Summary of this week:

Microsoft shows the Xbox One X
Alienware updates its Area 51 desktop supercomputer
The Uber report is out, Management 101, stupid stuff happening there
Microsoft gets perfect score on Ms Pacman (who cares?)
Netflix surpasses all Cable TV—the world turns upside down
Amazon buys Whole Foods $14billion, vows no layoffs, no robots (we shall see)

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

Monday June 12, 2017

Typical Monday morning in that the tech world hasn't awoken from the weekend. The only real news is about Uber about to fire everyone and Microsoft shows their new game console.

Uber's board adopts all the recommendations of the Holder report. We don't yet know what they are.

Amazon has loaned, not given, $3Billion to small businesses since 2011. They loaned $1B in the last year.

"Fear of success is at least as big a challenge as fear of failure."—Seth Godin

A look at Mercedes' autonomous bus. This is the near future of autonomous vehicles.

Microsoft shows the Xbox One X at $500. We can play 4K games.

Let's all pitch in and buy back all those insecure medical devices. Can I make a bunch of bad products and have the taxpayers buy them all?

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Tuesday June 13, 2017

The great Obama rural broadband boondoggle failed miserably. Where did the $8billion go?

A look at the upgraded iPad—a technical marvel, but does anybody want a technical marvel tablet?

A look at the Microsoft Surface Laptop. It took a few tries, but Microsoft succeeds with a good machine.

Consider the Holberton School for programmers. No tuition, but you payback after you have a job. Perhaps things like this will work.

Microsoft updates its offerings of Power BI for data and business intelligence.

Alienware updates the Area 51 gaming machine. You can also run climate models and oil exploration simulations on this HPC.

The Uber investigation report is due today. Who will be left standing?

Amazon sues a former AWS VP for violating non-compete clause. Are they about to release cloud apps?

Waymo (Google) will concentrate on software for other companies' self-driving cars. No Google car.

Data analysis reveals numbers that can predict attempted suicides. This is not AI, it is good analysis.

Free speech on college campuses. Can we possible make this more complicated?

1/3 of the world is overweight, and 1/10 is obese. Let's all eat ourselves off the planet.

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Wednesday June 14, 2017

Charles Thacker dies at 74. He invented ethernet and other foundation technologies at Xerox PARC.

Tim Cook talks, without details, about Apple's autonomous vehicle technology works.

Leaks and more leaks about Russian hacking into election systems. How about details of lazy security in election systems?

Google has now sold a million Pixel phones.

Amazon Prime Reload: a new program that gives cash back on round-and-round purchases involving debit cards.

Uber tries to reform itself. Time to just close the whole thing and have someone else start over. This is known as a "false start."

Here is the full report to Uber. Management 101. It isn't rocket science.

The Atlassian Stack: a new way to buy all their tools at once. Not cheap.

Finally, Verizon owns Yahoo. aOl + yA(t)Hoo = Oath. Marrisa Meyer walks away with a "nice" severance package.

Microsoft pushes ads claiming superiority over Chromebooks for schools.

UK and France pledge to work together online. Is this the start of NATO-Cyber?

Mozilla releases Firefox 54.

Our TSA is testing fingerprint check-in at the airport. What could possibly go wrong?

And now we are blaming North Korea for cyber attacks. Again, where is the blame for poor security?

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Thursday June 15, 2017

Finally, Google drive will have Backup and Sync so we can have a copy of our computer in the cloud.

How to run a deception campaign at little or no cost. This agrees with Scott Adams' writing earlier this week on the power of the influencer, i.e., anyone in the world who can influence others through skill.

The iPhone is ten years old this month. How Apple kept its creation quiet.

And maybe all the stories aren't quite agreed to by all the participants.

The 14-person committee that now runs Uber. Can it be any better or worse? Yes.

Apple is making a big push into health care. Hint: that is where the real money is.

"Unlike all the things I've already mentioned, worry isn't actually part of your job."—Seth Godin

Real news, but not really news: we want to select which TV channels we receive and we want to pay $1/month for each.

