's air is like smoking 40 cigarettes a day.

Facebook Notes morphs into a Medium-like blogging platform.

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Wednesday August 19, 2015

BedJet: they have solved how to both heat and cool your bed simply. Now you will never want to get out of bed.

Are fitness trackers doomed to drown in the wake of the more-powerful smart watches?

Hackers release 10GB of Ashley Madison data. Of course they could have put your information in the dump to falsely embarrass you.

Apple retail stores are being revamped this week with the goal of simplicity—not so much information.

Google introduces its OnHub wireless router.

How much RAM do you need for that desktop computer? Probably just 4GigaBytes.

A look inside Google's internal network. It is big, fast, and complex.

The Turing test is of no interest to those doing AI research today.

If you run Parallels 11 on your Mac, you can talk to MS Cortana browser, but you still can't talk to Siri.

Target is settling with financial institutions over the 2013 data breach. Will they send me any money for all the time I spent on the phone?

The two-year phone contract is coming to its end.

Intel's newest processors "listen" to your yell and wake your computer.

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Thursday August 20, 2015

We move into late August and the world goes to sleep.

Google changes the way its Express delivery operates in an attempt to find a way to compete.

A look inside the excellent maternity-paternity benefit at Facebook.

The Burning Man site is full of bugs. This is a physical place, and these are physical bugs.

Once again, a computer from Apple is probably the best machine to run the latest version of MS Windows.

AISight: AI-controlled security cameras are watching us and "preventing" crime.

DropBox now allows you to drag and drop URLs into it—make and view bookmarks from any device.

Intel reveals a few details of its Skylake generation of processors. One note: they drive 4K displays.

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Friday August 21, 2015

People are starting to take this hyperloop idea seriously. Perhaps one day something will come of it.

We now have another, much larger, Ashley Madison dump of data. If we could combine this with the OPM leak, print everything, and put the paper in the White House, it would be a good thing.

Fewer people are accepting Adobe Flash anything. It is a big mess.

Samsung starts the ultimate test drive—use one of its new phones for 30 days for $1 with no obligation.

Tech in is everyone's life and is in the 2016 campaign. That leads to regulation, and that leads to bad things in tech.

Intel and the Knight Cancer Institute have announced what will be an open-source service platform, called the Collaborative Cancer Cloud. This is what tech companies should be doing.

Censorship in Europe: Google ordered to not link to stories about Google not linking to stories.

Stories like this cause me to wonder if anyone at Google is actually working or something.

Microsoft's latest facial recognition software identifies identical twins. Amazing stuff when you think about it.

This is how bad NASA management is: they are scavenging spare parts from shuttles in museums.

Mobile applications for students and everyone else.

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Saturday August 22, 2015

The US stock market lost 10% of its value this week. Another lost year.

I love this, stick a whiteboard or chalkboard to your laptop computer for quick signs.

Serious people want Jon Stewart to moderate the real presidential debates.

Coming real soon now, an Arduino board with Bluetooth for remote programming.

Where checked luggage goes at the airport—through the intestines.

Plain language on eigenvectors.

Excellent thoughts on why science is hard. Climate science is really hard and not exact, which is why so many "deniers" gag at confident proclamations in the media. Surely, I wish, those who do the research couch their estimates and the media glosses over those things. Real scientists can't be that silly. Right?

The top 10 technology colleges in America. Most are private and impossible to attend for the vast majority of Americans.

A new group of EXPENSIVE apartment hotels are opening.

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Sunday August 23, 2015

Out with the tablet, in with the 2-in-1 tablet-laptop convertible thing whatever we call it.

The wish that technology will end extreme poverty. There is a chance that will happen. That will also increase the distance from poverty to riches. So, do we solve America's income divide or extreme poverty in the world?

The TSA showed its master keys for luggage. Now crook can study the photos and make their own. Somedays the TSA must even amaze itself with its incompetence.

NASA and Congress: made for one another.

NASA claims to be 10x better at hurricane modeling. When did NASA become part of the weather service? No wonder we have to pay the Russians for rides to the ISS.

ASUS makes a phone with 256GigaBytes of storage. Want your own copy of the Library of Congress in your pocket?

Someone calculates how much $$$ I am worth to the big tech companies. Where do I start with stating what is wrong with this?

How Google's WiFi router helps position them in the home for more things.

This chart shows how programming language popularity has drifted at GitHub since 2008. When did HTML become a programming language?

A look at what computers schools are buying: Apple leads while the Chromebooks are gaining.

The newest generation of overly successful "tech" companies is poaching employees from the previous generation.

Freelance writers need to take a day off now and then, too.

One writer's anguish and pain and still waking up in the morning.

Becoming an exceptional writer: this post's title is a bit silly, but it has good advice. Find a way to write all the time.

Writing all day brings physical injuries. Take care of yourself. If you are ill, no writing occurs and with it no income.

Writing is so much more than writing—true.

Tips on working and writing outside. Get Rite in the Rain notebook and pen.

Sometimes a writing is so busy writing that they can't write about writing.

Thoughts on creating that home office.

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