And what will Marissa Mayer do now?

Microsoft's "AI" achieves the world's first perfect score on Ms Pacman. Our brightest minds being wasted on stupid stuff!

Got $8,999 and wanna' be unique? Get this Acer laptop with 21" curned display, limited edition.

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Friday June 16, 2017

A watershed moment: Netflix has more subscribers than all of Cable TV. The world turns upside down.

Facebook tells us that it is attempting to fight terrorism, too.

The French government starts a new tech visa program to attract talent. This is not an H-1B visa where companies can pay half salaries to immigrant tech talent.

Our Dept of Energy invests in US companies with a new contract to build faster super-duper-computers.

It appears that Amazon AWS enforces non-compete clauses only when it wants, it is personal.

WikiLeaks shows how the CIA hacks or hacked WiFi routers. Of course it was easy.

Details about the not-quite-a-blimp crash as the US Open golf tournament.

I find this to be an excellent piece from Seth Godin on two lists about myself and how to use them.

Billionaire Jeff Bezos wants others to GIVE him ideas so he can make for billion$.

Elon's folly—let's put a million people on Mars (so they can all starve to death).

Silliness about using spaces or tabs in computer programming.

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Saturday June 17, 2017

Why get a job when you can sit at home and play video games? Fun for ten years, then ... you try to grow up too late.

Stardust: a GPU-based library for visualizations.

Can your Chief Technology Officer still code? (and other stupid questions)

Speaking of stupid, 7% of American adults think chocolate milk comes from brown cows.

ooops, somehow missed to put this here, but Amazon bought Whole Foods for $14billion.

The side benefits and theories of why Amazon bought Whole Foods.

Amazon's purchase of Whole Foods causes collapse of other grocery chains' stock prices.

Amazon promises no layoffs at Whole Foods, no robots, etc.

Indoor agriculture moves on. Maybe one day this will become something.

SpaceX and the disruption of government and military satellite launches.

Microsoft releases a Modern Keyboard with a fingerprint sensor.

Wired provides a state-of-the-practice in laptop computers.

The Girl Scouts will award cybersecurity badges starting next year. Good for them.

Unusual article about land loss in Louisiana. Funny, I have recently stood on ground in places the article says don't exist.

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Sunday June 18, 2017

Odd tale of Russian targeting of active and former us military members.

An increasing number of Americans are turning to charity crowdfunding to pay medical bills. Why? Because that is where the money is.

Fallout from the Amazon-Whole Foods deal continues. A look at Instacart's affects.

Qualcomm releases a reference design for smart speakers. This will help just about everybody build their own.

iFixit disassembles the Microsoft Surface Laptop. Reassembly is impossible.

Debian 9 is released.

"the book doesn’t come out the way we want it to, and that is normal." Excellent advice.

Tips on restarting that big writing project.

Thoughts on creating and using a pen name. Good thoughts and tips.

Plain, simple thoughts on simple explanations. They go together with understanding.

A 17-step procedure to write a blog post. I am not exagerating—17 steps.

Journal Theraphy: yet another use of journal writing. In this post, it is for those who try to care for those with mental illnesses.

Sometimes you pull out something you wrote years ago. I little (or a lot) work later, and you have a gem.

(self)Dicsipline and the writer. Some writers have NO disciplline. They just write because they just breathe.

This is yet another good take on, "Find out what works for you as a writer and do it."

"A pro writer just keeps showing up" Excellent.

Some thoughts on fighting yourself when you fight yourself and keep from writing.

I find this to be an excellent post of freelance writing tips. "Track what you want to improve (income)."

I find these to be excellent thoughts by Scott Adams on Russia and anyone influencing anyone else's elections. "From 2017 onward, the democratic process in any country is open to “voting” by the entire world. The foreign “votes” will come in the form of social media influence on the local voters." Free speech via the Internet is worldwide, well almost worldwide. If I am a good influencer, I can influence votes in a Russian or German or Nigerian election.

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